Good Reason not to vote for Kerry!!!
Sep 11, 2004 | 10:50 PM
#213
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Good Reason not to vote for Kerry!!!
I think Bush will win. He has the Momo moving his way. One thing........I hope all of you people who support him remember that you are compliant in his failed mission. When Iraq goes down as one of the biggest blunders in US history, remember you were partially responsible for propagating his half truths and neocon BS. Iraq was no threat to us, now it will become another Iran, run by religious fanatics. There is a reason Saddam was so brutal. So go ahead and believe you are being patriotic while it feels good.
Sep 11, 2004 | 10:56 PM
#214
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Afro-Engineer
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From: The Asphalt Jungle
Good Reason not to vote for Kerry!!!
Its good to see you have come to the realization he will win [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img] I watched a deal on the life of saddam on the history channel today while i was frustrated from taking the rappy apart and back together and apart and so on. and That dude was a threat to america. bigger that **** after he got his *** kicked outta kuwait he told his people he was victorious and what not. he was one dillusional being.
Sep 11, 2004 | 11:20 PM
#215
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Good Reason not to vote for Kerry!!!
<<<That dude was a threat to america.>>>
How? We had him cornered. His army crumbled in 2 weeks, on their home turf.....His WMDs obviously are long gone. Like it or not, he was an asset in the war on terror. He controlled his religious fanatics, brutally.
How? We had him cornered. His army crumbled in 2 weeks, on their home turf.....His WMDs obviously are long gone. Like it or not, he was an asset in the war on terror. He controlled his religious fanatics, brutally.
Sep 12, 2004 | 01:41 AM
#216
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Good Reason not to vote for Kerry!!!
Do you keep forgetting that Congress was agreeable to going into Iraq, Kerry included? Stop putting everything on Bush, it takes much more than 1 man to make a decision and run this country.
Sep 12, 2004 | 11:16 AM
#217
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Good Reason not to vote for Kerry!!!
Congress rarely if ever goes against the commander in Chief. Its just the way the country works. Bush and his cabinet sold this war hard. They pounded the table every night. When you sell something hard you better make darn sure you are right, and that you have a plan of action, in and out. Obviously Bush didn't .
Read this, written by an ex-marine VietNam vet writer almost a year ago. One of the best writers out there. He had incredible insight IMO.
http://www.fredoneverything.net/
The Mess In Potamia
Sprawling Mysterious Consequences
September 29, 2003
Our foray into the Middle East appears pregnant with largish consequences. I wish I knew which consequences.
The attack on Iraq was indeed shocking and awesome. If the United States can now subdue the country, and bend it to chosen ends whatever they may be, America will presumably be the dominant power in the world for decades to come. Syria and Iran will take note and behave prudently. Everyone will understand that the US can enforce its will almost anywhere and impose such political solutions as it thinks wise.
On the other hand, if the US cannot hold on in Iraq, no one will fear it for a long time. Instead of gaining influence in the Moslem world the US will lose any it had. Iran for example will understand that it can whatever it likes. America will shrink from overseas involvement as it did after Vietnam. The occupation will be seen less as the beginning of the new American century than as the end of the last.
Which?
Further, the presidency of Mr Bush, and his place in history, are at stake. He knows it, which will either make victory possible or defeat ugly. He has invested too much of both pride and political capital to pull out. Coitus reservatus is no much of an electoral strategy. If he prevails, he will perhaps be seen as a smaller Churchill, a clear-sighted man who by tenacity and unsuspected wisdom transformed the Middle East. If he loses I suspect that he will be remembered as the worst president we have had, the man who single-handedly neutered America in the world.
Which?
I don’t know. But one thing is sure. He won’t retreat.
Now, can Mr Bush prevail? I don’t know. I’m not in Iraq. I neither speak nor read Arabic. However: If, as the White House has argued, the Iraqi resistance consists of outside agitators and a few followers of a detested dictator, the US can probably wear them down. If the population of Iraq supports the resistance, or is coming to support it, then the occupation is in all likelihood doomed.
Which?
The power of the American military will be largely irrelevant to the outcome.
The military is small, heavily reliant on technology, and designed for attacking point targets and organized military forces. For these purposes, it is good, and in fact has no competitors. It is, however, poorly designed for occupying large countries with armed and hostile populations that choose to adopt guerrilla tactics.
The way to defeat American forces is to avoid giving them clear targets, stretch them thin, steadily inflict enough losses to alienate public opinion in the US, and keep the war dragging on. You don’t defeat the US in the field. It can’t be done. You defeat it in America. When a war loiters about inconclusively (if it does) and the body bags trickle home, eventually the country wearies, the press turns against the war, the president’s numbers fall, politicians of the other party make elections into referenda on the war, and (in this case) Hillary smells blood in the water.
Oddly, the occupying army itself often becomes the ally of the resistance. For example, the guerrillas destroy a truck in a supply convoy in a town. The soldiers return fire wildly, killing several civilians including, if the guerrillas are lucky, a child. The burning truck gives the resistance credibility: they are defeating the invaders. The killing of the civilians arouses hatred and aids recruitment.
Killing GIs eventually forces the occupiers into fortified encampments, making political ends harder to achieve. It also (reasonably enough) causes the GIs to hate the population. The soldiers are very young, in a country whose ways they do not understand and whose language they do not speak. Many of its people want to kill them. This makes troops angry and quick on the trigger. They therefore tend to treat the population roughly, which is exactly what the guerrillas want.
The occupiers often find themselves in circumstances in which there is no right answer. If at a checkpoint they do not search a woman in baggy clothes, it may well turn out that she was carrying a large amount of Semtex. Something blows up. If they do search her, the population will hate them. Body-searching the women of a conservative society doesn’t get you party invitations. Kicking in doors in the night and holding women at gunpoint poses the same difficulty. If you don’t do these things, you don’t catch the resistance. If you do, you recruit for them.
It’s a hard kind of war to win. A while ago, the media reported, GIs accidentally killed nine Iraqi policemen. Other American troops (said the papers) killed civilians when, hearing celebratory shots fired into the air, they opened up on a wedding. If these accounts are correct, they suggest very poor fire discipline. To the US command these were “incidents.” To families of the dead, the killings were reasons to seek revenge. And of course all Iraq knows. The guerrillas could ask for nothing better.
Now, is the resistance growing or diminishing? I don’t know. Having been around both reporters and military PAOs, I know better that to trust either too blithely. Still, it sounds as though the Iraqis are getting organized and getting better. They seem to be gaining in sophistication.
A few weeks back, for example, the media reported that the Iraqis had attacked a convoy and then ambushed the rescue forces. This was a standard Viet Cong tactic. Another is to put two remotely detonated mines close to each other. The first one gets the convoy and, a bit later, the second gets the medical teams. Coming soon to a theater near you.
What now? So far as I can see, the best possible solution now is that the US win, establish some reasonable government, and leave. I’m doing more hoping than expecting, but maybe. (Of course, I run to pessimism. This would be a splendid time to be wrong.) But if—if—things get worse and fighting grows, the odds would seem good for a long war by an increasingly desperate president and a humiliating retreat, leaving a helpless Iraq next to a healthy Iran. It sounds like a recipe for chaos. If you go to Baghdad, rent.
Meanwhile Hillary makes backseat noises: Oh, no, I’ll never, no, not that, keep trying….
Read this, written by an ex-marine VietNam vet writer almost a year ago. One of the best writers out there. He had incredible insight IMO.
http://www.fredoneverything.net/
The Mess In Potamia
Sprawling Mysterious Consequences
September 29, 2003
Our foray into the Middle East appears pregnant with largish consequences. I wish I knew which consequences.
The attack on Iraq was indeed shocking and awesome. If the United States can now subdue the country, and bend it to chosen ends whatever they may be, America will presumably be the dominant power in the world for decades to come. Syria and Iran will take note and behave prudently. Everyone will understand that the US can enforce its will almost anywhere and impose such political solutions as it thinks wise.
On the other hand, if the US cannot hold on in Iraq, no one will fear it for a long time. Instead of gaining influence in the Moslem world the US will lose any it had. Iran for example will understand that it can whatever it likes. America will shrink from overseas involvement as it did after Vietnam. The occupation will be seen less as the beginning of the new American century than as the end of the last.
Which?
Further, the presidency of Mr Bush, and his place in history, are at stake. He knows it, which will either make victory possible or defeat ugly. He has invested too much of both pride and political capital to pull out. Coitus reservatus is no much of an electoral strategy. If he prevails, he will perhaps be seen as a smaller Churchill, a clear-sighted man who by tenacity and unsuspected wisdom transformed the Middle East. If he loses I suspect that he will be remembered as the worst president we have had, the man who single-handedly neutered America in the world.
Which?
I don’t know. But one thing is sure. He won’t retreat.
Now, can Mr Bush prevail? I don’t know. I’m not in Iraq. I neither speak nor read Arabic. However: If, as the White House has argued, the Iraqi resistance consists of outside agitators and a few followers of a detested dictator, the US can probably wear them down. If the population of Iraq supports the resistance, or is coming to support it, then the occupation is in all likelihood doomed.
Which?
The power of the American military will be largely irrelevant to the outcome.
The military is small, heavily reliant on technology, and designed for attacking point targets and organized military forces. For these purposes, it is good, and in fact has no competitors. It is, however, poorly designed for occupying large countries with armed and hostile populations that choose to adopt guerrilla tactics.
The way to defeat American forces is to avoid giving them clear targets, stretch them thin, steadily inflict enough losses to alienate public opinion in the US, and keep the war dragging on. You don’t defeat the US in the field. It can’t be done. You defeat it in America. When a war loiters about inconclusively (if it does) and the body bags trickle home, eventually the country wearies, the press turns against the war, the president’s numbers fall, politicians of the other party make elections into referenda on the war, and (in this case) Hillary smells blood in the water.
Oddly, the occupying army itself often becomes the ally of the resistance. For example, the guerrillas destroy a truck in a supply convoy in a town. The soldiers return fire wildly, killing several civilians including, if the guerrillas are lucky, a child. The burning truck gives the resistance credibility: they are defeating the invaders. The killing of the civilians arouses hatred and aids recruitment.
Killing GIs eventually forces the occupiers into fortified encampments, making political ends harder to achieve. It also (reasonably enough) causes the GIs to hate the population. The soldiers are very young, in a country whose ways they do not understand and whose language they do not speak. Many of its people want to kill them. This makes troops angry and quick on the trigger. They therefore tend to treat the population roughly, which is exactly what the guerrillas want.
The occupiers often find themselves in circumstances in which there is no right answer. If at a checkpoint they do not search a woman in baggy clothes, it may well turn out that she was carrying a large amount of Semtex. Something blows up. If they do search her, the population will hate them. Body-searching the women of a conservative society doesn’t get you party invitations. Kicking in doors in the night and holding women at gunpoint poses the same difficulty. If you don’t do these things, you don’t catch the resistance. If you do, you recruit for them.
It’s a hard kind of war to win. A while ago, the media reported, GIs accidentally killed nine Iraqi policemen. Other American troops (said the papers) killed civilians when, hearing celebratory shots fired into the air, they opened up on a wedding. If these accounts are correct, they suggest very poor fire discipline. To the US command these were “incidents.” To families of the dead, the killings were reasons to seek revenge. And of course all Iraq knows. The guerrillas could ask for nothing better.
Now, is the resistance growing or diminishing? I don’t know. Having been around both reporters and military PAOs, I know better that to trust either too blithely. Still, it sounds as though the Iraqis are getting organized and getting better. They seem to be gaining in sophistication.
A few weeks back, for example, the media reported that the Iraqis had attacked a convoy and then ambushed the rescue forces. This was a standard Viet Cong tactic. Another is to put two remotely detonated mines close to each other. The first one gets the convoy and, a bit later, the second gets the medical teams. Coming soon to a theater near you.
What now? So far as I can see, the best possible solution now is that the US win, establish some reasonable government, and leave. I’m doing more hoping than expecting, but maybe. (Of course, I run to pessimism. This would be a splendid time to be wrong.) But if—if—things get worse and fighting grows, the odds would seem good for a long war by an increasingly desperate president and a humiliating retreat, leaving a helpless Iraq next to a healthy Iran. It sounds like a recipe for chaos. If you go to Baghdad, rent.
Meanwhile Hillary makes backseat noises: Oh, no, I’ll never, no, not that, keep trying….
Sep 12, 2004 | 02:20 PM
#218
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Joined: Dec 2002
Posts: 1,075
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Good Reason not to vote for Kerry!!!
Originally posted by: bsb64
I hope all of you people who support him remember that you are compliant in his failed mission. When Iraq goes down as one of the biggest blunders in US history, remember you were partially responsible for propagating his half truths and neocon BS.
I hope all of you people who support him remember that you are compliant in his failed mission. When Iraq goes down as one of the biggest blunders in US history, remember you were partially responsible for propagating his half truths and neocon BS.
Hey, since you are so good at predicting the Future, I bought a lottery ticket yesterday, how does it look for me, am I going to be Rich?
Does that mean that you are "compliant" for the whole Clinton B.J. stuff? But at least he got the "JOB" done, right? That's something to take pride in.
No one knows the future. You have to wait and see how things play out. But have comfort in your predictions, you have a 50/50 shot at being right. It will either be one of our greatest moments, or one of our greatest failures. We did the same thing in Afghanistan, and although history has yet to right it's final chapter, as of this moment, the outcome looks very promising.
Now time for a "REALITY" check. How many of you REALLY think that ONE Man is responsible for all of the evils of our country (Or the whole world as most of you Demos seem to believe.)? Are you really that naive? I realize that all of the stereotypical catch phrases and status-quo draw the party line B.S. is the norm, but do you Really believe all of this stuff?
This country is way to big for one man to take the blame for everything that people feel is wrong about this country or the world for that matter. I'm pretty sure that he is getting a lot of help from both sides of the isle.
Sep 12, 2004 | 02:58 PM
#220
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Joined: Aug 2002
Posts: 381
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Good Reason not to vote for Kerry!!!
<<<Does that mean that you are "compliant" for the whole Clinton B.J. stuff? But at least he got the "JOB" done, right? That's something to take pride in.>>>
When all else fails bring up Clinton. I never once supported Clinton in any way.
<<<But have comfort in your predictions, you have a 50/50 shot at being right. It will either be one of our greatest moments, or one of our greatest failures. >>>
50/50? I doubt it. 50/50 are lousy odds to be risking the bulk of our miltary on something that isn't even benificial to the war on terror.
<<<Now time for a "REALITY" check. How many of you REALLY think that ONE Man is responsible for all of the evils of our country (Or the whole world as most of you Demos seem to believe.)? Are you really that naive? I realize that all of the stereotypical catch phrases and status-quo draw the party line B.S. is the norm, but do you Really believe all of this stuff?>>>
1 I'm not a democrat
2 I know ridiculously horrible policy when I see it.
3 The administation as a whole is leading our war in terror. They are responsible for how it is carried out.
4 You want stereotypical catch phrases?
How about "Axis of evil", That one led the NKoreans to accelerate their nuke program.
Uhmm, "evil doers" what are we in second grade?
"they hate us because we are free" No..... they hate us because they view us as an empirialistic superpower(see Iraq) , because we support Isreal and because we support about 5 illegitamate regimes in the Arab world.
Lets see...any more? Uhm...."I won't rest until we catch Bin Laden!" I guess Saddam was more important.
When all else fails bring up Clinton. I never once supported Clinton in any way.
<<<But have comfort in your predictions, you have a 50/50 shot at being right. It will either be one of our greatest moments, or one of our greatest failures. >>>
50/50? I doubt it. 50/50 are lousy odds to be risking the bulk of our miltary on something that isn't even benificial to the war on terror.
<<<Now time for a "REALITY" check. How many of you REALLY think that ONE Man is responsible for all of the evils of our country (Or the whole world as most of you Demos seem to believe.)? Are you really that naive? I realize that all of the stereotypical catch phrases and status-quo draw the party line B.S. is the norm, but do you Really believe all of this stuff?>>>
1 I'm not a democrat
2 I know ridiculously horrible policy when I see it.
3 The administation as a whole is leading our war in terror. They are responsible for how it is carried out.
4 You want stereotypical catch phrases?
How about "Axis of evil", That one led the NKoreans to accelerate their nuke program.
Uhmm, "evil doers" what are we in second grade?
"they hate us because we are free" No..... they hate us because they view us as an empirialistic superpower(see Iraq) , because we support Isreal and because we support about 5 illegitamate regimes in the Arab world.
Lets see...any more? Uhm...."I won't rest until we catch Bin Laden!" I guess Saddam was more important.