[Ramona_A_Stone]

That's right Jiggles the Clown, narrow eyes see only the small picture that suits their fantasies, and how quickly they forget.

President Bush Proclaims End To Major Combat Ops in Iraq
By Kathleen T. Rhem / American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, May 1, 2003 — Major combat operations in Iraq are over, and America and her allies have prevailed, President Bush said this evening on the flight deck of a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier.

"In this battle we have fought for the cause of liberty and for the peace of the world. Our nation and our coalition are proud of this accomplishment," Bush said aboard the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln as the sun set on the Pacific Ocean. "Yet it is you, the members of the United States military, who achieved it. Your courage, your willingness to face danger for your country and for each other made this day possible.

"Because of you our nation is more secure," the commander in chief said to cheering sailors. "Because of you, the tyrant has fallen and Iraq is free."

With a huge red, white and blue banner declaring "Mission Accomplished" hanging in the background, Bush told the crew that the American military's precision, speed and boldness led to "one of the swiftest advances of heavy arms in history."

The Lincoln has been at sea for 10 months. She was ready to head home after duty in the Afghan theater during Operation Enduring Freedom, when the ship and her 5,000- member crew were turned around to support Operation Iraqi Freedom.

(Excerpt of article from the US Department of Defense website)

I guess you'd still like to see this as nitpicking about a 'slip of the tongue,' but I see it more as a deliberately false stunt, with a budget and premeditation probably rivaling the average day of any Hollywood shooting.

...an interview Bush gave Bill O'Reilly of Fox News in which O'Reilly asked Bush whether he would still do the carrier landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln beneath the "Mission Accomplished" banner. At the time, 16 months ago, Bush referred to Iraq as a "victory" and declared an end to major combat there.

"Absolutely," the president replied in the interview, to air on Monday's "O'Reilly Factor." O'Reilly, apparently surprised, replied, "You would?" "Of course," Bush continued. "I'm saying to the troops, on this carrier and elsewhere, 'Thanks for serving America.' Absolutely. And by the way, those sailors and airmen loved seeing the commander in chief. . . . You bet I'd do it again."

In April, White House senior adviser Karl Rove told an editorial board meeting with the Columbus Dispatch in Ohio that the "Mission Accomplished" sign had been a mistake. "I wish the banner was not up there," Rove said. "I'll acknowledge the fact that it has become one of those convenient symbols."

(source:washingtonpost.com)

He's not even bright enough to admit it was a mistake, but at least Karl, the puppetmaster is. Hardly surprising since Bush himself is a man who can't think of anything he's ever done wrong, being on a mission from God an all.

As of today, (12/14/04) 1,289 American soldiers have died since the start of the Iraq war. A total of 114 U.S. soldiers were killed between the start of the war March 20, 2003, and President Bush's declaration of the end of major combat operations May 1, 2003. Since then, 898 U.S. soldiers have been killed by hostile fire.
(source: detnews.com (Detroit News))

Obviously to such little street preachers such as your self, the death of nearly 900 'whiny idiot' soldiers is negligible. Your spiritually appointed master was perhaps just speaking in strange texas tongues.

Talk about fucking spin.

Meanwhile you insist time and time again on reminding us that 900 killed is no big deal and certainly 'no Vietnam', but you seem to want to overlook a few other key statistics.

transcribed excerpts from NPR audio, today (12/15/04):

...only 10% of wounded soldiers result in fatalities, a figure down from previous wars (including the Gulf War, where the figure was 25%) due to surgical teams moving closer to the front than ever before..

...But as fatalities decrease the military is faced with an influx of the severely wounded...

...There are more than 9000 wounded from Iraq or Afghanistan...

...(brief interview with Sgt. Michael McNaughton, who lost his right leg above the knee, almost lost left leg with severe shrapnel wounds, lost fingers on right hand and had a concussion--interviews with army surgeons)...

...We've been hearing about the possibility of shortage of troops what about getting medical personnel?...

Col. Paul Cordts, director of Health Policy and Services at the Office of the Army Surgeon General:

"Here we are a country of close to ten thousand surgeons and we now have had more than a million troops go through Iraq. It's certainly not been in our experience as a country to have to manage a war where there have been now close to ten thousand total who've been wounded in battle, and we're doing this on the basis of a voluntary force--and they are doing a tremendous job just as is reflected by the fact that this many people are surviving--but how to sustain it over the next two or three years if this battle goes on that long, you know, this is already at this point a war where there are as many people wounded as in the first four years of Vietnam or as in the Revolutionary War... ...they're doing a remarkable job, but it seems there will be continuing challenges for them..."

Now, accuse the Army of spin if you like.

Now, on the subject of Clinton, using your own logic, (laughingly referred) and words, I could say I am sick of this so-called-conservative second guessing and hindsight which screams of "I would have known better and done it different" after the fact.

America elected and reelected Clinton just like it elected and reelected Bush, so get the fuck over it and join the team--the team that REMEMBERS that Clinton presided over the creation of 22 million new jobs while the Bush aligned media constantly scrabbles over reports of ten thousand jobs created here and there because they know the administration is overseeing the highest unemployment rate in 70 years. Join the team that REMEMBERS that Clinton presided over the highest percentage of home ownership in American history while Bush's unsustainable economic policies threaten to effectively end the housing boom by driving mortgage rates into the sky, and which may mark the very end of the dollar's reign as the world's reserve currency. The team that REMEMBERS that Clinton presided over higher incomes in every sector, the largest budget deficit in American history converted into the largest surplus, and the lowest government spending and the lowest federal tax burdens since Kennedy--all with a predominantly Republican and often hostile congress.

Who's really a sore loser here when you haven't stopped bitching about the DUELY ELECTED Mr. Clinton for YEARS after the fact?

You might also REMEMBER that Clinton's liberal-mindless-apathetic-do-nothing, hope-it-goes-away foreign policy included deploying troops in Somalia, Haiti and Kosovo, as well as launching several military strikes on Iraq itself in response to violations of UN sanctions. You might REMEMBER that Clinton signed several antiterrorism acts including The Iraqi Liberation Act. Maybe you should read that again and REMEMBER that it states, in part, "It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime."

But no, I'm giving you too much credit. Your incessant need to exalt yourself over the liberal sore-loser rabble would be utterly unsupportable if you couldn't insist on the absurd notion that liberals just want to sit on their hands, be unpatriotic, and write poetry and send flowers to their terrorist lovers. You share this tendency so completely with albed that it's no wonder you can't get along with him, we usually hate seeing our own faults in other people.

And I realize that anything positive about the Clinton administration is going to be hard for you to grasp and hold on to, since the UN is an obsolete collection of pussies and 'terrorists' have been effectively redefined almost exclusively as the 'freedom-hating Iraqi insurgency,' in what has to be one of the most masterfully Orwellian linguistic manipulations in living memory, (along with "Reality TV")--and made all the more ironic since we directly experienced real terrorism on Bush's watch and should so easily REMEMBER that it had absolutely fucking nothing to do with Saddam Hussein or the dead in Fallujah or Mosul today.

It's boringly predictable though that you REMEMBER so well that Clinton made a feeble attempt to deny that he got his dick sucked--or that he got his dick sucked--whichever aspect bothers you the most, I can't tell and don't really even care. But this type of deflective bullshit and rewriting of the past is certainly what we've come to expect from those who seem completely unable to admit of the slightest error of judgement or impulse in their present fearless leader, even when it's baldly obvious, or criticism of him even when it's entirely warranted. One tries to give people the benefit of the doubt, but your incessant knee jerking defensiveness and insistence of his infallibity is merely laughable.

But then the beautiful thing about such pointless polarity, of which you are the poster child, is its symmetry, specifically in this case the fact that your blanket caricature of any and all criticism as being part of a the omnipresent liberal agenda and therefore lacking all credibility from the outset, has the result of divesting you of all credibility just as cartoonishly.

By the way, calling a soldier reporting ad hoc salvaging operations on the ground out of concern for his fellow soldiers a whiney idiot is a royally over-the-top fucking example of that principle and exactly the kind of disloyalty denounced by your 'support the troops' bumper-sticker mentality. I suppose if one weren't a self avowed superior black-fonted conservative on steroids who knows absolutely everything better than everyone else people would find it seditious, if not treasonous. Of course you could jump on your buddy albed's little bandwagon and suggest that since it was prompted by a member of the press, it must not be true.

To return to the subject of the thread, I just have to say that whether or not the troops on the ground are prepared or properly equipped seems but a minor ramification of the larger fact that our economy itself, not to mention our resources, both material and human, may be neither prepared nor properly equipped to sustain the policing of Iraq and the growing insurgencies--at least not with the economic damage occurring in every other sector under the present administration. Sending men into battle unprepared is one thing, sending them on missions of utterly futile pretense seems altogether another.

Having your ignorant blowhard president to this day issue 'warnings' to Iran and Syria, as if we are not stressing our potentials already and are actually prepared to singlehandedly kick the ass of the entire Middle East, is just another example of the chronic habit this administration has developed for exhaling smoke directly into the public rectum.

Perhaps they can shit in their free hand while wishing they had another army in the other--after all the people that believe that a couple of plants producing Hum-vees would solve the problem would probably eat just as readily out of either.

And as far as Rumsfeld's rancid arrogance and petulance indifference--well surprise surprise, just look at the man's face. He reminds one of some constipated film noire Nazi henchman with Alzheimer's on a perfect mixture of morphine, Prozac and crack and a hell bent quest for the grail, or an angry little pedophilic nun in drag. Here is a man who obviously hasn't had his dick sucked in about 40 years.

...what a perfect choice for these enlightened times...