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- gronne, on 10/12/2007, -8/+33Bush has said that he doesn't care what the American people want he will not correct his failed Iraq policy. His words, "if Laura and Barney are the only ones who support me". Well since he's declared himself dictator this is the only way to begin to fix the mess he's made in Iraq.
It's NOT stabbing troops in the back! - dshPls, on 10/12/2007, -9/+34He's not cutting off funding for current troops, he just doesn't want new ones to be sent to war.
Also, John Kerry is a bad politician, but he's also a veteran and a patriot, even if he's a horrible joker. - countmandible, on 11/15/2007, -4/+27The best thing we could do to support the troops is bring them home to be with their families.
- yakimushi, on 10/12/2007, -30/+50Soooo adding more troops to an awful situation where more troops will be killed is supporting them? Murtha is saving lives.
- DavidYeah, on 10/12/2007, -11/+31Thanks for putting the nonsense frame to use-- it makes for a good case study.
Notice the entire lack of acknowledgement that this proposal is to block funding for war escalation. He mixes in even more nonsense about Kerry and the DNC, none of which has anything to do with the issue at hand. - nfulton, on 10/12/2007, -8/+25150,000 troops from Iraq on Disability
3000 Dead
In a war with a country that was never a threat to us For a president who lied to us about the justifications for war as HIS ADMINISTRATION wiretapped the entire United States, engaged in torture and rendition, did away with Habaes Corpus, and gave 10's of Billions of Dollars in No Bid Contracts to his Campaign Contributors.
I'd say Murtha is doing more than standing up for the troops, he's standing up for the United States. Its really long past time someone pulled the brake on this runaway train. - kremvax, on 10/12/2007, -10/+27Time to pull the plug on the Blank Check-book that Bush has grown so used to.
In the absence of a realistic plan, I'd refuse further funding too. - DavidYeah, on 10/12/2007, -15/+31Is that based on some sort of reality, or are you just spinning the story to suit your purposes? Of course, it's ridiculously easy to make the Murtha proposal look bad, since he's taking a side door to preventing escalation by disallowing funding for it.
All people like sonofdy have to do is leave out the part about how he's blocking funding going to escalation of the troop levels, and emphasize cutting of funding, and perfecto-- the perfect conservative spin to fit their "Democrats hate the troops" nonsense frame. - whtnoise, on 10/12/2007, -7/+20Are you guys not reading the article, Murtha isn't saying he wants to abandon the troops that are there:
Quote: He says he wants to “fence the funding,” denying the president the resources to escalate the war, instead using the money to take care of the soldiers as we bring them home from Iraq “as soon as we can. - kremvax, on 10/12/2007, -8/+19"it all goes to ***** over there"
650,000 dead civilians in 36 months isn't "gone to *****?" The army has lost control of everything but the green zone. The largest contracting firms have withdrawn all US personnel. The number of journalists has gone from 1000+ to 15-. You can no longer distinguish between Iraq police and roving death squads. How bad does it have to get before you believe it has gone to *****? - kremvax, on 10/12/2007, -4/+13More like, if an infected patient hasn't responded to tetracycline in 3 years, and their condition has gone steadily from stable to critical, consistantly worse with every passing dose, maybe you should stop the tetracycline and try something else. Not up the dosage.
- reugeneg, on 10/12/2007, -5/+13Bush has has a blank check and control of both houses and he still couldn't pull together a "winning strategy." What have the generals been saying all this time? "Let's get more boots on the ground." Now Bush as a last resort 3+ years later, is offering that as his new winning strategy. So the American taxpayers should keep throwing more good money after bad? At some point, someone has to say "enough!" to Bush and Cheney's stupid spreading democracy cluster-*****.
Mission NOT Accomplished! Until my kid, and her kids, and their kids try to pay for this debacle. - Ark7, on 10/12/2007, -5/+12The only reason you haven't been dugg down is because most diggers are so ignorant beyond what they see on The Daily Show or The Colbert Report to know that the Abscam scandal was damaging for Democrats, specifically Murtha, not Republicans.
- Stonedonkey, on 10/12/2007, -6/+12Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard was on the Daily Show recently, and he had an interesting take. He said that, basically, our troops can do nothing but watch right now as the sects tear each other apart, and Iraq apart. Both he and Stewart (who has been to the Green Zone as well) said that they felt like babysitters with their hands tied behind their backs. It really does sound like they don't have the numbers or resources to quell the sectarian violence.
Face it: If we pull out, it all goes to ***** over there. While I don't like the idea of sending *more* people, I also don't want my country responsible for yet another geopolitical implosion. Because that means a backlash that could lead to more loss of life than we've seen during the entire occupation. Their idea is to risk more now in order to avoid having to risk too many, later.
It is an ugly, unpopular choice, and it will probably be denied, if for no other reason than it was Bush's idea. - kyledavis, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9@sonofdy
"Supporting our troops" means bringing them home to be with their families.
"Supporting our troops" means relieving them of the burden of fighting for a failed cause.
"Supporting our troops" does NOT mean supporting the prick who wants to use them like militant dogs of war until they break under the strain. The way I see it, YOU are a total dick for NOT "supporting our troops". - Athenor, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7... You don't seriously believe this, do you? With a media cycle that is 24 hours a day, which is actively looking for anything that can be a juicy news story, do you really think people can just disappear? ... The Kremlin allegedly tried that last year. It didn't work.
- graycat, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Yes - let's support them by sending more into the meatgrinder! There are soldiers who we are sending into combat who are on their third tours over there (like my sister's bf) and they really need to come home.
- kremvax, on 10/12/2007, -6/+11650,000 Iraqi dead is currently the only statistician supported number out there.
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's peer reviewed, scientific study (oct 06): http://www.jhsph.edu/publichealthnews/press_releases/2006/burnham_iraq_2006.html
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1012/dailyUpdate.html
http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=FA0E16FF3B540C728DDDA90994DE404482
I'd love to see other peer-reviewed, scientific studies on Iraqi casualties (really!). If you think the numbers are wrong, let's see what you've got. - baxtermaddux, on 10/12/2007, -6/+11no more than you have your nose in things you know nothing about
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8I know. Sad isn't it?
- geekee, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8So Democrats, who were complaining about "staying the course", don't want to change course.
- sathias, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6The fact of the matter is that Bush doesn't have the political capital or mandate to make such decisions in contrary to what the voting public want. After the 2004 election he said that he had the political capital and he intended to spend it... well he doesn't have it anymore, and he should damn well act like it.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -9/+13ShrimpCrackers: Because it worked in VietNam, right? I mean, sending hundreds of thousands of troops there reduced casualties, right? This was is just like that one. We fight like the British fought us, and the enemy fights like we did when we fought for our freedom.
We cannot win, and even if we did, we are the bad guys in this war. We are the dark men wearing black hats riding into a small desert town with our gang. The closest thing the town has to a handsome man in a white hat is the terrorist leaders who promise to get rid of the evil men.
Send in more, and more will die. Bring them all home, and no more die. It's a civil war that we caused. All we can do is let them resolve their own futures, and when stability returns, we can pay reparations in the multi-billions. That's it. American troops cause tension in the region, fueling more death. - Gerz1219, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"Some of you guys are idiots. Democrats have long said that one of the biggest foul-ups with Iraq was sending too small of a force in, since the soldiers were stretched thin, chaos ensued without anyone to police over the populace."
You see, ShrimpCrackers, the thing with problem solving is that solutions only work if they adapt to changing circumstances. Solutions that take into account only past circumstances are not effective in the present, nor are solutions to future problems effective in the past.
For instance, let's say I was to put you in a temperature-controlled padded cell. As I gradually turned the thermostat down to below freezing, you would ask me to turn the temperature back up. I could oblige and increase the temperature to 120 degrees. You would then beg me to lower it again. By your logic, I could respond, "You asked me make it hotter, now you're asking me to make it colder. Pick a side and stick to it!"
A larger invasion force at the outset would have gone a long way toward stabilizing the country before many key Iraqi institutions had been destroyed beyond repair. I'm personally of the opinion that this war would have failed eventually anyway, but here we have a unique case of an error in concept AND an error in execution. Now we've lost the war. Sending more troops will only forestall the inevitable, which is massive sectarian violence, the partitioning of Iraq, and a humiliating withdrawal of our troops. That's the reality now -- due to a combination of bad thinking, bad planning, and bad management, the United States has now suffered one of its worst defeats. Keep pretending it's not getting hotter in your padded cell. Frogs will boil to death without flinching if you just turn the heat up gradually. - kremvax, on 10/12/2007, -7/+10"Just a few months ago"
Try a few *years* ago. When it might have made a difference. Before we lost control of the country completely. - kremvax, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8
It's years too late to say that increasing our troop levels by 10 of 15% will turn the whole situation around. It's time to stop ***** around and pretenting we're somehow going to "win" something there. We're past the point of doing anyone any good. - killinger777, on 10/12/2007, -7/+10Good thing he is in the vast minority on this subject.
- Athenor, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8No, the Republicans lost all their seats that were in danger due to leaving incumbents, weak positioning, and scandal. Keep in mind that 1/3 of the Senate and every single house member was up for election in 2006. When put in that perspective, the narrow margin of victory for the Democrats comes into clearer focus.
Are those elected conservative leaning? I wouldn't know. But they do answer to Pellosi and Byrd at the end of the day. So we'll see if Murtha's "fiscally conservative" (as opposed to militarily conservative) stance here will fly. I doubt it.. and I am willing to bet Pellosi is going to come to seriously regret going into league with Murtha. - jdheiden, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4And I thought diggers were a smart people in general......guess I was wrong. It's no surprise that 90% of the comments that were in disagreement with Murtha's comments were buried then.
WHAT DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND??????
Yes, we are in a war, like it or not. The fact of the matter is, that now, Iraq needs to be SECURED. period. The only way to do that is to send in more troops to help do the job. Plain and simple. Pull them all out now and there will be a total collapse. This should be more than obvious, whether you're a 'publican or a democrat. - smoothmedia, on 10/12/2007, -9/+12Denying funding for an escalation PREVENTS the escalation, it does not permit an underfunded escalation to continue.
The obvious stawman argument that will come out of Bush supporters on this will be thatt Murtha doesn't support the troops, and wants to see them put in harms way by being under funded/supplied.
Murtha, nor any other democrat, would support the idea of underequipping the troops, or not providing them with the weapons/armor needed for combat.
Murtha wants to PREVENT the escalation of troops. - Ark7, on 10/12/2007, -7/+10When a political party has truly decided that appeasment is a viable and attractive foreign policy, it's time to put them out to pasture.
- dagobah77, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abscam
- 1angrychristian, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2he's probably giving those funds to his campaign financiers.
:-)
Next time Murtha try not to get caught on tape ... ok? - kremvax, on 10/12/2007, -6/+8"many of whom ran on Conservative-leaning platforms, right?"
No... The republicans ran on the conservative-leaning platforms. They lost. Badly. Almost unilaterally.
I do appreciate the amazing level of denial you have to be in to call a massive democrat rout of nearly every republican seat up for election a victory for the conservatives though. - GLSmyth, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2For those of us who were around during the Vietnam era, the commonalities are just continuing. This is exactly what began the end of our involvement in Vietnam, a refusal to continue funding it.
- Fhionnlaoch, on 10/12/2007, -6/+8It's much smarter to do something like put a "War Tax" into place, on the reasoning that the US of A shouldn't have to go into debt to pay for the war. Then you'll see the troops home a lot sooner.
- Athenor, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3this is quite negative.. but I do think we can pull something out of Vietnam:
ALL traditional thoughts on warfare need to be re-evaluated. A straight pull-out won't work, a troop escalation won't work, ignoring the problem won't work.
So what -will- work? When someone finds that answer, and people start listening to him, then we'll be getting somewhere.
.. I will never forget the story my dad told of the Vietnamese attendant he had when he was over there.. and how he still wonders if she survived the fall of Saigon. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -13/+15I feel ashamed that Murtha is my rep...
- geekee, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4"uh, democrats can't change course. They aren't commander-in-chief, they have no control over the military."
Exactly, so why are they trying to control the military by withholding funding? - OriginalLucid1, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3ABSCAM Jack! Democrat member of the "Most Ethical Congress" ever!
- kremvax, on 10/12/2007, -5/+7I suppose the difference is that Arianna Huffington is actually paid for her opinion, whereas you just get dugg down for free.
- Athenor, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3He caucus's with the Democrats, and that is what is important.. for now.
Really, he was just protesting their running him out of town. It'll cause issues down the line, but for now they are okay. - zlintux, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4This isn't really as cut and dry down party lines as people think.
Lieberman, a prominent centrist Democrat is in favour of an increase.
Christopher Shays, a republican, is against it (citing an independent study that says it will further increase the Iraqi gov's dependence on us and prolong the situation)
Colin Powell, while (to my knowledge) hasn't expressed a specific opinion, stated in a BBC article dated December 18:
"I am not persuaded that another surge of troops into Baghdad for the purposes of suppressing this communitarian violence, this civil war, will work," he said. He added that such was the overstretch of the US military, there were no additional troops that could be sent.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6188693.stm
A similar article dated December 16 states:
Military commanders, however, have been expressing scepticism that extra troops on their own will have much effect, our correspondent says.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6184965.stm
So, don't equate one persons opinion to represent their entire political party. - SLuM, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The next best executive officials would be Wesley Clark and Robert Gates imo
- michaelb1, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4Give em Hell Rep. Murtha!!!
- kremvax, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3I still haven't heard a single explanation about how increasing troop levels by ten percent, 3 years into a steadily declining situation will somehow regain us control over a country where the only thing the civilian population can agree on is that they want the US to leave.
We lost the "hearts and minds" of the Iraqi people three years ago. Without their support, the occupation wouldn't regain control of the country if we added fifty thousand troops. Staying another month or another year just isn't going to help anyone. - Athenor, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2The belief of the people, as I understand it, is that Iraq is the inverse of Afghanistan. Iraq's outlying countries are largely violence free, save for the Bathist stronghold (Saddam's hometown) and such. Hell, the Kurds in the north just want to break off and make their own country, and they're pretty much autonomous already.
No, the problem is Baghdad, and the low-income areas that ring it. This is where the majority of the violence is... and there aren't enough troops to properly do a citywide search (well, they aren't exactly allowed to do a house by house search, but you know what I mean).
And I wouldn't say jack to what the Iraqi people believe. After all, we aren't Iraqis... and just look at how the "hearts and minds" of Americans are portrayed. It swings, WILDLY, depending on who you ask.
As for your final comment, that I cannot attest to. - concertina, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4uh, democrats can't change course. They aren't commander-in-chief, they have no control over the military.
The most they can do is deny funding, make a lot of noise, and create congressional inquiries. Oh, and impeach the president. But they can't order the troops around. - Kalibah, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5nice except Lieberman is an independent not a democrat- they ran him out of town so to speak
- xenuxenuts, on 10/12/2007, -5/+6That's kind of like saying "I have to study for a test" that was 3 years ago. Sometimes things can be so mismanaged that it can't be fixed no matter how many resources you throw at them. Iraq can not be "won". It was too mismanaged. It might not have been possible to win in the first place. The challenge now is to minimize the damage both to the US and to the Iraqi people.
Democrats did not lose this war. Republicans did, and they will work very hard to try to place the blame on anyone but themselves. The neocon ideas (that were held before 911) failed. Now the country has to clean up their mess. And it will take both democrats and non-neocon republicans to do so. -
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