"The War As We Saw It"

[Atlanta Dan]

Originally Posted by lamberts-lost-tooth

I would suggest if you want an accurate insiders point of view ... you should consider that this article is based on the liberal leanings of only 7 soldiers from 82nd...

(I for one would be happy to let the soldiers in the field decide if we should stay in Iraq....I doubt if the left-wingers would be willing to do the same..which sorta makes the whole New York Times article a moot-point doesnt it?)

So if you are against the war as it has been fought you are a "liberal"? I missed the parts of the article where the soldiers gave their opinions on universal health care and repeal of Sarbanes-Oxley.

Trying to fit everyone who is for the Iraq deployment as being on the "right" or "conservative" while everyone who questions the deployment as being on the "left" or as "liberal" is pretty meaningless. George Will and Robert Novak are nobody's definition of "liberals".

I agree that you can certainly find many articulate current and former members of the uniformed military who support the effort and others who do not. I dare say the soldiers in the NYT Op-Ed have a lot more credibility than what we heard from Rumsfeld, Cheney, Tenet & others over the last 5 years.

But of course given that pesky civilian control of the military under the Constitution, it is not the uniformed military's call whether the U.S. stays or goes - going to war is a political decision (see, e.g., Clausewitz) and it is a lot more than "left wingers" in this country who think we should cut our losses on this one.

Is the U.S.military the finest fighting force in the world today? - absolutely

Does that mean it can indefinitely hang around Iraq to referee a civil war while the "government" of Iraq is collapsing -probably not.

But hope springs eternal for some that this is all just a PR issue - the latest bright idea that support for the war is going to be turned around by an ad campaign would be laughable if the subject was not so tragic.

[revefsreleets]

There needs to be some clarification here. Remember the whole "Mission Accomplished" thing? That was never the joke the Democrats and the pundits made it out to be, instead it was supposed to be the "all clear" sign for the allies that were sitting on the fence and the UN to step in. But things were too messed up, and, ultimately, the Bush administration is to blame, but there were a thousand factors that figured in. Regardless, what was supposed to occur way back then is just about to occur now. When the UN steps in and the Arab nations around Iraq start sending in their UN reps, the insurgency should chill a bit, despite their religious affiliation.

I'm anxious to see how things go in the next few months.

[Atlanta Dan]

Originally Posted by revefsreleets

Remember the whole "Mission Accomplished" thing? That was never the joke the Democrats and the pundits made it out to be, instead it was supposed to be the "all clear" sign for the allies that were sitting on the fence and the UN to step in.

Would sincerely be interested in your source for that one.

Bush used the same phrase in this speech, in June 2005 (after the banner was displayed on the Abraham Lincoln):

Posted 6/5/2003 3:31 AM Updated 6/5/2003 8:10 PM
Bush to troops: Mission accomplished
By Judy Keen, USA TODAY

DOHA, Qatar ? President Bush ended his trip to Europe and the Middle East on Thursday reveling in the approving roar of troops at Camp As Sayliyah....

Linking victory in Iraq with the broader war on terrorism, Bush harked back to his visit to Ground Zero days after Sept. 11. When a rescue worker shouted at him then, "We can't hear you," Bush replied, "I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon."

In his remarks here, Bush asked, "I have a question for you: Can you hear me now?" His audience erupted.

"America sent you on a mission to remove a grave threat and to liberate an oppressed people, and that mission has been accomplished," he said. Despite growing doubts at home and abroad, he reiterated that troops would find weapons of mass destruction, which were his rationale for striking first at Iraq.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/i...sh-qatar_x.htm

Later, after that opinion appeared a bit, ummm, premature, we had this story:

White House pressed on 'mission accomplished' sign
Navy suggested it, White House made it, both sides say

From Dana Bash
CNN Washington Bureau
Wednesday, October 29, 2003 Posted: 9:18 AM EST (1418 GMT)

Attention turned Tuesday to a giant "Mission Accomplished" sign that stood behind Bush aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln when he gave the speech May 1.

The president told reporters the sign was put up by the Navy, not the White House.

"I know it was attributed somehow to some ingenious advance man from my staff -- they weren't that ingenious, by the way," the president said Tuesday.

Now his statements are being parsed even further.

Navy and administration sources said that though the banner was the Navy's idea, the White House actually made it.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/....accomplished/

So the Navy decided to send an "all clear" signal to the U.N. and the White House decided to help the Navy out by printing up the banner by which to send the signal?

[j-dawg]

The UN was in Iraq... it pulled out in 2003 when it's chief envoy and 16 others were killed by an insurgents truck bomb. I don't know if sending them in is going to change anything, but i'm with you reves, i hope it does. Has anyone seen this video of Cheney talking about Iraq in 1994?



"Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you going to put in its place? That's a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off: part of it, the Syrians would like to have to the west, part of it -- eastern Iraq -- the Iranians would like to claim, they fought over it for eight years. In the north you've got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey.

It's a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq."

None of this was being said when there was the build up to invading Iraq not nine years later... 9-11 didn't change the fact that the region would be just as volatile.

Here's a quote from Bill Kristol talking about Iraq on 4/1/03:
"There is a certain amount of pop psychology in America that the Shia can't get along with the Sunni... there's almost no evidence of that at all."

All I'm saying is that the discussions about Iraq are not promoting advancement. It's obvious that there wasn't a clear contingency plan, and that many were wrong about that region. A political solution should be on the forefront of any plan involving Iraq now.

[revefsreleets]

My "source"? My source is the entire policy of the Bush administration at the time, which is in complete agreement with your above quotes. There was bad intel, and Bush thought that the Arab allies and the UN would step in and help stabilize Iraq as soon as "the coast was clear". Mission Accomplished was supposed to be the smoke signal to the rest of the World that it was okay to come onboard. In fact, things were so out of whack that the CIA suggested that FRANCE would send troops.

It took longer than anyone would want or hope, but we approaching that time now.

[revefsreleets]

I must reiterate this again. The intel out of Iraq was as bad as any Intel the US government has used for military operations since the Civil War. It messed up even the Democratic Party.

[Atlanta Dan]

Originally Posted by revefsreleets

My "source"? My source is the entire policy of the Bush administration at the time, which is in complete agreement with your above quotes. There was bad intel, and Bush thought that the Arab allies and the UN would step in and help stabilize Iraq as soon as "the coast was clear". Mission Accomplished was supposed to be the smoke signal to the rest of the World that it was okay to come onboard. In fact, things were so out of whack that the CIA suggested that FRANCE would send troops.

It took longer than anyone would want or hope, but we approaching that time now.

OK - I have heard so much nonsense out of the Bush Administration for the last 5 years about Iraq I thought someone had actually gone on the record and attempted to sell that spin to explain away the Mission Accomplished banner. Glad to hear that the coast is almost clear.

As for the CIA, if it is any consolation to W supporters,The Company has been providing bad intel to Presidents for almost 6 decades. I have just finished reading "Legacy of Ashes", a history of the CIA by Tim Weiner, in which, among other subjects, the sainted Kennedys are portrayed as being as obsessed with getting rid of Castro as W & Cheney were in taking out Sadaam and equally insensitive to the tiresome constraints of the law in seeking their goal.

[revefsreleets]

Originally Posted by Atlanta Dan

OK - I have heard so much nonsense out of the Bush Administration for the last 5 years about Iraq I thought someone had actually gone on the record and attempted to sell that spin to explain away the Mission Accomplished banner. Glad to hear that the coast is almost clear.

As for the CIA, if it is any consolation to W supporters,The Company has been providing bad intel to Presidents for almost 6 decades. I have just finished reading "Legacy of Ashes", a history of the CIA by Tim Weiner, in which, among other subjects, the sainted Kennedys are portrayed as being as obsessed with getting rid of Castro as W & Cheney were in taking out Sadaam and equally insensitive to the tiresome constraints of the law in seeking their goal.

But the blind squirrel (CIA) found a nut in Afghanistan, and that was big nut. Russia was crushed against it over 20 years, and we pacified the Country in a few months. Rumy became drunk on that power and he ****ed everything up. He ignored every bit of good ground intel we had, and misled Bush as well, but if you want to believe that it was some kind of evil plan, go ahead. I pretty much give up trying to use logic with either side of the aisle at this point.

[Atlanta Dan]

Originally Posted by revefsreleets

But the blind squirrel (CIA) found a nut in Afghanistan, and that was big nut. Russia was crushed against it over 20 years, and we pacified the Country in a few months. Rumy became drunk on that power and he ****ed everything up. He ignored every bit of good ground intel we had, and misled Bush as well, but if you want to believe that it was some kind of evil plan, go ahead. I pretty much give up trying to use logic with either side of the aisle at this point.

I asked you for your source on the "coast is clear" theory for the banner and you admitted it was just your own theory.

As for the coast being almost clear, what is your basis for that?

On Thursday, the administration is planning to make public parts of a sober new report by American intelligence agencies expressing deep doubts that the Maliki government can overcome sectarian differences. Government officials who have seen the report say it gives a bleak outlook on the chances Mr. Maliki can meet milestones intended to promote unity in Iraq.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/23/wa...policy.html?hp

And what "good ground intel" did Rummy fail to provide to W on Iraq?

In closing, thanks for trying to portray anyone who disagrees with you on "either side of the aisle" as not being worthy of a logical response.

[lamberts-lost-tooth]

Originally Posted by Atlanta Dan

So if you are against the war as it has been fought you are a "liberal"? I missed the parts of the article where the soldiers gave their opinions on universal health care and repeal of Sarbanes-Oxley.

Trying to fit everyone who is for the Iraq deployment as being on the "right" or "conservative" while everyone who questions the deployment as being on the "left" or as "liberal" is pretty meaningless. George Will and Robert Novak are nobody's definition of "liberals".

I agree that you can certainly find many articulate current and former members of the uniformed military who support the effort and others who do not. I dare say the soldiers in the NYT Op-Ed have a lot more credibility than what we heard from Rumsfeld, Cheney, Tenet & others over the last 5 years.

But of course given that pesky civilian control of the military under the Constitution, it is not the uniformed military's call whether the U.S. stays or goes - going to war is a political decision (see, e.g., Clausewitz) and it is a lot more than "left wingers" in this country who think we should cut our losses on this one.

Is the U.S.military the finest fighting force in the world today? - absolutely

Does that mean it can indefinitely hang around Iraq to referee a civil war while the "government" of Iraq is collapsing -probably not.

But hope springs eternal for some that this is all just a PR issue - the latest bright idea that support for the war is going to be turned around by an ad campaign would be laughable if the subject was not so tragic.

I think you missed the point.

Originally the New York Times article was posted as "proof" that even our soldiers disagree with the current assessment of where we stand in Iraq.
My point was ....#1) You dig deep enough, you will find those who agree with the "predominatly" liberal viewpoint that we should not be in Iraq...#2) This viewpoint is not the general opinion of our armed forces...AND if one is going to use the opinions of 7 soldiers as proof..they may want to consider the opinions of the armed forces as a whole.

I do agree with you that this war has moved from being about right/wrong and is now about political leverage and now all media information is filtered through a right or left wing filter. I also agree with you that the end result will be tragic. We just have to make a moral decision as to who should be put into harms way...Our professional well-equipped soldiers or a civilian populace that will either die... unarmed ...in a religious civil war, or live nightmare after nightmare every day because of our unwillingness to see this through

Dont get me wrong....I am increasingly frustrated by the lack of help from other countries and the obvious sluggish development of the Iraqi government....but as I have stated in other threads....Every "little" quality of life increase in the lives of the Iraqi people... seems, to them, to be sooooo much more than they have ever had and there is not an "end goal"...a concrete understanding of what democracy looks like.....And this is counter-productive to energizing the populace into throwing themselves into their own development.

In my opinion why do we need to see this through?:

10 IMPROVEMENTS IN THE LIVES OF IRAQI CHILDREN

1) A "back to school" campaign delivered 1,500 kits with book bags, notebooks, pens and pencils that helped 120,000 students in Baghdad return to their classrooms in May 2003. In preparation for the new school year, 1.2 million kits for secondary school students and 4,000 kits for their schools including desks, chairs, blackboards, and bookshelves are arriving in Iraq.
2) Malnutrition contributed to high mortality rates in Iraq during Saddam's rule. The food aid for Iraq has continued to supply the public distribution system and has allowed the majority of Iraqis access to food rations. On July 15, the World Food Program reported that nearly 1.5 million metric tons of food, or more than the three months supply required to keep the distribution system operating, have been dispatched to Iraq. An additional 2.2 million metric tons of food will arrive by the end of October. These steps will contribute to reversing malnutrition.

3) To date, 22.3 million doses of measles, tuberculosis, hepatitis B, diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, and polio vaccines have been provided, enough to vaccinate 4.2 million children.

4) Nearly all Iraqi children have finished their exams from last year and are ready to start a new school year in the fall. All universities are reopened.

5) A $53 million program to rehabilitate more than 100 schools and clinics is underway. In the southern region, more than 50 schools are in various stages of rehabilitation. More than 600 schools will be in "like new" condition in time for the beginning of classes.

6) Five million revised math and science textbooks were ready before the start of the school year.

7) Saddam Hussein's rhetoric is being removed from Iraqi schoolchildren's textbooks. In the words of Dunia Nabel, a teacher in Baghdad: "We want flowers and springtime in the texts, not rifles and tanks." (The Chicago Tribune, July 31, 2003).

8) Ten delivery rooms in hospitals and primary healthcare centers in Basra have been rehabilitated and stocked with essential drugs and medical supplies.

9) The juvenile institution for children that was the subject of reports of abuse and appalling conditions under Saddam Hussein has been replaced by a project run by UNICEF and NGOs. Seven orphanages have undergone major building renovations and training for staff.

10) Nearly 3,000 soccer balls were shipped on May 30 and another 60,000 balls on their way to Iraq through a private/public partnership and the U.S. soccer community...Kids who previously were focused on basic survival now have community leagues and after school programs.