Inexperienced, very liberal politician files papers to run for President

What a paradox it must be for basso to continue to insist that things are tstill really going swimmingly in Iraq when even the Denier in Chief has given up that particular fantasy.

basso, to give you a chance to make your case, why don't you tell me about the comprehensive success of Iraqi schools and the state of elementary school education since this is a pet crutch of yours, and tell me how and where you arrived at this information. I'm not saying "The US spent a lot of money on textbooks and painted some classrooms" type info, I'm talking genuine, documented examples of progress (attendance, test scores - you know the same type of Leave-No-Child-Behind stuff we use here).

From what I understand (thanks to the deadly MSM) the schools are not in great shape and those that have benefited the most are a function of the tremendous explosion (pardon the pun) of fundamentalist Islamic indoctrination centers, and that due to violence and sha'ria, a lot of kids now stay home from school.

Where do you have information that is different? And please do not feed me stock reports from 2003 about schools being painted. I don't deny that paint was in fact applied - but if you really can't see that it takes more than a fresh coat of paint to declare the school system a success, you really ought to just stop posting now.

Honestly, the more I look over your post the more amazing the scale of your delusion is. The Germany and Japan analogies are SO out of place for SO many reasons that it's not even worht explaining it now, and this was apparent years and years ago. If you haven't figured out why that doesn't work after 4 years, my god, pardon my french but how stupid can you possibly be? I find it hard to believe that I'm still shocked by thsi but it is surprising if you still think those examples are at all valid given recent history.

 

Hey Basso - thanks for the thoughtful reply, I was being sincere. I have a crapload of work right now and will not able to take each point with the thoughtfulness it deserves - or that you put in - but i agree with most of your points about the tactical mistakes on the war. Al Sadr especially. If he ends up in charge, he is Saddam Hussein on steroids, a fanatical dictator rather than a secular one. that would be very bad.

I am not measuring the success of the war on casualties, though that is a fair reading of the post. Casualties are a measure, however, of the incredibly dear cost of a bad war. Lets not forget phsycial and mental health impariments, those are more awful than we should bear. Just terrible.

The measure of success of the war is i think the key point - we have never had any that stuck. The ones we have now are so flimsy, it starts to get VERY frustrating. I think you're wrong about batman (batmen) just wanting everything to fail. Obviously i can not speak for him, only for myself, but for a start, i would love to have some emperic measures of success, i just dont think that is too much to ask. Has even one been met? I feel like there never ever have been, nor were there concrete rationale put forth for the invasion itself that turned out to be measurable. That's not "salesmanship" - that's "accountability." Its like resetting the target after you shoot the arrow to say you hit a bullseye, or even anywhere near the target. i fell like these guys are just shooting randomly, or in the end, that's what we end up doing, no matter how noble the initial cause might have been. Which in this case, was probably not that noble.

I dont agree with this: "either the war is empirically righteous, or it isn't. no amount of salesmanship by bush, me, or anyone else is likely to change that strategic calculus for you."

Not true. the devil is in the details- how this war - past and present - fits into the larger scope of the WOT has never been convincing to me. What are the criteria for determining the severity of a threat, the execution of details in that war, the consequences of actions and so forth are not an attempt to dodge the big question - is this war right or wrong - they are the calculus trying to figure out whether this war is right or wrong. I just have not been convinced that we are doing anything OTHER than empowering our enemies right now, while we are losing men and women in our Armed forces, killing Iraqi civilians at a pace that is remarkably underreported and discussed, and fritterring away the patience of our trusted allies, and - by the way - pissging off americans at something like a 60%-70% clip.

Blaming the media is not right, i dont think. Life there sucks. Tell me - if you were a reporter, and a school opened on a day that a bomb blew up 50 iraqis - what would you emphasize in your report? The textbooks or the bomb?

As always, i appreciate your thoughtful replies - please do not in any way to interpret the T-J critique as one of you as well.

 

Wow, I guess I really am a superhero -- or a supervillain, depending on your perspective. I can wish so ******* hard and my wishes are so ******* powerful that I can outwish the commander-in-chief, the vast majority of Americans and even the great and terrible basso. In just four years, my wishes of defeat have turned public opinion entirely around such that even the boss of the war, having said only a couple months back that we were winning the war now disapproves of how it's going and says we're losing. I'm not just Batman as it turns out -- I'm Batman, Superman and Galactus rolled up in one.

Of course, I had some help.

Anti-American, Bush-hating defeatists like Generals Shinseki, Abizaid and Casey, Colin Powell, James Baker, Lee Hamilton, Chuck Hagel, George Voinovich, Sam Brownback, Richard Clarke, Joe Wilson, Brent Scowcroft, the UN Security Council, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Pat Buchanan, Joe Scarborough and other well-known fellow traveler doves gave support to my super-wishes to realize a dream of over 3,000 dead American soliders and tens and tens of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians.

If you're really as serious as you say about this war, maybe you should spend less time hating and more time wishing. It's working hella good for me.

 

Umm Basso,

What you're doing here is commonly known as plaigarism-


From Bryan at Hot Air (This guy apparently visited Iraq recently with Michelle Malkin)

http://hotair.com/archives/2007/01/17/assessing-iraq/

Media misconduct and malpractice leading to flagging homefront morale. This one isn’t so much a mistake as just part of the modern world. The media is incurious, generally unethical in its approach to reporting Iraq and far more skeptical of the US military than it is of the insurgents, the militias and even the Iranians. The media hardly ever reports on victories in Iraq because the kinds of things that demonstrate real success just aren’t sexy, and perhaps because at their core they don’t believe in victory.


From Basso's post-


the MSM is largely complicit as well. They're incurious, generally unethical regarding reporting the war and far more skeptical of the US military than they are regarding the insurgents, the militias and even the Iranians. The media hardly ever reports on victories in Iraq because the kinds of things that demonstrate real success, such as opening a new school, or bringing infrastructure back on line, all things that demonstrate a functioning civil society, just aren’t sexy, and honestly I don't think they believe in victory.


There are other damning parallels if you look at Bryan's entire post, that was just the most egregious.


Basso,

There is nothing wrong with using other people's writing to make your point, but you should give credit, not change a couple of words and call it your own.

 

ouch!

 

and this thread is won by gifford by way of knockout.

 

The ownage here within this thread is astounding, particularly since it will change absolutely nothing. Next thread - let's do it again!

 

Oh, man.

 

yep, i don't usually read hot air, but i read that post, and thought much of it relevant to the discussion, and reflected what i've been trying to say for a while, and i should've included a link.

 

You rewrote sections of it to pass it off as your own. If it had been a matter of just failing to include a link, you wouldn't have rewritten small phrases. There's no difference here between what you did and what Biden did with the Kinnock speech. You should just admit you plagiarized it with the intent of passing it off as your own and apologize to CBFC for the time he spent responding to your "thoughtful" post. Of course, you won't. You have as much trouble as Bush admitting a mistake.

 

Honestly, most of what the author said was said about a year ago in an Op-Ed I read by a former general. I thought it was Schwarzkopf, but I can't find the article. So basso is just plagiarizing a plagiarizer.

 

Even after 7 years I still get confused when people do this and aren't talking about/to me.

Oh yeah...D&D:

You FUDs are all full of BDS.

PS: I personally think that....measurement of the angular and polarisation correlations between the scattered electrons and the emitted photons gives fundamental information such as the shape of the excited state charge cloud and the expectation value of the angular momentum transferred in the collision. In some simple cases the collision process is completely defined. Such studies provide the most stringent possible test of theoretical models of electron excitation and the programme is carried out in close collaboration with parallel theoretical studies.

 

We know who the original rimmy is...

France lover...

 

I brought up the bell curve because of the discussion on eugenics. I didn't say I agreed with it or not. just that it's the same stuff the other guy was talking about.

 

Well, yes and no. You could also argue that this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

 

The galling hypocrisy of basso. Just 28 hours ago he asked this of mcmark:

"Do you have any opinions of your own?"

We now have unassailable proof that basso doesn't.

 

I wasn't going to say anything...

And I will admit that I do post other authors and sources mainly because they mirror my thoughts better than I could sometimes. But most definitely site the source.

 

It wasn't that galling, it was more Gallic. It may have been gall bladdering.

 

Dude, basso is that something you do regularly? Copy text and pass it off as your own?

 

i don't mean to minimize the casualties- every one is tragic. but focusing on them doesn't tell us anything about this war in particular. if anything, it highlights how amazingly low casualties have been in general, and the incredible advances in military medicine (my old man was an army doctor) that have made many formerly fatal injuries survivable.

i think the rationale has been offered, both before and during. it's a fallacy to suggest there can only be ONE rational basis for fighting the war, or that additional ones can't be presented, or present themselves, as the strategic situation changes.

and how it fits into the global war on terror has not only been articulated, but in fact is the whole point- it's central to the WOT, or the Long War as it's been called elsewhere- iraq is just another front in that war. and it's a non-traditional war, with many different fronts, globally, and within iraq. that's why i don't feel qualified to comment on the troop surge, or find the argument over the number of troops, now or at the time of the invasion, meaningful. the same goes for deckards "biggest mistake of all" above (disbanding the iraqi army).

the number of troops is much less important than how the available troops are used. McClellan, Polk, Burnside, and Meade all learned that the hard way. even after Grant launched a war of attrition in 1864, it was only after Sherman went medieval on the south and cut the heart out of the confederacy that grant was able to wear lee down.

but then what happened? reconstruction was a disaster, and a couple hundred/thousand night riders ran an effective guerrilla campaign for years after the war officially ended. and we're in an similar war now, which is why i think the big news is the appointment of general petraeus as commander in iraq.

petraeus wrote the new army field manual on counter-insurgency warfare- if he thinks he needs the troops, and 21.5k is the right number, let's see what he can do with them. concentrating them in baghdad, and assuming a change in the rules of engagement has also been implemented, it seems like a good start.

i understand the "if it bleeds it leads" media mentality- we see it all the time in local news- and i'm not blaming them for where we find ourselves in the war. but i do expect them to recognize they have some skin in the game, or at least remain neutral and objective. same with the BATMEN. and i guarantee the reporting of this war would have been different if clinton had launched it. not only is clinton a far more effective communicator (i'm painfully aware of bush's shortcomings in this regard), but the reporting would have been more honest. i'm not talking about the blithering idiots on talk radio and opinion news shows- they would do what they always do. but responsible news organizations would have behaved responsibly. contrast the WSJ's reporting on Kosovo w/ that of the times on iraq and you'll see what i mean.