Hey, if you claim to know better than Army generals and West Point instructors, more power to you. I guess Bush does, too, then, but he's just relying on divine inspiration apparently. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4767542/ 'I Haven't Suffered Doubt' Bush wanted to invade Iraq. What's striking, Bob Woodward's new book reports, is how little he discussed it with anyone . . . In Woodward's portrait, President Bush is single-minded, and possibly simple-minded, in his resolve. He seems to have relied more on divine guidance than the considered opinions of his top advisers. Bush told Woodward that as he approached the final decision to go to war, "I was praying for strength to do the Lord's will ... I'm surely not going to justify war based on God. Understand that. Nevertheless, in my case I pray that I be as good a messenger of His will as possible." . . .
It's well known that officers aren't the ones who keep the integrity of a unit. It's the NCOs that do it. West Pointers are notorious for being morons that can't find their way out of wet paper bags.
Not a draft dodger until you've been drafted. If the draft has merely been reinstated and one leaves in protest, one is not dodging the draft. Besides, my move would be an act of protest alone as there is zero chance I would be drafted at my age. And fighting against one's will in an ill-conceived war that many educated people believe is potentially making the country less safe is not so much doing something for one's country. To be forced into service because the man in charge bit off more than he could chew in a war that is arguably not necessary for the common defense is not doing something for the country. It's doing something for limited special interests. I love this country, but one of the main reasons I love it is our dedication to freedom. If freedom were attacked and my country needed me, I'm there. But, in this case, the only person putting our freedom in danger is the President of the United States. It is likely this issue (and some related to it) more than many others that will take me to the polls this year to cast my vote against a Republican for the first time in my entire life. I hate doing it, too, because there are few in this country who have been more loyal to the party over the years. But I'm not abandoning the Party, the Republican Party is abandoning me and everything they supposedly stand for by attacking freedom. There needs to be some sort of Republican Party standard. When you disagree with so much of what the Republican Party stands for, you shouldn't be allowed to stay in the Party. Of course, that would mean a lot of people in the administration would be turning in their Republican Party membership cards because there aren't many real Republicans among them. Acts like these are straight out of the Politburo, Comrade.
What a great post, mrpaige. I was going to quote a bit from it, but the whole damn thing is terrific. This clown, Uncle_Tim, obviously knows nothing about the people who post here. He has slandered you, a Republican, as "unAmerican trash" and as a traitor who "should be tried as spies", without being able to get his brains out of his own rear-end, much less use what brains he has to find out a little about who he's going to vilify with as much thought as sitting in a car at MacDonalds, telling them, "I want fries with that." What does the chump do? Attacks one of the reasonable conservative members, viciously, giving a perfect example of what's wrong, devisive and bigoted about today's GOP's far-right minority ruling clique. They have captured your party, here in Texas and nationally, and are trying to impose their far-right, fundamentalist and bigoted views on America. Yes, I'm a proud Democrat, and I'm sick of their BS. And I know a lot of Republicans who are sick of it as well. Some day your party will find it's voice again, mrpaige. In the meantime, let's boot these fools out of office who seem hell-bent on destroying our country. edit: I'm a little testy this morning... had a very late, but fun, night.
Considering we're sending large parts of our forces without sufficient equipment, at this rate we'll need a draft just to have enough bodies in the field to replace the wounded and dead. Just as the Bushies do on most policies, they have a lot of good sound bites but not a lot of substance there. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4825948/ By Melinda Liu, John Barry and Michael Hirsh NewsweekMay 3 issue - The inaugural mission of the 1st Cavalry's 2d Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment was, in its humble way, a bid for hearts and minds. It was to safely dispose of Iraqi sewage. Having arrived in Iraq in late March, a 19-man patrol from the battalion, traveling in four Humvees, had just finished escorting three Iraqi "honey wagons" on their rounds in the grim slum of Sadr City, where vendors stash eggs and chickens in bamboo crates next to puddles of viscous black mud. ("You're lucky if it's mud," joked one U.S. officer.) Suddenly the street became "a 300-meter-long kill zone," recalls platoon leader Sgt. Shane Aguero, courtesy of gunmen from the Mahdi militia of Shiite rebel Moqtada al-Sadr. The Humvees swerved and ran onto sidewalks, rolling on the rims of flat tires, as gunmen kept up the barrage of bullets. Sgt. Yihjyh (Eddie) Chen, gunner in the lead vehicle, was shot dead. Another soldier was hit and began bleeding from the mouth. And their trouble was just beginning. Two of the Humvees became disabled. Aguero yelled at one driver to gun the engine to get his Humvee moving. The engine fell out. As they'd been drilled to do, the soldiers set out to strip the disabled vehicles of sensitive items and to "zee off the radio"—to see that codes and equipment don't fall into enemy hands. When another group got ambushed nearby, an enemy round came through the Humvee's right rear door—through retrofitted panels that the soldiers had been told would repel AK-47 rounds. Miraculously, none of the three people inside were hit. Then a third Humvee sputtered to a halt: debris had pierced the fuel tank. "It just wouldn't start; we coasted the last 50 yards out of the kill zone," said its driver, Spc. Dee Foster. At last an armored Bradley fighting vehicle arrived, and its steel ramp opened to scoop him and his buddies to safety. For the Bush administration it has been a mantra, one the president intones repeatedly: America's troops will get whatever they need to do the job. But as Iraq's liberation has turned into a daily grind of low-intensity combat—and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld grudgingly raises troop levels—many soldiers who are there say the Pentagon is failing to protect them with the best technology America has to offer. Especially tanks, Bradleys and other heavy vehicles, even in some cases body armor. That has been the tragic lesson of April, a month in which a record 115 U.S. soldiers have died so far and 879 others have been wounded, 560 of them fairly seriously. Those numbers greatly exceed the tallies in the combat-heavy weeks of the invasion last spring. And the impact of those deaths was felt more fully last week when blogger Russ Kick, after filing a Freedom of Information Act request, won the release of photos showing coffins returning to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. . . . On the battlefield, that has translated into a lack of armor. Perhaps the most telling example: a year ago the Pentagon had more than 400 main battle tanks in Iraq; as of recently, a senior Defense official told NEWSWEEK, there was barely a brigade's worth of operational tanks still there. (A brigade usually has about 70 tanks.) . . . According to internal Pentagon e-mails obtained by NEWSWEEK, the Humvee situation is so bad that the head of the U.S. Army Forces Command, Gen. Larry Ellis, has urged that more of the new Stryker combat vehicles be put into the field. Sources say that the Army brass back in Washington have not yet concurred with that. The problem: the rubber-tire Strykers are thin-skinned and don't maneuver through dangerous streets as well as the fast-pivoting, treaded Bradley. According to a well-placed Defense Department source, the Army is so worried about the Stryker's vulnerability that most of the 300-vehicle brigade currently in Iraq has been deployed up in the safer Kurdish region around Mosul. "Any further south, and the Army was afraid the Arabs would light them up," he said. . . . one knowledgeable Army officer points out that Rumsfeld's standing "stop-loss" order—basically a freeze on retirements—is a "silent draft." It is not expected to be lifted "for the foreseeable future," the officer said. . . .
The most compelling reason to reinstitute a draft (with no college exclusions) is that it would make our politicians much less likely to use military force unless it was absolutely necessary. Does anyone really believe that we would be in Iraq right now, if the kids of the members of Congress, or the kids of members of the media were in danger of being sent to fight. You can guarantee that a lot more tough questions would have been asked beforehand.
That's a heck of a risk, though. I mean, we had a draft during that whole Vietnam thing, and while it wouldn't be as easy to ditch the draft these days, I would be wary that the politically connected would still be able to find a way to avoid service (or to avoid fighting). I'm not sure there are that many "draft age" sons of Congresspeople anyway. The President sure doesn't have any. And it's still the wrong thing to do.
I followed the debate leading up to the war very closely. There was very little tough questioning of the Administration's case for war in the mainstream media. In the "leftwing" or "alternative" media claims about the Iraqi nuclear program and ties to Al Qaeda were debunked before the war. Do you remember Bush's last primetime press conference before the war? The scripted softball questions he was asked should make any member of the press in a democracy hang their head in shame.
Selective Service eyes women's draft The proposal would also require registration of critical skills By ERIC ROSENBERG SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- The chief of the Selective Service System has proposed registering women for the military draft and requiring that young Americans regularly inform the government about whether they have training in niche specialties needed in the armed services. The proposal, which the agency's acting Director Lewis Brodsky presented to senior Pentagon officials just before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, also seeks to extend the age of draft registration to 34 years old, up from 25. The Selective Service System plan, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, highlights the extent to which agency officials have planned for an expanded military draft in case the administration and Congress would authorize one in the future. "In line with today's needs, the Selective Service System's structure, programs and activities should be re-engineered toward maintaining a national inventory of American men and, for the first time, women, ages 18 through 34, with an added focus on identifying individuals with critical skills," the agency said in a Feb. 11, 2003, proposal presented to senior Pentagon officials. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/171522_draft01.html
