Open Letter to Bubba

I disagree that Iraq is the mess you are determined to see it as,

Doesn't appear to me me you caught the meaning of what I posted there,

I Didn't? What did your first statement mean then ??

or, at any rate, even if you did catch the meaning, your response is completely non sequitur.

Okaaaaay, but I'm sure this war is not going as you perdicted. It is, however, going exactly the way the people that opposed it said it would go. So I think it would be conservative of me to listen to them.

And what about Francis Fukuyama?

Amigo - thats some story. Damn.

timberlandko wrote:

Anybody who enjoys, applauds, and celebrates war is a fool. Anyone surprised that those who have experienced war might experience negative repercussions from the experience not only is a fool but also is a fool who has never experienced war.

As if being in the miltary gives one a balanced view of war. Ever figure out why we don't let the generals decide when and how to go to war?

Col. DOUGLAS MacGREGOR, U.S. Army (Ret.): We rebuilt the Army for the war we thought we wanted to fight. That was the war in central Europe against the Russians. And we said, "We don't ever want to fight another counterinsurgency. We don't want to go to another place like Vietnam."

NARRATOR: Over the years, they gradually took control and codified it into one particular doctrine. Designed to keep the military out of unwinnable quagmires and bring decisive force to bear, it would be named after one of its strongest champions, Colin Powell.

THOMAS WHITE: All of us were Vietnam veterans, and this business of the Powell doctrine was, "We're not going to do Vietnam again." And what we did in Vietnam is we kind of went in in an uncommitted way.

Gen. JOSEPH P. HOAR, Commander, CENTCOM, 1991-'94: The key thing is that you- you first of all have a clearly defined mission. It's not open-ended. You don't go there and do some things, you go to liberate Kuwait, is the great example of this. You have the support of the American people. The American people think that this is a meritorious task, that what we're doing is the right thing, that we're the United States of America, and we're contributing to stability, to peace, to democracy, whatever, that you have enough forces to do the job, that you don't do it piecemeal. Those are really the key elements of it.

NARRATOR: And then, just three weeks before the invasion of Iraq was to begin, General Shinseki was forced to take his internal fight with Secretary Rumsfeld public.

Sen. CARL LEVIN (D), Michigan: General Shinseki, could you give us some idea as to the magnitude of the Army's force requirement for an occupation of Iraq, following a successful completion of the war?

Gen. ERIC SHINSEKI, Army Chief of Staff, '98-'03: In specific numbers, I would have to rely on combatant commanders' exact requirements, but I think-

Sen. CARL LEVIN: How about a range?

Gen. ERIC SHINSEKI: I would say that what's been mobilized to this point, something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers are probably, you know, a figure that would be required. We're talking about post-hostilities control over a piece of geography that's fairly significant, with the kinds of ethnic tensions that could lead to other problems. And so it takes a significant ground force presence.

THOMAS WHITE, Secretary of the Army, 2001-'03: So the next morning, I get a call from Wolfowitz, who is upset that Shinseki would give this number. And I forget exactly what I said, but I said, "Well, he's an expert. He was asked. He has a fundamental responsibility to answer the questions and offer his professional opinion, which he did. And there was some basis to the opinion because he is a relative expert on the subject." So a week later-

INTERVIEWER: So what does Wolfowitz say when you say that? I mean, that's-

THOMAS WHITE: Well, he's- he's- they're mad. They're upset.

REPORTER: Army chief of staff General Shinseki said it would take several hundred thousand troops on the ground-

DONALD RUMSFELD: There's so many variables that it is not knowable. It is- however, I will say this. What is, I think, reasonably certain is the idea that it would take several hundred thousand U.S. forces I think is far from the mark.

PAUL WOLFOWITZ, Deputy Secretary of Defense: It's hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam's security forces and his army. Hard to imagine.

THOMAS WHITE: All of us in the Army felt just the opposite, that there was a long history of that being absolutely true, that the defeat of the Iraqi military would be a relatively straightforward operation of fairly short duration, but that the securing of the peace and the security of a country of 25 million people spread out over an enormous geographic area would be a tremendous challenge that would take a lot of people, a lot of labor, to be done right.

PAUL WOLFOWITZ: In short, we don't know what the requirement will be, but we can say with reasonable confidence that the notion of hundreds of thousands of American troops is way off the mark.

THOMAS WHITE: So they discredit Shinseki. Then a week later, I get in front of the same committee. I get asked- I see Senator Levin before the hearing starts, and he says, "I'm going to ask you the same question." I said, "Good." I said, "You're going to get the same answer." And so he asked me the question, and I- exactly the same answer. And you know, and at that point, Shinseki and White are not on the team, right? We don't get it. We don't understand this thing, and we are not on the team. And therefore, you know, actions are going to be taken.

Amigo - thats some story. Damn.

Old news, and not a secret. Who DIDN'T want Saddam gone?

Lamentable spelling however. Coarse? COURSE.