Our Losses in Iraq...

[Big Ruger]

So far your big sources of info are
1.sixty minutes.(in any conflict you can find a few who think its all wrong,e.g VVAW, thse are the same dopes who brought atrocity stoies from Nam vets who WERE NEVER THERE. And lets not forget fake documents.
2.Three kings w. the great sage george clooney? you aint really serious!( member when algore used the movie "day after tomorrow to prove global warming)? IT WAS A MOVIE as in not real, fantasy, Make believe.
3. Micheal moore? what has this idiot ever said that bore any resemblance to fact? (there is no terrorist threat)
NUFF SAID

 

[HappyGunner]

This would be

A pretty funny thread. But with everyday bringing news of more of our servicemen being killed in Iraq it does not make me even smile let alone laugh. Wonder what the families of all the servicemen killed in Iraq this past year will be thankful for this coming Thanksging? I am sure W Bush and his "Advisers" will be thinking about all the servicemen and their families this coming Thankgiving day as they eat and drink and enjoy the good safe life here in the United States far away from the killing in Iraq.

 

[JohnKSa]

Typical--light on facts, heavy on emotion.

For the record, Bush has already spent one Thanksgiving in Iraq with the troops--it was heavily covered on the "evening news"--surprised you missed that.

 

[HappyGunner]

Wonderful

Thanksgiving with the troops last year. Since you are living in Texas your a Bush baby right? Give us all a break

 

[JohnKSa]

By "us all" do you mean all the people who choose to be uneducated about international events? By "a break" do you mean that you wish to continue in your current state of uninformation without being prodded to learn about your world? Sure--here's your break. Don't read this thread anymore and you'll feel better about yourself and you won't have to worry that your small view of the world might be painfully expanded.

 

[gundog98k]

Whew... a lively debate indeed!

To Cactus:

1) The Reference to "3 Kings" was a bad example, I know. But was used to illustrate for those who don't follow foriegn politics. There are references in the film to Saddam being more concerned with the uprisings than what our troops were up to.

2) I can certainly show you the borders of "Palestine". Refer to any world map published prior to 1947. It sits exactly where the country of Israel is today.

To JohnKSa:

You're not exactly racking up bonus points for research ability, nor are you getting a reputation as a person who absorbs and retains useful information by admitting that you endorsed and voted for a candidate whose name you can't spell. The rest of the quoted paragraph is commensurate with the obvious lack research demonstrated by your lack of basic knowledge of the person you wanted to be president.

I'm not trying to earn bonus points here. Sorry if my spelling was off, but hey, What does your statement have to do with my comment about how religion plays into this. And by the way, can you point out a "war" or conflict in the last 10 or 20 years that wasn't caused by religious differences? I can't seem to come up with any.

Did you ever consider that our residence on this planet means we're involved in the WHOLE FREAKING WORLD? Sorry, that logic thing keeps popping up...

Certainly, we just don't need to be running the whole thing. Nothing wrong with logic, if it's used. I simply think we don't need to be invading countries we have no reason to. Especially at the cost of a thousand plus of our troops and BILLIONS of our tax dollars. :barf: No matter what anyone thinks about it, with what we have spent in Iraq, you could have fixed Social Security, or paid off some of our foriegn debt, or bailed out an airline or two. What ever your causes might be I think $80+ billion would have helped them out. If you read around this board, there are plenty of good examples of things we should be doing right here at home. I think the quote "Think globally, act locally." about covers my opinion.

To HappyGunner:

Like I said, nice to meet you. We need more people like you. Especially ones willing to speak out. We damn sure should take a whole lot better care of those we send off to fight, no matter what the reason. Of course I'm a bit biased here, I work with the troops. But I believe sticking by your own is what it's all about.

 

[JohnKSa]

My point on your religion quote was not that religion was a non player--it certainly is--FROM THE ISLAMIC SIDE. Saying that Bush had us invade Iraq because he's anti-islam is foolishness--as is the idea that we invaded Iraq with no reason. I suppose that Congress supported the invasion because they're all Christians too. And that England and the other countries that sent troops did so because they're all anti-islamic.

The fact that you admitted voting for a man whose name you can't even spell is relevent because the level of non-information demonstrated by that admission is commensurate with the level of your grasp of the topic of the thread. Might I suggest that in the future you refrain from discussing such complicated topics and further that you vote for candidates with simpler, shorter, single syllable names...

Certainly we don't need to be running the whole world. Unfortunately when the rest of the world starts killing us off a few thousand at a whack, the appeal of isolationism wanes a bit.

 

[gundog98k]

Reply to JohnKSa:

Sorry you've taken offense. But if you will notice, I started this thread. And I certainly never said we invaded Iraq for G. W.'s religious beliefs. The reason we invaded Iraq is anyones guess. There are a multitude of possibilities. None of which I like thinking about so I won't start here.
Isolationism has nothing to do with this. We are a big part of the world and I know it better than most. I'm a Merchant Seaman. But we don't need to be policing the whole thing. No one should be. If everyone worked a bit harder to clear up the problems in their own backyards, we'd all be a lot better off. And you must admit, when it comes to terrorism and/or conflict, we've been fairly lucky. Look at places like Somalia or Ulster or Angola. Lots of place out there with nasty little wars going on for decades. They could have spilled over to our shores long ago.

 

[Cactus]

I can certainly show you the borders of "Palestine". Refer to any world map published prior to 1947. It sits exactly where the country of Israel is today.

And if you are familier with the original 1948 U.N. proposal for the area of "Palestine" (a geographical region under the control of Great Briton, not a political entity or nation) you know that it called for the West Bank to be the "Palestinian" homeland. However, the Arab nations refused to go along with this proposal because they intended to destroy Israel (which has been populated by Jews since before Christ's birth) as soon as it was declaired a nation and give THAT land to the "Palestinians". The Arabs convinced large numbers of the "Palestinians" (who were mostly Jordanian) living in Israel to vacate their property in order to get out of the way of the battles

Unfortunately, (for the Arabs) they underestimated the fighting ability of the Israelis!

After the Israelis defeated the Arabs, they refused to return the land to the "Palestinians" who cooperated with the Arabs or allow them to return (why would they want treasonous people to return). These "Palestinians" that had left Israel were refused residency in Jordan, Egypt and Syria, and were placed in refugee camps in the ARAB nations. The "Palestinians" that stayed in Israel, are allowed full citizenship in Israel. As a matter of fact, these Israeli "Palestinians" are the only Arabs in the entire middle east that can vote!

But then again, it's so much easier to just blame the Jews for all the problems! :barf:

 

[JohnKSa]

I certainly never said we invaded Iraq for G. W.'s religious beliefs

In that case, perhaps you can tell me what you meant by this statement.

George is a fundamentalist christian, and he thinks islam is a sin. So our boys and girls go off and die in a country that doesn't want or need our help, all in the name of god.

But we don't need to be policing the whole thing. No one should be.

Sounds good but unfortunately when the world starts killing us a few thousand at a time then something DOES need to be done--unless you think that it's ok to just sit back and watch while our countrymen (and women and children) are murdered.

we've been fairly lucky

Yeah, right. Where were you on September 11, 2001? Or is it your opinion that we'll need another few thousand killed before we can claim to be unlucky?

 

[Destructo6]

As Cactus said, the area now referred to as "Palestine" or "Israel" was a British Mandate, as was Iraq and Egypt, after the end of WWI and the subsequent break up of the Ottoman Empire. Check the "Sykes-Pichot" agreement of 1916 for some more details. There hasn't been anything resembling home rule in that area since, at least, before the Mamluk conquests in the 1200s.

If I were a Palestinian living in one of the refugee camps in the neighboring countries, I would be as angry at my "hosts", who keep me eternally as a refugee, rather than allow me to naturalize.

Let's see, we have a false appeal to authority (3 kings) and an appeal to emotion. How many more logical fallacies can be fit into this thread?

 

[LAK]

Destructo6

As Cactus said, the area now referred to as "Palestine" or "Israel" was a British Mandate, as was Iraq and Egypt, after the end of WWI and the subsequent break up of the Ottoman Empire. Check the "Sykes-Pichot" agreement of 1916 for some more details. There hasn't been anything resembling home rule in that area since, at least, before the Mamluk conquests in the 1200s

Well summarized!

And it should not surprize anyone that those that live in the current State of Israel, Palestine, Iraq, Egypt, Kuwait, etc and the surrounding region are not likely to accept a perpetual series of outside mandates on their borders, governments and other affairs.

 

[Hal]

Do you have a copy of the declaration of war issued by congress? I could be wrong, but I don't believe congress does either

Nope -it's passe to need a declartion of war to invade a soverign country.

Tricky Dicky did it - congress sanctioned it by saying nothing.

((FWIW - IMNSHO, Nixon should have been given the highest possible honors for invading Cambodia and doing what was morally right,,,then taken out and had his necked stretched for violating everything he swore to uphold.))

Anyhow - you_just_don't_get_it. We are in a war. If we lose it, you can kiss life as we know it goodbye.,,,not just until the reset button is pushed on your Game Boy,,,forever,,and ever,,and ever..

 

[dfaugh]

Mixed emotions

I'm not sure how I feel about it any more...I was all for going into Afganistan after 9/11...I was for going into Iraq, too...However, as evey day passes, and the casualty numbers, for U.S troops, continue to climb, I'm getting alot of Vietnam "deja vu". I lost alot of friends over there, and we never accomplished a thing in Southeast Asia. And I'm not sure what we're accomplishing in Iraq, at the moment.

Logically, I see what we're SUPPOSED to be doing there, but the reality is I don't see it happening....ever. We're talking about a country with deep internal religious schisms. By removing Hussein (a good idea on the surface) we've simply allowed for a nasty civil war(which WE are currently fighting)....Which will probably happen whether we leave today, or 10 years from now...In the mean time our people are dying (again) trying to protect the Iraqi people from each other. (Yup, just like Vietnam.)

Some of this may be an emotional response, as I just found out last night that the husband of a good friend was seriously wounded in an RPG attack on his Humvee...His best buddy, the driver, didn't make it.

P.S. That POS Bill Clinton was DIRECTLY responsible for most, if not all, of our casualties in the raid in Mogadishu...Read the book "Blackhawk Down" (the movie is good but dosn't explain that he "vetoed" a request for armor for the convoy, and an AC-130 Spectre gunship to fly in support of the mission. If you don't think that woulda made a difference, lookup the specs on a Spectre, sometime.)

 

[Tallbill]

It seems that there are quite a few links to Al Queda and other terrorist groups that dont like us in Iraq. I agree that we need to keep killing them before then strike us at home.

 

[PaleRyder]

To Legalhack: Good luck, and I hope you come back safe and sound.

I might add, I was not opposed to going into Afghanistan, Al Quaida was there, being harbored by the Taliban.
I was opposed however, to invading Iraq, as they were not involved. And contrary to popular belief, there was information all over the net at the time, foreign news agencies, etc, that were screaming there were no WMDs in Iraq.

However, we are there now, so I support our people there, and want them back safe.
I personally believe we should just withdraw everyone from the Middle East, tell them we will not bother them anymore. In fact, they'll never see us there again. We'll leave them alone. But if they attack us (Like 9-11) we will annihilate them.
I'd also withdraw support for Israel. They've been very adamant they don't need our help anymore, so fine. Let's get out of there too, and kick the U.N. out of the US while we're at it.

I know with the oil and the political setup in the world now, this is very unlikely and not going to happen. At the very least, I wish we would withdraw from the UN and kick them the h*ll out of the US.

 

[MrAcheson]

Do you have a copy of the declaration of war issued by congress? I could be wrong, but I don't believe congress does either.

Nope -it's passe to need a declartion of war to invade a soverign country.

The authorization for use of force in Iraq was a de facto declaration of war according to the laws of this country. It doesn't matter that it didn't say "we declare war".

As for the rest, neo-isolationism is a fools game. Our economy needs foriegn resources to survive and that means engaging in global politics.

 

[Major Kong]

"The enemy will pass slowly from the offensive to the defensive. The blitzkrieg will transform itself into a war of long duration. Thus the enemy will be caught in a dilemma: He has to drag out the war in order to win it and does not possess, on the other hand, the psychological and political means to fight a long-drawn-out war . . . . "

General Vo Nguyen Giap, 1950 (he was referring to the French).

 

[LAK]

MrAcheson

As for the rest, neo-isolationism is a fools game. Our economy needs foriegn resources to survive and that means engaging in global politics

It did not get that way by accident; and there is no reason why it can not be reversed. Our economy has never needed to participate in a geo-political agenda called global socialism. The sooner we leave that runaway train to it's own inevitable destruction, the sooner we can take care of our national security and consolidate our national needs. We do need a level of independence, and we do have the resources we need right here.

 

[rolling thunder]

It's nice to where blinders, that way you can "stay the course"

Over thirty posts since I brought up the PNAC documents and only one reply or even acknowledgement that it even exists, let alone any attempt to refute it. I expected better from a forum filled with intelligent people. Sometimes it is easier to hold to your beliefs by keeping the blinders on. Ignorance is bliss.

It's about 74 pages and not a very easy (not fun, but disturbing) read.

www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1665.htm
www.sundayherald.com/27735
www.truthout.com/docs_03/082203H.shtml
www.newamericancentury.org/publicationsreports.htm
www.truthout.com/docs_03/082203H.shtml

It's not hard to find, only hard to read with blinders on...


For the record, Bush has already spent one Thanksgiving in Iraq with the troops--it was heavily covered on the "evening news"--surprised you missed that.....johnska

Sure was, keep in mind Bush knew it would be good PR for his re-election campaign. If he goes over this thanksgiving I would give him the credit for it. But his eating turkey with the troops in 2003 was a politcal boost, not a moral builder for the troops.

by tallbill....."It seems that there are quite a few links to Al Queda and other terrorist groups that dont like us in Iraq. I agree that we need to keep killing them before then strike us at home."

They are there now, but before there is no credible evidence that has shown that saddam was in on 9/11. Also, if they do attack us again, (and regretably I believe they will sooner than later) then your position of fighting in Iraq to "get them before they come here" will go right out the window.