Redstate

Glad to hear you find foreign policy important, too.  If we are not safe, nothing matters.  Look at New Orleans and see how close we are to chaos . . . and look at how vulnerable we are.

The "peace" group wants to see the U.S. lose in Iraq.  While Iraq may never be a U.S. type democracy, it does have the potential to be a free society.  Whatever our reasons for going in, we cannot leave it now.

There is still great potential for freedom to spread throughout the Middle East.  At least it is a much better shot than the chaos that has existed for decades.  If we can solve that problem, then we have so much more opportunity to solve problems at home.

Well said.  But, I must admit, I don't have as bleak an outlook as you do, for these reasons:

1. Iraq is not Vietnam
   
   
2. There are alternative outlets to the MSM and Ivy League academia opinionmaking.  This website, for example.
   
   
3. Our military is popular, and many of the zealots in the antiwar left are, deep down, anti-military.  Remember how they piled on two Army recruiters at Seattle Central Community College earlier this year?  There they showed their true colors.  And, many Americans didn't like it.  The smart ones in the antiwar crew know they have to restrain their rhetoric.  For Pete's sake, Cindy Sheehan couldn't handle an interview by NPR without having to run to her handlers!
   
   
4. The antiwar crew isn't being run by the smart ones.  It's being run by ANSWER, and the anti-Semite Cynthia McKinney, and Mother Raging Fool Sheehan, and professional Israel-haters.  They can't and won't shut up--which is good for us!  I hope we're taping everything they say and recording everything they write.  That way, if they really try to assert themselves in American society, we can then replay those tapes and ask:"Hey Mr & Mrs America, do you agree with these thoughts?  Do you want these people running this country?  Do you want politicians beholden to these people running this country?  I look forward to that conversation.

I'm not saying this fight will be easy, but I feel confident we can win--IF we fight!

The behavior of the Elected democrats in washington, not just the kook left or far left or just left, but the leaders, even those like Biden who says he supports the war and whose own son is over there!! have behaved disgracefully while we have been at war in Iraq.

I despise the ones that always first say they support the mission like Biden, or those that say they support the troops first before they go on with their bilge more than the kooks.

One wonders if the kooks would be as prominent if the dems were patriotic enough at least to accept the 2004 election verdict. But no. They are no better than they were in the year before the election despite neing proved wrong at every turn.

Except that their behavior has no doubt caused the enemy to fight harder in hopes their dispiriting voices would sap our will.

There is blood on the dems hands.

They predicted massive deaths if we didn't have more troops; that the election would not be possible w/o more troops; that the nation would be split apart and in full blown civil war by now and that they couln't possibly write a constitution. They discount all the great progress and lie that things are bad.

We won the main battle. BWe should be an exultant country at what we have done and what we are doing. its among our fimest hours. Heros should be on pedastals. But instead the naysaters are.

Compared to history what is happening is astounding.

And they also, these erudite elected responsible dems, never denounce gore or teddy or dean on specific statements. Oh, i wouldn't say it that way...crap.

That party is decadent and hannity was right. We have to defeat them if we are to defeat the enemy.

They are dangerous.

You War Weeary post made good points too about how Bush could and should lead more. But maybe Bush thinks that to higlight these sorry people by response especially given the get along crap in the senate, that he might be on a limb bt hisself.

Because when you get down to it, if one is to honestly address the dems, it would be necessary to state the obvious.

There conduct has been unpatriotic and has aided and abetted the enemy. PERIOD.

great post

...Daily Kos didn't really have positive (or neutral) coverage of the march either, just one photo diary frontpaged by Armando. I get the feeling, based on past statements and his absence, Kos doesn't really want to deal with the march in any way.

Besides Kos, and besides the front page, the condemnation of ANSWER and the anti-Israel, anti-American, motley fringes have been, at long, long, long last, almost universal. It actually surprised me how much the march made people finally care about ANSWER and their politics, and about the effect of the crazies on everyone else. Crucial steps are being made in moving towards a sane and unexploitive antiwar movement, and this is happening thanks to copious self-reflection and correction which you either didn't see or don't acknowledge.

So, I think your concerns would, ironically, have been much better founded before the march, which has made most everyone at Daily Kos more wary and critical of some elements in the antiwar camp.

They won no elections. They only highjacked a party.

McGovern went down to defeat in one of the most lop-seided election in our history. The party he led to defeat only holds on to the power they do have by pure race based voting blocks. The DNC only goes into popular support by splitting up conservatives.

I do not think that the freak show using Cindy as their mascot will succeed in that.

That they did demoralize us by control of the airwaves at the time is inarguable. That they do not control the airwaves to the same extent this time is also inarguable.

We will ahve some rough sledding ahead. The criminal ativites of the anti-American bigots will only grow, but will alos alienate large numbers of voters. Short of their election theft- which they are completely willing to do- they will not win anymore elections than did McGovern in 1972.

There is so much in this post that is dead wrong that it defies the imagination.  There is blood on the Democrats' hands?  (Excuse me -- who started the war?  So the thousands of Iraqi civilians who died in a war for WMD which don't exist -- that's the Democrats' fault?)  We won the main battle?  (So that is why last month was the most violent yet?)  And how exactly were the Democrats proved wrong?  (The 2004 election was decided by a single state, and the outcome was unclear for hours after the polls closed.  Over 60% of Americans disapprove of the Bush administration.  If the 2004 election were held today, Bush would be toast.  The only President with a similarly low approval rating was Nixon before he resigned).

However, the truly galling thing about that post is the statement that Democrats have been unpatriotic and aided and abetted the enemy.  Let me make sure I have this right:  if you support everything the government does, you are being patriotic.  If you object to a war whose premises have been proven to be wrong, and which most of the world finds to have been a horrible and tragic mistake, then you are aiding and abetting the enemy in stating the obvious.  Do I have this right?

...Daily Kos didn't really have positive (or neutral) coverage of the march either, just one photo diary frontpaged by Armando. I get the feeling, based on past statements and his absence, Kos doesn't really want to deal with the march in any way.

Listen, Addison, I acknowledged the dKos diarists and commenters, and I further rifled through your comments in particular. I found that there were a several folks who tried to distance themselves from ANSWER. A majority? No. And I'll tell you the two classes of people who are the only people who count, in this particular case:

1. The people who participated in the rally
   
2. The people who are benefiting politically from it.

Neither of those classes of people said a peep. Which does make them complicit.

Now, does Kos benefit from Cindy Sheehan and her crowd? I'd check the next Cindy Sheehan diary to see.

And I'd further posit that he benefits at least as much as we do from the folks who do the march on DC for the anniversary of Roe - and in the hypothetical I posited, you know we'd be obliged to frontpage.

Let's see, Clinton won two terms -- Gore won the popular vote by 500,000 votes -- Kerry lost against a war president by one state -- I guess this is all due to election theft and race based voting blocks.

And by the way:  MeGovern's loss has about as much relevance as Barry Goldwater's.

Nixon thought the "silent majority" would win out and lend him support. I guess the right believes the  "silent majority"  will help them win this one. Melanie Morgan knwe what had to be done, she said if they could not attract 500,000 thousand people no one would pay attention to them. They didn't , no one did.

The right did not show up on Sunday for the Support the troops rally, they had maybe 400 people. Don't tell me you have jobs, yadda, yadda.

I took a day off and drove to Crawford, I took time out and drove to DC from St Louis, MO.

The talk show personalities could not get more than 400 people to come out and support the troops. It is only a matter of time now before they achieve their victory.

Leon, you too damn late. I did not see anything on most right sided blogs talking about the MoveAmericaForward support the troops rally. Yes, I know a link was here, but this was one of the FEW places that talked about it.

I especially like the line "...the destruction of this country through increments of moral decay."  I happen to share that view.  

Unfortunately, it reminds me of the toad in hot water story.  Undoubtedly, should we ignore your advice to be prepared to take drastic measures, we will be boiled alive in increments of moral decay.

After reading of the 'anti-war' protestors in this post, several others on RS, and articles on other sites, I'm honesly not sure what nauseates me more:  the actual protestors themselves, or those who pat them on the back in the name of patriotic dissent.

...I saw quite a few comments written by people who were there who were pretty bitter and angry. Mostly on Sunday, and dribbling off into early Monday. There was some defense of ANSWER on "we must maintain solidarity" grounds, but that didn't get any real traction. Instead the "we need to stop whining and get an alternative to ANSWER, cause they're awful" seemed to be the main thrust of the pro-march folks. Which seems fair enough.

If you want to make it about Kos' silence on the matter, ok. I guess that's fair enough and you top-level bloggers can duel it out. But the vaguely defined "5th column" terminology that floats through the piece, I dunno, sort of overheated considering Sat/Sun's self-reflection and (what I felt was) a near universal rejection of ANSWER crowd. Not as overheated as some of the rhetoric coming out of Kos or Red State, of course, but still I think it's a misjudgement of the zeitgeist over there.

Anyway, I get your point, it's true the left collaborated with ANSWER too long, didn't heed warnings when they were given, and are now failing -- perhaps -- to have a unified and wholehearted rejection of ANSWER and their politics.

As a proud participant in the peace rally, I was amazed at the number of Military Families involved, at the number of Vietnam Vets against the War, at the number of Iraq vets participating, and at the military both in uniform and out.  In fact, some held their dogtags in the air at the helicopter that circled us continually.  The cross section of America was wonderful-old, young, middle, aged, retired, etc.  The good thing is that the number of people against this war is increasing.  I noticed in todays paper that there were about 400 at the anti peace rally.  And that even after you were offering on this sight to pay their way.

...is at home.  They can't beat us on the battlefield, but the chicken-jihadis at home can.

They ARE having an effect already; they've successfully brainwashed a significant chunk of America by being louder than the rest of us and getting their hateful voices injected into the mainstream media.  People ARE impatient, and when all they hear from the MSM (with the sole exception of Fox News) is that self-loathing hand-wringing and calling Bush a "liar," it sticks.

How often do you hear ANY MSM outlet remind people of all the other countries who were unequivocal in their assertions that Saddam had WMD?

How often do you hear in the MSM the reminder that Saddam had been committing acts of war against the United States for the 12 years between the ceasefire in 1991 and 2003?

All I hear constantly is the reasons why we "shouldn't" be in Iraq, and Bush-bashing for every reason under the sun.  WE have the internet and, as you said, smagar, this site--but most Americans don't have the first clue.

Any of you fellas on the right a little worried about wasting your time fighting the anti-war Eugene McCarthy leftists while Hillary positions herself as the centrist candidate with a "secret plan" to bring "peace with honor" in Iraq?  Sounds like your focus needs some adjusting......

Who in the name of all that is good and wonderful in this world died and appointed the likes of you, of all people, to be judge and jury of what is or is not patriotic?  Not too much of a swelled head, there, huh?

Not that you'd actually listen, but next time you decide that you're in charge, go back and look at all those Republicans who attacked Clinton during a war in the 1990s about patriotism.  Now that the shoe is on the other foot, it's somehow a crime to question a misbegotten war fought for no national interest whatsoever.  And now that it's gone bad, the only answer is "stay the course."  Why?  Really, why?

Patriotism is doing what one believes is in the national interest.  It is only those on the right who attempt to define anything other than blind allegiance to a deified Republican President who see it otherwise.  It just smacks of so much desperation to see a position supported by, what, 65% of the public, condemned as "fifth column."

This Iraq war is bad.  Bad policy, bad execution, refusal to adjust course, and now, there is no good option.  Staying is bad, leaving may be worse.  All other military action, either actual or potential, is now at risk because of this disaster -- that's not my opinion, that's what the military leadership says.  Of course, this Administration has a tendency to cashier anyone who disagrees with its fantasies.

And you say, "win at all costs."  What does that mean?  You ready to saddle up and fight?  If not, don't be so quick to throw other people's lives into the hopper.  And besides, the tone of your post is so clear -- it's not about the national interest, it's Republican political interest that you're looking to promote.  Not that we should be surprised -- everything your Leader does is about Party, not country.

So print up some posters -- "Join the U.S. Army, Save the Republican Party!"  Bet that'll improve recruiting, yes sir.

Such a "weak" diatribe to cover up and distract from the issues of lying to this country regarding WMD, connections to terrorism, and Sodamn Insane being a "clear & present danger" to the USA.

Shame on you for FAILING TO SEEK TRUTH, HONESTY IN GOVERNMENT, AND ACCOUNTABILITY - SHAME SHAME ON YOU.

Your total lack of compassion is evident and most egregious.

JR

I have no defense.

I was of the opinion, prior to the epiphany that led to this post, that protests are a waste of time. Most conservatives feel this way.

Sign a petition? Stand outside holding a sign? I'd rather just vote and let my guys do the right thing.

I'm slowly coming to realize that maybe we DO need to get out there and do these things just like the left does. For all the inroads we've made into the press, there's nothing like some good old fashioned show of solidarity. We did the links, time to get out the "rally."

Except minus the communists.

Next time, I'll be there.

From an article at Realclearpolitics by F. Gregory Gause III

September 18, 2005

Can Democracy Stop Terrorism?

Even if democracy were achieved in the Middle East, what kind of governments would it produce? Would they cooperate with the United States on important policy objectives besides curbing terrorism, such as advancing the Arab-Israeli peace process, maintaining security in the Persian Gulf, and ensuring steady supplies of oil? No one can predict the course a new democracy will take, but based on public opinion surveys and recent elections in the Arab world, the advent of democracy there seems likely to produce new Islamist governments that would be much less willing to cooperate with the United States than are the current authoritarian rulers.

The answers to these questions should give Washington pause. The Bush administration's democracy initiative can be defended as an effort to spread American democratic values at any cost, or as a long-term gamble that even if Islamists do come to power, the realities of governance will moderate them or the public will grow disillusioned with them. The emphasis on electoral democracy will not, however, serve immediate U.S. interests either in the war on terrorism or in other important Middle East policies.

It is thus time to rethink the U.S. emphasis on democracy promotion in the Arab world. Rather than push for quick elections, the United States should instead focus its energy on encouraging the development of secular, nationalist, and liberal political organizations that could compete on an equal footing with Islamist parties. Only by doing so can Washington help ensure that when elections finally do occur, the results are more in line with U.S. interests.

===

How do you define "victory?"

If Marc R. Gerecht is right and we cannot even win control of the roads (hence safety, commerce and prosperity), how will we win the war?  Why can't the party in power exert its will and demand the ouster of Rumsfeld?  If he is the chief author of this disaster, why not oust him and bring in Schwarzkopf II (whomever that might be) and get the job done right?  This isn't FEMA we're talking about.  This is the safety and future of our country, of our children.

It's all good and well to paint your adversaries as unpatriotic because they (like most Americans) don't see the Pentagon moving the ball down the field.  Do you think the Dems have the power to affect change in the Pentagon?  One party does, and so far, has failed to do so.

Yeah, I'm a Liberal but I'm tired of seeing the good name of our great nation dragged through the mud because no one in power is willing to say "this is stupid!"   Dems for the most part are saying stay the course.  It's time for the party in power to lead or get out of the way.  Dump Rumsfeld and win the war, or admit slow miserable defeat.

Quit whining about the protestors.  Quit whining about the liberals and war fatigue.  We live in the most powerful country on the planet.  ACT LIKE IT!  We have the most powerful military in the Solar System.  USE IT!  Excuses are for girliemen.  Either you are the majority party or you're not.  Either you speak for a majority of Americans or you don't.  Find a way to win this thing and get the job done.  Period.

However, to judge by some of the posts above, ratiocination is no match for emotion and bile.

Yeah, I'm a Liberal but I'm tired of seeing the good name of our great nation dragged through the mud because no one in power is willing to say "this is stupid!"   Dems for the most part are saying stay the course.  It's time for the party in power to lead or get out of the way.  Dump Rumsfeld and win the war, or admit slow miserable defeat.

Quit whining about the protestors.  Quit whining about the liberals and war fatigue.  We live in the most powerful country on the planet.  ACT LIKE IT!  We have the most powerful military in the Solar System.  USE IT!  Excuses are for girliemen.  Either you are the majority party or you're not.  Either you speak for a majority of Americans or you don't.  Find a way to win this thing and get the job done.  Period.

I think that's pretty close to what I said. Except the part about Rumsfeld.

So Lefty Lawyer's post was filled with some eminently reasonable stuff, and all the rest was just emotion and bile. That chickenhawk argument - how can it be defeated?!

...when inroads finally start being made on the left as regards the ineffectiveness and counterproductivity of mass protests, the right starts to pick them up? This after Nick Danger's post advocating that the GOP get into a spending war with Democrats?

This country is getting weird.

Put that on a resume sometime. And be sure to forward us your "I got banned at RedState" diary, wherever it may be posted.

"If we allow them to succeed by failing in Iraq, we provide a vital foothold to a fifth column whose end is the destruction of this country through increments of moral decay."

Allow me to suggest that whether America "wins" in Iraq will not depend on the extreme left fringe, it will depend on the situation on the ground in Iraq.  The success of the Iraqi "opposition" is dependent on their own successes and/or our failures, not 1% of America's feelings.

Likewise, I rather hope that the focus of the "pro-war" population is on winning in Iraq in order to stabilize the Middle East and protect American borders, not on a more vindictive, perhaps even juvenile quest to merely prove the "fifth column" wrong.  That short-sightedness reminds me more of LBJ/Nixon and losing sight of the reality of war with their obsessive personal longing to not be the first President to lose a war, or to be able to blame it on someone else if it were lost.

God help us if our wars are started and/or continued and our foreign policy determined not on facts and what's best for the country, but because of political quests to show that one's hated domestic opponents are wrong.

This country is getting weird.

I think The Big Ditch is swallowing us all.

If you guys quit doing them, I promise I won't ever do a counter-protest.

When Bush's and Cheney's daughters are in Iraq, there will be less emphasis on how Bush avoided the VietNam wars because of his father's connections, or how Cheney avoided it because of his "other priorities."

I don't fear her for a lot of reasons, specificcally on this because I expect the Iraq situation will not be a major issue at all by 2008.

Did you read my post? My ire was directed at the elected  dems like Biden and Co., which includes Hillary.

But, honestly, I don't fear the dems at all. It ain't all about elections. its about doing all we can beat the enemy as fast as we can, and given their refusal to unite behind the policy that has our troops in harm;s way, a policy approved of by most dems and ratified in the 2004 election,

we need to do all we can to reduce the hope they give the enemy by vocally opposing them and making it clear that their voices will not stop Bush from killing them till the Iraqis can do it mostly alone.

So its a war strategy not an election strategy.

This democratic country has, made a choice. It is unpatriotic to act to reduce the chance for the chosen strategy to succeed.

patiotism is loving one's country enough to accept its freely chosen choice after all voices were heard. rather than loving one's vanity more so and willing that their actions give the enmey hope when hope is what causes them to keep on killing us.

This is especiallly so when the only way we can lose is if we lose will.

They are a weakness the enemy exploits. we need to ameliorate that weakness thru calling them out.

agree, call out the hillarites for the cute language that has it both ways?

Allow me to suggest that whether America "wins" in Iraq will not depend on the extreme left fringe, it will depend on the situation on the ground in Iraq.  The success of the Iraqi "opposition" is dependent on their own successes and/or our failures, not 1% of America's feelings.

I did not say that our success or failure in Iraq would be due to the left wing fringe. I said their success, if it exists, would be due to our failure. Those are two distinct propositions.

Likewise, I rather hope that the focus of the "pro-war" population is on winning in Iraq in order to stabilize the Middle East and protect American borders, not on a more vindictive, perhaps even juvenile quest to merely prove the "fifth column" wrong.  That short-sightedness reminds me more of LBJ/Nixon and losing sight of the reality of war with their obsessive personal longing to not be the first President to lose a war, or to be able to blame it on someone else if it were lost.

I'm a domestic policy person. I supported the war in Iraq from the get-go - but like I said, it was pretty much ancilliary. The "proving the 'fifth column' wrong" is a nice - a necessary side effect, which is the point I was trying to drive home.

Can we get a "short list" of nominees to get the job done right?  Anyone but Patreus.  Puhleaze.

You're new here, so you get a freebie. Plus, I hate policing my own threads.

You defeat the chickenhawk argument like this. We've heard it around here for so long that you'd do yourself well to move along to other things.

But I'd not be the person to give them. I know my limitations.

A knowledge of people qualified to run the DoD is one of them.

If you are, I hope you're riding a desk somewhere, under the watchful eyes of adult officers and NCOs, and not pushing troops.

Why does the President have to send his daughters to this battle?  Would you want to be their platoon leader in Iraq, knowing that their presence would make your troops a magnet for jihadis looking for a headline.

Your comments are childish tripe.  Grow up.

You ready to saddle up and fight?  If not, don't be so quick to throw other people's lives into the hopper.

Aside from this being a juvenile argument--we do, after all, have a VOLUNTEER army--seems to me that, if your bleak assessment of the situation in Iraq was shared by the majority of our military, then retention would be down.  Army units would be missing their reenlistment targets.

But, they're not.  Look it up.

These are the words of a small, small mind.

1.  Republican President
   
2.  Republican Senate
   
3.  Republican House of Representatives

So, you go girl.  By all means, keep associating the Democratic Party with socialists, communists, jihadists, anti-Semites and the like.  Continue to convey to America your plan for our future.  

Also, you might want to keep a lid on the Talking Points.  

were reported by a caller (policeperson type) to Rush today.  He said there looked like only 2000 people on the Cindy Sheehan side and 2000 people on the other side.  That's not big in numbers.  The MSM tends to inflate the numbers and pictures.

professional protesters, how many people would you have had?

Keep following Mother Sheehan

After being a lefty and spewing similar garbage for much of my adult life, I now am also convinced that the left's focus on universal nonviolence -- what they call 'peace' -- will ultimately destroy our country and civilization and they must be fought in every way without resorting to their tactics of profanity and sensationalism and meanness. That the terrorists want to kill us is not hyperbole; it is a fact and no change of policy such as advocated by the left will stop this. In fact, it will only embolden them and encourage their jihad. To believe otherwise is to be living in a utopian la la land and I know many leftist who who truly believe that the la la land would be true is only we could 'Imagine' it. This delusion runs their energy pool and provides an attractive facade covering a empty hole of unrealistic and self-defeating promises. So yes, we have to fight this self-destructive part of our culture that freely screams that they are living in a Nazi state.

technically, saddam in 1991

But most dems voted for both the soon after 911 war on terror resolution and the specific iraq war resolution. Kerry as well. Kerry also did not run on a platform to pull out. But he did make all the criticisms that the dems make today andhave since the day after the election

in which their criticisms were rejected.

The people chose Bush's way.

But the dems insist on giving the enemy hope and putting our troops at greater risk die to a childish vanity.

Were the democrats proved right by losing the white house and more seats in congress?

Would you refuse to fight an enemy that hides behind and purposefully kills civilians as a matter of strategy?

MSM polls are consequence free.

Elections make choices.

Our troops are in the feild. Your disagreements were heard. Once this nation goes to war, defeat is not an option. The policy was affirmed on election day despite the same arguments.

Your disagreements had their chance to change policy, but really didn't even get Kerry to fully embrace them. The woos.

So now, with full knowledge that yopur disagreements will not be heeded, we therefore know that the only reason you do it is

vanity

to have an i told you so moment of pink pleqasure if we lose, at elast until the terrorists kill more of us

or to cause us tolose

for we do there only effect is to give the encourage the enemy

for you see, the enemy is cheering you on

becasue they know they are in a desperate situation.

By the way, some our greatest casualties in wwi and the civil war was near the end.

But you are factually wrong. US casualtis are down. the iraqis ae up. They ar e a brave people, the army, the purple fingered 80% fighting those baathist dead enders and terrorists.

By the way, most of the war objectives have been met. in ant way in history, removal of the regime and the threat it posed is victory.  Mor4eover, we made sure that sadam cannot harbour terrorist or use wmd. Our willingness to go to war is why he got rid of the stuff. Or he lied. Moreover, the peoplehave embraces freedom and are bonded with us against a commoin enemy and will be abeacon to the muslim world.

all good

rejoice

or don't let facts get in the way of the hysteria

I appreciate your suggestion to move on, but I would prefer to outline the fallacy in Tacitus's argument.

The thesis is true as far as it goes (i.e., if, for example, you don't want to support Amtrak, you can't deduct the part of your tax bill which goes to Amtrak.  Certain decisions of the state are binding on all of its citizens.  Moreover, you can't put a bunch of 60 year old Senators in uniform because they voted for the war.  It's like saying that Wayne Morse and Ernest Gruening didn't have to go to VietNam because they voted against the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, but the other 98 Senators had to go).

But this misses the point.  The fact of the matter is that when it was George Bush's chance to serve, he declined.  Ditto for Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, etc.  Does this mean that once in power, they could not legitimately start a war because they avoided service?  No, but it casts some doubt on the willingness with which they sent others to their deaths.  I do not think that a President who has seen war -- Eisenhower, for example -- would have been so eager to wage war on a country which has never attacked us.

But that misses the point, too.  The chicken hawk thing did not become prominent until the Republicans impugned John Kerry, who is a bona fide war hero.  Seeing delegates at the Republican convention with purple band-aids (to mock Kerry's Purple Hearts) was truly nauseating.  Kerry is a man who bled for his country.  For people who strove mightily to avoid fighting in VietNam to slime someone who volunteered and served, the term chicken hawk is far too kind.

While Lieutenant Bradshaw, LeftyLawyer and other gasbags rail on and on and on about how Iraq is a quagmire and we're doomed, the troops of the Coalition are slowly but surely making progress.

No one I know in the Army thought this would be easy.  But, the situation in Iraq is a lot better than many of us thought it would be.

I concede that Rummy and some in DOD thought it would be easier that it turned out to be.  I know of no one in the JCS or Pentagon who thought this would be a piece of cake.  

Sadly, many Americans simply lack the staying power for this fight.  But, I feel we have enough to get the job done.

And for those lefties who are poised to scream "Well, why don't YOU go serve in Iraq," why don't you tell me where YOU were in the fall of 1990/winter of 1991, or one month after 9/11.  If your answers aren't, respectively, "In Saudi Arabia and Iraq during Gulf War I" and "mobilized to active duty," I'm really not interested in your opinion.

There is no responsible voice on the left which is against fighting terrorism.  It is the war in Iraq which we are against.  There were few, if any, terrorists in Iraq under Saddam.  There are plenty of them now.  So how is it that we are fighting terrorism by giving terrorists a place to train and practice their trade?

Of course I would not want to serve under Bush's daughters -- they are spoiled, bratty kids who share their father's earlier inability to keep sober for very long.  But that's not the point.  Rather than repeat the post I made above, I will simply state that if George Bush were draft age, he surely would have found a way to avoid service now, as he did back in the 1960's.

Come on dude, why say something so ignorant? If all of us on the left are communists, jihadists, and so on, then what are you? A theocrat, a Nazi, a fascist, American Taliban?  I SAY NOT! Please stop saying such horrid things and restore some dignity. Do it for the right, ok?

You are the epitome of the peace at any cost bunch. The fact is you would never support a war, no matter what.

And get over the past two elections, YOU LOST!

"How often do you hear in the MSM the reminder that Saddam had been committing acts of war against the United States for the 12 years between the ceasefire in 1991 and 2003?"

I've been wondering why they don't ask where Osama bin Laden is anymore! Ain't that somethin'?

Those "known facts" again, huh? Seems like the facts are increasingly being known by Americans.

Democratic Party is morally bankrupt and traitorous as exemplified by John Kerry's actions after returning from Viet Nam as a coward.

"I now am also convinced that the left's focus on universal nonviolence -- what they call 'peace' -- will ultimately destroy our country and civilization"

Are you suggesting that, what you call "war", will ultimately save our country and civilization? Just a question...

need links where repubs attacked Clinton's patiotism for a war he was fighting

Do you beleive it is in our national interest to lose this war? For Al Qaida and/or Baathists to control Iraq?

We have enough soldiers to fight. Its just that we could win quicker and lose less of them if the enemy weren't hopeful that we will lose our will and put the paper tiger party back in charge.

And when they look back at Vietnam and and see the "courageous patriotic" marchers that risked... well nothing...but they "stood" for ...well surrender and abandoning our allies to two million slaghterd by communists, and when they look at the hans blix strategy folks

and think they can last till y'all can get "power"..kind of an oxymon when applied to the power to surrender.

Free speech allowed us all to argue and then we made a choice, and the pres and congress we chose sent us to war.

And that choice was re-affirmed.

The next chance to make choices to change policy is nov 2006 and then 2008.

msm weekly consequence free pulses aside

He shot himself to get the pass home and upon arrival slandered the heros he left behind.

Isn't that what Bill Bennett called Charlie Rangel?

I realize that your mind is made up, so I'm reluctant to intrude with some facts.  Regrettably, by any conceivable metric, the war is going very badly.  Violence continues to increase.  You can't even drive safely from Baghdad Airport to the Green Zone.  There is intermittent electricity, poor water and sanitation, and the oil pipelines are frequently under attack.  The country is splitting apart along ethnic and sectarian lines.  The constitution -- if it is adopted -- enshrines Sharia and denies the rights of women (this is what we are fighting for?).  Also, there is no Coalition -- it's us and the Brits.

Sounds suspiciously like a quagmire to me...

John Kerry shot himself?

And, I doubt he'd see eye-to-eye with Lieutenant  Bradshaw, based on this

There are only two serious attempts at swamp-draining currently under way. In Afghanistan and Iraq, agonizingly difficult efforts are in train to build roads, repair hospitals, hand out ballot papers, frame constitutions, encourage newspapers and satellite dishes, and generally evolve some healthy water in which civil-society fish may swim. But in each case, from within the swamp and across the borders, the most poisonous snakes and roaches are being recruited and paid to wreck the process and plunge people back into the ooze. How nice to have a "peace" movement that is either openly on the side of the vermin, or neutral as between them and the cleanup crew, and how delightful to have a press that refers to this partisanship, or this neutrality, as "progressive."

And how nice it is to have peaceniks and defeatniks, such as Lieutenant Bradshaw and LeftyLawyer and smittywhatever, who are great at whining but...well, anything else?  I wonder.

BZ, Chris Hitchens!

with any facts.

I think the critical flaw of the right these days  is that they fail to realize that perhaps liberals wouldn't be so staunchly against the Iraq war if it had been planned properly. As far as I can remember (I may be wrong)nobody expected the death of nearly 2,000 American soldiers during this war. As a matter of fact, if our boys weren't dying at this current rate, I probably would support the war (despite the lack of evidence linking Saddam to 9/11).

The left doesn't want our country to "lose" anything. That is why we don't want to "lose" anymore of our soldiers. We aren't cheering for insurgent success, we're hoping for a better future. Unfortunately, the disagreement lies here. Those of us on the left believe that the future won't be so good if we stay in Iraq, while the right thinks that leaving Iraq will jeopardize our future. I can see your argument, but the death toll of American soldiers (Iraqi civilian deaths too) makes it a little hazy. I hope you understand.

As an American citizen, I don't care if Democrats benefit or lose politically in any situation any more than Republicans. What I do care for is the American people and, not big government or small government, but GOOD government. But hey, I'm just some dude trying to make sense out of all of this madness. Just my two populist cents!  

Is the idea that the anti war movement is growing. Presently I'd say it was stagnant. In Vietnam you didn't see pro troop rallies countering the protesters. Furthermore, a good chunk of the protesters last weekend were the same people who were antiwar activists in Nam trying desperately to cling to their fading youth.

Most of the young people who were there were there for the free dope, sex and obnoxious music. Most of this crowd probably didn't even know what exactly the protest was over.

There would have been more people at the counter protest, but we were too busy making America work helping out our fellow citizens clean up the wreckage of Katrina and Rita.

Furthermore don't discount the media in all this. They're 100% behind the antiwar protesters cause a lot of media big wigs made their reputations reporting on Nam. They're not going to change their tune now.

I'm happy that these imbeciles were out in force. They're the greatest argument in favor of free speech I've ever seen. Now everyone can see exactly how stupid they all are.

the Lieutenant  Bradshaws of this world have never added one positive note to this geat country. They make up the true quagmire through which the builders of this country have had to tread over the last 250 years.

I have a feeling this one's commission extends only as far as his tag line.

I promised myself to be nice. I had my "one bite" weeks ago, so if I get a little crazy, let the directors ban me. Don't blame me for being attracted to good discussions. I hope you understand Tbone.

There is only one way to finish a fight and that is finish your opponent. The liberals never have had guts for a fight. Not now, not ever. Instead of accepting their cowardly weakness, they try to assuage it with rationalizations like you just wrote.  

just to get his 3 scratches and home pass.

Yes,

Being willing to fight the killers -- called 'War' is the only way to stop them. They cannot be negotiated with, massaged, hugged, or appeased into changing. The fight is not only via military warfare, but also via all other valid methods: helping the world to democratize and giving people a sense of power in their lives -- called 'Hope'. But at the moment military warfare is essential to our survival.

BTW, I wanted to get rid of Saddam without the WMD argument (even though everyone from Clinton to Mubarek were convinced Saddam had stockpiles of WMD): you know the litany of actions that made him an international war crimial -- he harbored Abu Nidal, Zawaqari, trained terrorists and would in a heartbeat have reinvigorated his nuclear, chemical, and biological ambitions once the world looked the other way. He is a thug and sadist -- called 'Evil' -- and would do anything he could to create havoc in the world. His two sadistic raping, murdering sons were metaphors for the progeny of Saddam's activity in the world.

Before the election, Democrats who opposed the war were smeared as traitors.  After the election, Democrats who opposed the war are still smeared as traitors.  And before the next election, if there is still a war, I'm quite confident any Democrats who oppose the war will be smeared as traitors.

You keep bringing up the election as some magical moment when we made a choice, but I'm still quite confused as to when you would consider it legitimate to oppose the war.

Around these parts, which explains why some seldom show it.

Toodles.

I guess you can drive safely from Baghdad Airports, violence is decreasing, the electricity is on all the time, and the newly adopted constitution is a marvel of Jeffersonian democracy.  Thanks for correcting me.

and several to preserve it. While war is an abomination, it is so often so very necessary.

If either Kos or Duncan says a word, just a single sentence, on the front page about this, I'll amend this post accordingly. I almost included the folks from mydd, but then I noticed Chris Bowers said something about hoping the rally was controlled by the Cindy Sheehan folks and not the crazy ANSWER folks (I'm paraphrasing, and deleting profanity), and I counted that as "distance."

FDR and IKE planned the training mission for d-day training mission so poorly they lost 5000 men. But the GOP did not rise up and insist on defeat due to poor plans.

Our plans have lost less than 2000 while liberating the country from the regime we sought to remove, had an election and are free.

And are fighting with us as muslim allies g=against the barbarians

There no men and women of courage and character on the left. That is why the left is increasingly being left.

"Yes,

Being willing to fight the killers -- called 'War' is the only way to stop them. They cannot be negotiated with, massaged, hugged, or appeased into changing. The fight is not only via military warfare, but also via all other valid methods: helping the world to democratize and giving people a sense of power in their lives -- called 'Hope'. But at the moment military warfare is essential to our survival".

Many of us on the left happen to think that people like you, the Bush conservatives, are responsible for the messy Iraq war. Does that mean I should go after you and kill you? If everyone follows this doctrine, won't it create MORE problems? I mean, China or even France may feel like calling us "killers" one day. Would it be ok for them to attack us for their survival? Are we supposed to live like animals fighting each other for the female in the pack?

If we met on the street and I disliked your way of life, would I have the right to thrash you (and I'm sure I would buddy, this 230 lb linebacker would crush you)? But if I did, wouldn't your family see me as a "killer" and therefore, seek vengeance. This creates a vicious cycle. I'd say try again.

In that President Clinton during Operation Desert Fox 1998-99 bombed the holy bejezus out of Iraq, but refused to go all the way and remove the problem which was Saddam Hussein.

The objective reason cited by Clinton and Al Gore, for Operation Desert Fox? Saddam Hussein's posession of WMDs and kicking out the inspectors.

We basically had two options, both of which were negative:

1. Take Saddam's word for it that he had no WMD after he'd kicked out inspectors again and refused to account for his prior stocks fo WMDs and precursors.
   
2. Invade and remove Saddam.

The strategy of bombing and leaving Saddam in was the worst of all possible worlds. Innocent people died while Saddam stayed in power, and the basic problem (Saddam) remained.

Let me note the PEACE MOVEMENT HAD NOTHING TO SAY ABOUT OPERATION DESERT FOX. Sorry for the Caps but this must be emphasized. The Peace Movement was perfectly willing to allow Presidend Clinton to kill innocent Iraqis while allowing Saddam to stay in power.

In the post-9/11 World the US is not going to take brutal and repeatedly anti-American dictators word for it. Let me remind you Saddam gave shelter and financial support to Abdul Rahman Yassin, the only remaining at-large 1993 WTC bomber. Also Abu Nidal, Zarqawi, and many others, as well as offering publicly refuge to Osama (as noted by Richard Clarke). Taking Saddams or lil Kim's or the Mullah's word for it is simply a non-starter.

The real objection of the Peace Movement is that Bush for better or worse ACTED instead of doing the desultory bombing that earned the contempt of bin Laden (as evidence of our "weakness" and ability to be bullied).

gross generalization you are making. How could you assume that liberals don't have guts? Come on pal, you're behind a computer talking smack. I'm sure you would get thrashed by many liberals. Stop acting all tough while sitting behind a computer. Let the Marines or the Army tell me what you're saying, but not you.

so, we can fight terrorists unless they band together and cross a nations border to attack us? ok

Uh, so when can we kill these terrorists/ Must we leave and then hunt them down one by one after we sat we're sorry, just to make it fair?

even if one could accept a "slander" argument (which last check expressing one's opinion about a public issue is not), you are really reaching on the shot himself one.  Why not just argue that Hillary and Bill had Vince Foster killed by the Cuban mafia too?  It would be just as credible.

Fullback's equation.

How would have the American public reacted to the GOP being against Nazi removal? I'm sure you wouldn't have said anything either buddy.

Going to war in Iraq to "liberate" it is a "known fact" by the right. Sure, Iraq was liberated from Saddam only to fall in the hands of al-Qaeda. Nice work guys, nice work!

The fringe elements of the anti-war Left you despise have no political power in this country, and never will, no matter how many Democrats are elected to office.

You can recite all the Michael Moore and Ward Churchill quotes you want, but they hold no political power and never will no matter how much you try to portray them as the authentic voice of the Democratic Party.  Oh, but wait, Michael Moore had a nice seat at the Democratic Convention.  Wow, such power.

The viewpoint you decry is a fringe and will always be a fringe.  There is such a gulf between some aging hippie complaining about American imperialism and Russ Feingold calling for a timetable for withdrawal that it's comical for anyone to pretend otherwise.

I understand there is sometimes a need to rally the troops by pretending that the wackiest elements of the other side are on the verge of taking over America.  The Left does it too, every time Pat Robertson talks about hurricanes being punishment for homosexuality or whatever.  But the fact that moderates are underrepresented in the blogosphere should not obscure the fact that most of the country is smart enough to identify a fringe and disregard it.

Jerry Falwell gets a call from the White House to solicit his opinion on the Supreme Court nomination, and you can take that fact for whatever it's worth.  Do you seriously think President Kerry would place a call to ANSWER to ask them what he should do about Iraq?  Your answer may determine whether you are a member of a fringe movement, as well.

I don't think so. Come on, come up with better logic. I didn't say kill those who 'disagree with us.' Your skewed logic is exactly the type of idiocy we need to counteract with logic and realism. Good night. Enjoy la la land.

Seriously, deep breaths. He's not challenging your personal manhood, there's no reason to slap him with your glove.

His point is that, historically, liberals don't have the stomach for prolonged war (especially in comparison with conservatives).

I suppose the point is disputable, but I've never heard it disputed.

you mention it, removing Saddam from Iraq isn't the same to removing Nazis. After the allies invaded Normandy, Nazis didn't multiply in numbers like insurgents did in Iraq after invading it.

sunday. He is ana cave with 10 people and no way to communicate/.  i forgot who the source is.

seriously

big story

how did you miss it

with soldiers who all had Dkos accounts? As for liberals thrashing me, I'm a real 2 Amendment kind of guy.

He said it in a way that sounded so personal, making me want to pimp slap him. But I apologize guys. No pimp slapping here! Although I would take a swift kick in the arse for making such a bad judgement.

"Who in the name of all that is good and wonderful in this world died and appointed the likes of you, of all people, to be judge and jury of what is or is not patriotic?  Not too much of a swelled head, there, huh?"

Umm, well that would be me.  As you can see from my user name you can't really attach the chickenhawk meme to me.  Uberpilothusband is in Iraq on a very regular basis and gets shot at every now and then as well.  And, oh yeah, he even got to do some of that spook stuff a couple of weeks ago to help spread democracy in Afghanistan.  So I am your MORAL AUTHORITY on this war.  Got it?  And I appointed Leon to do my dirty work.  Ya see, he writes better than me 'cuz he gets to be around adults all day.  Me, I just get to read picture books to kids.  So, now that we have that out of the way, I'll address a bit of your nonsense.

"This Iraq war is bad.  Bad policy, bad execution, refusal to adjust course, and now, there is no good option.  Staying is bad, leaving may be worse.  All other military action, either actual or potential, is now at risk because of this disaster -- that's not my opinion, that's what the military leadership says.  

All war is bad.  People die, it sucks.

Bad policy, blah, blah, blah.  No war is perfect.  Find one that was and we'll shut up.

Leaving is NOT an option.  Period.  Never has been, never should be.

All other military action is at risk, blah, blah, blah....Surely you have credible links to back up such a claim.  FTR-uberpilothusband did a thesis paper on the problems/successes in Iraq quite recently for his command and staff class.  I don't recall any of his professors or sources saying anything of the sort.

"And you say, "win at all costs."  What does that mean?"

John F. Kennedy says it far better than I could-

"We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty."

"You ready to saddle up and fight?  If not, don't be so quick to throw other people's lives into the hopper."

I've already addressed this. Remember, IAM your MORAL AUTHORITY.

"And besides, the tone of your post is so clear -- it's not about the national interest,"

On that note you couldn't be more wrong.  The national interest is the ONLY purpose.  Duty, honor, country.....not party, you idiot.

Skewed logic is exactly what I said my friend. You must be a resident of la la land?

and neither clinton or gore ran as a liberal, ie they lied.

bush set popular vote record

clinton got 49% and 43%

God saved us from gore

I know that ignoring media articles is a textbook play, but can you ignore this photo?

http://news.yahoo.com/photos/ss/events/wl/102602iraqprotests/im:/050924/ids
_photos_ts/r1123866861.jpg;_ylt=AlmMSzx8qdx3B8grC0UQTr9saMYA;_ylu=X3oDMTA5b
GcyMWMzBHNlYwNzc25hdg--

If you can, your cognitive dissonance has been taken to new levels.

I think the critical flaw of the right these days  is that they fail to realize that perhaps liberals wouldn't be so staunchly against the Iraq war if it had been planned properly.

If the Democrats had stayed on this message, I submit to you that their polling would have actually improved at the expense of Bush, instead of diving with it. As it is, too many of the fund raisers started agitating for "Out of Iraq, NOW! No war for Oil! Halliburton!" To the point that the message is just not believable for folks.

The left doesn't want our country to "lose" anything. That is why we don't want to "lose" anymore of our soldiers. We aren't cheering for insurgent success, we're hoping for a better future.

Fine. Then it's your job to shout down those idiots carrying signs like the Palestinian flag one I linked in this post, because they're marching for your cause, not mine. In case you're missing it, there are a heck of a lot of them who ARE rooting for us to lose. And I presume that's not you, but I also hold you and those of your ilk accountable when they become symbiotic with the crowd that DOES hate America and want us to lose.

First of all, you're one of the Democrats I truly enjoy reading over at Kos. Keep up the good work.

Second, questioning whether someone has the intestinal fortitude to protect the country from danger is different from "smearing them as traitors." Now, I'll grant you that there were probably some folks who did smear the anti-war folks as "traitors," but the majority, I think, engaged in the former, as opposed to the latter.

Third, I will say that I think that election time is the perfect time for that point to be made - and to be made loud and clear. I wasn't active at RedState before the election so that I can link back and establish that factually for you, but I really am sincere in saying that.

For that matter, I'm totally cool with you saying it now. I'm not cool with the folks who are marching with the commies and the Islamovictocrats and saying nary a word against them.

The problem for Democrats is that they objectively reject military force at all costs. All you need to do is look at Bill Clinton's constant effort in the 1990's to avoid at all costs ANY ground engagement that cost lives, including running away (there are no other words for it) in Somalia and even HAITI where armed thugs intimidated the US Navy under Clinton to sail away out of Port-Au-Prince.

There is long Copperhead history of Democrats using genuine War Heroes and Generals (such as McClellan) to avoid unsettling questions about their appeasement policies. Lincoln had at best a pretty dubious record in the Black Hawk Wars; McClellan had a pretty good record in the Mexican War. Yet McClellan advocated "Peace at any price" with the South and acceptance of secession and the end of the Union, along with slavery. Sensibly, the voters chose Lincoln with the policy of preserving the Union over McClellan's personal heroism and political appeasement.

You could see this with genuine War Hero George McGovern. Read Stephen Ambrose's "Into the Blue" which details the incredible personal heroism of George McGovern during the air campaign from first North Africa and then Italy. Yet his personal political policies were basically, surrender to the North Vietnamese and withdrawal from the world in neo-isolationism in the context of the Cold War. Voters had previously rejected the too warlike Barry Goldwater (too likely to start a nuclear war with aggressive acts) and rejected McGovern too (too likely to encourage aggression by the Soviets by weakness).

Kerry's ENTIRE political career tended to cast doubt on his war record. First there was his testimony during the Congressional hearings where he asserted that "American soldiers raped and pillaged in a manner reminiscent of Ghengis Khan." Not likely to engender confidence that the man was patriotic or stood with the troops. Then there was his appearance at Winter Soldier which was more of the same (American soldiers as SS brutalizers). Then there was Kerry throwing away his medals (or someone else's ... his story changed constantly).

Capped by his visit to the NVA folks in Paris when  folks like McCain were being held by the NVA and being tortured.

Kerry's on-the-record anti-troop and anti-American actions tended to re-inforce the Swift Boat charges. As did Kerry's somewhat dubious record (only 4 months of combat, followed by sending home via the three purple hearts, none of which required hospitalization). Unlike George McGovern who had a record that could not be questioned (and who never referred to his record), Kerry constantly harped on his military record of four months of combat in Vietnam, "reporting for duty" etc. while repeating a general anti-War agenda out of 1968. Coupled with his pretentions to blue blood (ironically "Texas Cowboy Bush" was the blue blood and Kerry the ordinary fellow) that never stopped the Swift Boats charges stuck. Particularly since Kerry was caught out in exaggerations such as Christmas in Cambodia and the magic CIA hat etc.

HAD Kerry run to the RIGHT of GWB and promised massive escalation to CRUSH the jihadis and get bin Laden by invading Pakistan if that's what it took, including a war that would defeat Pakistan and destroy it's nukes, he would have won. Instead Kerry ran as the "secret" anti-War guy who pretended to be merely "better" than GWB and everyone saw through it.

Only Woodrow Wilson, FDR, JFK, and Truman were able to break the Copperhead tendencies of the Democratic Party, all the others fell victim to it, including Hubert Humphrey who was basically defeated by the anti-War folks who'd rather have the odious Nixon (America's Worst President of the 20th Century, think Wage/Price controls) than an old-school FDR type guy.

who enriches the debate like a modern day Cicero...sheesh, your self-righteous ad hominem attacks are really getting old on this thread fast...Leon at least argues with facts and thought, rather than just dismissively deriding those who disagree with him.  Leon is a big reason I come back here, even though we happen to agree on very little.  Try and add a little something rather than just calling all us liberals "wimps", "useless" or whatever attack seems within reach on your desk.

And I'm glad you're on our side.

Seriously chief, on the laundry list of concerns, the percieved America-haters you describe are the least of our worries--I think an incapable executive might be a more pressing matter.  As you say, you can not be persuaded that our military was incapable of putting the war to bed, so I won't bother trying.  However, its worth considering that at this stage in the game, the US is right on track for Yet-Another-Failed-Regime-Change.  How did we get to such a mediocre position in Iraq?!  Once again, we can't blame the military force...  Now, it is certainly the case that there are a group of zealots who appear more concerned with our president's failure than America's success, and that is a Bad Thing.  But for every Michael Moore there is a Pat Robertson, no?  So lets rise above that chicken fight, and talk about the novel part of this problem.  What concerns me is that our executive created an enviornment where a sufficient military force was unable to achieve its charged duty due to a lack of leadership.  And if we must win, and we must prevail, then we MUST find strong leadership.  There is plenty of it in the Republican party, but its all been squandered by the incompetance of a likeable Texan.  It kills me.  I happened to be passing through my undergraduate stomping grounds, and I saw a booth advertising the College Republicans.  And wouldn't you know it, they had a massive picture of George Bush next to the table!  Is that what you want our youth looking up to?  That guy?!  If we really want to turn things around, we're going to have to turn this party back around.  Let the liberals have their tie-die parties, its not going to change what happens on the Ground.  Instead, lets go after the real America-haters, the administration who will fight dirty to take power (otherwise maybe it'd be Pres. McCain), but won't suck it up and lead the country to victory.

Do you have a link?

don't buy into that rubbish. Your assertion that there are people who really HATE American is like me saying that there are conservatives who were rooting for the black people to drown in New Orleans. I don't buy either. Dissent does not equal hatred. I don't agree with you, therefore, do I hate you? By arguing against you, am I rooting for your demise? Not everything is so black and white.

But I'm tired and going to bed, so I'll reply to whatever you have to say tomorrow. Good night and take care guys!

seriously and in good faith, but you're making it awfully difficult.  When, exactly, did Iraq "fall in the hands of al-Qaeda"?  I must have missed the coronation of Zarqawi.

Do you have any conception of the monumental task we have set before us as a nation to democratize the Middle East?  Are you oblivious the to miraculous progress made to date?  Freedom for 26 million Iraqis?  Removal of a violent dictator?  The holding of the first truly democratic Iraqi elections in half a century, supported by 60% of voting age Iraqis in spite of murderous threats?  The first democratically written constitution in the region?  The promise of a second election just around the corner?  All in under 3 years?  Have you any idea how long it took America, a country with a history and culture already embracing democracy, to reach these milestones?

That is nice work -- nice work, indeed.

Casualties during Exercise Tiger were tragically high, but I've never heard 5,000. I thought it was in the neighborhood of 700 (though admittedly even that figure would do little to undercut your point).

See my comment above.

Goldwater lost because people feared in the Cold War he would fly off the handle and start global nuclear war. Sensible and the vote for LBJ was wise in context.

McGovern lost despite his obvious personal qualities as a good man and very, VERY brave one because his political policies encouraged the Soviet Union to be too aggressive in context of the Cold War (and thus risked global nuclear war on the weak side).

Clinton won two elections during the complete absence of the Cold War calculations. There was no perceived downside to deterring the Soviet Superpower, but not being too aggressive.

NOW, we have bin Laden and Al Qaeda and global Jihad. We need Presidents who will be aggressive enough in solving the problem and deterring attack. WEAKNESS in foreign affairs and encouraging more mass casualty terror attacks are a real risk. Bin Laden and Al Qaeda are determined to attack us again and again, only by deterring states hostile to us from co-operating with bin Laden can we limit these attacks to London-style attacks instead of say, a nuclear-style attack.

So yes looking back at Goldwater and McGovern is instructive in how voters react to threats from abroad.

"Dissent does not equal hatred. I don't agree with you, therefore, do I hate you? By arguing against you, am I rooting for your demise? Not everything is so black and white."

Might want to let screamin' Howie in on that one.  Just sayin'.

Thanks for seeing the good our guys are doing.

Now, if only we could get the MSM to spread the luv.  Sigh.

I'm not disagreeing with your basic point that the groups themselves hold little power in the classic political sense. However, I am concerned about the fact that they are lent legitimacy by their inclusion with the "mainstream" of the anti-war movement, and thusly receive a boon if said movement succeeds.

You do know that two U. S. Representatives participated in that march, right?

Now ask yourself, if there was a march hosted - not by just hard right wingers like the Freepers or Falwell, but genuine nutjobs like that guy with the "God hates f*gs" church and the Freedmen and such, and two Republican U. S. Reps (any two) spoke at the march, what would you expect the rest of us to do?

from Iraq is bad news.  It's just reported that way by MSM.

This is what good news looks like:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/forms/printThis.html?id=110007245

And this is why we will be in Iraq for quite some time to come:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/forms/printThis.html?id=110007289

(free registration may be required to view some articles at OpinionJournal.com)

Seriously, go here, read the signs, then go to the websites for some of those organizations. They hate America. And not just in a "Atrios hates America, Apple Pie and his mother" half-joking sort of way. They really, really hate America.

Denying their existence is no more worthwhile than me denying the existence (however small) of the Klan. I admit that the Klan exists. I don't march with them, even if I'm not wearing a hooded robe.

bought it used. Had a tag sewed in said "R. Byrd" I wonder what ever happened to him.

uberpilothusband is headed back to Iraq in about 10 days.  Shall I have him send you some digitals of the good things?  How 'bout a progress report?  Will that make you feel better.

"Violence continues to increase."

Got some links to back that up on a consistent basis?

There were a ton of diaries at dkos regarding this weekend's protest, obviously, and I found it very interesting to read the competing viewpoints - both the people who complained that they didn't want ANSWER polluting the movement against the Iraq war with their fringe causes, and the other people who said the former group was blowing the importance of the fringe causes all out of proportion.  I think the two camps were pretty equally divided; a lot of people who attended the rally were basically like "no one was listening to those speakers anyway, it wasn't about that."

But the people who actually took the side of what I've called the "fringe causes" - the people who actually said "no, you can't truly oppose the Iraq war, unless you understand the linkage to the plight of the Palestinians and blah blah blah" - were definitely a tiny minority.  The real fight was basically between (1) those who wouldn't attend a rally such as this one, in protest against ANSWER's fringe positions, and (2) those would would attend, because it's the best thing going, but personally all they care about is the Iraq war.

So it comes down to nothing more than a difference about whether the 'Free Mumia' crowd is really worth loudly denouncing.  Like I said, I read both sides, and I found the discussion very educational.

I know Markos hasn't taken sides in this particular pie fight, and I know you'd like him to make a big front page post denouncing the anti-Israel fringe and what have you.  But based on his snide comments a couple weeks ago about the "visualize peace" crowd, I have a pretty good feeling which way he would come out.

Oh, and hi!

Actually, the Nazi army did grow in size after our declaration of war. So what.

The insurgents are a combination of those baathists that oppressed the people for 30 years with saddam, and are the same number as before. Forign Terrorists have invaded Iraq and are not "insurgents." The 80% purple fingers are Iraq.

The more correct analogy would be that when we went to Europe nazis that were in other countries crossed borders to fight us.

So we caused nazis to multiply in Italy?

We are fighting in Iraq (and Afghanistan) Al Qaeda. In Iraq it's Abu Musab al Zarqawi. In Afghanistan it's bin Laden himself. Don't forget it's the demand of the Peace Movement that we unilaterally surrender in Afghanistan also.

Terrorists in Iraq under Saddam: Zarqawi, who runs the terrorist jihad there now. Abu Nidal (legendary terrorist). Abdul Rahman Yassin (only at-large 1993 WTC bomber). Given Saddam's assasination attempt against GHW Bush, various provocative moves including a public offer of sanctuary to bin Laden, to deny he was a risk to US security is delusional IMHO. To say he was the greatest risk (over Iran, Pakistan, or the House of Saud) is another matter.

The central lesson of 9/11 is that allowing terrorist states such as Afghanistan to fester, where extensive training and planning takes place under state protection, is a terrible risk to US security. Other states such as Iran or Pakistan might be arguably pushed upwards on the to-do list, but after 9/11 you'd find very little support for terrorism as a law enforcement issue since that policy directly failed to stop 9/11.

And I tried to give a shout out to the ones who were "responsible" (as I would call responsible).

And that's my basic point. Okay - global communism has been responsible for roughly 100 million deaths in the last century. The Nazis, probably around half that or less. So, if we had a march on DC to protest Roe v Wade or something and there were 10 or 12 booths set up with Swastikas on them, wouldn't you at the very least expect somebody who was speaking at the event to stand up and say, "You know, I saw some wackos with Nazi periphenalia earlier, and for God's sakes, please understand that we don't support those nutjobs." Wouldn't you feel happier if EVERYONE speaking made some remark along those lines?

Now imagine how you'd feel if the folks sporting the swastikas SPONSORED the event, and you have some idea of our indignation over the whole ANSWER thing. I don't really thing it should be something that invites interesting debate over whether the communists and Israel-haters should sponsor your big rally, really. Seems pretty open-and-shut to me.

Like I said in my comment above, there are a lot of folks who felt like this protest was the only game in town for people who want to oppose the Iraq war.  "You oppose the war with the protest you have, not with the protest you might wish to have."

But personally, and maybe it's because I'm a member of the latte-drinking liberal set that likes our protests nice and orderly, but I feel like if I protest alongside some guy who is burning the Israeli flag, people are going to assume that I sympathize with his views.  And it really doesn't matter if he's the only guy for miles around preaching hate against Israel, I'm still not going to be associated with that.

And I am uncomfortable with elected representatives implicitly associating themselves with all these fringe causes, even if I assume that in their heart they oppose 2 or 3 of them.

So yeah, I definitely understand your point about this.  But understand mine - even if my friends at dkos had all their wishes granted tomorrow, there still would be no chance that the Cynthia McKinney wing of the Democratic Party would be setting national policy.

...but there were neo-Nazi's proudly displaying Nazi flags and giving fascist salutes within the Minuteman Project (I saw the photo here on Red State, actually), a project which was -- if I recall correctly -- widely supported here. And amongst that anti-abortion frontpage posts have there been a suitable number of posts condemning Rudolph and Kopp? You see what I'm getting at? ANSWER is different because they're really good at playing Cuckoo: finding a posh nest and hijacking it. But the basic principle is perhaps the same?

Again, I assume that while perusing my comments you noted that (a) I sometimes put snarky commentary above consistency and (b) I am not in favor of these generic mass marches in any form but most of all I hate ANSWER for the way they've betrayed me, my friends, and the sane left. And I hope that proved to you that, for the purposes of this thread, I'm not trying to excuse collaboration in any way.  

When Clinton tried to take out Osama's camp in Afghanistan with cruise missiles, he was soundly denounced by the GOP for "wagging the dog."

With the benefit of post-9/11 hindsight, people can sit here and say that if Clinton was a real man, he would have ordered an invasion with massive boots on the ground rather than resorting to wimpy cruise missiles.  But there obviously would have been no GOP support whatsoever for such an action, considering he couldn't even get support for a few cruise missiles.

If the GOP leadership had pulled a Wendell Wilkie and understood that going after the terrorists aggressively was in our shared national interest, then history might have turned out a lot different.  But they didn't get that terrorism was a big deal.  They chose the path of partisan obstruction and we see where it has landed us.

The history books are not some holistic tale of Republican resolve versus Democratic weakness down through the ages.  If we look at the historical record, there's plenty of opportunity to criticize the petty politics of both sides.

Is varied. In the North it's mostly secure, and Saddam is not going to roll in and redo his various massacres of the Kurds. The South is free from his massacres of Shias, though the Sadrist Army is a menace. It is a SOLVABLE menace if we devote enough resources to simply destroying Moqtada Sadr.

But oh no, the US cannot ever win against the mighty army of cheap thugs Sadr has put together. Guess we might as well surrender to bin Laden as many Dems are now saying.

The Sunnis are playing a losing hand. They are trying to kill their way into intimidation ala Saddam. Basically trying to reconstitute his regime under Zarqawi. Ultimately defeateable if we make the cost for continued terror the destruction of their property. Or we can just cower under their ruthlessness, murdering schoolteachers.

You confirmed my point in your post. Dems SPOKE before the election. And were not charge with a crime and put in jail.

Voila! feee speech.

And the pro-war citizens also spoke. But you hear nay disagree ment with your speech as saying you are unpatriotic. I never heard any repub say those words. I heard Dean and Kerry and Gore call people un-american and some did dsecribe criticizing the dissenters as "un-patriotic."

Gulity consciences scream and project.

Elections are magical moments. Sad you take them for granted. Many have died so that we could elect leaders rather than live in oppression where people we didn't elect took our property.

We aren't governed by msm polls/mob rule. We have troops in the field. Wars take time. The enemy gets to decide if they will continue to fight untill after the next poll. We can't put armies in the feild only to pull them out based on a snapshot poll and marches of the election losers.

A nation must defend itself and enemies can't think they can beat us thru cindy shehans and biden better plan crap.

I can imagine opposing a war but I cannot imagine publicly denouncing the commander in cheif with troops in the feild. I would do nothing to weaken the clout of the leader of the troops or t embolden the enemy.

Once we are at war, we, the nation is at war and I would respect the choice of the people and the one president we have.

No matter if I favored going in, the consequences in the reduction of detterence from losing out weighs anything.

But you see, I trust our people and our system not to engage in an unjust war and I consider none ion the last 100 years at least to havebeen unjust.

One caveat: LBJ fought the Vietnam war in an unjust way, as a

limited" war he would not let us win. After the loss of so many lives and little progress, i do not blame the respectful dissenters who did not disparage our cause.

However, we alos know that the media lied about tet. And  a large % of the protestors deemed the communists to be morally right and us wrong. That was unforgiveable.

When citizens pull for a communist enemy or a baathist enemy or a jihadist enemy and see the 80% purple fingers and call the enemy 'insurgents" I am repulsed at who i live with in this country.

Our definition of "just" is different.

But i guess i see the reason. The jihadists have no magical election moments. they rule by the mob and the knock on the door

Good post.  

But I do think the reasons there had to be a 911 before we as a nation would have the will to act are a combination of how soft we had become since wwII combine with the vietnam defeatism and the weak character and leadership of Clinton. i think the weakness was also reflected in Bush41 and Powell in leaving saddam in power and us as a people with a lost memory of what it takes to stay free. Maybe we never have fully developed the understanding ex cept in WWII, in Japan more so than in europe and in patton's warning re USSR, and then the limited war in Korea and then Vietnam.

But Clinton would not have been in the weakened position he was in 1998 had he not created the weakness. it really started in Somalia and with his appeasing apologetic tone. Given who he was and his past, he was not capable of leadership.

But, I do remember discussions of wag the dog on talk shows but not any elelcted gop, at least not many. And many syupported it and wanted more.

any links on this

And Clinton's speeches left me expecting and wanting more.

Moreover, Clinton still says, even 2 weeks ago that he favored the Hans Blix war as he lied about the justifications that mirrored Bush's given his own statements in 1998.

One other thing, BEFORE 911, Dubya told Cindi he waanted to stop swatting flies and had the CIA draw up war plans for Afhanistan and they were on his desk on 910!

And he reached out to Mussarhef very soon after taking office.

Re: "look at all those Republicans who attacked Clinton during a war in the 1990s about patriotism."

And which war was that? Somalia? Bosnia? Even allowing that such conflicts were "wars," how did Republicans exploit them? There were plenty of Republicans who hated Clinton (sometimes without reason) for domestic policies, and for signing bad treaties (Kyoto), but war was conspicuously absent from the politics of the 1990's.

Re: "You ready to saddle up and fight?  If not, don't be so quick to throw other people's lives into the hopper."

Do you have friends or family in the military?  I do. My brother probably leaves for Iraq in February, and he chose to join knowing the risk, just like everyone else in Iraq right now. That is the benefit of a volunteer military: nobody puts anybody's life in harm's way; we take such risks of our own accord.

I fear yours truly may have compiled a much cutpasted diary on the subject of Republican backbiting during a Democratic war. Find it here. It's been posted here -- in various forms -- by trolls a number of times, but I really would love to know what Red State thinks of the things some Republicans said during that...

Rep. Jim Gibbons (R-NV): "Look at the movie 'Wag the Dog.' I think this has all the elements of that movie.  Our reaction to the embassy bombings should be based on sound credible evidence, not a knee-jerk reaction to try to direct public attention away from his personal problems."

Rep. Bob Livingston (R-LA): "To invert a phrase, life often imitates art and "Wag the Dog" was a popular movie six months ago."

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA): "The President was considering doing something presidential to try to focus attention away from -- his own personal problems."

I could go on, but anyway, your points are well-taken.  I'm trying to make my point without attempting to set this up as a fairy tale of good-hearted Clinton the terrorist fighter and evil Republicans conspiring to hurt America by stopping him - but I think the part of the storyline that paints liberals as seeking to undermine America at every turn is a little overstated, as well.

thought Kosovo was a bad idea and still do.  It simply wasn't our business.  And it still isn't.  And it is still a mess.  And probably will be for a long time to come.

Yours truly also thinks the absolute biggest mistake Bush 41 made was not taking out Saddam the first time.

As for Somalia, just don't even get me started.  I honestly feared uberpilothusband going into Somalia far more than I fear him going into Iraq.  And he's been in Iraq/Afghanistan way more.  Part of it is due to the type of aircraft he flew in Somalia, but the biggest part was the whole CF that was Somalia.  Scary stuff.

And forgive me.  I've put three replies into one post because I'm tired and it's bedtime.  :)    

...when you realize the difference between a "just war" and an "unjust one" is occasionally just the difference between two good people's opinions and background. Good night.

Well, while Kosovo was a no threat to us pre-911 war of choice and not a post 911 war to prevent terrosists with thier nation-state supporters like Saddam, and so possible more criticizeable as no plan and  also conducted from 10,000 feet and so not a situation where the posted GOP comments could embolden an enemy army capable of attacking soldiers in the feild,

I still think most of the comments were improper and recall at the time my glee when the bombing worked.

But, we were not facing an enemy that threatened us and so the comments, also mild as compared to the dem comments the last two years, are not really comparable in kind.

But I give you credit and stand humbly enlightened toa certain extent.

We lived in Charleston at the time and the conventional military wisdom at the time was most definitely "wag the dog".  Clinton had NO credibility with the military for these actions.

Little inside scoop.  Uberpilothusband flew many a presidential mission for Bush 41 and Bubba.  The comments from the crew dogs and SS spoke volumes about where Bubba's attention was.  And it wasn't on takin' out terrorists.  He wasn't seeking to undermine America, he was just seeking to keep Hillary and the rest of America from finding out about his little honey.

*disclaimer-before you label me a partisan hack, know that I am a graduate of the University of Arkansas (1989) and Bubba spoke at uberpilothusband's high school graduation.  Know that I interfaced with Bubba in the chancellor's box on many occasions while at the U of A.  In other words, he's a homeboy.  You can't help but like the guy.  But that doesn't excuse his actions.  

...even when I disagreed with you, so "thanks" and it's no surprise that you understood where I was coming from and judged the facts fairly and in context.

here and claim a little moral authority.  :)

I think sometimes our differing backgrounds are what shapes our thinking.  I come from a family of decorated war veterans and IMO, any war that preserves the liberty of my country is just.  Most folks I know that have the same heritage would agree.

Please don't see this as being disrespectful to those who do not share my background.  That is not my intent.

Mission accomplished re pre 911

I would say this, though as a june 2001 converter to the gop after 25 yrs a dem and former county party chair, who voted for clinton twice, and all dems from carter 80 on:

Even when I was a lib, beginning in 1979, I wanted Carter to act against Iran, still voted for carter, but favored all of reagans military actions, still voted for Dukakis with nose held, and favored Clinton's, but wanted more and hated his apologetic tone and came to see that every tructh he spoke was couched in lies. oh well

But, most dems, even here in the south, under estimated the soviet threat, ridiculed Reagan's actions, and were, I think, a bit in denial about the way of the world, as were carter, thru kerry.

Your points do support even my agreement that gop and america did not appreciate the threat. I do think it possible that had a gop president been in office in the 90's it might have been different after the 1993 WTC and subseqquent foreign attacks. But I could be wrong. probably

But today, and since a few months after we eneterd Iraq, the dem behavior has been simply disgraceful and uniquely so in my lifetime, especially given 911, and given the relentless, even after the election, and level of vitriol.

And the only reasons are that either a) they just don't understand the need to PREVENT the next 911 (and never have quite understood deterrance) or they act totally selfishly knowing the need to act.

And their refusal to acknowledge the fcats pre 911 even confirmed by Clinton just floors me. i'm at a loss. I look at some friends when i show then what Clinton said and there eyes glaze over as if they are machines that can't compute. Its embarrassing. Makes me want to slap some sense into them.

thnaks bro

I do think that much of the crticism of Clinton

(while I have never seen evidence of a wag the dog motive, and don't care really, cause I favored any and all action gainst saddam and the terrorists at the time, and so if 10 monicas would have casued him to wag enough dogs to win wars, then I would have taken the trade off)

and scepticism that produced it some of it was deserved.

After all, Clinton is a proven liar going way back, probably to the first scream in the delivery room. I used to love that man. But over time I got disgusted with the way he would not talk straight. That even when he did something good, the way he explained it was fradulent. All his truths were surrounded by lies.

He has  no character and is a loathsome individual who grew more corrupt each year of his life, which accelerated as Governor and then exploded as President.

Dubya has character. And so, when people say Clinton was a liar its true. Not so with Dubya, and besides with respect to the war, all the reasons were said by all pre 911 by clinton and post 911 by the dems and the world.

But I totally agree with your post. The libs do take some time off from undermining us!! kidding

...back to the Revolutionary War. My namesakes fought in it. My great-grandfather graduated from West Point and was in the calvary in WWI and sailed the WWII wartime Pacific and later dealt with the Mao/Kai-Shek mess in China. My grandfather graduated from West Point, was saved from service in Japan by the nukes, and worked at Los Alamos and retired a Colonel. My father worked in Army intelligance on Okinawa during Vietnam, and got his Vietnam service ribbon for reasons I can't divulge. I break the streak, for now at least. I am flying out with the Peace Corps next Sunday. I know about the family tradition of service to the nation. I just couldn't join the Armed Forces right now. It was a hard choice, though one informed by my love and knowledge of my forebearers, to make...

"any war that preserves the liberty of my country is just"

I agree.  But I don't see our Iraq adventure liberating my country or even adding to it's safety.

In the end, I doubt we do much for theirs either.  They trade an evil, despotic dictator for a bunch of evil fundy mullahs who are just as quick to kill their own to hold power.  And they'll vote for it...

Women will be back under the veil with most of their rights washed away.  Christian elements that were tolerated by Saddam will be pushed out.  The Kurds will lose what autonomy they had under the status quo 1992-2004.  Bush I was correct.  This war has no hope of ending in anything but a civil war.

but you miss several larger issues.  

First, Kosovo was hardly a "war" from the American perspective.  It involved a lot of high-altitude bombing and very small numbers of ground troops. A lot of Republicans were critical, as your quote list showed, because they couldn't fathom any reason for our intervention, especially since (and this is a key point) our intervention was largely on behalf of Bosnian Muslims, many of who turned out to be allied with international terrorist groups. Milosevic was a nasty piece of work, but it's not clear the people he was killing were much better, nor is it clear that saving them made America safer.

Second, and this is the MAIN point, the scope of the Balkans situation as political issue in America was very small.  To put it plainly, there just weren't that many Republicans who cared what Clinton did in the Balkans. Maybe we should have, but we didn't.  If you compiled a list of "reasons why republicans hated Clinton" you'd probably find the Balkans in the low 30's, somewhere below "cattle-futures" and somewhere above "$200 haircut."  If you compiled a similar list concerning President Bush "war in Iraq" would be at the top. We both know that.

*Note: I do not deny that a large part of the GOP hatred of Clinton was irrational/hysterical. As I look back I am properly embarrassed by some of it. But exploiting a war is a hard thing to pin on the GOP of the time.

I'll never forget how excited I was when Clinton won. I was a former county party chair who had never voted for a winner and chose Clinton in the primaries as he was the most conservative dem.

And I expressed ny joy to a female fellow lawyer friend, also a dem, at the courthouse assuming she would also would be happy. Instead she said he was a no character sleaze.

I was a regular Rush listener,even though a dem and would get mad at the hatred expressed on that show. Not by Rush. The callers. But Rush did not trust him.

Slowly over the years neither did I. And I frew to feel betrayed by him.

your post puts it in perspective.

And I admire those that saw it before me. I already hated the congress dems by the early 90's, but thought my fellow southern baptist was different.

But I soon saw he had no character and the bancruptcy of what liberalism had evolved into.

So, of course, we should not hate the sinner.

I feel sorry for him and I see his face a decadent condemned man with no faith. He runs totally on praise for him.

"But you are factually wrong. US casualtis are down. the iraqis ae up."

Oh and also I can't recall reading that "our willingness to go to war is why [Saddam] got rid of [WMDs]."

Your last sentence is in amusing juxtaposition with the rest of your post.

I won't even ask you where you got that information, since I'm assuming you heard it from the same guy that told me GW Bush spent his Vietnam days coked up and blowing off TANG duties.  What is the standard for known facts here?

us fatalities (see link below)

6/29/05 - 1/30/05 (7 mos)

579

vs. down to

1/31/05 - 9/26/05 (8 mos)

483

8/05

85

vs. down to

9/05

36

http://icasualties.org/oif/default.aspx

on this same cite you can go iraqi security force casualties as well

I don't know what happened to the wmd that clinton and the whole world thought was still there. We do know he had wmd and the ceasefire that let him stay in power required him to destroy in our presence. The burden was on him. He had 18 mos to plan as we played with the UN. See Duelfer report. But give all we know since 1991, not finding the wmd, does not make the prior 11 years go away. It would have been impeaceable after 911 not to make sure he had the wmd.

Now we are sure. Victory.

What do you think Saddam did with wmd? and when? And why didn't he come clean instead of lying?

To deter Iran? To deter his own people for a coup? ???

Hey T, sounds like someone has a complex.  Or maybe just typical behavior for the unhappy

Insurance law, you don't understand when to leave well enough alone.

Well, let me make this easy for you. Up until the below, you were fine. Wrong, but within the bounds of reasonable discourse.

And you say, "win at all costs."  What does that mean?  You ready to saddle up and fight?  If not, don't be so quick to throw other people's lives into the hopper.  And besides, the tone of your post is so clear -- it's not about the national interest, it's Republican political interest that you're looking to promote.  Not that we should be surprised -- everything your Leader does is about Party, not country.

So print up some posters -- "Join the U.S. Army, Save the Republican Party!"  Bet that'll improve recruiting, yes sir.

Chickenhawking is a bannable offense in these parts. Happy trails.

We look forward to your They Banned Me! MEEE!!! diary on dKos. Please don't disappoint.

Would you apply your philosophy to domestic criminal law? Won't the muderer's family be mad and continue a cycle? Should we have let the Japanese conquer us to end the cycle? Should we have freed France and defended Britaiin even though Germany had not invaded us? Did we create the mess in Europe.

Saddam invaded kuwait.Was that a mess? The world acted, not just to free Kuwait, but also to prevent a "cycle" of invasions that would be more likely if evil powers knew they could do so with impunity.Was the refusal of saddam to comply with the ceasefire on handing over wmd, trying to assisinate bush 41, firing at our planes, supporting terrorists and killing 100,000's of thousands of his own people not a mess?

On September 10, 2001 and during the previous 3 years, would it have been better to have removed the threat posed by al Qaida based on past acts? Or better to wait till 3000 are dead? And even then, don't we just continue a cycle. Why not juts go ahead and let Bin Laden take power and end the cycle.

God knows, the worst thing in life is a cycle. Better to just die than have any part of a cycle.

So when will you be visiting the anti cycle nation of France?

The children of many elected politicians do not serve in the military, both democrat and republican. For you and Cindy Sheehan and other anti-war protesters to ask why Bush's daughters aren't in the military is wrong.

We have a volunteer military, where young men and women (like Casey Sheehan) VOLUNTEER to serve in the armed forces. There is no draft, we do not force people like other countries do.  

I have served the Navy for 23 years; my fathers was a Marine for 22 years, serving in Vietnam; my uncle served in Korea and my grandfather in World War II. My family has a proud tradition of serving this country.

How many of those who marched in the anti-war, anti-American fiasco served in the military? They can say all they want about caring about the troops, but the truth is they don't. None of them do. They only want to further their own political agenda, period.

If it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck, it must be a duck.

The 2004 Presidential election was decided by two states, Ohio and Florida.

Let's take a look at both of those states, and what led up to the 2004 election.

Diebold was given card-blanch to install computerized voting machines, that the Department of Homeland Security had determined to be compromised, and Howard Dean was able to hack on national television in 90 seconds. The President of diebold said that he would deliver Ohio to George W. Ohio Election officials have been indicted for violating vote recount rules.

Former FEMA head Michael Brown, rushed down to Florida personally after Hurricane Charlie, to give out rebuilding aid checks to everyone that asked for them in Miami-Dade county. Paying for such things as new cars, and complete living-room furniture sets to people who had no hurricane damage. Essentially buying votes with tax dollars.

The 2004 election marks the first time in history that exit polls didn't reflect the outcome, which directly coincides with the first time election results were tabulated with knowingly insecure computer systems that were easily accessible over the internet.

The 2004 Presidential election was hardly legitimate, and the proof is in the puddin' but the Democrats just didn't have the stomach to launch a battle here at home while we were fighting a battle abroad.

The Democrats didn't loose, they gave up.

One of the Bush/Cheney kids enlist, then you will deem the cause to be just? Or does it take two kids? Three?

Is the war in Afghanistan unjust as well? Are arrests of murderers only just if the mayor/police cheif children join the force?

Re: Yet McClellan advocated "Peace at any price" with the South and acceptance of secession and the end of the Union, along with slavery

This is not quite true, McClellan personally did not advocate outright surrender and letting the South go its way (although the Democratic platform in 1864 did). Rather he advocated a peace conference under international supices to bring about national reconciliation with some sort of vague compromise on the slavery issue.

reading and comprehension go together.  

I never said all...on the left are communists..etc.  I said your party is increasingly associated with their ilk.    

By the bye, horrid to me is calling terrorists 'freedom fighters'.  Horrid to me is a barage of anti-semitic comments.  Horrid to me is a proposed withdrawal that would inevitably lead to signficant death, destruction and a clear invitation to any terrorist with an IED to 'come on over' to America.

The 2004 election was decided by 50 states and DC. Kerry won several states by less votes than Bush won FL and OH.

There have been numerous convictions for voter fraud in the us courts throughout our history.

So prove it.

You are using tinfoil in a fashion which is not recommended by the manufacturer.

I think we can do both.

There are two problems with your theory.

First, Desert Fox was not the "worst of all possible worlds" because it worked.  As we learned when we invaded Iraq, Saddam no longer had WMD.  The difference between Desert Fox and W's War in Iraq is that many fewer Americans and Iraqis died.  So Desert Fox, was, apparently, a more limited use of force in order to accomplish the same objective.  I'll grant you that the current war in Iraq has broader objectives than just removing WMD, but my point is that Clinton basically accomplished his goal with less casualties.

Second, the fringe left did protest Operation Desert Fox.  See, for example which claims:

There is no evidence to suggest that our current actions

against Iraq will do anything more than strengthen the permanent arms

economy in the U.S., delay the impeachment of  President Clinton, and

result in the precalculated murder of Iraqi civilians. Within hours of the

bombing of Iraq legitimate protests against Operation Desert Fox began with

hundreds of people at each demonstration across the country, including San

Francisco, New York, Chicago, Washington, Tampa, Boulder and others. Join

us in our opposition to Operation Desert Fox.

A quick Google search on "Desert Fox inspectors" will also reveal various positions taken by the Socialists and the like which talk about how Desert Fox was a "big lie" and really just an attempt to assassinate Saddam.  Of course, Desert Fox was a 72 hour operation, so the peace movement didn't have the same opportunity to metastisize as it has with the current war, but it's definitely been there all along.

If your point is that a lot of Americans who weren't opposed to Desert Fox were opposed to the current war in Iraq, you'd have one.  Some of those people are partisans who will never agree with anything Bush does.  Some of them are believers in the Powell doctrine.  Some of them are believers in limited military engagements with low casualties.  Some of them are people that have become fed up with the incompetent way the war has been prosecuted.  Almost all, I suspect, have a more nuanced view of war than "always good" or "always bad".

I won't repeat cliches about statistics here, suffice to say that from these groupings it looks as though casualties have stayed relatively static:

1/2005-8/2005 (8 mos.) -- 596

5/2004-12/2004 (previous 8 mos.)-- 594

8/04-- 75

8/05-- 85

Honestly, I'm not sure how you can decipher a downward trend from this graph, beyond selectively choosing number groupings to your advantage.

I'm not sure why Saddam did not come clean about not having WMDs, but the reasons you give seem plausible.  My contention was with your claim that Saddam did have WMDs, and abandoned them somehow during the run up to war.  I assume from your reply that you cannot back this up.  I would be very suprised if Saddam saw the most fearsome military in the history of the world amassing on his southern border, and chose that time to disarm himself of his most powerful weapons.

"Megatron must be stopped. No matter the cost."

The rest is Transformers history.

He's talking about the protest in front of the White House, not the Star Wars bar scene that played out on the Ellipse on Sunday.

I was responding to a post that had fun with numbers as well.

casualties went up and down in WWII in numbers that dwarf this war. More casulaties in some battles as in the whole war. But we didn't surrender during the times they went up. We didn't go to war to not sustain casulaties. We went to war to prevent more 911's.

Good points on the wmd. But saddam may have decided that using his wmd would only ensure a massive retaliation that would destroy any chance for him to regain power. Maybe, and I think there is evidence of this from docs seized in Iraq, Saddam decided the best weapons were guirilla war in Iraq and libwrals in America!

to work

got to sue somebody

enjoyed

what here? Surely it can't be the sheer bonejarring idiocy that it appears to be.

First, Desert Fox was not the "worst of all possible worlds" because it worked.  As we learned when we invaded Iraq, Saddam no longer had WMD.

weren't we?

If you want to talk about clinton's two non-majority pluralities, go ahead.

Goreon and his lame campaign nearly did steal the election.

I think history shows Bus beat Kerry 51 - 48, a 3 million vote majority.

My point stands:

Americans reject the hard core anti-American bigots when our troops are actually fighting.

Let Cindy Sheehan and all of her pro-tyranny crowd take over the DNC completely.

That pre-Iraqi Freedom policies (inspections, limited military invention, etc.) were sufficient to remove Saddam's WMDs.

All agree...we would rather live without war.  I believe I heard O'Reilly say something like "fighting the war on terrorism abroad is a heck of a better choice than defending ourselves on our own soil"

The media distortion is incredible.  Thank God for C-SPAN!

I relied on a most always accurate source, but admittedky did not verify. My bad if wrong.

One:

I hear more about Vietnam and the legacy thereof from young folks who have no direct memory of it than I do from any 50 boomers.  It has, apparently, become as convenient a piece of mythology for advocates of our current foreign policy as for its opponents.

Two:

As argued by me ad nauseum in Erick's "True Colors" post, you folks are wasting your time focussing on ANSWER and related fringe groups.  They're an easy target, they are sure to provide lots of goofy pictures and quotes for you to post here on RS, and they certainly are visible.  Spend your time there, and your cause will lose the day.  You guys need to focus on building the confidence of everyday people in the effectiveness of our current efforts.  The reason I say "you guys" is because you, by which I mean this site, has a big, visible bullhorn and a lot of smart folks to bring to the task.

Note well -- here is the issue that must be addressed:

Not the goodness of the cause.  The effectiveness of the effort.

Repeat:

Not the goodness of the cause.  The effectiveness of the effort.

Repeat:

Not the goodness of the cause.  The effectiveness of the effort.

Read, understand, and internalize.

That is the soft spot in popular support for the war.

You need to win the sustained support of regular folks.  It's weakening.  Focus there.

Don't bother replying with the 500 reasons why it was a just and noble cause to go to Iraq.  Why?  See above under "the issue that must be addressed".  

Do bother replying, although no need to reply to me personally, with concrete, realistic, and credible statements, about what we can expect for an outcome, how long it will take, and what it will cost.

Some free clues:  

1.  "The cost is irrelevant" is a bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad answer.  It's not irrelevant.  Try again.
   
2.  "The problem is that Americans have become weak, spineless appeasers who are only too willing to trade away their sacred heritage for a mess of potage" is a bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad answer.  They haven't.  Try again.
   
3.  "We answered that question 500 times already, people just don't listen" is a bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad answer.  Bad.  Not 7 times, but 70 times 7.  Every day, if need be.  Try, try, and try again.
   
4.  "It's all the fault of the #!@^% MSM" is a bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad answer.  It isn't.  Try again.
   
5.  Leave the BS, smoke, and mirrors at home.  A bad answer that's true is better than a good answer that isn't, or that might not be.

Think I'm here to poke my pointy little stick at the President, conservatives, and our troops in the field?  Guess again.  On this particular issue, which is to say sustaining support for our efforts in Iraq until they are successful, I am your ally.

What can we expect for an outcome

How long will it take

How much will it cost

How far along the path are we now

Why will it be worth it to us when it's done

That's what ordinary, rank and file folks want to know.  If you can't give them a good answer, you will lose their support.  And, a "good" answer means one that is realistic, frank, credible, and which is congruent with the facts on the ground.

Yes, I'm a one-note johnny.  It's an important note.

Thanks

and then after blix, what? trust

or maintain a verification regime that keeps the Iraqi people hostage?

Wonder if it would be better to assign 6 cops (2 per shift)to probation violaters and save the price of builing a prison

before 911 we thought a lot of things were sufficient...

...that he thought that he had them, but actually didn't; the people involved weren't about to tell him that they couldn't give him what he wanted.  That entire 'sadistic, genocidal dictator' thing, you understand.

I wonder if he realized that he had been lied to; the expression on his face after ordering that chemical weapons be used on the advancing American army, only to be told that there were none to be used, would have been a thing to see.  I hope somebody asks him, in the limited amount of time that he'll be spending with us.

when did they remove him from power?

And it still doesn't answer the question of the linkage you drew between a handful of cruise missile strikes and the failure to produce WMD five years later.

problem with your browser. You apparently think you are posting at democraticunderground.com. You aren't.

But thanks for dropping by and sharing these ineffable bits of wisdom with us.

morons do. It's as simple as that.

about the number. sigh is correct.

We pussyfooted around in Vietnam, tried real hard to be careful with everyone's feelings, and we ended up coming home with our tails between our legs

I think, if you look into it a bit, you will find that the issue in Vietnam was not quite as you have portrayed it here.

The significant issue in Vietnam was that we went in with an operating assumption that we would not take and hold territory in the North.  The reason for that was "next stop -- China!".  Correctly or not, we did not want to engage China in a shooting war, and we believed that taking and holding territory in the north would provoke one.  Our at-that-time fairly recent experiences in Korea contributed to that calculus.

So, in Vietnam we tried to fight an enemy which could, at will, retreat across a line we would not cross.  The predictable military result was a stalemate.  

There was, throughout the period, an anti-war constituency who believed that the war was inherently wrong.  Some thought the Vietnamese should simply be allowed to sort things out for themselves, some simply did not see a compelling security interest for the US there, some thought Uncle Ho and his black pajama boys were romantic liberators fighting the corrupt kleptocracy of the south.  

None of these folks would have prevailed except for two factors:

1.  The war was unwinnable on the terms under which we went in, and that became increasingly clear.
   
   
2.  Johnson and Nixon made their positions vulnerable by, frankly, lying to the public about the reasons for going in and about our progress once there.

"Being careful with everyone's feelings", as it turns out, had little to do with it.  People were beaten, imprisoned, and killed for expressing their resistance to the war.  I know some of those folks, and my wife witnessed some of the killing.  It was not a touchy-feely time.

That's how I see it from my own memory of the time and the bit of research I've done since.  I'd be interested in the thoughts of the very many here who are knowledgable on the topic.

Everyone will note, I hope, that:

1. Prime would have finished Megatron had Hot Rod not interfered;
   
2. Prime eventually returned, was controlled by the Quintessons, but managed to break free and sacrifice himself to save the Autobots;
   
3. Prime returned again, and as only he could, opened the Matrix to save the Universe; and
   
4. The Autobots eventually won the war.

Lessons learned:

Optimus Prime is cool.

We need to bring back Ronald Reagan.

not much to quibble with here.

Buy Harry Summer's "On Strategy", the single best book on the military side of Vietnam ever written.

I wasn't trying to catch you--was just startled. As I said, your point is still well-made.

Army units would be missing their reenlistment targets.  But, they're not.  Look it up.

You'll have to give me a link, since all I can seem to find is "the active Army, Army Reserve and Army National Guard expects to completely miss its goal for fiscal 2005" from September 13.

I heard there was an upturn (I can't find a link to that now), but I don't recall the upturn being enough to meet 2005 targets.

Well said; particularly this:

The antiwar crew isn't being run by the smart ones.  It's being run by ANSWER, and the anti-Semite Cynthia McKinney, and Mother Raging Fool Sheehan, and professional Israel-haters.  They can't and won't shut up--which is good for us!  I hope we're taping everything they say and recording everything they write.  That way, if they really try to assert themselves in American society, we can then replay those tapes and ask:"Hey Mr & Mrs America, do you agree with these thoughts?  Do you want these people running this country?  Do you want politicians beholden to these people running this country?  I look forward to that conversation.

Yours truly also thinks the absolute biggest mistake Bush 41 made was not taking out Saddam the first time.

He apparently had his reasons:

"Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in 'mission creep,' and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under those circumstances, furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-cold war world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the U.N.'s mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different--and perhaps barren--outcome."

GWB lives in a different time.  We didn't really care what the U.N. thought, 9/11 had happened, and as for the rest of it... well, I'm hoping for a significantly less barren outcome.

...but there were neo-Nazi's proudly displaying Nazi flags and giving fascist salutes within the Minuteman Project (I saw the photo here on Red State, actually),

Yes, and IIRC, those guys were told to fold up their nutjob gear and go the hell home. I know that was the case with the first Minuteman Project, if there have been some since, I could be wrong.

And amongst that anti-abortion frontpage posts have there been a suitable number of posts condemning Rudolph and Kopp?

If you knew how many times I've had to answer for Eric Rudolph, you'd find that as funny as I do. Seriously.

Again, I assume that while perusing my comments you noted that (a) I sometimes put snarky commentary above consistency and (b) I am not in favor of these generic mass marches in any form but most of all I hate ANSWER for the way they've betrayed me, my friends, and the sane left. And I hope that proved to you that, for the purposes of this thread, I'm not trying to excuse collaboration in any way.

As far as I'm concerned, if dKos was populated with more people like you and less like - well, kos - we'd probably never win another election.

I've noticed in this space that when many on the right are shown to be wrong, they simply resort to name calling.  However, as Reagan said, facts are stubborn things.  The facts are that we are losing this war.  Maybe the war is already lost -- the best we can hope for seems to be a Sharia-based consitution which prevents the country from falling apart.  I wish it were not so, but it is.  The longer we stay, the more enemies we create.  It is also a fact that there are no good alternatives:  there are problems in staying and there are problems in leaving.  Faced with this situation, it might be helpful to try to decide what the best course is.  Calling those you disagree with vermin and bereft of courage and character adds nothing.

...that there weren't any there.

when did they remove him from power?

They didn't.  But that wasn't the goal of Operation Desert Fox.

And it still doesn't answer the question of the linkage you drew between a handful of cruise missile strikes and the failure to produce WMD five years later.

Well, you're right.  I can't prove a direct causality.  All I can say is that it was part of an overall strategy that turned out to be successful.  Just like we probably don't know exactly which of Reagan's actions broke the back of the Soviet Union, we can still look back in retrospect and decide that the overall approach he used was successful.

I'll briefly address gamecock's point here as well.  I'm not advocating that as a result of Clinton's strategy that we knew there weren't WMD in Iraq.  In fact, the opposite is true--we reasonably believed that Saddam still had at least some WMDs.  Nonetheless, in the fullness of time it has become clear that the pre-Iraqi Freedom approach was successful.

Good points, all.

I just wish there were more and better answers coming from The Man - it would make our job a tad easier, don't you think?

Cheers.

The facts are that we are losing this war.  Maybe the war is already lost -- the best we can hope for seems to be a Sharia-based consitution which prevents the country from falling apart.

Kind of ironic, isn't it? When you chastize someone for not using facts and you pull this bit of nonsense out of your fourth point of contact and wave it around as if it meant something.

They'll fight the right war.

Many in the left believe that the Iraq war has virtually zero benefit, and a significant subset feel it is harmful.

And so they will decline to support you.  (Do you support things you feel have no benefit?)  All you have to do to get support from the left is clearly show the benefit of the war.

If the goal is to sit around calling them cowards, then well done!  If your goal is to get their support, you're going to have to do better than this.

(Discounting the no-war-ever people, which is not the same as the left.)

One of which is, once banned, you don't get to return.

You are dishonorably discharged, Lieutenant. Next up is the execution.

is that we can look over the 12 years of sanctions and military strikes against Saddam and conclusively say that it was a failure.

The reason, I hope, that you don't try to draw any causality is because the result would be to reduce yourself to an object of scorn and derision.

Because the idea of another Clinton administration come 2008 terrifies me.  Keep in mind, we loaded the gun with the Patriot Act.  I don't want to hand it to them.

I don't get it, streiff.  How could we make that conclusion?  There were no WMD when we got there.

Here are some possible explanations why:

1. The sanctions and military strikes worked.
   
   
2. Right before he was about to be invaded, Saddam destroyed or gave away his best weapons.
   
   
3. Although no one knows about it, Bush implented a double top secret plan to steal all of the WMD right before we invaded, but then didn't want anyone to find out about how good we were at double top secret stuff so he had to suffer through the embarrassment of having the normal troops show up and then not find any WMD.
   
   
4. Fairies took them away.

I'm going to use Occam's razor and stick with #1.  You're free to choose your own theory.

Maybe you're trying to argue that the military strikes and sanctions were a failure at removing Saddam from power.  You'd be onto something there, but also not disagreeing with anything I've written on this topic.

They can say all they want about caring about the troops, but the truth is they don't. None of them do. They only want to further their own political agenda, period.

Is there anything really constructive in statements like this? Maybe I misread and you meant merely the "lunatic fringe" element, and if that's the case I don't necessarily disagree with you - I think ANSWER is, how to put this delicately..less than politically useful to those of us on the other side of the Big Ditch.

But many of those of us over here - of course we care about the troops. We have loved ones who are in the armed forces the same as anybody on y'all's side (I do).

We can also think this war has been handled poorly (Again, I do. Though in the interest of full disclosure I'm one of those "you broke it, you bought it" types who doesn't necessarily advocate immediate pullout this moment. I do, possibly, think the number of troops can be reduced, but that's another topic.) Suffice it to say my point was this - just because I think this war has been a mess, on the whole, is not anathema to supporting the troops.  

Occam's Razon, #1 isn't your choice.

If military strikes had removed anything there would have been a detectable chemical plume concurrent with the attacks (the weapons used high explosive warheads, thermobaric warheads for weapons the size of cruise missiles weren't fielded until very late 2002) and there would have been detectable residue at the facilities that were struck and detectable effects downwind. Neither Blix's merry men nor our exploitation teams discovered found that.

Given an choice between #1 and #4, #4 is much easier to believe.

on Sunday, but I have no problem in characterizing every single person who showed up at that protest exactly as that:

They can say all they want about caring about the troops, but the truth is they don't. None of them do. They only want to further their own political agenda, period.

I also hold you and those of your ilk accountable when they become symbiotic with the crowd that DOES hate America and want us to lose.

Just because you can find people who are anti-Iraq war, it doesn't mean they're all nutcases.  How can they possibly be held accountable for those who are, even if the press lumps them all into the anti-war category?

I don't tie Republicans to God Hates F--s or the KKK just because of their like stances on gay marriage, even if those Republicans haven't denounced those groups (and I am sure there are a lot of Republicans who haven't.)

I personally know a lot of people who are opposed to this war, and none of them hate America (they stand by the Constitution and abhor any attempts to bypass and undermine it), and none of them want us to "lose".  All of them (these are people I personally know, I'm talking about) reject outright those who call for our immediate withdrawal.  People like this exist, and in very large numbers.

The Right and Left are broad spectrums, and both sides have a case.

The post referenced reenlistment - not initial enlistments. Reenlistment rates is probably the single best metric by which to judge service and unit morale during times of relatively low unemployment.

If you recall, the statement was also made that Bush declined to serve when he had the opportunity. So, we're back to 2004, denigrating National Guard service as not being legitimate, meanwhile guardsmen are overseas fighting for us in Iraq.

I believe that victory can and must be had.

I hope you're right.  The only things that really scare me are the complete inability of Israel to do that even with our support, and the Soviet loss of the proxy war in Afghanistan.

Dan Quayle once said that, "from a historical basis, Middle East conflicts do not last a long time."  I must respectfully disagree.

As I posted elsewhere in this thread, Bush Sr. was not so confident as you are.

My misread, sorry!

Big time, as the Vice President would say...

All you need to do is look at Bill Clinton's constant effort in the 1990's to avoid at all costs ANY ground engagement that cost lives, including running away (there are no other words for it) in Somalia and even HAITI where armed thugs intimidated the US Navy under Clinton to sail away out of Port-Au-Prince

Is this becoming a new meme of the right?  I had to respond to it yesterday, but I guess I'll do it today as well since we're on a different thread.  First, Somalia.  The Statement of Republican Policy on U.S. Armed Forces in Somalia, Adopted April 1, 1993 says:

The United States is the world's only superpower, but this does not mean we are omnipotent, nor that our obligations are universal. Republicans believe that President Bush's commitment to pull our forces out of Somalia should be fulfilled.

So, I guess if Clinton "ran away", he did so at the urging of the Republicans.  Similarly, Republicans were not exactly rah-rah about the Haiti mission.  Republicans sponsored and largely supported resolutions demanding that Clinton withdraw the troops from Haiti.  Once again, if Clinton was weak-kneed in these circumstances, most of the Republican party was as well.

The underlying preimse of your post seems to be that Democrats are cowards and Republicans are brave, but this seems to be at odds with history.  In order to get to this conclusion, you need to make the following caveat:

Only Woodrow Wilson, FDR, JFK, and Truman were able to break the Copperhead tendencies of the Democratic Party

That's a caveat big enough for a whole fleet of trucks to drive through.  Those were the Commands in Chief for every single major war of the twentieth century.  It's like saying "except for Eisenhower, Nixon and Reagan the Republicans never really did anything about Communism".

More importantly, your list of "exceptions" proves that every time the strategic interests of the country are threatened and force is necessary to defend those interests, Democrats have been willing to step up and use the necessary military force to do so.  You could argue, I suppose, that Clinton failed to do so, but first you'd have to make the case that Somalia and Haiti were strategic imperatives as opposed to humanitarian interventions.  Fundamentally, you are trying to make your case without any example of a Democratic President who failed to bring force to bear when the country truly needed it.  Given the number of counter-examples that you yourself cite, there doesn't seem to be much to this line of reasoning.

5. Saddam Hussein thought he had weapons, we thought he had weapons, he didn't have weapons, because his generals couldn't get the weapons program running or had to scrap them or sold them or used them for flower arrangements, but they couldn't tell him that, because then he would kill them, and from their point of view, that would be bad.

This nicely (1) explains why he thought he had weapons, (2) explains why we thought he had weapons, and (3) explains why he didn't have weapons. And, given the lack of any sort of chemical residue from the bombings, I suspect it best applies to the Heretic's Razor.

the operative word is "reenlistment." Your article is about first term enlistments.

I don't recall the upturn being enough to meet 2005 targets.

Don't take this personally, but I doubt seriously whether you'd really be qualified to make that determination. There is a formula that converts reenlistments to a comparable number of first term enlistments.

But in the interests of comity:

He said the Army has exceeded its personnel retention goal by 9 percent, with soldiers in the Third Infantry Division -- now on its second tour in Iraq -- reenlisting at 112 percent of the goal. The First Cavalry Division has the highest reenlistment rate, at 138 percent of the goal, according to the Army. All 10 of the Army's divisions are surpassing retention estimates.

Keep in mind this data is before the release of August data and with September still remaining in the fiscal year.

reading back over that, you're right...but who doesn't like the Star Wars bar scene?  somehow it wouldn't surprise me if someone had shown up in a Chewbacca costume, along with a Chewbacca for peace sign

I give up, why do these things worry you?

The only things that really scare me are the complete inability of Israel to do that even with our support, and the Soviet loss of the proxy war in Afghanistan.

Not to say there aren't a lot of things to be worried about, but why are you worried about these?

BTW, I was drafting a response along these lines when you posted this.  Thanks for saying in about 100-words what I was having trouble getting-across in about 7-paragraphs.

Thanks also for sparing me the pain of having to post such a comment.  It was an embarrassment of incomprehension.

Cheers.

#5 is what happened and #1 is why.

Since the bombings are only half of #1 (the other half is "sanctions", and really also includes an off-and-on inspection regime), and the bombings could impact the WMD program without actually hitting stockpiles of WMDs, there's no contradiction between the overall strategy degrading Iraq's ability to produce WMD and the idea that the generals tricked Saddam into thinking they had WMDs.  They had to trick him because they couldn't make them.

Fundamentally, we probably won't ever know if Clinton's strategy directly led to the failure of Iraq's WMD program.  Conversely, we probably won't know that it didn't.  But, since the overall objectives of the strategy were acheived, I'm inclined to call it a success rather than making up reasons why it was a failure.

the national objective was set in the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998. That objective was not achieved until April 2003.

Is that we don't march with them.

#5 is what happened and #1 is why.

You're entitled to your opinions. Absent some sort of showing this is the case, especially given that the sanctions didn't stop Hussein from making mad money at will, or from spending it on anything else he wanted, I'm kind of at a loss for how they would have succeeded in this single area. But, you have your first premises.

Since the bombings are only half of #1 (the other half is "sanctions", and really also includes an off-and-on inspection regime), and the bombings could impact the WMD program without actually hitting stockpiles of WMDs, there's no contradiction between the overall strategy degrading Iraq's ability to produce WMD and the idea that the generals tricked Saddam into thinking they had WMDs.

There are, of course, other possible explanations. No one would sell to him? They suffered a brain drain? The institution of sanctions also turned what was already a kleptocracy into an even more inefficient one, so that projects never got off the ground?

I mean, seriously, the bombings were so sporadic that we cannot logically rely on them for any part of this. And given the frequency with which inspectors were diverted or kicked out of the country, it seems at best naive to assume they had anything to do with it.

Now, might they? Sure. And Halle Berry might show up at my office this afternoon and offer me a night of pleasure with her and Michelle Yeoh. But I don't count that as altogether likely.

Other explanations? Heck, any of the above; none of the above; some combination of the above. But crediting a sporadic bombing campaign and poorly executed sanctions with this Herculean achievement seems wishful thinking at best.

I'm genuinely curious. I just don't think it's possible to tar everyone in attendance at this event with a Troop Hating brush. Most of my friends who did go were unaware that there was going to be a whole section on Free, Free Palestine or Free the Cuban Five or whatever that other randomness was. Is that the issue (meaning the ANSWER crew and their fringe wackiness), or is it that people protested the war at all? Is it your belief then that protesting the war means you hate the troops?

And for the record, I live in DC, and I was home watching football. (Go 'Hoos!)

So this is where we agree to disagree.  You certainly have a point that there were likely other factors involved with the failure of the WMD program as well.  You may conclude that therefore Clinton's containment strategy was ineffective and those other factors were the key.  I conclude that Clinton's strategy was effective and those other factors were at best partially responsible.  We're both drawing conclusions from a limited data set, so I think we're as far as we can get on this one.

(Incidentally, Streiff seems very concerned with arguing a point that I am not trying to make so this will have to serve as a response to him as well.)

I do agree with Jim about Kerry, though. As the six merry murderesses said, "He had it comin'."

as an American citizen to hold this crowd in utter contempt just as much as it is their right to hold the cause we're asking young men to die for in contempt.

The fact that your friends are apparently morons doesn't get a lot of sympathy from me. It wasn't like ANSWER was keeping a particularly low profile for the past three years.  

There are plenty of other countries in the Coalition.  I presume you feel that Poland, South Korea, Japan, Denmark, the Netherlands and others are unworthy of your approval?  Have you asked them, btw?

Would you prefer we had large armies from countries with poor human rights records, such as China or Burma.

Never said there wasn't danger.  But, in 14 of 18 provinces in Iraq, things are going relatively OK.  And as for the Iraqi constitution--can you point to a better one in the Middle East, which the people wrote for themselves?  No, you can't.

I refuse to believe you're a lieutenant.  I shudder to think what ROTC program produced you.

"Lieutenant Bradshaw" is "Nick Danger's" nemesis in a Firesign Theater skit, The Further Adventures of Nick Danger, from 1969.

The left didn't march with these people either.  

Let's assume approximately half the country is left and generally opposes the Iraq war (based on the last election and recent poll results).  Let's also assume half of those are of protesting age.  That leaves over 70m people who could have showed up but didn't.  That's well over 99% no-shows.

These people are fringe, man.  You are fighting the fringe.

but why are you worried about these?

Because the Israeli military and the Soviet military are and were serious forces to be reckoned with, and have been unsuccessful in eliminating insurgencies in the Middle East.

There is a historical precident set that I don't care to repeat.  And our current strategy does not seem to adequately address the security issues that have caused the failure of those before us in this region.

That's why I'm worried.

You can't possibly contend that the National Guard's mission in 2005 is anything like what it was during Vietnam.

You don't have to believe that President Bush is a coward or a chickenhawk or unfit to serve as Commander-in-Chief to acknowledge that a lot of privileged folks made a priority out of avoiding service in Vietnam.  Serving in the National Guard was one of the more honorable ways of doing so - and unfortunately, not an option that was available to everyone.  These are just the facts.

And amongst that anti-abortion frontpage posts have there been a suitable number of posts condemning Rudolph and Kopp?

Have they been active since July 2004? I don't think I've been that out of touch.

And have they organized any significant marches or demonstrations in which and to which actual pro-lifers pointed and said, Thereyago?

Re: especially given that the sanctions didn't stop Hussein from making mad money at will, or from spending it on anything else he wanted, I'm kind of at a loss for how they would have succeeded in this single area.

He could not "make mad nomey at will". It takes only simple economic understanding to know that no government can do that and governments that try end up as bankrupt as Enron. Saddam obviously had ways to get some cash, but his highest priority was apparently himself and his high-ranking lackeys. Remember all those opulent palaces he had? And his security (and that of the Ba'ath regime in general) was no doubt next on the list. A good guess is that by the time he got done funding his own Lifestyle Of The Rich And Famous, bribing his henchmen for their loyalty, and cracking down on dissenst left and right, there really wasn't enough money left over for WMDs and yet no one was bold enough to tell him so he ended up with a Potmekin program which fooled everyone.

I'm not a big fan of the ANSWER crowd myself. I don't think most mainstream members of the left are.  Those people aren't the mainstream left, any more than Fred Phelps and his ilk represent the mainstream right, and this entire event was certainly not marketed or advertised as being a catch-all dumping ground for ANSWER's pet fringe causes of the day, which apparently is what it turned into.

What I was trying to ask was this, do you hold them in contempt and categorically state that they don't support the troops because of the ANSWER connection, or because there was a protest against the war at all?

Fred Phelps has never drawn a crowd of 100,000 once, much less on several occasions, and he's never had members of Congress speak at his gatherings. So just give ol' In fact, Fred is in agreement with the demonstrators on the war in Iraq. He, like some to of the groups represented Sunday, pickets funerals of young men and women killed there. So give ol' Fred a rest, okay, he's on your side here.

As to the second, yes.

This is what you, Lefty Lawyer, had to say about patriotism:

"Patriotism is doing what one believes is in the national interest.  It is only those on the right who attempt to define anything other than blind allegiance to a deified Republican President who see it otherwise."

According to Dictionary.com, patriotism is defined as "love of and devotion to one's country," or "love of country and willingness to sacrifice for it."

Patriotic is defined as "feeling, expressing, or inspired by love for one's country."

Patriot is defined as "one who loves, supports, and defends one's country."

The true definition of patriotism cannot be reconciled with the actions and views of most of those who marched on Washington last Saturday.  I spent more than two hours in traffic around the mall and the IMF buildings on Saturday, and I saw it with my own eyes.  If we use your definition of patriotism, then most of those people would be patriots because they believe that what the U.S. needs is to be humbled by defeat.  Were those people feeling love of America?  Were those people expressing love of America?  Were those people inspired by love of America?

What I saw was a seething, anger-fueled group of white-guilt-ridden apologists trying to undermine all the traditional values of this country.

What I saw were enough Che Guevara (a great lover a peace and enemy of war, indeed) t-shirts to make me think I'd taken a detour into a Phish concert.  How can you reconcile an appreciation for Che Guevara with American patriotism?  The man fought to bring communism to foreign lands!

My point is you could never convince me (or most Red Staters, I suspect) that these "anti-war" activities are patriotic.  However, if you continue to distort the definition to fit your own needs, I'm sure you can continue convincing yourself.

He could not "make mad nomey at will". It takes only simple economic understanding to know that no government can do that and governments that try end up as bankrupt as Enron.

Pedantic and utterly beside the point.

Saddam obviously had ways to get some cash, but his highest priority was apparently himself and his high-ranking lackeys. Remember all those opulent palaces he had? And his security (and that of the Ba'ath regime in general) was no doubt next on the list.

Curiously, this only makes my point.

A good guess is that by the time he got done funding his own Lifestyle Of The Rich And Famous, bribing his henchmen for their loyalty, and cracking down on dissenst left and right, there really wasn't enough money left over for WMDs and yet no one was bold enough to tell him so he ended up with a Potmekin program which fooled everyone.

Sure, this is possible. Or his generals embezzled the money intended for WMDs. Or any number of ideas, none of which have anything to do with my essential point, or maybe derive from it, but in no way, contradict it.

The poultroons protesting the war and promoting nearly every leftist thug in the world have no idea of patriotism.

That they are tolerated by a free people is only account of the liberty afforded to all in this great country.

Jaba the Hutt...aka Rush Limbaugh was not...sorry, but if you're gonna attack our nutjobs with ad hominem arguments, I'm attacking yours

that as Rush is looking pretty svelte these days... but attack away, the only limit is that you can't attack one of ours twice because you're going to run out by the time I list the speakers from that demontration.

that a hundred thousand people (or however many actually showed up) would have come had this been conceptualized or marketed as a Free the Cuban Five rally. It wasn't, and I think it's really, really stupid that it ended up turning into that, and that ANSWER was allowed to sort of usurp the purpose of the gathering for their fringe caterwauling.

It's really useless to try and cram everyone who doesn't support the war into some sort of wacko, extremist, freakshow label/box. There are people, perfectly mainstream people, who do not like the current progress of the war. And I don't think they hate the troops, either.

Wait, so did Bush "decline" to serve or not?

Is serving in the National Guard declining to serve?

That's what I'm trying to discern here.

I'll indulge in my own.

in the best interests of the country, I don't see how the definition doesn't work.  They got off the couch to go say something about how they feel we could improve the country,  seems more patriotic than most people sitting home and watching more Friends reruns to me.  And further, you can take the most extreme individuals from any group and try to apply them to the big picture, but it just doesn't work.  For example, we could use pictures of neonazis at a minuteman rally, and paint them all as communist, racist, and bigoted, but what good does that do anyone?

serving in the National Guard is declining to serve if you're talking about Bush, serving in the National Guard is honorable service if you're not.

recall any neo-nazis being billed as headline speakers at a "minuteman" rally. I did see a non-ending stream of anti-semites, racists of various colors, and anti-American nutbars on the speaker's dais in DC with 100,000+/- loyal followers looking on in adoration.

Service in the National Guard is serving your country.  It is not, however, the same as serving in Vietnam.  The fact that National Guardsmen in 2005 face the same risks in Iraq as members of the active military doesn't change how things were during the Vietnam era.

In terms of getting out of active combat duty, do I think serving in the National Guard is more commendable than, say, fleeing to Canada?  Obviously.  But I just remind you that not everyone who might have liked to join the Guard had the option to do so.

everyone who might have liked to join the Coast Guard couldn't either. What about the large number of draftees, actually most draftees, who never went to Vietnam? Did they serve?

The sanctions and military strikes worked.

It is highly unlikely that we would have destroyed WMD via military strikes, and if we had, we would know about it (and much would likely remain in any case).

It is possible sanctions or strikes could have persuaded Saddam to get rid of the material, but if that is the case, he would have had to have demonstrated that he no longer possesed WMDs. His behaviour indicated defiance and something to hide.

Right before he was about to be invaded, Saddam destroyed or gave away his best weapons.

Or, he could have done so earlier, either planning to admit inspectors or anticipating some sort of invasion. Incidently, IIRC he sent his air force to Iran prior to the first Gulf War.

As military weapons go, non-nuclear WMD have had poor histories (with the exception of the accidental use of germs against populations lacking resistance). Saddam's best weapons were his tanks, aircraft, and elite military units. It is true that his WMD had terror value, but it had little military value.

1.  Blood on the Democrat's hands?  Probably so.  If you see an accident and walk up and shoot one of the wounded, is there blood on your hands?  Yes.  We are in this war as a nation.  Our elected President, with the consent of our elected representatives made a decision.  Whether you like it or not, if you do anything to encourage our enemy (tempt them with weakness is how JFK put it) and any of our soldiers die, you have blood on your hands.
   
2.  We won the main battle.  If you doubt this, you have blinders on.  The battle fought against the government of Iraq was won virtually instantly, by any historical standard.  The constant attacks of violent, Islamist extremists is ongoing, and will probably be ongoing even after Iraq is established as a working democracy, though at that time, it will likely be in a different theater.  But the constant carping against the war itself only encourages the Islamist extremists to believe we are weak.  As Bin Laden himself said - he believed we were a paper tiger, unable to muster enough will to defend ourselves.
   
3.  The 2000 election AND the 2004 election were decided, not by one state, but by 50 -- read them all -- 50 states of these United States of America.  Either learn about the electoral college, and the methods by which we elect our delegates or get out of the debate.
   
4.  Who gives a flying rat's rear as to the results of a hypothetical 2005 election.  We aren't going to have one.  Thank goodness, the Democrats don't get to demand an election any time the polls look favorable to them.
   
5.  I don't think anyone has accused all democrats of being unpatriotic and aiding and abetting the enemy, but clearly many have (see the march in D.C.)  Too many others have been painfully and obviously silent as to their contempt for these traitors.  If that makes them look bad, whose fault is that?
   
6.  So, no.  You don't really have anything right.

You are just playing word games.  Find some other liberal to indulge you.

The large brush.  Although painting with it is fun, it is hardly useful.

I've always found that knowing who your real enemies are is very helpful when dealing with them.

I partially agree. The pre-Iraq freedom strategy prevented saddam from invading other countries and may well have been a factor in why we found no wmd. Who knows. It did not prevent him from allowing the zarqawi al qaida branch from operating in iraq at his sufrerence; didn't stop him from running a hotel for terrorists on the run and a hospital for injured jihadists; from publicly supporting suicide bombers; from trying to kill Bush41 and from shooting at our planes.

And we had to know esp post 911 that the wmd was not their.

AND MOST IMPORTANTLY post 911 Saddam had to go. The ceasefire was fatally flawed for it left the main wmd in power, saddam, with the posibility he could one day be unfettered to resume his ways.

see duelfer report

A

 what your basic point was. I'm only trying to explore what is the most reasonable explanation for the lack of chemical weapons* that everyone (including Saddam himself) thought existed. I really do find the explanation that Saddam (and the rest of world) was deceived by his underlings to be the most logical and least problematic.

* While there were suspicions that Saddam also had biologicals, there was never any certainty on that, and no one seriuously thought Saddam had a nuclear arsenal

have to do with any of this?

the thread very closely, despite posting on it.

But to your point, 100,000 sympathizers of bin Laden in DC is a concern to me. Not as much now as it was two years ago, but still a concern.

Saddam was a bad guy and it's good we got rid of him.

I have issues with the timing, the way the war was sold to the American people, the planning, the adequacy of the "coalition", and the way the war was handled after our "catastrophic success", but not with the result.

I'm not sure you have the reasons right for the condemnation.  I didn't google all the quotes, but of the Rs that I know, our biggest concern was that Clinton didn't seem to have any long term plan to actually accomplish anything, regarding the elimination of terrorism.  

He shot off some cruise missiles, but I can't recall there ever being any talk of doing anything else.  Some of us are not content with an occasional warning shot.  If Clinton had said something on the lines of, "This will not stand.  We will get Bin Laden," and actually followed through, some of us might have believed that he was serious.

Instead, he chose two very political days (the day the sperm DNA results from the blue dress were released and the day the impeachment vote was scheduled) to shoot some missiles off.  One time, they blew up a tent city in the desert, the other time they blew up a factory that may or may not have been a chemical weapons factory.  But never, not even once, was there any indication that he was ever going to make a war plan and follow through.

Hence, we didn't trust him and I think rightly so.

"Doing what one believes is in the national interest" is not patriotism; it is activism.  Patriotism is "love of and devotion to one's country."  Period.  Yelling anti-war slogans outside Walter Reed Army Medical Center is not love of and devotion to one's country.  Espousing the benefits of communism near the Vietnam Memorial is not love of and devotion to one's country.  Saying that America is not worth dying for is not love of and devotion to one's country.  Rejoicing over America's failures if it gives you ammunition to denigrate her leader is not love of and devotion to one's country.

You can argue all you want that this activism is motivated by patriotism, but what I know is that in two hours of sitting in traffic near the mall, I don't recall seeing a single American flag in the hand of someone who wasn't also holding a sign that read "Support Our Troops: Every Mission, Every Time."  Holding a sign that insinuates that Bush is a monkey who couldn't possibly be the result of "Intelligent Design" doesn't constitute a bold act of patriotism.  Trying to pass off actions that are motivated by an overt hatred of the President as patriotism is ludicrous.  I will grant that such sentiment doesn't automatically exclude you from being patriotic (after all, you may have put up an American flag, thanked a vet, and offered a roaring rendition of Star Spangled Banner on the way over), but the protest itself and the sentiment expressed was not patriotic.  

Patriotism is not mean spirited.  Love and devotion are positive things.  Trying to equate the activism by liberals at Saturday's protest with patriotism confuses love and devotion with anger and condemnation.  Hating Bush and wanting a "Regime Change Start[ing] at Home" is not synonymous with loving America.

You are wrong.  Not to address your whole post, but when we went in, there was talk of 100,000 dead in the initial attack.  Remember all the gas masks and stuff?

"Because the Israeli military and the Soviet military are and were serious forces to be reckoned with, and have been unsuccessful in eliminating insurgencies in the Middle East."

yep, well said. I think we are in big trouble and for a long, long, long time. I hope our economy will hold up, we stepped into it big  time

Fine, but my issue was that someone above claimed that Bush "declined" to serve by serving in the National Guard.

I think that's denigrating.

Flattery is great, but I'd give you a 1.  Your exceptions swallowed the rule.

I'm just being open and honest about my thoughts on the Clinton years.  The man deserved a large measure of the flak he got for trying to socialize medicine, for trying to perform social experiments on the military, and for wasting American prestige and political capital in a number of foreign policy misadventures. That said, he did not deserve to be hated as thoroughly and viciously as he was.  He did not deserve to be hated even for adopting policies republicans had long supported, just because he was "stealing issues."

Similarly, President Bush does not deserve automatic and unceasing hatred for his every thought word and deed. That is very nearly what is going on right now.  The man simply can't win with about 30-40% of the population right now.  If he doesn't go to a disaster area he's not doing his job, and if he goes he's getting in the way.  If he cuts spending he doesn't care about [name your favorite interest group].  If he spends more he's a deficit-lover. In Iraq he's a war-monger.  In the Korean penninsula he's passive and too fond of negotiation.  What can the man do but ignore it all and plow on?

I am confident that most americans see what we see. A  strong and decent man being unfairly criticized almost everday for 5 years in contrast to the childish behavior of the dems.

The polls? Well, everything is relative and Bush has three years to kill terrorists and appoint judges. And I suspect the house core repubs are going to force spending and immigration sanity. No matter the polls, even if they are accurate.

And one important part of the pollls is that a lot of conservatives are dissatisfied with Bush for not being conservative enough and they are lumped into the same number with the left.

And so the dems do not gain at all. To gain one has to have an idea!

I do agree that Clinton was not a total disaster at all and if the all desm were like him, as far as policy, the nation would be much better off.

I don't think that's "hating America". Dissent does not equal hate. I've said this before. Dissent is one of the most American things. What other country allows people to criticize like American does? I'm a hardcore liberal, and I love America. I love the fact that my parents moved here from Mexico years before I was born. Thanks to this country, I was able to get my B.A. and plan for law school. Thanks to this country, I feel I can say whatever I want to say. Sure, there are some people that choose the wrong words, but they come from desperation and anger. Perhaps they hate Bush, but certainly not America.

Let me ask you, do conservatives HATE liberals? Let us put the politics aside. We know that if a Democrat was running this war, liberals would be "patriotic" and conservatives would engage in "dissent". I, as a liberal, admit this. Politics are getting in the way of this country's well-being. But how do we know who's right?

To be clear, my point is that dissent does not equal hate. That is a bad assumption.

I'm deliberately making a distinction between honest folks who dissent and those folks. Did you go to any of those socialist party websites like I asked you to? Did you see how they praised the insurgents and whatnot?

I understand we took the "monumental task" of "democratizing" Iraq. But whatever happened to the monumental task of capturing Osama bin Laden? How did we suddenly get into Iraq? Spare me of the story because I frankly don't buy it. Perhaps I'm some idiot that doesn't understand. Just look around and read the polls. Our president is in dire straits. Unfortunately for me, my party continues to sleep on the opporunity to smash the GOP. But regardless of this, the GOP is losing many of its supporters. And please, stop blaming disent on the "liberal media", or the MSM.

I "don't get it"?  You seem to be confusing the Global War on Terrorism for some snatch-and-grab police raid.  We can all agree that capturing bin Laden would be a wonderful thing and both a symbolic and substantive victory in that war.  But surely you don't beleive that it would have reduced the threat to our national security of Islamo-fascist terrorism for any significant length of time?  And if not, then pray tell, what was your solution for prosecuting and winning that war?

Re: The man deserved a large measure of the flak he got for trying to socialize medicine

The Clinton health plan, AKA "HillaryCare", was a mess and it deserved to be shelved. But is was not "socialized medicine" as the term is generally understood. (That is, as either a single payor system as in Canada or a government-as-medical-employer system as in Britain). Rather it represented a proposal to thoroughly corporatize medicine under which the health payor industry would have been consolidated into a relatively small number of enormous health insurance corporations (presumably the smaller guys would have been merged into the existing large companies like Aetna) with private ownership but limited competition. This is not socialism of course but statist capitalism.

It's a football thing. Try not to show your ignorance.

Right, that's going to happen. The left have no stomach for war. Never have, never will. If they did, they would not be the left, they would be the right.

There are a few differences between various wars that you must consider, that all wars are not created equal.

I could assume from what you've been saying that you'd support Bush in any war he desired.  "We must occupy Fiji!"  I'm guessing, though, that you might have second thoughts about it unless you agreed there was a good reason to do so.

I know quite a few lefties who own firearms and would definitely not be afraid to use them if the country was invaded.  So I guess that blows your "left has no stomach for war" idea.

You're going to have to look somewhere else for the reasons why the left largely doesn't support the Iraq war.

And the differences between left and right are far more vast than simply "measure of stomach for war".  That metric is hardly definitive.

"if the country was invaded". I feel a lot safer knowing that the lefties will fight to save their own sorry butts.

I know quite a few lefties who own firearms and would definitely not be afraid to use them if the country was invaded.  

Seems to me that those are pretty darn cheap words knowing you'll never have to live up to them so long as the rest of us are fighting in other people's countries to keep this from happening.

1941-45, or Vietnam, 1945-1979, with brief interruptions.

Seems to me that those are pretty darn cheap words knowing you'll never have to live up to them so long as the rest of us are fighting in other people's countries to keep this from happening.

Just proof by contridiction against the grandposter.  Besides, no one was afraid of Iraq invading the US.

And here you imply that since people from the left would defend their home turf, they're not fighting elsewhere.  Not so.  Do you think no liberals or lefties fought in any wars?

But if you tell a leftie to take his guns and occupy Fiji, he's going to tell you to take a hike.  Unless you can justify it.  Would someone from the right jump to it simply out of principle?

We went to Iraq to stop the terrorists.  The anti-war left doesn't believe going to Iraq furthers this goal, and some believe it hinders it.  A third of the country doesn't even know what the war is about anymore.  So they're telling Bush to take a hike and, from the numbers, it looks some of the right is siding with them.

not to fight unless drafted or if they think they can make home movies, collect phony Purple Hearts and "report for duty" to run for President 35 years later. Seroiusly, would you want to go into battle knowing all your fellow soldiers had Dkos accounts?

that if we were invaded, the left would be lining the streets and tossing rose petals.

You make generalizations like no other. How much combat did Bush engage in? I think you're criticizing the wrong people here. If anything, we should criticize politicians for their overall lack of military experience. Dodging military service isn't an ideological question. It is a question of class. POOR liberals and conservatives,Democrats and Republicans, blacks, latinos, Asians, and whites make up our military. Why aren't Ivy League college Republicans signing up? Why aren't Hollywood liberals signing up? It's the $$$$$.  Of course, this isn't always the case, but it sure seems to be the historical trend.

"Onward Christian Soldiers".

here. You are chickenhawking. That is bannable here. This is your only warning.

And as a matter of fact the kids who are enlisting in the military come from households that make above the national median per household income.

Only us high class chickenhawks. And, you didn't answer my question.

Any links?

BTW, if I'm overboard on my previous comment, let someone like Leon H tell me. You and I have been at odds before, so I'm not sure whether you're saying it to threaten or to warn.

I don't need Leon to take care of you. You can take it anyway you want it, doesn't matter to me. Got it?

I don't know any Dkos users personally, so I wouldn't feel anymore confident sending them than I am confident sending conservatives. However, Kos is a former Marine who knows his stuff! Surely I would trust him. I don't think ideological leanings are a good indicator of one's courage.

I was just taking a look at Kos today, and noticed this story on the front page.

Is that good enough for you?

Check out this article about military recruitment. Then again, it's probably coming from the liberal media!

You guys are cracking me up!

I said go with them. Only way you could send them would be if you went to Canada to get them.

While Kerry's combat record might be in question, let's not forget that Bush's isn't.  If I were in a gunfight and needed someone by my side with a clear head and steady aim, I'd take liberal leftie peacenik Kerry by my side over Bush any day.

Do you feel Bush's military experience is representative of how far the Right is willing to go in a time of war?

fence or just his medals? Right, Kerry would shoot the guy and then testify to Congress how you murdered him, raped his wife and ran the jeep over his kids on the way out of the village. And, your title is right. What you wrote are stupid hypotheticals. Thanks for the heads-up.

And, your title is right. What you wrote are stupid hypotheticals. Thanks for the heads-up.

Well, to be honest, the expanded meaning of the subject was "While we're on the topic of stupid hypotheticals", and so was meant to be somewhat self-deprecating as I offered another one.  I'm sorry if I was obscure.

Kerry would shoot the guy and then testify to Congress how you murdered him, raped his wife and ran the jeep over his kids on the way out of the village.

And fortunately you're here to present facts with the clear voice of reason, so we don't have to worry about my crass mistakes!

"And fortunately you're here to present facts with the clear voice of reason". I certainly have my doubts about that. And. I would say your mistakes are only about 50% crass.

healthcare with Chinese characteristics?

This ill-advised conflict was lost before it began.  We are left with a big handful of dog-doo in a crowded room with nowhere to put it and no way to save face. If the muslim fringe were to write their favorite daydream into a script, this would be it.  Thanks to the real axis of evil, GW, DC and DR.

Keep in mind, we loaded the gun with the Patriot Act.  I don't want to hand it to them.

You know, assuming you mean what you say here, and that it is in any way representative of general opinion here on RS: it's hard for me to count the ways in which I find this dumbfounding.

If the Patriot Act is good law, it's good law no matter who is in charge.  If it's not, it should never have been passed.

If you are concerned about a Democrat becoming President with USAPA on the books, that means you think it gives the executive too much power.  A clue -- that's why people opposed it.  Laws that are good when your guy is in and bad when the other guy is in are bad laws.

If your support for USAPA is conditional on a Republican being President, I have to ask you what the hell you are thinking.  Do you think there will never be another Democrat President?  Do you think it won't be until after you are dead and gone, and then it's not your problem?

Thanks

(1) I don't think he was saying it was a good law. I think he was saying it was a bad law, and it would be even worse in certain other hands.

(2) I have read most of the god-awful thing now. Not all; most. Frankly, I think the hoo-hah over the thing is still unjustified, 89% of the way through. Unless there's a suspense ending and the death of the protagonist coming in the last 11%, I have to say that most of the fears associated with the thing are simply so much hype.

this Patriot Act bogeyman that mobys and buchananites like to trot out is just crap. The stuff in the Patriot Act is commonsense legislation that should have been in place all along, like wiretapping an individual instead of a telephone, and yes, making the records of a public facility, a library, as available to the FBI as it is to your vicious ex-wife's divorce lawyer.

Thomas -

Thanks for the reply.

I have also read a large amount of USAPA.  I've read all of the contentious sections, and much of the rest.  I have done so with the relevant sections of the US Code open so I could see what the changes proposed in USAPA actually accomplish.  My guide in this process was the Congressional Research legal analysis, which was very very good, some other legal analyses, and my own eyes and brain.  I've put, conservatively, 100 hours of my own time into trying to get a handle on it.

The USAPA issue was, basically, my entry point into current day politics.  There was so much BS flying around that I wanted to know what it was about.

The short form of my objection to USAPA is exactly this:

USAPA consistently weakens oversight of executive actions in the areas of intelligence gathering and police activity.  

We could go toe to toe, I suppose, on the details, but that's the nut of the issue.  You are correct to say that much of what folks get worked up about is not that big of a deal, but the above IMO is a big deal.

I don't trust the government to do the right thing without a watchdog, because they have a long history of abusing that trust.  I'm a blue stater, so I have no problem with a robust government; I do, however, like that government on a leash.

Thanks

I see this over and over. I don't understand it. We didn't have a Patriot Act under either Nixon or Clinton and it is pretty well established that both administrations used the IRS to go after their enemies. Someone who is willing to abuse the law is not going to be restrained by the absence of a law.

Yes, I am not a fan of the USAPA.  Frankly, it scares me and certain unscrupulous persons (Hillary Clinton in particular)could make it a very bad thing.  It was explained above about reducing oversight and increasing the power of the police.