For RJ : i may be incorrect but based on some of your other posts you seem to be one of the cheerleaders for this effort.
Are you going to tell us that going into iraq in the first place was a good idea? Or less strongly, that going into iraq based on " what we knew at the time " that it was a good idea
[quote]thabigdon24 wrote:
For RJ : i may be incorrect but based on some of your other posts you seem to be one of the cheerleaders for this effort.
Are you going to tell us that going into iraq in the first place was a good idea? Or less strongly, that going into iraq based on " what we knew at the time " that it was a good idea[/quote]
Absolutely. That has nothing to do with being a cheerleader, though. Unless it is now being defined as those that think the President did the right thing. 17, or 18 failed UN resoulutions, hints of developing nukes, and WMD’s were more than enough reason to go in. So we didn’t find the WMD’s in Iraq. There were plenty of other reasons to do what we did. I would rather be wrong about the WMD’s than to have been right about them and have them in the hands of the “insurgents”.
Is Lieberman a cheerleader?
Nothing wrong wtih cheerleading when something merits it. Just like nothing wrong with criticism when it’s merited
[quote]rainjack wrote:
thabigdon24 wrote:
For RJ : i may be incorrect but based on some of your other posts you seem to be one of the cheerleaders for this effort.
Are you going to tell us that going into iraq in the first place was a good idea? Or less strongly, that going into iraq based on " what we knew at the time " that it was a good idea
Absolutely. That has nothing to do with being a cheerleader, though. Unless it is now being defined as those that think the President did the right thing. 17, or 18 failed UN resoulutions, hints of developing nukes, and WMD’s were more than enough reason to go in. So we didn’t find the WMD’s in Iraq. There were plenty of other reasons to do what we did. I would rather be wrong about the WMD’s than to have been right about them and have them in the hands of the “insurgents”.
Is Lieberman a cheerleader? [/quote]
Ok have it your way, forget the cheerleading and WMD’s.
Get real, iraq is never going to have democracy for the long term. As soon as possible the iraqis are going to have a strong sadaam-style leader which is good b/c some people can’t take western style democracy.
RJ given that many countries around the world don’t practice democracy and have strong rulers, are we going to go around the world and take all of them over ( to provide democracy to everybody) as well? It would make us so weak that we couldnt defend our borders or provide an equal let alone good economy.
So guys , we have several despotic countries in Africa, and South America. Not to mention North Korea, China , Vietnam, Libya ect.
We better build the milatary up quick so we can make democratic republics out of all of these. Who cares if they rebel against us and we have to force them all to accept our ideas. I dont care if it ruins our economy , infrastructure and milatary and China invades for sheer contempt of us.
Seriously , y’all are cheerleaders. Not just that but blind to the negative effects of this. But thats fine , Americans aren’t going to stand for idiocy forever, we have a great country to lose.
[quote]thabigdon24 wrote:
Get real, iraq is never going to have democracy for the long term. As soon as possible the iraqis are going to have a strong sadaam-style leader which is good b/c some people can’t take western style democracy. [/quote]
You can give up on them now if you choose to. Who’s to say what people with a taste of freedom will or won’t do? Maybe western-style democracy will work there just as well as it does in Turkey.
But summarily dismissing the process becuase you don’t think it will work is selling short those 70% or so of the Iraqis that came and participated for the third time in a process that they have never been allowed to be a part of before.
[quote]RJ given that many countries around the world don’t practice democracy and have strong rulers, are we going to go around the world and take all of them over ( to provide democracy to everybody) as well? It would make us so weak that we couldnt defend our borders or provide an equal let alone good economy.
[/quote]
I don’t thinkn anyone is saying this. It fits in really well with the whole “U.S. Imperialist Pig” label, but I don’t think it is accurate.
Please tell me who has supported “going around the whole world” to provide democracy to everyone?
I dont know if I have said this before, but I have wanted to and I hust thought it had been covered well many times over by JeffR and other. But I feel the need to now.
I am in Iraq, been here for a while, and am thinking about coming back on the private side. (now no one can try to say I know nothing about the place and ask if I would be willing to come here.)
I believe we were right to come here. Whether or not you THINK they had WMD’s is beside the point, but I assure you they did. We have found several chemicals ready to be used and have evidence of other things happening. Im not sur ehow much has gone public, but the public isnt privy to a lot of this stuff, for simple reasons. However, regardless of WMD’s the UN stated the consequences of Iraws failure to adhere to the UN sanctions. I personally despise the UN with all my heart, but liberals seem to think it is God’s greatest gift to mankind. Anyway, The UN was too scared and inept to do anything abou tIraq themselves, so we (the US) had to step to the plate. Sure, maybe some intel was wrong, but we werent the only country that supposedly got it wrong.
Now the elections have happened and they went smoothly. Very satisfying. Like someone said before, this mihgt be a knife in the heart (or at least a gut wound!) to the regimes of Iran and Syria. Hopefully it is.
Most Iraqis want us here for their protection. Yes, most would rather us be gone, but they arent so stupid as to think they can handle this all by themselves. I have talked to many of them. I deal with them almost on a daily basis. Anyone hear the quote by the Iraqi lady the other day? It was something along the lines of “Anyone that cant see what America and President Bush has done for Iraq, well they can go to hell”. I agree with her. She is also in the majority, I believe.
I think we should get out of here ASAP. However, we must finish the job first. The dems that want us out now are insane.
Lastly, I want to address the people who think the troops are not equipped properly. Thats hogwash. At the begininning of the war, yes there were definitely some things that were needed. There still are. But when is there not? You cant sit around and wait to up armor all humvees, all bradleys, and apparently giv full body armor to everyone, while a country is helping terrorists (ie. Zarqawi) and possibly helping plan an attack on US or its interests. I bring up the full body armor because I read recently an article that some Marine’s dad was complaining his son only had a ballistic vest, yet there was armor to put on the arms and legs. WOW! I tell you what. I dont WANT that crap. I am limited enough by the armor and other stuff I carry. Please dont limit me more. I think it would be interestng to see what kind of (if any) combat missions this marine goes on.
So, before I go off on more of a rant, there it is. Is Bush perfect? No. Do I have problems with the way this is being fought? Yes. But that is because I think we should be more aggressive. But then I saw Kerry the other mroning complaining about us going house to house in the middle of the night, so I dont see my wishes being granted. People like him are making us fight with one hand behind our backs. And yes, my hand is getting rubbed raw back there by the rope used to restrain it. Do I think we made the right decision in coming here? Bottom line, YES.
Sorry about the rant. Drive on JeffR and others who stick their heads out of the clouds and can see the light.
IFball,
I trully appreciate your service and your insight.
I want you to know that there are plenty of people who understand how critical this fight is to the civilized world.
I hope you realize that there is a segment of the population who would do anything to retain power. That includes putting their head in the sand and trying to undermine this war.
Many of us feel that this is beyond despicable.
I want you to know that we are behind you and this effort.
JeffR
jsbrook wrote:
“Yes, they would. The war was largely waged on false pretenses. And the future is precarious. But this is still good news, no matter how you look at it!”
I wanted to tell you that I do think you are one of the more reasonable lefties.
However, I disagree strongly with the “largely waged on false pretenses comment.”
The ONLY THING WE DIDN’T FIND WAS THE LARGE STOCKPILES.
Now, if you are going to think this through, I hope you realize that we have found chemicals and illicit weapons that weren’t declared. We have found proof that saddam harbored al qaeda in Iraq. We have found evidence of the barbarism of this bastard and his regime. We have seen a people desperate to reach for freedom. We have found plenty of documentation proving that saddam was bribing un officials. We have found plenty of evidence of non-compliance with the treaty stipulations of Gulf War One. We have found that saddam was POURING money into R & D for wmd. He hid components for future use. Finally, the geography of the region hasn’t changed since the invasion. Iraq still sits in between syria and iran. If you don’t think the recent unrest and ridiculous comments coming out of those regimes are not due to the presence of a burgeoning democracy in Iraq, then you are smoking too much coal.
I want you to go back to the beginning. Read how many different reasons W. gave for invasion.
I think that, with the exception, OF A SAFEWAY SUPERMARKET FULL OF CHEMICALS WITH DATES ON THEM, Bush was right on.
JeffR
Here is an interesting article by a WSJ reporter who just joined the Marines, at age 31. Interesting guy and a different perspective on how to make a difference.
Mightier Than the Pen
Why I gave up journalism to join the Marines.
BY MATT POTTINGER
Thursday, December 15, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST
When people ask why I recently left The Wall Street Journal to join the Marines, I usually have a short answer. It felt like the time had come to stop reporting events and get more directly involved. But that’s not the whole answer, and how I got to this point wasn’t a straight line.
It’s a clich? that you appreciate your own country more when you live abroad, but it happens to be true. Living in China for the last seven years, I’ve seen that country take a giant leap from a struggling Third World country into a true world power. For many people it still comes as a surprise to learn that China is chasing Japan as the second-largest economy on the globe and could soon own a trillion dollars of American debt.
But living in China also shows you what a nondemocratic country can do to its citizens. I’ve seen protesters tackled and beaten by plainclothes police in Tiananmen Square, and I’ve been videotaped by government agents while I was talking to a source. I’ve been arrested and forced to flush my notes down a toilet to keep the police from getting them, and I’ve been punched in the face in a Beijing Starbucks by a government goon who was trying to keep me from investigating a Chinese company’s sale of nuclear fuel to other countries.
When you live abroad long enough, you come to understand that governments that behave this way are not the exception, but the rule. They feel alien to us, but from the viewpoint of the world’s population, we are the aliens, not them. That makes you think about protecting your country no matter who you are or what you’re doing. What impresses you most, when you don’t have them day to day, are the institutions that distinguish the U.S.: the separation of powers, a free press, the right to vote, and a culture that values civic duty and service, to name but a few.
I’m not an uncritical, rah-rah American. Living abroad has sharpened my view of what’s wrong with my country, too. It’s obvious that we need to reinvent ourselves in various ways, but we should also be allowed to do it from within, not according to someone else’s dictates.
But why the Marines?
A year ago, I was at my sister’s house using her husband’s laptop when I came across a video of an American in Iraq being beheaded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The details are beyond description here; let’s just say it was obscene. At first I admit I felt a touch of the terror they wanted me to feel, but then I felt the anger they didn’t. We often talk about how our policies are radicalizing young men in the Middle East to become our enemies, but rarely do we talk about how their actions are radicalizing us. In a brief moment of revulsion, sitting there in that living room, I became their blowback.
Of course, a single emotional moment does not justify a career change, and that’s not what happened to me. The next day I went to lunch at the Council on Foreign Relations where I happened to meet a Marine Corps colonel who’d just come back from Iraq. He gave me a no-nonsense assessment of what was happening there, but what got to me most was his description of how the Marines behaved and how they looked after each other in a hostile world. That struck me as a metaphor for how America should be in the world at large, and it also appealed to me on a personal level. At one point I said half-jokingly that, being 31 years old, it was a shame I was too old to serve. He sat back for a second and said, “I think I’ve still gotcha.”
The next morning I found myself roaming around the belly of the USS Intrepid, a World War II aircraft carrier museum moored a few blocks from Times Square, looking for a Marine recruiting station and thinking I’d probably lost my marbles. The officer-selection officer wasn’t impressed with my age, my Chinese language abilities or the fact that I worked for one of the great newspapers of the world. His only question was, “How’s your endurance?”
Well, I can sit at my desk for 12 hours straight. Fourteen if I have a bag of Reese’s.
He said if I wanted a shot at this I’d have to ace the physical fitness test, where a perfect score consisted of 20 pull-ups, 100 crunches in two minutes, and a three-mile run in 18 minutes. Essentially he was telling me to pack it in and go home. After assuring him I didn’t have a criminal record or any tattoos, either of which would have required yet another waiver (my age already required the first), I took an application and went back to China.
Then came the Asian tsunami last December.
I was scrambled to Thailand, where thousands of people had died in the wave. After days in the midst of the devastation, I pulled back to Thailand’s Utapao Air Force Base, at one time a U.S. staging area for bombing runs over Hanoi, to write a story on the U.S.-led relief efforts. The abandoned base was now bustling with air traffic and military personnel, and the man in charge was a Marine.
Warfare and relief efforts, as it turns out, involve many skills in common. In both cases, it’s 80% preparation and logistics and only a small percent of actual battle. What these guys were doing was the same thing they did in a war zone, except now the tip of the spear wasn’t weapons, but food, water and medicine. It was a major operation to save people’s lives, and it was clear that no other country in the world could do what they were doing. Once again, I was bumping into the U.S. Marines, and once again I was impressed.
The day before I left Thailand I decided to do my first physical training and see what happened. I started running and was winded in five minutes. The air quality in downtown Bangkok didn’t help, but the biggest problem was me. I ducked into Lumpini Park in the heart of the city where I was chased around by a three-foot monitor lizard that ran faster than I did. At one point I found a playground jungle gym and managed to do half a pull-up. That’s all.
I got back to Beijing and started running several days a week. Along the way I met a Marine who was studying in Beijing on a fellowship and started training with him. Pretty soon I filled out the application I’d taken from New York, got letters of recommendation from old professors and mentors, and received a letter from a senior Marine officer who took a leap of faith on my behalf.
I made a quick trip back to New York in April to take a preliminary physical fitness test with the recruitment officer at the USS Intrepid. By then I could do 13 pull-ups, all my crunches, and a three-mile run along the West Side Highway in a little under 21 minutes, all in all a mediocre performance that was barely passable. When I was done, the officer told me to wipe the foam off my mouth, but I did him one better and puked all over the tarmac. He liked that a lot. That’s when we both knew I was going for it.
Friends ask if I worry about going from a life of independent thought and action to a life of hierarchy and teamwork. At the moment, I find that appealing because it means being part of something bigger than I am. As for how different it’s going to be, that, too, has its appeal because it’s the opposite of what I’ve been doing up to now. Why should I do something that’s a “natural fit” with what I already do? Why shouldn’t I try to expand myself?
In a way, I see the Marines as a microcosm of America at its best. Their focus isn’t on weapons and tactics, but on leadership. That’s the whole point of the Marines. They care about each other in good times and bad, they’ve always had to fight for their existence–even Harry Truman saw them as nothing more than the “Navy’s police force”–and they have the strength of their traditions. Their future, like the country’s, is worth fighting for. I hope to be part of the effort.
Mr. Pottinger, until recently a Journal correspondent in China, is scheduled to be commissioned a second lieutenant tomorrow. He spent the last three months at Officer Candidates School in Quantico, Va. As of early December, his three-mile run was down to 18 minutes and 15 seconds.
[quote]thabigdon24 wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
It is truly an excellent thing.
I hope this is a step toward freedom for all in the Middle East.
That will undermine the evil that is radical Islam.
Nope. Saddamm had a surprisingly secular regime going. Now, since we might be goading the iraqis into adopting more radical beleifs from having a bunch of white people coming in and forcing democracy down their throats, this may make them MORE radically islamic in the future. Not a good thing.
Islam is kind of like Christianity ( or any religion that serves to give your creator a way to take up your hardships in life ) .
Based on the chance that civil war does happen AND radical islamists DO win, then it will further take us from this.[/quote]
This has nothing to do with Saddam any more. Real representative democracy in Iraq will improve the entire middle east.
The reason radical Islam has gotten support is because it has been the only alternative to dictatorship.
[quote]What did he do that was cheerleading? Say something positive about the situation over there? Is that a cheerleader?
Just because good news is reported does not constitute cheerleading. But since it is different than your view - then it must be cheerleading.
What’s funny is that EVERYONE sees your partisan blather for what it is. Even those that are against the war can see what you are doing. Everyone but you.[/quote]
Oh give it a rest.
Jerffy is one of the biggest cheerleaders around these parts. The fact you like his cheering doesn’t change that.
He is certainly capable of discussing these things rationally, but he usually chooses not to.
Besides, who the hell said it is different than my point of view? Do I have problems with the election that I’m not aware of?
[quote]JeffR wrote:
I would be interested to hear from the people who despise W. and everything Republican.
Given that this election looks like a smashing success, does that at least give you pause? Is there any circumstance for which you will say, “You know, I still hate W., but his plan seems to have worked in this case.”
I see a situation in which people are thrilled by the prospect of Democracy. They are participating in huge numbers. No one has suggested that they are being coerced in any way to go to the polls. Their participation speaks volumes about the direction that they want their country to go.
Let me ask my liberal friends in another way: If bill clinton was in the White House, wouldn’t you be celebrating this birth of freedom?
JeffR[/quote]
Which part of Clinton being a corporate hack doesn’t everybody understand? If you are going to use a Leftist as an example, don’t use Clinton, who was by far the most traitorous “Democrat” I’ve ever seen. Maybe with the exception of Liebermen.
I hope they have some sort of democratic government. But you guys are fools if you believe that they are not going to evolve into a hardline Islamic state. When it comes down to it, yes, I hope things work out, for their sake. But I simply don’t look at it so optimistically.
Either way, that does not make this war, or any war so blatantly fought over money, more noble. So do I still hate George II and everyone who voted for this damned war? Yes. Will that end if Iraq ends up having a democracy? No. Why? Because America could give a flying fuck about “spreading democracy”. Spreading democracy is the only decent thing that we can claim about this war, as every other premise has failed. There is bullshit and lies everywhere in the streets of Washington.
Yes, the Iraqi Election (not Iraq Election, JeffR)is rather sucessful SO FAR, but the end does not justify the means.
Yeah!, elections in Iraq! another puppet government…
[quote]vroom wrote:
Something I am encouraged by, as it could point to a much reduced chance of civil war, is an apparent good turn out by the Sunni’s this time around.
That is promising![/quote]
Good point. I think this is going to be one of the biggest keys in the end. The Sunnis are coming around more and more every day to the realization that involvment in the democratic process is the only way they are going to have their voices heard.
Another good sign was that there really was not a lot of terrorist/insurgent activity this time around, certainly less in comparison to the previous elections.
FightinIrish26 wrote:
“Which part of Clinton being a corporate hack doesn’t everybody understand? If you are going to use a Leftist as an example, don’t use Clinton, who was by far the most traitorous “Democrat” I’ve ever seen. Maybe with the exception of Liebermen.”
Strange. But, for the sake of argument, I’ll let it lie.
“I hope they have some sort of democratic government. But you guys are fools if you believe that they are not going to evolve into a hardline Islamic state.”
Maybe. But, I suppose I am a fool.
“When it comes down to it, yes, I hope things work out, for their sake. But I simply don’t look at it so optimistically.
Either way, that does not make this war, or any war so blatantly fought over money, more noble.”
Uh oh, I smell Halliburton. Or was it
“War over oil.” I try to keep up with the “truth.”
“So do I still hate George II and everyone who voted for this damned war? Yes. Will that end if Iraq ends up having a democracy? No.”
At least you are honest about your uncompromising hatred. I respect honesty.
“Why? Because America could give a flying fuck about “spreading democracy”.”
The Revolution/World War I/World War II/Korea/Vietnam/Gulf War I/Gulf War II.
“Spreading democracy is the only decent thing that we can claim about this war, as every other premise has failed.”
So wrong. See deterrance. libya (relinquishing weapons), Pakistan killing/capturing terrorists, elections/captures in Saudi, serious discomfort of syria/iran, etc…
“There is bullshit and lies everywhere in the streets of Washington.”
Who shot jfk? I’ll ask it, since you appear to have all the “real” answers.
JeffR
“Fucking Asshole wrote:
Yes, the Iraqi Election (not Iraq Election, JeffR)is rather sucessful SO FAR, but the end does not justify the means.”
Wrong. But, I like your new name. It sums you up in so many ways.
JeffR
[quote]JeffR wrote:
I like your new name. It sums you up in so many ways.
[/quote]
Thank you JeffR, that is SO original, I have never ever thought of that!
Oh great, another “ends justify the means” clown.