Sick Of It

Hey, I got an idea! Lets get out of Iraq!

Yeah, just pull up stakes and leave. Afghanistan, too. In fact, include Korea,
Germany, Turkey, and every other overseas base we have.

Lets not stay in Iraq and continue to cause the enemy to spend money attempting
to defeat the US military, which is impossible for them or anyone else except a
scurrilous congress that would put them further in harm's way by forcing them
to leave the battlefield under fire, which should be good for as many
casualties as has been suffered so far.

We don't need bases in any other parts of the world, since a unilateral cut and
run in Iran would let the entire world know that we don't even have the stomach
to use the military in a war with possibly the lowest casualty rate of any ever
fought.

There's no point in having a military that potential enemies are not afraid of.

We can just leave, and let Al Quada regroup, set up their training camps in
Iraq and Afghanistan, and just keep coming at us with hijacked planes or
whatever other creative attack that they can imagine and we cannot until its
too late. Could we lose 3,000 US citizens a month under a revitalized,
unopposed Al Quada? Maybe. Maybe more if they get their mitts on some nukes,
which would become more likely as those enemies that could provide them would
be less fearful of the US and its military might which it will be well know
that we don't have the stomach to use.

Yes, lets just surrender, and do it tomorrow. Men grow beards, women wear
burkas, all pray toward Mecca 5 times a day. That will keep us from having to
sacrifice even one soldier to the cause of defending the country from the
terrorists. We might as well short-cut this war to its inevitable conclusion
if we don't have the stones to make any sort of sacrifice in the name of
freedom.

Sick of the cowardice.

Dave Head

"Dave Head" > wrote in message
...
> Hey, I got an idea! Lets get out of Iraq!
>
> Yeah, just pull up stakes and leave. Afghanistan, too. In fact, include
> Korea,
> Germany, Turkey, and every other overseas base we have.
>

Sounds like a great idea. Really. -Dave

Dave Head wrote:
> Hey, I got an idea! Lets get out of Iraq!
>

Was the goal ever to stay there forever?

> Yeah, just pull up stakes and leave. Afghanistan, too.

Afghanistan was the country that harbored Al Qaeda. We never even sent
very many troops there relative to Iraq. Why not redeploy half the
troops in Iraq over there?

> In fact, include Korea,
> Germany, Turkey, and every other overseas base we have.
>

Not a good idea.

> Lets not stay in Iraq and continue to cause the enemy

Which enemy would that be?

> to spend money

The way we're throwing money around Iraq with little to no
accountablility, I wouldn't be surprised if at least half their funding
is coming from us in the first place.

Then of course, there's Iran supplying them and they're not going to run
out of money without serious international sanctiobns against them.

> attempting
> to defeat the US military, which is impossible for them or anyone else except a
> scurrilous congress that would put them further in harm's way

And by a CIC who is unwilling to listen to the military leaders who have
a clue about warfare.

> by forcing them
> to leave the battlefield under fire, which should be good for as many
> casualties as has been suffered so far.
>
> We don't need bases in any other parts of the world, since a unilateral cut and
> run in Iran would let the entire world know that we don't even have the stomach
> to use the military in a war with possibly the lowest casualty rate of any ever
> fought.

Actually, what we don't seem to have the stomach for is an undeclared
war with no clear objectives being fought against a nation that while
evil and despicable was never a threat to us in the first place - that's
costing us billions of dollars at the same time and isn't making us any
safer.

>
> There's no point in having a military that potential enemies are not afraid of.
>

You mean like Iran and North Korea?

> We can just leave, and let Al Quada regroup, set up their training camps in
> Iraq and Afghanistan,

How about we go after the terrorists instead of trying to create
democracies in countries that clearly have little interest in becoming a
democracy?

> and just keep coming at us with hijacked planes or
> whatever other creative attack that they can imagine and we cannot until its
> too late.

Terrorists cannot be defeated by "shock and awe" - they can be defeated
through intelligence gathering, suffocating their money supply and
pinpoint strikes.

> Could we lose 3,000 US citizens a month under a revitalized,
> unopposed Al Quada?

It's doubtful.

> Maybe. Maybe more if they get their mitts on some nukes,

Most likely a dirty nuke which wouldn't have nearly the impact of even
Hiroshima. And could they do this every month? No way.

> which would become more likely as those enemies that could provide them would
> be less fearful of the US and its military might which it will be well know
> that we don't have the stomach to use.

We need to be less fearful - Al Qaeda seems to have made quite the
impact on you, fomenting terror to the point where people can't think
straight.

>
> Yes, lets just surrender, and do it tomorrow. Men grow beards, women wear
> burkas, all pray toward Mecca 5 times a day.

How about fighting it intelligently rather than the foolish way we are
doing it now or your proposed surrender?

> That will keep us from having to
> sacrifice even one soldier to the cause of defending the country from the
> terrorists. We might as well short-cut this war to its inevitable conclusion
> if we don't have the stones to make any sort of sacrifice in the name of
> freedom.

What sacrifices have you made?

>
> Sick of the cowardice.
>

Look in the mirror.

> Dave Head

Dave Head wrote:

> Hey, I got an idea! Lets get out of Iraq!

Hey, I got a couple of ideas.

1. Post this to a newsgroup where it's on topic, or, failing that,
2. Prefix the subject line with "OT"

Ladies and Gentlemen (and I use those words loosely), In a sure sign
that the Apocalypse us upon us, Speeders & Drunk Drivers are
MURDERERS, a resource and connoisseur of all that is GAY KID PORN,
spewed forth this crap all over the landscape in rec.autos.driving and
other unrelated newsgroups:

<< ECP to unrelated newsgroups removed >>

<< snip >>


> You don't understand how the world works. We have wars because the
> profiteers make money off wars and they buy off the presidents and PMs
> and congressmen and media leaders. Been like that for hundreds of years.

Yeah, right, you moron. I suppose that next, you will be saying that
Fox News and CNN fanned the flames of the Civil War.

--
necromancer

Criminal Coddler. And Proud of it, man!!!

On Sun, 8 Apr 2007 11:31:33 -0400, "Dave" > wrote:

>
>"Dave Head" > wrote in message
.. .
>> Hey, I got an idea! Lets get out of Iraq!
>>
>> Yeah, just pull up stakes and leave. Afghanistan, too. In fact, include
>> Korea,
>> Germany, Turkey, and every other overseas base we have.
>>
>
>Sounds like a great idea. Really. -Dave

And isolationism has worked how many times in the past?

DPH

On Sun, 08 Apr 2007 09:44:38 -0700, "Fred G. Mackey" > wrote:

>Dave Head wrote:
>> Hey, I got an idea! Lets get out of Iraq!
>>
>
>Was the goal ever to stay there forever?

Long enough to keep the enemy from setting up a hostile government.

>> Yeah, just pull up stakes and leave. Afghanistan, too.
>
>Afghanistan was the country that harbored Al Qaeda. We never even sent
>very many troops there relative to Iraq. Why not redeploy half the
>troops in Iraq over there?

Why not just bring everybody home? No US troops on anything but US soil. If
we leave Iraq before the job is done, then the whole world will know that
having us as a friend is worthless anyway, as well as having us as an enemy is
not a credible threat.

>> In fact, include Korea,
>> Germany, Turkey, and every other overseas base we have.
>
>Not a good idea.

Why not? How effective will they be if we cut and run in Iraq? They might as
well not be there anyway.

>> Lets not stay in Iraq and continue to cause the enemy
>
>Which enemy would that be?

Islamist jihadists.

>> to spend money
>
>The way we're throwing money around Iraq with little to no
>accountablility, I wouldn't be surprised if at least half their funding
>is coming from us in the first place.

>Then of course, there's Iran supplying them and they're not going to run
>out of money without serious international sanctiobns against them.

>> attempting
>> to defeat the US military, which is impossible for them or anyone else except a
>> scurrilous congress that would put them further in harm's way
>
>And by a CIC who is unwilling to listen to the military leaders who have
>a clue about warfare.

Whether true or not, simply leaving the field of battle will be an immense
national disaster for us.

>> by forcing them
>> to leave the battlefield under fire, which should be good for as many
>> casualties as has been suffered so far.
>>
>> We don't need bases in any other parts of the world, since a unilateral cut and
>> run in Iran would let the entire world know that we don't even have the stomach
>> to use the military in a war with possibly the lowest casualty rate of any ever
>> fought.
>
>Actually, what we don't seem to have the stomach for is an undeclared
>war with no clear objectives being fought against a nation that while
>evil and despicable was never a threat to us in the first place - that's
>costing us billions of dollars at the same time and isn't making us any
>safer.

There's so much wrong with that paragraph it would take too long...

>> There's no point in having a military that potential enemies are not afraid of.
>>
>
>You mean like Iran and North Korea?

Yep. What do they have to fear, if they know we don't have the cajones to
actually _do_ something and stick with it until we've achieved our goal? We
_are_ the paper tiger that Chairman Mao declared us to be, if we simply leave
the field of battle, thus ensuring victory for our enemies.

>> We can just leave, and let Al Quada regroup, set up their training camps in
>> Iraq and Afghanistan,
>
>How about we go after the terrorists instead of trying to create
>democracies in countries that clearly have little interest in becoming a
>democracy?

The terrorists are _in_ this same country. The facts are that if we leave,
they win. Pure and simple.

>> and just keep coming at us with hijacked planes or
>> whatever other creative attack that they can imagine and we cannot until its
>> too late.
>
>Terrorists cannot be defeated by "shock and awe" - they can be defeated
>through intelligence gathering, suffocating their money supply and
>pinpoint strikes.

They can only be defeated by killing them or imprisoning them.

Intelligence gathering simply means fighting a defensive war. Defense without
offense cannot win a war.

Suffocating their money supply just makes them poor terrorists, but terrorists
nonetheless. They can still figure out how to remove bolts from train tracks
and kill hundreds of people on the next passing Amtrak, or some-such.

>> Could we lose 3,000 US citizens a month under a revitalized,
>> unopposed Al Quada?
>
>It's doubtful.

But its possible, if we're not diverting their attention from us to Iraq or
SOMEPLACE ELSE besides our own soil. Use someone else's soil on which to kill
them.

>> Maybe. Maybe more if they get their mitts on some nukes,
>
>Most likely a dirty nuke which wouldn't have nearly the impact of even
>Hiroshima. And could they do this every month? No way.

Wishful thinking. The fact is, given enough time and emboldened by victory in
Iraq, they _will_ find a way to come up with one of those missing Russian
suitcase nukes. It _will_ go off on Wall Street, eventually, if we don't go
about the business of killing terrorists.

>> which would become more likely as those enemies that could provide them would
>> be less fearful of the US and its military might which it will be well know
>> that we don't have the stomach to use.
>
>We need to be less fearful - Al Qaeda seems to have made quite the
>impact on you, fomenting terror to the point where people can't think
>straight.

You wanna sit back and let 9/11 happen again, eh?

>> Yes, lets just surrender, and do it tomorrow. Men grow beards, women wear
>> burkas, all pray toward Mecca 5 times a day.
>
>How about fighting it intelligently rather than the foolish way we are
>doing it now or your proposed surrender?

The democrats are proposing surrender in Iraq. I don't need to propose it.

Fighting your "defense only" war is not fighting it intelligently, since that
precludes winning it. And, any battles lost in your sort of war will be lost
in the streets of NYC or DC, whereas in the supposedly unintelligent war we are
waging now, lost battles are done 6000 miles away.

Now what's so damn smart about your defense-only war again?

>> That will keep us from having to
>> sacrifice even one soldier to the cause of defending the country from the
>> terrorists. We might as well short-cut this war to its inevitable conclusion
>> if we don't have the stones to make any sort of sacrifice in the name of
>> freedom.
>
>What sacrifices have you made?

Well, if I can get hired, I'll be going to Iraq to directly support the
military technically... trying to make it happen, anyway.... unfortunately,
there's competition for this job... I'm too old to join the military directly,
so that's the best I can do... Yeah, the money is good, but there is the same
risk that everybody takes of not coming back at all, so's I guess that's a
_risk_ of a sacrifice...

DPH

Dave Head wrote:
> On Sun, 08 Apr 2007 09:44:38 -0700, "Fred G. Mackey" > wrote:
>
>
>>Dave Head wrote:
>>
>>>Hey, I got an idea! Lets get out of Iraq!
>>>
>>
>>Was the goal ever to stay there forever?
>
>
> Long enough to keep the enemy from setting up a hostile government.
>
>

That's such a subjectively vague objective that it's meaningless.

Define "the enemy". Define "hostile government". Better yet, define
what requirements the government of Iraq would have to meet to be not
"hostile".

>>>Yeah, just pull up stakes and leave. Afghanistan, too.
>>
>>Afghanistan was the country that harbored Al Qaeda. We never even sent
>>very many troops there relative to Iraq. Why not redeploy half the
>>troops in Iraq over there?
>
>
> Why not just bring everybody home? No US troops on anything but US soil.

That's an absurd argument (argument ad absurdum) and you know it.


Why not address my point? That is, that we should have had more troops
in Afghanistan which posed the very real threat in the first place.

> If
> we leave Iraq before the job is done,

We need to define what "the job" is. Saddam was taken out of power and
he has been hanged. There have been free elections in Iraq. We have
trained Iraqi security forces. We have given billions to rebuild their
infrastructure.

When do we say enough is enough?

I'm not saying we should pick a specific date, but we should definitely
define milestones and gradually turn more and more responsibility of
providing security to the Iraqi government.


> then the whole world will know that
> having us as a friend is worthless anyway,

We didn't go into Iraq as their "friend".

> as well as having us as an enemy is
> not a credible threat.
>

We dismantled Saddam's regime in Iraq and we took out the Taliban in
Afghanistan (to an extent anyway, and I'm suggesting redeploying troops
there to finish it).

That certainly sends the message that you don't want to be on the wrong
side of the US.

>
>>> In fact, include Korea,
>>>Germany, Turkey, and every other overseas base we have.
>>
>>Not a good idea.
>
>
> Why not? How effective will they be if we cut and run in Iraq?

Your argument seems to be that everyone hinges on Iraq. That we may as
well run home and embrace isolationism.

Based on your reply to another poster, you know that is a ridiculous
policy to pursue.

> They might as
> well not be there anyway.
>

Our troops are deployed around the world to (among other things) provide
a quick response for situations which might develop.

>
>>>Lets not stay in Iraq and continue to cause the enemy
>>
>>Which enemy would that be?
>
>
> Islamist jihadists.
>

And how do you identify them? Our "smart bombs" cannot. We need
intelligence, not brute force to figure out who they are.

>
>>>to spend money
>>
>>The way we're throwing money around Iraq with little to no
>>accountablility, I wouldn't be surprised if at least half their funding
>>is coming from us in the first place.
>
>
>>Then of course, there's Iran supplying them and they're not going to run
>>out of money without serious international sanctiobns against them.
>

Not gonna touch that, are you?

>
>>>attempting
>>>to defeat the US military, which is impossible for them or anyone else except a
>>>scurrilous congress that would put them further in harm's way
>>
>>And by a CIC who is unwilling to listen to the military leaders who have
>>a clue about warfare.
>
>
> Whether true or not, simply leaving the field of battle will be an immense
> national disaster for us.
>

Based on what? Didn't "major hostilities" end a couple years ago?

It seems to me that by staying in Iraq indefinitely with no objectively
definable goal is the real "disaster".

>
>>>by forcing them
>>>to leave the battlefield under fire, which should be good for as many
>>>casualties as has been suffered so far.
>>>
>>>We don't need bases in any other parts of the world, since a unilateral cut and
>>>run in Iran would let the entire world know that we don't even have the stomach
>>>to use the military in a war with possibly the lowest casualty rate of any ever
>>>fought.
>>
>>Actually, what we don't seem to have the stomach for is an undeclared
>>war with no clear objectives being fought against a nation that while
>>evil and despicable was never a threat to us in the first place - that's
>>costing us billions of dollars at the same time and isn't making us any
>>safer.
>
>
> There's so much wrong with that paragraph it would take too long...
>

Bull**** - you're just afraid to refute any of the points in it:

* The war was never declared. (The fact that we haven't declared war
since WWII is irrelevant. If we had bothered to declare war, Congress
and the President would have been certain to have the support of the
American people.)

* There are no clear objectives.

* Iraq (though Saddam was evil and despicable) was DEFINITELY not a
threat to us in 2003. (Anyone who was paying attention to FACTS instead
of soundbites knew that.)

* The Iraq "war" is certainly costing us billions.

* And it's NOT making us any safer. This bull**** about fighting them
over there so we don't have to fight them here is insane. Do you think
those folks planting IEDs in Iraq would be doing so in the US if they
weren't so busy doing it there?

>
>>>There's no point in having a military that potential enemies are not afraid of.
>>>
>>
>>You mean like Iran and North Korea?
>
>
> Yep. What do they have to fear, if they know we don't have the cajones to
> actually _do_ something and stick with it until we've achieved our goal?

NK knows they have nothing to fear because Bush has chosen the path of
appeasement, just like Clinton - funny thing about that is, very few of
the people who were screaming bloody murder about it when Clinton was
responsible even bat an eye at Bush doing the same thing.

NK also knows that they can ship missiles to places like Yemen and we'll
just let them do it.

As for Iran, Ahmedinejad knows we aren't going to actually do anything
about them even if we stay in Iraq for the next 100 years. We didn't do
anything (other than a failed rescue mission) when they took over our
embassy in 1979 and Britain didn't do anything recently when they seized
15 of their forces which were operating in Iraqi waters under the
umbrella of the UN. Blair pussyfooted around the whole thing despite
Iranian claims that his rhetoric was "provocative".

> We
> _are_ the paper tiger that Chairman Mao declared us to be,

We should pick and choose our wars and when we choose to fight, the
President and especially Congress (which is supposed to declare war)
should make sure the American people are behind them and we should go at
it whole hog.

Stubbornly standing behind mistakes are not going to mitigate the
consequences of those mistake - they will only exacerbate them.


> if we simply leave
> the field of battle, thus ensuring victory for our enemies.
>

Where is the field of battle in Iraq?

>
>>>We can just leave, and let Al Quada regroup, set up their training camps in
>>>Iraq and Afghanistan,
>>
>>How about we go after the terrorists instead of trying to create
>>democracies in countries that clearly have little interest in becoming a
>>democracy?
>
>
> The terrorists are _in_ this same country.

The terrorists who attacked us were based in Afghanistan. There are
cells all over the middle east. We can't just invade the entire region.
The terrorists don't recognize borders.

We need to fight them intelligently. You can't just occupy a country
and expect to defeat a bunch of terrorist cells with varying degrees of
affiliation.

> The facts are that if we leave,
> they win. Pure and simple.
>

So you do think we should stay there forever. Or do you actually think
there will come a time when there will be no terrorism in Iraq?

Or is there an acceptable level of dissent among the Iraqi people that
may occasionally result in violence that would allow us to turn control
over to the Iraqi government without them "winning".


>
>>>and just keep coming at us with hijacked planes or
>>>whatever other creative attack that they can imagine and we cannot until its
>>>too late.
>>
>>Terrorists cannot be defeated by "shock and awe" - they can be defeated
>>through intelligence gathering, suffocating their money supply and
>>pinpoint strikes.
>
>
> They can only be defeated by killing them or imprisoning them.
>

And you can try that with "shock and awe", but as you can see in Iraq,
it doesn't work. You need to find out who the terrorists are and then
kill or imprison them. The only other alternative is to just nuke the
entire country, killing all life completely.

> Intelligence gathering simply means fighting a defensive war.

No, it means going out and finding terrorists and stopping them. What
we're doing now is more "defensive" than that.

For example, according to the Bush administration, Iran is supplying
insurgents in Iraq. I think that's highly likely, but what are we doing
about it? If that is true, to be offensive, we should be cracking down
on Iran, at least with sanctions, if not bombing and invasion.

> Defense without
> offense cannot win a war.
>

Brute force without intelligence cannot win a war - in fact, it will
most assuredly lead to defeat.

> Suffocating their money supply just makes them poor terrorists, but terrorists
> nonetheless. They can still figure out how to remove bolts from train tracks
> and kill hundreds of people on the next passing Amtrak, or some-such.
>

That's why cutting off their funding is only part of the strategy. We
must figure out who they are, execute strikes on them and also prevent
them from entering our country in the first place.

Do you realize that we rely on written statements from small-town police
departments in Asia to assure us that a visa candidate is "okay" to
enter the US?

We don't know who we're letting in the country legally, let alone who is
coming in illegally and an endless occupation of Iraq is not going to
solve that problem.

>
>>>Could we lose 3,000 US citizens a month under a revitalized,
>>>unopposed Al Quada?
>>
>>It's doubtful.
>
>
> But its possible,

Sorry - I'm sometimes prone to understatment. It is not possible - not
3000 citizens per month. It is possible that other strikes would occur,
but NOT with the death toll or frequency that your cowardice makes you
believe.

> if we're not diverting their attention from us to Iraq or
> SOMEPLACE ELSE besides our own soil.

Your attitude is letting the terrorists win.

> Use someone else's soil on which to kill
> them.
>

Did the war in Iraq prevent the 7/7 bombings in London? Or the 3/11
bombings in Spain?

Would uncovering those terrorist cells first have prevented them?

>
>>>Maybe. Maybe more if they get their mitts on some nukes,
>>
>>Most likely a dirty nuke which wouldn't have nearly the impact of even
>>Hiroshima. And could they do this every month? No way.
>
>
> Wishful thinking.

Realistic thinking. To think otherwise is to give into terror.

> The fact is, given enough time and emboldened by victory in
> Iraq, they _will_ find a way to come up with one of those missing Russian
> suitcase nukes.

You give way too much credibility to TV shows like 24.

> It _will_ go off on Wall Street,

That's your fear talking. While I accept the possibility of another
terrorist attack, I refuse to BELIEVE it is inevitable or to let it rule
my life.

> eventually, if we don't go
> about the business of killing terrorists.
>

Well, we're not doing that by occupying Iraq. The two are not connected.

>
>>>which would become more likely as those enemies that could provide them would
>>>be less fearful of the US and its military might which it will be well know
>>>that we don't have the stomach to use.
>>
>>We need to be less fearful - Al Qaeda seems to have made quite the
>>impact on you, fomenting terror to the point where people can't think
>>straight.
>
>
> You wanna sit back and let 9/11 happen again, eh?
>

Of course not. I WANT to fight terrorism. You want to ignore actual
terrorist threats and occupy Iraq forever.

It seems that you're the one who wants another 9/11. Then your fears
will be justified.

>
>>>Yes, lets just surrender, and do it tomorrow. Men grow beards, women wear
>>>burkas, all pray toward Mecca 5 times a day.
>>
>>How about fighting it intelligently rather than the foolish way we are
>>doing it now or your proposed surrender?
>
>
> The democrats are proposing surrender in Iraq. I don't need to propose it.

Read your own words ("Yes, lets just surrender"). Sure, you meant them
to be sarcastic, but your denial of my suggestion that we fight it
intelligently (by going after terrorist organizations and terrorist
cells) is to advocate surrender.

>
> Fighting your "defense only" war is not fighting it intelligently, since that
> precludes winning it.

I'm not advocating a "defense only" war and it's disingenuous of you to
put it in quotes as if I said it. Those are YOUR words.

What part of making pinpoint strikes is "defense only"?

> And, any battles lost in your sort of war will be lost
> in the streets of NYC or DC,

Not at all. You have let fear and terror cloud your mind.

> whereas in the supposedly unintelligent war we are
> waging now, lost battles are done 6000 miles away.
>

They can also occur here and even those battles we "win" 6000 miles away
involve American casualties and aren't helping to prevent terrorism here.

> Now what's so damn smart about your defense-only war again?
>

I want to fight terrorists. You want to keep our troops in Iraq
forever and let the terrorists operate everywhere else that they can.

Yours is the same mindset that law enforcement uses to fight the "war on
drugs". They wage the war on one street corner until the problem seems
to disappear, but it hasn't actually disappeared - it has just moved to
the next street corner.

>
>>> That will keep us from having to
>>>sacrifice even one soldier to the cause of defending the country from the
>>>terrorists. We might as well short-cut this war to its inevitable conclusion
>>>if we don't have the stones to make any sort of sacrifice in the name of
>>>freedom.
>>
>>What sacrifices have you made?
>
>
> Well, if I can get hired, I'll be going to Iraq to directly support the
> military technically...

Good for you.

> trying to make it happen, anyway.... unfortunately,
> there's competition for this job... I'm too old to join the military directly,
> so that's the best I can do... Yeah, the money is good, but there is the same
> risk that everybody takes of not coming back at all, so's I guess that's a
> _risk_ of a sacrifice...
>

I'm too young to remember from personal experience - and I suspect you
are too - but civilians on American soil during the last couple wars we
actually declared had to make real sacrifices (and I don't just mean the
ridiculous indignity of having to take our shoes off before boarding an
airplane).

> DPH

On Sun, 08 Apr 2007 20:20:14 -0700, "Fred G. Mackey" > wrote:

>Dave Head wrote:
>> On Sun, 08 Apr 2007 09:44:38 -0700, "Fred G. Mackey" > wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Dave Head wrote:
>>>
>>>>Hey, I got an idea! Lets get out of Iraq!
>>>>
>>>
>>>Was the goal ever to stay there forever?
>>
>>
>> Long enough to keep the enemy from setting up a hostile government.
>
>That's such a subjectively vague objective that it's meaningless.

Well, just stay long enough that a freely elected representative democracy that
is not controlled by a bunch of wild-eyed clerics can be set up with a military
and police force that is capable of defending the country.

>Define "the enemy". Define "hostile government". Better yet, define
>what requirements the government of Iraq would have to meet to be not
>"hostile".

They have to be able to defend themselves from the current enemies and the
potential enemies with nothing more than our air support. We can give that and
not lose any fighters, at least historically.

>>>>Yeah, just pull up stakes and leave. Afghanistan, too.
>>>
>>>Afghanistan was the country that harbored Al Qaeda. We never even sent
>>>very many troops there relative to Iraq. Why not redeploy half the
>>>troops in Iraq over there?
>>
>>
>> Why not just bring everybody home? No US troops on anything but US soil.
>
>That's an absurd argument (argument ad absurdum) and you know it.

Sure it is, made in response to what appeared to be an absurd isolationist
argument. Maybe you're a little more rational than the average democrat in
Congress that just wants to turn-tail and run.

>Why not address my point? That is, that we should have had more troops
>in Afghanistan which posed the very real threat in the first place.

We should have / have had more troops in both Afghanistan and Iraq, but thanks
to policies over the last 20 years or so that concentrated on saving money by
defunding the military, our military forces for fighting conventional wars with
boots on the ground, such as this one, is inadequate. Our military should
never have been allowed to get this small, but in spite of warnings from the
Pentagon that we were beyond the point where we could effectively fight 2 wars
at the same time, we allowed the military cost-cutting to continue. That was
stupid.

>> If
>> we leave Iraq before the job is done,
>
>We need to define what "the job" is. Saddam was taken out of power and
>he has been hanged. There have been free elections in Iraq. We have
>trained Iraqi security forces. We have given billions to rebuild their
>infrastructure.

>When do we say enough is enough?

When leaving will not rapidly result in the fall of the current government and
its replacement by yet another Saddam-like entity that will oppress the people
again and hate our guts to boot, as the current insurgents do. The long and
the short of it is that if we leave before the current government can defend
itself, the insurgents will win, and the place will be a terrorist stronghold
that, short of going back in and reconquering it and dismantlling terrorist
infrastructure again, we won't be able to do anything about. Rather than
leaving and then having to re-invade all over again to defend ourselves from
the terrorists who are sure to use the place as a base of operations, I think
it'd be a whole lot simpler just to stay. But just long enough to see that
they can win against the terrorists and repel outright invasions, although that
would still require our air support.

>I'm not saying we should pick a specific date, but we should definitely
>define milestones and gradually turn more and more responsibility of
>providing security to the Iraqi government.

That is where this is going right now. I'm pretty sure that we will be
defining such milestones, even Bush is pretty fed up with lack of Iraqi
progress. These guys need to get their **** together, and pretty damn quick.
No, I don't want to stay forever either, but simply object to cutting and
running while having a Mr. Magoo case of nearsightedness that doesn't try to
predict what's going to happen next, and realize how incredibly dangerous and
otherwise detrimental the situation will become if we just leave and let the
terrorists take charge of Iraq.

>> then the whole world will know that
>> having us as a friend is worthless anyway,
>
>We didn't go into Iraq as their "friend".

We went partially as an army of liberation. Mostly, actually. Yes, we were a
friend of the people, and an enemy of their oppressive government.

>> as well as having us as an enemy is
>> not a credible threat.
>>
>
>We dismantled Saddam's regime in Iraq and we took out the Taliban in
>Afghanistan (to an extent anyway, and I'm suggesting redeploying troops
>there to finish it).

I'd like to train-up and send more troops there for that purpose, while not
weakening ourselves in Iraq. Iraq actually needs _more_ troops so that the
ones there are safer.

>That certainly sends the message that you don't want to be on the wrong
>side of the US.

It would, if we stick to it and find the guts to finish the job.

>>>> In fact, include Korea,
>>>>Germany, Turkey, and every other overseas base we have.
>>>
>>>Not a good idea.
>>
>>
>> Why not? How effective will they be if we cut and run in Iraq?
>
>Your argument seems to be that everyone hinges on Iraq. That we may as
>well run home and embrace isolationism.

If we are willing to cut and run, and be known as a nation that has no
commitment to finish things we start and will abandon friends to horrible
fates, then having military all over the world just won't do us much good,
really. Yeah, it _does_ all hinge on Iraq, and whether we have the commitment
that we should have to finish the job.

If we simply leave, there will be a blood-bath. Those that helped us against
the terrorists will supply the blood, and it will flow knee-deep.

Imagine you are an Iraqi with useful intelligence. Are you going to tell our
troops your intelligence if you also know that:

1) If the country falls into the hands of its current enemies, they will, with
100% certainty, form death squads and take revenge on the collaborators, and
you will be dead.

2) It appears to you that the US congress is going to bring about a situation
where the troops are going to leave and abandon the country, and you, to those
very same enemies that are surely going to kill you if they get the chance.

>Based on your reply to another poster, you know that is a ridiculous
>policy to pursue.
>
>> They might as
>> well not be there anyway.
>>
>
>Our troops are deployed around the world to (among other things) provide
> a quick response for situations which might develop.

And if we become known as a country that will abandon our allies to be killed
by death squads, our troops will be acting 100% alone, without the vital aid of
the local population like in Afghanistan. Our forces will have to be many
times the size they are now in order to do the same job we could otherwise do
if people could trust us, and trust our resolve to finish a job we start.

>>>>Lets not stay in Iraq and continue to cause the enemy
>>>
>>>Which enemy would that be?
>>
>> Islamist jihadists.
>>
>
>And how do you identify them?

Through the intelligence that we will no longer have access to if we simply
abandon those that have helped us.

>Our "smart bombs" cannot. We need
>intelligence, not brute force to figure out who they are.

Yep, and turning tail and running, while abandoning those that help us, is the
best way to insure that we never again get intelligence from any corner, other
than CIA-style covert operations. The average Joe Iraqi, or Afghani, or even
Philippino will not provide it, because they know that at some point, we'll get
cold feet and abandon them. Nobody will trust us if we keep doing that.
>
>>>>to spend money
>>>
>>>The way we're throwing money around Iraq with little to no
>>>accountablility, I wouldn't be surprised if at least half their funding
>>>is coming from us in the first place.
>>
>>
>>>Then of course, there's Iran supplying them and they're not going to run
>>>out of money without serious international sanctiobns against them.
>>
>
>Not gonna touch that, are you?

Nope. That's a different thing. We can't go starting yet another war. We're
going to have to bring the Iraqis to the point that they can do something about
this. If they want to start another Iran-Iraq war, then so be it. Iran likely
doesn't want a real war with anybody, and will likely mend its ways in the face
of having to fight the Iraqis again.

>>>>attempting
>>>>to defeat the US military, which is impossible for them or anyone else except a
>>>>scurrilous congress that would put them further in harm's way
>>>
>>>And by a CIC who is unwilling to listen to the military leaders who have
>>>a clue about warfare.
>>
>>
>> Whether true or not, simply leaving the field of battle will be an immense
>> national disaster for us.
>>
>
>Based on what? Didn't "major hostilities" end a couple years ago?

Based on the fact that the place will be taken over by the terrorists, and used
as a base of operations. They will gain access to the oil money of Iraq, and
become much better funded, better protected by a friendly government that they
will set up, and probably be successful in launching a series of 9/11 style
attacks against the USA.

>It seems to me that by staying in Iraq indefinitely with no objectively
>definable goal is the real "disaster".

What is the disaster in that? By staying, we protect those that are helping us
make it tough on the bad guys. We don't lose many troops in comparison to any
other war we've ever fought. The longer we stay, the better prepared the
current government becomes to eventually provide for their own defense. All
that would be undone by a policy of "cut and run".

>>>Actually, what we don't seem to have the stomach for is an undeclared
>>>war with no clear objectives being fought against a nation that while
>>>evil and despicable was never a threat to us in the first place - that's
>>>costing us billions of dollars at the same time and isn't making us any
>>>safer.
>>
>>
>> There's so much wrong with that paragraph it would take too long...
>>
>
>Bull**** - you're just afraid to refute any of the points in it:
>
>* The war was never declared. (The fact that we haven't declared war
>since WWII is irrelevant. If we had bothered to declare war, Congress
>and the President would have been certain to have the support of the
>American people.)

So what? Neither was Korea, Viet Nam, Grenada, Panama, Gulf War 1, etc. We
simply don't do that any more.

>* There are no clear objectives.

Its pretty clear to me that we're trying to set up a government that can be
self-sustaining and that will not have huge reasons to hate us. Yeah,
everybody hates something about the US, but not like the current insurgents,
into whose hands this country will fall if we simply leave.

>* Iraq (though Saddam was evil and despicable) was DEFINITELY not a
>threat to us in 2003. (Anyone who was paying attention to FACTS instead
>of soundbites knew that.)

We know that now. But, at the time, there was the definite possibility that
they had anthrax, nerve gas, and possibly were on a path to building nukes that
could all be given to terrorists, and likely would have at some point. All
this might have been knowable if not for the penchant of democrats to declare
all our intelligence gathering to be evil, cut the intelligence agencies'
budgets to the bone, and thus forced them to rely exclusively on satellite
intelligence which we now know was and always will be inadequate. We need
spies, pure and simple, but that is too dirty a profession to get funded by the
rose colored glasses democrats that think the world must be made of sugar and
spice and everything nice.

>* The Iraq "war" is certainly costing us billions.

Yep. All wars are expensive. So what? The alternative is even more
expensive, 'cuz we're going to lose thousands of citizens to terrorism on our
soil if we just quit and abandon those who have helped us. If the bad guys get
nukes, it'll be a many-fold worse disaster.

>* And it's NOT making us any safer.

Then why haven't we been hit again since 9/11? I'd say that is irrefutable
evidence that we are safer.

>This bull**** about fighting them
>over there so we don't have to fight them here is insane.

No its not. It is working.

> Do you think
>those folks planting IEDs in Iraq would be doing so in the US if they
>weren't so busy doing it there?

Absolutely. They will take a while to get control of Iraq, and a little more
to get control of Iraq's oil money, and then they will not need Improvised
explosives, they will manufacture devices tailored to the job. Bomb or shoot
down airliners. Set bombs under trains with a lot of nasty industrial
chemicals that form deadly gasses when they burn. Poison our water supplies.
All sorts of vile **** will start happening if these guys get access to a whole
country and its oil money.

We're in yet another islamic war of conquest. You think its some kind of
coincidence that the attack of 9/11 fell on the anniverary of the defeat of the
islamic hoardes at the gates of Vienna in 1683? Its not. They're on another
religious tear, and that is going to contine for probably another 100 years
until we disabuse them of the idea that they can win. Again. But leaving Iraq
will do just the opposite - it will cause them to think that this is going to
be a much easier fight than they thought, and that they will much more easily
achieve a 100% world domination by the muslim religion, subjegating all other
religions and atheism throughout the world.

>>>>There's no point in having a military that potential enemies are not afraid of.
>>>>
>>>
>>>You mean like Iran and North Korea?
>>
>>
>> Yep. What do they have to fear, if they know we don't have the cajones to
>> actually _do_ something and stick with it until we've achieved our goal?
>
>NK knows they have nothing to fear because Bush has chosen the path of
>appeasement, just like Clinton - funny thing about that is, very few of
>the people who were screaming bloody murder about it when Clinton was
>responsible even bat an eye at Bush doing the same thing.

Well, thanks to Clinton's f'ups, the NK's now have nuclear weapons. We can't
afford to go toe-to-toe with any nation that is lead by an absolutely insane
man that would find a way to get one of these devices in the bilge of a
freighter that enters San Francisco harbor and levels the whole city from
there.

Plus, there's that thing again about not being able to fight 2 wars at the
same time, again thanks to military-hating democrats that gutted the military a
long time ago, leaving us with 1/3rd or so of the size of army we should have.

>NK also knows that they can ship missiles to places like Yemen and we'll
>just let them do it.

Yep.

>As for Iran, Ahmedinejad knows we aren't going to actually do anything
>about them even if we stay in Iraq for the next 100 years.

Yep. We should make as many friends in the region as we can, and let them do
it. Isreal, at some point, will do it. Iraq may someday be able to assist
with that, although no one will ever be able to get them to fight side-by-side
with Israel, unless maybe Iran is invading Iraq again, which wouldn't see
Israel giving a damn about that anyway...

>We didn't do
>anything (other than a failed rescue mission) when they took over our
>embassy in 1979

We had a nice little rescue mission planned, but ****wit Jimmy Carter
personally slashed the size of the rescue force, thus sabotaging it.

>and Britain didn't do anything recently when they seized
>15 of their forces which were operating in Iraqi waters under the
>umbrella of the UN. Blair pussyfooted around the whole thing despite
>Iranian claims that his rhetoric was "provocative".

I'd say there was a naval blockade of Iran in the works. Its probably the
reason that the Brits got their people back at all.

>> We
>> _are_ the paper tiger that Chairman Mao declared us to be,
>
>We should pick and choose our wars and when we choose to fight, the
>President and especially Congress (which is supposed to declare war)
>should make sure the American people are behind them and we should go at
>it whole hog.

There was overwhelming support for this war at the time it was initiated. Now,
because things haven't gone well, supporters are trying to run away from their
history of being for it. But history is history, and they can't get around the
fact of their support.

>Stubbornly standing behind mistakes are not going to mitigate the
>consequences of those mistake - they will only exacerbate them.

No, if you start something, you finish it. Those deeply affected by simply
saying "Oops" and leaving will hate us for the rest of their lives, which will
probably be very short. But their loved ones will survive, and hate us for
eternity.

>> if we simply leave
>> the field of battle, thus ensuring victory for our enemies.
>>
>
>Where is the field of battle in Iraq?

Abbar province, mostly, but all over Iraq, occasionally.

>>>>We can just leave, and let Al Quada regroup, set up their training camps in
>>>>Iraq and Afghanistan,
>>>
>>>How about we go after the terrorists instead of trying to create
>>>democracies in countries that clearly have little interest in becoming a
>>>democracy?
>>
>>
>> The terrorists are _in_ this same country.
>
>The terrorists who attacked us were based in Afghanistan.

They move around. They are now in Iraq. Al Quada is in Iraq.

>There are
>cells all over the middle east.

And the USA most probably. Its another "so what" moment.

> We can't just invade the entire region.
>The terrorists don't recognize borders.

Yep, but we can kill the ones that we have access to. Those are in Iraq and
Afghanistan.

>We need to fight them intelligently. You can't just occupy a country
>and expect to defeat a bunch of terrorist cells with varying degrees of
>affiliation.

Eventually, it is hoped that the Iraqis themselves will do that.

>> The facts are that if we leave,
>> they win. Pure and simple.
>>
>
>So you do think we should stay there forever.

Nope. I should have said, "leave prematurely", but then again, that should
have been understood.

We stay until the Iraqis themselves can do their own security job, or it
becomes obvious that they never will be able to do it, and then either form a
new approach (breaking Iraq into 3 coutries perhaps), or simply recognize that
its impossible and leave. We're just not at the "impossible" stage yet, and
likely won't be for 3 - 5 more years. I think it'll take that long to either
be successful, or be sure that success is not an option.

>Or do you actually think
>there will come a time when there will be no terrorism in Iraq?

There will come a time when terrorism is not a daily concern, if we are
successful. I think we can still be successful.

>Or is there an acceptable level of dissent among the Iraqi people that
>may occasionally result in violence that would allow us to turn control
>over to the Iraqi government without them "winning".

Yep, that's it. Then they will be like us, only our daily terrorist problem is
our criminal element, which is many times worse than most developed nations,
thanks in part to our puritanical war on drugs that creates new and wonderous
criminal organizations to try to distribute them.

>>>>and just keep coming at us with hijacked planes or
>>>>whatever other creative attack that they can imagine and we cannot until its
>>>>too late.
>>>
>>>Terrorists cannot be defeated by "shock and awe" - they can be defeated
>>>through intelligence gathering, suffocating their money supply and
>>>pinpoint strikes.
>>
>>
>> They can only be defeated by killing them or imprisoning them.
>>
>
>And you can try that with "shock and awe", but as you can see in Iraq,
>it doesn't work. You need to find out who the terrorists are and then
>kill or imprison them. The only other alternative is to just nuke the
>entire country, killing all life completely.

Naw, wouldn't want to do that. The Iraqis will find out / already know who the
terrorists are, but will not tell us if we appear to be ready to abandon them.

>> Intelligence gathering simply means fighting a defensive war.
>
>No, it means going out and finding terrorists and stopping them. What
>we're doing now is more "defensive" than that.

Yep. We do have to be more aggressive, for sure. The rules of engagement are
a joke, and need to be changed. Lots of things can be done better.

>For example, according to the Bush administration, Iran is supplying
>insurgents in Iraq. I think that's highly likely, but what are we doing
>about it? If that is true, to be offensive, we should be cracking down
>on Iran, at least with sanctions, if not bombing and invasion.

How about a nice blockade of their oil shipments? Yeah, our gas prices would
skyrocket, but then again, we might meet CO2 reduction targets if it gets high
enough! <G> Sounds like a win-win... <GGG>

>> Defense without
>> offense cannot win a war.
>>
>
>Brute force without intelligence cannot win a war - in fact, it will
>most assuredly lead to defeat.

And we're not going to get the intelligence that we would otherwise get if Joe
Iraqi believes he's going to be abandoned to the predations of the insurgents
when we cut and run.

>> Suffocating their money supply just makes them poor terrorists, but terrorists
>> nonetheless. They can still figure out how to remove bolts from train tracks
>> and kill hundreds of people on the next passing Amtrak, or some-such.
>
>That's why cutting off their funding is only part of the strategy. We
>must figure out who they are, execute strikes on them and also prevent
>them from entering our country in the first place.

We should do more, for sure, but keeping them from entering the coutry, when
there's millions of illegal aliens simply walking into it, is an impossible
job.

>Do you realize that we rely on written statements from small-town police
>departments in Asia to assure us that a visa candidate is "okay" to
>enter the US?

Sounds like a normal government screw-up, yeah.

>We don't know who we're letting in the country legally, let alone who is
>coming in illegally and an endless occupation of Iraq is not going to
>solve that problem.

It _is_ a great diversion of terrorist resources, tho, and we get to kill a lot
of them, too. That's a good thing.

>>>>Could we lose 3,000 US citizens a month under a revitalized,
>>>>unopposed Al Quada?
>>>
>>>It's doubtful.
>>
>>
>> But its possible,
>
>Sorry - I'm sometimes prone to understatment. It is not possible - not
>3000 citizens per month. It is possible that other strikes would occur,
>but NOT with the death toll or frequency that your cowardice makes you
>believe.

3000 a month is not likely, true. 3000 a year is still unacceptable, however.

>> if we're not diverting their attention from us to Iraq or
>> SOMEPLACE ELSE besides our own soil.
>
>Your attitude is letting the terrorists win.
>
>> Use someone else's soil on which to kill
>> them.
>>
>
>Did the war in Iraq prevent the 7/7 bombings in London? Or the 3/11
>bombings in Spain?

Nope. But it has prevented any attack on us.

>Would uncovering those terrorist cells first have prevented them?

Maybe, if that were possible.

>>>>Maybe. Maybe more if they get their mitts on some nukes,
>>>
>>>Most likely a dirty nuke which wouldn't have nearly the impact of even
>>>Hiroshima. And could they do this every month? No way.
>>
>>
>> Wishful thinking.
>
>Realistic thinking. To think otherwise is to give into terror.

Failing to recognize the worst-case scenario and plan for it is to allow
defeat.

>> The fact is, given enough time and emboldened by victory in
>> Iraq, they _will_ find a way to come up with one of those missing Russian
>> suitcase nukes.
>
>You give way too much credibility to TV shows like 24.

I don't watch any commercial-laden TV dramas. I just get too impatient during
the commercials, and then switch channels. So, I don't think I've seen more
than 1 or 2 24's since they started airing.

>> It _will_ go off on Wall Street,
>
>That's your fear talking. While I accept the possibility of another
>terrorist attack, I refuse to BELIEVE it is inevitable or to let it rule
>my life.

Then I sure don't want you for President. I want a President that realizes
that the terrorists would like nothing better than for this to happen, are
working to bring it about, and will likely succeed unless we do everything we
can to prevent them from it.

>> eventually, if we don't go
>> about the business of killing terrorists.
>>
>
>Well, we're not doing that by occupying Iraq. The two are not connected.

We are killing terrorists in Iraq, no doubt about it. And, our enemy's
resources _are_ being consumed in Iraq, just like ours, only we have many more
resources than they have. We can, of course, commit the ultimate blunder by
walking off the field of battle, and simply handing Iraq to the enemy.

>>>>which would become more likely as those enemies that could provide them would
>>>>be less fearful of the US and its military might which it will be well know
>>>>that we don't have the stomach to use.
>>>
>>>We need to be less fearful - Al Qaeda seems to have made quite the
>>>impact on you, fomenting terror to the point where people can't think
>>>straight.
>>
>>
>> You wanna sit back and let 9/11 happen again, eh?
>>
>
>Of course not. I WANT to fight terrorism. You want to ignore actual
>terrorist threats and occupy Iraq forever.

I want to kill terrorists, and bring a legitimate Iraqi government to power
that is also interested in killing terrorists for as long as it takes to
disabuse them of the idea that they can take over the world, which is their
goal.

>It seems that you're the one who wants another 9/11. Then your fears
>will be justified.
>
>>
>>>>Yes, lets just surrender, and do it tomorrow. Men grow beards, women wear
>>>>burkas, all pray toward Mecca 5 times a day.
>>>
>>>How about fighting it intelligently rather than the foolish way we are
>>>doing it now or your proposed surrender?
>>
>>
>> The democrats are proposing surrender in Iraq. I don't need to propose it.
>
>Read your own words ("Yes, lets just surrender"). Sure, you meant them
>to be sarcastic, but your denial of my suggestion that we fight it
>intelligently (by going after terrorist organizations and terrorist
>cells) is to advocate surrender.

No, its just that going after the cells is an even more impossible job than
stopping all the drugs from entering this country. A nice little war in
someplace like Iraq will draw them out, onto the field of battle, where we
don't need to expend huge resources to find them. They present themselves
there, and then we can kill them.

>> Fighting your "defense only" war is not fighting it intelligently, since that
>> precludes winning it.
>
>I'm not advocating a "defense only" war and it's disingenuous of you to
>put it in quotes as if I said it. Those are YOUR words.

A war without an offense is a defensive war. Finding and taking down terrorist
cells, one-by-one, is doomed to failure to the point that such an approach can
be said to be inoffensive.

>What part of making pinpoint strikes is "defense only"?

Their inadequacy to the task. Work 6 months to find a single cell, and send a
cruise missle after it. Repeat. Meanwhile, 20,000 other cells are unaffected.
It is even more of a losing battle, on a many-fold scale, than what we are
doing in Iraq and Afghanistan.

>> And, any battles lost in your sort of war will be lost
>> in the streets of NYC or DC,
>
>Not at all. You have let fear and terror cloud your mind.

Wait and see. Abandon Iraq, and we _will_ get another major strike here, maybe
multiple strikes.

>> whereas in the supposedly unintelligent war we are
>> waging now, lost battles are done 6000 miles away.
>>
>
>They can also occur here and even those battles we "win" 6000 miles away
>involve American casualties and aren't helping to prevent terrorism here.

Er, yes they are.

>> Now what's so damn smart about your defense-only war again?
>>
>
>I want to fight terrorists. You want to keep our troops in Iraq
>forever and let the terrorists operate everywhere else that they can.

Only long enough to let the Iraqis provide their own defense, or until it
becomes obvious that it can never happen. But that is maybe 3-5 years away
before we know for sure. Yeah, I want to give our troops 3 - 5 more years to
be successful.

>Yours is the same mindset that law enforcement uses to fight the "war on
>drugs". They wage the war on one street corner until the problem seems
>to disappear, but it hasn't actually disappeared - it has just moved to
>the next street corner.

Any I think your approach is likely to be as ineffective as stopping all drugs
entering the US is.

>>>> That will keep us from having to
>>>>sacrifice even one soldier to the cause of defending the country from the
>>>>terrorists. We might as well short-cut this war to its inevitable conclusion
>>>>if we don't have the stones to make any sort of sacrifice in the name of
>>>>freedom.
>>>
>>>What sacrifices have you made?
>>
>>
>> Well, if I can get hired, I'll be going to Iraq to directly support the
>> military technically...
>
>Good for you.
>
>> trying to make it happen, anyway.... unfortunately,
>> there's competition for this job... I'm too old to join the military directly,
>> so that's the best I can do... Yeah, the money is good, but there is the same
>> risk that everybody takes of not coming back at all, so's I guess that's a
>> _risk_ of a sacrifice...
>>
>
>I'm too young to remember from personal experience - and I suspect you
>are too - but civilians on American soil during the last couple wars we
>actually declared had to make real sacrifices (and I don't just mean the
>ridiculous indignity of having to take our shoes off before boarding an
>airplane).

Yeah, they got blown up a lot.

DPH

>> DPH

Dave Head wrote:
> On Sun, 08 Apr 2007 20:20:14 -0700, "Fred G. Mackey" > wrote:

>
>>* The war was never declared. (The fact that we haven't declared war
>>since WWII is irrelevant. If we had bothered to declare war, Congress
>>and the President would have been certain to have the support of the
>>American people.)
>
>
> So what? Neither was Korea, Viet Nam, Grenada, Panama, Gulf War 1, etc. We
> simply don't do that any more.

And Korea is still at war, Vietnam was a disaster, Granada and Panama
were very minor and shot, and Gulf War I left Saddam in power.

IOW, not declaring war only works for very minor operations - it has
proven to be a disaster - or at best not something that results in any
real victory.

>
>
>>* There are no clear objectives.
>
>
> Its pretty clear to me that we're trying to set up a government that can be
> self-sustaining and that will not have huge reasons to hate us. Yeah,
> everybody hates something about the US, but not like the current insurgents,
> into whose hands this country will fall if we simply leave.
>

How does one measure that?

If things are going so well - as some are claiming, then what makes us
think Iraq isn't ready to start stepping up now?

>
>>* Iraq (though Saddam was evil and despicable) was DEFINITELY not a
>>threat to us in 2003. (Anyone who was paying attention to FACTS instead
>>of soundbites knew that.)
>
>
> We know that now.

And we knew it then too - at least anyone who wasn't blinded by
jingoistic rhetoric did.

> But, at the time, there was the definite possibility that
> they had anthrax, nerve gas, and possibly were on a path to building nukes that
> could all be given to terrorists, and likely would have at some point.

So why didn't we invade Iran?

> All
> this might have been knowable if not for the penchant of democrats to declare
> all our intelligence gathering to be evil, cut the intelligence agencies'
> budgets to the bone, and thus forced them to rely exclusively on satellite
> intelligence which we now know was and always will be inadequate.

Why is it always partisan politics with people like you?

Wasn't the GOP in control of Congress from 1995 until just very recently?


> We need
> spies, pure and simple,

You sure that wouldn't be "defense only" (too use your own phrase)?


> but that is too dirty a profession to get funded by the
> rose colored glasses democrats that think the world must be made of sugar and
> spice and everything nice.
>

>
>>* The Iraq "war" is certainly costing us billions.
>
>
> Yep. All wars are expensive. So what?

In this case, we're not sure what it's buying us. In WWII we were sure.
We were even sure during the first Gulf War, but the only thing this
seems to be buying us is a long-term recruiting campaign for terrorism
in the ME.

> The alternative is even more
> expensive, 'cuz we're going to lose thousands of citizens to terrorism on our
> soil if we just quit and abandon those who have helped us. If the bad guys get
> nukes, it'll be a many-fold worse disaster.

More unsubstantiated doom-and-gloom and fear-mongering.

>
>
>>* And it's NOT making us any safer.
>
>
> Then why haven't we been hit again since 9/11?

For the same reason there weren't any terrorist attacks by foreign
terrorist organizations between 1993 and 2001.

You're claiming a result with no evidence to connect it to the war in Iraq.

We've also taken other measures to prevent terrorism, INCLUDING the
invasion of Afghanistan, increased intelligence gathering and increased
domestic security.


> I'd say that is irrefutable
> evidence that we are safer.
>

I'd say that it's irrefutable evidence that you aren't willing to listen
to reason.

What about the terrorist plot to blow up planes over the Atlantic last year?

That was broken up due to intelligence, NOT the war in Iraq.

>
>>This bull**** about fighting them
>>over there so we don't have to fight them here is insane.
>
>
> No its not. It is working.

Yeah - and the fact that I have a fire extinguisher and have never had a
fire in my home is proof that my fire extinguisher is working.

>
>
>>Do you think
>>those folks planting IEDs in Iraq would be doing so in the US if they
>>weren't so busy doing it there?
>
>
> Absolutely. They will take a while to get control of Iraq, and a little more
> to get control of Iraq's oil money, and then they will not need Improvised
> explosives, they will manufacture devices tailored to the job. Bomb or shoot
> down airliners. Set bombs under trains with a lot of nasty industrial
> chemicals that form deadly gasses when they burn. Poison our water supplies.
> All sorts of vile **** will start happening if these guys get access to a whole
> country and its oil money.
>

That's irrational fear talking.

> We're in yet another islamic war of conquest. You think its some kind of
> coincidence that the attack of 9/11 fell on the anniverary of the defeat of the
> islamic hoardes at the gates of Vienna in 1683? Its not.

I think it probably is a coincidence. Most people, including muslims,
don't know their history that well.

> They're on another
> religious tear, and that is going to contine for probably another 100 years
> until we disabuse them of the idea that they can win. Again. But leaving Iraq
> will do just the opposite - it will cause them to think that this is going to
> be a much easier fight than they thought,

No, that's probably what they think as a result of how we handled
Afghanistan though.

> and that they will much more easily
> achieve a 100% world domination by the muslim religion, subjegating all other
> religions and atheism throughout the world.
>
>
>>>>>There's no point in having a military that potential enemies are not afraid of.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>You mean like Iran and North Korea?
>>>
>>>
>>>Yep. What do they have to fear, if they know we don't have the cajones to
>>>actually _do_ something and stick with it until we've achieved our goal?
>>
>>NK knows they have nothing to fear because Bush has chosen the path of
>>appeasement, just like Clinton - funny thing about that is, very few of
>>the people who were screaming bloody murder about it when Clinton was
>>responsible even bat an eye at Bush doing the same thing.
>
>
> Well, thanks to Clinton's f'ups, the NK's now have nuclear weapons. We can't
> afford to go toe-to-toe with any nation that is lead by an absolutely insane
> man that would find a way to get one of these devices in the bilge of a
> freighter that enters San Francisco harbor and levels the whole city from
> there.
>
> Plus, there's that thing again about not being able to fight 2 wars at the
> same time, again thanks to military-hating democrats that gutted the military a
> long time ago, leaving us with 1/3rd or so of the size of army we should have.
>

More partisan tripe - the GOP was just as eager to spend the "peace
dividend".


>
>>NK also knows that they can ship missiles to places like Yemen and we'll
>>just let them do it.
>
>
> Yep.
>
>
>>As for Iran, Ahmedinejad knows we aren't going to actually do anything
>>about them even if we stay in Iraq for the next 100 years.
>
>
> Yep. We should make as many friends in the region as we can, and let them do
> it. Isreal, at some point, will do it. Iraq may someday be able to assist
> with that, although no one will ever be able to get them to fight side-by-side
> with Israel, unless maybe Iran is invading Iraq again, which wouldn't see
> Israel giving a damn about that anyway...
>
>
>>We didn't do
>>anything (other than a failed rescue mission) when they took over our
>>embassy in 1979
>
>
> We had a nice little rescue mission planned, but ****wit Jimmy Carter
> personally slashed the size of the rescue force, thus sabotaging it.
>

Aren't you sick of all this partisan hatred?

You seem awfully mired in it.


>
>>and Britain didn't do anything recently when they seized
>>15 of their forces which were operating in Iraqi waters under the
>>umbrella of the UN. Blair pussyfooted around the whole thing despite
>>Iranian claims that his rhetoric was "provocative".
>
>
> I'd say there was a naval blockade of Iran in the works. Its probably the
> reason that the Brits got their people back at all.
>

I think that's probably unlikely - at least in the short run.

>
>>>We
>>>_are_ the paper tiger that Chairman Mao declared us to be,
>>
>>We should pick and choose our wars and when we choose to fight, the
>>President and especially Congress (which is supposed to declare war)
>>should make sure the American people are behind them and we should go at
>>it whole hog.
>
>
> There was overwhelming support for this war at the time it was initiated.

You're attempting to rewrite history.

There was overwhelming support for the war in Afghanistan, but for
whatever reasons, Bush wasn't really into it that much.


> Now,
> because things haven't gone well, supporters are trying to run away from their
> history of being for it. But history is history, and they can't get around the
> fact of their support.
>

If you could remember all the way back to 2003, you would remember a lot
of people being called traitors because they didn't support the war in
Iraq even before it began. Then, once it did begin, all the crap
started spewing about them not "supporting the troops".

>
>>Stubbornly standing behind mistakes are not going to mitigate the
>>consequences of those mistake - they will only exacerbate them.
>
>
> No, if you start something, you finish it. Those deeply affected by simply
> saying "Oops" and leaving will hate us for the rest of their lives, which will
> probably be very short. But their loved ones will survive, and hate us for
> eternity.
>

Well, we ousted Saddam Hussein - they've held free elections in Iraq.
Iraq has a new government.

I'd say we finished the job.

>
>>>if we simply leave
>>>the field of battle, thus ensuring victory for our enemies.
>>>
>>
>>Where is the field of battle in Iraq?
>
>
> Abbar province, mostly, but all over Iraq, occasionally.
>

Right - so why don't we define that as an objective and win the battle
and end the war there?

Could it be that's not the real objective?

>
>>>>>We can just leave, and let Al Quada regroup, set up their training camps in
>>>>>Iraq and Afghanistan,
>>>>
>>>>How about we go after the terrorists instead of trying to create
>>>>democracies in countries that clearly have little interest in becoming a
>>>>democracy?
>>>
>>>
>>>The terrorists are _in_ this same country.
>>
>>The terrorists who attacked us were based in Afghanistan.
>
>
> They move around. They are now in Iraq. Al Quada is in Iraq.
>
>
>>There are
>>cells all over the middle east.
>
>
> And the USA most probably. Its another "so what" moment.
>

Yep - you always wish to ignore the reality that even if Iraq were 100%
under control tomorrow, you would have done nothing to stop any repeat
of a terrorist threat against the US.

>
>>We can't just invade the entire region.
>>The terrorists don't recognize borders.
>
>
> Yep, but we can kill the ones that we have access to. Those are in Iraq and
> Afghanistan.
>

We need to get access to ALL of them - this cannot be done with massive
invasions. We have to be smarter than that.

>
>>We need to fight them intelligently. You can't just occupy a country
>>and expect to defeat a bunch of terrorist cells with varying degrees of
>>affiliation.
>
>
> Eventually, it is hoped that the Iraqis themselves will do that.
>

We expect the Iraqis will defeat all the terrorists operating all over
the world?

I certainly don't expect that. I think it's quite insane.

>
>>>The facts are that if we leave,
>>>they win. Pure and simple.
>>>
>>
>>So you do think we should stay there forever.
>
>
> Nope. I should have said, "leave prematurely", but then again, that should
> have been understood.
>

But you want to define "prematurely" as being anytime before all Iraqis
are happy and love the US. It simply isn't going to happen.

> We stay until the Iraqis themselves can do their own security job,

They'll never learn to stand on their own 2 feet as long as they can get
us to do it for them.

> or it
> becomes obvious that they never will be able to do it, and then either form a
> new approach (breaking Iraq into 3 coutries perhaps), or simply recognize that
> its impossible and leave. We're just not at the "impossible" stage yet, and
> likely won't be for 3 - 5 more years. I think it'll take that long to either
> be successful, or be sure that success is not an option.
>

So if we're still in the same boat 5 years from now, you would support
giving up on Iraq?

Wouldn't that (according to you) be granting victory to the terrorists
and thus ensure the deaths of several thousand Americans every month?

>
>>Or do you actually think
>>there will come a time when there will be no terrorism in Iraq?
>
>
> There will come a time when terrorism is not a daily concern, if we are
> successful. I think we can still be successful.
>
>
>>Or is there an acceptable level of dissent among the Iraqi people that
>>may occasionally result in violence that would allow us to turn control
>>over to the Iraqi government without them "winning".
>
>
> Yep, that's it. Then they will be like us, only our daily terrorist problem is
> our criminal element, which is many times worse than most developed nations,
> thanks in part to our puritanical war on drugs that creates new and wonderous
> criminal organizations to try to distribute them.
>
>
>>>>>and just keep coming at us with hijacked planes or
>>>>>whatever other creative attack that they can imagine and we cannot until its
>>>>>too late.
>>>>
>>>>Terrorists cannot be defeated by "shock and awe" - they can be defeated
>>>>through intelligence gathering, suffocating their money supply and
>>>>pinpoint strikes.
>>>
>>>
>>>They can only be defeated by killing them or imprisoning them.
>>>
>>
>>And you can try that with "shock and awe", but as you can see in Iraq,
>>it doesn't work. You need to find out who the terrorists are and then
>>kill or imprison them. The only other alternative is to just nuke the
>>entire country, killing all life completely.
>
>
> Naw, wouldn't want to do that. The Iraqis will find out / already know who the
> terrorists are, but will not tell us if we appear to be ready to abandon them.
>

Why wouldn't they?

>
>>>Intelligence gathering simply means fighting a defensive war.
>>
>>No, it means going out and finding terrorists and stopping them. What
>>we're doing now is more "defensive" than that.
>
>
> Yep. We do have to be more aggressive, for sure. The rules of engagement are
> a joke, and need to be changed. Lots of things can be done better.
>
>
>>For example, according to the Bush administration, Iran is supplying
>>insurgents in Iraq. I think that's highly likely, but what are we doing
>>about it? If that is true, to be offensive, we should be cracking down
>>on Iran, at least with sanctions, if not bombing and invasion.
>
>
> How about a nice blockade of their oil shipments?

It would be better than nothing.

> Yeah, our gas prices would
> skyrocket, but then again, we might meet CO2 reduction targets if it gets high
> enough! <G> Sounds like a win-win... <GGG>
>
>>>Defense without
>>>offense cannot win a war.
>>>
>>
>>Brute force without intelligence cannot win a war - in fact, it will
>>most assuredly lead to defeat.
>
>
> And we're not going to get the intelligence that we would otherwise get if Joe
> Iraqi believes he's going to be abandoned to the predations of the insurgents
> when we cut and run.
>

Sure, Joe Iraqi might not help us, but Jose Iraqi will.

But we also need intelligence from Joe Yemen, Jose Syria, Joseph Iran,
etc...

Iraq alone just doesn't cut it.

>
>>>Suffocating their money supply just makes them poor terrorists, but terrorists
>>>nonetheless. They can still figure out how to remove bolts from train tracks
>>>and kill hundreds of people on the next passing Amtrak, or some-such.
>>
>>That's why cutting off their funding is only part of the strategy. We
>>must figure out who they are, execute strikes on them and also prevent
>>them from entering our country in the first place.
>
>
> We should do more, for sure, but keeping them from entering the coutry, when
> there's millions of illegal aliens simply walking into it, is an impossible
> job.
>

There is nothing that will make us 100% safe forever and ever - we have
to do what we can, as long as it makes sense.

>
>>Do you realize that we rely on written statements from small-town police
>>departments in Asia to assure us that a visa candidate is "okay" to
>>enter the US?
>
>
> Sounds like a normal government screw-up, yeah.
>
>
>>We don't know who we're letting in the country legally, let alone who is
>>coming in illegally and an endless occupation of Iraq is not going to
>>solve that problem.
>
>
> It _is_ a great diversion of terrorist resources, tho, and we get to kill a lot
> of them, too. That's a good thing.
>
>
>>>>>Could we lose 3,000 US citizens a month under a revitalized,
>>>>>unopposed Al Quada?
>>>>
>>>>It's doubtful.
>>>
>>>
>>>But its possible,
>>
>>Sorry - I'm sometimes prone to understatment. It is not possible - not
>>3000 citizens per month. It is possible that other strikes would occur,
>>but NOT with the death toll or frequency that your cowardice makes you
>>believe.
>
>
> 3000 a month is not likely, true. 3000 a year is still unacceptable, however.
>

That's not likely either.
>
>>>if we're not diverting their attention from us to Iraq or
>>>SOMEPLACE ELSE besides our own soil.
>>
>>Your attitude is letting the terrorists win.
>>
>>
>>>Use someone else's soil on which to kill
>>>them.
>>>
>>
>>Did the war in Iraq prevent the 7/7 bombings in London? Or the 3/11
>>bombings in Spain?
>
>
> Nope. But it has prevented any attack on us.
>

How do you figure?

>
>>Would uncovering those terrorist cells first have prevented them?
>
>
> Maybe,if that were possible.
>

It definitely would have prevented them.

>
>>>>>Maybe. Maybe more if they get their mitts on some nukes,
>>>>
>>>>Most likely a dirty nuke which wouldn't have nearly the impact of even
>>>>Hiroshima. And could they do this every month? No way.
>>>
>>>
>>>Wishful thinking.
>>
>>Realistic thinking. To think otherwise is to give into terror.
>
>
> Failing to recognize the worst-case scenario and plan for it is to allow
> defeat.
>

But letting your fears and emotions overcome rational thought is to
surrender before the fighting even begins.

>
>>>The fact is, given enough time and emboldened by victory in
>>>Iraq, they _will_ find a way to come up with one of those missing Russian
>>>suitcase nukes.
>>
>>You give way too much credibility to TV shows like 24.
>
>
> I don't watch any commercial-laden TV dramas. I just get too impatient during
> the commercials, and then switch channels. So, I don't think I've seen more
> than 1 or 2 24's since they started airing.
>

Well, you're getting some unrealistic ideas from somewhere.

>
>>>It _will_ go off on Wall Street,
>>
>>That's your fear talking. While I accept the possibility of another
>>terrorist attack, I refuse to BELIEVE it is inevitable or to let it rule
>>my life.
>
>
> Then I sure don't want you for President.

Damn! And I was really counting on your support.

> I want a President that realizes
> that the terrorists would like nothing better than for this to happen, are
> working to bring it about, and will likely succeed unless we do everything we
> can to prevent them from it.
>

Funny thing - I do want to do everything we can to prevent them from
doing it. Wasting our resources on a bunch of Iraqis who didn't care
enough about their own freedom in the first place is NOT doing
everything we can to prevent them from it.

>
>>>eventually, if we don't go
>>>about the business of killing terrorists.
>>>
>>
>>Well, we're not doing that by occupying Iraq. The two are not connected.
>
>
> We are killing terrorists in Iraq, no doubt about it.


Sure, we've killed some, but we've created more and we've distracted
ourselves from more likely threats by sacrificing our resources there.

> And, our enemy's
> resources _are_ being consumed in Iraq, just like ours, only we have many more
> resources than they have.

Part of their strategy is to waste our resources, which we value more
than they do.

We don't sacrifice our own people just to blow up a deli. They do.

> We can, of course, commit the ultimate blunder by
> walking off the field of battle, and simply handing Iraq to the enemy.
>

Nobody is suggesting we leave the field of battle. You are ignoring the
fact that the battle is not restricted to Iraq.

>
>>>>>which would become more likely as those enemies that could provide them would
>>>>>be less fearful of the US and its military might which it will be well know
>>>>>that we don't have the stomach to use.
>>>>
>>>>We need to be less fearful - Al Qaeda seems to have made quite the
>>>>impact on you, fomenting terror to the point where people can't think
>>>>straight.
>>>
>>>
>>>You wanna sit back and let 9/11 happen again, eh?
>>>
>>
>>Of course not. I WANT to fight terrorism. You want to ignore actual
>>terrorist threats and occupy Iraq forever.
>
>
> I want to kill terrorists,

But you don't seem to want to defeat them or make our country safer.

> and bring a legitimate Iraqi government to power

What would you call the current Iraqi gov't?

> that is also interested in killing terrorists for as long as it takes to
> disabuse them of the idea that they can take over the world, which is their
> goal.
>
>
>>It seems that you're the one who wants another 9/11. Then your fears
>>will be justified.
>>
>>
>>>>>Yes, lets just surrender, and do it tomorrow. Men grow beards, women wear
>>>>>burkas, all pray toward Mecca 5 times a day.
>>>>
>>>>How about fighting it intelligently rather than the foolish way we are
>>>>doing it now or your proposed surrender?
>>>
>>>
>>>The democrats are proposing surrender in Iraq. I don't need to propose it.
>>
>>Read your own words ("Yes, lets just surrender"). Sure, you meant them
>>to be sarcastic, but your denial of my suggestion that we fight it
>>intelligently (by going after terrorist organizations and terrorist
>>cells) is to advocate surrender.
>
>
> No, its just that going after the cells is an even more impossible job than
> stopping all the drugs from entering this country. A nice little war in
> someplace like Iraq will draw them out, onto the field of battle, where we
> don't need to expend huge resources to find them. They present themselves
> there, and then we can kill them.

Maybe we should offer free airfare to all the terrorists around the
world who AREN'T in Iraq, because the last I checked, there were lots of
terrorists who haven't made their pilgrimmage their.

>
>
>>>Fighting your "defense only" war is not fighting it intelligently, since that
>>>precludes winning it.
>>
>>I'm not advocating a "defense only" war and it's disingenuous of you to
>>put it in quotes as if I said it. Those are YOUR words.
>
>
> A war without an offense is a defensive war. Finding and taking down terrorist
> cells, one-by-one, is doomed to failure to the point that such an approach can
> be said to be inoffensive.
>
>
>>What part of making pinpoint strikes is "defense only"?
>
>
> Their inadequacy to the task. Work 6 months to find a single cell, and send a
> cruise missle after it. Repeat. Meanwhile, 20,000 other cells are unaffected.
> It is even more of a losing battle, on a many-fold scale, than what we are
> doing in Iraq and Afghanistan.
>
>
>>>And, any battles lost in your sort of war will be lost
>>>in the streets of NYC or DC,
>>
>>Not at all. You have let fear and terror cloud your mind.
>
>
> Wait and see. Abandon Iraq, and we _will_ get another major strike here, maybe
> multiple strikes.
>

It's very possible there will be another major strike here at some point
in time.

>
>>>whereas in the supposedly unintelligent war we are
>>>waging now, lost battles are done 6000 miles away.
>>>
>>
>>They can also occur here and even those battles we "win" 6000 miles away
>>involve American casualties and aren't helping to prevent terrorism here.
>
>
> Er, yes they are.
>

Evidence?

>
>>>Now what's so damn smart about your defense-only war again?
>>>
>>
>>I want to fight terrorists. You want to keep our troops in Iraq
>>forever and let the terrorists operate everywhere else that they can.
>
>
> Only long enough to let the Iraqis provide their own defense,

And then?

What will you do about all the other terrorists operating around the globe?

> or until it
> becomes obvious that it can never happen. But that is maybe 3-5 years away
> before we know for sure. Yeah, I want to give our troops 3 - 5 more years to
> be successful.
>
>
>>Yours is the same mindset that law enforcement uses to fight the "war on
>>drugs". They wage the war on one street corner until the problem seems
>>to disappear, but it hasn't actually disappeared - it has just moved to
>>the next street corner.
>
>
> Any I think your approach is likely to be as ineffective as stopping all drugs
> entering the US is.
>

One big difference is there is no economic incentive for terrorism.
Drug trafficking is self-financing.

>
>>>>>That will keep us from having to
>>>>>sacrifice even one soldier to the cause of defending the country from the
>>>>>terrorists. We might as well short-cut this war to its inevitable conclusion
>>>>>if we don't have the stones to make any sort of sacrifice in the name of
>>>>>freedom.
>>>>
>>>>What sacrifices have you made?
>>>
>>>
>>>Well, if I can get hired, I'll be going to Iraq to directly support the
>>>military technically...
>>
>>Good for you.
>>
>>
>>>trying to make it happen, anyway.... unfortunately,
>>>there's competition for this job... I'm too old to join the military directly,
>>>so that's the best I can do... Yeah, the money is good, but there is the same
>>>risk that everybody takes of not coming back at all, so's I guess that's a
>>>_risk_ of a sacrifice...
>>>
>>
>>I'm too young to remember from personal experience - and I suspect you
>>are too - but civilians on American soil during the last couple wars we
>>actually declared had to make real sacrifices (and I don't just mean the
>>ridiculous indignity of having to take our shoes off before boarding an
>>airplane).
>
>
> Yeah, they got blown up a lot.
>
> DPH
>
>
>>>DPH