Bush's Best Pal!

Webb
Those alleged defenseless civilians are firing upon and killing American troops on a daily basis.

those that are firing upon them (I feel for US soldiers though /not commanders/ they're just brainwashed youngsters mostly and doing what they are told to do which is their job after all) are protecting their country from foreign occupators (sorry if that word is not spelled right) - I believe I would do the same thing if US troops would be in Croatia because of FALSE allegations about WMD, only to use our oil (luckily we don't have it, but we have enormous resources of natural clean water so in 50-100 years from now, who knows...maybe suddenly we will have WMD too).

Four kids the other day, wedding ceremony in Afghanistan, four year old girl in Batajnica, Serbia, and 20 people in civil building in Aleksinac, Serbia (all 21 far far away from any military objects), as well as chinese embassy in Belgrade as a matter of fact - are NOT enemy that is firing upon. Neither journalists killed and wounded in Iraq - MUCH MORE of them by US troops then by those "evil fanatic" Iraqis...

AU1929, the official policy is shoot to kill anyone in areas in Iraq which may contain threats to American forces ..... and apologize later for the many innocent deaths.

By the same logic, perhaps the President should start bombing Los Angeles. After all, there must be some would-be threats living there.

Webb
Are these your innocent civilians?
Are these the innocent civilians you are alluding to?

from the April 28, 2004 edition

Insurgents in Iraq show signs of acting as a network

They appear to be carrying out coordinated raids and finding ways to recruit new fighters.

By Ann Scott Tyson | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON – Far from limited to a small group of "dead-enders" and Saddam "thugs" as Pentagon officials claim, the armed opposition to the US occupation in Iraq has reached the point where some experts say it threatens to become a full-fledged nationalist insurgency. Bolstered by former Iraqi military and security personnel, today's insurgents are at the least conducting increasingly sophisticated coordinated attacks. In addition, they have built networks to recruit fighters, make weapons, and funnel funds from Iraqi businesses and charitable groups, military experts say.

Perhaps most important, insurgents are now motivated primarily by nationalism and Islam, rather than by loyalty to Saddam Hussein, they say.
US commanders are weighing moving tens of thousands more US troops into Iraq - as well as additional tanks and other armor - in an effort to curb unrest expected to surround the planned June 30 transfer of power to Iraqi authorities.
"The insurgency has worsened immeasurably," says Ahmed Hashim, an Iraq expert and professor of strategic studies at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. For example, "the new insurgents showed a dramatic improvement in small-unit fighting skills" during recent violence in Sunni towns such as Fallujah, he said, testifying before Congress as a private citizen.
Coordinated attacks on convoys and troops, such as a devastating ambush in Ramadi this month that killed 12 US Marines, show insurgents in some areas are striking virtually as military units and withdrawing under covering fire, he says. "They have shown an ability to stand and fight, rather than merely to 'shoot and scoot' or 'pray and spray' as in the past."
Coupled with urban uprisings by Shiite militia that have also recruited former Iraqi enlisted soldiers and are now stockpiling weapons in mosques, the Iraqi insurgency has emerged as a multifront war for US forces nearly a year after Mr. Bush declared major combat over last May 1.
What's behind deadly month
As heavy fighting reignited this week in Fallujah and Najaf, the number of US troops killed has roughly doubled to 120 this month, the deadliest since the war began. Meanwhile, deaths among Iraqi security forces and civilians, suicide bombings, and daily insurgent attacks all show upward trends.
"The trends on the security side are almost uniformly bad," says Michael O'Hanlon, a military analyst at the Brookings Institution who has been upbeat on the prospects for postwar Iraq.
To be sure, Iraqis have seen modest economic gains and improvements in basic services, and remain cautiously hopeful about their future, polls show. Yet the deterioration in security threatens to stifle, if not roll back, tentative progress on other fronts. In the debate over what has fueled the insurgency, military experts agree on some broad missteps: Unrealistic assumptions about how Iraqis would react to the occupation, the alienation of disbanded Iraqi soldiers, and too few US troops to ensure genuine security.
"We simply did not have enough manpower to police Iraq and protect the citizens while at the same time fully engage in combating the insurgency," says Mr. Hashim.
Beginning last fall and culminating in the winter with Mr. Hussein's capture, the insurgency's composition shifted from what the Pentagon calls "former regime loyalists" to Iraqis motivated by nationalism and Islam, as clerics increasingly stepped into the local power void, experts say. In Sunni areas, disgruntled, jobless Iraqi military and intelligence personnel used their expertise in weaponry and explosives to bolster the proficiency of insurgents.
Their ranks have swollen with young men from Sunni Arab tribes that felt both disenfranchised and angered by harsh US military tactics in the Sunni Triangle. Meanwhile, an influx of small numbers of foreign terrorists and Sunni extremists willing to carry out suicide attacks served as a "force multiplier" for the insurgency.
"Sunni tribesmen ... have become the principal popular support for most of the Sunni Arab and foreign insurgents," says Kenneth Pollack, a Middle East specialist at the Brookings Institution. Like other experts, Mr. Pollack stresses the existence of a popular base of support that is sustaining Iraqi insurgents. "We should always remember Mao Zedong's parable of the sea and the fish; the people are the sea and the guerrilla is the fish, and as long as the sea is hospitable to the fish, you will never catch them all."
At the same time, Shiite clerics asserting their influence after the fall of the regime steadily built up their militia and support networks. In Baghdad's sprawling Sadr City, for example, the anti-US cleric Moqtada al Sadr moved into former Baath Party neighborhood offices and systematically recruited poor, unemployed youth with offers of money and welfare for their families.
Today, military sources say Sadr's Mahdi Army has 7,000 to 10,000 men. Iran has agents in Najaf and Karbala who are providing arms and training to various Shiite militia, the sources say.
Some low-level cooperation is underway between Shiite and Sunni insurgents, says Hashim, and Shiite militiamen from Sadr City have even infiltrated Fallujah to battle coalition forces, he adds.
To head off worse violence, experts say the US must urgently add tens of thousands of troops to the 135,000 now in Iraq in order to uproot enemy fighters and better protect Iraqi civilians.
More troops needed
The top US commander in the Middle East, Gen. John Abizaid, this month retained 20,000 troops scheduled to leave Iraq and says he may need more. Tanks and other armored vehicles, which were left at US bases when fresh troops such as the 1st Cavalry Division rotated into Iraq this spring, may now be brought into the country. "We are doing some planning for follow-on forces," said Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, this month, adding that the military may beef up existing forces by replacing some Humvees with tanks.

Bush took America into Iraq, officially, to protect America from Saddam's non-existent W.M.D.s, which later became to free Iraqis from the monstrous domination of Saddam himself.

Both objectives have been achieved, so now he and his gang are simply reverting to their true nature and committing wholesale mass-murder of innocents and protesters alike, whilst claiming they are doing it to protect Iraq from foreign terrorists.

It is the greatest tragedy that mankind has learned nothing from the second world war and such evil can repeat itself once more. This time in the once-proud name of America.

So now our military men and women are murderers according to you, right? Right up there with the German soldiers who manned the gas chambers of WWII. That is what you are implying. So my comment is simple.

Thank God I am on the other side of the political fence than you are, if this is how your side thinks about our military. And I hope at least a few of the Bush haters on this site have the guts to speak out about such idiocy that you are espousing here.

My little rodent friend, you must be incredibly naive if you believe any normal soldier would refuse to obey the orders of their military and political bosses, no matter how unjust or obscene.

All the armed forces are doing is their duty, by obeying the orders of their albeit Supreme Court appointed and unelected President.

I agree I am a rodent, but please don't you use the word friend with me. That I am not. You have effectively stated that our military personnel are no better than Hitler's henchmen who gassed better than 6 million people to death in WWII. Do I naively believe a normal soldier would refuse to obey the orders of their military bosses? I'm sure most would not. The real question is do I believe their military bosses have issued orders to perform atrocities along the lines of Germany in WWII. That I do not believe, and for you to even hint at it without a shred of proof goes a long way to discrediting anything that you have to say that might make some sense.

Coastal it's not even issue of who is right and who is wrong - you can believe in everything you want, but I assure you that in every single war, everywhere in the world, every single "wrong side", and every single "right side" was commiting terrible crimes - many of them ON PURPOSE.

I do not doubt that crimes are committed in war, on both sides. Because soldiers are human and thus subject to giving in to evil. I am only objecting to his characterizing our military as a whole as engaging in the past time of killing innocents en masse such as happened in WWII in Germany. Now if you can read what he has written and come away with a vastly different idea, please set me straight. But if you are trying to agree with his characterization of our soldiers, then maybe you and other liberals are closer than you think to the ideas expressed in the thread about Pat Tillman's being a baby killer, etc.

His statements can only be interpreted to mean our entire military, under the evil command of GWB, is engaged in genocide. Tell me I am wrong and I will certainly apologize to him for misinterpreting him. Otherwise, have the guts to ignore the fact that he too hates Bush and tell him he is wrong.

CoastalRat
Webb is like the guy who hates the police until he needs them then he cries the loudest. He decries civilian casualties but never mentions that the insurgents have such disregard for life that they use the civilian population as human shields. One for the obvious, the American soldier will be reluctant to fire at them and secondly when there are civilian causalities they can use them as a public relations tool. Al Jazzeera is always available to flash the photos and embellish the story.

I do not believe our forces are behaving like Nazis by intention, but the end result is as if they were, for many Iraqis - all of whom actually once owned the nation the President has occupied.

Today, the President effectively said that his armed forces are killing Iraqis for the benefit of Iraqis.

I heard somewhere else today that 10,000 members of the American forces have so far been MAIMED FOR LIFE in Bush's illegal invasion. If true, than Iraqis are not alone amongst the Presidential victims.

Webb
I have no great affection for our resident dummy nor do I agree or approve of the preemptive invasion of Iraq. That said however, since the die has been cast it would be catastrophic for us to cut and run, for the US, the Iraqi's and the entire middle east. As for our fighting men and women we owe them full and unbrideled support.

yeah, to be honest it's way way too much to say that USA today is like Nazi Germany, although Bush in my honest opinion has some of Hitler's thoughts, ideas and fictions...not the worst ones luckily and I don't think that Bush or Pentagon or anyone would like to kill 6 million Moslems in concentracion camps...they just want oil.

However, I don't see big difference in US acts in Iraq and Iraq acts in Kuwait for example.

In the opinion of many, the President and his gangsters set themselves humanity's lowest political standards ..... and never fail to achieve them.

Indeed, should Kerry win the coming election, it would come as no surprise to some if Bush and his administration refuse to recognize the result AGAIN and resort to their own bought and paid-for courts to find ways of delaying any handover for years, if ever ..... ignoring the Constitution and massive widespread public protests.