4,000 dead Americans

[NoCalMike 0]

Yes. It does. If you're going to talk based on inaccurate facts, why talk at all?

 

Well hell, Fox News has made a pretty successful network out of doing just that.

[EricMM 0]

Why the fuck haven't we federalized these people yet?

 

They obviously cannot learn to play nice...

[Jingus 0]

Yes. It does. If you're going to talk based on inaccurate facts, why talk at all?

 

Well hell, pretty much every media outlet has made a pretty successful network out of doing just that.

EFA

[NoCalMike 0]

Yes. It does. If you're going to talk based on inaccurate facts, why talk at all?

 

Well hell, pretty much every media outlet has made a pretty successful network out of doing just that.

EFA

 

Haha, I guess I can't disagree with that.

[Dobbs 3K 0]

Link found on Drudge:

 

Bush: there will be no pullout from Iraq while I'm president

 

Ewen MacAskill in Washington

Thursday August 23, 2007

The Guardian

 

President George Bush sought to buy more time for his Iraq "surge" strategy yesterday by making a risky comparison for the first time with the bloodshed and chaos that followed the US pullout from Vietnam.

 

Making it clear he will resist congressional pressure next month for an early withdrawal, he signalled that US troops, whom he hailed as the "greatest force for human liberation the world has ever known", will be in Iraq as long as he is president. He also said the consequences of leaving "without getting the job done would be devastating", and "the enemy would follow us home".

 

Mr Bush's speech came on the day that the US suffered one of its highest daily death tolls since the 2003 invasion, with 14 troops killed when a Black Hawk helicopter crashed.

 

In a speech to army veterans in Kansas City, Mr Bush invoked one of the US's biggest military disasters in support of keeping troops in Iraq: "One unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like 'boat people', 're-education camps' and 'killing fields'."

 

The speech was aimed primarily at what White House officials privately describe as the "Defeatocrats", the Democratic congressmen trying to push Mr Bush into an early withdrawal. The issue is set to come to a head next month when the US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, gives a progress report to Congress.

 

Gen Petraeus is expected to say that the surge has produced military successes but that there has only been limited progress on the political front.

 

In relation to the latter, Mr Bush was forced yesterday to backtrack after 24 hours earlier expressing frustration with the Iraqi prime minister, Nour al-Maliki. Alarmed by the harsh reaction of Mr Maliki, Mr Bush hurriedly rewrote his speech to praise him: "Prime Minister Maliki's a good guy, a good man with a difficult job and I support him."

 

The speech overall reflected the White House belief that it is shifting American public opinion behind the surge - the injection of 30,000 extra US troops into Iraq that has brought the total US force in the country to its highest level, 165,000.

 

The Bush administration wants to keep the surge going until at least next April, at which point the overstretched military will be forced to begin reducing troop numbers anyway.

 

Although Gen Petraeus has not yet completed his report, a Pentagon source said the US presence could be down to 110,000 by the end of next year. The army, as of yesterday, had no plans to replace five brigades, each consisting of 3,400 to 4,000 soldiers, when their 15-month tours expire next summer.

 

Freedom's Watch, a conservative group, yesterday launched a $15m (£7.5m) advertising campaign in 20 states saying: "It's no time to quit. It's no time for politics."

 

Mr Bush's former White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, who works for the group, said: "We want to get the message to both Democrats and Republicans: don't cut and run, fully fund the troops, and victory is the only objective."

 

The White House has been emboldened by a Gallup poll published yesterday showing approval ratings for the Democratic-led Congress had dropped to 18%, the lowest since the survey of the public views of the legislature began in 1974, and an earlier Gallup poll showing support for the surge had jumped in a month from 22% to 31%.

 

Two of the most influential senators on military affairs, the Democratic chairman of the armed services committee, Carl Levin, an advocate of an early withdrawal, and John Warner, a veteran Republican who recently broke ranks with Mr Bush over the war, issued a statement this week lauding the surge's "tangible results".

 

Mr Bush, until yesterday, had strenuously avoided making explicit references to Vietnam. It is a gamble, risking reminding Americans that Vietnam was a military quagmire and reminding them of the shambolic retreat from the embassy rooftop in Saigon on the day that a Black Hawk crashed in Iraq killing 14 US soldiers.

 

But Mr Bush tried to turn the argument around as he made a series of contentious political parallels. He argued that US involvement in the far east had turned it from a continent in 1939 with only two democracies - Australia and New Zealand - into one where democracy was the norm: he mentioned Japan, South Korea and Vietnam.

 

"In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge began a murderous rule, in which hundreds of thousands of Cambodians died by starvation and torture and execution," Mr Bush said.

 

Some historians argue that it was the US covert bombing of Cambodia that produced the Khmer Rouge rather than US withdrawal from Vietnam.

 

Mr Bush added: "In Vietnam, former allies of the United States and government workers and intellectuals and businessmen were sent off to prison camps, where tens of thousand perished. Hundreds of thousands more fled the country on rickety boats, many of them going to their graves in the South China Sea."

 

He said that there had been lots of critics of US involvement in Vietnam at the time. But he quoted from Graham Greene's novel The Quiet American, the words "I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused", implying that, with the benefit of hindsight, they were wrong, just as critics of the Iraq war will later seen to be misguided.

 

He will expand on that in a speech next week in which he will say he has not abandoned his ambitious idea that Iraq could be in the vanguard of bringing democracy to the Middle East.

 

Since the British government hinted recently that it planned an early pullout from Iraq, it has come under increasing pressure from the White House. US general Jack Keane yesterday became the latest American to criticise the proposed British move.

 

He told the BBC that the situation in Basra was deteriorating. "From a military perspective I know what the [uS] commanders are trying to avoid is having to send reinforcements to the south from forces that are needed in the central part of Iraq. That situation could arise if the situation gets worse in Basra if and when British troops leave," he said.

[Jingus 0]

The Iraq-Vietnam comparisons are bullshit anyway. Vietnam had an American death rate that was literally about a hundred times higher than what we're currently experiencing.

[snuffbox 0]

55,000 isn't quite 100x 4,000.

 

If our Iraq War leadership had as many soldiers on the ground there as LBJ etc did in Vietnam (which would still not be enough to stifle civil war & nation build simultaneously) the death toll would be subsequently higher. Also, advancements in medicine are allowing more soldiers to live on as invalids or handicappeds that would have otherwise died from Vietnam-era injuries.

 

The comparison is apt in that it shows us what happens when we invade foreign countries with underwhelming forces without bothering to consider who/where we are attacking or the consequences thereof.

 

Also, whoever wrote yesterday's speech apparently has a 6th grade level education in history. It was really dumb on that level. And Bush again showed that saying he will support the returning troops counts for far more than actually doing so in his & his Administration's opinion.

[Jingus 0]

If our Iraq War leadership had as many soldiers on the ground there as LBJ etc did in Vietnam (which would still not be enough to stifle civil war & nation build simultaneously) the death toll would be subsequently higher.

 

 

The comparison is apt in that it shows us what happens when we invade foreign countries with underwhelming forces without bothering to consider who/where we are attacking or the consequences thereof.

So, which one is it? We should deploy more troops, or we could never deploy enough troops?

[EricMM 0]

Jingus, realize that something like 1 in 3 vietnam vets who were critically injured died, the number for the Iraq war is something like 1 in 26. So while that is happy for the people surviving, it kind of skews the numbers to make this seem to be a cleaner war than it actually is.

 

Further more, shellshocked soldiers whos brains are been pressurized one too many times are never, ever going to be the same. This war has a lower number of fatalities than previous wars, but that doesn't mean the loss of life, or quality life isn't high.

[Jingus 0]

Alright then, what's the comparative number of serious injuries from Vietnam to Iraq?

 

And yeah, soldiers are gonna get irreperably damaged. That's kinda what they do. This isn't a draft situation, every one of these people knew the risks and still volunteered anyway. You could argue about the ever-lengthening tours and how some people are being kept there too long to maintain their effectiveness, and then you'd have a point, but don't just go "war is hell" and make that an argument.

[EricMM 0]

The argument is that the amount of damage isn't worth it, that's what the argument is.

 

And then your side goes "zomg Vietnam was worse"

 

And then we go, "medical technology is obscuring the damage."

 

Fatalities get headlines, not cripplings, not brain trauma.

[Dobbs 3K 0]

It is true that the administration is basically playing toy soldiers with our troops. They're staying for multiple tours way too long and often. No thought is being given to the psychological trauma being inflicted.

[NoCalMike 0]

It seems at this point that people still supporting this war are never going to support a withdrawl until a hypothetical victory is achieved, whatever that really means. They are actually in one breath saying "we can't pullout because then Iraqis will kill Iraqis" and then with their next breath say things like "lets just nuke the whole place and exterminate those muslims" It really is comical.

 

Also, the comparison to Vietnam has nothing to do with the death totals. It has to do with using the army as police, trying to police a situation and keep the peace. That isn't what an army is for, and it doesn't work.

[Dobbs 3K 0]

Exactly. Let the UN deal with it if they want to at this point. Any sort of tangible victory is going to be years away at this point, and the US can't really afford that, and doesn't need it, frankly. Let our troops come back to the US and protect us here, if needed.

[Jingus 0]

Let the UN deal with it if they want to at this point.

They've repeatedly proved that they're going to do absolutely nothing. At this point, I wouldn't trust the UN to do a pull-apart on a wrestling show.

 

And then your side goes "zomg Vietnam was worse"

What do you mean, "you people"?! [/sykes]

 

Anyway, I'm not a republican, or a conservative. Hell, I voted for Nader. (I knew Bush was winning my state no matter what, so I just randomly picked my choice.)

[Kristianna 0]

Anyway, I'm not a republican, or a conservative. Hell, I voted for Nader. (I knew Bush was winning my state no matter what, so I just randomly picked my choice.)

 

Ha, I'm from Texas, and I also voted Nader.

 

As for the war... fuck. Its an absolutely no-win situation. You can't pull out with out looking like cowards who don't finish what they start. And you can't stay without looking like an occupying force. Either way, people from the extreme Muslim communities and those from the left and right wings of our own nation will always find a way to twist either scenario to their own advantage.

 

Is there a solution? I think so, but it would actually involve the US admitting they were wrong. I won't hold my breath for that one, because the current administration is on a steady diet of their own hubris and self-aggrandizing. But its obvious that a military solution does not exist, unless you want to do the unspeakable and nuke the entire region. Which, by god, I hope everyone, even those who scream "LOL GLASS PARKINGLOT", will just open the biggest can of worms since the Cold War itself.

 

The US needs to stop getting up in everyone else's shit. Its plain, and its simple. We don't need to police the world, and we don't need to be the "Hero of the Day" every day. It really all started with the way we handled the end of World War II, and its just spiraled out of control from there.

 

Iraqis should be ruled by Iraqis. If they want to have a religious despotic government like Iran, let them. If they want to have tribal warlords fighting over everything and killing each other for thousand year old grudges. Let them. Its time for the US government to focus on the United States of America. The US created Saddam Hussein, when he was our boy against Iran. He got a little headstrong for our tastes, so we kicked his ass a couple of times. Problem is, one we saved his people from him, we didn't leave. The saviors that we once were to the Iraqi people quickly became foreign invaders. And they'll keep on banding together tenuously in order to get rid of us. Of course, they'll turn on each other once we leave... but honestly, why should we care? The war between Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds have been going on for longer than the US has existed, and they won't be satisfied until they've killed themselves down to the last man, woman and child. But they want us to get out of their way, and let them have their civil war. And we should let them, for its really none of our business.

 

Its sad to see it happen, but just let it happen. I mean, we can't save everybody... the US is not the right arm of God that some people would like to believe, and we really shouldn't portray ourselves as such to the rest of the world. There are plenty of us who don't believe that we should, but our voices are not the loudest.

[Jingus 0]

Ha, I'm from Texas, and I also voted Nader.

Actually, I'm from Tennessee, just moved to Texas recently. But, yeah, just from knowing the locals, I knew that Bush would win the electoral votes and Gore would be locked out of his own state (he'd just gotten too dang liberal for the bible belt's taste).

 

He got a little headstrong for our tastes, so we kicked his ass a couple of times. Problem is, one we saved his people from him, we didn't leave. The saviors that we once were to the Iraqi people quickly became foreign invaders. And they'll keep on banding together tenuously in order to get rid of us. Of course, they'll turn on each other once we leave... but honestly, why should we care?

But we couldn't have just invaded and then left as soon as we got Saddam. I mean, we blew up a LOT of shit taking out his government. If we hadn't stayed to help rebuild the infrastructure and at least attempt to enforce the peace, things in Iraq would be a lot worse off than they are now. And even the terrorists don't seem to consider the Americans their biggest enemy; they kill way more fellow Muslims than they do of us.

[Kristianna 0]

I agree with your sentiments. But you must be willing to admit I hope that our presence is, if nothing else, a firebrand. Rebuilding all we had destroyed on the way in is really all we should have done, and be doing right now. Don't get me wrong, I know that a lot of that does happen. My older brother just recently ended his second tour as an engineer over there. He was a water treatment expert, and you could tell that the people he helped truly appreciated the work that he'd done.

 

[BorneAgain 0]

Jingus is correct about how the US needed to there for at least a little while. Even beyond the bombings, the subsequent looting of almost government building crippled the infrastructure. The Iraqis seeing Americans as occupiers was bad enough, but a great deal of the problems came out due to the gross incompetence of the CPA, whose decisions (firing of the national army, de-baathification, attempts to immediately turn what had been a socialist dictatorship into a neo-conservative free market, and a whole litany of problems with the initial government) turned a hell of a lot of the populace against the US.

[NoCalMike 0]

I think the first step to ending the war though is for the administration to admit not that it was a mistake in the first place(the point has been drilled into our brains by the left, and rendered irrelevent at this point by the right), rather admit that the current course of action is NOT WORKING. Instead of every few months saying, "well it's not that it isn't working, it is that it just needs more time, how much, we have no idea, but more time"

 

Until the consensus is that a military solution in Iraq is not going to work, we are going to be stuck in this kind of limbo where the answer is "well, we just haven't blown enough stuff up yet, give us more time" Bush seems to be acting as if Al Qaeda and other terrorists are all hiding out in a hotel, and we just haven't found that certain hotel yet, but once we do, the war will get better. He still seems to have trouble with the concept that 90% of the violence in Iraq and casualties that our soldiers are taking are not even coming from Al Qaeda, rather Iraqis that are duking it out with each other. Of course, Bush has been trying to blur the line between Iraqis and Al Qaeda from day one anyway.

[Kristianna 0]

Oh yeah. the current government of Iraq shoulders a lot of the blame for the current problems in Iraq, there's no doubt. They're too busy fighting over their petty religious squabbles to actually take care of their government. But hey, I'm not really surprised, and really... none of you should be either.

[NoCalMike 0]

Oh yeah. the current government of Iraq shoulders a lot of the blame for the current problems in Iraq, there's no doubt. They're too busy fighting over their petty religious squabbles to actually take care of their government. But hey, I'm not really surprised, and really... none of you should be either.

 

No one is suprised, but then again, what do you expect when "Democracy" is handed to you by a barrel of a gun?

[Kristianna 0]

Or what's worse, when its handed to you with a bundle of lies to go along with it too.

[At Home 0]

Or what's worse, when its handed to you with a bundle of lies to go along with it too.

LOL

 

How's sophomore year of state college?

 

 

The reason that democracy is not going to work in Iraq is because democracy doesn't exist in their minds and is not a legitimate form of government to them.

[BorneAgain 0]

Or what's worse, when its handed to you with a bundle of lies to go along with it too.

LOL

 

How's sophomore year of state college?

 

 

The reason that democracy is not going to work in Iraq is because democracy doesn't exist in their minds and is not a legitimate form of government to them.

And those who were or are open to that form have fled, died, or too scared to suggest it.

[EricMM 0]

So whats the point of staying there?

 

If we're holding back the flood without any way to stop it, there's really no point.

[Dobbs 3K 0]

The only reason we're still there is so Bush can pass the buck to the next president, and blame them for the eventual pullout and following humanitarian disaster.

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

The only reason we're still there is so Bush can pass the buck to the next president, and blame them for the eventual pullout and following humanitarian disaster.

 

Ding ding ding! We have a winner. Bush is already laying the groundwork for this with the Vietnam comparisons.

 

"We coulda saved them foreigners (cause that's all we ever really wanted to do in Indochina & the Middle East) if it wasn't for them dirty hippies!"

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

Also, we should have never invaded in the first place.

[Jingus 0]

You think Saddam was doing just fine as a humanitarian leader?