Democrats Want to Lose another war

[Thrawn]

But I don't think your arguement is simpler.


Okay, we don't have evidence that there is (or at least was) an exit strategy.  Let's draw a couple of conclusions.


1. There isn't (or at least wasn't) an exit strategy.

2.  There is an exit strategy in place that no one outside of X amount of people that know about it.


The first case can't be proven, the whole proving and negative thing.  But it is a logical assumption as there is no evidence for an exit strategy.  The second case can be proven, and needs to be in order to be accepted, because it is a positive.


No evidence for my space lizards.

1.  There aren't any damn space lizards.

2.  There are space lizards but no one outside of X amount of people know about.

Neat thing about conspiracy theories, any evidence against is transformed into evidence for it.  Of course, I'm now arguing against the existance of space lizards...they got to me!  



Saw a great movie today, about Edward R Murrow going up against Senator McCarthy.  

McCarthy:  Commies have infultrated teh everything.

Murrow:  You're an ****** McCarthy.

McCarthy:  See!  He must be a commie and that proves that commies are everywhere.

[Thrawn]

On to your questions.


"My question is simple (wich you didn't answer) If you had an exit plan would you publish it? Seriously, why would you?"

Sure, how else is Iraq supposed to know what the hell we are up to and what we expect from them.  Or fellow coallation members, citizens of my country etc.  It let's everyone make informed decisions, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let terrorists dictate what policies I should and shouldn't implement, because hey **** them and I don't want to give them the initative.


"If I knew the exact date and timeline my enemy was leaving I'd plan accordingly, you don't think terrorists think this way?"


What are they going to do?  Attack more?  


"It just makes sense to me. Personally I'd think it would be great if Bush pulled in all the senior leaders (IE Politicians from BOTH sides) and generals into one room and said we arent leaving here until we all agree on a "Victory Strategy" and quit politicising this war."

Yeah, that would be great.


"Now on WMDs I know Sadam had them, that's not an assumption. He hasn't shown any proof that he destroyed them, in fact there's more evidence to the contrarey. So where'd they go?"

I recommend sending in inspectors to find out.

[Gunslinger]

Space lizards aside.  

It is not a big suspension of disbelief to think that Generals of the Armed Forces of the United States are conducting war with a strategy.

OTOH

It is a HUGE suspension of disbelief to think that Generals of the Armed Forces of the United States are conducting war without a strategy.

[Thrawn]

Not at all, the Generals don't have a choice but to conduct a war whether there is a, let us say "clear", strategy or not.

Unfortunately it means that they can't do a good job persecuting it.  Kind of saw that reflected in the on again, off again, on again, off again....on again!, theme of the Falluja and Mahdi Army operations.

[Gunslinger]

Originally posted by Thrawn
Not at all, the Generals don't have a choice but to conduct a war whether there is a, let us say "clear", strategy or not.

Unfortunately it means that they can't do a good job persecuting it.  Kind of saw that reflected in the on again, off again, on again, off again....on again!, theme of the Falluja and Mahdi Army operations.

Soooo by what you are saying in that second paragraph specifically the "Falluja and Mahdi Army operations."  That sounds suspiciously like a PLAN!

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Sunday made no promises for a significant withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq next year, sticking to the Pentagon’s long-held assertion that field commanders will determine when to begin a military drawdown.

Wich to me is the way it should be.  

It's funny you sit here and site Falluja and Mahdi but if the assault went as orriginally planned you'd probably be here blaming them for the mass amounts of civilian casualties that would have resulted.  Last time I checked massive ammounts of civilian casualties don't help the cause.....so again it sounds like a PLAN! was enacted.

tell me about them space lizards again?
   

EDIT: most generals I know do not conduct warfare without a plan....and yes they have a choice albeit not a very good one when it means them resigning.

[capt. apathy]

I just don't see the point in continuing the argument as to the quality of this administration (their war, policy, motives, corruptness, proffiteering,...).

at this point nobody's mind is going to be changed.  in fact Bush and company can now do just about whatever they want without fear of it hurting their approval by the American people.

 Bush, Chaney, and Rummy could sit down to a table on live television tonight and eat an infant for all of America to see.  

and come tomorrow morning we'd have 5 pages of 'rip-n-paste' from neo-con experts telling us how it helped the economy, brought freedom to parts of the world too ignorant to know how to run their own countries, fought terrorism or if we weren't buying any of that they'd find some CIA document showing how the kid was a collaborator working for Saddam and Al'Quada anyway so his life is worthless and he has no rights under the constitution.

the rest of us would see it as not much of a surprise from an administration that has no problem sending bleeding our treasury, and some of our countries finest young men and women off to die so their friends can skim cash off of no-bid defense and reconstruction projects.
Bush could do just about whatever he wants and I couldn't imagine despising him and his cronies any less, and anyone who hasn't opened their eyes yet is likely not capable.

[Thrawn]

"Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Sunday made no promises for a significant withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq next year..."

Right, so Rumfeld said nothing.


"...sticking to the Pentagon’s long-held assertion that field commanders will determine when to begin a military drawdown."

Wich to me is the way it should be.

Wow, so the Pentagon determining policy policy is the way it should be?  I'm not sure how to take that.  Isn't that supposed to be the job of your elected representitives?  

Are they so sick of not having a concrete strategy that they have decide to it themselves?

It's funny you sit here and site Falluja and Mahdi but if the assault went as orriginally planned you'd probably be here blaming them for the mass amounts of civilian casualties that would have resulted.

Which assult?

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/iraq/fallujah.htm

Last time I checked massive ammounts of civilian casualties don't help the cause.....so again it sounds like a PLAN! was enacted

Hmmm, to kill a bunch of people, pull out.  Go in with Iraqi soldiers, kill a bunch of people, pull out.  Tell eveyone to leave, and then practically level the city was the PLAN?

That wasn't a plan, that was reacting.  To go after Al-Sadr, stop, go after him, stop again etc, isn't a plan, it isn't acting following an understood strategy.  It's reacting.

[Gunslinger]

You really have no clue do you.  It seems to me the same critics crying about civilian casualties are the same ones crying about the pains the military takes to avoid them.

EDIT: and I never said Field commanders determine policy when I said "that's how it should be" I was referring to them deciding when it was appropriate to draw down troops......cause I don't know....maybe they are there and know better.  Yup better than some politician in Washington and better than some guy with a computer in Canada.

Are they so sick of not having a concrete strategy that they have decide to it themselves?

again I don't know a single officer that would conduct war without a plan.  And for the armchair quaterbacks "no plan survives contact with the enemy "-Murphy

[Gunslinger]

Senate adopts 'exit strategy' from reality

November 20, 2005

BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST Advertisement


A busy time in the U.S. Senate, the "world's greatest deliberative body." Judging from the 2006 conference report, the Senate subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education -- Chairman Arlen Specter (R), ranking member Tom Harkin (D) -- has been deliberating especially hard:

"Sec. 221. (a) The Headquarters and Emergency Operations Center Building (Building 21) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is hereby renamed as the Arlen Specter Headquarters and Emergency Operations Center.

(b) The Global Communications Center Building (Building 19) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is hereby renamed as the Thomas R. Harkin Global Communications Center."

Good to see that even in the viciously partisan atmosphere of today's politics, Republicans and Democrats can still work together to carry out the people's business. In the same spirit, I wonder whether the Senate chamber itself should not be renamed the Abu Musab al-Zarqawi United States Senate. With increasingly rare exceptions, just about everything that emerges from the chamber tends to support the Zarqawi view of Iraq -- that this is a psychological war in which the Great Satan is an effete wimp who can be worn down and chased back to his La-Z-Boy recliner in Florida.

Last week, the Republican majority, to their disgrace and with 13 honorable exceptions, passed an amendment calling on the administration to lay out its "plan" for "ending" the war and withdrawing U.S. troops. They effectively signed on to the Democrat framing of the debate: that the only thing that matters is the so-called exit strategy. The only difference between Bill Frist's mushy Republicans and Harry Reid's shameless Democrats is that the latter want to put a firm date on withdrawal, so that Zarqawi's insurgents can schedule an especially big car bomb to coincide with the formal handover of the Great Satan's cojones.

"Exit strategy" is a defeatist's term. The only exit strategy that matters was summed up by George M. Cohan in the song the Doughboys sang as they marched off to the Great War nine decades ago:

"And we won't come back

Till it's over

Over there!"

And that's the timetable, too. If you want it fleshed out a bit, how about this? "The key issue is no longer WMD or even the role of the U.N. The central issue is America's credibility and will to prevail.'' That's Goh Chok Tong speaking in Washington last year. Unfortunately, he's not a U.S. senator, but the prime minister of Singapore, and thus ineligible to run, on the grounds that he's not a citizen of Blowhardistan. What does the Senate's revolting amendment tell America's enemies (Zarqawi) and "friends" (Chirac) about her will to prevail?

Any great power -- never mind the preeminent power of the age -- should be engaged with the world. That means, among other things, that it has a presence in those parts of the globe that are critical to its interest. For two years, the Democrats have assiduously peddled the line that Bush "lied" about Iraq. A slightly less contemptible class of critic has sneered that the administration never had any plans for postwar Iraq, hadn't a clue what it was getting into, couldn't tell the difference between a Sunni and a Shia and a Kurd if they were painted different colors and had neon signs flashing off the top of their heads. If there's anything to this feeble second-guessing, it's that the U.S. government simply didn't know enough about Iraq -- and, in a crude sense, they're right. U.S. taxpayers would be justified, for example, in feeling they're not getting their $44 billion worth from the intelligence community.

But the only way to know the country is to be there on the ground, in some form or other. I'm all for "Iraqification" -- though those Democrats urgently demanding everything be done by the locals will be the first to shriek in horror once the Iraqis start serious score-settling with the foreign insurgents. But, even with full-scale Iraqification, America would be grossly irresponsible if not clinically insane not to maintain some sort of small residual military presence somewhere in the western desert.

Sorry, but that's part of the deal of being the world's hyperpower. To pretend otherwise is an exit strategy from reality. If you're worried about the ''cost,'' stop garrisoning your wealthiest allies -- Germany, Japan et al. -- and thereby absolving them from stepping up to the traditional responsibilities of nationhood.

One expects nothing from the Democrats. Their leaders are men like Jay Rockefeller, Democrat of West Virginia, who in 2002 voted for the war and denounced Saddam Hussein as an "imminent threat" and claimed that Iraq could have nuclear weapons by 2007 if not earlier. Now he says it's Bush who "lied" his way into war with a lot of scary mumbo-jumbo about WMD.

What does Rockefeller believe, really? I know what Bush believes: He thought Saddam should go in 2002 and today he's glad he's gone, as am I. I know what, say, Michael Moore believes: He wanted to leave Saddam in power in 2002, and today he thinks the "insurgents" are the Iraqi version of America's Minutemen. But what do Rockefeller and Reid and Kerry believe deep down? That voting for the war seemed the politically expedient thing to do in 2002 but that they've since done the math and figured that pandering to the moveon.org crowd is where the big bucks are? If Bush is the new Hitler, these small hollow men are the equivalent of those grubby little Nazis whose whining defense was, "I was only obeying orders. I didn't really mean all that strutting tough-guy stuff." And, before they huff, "How dare you question my patriotism?", well, yes, I am questioning your patriotism -- because you're failing to meet the challenge of the times. Thanks to you, Iraq is a quagmire -- not in the Sunni Triangle, where U.S. armed forces are confident and effective, but on the home front, where soft-spined national legislators have turned the war into one almighty Linguini Triangle.






It's easy to laugh at the empty shell of a Jay Rockefeller, bragging about how he schmoozed Bashar Assad, dictator of a terrorist state, about Bush's war intentions. But look at the news from France and ask yourself what that's really about? At heart, it's the failure of Europe's political class to grasp the profound and rapid changes already under way. This Senate is making the same fatal error. I'd advocate throwing the bums out if there were any alternative bums to throw in. But maybe the Thomas R. Harkin Centers for Disease Control could persuade them to be the first deliberative body to donate itself to medical science.








© Mark Steyn, 2005

[lazs2]

I would hope that our generals and leaders are using Abrahms exit strategy that he used to win the war in vietnam and that they would also be strong enough to not allow the anti war crowd to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

We need a strong Iraqi police and militia force in Iraq and then we need to loan them the money and tools to keep it functioning and we probly need some small military force there for many years... the potential rewards are great for us and the world.

lazs

[Gunthr]

I agree with that, Lazs.  I think we will have strategic military bases in the Middle East for years to come, and I think that this was the plan from the beginning.  When I hear "exit strategy" I realize that the Vietnam Syndrome is still wrapped around the axle.  And the politicians will continue to jump up and down on the issue like it was a trampoline.

[Thrawn]

Originally posted by Gunslinger
again I don't know a single officer that would conduct war without a plan.  And for the armchair quaterbacks "no plan survives contact with the enemy "-Murphy

Well sure, Shinseki had a plan too....hey wait a second you devious weazel.  You have me arguing about whether or not Generals have plans when we where discussing whether or not Bush had an exit strategy.  Red herring me not!

[Gunslinger]

Originally posted by Thrawn
Well sure, Shinseki had a plan too....hey wait a second you devious weazel.  You have me arguing about whether or not Generals have plans when we where discussing whether or not Bush had an exit strategy.  Red herring me not!

Isn't that the same thing?  Do you think Bush or his cabinate (besides the Joint Cheifs) have time in their schedules to draw up war plans.....I doubt it.  This is done by Generals in the JCS and Pentagon.  And AGAIN it's a far cry to say there was NO plan.  Kinda hard to beleive.

[Thrawn]

If I sound like a smartass here I don't mean to.  Do you know the differences between strategic goals, operations, and tactics?  Do now the where the term "exit strategy" came from and it's technical definition?

[MrCoffee]

If we leave Iraq, at least secure its oil refineries etc... UN charter it or whatever to see what happens in Iraq after US forces leave. If a buncha beheading terrorists take over and get friendly with Iraqi Nationalists like sadr and dont play ffriendly ball with the US and UN, at least we got their oil. Obviously Im totally unqualified to remark on the situation but feel I must post.