3
   

Who Lost Iraq?

 
 
Monte Cargo
 
  1  
Reply Wed 15 Nov, 2006 11:23 pm
Setanta wrote:
LoneStarMadam wrote:
Oh, & "leave the Constitution alone" If you're not telling me to not speak to it, what are you saying?


I'm telling you that you demonstrate all too obviously that you don't know **** about the Constitution, in the first place, and that you're making **** up when you say that Congress ceded its war-making power, in the second place. You can run your mouth and prove you're a fool to your heart's content, and you can expect to have it pointed out.

I note that you have not provided a shred of evidence to support that horseshit statement. I'll bet you're a Freeper. But here, unlike FreeRepublic, you'll get called on to provide evidence for your statements, and if you can't provide it, you'll be taken for a loud-mouth bullshit artist.

As for Wesley Ellis . . . no, i don't read cowboy fiction, i've got better ways to spend my time.

I must say, your articulation skills show such eloquence and statesmanship...sort of like a Steve Buscemi scene out of Fargo, but you kind of wish it was really Steve Buscemi. Razz

I think your point was something like "Impeach Bush for his illegal war."

I am going to go out on a limb here and suggest that you probably voted for Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996. Remember that little thing called Bosnia? Well then? Perhaps another string of profanity laced explicatives will accompany your explanation of the Constitution and that little conflict.

Harry S. Truman, another democrat, led U.S. forces into the Korean conflict in the 1950s. Arrow Ooh. No Congressional declaration of war...You can't impeach him, because he was a democrat, and worse, you can't impeach him for Truman's illegal war because Truman is dead.

Anyone with a modicum of understanding of U.S. history can find many examples of presidents leading troops into action without first obtaining the blessing of Congress (or the United Nations). Idea

The leftist point of view is that the executive branch should be the weakest of the three branches with the judiciary the strongest, especially when a republican is in office. Shocked

I submit, with some confidence, that LoneStar isn't the poster in the most danger of being taken for, now how did you put it?...a loud mouth bullshit artist.
0 Replies
 
McTag
 
  1  
Reply Thu 16 Nov, 2006 02:25 am
Welcome, Monte Cargo. The Right on these threads needs another good writer, because most of them have slunk away, having been proved wrong over Bush and the Iraq invasion.
On American History I defer to those better equipped to answer your points, and I look forward with interest to that exchange.
0 Replies
 
McTag
 
  1  
Reply Thu 16 Nov, 2006 04:34 am
LoneStarMadam wrote:
Remaining backswoodsman? What makes you think they'll go back? The trailer trash from Arkansas didn't go back, they swindeled the US taxpayer out of funds to make their house payment in NY, now one of them is the senator from NY. lol


It's astonishing how often an attack on Bush and his supporters, even from a foreigner like me, is countered by a diatribe against the Clintons.

Illogical of course; but the well of hatred seems to be bottomless and inexhaustible.
0 Replies
 
spendius
 
  1  
Reply Thu 16 Nov, 2006 04:56 am
McTag wrote-

Quote:
The Right on these threads needs another good writer, because most of them have slunk away, having been proved wrong over Bush and the Iraq invasion.


Before you can say "proved wrong" you have to consider possible eventualities had the Iraq invasion not taken place. The alternatives would not be nothing.

The war was voted for in the US and the UK by a large consensus of elected representitives.

The "Right" may well have decided that it is pointless to debate with statements like the one quoted on the grounds of its naivety.
0 Replies
 
blatham
 
  1  
Reply Thu 16 Nov, 2006 06:14 am
spendius wrote:
McTag wrote-

Quote:
The Right on these threads needs another good writer, because most of them have slunk away, having been proved wrong over Bush and the Iraq invasion.


Before you can say "proved wrong" you have to consider possible eventualities had the Iraq invasion not taken place. The alternatives would not be nothing.

The war was voted for in the US and the UK by a large consensus of elected representitives.

The "Right" may well have decided that it is pointless to debate with statements like the one quoted on the grounds of its naivety.


The alternatives would not be nothing, as you say. What would they be?

A vote of a majority of elected representatives tells us exactly what, as regards real states of affairs? And if you wish to grant authoritative status to such communal opinion, where does that leave you now that a contemporary survey of the opinions of those same people shows an opposite result? Which isn't even to account for the "votes" of those whom they represent.

Naivety is a charge as easy to insert in a conversation as any butter-smeared thing.
0 Replies
 
blatham
 
  1  
Reply Thu 16 Nov, 2006 06:20 am
On the topic of naivety...

Let's bomb the world into conflagration... the American Enterprise Institute, neoconservativism and pathologically insane people sitting at desks

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3602&page=0
0 Replies
 
snood
 
  1  
Reply Thu 16 Nov, 2006 06:55 am
Blatham, you sir are a steely-eyed dragon slayer - and I salute you.
0 Replies
 
spendius
 
  1  
Reply Thu 16 Nov, 2006 06:58 am
blatham wrote-

Quote:
The alternatives would not be nothing, as you say. What would they be?


I hardly think any of us are in a position to provide an answer to that. There will be factors that we don't know about.

We elect Governments and we pay for the departments of state. What real alternative do we have except to trust them.

A vote of a majority of elected representatives is not comparable with a contemporary survey of the opinions of those same people. And, as I remember, the vote was overwhelming.

I remain convinced that the statement-

Quote:
The Right on these threads needs another good writer, because most of them have slunk away, having been proved wrong over Bush and the Iraq invasion.


is naive. The fact that it is easy to insert in a conversation is neither here nor there. Saying that people have been proved wrong about Mr Bush's administration's Iraq policy is just as easy.

Our Governments have taken us to war and I think we should fight it. The alternative hardly bears thinking about.

Who has been right or wrong is of no consequence. It is Nov 16 2006 and time goes forward from where we are now.

What do you suggest Bernie?
0 Replies
 
LoneStarMadam
 
  1  
Reply Thu 16 Nov, 2006 08:05 am
McTag wrote:
LoneStarMadam wrote:
Remaining backswoodsman? What makes you think they'll go back? The trailer trash from Arkansas didn't go back, they swindeled the US taxpayer out of funds to make their house payment in NY, now one of them is the senator from NY. lol


It's astonishing how often an attack on Bush and his supporters, even from a foreigner like me, is countered by a diatribe against the Clintons.

Illogical of course; but the well of hatred seems to be bottomless and inexhaustible.


What? You don't appreciate history in your country? If you have a sleaze bag for a "leader" you just sweep him/her under the rug & pretend he/she doesn't exist?
Now, to make this simple for you, I used the Clintons (funny you recognized them from my discription of "trailer trash" lol ) as a way of saying they don't always go back home.
I lived in your wonderful country for 10+ years. I got there in the year of "Englands winter of discontent" when you had your own bad boy , Jimmy Callahan, & he was knighted for his ineptness. Then Maggie came in & you guys had several years of decent gov't. See what remembering the good, the bad, & the ugly can do. Maybe you should look back at some of Englands follys too. Rolling Eyes
0 Replies
 
McTag
 
  1  
Reply Thu 16 Nov, 2006 08:12 am
spendius wrote:

I remain convinced that the statement-

Quote:
The Right on these threads needs another good writer, because most of them have slunk away, having been proved wrong over Bush and the Iraq invasion.


is naive. The fact that it is easy to insert in a conversation is neither here nor there. Saying that people have been proved wrong about Mr Bush's administration's Iraq policy is just as easy.


Yes it's easy now, with the benefit of hindsight, and was easy also in the "Shock and Awe" days- Afghanistan I know, but the approach is the same.

Spendius wrote:
Who has been right or wrong is of no consequence. It is Nov 16 2006 and time goes forward from where we are now.


"Okay officer, I smashed the store window with a brick, and my pockets are full of loot, it's true. But hey, we are where we are. Let's move on".
0 Replies
 
LoneStarMadam
 
  1  
Reply Thu 16 Nov, 2006 08:14 am
Monte Cargo wrote:
Setanta wrote:
LoneStarMadam wrote:
Oh, & "leave the Constitution alone" If you're not telling me to not speak to it, what are you saying?


I'm telling you that you demonstrate all too obviously that you don't know **** about the Constitution, in the first place, and that you're making **** up when you say that Congress ceded its war-making power, in the second place. You can run your mouth and prove you're a fool to your heart's content, and you can expect to have it pointed out.

I note that you have not provided a shred of evidence to support that horseshit statement. I'll bet you're a Freeper. But here, unlike FreeRepublic, you'll get called on to provide evidence for your statements, and if you can't provide it, you'll be taken for a loud-mouth bullshit artist.

As for Wesley Ellis . . . no, i don't read cowboy fiction, i've got better ways to spend my time.

I must say, your articulation skills show such eloquence and statesmanship...sort of like a Steve Buscemi scene out of Fargo, but you kind of wish it was really Steve Buscemi. Razz

I think your point was something like "Impeach Bush for his illegal war."

I am going to go out on a limb here and suggest that you probably voted for Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996. Remember that little thing called Bosnia? Well then? Perhaps another string of profanity laced explicatives will accompany your explanation of the Constitution and that little conflict.

Harry S. Truman, another democrat, led U.S. forces into the Korean conflict in the 1950s. Arrow Ooh. No Congressional declaration of war...You can't impeach him, because he was a democrat, and worse, you can't impeach him for Truman's illegal war because Truman is dead.

Anyone with a modicum of understanding of U.S. history can find many examples of presidents leading troops into action without first obtaining the blessing of Congress (or the United Nations). Idea

The leftist point of view is that the executive branch should be the weakest of the three branches with the judiciary the strongest, especially when a republican is in office. Shocked

I submit, with some confidence, that LoneStar isn't the poster in the most danger of being taken for, now how did you put it?...a loud mouth bullshit artist.

You summed it all up beautifully, much better than my weak & inept, "Congress ceded their powers of declaring war to the president" did.
Nice to have another poster that understands the Constitution. :wink:
0 Replies
 
dyslexia
 
  1  
Reply Thu 16 Nov, 2006 08:16 am
LoneStarMadam wrote:
Monte Cargo wrote:
Setanta wrote:
LoneStarMadam wrote:
Oh, & "leave the Constitution alone" If you're not telling me to not speak to it, what are you saying?


I'm telling you that you demonstrate all too obviously that you don't know **** about the Constitution, in the first place, and that you're making **** up when you say that Congress ceded its war-making power, in the second place. You can run your mouth and prove you're a fool to your heart's content, and you can expect to have it pointed out.

I note that you have not provided a shred of evidence to support that horseshit statement. I'll bet you're a Freeper. But here, unlike FreeRepublic, you'll get called on to provide evidence for your statements, and if you can't provide it, you'll be taken for a loud-mouth bullshit artist.

As for Wesley Ellis . . . no, i don't read cowboy fiction, i've got better ways to spend my time.

I must say, your articulation skills show such eloquence and statesmanship...sort of like a Steve Buscemi scene out of Fargo, but you kind of wish it was really Steve Buscemi. Razz

I think your point was something like "Impeach Bush for his illegal war."

I am going to go out on a limb here and suggest that you probably voted for Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996. Remember that little thing called Bosnia? Well then? Perhaps another string of profanity laced explicatives will accompany your explanation of the Constitution and that little conflict.

Harry S. Truman, another democrat, led U.S. forces into the Korean conflict in the 1950s. Arrow Ooh. No Congressional declaration of war...You can't impeach him, because he was a democrat, and worse, you can't impeach him for Truman's illegal war because Truman is dead.

Anyone with a modicum of understanding of U.S. history can find many examples of presidents leading troops into action without first obtaining the blessing of Congress (or the United Nations). Idea

The leftist point of view is that the executive branch should be the weakest of the three branches with the judiciary the strongest, especially when a republican is in office. Shocked

I submit, with some confidence, that LoneStar isn't the poster in the most danger of being taken for, now how did you put it?...a loud mouth bullshit artist.

You summed it all up beautifully, much better than my weak & inept, "Congress ceded their powers of declaring war to the president" did.
Nice to have another poster that understands the Constitution. :wink:

lol
0 Replies
 
LoneStarMadam
 
  1  
Reply Thu 16 Nov, 2006 08:20 am
Idea "lol", hey, that's spelled the same way frontwards & backwards, dyslexia is no problem there. lol
0 Replies
 
McGentrix
 
  1  
Reply Thu 16 Nov, 2006 08:26 am
It seems i am not alone in my belief that American morality is making us lose the war in Iraq.
_________________________________________________________

ARABIAN NIGHTMARES
IRAQ'S BUTCHERS EXPLOIT OUR MORALITY

November 15, 2006 -- YESTERDAY, 80 terrorists in police uniforms raided an Iraqi research institute in Baghdad, rounded up 100-plus male students, loaded them into vehicles in broad daylight and drove away.

They couldn't have pulled it off without the complicity of key elements within the Iraqi security services and the government: "our guys."

The students probably will be executed and dumped somewhere. Partly for the crime of wanting to study and build a future, but primarily just to step up the level of terror yet again.

Apart from highlighting the type of regime of which both Shia and Sunni Arab extremists dream - a land of disciplined ignorance and slavish devotion - the mass kidnapping also highlights the feebleness of our attempts to overcome ruthless enemies with generosity and good manners.

With Iraqi society decomposing - or, at best, reverting to a medieval state with cell phones - the debate in Washington over whether to try to save the day by deploying more troops or withdrawing some is of secondary relevance.

What really matters is what our forces are ordered - and permitted - to do. With political correctness permeating our government and even the upper echelons of the military, we never tried the one technique that has a solid track record of defeating insurgents if applied consistently: the rigorous imposition of public order.

That means killing the bad guys. Not winning their hearts and minds, placating them or bringing them into the government. Killing them.

If you're not willing to lay down a rule that any Iraqi or foreign terrorist masquerading as a security official or military member will be shot, you can't win. And that's just one example of the type of sternness this sort of fight requires.

With the situation in Iraq deteriorating daily, sending more troops would simply offer our enemies more targets - unless we decided to use our soldiers and Marines for the primary purpose for which they exist: To fight.

Of course, we've made a decisive shift in our behavior difficult. After empowering a sectarian regime before imposing order in the streets, we would have to defy an elected government. Leading voices in the Baghdad regime - starting with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki - would demand that we halt any serious effort to defeat Shia militias and eliminate their death squads.

Killing Sunni Arabs would be fine, of course. The Maliki government's reason for being is to promote Shia power.

Reportedly, our CentCom commander, Gen. George Abizaid, just had a "come to Jesus meeting" (metaphor fully intended) with Maliki, warning him that our continued support is contingent on the government moving to impose public order and protect all of Iraq's people. The result is predictable: A few law-enforcement gestures by daylight, some reshuffled government appointments - and more sectarian killing.

From the Iraqi perspective, we're of less and less relevance. They're sure we'll leave. And every faction is determined to do as much damage as possible to the other before we go. Our troops have become human shields for our enemies.

To master Iraq now - if it could be done - we'd have to fight every faction except the Kurds. Are we willing to do that? Are we willing to kill mass murderers and cold-blooded executioners on the spot?

If not, we can't win, no matter what else we do.

Arrest them? We've tried that. Iraq's judges are so partisan or so terrified (or both) that they release the worst thugs within weeks - sometimes within days.

How would you like to be one of Iraq's handful of relatively honest cops knowing that any terrorist or sectarian butcher you bust is going to be back on the block before your next payday? And yeah, they know where you live.

Our "humanity" is cowardice masquerading as morality. We're protecting self-appointed religious executioners with our emphasis on a "universal code of behavior" that only exists in our fantasies. By letting the thugs run the streets, we've abandoned the millions of Iraqis who really would prefer peaceful lives and a modicum of progress.

We're blind to the fundamental moral travesty in Iraq (and elsewhere): Spare the killers in the name of human rights, and you deprive the overwhelming majority of the population of their human rights. Instead of being proud of ourselves for our "moral superiority," we should be ashamed to the depths of our souls.

We're not really the enemy of the terrorists, militiamen and insurgents. We're their enablers. In the end, the future of Iraq will be determined by its people. The question is, which people?

Our naive version of wartime morality handed Iraq to the murderers. Will our excuse for a sectarian bloodbath be that we "behaved with restraint?"

Any code of ethics that squanders the lives of tens of thousands and the future of millions so we can "claim the moral high ground" is hypocrisy worthy of the Europeans who made excuses for the Holocaust.

If we want to give Iraq's silent - and terrified - majority a last chance, we would have to accept the world's condemnation for killing the killers. If we are unwilling to do that, Iraq's finished.
0 Replies
 
LoneStarMadam
 
  1  
Reply Thu 16 Nov, 2006 08:36 am
"Are we willing to kill mass murderers...."
We should be. Terrorists do not understand anything but brutality.
I have heard & read many times, "If we had not invaded, if we just talked to them, etc., etc.", yeah right, it would be the same as 'talking to a rabid dog' & they hated us before we invaded, 911 proved that.
0 Replies
 
spendius
 
  1  
Reply Thu 16 Nov, 2006 08:45 am
And those in Iraq who support our side daren't come out to support us because they fear our pussyfooting will leave them high and dry if we even talk of pulling out.

McTag wrote-

Quote:
"Okay officer, I smashed the store window with a brick, and my pockets are full of loot, it's true. But hey, we are where we are. Let's move on".


The comparison is ridiculous. The war was voted for by an overwhelming majority of both our elected representitives and is thus legal. They didn't vote to legalise smashing store windows.

Every questioning of our position strengthens the morale of our enemies and weakens our own. They don't do bleeding heart.

What is our military for if not to fight, as McGentrix said, for what their political leaders tell them to.
0 Replies
 
LoneStarMadam
 
  1  
Reply Thu 16 Nov, 2006 08:56 am
spendius wrote:
And those in Iraq who support our side daren't come out to support us because they fear our pussyfooting will leave them high and dry if we even talk of pulling out.

McTag wrote-

Quote:
"Okay officer, I smashed the store window with a brick, and my pockets are full of loot, it's true. But hey, we are where we are. Let's move on".


The comparison is ridiculous. The war was voted for by an overwhelming majority of both our elected representitives and is thus legal. They didn't vote to legalise smashing store windows.

Every questioning of our position strengthens the morale of our enemies and weakens our own. They don't do bleeding heart.

What is our military for if not to fight, as McGentrix said, for what their political leaders tell them to.


BRAVO!!!!!
0 Replies
 
McTag
 
  1  
Reply Thu 16 Nov, 2006 09:37 am
spendius wrote:
And those in Iraq who support our side daren't come out to support us because they fear our pussyfooting will leave them high and dry if we even talk of pulling out.

McTag wrote-

Quote:
"Okay officer, I smashed the store window with a brick, and my pockets are full of loot, it's true. But hey, we are where we are. Let's move on".


The comparison is ridiculous. The war was voted for by an overwhelming majority of both our elected representitives and is thus legal. They didn't vote to legalise smashing store windows.

Every questioning of our position strengthens the morale of our enemies and weakens our own. They don't do bleeding heart.

What is our military for if not to fight, as McGentrix said, for what their political leaders tell them to.


No accountability at that level then? We can accept the 600,000 dead as an unimportant statistic? And this expenditure of life and treasure has achieved precisely what?
As I remember, at Nuremberg it was not the military who were tried, it was their leaders.
And as for "our enemies", we seem to have a hell of a lot more of them now since GWB got the armed forces to play with.
0 Replies
 
joefromchicago
 
  1  
Reply Thu 16 Nov, 2006 09:56 am
McGentrix wrote:
It seems i am not alone in my belief that American morality is making us lose the war in Iraq.

That's ok. It was a departure from American morality that got us involved in the war in the first place.
0 Replies
 
spendius
 
  1  
Reply Thu 16 Nov, 2006 10:34 am
An explanation of American morality might be in order before any weight might be attributed to that remark.
0 Replies
 
 

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