War in Iraq

Dear Readers
I personally agree with Drnaline and Tumbleweed. I do not have to prove who I am. I know who I am, and I have told you. It is the truth. Now, beleive whatever. Now, I would like to get back on topic, and not debate my profession with civilians or lower ranking soldiers.
Still, I am a Major General, and I wish to be addressed as Major. Please do it. I am a two star general, and am readying for my third star.
Also, I go to Iraq in two weeks.
I also, once we get this whole, 'Is Major who he says he is or not' crap resolved, I actually got some answers to your posts, and have lots of supporting details.
-Major

If you wanted to be called "Major" on a message board, perhaps you should have chosen the user name "Major"

Just a thought John P.

OK , Major - ready for the answers , let the questions about your rank , etc. pass . No problem here . I have already agreed with you on everything except your bonafides .

Good point. What all this respect bullshit. Your user name is John P.

I shall address you as John P.......Sir !

Dear Readers
I did a little research this weekend. I even called a close friend of mine. His name is General Tommy Franks. Some of you might know him, and about his book. He is a man who led many troops in Afghanistan, and I knew him briefly in Vietnam.
Anyway. We talked about Bush and the war. You all were right. Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction, the U.N and Hans Blix said there were no weapons, and the CIA never misled Bush. The CIA never said **** to Bush.
I chose to believe Mr. Bush because he addressed the Nation, the world, and my troops that there was a threat, Saddam has weapons, and we would be in the fight of our lives.
Guys, I am sorry. I was misled by Mr. Bush. I just still don't understand why Bush led us into a war with no weapons or threats present.
The books I read that suggest Bush was right, are now proven wrong. Tommy Franks disagrees with Bush highly. Franks is a four star general and has made many trips to Iraq since 2003. He knows more about Iraq than I do.
My research on the web, and my research with friend General Franks, and talking to a friend of mine who retired from the CIA a year after the Iraq war began, talked to me and set me strait. Sorry if I pissed some of you off with my bogus Bush theory and lies.
-Major

Tumbleweed, you make me laugh. Thanks.

Welcome aboard Major.

You do realize that, as a Major of America's armed forces, you could get in a whole lot of trouble for espousing "bogus Bush theory and lies" don't you?

Yes, I do know that I could get into trouble. But, I only gave you my first name and middle initial (also my username).
Besides, I am not the only Major General named John with a middle name that starts with P. There is one other.
Now, bakc on track. How many of you beleive Bush lied and why? Be truthful for I am to expose information if I get good debate starters.
-Major

I think Bush was the recipient of some poor advice.:outraged:

Bush was misled. There's nothing he can do when trusted, or formerly trusted, advisors give advice and intel. He believes it, tells us, we believe it, we all find out we were misled, we get pissed at Bush. It makes no sense.

Dear Readers
You are all correct. Bush did mislead you. I honestly don't support the war. I mean, some good things came out of it, but, the main point was to get Saddam and his weapons removed from Iraq.
Afghanistan was a good idea. It really was. But, Iraq was a diffrent story. I think that Iraq was just a family thing.
But, the point is, something good came of it. The Iraqi people are now free from tyranny, oppression, and dictatorship.
But, bad things came of the U.S. led invasion of Iraq. The Iraqi people are coming closer every day to civil war, the United States troops are pissing off the muslims and Arbas by torturing prisoners (abu Ghraib).
The terrorists blow things up and the Iraqi's start saying, hey, maybe terrorism will end if the Americans leave. They are the reason for this mess.
True.
Now, as for Iraq, I am pleased to say, troops will be cut by summer. A little over ten thousand will remain, but, some are coming home.
-Major

Misled or not , I still support the war and the troops .
I think our efforts to establish democracy in the region are just and possibly fruitful . Just the fact that elections have been held and the people are getting a good taste of democracy is a step forward . Once tasted , democracy is hard to push out .
I am not deluded enough to think democracy in Iraq will look like or act like ours , but I do think it will be established and help the people there .

http://whois.sc/209.159.213.145

The ip address that you are posting from is located in South Dakota. If that you are a Major General that is cool and all but remember we can not see you or have any other means of confirming this other than via your ip address and clues you give us in your posts.

Sorry Johnny P, you and Tommy are wrong.

Do you some proof of this or just an opinion. Not finding weapons does not constitute he did not have them. The UN also said they were not involved in Oil for food either? Guess they lied. And you believe the CIA said they never said anything then why did the whole world believe he had them?

What with the rest of the world addressing us that he had such weapons they starting saying it way before we ever did? What do you deem a WMD? What of the 18 UN resolutions? What of Congress's almost unanimus concent? What of Saddams months of time before hand to get rid of them. What of the report by the BBC (a post located on this site) of the US moving some of the weapons they did find? Nothing in the MSM, why? What was Saddam flying jumbo Jet sortys into Syria prior to the war? Some admit to 10/20 sortys a day?

Sorry, your friends are lieing to you. Your theory is still bogus, you need to provide a little more then hearsay!

I bet i could find out with the info you provide. Narrowing it down to two people is pretty good without even getting started. I gave you the benifit of the dought early on but now i believe you are suspect!

Not I. No need to explain why. Did Sklinton, Reid and countless others lie as well or just the pres? I think you are about to expose nothing. Other then hearsay of which you done a good job so far. I think you are a subvert, using the military as a guise to propogandize your ulterior motive. Care to elaborate? Will you exposee be truthfull?

So by the same token we can say bush was misled as well. By the information as the world say it, that means you too. Did you mislead your troops? If you believe Bush did then you must take responcibility for your command. Are our troops liberators or murderers? If bush lied the are murderers lead by you! Should you not resign?

Yet you still find it in yourself to draw a paycheck from your misdeed? A man of conviction are we?

Got proof? Don't forget to leave out the UN and there resolutions!

How would you know what the point is when you keep changing it?

To bad it was an illegal unjust war huh? Then was freeing europe from Germany's grip illegal too. It was Japan that attacked us remember? How many countrys have we freed since we came about for less reason then a tyrant? Were those illegal too? Your full of **** my friend IMO!

Shall i quote how many times i have heard that Iraq is on the verge of a cival war? I would say at least twenty times in the last three years, so when is going to start again? Torturing is not playing loud music, allowing women interigators, taking picks of them naked or pissing on a koran. You explain to me where we tortured them, and then provide proof. I can show you a few pics of people that were tortured but they are missing there heads. Does that quaility as torture to you? Can you privide a like source, i think not. Other then that you should STFU.

What's great about this statement is it is true, now the Iraqi's are able to have such an opinion, they are FREE to do so. But from this mess it is up to the Iraqi people to chance it. We gave them the chance it is up to them to see what they do with it. Not us. We have seen what Japan, Germany, Turkey, South Korea, and many countless others have done with such a gift. We should not expect different from them, If they want it? The answer remains to be seen. From your responce so far i know what you wish would happen there and you are a sick man. You agenda is plain for all to see, and believe me we see you for what you are.

It amazes how easy his tune was changed once he talked to a supposed friend. Being friends you would think they had some sort of relationship coming all the way from Nam and stuff? I must also guess that he must have some sneaky alterior motive to deny his IP address, either that or he is that nieve of internet process and how it can be traced?

Here is one for you major.
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=49221
Surprise, surprise! Saddam had WMDs after all
? 2006 WorldNetDaily.com


I don't know if I have any readers devoted enough to remember what I wrote in my column here on Jan. 7, so I'm not above telling you myself: I predicted we'd be learning that Saddam Hussein's WMDs were "slipped across the border into Syria."

Now, it's just a few weeks later, and we have in fact learned that was the case. I'm neither prophet nor genius on this stuff, and if I was catching on long before the first days of January, so were other people. Now we have enough increased evidence and detail to declare mystery solved.

The new mystery is why the politicians and the news media are taking scant notice.

If what's being learned isn't news, well what is? Even rumors about this would deserve notice bigger than these facts are getting. Has the definition of news become just the bits that fit an ideological agenda? Are raw facts off the menu?

By now, of course, you've heard of the verified audio tapes revealing Saddam Hussein in his palace meetings discussing his WMDs and ways to hide evidence and smuggle them over the Syrian border in the final weeks before the U.S. military came calling in earnest.

What? No! Don't tell me you haven't heard!

Right now, if I needn't say this to you, there are lots of people who do need to hear it from you. The truth is, a recently commissioned poll by the respected TIPP organization shows that no more than 20 percent of the public are even aware of the existence of these tapes showing that pre-war intelligence about Saddam's WMDs was correct all along!

Why aren't we hearing playback with voice-over translation and maybe some artsy graphics as we did with certain past events in Iraq that had the major media frenzied? My hunch is that it relates to there being no kind of pornographic element to juice the story. Then again, those old Nixon White House tapes and these recent pre-Katrina tapes evidencing too-casual official preparedness had none either – yet they got plenty of broadcast repetition. So is this story beyond big media's appetite just because its bad guy Saddam doesn't happen to be anybody they're itching to bring down?

OK, so we have only audio of Saddam's conferences, no video. But just put it on TV with graphics or stock footage and folks will watch – and appropriately watch in some shock and awe!

This is of pivotal historic importance (especially if you take seriously the idea that "Bush lied" as some of the media have all but engraved in stone), and what "everybody" knows someday (after enough expos?s by the likes of The History Channel) won't help a citizenry who need to know right now. I'm sure I'm not the only one who sees something catastrophically wrong here, and we'd better make some loud noise and make it immediately. Contacts with elected representatives, rage calls to corporate media switchboards, talk radio, letters to the editor …all will count for something now.

Facts known are growing more numerous, and from reputable sources, but they now include:


That the United States has uncovered some 12 hours of Saddam Hussein palace audiotapes – since authenticated by FBI methodology – with discussions by familiar voices like Tariq Aziz and others including Saddam himself about what to do with their WMD stockpiles and resources.

That Russian Spetsnaz (special forces) units evidently helped Saddam's military in secreting away – mostly into Syria – WMD that had first been purchased from Russia. Former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense John Shaw recently declared after lots of inquiry that the Russians' goal had been to erase any signs of their involvement in Saddam's WMD programs. On this point, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney has been quoted as believing the Bush administration needs Russia's involvement now in halting Iran's rush toward nuclear armament and so must resist information damning to Russia.

That two different former high-ranking Iraqi military officers – Gen. Georges Sada, the No. 2 ranking officer with the Iraqi Air Force, and Ali Ibrahim, another Iraqi commander – both assert that that Saddam possessed stockpiles of WMD and transported them out of Iraq by converted 747 passenger jet and by land to be hidden inside Syria.
It's not my point here that I (along with countless others) was right about Saddam slipping WMD evidence across the border into Syria. – As I wrote here months ago, "It doesn't take a genius to figure that out." No, the louder discussion now needs to be about the neglect of this new information in our public discourse. Both the mainstream political leaders and the mainstream media are oddly muted or downright silent about the details we're learning.

Why? By now, does anyone still imagine that ignoring inconvenient facts can make them just go away?

The conventional wisdom has been settled around the idea that Saddam Hussein had no WMDs, so President Bush now has only the good riddance of Saddam and the better life of Iraqis left as a way to justify the decision to make war back in 2003. And this has made "Bush lied, people died" seem just a tad less loony a mantra for copyright by the left.

Amazingly, given what's being revealed, nobody has yet laid a glove on the conventional wisdom. But people do catch on and make up their own minds about things like this. If you check the percentages of Americans who believe Lee Harvey Oswald was not JFK's lone assassin or that UFOs are indeed extraterrestrials' vehicles, it's obvious that the "official line" on a subject does not always become what "everyone knows."


But what "everyone knows" doesn't matter; it' the way everyone acts, and this is a dreadful problem if failure to act risks our national security. If the president and members of the Congress timidly act as if the justification for making war on Saddam was only that the Iraqi people are better off now, public debate will be distorted. It is the mainstream news media's duty to point unblinkingly to the fact of Saddam's WMDs being smuggled into Syria. If they in their wisdom prefer – for whatever imaginable combination of reasons – to soft pedal the information, then we "small fry" are duty-bound to bellow about it as I do here and now.

A nation may survive or succumb based on its conventional wisdom. And each of us has a personal part in shaping it just by what we bother to mention, or refuse to let go by unchallenged, in our passing conversations with random fellow citizens. This is an art not to be forgotten as we accept life within urban masses as more likely for most of us than life in any sort of Mayberry. Can you respectfully tell a fellow traveler, say, on a commuter bus or awaiting service at a deli counter, that you've heard contrary to what you just heard him mention? DO IT!

On Manhattan subways, when I was a Columbia undergraduate, it often impressed me when my fellow "strap hangers" would do this back in the late '50s. It remained friendly, but it was authentically spirited. This kind of open exchange between strangers is one of the "vital signs" of a healthy free society. May God bless all who keep this sport participatory, and let's you and I work to keep ourselves counted among them.

In the days ahead, the erroneous conventional wisdom about Saddam's WMDs needs to be squarely in our cross hairs. Tell your friends and neighbors. "THERE WERE WMDs IN IRAQ!"

Dear Drnaline
Ok. I beleive that there was weapons of mass destruction now. I never heard anything about uncovering weapons on the news or on the base. Sorry. I now bow down to your wisdom.
Now, I apologize for saying Bush is a liar, and bladdy blah. Disregard any of my posts about the war in Iraq. I have yet to go there, and I am waiting.
Also, can I ask that you please show me some respect? I am not asking you to show me respect cause of my rank, but show me respect as an individual please. I really don't like people asking me to shut the **** up. Also, please lets disregard any of my announcements.
If you choose to not beleive I am a Major General, that is fine. But, I still ask to be called a major.
Also, as for Brent's post about me living in South Dakota or something, I don't. I live in Washington D.C.
I don't want to argue with you guys anymore.
Please, stick with the main post and debate that. I don't understand why debate is turned into a debate on my military status, place of residence, and my rank. I am not a liar, I am true, and I am tired of debating this.
-Major