In much of the Islamic world representing Eastern Values..the only thing thats readily understood is the use of force and heavy handed force at that...

Being nice and showing mercy is considered to be weakness. Thats why heads are chopped and school children are blown up..

Since the 1980's and Ronnie the Populars retreat from Beriut after the 198 US soldiers were killed in a high rise billet ....US policy has been to cut and run when faced with adversity in the ME...until 911 that is when the problem came home to roost.

Now the USA can no longer ignore the ME and it's problems...as I have said before it's damed if U do and damed if U don't...

Yes, Ali Tabba, but what do we do now?

A few options:

• continue on present path, US soldiers picked off like tin cans on a fence on a daily basis, situation escalates
• pull out and 'lose face'
• 'solve' the problem ala Stromberg and nuke the whole place

Continue to be tin cans....

You don't know how pessimistic I feel..this thread has kept me from ranting about Events spiraling out of control...not only just the ME but with regards to domestic politics and the media...


What will happen if a 2000 election outcome happens again and we are faced with terrorist threats...or if they pull one off during the resolution of the election???

Wow. One negative assessment by an "intelligence" group (from the same Merry Band of F'Ups you guys accussed of being AWOL on 911 and the lead-up to OIF) and the sky falls.
Glad you folks weren't around during Valley Forge, Tarawa, etc.

Oh U mean a Quackmire

Yeah, I lost three friends on 9-11. And to blame all followers of Islam for the actions of a few whack-jobs is an insult to my dead friends. I believe those who carried out the attack in Oklahoma City were Christians, were they not? Do you blame all Christians for their actions? Simple minded and absurd.

Yetidave actually there is a connection between Islam and AEM bombing remember the first report link Tim Mcvee with a ME guy, Terry Nichols wife if from a Muslim area in the Philippines and he went there.

So what Steve? At worst he learned a few tricks from the masters of terror to help him do what he would have done anyway. At best, Tim knew a guy from the Middle East and Terry married a Philippino who happens to be Muslim.
They were not motivated to do what they did by the teachings of Islam.

Read my last post again Steve.

No quagmire...the war is going quite well. Our troops are well trained and adept at destroying the enemy...and are doing so. The press and the political left have exaggerated the problems greatly due to the current political environment. After Bush is reelected, they will give up and end their traitorous activities and we will finish what we started.

Sorry. Gotta' call BS on this one. Every troop I've seen interviewed (which I'm sure is all anyone on this board has seen, except for those on this board who are actually there), cite confusion, inadequate direction and overall dismay. They don't know what they're doing there as of late - tit-for-tat fighting in "no-go-zones" being the prime motivator of this discontent.

Unless you're getting your information elsewhere, that's what I have seen, heard and read.

fintstone is living in another universe. "The war is going quite well" - give me a break. In the same way the Vietnam War was "going quite well" in 1967, perhaps?

Agreed that "our troops are well trained and adept at destroying the enemy". The problem is that the supply of enemy fighters is very deep, and growing.

"The press and the political left have exaggerated the problems". So the fact that our troops no longer have daily control of Fallujah, Najaf, and any number of cities; that the insurgents can kill anyone anywhere outside of US fortifications, from civilian workers to senior Iraq government officials; that people keep turning up with their heads missing; that the fighting and insecurity has prevented more than a fraction of the reconstruction funds from being spent; that the US military itself is now planning to have up to 100,000 troops in Iraq in 2006; all of this is invented by the media?

"After Bush is reelected, they will give up and end their traitorous activities and we will finish what we started". I like to hear the truth, and I don't consider it traitorous to speak it.

I would have liked a little more "treason" when Powell, Rumsfeld, Bush, Cheney, Rice et all were telling us about Saddam's stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons, and all the flower-waving, kisses-throwing, American-loving that was going to happen after the invasion.

Yep, I agree dd. I watched NOW with Bill Moyers tonight; interview with a freshly returned soldier describing first how he wrote his mother to hold the cookies and instead buy and send him some body armour, and ending with his feelings about being given the mission of body guard to a Kellog Brown & Root truckdriver who was being paid $70K tax free, compared to his own $20K compensation. If that's not insulting enough, the KBR guy can leave whenever he's had enough; the soldier gets extended duty.

Geez, I hate to post this for no other reason than it bumps the thread to the top again. How many times do we want to beat this dead effing horse?

It's about nothing more than wealth and power; things that I can speculate none of us have enough of to even be able to get a whiff of what they really mean. If we did, we would probably not be wasting our time typing out our blatherings on a Friday night.

Ed

What you just did was describe war...any war,

The troops I talk to daily do indeed call it differently..every one of them...Interviews of positive guys are just never aired...or those parts are edited out.

Of course you would. That is part of the liberal playbook isn't it? Authored in '71 by J. Kerry?

Both chose their career. And of course, no soldier in a war zone is compensated only $20k.....most are making closer to the $70k in total compensation. Many are making much more.