Reid keeps getting more and more pathetic- Updated with Video- More Updates!
Posted by Lance on 24 Apr 2007 at 4:24 pm | Tagged as: Notes on the war, Military Matters, Lance's Page, Foreign affairs, Domestic Politics
Now he goes and calls General Petraeus a liar!
BASH: You talked several times about General Petraeus. You know that he
is here in town. […] [President Bush] said that General Petraeus is
going to come to the Hill and make it clear to you that there is
progress going on in Iraq, that the so-called surge is working. Will you
believe him when [General Petraeus] says that?REID: No, I don’t believe him, because it’s not happening.
Here is the Video:
McQ smacks him hard. Maybe Petraeus is a liar, though he has generally been recognized as a straight shooter willing to criticize the administration, but I don’t know the man. The question I have, is if Petraeus is a liar, how would Reid know? Is he in any position to know?
Maybe we should ask some of his constituents who would have some insight:
“We’re not losing this war.”
That’s how a Las Vegas Army Reserve sergeant and Iraq war veteran who is heading out again for Operation Iraqi Freedom reacted Friday to Nevada Sen. Harry Reid’s assessment that the war in Iraq is “lost.”
“I don’t believe the war is lost,” Sgt. George Turkovich, 24, said as he stood with other soldiers near a shipping container that had been packed for their deployment to Kuwait.
[…]
“Unfortunately, politics has taken a huge role in this war affecting our rules of engagement,” said Turkovich, a 2001 Palo Verde High School graduate. “This is a guerrilla war that we’re fighting, and they’re going to tie our hands.
“So it does make it a lot harder for us to fight the enemy, but we’re not losing this war,” he said.
For the most part, the 50-plus soldiers from a detachment of the Army Reserve’s 314th Combat Service Support Battalion expressed similar views about Reid’s war-is-lost comments this week. They respectfully disagreed with the Democrat.
All volunteers, they were upbeat and excited about the deployment. Some said they were nervous and were trying not to dwell on leaving their families for a year.
[…]
In the eyes of Turkovich, who served as an infantryman with the 82nd Airborne Division for seven months each in Iraq and Afghanistan, the mission is nearing completion but is not over yet.
“Our mission statement when we first went into Iraq was to get Saddam out of power and stand up a new government and a new army,” Turkovich said.
“We’ve gone in there. Saddam is now out of power, and we’ve stood up a new army and we’ve stood up a new government,” he said. “Now we’re just kind of the crutch, nursing it along for right now, and hopefully they’ll be able to get off those training wheels soon and they’ll be able to stand for themselves.”
The 314th’s stateside commander, Lt. Col. Steven Cox, said the political controversy swirling around the war “does weigh upon us because the representatives are supposed to represent American sentiments.”
“I find it exceedingly difficult to believe that the American people would leave their military dangling in the wind the way the good senator is doing,” Cox said.
“Defeatism … from our elected officials does not serve us well in the field,” he said. “They embolden the enemy, and they actually leave them with the feeling that they can defeat us and win this.
“All they have to do is wait us out because the American resolve is waning,” he said.
In response the Senator had an underling respond:
“He understands the sacrifices they make and the effects felt by their families when they are called to serve overseas,” Summers said.
“That is why he believes we owe it to them to give them all the resources they need and provide them with a strategy that is worthy of their sacrifices,” he wrote. “Military generals, the American public, and a bipartisan majority of Congress all agree that to stay the course of the president’s failed strategy fails our troops and will not lead to success in Iraq.”
Well, to quote the officer above, he says you are undermining their mission and emboldening the enemy, he says you are leaving the “military dangling in the wind.”
How about the opinion of a soldier in Anbar Senator Reid?
All,
I just wanted to let you know what is happening where I am in Iraq. I don’t want to say this is in response to Harry Reid, but his comments the other day are not in line with what we’re seeing.
We are winning over here in Al Anbar province. I don’t know about Baghdad, but Ramadi was considered THE hotspot in Al Anbar, the worse province, and it has been very quiet. The city is calm, the kids are playing in the streets, the local shops are open, the power is on at night, and daily commerce is the norm rather than the exception. There have been no complex attacks since March. That is HUGE progress. This quiet time is allowing the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police to establish themselves in the eyes of the people. The Iraqi people also want IA’s and IP’s in their areas. The Sunni Sheiks are behind us and giving us full support. This means that almost all Sunnis in Al Anbar are now committed to supporting the US and Iraqi forces. It also means that almost all insurgents left out here are AQ. FYI, the surge is just beginning. Gen Petraeus’ strategy is just getting started and we’re seeing huge gains here.
However, you don’t see Harry Reid talking about this. When I saw what he said, it really pissed me off. That guy does not know what is going on over here because he hasn’t bothered to come and find out. The truth on the ground in Al Anbar is not politically convenient for him, so he completely ignored it.
This war can be won. We just need the time to get the IA and IP operating on their own. Gen Petraeus is treating the war like a counter-insurgency rather than a stability operation. For non-military personnel, there is a HUGE difference between the two. What we’ve been doing in Iraq since Petraeus took over is completely different than what we were doing under Gen Casey. However, you don’t hear the press or the democrats say that. Most of them are too committed to saying we’ve lost to further their own political agendas that they cannot acknowledge we’re doing something totally different and it is working.
I don’t think the honesty problem has anything to do with Petraeus or the soldiers Senator Reid.
Or as the White House points out, Senator Reid is “confused.” How delicate:
Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV): “By ordering his troop surge,” the President “ignored the advice of the Iraq Study Group.” (Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), Remarks On Iraq, Washington, DC, 4/23/07)
- Iraq Study Group Report: “We could, however, support a short-term redeployment or surge of American combat forces to stabilize Baghdad, or to speed up the training and equipping mission, if the U.S. commander in Iraq determines that such steps would be effective.” (”The Iraq Study Group Report,” 2006)
- Iraq Study Group Co-Chair James A. Baker, III: “Setting a deadline for withdrawal regardless of conditions in Iraq makes even less sense today because there is evidence that the temporary surge is reducing the level of violence in Baghdad. As Baghdad goes, so goes Iraq. The Iraq Study Group said it could support a short-term surge to stabilize Baghdad or to speed up training and equipping of Iraqi soldiers if the U.S. commander in Iraq determines such steps would be effective. Gen. David Petraeus has so determined.” (James A. Baker, III, Op-Ed, “A Path to Common Ground,” The Washington Post, 4/5/07)
Did the Senator read the ISG report? I don’t think so. he just knew it was critical and decided what that criticism should have meant rather than what it says. I think the Senator has been studying Glenn Greenwald.
Sen. Reid: “The first thing that needs to be done is a regional conference.” “Have, as the Iraq Study Group said, have the United States meet with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and, yes, Iran, to sit down and see what we can do to resolve the issues that are so ugly in Iraq.” (Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), Remarks On Iraq, Washington, DC, 4/23/07)
- A regional conference is scheduled for early May: “Ministers from Iraq’s neighboring countries, the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and industrialized nations will hold a meeting in Egypt early next month to discuss the situation in Iraq, Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Saturday. … Ministers from Iraq’s neighbors as well as Bahrain and Egypt, and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, will hold a meeting in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik on May 3-4, Zebari said. … Also in attendance, Zebari said, will be officials from the so-called Group of Eight industrialized nations: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the U.K. and the U.S.” (”Ministers From 20 Countries To Meet In Egypt Over Iraq Next Month,” The Associated Press, 4/7/07)
Does the man even read the newspaper?
Sen. Reid: “General Petraeus has said the ultimate solution in Iraq is a political one, not a military one.” (Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), Remarks On Iraq, Washington, DC, 4/23/07)
- Of the President’s FY 2007 supplemental request, the Senate cut $243 million in critical programs that would help the Iraqis meet important political and economic benchmarks. The Senate added $120 million to the President’s request, of which $70 million is for refugees and internally displaced persons and $50 million is for a specific USAID program, leaving a net cut from the President’s request of $243 million.
- The $243 million in net Senate cuts included:
- $70 million to build the governing capacity of local governments.
- $50 million to help the Iraqis draft and implement key legislative and legal reforms.
- 50 million to support rule of law programs so Iraqis can better govern themselves.
- $43 million to promote democracy and civil society efforts.
- $40 million to build the governing capacity of the national government.
- $10 million for private sector development.
- $100 million to support our diplomatic mission and civilian presence, including $41 million for supporting the doubling the PRTs.
- President Bush: “We fully recognize that there has to be political progress and economic progress, along with military progress, in order for that government to succeed.” (President George W. Bush, Remarks, East Grand Rapids, MI, 4/20/07)
Obviously the political solution Senator Reid meant was back here in the US, because he is undermining all the tools for political success. Obviously the economic solution he was concerned about was in lining their own pocketbooks as it turns out the Democrats are raking in the funding now that they have power and pork is swelling. More dissonance:
Sen. Reid today: “We don’t have meetings with the President, not real substantive meetings, he holds carefully scripted sessions where he repeats his talking points.” (Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), Remarks On Iraq, Washington, DC, 4/23/07)
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Sen. Reid immediately following last Wednesday’s meeting: “Well, we had an hour-long meeting with the President. It was a good exchange; everyone voiced their considered opinion about the war in Iraq – the conversation was with the war in Iraq, that’s basically all it was, with a few variations, but mainly that. … [P]eople gave their opinions, they gave their considered opinion what was going wrong and right with the war in Iraq. And I think we have too little of that. I think it was extremely important the President hear from us. And he heard from us in detail. And I think he needs to hear more of conversations from people like us – who don’t always tell him what he wants to hear. I think we told him things today that he needed to hear.” (Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), Remarks After Meeting With The President, Washington, DC, 4/18/07)
- Speaker Pelosi on the meeting: “I think the conversation that we had is the basis for future conversations on this. But each side was very clear with its position that that doesn’t mean that that’s the end of the conversation. And that is what is known as a negotiation and government, that it’s not just one meeting.” (Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Remarks After Meeting With The President, Washington, DC, 4/18/07)
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Sen. Reid immediately following last Wednesday’s meeting: “Well, we had an hour-long meeting with the President. It was a good exchange; everyone voiced their considered opinion about the war in Iraq – the conversation was with the war in Iraq, that’s basically all it was, with a few variations, but mainly that. … [P]eople gave their opinions, they gave their considered opinion what was going wrong and right with the war in Iraq. And I think we have too little of that. I think it was extremely important the President hear from us. And he heard from us in detail. And I think he needs to hear more of conversations from people like us – who don’t always tell him what he wants to hear. I think we told him things today that he needed to hear.” (Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), Remarks After Meeting With The President, Washington, DC, 4/18/07)
I think he needs to write down what he has done in his appointment book. Confused?
UPDATE: Captain Ed takes on a few other nonsensical statements from Reid. Here are a few of the false or misleading statements I didn’t specifically address, but Ed does:
General Petraeus Says The War Is A “Lost Causeâ€
General Petraeus Says There Is No Military Solution
General Petraeus Does Not Support the Surge
General Petraeus Does Not Need Immediate Funding (okay, I have addressed this elsewhere extensively, but not here, and in the comments some deny it has had an effect.)
Go read Captain Ed take apart Reid bit by bit.
Technorati Tags: Senator Reid, Military, Iraq, funding, General Petraeus
86 Responses to “Reid keeps getting more and more pathetic- Updated with Video- More Updates!”
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Is it possible you are misreading this particular response? It sounds to me like Reid is saying he won’t believe what BUSH is saying about this (Bush being the original subject of the previous sentence.)
Of course, Reid is at best disingenuous when he mangles Petraeus’s words then claims to agree with him that “the war cannot be one militarily”. But let’s assume he’s convinced himself that he’s properly representing what the general said –and he certainly seems to be going out of his way to show his ’support’ for Petraeus’s position. In that case, I cannot see why he would, in the next breath, call Petraeus a liar. So I have to take “I don’t believe him” as referring to Bush’s claims. And isn’t his declaring that he will not believe Bush, no matter what disgusting enough?
If you were correct in that reading then it could only mean that Reid doesn’t believe that Gen. Petraeus is actually coming to the Hill. Reading the entire thing in context, however, it is clear that Reid is emphatically denying that there is progress in Iraq or that the surge is working, the message that Petraeus will apparently deliver.
Not really since he’s not made a concerted effort to show how he supports Pres. Bush as he has done with Gen. Petraeus.
So, you are thinking that he doesn’t believe Bush when he says Petraeus is coming to report on progress? I guess it is possible, though unlikely given his many other statements. You are assuming that Reid is being intellectually consistent and believing that supporting Petraeus should mean that he is not saying Petraeus is misrepresenting things. However, reading all that I have above, plus the many contradictory things he has said I am using Occam’s razor.
We will see after he meets with Petraeus what comes out. My guess is we will get a variation of one (or, who knows, both) of two answers. He will claim to have listened carefully to what Petraeus said, shower him with praise, and claim somehow it agrees with his own assessment. Something along the lines of how he mangles Petraeus in the way you already note and as he does with the Iraq Study Group. It won’t make any sense, but he’ll say it with conviction. I think he actually believes it, which is why he so pathetic.
Or, he will claim that Petraeus is flat out wrong while lavishing him with praise. He won’t call him a liar, that will just be the implication as it is here.
I think it will be #1, which would keep your interpretation in play. As you said, it really doesn’t matter. The more I think about it though, given the way he has handled it, doing both is almost as likely.
If you read the CNN transcript, it’s clear that Reid is calling Bush a liar, not Petraeus. Here is the questioner’s follow up to Reid:
It’s not a close call.
Moreover, even if Reid was referring to Petraeus, how does it make Reid a liar? After all, disagreeing with an opinion can’t really make one a liar. If your opinion is that the Mona Lisa is a great painting, and I think it sucks, does that make me a liar? Hardly.
Look, Reid was expressing merely what many, many people outside the right-wing bubble agree with, namely, that the “war” in Iraq cannot be “won.” Indeed, it’s a rather conservative position. The idea that America cannot force sides in an schism dating back some 1400 years to play nice with each other is hardly a radical idea.
If you really support the troops, bring ‘em home.
It shows he has called Bush a liar and said he was in a state of denial minutes before, which he did.
In the part of the transcript above I maintain he is saying that if Petraeus says what Bush says he is saying, he won’t believe him because he believes it isn’t happening. He is saying that he thinks Petraeus is a liar (without using the word) or worse, delusional.
There is no doubt he is calling Bush a liar, I certainly wouldn’t dispute that.
So, you are saying that if Petraeus says he believe progress is being made that Senator Reid owes Bush an apology, because then Bush would not have lied? You are saying the “him” above refers to Bush.
I expect you back here if Petraeus does say things along the lines of what the President says and demand Reid make an apology. I don’t buy for a second that is what Reid meant, but I am willing for you to make the demand anyway. In fact, I’ll put up a great big post with your demand. On one interpretation (do you really think Reid thinks Bush is lying about what Petraeus is saying? Really?) I’ll take him to task for questioning Petraeus’ veracity, but I’ll also give your alternate theory, and the demand for Reid to apologize, just as much space. Either way it was a pathetic response to Bash’s question.
I didn’t say it did. Other things might make him a liar, but I never claimed this statement did.
As for the rest, I disagree, but then I am not a conservative.
Actually three things make it pretty clear that Reid is talking about comments to come from Petraeus:
(1) The entire question pertains to Petraeus, not, as you suggest, to Pres. Bush.
(2) “He also said that General Petraeus is going to come to the Hill and make it clear to you that there is progress going on in Iraq, that the so-called surge is working. Will you believe him when he says that?” Bash is speaking in the future tense, i.e. when Petraeus comes to the Hill. Bush’s comments on what Petraeus will testify are statements in the past to which the proper question is not “will you believe him” but “do you you believe him.”
(3) Reid’s complete response to the question attempts to explain why he won’t (note future tense) believe that “there is progress going on in Iraq, that the so-called surge is working” which is the testimony that Petraeus will supposedly be giving, not Bush.
If you really support the troops why don’t you try listening to them instead of treating them like immature imbeciles who don’t know what’s best for them. Does this guy sound like he agrees with you?
Since the surge began, Diyala province has become much more violent. So too Basra. And tensions are rising in Kirkuk, especially between the PKK (a terrorist organization) and Turkey.
In the two months since the surge began, both civilian deaths and American military deaths have risen 10 percent.
Even more scary is the nature of yesterday’s attack in Baquba. 9 dead paratroopers? The attack was both sophisticated, and preyed on the vunerable position our troops are now put in, sitting as they do in their “outposts.”
Is the surge working? Who knows. If you ask some supporters of the surge, they would say that an increase in violence is evidence the surge is working. And then they would probably also say that the same thing if the violence were decreasing.
Until, however, you disarm the Shia militias, this is all a dog and pony show. And there has been absolutely no effort on that front.
More to the point, the purpose of the surge is to create enough security to allow for reconcilliation between the Shia and the Sunnis. But that assumes the Shia leadership wants reconciliation. But they don’t. Maliki doesn’t. SCIRI doesn’t. And Sadr certainly doesn’t.
It’s a waste of American lives. Plain and simple.
So I guess that means you won’t believe Petraeus either?
I am not doubting that, though that would be a deterioration from earlier, but could you give a cite for that?
True, whci is why such simple metrics are irrelevant.
That is just false. Its sufficiency may be in question, but not that there has been no effort. If you don’t believe me I will cite that.
Anyway, it may end up a waste, though neither you or I can know that. It changes nothing about my criticism of Reid.
Michael,
I agree that to make the case for Reid’s comments about Petraeus calls for assuming things about mangled tenses and pronouns. I have given the idea creedence because Reid is quite capable of getting such things messed up. I agree with Bruce above, it is bad either way.
Ok, I will. From NPR this morning:
Now, the soldier you quote is talking about Ramadi. Great. Things may be going better there for now. But look at Diyala. Things are going much worse there.
From the Washington Post:
So things are getting better in Ramadi, but worse in Diyala. And yet the soldier you quote makes no mention of Diyala, because it is not convenient for him to do so. Nor does he mention Basra, where intra-Shia violence is increasing, especially over the last two weeks, as British troops are withdrawing.
If you or Lance want to cherry pick a few choice quotes from selected soldiers, go ahead. Meanwhile, the rest of us will deal with the big picture.
If Basra is not secure, the whole Iraqi enterprise will go down the tubes. Yet there is no surge there; to the contrary, the British are leaving. Likewise, the more troops that flow into Diyala means fewer troops somewhere else. And that’s where the Sunni insurgents will go next.
Bush cannot “win” this war.
Caldwell’s briefing of 4/11/07
Yeah, I heard that too. He has every right to his opinion, but I sure do wish that NPR would air the views of soldiers who do support the war and want to win the mission in which they’re involved. I read about a lot of them because I know where to look. I have not once heard such an opinion expressed on NPR, and I listen to it everyday.
If you want to know what they are thinking on the ground, try searching them out a little. I expect to hear grumbling and dissent from some of the troops, but can you handle the opinion of those who don’t want to see their efforts wasted? You could try looking here for starters, and Green Beret (inactive) Michael Yon will give you the straight skinny whether it’s pretty or not.
The soldier doesn’t make mention of Diyala because that’s not where he’s based. He can only report on what he knows. Too bad “reporters” holed up in Baghdad don’t take the same advice. As for Diyala being so bad, that not what CENTCOM is reporting:
The point is that we could back and forth on this with you providing bad news and casualties and me linking good news and enemy kills/captures, and we will still be in the same place. The question is, do you want to win the war or not? And don’t tell me “We can’t win it”; I want to know if you want to win it.
As for myself, not only do I want to win, I am extremely confident we can if we give our troops the support and encouragement that they need. Having the Senate Majority Leader stand up and declare that “the war is lost” is giant slap in the face to our troops, and the constant caterwauling from the MSM and those on the left he definitely do not want the US to win, only serve to make our job harder. Gen. Petraeus is, of course, correct that the war will not be won solely by military means (and so is Harry Reid to the extent that he says the same), which is exactly why it so important that we give our guys a chance to settle things down so that Iraqis can continue to train and take over their own country.
Left unsaid by Petraeus et al. is that it also takes will to win, and that has been sorely lacking here in the States.
It wouldn’t hurt to listen to the Iraqi troops either:
Look, you asked me to listen to those on the ground. I quickly found one who is there who opposes the war and who, apparently, is not alone. You have found some who do.
So listening to the troops on the grounds proves your point and proves my point.
So it proves nothing. Or everything. But it certainly isn’t definitive. So can we finally move on from this canard that if there are troops who want to stay there, that proves Reid is wrong?
Exactly.
And the problem is, as I identified above, there are many places where violence is going on where we have no troops at all. (E.g., Basra.)
Sure I want to win it.
But most telling is what you don’t want to hear. You don’t want to hear that we can’t. And that is the problem. It’s Bush’s problem too. This is not simply a matter of wills.
Let’s say I really wanted to defeat the Germans at Dunkirk in 1940. Would it have been wise for me to stay? No. Despite my will to win, it would have been foolish to stay, because I would have been killed. Likewise, those in Pickett’s Charge surely had the will to win. And yet Pickett’s Charge was a mistake. A big mistake.
And when you say you don’t want to hear we can’t win, that is more telling than anything. And it is a classic rhetorical trick. It’s cheap. By accusing those who counsel against staying at Dunkirk of lacking the will to win, you get to avoid the question of whether it would be smart to stay.
So I answered your question. I want to win. Now you answer mine. Explain how the Shia and Sunni are going to reconcile.
Again, you are missing the big picture here. Let’s say the Sunnis unite and quit fighting the Americans. Let’s say for one moment they stop killling Americans altoghether. So what? It doesn’t mean an end to the civil war. Again, you are missing the big picture. As long as Sunni wants to kill Shia, and vice versa, it doesn’t matter how much each side cooperates with the Americans.
And at this point, there is no chance for reconciliation. The Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigade are never going to disarm. Sadr will never share power with the Sunnis. Neither will SCIRI. And they run the government. The run the domestic security forces. And let’s not even get into the Kurds.
Explain how the Sunni and Shia are going to reconcile. The surge is not going to work. But let’s assume it does. How, then, do you convince each side to play nice with the other.
We couldn’t do it in the Balkans. Why can we do it here?
Okay, since we agree Reid is pathetic, the question you now are focused on is can we win it. Of course I get the requisite, you are not looking at the big picture, but I think I am.
First, we may not “win” it. Many things are undertaken and are worthwhile even if it never results in a “win.” The relevant question is which course is the best. To determine that there are numerous variables to look at. The effect upon our own forces, the economic cost, the cost to Iraqi’s of various courses of action, tactical and strategic goals, etc. I assure you I have looked quite carefully at those. The most one sided of those questions is the fate of Iraqi’s. The others are far more debateable. Of course, for many people the fate of the Iraqi’s themselves, especially Kurds, seems to be beside the point. Such a calculation used to be a very conservative way of looking at things, it now seems to be the mantra of the left as well.
Interestingly, on the strategic and tactical concerns, that noted “all that matters are our interests” realist Scowcroft backs the President now, which must gall him. I see that part pretty much like Scowcroft, and he doesn’t expect a “win” either. He does think we can make a difference in what happens afterward, and he thinks the tactical and strategic risks of a premature withdrawal outweigh the advantages. He seems to have lost his status as the realist to quote lately. I have from the beginning weighed things pretty similarly to Scowcroft, and always respected him, but I just weighed what was and is important differently than he. I am no cold realist.
Can we win? Only fools say things like you can’t win, just like over confident hawks who couldn’t imagine that it would be as difficult as it has become have had to learn a bit of humility. Many (such as Andrew Sullivan and Greg Djerejian) have become filled with rage at Bush. “His incompetence is the reason!” Maybe, but they should never have supported something if outcomes like we have seen were so beyond belief to them.
Yes we can win, will we is another story. One thing we can be sure of, we can’t win if we just go ahead and quit. Most soldiers don’t feel as the man you quoted. When most do I’ll be a lot more concerned.
As for your appeal to whack a mole, of course they will move. of course the violence will continue, and for quite a while. If the surge merely changed the location of the violence (and we will not know any of it for many months) that is a win. Baghdad is far more important than Diyala. If Baghdad and Anbar are vastly improved and Diyala worse, then strategically that is a win. Does it end the deployment? No. Does it move the ball down the field? Yes.
Other metrics are more important than the violence level as well. Is the Iraqi army getting stronger and more capable? The answer to that is yes. Is that army more reliable when it comes to death squads and other elements? Yes. Has that army taken on more and more responsibility? Yes it has.
Of course there will be continued setbacks. Certain areas they take over will backslide and the units disappoint. Others will not. The question isn’t whether there is uniform progress, but whether there is progress? Right now on all the most important metrics there is. If that were to change, and spiral away from us, then maybe I change. Right now that progress is occurring.
So can we win? Of course. If not, can we improve the eventual outcome? I believe so, though that determination depends on how you weigh various factors. If the fate of the Iraqi people is of little importance then anything short of a stable military ally probably doesn’t seem very important.
Can we lose, or see little improvement, just putting off the inevitable? Sure, but that was always true. I think we are halfway to getting a decent outcome. I just don’t think enough people are willing to commit to that. That is a shame. We can go back to invading Grenada and Panama. Real war with actual prospects for failure seems just too much for some people.
The fact is failure can still be better than inaction. Both Korea and Vietnam provided us with significant strategic advantages, even though we “lost” both. They would have provided even more had we not cut off funding for Vietnam after we left. Hopefully we can accomplish at least as much here if we play our cards right. Many professional who critiqued the war now realize that. Unfortunately, and partly due to their influence, the public attitude has soured just when they may need it to do what they think is necessary to carry out an effective policy. Scowcroft should have spent a lot less time playing to people he actually disagreed with. Same with all those generals who were so popular with the anti war movement until we found out they opposed the Bush policy (including, by the way Petraeus) but think withdrawal is a bad idea as well. Bad politics and bad strategy.
First of all those were battles, not the war. More importantly, you cannot possibly compare Iraq to Dunkirk. We also came back and re-invaded. It is a silly comparison. Michael shouldn’t want to hear we can’t win, as should have Churchill. He notably, at a point far darker than now, decided it was winnable. If we are looking at Dunkirk I am sure Michael will certainly not want to hear it then either, and I would hope you wouldn’t as well. He will however realize withdrawal is a good idea.
Dont have enough time for anything other than a snark…
said the Buffalo Bills, Jan. 1993.
But the Bills and Frank Reich thought they still had a chance. Marv Levy gave them that chance, and they won. from 25 points down.
The point being, if the players feel they have the opportunity to win, they can either lose or win. but if you insist that they cant, then the loss in on your shoulders.
Any general (or anybody else for that matter) who works for Bush stays on message or loses his job. Casey and Abazaid touted the administration line for years, “more troops would be detrimental, Iraqis must take the lead, we’re standing them up so we can stand down”.
They were dutifully mimicking the party line right up to the election in November. Once the Iraq Study Group said that strategy was a failure Bush spent from November to January looking for any other way forward no matter how brainless to keep from admitting failure and have his daddy’s friends bail him out again. He hit on Kagan and Keane’s surge plan. Casey and Abazaid couldn’t have credibly implemented it after years of parroting just the opposite. They had to go and in came Petraeus and Admiral Fallon.
These small unit and neighborhood watch tactics have been tried before. In Vietnam they were called “strategic hamlet” and “pacification” programs. They were short-term fixes that had little impact on the outcome.
Most Iraqis want a timetable for our withdrawal. The ISG wants a timetable for withdrawal (3/08). The majority of the American people, the US military and the US Congress wants a timetable. George Bush, most of the Republican party and their 30% deadender supporters do not. You can only pretend this is working for so long.
Yes they did. Where counter insurgency tactics were tried they were very successful and the Vietcong by the time of our withdrawal was devastated. It was a conventional invasion after we left, and after we cut off aid that did the S. Vietnamese in. The tactics were also effective in Algeria and many other places.
Actually it seems most Iraqi’s want us to stay until things are better. They do want us to withdraw. I am not pretending it is working, I am saying we see signs of progress. Neither you nor I know if it will work.
Notice the ISG and the men behind it back what he is doing now. They may be wrong, but both Reid and you shouldn’t be claiming the ISG backs what he is asking. The ISG specifically ruled out set time lines and James Baker has made it clear what was meant. The war may be lost and Iraq destined no matter what we do to collapse into a brutal civil war, but that doesn’t change what I wrote about Reid’s misrepresentations one bit.
Tell it to the people of Ho Chi Minh City.
Well no, the Vietcong was devastated by the Tet Offensive in 1968. And yet the ARVN never did stand up so we could stand down. Even though we trained them for years, left them billions in munitions, and the third biggest air force in the world. Not many like fighting for a corrupt puppet government.
It was a not so conventional invasion during most of the war supported by a large majority of the local populace.
Nope. Take off the rose colored glasses. Algeria won it’s indepencence form France in 1962. French opinion turned against the war because of torture. Sound familiar?
Judging by Petraeus’s own counter insurgency manual we don’t have a chance of calming things down to give the government breathing space. Maliki is so weak he can’t decide whether he supports walling off Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad let alone enact and enforce the benchmarks he needs to mollify the Sunnis. The Shiites won’t let him.
You are just wrong. TET did devastate them, but when we left the government was able to stand on its own. It won the first time the North invaded, they lost only when we cut off aid. They ran out of ammunition, fuel and other critical supplies while the North got all it needed from its allies. The Vietcong were a non factor.
Which has nothing to do with whether the tactics you disparage were effective or not. The were very effective once they were employed and form the basis of most counterinsurgency doctrine to this day. The French lost for many reasons, that wasn’t why. The torture issue did loom large, though to compare us to the French is pretty ridiculous. The head of the counterinsurgency was opposed to the torture, they were not part of his strategy. The tactics used by the French have been studied in military circles for decades because of how effective they were. They are not studying them because of their lack of success. Much can be learned from defeat, and if we had paid more attention to those lessons earlier, as Petraeus has advocated, we might be much further along. The defeat of the French reinforced the effectiveness of the counterinsurgency tactics and damaged the case for the French’s earlier course and their brutality.
Possibly. Glad to know you are so sure of that. I live in a more uncertain world, and as a student of history believe such confidence is rarely warranted. I wish the Bush administration had shown more humility from the start about what would happen, I see no reason to feel comfortable with that kind of certainty of failure either.
The S. Vietnamese fell like a house of cards when attacked. It simply did not have the support of the people. The proof was in that pudding too.
It was always a longshot we’d be able to invade, occupy and successfully help usher Iraq into a market based economy and democratic government. That effort was crippled when Rummy and Wolfowitz, drunk on power, gutted Powell’s Future of Iraq project and DoD took away the Phase IV of the operation from State a few weeks before the invasion with absolutely no idea what they were doing. It was dealt the fatal blow at Abu Ghraib in April 2004. This war has been lost for years. All that’s left is the finger pointing here at home and the dancing in the streets over there. Iraqis are probably hoping we leave on a nice spring or fall day so their new indepedence day holdiay will be amenable for oudoor celebrations for centuries to come.
Yeah like not questioning the patriotism of anyone who disagrees with them. That would go for you and Michelle Malkin the cheerleader too. You’re supposed to divide your enemies not your friends if you expect to conquer. George Bush is the best friend
Al Qaeda recruiters have ever had and the worst president the US has ever had.
Lance as for humility here’s something for you to think about that Atrios wrote today:
Laura Bush doesn’t get it either.
No it didn’t. It was hard fought, but they crushed the first invasion attempt. They fell afterward because they ran out of ammunition, air support, etc. They didn’t have enough of that because the N. Vietnamese had all the support from their allies they needed. Without that support the North could not have won either. Support of the people pales in comparison to war material in a conventional fight, and that was a conventional fight. I’ll give you the story of what happened to change things (I love that somehow you believe the N. Vietnamese did have the support of the people) from the Democratic Senator from Virginia, Jim Webb:
Then in early 1975 the Watergate Congress dealt non-Communist Indochina the final blow. The new Congress icily resisted President Gerald Ford’s January request for additional military aid to South Vietnam and Cambodia. This appropriation would have provided the beleaguered Cambodian and South Vietnamese militaries with ammunition, spare parts, and tactical weapons needed to continue their own defense. Despite the fact that the 1973 Paris Peace Accords called specifically for “unlimited military replacement aid” for South Vietnam, by March the House Democratic Caucus voted overwhelmingly, 189-49, against any additional military assistance to Vietnam or Cambodia.
[…]
On the battlefields of Vietnam the elimination of all U.S. logistical support was stunning and unanticipated news. South Vietnamese commanders had been assured of material support as the American military withdrew—the same sort of aid the U.S. routinely provided allies from South Korea to West Germany—and of renewed U.S. air strikes if the North attacked the South in violation of the 1973 Paris Peace Accords. Now they were staring at a terrifyingly uncertain future, even as the Soviets continued to assist the Communist North.
As the shocked and demoralized South Vietnamese military sought to readjust its forces to cope with serious shortages, the newly refurbished North Vietnamese immediately launched a major offensive. Catching many units out of position, the North rolled down the countryside over a 55-day period. In the ensuing years I have interviewed South Vietnamese survivors of these battles, many of whom spent ten years and more in Communist concentration camps after the war. The litany is continuous: “I had no ammunition.” “I was down to three artillery rounds per tube per day.” “I had nothing to give my soldiers.” “I had to turn off my radio because I could no longer bear to hear their calls for help.”
That is the reality. No amount of the support of the people (and a great many people, the large majority did support the government or the counterinsurgency wouldn’t have worked against the Viet Cong) would have stopped the North Vietnamese tanks. A people who were in revolt wouldn’t have needed N. Vietnamese tanks to throw off their government. When they fled for their lives they were not thinking how glad they were the S. Vietnamese government fell. It also has no bearing on whether the counterinsurgency tactics were effective or not. It is a red herring.
Uh, Atrios lied in that piece. I covered it in another post. You can vent on that there.
You obviously know nothing about me to in any way think that accusation applies to me. You are just slinging mud now. I never questioned your patriotism, or war opponents in general. I have questioned some people’s patriotism, but I know many patriots who opposed the war. Funny, a lot of them now support staying, such as Scowcroft. I never questioned his patriotism though. I haven’t even questioned Reid’s. I called his arguments pathetic and misleading, which they are. I can’t speak for Malkin, I almost never read her.
Now you’re going to have to back that up or you are just gonna look like an ignorant ass. Since I’ve not seen any administration official question anyone’s patriotism (I’ve only democrats question people’s patriotism ironically enough) and I know Lance hasn’t, I’m going to have to guess that much like Donny, you are out of your element here.
So we should have just gone on propping up an unpopular corrupt government in a proxy war for how many more years? You do know in 1956 the UN held an election in Vietnam and Ho Chi Minh won overwhelmingly. Like it or not he was the George Washington of their country. The Vietnamese fought for their independence for decades against the Japanese, French and then us. Afterward they did not ramage thru Indochina, the domino theory was BS. As a matter of fact they invaded Cambodia and drove out the murderous Khmer Rouge and then left.
If the S. Vietnamese despised their Northern brothers so much why was there no insurgency against the N. Vietnamese? Why was there no uprising?
Lance quotes that soldier accusing Reid of treason. I assume he agrees with him. And parse it all you want, these words “you are undermining their mission and emboldening the enemy, he says you are leaving the “military dangling in the wind” are accusing him of treason. As for the administration, look at anything Dick Cheney says these days.
Nuff said.
I can quote people for reasons other than agreeing with everything they say. I do it all the time with liberals and leftists for example. Of course you seem to have a problem with context. The point was that many people on the ground and in the command structure disagree with him that there is no progress. It may all come to naught, but they say it is there. Reid has no basis to just say that Petraeus isn’t being straight. Wrong on the implications maybe, but not about whether there are signs of progress.
Further, I went and checked, no mention of treason.
Uh, Reid said he believes in giving them all the necessary support. Yet the officer in question says he is not. Now, the officer is in fact correct, but it doesn’t matter, it was a quote in response to Reid not my own opinion. None of that is an accusation of treason. If you think cutting critical funds for their mission is treason that is on you, not me or that officer. I think it is stupid, and Reid has misled people about the fact that he is doing that, but I would never use the word treason for it.
You continuing to make things up about what I say or believe is getting irritating.
As for Dick Cheney, please find something besides your assertion where he says all who disagree with him are traitors. It may exist, but please demonstrate it.
The officer is in fact incorrect, but that doesn’t matter to you. The Iraq supplemental has $124 billion in it, $4 billion more for the military than Bush requested. The supplemental changes nothing about rules of engagement like Sgt. George Turkovich claims. If he doesn’t like the rules of engagement our military is supposed to abide by he shouldn’t be representing our military in Iraq or anywhere else. We don’t need any more Charles Graners or Steven Dale Greens.
You can play all the word games you want Lance. The fact of the matter is you’re willing to thousands more Americans and Iraqis get maimed and/or die. For nothing. Iraq may or may not have some semblence of democracy. It may not survive intact. It isn’t going to be a US ally. It will be an Iranian ally.
You want an open ended committment from our military and our wallets to do the impossible. You want to win political victories here at home and in Iraq using the military. You and your party has had 4 years to win those victories using bombs and bullets over there and fear and smear over here. It’s counter productive. The more you bomb and the more you smear the less support you have.
No, Reid and Pelosi have delayed sending a supplemental up for a vote and send it to the President. That is a fact and critical programs are on hold because of that. No word game, that is a fact. I have documented that here, as have many others elsewhere.
Nor does it justify the unsubstantiated assertions about my views, or the history of counter insurgency, or the collapse of Vietnam. Nor does it address the pathetic cluelessness of Reid in the piece above. You are the one playing wordgames, trying to put words in my mouth that I have never uttered, and claiming things were said in the post that were uttered by nobody, even in quotes.
In the short run that may be a consequence for American soldiers. For Iraqi’s I expect far more will die if we leave. That is what I am trying to avoid, and it may fail. I have never denied otherwise. You are the one claiming all kinds of certainty about the world you cannot in any way justify. It is vanity. Claim I am wrong and I’ll discuss it, but your smears and insinuations of other motives only prove you know nothing of my views, and your own have more to do with bile than any weighing of the facts and implications of them.
Come back and discuss this when you have something other to say than unsupported claims followed by changing the subject so you can hurl some other charge or claim. Whether the Iraq war is a good or bad idea for us to continue to be involved in doesn’t change the truth of the post.
Total bullshit, whether it comes out of your butt, the DoD or the WH. I haven’t bothered reading all your screeds, only been here a week, but I doubt you were screeching when the Repubs didn’t bother passing one appropriation bill last year forcing the Dems to spend the first month of this session doing the work they didn’t get done. In any case Bush didn’t complete his Iraq Supplemental Funding Request until March 9 this year. The House passed their version of the bill on March 23. The Senate on March 29. The House passed the conference bill today. The Senate will pass it by the end of the week. The president will have it on his desk by this Friday April 27.
Last year on February 16, Bush submitted his 2006 supplemental appropriations request. The conference bill didn’t come out of the Republican controlled congress til June 15.
In 2005 Bush submitted his request on February 14. The conference bill didn’t come out of the Repub congress until May 10.
Tell me you were oh so irritated about critical programs being on hold the last two springs. Republican talking points don’t fool anybody but the most gullible these days.
Another Repubican talking point. The fact is every year we’ve been there the war has gotten worse. The last 3 months have been the costliest for US forces. The Iraqi government won’t even release their civilian death toll for last month. There is no breathing room being created. We’re just leaving US soldiers exposed at forward outposts which is making it more dangerous for them and the locals in the area. There’s somewhere between 250,000 and a million tonnes of munitions in caches and dumps all around Iraq. The DoD estimated years ago there was enough for another dozen to 18 years of insurgent warfare.
In reality neither you or anybody else has any idea what will happen after we leave. Polls say Iraqis don’t want to split up into 3 nations. As even wingnuts admit the Sunni insurgency is rejecting Al Qaeda. Both Sunni and Sadrists say Iraqis should only attack occupiers not Iraqis. During the marine attack on Fallujah in April 2004 Sadr’s people sent humanitarian aid to the predominantly Sunni city. Once the Iraqi government has to deal with a hard deadline they’ll make the deals they need with each other. If they don’t they’ll fall. But that’s for them to sort out. We didn’t have the French hanging around 5 years after they enabled us to throw off British rule. We can’t solve Iraq’s civil war for them. Hell Bush won’t even talk to Syria or Iran. We’re not doing anything but providing targets for their weapons and ire as it is. And Bush is perfectly happy with that as long as the disaster can be passed on to the next president.
What does that have to do with anything? Are you under the impression I am a Republican? That I voted for Bush or some other pattern that might make me not criticize Republicans? Ignorant reply again. What a scintillating retort.
Which could have been done weeks ago, but they chose not to do it, and had the gall to claim it didn’t matter because the military had plenty of funding. Except that wasn’t true. Now the bill will be vetoed and they will have to delay it all until later. If they had voted when McConnell asked them to, had Pelosi appointed conferees, etc. this would already be pretty much done. Now we are weeks away.
What past funding bills timing has to do with this funding bill you will have to explain, however:
Taking points or not, they are true. Programs are being cut and put on hold that support the mission. Search the archives, I have it all documented and weeks ago when they could have passed the initial bill, got the veto over with and gotten down to brass tacks. They decided not to despite strong pleas from the Republican leadership and the White House to appoint conferees and send the bill on.
As for the rest, some of it you argued against earlier in this thread. You are now incoherent.
No, it is my opinion, unlike above which was fact. You can claim I am wrong, but I disagree, and given your tentative grasp of almost everything we have discussed I am pretty much going to leave it at that. You are beginning to sputter. Not much to debate, you abandon each issue and wander around. Nobody learns anything and when we get down to any details you just change the subject again. None of it has any bearing on the things we were discussing earlier or the post. You think the war should end. Fine, I get that. It doesn’t excuse Reid, mean I called anyone a traitor, or support your account of the Vietnam war or counterinsurgency tactics.
I will say that even most who want withdrawal don’t believe it will be better for Iraqi’s. They may be wrong and you may be right, but it has nothing to do with talking points. If the Republicans are saying something I agree with I do. When they don’t I don’t. I certainly don’t waste my time defending people like Reid, Atrios, Trent Lott or Ann Coulter because they are on “my” side whatever that side may be at the time. You do. Who is following talking points?
.
As far as I’ve seen you’ve done nothing but repeat Republican talking points no matter how silly. When called on it you start to hedge, dodge responsibility for your words and claim I’m changing the subject. Lance you’re the one who brought up the silly Republican point that military efforts will come crashing to a halt unless the supplemental is passed soon. Your irresponsibility, fantasies about “winning”, revisonist history on Vietnam have deadend Republican written all over it.
I guess you need it cited for you. There is no imminent funding crisis if the war supplemental isn’t railroaded through as Republicans and you would like. According to the non-partisan budget experts at the Congressional Research Service the DoD can carry on all functions related to the war well into July with what they already have.
Your argument that we should listen to the troops is irrelevent because 24 year old soldiers don’t make policy, they implement it on the ground.
But if you insist then google the Military Times poll from last December. The US military has turned against the war just as the American people have.
But regardless of opinion polls the fact is the surge isn’t working any better than it did iin Vietnam. Escalation just escalates the violence. We can’t possibly kill or bend to our will the vast numbers of Iraqis by force of arms who want us to leave.
Putting US troops in smaller units at forward operating bases in Iraqi towns and neighborhoods makes them much more tempting targets. It’s a good strategy for policing and peacekeeping. It’s a terrible strategy in a multi opponent insurgent war zone in a nation crazed by violence, who blame us for their misery with a propensity for family and tribal vengeance/honor killing. Everybody likes having a local police station and cops walking the beat. Nobody wants a police station full of heavily armed foreign kids with itchy trigger fingers who don’t even speak the language.
You and your conservative friends are stuck supporting a policy that is killing the US Army, destroying our standing in the world and bankrupting us. As a Democrat I say keep it up. That’s fine by me. There’s nothing that will wreck the corrupt Republican party faster than going down with Bush’s ship. But our country needs a different plan. Here’s something I wrote back in January. Take a look. You’ll probably find it repulsive but it may at least get you thinking out of the box you’re locked in.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/1/19/133610/922
Who’s spouting talking points? Lance has hedged nothing and presented facts and opinions, clearly labeled as such since you see to be having a difficult time figuring what is what.
As for historical revisionism, you were still blathering on about how
in spite of the proof to the contrary, presented ably by Lance, and without comprehending the contradiction in your analysis: if the “people” didn’t support S. Vietnam, then why was an invasion necessary? And, as for this:
Do you not recall that approximately 1.6 Million people were rounded up and “re-educated”, sometimes to their deaths, by the NV? Did it escape your memory that Communist Vietnam was not exactly a place that suffered dissent, much less allowed an insurgency to develop. Once we cut off all funding, where exactly would the insurgency have obtained the means to resist?
But, let me guess, you will bristle with righteous indignation at being referred to as defeatist.
No one said they couldn’t. The problem is that the military will essentially be consuming itself in the process. SECDEF Gates laid this out quite precisely in his letter to Sen. Byrd:
But that’s just one big “talking point”, eh?
No that is a Democratic talking point.
I dealt with that a long time ago, and no, the CRS report does not mean what you think it does, though think progress sought to frame it in such a way as to confuse the casual reader. Please, come at me with something new.
More importantly that argument is now over, as the expected cuts have occurred. So you can say that it won’t result in programs being effected all you want, but they already have, so your arguments are pointless and silly at this point.
To catch you up to speed read all the posts below since you obviously have spent no time learning what those who disagreed with that assessment were arguing at the time, though as mentioned, the cuts have occurred and I document them in the link below. Then come at me with arguments I haven’t already dealt with.
The Republicans and I are on the same page here, if they are talking points they are the truth. When they are not on the same page we won’t be. Get it? That way I am not sitting around defending people when they are spouting factually incorrect talking points like you are. I can slag at the Republicans when appropriate. Since you haven’t been here long let me clue you in. Michael Wade and I actively argued against returning the Republicans to power in congress. I am not sure about the others, but I am pretty sure Joshua at minimum refused to vote for them.
I just agree with them on this issue. Anyway, I am not going to bother arguing with you on this unless you have some idea of why I believe it is wrong. Since you pulled out the CRS I guess that means you have no knowledge of the other side of the issue, as opposed to me, who was waiting for you to pull it out because I make it a point to know why other people might disagree. Quite often they have a point.
If you want to argue after reading that the cuts and reshuffling of money isn’t an issue you have to address that argument, not act as if something that is already happening isn’t going to happen. You’ll need proof that the military is hiding money somewhere and purposefully doing this to make Bush look good or something. If that is the case, you better have evidence.
https://asecondhandconjecture.com/?p=680
https://asecondhandconjecture.com/?p=745
https://asecondhandconjecture.com/?p=747
https://asecondhandconjecture.com/?p=800
https://asecondhandconjecture.com/?p=844
Oh well, you beat me to it Michael.
We are conservatives now Michael! I guess all those fire breathing LGF’ers who called us Dhimmis will be disappointed to have to associate with us. Support Petraeus and argue for an honest appraisal of the military budget and you are practically Karl Rove’s partner in the pew.
You’d think a conservative could at least spell sean hannity’s name right. Back to Vast Right Wing Conspiracy re-education classes for you Lance!
Why was an invasion necessary from the USA to South Vietnam? The North and South were both Vietnamese.
Where there’s a will there’s a way isn’t there? By 1976 when Hanoi and the Chinese were at odds over Cambodia and by 1979 when they were actively fighting each other across their border a South Vietnemese insurgency could have gotten arms from the Chinese. But after decades of war there was no will to fight in South Vietnam in 1975. If you took a poll in Vietnam today and asked them if they wanted to go on fighting for an independent South Vietnam they’d give you a resounding no. And then tell you what a wonderful capitalist opportunity Vietnam is for investors today.
The military has been consuming itself in the process for the last 4 years. Even as we spend unsustainable amounts on this war. You’d think even with over a $500 billion dollar budget and hundreds of billions in supplementals for the war already that Gates is running the DoD, the single biggest agency in the US government on a shoe string, hand to mouth on a daily basis by that letter. He’d better learn to budget his expenditures a lot better than Rummy ever did every quickly. Regardless the Senate just passed the supplemental 51-46. The president can sign the bill today and the miltiary will have more than Bush asked for to fund his war.
Lance you may not think you’re a conservative or a Republican. But don’t kid yourself. If you support the policy then you are. Not recognizing that is delusional.
But what if he supports democratic or liberal policy too, is he then a democrat? Does that mean he’s both according to you?
So you admit your democratic talking point was wrong? Or have you just shifted your argument to a contradictory one and hoping no one will notice the rhetorical slight of hand.
ChrisB you’re not making any sense. But from what I’ve seen you rarely do.
Whatever you say Donny :)
Chris you do realize you’re emulating John Goodman’s character who acted as if he was Jewish and a Vietnam vet when he was neither. In other words a complete phony. I find that hilarious.
Actually he was nominally Jewish, and he definitely was a Vietnam Vet, although IIRC there was doubt cast as to whether he saw combat.
You should be glad he didn’t emulate “Da Jesus” …
Man, if I am a Republican they are in worse trouble than I thought. Given I haven’t voted for a Republican since………I can’t remember. I might have voted for Reagan in 1984, but I don’t think so. I have had the chance to vote for Bush in every election he has run, including for governor of Texas, and somehow avoided it. I asked people to not vote for Republicans in the last election. Damn, if I am representative of the Republicans then they must be guilty of voter fraud. Other wise they would have no votes.
I may violate that this fall however, and possibly vote for my first state or national level Republican. Bobby Jindal for Governor. At that point I guess I might as well declare myself an ally of Pat Robertson I’ll be such a solid base member. I mean, I will have actually voted for a Republican for a major office. Now they need only fraudulently get a few million more and he is in like Flynn. I’ll go get all my gay friends and see if Jimmy Swaggart can save them. My next interview won’t be with Norm Geras, it’ll be Ann Coulter or D’nesh D’souza. I’ll need to erase my old posts about Ann, I wouldn’t want her to take offense.
What a partisan, close minded person you are mark.
Well, let me explain it to you. If your last comment is what you believe now, it accepts that Reid, Murtha and Pelosi were wrong, and that the military is making cuts, and that the CRS was not saying what Think Progress and other blogs were claiming it was. Now your argument is that the military needs to tighten their belts. Fine, they are. It will affect the mission in numerous ways, as the posts I referenced demonstrate conclusively.
Now, you are coming dangerously close to claiming it is all BS and that they are making these changes just to give the President cover. Who knows? It may be true. But before you take that next step you better come with evidence more convincing than they are a bunch of cold hearted criminals. Just like I didn’t take anybody’s word on the CRS and read it myself. If it had shown that there wasn’t an issue, I would have called them on it as quickly as I called Reid and Murtha, because as far as I am concerned the timing is unimportant, it can be anytime. Unfortunately it is an issue.
In fact, if it avoided all this nonsense I wish they didn’t have to vote at all. Unfortunately the CRS shows this is an issue. My contacts in the military say it is a big issue (especially for the logistics guys, and I know some) and numerous figures in the military and other branches of government have said so and the effects are already being felt. So whether you support the war or not Reid is wrong, Think progress was wrong, and you were wrong to swallow their BS. If you want to say you don’t care, because being opposed to the war justifies their tactics and misrepresentations, that is another argument. This post is about his misrepresentations, not the cause they serve. My view on that is plainly stated.
Except it will be vetoed. Now they will have to get one that is veto proof put together and it will take a bit more time. It won’t make up for what has already been delayed or put off. They could have sent it up immediately as the Republicans asked and it could have been on his desk weeks ago. Thus we could have had the veto proof bill passed by now and we could all go on our merry way whatever the makeup of that bill might be.
Instead they want to play games to try and force him to veto it when it will cause a problem. Bad enough in my book, but maybe justifiable to you if it makes him look bad or possibly forces him to sign the bill into law. Well bully for you if you think so. My issue here is they don’t want to admit that is what they are doing so they are lying, misleading, whatever you want to call it so that voters think it isn’t an issue when it most certainly is. You are parroting that lie rather than just admitting what Steny Hoyer admitted, the delay is purely a political tactic. Defend that if you want, but don’t claim I am the one using talking points when you are mouthing provably false ones and I am mouthing provably correct ones.
What is the purpose of occupying a Islamic country indefinately, against the wishes of
the majority of it’s people? What are the chances of that succeeding vs. the chances it’ll only inspire more Arab kids to become terrorists?
Isn’t one of the prerequisites for winning the larger war against radical Islamist terrorists is that Arabs and Islamic people must confront the nutjobs? Then let’s get the hell out and let them do it. The foreign Arab fighters in Iraq are despised by everybody over there because they kill everybody indiscriminately over there. Let the
Shia, Kurds and Sunni tribes that are sick of having their markets blown up by suicidal whackjobs have at them. They know a Saudi or a Egyptiian accent when they hear one. It’s much easier for them to root them out of their towns and cities. It won’t be much of a fight (there aren’t many foreign fighters in Iraq) and might be overshadowed by sectarian violence and ethnic cleansing but it will be a Iraqi victory over radical Islamists. And isn’t getting peopel Islamic faith to reject radical Islamist terrorism what this is all about?
I disagree mark, but what does this have to do with everything we have been discussing. The veracity of Reid’s statements, the effectiveness historically of counterinsurgency, specifically Vietnam and Algeria, etc. That you think the war is a bad idea is established. That I think you are wrong about the outcome should we leave has been established. Can you stick to a just a few topics where we are in dispute and they are not just opinions based on so many variables that we can say anything. Let us narrow the field a bit. Let us keep it to the post and the first off topic discussions we had.
Affect the mission. Affect.
Man, if I had a nickel…
Once again Chris, I have no idea what you are talking about:^]
Lance you make as little sense as Chris though I must say I like Cohen Bros movies as much as the next guy. If you haven’t seen it, rent “Blood Simple” their first. Excellent murder/thriller.
You think I’m a close minded partisan and yet you don’t consider any Iraq policy valid other than the policy of the worst president this country has ever seen. The president who has been wrong about everything in this godforsaken war he started. You’re such a Democrat you call the Senate majority leader pathetic for opposing the war policy of again, the worst president this country has ever seen. On the single biggest issue of this decade which will have negative repercussions for our country for decades to come, you accept without question a letter from Bush’s handpicked SecDef who has a vested interest in getting the DoD all the cash he can over the non partisan CRS. Between the two I’m inclined to believe the guys who aren’t looking for a flood of taxpayer money out of the deal. I’ve never even seen the Think Progress post you speak of. Your posts don’t prove anything conclusively. You have supposed military people making claims on taxpayer money. It’s not like the military has ever lied about anything before. Ask Rummy.
Hey why not make that president you don’t support, you know the worst president this country has ever seen, king! That way he won’t have to deal with all that pesky oversight by the Democratic congress and those Republicans you don’t support won’t have to go on record siding with the yet again, worst president this country has ever seen.
Reid and Pelosi aren’t trying to force him to veto the bill. They are trying to get him to sign a sensible bill that’s supported by the American and Iraqi people. If he vetoes it he will deny our troops the strategy and support they need. That would all be on George Bush, the worst president this country has ever seen.
What you mean is Bush could have his funding with no accountability and no deadline.
Time isn’t on Bush’s side in any way shape or form. He has to actually negotiate with Democrats, be a uniter instead of divider (another of his original campaign lies) to get the funding he wants. But more importantly the surge is crippling the military much faster. They were hardpressed to keep up the old rotations. It’s disgusting that Bush announced that delaying the supplemental would cause him to extend deployments. The next day Gates announced extended deployments, prematurely he said, after someone in the Pentagon leaked that it was going to be the policy all along. Despicable. Talk about playing games.
To keep this war from spreading to the rest of the region Bush has to negotiate with ALL Iraq’s neighbors including Syria and Iran. The longer he waits the less leverage he has from our increasingly crippled Army. The Army that was barely hanging on last year that’s now falling apart faster because of the surge and the strain of this occupation. And that means negotiate, not send some John Bolton wannabe to glare across the table at them, spew insults and threats, or recite a pointless litany of their faults to them.
It is obvious that mark is not interested in honest debate – better informed than leftside perhaps – but mired in his own prejudiced certitude none the less. This quote though, I think shows the greatest divide between those both actively, and reluctantly, supporting the surge, and the ‘embarrass Bush regardless of the cost’ defeatocrats.
The Michael Moore, Al Gore, Morgan Spurlock mindset that so dominates the far left seemingly has to find a boogieman to blame all our ails upon. It’s not surprising that the boogieman they construct is a caricature of their political opponents. In spite of numerous explanations and reams of evidence, they gleefully slide across Occum’s Razor (figuratively) to latch upon the most preposterous theories.
So what “[i]s the purpose of occupying a Islamic country indefinately[sic], against the wishes of the majority of it’s people?†No purpose what so ever. But that is not what we (the US) are trying to do. And more importantly, not what anyone supporting the surge is advocating. Recognizing this however, takes all the wind out of many sails, so they have to reject it – the narrative posited by Kos, Glenns, Atrios, and parroted by mark et. al., must be nurtured, propagated… and defended at all costs. Blame must be laid at McChimpyHalliburton/BusHitler’s feet.
Mark, Lance isn’t a bad guy, although his opinions drive me insane. Try to clarify your points.
Lance, for old times’ sake, here’s an argument with your described logic.
#1. The essential results of the line of argument you follow regarding funding are that Congress can never oppose, control or contradict Presidential foreign policy.
After all, if their only power is “the power of the purse” - oh, but wait, every time they use the power of the purse, they’re treasonous for killing off our soldiers - then there is no effective way to ever stop a president from pursuing a disasterous war - any disasterous war.
I know you’ll slip around this with all kinds of evasions, claim that’s not what you’re supporting, but you are. Right now, in real time, away from the abstractions - you’re undermining Congressional Democrats’s ability to use their Constitution-granted powers to control foreign policy. Not that their powers are limited to the purse - the plain text of Article I makes it abundantly clear that that was a million miles away from founders’ intent. But it’s the most important one, and you are pursuing its functional elimination, informally, by shaming.
I bet you don’t agree that that’s your purpose or your effect. Well, Harry Reid doesn’t like to be told that his free speech and duty-bound objective analysis of the war are making terrorists cheer (Don’t even get me started on the shameful and embarrassing “morale” argument)
Not that this means I agree with you that using the purse is hurting our soldiers. So onto point #2.
Furthermore, the fact that the DoD claims the Safety of America is imperiled by delays in surge funding are the exact same people that make the exact same claim when Donald Rumsfeld tried to kill the V-22 Osprey, or the Crusader. And you know what, the DoD wasn’t provably wrong then, either! Because everything that could possibly be used to protect America in any possible way, not having it endangers our troops.
None of this makes any threat to our troops from this supposed funding delay observable - meaning a break from prior battlefield trends - in any quantifiable manner. What you have are a bunch of bullsh*t from DoD bureaucrats who say the same thing in practically every recorded instance of not getting something they want. You can make the ‘argument’ that US troops are in danger, but you’re making the argument because you can, not because you genuinely believe it. You’re smart, but unfortunately, I think your posts here are sensationalist and manipulative. I’m sorry, my friend, because in comments you’d probably admit something like “I admit we haven’t really seen any particular battlefield deteriorative metrics that we can tie to funding delays.” And yet, your posts lead people to imagine that very thing.
#3: Here’s why I think, whatever you think of yourself as, I’m not surprised Mark thinks you’re a Republican. It’s because you are in no way, whatsoever, and I don’t mean this to be an insult, anything like evenhanded in your treatment of “who’s hurting the troops”. You know what’s hurting the U.S. Army 100 times worse than any imaginable problems in funding delays, in all kinds of quantifiable ways? This war. Read Barry McAfferey’s memorandum. Read Intel Dump - run by a vet, Phillip Carter - find “The Breaking of The Army” The Army is being annihilated by the impact of this - and you are focused in like a laser on some vaporous damage done by an *eyeroll* unheard of “Four Week Delay!” on a war funding bill - a war that has killed thousands of soldiers and orders of magnitude more of civilians, and is closing on $1 trillion dollars in expenses. It’s their dam*ed right and duty to oppose this war if they don’t believe in it, for the protection of both the Republic and our collapsing volunteer army, and funding seems to be the tools the constitution gave them - and when you laser on them and ignore the disasterous pain inflicted on soldiers, and the Army, by this war, you selectively stigmatize “hurting the army” from the Dems, but give the Admin free rein to use the army to death, like a horse ridden into the desert. Your blindness creates the effect of hypocrisy.
#4. Speaking of evenhanded - and if even if you can’t agree with the others, you dam* well ought to be able to admit this - where will your outrage be when George Bush vetoes funding for his own soldiers to score cheap political points about war? When he vetoes funding - exposing soldiers to your much tauted magnificent danger from funding delay - to avoid a withdrawal advocated by the his own Baker-Hamilton, a majority of the public in poll after poll, and the Congress of the United States? If you had one breath of objectivity in your body, you’d be able to admit that Bush vetoing this bill is an act of free will, a deliberate choice that will literally and immediately cause of risks of the same type and nature to the troops that you’re lambasting the Democrats for. But this entirely escapes your criticism. That’s why I know you don’t really care about risks to the troops. Or, after decrying Dems for delaying the bill, you would beg Bush to sign the funding and excoriate him for a veto - for taking deliberate action to withhold those funds from his army - after all, the troops are in such dire jeopardy, right?
You know another reason, I spontaneously realize, that my posting at Q and O has survived, and not here? For reasons I don’t fully understand, I take this place more seriously than that place - of course, I take both of them way too seriously and shouldn’t be posting at either. It must be something to do with the tone set here. Nevertheless, the greater depth I sometimes get into here in comments just makes me angrier that the posts always seem to push the same lines. You clip away at the tip of the wedge - Harry Reid, politician-style, giving different mixed messages - and beneath it roam the icebergs that you know everyone else is pushing all around you.
On the other hand, I applaud you for letting the Conjecturer post here. I know you’re committed to free speech, anyway. And even diversity of viewpoints. The above is mine.
glasnost
Speaking for myself, as a libertarian, when any bill is laden with pork to get any majority to vote for it, well…
And knowing where you come from glasnost, your demanding outrage is… well, lets just say your demands impress me not.
Bains I haven’t seen anything by Michael Moore in years and am not even sure who Morgan Spurlock is. Might as well throw Ward Churchill in there for strawmen too while you’re at it cuz I never heard of him and neither did anyone else I know of until wingnuts started trumpeting him as some paragon of our thinking.
Wow, this comes from an adherent to party that told us Saddam was a dire threat to the United States and trots out the spector of bin Laden (whom they don’t even bother to catch) whenever there’s a domestic threat politically. Gimme a break.
Name me a worse president in US history than George W. Bush. Not even Nixon comes close.
What’s your timeline then? What’s that you say, you don’t have one? That’s the definition of indefinately. George Bush himself (the worst president the US has ever seen) says the next president will decide when we leave Iraq. As has been the pattern his whole life he’s trying to leave his mess for somebody else to clean up and he could give a damn about those paying the price.
glasnost I noticed that quirk too. I write something snarky about Gates not controlling his budget and just because I didn’t mention that George Bush is the worst president the US has ever seen in that paragraph these two construe that to mean I agree with them and therefore I’m inconsistent.
Nicely put glasnost.
P.S. GWB still the worst preisident…
Lance, I thought I would follow up - just to clarify, I haven’t been on ACHJ much, and I sort of get the idea that it bugs you that I stopped hanging around, and all - it really is, most of all, because I just shouldn’t be blogging. It’s not out of disrespect for you or a grudge against the site.
“ACHJ” ???
I won’t presume to speak for Lance, but I can’t think of any reason why your absence, while noticed and lamented, would make any of us feel “disrespected.” Especially since, IIRC, you mentioned before that you had much more pressing things to take care of (a manuscript?).
Frankly, I think we’re all pretty happy anyone comes around at all, whether the visits are long or short in between. So, don’t sweat it. We’ll be here. Visit when you can.
I saw it when it came out. My favorite film of theirs in fact.
I never said I don’t consider any other policy valid. I can think of many other policies that are valid. I disagree with many, but then I have disagreed with Bush’s for the most part. You can continue asserting things about me that you can’t possibly know, but that won’t get us anywhere. Notice, not once in this conversation have I claimed a belief of yours that you don’t explicitly express. I won’t claim perfection here. I do it on occasion, but I usually admit it and even apologize. Also, while no fan of Bush I usually suggest that Presidents seem different years later. Reagan and Eisenhower seem better to many liberals (actually, I am the liberal, progressive, leftist, whatever is more accurate) than they did at one time, as does the first Bush. Others fall. As a value oriented investor, I’ll guess Bush will seem better in retrospect, his stock is pretty low. No particular reason, just that is how it tends to work out.
That is funny. I don’t take the word unquestioningly of anybody, and certainly not a bureaucrat. You know nothing of my ideology. Keep insulting me, regular readers are laughing. Actually I built my case on the CRS. If you bothered to read the posts I referred you to you would know that. Whatever the “word” of Gates, the cuts and shifts have been coming. If you followed the links to QandO you would know that. Once again. If you say those consequences are being inflicted on our forces purposely, I am willing to give it some credence if you provide some evidence of that fact. I love slamming duplicitous bureaucrats. I have never thought Republican bureaucrats were any better than Democrat ones.
Now I will admit, that was pretty clever. It never occurred to me that anyone would interpret it that way. I guess you can get lazy with regular commenters and readers who would never assume I meant that. If this were about scoring points you would get one.
However, it isn’t about scoring points. It is a discussion, and that was just confirmation bias short circuiting your ability to interpret what I am saying in light of who I am. Kind of Greenwaldian. I meant only that I wish they had the money, had budgeted and run the department well enough to make your assertion that they had all they needed true. You don’t need to convince me that the defense department is full of poor resource management. One of the reasons I invited Joshua to post here is he follows just that issue. It isn’t a Republican problem however. It is an institutional and bureaucratic problem. Amusingly, on this issue Rummy was the good guy. I disagree with much of his approach to Iraq, but on procurement issues he was unpopular precisely because he was taking on cherished gold plating.
I have written extensively and forcefully on congresses role in this. They are fully within their rights to defund the war. I want no king. I don’t agree with that course of action, but that is the course they should take if they want to end the war. Instead we get games like the funding bill. You can disagree with that view, but do so. Don’t build strawmen so you can reinforce some imagined moral superiority.
No. The accountability is the vote. They get the votes, they can end it. What you seem to be arguing is that accountability means getting your way. If that isn’t what you mean explain yourself.
Some of that is correct, exactly when have you heard me defend Bush on that? The funding delays went into the decision, but it was not the primary rationale. You are correct. Not as pathetic as Reid, but pretty damn weak. It is typical however, you were around during the Clinton administration right? And before you jump on me about Clinton, I have defended him here many times. In fact, I did in another thread this very day.
Maybe, and I read your piece. I’ll discuss it later maybe. However, I would prefer we stick to the issues at hand. One note, the army is not crippled. We have won wars with army’s under far more strain than this one. Ideal? no. Crippled? No as well.
glasnost,
Good to have you here. I hope this is more fruitful than with Mark, but my lack of patience with someone new and unfriendly from the get go is probably partially responsible. Hopefully your sanity remains intact. Mine has survived you just fine.
Oh come on glasnost. I have never said opposing the president is treasonous. I think withdrawal is a bad idea. I oppose it. I think it will be devastating to the Iraqi people. You disagree. Period.
No, I am opposing it. You know, Democracy. In this post I am shaming, because he deserves to be shamed for saying shameful, misleading things. Kind of like pointing out Bush’s disingenuousness about extending the tours. Quite proper as well.
I am sorry that in a few short months your party has shown itself to have all the ethics, honesty and money grubbing greed of the ……Republicans! Not my problem. I think I had a post sometime back, Same boss as the old boss? Maybe it was McQ. Either way. Reid deserves every criticism I give, and it doesn’t matter what your opinion of the war is. My main points are true regardless.
I don’t know why it bothers you so much. You don’t see me defending Republicans when they do such things (since my Republican bona fides are so obvious;^)) I just shrug it off as par for the course. You need to get a little more cynical. I think it is the reason for my amiable disposition. I don’t expect much and therefore they rarely disappoint me, and I am not stuck acting as if Ted Stevens and Trent Lott are anything but the parasitic buffoons they are. You should try it, it is very liberating.
Well, Harry Reid doesn’t like to be told that his free speech and duty-bound objective analysis of the war are making terrorists cheerExcept your statements about me are not correct. It is true about Reid. It may be necessary (if you believe that the war should end) but it is nevertheless true. Life is like that. Sometimes doing what you feel is right, check that, a great deal of the time, it has mixed effects. I don’t avoid that. My position does not entail some happy future where every action has nothing but good consequences. Reid wants to convince himself and everybody else his words and actions have no negative consequences. They do. You, Mark and Reid may be right that withdrawal is the best course, but it doesn’t change many of the negatives no matter how much you hate that those who disagree point them out.
How special that you are so sure of what I believe. As with Mark, I’ll point out that I don’t do that to you. Moreover, I haven’t claimed they are in direct danger, but I know enough to know that funding, no matter how unwise, cannot just be moved as needed from such programs. You are right about your general point on the weapons systems, it just doesn’t have any bearing on this. I will argue that many of the things that funding delays are impacting are hurting readiness and depriving the Iraqi forces of needed funding which legally cannot be shifted. I also know that the funds specifically for commanders on the ground to disburse legally have to come in the special appropriations bill. They cannot come from other programs. Those are precisely the funds used for political and economic aspects of any solution to the problem in Iraq. I do believe that. The CRS made it clear that these types of areas would be impacted, and according to Mark and Reid it is an authoritative take. The reason they are right, though they ignored the reports true import, is that funds are not legally completely fungible. Maybe they should be, but they are not.
I wouldn’t, because both personal contacts and military commanders in Iraq have said it is already having an effect. If they are lying please source it. I’ll be glad to post it. If I don’t, I promise Joshua will.
I won’t respond to number three because that is true of war period. I deny your annihilate remark, but I already addressed that. As for Carter et al. I do read them. I have read Carter since he first set up shop. I also read McCaffrey, have you read his recent work? I have. His view isn’t much different than mine.
On this issue I am not “evenhanded.” I think the Democrats are wrong. What is to be even handed about? That doesn’t excuse Mark, or you, for claiming things I haven’t said, or believe. Criticize me if you think the things Reid said are accurate, not because I point them out. You can’t, because he is plainly misrepresenting Petraeus, the funding (and that is true even if your argument on it is correct, because that is not his argument.)
No. it means I am wrong in your opinion. Maybe very wrong, not hypocritical. Nor am I blindly following Bush, do I need to list the long number of complaints I have with the way he has handled the war? Those are old battles not relevant to this discussion, but there is nothing blind about it.
They are not cheap points. It is the fundamental disagreement. A fundamental disagreement that could have been dealt with one way or the other weeks ago. He may win or lose, you know, democratically?
My point, and one that was made weeks ago, is that there is no reason the vote can’t happen as soon as possible. The Republicans purposely rolled over on the bill (and if you don’t believe it I have e-mails from before hand saying that was exactly the plan, and motive, from the senate) just to give it the chance to be decided one way or the other by the beginning of April. They told the Democratic leadership that was what they were going to do, but the Democratic leadership decided it would be better to wait and try and make Bush appear like the one who was delaying things. I am not letting that go by unnoticed. It may work, but I am going to do my best to reveal it for what it is, just like I was glad to rail against the Republicans when they pulled games to stuff their pockets with campaign cash via hidden earmarks. I watch the process glasnost. The Republicans may be being cynical as well, but they still gave the bill a chance for democratic debate. I don’t mind cynical things which are the right things, even if I don’t think it shows any true virtue.
Who said dire? I do think it is affecting their mission. No, I know it is. I don’t think they will be reduced to throwing rocks and eating rats.
I don’t think you caught it Mark, but bains isn’t a Republican, so he adheres not to what you claim.
You know, that was lame when the Republicans said the same thing in the nineties. The timeline is based on conditions, and you don’t know them ahead of time. The conditions may be bad, hopeless, or due to rousing success. They are not based on some arbitrary date. “Roosevelt, if the Germans haven’t capitulated by December we are coming home.”
You know, re read what you and glasnost said. Not the same thing. Your answer assumed that there were funding issues. If you didn’t mean it then you were just blowing smoke because you haven’t been able to back up anything you said, because Reid is showing his ass. Like with Glasnost, I don’t get it. It doesn’t reflect on you, it doesn’t even vitiate the case against the war. It shows that Reid is out of his depth.
It does bug me, but I didn’t take it negatively. I took your previous e-mail on that in the spirit you intended it. It bugs me because I enjoy having you around. You get testy, but you usually give me the credit for trying to engage you honestly, and I hope you feel I do the same. If it were not for the war I suspect you and I would spend far more time agreeing, or at least arguing about things that didn’t piss you off so much. Like trade for instance. At least you are not like some who assume because my beliefs are so market oriented that I don’t care about the poor or am racist, or other such things. I appreciate that. I think you know I do care, you just think my solutions are wrong.
I try and extend you the same courtesy, I don’t think you want to keep blacks on the welfare plantation, think Arabs are incapable of democracy, or think you sympathize with Ward Churchill.
I hope Mark reflects on these many e-mails and re-reads them. I was a little more dismissive than typical with him, but he came in filled with assumptions and never backed off. That bugs me, but I never returned that particular fire. I kept it to the arguments, right or wrong. Still, I took a breath and have spent time defending rather than attacking from that point because I believe in left-right dialogue as you know, as much as I find those terms inadequate and I hoped he would come around. I also stepped back and realized where he came from once he showed me his diary. What bothers me here would be the tamest day ever over at kos. So I am trying to be patient, because in reading back over them I see someone who could be a productive person to discuss things with.
I don’t dislike the fireworks at Kos or LGF or such things out of any prudish moralizing. It can sometimes be fun. It just doesn’t lend itself to what I enjoy about this site, which is the ability to come on and say things and know that Joshua, you, Michael, Omar, Bains, and the rest are more interested in questioning the others views and thought processes than attacking. We aren’t perfect, I admit that, but we make a pretty good effort.
So Mark. I would like you to hang around. It may sound like I am talking down, but tone is hard to get across sometimes. I am actually interested in dialogue. Spend some time on the posts that are not so “of the moment” political. Stop attacking. Go read the music posts (There are not many, but especially Robby’s are really good. I especially recommend the one on X and Sunday Morning Coming Down.) Read Joshua’s News Brief (plenty there to give you blog fodder at kos) and don’t be so angry we disagree. If you get to Baton Rouge I’ll buy you a beer, or ten. Just disagree with me. It is okay, I take it really well.
My last piece of advice is don’t invest yourself so much in politicians. They will all disappoint you. Reid is acting pathetically. If I was in favor of withdrawal I would want him to shut up as well. Generally I wish Bush would shut up. If I were you I would want him to speak as often as possible.
I wish Iraq were being presided over by someone else, you should wish your side were represented better as well in my opinion, but you don’t seem to feel so, so that is it on that. I will admit I far prefer McConnell to what the Republicans had before. Sometimes it helps to get rid of the embarrassments. You also won’t feel obliged to defend them on my blog. I promise not to come defend Denny Hastert on yours (no laughing Michael.)
I already gave you my opinion on judging Bush, but I am glad we agree about Nixon. You should argue with McGovern on that. He thinks Nixon was a great President. Ironic, but true.
You may not have seen the Think Progress post, but it was they who brought the whole CRS meme to the forefront. I read it and investigated it. So did others. The CRS report confirms what the military was saying. Things have developed just the way it was claimed, with a few extra’s thrown in. I also asked that if you are going to say they are lying then you should have some evidence. Please provide it. They may be, and they are purposefully short changing the troops to make a “cheap political point” as Glasnost put it. Of course I would also like you to show that the CRS was fraudulent as well.
For what it’s worth mark, I used “mindset” for a reason. Moore, Gore and Spurlock all produced documentaries spouting a particularly bias POVs. Their mindset is to start with a conclusion and work backwards to prove their “thesis” is valid, using data selectively and dishonestly. I accuse you of belonging to that mindset, and nothing more.
You accuse me of using straw men, yet it is you that brings in Ward Churchill into discussion, someone that I did not mention, reference, nor even allude to. And that is the mindset Moore, Gore, and Spurlock as evidenced by their ‘croc’umentaries.
Wow, that last post was poorly written - I guess that’s what happens at 0230hrs MDT during intermissions of your dog’s episodic incontinence.
Nan Pelosi for President!…
The Blog Princess awoke this morning in a decidedly blue funk. Long before rosy fingered dawn began painting the sky outside her western Maryland home, she swung her shell pink toes over the side of her bed and trudged dutifully……
Eisenhower overthrew the democratically elected PM of Iran and installed the Shah. Death to America Day the Iranian Independence Day is the result of that. For what? For oil.
He also overthrew the democratically elected Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala and installed another murderous tinhorn dictator. A-holes like Castro and Chávez have been making hay out of that for decades.
Reagan is responsible for the deaths of 250,000 campesinos in Central America during his dirty little wars for the crime of wanting a better life for their children than the endentured servitude they lived under the oligarchs and multinationals Reagan supported and Eisenhower helped protect. He also pointlessly put marines in Beirut in 1982 with no mission and then withdrew them after over 250 were killed in their barracks by a truck bomb. It’s Osama Bin Laden’s favorite “Paper Tiger Americans” story. Let’s not forget he also traded arms for hostages with the enemy in his misgotten Iran Contra plan and broke the law to do it.
There is very good reason to suspect he committed treason by doing the same during the 1980 election by colluding with the Khomeini Iranian government. The weekend before our election the Iranians announced a deal to release our embassy hostages was possible. By Monday, the day before the election an ashened faced Carter had to announce that no deal was imminent. The October surprise worked well. On Reagan’s inauguration day the hostages were released. Proof of that? I have none. All presdiential records going back to the Ford Administration, that should have been released by now, were ordered kept secret by this administration as one of their first acts in office in 2001.
You call yourself a “liberal, progressive, leftist, whatever” but you think these guys look better in retrospect? I think you better stick with the whatever.
Then I suggest you write what you mean a little more plainly. And please try to be a little more succinct. I thought I was a wordy f*ck but your book length tomes meander all over the place and take forever to read and respond to.
After 6 years of this administration anybody who gives their politically appointees any benefit of the doubt is a fool. How many times do you have to be lied to before you get that?
We the people are not amused when Halliburton gets paid to deliver “sailboat fuel” and the Green Berets we trained quit and become contractors who follow no rules of engagement for 10 times the pay. All out of our pocket.
It’s not my way, it’s the what the Iraqi and American people, our military and the rest of the world wants. You apparently think a Bush veto will result in some great political victory for him and his party. Wrecking the US military faster and fighting a losing war out to the bitter end isn’t going to result in a poltical victory.
Bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit. But hwat can you expect from a guy who thinks Algeria and Vietnam were successes for France and the US?
Yeah last year the Iraqi in charge of procurement for their DoD was complaining his forces were not being supplied with armor piercing projectiles. The insurgents have no armor. Coalition troops are the only forces who do in Iraq.
And since when does the DoD or anybody else in Bush’s government give a damn about laws or regulations? Regardless they have legal authority to shift billions around within the DoD budget and if they wanted to shut down the assembly lines for the F-22, the Osprey or the useless NMDS for the summer to fund the war the Dem congress would approve it in a day.
Translation: Slush fund to buy off tribal elders in hopes fewer people will take a few hundred bucks a pop to plant IEDs in order to feed their families.
Purely politically I might add. They know they’re going to get crushed in the next election if there isn’t way out of this war before next year and they’d rather have Bush
take the heat for his war than see a veto and filbuster proof majority of Dems in the Senate. Filibustering this bill like they did the non binding resolution would be suicidal.
Yeah just like you aren’t. He’s what a Libertarian? Anarchists with a 401K plan.
There’s no timeline, no exit policy, just ever shifting excuses to stay pretending that extending the occupation they hate will get Iraqis to be our allies when we leave. Knowing fiull well that’s impossible staying until a new president has to admit defeat has become the policy.
This is a waste of time. If I’m going to argue with wingnuts I think I’ll find some that at least know how to write and have some clue what they’re talking about.
Yes, they are looked on more favorably than they used to be. That you still don’t like them, or dislike them more doesn’t change that. There has actually been news stories about Eisenhower’s rehabilitation. I didn’t say it was deserved, I said it happened.
No i didn’t. You still seem more interested in attacking than reading or evaluating what is being said accurately. Re-read what I wrote.
As for your barrage against the three figures above, do you want me to start on the sins of Roosevelt, Carter, Clinton, Kennedy, etc. As for some of the whacked out conspiracy stuff, do I get to claim Roosevelt allowed Pearl harbor to happen? How about Clinton running drugs and murdering Vince Foster and that his Chinese fund raising shenanigans were actually because he was selling us out to the Chinese? Come on, now you are just getting weird on me.
Then leave, or barring that don’t throw out so many disconnected, false, unsupported statements, accusations and offensive characterizations to respond to. It is tiring for me as well.
Compared to previous ones? Whatever dude. I don’t assume conspiracies just because I have been lied to or I would have been with the black helicopter crowd in the ’90’s.
So, you think our soldiers now have it worse than in WWII to pick the obvious retort?
I am pretty close to done with you. If you believe that then you are so sorely ignorant that you should leave. I can promise you, if I talked to every Democrat out there with any knowledge of history they would turn red with embarrassment. Not because you are the most ignorant, but because you will not shut up. Never banned anyone before though I have almost done it twice. Once with the Muslim haters from LGF and the last time with the neo-nazi from Stormfront. You are actually more irritating.
As for me saying Vietnam or Algeria were successes, I never said that. Obviously you have a pretty blunt intellect. Either everything is a failure or a success. The constituent parts of something don’t even exist. I said the type of counterinsurgency techniques being applied in Iraq now were successful, not the wars themselves. That after all this time you can’t get the difference is just sad. You know nothing of the topics themselves since your only response has been that the French lost or some other such irrelevant to my argument response. I figured out a long time ago you have no actual knowledge of the Algerian conflict, which is fine. Just don’t act as if your ignorance is a virtue, and you should at least try and understand what the other person is saying. You seem incapable of either.
That is what is known in logic as a non sequiter.
The first sentence is yet another non sequiter, and the second false.
If you want to characterize it that way fine, but it is also the kind of thing the Democrats have said they want more of and the commanders on the ground say is very effective. Does it not work or get wasted some of the time? Yes. I suggest on that basis we shut down the whole government.
Everybody who doesn’t agree deserves an insult. Anarchists? Yeah, bains and Bakunin, quite a pair.
Don’t come back until you learn how to debate with something other than insults, bluster and crude reductionism.
Huh? The Pahlavi Dynasty was established in 1925. Iran was a constitutional monarchy for a little over a decade prior to that. What did Eisenhower have to do with any of that. Or, perhaps, you are referring to Operation Ajax? The definitive information on that top secret plan can be found here.
If so, you should mention that, not only was Mosaddegh a thief on the scale of Castro or Chavez, he actually hurt Iran pretty badly when he nationalized the oil industry and plunged Iran into the Abadan Crisis. Mossadegh was quite popular with the Iranian communists and islamists, which popularity who used to great effect in essentially completing a power grab somewhat reminiscent of Hitler’s in 1933:
In short, the “democratically elected” Mossadegh was not really so, and he was a communist dictator in the making. Arbenz was no better, although Somoza was no real prize either.
However, judging from your selective invection, I get the idea that you think the Cold War was a mistake? The advance of communism across the globe was just peachy with you?
The rest of your comment seems to be similarly misinformed, but I did want to address this:
I’m sure you thought that was clever, but it merely reveals how ignorant you really are. Also, has it occurred to you that, by the way you seem to define people’s preferences despite their true words and deeds, that you are creating a world of enemies for yourself? Why would you do that?
Try self-employed pal. If you have any intelligence behind all that vitriol, you’d recognize the implications therein.
I cut and pasted that
quote from your #57 post ya goofball.
I don’t know any liberals, progressives, leftists whatever who have changed their minds about Eisenhower and certainly not about Reagan, he rates down there just behind Nixon in my eyes. Ike wasn’t hated when he left office and nobody much cares about him now. He golfed a lot and left the dirty work to the crazy Dulles Bros. Reagan has always been a Repub icon. His rep was in the toilet when he left office but compared to the Bush’s he looks to Repubs like he belongs on Mt. Rushmore. Even a dummy looks goods next to two morons. Even though they renamed the airport in DC after him everybody still calls it National. Neither Eisenhower or Reagan has seen a national resurgence in their reps like, say Truman. As usual you’re confusing your daydreams with trends.
Wake up kid, those aren’t conspiracy theories, Reagan’s dirty little illegal wars, Iran Contra, the overthrow of democratically elected governments by the CIA are documented history.
And yet you argue that the same strategies and tactics that didn’t win those wars will win this one. Let me tell ya, winning hearts and minds, strategic hamlets etc. came way too late after too many search and destroy missions and free fire zones to win
hearts and minds in South Vietnam. Just as there’s been too many doors kicked in, too many promises broken, too many Abu Ghraibs (one was too much) to wish it all away in Iraq. They hate us. They hate our occupation. Over half of them, even when you factor in the Kurds, think killing Americans is justifiable. Take out the Kurds who live barricaded from the rest and are thrilled to have finally gotten their hands on the northern oil fields which they adamantly refuse to share and what do you have? A huge proportion of Arab Iraqis who’d like to see our soldiers dead.
MichaelW you seem as deluded as Lance. Mossadegh natonalized the oil industry for the benefit of the Iranian people. The Brits and BP wanted those profits. They asked Truman to help them get rid of him. He declined. When Ike came in he gave the Dulles Bros free rein and they agreed. Mossadegh was no crook and he sure as hell wasn’t a communist. That’s a fairy tail.
As for the cold war you don’t fight communism by overthrowing democratically elected governments and installing tinhorn dictators for the benefit of Western owned multinational corporations. You don’t train death squads at the School of Americas so the tinhorn dicactors have secret police forces every bit as bad as the KGB. We’re not supposed to be the bad guys. Our principles of democracy, freedom and regulated capitalism work well where we encourage them to flourish. Ask Europe. It’s what people have always liked and admired about the USA.
You also don’t fight radical Islam and promote democracy in the ME by trashing our consititution as Bush has done, invade Islamic countries like Iraq on false pretenses just as bin Laden predicted we would and occupy it indefinately while forcing them to sign exactly the kind of oil agreement Mossadegh tried to get rid of in Iran.
When we win it’s because of the example we set by adhering to those principles. Not by being more ruthless than commnunists, not by being more barbaric than terrorists.
You don’t fight fire with fire. You fight it with water.
We didn’t have to fire a shot when the Warsaw Pact and the USSR fell. That didn’t happen because Eastern Europeans were terrified of Star Wars or Reagan’s arms build up. It happened because their citizens compared their lives with Western Europeans’ and ours’. They saw peoples who had much higher standard of livings AND who could protest against their governments placing American missiles in their backyards without getting hauled off to a gulag for a the rest of their lives.
The implications of what bain? I’ve been self employed since 1982. Hasn’t made me decide our country would be better off without half it’s government.
I wasn’t referring to me.
You see, I am pointing out that the term liberal should apply to me, and people who call themselves liberals today are more accurately called leftists, progressives or something else. Technically I am the liberal, you are not. Sorry you didn’t get that, but if you were paying attention instead of ranting maybe you would have picked up that I am not a leftist nor would I ever characterize myself as such.
As for the rest, you still refuse to address the history we were discussing (because obviously you don’t know it) and make off topic unsupported rants. I have asked you to leave until you can do better, like read at least one good long article on counterinsurgency in Algeria. It is alright not to know something, to still disagree despite your lack of background. It is not alright to act as if you are some superior intellect when you don’t know what you are talking about. I may be wrong, but venomous spewings showing a serious lack of grounding in history doesn’t prove it.
I have asked you to leave. When you can come back and discuss things in some kind of spirit of goodwill and real debate do so. Until then stay away.
Yadda, yadda, yadda technically you’re a poor writer prone to flabby streams of consciousness who doesn’t bother to proofread, let alone edit your writing for clarity, factual errors or even common sense. I’d hate to see what your drivel would look like without a spellchecker. Your political and military acumen match your writing ability. Time and time again you state what are clearly opinions as fact. Your grasp of the most basic historic facts is not only deficient it’s wildly distorted. Ta ta Lance. It hasn’t been fun but like a bad car accident it’s been interesting to witness. Sometimes the carnage
is so spectacular you just have to stop and gawk for a bit.
That’s the second time you’ve said you’re leaving, yet you keep coming back to show your immaturity, flinging insults and proving unable to maintain a respectable debate.
We’d prefer one of two outcomes now, in this order,
1) That you stop insulting others and come back and take part in a mature debate.
2) That you actually do what you claim you are doing and leave.
[…] think it is time for a little timeline since in my last post that touched on this issue some people seem not to be aware of what has really […]
That pretty much cuts it. If he comes back we are going to delete his comments. If he persists in this style of debate I’ll just ban him.
I can take insults toward me and my readers, but you have to be willing to give somewhere, and you need to have something to add, and it helps to have someone like Pogue who on his worst day is at least clever and often quite funny.
Rather than delete them, I’d showcase them. Make an instructive post out of them.
It must give you warm fuzzies knowing you can defeat all the agruments that no one has set forth.
I’d guess you’ve call options on wheat futures given how many strawmen you erect in your ‘arguments’.
They are not cheap points. It is the fundamental disagreement. A fundamental disagreement that could have been dealt with one way or the other weeks ago. He may win or lose, you know, democratically?
I don’t buy this. I don’t buy this it all. Moreover, it is precisely my point. George Bush gets to make deliberate acts that directly result in US troops not getting funding, when they otherwise would have. And you wave it off. But G*d forbid Democrats withhold funding for the mirror image reason. George Bush can halt funding to the troops because he thinks the war is right, and you don’t care. But if the Democrats halt funding to the troops because they think the war is wrong, well, then it’s open season.
I tell you what. I don’t know why this bill took so long to create. But I have a feeling that an awful lot of it boils down to Democrats arguing over what they were going to do when George Bush vetoes the bill.
Where will A Second Hand Conjecture be after Bush vetoes this funding bill? Are they going to create a 40 days, 80 days, 120 days timeline and post seven columns on troops suffering because of George Bush’s callous disregard for their welfare and the short-term success of their mission?
I fundamentally don’t believe that the mission in Iraq is being genuinely impacted by the war’s delays, but that could easily be a result of ignorance on my part. But it’s going to be impacted in an identical manner when Bush vetoes the withdrawal bill.
The Republicans purposely rolled over on the bill (and if you don’t believe it I have e-mails from before hand saying that was exactly the plan, and motive, from the senate) just to give it the chance to be decided one way or the other by the beginning of April. They told the Democratic leadership that was what they were going to do, but the Democratic leadership decided it would be better to wait and try and make Bush appear like the one who was delaying things. I am not letting that go by unnoticed.
Fine. But when Bush does the literally identical equivalent of what the Democrats are doing right now by vetoing the withdrawal/funding bill, you won’t be able to muster a tenth of the outrage. That’s manifestly obvious. Since you care about the troops ‘being hurt’ when Democrats deny funding, but not when Bush denies funding, I can’t take you seriously on the entire rest of your argument.
Well glas, I can speak for myself when I say I don’t blame the president for the troops not getting their funding because of a few reasons. One, the dems have used the funding to play political games. Two, they have used it to try to take away the president’s ability to be sole commander and chief. Three, they loaded it with pork spending. and lastly (I may be wrong on this) but I seem to remember congress not fully funding all the economic sections of the spending request.
I guess to make a bad analogy I would say it’s like ordering a cheese burger at a restaurant, and instead being served a chili burger with jalepenos. I don’t blame the patron for sending it back, I blame the waiter for brining the wrong order.
No glasnost. He could have vetoed it weeks ago. It was a deliberate choice to make him do it now. The fight was the same either way. Why are we doing it now instead of weeks ago? You know the answer.
Different issue, but yeah. I disagree with it. What am I supposed to say? I disagree, but I won’t argue why I disagree? Except no open season. I won’t claim they are doing anything that they are not doing. But I will say what they are doing, why I disagree with it, etc. That is a different issue than this. There is no military or legislative reason for the delay. It doesn’t matter what your position on the eventual outcome of the vote is, this is wrong. They are also not telling the truth or in the case of Reid he may just be going dotty. You can do the whole Brit Hume thing to me now, but read the nonsense he is spouting. Figure this out for me:
He’s the man on the ground there now. … I agree with General Petraeus. … …I stick with General Petraeus. … He’s the commander on the ground there.†– Reid on Gen. Petraeus, 4/23/07
* “I don’t believe him.†That is from the same interview glasnost! Then he claims all these things Petraeus has said which he didn’t. Add on the nonsense above.
Look, when it comes time for the vote you and I can go at each other hammer and tong. I will disagree vehemently. At least I understand it as an intellectual disagreement.
This I don’t get. They are just in the wrong. Isn’t this just the kind of thing we turned the Republicans out for? They are delaying something that didn’t need to be delayed, misled everybody the delays effect, just so they could put Bush in the position of denying needed funding to the troops. Those are the kind of political maneuvers that regardless of your position on what the bill should say you should oppose.
They either have the votes or not. Anyway, the veto will be done as soon as it is delivered to him. They could have a bill passed the next day without all the pork and the funding they asked for if the Democrats cooperate and don’t delay from there. Hardly equivalent to delaying this for two and a half months. 1 to 2 days versus 2 1/2 months. Not remotely comparable in my mind. My guess is they will delay it more. The idea is to paint it as his fault, and they want to make him do something from public pressure that they don’t have the votes to do. It won’t work, I think the Republicans will win that argument because the Democrats are even losing the press cover on this. The behavior has been too transparent. Hopefully I am wrong.
No, the bills were passed almost a month ago. The bills (because the House and Senate were slightly different needed to got to conference. Since the Republicans rolled and said it could be whatever they wanted to get it out the door it could have been done within a day. The Democrats decided to go on vacation. They wouldn’t even appoint conferees. Steny Hoyer admitted why they did it. This is not close. Why are you putting up with stuff we both raked the Republicans over the coals for just months ago?
It is the legislatures job to put together a bill that will survive his veto or that he will not veto. That is my position. They can fund the bill and try again next time if it is necessary because they don’t have the votes to get past his veto. My own guess is once the pork is pulled out, the present bill probably wouldn’t even get a simple majority. If they are right and the whole exercise is pointless and we need to withdraw then they can end it next vote. August 2008 is far enough out to get them another bite at the apple.
It is the legislatures job to put together a bill that will survive his veto or that he will not veto. That is my position. They can fund the bill and try again next time if it is necessary because they don’t have the votes to get past his veto.
No. If George Bush cares about the troops getting funding, it’s his job not to veto the bill.
Of course, sure, you can turn it around and say, if Democrats care about getting the troops funding, it’s their job to make a bill that GWB won’t veto.
But the argument is equally valid either way.
We’re still talking past each other.
The point is that Congress holding up the funding bill has the same effect on the troops as the President vetoing the funding bill. That’s as clear as I can make it.
Yes or no?
I’m not talking about your overall record on anything. I’m talking about, right now, right here, from Day 1 the President has announced his intention to deny funding to US troops by vetoing the funding bill, and you don’t care. You get very upset when Democrats stall funding, but the President can veto the funding with a free pass. You still can’t even seem to understand that - unless you’re prepared that stalling on funding hurts troops more than vetoing funding - which you have not made - that GWB and the Democratic Congress, vis-a-vis the troops, are doing the same thing
Listen:
vetoing funding = no money for troops
stalling funding = no money for troops
stalling funding = vetoing funding
How is this untrue? I’m still waiting.
Anyway, the veto will be done as soon as it is delivered to him. They could have a bill passed the next day without all the pork and the funding they asked for if the Democrats cooperate and don’t delay from there.
Why should they, Lance? What’s wrong with letting the bill stall for two months? Does it hurt the troops? I’m passing on that argument right now, so for the sake of argument, fine. It hurts the troops. Guess what! Vetoing the funding bill hurts the troops! The end result of both actions is the same - troops not getting their money! Why does George Bush have carte blanche to hurt the troops by vetoing a funding bill?????????
If George Bush is telegraphing that he’s willing to screw the troops over by vetoing their funding and then blame it on Democrats, why shouldn’t the Democrats play the same game?
Sure. You seem to be misreading what I am saying. My position is not that the fight is illegitimate, just delaying the damn thing six or more weeks and pretending delaying the fight wouldn’t have consequences was wrong. They have every right to fight it out. It should have been done at least sixty days ago.
Yes, but they could have done it sixty days ago and that was completely the Democratic leaderships choice. Bush couldn’t do anything about it. They thought it would pressure him to do something they couldn’t get the votes for. Fine (well not really, but lets move on) but then I get to do my best to put the pressure on them for having tried the tactic.
I won’t quote the rest of your argument, but his veto doesn’t delay things very long either. I am not galled about two or three day delays. So if he vetoes it and they go ahead and pass a bill (including one that sets a pullout date that has enough support to be veto proof) then that is fine, or would have been had they done it sixty days ago! I’ll be pissed about if they roll over tomorrow.
My guess is the Democrats will not go ahead and finish this up even after the veto. They will stretch it out weeks more. Bush isn’t driving this delay, veto’s are quick. The Democrats are controlling the calendar. They control whether something takes weeks/months vs. days. The possible variations on this bill are all available. Pass the one which gets the votes.
Not equivalent because of time. Two days is not two months. If his veto meant that it couldn’t be done for another two months I would feel differently. It would pretty much mean the end of the mission anyway. I would still blame them though, because the fight could have happened sixty days ago.
Bah. Congress has no obligation to send a funding bill quickly, or at all, if the President is going to veto the ones he gets. It may politically unwise not to send one, but morally, George Bush has already gone public to the effect of, “I don’t care if it endangers the troops, I prefer no funding at all to a funding bill with conditions I don’t like.” He’s already placed doing things his way over funding the troops, and then he expects Democrats not to follow his example.
By vetoing the bill, he eliminates funding. It ceases to exist. Then, by some twist of MSM magic, it becomes Congress’ obligation to clean up his mess and step in to, in effect, save the troops from his overwhelming spite by passing what the President wants. This is no fair scale where GW can play hostage with the troops by vetoing funding bills and it becomes high principles, but when the Democrats play hostage with the funding bill, it becomes cynical political manuvering. There is no tradition being broken, no laws being changed, no precedent-breaking manuever. There’s simply a game of chicken being played, and you grant the President the G*d-given right to play chicken with the troops but hold a microscope up to the other side.
We’ll have to agree to disagree.
No, we just expect them to do it quickly. If he sat on the veto for weeks you might have a point.
Fine. But as I said time matters. If they feel it is worth it to them to not pass a funding bill unless it has the withdrawal dates, because they can’t get the votes to overcome the veto, then do that and say that. Be honest. They could have done that 60 days ago and the withdrawal would have already begun. Of course, that isn’t what they will do. They will pass a funding bill that they could have passed 60 days ago.
If they were really serious about this, as you seem convinced they are, they would say, “veto it and we will just refuse to fund them at all.” I’ll complain and criticize, but at least they will have stood up and taken the criticism as opposed to lying and misleading. Once again, it should have been done sixty days ago, but better late than never to start being straighforward about this.
Oh, and the reason they don’t want to do what you feel they are really up to, is that they don’t want a withdrawal now, as I point out in my post on Feingold.
[…] I am posting the whole thing. Notice for those who tried to follow our little spat about COIN in this posts comments, the Marine makes the point that COIN techniques have been successful in the past when used, most […]
Oh, and the reason they don’t want to do what you feel they are really up to, is that they don’t want a withdrawal now, as I point out in my post on Feingold.
I read the post on Feingold, and he’s one of my favorite Democrats, as well. But the underlying thing revealed by the lack of similar decisiveness among Democrats isn’t proof that they don’t really want a withdrawal. It’s that they want a withdrawal, but they also want to, as much as possible, meet people with whom they disagree with completely, halfway.
Or, I suppose, it’s possible that they have mixed feelings and want to hedge their bets and satisfy their constituents while minimizing the extent to which people who disagree with them get angry.
It’s the same reason why GWB is running around saying “we’re going to work with Democrats” on the next bill, while the other side of his mouth has been saying “no chance, pal, we’re not giving an inch”, on all the things that they want him to work with them on.
It doesn’t make for anything as inspiring as Feingold. It’s just the typical politician way of settling for 66% of a solution. Withdrawal in 2008 is there because people are telling them that withdrawal right now is too radical. It’s also a way of attempting to make concessions to what they may see as genuine concern for the possibility of genuine downsides to withdrawal.
The funding thing is the same. No one sees any difference between a funding bill, a veto, and then a long delay as a second bill is argued about, or a long delay… and then a funding bill and then a veto. The second one is what they did. I assume they thought it was politically safer.
I meant by that that they don’t know the right course, but they want to appease their base and not have the disaster, if there is one, become something people like myself will pin on them at least partial responsibility for before the election. Call me cynical, but that is what I see in every action they have made. Hey, the Republicans have the easy job here, which I know I pointed out, and McQ did as well, both before and immediately after the election. We saw their confusion coming because they had no coherent narrative. As I said in my post today, I can claim prescience on this as well. It is almost as if they handed me the script it was so predictable. Rarely are things truly predictable, though people act as if they are (including in Iraq.) This might be one of those rare instances where it was.
True, they all do that.
You can believe that if you want, but I have written post after post looking at this over the last six months, and everything they do fits with my thesis. The date is perfect for what I am suggesting. They aren’t doing it in May or after the election. It is right before. Perfect. But, assume Democrats are somehow more noble than that if you wish. Feingold knows better.