Bush To Unveil “National Strategy for Victory in Iraq” Tommorow

wonder where bush will be without 911..

 

have you seen the french fight?

 

They did well in Afghanistan

 

I just heard something interesting on the radio. They were pointing out that even if Bush's proclomations about how great the Iraqi forces are doing, and how close to victory we are happen to be true, why would anyone believe them?

Early on Rumsfeld and others did the military and the mission a disservice by lying in their numbers of how many Iraqi troops were ready. At one point it was over 200,000. That changed to somewhere in the hundred thousands, and then finally it came out that there was only one Iraqi unit that was really ready. They made those claims to keep support alive and make it seem like they were having success.

Bush and his administration have cried success when it wasn't true one too many times, so nobody is going to trust them when they are crying out success once again.

Their constant dishonesty has really hurt their case, to make a case, even if they had a case to make.

 

Murtha HAS a plan. Bush has empty words and meaningless platitudes.

 

It should be interesting as simple minded, stubborn Bush plows forward convinced that Jesus is with him,so facts on the ground mean nothing-- if anyone could tell him. By many accounts what Murtha is saying is what the top Generals are afraid to telll Bush, who wigs out if anyone tells him that the war in Iraq is not going well.

It should be a good couple of years for the Demcorats if they just follow Murtha (and the generals) in real plans to end the Iraq fiasco as Bush digs his hole deeper and deeper.

The question now is: "Can you support the troops, and their 4th , 5th etc. dployments if you support Bush's endless mission in Iraq."

 

November 30, 2005
Murtha on Hardball (Response to Bush's speech)
.....

Following up today’s speech — I’m watching Congressman Jack Murtha on Hardball to get his response. I thought you might be interested, so I took notes. Quotations are approximate.

Murtha said that what the President presented today is not a plan. We went in with inadequate forces, then we didn’t have the appropriate people in the right places and we lost the support of the Iraqi people. 80 percent want us out.

The public wants direction. They want leadership, and they want honesty. We’re not getting honesty from this president .

Matthews says, the President says we should stay until the Iraqi military is trained enough to take over the fight.

He’s allowing Iraqis to set the timetable, says Murtha. They’re going to let us do the fighting, even though they said they want us out. If we don’t redeploy as I suggested we’re going to be there for 100 years. It’s not progressing. It’s not getting better. Let the Iraqi peple handle it themselves.

Bush is trying to tie what’s going on in Iraq to the worldwide network of terrorism, Murtha continued. But only 7 percent of the people fighting us in Iraq are al Qaeda.

Can you imagine if the French had stayed after the Revolution? We’d have run them out.

The number of casualties per day is increasing. We can’t win this militarily, because our military actions make enemies for us. All we get from this administration is rhetoric.

How long it will take to get an Iraqi army that can defend itself without our help? asks Matthews.

25 years, says Murtha. From every measurment I can see we are not making progress.

Matthews thinks Bush’s new request of a $4.6 billion supplemental appropriation for Iraqi reconstruction is a trap for the Democrats, because if they vote for it they’ll be endorsing his Iraq policy but if they vote against it they’ll be accused of undermining the effort.

Murtha responds, They haven’t even spent the $18 billion we already appropriated for reconstruction, and some of that was used for the military. I can’t imagine what he wants the $4.6 billion for. They’ve only spent $9 billion.

Murtha dismissed the idea of any kind of trap. He believes the reconstruction spending is important, because it provides jobs for Iraqis.

Murtha points out that if troops numbers are reduced the troops remaining will still be a target. Supply convoys will still be vulnerable. It makes more sense, he says, to redeploy out of Iraq but retain troops nearby so that we can go back in if needed to go after al Qaeda or other terrorists who are a threat to us and our allies. But we need to get out of the fight between the Shia and the Sunnis in Iraq.

We still don’t have the kind of people we need, Murtha says. We don’t have translators, demolition experts, special forces, intelligence experts. We’re paying big money to recruit these people, and we still don’t have them. This effort has been so mishandled from the start. There are not enough troops to protect the Syrian border. This thing cannot be won militarily.

Matthews: Bush wants to stay with no time limits. But you’re saying we should gradually redeploy out of the country but maintain troops in the region to fight terrorism if we have to.

Murtha says that’s right. We need credibility, he says. This is a real war. People are getting killed. It’s time to admit we made a mistake. We need to repair our relations with the world. That’s what people are thirsting for.

Matthews: Do you trust the Cheney Rumsfeld crowd? On every pont they’ve been wrong about how this war would turn oujt. Do you trust them on the facts?

Murtha says, Just because they say it doesn’t make it so. Be truthful. I told them, it’ll backfire if you keep telling these stories. They aren’t being honest.

Is George Casey telling the truth? asks Matthews.

You know I deal with these guys all the time. I know how they feel. He said one of the problems in this insurgency is the occupation. We’ve become the enemy. He said one of our policies will be to start to withdraw.

Matthews: Bush said if any general needs more troops they only need to ask, and they’d get more troops.

Murtha: That’s not an honest statement. One general I talked to doesn’t have enough troops to protect the Syrian border. That’s one of our missions, and we don’t have enough troops.

These guys are sitting in theiir conditioned office saying stay the course. They aren’t out in the heat and the dirt. A very small portion of our citizens are making that sacrifice. In some ways it’s worse than Vietnam– we’re going to have a lot of people with post-traumatic stress.

Matthews brought up the news stories being written by Americans and planted in the Iraqi press.

This has been a problem from the start, Murtha said. The dishonesty of the people speaking for the administration.

What about support in Congress, Matthews asks.

Democrats sat behind me during the debate. Many Republicans come up to me privately and quietly. All of us want to find a solution.

http://mahablog.com/

 

Oh, for the love of Murtha... would you guys stop it!?

 

in a Cakewalk?

 

Even Marcel Marceau? Does he really land punches or is it just choreographed fighting like this Van Damme movies?

 

What is interesting about Bush is his lack of follow through. All along he claimed that when commanders on the ground give him the word we will start our pull out.

The commanders on the ground are saying not only should we start redeploying out of Iraq, but that by us being there in such large numbers we are making matters WORSE on the ground in Iraq. So despite Bush's claim to follow the advice and do what's best according to the commanders on the ground, he is now acting against their advice.

I actually thought Kerry gave a great response to Bush's speech. He pointed out that Bush set up the straw man by claiming his opponents wanted an artificial deadline for withdraw, which nobody is proposing. Then Bush attacked that strawman rather than deal with the real plans others have put on the table.

I thought Kerry really hit the nail on the head.

 

Yes, that was another good point, Kerry made. The sad thing is, is that the points he made should have been obvious, but had to be pointed out. I'm glad that he laid them out the way he did.

 

this complicitous tango always puzzles me. talk about a vicious circle.

 

I think it was Howard Zinn who said something to this effect: "The best thing about the American people is that you have to deceive them to do so much evil around the world. The worst thing about the American people is that they are so easy to fool."

 

This is bad on so many levels. Not only is it bad because it is dishonest, but as I pointed out earlier, by lying about accomplishments and victories that didn't really hapen, who will believe them when they actually do happen?

Sometimes when lies that Bush has made regarding Iraq are brought up, the pro-war crowd will say that there is no point talking about the past, because we are there now, and we need to deal with it.

This is a present day lie from the President and deals with Iraq now. I would be curious to know the response from a war supporter who wants to tackle this issue.

We aren't debating how the war started, but dealing with ongoing issues and dishonesty now.

 

As long as the 11 Iraqi forces are fighting in the front line, I'd consider that as "leading the fight". It's understandable that the green beret were directing the fight because Iraqi is likely to be relying on American intel for the fight. It's absurd to call this a lie simply because the Green Beret unit was fighting in front line IMO.