And now Buckley has come around

[billvon 2,446]

>STEP 1: Take all the politicians out of all the decision making for Military operations.

Agreed.

>STEP 2: Take the leash off the military.

We already did that. What have you seen them NOT do? Torture people? Kill civilians?

>STEP 3: Tell the rest of the world if they don't like it go fuck themselves.

We already did that.

>STEP 4: Bring our military home after the 4 months it would take
> to kill every Terrorist, Sympathizer and Financier.

Then we'd have to kill Rumsfeld, and then he'd rustle up his own military to fight the military people to assassinate _him_, and it would all be a big mess (but perhaps an excellent made-for-TV movie!)

>STEP 5: the next time someone cries for help from the USA tell
>them in no uncertain terms ...NO!

Not sure how letting people starve helps, but whatever.

>STEP 6: If we are ever attacked by any terroist or any US citizen
>is killed abroad we will either wipe out an entire city or kill every
>living relative that terrorist has.

Sounds great, but that leads to having to kill everyone who is not a US citizen, and then we won't have a country to do the next World Team in.

[jenfly00 0]

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Nah, it's more like the annoyance of a stuck record replaying one phrase endlessly. You keep hoping there is more to come ...but it doesn't happen.

Funny you should say that.... I know EXACTLY what you mean.

Hehehehe. Bwaaaahaha! So now it's 'I know you are but what am I?' I am impressed. Did you actually attend the PeeWee Herman school or was it a correspondence thing?

I'm gonna split before you start your Big Shoe Dance. Have fun ...but stay out of the adult theaters (o) .

-----------------------
"O brave new world that has such people in it".

[Richards 0]

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Unfortunately there are many elements in western democracies (including the US) who for whatever reason are drooling at the prospect of seeing the US fall on it's face in this matter. For example, nothing would make the western media happier than to see Iraq turn into a Vietnam type fiasco as that would be more newsworthy than a successful mission (Michael Moorers career depends on the US failing). As a result the US is forced to carry more than their fair share of the burden as countries that could be helping out are standing on the sidelines hoping it will fail, so they can smugly reasure themselve of their moral superiority. It is rather like a surgeon watching another surgeon who is his competitor fail during a real operation and refusing to help (even if it would save the patients life) just because watching his colleague fail is more important than saving a life.

Hasn't the argument for international participation been around for several years now? If I recall, one of the key roadblocks was the administration's unwillingness to give up some measure of control, both in terms of the military and in terms of civilian contracts, in order to secure international cooperation. Has that changed since then?

I would imagine that by now with all the political fallout and discontent at home, the administration is eager to find a way out of this, so perhaps another round of calls for international intervention might yeild different results than it did last time. The administration might be releived to pass some degree of control off to someone else. Possibly not, but again there are not many other alternatives floating around so it is worth a try. Again solutions will be more usefull at this stage than roadblocks.

Richards

My biggest handicap is that sometimes the hole in the front of my head operates a tad bit faster than the grey matter contained within.

[kelpdiver 2]

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Nah, it's more like the annoyance of a stuck record replaying one phrase endlessly. You keep hoping there is more to come ...but it doesn't happen.

Like when Bill says that Iraq is matching the Vietnam war for fatalities, and then runs for cover when pressed on the details?

It goes both ways. We probably could retire Iraq discussion forever here because neither end is coming up with much in new arguments.

Though it's funny now that more of the Right is ready to get out of there, and the Left, who opposed it all along, have more voices saying we can't leave now. Is that out of a genuine concern for the Iraqis, or a wish to make Bush sleep in his crapped on bed till at least the 2008 election?

[billvon 2,446]

>Like when Bill says that Iraq is matching the Vietnam war for
>fatalities, and then runs for cover when pressed on the details?

I've provided the details; you changed the start date so that you got a result you preferred. I could describe that as "a desperate attempt to make the Iraq war look better" but there's been enough of that sort of rhetoric in this thread already, don't you think?

The parallels are getting pretty suprising. We've already had at least one republican senator say "Vietnam" when he meant "Iraq" so other people are thinking about this as well.

Today's parallel:
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And at the same time, on a day in February 1966, David Lawrence, the editor of US News & World Report was moved to put the following words to paper: "What the United States is doing in Vietnam is the most significant example of philanthropy extended by one people to another that we have witessed in our times."
------------------
Should national unity prevail, Iraq’s chances of becoming a stable democracy will improve dramatically. I’d like to see one other thing in Iraq, an outbreak of gratitude for the greatest act of benevolence one country has ever done for another
----------------

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/Intro_RogueState.html

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/919kknyv.asp


>Though it's funny now that more of the Right is ready to get out
>of there, and the Left, who opposed it all along, have more voices
>saying we can't leave now.

I see that as a positive thing. Some people are abandoning their partisan positions and starting to think about it on their own - which is a very positive step towards finding a better solution than the one we have now.

[kelpdiver 2]

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>Like when Bill says that Iraq is matching the Vietnam war for
>fatalities, and then runs for cover when pressed on the details?

I've provided the details; you changed the start date so that you got a result you preferred. I could describe that as "a desperate attempt to make the Iraq war look better" but there's been enough of that sort of rhetoric in this thread already, don't you think?

I can't have changed a start date when you didn't provide one yourself (at least not in this thread - in the past you tried to use Dec 61). I did suggest it was silly to consider any timeframe before 1965 as relevent when the troop count was 20k or less, given that the forces in Iraq in 2003 were already at full size. We've had troops in or on the border of Iraq since the end of the 1991 war. Either way, your math is wrong.

So yeah, I'd say it was desparate on your part, but I have mixed feelings since we're still talking about too many dead, and I'm more then happy to cut out. If coaltiion forces are causing too much collateral damage anyway, not being there can't be that bad, can it?

[billvon 2,446]

>I can't have changed a start date when you didn't provide one yourself . . .

My apologies; I assumed you read the graph you were responding to. Yes, you have to change the start date on that graph for it to support your interpretation. I'm not saying you are evil or wrong for doing that, just that you do have to change it for your statement to make sense.

>If coaltiion forces are causing too much collateral damage anyway,
>not being there can't be that bad, can it?

It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't question. If there's going to be a civil war anyway, then we are better off letting them fight it; fewer american dead, and we don't know if it will result in fewer or more dead Iraqis. If there's a way to stay there, stop the civil war, bring peace to Iraq, get a stable government going - then that's the ideal solution. But as the administration has been claiming that exactly that has been happening, and we have to just 'stay the course' and everything will be fine - that's not going to happen without a very serious and fundamental change in thinking about how we handle Iraq.

[billvon 2,446]

Add Andrew Sullivan to the conservtives starting to realize they have been misled. From his website where he talks about some recently released White House notes:

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The most revealing items, of course, are the following: in discussing whether Iraq could have been involved, the notes say: "judge whether good enough [to] hit S.H. at same time." Later comes: "Hard to get a good case." Then there's this: "Go massive ... Sweep it all up. Things related and not." (My italics). My confidence that there was no deliberate misleading of the American people after 9/11 just slipped a notch.
----------

Took him three years, but better late than never.

[SpeedRacer 1]

Pat Buchanan, George Will, and now William F Buckley.

Maybe things are finally starting to turn around now that some people on the right have the guts to say when the emperor has no clothes.

Speed Racer
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