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Old 10-04-04, 07:19 AM   #41
Haole
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I also can't believe you are citing the 'pussification' of the American military in the situation with 135,000 troops deployed, which even Rumsfeld himself has called "an unusually high level," and is far more than was expected or projected to be required to contain the situation. What, if anything, this could say other than that we committed the classic and dire mistake of underestimating the enemy, I can't imagine. I also can't imagine what color of ultramasculine tactical undergarments you would have us wear that would make less of our boys die or win more 'hearts and minds' of Iraqis. I'm not sure how much more butch you can get than tanks full of Marines. Perhaps we should just cut our losses and revert to the old classic "NUKE IRAQ" strategy?


You're getting warmer. In no way am I saying our troops are pussies--I am implying that their hands are tied when maybe they ought not to be. Take that anyway you want to.

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Old 10-04-04, 08:33 AM   #42
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Apparently I'm not very good at taking intentionally vague things the way I want to. How exactly are our hands tied tactically? Is it along the lines that we can't bomb Fallujah into a pile of rubble and corpses, or are we envisioning something more like the helicopter gunner from Full Metal Jacket yelling "get you some" as he indiscriminately mows down fleeing gooks?

As far as I'm concerned it's a damned good thing we see our hands as tied, it shows we have at least a marginal respect for life, can make an at least marginal distinction that all Iraqis are not 'the enemy' and it makes us look like some of us might actually believe we are there to give them something better than they had.
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Old 10-04-04, 10:11 AM   #43
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Quote:
You're getting warmer. In no way am I saying our troops are pussies--I am implying that their hands are tied when maybe they ought not to be. Take that anyway you want to.
Nice to know we have a choice

The whole Falluja shit started when those american soldiers decided to make use of a girl school as their stronghold in the city. By doing so, the army totally insulted (even if they were clueless about it) the population of Falluja. Then protester started to march on the streets and some of em got shot down by the army thus leading to more daily massacre.

The killing of those 4 contractors escalated the violence into new hights because the way it was done reminds me of what happened in Somalia 10 years ago.

If that batallion just had the decency to have appologised to the citizen of Falluja for occupying a girl school and moved elsewhere to established their coumpound, this shit prolly would never happened.

To recap this hold situation

1) american troops enter Falluja, occupy a school, protest occurs because they fell insulted about one of their school being occupied.

2) Because they protest and some of the protesters have weapond, the american shoots at them ank kill 13 of them.

How does ppl think the Falluja citizens will respond in the eyes of such disrespect coming from ''The liberators of Iraq?''

Violence only brings more violence and it's a good thing that their hands are loosly tied.
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Old 11-04-04, 09:29 PM   #44
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Originally posted by Ramona_A_Stone
And hello albed, I got all nostalgic seeing you here. You might be happy to know you are the author of a comment that had a profound effect on me, something I still think of from time to time and may never forget.
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I'll guess 15 days and about 50 allied fatalities before its over.
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http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=15761
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Originally posted by Ramona_A_Stone
....war is dirty and fucked up. I knew this before the war started, even though many people tried to assure me it'd be over in a week and amount to 50 casualties.
And of all those many people you only remembered me....




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Originally posted by Ramona_A_Stone
It's incredibly ironic to label insurgents as "freedom hating" while we are occupying their country.
Of course they're no longer free to murder their countrymen over petty differences. How unjust.



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Originally posted by Ramona_A_Stone
No one can say with any sense of certainty how long Americans in Iraq might be targets, but I'll be willing to bet it will be right up to the moment the last soldier comes home and beyond. (And anyone currently reading this is probably naive to think such a time will ever come in their lifetime.)
Ooh, count me as naive. I'll think of this from time to time and may never forget.




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Originally posted by Ramona_A_Stone
If you look honestly at the broader history of war, it's a far filthier and more futile feeling it ultimately creates in all parties than the cut-and-dry adrenalized save-the-world propostion which usually motivates the well-intentioned advocate, and generations seem to need to learn this over and over again.
While they forget over and over again the genocides in Iraq, Rwanda, Cambodia, Nazi Europe, etc. where world leaders wouldn't send in their militaries and were accused of not caring to save-the-world.
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Old 11-04-04, 10:18 PM   #45
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FALLUJAH, Iraq (April 11) - More than 600 Iraqis have been killed in Fallujah since Marines began a siege against Sunni insurgents in the city a week ago, most of them women, children and the elderly, the head of the city's hospital said Sunday...

...Asked about the report of 600 dead, Marine Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne said: ''What I think you will find is 95 percent of those were military age males that were killed in the fighting.''

''The Marines are trained to be precise in their firepower .... The fact that there are 600 goes back to the fact that the Marines are very good at what they do,'' he said.

A day earlier, Byrne, commander of the 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, said his battalion - one of three in or around the city - had confirmed 40 Iraqi insurgents were killed and 19 others were likely dead throughout the entire campaign.

Residents started burying bodies in the soccer fields starting Friday, when there was a pause in fighting to allow people to tend to the dead...

...At one of the fields, which residents dubbed the ''Graveyard of the Martyrs,'' an AP reporter saw rows of freshly dug graves with wooden planks for headstones over an area about 30 yards wide and 100 yards long.

Some headstones bore the names of women; others had markings indicating the dead were children...
AP-NY-04-11-04 1548EDT
Well, we'll let the head of the Fallujah Hospital and Col. Byrne argue about the indentities of the dead, but hey, killing only 600 people to get 40 insurgents sounds like a helluva bargain don't it?

Everyone feel more secure now? I know the Iraqis probably do.



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Vietnam analogies are deeply imperfect when discussing the war in Iraq. Still, it can't be a good sign for the Bush administration that so many people have begun talking about the Tet offensive.

The young soldiers who were risking their lives last week in places like Falluja were not born in 1968 when the North Vietnamese and their supporters staged a multipronged attack on the United States forces during the Tet holiday. They were eventually routed, but the offensive marked the beginning of a shift in the attitude of the American public. Slowly, former supporters of the war began asking what the point was. The South Vietnamese allies appeared to be a weak reed; the North Vietnamese and their supporters were obviously prepared to keep fighting forever. The civilians caught in the middle wanted nothing but to be left alone. The United States seemed trapped in a bad story, with no way to change the plot.

It's not necessary to argue about the vast differences between the Mideast and Southeast Asia, between Saddam Hussein and Ho Chi Minh. The lesson of Tet that President Bush needs to embrace is that the American people will faithfully follow a commander in chief through a difficult course, but only if they have faith in the mission.

The current chaos in Iraq can be traced to decisions that were made earlier in the invasion. Gen. Eric Shinseki ran into enormous political flak when he estimated that several hundred thousand American troops would be needed to stabilize the country, but right now he's looking prescient. The disbanding of the Iraqi Army and the reliance on slightly trained Iraqi security forces with dubious loyalties are also at least partly to blame for the current problems. So is the Bush administration's decision to invade without the help of the United Nations or broad international support.

But if the goal was clear, and people understood how to reach it, Mr. Bush could compensate. He could even bolster the desperately straitened military with a draft if Americans understood the need to sacrifice. But the public was given the impression that the war in Iraq would be sacrifice-free — for everyone but the military families. And the goal has gone from destroying weapons of mass destruction to ousting a repulsive dictator to stopping terrorism to establishing a free and stable democracy in the Arab world.

It is hard for the American people to envision the road to a better Iraq when they have not been introduced to Iraqi leaders with popular backing who are committed to tolerance, civil rights and democracy. Even the moderate Shiite clerics were shaky on these issues and now their standing appears to have been weakened by the current surge of anti-Americanism. The crackdown on former Baath Party leaders has left the coalition forces with literally no one to negotiate with when it comes to stopping the violence in Sunni areas. The feckless Iraqi Governing Council created by the occupation authorities has lost credibility by its mute passivity in the current crisis.

It is hard to accept the deaths of young men and women when all the world's other military powers, save Britain, have chosen to sit this one out. The ill-prepared troops who form the contributions of places like Ukraine and Bulgaria seem to need protection themselves. With less than 90 days before the symbolic transfer of authority to an Iraqi governing body, the United States has not even seriously started working out the arrangements for bringing the United Nations into Iraq as a real partner.

The rationale for the American military presence in Iraq has quickly morphed into a negative one. If the troops leave, bloody civil war would probably follow and Iraq, which had not been a haven for terrorists, could easily become one. But if there is no vision of a workable exit plan with a better outcome, even that terrible prospect will lose its power to convince the public that this is a fight worth continuing.

What we need desperately is a clear mission, a believable strategy for success, a morally viable exit plan and international involvement. Instead, the administration's current strategy seems to be simply urging perseverance. Staying the course is noble when the cause is right. But perseverance for the sake of perseverance is foolhardy.
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Old 12-04-04, 01:43 AM   #46
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soon rummy and the pnac neocons will start blaming iran and syria for the insurgent terror.

north korea is still ready to distract us as well if things get too bad in iraq.
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