Many Democrats Won't Stand For Victory In Iraq

[Gaffer]

more boots on the ground is a nice phrase, but only marginally more will not be enough to cause the quantum change in the paradigm. And I like your idea about the border with Iran, but that is NOT, unfortunately, where the 21.5K is destined to go, but rather to the Anbar Province and into Baghdad.

21K is a drop in the bucket... it is throwing a handful of men at a problem that is bigger than fifty handfuls could take care of.

That is the one time I think we have ever been in agreement. Baghdad and anbar need to be secured. We need to have our rear areas secure while we concentrate on the borders. I don't think leaving the city just to the iraqis would be a good idea at this point. We need to take a couple of months and take down as many of the large groups as posible before turning it over to the iraqis. Then move to the borders and prevent infiltration of men and supplies while the iraqi army cleans up.

If things are about to intesify with iran I would be putting more unannounced troops in along with the 21,000 and build up along the border with iran.We could quietly put two divisions along the iranian border under the surge banner with no media announcements to tell the iranians what's going on.

[retiredman]

but that is not what Petraeus is going to do....Bush will make him put everyone in Anbar and Baghdad and 21K ain't enough to change anything....

it is nothing more than pouring more men with shovels down the hole and telling them to keep digging faster

[Gaffer]

but that is not what Petraeus is going to do....Bush will make him put everyone in Anbar and Baghdad and 21K ain't enough to change anything....

it is nothing more than pouring more men with shovels down the hole and telling them to keep digging faster

Your assuming that Bush will tell him to do that. It's a wait and see point right now. We will probably see some results by spring. I expect the leaders like sadr will pretend to lay down their arms and go along with things until we withdraw. We will clean out the better part of the independent thugs and al queda and start packing to leave. After we leave sadr will take up arms again and then you will see a civil war.

[retiredman]

Your assuming that Bush will tell him to do that. It's a wait and see point right now. We will probably see some results by spring. I expect the leaders like sadr will pretend to lay down their arms and go along with things until we withdraw. We will clean out the better part of the independent thugs and al queda and start packing to leave. After we leave sadr will take up arms again and then you will see a civil war.

let's reconvene in four months and see which one of our prognostications is more on the mark....

[red states rule]

Evey so often, the liberal media shows the other side



NBC's Engel Relays Frustrations of Soldiers Disturbed by Opposition to War Back Home
Posted by Brent Baker on January 26, 2007 - 20:35.
A week after NBC News reporter Jane Arraf conceded that life in Iraq “isn't entirely what it seems” from the constant media focus on bombings, the Friday NBC Nightly News gave rare voice to soldiers in Iraq disturbed by criticism of the war back home. Embedded with the Army's Stryker Brigade's Apache Company (the Fort Lewis, Washington-based 1st Battalion of the 23rd Infantry Regiment; newspaper story) in Hurriya, Richard Engel relayed how “troops here say they are increasingly frustrated by American criticism of the war. Many take it personally, believing it is also criticism of what they've been fighting for. Twenty-one-year-old Specialist Tyler Johnson is on his first tour in Iraq. He thinks skeptics should come over and see what it's like firsthand before criticizing." Johnson asserted: “You may support or say we support the troops, but, so you're not supporting what they do, what they're here sweating for, what we bleed for, what we die for. It just don't make sense to me."

Staff Sergeant Manuel Sahagun directly took on the spin of war critics, complaining that “one thing I don't like is when people back home say they support the troops, but they don't support the war. If they're going to support us, support us all the way." Engel soon powerfully concluded: "Apache Company has lost two soldiers, and now worries their country may be abandoning the mission they died for.”

Video clip (1:10): Real (2 MB) or Windows Media (2.3 MB), plus MP3 audio (400 KB)

My January 19 NewsBusters item, with video, recounted:


Back in the United States from Baghdad, NBC News correspondent Jane Arraf, who joined NBC last year after eight years with CNN, conceded that life in Iraq “isn't entirely what it seems” from the constant media focus on bombings. In studio with Brian Williams on Friday's NBC Nightly News, she acknowledged how journalists are “really good at getting across the relentless bombing and the violence, but it's really a lot harder for us to portray those spaces in between. I mean, for us, we live in the city. It's as secure as it can be, but we wake up to the sound of car bombs. We feel the mortars sometimes. And in a horrible, inevitable way, it becomes sort of like the weather, and it's kind of the same for Iraqis. Unless they're in the middle of it, life looks amazingly normal."

Williams noted how “we get asked all the time....where's the good news we know is going on there?" Arraf conceded there's “a piece of good news that's out there every day that's really hard for us to get at,” and that's how “there are children walking to school, there are girls and boys, there are Iraqi girls who are walking to school, and it's that wonderful sign of resilience that is the fabric, the background of life there.” But, “to go out and do that story....we'd probably be putting those children in danger because that is the nature of television.”


The MRC's Brad Wilmouth corrected the closed-captioning against the video for the January 26 NBC Nightly News report from Iraq:

Brian Williams: "Tonight we get to see American soldiers on the job in Iraq, and more important really we get to hear from them about all the talk about the war here at home. We get this view courtesy of our veteran Baghdad-based correspondent who is tonight embedded with U.S. forces as they prepare to be joined by a whole lot more U.S. forces. Here with our report, NBC's Richard Engel."

Richard Engel: "When the Stryker Brigade's Apache Company headed out this morning, they had one mission: to find bases for the new U.S. troops coming in. There aren't a lot of safe options in Hurriya. This Baghdad neighborhood has been overrun by Shiite militias that have forced out nearly all of the Sunnis. The company also checks out an Iraqi army outpost, but it's just a trash-strewn soccer field exposed to snipers. And there's a bigger problem: The Iraqi soldiers aren't staying on guard duty."

Unidentified soldier to an Iraqi soldier: "We came here to find you guys, and we came in here and no one was here."

Engel: "It's not just the new mission the new soldiers are adjusting to. They have something else on their minds -- the growing debate at home about the war. Troops here say they are increasingly frustrated by American criticism of the war. Many take it personally, believing it is also criticism of what they've been fighting for. Twenty-one-year-old Specialist Tyler Johnson is on his first tour in Iraq. He thinks skeptics should come over and see what it's like firsthand before criticizing."

Specialist Tyler Johnson: "-because people are dying. You know what I'm saying? You may support or say we support the troops, but, so you're not supporting what they do, what they're here sweating for, what we bleed for, what we die for. It just don't make sense to me."

Engel: "Staff Sergeant Manuel Sahagun has served in Afghanistan, and is now on his second tour in Iraq. He says people back home can't have it both ways."

Staff Sergeant Manuel Sahagun: "One thing I don't like is when people back home say they support the troops, but they don't support the war. If they're going to support us, support us all the way."

Engel: "Specialist Peter Manna thinks people have forgotten the toll the war has taken."

Specialist Peter Manna: "If they don't think we're doing a good job, everything that we've done here is all in vain."

Engel: "Apache Company has lost two soldiers, and now worries their country may be abandoning the mission they died for. Richard Engel, NBC News, Baghdad."

http://newsbusters.org/node/10434

[retiredman]

whether individual troops can comprehend the distinction, there is, nonetheless, a difference between questioning the validity of a mission given to our armed forces by the civilian military command, and questioning the honor and purpose of the troops on the ground doing their damnedest to carry out that mission.

[red states rule]

whether individual troops can comprehend the distinction, there is, nonetheless, a difference between questioning the validity of a mission given to our armed forces by the civilian military command, and questioning the honor and purpose of the troops on the ground doing their damnedest to carry out that mission.

That is like saying you like football players but you hate football

[retiredman]

That is like saying you like football players but you hate football

no...that is a faulty analogy.

and for the record, every career military man hates war.

[red states rule]

Nobody loves war - but this is one we have to win

Of course you are not to say that if you work for the liberal media



Fox News Cites Times Watch's Story on Double Standards at the NY Times
Posted by Clay Waters on January 30, 2007 - 10:48.
Fox News "Special Report" anchor Brit Hume led off his "Political Grapevine" segment Monday night by citing a piece that appeared that day on Times Watch, on the paper's double standard regarding the expressing of personal opinions on television. Here's Hume:

"A New York Times reporter has been rebuked by his superiors after voicing the hope that the U.S. can accomplish its goals in Iraq. Here's what Times chief military correspondent Michael Gordon said on the Charlie Rose show earlier this month, quote:

'As a purely personal view, I think it's worth it, one last effort for sure to try to get this right, because my personal view is we've never really tried to win. We've simply been managing our way to defeat. And I think that if it's done right, I think that there is the chance to accomplish something,' end quote. Times Public Editor Byron Calame writes that Washington Bureau Chief Philip Taubman said Gordon quote, 'stepped over the line' and quote, 'went too far.'

"Timeswatch.com points out that last summer Times reporter Neil MacFarquhar appeared on the Rose show, and criticized Bush administration practice of sending bombs to the Middle East, saying the policy, quote, 'erodes and erodes and erodes America's reputation.' MacFarquhar received no reprimand for his comments."

http://newsbusters.org/node/10496

[retiredman]

because redstates...since you obviously have no time in uniform, let me give you a little clue: folks on active duty routinely go wherever the fuck the suits in DC tell us to go and do whatever the fuck they tell us to do until they tell us to stop. Supporting the troops has nothing to do with supporting the relevance of the mission they are sent in to accomplish.

If Bush said that our military would go full bore and attempt to establish a nation of smurfs in south africa, that might cause me to publicly proclaim that I thought his MISSION was absurd, but it would NEVER cause me to say that the brave men and women of our armed forces who were sent to fight and die to attempt to achieve that, admittedly absurd mission were anything less than brave or honorable...it is clearly possible to maintain support for those in uniform while varying one's support for the mission they are sent on based upon that mission's intellectual underpinnings

[red states rule]

Tell that to the peace niks and the libs in Congress. So far I have heard elected Dems compare then to Nazis, Pol Pot, the miltary is operating torture chambers, they are uneducated, they terrorize innocent civilians, and peace niks spit at them at the Pro Terrorist Rally in DC this past weekend

I do not see alot of "support" for them from the left

[retiredman]

Tell that to the peace niks and the libs in Congress. So far I have heard elected Dems compare then to Nazis, Pol Pot, the miltary is operating torture chambers, they are uneducated, they terrorize innocent civilians, and peace niks spit at them at the Pro Terrorist Rally in DC this past weekend

I do not see alot of "support" for them from the left

no..ou haven't heard anyone compare THEM top nazis or pol pot, you have hearde their mission compared to that.


and let me ask you something.... if your house was broken into in the middle of the night by a band of armed personnel who did not speak your language, do you think your wife and children (assuming any woman would stay with a prick like you long enough to pump out babies) would be frightened by such an experience?

[Gaffer]

Tell that to the peace niks and the libs in Congress. So far I have heard elected Dems compare then to Nazis, Pol Pot, the miltary is operating torture chambers, they are uneducated, they terrorize innocent civilians, and peace niks spit at them at the Pro Terrorist Rally in DC this past weekend

I do not see alot of "support" for them from the left

You will never see support for them from the left. The left has nothing but distain for our troops and our country.

[retiredman]

and I most likely do more (from the left) in any given week to support our troops than you do all year with all your yellow ribbon made in china bumper magnets

[red states rule]

no..ou haven't heard anyone compare THEM top nazis or pol pot, you have hearde their mission compared to that.


and let me ask you something.... if your house was broken into in the middle of the night by a band of armed personnel who did not speak your language, do you think your wife and children (assuming any woman would stay with a prick like you long enough to pump out babies) would be frightened by such an experience?

Sen Dick Turbin compared them to both Nazis and Pol Pot on the Senate floor

I see you agree with John "I served in Viet Nam" Kerry our troops are terrorists. Did you forget the terrorists use the civilians as human shields and their homes as safe houses