RayV wrote:
Just went to amazon and was surprised by their commercial/sponsorship
of Bill Maher. I closed my account with them.

So now where do I turn to buy tools online? I have only ever made one
other tool purchase online and it was from www.holbren.com when I
wanted to try an inexpensive raised panel set.

Any recommendations of online stores that sell tools?


Politics aside, I find that there are precious few places that aren't
just front ends for Amazon. There used to be many sources of tools
online, but now you go to actually buy something and voila! you are
once again at Amazon. We're talkin' Wally World here for stomping down
the small vendor and removing competition. Sorta like Starbuck's in
some towns.

Long Live Lee Valley!

wrote:

Yes, I agree that the Strategic Air Command and the Trident submarine
fleet are not overextended.

Dunno about the Trident sub fleet, but I'd say that SAC was very much over extended considering
that it was dismantled in 1992.

--
Frank Stutzman

wrote in message
oups.com...

Rod & Betty Jo wrote:
Ever hear of elections, voting or democracy? Seems I heard a rumor about
U.S.trying to establish something or the other like that in
Iraq.......one
might think those attempting to thwart such a outcome with violence might
fear the popular vote. Rod

Do you really think the isnrgents could win control of Iraq that way?
Even if you do, do you think they do?
FF


My previous comment clearly answered your query before you asked it
"one might think those attempting to thwart such a outcome with violence
might
fear the popular vote".......That said minorities have and often can control
a majority via force....Saddam and his ilk imposed their will on both the
Shiites and the Kurds with approx. 1/3 of the total population....The
current violence there is less about our presence or even religious
differences but rather competing thugs attempting to thwart popular will and
gain dominance. Rod

Mark & Juanita wrote:
On 19 Aug 2006 10:36:30 -0700, wrote:


Mark & Juanita wrote:
On Thu, 17 Aug 2006 20:51:18 -0700, "Dave Bugg"
wrote:

wrote:

"...that we know terrorists are hiding among the civilian
population and that when the necessary bombing occurs, we will *not*
be
able to separate civilians from terrorists; we make it crystal clear
that
if these countries and their citizens continue to harbor these
animals, we
will not deliberately target their civilian populations unlike the
terrorists among them, but we will *not* avoid destroying terrorist
strongholds despite their locations. "

You need to research what "carpet bombing" is. Nothing that you have quoted
even remotely smacks of carpet bombing.

Among other places, the enemy is scattered throughout the
civlian population of Bagdad. We do not have bombs that
can kill one person in a house while sparing the rest of the
household, even assuming we could identify the one person
in a house who was the enemy.

That is not carpet bombing. And this is the exact reason why the terrorists
are responsible for these types of civilian casualties.

'tain't worth it Dave. Fred has his wordlview and mindset and no amount
of reasoning nor clarification is going to change that mindset. He will
re-define your terms to suit his purposes and rationale and then read into
your responses that which he wishes to see -- and not in the same way that
you or I might engage in hyperbole or sarcasm to make a point. The
worldview is pretty well illustrated by the statement made in one of his
other postings, "Mind you, IMHO the only way to defeat a guerilla enemy is
to withdraw while the guerillas are still too weak to take control." The
only way to win is to retreat? What a concept! "Oooh, they're running,
guess we better give up" Yeah, that will work real well.


Doh! Just how are they going to fight us when we're not there?
Do you think the Sadr militia or the Feyadeen Saddam are going
to miss us so badly that they'll send sabotuers over here to goad
us into re-invading?


Doh! right back at you. So, in your opinion, the sole purpose here should
be to prevent our people from being attacked? It's OK if those guerillas
or terrorists fill the vacuum we leave by bugging out and re-instituting
the same kind of regime that again enslaves the people of that country. Now
*that* would be a real good reason for the people of a country we so
treated to truly hate us.

ISTR that is what you call 'twisting words'.



The long standing dispute over the no-fly zones came to an end
for good when we deposed Saddam Hussein. Aside from skirmishes
over the no-fly zones there were NO Iraqis fighting us until we
invaded.
Iraqis are fighting us BECAUSE we invaded.



Iraqis will continue to fight so long as there are foreign troops on
Iraqi soil. They may well continue to fight among themselves after,
but that is something the Iraqis themselves will have to work out,
better sooner than later.


So let's not give the people who might be a bit more friendly toward us a
chance, eh? Just bomb 'em, kill the dictator, dust our hands "done" and
let the people we *didn't* fight when they walked away from their arms
re-arm and re-enslave the country. Yep, great plan.

ISTR that is what you call 'twisting words'.


The alternative is to stay bogged down in Iraq indefinately. Iran and
North Korea would just love that.

So, let's get this on the record. You *are* for invading both North
Korea and Iran if we would just get out of Iraq?


ISTR that is what you call 'twisting words'.

However it would appear that, in your own twisted way, you are
asking for a clarification.

I don't know why we invaded Iraq. I do know it was not to protect
the Kurds, they were already protected, it was not to protect Iraq's
neighbors, they were not threatened, it was not to protect us,
Iraq wasn't even on the State Department's list of nations in
which Al Queda operated. It certainly was not to deprive Iraq
of WMD, Iraq had none, had no facilites for producing them,
had no capacity to recover that capability under the UN sanctions,
and this was clear before the first US soldier crossed the border
into Iraq. We know that because the inspectors we insisted on
sending to Iraq, told us so.

Did we invade Iraq in order to establish a stable Democratic
Government there? It sure doesn't look like it because when
we had control we systematicall deconstructed the governmental
infrastructure at all levels, leaving no border guards, no police,
no one to provide the most basic governmental services. Of
course the country needed to be "deBaathified", but did it
really matter if the local dog catcher was a Baathist in name
only? Disbanding the military left a million young men with
military training without a paycheck and dumped them into
an already ruined economy. Did anybody suppose that would
be anything but a disaster? Sure, the army had largely 'dis-
banded' itself through desertion but was any effort made to
encourage them to return to their ranks? You'd think that
promising them three squares a day and a paycheck would
have gone a long way there. Did anybody think that a
foreign army, unfamiliar with the culture and language could
maintain law and order? We formed an ineffective and
reviled provisional government, then after a year elections
were held to replace it with another temporary governmnet
that was replaced again and so on. There have been
elections after elections in Iraq and each new government
has less control than the last. The country is progressing
to chaos and civil war.

If the Bush administration was tryi8ng to create a stable
Democratic Iraq it sure doesn't show from their actions.

I'll readily agree that a stable and prosperous Iraq would be
a good thing for the Middle East, us, and the world. The fact
that it would be a good thing does not meanit is possible to
force one on Iraq thorugh force of arms. A few notable people
were of the opinion that it would not be possible. George
H Bush, Colin Powell, and Bill Clinton all pretty much
agreed on that before we invaded. OTOH Operation
Iraqi Liberation's chief proponent and architect, Paul Wolfowitz,
cut and ran as soon as the predicted consequences of
his plan began to materialize. But not before being awarded
a medal.

Maybe it was possible to create a stable Democratic
government in Iraq. But maybe by now all hope of
being able to do so has been sytematically destroyed.
Attacks on Coalition Forces have steadily increased and
over the past two years violence has accelerated between
Iraqi factions as well. We are rapidly approaching the point
where any faction that relies on foreign troops for support
will rapidly fall out of favor with the bulk of the Iraqi people.
We have become a force for instabilty in Iraq.

Here in the US the nation is being divided between those
who want to withdraw as soon as possible, and those
who want to send in more troops to 'get the job done'.

The administrations position "stay the course no matter where
we're headed" is increasing unpopular with both factions.

Just what is the Bush administation's plan for victory?
Isn't it clear they have none, they never had one, their
plan was to stay the course and hand the mess over to
the next administration so they could blame somebody
else for losing the war?

Now, as for Noth Korea, there is a real threat of nuclear weapons
there. If we can deprive North Korea of nuclear weapons by
military force that would be justified. I think the Chinese won't
let us.

The same is true, but even more so, for Iran. Iran must not
be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon. It is best if that
can be acomplished by the use of diplomacy and the threat
of military action is a powerful diplomatic tool. But that
threat is only effective if the military is prepared to back it
up. Being bogged down in Iraq hampers our position and
encourages our enemies everywhere.

If military means are required to deprive Iran of nuclear weapons
then that must be done. Be warned, bombing will not be sufficient.
It is doubtful that we have sufficient intelligence to adequately
assure identification of the targets and bombing cannot
destroy the nuclear materials themselves.

Rather than invade Iraq, what I was in favor of, and still am, is
finishing off Al Queda and then proceeding to destroy Hezbollah
and so on. As it surns out, we let Hezbollah grow in power
until Israel was forced to act.

--

FF

Rod & Betty Jo wrote:
wrote in message
oups.com...

Rod & Betty Jo wrote:
Ever hear of elections, voting or democracy? Seems I heard a rumor about
U.S.trying to establish something or the other like that in
Iraq.......one
might think those attempting to thwart such a outcome with violence might
fear the popular vote. Rod

Do you really think the isnrgents could win control of Iraq that way?
Even if you do, do you think they do?
FF


My previous comment clearly answered your query before you asked it
"one might think those attempting to thwart such a outcome with violence
might
fear the popular vote".......That said minorities have and often can control
a majority via force....Saddam and his ilk imposed their will on both the
Shiites and the Kurds with approx. 1/3 of the total population....The
current violence there is less about our presence or even religious
differences but rather competing thugs attempting to thwart popular will and
gain dominance. Rod

Well then it seems we are in agreement on why those tactics are used.
That's not justification, or making excuses, just recognizing THEIR
motivation.

I'm not inclined to agree as to the effect of our presence. Attacks on
Coalition Forces, primarliy on US forces since we've the largest number
of troops in Bahgdad and the Sunni triangle have steadily increased.
The increase in Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence has not displaced the Iraqi-on-
foreign army violence.

--

FF

wrote:

Now I'd like to know YOUR sources. I don't know anyone who
advocated the US deploy far more troops in various neighboring
countries, on a never-ending assignment to surround Iraq.

Are you kidding? That was, and still is, the strategy proposed by the
democrats and the UN. If yer memory is that short term, Google is yer
friend.

...... snip of all the regurgitated crap that every anti war group continues
to state.

Right, that's what France said about Hitler's rise.

Godwin!

You are just as wrong about invoking Godwin. Restating historical issues
doesn't apply.


Nonsense. It was two years after we left before the Communists
took Saigon.

Hardly nonsense. Better check your timeframes for total withdrawl. My
Brigade was still in country until 7/74. Regardless, a 24 month time frame
would be a reasonable time for the North to have massed the men, equipment,
and supplies neccesary to conduct a long, sustained military push. The time
frame would also be necessary to formulate the tactical plan needed to
ensure success. Planning that type of military campaign is a huge task; even
if the campaign is against a much weaker opponent. Also keep in mind that
infrastructure and logistical support must also be developed to deal with
the immediate post-campaign conquest.

Two factors led to the loss. One was an to all or nearly
all US military aid toe South Vietnam. But I remind you that the
US was not the only SEATO nation. No one else stepped in to
take our place. The scond was the abysmal corruption and
incompetence of the South Vietnamese government.

All of that is irrelevant to the fact that we left prior to stabilizing the
South Vietnamese army, police, as well as helping to assure that a full
democratic process took place within the government.

Don't confuse fiscal decision making with
industrial capability. The Japanese and Germans made that mistake
at Pearl Harbor.

'and Germans'???? Where do you get your history,
John Belushi movies?

Where do get yours, bubble gum wrappers? :-) Did you forget that we provided
massive industrial support to Britain so that they could hold off Germany?
And I suppose that you recall that we declared war on BOTH Germany and Japan
post-Pearl Harbor? I'd also mention Italy, but hey....

Until petroleum prices rose above about $50/barrel it was not
economical to develop the Canadian tar sands. Intersting,
isn't it?

But, it still a fixable issue.

However, hydrogen cannot be a primary source of energy.

Maybe, maybe not. I guess I'm focused on the fact that if we can diversify
our fuel sources to replace petroleum, than we don't have to rely on a
single fuel source to make up the loss of all that petroleum.

--
Dave
www.davebbq.com

Our way is the best way. Don't believe it? Our military will convince you.
The crusades all over again.

"Rod & Betty Jo" wrote in message
...

wrote in message
ups.com...
By reading what you wrote. You pretended that hiding behind
women and children is the only way they can fight and win.

Please explain an altenative they can use to win.

Ever hear of elections, voting or democracy? Seems I heard a rumor about
U.S.trying to establish something or the other like that in Iraq.......one
might think those attempting to thwart such a outcome with violence might
fear the popular vote. Rod

Unbelievable. Fred the Red has all the answers. Why doesn't the rest of
the world listen to him? He's soooooo smart.

On 22 Aug 2006 14:01:13 -0700, wrote:

Mark & Juanita wrote:
On 19 Aug 2006 10:36:30 -0700, wrote:


Mark & Juanita wrote:
On Thu, 17 Aug 2006 20:51:18 -0700, "Dave Bugg"
wrote:

wrote:

"...that we know terrorists are hiding among the civilian
population and that when the necessary bombing occurs, we will *not*
be
able to separate civilians from terrorists; we make it crystal clear
that
if these countries and their citizens continue to harbor these
animals, we
will not deliberately target their civilian populations unlike the
terrorists among them, but we will *not* avoid destroying terrorist
strongholds despite their locations. "

You need to research what "carpet bombing" is. Nothing that you have quoted
even remotely smacks of carpet bombing.

Among other places, the enemy is scattered throughout the
civlian population of Bagdad. We do not have bombs that
can kill one person in a house while sparing the rest of the
household, even assuming we could identify the one person
in a house who was the enemy.

That is not carpet bombing. And this is the exact reason why the terrorists
are responsible for these types of civilian casualties.

'tain't worth it Dave. Fred has his wordlview and mindset and no amount
of reasoning nor clarification is going to change that mindset. He will
re-define your terms to suit his purposes and rationale and then read into
your responses that which he wishes to see -- and not in the same way that
you or I might engage in hyperbole or sarcasm to make a point. The
worldview is pretty well illustrated by the statement made in one of his
other postings, "Mind you, IMHO the only way to defeat a guerilla enemy is
to withdraw while the guerillas are still too weak to take control." The
only way to win is to retreat? What a concept! "Oooh, they're running,
guess we better give up" Yeah, that will work real well.


Doh! Just how are they going to fight us when we're not there?
Do you think the Sadr militia or the Feyadeen Saddam are going
to miss us so badly that they'll send sabotuers over here to goad
us into re-invading?


Doh! right back at you. So, in your opinion, the sole purpose here should
be to prevent our people from being attacked? It's OK if those guerillas
or terrorists fill the vacuum we leave by bugging out and re-instituting
the same kind of regime that again enslaves the people of that country. Now
*that* would be a real good reason for the people of a country we so
treated to truly hate us.

ISTR that is what you call 'twisting words'.


[Sigh] No, it is you twisting words. *Your* statement was "the only way
to DEFEAT a guerrilla enemy is to withdraw while the guerillas are still
too weak to take control" How does preventing *our* people (as you stated
in your second statement, "Just how are they going to fight US when we're
not there?". That is not defeating the guerrillas, it is getting our
people out of the way of the guerillas. Hardly the same thing. But then,
you know that.

.... snip


+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

If you're gonna be dumb, you better be tough

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Dave Bugg wrote:
wrote:

Now I'd like to know YOUR sources. I don't know anyone who
advocated the US deploy far more troops in various neighboring
countries, on a never-ending assignment to surround Iraq.

Are you kidding? That was, and still is, the strategy proposed by the
democrats and the UN. If yer memory is that short term, Google is yer
friend.

IOW, you don't have a single credible source.


..... snip of all the regurgitated crap that every anti war group continues
to state.

Right, that's what France said about Hitler's rise.

Godwin!

You are just as wrong about invoking Godwin. Restating historical issues
doesn't apply.


Nonsense. It was two years after we left before the Communists
took Saigon.

Hardly nonsense. Better check your timeframes for total withdrawl. My
Brigade was still in country until 7/74. Regardless, a 24 month time frame
would be a reasonable time for the North to have massed the men, equipment,
and supplies neccesary to conduct a long, sustained military push. The time
frame would also be necessary to formulate the tactical plan needed to
ensure success.

TOTAL withdrawal didn't occur until Saigon fell in April, 1975.
The Marine guards at the US embassy were possibly the last
US troops to officially leave Vietnam.

The Paris Peace Accords went into effect on January 27, 1973.
Ostensibly, all major American ground forces were withdrawn by
April of that year. I don't doubt you were still there more than
a year later, but I do wonder what duties were assigned to your
brigade. More than two years passed betwwen the Peace Treaty
that had supposedly ended the war and the actual end of the war.

We all but destroyed the Viet Cong in the 1968 Tet offensive and
won every major battle of the war. We had badly damaged the
North and the North was less populous than the South by
a wide margin in the first place.

The revisionists who claim we could have won the Viet Nam
war seem to forget that we DID win the Viet Nam war. We
forced the Communists to recognize the sovereignty of the
South Vietnamese government and the permanancy of the
division at the 17th parallel. For whatever reasons we were
not willing to attempt a gound offensive into NorthVietnam
so the Paris Accords were almost (there was, after all,
the "Parrot's beak") the best terms we could have ever
expected.

Had a treaty been signed years earlier or years late it
could hardly have been more advantageous to us.

The reasons the South Vietnamese were not ready to
defend themselves were precisly the reasons given.
Lack of material support was part of it but the corruption
and ineffectiveness of the government in South Vietnam
was a major factor too. That wasn't about to change.

Of the two, the North Vietnamese were in far worse
shape with much of the Northern infrastructure ruined
by US bombing, the reduction in Soviet and Chinese
support negotiated by Nxon, and a smaller populatoin.

We lost the war in Viet Nam in 1956 when we backed
Diem's decisions to cancel elections and declare the
South an independent nation. It is quite possible that
had there been free and fair elections Viet Nam might
have been reunified in 1956 under a Communist government.
If we are to be true to our principles we have to recognize
the right of a free people to vote contrary to our
best interestes whether it is Communists in Viet Nam
or Hamas on the West Bank.

Planning that type of military campaign is a huge task; even
if the campaign is against a much weaker opponent. Also keep in mind that
infrastructure and logistical support must also be developed to deal with
the immediate post-campaign conquest.

I agree that should be the case but Operation Iraqi Liberation and
the susequent occupation proves that what you say is NOT
necessary, desireable though it should be.


Two factors led to the loss. One was an to all or nearly
all US military aid toe South Vietnam. But I remind you that the
US was not the only SEATO nation. No one else stepped in to
take our place. The scond was the abysmal corruption and
incompetence of the South Vietnamese government.

All of that is irrelevant to the fact that we left prior to stabilizing the
South Vietnamese army, police, as well as helping to assure that a full
democratic process took place within the government.

The South Vietnamese government was not about to allow
us to do that--ever.


Don't confuse fiscal decision making with
industrial capability. The Japanese and Germans made that mistake
at Pearl Harbor.

'and Germans'???? Where do you get your history,
John Belushi movies?

Where do get yours, bubble gum wrappers? :-) Did you forget that we provided
massive industrial support to Britain so that they could hold off Germany?

No but evidently I forgot that Britain defended Pearl Harbor from the
Germans...

And I suppose that you recall that we declared war on BOTH Germany and Japan
post-Pearl Harbor?

I recall that we declared war on Japan on December 8, 1941.
Germany and Italy declared war on the US on the morning of
December 11, 1941, and we reciprocated that afternoon.
(To be precise, I recall reading it, I wasn't born yet.)

I'd also mention Italy, but hey....

Until petroleum prices rose above about $50/barrel it was not
economical to develop the Canadian tar sands. Intersting,
isn't it?

But, it still a fixable issue.

The implication is that it is already fixed ...


However, hydrogen cannot be a primary source of energy.

Maybe, maybe not.

No 'maybe not', unless you can disprove the laws of
thermodynamics or discover an exploitable source of
molecular hydrogen.

I guess I'm focused on the fact that if we can diversify
our fuel sources to replace petroleum, than we don't have to rely on a
single fuel source to make up the loss of all that petroleum.


As you may recall, George W. Bush said something to the
effect of "We wouldn't have this problem if this country had
an energy policy ten years ago." He neglected to mention
that this country had such a policy 25 years earlier and
it was completely destroyed by the Republicans under
Ronald Reagan.

--

FF

Your points are all a mixture of argument for arguments sake, with a
continual twisting of what I write. I'm done, as there is little you or I
will agree on and I don't find this a productive use of my time. YMMV.

--
Dave
www.davebbq.com

Mark & Juanita wrote:
On 22 Aug 2006 14:01:13 -0700, wrote:

Mark & Juanita wrote:
On 19 Aug 2006 10:36:30 -0700, wrote:


Mark & Juanita wrote:
On Thu, 17 Aug 2006 20:51:18 -0700, "Dave Bugg"
wrote:

wrote:

"...that we know terrorists are hiding among the civilian
population and that when the necessary bombing occurs, we will *not*
be
able to separate civilians from terrorists; we make it crystal clear
that
if these countries and their citizens continue to harbor these
animals, we
will not deliberately target their civilian populations unlike the
terrorists among them, but we will *not* avoid destroying terrorist
strongholds despite their locations. "

You need to research what "carpet bombing" is. Nothing that you have quoted
even remotely smacks of carpet bombing.

Among other places, the enemy is scattered throughout the
civlian population of Bagdad. We do not have bombs that
can kill one person in a house while sparing the rest of the
household, even assuming we could identify the one person
in a house who was the enemy.

That is not carpet bombing. And this is the exact reason why the terrorists
are responsible for these types of civilian casualties.

'tain't worth it Dave. Fred has his wordlview and mindset and no amount
of reasoning nor clarification is going to change that mindset. He will
re-define your terms to suit his purposes and rationale and then read into
your responses that which he wishes to see -- and not in the same way that
you or I might engage in hyperbole or sarcasm to make a point. The
worldview is pretty well illustrated by the statement made in one of his
other postings, "Mind you, IMHO the only way to defeat a guerilla enemy is
to withdraw while the guerillas are still too weak to take control." The
only way to win is to retreat? What a concept! "Oooh, they're running,
guess we better give up" Yeah, that will work real well.


Doh! Just how are they going to fight us when we're not there?
Do you think the Sadr militia or the Feyadeen Saddam are going
to miss us so badly that they'll send sabotuers over here to goad
us into re-invading?


Doh! right back at you. So, in your opinion, the sole purpose here should
be to prevent our people from being attacked? It's OK if those guerillas
or terrorists fill the vacuum we leave by bugging out and re-instituting
the same kind of regime that again enslaves the people of that country. Now
*that* would be a real good reason for the people of a country we so
treated to truly hate us.

ISTR that is what you call 'twisting words'.


[Sigh] No, it is you twisting words. *Your* statement was "the only way
to DEFEAT a guerrilla enemy is to withdraw while the guerillas are still
too weak to take control" How does preventing *our* people (as you stated
in your second statement, "Just how are they going to fight US when we're
not there?". That is not defeating the guerrillas, it is getting our
people out of the way of the guerillas. Hardly the same thing. But then,
you know that.


As you know the rhetorical question "Just how are they going
to fight us when we're not there?" was a response to your
rhetorical remark, "The only way to win is to retreat? What
a concept! 'Oooh, they're running, guess we better give up'
Yeah, that will work real well."

Did we leave while the guerillas were still weak and
disorganized? No, we did not. I certainly could
not guarantee that turning power over to the Iraqis
sooner would have killed the insurgency in its infancy.
But the current policy certainly neither prevented
nor put down the insurgency. What makes you
think it is even possible to force stability on Iraq?

George H Bush didn't think it was possible to
depose Saddam Hussein and maintain stablity
in Iraq. Norman Swartzkopf, albeit a bit more
reluctantly, saw it the same way. Colin Powell
and Bill Clinton thought the same way.

Aside from God, did GWB give any credence to
ANYONE who had any experience in the region?

Has there been any sign that under current US
policy the insugency and intra-Iraqi violence has
done anything but steadily increase? What do
they call it when someone does the same thing
over and over again and yet expects the results
to change? You might call that "staying the course"
but I am far from convinced that George W Bush
actually expects a good outcome. Just because
someone breaks something does not mean he's
incompetent.

Plainly George W Bush's master plan for victory in
Iraq is to stay the course until January, 2009 and
then blame the next Administration for 'losing the
war.'

--

FF

John wrote:

Unbelievable. Fred the Red has all the answers. Why doesn't the rest of
the world listen to him? He's soooooo smart.

Apparently he's smarter than you. But then I knew that when I saw the webtv
address :-).

--
It's turtles, all the way down

Larry baby, stroke your ego. My computer is about 6 feet away. I use it
for important stuff. You, along with Fred the red are definitely not
important.

Swartzkoff saw it that way after he was told to see it that way. Up till
then, he was all for taking out Hussein.

wrote in message
ups.com...
Mark & Juanita wrote:
George H Bush didn't think it was possible to
depose Saddam Hussein and maintain stablity
in Iraq. Norman Swartzkopf, albeit a bit more
reluctantly, saw it the same way.

CW wrote:
Swartzkoff saw it that way after he was told to see it that way. Up till
then, he was all for taking out Hussein.

wrote in message
ups.com...
Mark & Juanita wrote:
George H Bush didn't think it was possible to
depose Saddam Hussein and maintain stablity
in Iraq. Norman Swartzkopf, albeit a bit more
reluctantly, saw it the same way.

I'm not sure. Some people siad he was obsessed with the
Republican Guard. I tend to think the 'keenly focussed' may
be more apt. The Republican Guard were Iraq's most combat
effective troops, that level of attention was entirely appropriate.

It is hard to switch off that level of intensity so it would be no
surprise if he went a little ape-**** when told to stop the
offensive. He certainly sounded sincere in his subsequent
statements and interviews, including after retirement.

As he put it, we had x number of mandats from the UN, not
one of them said to go to Bahgdad and shoot Saddam Hussein.

--

FF

Dave Bugg wrote:

wrote:
Dave Bugg wrote:
wrote:

I still disagree. There is a difference between being assigned to
Iraq,
and asking to be assigned to Iraq, whether you recognize it or not.

What in the heck is your difficulty in comprehension? You join the military
knowing that you are there to accomplish its mission. Your job description
calls for deployment on demand. Soldiers that volunteer for the military
know that they are volunteering for whatever job the mission calls for,
including deployments. I suppose that you'd say a cabinet shop employee
didn't voluntarily agree to handle wood on the job.

I comprehend that there is a difference between enlisting,
knowing that one might be deployed, and volunteering for
a specific deployment.

Similarly, a cabinet shop employee, at the time he was hired,
did not volunteer for any specific task.

I'm quite sure that you comprehend the differrence as well.

Whereas also it is cowardly and stupid to ignore the effectiveness
of the tactic.
Ignoring? No one is ignoring it. That fact is demonstrated by America by the
restraint of its military power in its tactics in Iraq, and that Israel held
back the mass of its military might during Lebanon.

[1]
How is that different from the way we would act toward the civilian
population if the enemy did not hide among them?

What... are you really serious? The distinction is the application of
overwhelming and unremmiting firepower on the enemy that doesn't hide in
civilian populations. If we ignored that distinction, Bagdad or Beirut would
have been flattened piles of rubble with no doubt about the existence of the
enemy.

Huh? I asked: "How is that different from the way we would
act toward the civilian population if the enemy did not hide
among them? "

The enemy hides among the civilians and we have not flattened
Bahgdad. If the enemy did not hide among the civilians, we
still would not have flattened Bahgdad, right? You haven't
indicated that we would treat the civilians differently--you
ignored the question entirely.


Yet you called the reasons the enemy adopted those tactics
_irrelevent_.

I said the reasons were self evident.

In:
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.w...3?dmode=source
You wrote:

"The reasons they use such tactics is self-evident and irrelevant. You
are
correct about the fact that it points to a fundamental difference in
morality 'tween us and them. "

We agree that they are self-evidend, though we may not agree on
why they use those tactics. We do NOT agree that their reasons
irrelevent, unless you have changed your mind since you wrote
that those reasons were irrelevent.

We still agree on the fundamental moral difference. That is also
why you and I can have a public debate, instead of shooting
at each other.


That sounds awfully inconsistent with 'not ignoring' the reasons
the enemy adopted those tactics.

To you, not to me.

After we've lost, our change in tactics will not matter.

Who says we're going to lose?

I say we lose Iraq if we stay the course. It is far from clear that
we could have imposed Democracy on Iraq, even without the
terrible mis (or mal?) management of the occupation.


Your first answer was to call the reasons 'irrelevent'. Now it would
appear you've changed your mind on the issue of relevence and
so now you say, "No, we don't ignore them." You haven't suggested
anything that has actually been done about it.

And you are talking in circles. I already stated that what has been done is
to restrain our military impact on the civilian population where the
terrorist are hiding.

I quite agree that we act with retraint. The guerillas take
advantage of that restraint to survive.


Mind you, IMHO the only way to defeat a guerilla enemy is
to withdraw while the guerillas are still too weak to take control.

These are not guerillas, these are terrorists. And these terrorists are not
"too weak to take control" because they are the forward guard to Iran's
attempting to assume control.

Some of the guerillas are sponsored by Iran, many are not.
Unlike Viet Nam, the enemy in Iraq does not have a single
central authority. That vastly complicates the situation as
there is no more an effective way to engage them diplomatically
than there is to engage them militarily. The Feyadeen Saddam,
the Sadr militia, and Al Queda in Iraq to name but three,
have different and incompatible agendas.

[1] While it is good practice to judiciously edit quoted text when
replying it is also customary to insert a placeholder such as
[snip] or an elipsis "...". I usually do, my apologies if I have
been inconsistent in this. I note that you do not, and that has
the effect, sometimes of misrepresenting (e.g. "twisting") my
words. That's why I put some of the preceding text back
in, lest it appear that you were responding to something I had
not written. This may cause problems in some newsreaders
that misinterpret plain text as formatting instructions.

--

FF

Prometheus wrote:
Prometheus wrote:

And you keep ignoring the fact that we are purposely targeting
civilians because a terrorist lives next door to them.

We are purposefully targeting the terrorists. And most of the targeting is
done with an attempt to ascertain if civilians are present. Your attempt to
flip this as a purposeful attack on a civilian element is pathetic. But I
suppose you know that.

and we drop a MOAB on the building to get those three guys, we are
intentionally targeting civilians to acheive an objective.

MOAB hasn't been used in the theater, and is not an urban weapon. Again,
your premise is false, but that is the type of pathetic dribble your ilk
continually spouts.

Now, if I
was the hypothetical falafel vendor's brother, I'd be looking at that
bombing in exactly the same way as I look at 9/11 as an American.

Uh, huh. Sure. Of course we don't have a clue, what you really felt about
9/11. To bad your justification of terrorism is as flaccid as your
"hypothetical". Why don't you "hypothetically" blame the terrorists for the
collateral loss of life, instead of America? Oops, I guess you've already
answered that question.

Instead of joining the military, I might hook up with a terrorist
cell.

Of course you would; we've already been able to see where your allegiance's
lie.

It's not a flaccid argument....

It's so flaccid that even a rhetorical dose of Viagra won't help.

The thing is- if we have the right to kill civilians in a foreign
country, we have declared total war.

We are in a war. Wakey, wakey. And even in your rambling re-invention of
something called "total war", civilians are avoided as targets as much as
possible. That doesn't mean they can always be avoided, and depending on the
scope of the war, they may, by necessity, even be involved; ie Dresden,
Hiroshima, Berlin, Hanoi.....

Once we as citizens have
endorsed total war, it grants the right of our enemies to engage in
total war against us.

Whether or not your mind can grasp the concept, Islamic Fascists HAVE been
engaging us in total war.

They then have the right in the eyes of the
greater world to kill US civilians as part of their campaign.

Uh, you DO remember the 1993 and 2001 World Trade Center attacks? Or hows
about the '98 bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie? And I suppose you have
heard of the Bahli night club bombings in 2002 which killed over 200; not
to mention 6 other bombings by terrorist in Indonesia since then? Or how
about the 2004 Madrid bombing? Or maybe you picked up on last year's
bombings in London? Etc. etc. Nope, no history of a war by the bad guys,
and certainly no thought to them targeting civilians.

That's
why we have rules of engagement... snip of the patronizing blah, blah.

There is a city burning in the middle east every day of the week. In
Iraq- and you've just said they're appendages of Iran and Syria. So
how does destroying Iraq and killing the population help us win a war
against terrorist organizations?

Killing the population? shaking head in disbelief Better check your
sources, bubba. The terrorists are the ones that are purposefully targeting
and killing the civilian population. They are the ones who are targeting the
Iraqi police. They are the ones who are killing the democratically elected
leaders, and desperately trying to terrorize people from the polling places.
Your terrorist heroes have been responsible for the death of thousand of
Iraqi citizens, and have been responsible for the bombing and sabotage of
the power, water and other infrastructure in locations in Iraq. Not to
mention their continual attempt to damage the oil production capability that
Iraq needs to gain capital.

It's not about peace, it's about persuing war in the correct way.

Now that is telling. Thanks for sharing.

I don't have a problem with fighting a just war- I have a serious
problem with misguided and high-handed attempts to "spread democracy".

Yeah, that horrible democracy. Yuck. Give us Saddam.

If the terrorist organizations are direct appendages of Iran and
Syria, we have no business overextending our servicemen and women by
sending them into a senseless battle based on a submoron's whim.

The military capability of America is hardly overextended. What is
overextended is relying on a small portion of our overall ground forces to
be recycled and sent on multiple tours.

By the same token, it is your ilk that said that we shouldn't have invaded
Iraq to take out Saddam, and any capability he had to produce or use Weapons
of Mass Destuction. Your comrade's stellar strategy was to "contain" Iraq
and Saddam by the deployment of far more troops in various neighboring
countries, on a never-ending assignment to surround Iraq.

They
need to be fighting Iran and Syria, and Iraq should have been left for
the time being. We do not have infinite resources with which to fight
the entirety of the world just because you said so.

Fighting the "entirety of the world"? Bwahahaha. Yer just making this up as
you go, right? I agree with you though, we need to take out Iran and Syria.

What about North Korea? Iran? Syria? Saddam wasn't going to do
anything- he was a paper tiger, and now it's a reeking mess.

Right, that's what France said about Hitler's rise.

You
can't just say "terrorist" and justify any senseless act of agression
with it.

No one but you has suggested that.

Doing things like that is going to get us in a deep pile of
****, alone and cut off.

Well, first, you have produced a thesis about "senseless act of agression"
that I reject outright. Second, "deep pile of ****"? What are you, some
teenage kid afraid that mom is going to find a pile of porn under his
mattress? Oh, I get it; yer afraid of the big, bad UN. Third, Earth to North
Korea: Don't look now, but we've got satellites overhead that can see any
run-up bloom of a missle launch, and a Trident parked close enough to send a
few megatons down the pipe before yer bird has time to launch.

I know the country singers and close
personal friends of GWB will tell you that we can do anything we want
because we're the USA,

I love the patronizing and purulently bigoted tone you guys always seem to
take.


but there have been powers with empires as
relatively mighty as ours throughout history, and where are they now?
Rome at the height of it's power was an unstoppable military force-
but they are now part of the history books. There is a limit to what
we can do- and if we "stay the course" too much longer, I believe we
will see those limits firsthand.

So you believe that America and other democracies are Evil Incarnate? Again,
thanks for the insight into how your mind is working.

No, I have been making the argument that we are engaging in the
wholesale manufacture of enemies by blindly thrashing around without a
clear plan or vision. The Bush administration's handling of our
military has been akin to a bully on a playground who got his pants
pulled down by a sneaky kid, and decides to cream everyone on the
playground because he's embarassed.

Right, I forgot you believe that Islamic Fascist terrorism only existed when
Bush was elected. And I forgot that we took out Saddam PRIOR to 9/11.

I was ****ed off about 9/11, and
I still am. I'm even more ****ed that we are not doing thing one
about it. We invaded Afganistan- good move. We were going to find
Bin Laudin, great. But that turned out to be too hard, so let's all
just skip merrily off on a side track to bring democracy to Iraq,

So, if the one person, Bin Laden, had been caught or killed, things would
have ended? The fact that the vast majority of the terrorist kingpins have
been decimated is a failure otherwise? You believe that a war on terrorism
is only on one front... Afghanistan? So you are privy to all the tactical
details that are going on in Afghanistan? Gee, from what my friends tell me
when they get back from Afghanistan, things have been difficult, but they
are holding nicely. The democratically elected and constitutional government
is growing stronger by the day. The agricultural drug problem -- opium
production -- has grown; which is the primary reason the Taliban fragment
keeps popping up. They act like south american drug lords, only with the
objective to get as much of the cash crop as possible to fund terroism.


and
in so doing, remove the only secular leader in the entire region.
Saddam was not a good man- but he was not an Islamic extremist.

Again, I appreciate you revealing the way your mind works.

He
kept them out, in large part, because they were rivals for his power.

Problem... he didn't keep them out. He funded them, gave them sanctuary, and
allowed training camps to exist. They weren't rivals for his power, that's
just a plain silly statement. What they were, were allies against the West.

Now we got rid of him- how does that help? Instead of a political
roadblock for the extremists, we have made them a new nest.

Unbelievable... but you stand in good stead with the Cindy Sheehan
irregulars.

That's right, it isn't the guy in rags in the small village doing it.

Then why did you say it was? Talk about ducking and weaving.

That's why I am saying we should not blow up his house and kill his
family.

That is only a relevant argument if that was the mission of our military.

Yes, I know it is more difficult to take the time to find the
persons responsible for terrorist attacks-

Even in house-to-house missions, accidental civilian casualties occur. Hell,
they even occur under police action in America; innocents are accidentally
hurt or killed while trying to apprehend a suspected criminal.

and that doesn't fit with
the American 'I want it NOW so Get 'r dun' ethic- but that does not
mean we should not take the time to kill the right people.

Again, that snot-assed patronizing attitude toward Americans. Your concept
of a fast-food military response is ludicrous, and obviously coming from
someone who knows squat about what it takes to accomplish a military
mission. It's too bad that your mislead concept about how he military
functions in Iraq is sooooo far off base.

We kill
the right people, and the problem is on it's way to being solved

News flash.... we are killing the right people. Lots of them.

- we play "Shock and Awe" by blowing the hell out of Bagdad, we just make
the problem worse.

If we wanted to really blow the hell out of Bagdad, there would be nothing
but dust there. But it is sad how you would like to ignore all tacticle
advantage that would allow our soldiers a better chance of staying alive.

Haven't years of total failure shown you anything
yet?

Again, it is remarkably telling the way you view America. Your words speak
for themselves, I don't need to say a thing.


No, I want a real war faught by real generals who have a sense of
diplomacy,

Right, you want a politically correct war. Hint: Generals exist for the
purpose of knowing the best way to kill as many of the enemy as possible and
destroying their assests. That was why Lincoln turned Sherman lose -- sadly
and with regret -- on the south. Diplomacy exists prior to war and when the
enemy is defeated. Generals worth a damn leave diplomacy to the diplomats.

.......snip of the self-serving crap.

We're not as tough as the media says we are. We lost Vietnam, too.

Really? Can you name one major battle that we lost there, one campaign? As
far as I know, the South Vietnamese lost because we departed too soon,
allowing the North to overwhelm their army. They weren't ready. In the same
exact way that your ilk want us to abandon Iraq today. It was your ilk that,
politically, forced us to abandon Vietnam prematuraly. It was your ilk that
threw bags of urine, vomit and feces on me and my comrades when we came
home. It was your ilk that accused us of reeking purposeful atrocities on
civilians as part of our mission. And it was your ilk who made us feel
abandoned and alone in our own country because of your political "views"
opposing the war.

Your statement is the most telling thing about your whole babblecrap
post..... your ilk want to set us up to lose, because you can't stand the
fact that America DOES see itself as winners, as the most productive people
on this planet, as a people with a generous heart and spirit willing to
stand up to evil and spit in its eye. And we don't ask "permission" to do
so.

So global opinion matters.

Right. That and 4.50 will buy a latte down the street.

We no longer produce our own goods- China
does.

China, and other countries do produce a lot of goods that we buy. But that
doesn't mean that we do not have the capability to put our industrial
capacity up to speed if desired. Don't confuse fiscal decision making with
industrial capability. The Japanese and Germans made that mistake at Pearl
Harbor.

We don't grow enough food to feed ourselves.

What planet are you living on? We not only feed ourselves, we export HUGE
quantities of surplus around the world. Again, you confuse trade and cost,
vs. capacity. Yes, we import a lot of some food stuffs, but we also EXPORT a
lot of foodstuffs. I think the grain farmers and fruit producers here in
Washington State would be surprised to read your opinion.

We have huge
debts that are held by other countries.

Because they get a great return on their investments. Hint: most countries
have debts from foreign investors. In fact, my portfolio holds a number of
such foreign investment.

We don't have enough oil to
keep the status quo.

That is fixable. Between shale oils, gassifying coal --- to which we are a
leading resource holder -- ethanol production, and beginning to drill for
known and yet to be discovered oil reserves, we can make ourselves far more
sufficient. Not to mention that with continuing technological research into
hydrogen fuel cells and other alternatives, oil may not be a primary fuel
source within the next twenty years.

What, pray tell, are we going to do when no one
will stand alongside us in ten years, or twenty?

And what will you and your ilk do when your self-serving delusion in this
regard never materializes? Yes, I know you hope it will, but hope is not
reality.

Will jingoistic
sentiment ..... snip

Again, the rest of your diatribe falls into the same multi-category of
self-loathing nihlism. It is a mark worn by your ilk as a badge of honor.
But the fact is that those who profess your beliefs do so out of a basic
hatred of the current administration, and not of some fantastical illusion
of what is best for this country. You have regurgitated a specific political
mantra without a smattering of anything based on historical context, in
ignorance brought about the blind hatred you feel toward those who oppose
your vision.

You have much in common with those who believe in the Biblical
"Tribulation". The difference is that your ilk get goosebumps of joy at the
future hope of America's doom. You wallow in the seething cauldron of a
hoped for American Apocalypse; you want to see the Horsemen gallop, cutting
their way through the goodness of a traditional America ---- a Traditional
America which embitters you and makes you retch in political agony. You
would rather see America suffer defeat than be victorious, when victory
demonstrates the failings of your political desperation.

You and your ilk are America's bitter spawn.
--
Dave
www.davebbq.com

This country fought one of the longest and, ultimately, most
successful guerilla wars in history. It was fought with varying
degrees of intensity from the 1600s into the late 1800s. We tend to
mostly think about and enjoy the entertainment from the mid-to
late-1880s portion though. Of course I am discussing thge Indian Wars.
I seem to remember some collateral damage to civilian populations on
both sides. We figured out how to fight that within our own boarders,
but seem incapable of applying the lessons learned to similar
situations. Mostly because we are no longer accepting of the fact that
these are long term wars of attrition and that they can't be
completely by the Marquis of Queensbury rules.

Dave Hall

On 24 Aug 2006 08:06:51 -0700, wrote:


Dave Bugg wrote:

wrote:
Dave Bugg wrote:
wrote:

I still disagree. There is a difference between being assigned to
Iraq,
and asking to be assigned to Iraq, whether you recognize it or not.

What in the heck is your difficulty in comprehension? You join the military
knowing that you are there to accomplish its mission. Your job description
calls for deployment on demand. Soldiers that volunteer for the military
know that they are volunteering for whatever job the mission calls for,
including deployments. I suppose that you'd say a cabinet shop employee
didn't voluntarily agree to handle wood on the job.

I comprehend that there is a difference between enlisting,
knowing that one might be deployed, and volunteering for
a specific deployment.

Similarly, a cabinet shop employee, at the time he was hired,
did not volunteer for any specific task.

I'm quite sure that you comprehend the differrence as well.

Whereas also it is cowardly and stupid to ignore the effectiveness
of the tactic.
Ignoring? No one is ignoring it. That fact is demonstrated by America by the
restraint of its military power in its tactics in Iraq, and that Israel held
back the mass of its military might during Lebanon.

[1]
How is that different from the way we would act toward the civilian
population if the enemy did not hide among them?

What... are you really serious? The distinction is the application of
overwhelming and unremmiting firepower on the enemy that doesn't hide in
civilian populations. If we ignored that distinction, Bagdad or Beirut would
have been flattened piles of rubble with no doubt about the existence of the
enemy.

Huh? I asked: "How is that different from the way we would
act toward the civilian population if the enemy did not hide
among them? "

The enemy hides among the civilians and we have not flattened
Bahgdad. If the enemy did not hide among the civilians, we
still would not have flattened Bahgdad, right? You haven't
indicated that we would treat the civilians differently--you
ignored the question entirely.


Yet you called the reasons the enemy adopted those tactics
_irrelevent_.

I said the reasons were self evident.

In:
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.w...3?dmode=source
You wrote:

"The reasons they use such tactics is self-evident and irrelevant. You
are
correct about the fact that it points to a fundamental difference in
morality 'tween us and them. "

We agree that they are self-evidend, though we may not agree on
why they use those tactics. We do NOT agree that their reasons
irrelevent, unless you have changed your mind since you wrote
that those reasons were irrelevent.

We still agree on the fundamental moral difference. That is also
why you and I can have a public debate, instead of shooting
at each other.


That sounds awfully inconsistent with 'not ignoring' the reasons
the enemy adopted those tactics.

To you, not to me.

After we've lost, our change in tactics will not matter.

Who says we're going to lose?

I say we lose Iraq if we stay the course. It is far from clear that
we could have imposed Democracy on Iraq, even without the
terrible mis (or mal?) management of the occupation.


Your first answer was to call the reasons 'irrelevent'. Now it would
appear you've changed your mind on the issue of relevence and
so now you say, "No, we don't ignore them." You haven't suggested
anything that has actually been done about it.

And you are talking in circles. I already stated that what has been done is
to restrain our military impact on the civilian population where the
terrorist are hiding.

I quite agree that we act with retraint. The guerillas take
advantage of that restraint to survive.


Mind you, IMHO the only way to defeat a guerilla enemy is
to withdraw while the guerillas are still too weak to take control.

These are not guerillas, these are terrorists. And these terrorists are not
"too weak to take control" because they are the forward guard to Iran's
attempting to assume control.

Some of the guerillas are sponsored by Iran, many are not.
Unlike Viet Nam, the enemy in Iraq does not have a single
central authority. That vastly complicates the situation as
there is no more an effective way to engage them diplomatically
than there is to engage them militarily. The Feyadeen Saddam,
the Sadr militia, and Al Queda in Iraq to name but three,
have different and incompatible agendas.

[1] While it is good practice to judiciously edit quoted text when
replying it is also customary to insert a placeholder such as
[snip] or an elipsis "...". I usually do, my apologies if I have
been inconsistent in this. I note that you do not, and that has
the effect, sometimes of misrepresenting (e.g. "twisting") my
words. That's why I put some of the preceding text back
in, lest it appear that you were responding to something I had
not written. This may cause problems in some newsreaders
that misinterpret plain text as formatting instructions.

Morris Dovey wrote:
(in
) said:

| I think 'Islamofascist' is a perfectly good term for Al Queda, the
| Taleban and the like. No doubt there are some, and not jsut
| Muslims, who when they hear GWB use it really do _think_ he means
| all Muslims. He doesn't waste much of his breathe disabusing them
| of that notion.

It's not a good term for Al Queda - the only real association between
Islam and Al Queda is that they share a common geographic and
linguistic context. AQ tries to use Islam as a "hook" to attract
support from within that context, very much in the same way that an
American religious leader attempted to use his standing in his
Christian community to call for the murder of a South American
president. The AQ folks would be shouting "Crusade!" if they thought
that would improve traction.

I agree in part.

It is my understanding that bin Laden is a Wahhabi Sunni, a small
sect that unfortunatey includes the House of Sa'ud, though the
family members who share power are probably more or less token
in their beliefs, relying or religious rhetoric to marshal loyalty in
the population. An analogy to American politics suggests itself.

The Wahhabis are extremists, pretty much at the opposite end
of the religious spectrum from Suffiism, which is banned in Saudi
Arabia.

Some of the Wahhabi's are so extreme that they would happily
wipe out all other Muslims, secular Muslims in particular, if
there were no other religions to target instead.

To consider bin Laden and Wahhabism as exemplar of Islam would
be worse even than to consider Vernon Howell (David Koresh) and
the Branch Davidians as exemplar of Christianity.

In a similar vein, Saudia Arabia under the present rulers is no more
exemplar of a Muslim country than Serbia under Millosevic was
of a Christian country. It was MiIlosevic's bad luck that he didn't
control large petroleum reserves contracted to American and Western
European countries. Plus his crimes were comitted against European
Muslims, not Arabian Muslims.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahabbi

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Saud

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branch_Davidian

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milosevic

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity

--

FF

After comments from Dave whose proposed action is "Kill them all and
let God/Allah sort them out".

You seem to have all the "answers" Dave....why aren't you over in Iraq
leading the charge along with your family?

Then you could enjoy the 500lb. bombs that the US is dropping in
civilian neighborhoods in person.

I also note you are using the typical conservative name calling that
denotes a reduced IQ and inability to argue an issue intelligently.

Could you restate your arguement for civilized society....try using
small words...it's best to use what you have to work with.

I assume that you do not realize that your kind of thinking is more of
a danger to the United States than Osama Bin Forgotten is.

TMT

Dave Bugg wrote:
Prometheus wrote:
Prometheus wrote:

And you keep ignoring the fact that we are purposely targeting
civilians because a terrorist lives next door to them.

We are purposefully targeting the terrorists. And most of the targeting is
done with an attempt to ascertain if civilians are present. Your attempt to
flip this as a purposeful attack on a civilian element is pathetic. But I
suppose you know that.

and we drop a MOAB on the building to get those three guys, we are
intentionally targeting civilians to acheive an objective.

MOAB hasn't been used in the theater, and is not an urban weapon. Again,
your premise is false, but that is the type of pathetic dribble your ilk
continually spouts.

Now, if I
was the hypothetical falafel vendor's brother, I'd be looking at that
bombing in exactly the same way as I look at 9/11 as an American.

Uh, huh. Sure. Of course we don't have a clue, what you really felt about
9/11. To bad your justification of terrorism is as flaccid as your
"hypothetical". Why don't you "hypothetically" blame the terrorists for the
collateral loss of life, instead of America? Oops, I guess you've already
answered that question.

Instead of joining the military, I might hook up with a terrorist
cell.

Of course you would; we've already been able to see where your allegiance's
lie.

It's not a flaccid argument....

It's so flaccid that even a rhetorical dose of Viagra won't help.

The thing is- if we have the right to kill civilians in a foreign
country, we have declared total war.

We are in a war. Wakey, wakey. And even in your rambling re-invention of
something called "total war", civilians are avoided as targets as much as
possible. That doesn't mean they can always be avoided, and depending on the
scope of the war, they may, by necessity, even be involved; ie Dresden,
Hiroshima, Berlin, Hanoi.....

Once we as citizens have
endorsed total war, it grants the right of our enemies to engage in
total war against us.

Whether or not your mind can grasp the concept, Islamic Fascists HAVE been
engaging us in total war.

They then have the right in the eyes of the
greater world to kill US civilians as part of their campaign.

Uh, you DO remember the 1993 and 2001 World Trade Center attacks? Or hows
about the '98 bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie? And I suppose you have
heard of the Bahli night club bombings in 2002 which killed over 200; not
to mention 6 other bombings by terrorist in Indonesia since then? Or how
about the 2004 Madrid bombing? Or maybe you picked up on last year's
bombings in London? Etc. etc. Nope, no history of a war by the bad guys,
and certainly no thought to them targeting civilians.

That's
why we have rules of engagement... snip of the patronizing blah, blah.

There is a city burning in the middle east every day of the week. In
Iraq- and you've just said they're appendages of Iran and Syria. So
how does destroying Iraq and killing the population help us win a war
against terrorist organizations?

Killing the population? shaking head in disbelief Better check your
sources, bubba. The terrorists are the ones that are purposefully targeting
and killing the civilian population. They are the ones who are targeting the
Iraqi police. They are the ones who are killing the democratically elected
leaders, and desperately trying to terrorize people from the polling places.
Your terrorist heroes have been responsible for the death of thousand of
Iraqi citizens, and have been responsible for the bombing and sabotage of
the power, water and other infrastructure in locations in Iraq. Not to
mention their continual attempt to damage the oil production capability that
Iraq needs to gain capital.

It's not about peace, it's about persuing war in the correct way.

Now that is telling. Thanks for sharing.

I don't have a problem with fighting a just war- I have a serious
problem with misguided and high-handed attempts to "spread democracy".

Yeah, that horrible democracy. Yuck. Give us Saddam.

If the terrorist organizations are direct appendages of Iran and
Syria, we have no business overextending our servicemen and women by
sending them into a senseless battle based on a submoron's whim.

The military capability of America is hardly overextended. What is
overextended is relying on a small portion of our overall ground forces to
be recycled and sent on multiple tours.

By the same token, it is your ilk that said that we shouldn't have invaded
Iraq to take out Saddam, and any capability he had to produce or use Weapons
of Mass Destuction. Your comrade's stellar strategy was to "contain" Iraq
and Saddam by the deployment of far more troops in various neighboring
countries, on a never-ending assignment to surround Iraq.

They
need to be fighting Iran and Syria, and Iraq should have been left for
the time being. We do not have infinite resources with which to fight
the entirety of the world just because you said so.

Fighting the "entirety of the world"? Bwahahaha. Yer just making this up as
you go, right? I agree with you though, we need to take out Iran and Syria.

What about North Korea? Iran? Syria? Saddam wasn't going to do
anything- he was a paper tiger, and now it's a reeking mess.

Right, that's what France said about Hitler's rise.

You
can't just say "terrorist" and justify any senseless act of agression
with it.

No one but you has suggested that.

Doing things like that is going to get us in a deep pile of
****, alone and cut off.

Well, first, you have produced a thesis about "senseless act of agression"
that I reject outright. Second, "deep pile of ****"? What are you, some
teenage kid afraid that mom is going to find a pile of porn under his
mattress? Oh, I get it; yer afraid of the big, bad UN. Third, Earth to North
Korea: Don't look now, but we've got satellites overhead that can see any
run-up bloom of a missle launch, and a Trident parked close enough to send a
few megatons down the pipe before yer bird has time to launch.

I know the country singers and close
personal friends of GWB will tell you that we can do anything we want
because we're the USA,

I love the patronizing and purulently bigoted tone you guys always seem to
take.


but there have been powers with empires as
relatively mighty as ours throughout history, and where are they now?
Rome at the height of it's power was an unstoppable military force-
but they are now part of the history books. There is a limit to what
we can do- and if we "stay the course" too much longer, I believe we
will see those limits firsthand.

So you believe that America and other democracies are Evil Incarnate? Again,
thanks for the insight into how your mind is working.

No, I have been making the argument that we are engaging in the
wholesale manufacture of enemies by blindly thrashing around without a
clear plan or vision. The Bush administration's handling of our
military has been akin to a bully on a playground who got his pants
pulled down by a sneaky kid, and decides to cream everyone on the
playground because he's embarassed.

Right, I forgot you believe that Islamic Fascist terrorism only existed when
Bush was elected. And I forgot that we took out Saddam PRIOR to 9/11.

I was ****ed off about 9/11, and
I still am. I'm even more ****ed that we are not doing thing one
about it. We invaded Afganistan- good move. We were going to find
Bin Laudin, great. But that turned out to be too hard, so let's all
just skip merrily off on a side track to bring democracy to Iraq,

So, if the one person, Bin Laden, had been caught or killed, things would
have ended? The fact that the vast majority of the terrorist kingpins have
been decimated is a failure otherwise? You believe that a war on terrorism
is only on one front... Afghanistan? So you are privy to all the tactical
details that are going on in Afghanistan? Gee, from what my friends tell me
when they get back from Afghanistan, things have been difficult, but they
are holding nicely. The democratically elected and constitutional government
is growing stronger by the day. The agricultural drug problem -- opium
production -- has grown; which is the primary reason the Taliban fragment
keeps popping up. They act like south american drug lords, only with the
objective to get as much of the cash crop as possible to fund terroism.


and
in so doing, remove the only secular leader in the entire region.
Saddam was not a good man- but he was not an Islamic extremist.

Again, I appreciate you revealing the way your mind works.

He
kept them out, in large part, because they were rivals for his power.

Problem... he didn't keep them out. He funded them, gave them sanctuary, and
allowed training camps to exist. They weren't rivals for his power, that's
just a plain silly statement. What they were, were allies against the West.

Now we got rid of him- how does that help? Instead of a political
roadblock for the extremists, we have made them a new nest.

Unbelievable... but you stand in good stead with the Cindy Sheehan
irregulars.

That's right, it isn't the guy in rags in the small village doing it.

Then why did you say it was? Talk about ducking and weaving.

That's why I am saying we should not blow up his house and kill his
family.

That is only a relevant argument if that was the mission of our military.

Yes, I know it is more difficult to take the time to find the
persons responsible for terrorist attacks-

Even in house-to-house missions, accidental civilian casualties occur. Hell,
they even occur under police action in America; innocents are accidentally
hurt or killed while trying to apprehend a suspected criminal.

and that doesn't fit with
the American 'I want it NOW so Get 'r dun' ethic- but that does not
mean we should not take the time to kill the right people.

Again, that snot-assed patronizing attitude toward Americans. Your concept
of a fast-food military response is ludicrous, and obviously coming from
someone who knows squat about what it takes to accomplish a military
mission. It's too bad that your mislead concept about how he military
functions in Iraq is sooooo far off base.

We kill
the right people, and the problem is on it's way to being solved

News flash.... we are killing the right people. Lots of them.

- we play "Shock and Awe" by blowing the hell out of Bagdad, we just make
the problem worse.

If we wanted to really blow the hell out of Bagdad, there would be nothing
but dust there. But it is sad how you would like to ignore all tacticle
advantage that would allow our soldiers a better chance of staying alive.

Haven't years of total failure shown you anything
yet?

Again, it is remarkably telling the way you view America. Your words speak
for themselves, I don't need to say a thing.


No, I want a real war faught by real generals who have a sense of
diplomacy,

Right, you want a politically correct war. Hint: Generals exist for the
purpose of knowing the best way to kill as many of the enemy as possible and
destroying their assests. That was why Lincoln turned Sherman lose -- sadly
and with regret -- on the south. Diplomacy exists prior to war and when the
enemy is defeated. Generals worth a damn leave diplomacy to the diplomats.

......snip of the self-serving crap.

We're not as tough as the media says we are. We lost Vietnam, too.

Really? Can you name one major battle that we lost there, one campaign? As
far as I know, the South Vietnamese lost because we departed too soon,
allowing the North to overwhelm their army. They weren't ready. In the same
exact way that your ilk want us to abandon Iraq today. It was your ilk that,
politically, forced us to abandon Vietnam prematuraly. It was your ilk that
threw bags of urine, vomit and feces on me and my comrades when we came
home. It was your ilk that accused us of reeking purposeful atrocities on
civilians as part of our mission. And it was your ilk who made us feel
abandoned and alone in our own country because of your political "views"
opposing the war.

Your statement is the most telling thing about your whole babblecrap
post..... your ilk want to set us up to lose, because you can't stand the
fact that America DOES see itself as winners, as the most productive people
on this planet, as a people with a generous heart and spirit willing to
stand up to evil and spit in its eye. And we don't ask "permission" to do
so.

So global opinion matters.

Right. That and 4.50 will buy a latte down the street.

We no longer produce our own goods- China
does.

China, and other countries do produce a lot of goods that we buy. But that
doesn't mean that we do not have the capability to put our industrial
capacity up to speed if desired. Don't confuse fiscal decision making with
industrial capability. The Japanese and Germans made that mistake at Pearl
Harbor.

We don't grow enough food to feed ourselves.

What planet are you living on? We not only feed ourselves, we export HUGE
quantities of surplus around the world. Again, you confuse trade and cost,
vs. capacity. Yes, we import a lot of some food stuffs, but we also EXPORT a
lot of foodstuffs. I think the grain farmers and fruit producers here in
Washington State would be surprised to read your opinion.

We have huge
debts that are held by other countries.

Because they get a great return on their investments. Hint: most countries
have debts from foreign investors. In fact, my portfolio holds a number of
such foreign investment.

We don't have enough oil to
keep the status quo.

That is fixable. Between shale oils, gassifying coal --- to which we are a
leading resource holder -- ethanol production, and beginning to drill for
known and yet to be discovered oil reserves, we can make ourselves far more
sufficient. Not to mention that with continuing technological research into
hydrogen fuel cells and other alternatives, oil may not be a primary fuel
source within the next twenty years.

What, pray tell, are we going to do when no one
will stand alongside us in ten years, or twenty?

And what will you and your ilk do when your self-serving delusion in this
regard never materializes? Yes, I know you hope it will, but hope is not
reality.

Will jingoistic
sentiment ..... snip

Again, the rest of your diatribe falls into the same multi-category of
self-loathing nihlism. It is a mark worn by your ilk as a badge of honor.
But the fact is that those who profess your beliefs do so out of a basic
hatred of the current administration, and not of some fantastical illusion
of what is best for this country. You have regurgitated a specific political
mantra without a smattering of anything based on historical context, in
ignorance brought about the blind hatred you feel toward those who oppose
your vision.

You have much in common with those who believe in the Biblical
"Tribulation". The difference is that your ilk get goosebumps of joy at the
future hope of America's doom. You wallow in the seething cauldron of a
hoped for American Apocalypse; you want to see the Horsemen gallop, cutting
their way through the goodness of a traditional America ---- a Traditional
America which embitters you and makes you retch in political agony. You
would rather see America suffer defeat than be victorious, when victory
demonstrates the failings of your political desperation.

You and your ilk are America's bitter spawn.
--
Dave
www.davebbq.com

Too_Many_Tools wrote:

The typical top-posting, non-snipping, frustrated peace-activist babble.

After comments from Dave whose proposed action is "Kill them all and
let God/Allah sort them out".

Now that's a real clever lie. Try reading for context.

You seem to have all the "answers" Dave....why aren't you over in Iraq
leading the charge along with your family?

Been there in a different coupla wars. I've walked the talk. You just simply
squawk.

Then you could enjoy the 500lb. bombs that the US is dropping in
civilian neighborhoods in person.

Uh, huh.

I also note you are using the typical conservative name ...

Pot-kettle-black.

Could you restate your arguement for civilized society....try using
small words...it's best to use what you have to work with.

Small words ain't the issue, Bubba. It's your inability to proffer a
coherent counter.

I assume that you do not realize that your kind of thinking is more of
a danger to the United States than Osama Bin Forgotten is.

Quite the opposite, cutie-pie. As I said before, you and your ilk are
America's bitter and ungrateful spawn.

--
Dave
www.davebbq.com

Has anyone considered what the results would be if an nuclear bomb was
exploded in Bagdad...next to the Green Zone?

And that bomb could belong to either side....

TMT

wrote:
Dave Bugg wrote:
wrote:

"...that we know terrorists are hiding among the civilian
population and that when the necessary bombing occurs, we will *not*
be
able to separate civilians from terrorists; we make it crystal clear
that
if these countries and their citizens continue to harbor these
animals, we
will not deliberately target their civilian populations unlike the
terrorists among them, but we will *not* avoid destroying terrorist
strongholds despite their locations. "

You need to research what "carpet bombing" is. Nothing that you have quoted even remotely smacks of carpet bombing.

I know what carpet bombing is. Mark or Juanita did not use the
words 'carpet bombing', but he or she did advocate a plicy that
could only be implimented by carpet bombing.


Among other places, the enemy is scattered throughout the
civlian population of Bagdad. We do not have bombs that
can kill one person in a house while sparing the rest of the
household, even assuming we could identify the one person
in a house who was the enemy.

That is not carpet bombing. And this is the exact reason why the terrorists
are responsible for these types of civilian casualties.


Correct. Note also I said THAT cannot be done. Since
the enemy is interspersed in the civilian population IF
our policy is to bomb them without regard to colateral
casualties, as Mark or Juanita advocates, the only
technology at our disposal that can do that IS carpet
bombing. Mark of Juanita will deny advocating carpet
bombing Baghdad but he or she will NOT explain any
practical alternative approach that would actually impliment
what he or she advocates.

Can you describe an effective way, substantively different
from carpet bombing, to bomb an urban guerilla army
out of existance?

Every once in a while I read a rant on the internet about
how the Repubican party has been hijacked by a powerful
sect intent on fomenting war throughout the Middle East to
bring on Armageddon (which is actually a valley in the Holy
Land) and thus fullfill their 'endtime' prophecy. Typically I
regard the ranters themselves as crazier than the
backsliders they criticize. But when I read what Mark or
Juanita has to say, it gives me pause.

--

FF