A New Way Forward In Iraq

[Kurt]

Originally posted by Yeager

That was one of the lamest posts in this thread.

Why?

If the idea sucks, sticking with it isn't going to make it better.

Other than a need to agree with the President, what is lame about the point he made?  If you are doing something that isn't working, 'Staying the course' is retarded... Its pretty clear cut to most of us, but I'd like to hear your take on it, since we disagree....

[x0847Marine]

Originally posted by Auger
The reasons for failure in Iraq are many, but the primary reason is the unmitigated incompetence of the current administration.  

Every administration that starts a "war on", loses... its the legacy of republican & democrat failure.

The War on drugs has made weed the #1 cash crop in the USA, war on gangs?, LA City spends $82 million (some Fed $$) annually, yet gang membership has grown 6x, gang crime is up 14%.

This latest "War on.." (terror) will go the same way, our so called leaders cant help but screw things up... its what they are best at.

[-tronski-]

Originally posted by kamilyun
Where in my post did I say the war is lost?

You seem to think there are only 2 sides to this issue.  "stay the course" and "cut and run".

I have stated that IMHO that the last 3.5 years of war/conflict in Iraq have been poorly planned and executed.  Maybe there is a measure of success that I am missing?

As for future strategies, 20,000 troops is a start.

In your perfect world, what should our strategy be? Not sarcasm.

Same for you Eagler...how long, how many troops, rules of engagement, anything else to get the job done...?

well there were 61 US divisions (1.6 Million american soldiers out of a total of 3 mil in europe) in Germany on VE day which were used to occupy the american sector....

so somewhere between 20,000 and 1.6 million should suffice...of course that would be beneficial 3 years ago

 Tronsky

[Eagler]

Originally posted by kamilyun
Same for you Eagler...how long, how many troops, rules of engagement, anything else to get the job done...?

as many troops as it takes, as long and it takes
the alternative should not be acceptable to the US ppl or the rest of the world as Iran as a superpower will create a war which makes Iraq look like the skirmish it really is

do you not think Iran will absorb Iraq if/when we retreat?
They might even if we stay and stabilize the place, they definitely will if we turn tail and run as the left wants us to do today .. j so they can spend the money we now spend on the military on their useless voting base ..

as for rules of engagement, yes it has to get bloodier before it gets better ,,, the blood should be insurgent blood but the sad fact is to spill more of that blood, more innocent Iraqi blood will spill also ..

[lazs2]

oboe... I may be paranoid but I don't believe I am fanatical..  I would say that the socialists trying to run my life are the fanatics.

I listen to NPR and I listen to fox.  I find them equally biased (despite what some liberal professors study said).    Overall they may rank as only the eighth most liberal station out of 20 but there are some pretty bad ones in that study I would bet.

When I listen to NPR I hear old men and women and brits all whining and pleading and using terms like man made global warming crisis in normal conversation like it is a given.   I hear them taint everything they say with a very socialist liberal viewpoint.   I probly hear about a half hour per day on average... all in my work vehicle.

I do not pretend to know much about every subject they are talking about... I kinda have to take their spin on most...  that is not what I am judging them (or any source) on...

How I do it is when there is a subject that I know a lot of... have experiance with or researched... It is how they handle those subjects.  It is also how they avoid subjects that are important to me... Like the ACLU.. they avoid the second amendment even with 80 million homes haveing firearms in them.

The interview with the democrat on his new raise gas prices to start a government screw up subsidy for carpetbagger flim flam men "alternative energy" plan was a perfect example of socialism by consent... the way NPR does things... they weren't the liberals... the guest was... they just didn't call him on anything.  sheesh...anyone recall the subsidies for solar hot water heaters and the way it killed all research and put a bunch of cheap junk on peoples roofs that later killed their property values?    Give a damn billion dollar prize for the first solar electric panel that is 80% efficient and costs under a grand if you want the government involved.

As for "fair and balanced"  I don't think that you need to balance the leaders of iraq with some saudi liberal professor unless you have an agenda.  

lazs

[midnight Target]

Do I get 2 awards? Best and Lamest?





I'd like to thank the academy......

[Yeager]

Why?

If the idea sucks, sticking with it isn't going to make it better.
====
So here we are pursuing new tactics and increasing force levels to finally force the iraq government to break the cycle of sectarian violence and include all sects in the decision making process, to come down hard on the militias.  So you should be happy. Right?  trying something new, something that just might work, right?

Whats your plan?  withdraw all forces and leave Iraq high and dry?  if thats the plan you support then say it.  To stop funding the troops in battle? Give Iraq to the radicals....might as well retreat from afganistan.  You know what that would do

and the sliding door analogy was just retarded, lame.  Sorry mt, no award.

[oboe]

laz,

Here is a link to the study.   They did take pains to keep bias out of the study:

The researchers took numerous steps to safeguard against bias — or the appearance of same — in the work, which took close to three years to complete. They went to great lengths to ensure that as many research assistants supported Democratic candidate Al Gore in the 2000 election as supported President George Bush. They also sought no outside funding, a rarity in scholarly research.

"No matter the results, we feared our findings would've been suspect if we'd received support from any group that could be perceived as right- or left-leaning, so we consciously decided to fund this project only with our own salaries and research funds that our own universities provided," Groseclose said.

I listen to NPR often because of all the inane DJ chatter and so many ads in the commercial broadcasts.    

Whether or not global warming is man-made and a crisis seems like a scientific question not a political one, so the answer shouldn't depend on a political viewpoint.

I can't tell whether you are for subsidies or not.   You attack them in relation to solar water heaters but you seem to be a favor of keeping them in place for the oil companies -- even as some of them experience more profit than any other companies in the history of commerce?    I woulda thought you would dismiss those too as socialism.

[lazs2]

A study done by a liberal school is allways suspect but even so...  NPR was rated pretty liberal even amoung the 20 they surveyed when...  it is pretty much a given that even under the best of circumstances the media leans toward the left.

to me..  a survey by lefties on a lefty institution (the media) showed that NPR was pretty... well.... lefty.

I am against taxes..  you and the democrats and NPR may call em subsidies but to me they seem to be tax breaks.   It seems to me that the more we tax the oil companies the more it will cost us at the pump.

Now...  it is not like if the oil companies are taxed more that the rest of us will get taxed less..... nope.. they, the socialists, just want more money to spend.

Sooo this seems to be a way to increase taxes on a group..... increase the price of a product....  Increase our dependency on foreign oil and...increase/form another expensive government agency... and..

subsidize cheapo crap "alternative energy" gizmos that will destroy any real research.

I see no win in this.

This is simply more underhanded socialist class warfare to fund more and bigger government...   It's all ok so long as you can demonize a group before you penalize em.    smokers, drinkers, risk takers, the rich... the ones not completely in step with the herd..

As for telling me that if NPR makes me mad then I shouldn't listen...  that is perhaps one of the dumbest bits of advice I have herd here.   If you always agree with people telling you how to think then you will learn nothing.   Even tho I disagree I think I might learn something or.. it may drive me to check it out.

I Believe listening to both sides.... NPR and fox say... is far better than listening to just one.   If I could listen to only NPR tho.... I would probly not listen to anything.  

The internet, fox, right wing talk shows... these are all good things and add balance to what I consider to be a socialist left wing media out of touch with at least 50% of the population.

lazs

[lazs2]

and oboe... from your study..

"I suspected that many media outlets would tilt to the left because surveys have shown that reporters tend to vote more Democrat than Republican," said Tim Groseclose, a UCLA political scientist and the study's lead author. "But I was surprised at just how pronounced the distinctions are."

"Overall, the major media outlets are quite moderate compared to members of Congress, but even so, there is a quantifiable and significant bias in that nearly all of them lean to the left," said co‑author Jeffrey Milyo, University of Missouri economist and public policy scholar."

They admit that overall there is a distinct an significant bias to the left..  Fox news is far more centrist than NPR is.

lazs

[Dos Equis]

Late last year, McCain needs to find a way to appeal to the neocon cabal. He knows the war in Iraq is finished and lost, but he cannot admit as much and hope to get out of the primaries.

He sees the Iraq Study Group close to advocating a gradual withdrawal, and conventional wisdom was convinced (despite all evidence to the contrary) that Bush would take that advice. So McCain hatches his too-clever-by-half plan -- while Bush works to draw down forces, he'll argue for a "surge". And when people wondered in the coming years why we lost the war -- a war that McCain had cheered from the beginning -- he would say, "if they had only listened to me, we would've won!"

"Roughly, you need another 20,000 troops in Iraq," Mr. McCain said Friday during a visit to northern New Hampshire. "That means expanding the Army and Marine Corps by as much as 100,000 people. … It's just not a set number." - October 2006

Unfortunately for McCain, Bush called his bluff, suddenly embracing the escalation of the war in Iraq.

McCain is smart enough to know that the "surge" ain't going anywhere. The war is lost, and adding 20,000 troops won't help us secure Sadr City, much less the rest of Iraq.

Problem is, this was McCain's effort to bamboozle people into thinking he could've saved Iraq. And now, he's destined to be associated with the failure of the GOP's last-ditch effort to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

So how does McCain respond? By moving the goalposts.

Mr. McCain embarked on a high-profile television tour announcing his support for Mr. Bush’s move. In an interview, he said he would have preferred that the White House send in even more troops, and noted that he had pressed this position on the White House, unsuccessfully until now, for more than two years.

A complete lie. As quoted above, Bush did exactly as McCain has been suggesting the past year.

But McCain has no choice. He is now tied to the Iraq War more than he ever thought would happen. McCain put his trust that Bush would follow the sane, reasonable path handed to him by the ISG. Instead, Bush embraced McCain's bull**** plan.

And that's how the Iraq War became the Bush/McCain War, and how the escalation became the "McCain Doctrine".

And no matter how we look at this, there's no way that this is what McCain had in mind.

[john9001]

the "war' is lost, yes, it is true , the terriorsts have lost the war. They were defeated by the "neocon cabal".   but, now you neolibs want to help the terriorsts to come back from defeat to a victory just for your political gains.

[Eagler]

 2 X

[Kurt]

Originally posted by Eagler
Iran as a superpower

Dude... Aren't you putting the cart WAY before the horse here?  You don't become a superpower just because you have a n00k.

You need to have a navy that can be anywhere in the world at all times, and an airforce that can do the same.  Iran does not now and never will have the capability to project that kind of power.

[Kurt]

Originally posted by Yeager
Whats your plan?  withdraw all forces and leave Iraq high and dry?  if thats the plan you support then say it.

Hey, we screwed up Vietnam and walked away, and today, other than the brave souls lost over there, it doesn't mean a hill of dung in the world scheme.  The world didn't end, the commies still lost the cold war.

Should we have thrown another 50000 on the fire for the chance of winning and the cold war still going the way it did...?  To have another little puppet government in Asia?  Just to prove that we can win every fight that the French can't?  It didn't matter.  And in 20 years neither will Iraq.  There will still be militants over there that hate us, and there will still be dictators that won't play by American rules.

This idea that the world needs constant hand-holding of the United States or else it will descend into Chaos is pure weapons-grade CRAP.

We never should have gone into Iraq to begin with, My exit stratigy was not to enter, but the President didn't ask me.