Bring 'Em On!

Trader_Jorge, where is your outrage at bamaslammer? I doubt the families of the 13 brave soldiers who were killed this weekend wouldn't like their loved ones being compared to bloody noses.

 

FYI, it is human nature to use humor to overcome strong emotions, especially when a tragedy is involved. I was sitting in front of Janelle Onizuka (daughter of El Onizuka) when the Challenger exploded and it couldn't have been more than an hour before I heard the first of the jokes.

Lighten up and get a life.

 

November 2004. Bushizzle my nizzle.

 

Thanks for the clarification. Now that you have defined the term for me, I will say that I stand by my statement and don't understand what unconscious belief you feel I revealed. I had two main points in that quote.

1. I disagree with the anti-war folk. I think that the war was justifiable (though not for the reasons given, perhaps), and that continuing anti-war protest is a waste at this time, because we are not likely to leave the job unfinished - we don't want a repeat of Vietnam.

2. I don't think the b****ing and moaning really gives any substantial aid to the terrorists/guerillas. All the protest could be eliminated, or doubled, and the terrorist situation both at home and abroad would remain unchanged, IMHO.

Sorry if I wasn't clear originally.

 

Every member of the armed forces knows that their job description entails the threat of death while doing their job. Even those who go for the free ride of education afterwards... Do you hate the war, or do you hate Bush, because you know, there are Democrats who strongly support the war.... I'd like for you to attack them with as much vigor as well...

 

At what point in American History did the change happen?

It used to be the liberals were in favor of using the armed forces to influence world events and conservatives were isolationist. FDR is widely considered a liberal president yet conspiricist say he allowed the attack on Pearl Harbor to get the US into WW2. LBJ has got to be considered one of the most liberal US presidents and he expanded our combat role in Viet Nam.

Nixon attempted to reduce the US troops in Viet Nam and a Republican, Gerald Ford, ended our comitment. Ron Regan was certainly not opposed to using the military covertly, but of course he was a democrat before he got rich. Bush the first is on record against using US troops in foriegn lands to promote social reform. Clinton of course was willing to use air power to promote social reform.

So I just don't know where you 'label bozos' got your ideas about your liberal and conservative lables. Do you think you might
consider independently thinking about your position on an issue rather than just regurgitating your Limbaugh/Coulter/Carvel infotainment blather.

 

I am not a Democrat, but I did support the war on the basis of the supposedly ironclad evidence of WMDs. I believe that the Democrats who supported the war were similarly duped and do not hold them at fault. The people at fault are the people who lied (or exaggerated) about the intelligence when making the case for war.

I realize that we cannot simply pull out now, because doing that would create another Afghanistan, ripe for radicals to take over, but I do not trust the current cast of characters to run the show anymore.

 

So even though Democrats still throw their support behind the war, you only have a problem with the current administration?

 

OK, I'm kind of tired of being mischaracterized here. I did not compare them to bloody noses, but I said that the loss of 13 soldiers was the equivalent of a bloody nose for our military. Now that sounds callous and cruel to those outside of the military, but when you realize that there were units in the Civil War that lost up to 90 percent of their effective numbers, that is a small price to pay in lives. Now that is not very consoling to their families, but this is war!

People are going to die in wars, but just because they shot down ONE of our helicopters doesn't mean we've got to run away like cowards, which is what Saddam and the Islamists are banking on. They know what we did in the Mog: we ran away because we lost a few soldiers because the American public wants zero casualties. Zero casualties will not happen in a theater with ground troops deployed. Those are the cold hard facts that I wish were not true, but are. So take off your rose-colored spectacles, quit analyzing the war through the lense of bloodless action movies and realize that war is a nasty, personal business where people die.

I'm quite tired of this constant coverage by the media that never sheds light on any positives, but always starts out "Three soldiers were killed today." If we let that sink in, we will repeat the mistake of the coverage of the Tet offensive, which was a bloody defeat for the NVA and VC and turn an obvious American victory into a defeat because of the nightly news. Despite the loss of these brave souls on that helo, the war will go on. And we will win, if the American people aren't a bunch of chicken****, candy-ass cowards like this:

That's right, lets repeat the mistakes of Somalia. Let's just run away every time we lose a handful of troops. Let's try to make every war bloodless or else we won't fight it. If it doesn't come easy, we don't want it. Sure......right......that's the message I want to send the world. One of cowardice, weakness, a toothless dog whose bark is far worse than our bite.

 

I don't have a problem with the ones who are dealing with the aftermath, but I haven't heard any Democrats saying that they would support starting the war based on the intelligence the administration was ACTUALLY receiving.

I don't have any particular problem with war, as it is a necessary evil. I have a problem with being deceived into supporting a war, however.

 

You and bamaslammer are making it real, reeeaaal tough to obey Jeff's "keep it civil" rule.

What you hardline conservatives don't seem to understand is that being liberal and/or being anti-war does NOT, NOT mean that we enjoy watching American troops die just to make Bush look bad.

What the hell is wrong with you, anyway?

Speaking for myself, I used to serve in the U.S. Armed Forces. I was sickened and saddened by the news of this tragedy. 16 Americans dead, just like that. 16 soldiers, and underneath the uniform, they're just like you and me. Maybe it DOES take having actually served in uniform to understand how presidents sell war at the expense of American lives (don't even mention 9/11; Bush uses it as his crutch for everything, but could have prevented the tragedy if he simply took his memos seriously).

Now, you can keep supporting this president and his administration, but I would personally take away the War-agra they've been sneaking into Dubya's coffee. He did say "Bring'em on," and yes, they're bringing it.

But it's OK. God wants Bush in the White House. Right? Just ask W. When you're on loan from God, you get carte blanche.

I'm getting impatient. How many American soldiers can we get killed in Syria? Syria's on the junior varsity Axis of Evil. Right?

Anyone who believes Democrats want Americans to die in Iraq to make Bush lose next year is really self-delusional. It's a grotesque notion.

Some of us just know a bad sales job when we see it, and this was a bad sales job, since it was telegraphed far in advance, and included a promotional roll-out in September (because no one launches a big push in August; who's paying attention? sell! sell!)

I hate to think of the parents of the soldiers who died. It's a risk you take when you enlist. I just wish when we went to war that it was actually necessary.

 

Well andy there are a lot of people who would disagree about the nature and extent of that deception, and thats been argued to death in other threads so I won't resurrect it here...and I think its wrong to characterize the democrats by just saying they wouldn't have lied to us....because the very first precept is highly debatable, that we were simply led into war by deception... I remember Bush saying after 9/11 that we would go after terrorists and the country's that harbor them...now....I also remember seeing something about there being a direct link found between Al Queda and Iraq, treeman or someone who doesn't have as much work to do, could you please find that for me...?What more justification do we need than that? We said we were gonna hunt these guys down, and now we are...and don't even say Saudi Arabia harbors terrorists, because even though, there are terrorist in Saudi Arabia, they did in issue a statement in which they were going to strike down on terrorists.... If not, they too will probably feel our wrath, if not through, war, then through some other means....

 

I heard an American soldier paraphrased today. He said something to this effect: "Why does the media only value us when we take a bullet or get blown up." There is a medium sized city of American soldiers helping to re-build Iraq and we hear almost nothing about it.

It's Michael Moore's Culture of Fear all over again...

 

Hey, roxtia, is any war <b>necessary</b>? Couldn't somebody always choose to just roll over?

 

Who, in this case, was in a position to roll over? Had we not invaded, broken treaties, defied global opinion and international law, had we instead abided by the UNSC, whom we had agreed, in writing, were the governing body on this...had we not superceded same because of the imminent threat posed to the American people by...er...Saddam being a tyrant ( whew! nice shoft of position there, no?), how in any way would that have entailed rolling over? We are the ones who brought this from the back urner, put it on high in front, and then acted like " Well, somebody's gotta take care of this before it boils over,,,"

 

MacB,

I'd like to know if there is anyway you support this war.... I know there are a couple of ways I do, I was wondering if you agreed with your main man George Will on this one, because it seems as if you two would take similar stances...i.e. for security it needed to be done...?

 

"Roll over" is just a figure of speech. "Let it go" is another. Yeah, the U.S. could have just minded our own business, but I think the time had come to take action.

My point was that war can always be avoided. It is never necessary in the strict sense.

The rest of the world does nothing about world problems; the U.S. is the only nation on the freakin' planet that steps up to the plate whenever it is called for or deemed necessary.

Leadership always ruffles a few feathers.

 

Do you really believe that? Wow. There are all kinds of nations which help other nations, and many of them, unlike the US, never look for something in return. Canadian forces are currently fighting/peacekeeping in over 40 countires around the world, and have never asked for anything; a dime, say in the politics of those countries, control of those countries, beneficial trade relations, even acknowledgment. There are several countries, including France, who are now fielding troops in Afghanistan, Liberia, etc. The US steps up to the plate when it feels it is in it's best intersts more so than many other nations, so calling doing so when no other nation can be termed 'leadership' if you are in the incredibly small global minority who feels we were justified, or other things if you're everyone else.

 

As is, I find it impossible to support the war, becuase the repercussions of letting the actions which lead to this war get a pass are so extreme, and betoken such dangers in the future that the precedent alone is reason enough to need those actions condemned.

Had the war been presented on another front; had the argument been for the humanitarian reasons, and to avoid the possibility of conflict of interest, had we abided by the treaty we signed regarding Iraq, and gone about it as George Bush I did, I would have felt that it was quite the commitment, and that it would be the kind of thing we would need to commit to where it wouldn;t profit us, like in Liberia, but under those circumstances, I would have approved.


As far as security, I disagree with my man, Will. Just because I think he's brilliant and hillarious doesn't mean I always agree with him, and in this case I don't. Iraq was the one nation in the middle east where extremist Islamic fundamentalists couldn't really get a hold until we gave them and Saddam no option but to get together. The NIE report states that there was absolutely nothing to indicate that Saddam would have given WMDs on us, or our allies, either directly or through terrorists, as it contradicted his primary goal: survival. I felt that this was evident based on the fact that he didn't use them against us in the first Gulf War, when we know he had them, but we had to engage in the usual demonisation of the enemy, which always seems to have to include insanity, irrationality, and a hair trigger; nothing in Saddam's history showed that he would make the grandiose suicidal move when survival in power was an option, and I anticipated the findings of the NIE report in this regard.

As far as the idea of a reverse domino effect in the Middle East, I have as much faith in that as the original. It fails to account for the polarization of cultures which even attempting that will cause, as we have already seen.

 

Deception, exaggeration, or hype, the fact remains that many of the claims used to drum up support for this war have turned out to be untrue. Specifically, the claims of WMDs were what made me weigh in as a war supporter and those claims have turned into ... nothing.

Democrats lie just as much as Republicans, the difference seems to be WHAT they lie about. This president has lied (exaggerated, hyped the danger, whatever) about more significant issues than any other president in my lifetime.

Deception, exaggeration, or hype, it turns out that the reasons they took us to war for were simply not true.

Sorry to be the one who tells you this, but that claim was debunked before we got into the war, too. There has not been a demonstrable link from Saddam to al-Quaeda.

If we were hunting down the people who were linked to 9/11 (like we were in Afghanistan), I would be in full support, but this war was not justified.

I wasn't even going to go there, but since you did, I would have seen more justification for invading Saudi Arabia than we had for Iraq.

All that being said, I do not believe we should simply pull out of Iraq at this point. That would be throwing gasoline on a fire. In addition, none of the Democratic presidential candidates have proposed simply pulling out. I just think that we should have someone other than the people who lied (exaggerated, hyped, whatever) to get us into a war get us out of it. I would prefer to see Clark come up with and execute an exit strategy rather than believe the people who got us into this mess in the first place.

Burn me once, shame on you. Burn me twice, shame on me.