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Post by phinehas on Feb 1, 2007 13:22:51 GMT -5
I have read a couple of times now on this forum and it's been said in the MSM, that we are not winning in Iraq.
Is this sentiment that we are not AT THIS MOMENT winning in Iraq or that we have never been winning in Iraq from the start?
For those that don't think we are winning in Iraq, please give your reasons why? What is your basis for this?
We invaded Iraq and defeated their Army within a couple of days. = "Winning"
We removed the regime = "Winning"
We assisted in the formation of a democratically elected government = "Winning"
We apparently have utilized or reduced down to nothing the terrorist element, considering that we have killed many of their leadership and when is the last time we heard a peep out of them? = "Winning"
Up to this point I can't see how it could be described as not winning.
Now the significant measurement has been changed to addressing the sectarian attacks. This currently has not been taken care of in the same results as the other "measurements" of above.
So if we get the sectarian violence under control, what will be the new "measurement" of failure in Iraq?
It seems to me there is an atmosphere in our midst that will not view anything that occurs in Iraq as showing us winning or improving.
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Post by W.O.M.I on Feb 1, 2007 19:06:47 GMT -5
A very valid point, P.
Please bear in mind that ANY admission of even progress, much less success, in Iraq will redound to the credit of George W. Bush and the MSM will not and can not allow that to happen.
I would not for a second be surprised if the MSM tried somehow to give credit to Democrats for any success Bush's 'surge' might ultimately produce, probably saying something along the lines of, 'Were it not for the patriotic and brave dissent of leading Democrats, Bush would have stuck to the failed plan of the first 3 years....'
It's like the whole "Mission Accomplished" banner flap. rational people know and understand the proper contexts in which the statement was entirely accurate:
1) our military had defeated the Iraqi military and overthrown Saddam Hussein, thus implementing and completing the policy of regime change in Iraq put in place by President Clinton in 1998
2) the banner acknowledged the completion of that aircraft carrier's and its personnel's deployment to the region in support of the military effort
Yet the Democrats, with the help of their willing lapdogs in the MSM, managed to substitute their own false context- that Iraq didn't resemble Mayberry in a timeframe they felt was acceptable- for the truth and most Americans bought into the duplicity.
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Post by killer on Feb 1, 2007 20:43:41 GMT -5
How can you EVER consider killing innocent people as winning?Also, it's just the damnest thing... conservative Republicans who claim to be Christians thinking/saying this war is a good thing/necessary thing...
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Post by phinehas on Feb 1, 2007 20:54:23 GMT -5
Military people on a battlefield are not innocent people. They are fully aware of the situation they are in and the reason they are there.
Do you know me? Who are you?
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Post by killer on Feb 1, 2007 21:08:55 GMT -5
All the people killed are not military!!
Don't know you personally, but know you write as a strong defender of the Republican party.
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Post by phinehas on Feb 1, 2007 21:30:13 GMT -5
I thought you were refering to my post were I mentioned that it was "winning" when we defeated the Iraqi military. I also mentioned that "winning" was when we eliminated or reduced down to nothing, the terrorist element.
I did not state that "winning" was killing innocent people, so I don't know where you drew that conclusion.
Defending yourself and going to war is well documented in the Bible to be just as Christian as atheist in it's validity of being necessary at times. You do know that the Apostles carried swords in the presence of the Lord?
Find a post where I defend the Republican party.
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Post by deovindice on Feb 5, 2007 6:59:43 GMT -5
[quote author=phinehas board=world thread=1170354171
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Post by killer on Feb 5, 2007 10:44:34 GMT -5
Syrian president said this morning on GMA that the current U.S. administration had no vision.
Diane Sawyer asked about the democracy in Iraq and the voting... The president said what good is democracy when you're dead? Seems like the death toll he gave was 700,000.
The guy also said this (U.S.) adminstration didn't really care about peace. He said it was about power.
Interesting comments.
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Post by phinehas on Feb 5, 2007 11:24:51 GMT -5
Quote:We invaded Iraq and defeated their Army within a couple of days. = "Winning" It wasn't the first time. Encore!
*No, we pushed them out of Kuwait, we didn't invade their country. All the pundits were pointing that out prior to the invasion and saying there would be tens of thousands of American body bags in Dover due to an invasion. That I believe was the first volley in the Libs saying we would lose the war before it began.
Quote:We removed the regime = "Winning"
As well as any and all stability within the country. De-Nazification brought about more problems than it solved. We should have remembered our history. Hell, the lights still go out and the water doesn't always flow.
*Speaking of History...how is that De-Nazified Germany doing?
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Post by phinehas on Feb 5, 2007 11:29:09 GMT -5
Syrian president said this morning on GMA that the current U.S. administration had no vision. Diane Sawyer asked about the democracy in Iraq and the voting... The president said what good is democracy when you're dead? Seems like the death toll he gave was 700,000. The guy also said this (U.S.) adminstration didn't really care about peace. He said it was about power. Interesting comments. Uh.....Syria is on the side of the Terrorists. Why should Americans listen to them? Why don't you just start quoting Bin Laden?
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Post by killer on Feb 5, 2007 14:26:31 GMT -5
The guy didn't sound like a supporter of terrorists. He sounded like a genuine person who wanted peace.
You might be happy to hear that he was positive about Bush, Sr. but went on to say the current Bush "had no vision."
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Post by W.O.M.I on Feb 5, 2007 17:07:29 GMT -5
Of course Assad was happy with Bush 41!
Bush 41 obeyed strictly the tenets of the United Nations and left in place a terrorist regime in Baghdad. Had the coalition gone on and finished the job then, the world would be a VERY different place now.
Assad was in a very uncomfortable place in 1991. He was friends with neither Iraq nor Iran despite constant wooing from both sides (sort of like Franco's Spain in WW2) but he knew that, if he professed loyalty to either despotic regime, chances were very good that he wouldn't be collecting the Syrian equivalent of Social Security. Unless the United States, Saddam's Iraq and the ayatollah's Iran do not reject assassination as a legitimate means of implementing their foreign policy (ask the Lebanese about that).
Assad is very worried that a successfully transformed Iraq might embolden the forces of democracy within his own borders, thus threatening his comparatively cozy situation. His proverbial nut would indeed be easier to crack than would Iran's. And he knows it.
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Post by richbrout on Feb 5, 2007 18:24:15 GMT -5
The phrase "Crazy on a ship of fools" comes to mind. Hell, even Bush and Cheney don't think we are "Winning" the war. How many Generals have to say it before you neo-cons realize its not the liberal media? Shenzeki, Gen Powell, Zinni, Casey come on your delusional. you can't have a "shining democracy in the middle east" when you can't walk to the market without fear of being blown up. It should be obvious to even an idiot that we are not in control over there.
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Post by phinehas on Feb 5, 2007 18:36:45 GMT -5
richbrout - We are not winning at this very moment if you lose all memory of what has taken place from the beginning and what objectives have been met. A war has points were we are losing at a particular objective at a particular time. You have to look at it as a whole, like a boxing match. It's the 12th round and I have won every round and you start to get a few jabs in on me...at that very moment you are winning the ROUND but that doesn't mean you are winning the Fight. So unless you knock me out, which WITHDRAW from Iraq will do, you are not winning anything that counts at the end.
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Post by richbrout on Feb 5, 2007 18:39:35 GMT -5
Sometimes.....when there is no chance of "winning", you throw in the towel.
We have the best military in the world bar none and we can't keep the peace, but we are supposed to be there till the Iraqis can do what we can't? Our boys are too valuable to be put in the situation of being in the middle of a civil war.
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Post by phinehas on Feb 5, 2007 18:41:31 GMT -5
We are still in the DMZ in Korea and we are still in Bosnia to name a few.
I still don't see how anyone can say there is no chance of winning when we have won all the battles.
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Post by solinvictus on Feb 5, 2007 21:27:30 GMT -5
..I can honestly see why Saddam was such a brutal SOB: because it's all these people understand. Until we use his tactics, we'll never win.
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Post by deovindice on Feb 6, 2007 5:55:58 GMT -5
Quote:We invaded Iraq and defeated their Army within a couple of days. = "Winning" It wasn't the first time. Encore! We most certainly did invade Iraq. VII Corps launched one of the largest armored attacks in history into Iraq. We only stopped short of taking Baghdad. Quote:We removed the regime = "Winning" As well as any and all stability within the country. De-Nazification brought about more problems than it solved. We should have remembered our history. Hell, the lights still go out and the water doesn't always flow. It's doing fine without the "religion of peace" to convolute it's efforts.
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Post by richbrout on Feb 6, 2007 8:44:09 GMT -5
If we had left Vietnam in 1967 we would have saved 30,000 Americans and another million Vietnamese.
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Post by killer on Feb 6, 2007 10:26:03 GMT -5
rich,
What do you think this occupation is really about?
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Post by W.O.M.I on Feb 6, 2007 16:52:14 GMT -5
Those generals, save perhaps Casey, have ulterior motives in speaking out against the war.
to fully understand their true motivations, you must first realize that the effort in Iraq is merely a most convenient ploy to denounce. It is >NOT< the object of their true ire.
The correct object is Donald Rumsfeld and, by extension, President Bush.
One of the first things that SecDef Rumsfeld began to do after his appointment by President Bush was to modernize the military so that it could deal with the new type of threat posed by terrorism.
Prior to this, our military was still designed to deal with the threats of the Cold War- massive conventional forces employing conventional tactics on a conventional battlefield. The military was structured to deal with a threat that no longer- as of 1994- existed.
(one can argue that such a force structure might once again prove necessary if and when we have to fight red China, but I'll leave that discussion to another time in another thread)
However, such a force restructuring stepped on many toes, like the generals referenced above. At the top of the military food chain, the high level positions entail a great deal of power and prestiege. These generals enjoyed their fiefdoms and strongly resented someone like Rumsfeld- a civilian!- telling them that their fiefdoms, post-restructuring- might not resemble the ones they enjoyed now or might not exist at all, thus either lessening or eliminating the power and prestiege of these generals.
Look at the historical example of Billy Mitchell.
In the 1920s, he became convinced that the airplane would be THE ultimate arbeiter of any coming war, supplanting ships, tanks and infantry. The US did not posses an 'air force' worthy of the name at the time. Had we been in a war, the planes we flew would have been a greater threat to our own pilots than they would ahve been to any enemy. Mitchell tried to address his concerns and express his vision, first through proper military channels but then, having gotten nowhere at all, went public with his displeasure. The result was that he was court martialed and convicted of gross insubordination, though his criticisms were valid and his vision ultimately vindicated.
Rumsfeld, like Mitchell, bucked the system and the system, resistant to change as always, bucked back. Rumsfeld had far more weight of rank than did Mitchell, so Rumsfeld's detractors had to take their sorry cases to the public in order to try to discredit him (and, by extension, the President).
Casey actually supports the surge because he, unlike the other generals, is still desirious that we win in Iraq. Shinseki and the others, invested in defeat as they are (along with many Democrats and the MSM), put their own legacies above the security of the nation.
There's a really nasty word for that....
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Post by solinvictus on Feb 6, 2007 20:14:55 GMT -5
rich, What do you think this occupation is really about? ...and Kellog/Brown/Root and Bechtel and countless others who are raking in the sheckles at the expense of American lives. I've said it before and I stand by my argument: in deposing Hussein, we've uncorked the genie's bottle in the region and if we fail, Iraq will become an Iranian proxy state. We're already tacitly allowing the Shiites to ethnically cleanse the Sunnis, so Iran's well on its way.
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Post by richbrout on Feb 6, 2007 20:32:40 GMT -5
I'll put it this way.
We replaced the British, Dutch and French after WW2 as the strongest ally of Saudi Arabia. The deal is we have access to the oil, and we don't say boo about the tyranical goverment they run.
Example: I just read the other day that dozens of foriegners have been sentenced to an undetermined number of lashings and 4 to 5 years in prison for attending a party where alcohol was served.
Right now I think the prez does believe it is vital to win and he believes it is the front on the war on terror. I think every Jihadist in the world is coming to Iraq for a chance to kill Americans. I also think there is no way to prevent the chaos, when they are willing to die to create it.
I don't think its the reason we are there but i think there is something patently wrong with the conservatives "privatize everything" approach that has privatized the entire service sector of the military and is transfering billions of tax payer dollars to the above mentioned companies. Its just wrong.
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Post by W.O.M.I on Feb 6, 2007 22:30:39 GMT -5
We have ample sources of various fossil fuels, along with plenty of uranium for nuclear plants and coal for coal-fired plants, to stop importing oil/natural gas from overseas in less than three years....
....IF the Libs would allow us to do so.
Of course, as is the case with so many issues that the Left demagogues, they'd much rather have the "crisis" that we have to purchase our oil from evil regimes such as Saudi Arabia rather than offering a real and permanent solution to the imports, which is obviously letting us tap our in-hemisphere sources of fuel while at the same time encouraging energy companies to develop and refine alternative sources of energy for down the road.
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Post by richbrout on Feb 7, 2007 8:37:48 GMT -5
Your kidding right? The left has been begging to use renewable energy for 30 YEARS!!!!!!!!!!! But instead of putting money into solar, wind, geothermal, ethanol, etc...we have been giving corporate welfare to the oil companies. 0% duty on imported oil from the Middle East. 50% duty on Ethanol from Brazil. Nixon,Ford,Reagan,Bush,W-------------------the people that pushed for renewable energy were Carter and Clinton
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Post by killer on Feb 7, 2007 10:37:20 GMT -5
Now there's the guy standing trial for refusing to go to Iraq. Also charges against him for making "anti-war" statements.
So are military personel supposed to avoid making statements of any sort that would sound as if they did not support the war? Even if they disagree with what they see?
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Post by lawmanguest on Feb 7, 2007 10:42:53 GMT -5
Guys fighting for freedom, losing their lives and limbs, and friends, but are forbidden to talk? Is America worth fighting for?
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Post by W.O.M.I on Feb 7, 2007 19:13:56 GMT -5
rich-
Nope, I'm most assuredly NOT kidding.
If pushing alternative energies was such a major Democrat agenda point, then why didn't it get done under Carter or Clinton? Both of them had strong Democrat majorities while they were President- Carter especially but so did Clinton for the first couple years of his first term.
The sad fact is neither did anything when they had the chance but they miss no chance to criticize the Republicans for not doing more. If they had expended the same amount of energy promoting such a 'crucial' agenda plank as they do using the issue to bash Republicans, we'd no longer need oil or gas at all.
As for the 0% duty on imported oil, you've got a point there. I'd have no problem, really, with slapping a tax on imported oil, PROVIDED Democrats would let us tap domestic sources of oil and gas. In the meantime, the money raised by the surcharge would go into a fund to promote alternatives and renewables and be available to anyone- yes even the oil companies- to promote private sector entrepreneurship.
Democrats would never go along with it because their base would go bonkers....George Soros (aka "Daddy Warbucks") might stop writing checks with LOTS of zeroes to the Dems.
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Post by richbrout on Feb 7, 2007 19:31:55 GMT -5
Carter did push hard but did not have popular support. We can agree on your above post.
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Post by W.O.M.I on Feb 8, 2007 21:46:38 GMT -5
Our history regarding energy, particularly over the past 40 years or so, is an example of free-market capitalism at its best- or worst, depending on your perspective.
We were pretty much blindsided by the oil embargo in, what, 1973? which was levied against us in large part due to our support of Israel. Being that Nixon was rather preoccupied with Vietnam and spying on the Democrats, he didn't give the situation the attention it truly deserved. I'm not sure that I would have agreed with a proposal he might have made, as Nixon was, among many things, no conservative and I think it fair to say that any plan he would have presented would have had strong, even oppressive, government mandates in it.
Ford held the country together post-Nixon. That was a big enough task so I'll forgive him not doing much re: energy independence.
Carter was probably in the best circumstance to have enacted meaningful programs. He was ideologically inclined to do so, had the backing of a friendly Congress and, for the first three years anyway, largely peaceful foreign relations. He did have more than his share of domestic demons: stagflation, double digit unemployment, interest rates and inflation, etc. and, while I rarely do this in his case- give him the benefit of the coubt about, well, anything- I would venture to say that maybe, just maybe, he realized that our economy could not take another hit at that time, especially the degree of a hit coerced energy independence would have caused at that time (largely because we had no viable alternatives at that time, barring nuclear, and TMI was too fresh in the people's minds to make that a promising avenue).
As for Reagan, Bush 41 and Clinton, it's hard to push alternatives when the existing energy is- comparatively- low priced. Oil shale, for example, has the potential to provide us wth more oil than is found in saudi Arabia and the technology from which oil is extracted from the shale is a proven one. But it did not make economic sense to tap oil shale at $35 a barrel when crude was $20 a barrel. Same with capped wells- we have literally thousands of capped wells in this country that were capped because the oil remaining in them is not cheaply or easily pumped. It makes more sense to the stockholders to import oil at 450/barrel than to uncap and reactivate these wells at $65/barrel. Like I said...capitalism and the free markets at their finest.
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