House passes war appropriations bill - Chimpy throws a hissy fit

i dont know about you, but to me 72% constitutes a "vast majority"? i already linked the poll once in this thread, but here you go again...

as i already mentioned, this is from february 2006 and i doubt their sentiments have improved since then.

http://www.zogby.com/NEWS/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1075
An overwhelming majority of 72% of American troops serving in Iraq think the U.S. should exit the country within the next year, and more than one in four say the troops should leave immediately, a new Le Moyne College/Zogby International survey shows.

Le Moyne College/Zogby Poll shows just one in five troops want to heed Bush call to stay “as long as they are needed”

so in your mind when people bash-bush it is only because it is in "vogue" and they are just doing it b/c it is popular? it has nothing to do w/ all the horrible stuff he has done?

ah yes, the good old "fight them there so we dont fight them here" line. its a total b.s. argument, but even if you believe that tripe, dont you find it immoral to bring war, death and destruction to an innocent country that was not involved in the matter in order to keep people from attacking us?

 

I agree that things very likely could be very bad if the US leaves the problem is that I'm not seeing things being that good if the US stays. You're absolutely right about the risks which is why I wouldn't support a sudden withdrawl what needs to happen is the Iraq Study Group's recommendations need to be implemented for a regional diplomatic solution. Its not in Saudi Arabia, Iran or Syria's longterm interest for Iraq to remain destabilized. The Iranians might think they get a gain out of controlling the Shiite South but many of the Shiites might not be that willing to be Iran's puppet and a Sunni middle and Kurdish North will be breeding ground for anti-Shiite and Kurdish nationalists that will fight an insurgency against Iran.

Us staying there just continues to bleed us and offers no incentive for the Iraqis to come to any solution themselves. In the end we might have to let them fight it out before they can come to agreement.

I agree and am highly skeptical about the possibility of stability in 18 months and have already stated why I think it is a bad idea for the Congress to try to make battlefield strategy. This shouldn't be a matter solely left up to Congress for several reasons. I'm not advocating staying as I think we need to figure out how to get out but at this point I'm resigned to this being a mater for the next Admin..

 

-im not saying things are right, just offering a different insight and random thoughts. Maybe i'm wrong but i dont think a little critical thinking is a bad thing. I dont pretend to have all the answers, i just try to think of all the angles.

ultimately we dont know what all this was for, but when you look at the world situation, global economies, rouge states defying international safety, etc etc...i just cant help but think there is just more to it than meets the eye. not necessarily some huge conspiracy, just some type of long term goal (im talking 10, 20, 30 year long term)... thats all. I dont think that all of this was for WMDs, was b/c of saddam, was b/c of oil... those, quite possibly, were some of the factors but i cant help but think they were a means to an end.

-the point about afghanistan is a solid one, but i think the location and resources, amongst other things (culture, historical relevance, etc),play an important difference.

No, I just believe that after 6 years of abject failures, the American people have finally woken up from the fear induced coma they have been suffering through since 9/11/01

failures get thrown around a lot but what exact failures? booming economy? increased jobs? or is this soley based on iraq? obviously the war plan was not perfect, they rarely are. like the old saying, you plan for a fight but all that goes out the window once you take that first shot.


Other things have been offered up as better ideas...

Don't torture people...

Don't invade a country that isn't a threat...

Don't wiretap without a warrant...

Don't hold people indefinitely without a chance to defend themselves...

Don't cut taxes during a time of war...

Take care of veterans if they are injured, particularly if they are injured in battle.

i guess thats were we differ. Torture is a loaded word, but i know what you mean. Interrogations and information getting is vital. unfortunately asking people politely does not get the job done. And we are dealing with extremists here. whats worse? having your head cut off with a knife, cutting and hacking away slowly or stacking some guys up naked, meanwhile they recieve medical care, food, water and such? Sorry, but one has to be tough and putting men through emotional distress to gain info is a necessary thing in military times.

personally i have no problems with a wiretap without a warrant when it concerns national security. I have nothing to hide. Plus, its not like these are random wiretaps of nancy and lisa talking about who should win dancing with the stars ..{cough} clyde.

hold people without a chance to defend themselves? you mean prisoners? isnt that sort of what being a prisoner is. Plus, i have a hard time feeling sorry for american prisoners when they are probably a day spa compared to a lot of other countries.

and care of veterans has been a problem for a looooong time...it isnt this administrations sole fault.


That is not what we were told

doesnt mean it cant be true. to think we are informed of everything is being niave.


Add that to the fact that the "great minds" who gave HONEST assessments of the situation in Iraq, people like General Shinseki who said we should be sending at least 300,000 troops, were forced to resign so that the Perle/Wolfowitz/Rumsfeld cabal would not have any opposition to their "plan."

hey, i agree. the whole 9 yards should have been sent over and there should be 100K more troops there now. the only thing i would comment and bring up would be, more troops would probably yield better results however it would also result in more deaths (more than likely). You see the political ammunition opposing parties have used by throwing around the # of troops dead...perhaps that could have been another factor. Another could be cockyness by certain military people that bush trusted. both, i'd imagine, bave some merit.

If this was to be a long term venture from the start, it should have been approached that way from the start. If the real reason for deposing Saddam was human rights, the emphasis should not have been on WMDs and bogus uranium purchases.

easy. it was the most convenient legal loophole. America couldnt just go in there and drop bombs while saying "trust us, its for the best" to the rest of the world. The US had to find some type of 'legitimate' way to go to iraq and the WMDs was that route. Especially when you consider that suddam should have been taken down by the UN years ago but likw the league of nations the UN is all talk and no bite. Then again, maybe it was just bad intelligence. Or even, maybe there were shady acts taking place, and lets also remember that is was 6+ months of campaining and drumming up support for the invasion...alot can be hidden/destroyed/or moved in that time.

Wake up, dude.

i was thinking the same thing to you. the world is a great...and very dirty place and it always will be, at least during homosapiens time here.

 

Have you considered why people are anti-Bush to begin with?

since the florida elections.


My guess is his response will be "the liberal media".

classy and typical. im not blaming all the problems on the president so i must be some conservative that hates liberals...nice...and productive.


agree and am highly skeptical about the possibility of stability in 18 months and have already stated why I think it is a bad idea for the Congress to try to make battlefield strategy. This shouldn't be a matter solely left up to Congress for several reasons. I'm not advocating staying as I think we need to figure out how to get out but at this point I'm resigned to this being a mater for the next Admin

nice post. this isnt something that goes away in 18 months.


so in your mind when people bash-bush it is only because it is in "vogue" and they are just doing it b/c it is popular? it has nothing to do w/ all the horrible stuff he has done

not all. but a lot, especially the younger crowds. there are a lot of sheep out there ya know...and unfortunately the reasonable and intelligent are the minority.


ah yes, the good old "fight them there so we dont fight them here" line. its a total b.s. argument,

why is it bs? b/c you said so? not a great counter argument

but even if you believe that tripe, dont you find it immoral to bring war, death and destruction to an innocent country that was not involved in the matter in order to keep people from attacking us?

i dont know if i believe it, but i recognize it as a option and could have very well been considered. I at least acknowledge the possibility that it could be true or that it could not...rather than dismiss it automatically like you.

well if we are getting into a moral/ethics argument we may have to start another thread and start fresh. then we'd have to go through utilitarianism, categoricalimperatives, list the virtues...and thats of course assuming that there is even morality at all.

nice little stat about the troops. is there other independant stats as well? its usually nice to get several different sources...im typically skeptical of polls in general.

 

I agree that things very likely could be very bad if the US leaves the problem is that I'm not seeing things being that good if the US stays. You're absolutely right about the risks which is why I wouldn't support a sudden withdrawl what needs to happen is the Iraq Study Group's recommendations need to be implemented for a regional diplomatic solution. Its not in Saudi Arabia, Iran or Syria's longterm interest for Iraq to remain destabilized. The Iranians might think they get a gain out of controlling the Shiite South but many of the Shiites might not be that willing to be Iran's puppet and a Sunni middle and Kurdish North will be breeding ground for anti-Shiite and Kurdish nationalists that will fight an insurgency against Iran.

Us staying there just continues to bleed us and offers no incentive for the Iraqis to come to any solution themselves. In the end we might have to let them fight it out before they can come to agreement.

great points.

and perhaps you are right, fighting over there may be inevitable and unfortunately sometimes it takes massive loss of life and bloodshed for people to work out their differences.

 

this is probably the most unamerican post i have ever read on here.

 

i dont know how you can dismiss it as a "nice little stat". you dont think that the fact that a vast majority of the troops serving are against continued occupation is a problem?

sure - how about the military times poll? they arent really "independAnt", but even you would have to concede that they do not have a liberal bias. i have posted this many times so i wont bother again, but would it be too much to ask of you to actually check out the stats in the article?

http://www.militarycity.com/polls/2006_main.php

if you support our continued occupation of iraq than you need to realize that you really are not supporting the troops. you are in fact, arguing for a policy that they are against.

 

this is probably the most unamerican post i have ever read on here

why?


i dont know how you can dismiss it as a "nice little stat". you dont think that the fact that a vast majority of the troops serving are against continued occupation is a problem?

i didnt dismiss it. maybe they dont want to be there, who would want to be away from home in a strange land and in danger?

I just typically am skeptical of polls, in particular the way in which the questions are presented. It doesnt take much to completely alter the outcome of a question by changing one word. one should always be warry of polls.

but again, it may sound mean, but these people enlisted for this job. god bless them

 

DonkeyMagic;

Can you please use the reply and quote function when responding? Its hard to determine who you are replying and when you are quoting someone.

 

Sorry to go off topic here, but I just wanted to say to Donkeymagic to keep posting while he is posting things I don't agree with, he hasn't called the large number of people disagreeing with him traitors, terrorist lovers, or pretended that facts that they posted never existed and never entered into the conversation.

We could use more posters like this.

Keep up the good work donkey, and don't be disheartened if it seems that you are the lone supporter of your side, and everyone is against you.

Welcome aboard.

 

first of all, you are advocating torture, which is unamerican, evil and wrong, no matter who you are doing it to. just because "they" do it doesnt mean we as a nation have to lower our standards and to it to. you do realize that the majority of people we have ended up torturing have been totally innocent, right? and you do realize that the majority of troops disapprove of torture. and you do realize that experts in the field of interrogation say that torture is not an effective way to gather intelligence? the things we saw of abu ghraib are the tip of the iceberg. it went so far beyond pyramid stacking or "emotional distress", as you put it. we are talking about rape and murder. rape of children. sexual torture of children. we have an attorney general who called the geneva convention "quaint" and changed the definition of torture to be so vauge as it is basically now considered torture only in the case of death or organ failure. or bush's former legal council, john yoo, who publicly stated that there is no law that prevents bush from sexually torturing children.

24 is a fictonal tv show.

second, you dont have a problem with wiretaps. it goes against the basic principles this country was founded on. it is unconstitutional. and im no legal expert, but it seems like it violates the 4th amendment (unreasonable search and seizure). furthermore, the federal government has been abusing this law and spying on more people than they have said. just this past week the story broke about how the fbi has been abusing their powers of domestic wiretapping.

do you agree with alberto gonzales, who claims that there is no right to habeas corpus in the constitution? it only says that it cant be taken away.

third, you claim that prisoners do not have a right to defend themselves. i got news for you - this isnt mexico. in the united states we have this neat little thing called "due process". maybe in some countries being held w/out trial is what "being a prisoner is", but not in the united states - we used to be better than that. bush's military commissions act from 2006 has serious implications for all americans. any american citizen can be hauled off and detained indefinately, w/out legal council, w/out the charges being read to them and w/out the opportunity to appear before a court. is that what america is all about to you?

this is why i say that what you are saying is very unamerican.

 

What the Warriors Cannot Do
It's Time To Call Iraq's Leaders To Account

By Fareed Zakaria
Newsweek

April 2, 2007 issue - In the last weeks, the violence in Baghdad has moved from ghastly to merely grim, and we are told that the tide has turned. President Bush says the surge of U.S. troops is producing "encouraging signs." Many of his neoconservative supporters have been less circumspect. "It may well be that General [David] Petraeus is going to lead us to victory in Iraq," declared William Kristol last week. The obstacle now is apparently not in Iraq but in Washington, where Congress has been making efforts to bring American combat forces home. The president's spokesman Tony Snow describes these as recipes for "failure, not victory."

To speak of victory in Iraq might sound like a cruel joke. This is a nation that is now devastated, where 2 million people have fled, another 2 million are internal refugees, militias run large parts of the country and the government sanctions religious repression, ethnic cleansing and vigilante violence. What does "victory" mean in such circumstances?

When the president announced his new policy of a "surge" in January, I argued that it was likely to have a positive military effect. Petraeus, the new commander in Iraq, is all that he has been advertised to be: an unusually smart and strategic general. His first moves in Baghdad show that. He has begun securing neighborhoods and is trying to prove to Iraqis that U.S. forces will go after both Sunni and Shiite extremists (though the latter have mostly melted away). But by his own estimation these achievements, even if they expand, are not enough. "Any student of history recognizes there is no military solution to a problem like that in Iraq," he said recently. "A political resolution of various differences ... of various senses that people do not have a stake in the successes of Iraq ... is crucial." The new secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, echoed this analysis, explaining that the role of the U.S. military in Iraq was to buy time for national reconciliation.

It would seem reasonable, then, to measure progress not just by neighborhoods secured and militants killed, but in political terms as well. And as it happens we have a series of benchmarks that have been set out at various points by the Bush administration and the Iraqi government.

Just before the referendum on Iraq's Constitution in October 2005, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad brokered a deal that secured Sunni participation in exchange for the Iraqi government's promising to set up a committee to amend the Constitution to incorporate Sunni concerns later. This was to have been done four months after the formation of Iraq's elected government—in other words, by September 2006. Nothing has happened. When he took office, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki announced plans for an ambitious program of national reconciliation. Nothing has happened.

In January, after persistent inquiries from Sen. Carl Levin, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice wrote to Levin setting out the benchmarks and timeline that the Iraqi government had signed off on. They included new election laws, the scheduling of provincial elections, laws on investment and oil-revenue sharing, the disbanding of militias, the reversal of de-Baathification and the granting of amnesty. In supporting the surge, Sen. John McCain also listed these goals as crucial to progress. But none of them has taken place. The revenue-sharing law has passed the cabinet but not yet moved through Parliament. The Los Angeles Times reported in February that Baghdad had abandoned plans to reverse de-Baathification. It quoted a U.S. official who said that the reform, far from advancing as promised, was "moving backward" and was "almost dead in the water." The amnesty law also appears moribund.

These two measures have historically proved crucial in almost any political process that has ended a civil war. Without some kind of amnesty and prospect for rehabilitation, there is little incentive for insurgents to lay down their arms and join the political process. Last week the Sunni vice president of Iraq urged his own government to begin talks with the insurgents, a position that General Petraeus has also taken.

There are less formal benchmarks that are also not being met. Maliki was to have reshuffled his cabinet to remove members who actively fomented civil war. That has not happened. The government was to finally start spending money in Sunni areas. That has not happened. Militias were to be demobilized. Instead, one of their most notorious leaders has been released from prison and publicly embraced by Maliki.

For four years President Bush has given Iraq's leaders unconditional support. They have not interpreted it as a reason to make compromises. In fact, talking to both U.S. officials in Iraq and Iraqi politicians, it appears that the chief reason there has been some movement on a few of these issues—the oil laws and noninterference in U.S. military operations, for instance—was the fear that Congress was going to force a withdrawal of U.S. forces.

The Democratic bills in Congress have two features: timeline and benchmarks. The rigid timelines the House bill imposes are problematic because they give the United States little room to maneuver in a highly volatile situation. But the benchmarks to measure Iraq's political progress—prominent in the Senate bill—are entirely in keeping with the basic strategy being outlined by Gates, Petraeus and, indeed, Bush. The only difference is that this is a strategy with teeth. If the Iraqi government does not do what the administration itself has argued is crucial to success, then American troops should begin withdrawing. (There will still be a need for a reduced force to fight Al Qaeda, secure Kurdistan and prevent major refugee flows.)

Announcing his new surge policy on Jan. 10, President Bush said, "I've made it clear to the prime minister and Iraq's other leaders that America's commitment is not open-ended. If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people." In a sense, Congress is merely following through on the president's promise.
© 2007 Newsweek, Inc.

 

ill work on that just for you

 

appreciate it. people disagree, thats part of the fun of it all. Thats the problem now in days, everyone thinks its us vs them and you have to be on 1 side or the other. People wonder why things are so messed up...its b/c people are too busy saying someone else is wrong to really work on the problem at hand.

lone supporter on my side? heck, sometimes i dont even know my side. I just try understand the situation and all the variables that may, or may not have an affect on it.

 

this is what i was eluding too earlier. The bill is nothing but political leverage.

If pres. bush accepts it, he is accepting a irrational and arbitrary date to leave iraq. that just doesnt make a whole lot of sense. Imo, its a horrible idea to just leave, regardless of the state of the country. And chances are iraq would not be stable in a year (i think we can all see that as the likely possibility), so if the troops pull out and even more chaos breaks out it would just be another 'failure' by the previous admin which would undoubtly be mentioned in the next elections. the old "new plan" argument would be beated to death.

If bush vetos the bill (and rightfully so), then dems will say that he is not supporting the troops and he is cutting their funding, etc etc


lets be real...this bill is a form of blackmail.

Personally i think its disgusting that the house is using troop funding as political leverage

 

Critical thinking is good. It just doesn't look like you do much of it...

So, you are OK with the President and his administration lying about their motives for war, the length of the war, the cost of the war, and virtually everything else about the war. I am not OK with the President lying to the American people. I was disgusted when Clinton did it, and he was just lying to cover up a sexual affair. Bush lied and as a result, over 3,000 Americans and 650,000 Iraqis are dead.

What? The "important difference" between Iraq and Afghanistan is that Afghanistan was involved in 9/11 and Iraq was not. Afghanistan was the right thing to do, but the Iraq war is not.

Only booming for the rich. The median family income has been flat or down for the past few years.

Which still have not made up for the 3 million jobs lost in the first 2.5 years of Bush's presidency.

Iraq
Katrina
Squandered the good will given to us by the entire world on 9/12/01 and turned it into a near universal hate for America.
Made us less secure at home
Given terrorists a massive recruiting tool
No-bid contracts to Halliburton
Turned a $230 billion surplus into a $500 billion deficit
Reduced taxes for the wealthy, but not so much for the rest of us

There are more, but the single biggest failure was letting OBL slip through his fingers while allowing the Taliban to retake control over vast swaths of land in Afghanistan.

But the thing is, they did have a better plan, they just scrapped it and fired the people who insisted that it was a better plan than the one Bush and Rumsfeld decided to use.

Torture is torture and America should not engage in it. Have you seen the list of torture experts who have come out and said that torture rarely results in actionable intelligence? People will say what you want them to so that you will stop torturing them.

BTW, there have been several incidents where innocent people have died in American prisons as a result of torture. You are welcome to claim that "stack[ing] some guys up naked" is the worst that has happened in American prisons, but we ALL know that innocent people have died as a result of our unAmerican actions.

But the problem is that sometimes the powers that be will misuse or abuse their power {cough} FBI {cough}. AS we have seen, any power that is given will not necessarily be limited to cases that bear on "national security." We don't know if someone is tapping Nancy and Lisa and if they are, there is no oversight to curb such abuses.

I would prefer that we follow the law which provides for warrants up to three days after the fact granted by a court that is totally secret.

Habeus Corpus. If a person is sent to prison, they should have their day in court. We should not be able to hold people indefinitely because someone in government made the claim that they are a terrorist.

Bush cut taxes, veterans benefits, and funding for the VA as he was embarking on a war. There have definitely been problems for a long time, but Bush contributed more than his fair share of issues to this problem.

Apparently, expecting honesty from this admin is "being naive."

So, IOW, Bush should not have fired Shinseki, he should have listened to him.

And even after "drumming up support" for 6+ months, he was not able to come up with anywhere NEAR the support that he should have. Perhaps it was because if he had waited, the weapons inspectors who were in Iraq when we invaded would have confirmed that Iraq was free of WMDs.

Bush had to lie in order to get Americans to support his war.

And it only got dirtier with Bush in charge.

 

I would like to echo this. It is refreshing to have a Bush supporter who refrains from name calling and who actually acknowledges (some) facts.

 

.


you keep using the word torture but that is a loaded term and I didnt say i advocated torture, i said i advocated information getting through means of coersion, and yes that involves certain tactics that put stress on the perp. Im not saying beat them, b/c there are better ways to get information.

but you said its unamerican...why? why is interrogations unamerican? heck i'l take it a step further, why is torture unamerican? americans have done it since they got to the new world.

i never used that reasoning.

?


again, you are using the words interrogations and torture as if they are interchangible..they are not.

.

you're stuck on torture.

so now you put children torture on bush? does he have a dungeon next to the oval office?

you lie

again, im talking about national security. Im not advocating cops being able to randomly search people or tap phones and things like that.

Of course there would have to be stipulations that would have to be required to perform such searches/taps.

and again, during the american revolution peoples mail was 'tapped' (for lack of a better word).

but i do think it should be easier for certain agencies to perform their job more effectively if it didnt take SOOO much red tape and if they had a little more freedom. again, this isnt free range, but at least give them a little extra room to do their job.

.

i dont know, im not a constitution expert or a lawyer. I do believe that there are certain circumstances in life where certain 'rights' can, and should be taken away. I believe in flexibility because no matter how much you try to set up a certain law/rule or whatever, there are always special circumstances that require a different form of action.





thi

i dont know how much longer we can say that.

.

i wouldnt flatter ourselves too much. Dont make it sounds like america has been a saint up until bush.

bush's military commissions act from 2006 has serious implications for all americans. any american citizen can be hauled off and detained indefinately, w/out legal council, w/out the charges being read to them and w/out the opportunity to appear before a court. is that what america is all about to you?

when concerning military matter i dont think you can approach them the same as you can with typical, daily american life.