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Hater Depot
Joined: 29 Mar 2005
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 Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2005 10:27 am Post subject: Who's really undermining the war? |
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Defenders of Bush and the war like to trot out the "Fifth Column left wing" card and accuse critics of undermining the war, not supporting the troops, sometimes even literally getting people killed. The analogy is to Vietnam, which supposedly we would have won if not for those blame America firsters.
It's worth asking why we left Vietnam. It was a decade into the war and over 50,000 American had died. We didn't withdraw until support collapsed in the middle class. The hippies were against it for years and the military went right on ignoring them. The extreme left argued that North Vietnam was a socialist paradise, and middle America went right on ignoring them. It wasn't until its essential unwinnability was clear to people with 2.5 kids a half-paid mortgage that we left, and those people didn't change their minds because a bunch of hippies marched in DC.
It's the same today. For all the marches and protests we still went to war and are still there. For every Jeff Rense or International ANSWER supporter there are 10 people who voted for Bush. Granted I don't get to talk with as many veterans or GIs as I'd like to, but I've never heard one complain that the left was undermining them or their morale. In fact just the opposite -- I've never known them to be anything other than proud to have defended the freedom of idiots to be idiots, howver angry they might be with those idiots.
We're not in grave danger of losing because Michael Moore made his movie or because Ward Churchill opened his fool mouth. It's because of stuff like this:
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/afdb7b0c-40f3-11da-b3f9-00000e2511c8.html\
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In a scathing attack on the record of President George W. Bush, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Mr Powell until last January, said: ��What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.
��Now it is paying the consequences of making those decisions in secret, but far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences.��
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��If you're not prepared to stop the feuding elements in the bureaucracy as they carry out your decisions, you are courting disaster. And I would say that we have courted disaster in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran.�� |
Poor decisionmaking at the top very much does get people killed.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4359128.stm
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The US military has launched a criminal investigation into alleged misconduct by its troops in Afghanistan, including the burning of Taleban corpses.
The move came after an Australian TV station ran footage of what it says was US soldiers burning the remains.
The footage shows other troops apparently taunting residents of a nearby village, which they believed to be harbouring the Taleban.
The act of burning corpses is regarded as a sacrilege in Islam |
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,13743,1382132,00.html
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A British detainee at Guantanamo Bay has told his lawyer he was tortured using the 'strappado', a technique common in Latin American dictatorships in which a prisoner is left suspended from a bar with handcuffs until they cut deeply into his wrists.
The reason, the prisoner says, was that he was caught reciting the Koran at a time when talking was banned.
He says he has also been repeatedly shaved against his will. In one such incident, a guard told him: 'This is the part that really gets to you Muslims, isn't it?' |
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1357699,00.html
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An executive jet is being used by the American intelligence agencies to fly terrorist suspects to countries that routinely use torture in their prisons.
The movements of the Gulfstream 5 leased by agents from the United States defence department and the CIA are detailed in confidential logs obtained by The Sunday Times which cover more than 300 flights.
Countries with poor human rights records to which the Americans have delivered prisoners include Egypt, Syria and Uzbekistan, according to the files. The logs have prompted allegations from critics that the agency is using such regimes to carry out ��torture by proxy��; a charge denied by the American government. |
I'm not saying every allegation is true, and everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty (a principle Bush wishes to discard). But nobody can deny the fact that we have a policy on torture: don't get caught. You can't do this stuff when you're trying to win Muslim hearts and minds. The war on terror isn't one that can be won militarily. Trying to one-up al Qaeda in brutality is futile and counterproductive. |
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Bulsajo
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2005 2:59 pm Post subject: |
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| I'm not saying anyone should be running around sticking flowers in the barrels of insurgent weapons, but here's a dare: read Chain of Command and then tell me Rumsfeld isn't a war criminal. There is no one whose decisions have been more directly responsible for American lives lost. And while American lives lost are tragic someone might, for a second or two, also contemplate the innocent Iraqi civilians who have been killed (or 'suspected insurgents' as they also tend to be called). |
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EFLtrainer
Joined: 04 May 2005
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| Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2005 9:15 pm Post subject: Re: Who's really undermining the war? |
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[quote="Hater Depot"]We're not in grave danger of losing because Michael Moore made his movie or because Ward Churchill opened his fool mouth. It's because of stuff like this:
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/afdb7b0c-40f3-11da-b3f9-00000e2511c8.html\
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In a scathing attack on the record of President George W. Bush, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Mr Powell until last January, said: ��What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.
��Now it is paying the consequences of making those decisions in secret, but far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences.��
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Anyone actually surprised by this has either had a lobotomy, or needs one, eh? |
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igotthisguitar
Joined: 08 Apr 2003
Location: South Korea (Permanent Vacation)
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| Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2005 12:51 am Post subject: |
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| Bulsajo wrote: |
| And while American lives lost are tragic someone might, for a second or two, also contemplate the innocent Iraqi civilians who have been killed (or 'suspected insurgents' as they also tend to be called). |
Poll shows Iraqis back attacks on UK, US forces
Sat Oct 22, 5:45 PM ET
LONDON (Reuters) - Forty-five percent of Iraqis believe attacks on U.S. and British troops are justified, according to a secret poll said to have been commissioned by British defense leaders and cited by The Sunday Telegraph.
Less than 1 percent of those polled believed that the forces were responsible for any improvement in security, according to poll figures.
Eighty-two percent of those polled said they were "strongly opposed" to the presence of the troops.
The paper said the poll, conducted in August by an Iraqi university research team, was commissioned by the Ministry of Defense.
Britain has more than 8,000 troops stationed in the south of Iraq, and has had 97 soldiers killed, the most recent the victim of a roadside bomb on Tuesday night.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051022/ts_nm/iraq_britain_dc;_ylt=ArapWhni4Y54NJfUNYV1b1QDW7oF;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl |
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wannago
Joined: 16 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2005 7:30 am Post subject: |
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| Forty-five percent of Iraqis believe attacks on U.S. and British troops are justified, according to a secret poll said to have been commissioned by British defense leaders and cited by The Sunday Telegraph. |
Oh yes, you gotta love those "secret" polls. Always trustworthy those. |
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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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| Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2005 7:51 am Post subject: |
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Are you joking? It was commissioned by the Ministry of Defense, and I assume it was secret to keep people's identities safe and the results untainted. Like a secret ballot.
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LONDON, Oct. 23 (Xinhuanet) -- Millions of Iraqis believe suicide attacks against British troops are justified, a secret military poll commissioned for the Ministry of Defense has revealed.
The poll, reported by the Sunday Telegraph, shows that up to 65 percent of Iraqi citizens support attacks and fewer than one percent think allied military involvement is helping to improve security situation in their country.
A total of 67 percent Iraqis feel less secure because of the allied occupation while 72 percent do not have confidence in the multinational forces. Forty-three percent believe conditions for peace and stability have worsened and 82 percent are "strongly opposed" to the presence of coalition troops.
It demonstrates for the first time the true strength of anti-Western sentiment in Iraq after more than two years of occupation, said the report.
The nationwide survey also suggests that the coalition has lostthe battle to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people, which Tony Blair and George W. Bush believed was fundamental to creatinga safe and secure country.
The secret poll appears to contradict claims made by General Mike Jackson, the Chief of the General Staff, who only days ago congratulated British soldiers for "supporting the Iraqi people inbuilding a new and better Iraq".
The survey was conducted by an Iraqi university research team that, for security reasons, was not told the data it compiled would be used by coalition forces.
The poll, carried out in August, also defies claims by both theUS and British governments that the general well-being of the average Iraqi is improving in post-Saddam Iraq.
The report profiles those likely to carry out attacks against British and American troops as being "less than 26 years of age, more likely to want a job, more likely to have been looking for work in the last four weeks and less likely to have enough money even for their basic needs".
But Iraqi President Jalal Talabani pleaded Saturday night for British troops to stay. "There would be chaos and perhaps civil war," he said, "We are now fighting a world war launched by terrorists against civilization, against democracy, against progress, against all the values of humanity." Enditem |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2005 9:01 am Post subject: |
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The irony is those knuckleheads viewed Vietnam as a failure because of poor decesion making in the executive branch. They thought (as well as most in the Pentagon) that had LBJ and his staff not been involved so much and let the generals do their job, Vietnam would have had a different outcome. Consequently, the military was given a lot of autonomy betweeen the end of Vietnam and our invasion of Iraq (this time around). Alas, Rumsfeld got a massively inflated ego and the rest of them are idiots when it comes to military planning.
It really pisses me off. While I didn't think the invasion was a smart move, it could have worked. Keyword: could. Had we even had a plan to start out with, it might have worked. But we didn't. CAN YOU BE ANY MORE STUPID? |
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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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| Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2005 9:19 am Post subject: |
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I think the best plan would have been to give jobs to every Iraqi to reconstruct the place the moment after the army went through. With actual people that speak Arabic. Give everyone the same wage until everything is back up to 100%. That would have been so easy. I remember a number of bridges and whatnot that were awarded to American firms for a few dozen times more than Iraqis could have done. Meanwhile the contractors are out in the open and Iraqis are hanging around bitter and unemployed. With guns. Duh.
How would they pick people for the positions? Like in Cinderella man. People line up in the morning and they pick the people they need for whatever job it is. At least that keeps people busy. The foreman makes the same wage but the only difference is that he has the job every day.
But yeah. Actual people that speak Arabic. *beep*, I could have told Rummy that. |
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some waygug-in
Joined: 25 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2005 4:42 pm Post subject: |
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Not that this has much to do with anything......... but
has anyone seen the movie, "We were soldiers once"?
More than anything, that movie made clear how ill concieved the US military's plans were upon entering Vietnam.
'An experimental helicopter war' to test some idiot behind a desk's theory.  |
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Bulsajo
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2005 6:34 pm Post subject: |
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double post
Last edited by Bulsajo on Sun Oct 23, 2005 6:43 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Bulsajo
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2005 6:42 pm Post subject: |
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| to test some idiot behind a desk's theory |
That pretty much describes Iraq- the idiots behind the desks bullying intelligence until they got the answers they wanted, then bullying the military until they agreed that the timetable and force size they wanted was do-able.
Rumsfeld thought he knew better than everyone else how to conduct a modern war- he thought the military was gun-shy and overcautious.
He thought that precision bombing and an extremely small and light footprint with special forces as force multipliers could replace the traditional deployment of the military.
He has a lot to answer for, preferrably in front of a jury. |
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