Cheney

[theknife]

yet another cut-and-run, cowardly traitor:

The top U.S. commander in Iraq has submitted a plan to the Pentagon for withdrawing troops in Iraq, according to a senior defense official.

Gen. George Casey submitted the plan to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. It includes numerous options and recommends that brigades -- usually made up of about 2,000 soldiers each -- begin pulling out of Iraq early next year.

whoops, that's the General George Casey, top US commander in Iraq. hasn't he been listening to the psuedocons? didn't he get the memo that the only way to honor the sacrifice of our brave troops is to continue getting them killed?

[albed]

He must have thought the dems might actually vote for what they said they wanted.


He should realize that their entire agenda is impeding the administration with hot air and bullshit and they have no intention of actually doing what they say should be done.


They've been called on to walk their talk and now it's perfectly clear that they don't walk at all.

[Sinner]

Mr. Speaker --

My Democratic colleagues are coming down here accusing us of slandering our friend and fellow member, Rep. Murtha.

That's absurd.

This isn't about him.

It's not about any of us.

This is about foreign policy.

And quite frankly this idea on the left that we can and should immediately withdraw is not only a bad idea, it's a dangerous one.

How do you tell an 19 year old American fighting, bleeding for their country that this is all pointless? How dare you. You may not agree with the way things are being managed, but don't you minimize the importance of what we're doing in Iraq.

You all on the left opened up this debate with your irresponsible comments and now you're trying to sneak out of the room to avoid the topic.

The left in Congress wants a debate on the idea of immediate withdrawal and we're going to have it.

The left wanted to run their mouths with no regard to the big picture, well now you're going to have to stand here and take the heat for that.

We're fighting because we don't want our kids living in a world dominated by terrorism. That's why we're fighting.

The left works real hard to isolate Iraq from the Middle East and from terrorism.

Does the left actually think terrorists separate Iraq from the war on terrorism.

Certainly not. Absolutely not.

I don't believe America is willing to give up on what is a WAR for the FREE WORLD.

The left wanted this debate. We'll have this debate. And you will lose this debate.

The American people have stronger backbones than the radical left running the Democratic Party in this House.

The final vote is 403-3 (6 present, 22 not voting) on immediate withdrawal from Iraq. So, when Democrats hold press conferences stating we should 'immediately redeploy' ('Retreat hell! We're just redeploying gradually in a different direction when 'practicable!'), they are speaking figuratively.

[JackSpratts]

i haven't heard more bulsh*t since vietnam. typical republican grandstanding while more continue to die.

- js.

[Sinner]

Originally Posted by JackSpratts

i haven't heard more bulsh*t since vietnam. typical republican grandstanding while more continue to die.

- js.

Really? read Murtha's resolution again then.....The US Congress has learned the Vietnam lesson: We will not abandon our friends and allies to the good wishes of murdering thugs.

Jack Murtha is an American hero, who has learned the other Vietnam lesson: RUN!!

[JackSpratts]

i'm not sure where you get your information concerning vietnam but i suggest you get a refund. vietnam had a civil war. the parties in question were the fascist establishment vs the communist upstarts. what we had was an academic philosophy of "containment" that had nothing to do with the people of vietnam, or as it turns out, reality.

the lesson we learned cost 50,000 american lives and an untold number of asians, but it was simple: we can't stop someone else’s civil war by occupation unless we care to send our young there to die indefinitely - and - we fix the problem politically. even then we have no guarantees. the same lesson applies to iraq. perhaps even more so since the internal hatred reaches back to a time america wasn't even a concept. the shiites and the sunnis will have their civil war, whenever we leave, regardless of how efficient we make their militia killing machines. the sunnis will be crushed, the shiites victorious and all this talk about balance forgotten as some kind of absurdist conservative think tank fairy tale the muddled masses swallowed whole. in the meantime more americans will die in the slow waltz to the inevitable.

- js.

[Mazer]

Please stop comparing Iraq to Vietnam, there's no way 58,000 American soldiers are going to die there. There's no draft. There's no Ho Chi Minh trail. The comparison is not only futile, it's tiresome.

Shiites and Sunnis aren't as despairate to kill each other as you think. A civil war might be inevitable if we left them alone now, but the longer we engage them politically the more they learn and more preventable civil war becomes. Besides, if the Shiites decide to slaughter Sunnis then Saudi Arabia will close its borders to all Shiites, not just Iraqis. Without access to Mecca an international war might begin, and nobody in the middle east wants that to happen. So if a couple thousand soldiers dying will save the lives of millions of Muslims then it's something we must do.

[Mazer]

Originally Posted by theknife

whoops, that's the General George Casey, top US commander in Iraq. hasn't he been listening to the psuedocons? didn't he get the memo that the only way to honor the sacrifice of our brave troops is to continue getting them killed?

I'd trust a military plan for withdral over any politician's plan. It's likely that an exit strategy like this one was requested by the administration in case the Republican resolution passed. It's best to leave these things up to the people who understand the situation, so Congress best stay out of it.

[Sinner]

Jack, AMERICA MUST PREVAIL, You can not Run this time;

Murtha whined on the floor of the house about the dead and injured soldiers as a lot of the liberal left do, your enemies would rightly conclude that Americans are weak and will run when they shed blood, Rome Fell, The USA was not put in this position, 911 happened, and yes I bring 9/11 into this. Was Saddam connected to the terrorist attacks? No he most likely was not, but Did Saddam hate America? With Afghanistan no longer a safe haven for terrorist, would Saddam open his country to them? BTW, don’t even try to say Iraq is now a safe haven for terrorist, there are more terrorist in Iraq now, but they are far far from safe, remove American troops from Iraq right now – well then they are safe. Saddam needed to be removed and removed when he was, why wait until he builds his army up, get WMD, or helps the terrorist attack America again, the world is safer with out Saddam controlling Iraq.



What are your opinions on this article?

As now configured, this is a party that cannot be trusted when the nation is at risk. Its blindness to evil will get people hurt. It will, by its fixation on poll numbers, say to the people of Iraq who have trusted our word, that it is a pledge written on insufficient funds. It will, as was the case with the 200,000 rebellious Shiites that Saddam Hussein slaughtered in the aftermath of Desert Storm, leave Iraq exposed to the vengeful brutality of unchecked evil.

This party rushes to hide its pacifism and its relativism in single file behind imagery — first the "peace mom" radical Cindy Sheehan and, when she was spent, behind the valor of U.S. Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), a Vietnam veteran who last week provided cover to his anti-war colleagues by declaring, "It's time to bring the troops home."

It is left, then, to Lieberman, Al Gore's vice presidential candidate in 2000, to spark any ray of hope that the party of FDR and Harry Truman has not become a backward-looking party that can't be trusted with liberty's franchise.

"The questions raised about prewar intelligence are not irrelevant . . . but they are nowhere as important and relevant as how we successfully complete our mission in Iraq and protect the 150,000 men and women in uniform who are fighting for us there," Lieberman said.

"The danger is that by spending so much time on the past here, we contribute to a drop in public support. Terrorists know that they cannot defeat us in Iraq, but they also know they can defeat us in America by breaking the will and steadfast support of the American people for this cause."

That is the voice of the Democratic Party America once embraced. It is the voice of the Democratic Party that held the South. It is the voice of a party America can trust when our people are threatened.

But it is not the voice that now dominates — and defines — today's national Democratic Party. That voice will get defenders hurt and trusting souls betrayed.

http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/o...05/112005.html

[theknife]

Originally Posted by Sinner

Jack, AMERICA MUST PREVAIL, You can not Run this time;

"prevailing" is not an option - it's unwinnable, by any conventional definition. here's how it ends - the Kurds do reasonably well as an autonomous, independent entity, the Shia end up in bed with Iran, and the Sunnis continue the violence with or without us.

forget democracy, no dancing in the streets, farewell to all that - Iraq was a neocon fantasy that was dead on arrival. the only remaining question is how many more get killed before we write it off and call it a day. as well we should. we got Saddam, no wmd's, mission accomplished - bring 'em home, end of story.

btw, the government of iraq wants us out, too:

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- Reaching out to the Sunni Arab community, Iraqi leaders called for a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces and said Iraq's opposition had a "legitimate right" of resistance.

The communique -- finalized by Shiite, Kurdish and Sunni leaders Monday -- condemned terrorism but was a clear acknowledgment of the Sunni position that insurgents should not be labeled as terrorists if their operations do not target innocent civilians or institutions designed to provide for the welfare of Iraqi citizens.

The leaders agreed on "calling for the withdrawal of foreign troops according to a timetable, through putting in place an immediate national program to rebuild the armed forces ... control the borders and the security situation" and end terror attacks.

if there is any legitimacy to the claim of freeing iraq, then there is no longer any legal grounds to remain there indefinitely. anyone who argues to stay the course is now arguing to ignore the wishes of the iraqi government, which therefore makes the whole fiasco a sham. so what's it gonna be? are they free or aren't they?

[albed]

The Iraqi legislature needs to pass a law then. Do you understand legality? Fuck you don't even understand grammar and punctuation. Get a clue you straw grasping liberal.

An education and a sense of ethics wouldn't hurt you either. Both sorely lacking.

[Mazer]

Knife, the only person to suggest that anyone wants our troops to say there indefinitely is you, but it simply isn't true. While the Cheney spokesperson who you continually quote was obviously way off the mark when he suggested the invasion would take weeks, not months (and what authority does such a person have to make such a prediction anyway?), I think that phrase demonstrates this administration's strong desire to bring this war to a quick end. Iraq's government understands this, which is why they're working on this timetable. The word timetable implies that they want our troops to leave gradually over a period of time, otherwise they would simply have made an ultimatum. The simple fact is that there is a lot of work yet to be done, millions of man hours need to be invested, and the old saying 'many hands make light work' still applies. Decreasing our presence there too sharply will ensure that the work will never be done so I'm afraid we can't just cut and run.

I am of course writing from the presumption that peace is attainable in the middle east. Anybody who thinks civil war is a foregone conslusion is arguing from ignorance. Tribalism in the middle east gave way to federalism many generations ago, and since then Arabs and Iranians have learned to settle disputes diplomatically. Maybe they need more practice, but like I've said, nobody in the middle east wants open war among Muslims, with a few exceptions. Hell, maybe we should send Bono in to help the Shiites and Sunnis learn to get along.

At any rate, the defeatist attitude I've seen here and among Democrats in congress is ludacris. For the politicians, the call to remove our troops from Iraq is a calculated move, but for the rest of us regular folk it's just a symptom of the media's selective reporting. In truth progress towards peace continues and will continue, and frankly, the fact that any American thinks that this war or any war is unwinnable deeply saddens me. If that attitude had previaled during the early stages of the American revolution then there would be no United States to speak of because for more than a year we were on the loosing side of that war. Beating the odds has always been the American way and I hope it always will be.

[theknife]

Originally Posted by Mazer

At any rate, the defeatist attitude I've seen here and among Democrats in congress is ludacris.

"ludacris" is a rapper, no? the word is ludicrous - let's use it in a sentence: it is ludicrous for American soldiers to be dying for an Iraqi government that supports the right of it's citizens to kill the American soldiers who are protecting it:

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- Reaching out to the Sunni Arab community, Iraqi leaders called for a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces and said Iraq's opposition had a "legitimate right" of resistance.

The communique -- finalized by Shiite, Kurdish and Sunni leaders Monday -- condemned terrorism but was a clear acknowledgment of the Sunni position that insurgents should not be labeled as terrorists if their operations do not target innocent civilians or institutions designed to provide for the welfare of Iraqi citizens.

the Iraqi leadership recognizes the insurgency's right to resist, which is exercised by killing Americans. is that ludicrous enough for you?