Hitler V Lenin?Follow

No. i'd even say it's further away, since the people they are fighting against are stronger than before, since the Sunni/Shia divide is increasingly leading to a bloody civil war, and since most of the IRaqi population sees the government as corrupt at best, and criminally incompetent at worse.
---------------------------------------------------------------------

still not the whole story.

the people we are fighting are mostly the Iraqi,s themselves. they are smilling in our fact doing exercizes with us by day and laying bombs and shooting at us by night.

just like vietnam.

toss in support from their neibhors in the reagon, and compacency by the general population who mostly want us gone also.....unwinnable. Bush sr. nailed it in his book "we could win every battle but loose the war..."

war is hell. it is mercieless. it is cruel. it should be a last resort. and when you get to the point it becomes a last resort, it should be executed with extreme prejudice. to the point BOTH SIDES never want to see it happen again.

Iraq, like vietnam, was never a war. it is just an extension of political agenda. a half hearted poke em with a stick till they get tired and give us what we want type if thing. vietnam had China behind them and China was never going to yield to us, ever. Iraq is the same thing. not only will the Iraqi people not yield to us, but neither will the people in the countries surrounding Iraq.

it is not war, it is STUPIDITY and must end as soon as possible. if we stay 1 year or 50 years, the only thing that is going to change is the body count. 1000 years of history tell us this. dont take my word for it, go ask the russians. 15 years in afganistan and the only thing they have to show for it is a multibillion dollar price tag and over 17,000 dead troops. they dont like us any more than they like the russians.

yes, pull out now. right now.

you want to fight a war? go in and destroy the entire country one end to the other then LEAVE. no occupation. no rebuilding. just a serious **** whipping that leaves them with the unforgettable impression that they NEVER want us to come back. 50 years or so after they dig themselves out of the rubble, you can bet they will be a little more polite to us as well as their neibhors.

i would be willing to bet most americans dont give a rats **** what type of government Iraq has. nor do we care if their government are criminals and thugs. if THEY get sick enough of it, THEY can change it. if not, tough cookies.

bomb the hell out of any nuclear facility they try to build, and leave them with no doubt we will do the rest of the country if they attack any of our allies then LEAVE them alone.

i would rather see this country involved in a painfull struggle to GET OFF OIL than involved in a continous pissing contest fighting a political agenda campaign that constantly butchers human beings.

if you think we need to fight a war, then fight a WAR. but any politican who throws away thousands of human lives for a politicall agenda should be tried for treason.

osama bin laudin attacked us with support from the taliban. lets GO TO WAR in afganistan. how in hell is it that the taliban is STILL staging large scale attackes after what they did to us? how in hell can this addministraition justify their continued existance?

war is needed. but not in Iraq.

Economically at least, this is what was done to Germany at the end of WW 1, and we all know what that fueled. While in Westeran Germany and Japan after WW 2 we did the opposite, and I think it worked out. The terror campaign against our troops and the people of Iraq, is more of a reason to stay and continue to build a strong viable government in Iraq, not a reason to cut and leave.



Oil is the lifeblood of modern civilization, we could not, and cannot exist without it. We would not have the food we eat, the water we drink nor most of our homes without it. Simply speaking our entire modern infrastructure in this country requires oil to run it. Yes we should find alternatives where available, but in the meantime oil is life for us and it is worth fighting for.

Yes to all three. Because there's a process going on in Iraq. It's painful. But if it's allowed to complete, and the government can be maintained throughout, then the result will be positive. If we leave halfway, we'll have just done what the US has consistently done in the region for the last 40 years. Get involved in internal issues in the area, encourage people to stand up for their rights and freedoms, and then abandon them when they do so.

You dismiss the military analogy, yet it's the same thing. Just as the battles during the critical phases of WW2 were the most violent and most difficult (and had the highest casualty rates), the same can be said for the process in Iraq. We didn't create the sunni-shiite hatreds. They were there before we showed up. We just ignored them, and allowed brutal regimes to "keep them in check". Covering them up doesn't make them disappear. This is a dispute that the Iraqi's will have to resolve. Having an authoritarian power step in and force the issue does not resolve it. It just forestalls it for another day.


It's like a guy with a bandadge over a bad wound on his leg. He refuses to take it off because he's afraid his leg might be need to be amputated as a result of his wound. He thinks that if he doesn't check, then it wont happen. But the wound is still there. The damage is still present. And the longer he hides it from sight under a bandadge the worse it will be when he finally takes it off. You could argue that you've made things "worse" by taking off the bandage. After all, prior to that you just had a bandaged leg. Now you've got to amputate it. But the reality is that you didn't make it worse. You only revealed what was already there. And in the long run you prevented worse damage down the line.

Western policy in the ME for the last 40 years has been to just cover everything over with a bandadge of authoritarian regimes. As long as they kept the people in check, and sold us oil, we didn't care what else happened. If you agree that that's a bad way to do things, and if you agree that that's a major reason why terrorism has grown in the region, then you have to conclude that regardless of how painful the process in Iraq is, it's a step in the right direction. In the short term the violence is increased, but in the long term it's the only way that region will ever become a free participant in the global community.



Sure. The second the rest of the country promises not to use any estimates or "goals" as a measure of failure if they aren't met, I'm sure he'll do it. Oh wait! That'll never happen...

That sounds really great Joph. And if we were in a boardroom where a small group of people discussed the goals and timetables and established success levels based on those things, you'd be perfectly correct. But those people would understand that large chunks of the project in Iraq are completely out of the US's hands. Thus, any goal-based timetable would be a sheer guess at best. You may understand that. I may understand that. But you know darn well that if anyone in the Bush administration says something like that they'll be held to it as an absolute.

I'm pretty sure that such timetables do exist. But they're likely classified, and you don't know what they are. That's probably not a bad thing...


Additionally, they'd be rife for misunderstanding. If people can so easily take basic statements about 9/11 and Iraq and turn them into an opposition position based on a false assumption from them, then they can certainly take a timetable and turn it into one as well. Timetables of this sort would have lots of conditions. They wouldn't be as simple as "We expect to have 50% of Iraqi troops online by X date". They'd be based on complex relationships. Something like "If the minister of X can produce Y materials in province Z, then we should expect to have 45% of infrastructure rebuilt by July...".

You know damn well that'll just be shortened to "They promised we'd have infrastructure rebuilt by July!!!".

Show me that the media wont ridiculously misrepresent any timetable presented and I'll agree that one should be handed out. But I simply don't believe it's possible.



*cough* I thought our "goal" was to rebuild Iraq? Isn't measuring how many schools and powerplants are built the correct way to measure that?

You're trying to measure to withdrawal. But that assumes our "goal" is to withdraw...

See where the problem is?

And herein lies the problem....
Withdrawal has never been part of the plan has it?? Despite the rhetoric from the US Gov. withdrawal is not, and has not ever been part of the plan.

If every Iraqi got together tommorrow and shook hands and went down the pub for beer and pies, the US would be still there in their Giant embassy.

After all the money and lives spent in the last few years, declaring 'job done, lets go home', is just not gonna happen.

Thats why the goalposts keep getting moved. From WMD to humanitarian effort thru regime change and all the other reasons for staying "that little bit longer" till the 'mission is complete', leaving iraq to look after itself, was never part of the plan.

?

I thought the goal was to neutralize the 'grave and gathering threat' of WMD's. But i prolly read that in a liberal newspaper....

You're playing a semantic bait and switch though. I said our "goal" is not to withdraw (ie: we didn't send troops into Iraq purely so we could remove them as quickly as possible). You respond that withdrawal was never "part of the plan". Those are two radically different concepts.

You're also playing fast and free with what exactly is meant by "withdrawal". I'm interpreting withdrawal to mean the removal of the bulk of our military forces from the country, and a removal of their use as a primary security force in that country. I'm assuming that's what Joph meant when he talked about withdrawal, and I assume that's also what you were talking about. I also assume that's what someone like Murtha was talking about when he used the term.

You're now trying to use it in a different context. You're introducing the idea that "withdrawal" means removing all presense in the country entirely. No embassy. No bases. Nothing. That's totally different. Clearly, we "withdrew" the bulk of our forces out of Germany and Japan after WW2. Clearly also, we maintained bases and embasies and a military "presense" in both of those countries for quite some time.

The "plan" for Iraq may very well involve maintaining a degree of force in the country, both in terms of embassies and bases. But that's not what anyone is talking about when they talk about withdrawing troops from Iraq. At least not anyone who's also concerned about what happens in Iraq after that event.



Sure. Just like we were still in Germany, and Japan, and Korea, and the Phillipines.

The only way that's not going to happen is if we "withdraw" in the same manner we did in Viet Nam. Which seems to be what Liberals *want* to have happen. The sorriest part is that they seem to want that to happen, not because it would be better for Iraq, nor because it would be better for the US, but purely because it would be better for *them* politically because they'd be able to blame Bush for the failure.

Bush is following a model that has worked repeatedly when it's actually followed with a commitment to see it through. Those opposed to Bush are insisting we follow the failed model of Viet Nam. Hmmm... Which is "better"?



Of course not. But again. Who's insisting that we should do that? And who's insiting that we shouldn't? If you think that's "wrong", then you need to stop and think *really* carefully about which position you support. The Dems want us to say "job done (or job can't be done), let's go home". If you honestly think that's the better long term solution, then by all means bash Bush for not following that course of action.

Personally, I think it would be a disaster if we did that. Thus, it's ridiculous to criticize Bush for the "plan" in Iraq. Point at specific problems if you must (and there certainly are a number), but to blanketly declare the whole venture a failure because we haven't withdrawn our troops quickly enough? That's just silly...



It's not that the goalposts are being moved, but that as we complete each phase of the "plan", we set new goals for the next step. They're called mileposts in buisness. Same deal. You don't just achieve the first part and then call it a day and go home. Removing the threat of WMD from Saddam's regime was the *first* step. And we accomplished that. But that now requires that we help rebuild the nation we attacked. That's the next step. And we've made incredible progress there. Iraq's infrastructure has been above pre-war levels for almost 2 years now. At the same time, we've been working with the Iraqi's on creating a new government. That's been quite sucessful as well, with several elections held, and several stages of development completed to the point where they now have a working Constitution, a working parliment, and a working electorial system.

In fact, the recent violence is an indicator that this *is* working. If we'd just replaced Saddam with another dictator, there wouldn't be any fighting. But that would not be success by any measure (or at least not any sane measure). The fact is that for the first time, we're seeing different groups of people (factions if you will) in Iraq have the freedom to express themselves and have a say in the running of their government. The faction fighting is unfortunately a part of that process since some factions will see violence as a means to exert their own views on the system.

Representative Democracy is at its most simple a process where you replace soldiers with votes. Instead of each faction having X number of people behind them and duking it out for control, you vote. However, when a democracy is young, you'll tend to have lots of people try to control the system by building their own faction "armies". It happened here in the US when we first started. It happened in France. It's happened (violently) in most of the old European colonies once given independance. What's happened in the ME is that the European powers didn't *want* this process to happen there, since it would disrupt oil in the short term. So they put dictators in power and have (via oil profits) kept them in power. Thus, "the people" have never had a voice, have been increasingly oppressed, and terrorism is just one symptom of that.

The degree of violence is kinda in proportion to how long the pressure cooker has been running. And in the case of the ME, we're talking about 50+ years. That's a lot of pressure. Of course you're going to have violence. Interestingly enough though, the switch from attacking US soldiers to attacking eachother is a strong indicator of progress. And I don't mean that from a "better them then us" standpoint. I mean that it signals a shift of perception that the US is imposing some kind of rule on them so they fight against us, to a perception that the democratization process is going to work, so now the "enemy" is other Iraqi factions.

That may not seem like progress if you measure things in body count. But when you measure in terms of real historical process, it's a *huge* step forwards. Those folks forming factions and arming their own militias have accepted at least that Iraqi's are in control of their own destiny and not controlled by the US or some emplaced dictator. And that's "progress"...



Again. That's goal number one. What part of "multi-step process" do you not get?

You're trying to simplify a process that involves multiple phases, each with their own criteria and difficulties down to a simple "but we went there for WMDs!!!". I'll point out again that the only people saying we'd be in and out of Iraq quickly were the vocal opponents to the war on the left (or more correctly, they argued that we *should* but that since we couldn't, we shouldn't get involved in the first place). Bush stated from day one that this would be a long and difficult process. And he certainly told the truth that day...

Well. If we're going to see the visual, we may as well read the speech that goes along with it.


Or did you not notice this part:




Anyone who did more then just look at a picture would know that the banner (and a good portion of the speech itself) was directed at the soldiers who served on the Lincoln. It's just another example of the Left deliberately misintepreting something and then blaming Bush when their interpretation doesn't match the facts.

Or is that too insidious and complex?

Sigh.

Read through the pdf off this link

Find some interesting points. While violence has increased (it actually kinda goes through cycles), the overall living conditions have improved.

Nationwide average hours of electricity prewar: 4.8. Today? 10+

Oil production levels are today exceeding what they were prewar.

GDP rates are good (although inflation is high). However, considering that Iraq had a negative GDP growth value (and about the same inflation rate), I'd say they're better off economically today then they were.

Employment rates are *higher* today then they were pre-war.

9 times as many people in Iraq have phone service today then pre-war.

46 times as many people in Iraq have internet access today then pre-war

There were zero privately owned newspapers pre-war. Today there are 268. Similar stats for TV and radio sources of media.

Water is still a problem, with water not yet back to pre-war levels. Much of this is due to continous sabatage in some regions of the country.



And hey! Maliki has a 58% approval rating. Not bad for a guy in a country in the middle of a "civil war"...

Whining fucking maggots. Don't they know that we've saved them from a life of oppression under a terrorist regime?? Ungrateful bastards.

So fUck off and live there you cretin

Not to derail the nice heated debate, but on the point of leave Iraq, I assume that means our troops stop performing the role of peacekeepers and terrorist hunters. I would hope some military presence never leaves, I couldn't think of a better country to have a couple of permenant airbases and an accompanying other branch base in, the couple we have in Germany now are not near any potential threats. Especially would be nice to have some near the Iranian border.

I believe the Iraqi parliament or significant sections of the Shiite and Kurdish members are contemplating making areas of control. Semi-autonomous areas for each religion so that religious tension would simmer down. Or in other words a split up of the country into 3 states based on ethicity and religion.

The only reason the Sunnis are against the plan is they will be cut out of most of the oil producing parts of the country.

Gbaji if you think that Iraq is on the improve I would hate to get the news from the same areas as yourself. They recently found 100 bodies in 48 hours, the worst violence in months. I think things are slipping further not getting better.