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jwhop
Knowflake

Posts: 2787
From: Madeira Beach, FL USA
Registered: Apr 2009

posted June 24, 2006 02:25 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for jwhop     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
So, the head democrat, Howard Dean says our troops are targets in Iraq. That's brilliant of the crazed loon. I wonder in what war soldiers weren't a target for the opposition?

The democrat plan for the war in Iraq is to cut and run now...or cut and run a little later. Either way, it's surrender to the terrorists and upsets all kinds of security agreements the US has with nations around the world.

For instance, if the US doesn't have the guts and political will to defeat the terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan, can the Taiwanese have any confidence the US will come to their aid if they're attacked by China...which China threatens every other week or so?

Can one of our partners in the area...Pakistan and Musharraf have any confidence the US would stand by the government if the Islamic terrorists attacked Pakistan in force?

What about Japan? How could Japan, a nation which has forsaken nuclear weapons and even a strong military have any confidence they would continue to enjoy any protection under the US umbrella of security arrangements with them?

Those are by no means ALL the nations who look to the United States for an umbrella of protection in the face of attacks by others.

There's only two ways to look at this.

Either the democrats know all this and are attempting to embarrass the United States around the world with our security partners....while giving aid and comfort to America's enemies...the terrorists, Iran, North Korea, Syria et.al.,...and are therefore traitors of the very worst sort.

OR

democrats are so braindead they don't understand the broader implications of their cut and run, surrender now policy. And democrats call Bush a stupid moron

But either way you slice it, it proves beyond any doubt whatsoever democrats are totally unfit...being either treasonous OR terminally stupid...to lead, govern or control the Congress and White House of the United States.

Saturday, June 24, 2006 11:13 a.m. EDT
Howard Dean Says President Bush Turned U.S. Soldiers Into Targets

The head of the Democratic Party blamed the Bush administration's "failed political leadership and lack of foresight and planning" for turning U.S. soldiers into targets for the Iraqi insurgency.

In his party's weekly radio address Saturday, Howard Dean said the Republican plan of "stay the course" is not an option in the 3-year-old war and emphasized the Democratic call for a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops to begin by year's end.

He also rejected the Republican criticism that Democrats want to "cut and run."

"Among the victims are brave American soldiers who are the targets of an insurgency because of failed political leadership and a lack of foresight and planning," Dean said. "We don't want another wall with 55,000 names of courageous Americans who were let down by their government."

The reference was to the black granite memorial in Washington with the names of those who died in Vietnam.
Dean described the Democratic proposals offered in the Senate last week, including the start of a phased redeployment of troops and an accounting of the war's costs. The Republican-controlled Senate soundly rejected two Democratic plans calling for the United States to begin withdrawing most of the 127,000 American forces in the war zone.

Republicans contend that leaving would amount to a policy of retreat that would threaten national security. Vice President Dick Cheney said withdrawal of U.S. forces would be giving the terrorists what they want.

During the Senate debate, John McCain, R-Ariz., said leaving Iraq would "risk disaster" there. "Withdrawal and fail, or commit and succeed," he said.

Dean argued that Republicans don't have a plan.

"'Stay the course' is not a plan. Saying the problems in Iraq will be left to the next president is not a plan. Our troops deserve better," he said.
Dean added that phrases such as "peace is at hand" and "the insurgency is in its last throes" are made by what he called an increasingly desperate administration.

Cheney said last week that he stood by his statement that the insurgency was in its last throes.

Dean rejected the "cut and run" moniker, saying Democrats "will defend America, but we will be tough and smart."

In heated rhetoric, Cheney and White House adviser Karl Rove have assailed Democrats such as John Kerry and John Murtha, both decorated Vietnam veterans. Rove said those Democrats "may be with you at the first shots, but they are not going to be there for the last tough battles."

Said Dean, "A majority of the American people don't believe the president is telling the truth, while the administration and its supporters question the patriotism of veterans who disagree with them, accusing them of 'cut and run."'
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/6/24/111423.shtml?s=ic

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lotusheartone
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posted June 24, 2006 03:26 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Simply..we can not cut and run. ...

for every action..there is an equal or greater re-action..

LOve and Respect for ALL. .

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Petron
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posted June 24, 2006 09:10 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote

Polls, Pundits and Pols
You'd never know it from some of the reporting and bloviating on the debate over an Iraq withdrawal, but all major polls show that the public favors withdrawals, with strong support for a timeline or total pullout within a year.

By Greg Mitchell

(June 22, 2006) -- The new efforts by Republicans in Congress, and in the media, to use Iraq to their advantage by branding Democrats as favoring a "cut-and-run'" policy, has received wide coverage in the past week. Often pundits, and even reporters, have suggested that this is working, because Americans are not in favor of a "hasty" withdrawal. Democrats are in shambles, they report, as they fear that proposals for setting a timetable for withdrawal put forward by Sen. John Kerry and Rep. John Murtha will prove disastrous for the party in the November elections, due to the alleged unpopularity of this stance.

This conclusion, however, flies in the face of surveys by all major polling firms, as E&P has chronicled over the past two years.


It's one thing when polls are dismissed, ignored or twisted by political or media spinmeisters. But when journalists in their news stories do it, it is downright misleading.

Take Jim Rutenberg and Adam Nagourney in The New York Times today.

They produced a front-pager on the Republicans' unexpected confidence on this issue, and declared: "Some polls show a majority of Americans continue to think that entering Iraq was a mistake, and pollsters say independent voters are particularly open to the idea of setting some sort of timetable for withdrawal, the very policy Democrats have embraced and Republicans are now fighting."

The fact is, not "some" polls, but virtually every major poll shows that American have long declared that going to war against Iraq was a mistake.

And far more than "independent voters" are drawn to withdrawal. Every major poll reveals that a majority of Americans advocate withdrawals from Iraq, with large numbers wanting this to be quite speedy, and most wanting a full pullout in a year or so (Kerry's idea) or by the end of next year.

This is hardly a "some" position. A CNN poll, for example, conducted June 14-15 found that 53% favored a timetable for withdrawal, while 41% opposed it. Yet newspaper editorials, as usual, remain mute on this and the Senate today soundly trounced the Democrats' withdrawal pleas, even a wishy-washy one put forward by Sen. Carl Levin.

In highlighting the Republicans' new spin on Iraq, Rutenberg and Nagourney stated, "The approach might yet be upended by more problems in Iraq." This laughably suggests that voters are okay with the current situation -- so long as it doesn't get worse.

On Wednesday, Charles Babington in The Washington Post noted "polls showing that many Americans oppose the war but do not want to leave Iraq amid such chaos that it is a breeding ground for terrorism." Again: All major surveys show that a clear majority do want us to "leave Iraq," partly because of that very "chaos."

And how is this for a bottom line poll result? The CBS News poll taken less than two weeks ago asked if what has transpired in Iraq was "worth the loss of American life and other costs." The result: 62% said "no."

Yet Sen. John McCain actually suggested today that any timetable would be "a significant step on the road to disaster" -- as if we haven't been on that road for three years, and already found disaster.

I happen to have a full printout of a detailed NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey completed 10 days ago. It shows, among other things, that 57% of respondents support reducing troop levels now, with only 35% favoring current levels. The vast majority of those backing withdrawal favor setting a timellne. The same poll finds just 35% supporting the job President Bush is doing on Iraq.

But here's the key finding. The pollsters stated a series of positions, ranging from opposing gay marriage to repealing the estate tax, and asked if a candidate running for congress who embraced such a position was more or less likely to gain their vote. One position was: "Favors pulling all American troops out of Iraq within the next 12 months."

That couldn't be more simple and clear. The result? Some 54% said they would be "more likely" to vote for such a candidate and only 32% said "less likely."

They were then asked to rank the most important issues for this fall's election. Iraq topped the list at 53% with illegal immigration far behind at 32%. This survey, and recent ones from Gallup, strongly show that the public very much prefers Democrats in this year's races and, in fact, would like to see a Democratic congress to balance the Republican White House.

Of course, time will tell if they actually go ahead and vote their beliefs. But reading the latest poll results, one might conclude the opposite of what many reporters and pundits now seem to be suggesting: that, actually, the GOP faces an uphill fight on re-selling the Iraq war, now in its fourth year.
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002726568


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Petron
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posted June 24, 2006 09:12 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote

WPO Poll: Iraqi Public Wants Timetable for US Withdrawal, but Thinks US Plans Permanent Bases in Iraq

Half of Iraqis Approve of Attacks on US Forces, Including 9 Out of 10 Sunnis

Full Report
Questionnaire/Methodology

A new poll of the Iraqi public finds that a large majority of Iraqis think the US plans to maintain bases in Iraq permanently, even if the newly elected government asks the US to leave. A large majority favors setting a timeline for the withdrawal of US forces, though this majority divides over whether the timeline should be over a period of six months or two years. Nearly half of Iraqis approve of attacks on US-led forces—including nine out of 10 Sunnis. Most Iraqis believe that many aspects of their lives will improve once the US-led forces leave, but are nonetheless uncertain that Iraqi security forces are ready to stand on their own.
http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/brmiddleeastnafricara/165.php?nid=&id=&pnt=165&lb=brme

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Petron
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posted June 24, 2006 09:13 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote

Top Sunni asked Bush for pullout timeline
Associated Press

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq's vice president has asked President Bush for a timeline for the withdrawal of foreign forces from Iraq, the Iraqi president's office said.

Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, a Sunni, made the request during his meeting with Bush on Tuesday, when the U.S. president made a surprise visit to Iraq.

"I supported him in this," President Jalal Talabani said in a statement released Wednesday. Al-Hashimi's representatives could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday.
http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/world/14823067.htm

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Petron
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posted June 24, 2006 09:14 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote

The Way Out of Iraq: A Road Map

By Mowaffak al-Rubaie
Tuesday, June 20, 2006; Page A17

There has been much talk about a withdrawal of U.S. and coalition troops from Iraq, but no defined timeline has yet been set. There is, however, an unofficial "road map" to foreign troop reductions that will eventually lead to total withdrawal of U.S. troops. This road map is based not just on a series of dates but, more important, on the achievement of set objectives for restoring security in Iraq.

Iraq has a total of 18 governorates, which are at differing stages in terms of security. Each will eventually take control of its own security situation, barring a major crisis. But before this happens, each governorate will have to meet stringent minimum requirements as a condition of being granted control. For example, the threat assessment of terrorist activities must be low or on a downward trend. Local police and the Iraqi army must be deemed capable of dealing with criminal gangs, armed groups and militias, and border control. There must be a clear and functioning command-and-control center overseen by the governor, with direct communication to the prime minister's situation room.


Despite the seemingly endless spiral of violence in Iraq today, such a plan is already in place. All the governors have been notified and briefed on the end objective. The current prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, has approved the plan, as have the coalition forces, and assessments of each province have already been done. Nobody believes this is going to be an easy task, but there is Iraqi and coalition resolve to start taking the final steps to have a fully responsible Iraqi government accountable to its people for their governance and security. Thus far four of the 18 provinces are ready for the transfer of power -- two in the north (Irbil and Sulaymaniyah) and two in the south (Maysan and Muthanna). Nine more provinces are nearly ready.

With the governors of each province meeting these strict objectives, Iraq's ambition is to have full control of the country by the end of 2008. In practice this will mean a significant foreign troop reduction. We envisage the U.S. troop presence by year's end to be under 100,000, with most of the remaining troops to return home by the end of 2007.

The eventual removal of coalition troops from Iraqi streets will help the Iraqis, who now see foreign troops as occupiers rather than the liberators they were meant to be. It will remove psychological barriers and the reason that many Iraqis joined the so-called resistance in the first place. The removal of troops will also allow the Iraqi government to engage with some of our neighbors that have to date been at the very least sympathetic to the resistance because of what they call the "coalition occupation." If the sectarian issue continues to cause conflict with Iraq's neighbors, this matter needs to be addressed urgently and openly -- not in the guise of aversion to the presence of foreign troops.

Moreover, the removal of foreign troops will legitimize Iraq's government in the eyes of its people. It has taken what some feel is an eternity to form a government of national unity. This has not been an easy or enviable task, but it represents a significant achievement, considering that many new ministers are working in partisan situations, often with people with whom they share a history of enmity and distrust. By its nature, the government of national unity, because it is working through consensus, could be perceived to be weak. But, again, the drawdown of foreign troops will strengthen our fledgling government to last the full four years it is supposed to.

While Iraq is trying to gain its independence from the United States and the coalition, in terms of taking greater responsibility for its actions, particularly in terms of security, there are still some influential foreign figures trying to spoon-feed our government and take a very proactive role in many key decisions. Though this may provide some benefits in the short term, in the long run it will only serve to make the Iraqi government a weaker one and eventually lead to a culture of dependency. Iraq has to grow out of the shadow of the United States and the coalition, take responsibility for its own decisions, learn from its own mistakes, and find Iraqi solutions to Iraqi problems, with the knowledge that our friends and allies are standing by with support and help should we need it.

The writer is Iraq's national security adviser.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/19/AR2006061901237.html

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lotusheartone
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posted June 24, 2006 09:14 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Refreshing!

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jwhop
Knowflake

Posts: 2787
From: Madeira Beach, FL USA
Registered: Apr 2009

posted June 26, 2006 03:00 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for jwhop     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
June 26, 2006, 5:49 a.m.
Run Away! Run Away!
A short history of the party of surrender.
By Mario Loyola

The text of the Kerry-Feingold proposal to withdraw American forces from Iraq contained an element of unintended comedy:

The President shall redeploy, commencing in 2006, United States forces from Iraq by July 1, 2007 … leaving only the minimal number of forces that are critical to completing the mission of standing up Iraqi security forces, conducting targeted and specialized counterterrorism operations, and protecting United States facilities and personnel (emphasis added).

Since that just about is the mission, the proposal would have had no effect at all on troop levels. So its sole purpose was to serve as a declaration of surrender. Most Democrats, however, preferred the surrender declaration proposed by Senator Carl Levin, which not only did not specify a date, but in fact hardly specified anything at all.

This rather effete (and eerily French) inclination to seek defeat has a rich history in the Democratic party, going back at least to the Kennedy administration. Despite sweeping declarations about paying any price, etc., for the success of liberty, Kennedy’s foreign policy was actually based on the notion that war most often results from miscommunication. That, apparently, was his thinking when he reassured the Soviets that we would not attack if they raised a wall in Berlin. (They didn’t know that before, which is why they hadn’t built it). The predictable result, a few months later, was the Berlin Wall, which saved the Communist regime of East Germany from death-by-mass-emigration.

What is harder to divine is what Kennedy might have been thinking when he waited until the Bay of Pigs invasion was underway before deciding to pull American air and logistical support. Thousands of Cuban exiles, who were in fact willing to pay any price for the success of liberty, threw their lives away on the beach or rotted in jail for decades.

And then, of course, we have the Cuban Missile Crisis, which was caused most fundamentally by Khrushchev’s desire to see if there was any limit to Kennedy’s submissiveness. (Fortunately, there was a limit to the Pentagon’s.)

The roots of the Democratic defeat-fetish grew deeper in the weary Johnson years, during which nearly a million American boys were sent to the other side of the world by a president who was driven there almost purely by domestic politics and who appears never to have worked up any real resolve to win. By the time 1968 rolled around, Johnson himself gave up, and withdrew from the reelection battle.

Nixon and Kissinger came to office convinced that Vietnam was unwinnable (which, by that point, may have been true) and that the key thing was to surrender without appearing to have done so. They started negotiating with everyone — the North Vietnamese, the Chinese, and the Russians — to try to triangulate a settlement that would bring “peace with honor.” For most Democrats, there was no reason to sugar-coat it — surrender tasted just fine by itself. They put enormous pressure on the administration to withdraw, with or without concessions from Hanoi. In diplomacy, this is called a unilateral concession; in strategy, we use a different term: Surrender.

Interestingly, it was at about this time that “neoconservative” Democrats started to give the party a more hawkish tilt. The détente inherent in triangulation brought Kissinger into increasing propinquity (so to speak) with the Soviets, which made some Democrats very angry. Led by Senator Scoop Jackson (and his aide Richard Perle) these Democrats demanded that the Nixon administration extract concessions from the Russians in exchange for the grain credits we were offering them — in particular, that the Russians allow tens of thousands of Jews to leave the Soviet Union.

But this hawkish trend faded just a few years later, when the neoconservatives were driven from the Democratic Party by a president for whom defeat was a moral virtue. The basic message of the Carter presidency was that America is on the decline, and we have to accept it. Though the Carter years are really too depressing to think about, I recently came across an interesting and telling anecdote: The Delta Force units that took part in the disastrous Desert One operation were under orders not to use lethal force if they got as far as the embassy in Tehran and encountered a hostile crowd. (As Mark Bowden revealed, they had little intention of following these ridiculous instructions).

In fact, Carter has dedicated his entire career to American surrender. After Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, he lobbied the Security Council to vote against the Gulf War resolution, by writing letters to each of the members. (Only Cuba and Yemen followed his sage advice). More recently, he has worked to establish warm relations with many of America’s enemies, most scandalously Hugo Chávez.

After a long interregnum of American victories, Clinton brought the Democrats back to the White House and proceeded to pack as many defeats into eight years as was humanly possible. There was North Korea, Bosnia, Somalia, Iraq, Rwanda, Iraq again, and Kosovo. Bosnia and Kosovo eventually turned into victories, but not before we allowed the Serbs to win. In Bosnia, we actually helped the Serbs by drawing Bosnian Muslims into undefended “safe havens” and then looking on with some concern while the Serbs slaughtered them. In Kosovo, Clinton also tried to lose, by allowing Belgium (Belgium!) to block NATO from planning for the use of ground combat troops even as a contingency. The result was that 800,000 Kosovar Albanians lost their homes, and many tens of thousands their lives, before General Wesley Clark finally pounded Belgrade into submission with air strikes. He was promptly fired.

The greatest of Clinton’s achievements in the realm of defeat-fetish was his response to al Qaeda’s declaration of war on the United States. After our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were destroyed, Clinton valiantly lobbed scores of cruise missiles at a milk factory in the Sudan and several empty campsites in Afghanistan. The only effect on Osama bin Laden, besides giving him a reason to laugh at us, was to convince him that we were weak and would quickly accept defeat if we were hit hard enough.

And now, with the Iraq war, the Democrats are at it again. Their comparison of Iraq to Vietnam is, to say the least, a stretch. The insurgency in Iraq has failed to achieve a national geographic scope; it has no foreign countries supporting it; it has no political program that anyone can understand; and it does not even have the scant military effectiveness of the Viet Cong. But there is one striking parallel with Vietnam: The Democratic party is once again mired in a race-to-the-bottom debate about how best to make America surrender.

As events in the Senate showed last week, there is diversity of opinion among Democrats on that issue; victory, on the other hand, has almost no support within the party. Senators Clinton and Lieberman, among the only Democratic politicians who think that victory is both possible and necessary, routinely get booed at public functions when they even mention the dreaded “v” word.

The basic problem for the Democrats is that Americans are not instinctive losers. And because the Democratic base is split between moderates who want to surrender in Iraq, and liberals who want to surrender generally, they can’t exploit the biggest vulnerability Republicans have, which is, of course, the war. Any time the Democrats are forced to take a position on the war, they alienate a part of their base, and embarrass themselves in the process. This is why last week’s defeat of the two surrender declarations in the Senate is such good news for Republicans; the Democrats appear to have made surrender the essential theme of their political platform. As a result, they may yet snatch defeat from the jaws of victory come November.

Mario Loyola is a writer in Washington, D.C.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=N2Y5N2FhODZmZDNlMTgyMDQzNGE0M2JhZmZiZGE3NjY=

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