suddenly make invasion of Iraq and the occupation ok? If it did work it was 5 years too late. Bush had 6 years of everything he wanted yet never called for a "Surge." Yet, somehow that is ok. What is important is that the Surge worked although no one that claims it worked wants to pull out. :shrug:
How does the "Surge"
- Thread starter StevieD
- Start date
keep moving the bar....it`s a war,not a video game...
unfotunately,you have the attention span of a fencepost,stevie...
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jzxqARN0Huv38n5pgDfdBRwuoiZgD925HT7G0
lloks like YOUR country will be successful and erase the tarnished image of the viet nam debacle...
bravo to the trrops and general petraues...
btw...somethings working...7 years without an islamic attack on the homeland....others haven`t been so fortunate...please take the time to read the article below...
http://www.reuters.com/article/topN...?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&rpc=22&sp=true
thanks to pres. bush and the administration for keeping us safe....
/that ought to bring `em outta the woodwork......:lol:
....
Don't you understand GW they dont have to attack us because we are killing ourselves for them in Iraq. Look around you my friend. It is the deficit this invasion has brought upon us that is the causing al the problems. Why would they attack. Bush has done nothing to secure the borders or the rails. An attack would be easy. Childs play.
i voted for gw the first time, but not the 2nd. his personal agenda and poor spending habits are deplorable. this war is crap at best.
it was a war when we were losing....NOW,it`s an illegal occupation....
lol
appreciate all the hosannas for the troops and the surge optimism,guys....
maybe you can stop by some of your local funeral parlors and yuk it up there,too....
sometimes I think you are an ok guy, and somtimes I realize that you are an insane moron.
it must be hard to get all those voices in your head to come to a consensus...:yup
/
Doesn't have anything to do with premise for going to war--goes to attitude and tactics/tenacity once in war.
You have one party where losing is not an option and then the retreat-surrender crew.
Mac said it best on Obama but you can replace his name with liberals and get same result.
"In retrospect, given the opportunity to choose between failure and success, he chooses failure. I cannot conceive of a Commander in Chief making that choice."
We lost an extra 30,000 guys in Vietnam because of thinking like that. In the end we got the same terms that Nixon had laying on the table for 5 years. There is no victory in an occupation. We already won the war. Remember the party that gave us Misson Accomplished.
What this Chit we can still lose in Iraq. Lose What?
We won if thats what you wish to say when we did what we said we went there for. An that was for WMD's none there. And to get Saddam and his Brother done long time ago. Lets go home.
We won if thats what you wish to say when we did what we said we went there for. An that was for WMD's none there. And to get Saddam and his Brother done long time ago. Lets go home.
Gary:
I think I've been consistent on this and for those who can handle the truth:
it was an invasion, then it was, and currently is, an occupation.
Never was a war on terror. That was just a cute name the Bush administration, right wing radio, and the corporate media gave it. Kinda like "the Patriot Act" or "the Water Conservation Act".
George W. Bush has never fought a war on terror. Had he fought a war on terror (which would have been much more difficult cause he wouldn't get to pound the big broad American military chest) we would have defeated Al Quida by now instead of being on the brink of an invasion of Iran aka another recruiting poster for Al Quida.
The man is positively the dumbest thing to walk the planet.
Eddie
I think I've been consistent on this and for those who can handle the truth:
it was an invasion, then it was, and currently is, an occupation.
Never was a war on terror. That was just a cute name the Bush administration, right wing radio, and the corporate media gave it. Kinda like "the Patriot Act" or "the Water Conservation Act".
George W. Bush has never fought a war on terror. Had he fought a war on terror (which would have been much more difficult cause he wouldn't get to pound the big broad American military chest) we would have defeated Al Quida by now instead of being on the brink of an invasion of Iran aka another recruiting poster for Al Quida.
The man is positively the dumbest thing to walk the planet.
Eddie
yep and how many in korea what about both world wars--what about revolutionary war--civil war :shrug:
Where would we be had everyone had your liberal pont of view/attitude--
Don't know of anyone asking you to volunteer to do anything--Can we make a deal--
we vets will continue to do the fighting and you others continue to do the whining--and since we don't bring you in on the battles could you conifne the whining to amoungest yourselves. :shrug:
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/obama-in-iraq-s-quicksand-11869
To listen to Barack Obama attempt to explain his views on Iraq and the so-called surge is becoming, for those of us who have followed his responses over the last 18 months, something of a spectacle. With every effort, it seems, he is compounding his mistakes in judgment with intellectually dishonest answers, ones which melt away under even minimal scrutiny.
The latest example is Obama's appearance yesterday on Meet the Press. During the interview, host Tom Brokaw played portions of an interview with Obama on January 10, 2007 ? the day President Bush's so-called surge strategy was announced ? when Obama said this:
I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there; in fact, I think it'll do the reverse.
When asked by Brokaw about this quote and whether the surge has made it possible to withdraw American troops within 16 months, Obama answered:
I mean, I know that there's that little snippet that you ran, but there were also statements made during the course of this debate in which I said there's no doubt that additional U.S. troops could temporarily quell the violence.
The problem with this response is several-fold. First, Brokaw could have played many additional "snippets,? all of which were of Obama opposing the surge and indicating that it would fail. For example, in responding to President Bush?s January 23 State of the Union address, Obama said this:
I don't think the president's strategy is going to work. We went through two weeks of hearings on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; experts from across the spectrum--military and civilian, conservative and liberal--expressed great skepticism about it. My suggestion to the president has been that the only way we're going to change the dynamic in Iraq and start seeing political commendation is actually if we create a system of phased redeployment.
In July 2007, long after the surge was announced, Obama claimed, "My assessment is that the surge has not worked." And in November 2007, two months after General David Petraeus testified before Congress about the considerable progress we had made because of the surge, Obama argued it was making the situation in Iraq potentially worse:
Finally, in 2006-2007, we started to see that, even after an election, George Bush continued to want to pursue a course that didn't withdraw troops from Iraq but actually doubled them and initiated a surge and at that stage I said very clearly, not only have we not seen improvements, but we're actually worsening, potentially, a situation there.
So Obama?s anti-surge ?snippet? was in fact an accurate representation of what he said and believed at the time, and for a long while after that.
As for Obama's statement that "during the course of this debate" he has maintained that "there's no doubt that additional U.S. troops could temporarily quell the violence:" What Obama doesn't say is that he made that claim in a debate in 2008, a year after the surge was announced and well after it was clearly succeeding.
In fact, Obama made his ?quelling the violence? statement in an attempt to deny his initial prediction that the surge would cause sectarian violence to worsen. What Obama did in yesterday?s Meet the Press interview, then, is to provide a misleading answer to a previously dishonest answer, in an effort to cover up his spectacularly wrong prediction.
Later in his Meet the Press interview, Obama attempts to offer examples of developments that have decreased violence that are separate and apart from the surge. According to Obama:
for example, in Anbar Province, where we went to visit, the Sunni awakening took place before the surge started, and tribal leaders made a decision that, instead of fighting the Americans, we're going to work with the Americans against al-Qaeda.
It's true that the Anbar Awakening, which Obama recognized only long after the fact, did precede the surge. What Obama didn't say, what the sheiks of Anbar will tell you, is that the surge helped them enormously in their efforts. There was an organic uprising against al Qaeda in Anbar based on al Qaeda's savagery, and we were wise enough to assist those efforts. But Obama will not tell that story, because it would credit a policy he fiercely opposed.
Still later in the Meet the Press interview, Obama states
John McCain's essential focus has been on the tactical issue of sending more troops
This demonstrates Obama's confusion about the scope and nature of the surge. It was not a tactical adjustment; in fact, it was a profound, and much needed, change in strategy.
What Obama doesn't seem to grasp is that what made the surge successful is not merely, or even primarily, an increase in the number of troops; it was a fundamentally new counterinsurgency strategy, one that concentrated on securing the population and, over time, winning their confidence and support.
In the past, American combat troops would secure an area but quickly withdraw, turning it over to the Iraqi Security Forces, which at that time were unprepared to defend the gains we had made. People likened it at the time to a car tire, in the midst of a rain storm, hitting a pothole filled with water; it temporarily expels the water, but once the tire vacates the pothole, it immediately fills up again.
General Petraeus, along with others, dramatically altered our approach, and we have been benefiting from the fruits of those changes ever since.
It would be useful if the man who hopes to be our next commander-in-chief understood the difference between a tactical adjustment and a strategic shift. To argue that the entire course of the Iraq war changed because of an alteration on a "tactical issue" is ridiculous.
There is still more. When Brokaw, citing a recent USA Today editorial, asked Obama why he cannot bring himself to acknowledge the surge worked better than he and other skeptics thought it would and then asked, "What does that stubbornness say about the kind of president that he would be?", Obama replied
Well, listen. I, I actually think that there's no doubt that the violence has gone down more than any of us anticipated, including President Bush and John McCain. If you, if you would--if you had talked to them and, and said, "You know what? We're going to bring down violence to the levels that we have," I think--I, I, I suspect USA Today's own editorial board wouldn't have anticipated that. That's not a, that's not a hard thing to acknowledge, that the situations have improved more rapidly than we had anticipated. That doesn't change the broader strategic questions that we've got to deal with.
It's true that the surge worked sooner than anyone, including Bush and McCain, thought it would. The key difference with Obama, of course, is that both Bush and McCain believed the surge would succeed, whereas Obama believed it would not only fail, but make things worse.
As for Obama's statement that it's "not a hard thing to acknowledge" that violence has gone down more than anyone anticipated: Why, then, is it so hard for Obama to acknowledge that his opposition to the surge was wrong? Why does he insist, as recently as a week ago, that his opposition to the surge was right and wise? Obama's position was obviously, and at this stage we can say indisputably, mistaken. Yet Obama cannot bring himself to admit what he must, on some level, know to be true.
There are at least three conclusions to draw from Obama's appearance on Meet the Press. The first is that when it comes to his stand on Iraq, Obama is like a man trapped in quicksand. The more he fights to justify his past stances, the quicker and deeper he sinks. Obama's explanations have moved from being misleading to unserious to embarrassing.
The second, and related, conclusion we can reach is that the more Obama talks about the surge, the more his claim that he has the "judgment to lead" is subverted. He has taken an understandable and forgivable mistake in judgment (opposition to the surge) and allowed it to call into question his political character and, by denying the positive effects of the surge for so long, his attachment to reality.
In addition, Obama?s comments about the Iraq war being a ?distraction,? when combined with his votes against funding American troops on the battlefield and his 2007 proposal to withdraw all combat troops from Iraq by early 2008, call into question whether Obama was ever serious about winning the war or was bothered in the least by losing it.
The third conclusion is that Obama has completely obliterated the core early promise of his candidacy: that he would turn the page on American politics and offer us something new and better; that he would speak honestly and candidly, in a way free of ideology and in a manner than demonstrated an open mind, and eschew "spin."
Obama has not only turned out to be a practitioner of the "old politics;" he has, as a young, first-term senator, come to embody it. He has fallen into seemingly every trap he said he would avoid. All the hype, all the promise, all the high-minded words have turned out to be a mirage. And for those of us who were once impressed with Obama, even as we strongly disagreed with his political ideology, it has been both a fascinating and unsettling thing to witness. Watching a man become what he preaches against often is
To listen to Barack Obama attempt to explain his views on Iraq and the so-called surge is becoming, for those of us who have followed his responses over the last 18 months, something of a spectacle. With every effort, it seems, he is compounding his mistakes in judgment with intellectually dishonest answers, ones which melt away under even minimal scrutiny.
The latest example is Obama's appearance yesterday on Meet the Press. During the interview, host Tom Brokaw played portions of an interview with Obama on January 10, 2007 ? the day President Bush's so-called surge strategy was announced ? when Obama said this:
I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there; in fact, I think it'll do the reverse.
When asked by Brokaw about this quote and whether the surge has made it possible to withdraw American troops within 16 months, Obama answered:
I mean, I know that there's that little snippet that you ran, but there were also statements made during the course of this debate in which I said there's no doubt that additional U.S. troops could temporarily quell the violence.
The problem with this response is several-fold. First, Brokaw could have played many additional "snippets,? all of which were of Obama opposing the surge and indicating that it would fail. For example, in responding to President Bush?s January 23 State of the Union address, Obama said this:
I don't think the president's strategy is going to work. We went through two weeks of hearings on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; experts from across the spectrum--military and civilian, conservative and liberal--expressed great skepticism about it. My suggestion to the president has been that the only way we're going to change the dynamic in Iraq and start seeing political commendation is actually if we create a system of phased redeployment.
In July 2007, long after the surge was announced, Obama claimed, "My assessment is that the surge has not worked." And in November 2007, two months after General David Petraeus testified before Congress about the considerable progress we had made because of the surge, Obama argued it was making the situation in Iraq potentially worse:
Finally, in 2006-2007, we started to see that, even after an election, George Bush continued to want to pursue a course that didn't withdraw troops from Iraq but actually doubled them and initiated a surge and at that stage I said very clearly, not only have we not seen improvements, but we're actually worsening, potentially, a situation there.
So Obama?s anti-surge ?snippet? was in fact an accurate representation of what he said and believed at the time, and for a long while after that.
As for Obama's statement that "during the course of this debate" he has maintained that "there's no doubt that additional U.S. troops could temporarily quell the violence:" What Obama doesn't say is that he made that claim in a debate in 2008, a year after the surge was announced and well after it was clearly succeeding.
In fact, Obama made his ?quelling the violence? statement in an attempt to deny his initial prediction that the surge would cause sectarian violence to worsen. What Obama did in yesterday?s Meet the Press interview, then, is to provide a misleading answer to a previously dishonest answer, in an effort to cover up his spectacularly wrong prediction.
Later in his Meet the Press interview, Obama attempts to offer examples of developments that have decreased violence that are separate and apart from the surge. According to Obama:
for example, in Anbar Province, where we went to visit, the Sunni awakening took place before the surge started, and tribal leaders made a decision that, instead of fighting the Americans, we're going to work with the Americans against al-Qaeda.
It's true that the Anbar Awakening, which Obama recognized only long after the fact, did precede the surge. What Obama didn't say, what the sheiks of Anbar will tell you, is that the surge helped them enormously in their efforts. There was an organic uprising against al Qaeda in Anbar based on al Qaeda's savagery, and we were wise enough to assist those efforts. But Obama will not tell that story, because it would credit a policy he fiercely opposed.
Still later in the Meet the Press interview, Obama states
John McCain's essential focus has been on the tactical issue of sending more troops
This demonstrates Obama's confusion about the scope and nature of the surge. It was not a tactical adjustment; in fact, it was a profound, and much needed, change in strategy.
What Obama doesn't seem to grasp is that what made the surge successful is not merely, or even primarily, an increase in the number of troops; it was a fundamentally new counterinsurgency strategy, one that concentrated on securing the population and, over time, winning their confidence and support.
In the past, American combat troops would secure an area but quickly withdraw, turning it over to the Iraqi Security Forces, which at that time were unprepared to defend the gains we had made. People likened it at the time to a car tire, in the midst of a rain storm, hitting a pothole filled with water; it temporarily expels the water, but once the tire vacates the pothole, it immediately fills up again.
General Petraeus, along with others, dramatically altered our approach, and we have been benefiting from the fruits of those changes ever since.
It would be useful if the man who hopes to be our next commander-in-chief understood the difference between a tactical adjustment and a strategic shift. To argue that the entire course of the Iraq war changed because of an alteration on a "tactical issue" is ridiculous.
There is still more. When Brokaw, citing a recent USA Today editorial, asked Obama why he cannot bring himself to acknowledge the surge worked better than he and other skeptics thought it would and then asked, "What does that stubbornness say about the kind of president that he would be?", Obama replied
Well, listen. I, I actually think that there's no doubt that the violence has gone down more than any of us anticipated, including President Bush and John McCain. If you, if you would--if you had talked to them and, and said, "You know what? We're going to bring down violence to the levels that we have," I think--I, I, I suspect USA Today's own editorial board wouldn't have anticipated that. That's not a, that's not a hard thing to acknowledge, that the situations have improved more rapidly than we had anticipated. That doesn't change the broader strategic questions that we've got to deal with.
It's true that the surge worked sooner than anyone, including Bush and McCain, thought it would. The key difference with Obama, of course, is that both Bush and McCain believed the surge would succeed, whereas Obama believed it would not only fail, but make things worse.
As for Obama's statement that it's "not a hard thing to acknowledge" that violence has gone down more than anyone anticipated: Why, then, is it so hard for Obama to acknowledge that his opposition to the surge was wrong? Why does he insist, as recently as a week ago, that his opposition to the surge was right and wise? Obama's position was obviously, and at this stage we can say indisputably, mistaken. Yet Obama cannot bring himself to admit what he must, on some level, know to be true.
There are at least three conclusions to draw from Obama's appearance on Meet the Press. The first is that when it comes to his stand on Iraq, Obama is like a man trapped in quicksand. The more he fights to justify his past stances, the quicker and deeper he sinks. Obama's explanations have moved from being misleading to unserious to embarrassing.
The second, and related, conclusion we can reach is that the more Obama talks about the surge, the more his claim that he has the "judgment to lead" is subverted. He has taken an understandable and forgivable mistake in judgment (opposition to the surge) and allowed it to call into question his political character and, by denying the positive effects of the surge for so long, his attachment to reality.
In addition, Obama?s comments about the Iraq war being a ?distraction,? when combined with his votes against funding American troops on the battlefield and his 2007 proposal to withdraw all combat troops from Iraq by early 2008, call into question whether Obama was ever serious about winning the war or was bothered in the least by losing it.
The third conclusion is that Obama has completely obliterated the core early promise of his candidacy: that he would turn the page on American politics and offer us something new and better; that he would speak honestly and candidly, in a way free of ideology and in a manner than demonstrated an open mind, and eschew "spin."
Obama has not only turned out to be a practitioner of the "old politics;" he has, as a young, first-term senator, come to embody it. He has fallen into seemingly every trap he said he would avoid. All the hype, all the promise, all the high-minded words have turned out to be a mirage. And for those of us who were once impressed with Obama, even as we strongly disagreed with his political ideology, it has been both a fascinating and unsettling thing to witness. Watching a man become what he preaches against often is
Shi%. During Bill's administration we had both urges and surges. Monica put DNA research back a decade. I hate radical muslims more than dry cleaners. I admire the persistance in both administrations.
tell it to the turks/those in darfur/india/israel/pakistan/somalia,etc....
your boogeyman bush,the cia and fbi,special ops and our brave soldiers have been keeping useful idiots like yourself safe while you belabor him for the evil these monsters perpetrate all over the world...
heres a weeks worth....
Date Country City Killed Injured Description
7/28/2008 Pakistan Kohat 2 12 A teenager is among two people blown apart when Islamic militants detonate a bomb attached to a bicycle.
7/28/2008 Afghanistan Nuristan 3 0 A Taliban rocket attack on a residential area leaves three dead.
7/27/2008 Iraq Fallujah 2 2 Radical Sunnis bomb a house, killing two occupants.
7/27/2008 Iraq Buhriz 2 0 Two oil workers are murdered by Jihadi bombers.
7/27/2008 Iraq Baghdad 7 0 Seven young Shia pilgrims on foot are shot at point-blank range by Sunni gunmen.
7/27/2008 Pakistan Charbagh 1 5 A child is killed when fundamentalists bomb a shopping center.
7/26/2008 Iraq Hilla 1 0 Islamic gunmen take down a 4-year-old girl.
7/26/2008 India Ahmedabad 45 161 Islamic bombers rock India for a second day, setting seventeen bombs and killing over forty innocent people.
7/26/2008 Lebanon Tripoli 9 50 A 10-year-old boy and a woman are among nine people killed in a sectarian conflict between Sunni and Alawite.
7/26/2008 Pakistan Dera Bugti 3 0 Three local cops are murdered by Islamists in separate attacks.
7/26/2008 Somalia Gedo 3 0 Islamic militia shoot three people to death at a roadblock.
7/25/2008 India Bangalore 2 10 Islamists set off a series of bombs, leaving two innocents dead, including a woman.
7/25/2008 Bangladesh Sadar 1 0 Suspected Jama'atul Mujahideen strangle a woman, then hang her from a tree.
7/25/2008 Pal. Auth. Gaza 1 15 A bomb kills a young girl.
7/25/2008 Pal. Auth. Gaza 1 3 A bomb set outside a Christian cafe kills one person.
7/24/2008 Philippines Digos 2 10 A group tied to the Moro Islamic Front is suspected in the bombing of a bus in which two people died.
7/24/2008 India Srinagar 5 28 Four children, ages 4 to 12, are killed along with a woman from the same family of migrant workers when Islamic terrorists throw a grenade into a bus stop.
7/24/2008 Iraq Baqubah 8 25 A female suicide bomber kills eight Sunni Iraqis.
7/24/2008 Afghanistan Paktia 3 4 Talibanis murder three local police with a bomb.
7/24/2008 Yemen Sayoun 4 12 al-Qaeda is suspected in the car bombing of a ministry building that leaves four dead.
7/24/2008 India Doda 4 0 A woman and a 13-year-old girl are among four civilians shot to death during a Hizb-ul-Mujahideen home invasion.
7/23/2008 Somalia Jowhar 1 0 Islamic militia assassinate a local official.
7/23/2008 Afghanistan Nangarhar 1 2 Religious extremists murder a local cop with a bomb.
7/23/2008 Iraq Muqdadiyah 1 0 A young woman is killed in a Jihad roadside bombing.
7/23/2008 Thailand Pattani 1 0 Islamists gun down a school bus driver in a drive-by shooting.
7/23/2008 Algeria Lakhdaria 0 13 A suicide bomber on a motorbike injures thirteen Algerians.
7/22/2008 Afghanistan Ghazni 4 1 The Taliban kidnaps a man after invading his home and killing his four sons.
7/22/2008 Thailand Narathiwat 1 5 A local soldier is killed in an Islamist bomb blast.
7/22/2008 Philippines Aleosan 1 1 Moro Islamists shoot a 62-year-old woman to death as she is farming her field.
7/22/2008 Thailand Narathiwat 1 0 A 41-year-old rubber worker is shot to death by Muslim militants.
7/22/2008 Israel Jerusalem 0 11 A Palestinian attempts to run Israelis down with a bulldozer.
7/22/2008 Afghanistan Khost 4 3 A woman and child are among four civilians blown up by Sunni bombers.
7/21/2008 China Kunming 2 10 The Turkestan Islamic Party takes credit for a bus bombing that leaves two dead.
7/21/2008 Somalia Mogadishu 7 12 Three children are among seven killed in an Islamic militia mortar attack.
7/21/2008 Iraq Mosul 6 8 Freedom Fighters murder six Iraqis in various attacks.
7/21/2008 Iraq Saidiya 7 8 al-Qaeda kill seven Iraqis by planting a bomb on a tractor.
7/21/2008 Pakistan Bajur 1 2 Islamic militants gun down an elderly man riding in a car.
7/21/2008 Afghanistan North Waziristan 2 0 Two civilians are abducted and murdered by Talibanis.
7/21/2008 Afghanistan Paktika 1 3 Sunni extremists attack the home of a former governor, killing him and injuring members of his family....
that`s ONE week...
go back a little further and throw in indonesia/turkey/ yemen/and on and on...
