thinkprogress.org — ThinkProgress has video of President Bush 18 months ago, arguing that sending more U.S. forces to Iraq would "undermine our strategy of encouraging Iraqis to take the lead" and "suggest that we intend to stay forever."
Jan 8, 2007 View in Crawl 4
Closed AccountJan 9, 2007
@techdugger:"dude. changing your mind in whether or not you want an omelete for breakfast is one thingchanging your mind whether or not tens of thousands of soldiers will be sent to iraq to fight a bulls**t war is something totally different"“I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.” - John Kerry.You're right. No one on either side is ever allowed to decide they were wrong. What an idiotic thing to say. Whether or not you agree with this tactic, sometimes the most intelligent thing you can do is change your mind. At least we're not hearing, "stay the course" every other day anymore.
Closed AccountJan 9, 2007
I say it's time to take the "white gloves" off when it comes to our insurgent battle strategy. Massive influx of troops. Start leveling cities one by one. It's war for god sakes, civilian causalities at this point are moot. Get as many civilians out as possible, then systematically destroy trouble areas. Let god sort them out. If that doesn't work, then it's time to pack our bags. The thousands killed will be more than acceptable, when compared to long term projections. Do it. Having served in Iraq myself for nearly 2 years, and having to worry more about international perception (embedded camera crews, etc.) than killing insurgents, I think it's about time. With enough troop strength, and more aggressive tactics, we can crush the insurgency within a couple of months.
freffJan 9, 2007
"Massive influx of troops."The problem is, the one thing that everyone agrees on is that we don't have "massive troops". Our military has been described in various states of readiness, but robust is not one of them. The past 5 years at war, 3 at war on two different fronts has taken a heavy toll out of our troop readiness. Massive troop levels would have worked at the beginning of this war, or early on when we were trying to secure the civilian population, but at this point, not only do we not have these troops, but we don't have the cooperation of the Iraq government, and we have blown our window of opportunity to accomplish what we could have early on in this war.Wow, that last is one hell of a sentence, but I'm too lazy to actually go back and fix it. You get the picture anyway. We just don't have the troops, and we don't have the coalition. We've kinda blown our wad, and we're about to rub it raw trying to go at it one last time.
digbirdJan 10, 2007
Well, if we're going to ping Bush for changing his tune about reinforcing the troops in Iraq, what about pinging someone like Ted Kennedy for a similar inconsistency. Today, I heard on CSPAN a speech that he gave at the National Press Club decrying the "surge." But when I checked his website, he was blasting Bush for not putting enough troops in.
digbirdJan 10, 2007
all that proves is that there are some people who know how to "game" Google who have waaaaay too much time on their hands.Why not join a campaign of someone running for office under the Democrat ticket instead of doing juvenile stuff like this?
rtiniJan 10, 2007
Didn't he mean it would undermine our strategery?
arachosiandickJan 10, 2007
@GanchulaActually, a scorched earth policy would secure the middle east. Dead men have horrible aim and generally aren't capable of placing blame.Just because nobody calls it WW3 doesn't mean it isn't. The big problem is agreeing on when it started. I vote for 1979, makes for a pretty visible starting point. Soviets invade Afghanistan, Iran deposes Shah (read our boy) in favor of Islamic Fundamentalism. The only reason US didn't respond to Iran at that time was because of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. We aided Taliban and Saddam Hussein instead. The Taliban turned on all westerners after the Soviets withdrew and Saddam Hussein aimed his weapons at the wrong people.Of course 1993 would work too with the WTC bombing. Everyone agrees that 2001 attack pushed the issue in front of mainstream.