President Bush: We're Sending 20,000 more troops to Iraq.

shack

Finish the job that was started with no holds barred...hand the Iraqis the keys...and bring the troops home. I have NO expertise in how to do this...I really don't care HOW they do it...Just DO it.

ND13

All that I know for certain is, that since 9/11, the continental United States has not been hit with a terrorist attack. 9/11 was supposed to be just the tip of iceberg, too. So that tells me that we and our "REAL" allies have been doing something right and one could deduce from that, that we must have hit the terrorists in the right places.

I may not agree with all of W's tactics and would love to see the Iraqi conflict come to quick and peaceful end, but I'm not ignorant enough to claim that I know all the facts of our "actual" situation over there. I do believe, with all my heart and mind, that if the kid gloves were removed, our military can and will perform the task at hand with precision and professionalism. When you don't let the military do the job they were trained for, to the best of their abilities, they get frustrated and restless. IMO, that's one of the main reasons we hear about situations like the marines that "supposedly" killed all those civilians or the POWs that were tortured and/or humiliated.

I guess that we didn't learn enough from Vietnam about red tape and war not mixing to well.

Please let the fine men and women of our military do their jobs to the best of their abilities. Cut the tape and sit back in awe of the most powerful and technologically advanced military machine EVER!!!

shack

Sen. John McCain defended President Bush's Iraq plan on Friday as a difficult but necessary move, parting company with lawmakers questioning the wisdom of the military build up.

Right or wrong....McCain has a big pair. You know he would like to be President but to come out this vocal against all public sentiment to do what he percieves to the "right thing to do" tells me something about the man. I never supported him before. I might have to reconsider...not because of his position...but because of who he is.

ND13

McCain has declared, right?

markmarc

Demiurge asks a powerful question. Here are a few of my thoughts on this. By no means is it thorough, or complete. But, IMHO it follows common sense.

First off, we need to remember that fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 mass murderers were Saudi's, not one was Iraqi. Secondly, we had the information on the scumballs, but bureacracy (sp?) prevented it from being investigated. Our foray into Iraq was a departure from bringing the those who planned 9/11, etc. to justice.

I believe in what a number of terrorism experts, including former special ops military people subscribe to: Creating many small units to covertly follow and take out terrorists.

From what I perceive as a vast majority of experts on counter-terrorism conclude that good old fashioned police work stops many attacks. By beefing up this effort, and by using intelligence networks and special ops, we can do the best job possible at protecting ourselves and our interests.

A parent of a former student of mine (retired career Ranger officer) said it best I thought. "I'd prefer TR's policy of walking softly and carring a big stick, to swinging the big stick then looking to see what we hit."

Demiurge

ND13 wrote:

McCain has declared, right?

I don't think any Republicans have declared officially.

He's also doing political posturing, and they all do it, but he has no shame at all in it. The guy is trying to get the conservative vote while generally being a whatever way the political wind blows type moderate. I think everything he does is completely self serving, and as politicians go, I find him especially untrustworthy in sticking with his word. I wouldn't say this if he wasn't constantly contradicting himself every other month. It's the same reason Hilary Clinton is trying to pretend to be a moderate now that the campaign season is heating up.

I'd much rather vote for a progressive Giuliani who I don't agree with on much at all socially, who I know doesn't posture as much as McCain.

Demiurge

markmarc wrote:

A parent of a former student of mine (retired career Ranger officer) said it best I thought. "I'd prefer TR's policy of walking softly and carring a big stick, to swinging the big stick then looking to see what we hit."

Spoken like a true Spec-Ops soldier.

jdhdiggs

Gotta agree with Demi on McCain, he's more of a "conservative" version of Bill Clinton. The upcoming election has absolutely 0 appeal to me in any of the condidates.

read-alot

"I'd much rather vote for a progressive Giuliani who I don't agree with on much at all socially, who I know doesn't posture as much as McCain".

Demi, I agree and anyone who can clean up 42nd street the way he did has my attention.

markmarc

What I like about McCain is that he has been absolutely consistent on deriding all forms of Pork Barrell politics. He hasn't been afraid to piss off his party brethren.
Yes, I've been disappointed in his kissing up to the conservative base. I liked it better when he stood his ground. Damn political $$$$.

George Grand

I couldn't be LESS informed in the big scheme of things, and neither could you.

I offered a counterpoint, and will now be more than happy to never visit this thread again. It will be construed as my having "lost" the debate, and that suits me just fine.

Demiurge

McCain-Feingold has created more and more problems and solved none. It's impossible to regulate, and furthermore when you take out the money it nullifies the idea that the person you want to represent you actually does represents you. People who don't get involved in the political process only have themselves to blame if they get someone they don't like in office while not participating.

The money is supposed to get you exposure in campaigning. It doesn't get you elected.

Putting all of the money in one fund for the party heads to dole out doesn't work. In fact, it gives the rich more control than ever. Think a phone call can't be made by a guy donating a million dollars to a party head and tell them that if the money doesn't go to this or that candidate that they won't give one red cent?

Besides, who regulates the biggest campaign contributor of all, the mainstream media? The nightly news does more than money ever could.

Demiurge

George Grand wrote:

I couldn't be LESS informed in the big scheme of things, and neither could you.

I offered a counterpoint, and will now be more than happy to never visit this thread again. It will be construed as my having "lost" the debate, and that suits me just fine.

With all due respect, George, after re-reading all of your posts I haven't seen where you posted your alternative to being in Iraq as we are now, and also addressing what that means to not be there.

Not one person has done that yet in this thread.

unc2701

Reinstate the draft and get the 20 troops per 1000 population that our generals say we need.

markmarc

Some Interesting background on new general in charge in Iraq, Gen. Petreas. It comes from Time. However the last paragraph does go into the author's opinion:

You have to achieve very rapid progress to show people your intentions are good," Lieut. General David Petraeus told the Philadelphia Inquirer in October 2003, explaining how he and the 101st Airborne Division had brought peace and civility to the city of Mosul. It was one of the few early success stories of the war in Iraq--and then, within a year after Petraeus left, it all fell apart. What happened in Mosul, despite the best efforts of an enlightened U.S. general, is particularly instructive now that Petraeus has been given the far more difficult job of securing Baghdad in the midst of a civil war.
Petraeus did move rapidly in Mosul. With 20,000 troops at his disposal, he was able to establish an overwhelming presence in the streets. U.S. soldiers walked beats like police officers and were stationed in local patrol bases, the equivalent of precinct houses. They were instructed to treat the Iraqis with respect. Knocking down doors was replaced by knocking on doors. When force was used, the Inquirer reported, "A task force is sent into a neighborhood to clean up and take claims for any damages ...'Will this take more bad guys off the streets than it creates?' is one of Petraeus'" guiding principles. The judicious use of force was effective: among the bad guys taken off the street were Saddam Hussein's sociopathic sons Uday and Qusay.
In May 2003, within weeks after he arrived, Petraeus staged elections for a city council and began to disburse funds to clean schools, reopen factories, fix potholes and establish recreation programs. He was, in effect, the mayor of Mosul. The tactics Petraeus used were well known to a tiny cadre of military intellectuals in the Pentagon: they were classic counterinsurgency methods, and they were scorned by most of the brass (and by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld), who thought that nation building was a job for social workers, not soldiers. Even though counterinsurgency seemed to be working in Mosul, the Pentagon wasn't impressed.
In January 2004, Rumsfeld replaced the 101st Airborne in Mosul with a Stryker Brigade, one of his prized innovations. Instead of patrolling the streets on foot, the Strykers--about 5,000 strong, one-quarter the number of troops that Petraeus had at his disposal--dashed about in high-tech armored vehicles. They didn't do any of the local governance that Petraeus had done. They were occupiers, not builders, and put Iraqis in control of civic order. Within months, Mosul descended into chaos. "You win this thing with boots on the ground," a Stryker Brigade officer told a Knight-Ridder reporter in January 2005, "not by throwing more vehicles at the place."

And so it is important to be clear about what Petraeus is about to attempt in Baghdad: the "surge" is marketing spin for a last effort to apply counterinsurgency tactics to the civil war in Iraq. There are several ironies here. This escalation is favored by the Pentagon faction most closely aligned with the Democratic Party's national-security sensibility, the most sophisticated and cerebral officers: generals like Jack Keane and Petraeus; colonels like H.R. McMaster and Pete Mansoor, who served in the semisecret "Colonels Group" advising Joint Chiefs Chairman Peter Pace last autumn. The counterinsurgency doctrine--drafted by a group led by Petraeus and published by the Army in 2006--is a remarkable document. It has a Zen tinge, posing nine paradoxes of counterinsurgency warfare like "the more force used, the less effective it is" and "the more you protect your force, the less secure you are." It proposes radical new tactics, which resemble nothing so much as the community policing that transformed New York and other U.S. cities in the 1990s. This requires a revolution in military training, an emphasis on creative decision making rather than on merely following orders.
But by the very standards that Petraeus helped develop, it probably won't work in Baghdad. First of all, there aren't enough troops to do it. The counterinsurgency manual suggests a ratio of 20 troops per 1,000 residents, or 120,000 troops to secure Baghdad alone, but the largest "surge" being contemplated would increase the number of troops in the capital by 20,000, to about 35,000. Second, the troops we do have aren't trained to the task: they're tired and overextended, and it will take time to retrain them to knock on doors rather than kick them down. Third, this is no longer an insurgency; it's a civil war. Counterinsurgency tactics are designed to help a credible indigenous government fight a guerrilla opponent. The idea that Nouri al-Maliki's government is responsible is laughable: it's little more than a fig leaf for Shi'ite militias. Finally, as Mosul shows, these tactics require lots of time. I asked a leading active-duty Army counterinsurgency expert how long it would take before we knew if the surge had succeeded. "Ten years," he said. That's not a surge. It's a glacier.

markmarc

Demiurge:
I believe I have posted some alternatives.

Demiurge

markmarc wrote:

Demiurge:
I believe I have posted some alternatives.

markmarc wrote:

Creating many small units to covertly follow and take out terrorists.

Sorry I missed it.

I agree with you, and it's already being done currently. SEAL and Ranger teams are doing this stuff day in and day out. All around the world. However, Special-Ops can't do anything of scale to the governments (Iran, Iraq, Syria, etc.) funding the terrorists they hunt.

PolkWannabie

Demiurge wrote:

Not one person has done that yet in this thread.

Or anywhere else for that matter ...

The mantra of the year or last few years which apparently was sufficient to get lots of new / replacement people elected has in essence been a long list of complaints either about other politicians or Iraq or some combination of those but there certainly hasn't been alternate plans I've seen anyone come forward, not only about Iraq but about a whole slew of other issues as well.

jdhdiggs

Here's a solution:

1). Make the Kurds autonomous in the North as there own country, Enter into a defense agreement with them and Turkey

2). Take the area South of the new Khurdistan and East of the Tigris/Baghdad and give it to Iran or make it it's own country

3). Make a third small country in the Anbar province and provide 100 Greyhound buses and name it Palestine and start bussing them in.

4). Let the remainder people name the country whatever it wants, Iraq, Mesopotamia, whatever.

5). Boot the UN from NYC.

That's it... They's all start happily killing eachother again.

ohskigod

shack wrote:

Right or wrong....McCain has a big pair. You know he would like to be President but to come out this vocal against all public sentiment to do what he percieves to the "right thing to do" tells me something about the man. I never supported him before. I might have to reconsider...not because of his position...but because of who he is.

wow, voting for someone for there charachter and integrity instead of blind political ideology? holy SH&T, what a concept. shame more people dont do it, then poltics would actually be interesting.

seriously, your dead right. its why I never declared a political party. I dont vote party, I vote person. the extreme polarization of politics has made this harder, i'll give you that

Demiurge

I never vote for the person, I vote for the idea. Mankind will always have the opportunity to let you down, and often will.

PolkWannabie

jdhdiggs wrote:

Here's a solution:

2) Could wind up going to Iran regardless
5) (UN) ... and locate them between the 3-4 new countries you've defined where they can start attempting to practice what they're supposed to be doing ... Hey if it doesn't work then they can wind up as part of your conclusion -> That's it... They'll all start happily killing each other again ... In which case we'd have at least one less problem ...

unc2701

jdhdiggs wrote:

Here's a solution:

1). Make the Kurds autonomous in the North as there own country, Enter into a defense agreement with them and Turkey

2). Take the area South of the new Khurdistan and East of the Tigris/Baghdad and give it to Iran or make it it's own country

3). Make a third small country in the Anbar province and provide 100 Greyhound buses and name it Palestine and start bussing them in.

4). Let the remainder people name the country whatever it wants, Iraq, Mesopotamia, whatever.

5). Boot the UN from NYC.

That's it... They's all start happily killing eachother again.

...and get the hell out? are you a cut and runner?

Anyhow, agree on 1) & 2) ; 3) I think is trouble- If you wanted to find al quada 3 months later, that's where you'd look
4) you might as well throw in with 2)

5) Yeah, the UN got us into this mess in the first place :rolleyes:

ohskigod

Demiurge wrote:

I never vote for the person, I vote for the idea. Mankind will always have the opportunity to let you down, and often will.

idea's change, the charachter of a man or woman doesnt. voting purely for an idea a person says he/she has is a major proponent of why you have lying politicians.

Demiurge

ohskigod wrote:

idea's change, the charachter of a man or woman doesnt. voting purely for an idea a person says he/she has is a major proponent of why you have lying politicians.

Is that kind of like "Billy was a really nice young man growing up. We just can't believe he ate 5 babies and wore their skulls around his neck like some sort of trophy. Truly tragic. We're just shocked!"

...anyhow what character does John McCain have? He has none. He just wants to be President. I'm sorry, but that's not enough to get my vote. If you don't support the same ideological principles that I support I am not voting for you. "Watch what they do, not what they say." Words to live by.

McCain talks, he does nothing else.

jdhdiggs

unc2701 wrote:

...and get the hell out? are you a cut and runner?

Anyhow, agree on 1) & 2) ; 3) I think is trouble- If you wanted to find al quada 3 months later, that's where you'd look
4) you might as well throw in with 2)

5) Yeah, the UN got us into this mess in the first place :rolleyes:

Well, if you listen to the media reports, the palistinians just want a place to call their own and they'll stop messing with Isreal.

Seperate 2/4 to keep the Shia's and Sunni's from killing themselves. If we leave them intact and withdraw, the war becomes larger and your talking Saudi, Jordan, and Syria against Iran. Not good, and we'd likely be brought back in anyways as a "UN peacekeeping force"

As for the UN, it's just more that I'm sick of their corruption and anti-US stance. Additionally, we are there because the UN failed to act on it's own policies. I'd love to shove them right into the middle of the Green Zone in Baghdad. Make that the new HQ.

Also, I never said it was feasible, just giving Demi and option.

brettw22

When you see any one of us working in Washington then you can ask for a specific plan of attack because only then can you do more than just armchair quarterback......

That has absolutely nothing to do with evaluating how things have been done up to this point and being able to logically deduce that "stay the course" has gotten us into such a hole with the everything that it's not acceptable.

I think the best thing since the mid-terms is to see a look in W's eyes that says he knows now that he can't keep pushing the same BS he's been pushing and if that alone changes things, then it's a positive.

Systems

"Watch what they do, not what they say." Words to live by.

Good thing for that in Bushs case....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdmVXHtgooI

Demiurge

brettw22 wrote:

When you see any one of us working in Washington then you can ask for a specific plan of attack because only then can you do more than just armchair quarterback......

That has absolutely nothing to do with evaluating how things have been done up to this point and being able to logically deduce that "stay the course" has gotten us into such a hole with the everything that it's not acceptable.

I think the best thing since the mid-terms is to see a look in W's eyes that says he knows now that he can't keep pushing the same BS he's been pushing and if that alone changes things, then it's a positive.

Really, so just fling **** at eachother like monkeys in the zoo because some are incapable of debating the ideas?

This post is more of the same. No ideas, just how the current way of things is wrong.

The liberals also can't touch Bush on Iraq. He'll be riding that one to the end of his Presidency, and I suspect it will be the one and only thing he'll fight for.

Demiurge

Sartori wrote:

"Watch what they do, not what they say." Words to live by.

Good thing for that in Bushs case....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdmVXHtgooI

I didn't know Michael Moore posted here. Let's splice tape together sometime. :rolleyes: