A third choice on Iraq?

“I stumbled across a website for Families of the Fallen which promotes what they describe as better plan for Iraq that what the Dems and Reps offer. I haven't really had time to look into it much, but with the buzz about the Baker plan growing I thought it would be interesting to look at:

http://fofchange.org/”

“I LOVE IT!...LOL everytime we see a call for being "moderate" it means they don't ahve the GUTS to call themselves Liberals.

Hey I got news...when did we surpass the loss of life in 9/11???HMMMMMM...So if we pull out, Iraq goes back to being a terrorist stronghold and 10,000 Americans die in an attack...can we sue each of these people? I think not there is not responsibility in ANY of these groups. Their family members JOINED...i.e. they knowingly took the oath.

Translation, 'SON thanks for giving your life for freedom, WE HATE YOUR GUTS!"


LOL read her comment in the conversation with Chris Matthews...this was more about her than her son. She is burning up the 15 minutes of fame.

ROSEMARY PALMER, MOTHER OF KILLED U.S. MARINE: Well, war is always dangerous. And there were so many deaths that it was starting to mount to the point where I was actually thinking yesterday that if Auggie were not among the 14 killed, I was almost to the point of calling the Department of Defense and just saying, for mental health reasons, he had to come home, that I couldn’t handle it anymore. It was just too much.


My reply, Sweetness...he enlisted in the UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS...okay that is the FIRST TO FIGHT...No kidding this is not the Peace Corps these are our first line in defense of freedom....YOU BLITHERING TWIT
last edited: 10/19/06 8:50:13 AM”

“Hey I got news.......Iraq did not attack the U.S.

And what result in Iraq will make the sacrifice, even thus far, of American lives and limbs and minds worth it.

Dude, try to improve your sentence structure so the rest of us can understand WTF you are trying to say.”

“UM MarkO neither did Italy attack the US in World War II...why did we invade Italy first???


Guess what////

Schroeder's parents founded Families of the Fallen for Change, an anti-war group pushing for a gradual withdrawal of American troops from Iraq.

http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,635198165,00.html

God ped this post was so duplicitous...tell the truth the next time you post a Fondaeque article...if you hate the military admit it. Just go ahead and entitle your thread...HERE IS ANOTHER GROUP THAT SAYS THE MILITARY STINKS!
last edited: 10/19/06 8:54:30 AM”

“UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS...okay that is the FIRST TO FIGHT

Not necessarily. Somebody scouts a landing area for them.

Hoo-ah! Go Cav!”

“LOL...true enough...or as we used to remind the Marines, they are essentially an amphibious fighting force...yet the ARMY had more Amphibious landings in World War II than the Marines have had in their entire history (LOL).”

“Jack Belden went along on a night landing in Sicily with the U.S. Army. The landing was in the German rear and un-opposed but hairy none the less.

XL, you seem to like WWII history.
This account is in a book published in '43 or '44 called "Still Time To Die".

Jack Belden was one of those war correspondants who crawled through lots of mud with the infantry.
He was wounded at Salerno(?) and the war was over for him.”

“So, when are you guys going to realize that we're not fighting Iraq, and we don't want to be out of Iraq?”

“Yeah MarkO and it must have sucked to be accused of attacking a country than never attacked us....Dang we need to go to the VA hospitals and spit on the Italian Front Soldiers...Heck might as well kick the walkers out from under the ones who invaded France (they were on our side I thought?)...and Don't get me started on the ones who invaded the Philippeans...hey they were OUR Colony at the time...what the heck were we doing fighting there?

LIBBIES...so full of holes you whistle when you drive”

“No duplicity here. I hadn't read much - just saw that they were against leaving to soon ("cut and run"), but against just staying with the Bush/Rummy plan ("just dig this hole deeper") gang.

Even reading XL's article, it sounds like the founders are not just simply anti-war. From the article:

A day after his {their son's} burial, the couple invited the media to their front yard and called on President Bush to send more reinforcements to Iraq or withdraw U.S. troops altogether.


You certainly weaken the discussion if you treat everyone critical of the Bush/Rummy policy as if they were all the same.

I'm actually against a deadline and against mmediate withdrawal. I want to believe that this is something we can get right. There are things to be accomplished in Iraq that no one else can do, and until I'm convinced that w'ell only F- it up worse by staying in - I'll continue to oppose a firm time line or immediate withdrawal.


The polls show most people think it was a mistake to go in, but that we'd make it worse by leaving too quickly. They will stay the course, if the leadership can demonstrate that are on the right course.

One of my worst fears is that in 2008, things will be no better (or worse) and I'll have to chose between someone who wants a precipitous withdrawal and someone who thinks we've been doing a heckuva job all along and offers more of the same.”

“Here is a neat historical perspective....


THINKING THINGS OVER

Iraq: Another Vietnam?
The truth about the Tet offensive is that we won.

BY ROBERT L. BARTLEY
Monday, November 3, 2003 12:01 a.m.

Suddenly the historical debate over Vietnam is sprouting all through the current debate over Iraq. Howard Dean, leading the Democratic pack, told Dan Rather: "We sent troops to Vietnam, without understanding why we were there. And the American people weren't told the truth and it was a disaster. And Iraq is gonna become a disaster under this presidency."
With other would-be Democratic presidents joining this assault, it might be helpful to review what happened in Vietnam. Especially what happened at the Tet offensive, like the car bombings in Baghdad timed at the start of a religious holiday. In what sense should we fear that Iraq is "another Vietnam"?

Well, first of all, the Tet offensive was a militarily significant effort, not four truck bombs. After erosion of their position during 1967, the Communists threw all of their South Vietnam guerrilla forces into attacks in more than 100 cities across the length and breadth of the country. Most spectacularly, since it came before the eyes of the Saigon press corps, a 19-man sapper squad penetrated the U.S. Embassy compound. They failed to enter the chancery building, despite early reports, and the last of them was killed or repulsed after a six-hour battle.

General William Westmoreland appeared in the shattered compound to proclaim a great victory. His televised appearance came against a backdrop of destruction throughout the country, and the American elite decided to believe not the general but their own eyes. A widely cited Wall Street Journal editorial proclaimed that "the whole Vietnam effort may be doomed, it may be falling apart beneath our feet." Walter Cronkite turned against the war, editorializing on the need for negotiation. With this home-front reaction, Tet was the turning-point in the war, the anvil of Communist victory and American defeat.

Yet in fact, Westmoreland was right, subsequent analysts have uniformly concluded. The Communist offensive was decisively repulsed. There was no general uprising in favor of the North. The South Vietnamese army did not buckle, though operating at 50% strength because of imprudent holiday leaves. The indigenous Viet Cong were destroyed, leaving the rest of the war to be conducted by troops recruited in the North.

"To have portrayed such a setback for one side as a defeat for the other--in a major crisis abroad--cannot be counted as a triumph for American journalism," Peter Braestrup wrote in his book "Big Story." He was Washington Post Saigon bureau chief during Tet, and his critique didn't provoke serious controversy even within the press corps.

Tet was a military victory turned into a psychological defeat on the home front. Shall we do it again in Iraq?





Tet represents another, less widely understood, turning point in the Vietnam War. Soon after the offensive, Gen. Westmoreland was replaced as the U.S. commander by Creighton W. Abrams, with a notable change in U.S. strategy and tactics. The contrast of the two eras is pregnant with lessons for the far smaller guerrilla war in Iraq.
"More troops" was Gen. Westmoreland's first request from Vietnam, and also his last one. He sought to take the battle to the enemy, with "search and destroy" missions intended to find the major enemy units hiding in the jungle hills. It was a war of attrition, using superior U.S. firepower to destroy the enemy's forces faster than he could replace them. But the scale of the Tet assaults was scarcely encouraging.

Under Gen. Abrams, "search and destroy" was replaced by "clear and hold." This is recorded in "A Better War," by Lewis Sorley, who notes that most of the histories of Vietnam pretty much skip the post-1968 period. Abrams put emphasis not on attrition but on the security of the local population, and the training of the South Vietnamese who would continue the fighting as Americans left.

The success of these programs was tested by the Easter Offensive of 1972. Some 200,000 North Vietnamese troops attacked on three fronts. U.S. ground troop withdrawals continued as scheduled, but President Nixon ordered heavy air and naval retaliation, including the mining of North Vietnamese ports. With this air support, the South Vietnamese army repelled the invasion. The North Vietnamese lost half of their attacking force and half of their tanks and artillery. The legendary Vo Nguyen Giap was quietly removed from command of the Northern armies.

Three years later the North had recovered sufficient strength to repeat the offensive. But by then the Paris peace accords had been signed, with U.S. prisoners returned at the cost of allowing Hanoi to infiltrate military units in the south. With Watergate, Congress had passed the Case-Church Amendment forbidding military involvement in Southeast Asia. Sen. Edward Kennedy passed a $266 million cut in supplemental spending for Vietnam, and funds were slashed for the coming year. Counter-insurgency expert Sir Robert Thompson remarked, "perhaps the major lesson of the Vietnam War is: do not rely on the United States as an ally."

This time the South Vietnamese got no assistance from the U.S. and fell before an assault by 20 tank-led divisions. Some million refugees took to the seas as "the boat people." After the loss of Iran and some trying times in Europe, the U.S. elected Ronald Reagan, who revived the American military and faced the Communists down at Reykjavik. The Communist empire fell after all, and Vietnam goes down as a lost battle in a successful campaign.





Yet something more than a lost battle, a self-inflicted wound arising from an essentially dishonorable strain of American neurosis. Yes, by all means, don't do it again in Iraq. As Gov. Dean says, the first step is to tell the truth, starting with the truth of what happened in Vietnam.
Mr. Bartley is editor emeritus of The Wall Street Journal. His column appears Mondays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com.

Copyright © 2006 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

So this could be another Vietnam..meaning a war we are winning until the sad sack Loseaholics push the limit...lets pull out and "surrender" and that way we can make those hero's sacrfice WORTHLESS. LOL...Good Idea.”

“youre a f­ucking idiot.”

“LOL...isn't it cute when they learn a new phrase from home....so ....go ahead tell us where you have been hearing that...I know you aren't an idiot, just a little misdirected...”

“Even if we were to accept that neo-con revisionist history of the Vietnam war (and that is a little hard given how the war went under Nixon in the years after Tet), there would be two other major lessons to the Vietnam War that the neo-cons did not learn:

1) A democracy has limitted patience with a prolonged war not fought out of genuine and immediate necessity.

2) The patience of the populace is further limitted when much of the justification for the war is built on false pretexts and support is marshalled by misleading people.”

“Here we go again...Nixon entered office in January of 1969....Tet was a YEAR earlier in 1968.

Now since you stick with the BUSH LIED revision...please show me one place he claimed we were going in for WMDs. I can find where BILLY, and the Hildabeast and put near every Defeatocrat is claiming that...but where did Bush lie in his request to go into Iraq?

You can't, you are so lost on what the TRUTH is that you must condemn truth. Want references from Vietnamese who have written on Tet? Want more proof? You demand proof but never require that of yourself..typical duplicitious behavior we have come to know and love from the LEFT. (kiss kiss.)”

“I LOVE IT!...LOL everytime we see a call for being "moderate" it means they don't ahve the GUTS to call themselves Liberals.

stop and take a deep breath man






no wonder they sound liberal - your bunch is now so far right, pat buchanan looks like a lefty

....YOU BLITHERING TWIT

so you know how she feels??? youre son died there?????”

“the U.S. won the Tet offensive”

“Here we go again...Nixon entered office in January of 1969....Tet was a YEAR earlier in 1968.

Exactly - Nixon was in charge for years after Tet.

We've gone through the WMD before, even for you XL. The WMD was way overhyped. I'm not going to recite all the evidence once again. Bush said significantly misleading things as did his gang.”

“By the way. Yes her son took the oath. But, there is some trust involved that the folks who run the country will not misuse the obedience to that oath.”

“Bush said significantly misleading things as did his gang.

After going through all the WMD stuff before, the stuff that you won't recite ... this was not shown to be true. Saying it doesn't make it so.”

“I'm sorry. I know I get easily lost but who thought Tet was a military loss for the US?”

““I'm sorry. I know I get easily lost but who thought Tet was a military loss for the US?”

ask mr history! acording to him we only lose wars under a Defeetocrat admin”

“Bear the media did and they used it to push the idea.

ped...the ability to kill how many Americans with WMD's is considered acceptable. I mean I know you must have an "acceptable" limit, i.e. the max number of children and women screaming silently as their bodies convulse from some weapon. So what is your number...100,000 300,000....”

“the U.S. won the Tet offensive

-fullmoonglob



Oh right cos this of course ultimately led to us winning the Vietnam War

good point.”

“Actually BJW...our military did not lose one battle, never lost a unit (surrendered, destroyed etc) in combat,,the surrender came from the Defeatocrats at the other end of the mall in Washington. That with the help of traitors like "I have a hat" Mr. Teresa Heinz and useful idiots like...well you.”

“so let me get this straight:

from a combat standpoint, we were doing so well in the vietnam war that a large portion of american politicians and citizens decided we should just call the whole thing off. and subsequently democracy is flourishing in vietnam.

seriously, you're the dumbest person ive ever had the chance to communicate with. ive met tree stumps smarter than you.


the degrees you go in order to defend military action as the only method of conflict resolution are astounding. the hilarious lies to tell to yourself are astounding. the unwavering nationalism you express is testament to your small mindedness. your quick judgment on anything not completely in line with your beliefs is indicative of your inability to conceive of multiple possibilities.

you're a mole person.
last edited: 10/19/06 2:59:49 PM”

““I'm sorry. I know I get easily lost but who thought Tet was a military loss for the US?”
bearmagnet

George Steponagolopolous”

“EmJayDubya, it looks like its time for the Goering quote again.”

“BJW...the length to which you turn a blind eye to the truth of the failing Mainstream media is astounding. I think your past few statements about our heroes in Vietnam shows you have never supported the military. People like you are hilarious...you are what the Soviets referred to as Useful Idiots (LOL)...

MarkO gonna run the Goering quote? LOL good idea quote a convited mass murder as your support. So you and Violin go to the Same Bund Meeting?”

“ask mr history! acording to him we only lose wars under a Defeetocrat admin”
HikerBoy
2:37:25 PM
10/19/06

the surrender came from the Defeatocrats at the other end of the mall in Washington.
Xl400236
2:49:20 PM
10/19/06

thanks mr history (selective edit version)!!!!”

“"Not necessarily. Somebody scouts a landing area for them."
mooglo


I beg to differ, moonglo.

We say...HOOYAH!!!”

“MarkO gonna run the Goering quote? LOL good idea quote a convited mass murder as your support.
XL

No, this quote points to how loonies like yourself can be brought to do the bidding of the warmongers while calling the rest of us traitors.

See ya on the trail, good buddy!”

“HOOYAH?

Sounds like the air force. LOL!

Or is it a Harry Krishna thing?”

“Hey hey...lets not drag this thread into a war of the services...oh what the heck....AIR FORCE??? with out the bombs and bullets just another expensive flying club


LOL Coast Guard...have to be over 6 feet tall so that they can walk back to the dock if their boat sinks (LOL)”

“Harry Krishna...Harry Krishna...Krishna-Krishna...Harry-Harry...Harry Krishna...


Yeah, that's the ticket. Maybe that's what we shout. It's been so long I forget.

I know it was some sort of message of peace and love for everyone, especially our enemies. Turn the other cheek don't you know.

...Air Force my achin' arse!



It certainly must have been a long time ago. Since when did the Cav's AO include hydrographic survey and beach recon?”

“It wasn't that long ago. Hydrographic survey!? LOL. How about they scouted beaches and land areas for bad guys. We scouted for enemies, landing areas, food/fuel supplies, discharged chemical and biological hazards. Then cleared the area so the Marines could come aboard.

Didn't you ever watch Apocolypse Now? I love the smell of napalm in the morning. That napalm wasn't clearing trees for recreational skate-board parks.

Air-Cav. Hoo-ah!”

“Ever since WWII, landings have been preceded by hydrographic survey and beach recon whenever possible, even before the marines hit the beach in front of the TV cameras in Somalia. And it wasn't Air-Cav.

But you knew that.”

“Ok arclite, think what you want. You've been wrong before in the military category. You are wrong again.

I think I would know what my unit did.

Rent the movie. It was based on reality. A real unit. A real mission.
last edited: 10/19/06 7:26:07 PM”

“I heard the US won Tet.”

“Yeah, that's it moonglo. I'll go rent Rambo for the true story.

And if we ever meet, you can educate me about the truth about the military.




Yes, magneto, but many people thought (and still think) we lost. The media put such a negative spin on the whole thing that the U.S. public wanted our withdrawal...

...sound familiar?
last edited: 10/19/06 7:47:22 PM”

“"Megneto". I like that. Kind of X-Men, mutant like.

I doubt anyone thinks we lost the Tet Offensive in a military sense. But that might be beside the point.

One can analyze History in a more unbiased manner. Current events are not so easy. One may say the media is spinning current evnts but how does one conclude that? How does one find an unbiased source?”

“arclite - I just told you the truth about the military.

Do you think I'm lying? Do you think I'm making it up?

Unreal.

Yeah, go rent Rambo.”

“I don't think there is one unbiased source, magneto (I'm not normal so I like it too).

That's why continuing education is so important.

How many people in media polls thought (and quite possibly still think) the economy was doing poorly? You know the Dow went over 12000 today? Yeah, well if people knew a little bit about economics, they wouldn't have believed all the doom and gloom coming from the media. You can’t let journalists educate you about economics.




It's important to examine all sides of an issue, but I know of too many people who only want to read things that confirm what the already believe.

Case in point: I had a conversation with a left-leaning guy in the office about the book Bias when it came out. He said that he would think about reading it when he was finished with his current book. I saw him a week later with a new book. It was a comedy book by Molly Ivans. Now which of those two very different books do you believe would have broadened his view of the world?




You’ve also got to be ready to admit your mistakes of perception by self-examination. Apparently that’s really hard for many people to accomplish. But you can’t grow as a person without that ability.

One of my favorite conversations was with phaedrus. He told me to Read, What Liberal Media by Eric Alterman. He said it would explain why I was wrong about my position. I read it and then tried to ask him a few questions about the premises therein.

It was obvious that he either hadn’t read it, had forgotten it, or wouldn’t bother trying to examine its points. He says he read it, but he’s never bothered to show that he knows anything about it.

Then moonglo says I was wrong about a military discussion I had with an alter-ego named Sarge. Want to guess who obviously didn’t know about the military? When you don’t have any clue that rating is used differently in the Army and Navy, you’re clueless. When you don’t know what is the most widely used military ammunition in the world, you’re clueless.

And both of them still try to say that I’m wrong. Believe me, unlike those two, the first place I look is to myself. If I’m honest in my self-examination, then I can discard other people’s BS. Some folks provide great examples of what you don’t want to be if you want to grow in mind and spirit. You don’t want to miss those lessons. The first place I always look is at my own bias. We all have bias, but in order to lessen it, you first have to admit that you have it.


There are people who believed (believe) that we lost TET. There are people who believe that George Bush was responsible for the economic bubble bursting. There are people who believe our economy is in bad shape. And there are people who believe that the Republicans are controlling the price of oil for political purposes.




There’s a lot of spin and misinformation out there. I’ve said this to you before and I mean it truthfully: I don’t care if you agree with my beliefs or not, but you owe it to yourself, and this country, to be as informed as you can be.
last edited: 10/19/06 8:24:49 PM”

“You’ve also got to be ready to admit your mistakes of perception by self-examination. Apparently that’s really hard for many people to accomplish. But you can’t grow as a person without that ability.

You should take your own advice.”

“I don't believe I ever heard anyone with a lick of sense say that the NVA won the Tet Offensive.
The Tet Offensive wasn't about winning or losing so much as it was about demonstrating the sacrifices the Vietnamese were willing to make to rid their country of foreign domination.

In Spring '54 the French garrison's defeat at Dien Bien Phu was only a local defeat for French forces even though they were in control of most of the rest of the country.

It was however the last straw for the French people having lost some 90,000* killed between '45 & '54 with no prospects that the Vietnamese would give up.............ever.
The disaster at DBP also netted the Viets thousands of prisoners in a war in which they took no prisoners for the most part.
They could barely feed their own soldiers let alone care for prisoners.
The fact that the Viets held all these men pushed the French to negotiations .

During the years '45 to '54 the French people protested the conflict increasingly as it dragged on sometimes fighting pitched battles with riot police in France.
This made the U.S. anti-war movement look like Sesame Street in comparison.

During those years the French military academy could not produce second lieutenants/platoon leaders fast enough to replace those killed in the fighting forcing them to resort to extensive use of mercenaries as platoon leaders.

The French forces did not lack in brutality containing many German veterans from SS and Wehrmacht infantry who were combat junkies eager to kill communists.
It wasn't as though they could not or would not fight effectively.
And the U.S. government saw to it that they had plenty of money to finance the war.

*I'm not sure of this figure and it is not my intention to mislead if I am incorrect with the figure.
last edited: 10/19/06 8:30:59 PM”

“The Tet Offensive wasn't about winning or losing so much as it was about demonstrating the sacrifices the Vietnamese were willing to make to rid their country of foreign domination.

It also demonstrated how unwilling many Americans were to sacrifice to prevent the success of communist guerrillas.”

“I don't believe I ever heard anyone with a lick of sense say that the NVA won the Tet Offensive.

George Steponalogolot”

“Good Lord...never heard the media say we LOST TET...I think DAN Blather was famous for that (LOL along with making up other stuff).

In reference to why we do surveys of beaches...shall I enlighten you...there is a little spit of land in the South Pac named Betio part of the Tarawa Atoll. Its about half the size of NY Central Park. Sadly it has a reef that is about 100-200 yard from the beach. The First Wave of US MARINES hit the beach then the tide went out. The Second wave was almost totally destroyed. My Uncle was in that wave. When he got to the island (bailed out of his boat as it was hit) you could stand on one side and see the ocean on the other. Over 1000 American Marines and Sailors died in 72 hours there. Question...why did they die?”

“ped...the ability to kill how many Americans with WMD's is considered acceptable. I mean I know you must have an "acceptable" limit, i.e. the max number of children and women screaming silently as their bodies convulse from some weapon. So what is your number...100,000 300,000....”
Xl400236
3:39:13 PM
10/19/06


XL - If anywhere near that number of Americans were at risk from Iraqi WMDs, I'd be with ya on this.”

“boats couldn't cross”