I have no problem whatsoever with those who voted for Bush losing their lives, jobs, retirement, social security, or anything else. They made their choice, & they should have to live with it. The problem is, the rest of us did NOT vote for Bush, but we have to abide by the choice of these half-wit shit-for-brains & suffer right along with them, and that's not right. There should be a better way, but I haven't figured it out yet.

Bush is on his 50th vacation to Crawford since taking office. I hear he's staying for a month this time. How long before he or Cheney make a trip to Iraq? ...and I'm not refering to the kind of visit where you sneak in and out in a couple of hours. Now what did that banner say ...
Mission accomplished?

"I have no problem whatsoever with those who voted for Bush losing their lives, jobs, retirement, social security, or anything else." - Nancy

If you don't care about over half the country dying then why do you get so upset about the war in Iraq with it's measly 1500 or so American casualties?

Last I checked jobs and wages were up and I believe Bush's plan was to let us keep our Social Security money not take it away or keep raising the age until most of us are dead and get nothing anyway.

We're willing to sacrifice 15-20,000 lives per year in alcohol related accidents so that we can all enjoy the freedom to get drunk at our 4th of July parties, I don't think 500 lives a year is a waste to protect ourselves from Islamic fundamentalists who want to take away much more than alcohol.

"measly" 1,800?

yikes. We salute you

>...to protect ourselves from Islamic fundamentalists...<

'If I keep repeating my simplistic analysis it will be true, if I keep repeating my simplistic analysis it will be true, if I keep repeating my simplistic analysis it will be true, if I keep...'

"to protect ourselves from Islamic fundamentalists" -- what does that mean exactly. I think Bill pegged it. It's an easy target but isn't necessarily the right target. Peace can't be "won" by killing all the people that hate you. Do you think if you went around killing all the people that didn't like you that you'd finally end up in a state of peace? it's nonsensical.

I tend to agree ochairball. We are also likely to create more enemies by attempting to kill them all although that was not the thrust of my point. I believe we are creating more enemies by the erroneous nature of our aggression. You know, no Iraq-Quaeda link, no WMD, distortion and possible out and out lies about intelligence.

I was referring to the nature of the insurgency in Iraq.
Consider from CNN 2/5/05:

"The U.S. military faces between 13,000 and 17,000 insurgents in Iraq, the large majority of them backers of ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and his Baath Party, a senior military official said Tuesday."

"The senior military official told CNN the bulk of the insurgency is made up of 12,000 to 15,000 Arab Sunni followers of Saddam's party. The Baath Party was overthrown by a U.S.-led invasion in March 2003."

"Of those, the source said 5,000 to 7,000 are considered "committed" fighters, with the rest considered "fence-sitters," criminals or "facilitators" who contribute material support or sanctuary to the guerrillas."

"The official, who is familiar with the region, said about 500 other fighters have come from other countries to battle the U.S.-led forces in Iraq, while another group of fewer than 1,000 are believed to be followers of Jordanian-born Islamic terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi."


So I just get a little nuts when folks (repug/conserve lemmings) try to paint the insurgency as some monolithic entity.

The number of Islamic extremists we've created along with the damage to our credibility throughout the world will be felt for years to come.

I'm sure Mr. Ritter has "all of the inside information"

okay... Can I think of anything stooopider to say?

Probably not.

Good intel, properly protected, never makes it to the streets, at least for 20 years.

Anything else is just conjecture.


Do I agree with the war? No.

It there any appeasing terrorists? No.

Do I want them knocking off innocents within the U.S. borders? No.

Shit, I'm outta' options

um..i'll say it again...slowly and clearly

the folks that planned and trained and ordered 9/11 are somewhere around the Afghan/Pakistan border..you know..al Qaeda...bin Laden specifically

Iraq is a mess of our own making, we need to finish cleaning it up, but as of yet, outside of Iraq itself(which we invaded) there haven't been any Iraqi terrorists threatening the US...so toss that straw man into the Fire of Reason...NO threat from Iraq outside of Iraq

send in a few hundred thousand more troops..seal the place off, finish the job

but for Bog's sake...finish off Afghanista( the REAL threat) and fucking capture or kill bin Laden and the Taliban leader with the fucking "cloak of Mohammed", Mullah Omar...

k?...tnx

Excelsior!

Nowhere in any discussion from the left do I see anything about the viability of establishing a Democratic Middle East. Sure, it may be a long shot, but so was the fall of the Berlin Wall. So was the stabilization of our relationship with China (thank you Tricky Dick.)

Sometimes we need to take risks. Sometimes we will fall flat on our face. This seems to be a risk worth taking. The cost has been verrry small thus far compared to the potential reward (and compared to the scare mongers predictions.)

Meanwhile almost 4 years without an attack on American soil or against American interests outside of Iraq.

and nowhere from any neocon, do they have an answer why we have not captured or killed the Architect of the 9/11 attacks

so the neocons can shut the fuck up about getting aythingj done until they show up with bin Laden, either in chains, or his head on a fucking platter

nuff said?

Excelsior!

Not responsive.

Whoops. Wrong Thread. Sorry Gonzo.

My understanding is that the CIA was weakened under the Clinton administration. In particular agents could no longer work with known criminals, limiting field agent's effectiveness.

I imagine reestablishing such covert networks takes a while. Who knows, maybe Superman couldn't find Bin Laden.
But I think Bush was handed a weakened intelligence apparatus which didn't help.

But I agree that we need to expect results in this regard and if Bush doesn't get him while in office that's a big failure.

to 1potato,

most reports bear you out about the CIA being dowsized in the 90's

my whole point here has been that the elective and pre-emptive conflict in Iraq shoudl NOT have been begun until the primary mission in Afghanistan had been accomplished

in terms of military strategy, vital logistic and intelligence resources were diverted form Afghanistan and shifted to Iraq ona timetable that was NOT determined by military objectives, but rater, political ones

more simply put...they fucked up a secondthing before they finished the work on the first...and now have 2 problems to deal with, INCLUDING the original one of bin Laden

this is important because he DID have something to do with 9/11...whereas NO Iraqi did

yet where are we spending time, money and lives?

i will say again, we broke it, we have to fix it now...the same is true for Afghanistan

and we still haven't gotten the man who masterminded the attack against us

that help?

Excelsior!

Yeah Gonzo....

But it's all conjecture...

the world is ripe with bullshit.

huh?

don't quite get what ya mean, WTF...

just gave my observations and opinion

/shrugs

Excelsior!

"Stand by your man"??? Hmph. If people who voted for Dubya are wising up, good for them! Turn on him! Admit you were wrong -- you will be respected for it. And may the poll numbers continue to plummet.

If people are changing their minds it just means that they were doing some shallow thinking electing Bush in the first place, and frankly, that's irritating.

More than irritating, it has turned out to be deadly.