Tommy Franks: Bush has eye on the ball, Kerry doesn't

Kerry's lie about Tora Bora and the outsourcing myth was and is disgusting. For him to conclusively make these statements with no proof whatsoever is just a baseless slam on our Armed Forces. How can ANYBODY say that Kerry is pro-troops when he constantly derides their accomplishments and belittles their successes? This is the same man that is undercutting their morale by mindlessly droning on about 'wrong war wrong place wrong time'. Is this leadership? No, it is irresponsible political trash -- trash that Kerry has been generating since the 70's.

Franks did the right thing here by rebutting Kerry's malicious lies.

 

Oh so you guys caught Osama? No?
I'm sorry, so you didn't catch Osama?
So he is still at large?
But you "kept your eye on the ball"?

W: Sept. 17, 2001 "Wanted Dead or Alive"

W: March 13, 2002. " I don't know where [bin Laden] is... he he I truly am not that concerned about him."

Sorry General, that's crap.

 

Sorry, Georgie, but "irresponsible politicial trash" is lying about a threat in order to get the country to support an invasion and occupation of another country.

And your boy Dubya is a master of "irresponsible political trash". The only difference is that Dubya's irresponsible political trash causes innocent people to die

 

I am sure that GWB misheard God when it came to killing OBL in the Tora Boras. Its not W's fault that he born with a listening defect.

 

I always thought that Kerry's quote "outsourcing" the Tora Bora battle was an attempt at a quirky accusation that fell flat. Not because of the subject, just using the word 'outsourcing' was kind of lame.

Look, the administration and commanders of the Afghan war relied on using Taliban resistance guerillas because it kept our boys out of harm's way. Lower casualties for our boys means the war doesn't lag in popularity back home. This was agreed upon by any number of military and civilian leaders and analysts back in 2001/2002.

Furthermore, whether or not OBL was at Tora Bora, tons of Taliban and AQ escaped into Pakistan, including important leaders because they left the fighting up to Afghani guerillas who were 1)inferior soldiers and 2) could be bribed. In hindsight this was a huge mistake and everybody knows it. Instead we had to rely on the Pakistan army to round them up after they escped across the border which has met with very mixed success.

But everything is clear in hindsight; Kerry was trying to find a chink in W's armor and it didn't work with this outsourcing comment. Leaving the Tora Bora battle to the Afghan resistance was indeed a mistake, but it's exactly the same kind of mistake Kerry would have made if he were CIC.

I definitely agree; we absolutely should not withdraw anybody and we should in fact add as many troops as we can, including as many as we can from other nations. But what is Franks' point here? Has Kerry ever made withdrawl of troops part of his platform?

Yep. So what were those numbers again? 10,000 in Afghanistan and 150,000 in Iraq? Oh, regarding those 150,000 US soldiers in Iraq fighting and dying every day- what the **** does it have to do with the war on terror?!? And why weren't they used for the real war on terror?

Yep. That's why you definitely should not vote for George Bush. This administration has been dishonest about the reasons this war was waged, and spun this war onto it's head, denying reality at every turn. Oh, but they do have consistency down- even when their plans are failing miserably, they stick to them.

Yep. So, if that's true, why did we invade Iraq? We have 150,000 troops fighting and dying for a war that was begun with no connection to the war on terror. Oh, wait-

Why, ironically, yes!! Now that Iraq has been destabilized, it has opened up a theater of operations for Zarqawi and an influx of foreign terrorists to kill and spread hatred. So, yeah, we better win this one, because if we don't, the country will dissolve into civil war, and where we once had a bloody secular dictatorship we'll have huge religious factions slaughtering each other by the thousands, spreading fundamentalist hate (particularly towards the US which created the mess) and raising new generations of terrorists.

Uhhhhhhmmmmm. Okay, Tommy.
________________________________________

Anyway, this piece offers very little substance other than to say that the general supports Bush. He offers up weak points with nothing to back them up whatsoever.

It's worth repeating that General Tommy Franks himself said that they did not go in with enough troops to keep the peace after Sadaam was deposed, and were not prepared for the insurgency that came afterward.

Not only did W start an unnecessary war, he did it with a bad plan. But he has his eye on the ball.

I hope and pray that we succeed in suppressing the Iraqi insurgency and in having nationwide elections create a secular democracy for the Iraqi people that ushers in a new era of peace and prosperity. But W ain't getting my vote. And he doesn't have his eye on the ball.

 

All Franks does is bring out the fact that it is unknown that OBL was in Tora Bora. Kerry is overstating the case on that one. It's not a major overstatement, because IT MAY BE TRUE.

 

Kerry never slammed our armed forces. You're twisting this around. It was a slam on the leadership, always was.

The accusation is not baseless. It was a mistake to leave the majority of the fighting at Tora Bora up to the Afghan resistance. They allowed many Taliban and AQ fighters to escape.

Frankly, I think Kerry's criticism is misplaced because in my opinion he would have done the same thing; it's hypocritical.

When you twist around criticism of leadership to say it's criticism of the actual troops on the ground, then you get to call anybody who dares criticize our leaders as unamerican and anti-troops. It's not true.

 

Shabam!

Sad but true.

 

TJ excels at this...

 

"I don’t do politics" Tommy Franks, The New Yorker, 6-20-2003


Flip flop!

Anyway, I'll see your Franks and raise you a Zinni!

 

Either you're understanding of basic analogies is way out of whack or your understanding of reality as we know it is way out of whack.

I guess your scenario is plausible, but certainly not an analogy for the Tora Bora accusation.

 

Oops!

Pentagon exaggerated risk posed by Iraq: US senator

11 minutes ago Politics - AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A senior Democratic senator released a report alleging that the US Pentagon exaggerated the military risks posed by Iraq before the US-led war there to support a decision already taken by the White House to invade the country.

In a statement, Senator Carl Levin, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said a months-long probe conducted by his staff of prewar intelligence showed that the US Defense Department tailored its analysis to the George W. Bush administration's liking, after "assessments of the intelligence community did not make a sufficiently compelling case" for invasion.

Levin, who began his inquiry in June 2003, concluded that defense officials had found only "a relatively weak" relationship between Saddam and the Al-Qaeda terrorist network, rather than the substantial one that the Bush administration cited as a justification for invading Iraq.

Levin said the Pentagon analysis presented to the White House -- and in particular intelligence supplied by the office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith -- inflated the risks "to support the policy goal of removing Saddam Hussein."

Levin called for tougher congressional legislation and better legislative oversight of intelligence assessments, the reliability of which he said have been undermined.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...l_afp/us_iraq_intelligence&cid=1521&ncid=1480