This is a combined potpurri list. Anyone wanting on or off please advise.
Posted on 09/22/2013 8:36:02 AM PDT by Pan_Yan
On December 18, 2011, the last convoy of US soldiers pulled out of Iraq, ending nearly nine years of war that left almost 4,500 American troops and tens of thousands of Iraqis dead.
Marking the end of the combat mission in a speech at Fort Bragg (the same location where George W. Bush had declared war in 2003), President Barack Obama emphasized repeatedly that he was fulfilling his 2008 campaign pledge of an Iraq pull-out, while praising the courage of American soldiers and vowing that Iraqi forces were prepared to assume responsibility for their country’s security.
“Of course,” he noted, “violence will not end.... Extremists will continue to set off bombs, attack Iraqi civilians and try to spark sectarian strife.”
...
Yet Obama failed miserably in his attempt (if ever it was sincere) to forge a deal with the newly elected, fragile Iraqi government to maintain a residual US troop presence in Iraq. The agreement fell apart over the technicality of providing legal immunity to American soldiers, hardly an insurmountable impasse, one might have thought.
Since then, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has filled the power vacuum by consolidating his rule. He has eliminated his leading Sunni rivals and tightened his control over Iraq’s security services. Maliki has repeatedly violated the terms of the so-called Erbil agreement, which was meant to preserve the rights of Sunni and Kurdish communities.
In parallel, Iraq has descended progressively into chaos. This year alone, approximately 5,000 Iraqis have died in principally Sunni-on-Shi’ite terror attacks, with a recent surge in violence killing upwards of 1,000 Iraqis each month. Hardly a day goes by without multiple attacks being perpetrated throughout the country, as the domestic carnage there proceeds unabatedly.
(Excerpt) Read more at jpost.com ...
Similar to the "Cyber Liberty Option." Works like this...
We'll pull all our people from these crapholes to let them stew their own problems. If anybody shoots at us on the way out, we'll retaliate 100 to 1 and then proceed with the pullout. Then, publish this doctrine: If any Americans are killed anywhere in the world, and we can trace the perpetrators to your citizens, we will come and kill 100 of your people for every American casualty. If you hit a jackpot where more than 1,000 Americans dead, we will simply nuke one of your cities per 1000 dead Americans. We'll provide each Islamic country a list of ten cities beforehand, and it will be one of the listed cites we'll hit.
I am an E-8...Air Force...and could care less about my next promotion. I'm pretty outspoken about the ROE's...and pretty loud when it comes to my concern about the PC nature of the military.
There are a LOT of us still out there. Of course, the current admin and leadership are doing what they can to replace us...but we are still there. All hope is not lost.........yet.
This compassionate decades long war cost trillions in American tax dollars...
We won nothing but death, pain and suffering as Bush and the insiders looted the American treasure.
No doubt several hundred of his super wealthy insider friends, became way more wealthy funding the compassion...They lined their freaking pockets while they robbed the tax payers.
If those three sentences you posted there are correct, then George W. Bush never should have been allowed to run a lemonade stand, let alone serve as the President of the United States.
The U.S. doesn’t engage in those kinds of military campaigns anymore because we are now a colonial power, not a free nation. It makes no sense to destroy an enemy nation’s infrastructure and kill hundreds of thousands of its people if the whole purpose of going to war in the first place is to build and prop up that nation up as a trading partner.
This is a combined potpurri list. Anyone wanting on or off please advise.
When this “war” started I told my wife “We’ll never win a war on terror because we’re not willing to do what will have to be done.” And that means nukes.
I couldn’t disagree that Saddam was a brutal dictator so take him out. Then get half of the oil. But noooooo. W said “The oil belongs to the Iraqi people.” That’s funny. They never got any when Saddam was in power so getting half would make them very happy.
...the Democrap Party(politically) & all those who profited(financially).
I don’t believe George W Bush came into office wanting to invade Iraq. I think 9/11 changed him in a fundamental way, and having surrounded himself with people who liked the idea of invading Iraq, ended with us invading.
I think President Reagan was probably advised to send more troops after the barracks in Beirut were bombed. He wisely decided to pull them out and cut his losses.
Even though Beirut and Iraq are two different situations, the lesson to be learned is to avoid entanglements in that region. The people there end up with a dictator or a Islamist nut-job government in the end.
I said when we first invaded Iraq we would have to stay there at least 20 years, or else the moment we left it would fall to either the Iranians or Islamo-Fascists.
I now am not only against the second Iraq war, I now don’t see much point in the first one, neither. Who cares about Kuwait, just another invention of British map making....they’re all Arabs anyway. Besides Kuwait was side-drilling to Iraqi oilfields, so were the Saudis. Never get involved in a fight between Arabs.
I agree, that was the goal that would have made sense, and the one that Bush should have articulated.The presence of US military power after the conflict was not a bad idea in Germany, Japan or the Philippines over the past century, or probably even Korea.The Iranians kept it churning when they saw they were going to be able to stampede the Democrats.
BTW, the Philippines now supposedly wants us back at Subic Bay.
Hiya ANV!
I’ve come to the same conclusion. I do think Saddam would have eventually become a major threat to us so I supported the action. Afghanistan had it coming b/c of 9/11.
Now they can both rot.
You might be right. But then Michael Moore couldn't have come up with a more pathetic description of a Republican "leader" than this.
This is why nobody should ever sit in the White House -- or in either house of Congress, for that matter -- unless their own children are enlisted in the U.S. military and assigned to the first detachment of soldiers sent overseas in any military campaign.
And I will cut him some slack because so far, no one has defined the enemy correctly or painted a picture of what victory will look like.
The war against us and our way of life has been declared by a cult which is simultaneous a religion and a system of government...and not by a single country. And not all within that religion agree with said declaration of war (but those who oppose it are terrorized by the radicals among them who have declared such war).
What will victory look like? Most folks who study Islam believe there will be war until either Islam wins and controls the world or is wiped off the face of the earth (and this might include some kind of reformation of Islam if such a thing is even possible).
But any attempt to invade a country like Iraq or even Afghanistan is eventually doomed to failure.
This is not a war against a military (though there is certainly a military component to it). This is also a political (and even religious) war.
This is as Samuel Huntington said, "a clash of civilizations" (though he should have taken that description one step further...this is a clash between civilization and socio/political religion which wished to destroy modern civilization).
If we went into Iraq, we should have occupied it, and told the Saudis once and for all to F-— Off.
Which country was it that financed and supplied the terrorists that attacked the WTC? It sure wasn’t Iraq....It was our “friends” the Saudis.
And it was all over once that declaration was made.
NOT providing immunity is a non-starter.
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