Vets For Freedom

Do I know you?

I'm just shakin' here.

cj, both of my Grandfathers were buried with honors, one with a full military service.

Get over yourself you self-righteous Jackass...

Rock

No. The troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere need our support, not backstabbing bullshit. I refuse.

I support the troops, but really dislike the command decisions, and we prolly should part here...

"That was no WWII vet. They're all at least 83 years old - they don't speak or write in those inflections.

The greatest generation, what's left of them, most definitely support the war in Iraq, by far."


============"Let's start by banishing the word "warfighter," and, while we're at it, let's toss out that "world's best" boast as well. Boasting about military prowess is more Spartan than Athenian, more Second and Third Reich Germany than republican and democratic America.

Indeed, imagine, for a moment, a world in which the U.S. is no longer "number one" in military might (and, at the same time, no longer fighting endless wars in the Middle East and Central Asia). Would we then be weak and vulnerable? Or would we become stronger precisely because we stopped boasting about our ability as "warfighters" to dominate far from our shores and instead redirected our resources to developing alternative energy, bolstering our education system, reviving American industry, and focusing on other "soft power" alternatives to weapons and warriors? In other words, alternatives we can actually boast about with the pride of accomplishment.

Think about it: Must our military forever remain "second to none" for you to feel safe? Our national traditions suggest otherwise. In fact, if we no longer had the world's strongest military, perhaps we would be more reluctant to tap its strength -- and more hesitant to send our citizen-soldiers into harm's way. And while we're at it, perhaps we'd also learn to boast about a new kind of "warfighter" -- not one who fights our wars, but one who fights against them. "

William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), taught at the Air Force Academy and the Naval Postgraduate School.

One more here


Promoting Incompetence in Iraq
By Luis Carlos Montalvan




Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Gens. George Casey, David Petraeus and Ricardo Sanchez have not heeded the requests of their subordinate officers for more resources and more troops.

Instead, these top commanders have consistently misrepresented to Congress the strength and number of Iraqi Security Forces as Iraq falls deeper into civil war. Their misrepresentations should be grounds for criminal indictments and courts-martial.

During my tours of duty in Iraq in 2003 and 2005, I witnessed and participated in American military operations whose metrics for success were the numbers of detainees apprehended ?- without regard to the tribal, ethnic and sectarian strife they caused.

Sadly, since returning home in 2006 and departing the Army on Sept. 11, 2007, I've noticed a lack of scrutiny of our top commanders.

In September 2003, I was put in charge of 80 soldiers who entered Iraq without any weapons or ammunition. We were mortared for three days in Balad, north of Baghdad, before arriving in Al Anbar province to link up with our unit. We were unable to return fire.

Later that month, we had to secure the five-kilometer border crossing at Al Waleed, the largest crossing point between Syria and Iraq, with a mere 30 to 40 troops. We were also in charge of recruiting, training and equipping Iraqi Security Forces ?- uniformed and equipped militias ?- and redeveloping the local infrastructure and economy. I wrote countless memoranda to my superiors requesting more resources and personnel, but they went unanswered.

I asked myself then as I ask myself now: How could the commanders of the greatest Army in the world send soldiers into battle without the weapons and resources to accomplish their mission?

Also at Al Waleed, I witnessed American counterintelligence soldiers waterboard a prisoner. It was disturbing and wrong. Nonetheless, I was unable to intervene.

On another occasion, my higher headquarters ordered me (unlawfully) not to offer humanitarian assistance to refugees caught between the Syrian and Iraqi borders. Dozens would have died had we not disobeyed those orders.

I lost many friends in Iraq ?- American and Iraqi. The death toll of U.S. soldiers ticks on above 4,000, as the deaths of innocent Iraqis number in the hundreds of thousands, with millions more displaced and suffering.

In 2005, I was assigned to oversee the security of the northern half of the Syrian-Iraqi border and the port of entry at Rabiya. For that we needed an automated computer tracking system for immigration and emigration, known as a Personal Identification Secure Comparison and Evaluation System, or PISCES.

At a high-level conference in Baghdad's "Red Zone" in June 2005, I was told that Coalition Forces possessed a dozen PISCES and that they would soon be installed at the ports of entry. But as of March 2006, when the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment departed western Nineveh province, no PISCES ?- or equivalent tracking system ?- had been installed at Rabiya.

The PISCES system has proven effective abroad. British authorities were able to apprehend the terrorists responsible for the London subway bombing in 2005 after PISCES tracked their movements from the Middle East to Europe.

The lack of sufficient equipment along Iraq's borders contributed to the country's instability. For four years after the invasion, foreign fighters were free to move transnationally without fear of apprehension. Many Americans and Iraqis were wounded or killed as a result.

Petraeus, for one, has been nearly impervious to scrutiny for failures in Iraq under his command. Despite those failures, many senior leaders have been promoted again and again.

More than one year after the "surge" strategy was announced, credible voices charge that Iraq today is no better off than before. Petraeus and his "brain trust" of officers and diplomats have made every effort to convince the American and Iraqi people that progress has been made, but the reality is that their measures of success are fraught with fallacious assumptions and offer skewed perspectives.

Members of this administration, diplomats and high-level military leaders got us into this Iraq disaster. And they continue to proctor it with arrogant obstinacy and incredible incompetence. They must be held accountable.

Luis Carlos Montalván, a former captain in the U.S. Army, is the highest-ranking member of Iraq Veterans Against the War.

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3800/promoting_incompetence_in_iraq/

That's all they got - a captain? Aye aye!

"No. The troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere need our support, not backstabbing bullshit. I refuse. "

Your choice and not that of mine.
Sorry. Risk your life for your cause.
As a globalist I uphold
nonviolence, peace, decency, decorum and civility.

"President Bush's ultimatum to the people of the world - "If you're not with us, you're against us" - is a piece of presumptuous arrogance. It's not a choice that people want to, need to, or should have to make. "
--
Aruntathi Roy

You must be benefitting from the raping of America by the globalists.

Cjh

"A war long sought and planned for is now underway. All deliberations and warnings of the United Nations notwithstanding, an overpowering military apparatus has attacked preemptively in violation of international law. No objections were heeded. The Security Council was disdained and scorned as irrelevant. As the bombs fall and the battle for Baghdad continues, the law of might prevails.

And based on this injustice, the mighty have the power to buy and reward those who might be willing and to disdain and even punish the unwilling. The words of the current American president -- "Those not with us are against us" -- weighs on current events with the resonance of barbaric times. It is hardly surprising that the rhetoric of the aggressor increasingly resembles that of his enemy. Religious fundamentalism leads both sides to abuse what belongs to all religions, taking the notion of "God" hostage in accordance with their own fanatical understanding. Even the passionate warnings of the pope, who knows from experience how lasting and devastating the disasters wrought by the mentality and actions of Christian crusaders have been, were unsuccessful.

Disturbed and powerless, but also filled with anger, we are witnessing the moral decline of the world's only superpower, burdened by the knowledge that only one consequence of this organized madness is certain: Motivation for more terrorism is being provided, for more violence and counter-violence. Is this really the United States of America, the country we fondly remember for any number of reasons? The generous benefactor of the Marshall Plan? The forbearing instructor in the lessons of democracy? The candid self-critic? The country that once made use of the teachings of the European Enlightenment to throw off its colonial masters and to provide itself with an exemplary constitution? Is this the country that made freedom of speech an incontrovertible human right?

It is not just foreigners who cringe as this ideal pales to the point where it is now a caricature of itself. There are many Americans who love their country too, people who are horrified by the betrayal of their founding values and by the hubris of those holding the reins of power. I stand with them.
--------------Gunter Grass----

har!! you're thinkin' of kbr and halliburton.

wonder if ol' cheney's been over to swing dicks with the big boys over at halliburton's ritzy new digs in the u.a.e.?

Forget it.
Some of the participants of this forum are experts in verbal villifications.
I stick to the subject of this topic.