There are just more and more statements from the admin lately that sound like the Vietnam era administration. PD was right. It's just going to go on and on.

Here's the latest ...

"Our resolve is unshakable, and we will defeat them," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Tuesday.

Heh. Yeah, right. Saddam is out of power. Let's hang him, declare victory, and leave.

Colin, I think what we do there now is cleaning a field a little more before we leave.

Colin, I think what we do there now is cleaning a field a little more before we leave.[/b][/quote]
I hope you're right. I think the odds are we'll be out of there soon enough.

It doesn't seem that things haven't gotten quiter there after Saddam was captured.

I hope you're right. I think the odds are we'll be out of there soon enough.

It doesn't seem that things haven't gotten quiter there after Saddam was captured.[/b][/quote]
Colin, they did...
when he was around, every day we heard about our losses,
it changed.

applying Risk/Reward evaluation to Iraq,
seems to me secure Iraq versa rogue Iraq does worth extra effort

Evolution says we stay - the world need democracy. This is prehaps the first arab country with a real chance of democracy, and we can not give up now, because some desert mullahs think they got Allah on their side.

Most of the world countries are not democratic - they are runned by dictators, juntas, and religious fanatics. These countries are scared that they are next, however if the US pulls out now, then they know that they are more powerful, than any democratic movement.

Bush might have lied to himself, the US people, and to the rest of the world, saying it was because of terror and Saddam Iraq was invaded, but the cards have been dealt now, and we got a chance of starting a democracy.

What should have been done a long time ago was getting the EU involved in Iraq, and make it a project of the democratic countries in the world, and not just a US project..

Colin, they did...
when he was around, every day we heard about our losses,
it changed.

applying Risk/Reward evaluation to Iraq,
seems to me secure Iraq versa rogue Iraq does worth extra effort[/b][/quote]
http://lunaville.org/warcasualties/Summary.aspx

The 52 coalitions deaths in March was on the high side. April is a relative bloodbath with 39 deaths in 6 days. "Insurgency" is roughly the same today as it was a year ago.

Hey, it's no Vietnam. 700 KIA in a year? I know. Pretty good as far as such things go. Really.

Once we're all democracies, then what?

The EU had their chance to get involved in Iraq. The UK showed up for the fight.



Last edited by Colin at Apr 7 2004, 06:35 AM

30 years of brainwashing by Saddam and the other extremists is going to take a lot of coalition deaths to unwash unfortunately

Coalition should get outta there before anyone else is killed...

Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait etc could put soldiers in that will have a better chance of restoring order to this fucked up cuntry.

Democracy is not worth fighting for in Middle east, its not worth having soldiers die for, they dont want it, let them be how they want to be and start saving lives on both sides, the world also needs to find a better fuel alternitive for oil...

Democracy is the only goverment form, which is able to deal with the problems of the future... Democracy also moves a society forward, and give freedom to the people, and not just a select few... Democracy might be the only way to secure real world peace, and avoid 3rd world war.

Is democracy too good for people who live in the middle east?
Is democracy too good for people who live in the west?

I´m sure none of us, would go back to a dictatorship once we have tasted the freedom Democracy gives.... why should we let people in the middle east be left with Dictators and Mullahs, when we can set them free?

It has and will cost lifes, but that is due to the wrong strategy - not the goal.

Meat, we are NOT installing Democracy for Iraq's sake, we do it for us....

Rolo,
I think you have way of idealistic view, mine is more pragmatic
;-)))

I don't think it is time to get out of Iraq. We went in and started this shit, we gotta stay and finish it.

However, I do think that this war is just getting started. We are now in an urban war going block to block through the cities. We will end up going house to house in order to clean up the mess. This thing will go on for quite a while yet and there is no way that I see power being handed over in 2 months.

Sorry, I got carried away. Truth is that I want them to be free, so I can sell porn to them - gotta get a piece of that oil money somehow :awinky:



Last edited by Rolo at Apr 7 2004, 05:41 AM

Meat, you need to go on Larry King Live with that.
Nice post.

You know I have been followin the recent events closely, and it is something that has been troubling me. I would love to say fuck them, and just leave Iraq. Those animals are not worth one drop of American blood.

However, in reality this would cause more problems for the US down the long run.

The ba'athists in the sunni triangle are lashing out because they know they will have no power. Fallujah was never cleaned out during the war, so it has to be now.

The troubling part in the South is this guy Sadr, who is getting his orders from Iran. They have purposely bided their time, and have started this "war" to try and force the US out. We cannot like him win, he would turn Iraq into another Iran, something we do not need. This man murdered another cleric who was friendly to the US, and had mroe influence.

It may sound like Vietnam, but we must send in more troops ( we should have had more in, I beleive Bush is playing games for re-election) and when things like this flair up we need to put our boots down so hard on these people necks their heads pop off.

Unfortunately not everyone in the world thinks like us, in this region people see thoughfulness as weakness. They see our attempts to negotiate, or come to a compromise as weakness. Maybe it is time to run Iraq like Saddam did.

We should be clear to the world that there can be not bigger friend, nor no bigger enemy then the US. If we cut and run, the ghosts of Vietnman, Mogadishu will come back to life and the US will have NO respect at all. It will only encourage our enemies.

The military, and our intelligence services should have had been prepaired for this. We should be finding people like Sadr before they start carrying out their plans.

Meat you had a good point. If these kinds of things continue, the US should threaten ( and follow through) with something extreme. Breaking up Iraq into multible countries could be possible. It is not like there are any traditional nations, the lines were randomly drawn not too long ago.

Give the north to the Kurds who seem to be the only ones who are responsible and not causing problems. Break up the central to a few states, and keep the south and the oil fields for our needs and base.

At times I wish we were not so highly advanced and would do what the Romans did when they had problems with enemies.

Holy shit I agree with that entire post Mike!! :P :huh:

I just fell out of my chair.....

Debka's view:

http://debka.com/article.php?aid=822

Shiite Radicals Join with Sunni Insurgents in Ramadi

DEBKAfile Special Analysis

April 7, 2004, 2:53 AM (GMT+02:00)

The third day of Moqtada Sadr’s radical Shiite uprising saw US-led coalition forces under attack by both Sunnis and Shiites and the first extremely dangerous sign of a merger between the two fronts. DEBKAfile’s military sources report that US-led forces, instead of beginning to get a grip on the armed Shiite militia uprising in Baghdad and four cities, appeared to be letting command slip out their hands. There was little indication of US forces executing the arrest warrant out against the Shiite radical cleric since October. He lost no time in slipping underground, possibly in the Shiite holy city of Najef, with the estimated 3,000-strong hard core of his Medhi Army militia.

The failure to move fast enough to nab Sadr may be as costly as was the escape from capture of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in November 2001and of Saddam Hussein in March 2003. Al-Sadr matches neither in stature. He also represents no more than a splinter faction of the Shiite community. Yet if he proves able lead an effective underground resistance to the coalition for a critical period, he could attract a disproportionately large number of Shiite followers to his flag. It might be enough for him to keep going for another five days to a week without being caught or stopped, for the Americans to find themselves in the midst of a full-blown war.

The firebrand cleric and his Mehdi Army militia went into action in three rapid phases:

Stage One: Early Tuesday, April 6, he melted out of his headquarters in the Kufa mosque near Najef and went to ground.

Stage Two: Simultaneously, his militia moved in on the police stations and government buildings of one town after another in southern Iraq.

Stage Three: Tuesday afternoon, shortly after US Marines entered Fallujah to collar the men responsible for the brutal murder of four US contractors last week, fresh Shiite militiamen were drawn from the Sunni Triangle towns of Baquba, Balad, Samarra and Al Muqdaryah to launch a ferocious assault on the US Marine compound in Ar Ramadi, 40 km east of Fallujah. At least 12 US Marines were killed and 20 injured in this assault.

This development represents an ominous turning-point in the Iraqi conflict for four reasons:

1. It was almost certainly coordinated with the Sunni Baathists, imported Arabs and al Qaeda combatants battling US Marines in Fallujah in order to draw off American military pressure in Fallujah and threaten the Marines from the rear.

2. Instead of al Qaeda striking Shiites to inflame civil war - as predicted by some US strategists – Shiites apparently turned up in Ramadi to fight the Americans in cahoots with Sunni insurgents and al Qaeda combatants. This show of solidarity makes the Sunni Triangle of central Iraq, including Baghdad, a doubly hazardous and unruly region

3. US intelligence evaluatons of Moqtada Sadr’s military strength have proved wide of the mark. Tuesday morning, it was still estimated as 10,000 with a hard core of 3,000 fighting men. DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources believe this figure represents only the Mehdi Army’s numbers in Baghdad, Najef and Karbala. It does not take into account the Sunni Triangle Shiite force that was secretly trained and prepared over the past year by thousands of Iranian Republican Guards infiltrators in conjunction with the Iranian protégé, Lebanese Hizballah terror-master Imad Mughniyeh. This force numbers an estimated 5,000 combatants, who are better equipped, organized and trained than Mehdi Army militiamen.

4. The Sadrist revolt looks therefore like having taken hold in three major regions of Iraq: The Sunni Triangle, Baghdad and the South.

As for the other fronts:

Baghdad. By Tuesday night, US forces had not regained control of the sprawling Shiite districts of the capital, except for some police stations, and the sounds of fighting were rising in intensity.

The South. Sadr’s militia captured Diwaniya 30 km east of Najef after beating back repeated Spanish attempts backed by US helicopters to recover control.This is the first Iraqi town to fall to Sadr’s forces, a situation that is totally unacceptable to the US command. If complete Iraqi towns continue falling into Shiite or Sunni insurgent hands, the US and coalition forces will quickly lose control of the country.

In Karbala, al Amara and Nassiriyeh, the Mehdi Army captured buildings in the town centers. In Karbala, US and Polish forces failed to repulse the Shiite attackers; likewise the Italian troops in Nasseriyah. In Al Amarah near the Iranian border north of Basra, British contingents using helicopter gunships, tanks and artillery failed to break the Shiite Sadrists’ grip on the town center.

At the end of Day Three of the radical Shiite uprising, therefore, the score was not in the coalition’s favor.

How long before the helicopters are evacuating people from the tops of buildings?

Mike, if you split Iraq up, you create major instability because now you have three small countries not strong enough to protect themselves from their neighbors. Pressures from Syria, Turkey, and Iran would certainly lead to new wars in the region, and the results could be worse that the current disease. Can you imaging the battles over the oil field regions? Can you imagine what that would do to the price of oil?

Go look at Bosnia to see how well splitting countries up works.

Alex

its only now that i understand the logic of invaders and occupiers of the past. nazis, Romans, Soviets... whoever.

there is a reason they slaughtered everyone who might resist. there is a reason for secret police forces, kidnapping, tortures, executions of those who might resist... if you don't do all that, if you do not make people afraid for thier lives, you will have nothing but resistence.

invading and occupying a country that does not want you there is a lose/lose proposition. you cannot organize/manage or change people who hate you with democracy or by installing democratic institutions.

you can only control them through force. and history has always proven that even that can only last so long.

i am beginning to think that changing Iraq would require another Saddam Hussein... not a new public library or strip mall.

I do not believe the Administration has a fucking clue about what the hell they are doing in Iraq. I am beginning to think they actually believe the simple minded pablum spit up by Bush yesterday ... "we love freedom, they hate freedom." I think these morons actually believed the horseshit they spread about Iraqis greeting us with parades when we liberated them, and are dumbstruck by the situation we are now in.

Colin ... you know more about math than I even want to, so take a look at the numbers again. 700 a year at inadequate troop levels of 133,000 in the beginnings of an insurrection. Triple the troop levels as the insurrection gains momentum. How long until it reaches a critical mass when things are no longer "pretty good"?

Donny's cousin was in Iraq a year
did 3 1/2 years service, had free time, just left
out of the military
what does he think
can't trust his President
he risked his ass over there
And now wants bush OUT
considering all Mike does is crow about iraq and terrorism
and the boys fighting in Iraq don't want Bush
oh boy sounds like you are fucked

I just fell out of my chair.....[/b][/quote]
:P

Hope you didn't hurt yourself!!

For us for them who cares, the loss of life is not worth it for democracys sake and there are not enough barrels of oil in middle east to make it worth the loss of one soldier let alone hundreds of sodilers lives:(

To do something extreme would be to round up all the bad asses in the world, take them from the jails murderers rapists terrorists etc, send them all to iraq and then nuke the whole goddamn country.

Mike
Does this mean you're joining the military to go fight for Iraqi Democracy and lower oil prices?

I wonder how many billions of dollars have been wasted by the west fighting wars in the middle east?

not just Iraq, but all of them, kuwait, iran etc?

If a small portion of those billions was put into developing a better fuel alternitive years ago when the shah of iran got kyboshed then we wouldnt be reliant on any of the oil in middle east anymore, the rich shieks wouldnt have so much money to sponsor terrorism anymore, the world would be a better place.

You crack me up, Mikey ... you really do. I have to admit, though, that it would be a lot fucking funnier if it was your ass in Falujah right now, instead of my girlfriend's son.

Uhhh ... yes, it sounds like Vietnam. Even the part about Bush playing games for re-election sounds like Vietnam. More troops = more American and Iraqi casualties. More American casualties will lead to increasing calls to abandon Iraq to the chaos we have created there. More Iraqi casualties will lead to greater strength for the resistance. A lying cocksucker of a president trying to downplay the clusterfuck we are in ("I'm not changing the plan on turning over soverignty because Carl Rove told me it wouldn't be politically acceptable, even though there is no one to turn power over to") in order to secure re-election just adds more to the Vietnam comparison.

You make a good point. They don't understand how we think, and we don't understand how they think. Thinking that "put[ting] our boots down so hard on these people necks their heads pop off" is some sort of tactical possibility demostrates that we don't understand how they think.

Mikey, you seem to be quite proud of the fact that you regard this as an old-fashioned imperialistic war that we have engaged in for the purposes of securing oil and maintaining bases for future operations. The absolute folly of your whole theory is that we - the United States - simply cannot operate that way. The 2nd level of the veneer we put on this paper-mache pink elephant - the first, of course, being WMD - is "liberating" the Iraqi people. That very fact denies us the right to operate in a manner appropriate for your stated aims. JR was right - if that is our purpose, then we need to act like Hitler or Stalin (although I'm sure you feel more comfortable using the sanitized Romans). Considering, however, that the American people would never stand for it - you got a bit of a problem, Mikey.

Gee ... you don't think maybe the political masters who ordered the military and intelligence folks into action might have gotten some warnings about things like this, and ignored them, do you?



Last edited by PornoDoggy at Apr 7 2004, 01:26 PM

You crack me up, Mikey ... you really do. I have to admit, though, that it would be a lot fucking funnier if it was your ass in Falujah right now, instead of my girlfriend's son.

Uhhh ... yes, it sounds like Vietnam. Even the part about Bush playing games for re-election sounds like Vietnam. More troops = more American and Iraqi casualties. More American casualties will lead to increasing calls to abandon Iraq to the chaos we have created there. More Iraqi casualties will lead to greater strength for the resistance. A lying cocksucker of a president trying to downplay the clusterfuck we are in ("I'm not changing the plan on turning over soverignty because Carl Rove told me it wouldn't be politically acceptable, even though there is no one to turn power over to") in order to secure re-election just adds more to the Vietnam comparison.

You make a good point. They don't understand how we think, and we don't understand how they think. Thinking that "put[ting] our boots down so hard on these people necks their heads pop off" is some sort of tactical possibility demostrates that we don't understand how they think.

Mikey, you seem to be quite proud of the fact that you regard this as an old-fashioned imperialistic war that we have engaged in for the purposes of securing oil and maintaining bases for future operations. The absolute folly of your whole theory is that we - the United States - simply cannot operate that way. The 2nd level of the veneer we put on this paper-mache pink elephant - the first, of course, being WMD - is "liberating" the Iraqi people. That very fact denies us the right to operate in a manner appropriate for your stated aims. JR was right - if that is our purpose, then we need to act like Hitler or Stalin (although I'm sure you feel more comfortable using the sanitized Romans). Considering, however, that the American people would never stand for it - you got a bit of a problem, Mikey.

Gee ... you don't think maybe the political masters who ordered the military and intelligence folks into action might have gotten some warnings about things like this, and ignored them, do you?[/b][/quote]
PD:

Several times now you have referenced your "girlfriend's son" as being a soldier of some sort deployed in the Middle East. If the lad signed up to do military service, who are you to complain that he's now fighting a war? I cannot imagine why anyone would join the armed forces if they did not want to be available for kicking the crap out of people globally. There's always the Peace Corps for people who have a sense of duty but would prefer not to put their lives at risk (as much).

Does he not want to be there or something? If so, why did he sign up?

Wow Colin, I'd never thought you'd say this.

I thought you were a firm believer of the war (which is actually almost a year over now), and still were so.

They should have never gotten in there anyway. A sniper does wonders.

yeah, PD, tell us why do people join the voluntary ARMED forces?

do you need multiple choice answers or you can pull it on your own?

I did that to Meni and I'll do it to you,
bug the shit out of you 'till I get the answer

I know why I joined:

1) I wanted training in certain specific skill sets
2) I wanted to get the chance to destroy bad guys
3) I wanted to test myself
4) I wanted to come back and talk shit and hold it over everyone else's head what a bad ass I am and what pussies they are. ;)

i think that based on the info BEFORE the fact, it was quite reasonable to support the war. i think that it is increasingly difficult to support it after the fact.

there is a difference between people who signed up to learn, gain skills, pay for college *and* do so knowing they possibly will have to defend their country and the notion that *because* they joined up, it makes it quite alright to send them to a meat grinder.

its a two way street. the Army does not exactly run ads saying "hey, how would you like to get ambushed, shot and killed, decapitated and hung from a street post to be seen on global news networks while you are fighting in a war started under questionable pretenses with little to no world support"

in fact, the army paints quite a different picture of what it is like to join up.

this whole Iraq issue has changed my perspectives on a lot of things and i said a lot of things before this started that i sincerely wish i had not.



Last edited by JR at Apr 7 2004, 10:58 AM

Oh if I only had enough spare time to dig up old threads of the patriots claiming it would be over in a week and the Iraqis would welcome us and thrown off the chains of oppression.

Idiots. May your loved ones die on xmas day.

The war was over in a few weeks. This is a secondary war. There are a lot of interests being fought over.

I could careless about chains of oppression, I care about oil and long term stability. ( long term means more then a year)

My girlfriend's son is a Captain in the U.S. Marine Corps. He will be a Marine until they kill him or force them to retire after 30 years. I have not heard one single complaint from him about what he's being asked to do.

So this talk of the Peace Corps is bullshit. If you are too fucking stupid to figure out that there is a certain amount of anguish when it's YOURS that has his ass on the line, regardless of how well you understand the concepts of duty, honor, and sacrifice - then I pray to god you get a vasectomy before you ever have children. That will both spare you this possible source of anguish in the future, and eliminate the possibility that the "stupid" gene you have in overabundence will get passed on to future generations.

Now ... armed with the knowledge that you are in possession of an overabundance of stupid, I can understand how you might not grasp the idea that someone might object to a war as unwinable, irrelevant to and even counterproductive to the national interest of the United States, and therefore not worth the potential sacrifice of someone close to me. That kind of thing can add to the natural anguish.

I know you understand at least part of the idea that something might not be worth the sacrifice. The last time you tried to construe my personal objections to the folly of this war as evidence that her son was a pussy, I asked you why you weren't still in and over there - and your response was that "we" - the people of the United States - were not worth fighting for.

Oh, fuck. You just made William Jefferson Clinton's attempt to separate oral sex from having sex seem downright plausible.

The question is totally irrelevant. I have no idea why he joined the Marine Corps, and neither does his mother. The reasons people join the military are as many and varied as they are for why anyone selects any profession.

As I told Buffoon, HE is not objecting to his service in any way, shape or form.



Last edited by PornoDoggy at Apr 7 2004, 03:15 PM

PD take the time and read this peice http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=200404...06-032203-3282r

there is a difference between people who signed up to learn, gain skills, pay for college *and* do so knowing they possibly will have to defend their country and the notion that *because* they joined up, it makes it quite alright to send them to a meat grinder.

its a two way street. the Army does not exactly run ads saying "hey, how would you like to get ambushed, shot and killed, decapitated and hung from a street post to be seen on global news networks while you are fighting in a war started under questionable pretenses with little to no world support"

in fact, the army paints quite a different picture of what it is like to join up.

this whole Iraq issue has changed my perspectives on a lot of things and i said a lot of things before this started that i sincerely wish i had not.[/b][/quote]
Anyone who is too stupid to know what the Army does deserves whatever he/she gets when the Army does it.

My girlfriend's son is a Captain in the U.S. Marine Corps. He will be a Marine until they kill him or force them to retire after 30 years. I have not heard one single complaint from him about what he's being asked to do.

So this talk of the Peace Corps is bullshit. If you are too fucking stupid to figure out that there is a certain amount of anguish when it's YOURS that has his ass on the line, regardless of how well you understand the concepts of duty, honor, and sacrifice - then I pray to god you get a vasectomy before you ever have children. That will both spare you this possible source of anguish in the future, and eliminate the possibility that the "stupid" gene you have in overabundence will get passed on to future generations.

Now ... armed with the knowledge that you are in possession of an overabundance of stupid, I can understand how you might not grasp the idea that someone might object to a war as unwinable, irrelevant to and even counterproductive to the national interest of the United States, and therefore not worth the potential sacrifice of someone close to me. That kind of thing can add to the natural anguish.

I know you understand at least part of the idea that something might not be worth the sacrifice. The last time you tried to construe my personal objections to the folly of this war as evidence that her son was a pussy, I asked you why you weren't still in and over there - and your response was that "we" - the people of the United States - were not worth fighting for.[/b][/quote]
I he is not objecting to fighting, then why are you trying to humiliate him?

Kindly explain to this public school graduate how I am trying to humiliate him?

Kindly explain to this public school graduate how I am trying to humiliate him?[/b][/quote]
He is over there fighting with honor and dignity and courage like a man, and you sit back here and whine about the fact that he is serving over there. You're like an overprotective mother embarrassing her child.

He is over there fighting with honor and dignity and courage like a man, and you sit back here and whine about the fact that he is serving over there. You're like an overprotective mother embarrassing her child.[/b][/quote]
Well, we're just going to have to disagree on this one, Buff.

I expect him to do what he's ordered to do. I'm proud of him for doing what he's ordered to do - and I'm proud of every last soldier, sailor, airman or Marine who are over there doing that. My feelings about this are not going to change substainally when he does get sent home from this clusterfuck.

I would gladly force him to come home - probably over his objections - and let him be replaced with someone else who was in favor of this boondoggle.

My arguement is not with him, his men, or even most of his Chain of Command. It's the foolhardy policies of the cocksuckers at the top of that chain that I disagree with.

I read the article, Mike. Didn't think much of it, actually. It's based on the traditional right-wing misconception that the war in Vietnam was "winnable", and followed by a well-honed right wing trick of blaming the defeat on a lack of political will which was sapped by back-stabbers at home.

It's not (until you get to Anne Coulter country, at least) as onerous as the German right's post WWI blaming the "Jews" for their defeat - but it's close.

Serge ... just out of curiousity - do you know who like-minded Russians blame for the defeat in Afghanistan? Besides the CIA, is it Menshoviks , Trotskites, reactionary elements, and sabateurs?

I do not believe that the war in Vietnam was ever "winnable." What Ted Kennedy realizes today - something which seems to escape the author - is that when his brother "...saw the conflict in the larger framework of the Cold War and Nikita Khrushchev's threats against West Berlin..." he was just flat-ouy wrong. The assumption of hegemony between all Arabs, er, Communists, combined with the refusal to recognize the nationalism that underpinned the entire conflict made him wrong.

If Jane Fonda and Ramsey Clark had stayed home; if millions of Americans had stayed off the streets - Lyndon Johnson still would have found himself faced with the endless cycle of escalation. If we'd listened to the hawks back then at the very least we would have gotten ourselves into a land war with China; and the possibility of a nuclear war was very, very real.

And if we'd "won" in Vietnam - then the news today could have included the death of Marines at Hue or Siagon or Hanoi in addition to those in Falujah.

Besides, Mike - you've admitted that you are an imperialist who thinks we should be in Iraq for oil and strategic purposes. If it is of neither interest nor importance to you, what possible value could an article that includes language such as "[i]t would behoove Kennedy to see Iraq in the larger context of the struggle to bring democracy, not only to Iraq, but the entire Middle East..." have?



Last edited by PornoDoggy at Apr 7 2004, 05:35 PM

PD I do not think they guy who wrote the article is a Conservative.

I do not agree with all of his points, however I do beleive the left is undermining the war effort in Iraq. The Vietnamese general makes the point very well.

I know you have a hard time beleiving this, but our enemies know they cannot defeat us in battle, so they target the home front. Then the weak-kneed amoung us start refering to Vietnman. What is worst is that politics gets invovled, leading democrats to say outlandish things about the President and the war....

For the record, I do beleive Vietnam was winnable, even with the poor condition of our military, and poor leadership. We lost on the home front. We lost because of people like John Kerry who lied about abuses he saw in Vietnam. The left anti-war movment undermined this country. They are the true enemies, and the only people who can lead to the defeat of this country.

In Iraq, you are an unabashed imperialist - you believe we are there in order to secure oil and bases. Now, off the top of my head, Britian, Portugal, Belguim and France all found their imperialistic endeavors crushed in the last century. Were all of those powers also stabbed in the back by the leftists back home, Mikey?

I suspect that what you know about Vietnam is comprable to what I know about nuclear physics - which is to say, absolutely nothing. How, precisely, would you have won the war? Would you have gone nuclear? Would you have risked a war with China? Would you have weakened our strength in Europe where there really was a Soviet Union that could be tempted to take advantage of that weakness?

I am idly curious to know what the fuck you are talking about when you say the "poor condition of our military" during Vietnam. Are you going to do a Rumsfeld, and blame the folks who fought, too? The brass did the monkey dance their political masters ordered them too ... the grunts just went and died, but took one hell of a lot of the enemy with them.

Continue to recite the catechism of the right, Mike ... it was the Jews that did it, or the liberals, or the niggers, or whatever your brand of facist is blaming today.

You'd have made a great German, Mike - if you'd lived about 75 years ago.

Machiavelli was on to something :)