Forum Discussion

ZZZZZZZZZ....

So we should pull out of your basement by the end of the year, so that we can have political cover, while your basement completely explodes taking out the rest of your house. If we shouldn't have been in your basement in the first place, isn't it our responsibility to leave it at least as stable as we found it. Not possible with the poppycock from that report.

What did you think of Bush's Speech?

>So we should pull out of your basement.
I have yet to hear good ideas on how to do that.
Adding 21500 troops won't do it Baghdad alone has 6 million people.

Look if

>What did you think of Bush's Speech?
Incoherent and more of the same.
I do not know how he thinks we can use oil money to give it to the citizen. The oil industry in Iraq is dead due to constant bombing. The pipelines are not working!!!

Look, let be honest here.
The situation is total and complete CRAP!!!
The only thing that MIGHT work (and I say might) is getting support of many, many countries to help out. And I am no talking about "Coalition of the willing" because only the Brits were really present, while every other country in there had no more then 10-200 (figuratively speaking) soldiers and most are gone.

You know the real problem?
"Pride goeth before destruction, And a haughty spirit before a fall."

Its Bush's and neocon pride that dragged us ALL down.
Now we need to humble ourselves, send out diplomats into EVERY country and ask them to help us in Iraq. Does it hurt, yes!!! But that is what real men/women do when push comes to shove.
Basically, do whats NEEDS to be done!!!

This might work, or might not. I do not know.

Thank you for asking an actual question, rather then engaging in namecalling.

I agree the speech was mostly more of the same...

I disagree that the extra troops won't work; we've done it before and the only reason it didn't work then was that the rules of engagement were too weak. There was a little bitty blip about that in the speech but it was almost nonexistent. I'm not confident that the rules of engagement will change as a result of THIS surge, but if it doesn't, you're right, it won't work.

I was talking the other day with a friend about how a better choice for this part of the speech would have been:

"Hey folks, we need to go after the bad guys, and when we do, there will be collateral damage, and everyone in the world will start bitching and moaning about all the civilians losses, but if we don't go after the bad guys, then there will be more of the same and ten times the civilian losses...." etc. etc..

Managing expectations has always been a challenge, though; and even when Bush said it'll take decades...noone listened to him. Everyone just assumed we'd be in and out, which was a stupid assumption. Thus the comparisons with World War II ("We've been in this war longer than we were in WWII") Sure, but in WWII, we actually were conquering territory, running around killing people and breaking things. That's what we should be doing in Iraq, but we never will.

And going to other countries and getting their help would be ill-timed. The best time to get their help was right after the USS Lincoln "we kicked their ass" speech. Now? Who would join such an unpopular endeavor? Plus even if they did help, how would they help? Troops? How many? Other countries don't send troops in the thousands for ANYTHING. We're better off simply using our own.

And by the way, I'd never resort to name-calling, you left-wing, liberal, moonbat, nutjob.

So did you think the Health Insurance tax incentive deal was a good idea, or have you looked into that yet?

>I'm not confident that the rules of engagement will change as a result of THIS surge, but if it doesn't, you're right, it won't work.

About two years the troop levels were what we have there now plus the "surge" amount. Except now, There are 5-10 times more bombings per day. If we did not do it them, we won't do it now, unless the rules of engagement do change. No one has ever won against so many guerrillas with army troops (short of just completely obliterating the populace).

>even when Bush said it'll take decades...noone listened to him.
Look, we were told that the insurgency is its in last throes, that the "Mission [is] Accomplished". That the reconstruction is going on ok, that Iraq's oil will pay for the effort. One can quibble over semantics but in the end how many time do you think one can be lied to and believe the next lie.

I knew from the second I heard about the war I knew that 80% chance is that this will be a long, drawn out, bloody war. And not because I think people liked Saddam. We had about 20% chance to get it right, because we were in fact originally greeted as liberators. But Iraq is full of petty little men (and women) with their own agendas.
As an example, there is no chance I think that Kurds ever really wanted to be part of the bigger Iraq.

We could have only won economically, by immediately providing Iraqis with replacements for bombed houses, schools and the rest, and we could have done it if we and actually PLANNED WELL for it. I mean, like having thousands of quickly constructible bungalows to replace schools and etc. AND WE BLEW IT.

>Other countries don't send troops in the thousands for ANYTHING. We're better off simply using our own.

Oh yeah that is hard as hell, but the coalition built in 1991 for the Gulf War was MUCH better built.
As I said the problem with using our own is that we are simple treated as invaders, and there is no feeling in Iraq that the world want to help them to get rid of Saddam.

>The best time to get their help was right after the USS Lincoln "we kicked their ass" speech. Who would join such an unpopular endeavor?
yup. this is very, very sad.

>So did you think the Health Insurance tax incentive deal was a good idea, or have you looked into that yet?
Well just from the simple look over the tax brackets for this, I deduced that when I was in that tax bracket, I could not even afford the premiums. A tax deduction on something I could not afford would help me. To put it plainly, I could not pay 200-300+ premium in the first place cause then I'd starve.