Posted on 09/14/2007 9:02:25 PM PDT by NapkinUser
President Bush has won the Battle of September.
When he turns over the presidency on Jan. 20, 2009, there will likely be as many U.S. troops in Iraq as there were when Congress was elected to bring them home in November 2006.
That is the meaning of Gen. Petraeus' recommendation, adopted by President Bush, that 6,000 U.S. troops be home by Christmas and the surge of 30,000 ended by April. Come November 2008, there will likely still be 130,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq.
Will this make America safer, Sen. John Warner, R-Va., asked. "I don't know," answered the general. An honest answer. None of us knows.
The general did know, however, that "a premature drawdown of our forces would likely have devastating consequences."
So we are trapped, fighting a war in which "victory" is not assured and perhaps not attainable – to avert a strategic disaster and humanitarian catastrophe should we walk away.
While the posturing of the Democrats, using Petraeus as a foil for their frustration and rage, was appalling, it is understandable. For, as this writer warned the day Baghdad fell, this time, we really "hit the tar baby."
What has the war cost? Going on 3,800 U.S. dead and 28,000 wounded. More than 100,000 Iraqis are dead; 2 million, including most Christians and much of the professional class, have fled. Millions have been ethnically cleansed from neighborhoods where their families had lived for generations.
(Excerpt) Read more at worldnetdaily.com ...
We will continue grinding the Islamic jihadists into little bitty pieces as long as they keep sending them in. Better there than here.
With his second sentence this fool shows he hasn’t a clue regarding the war here at home being lost because of fools like him mischaracterizing the ‘06 election and feeding the dissonance the DNC craves. Pat is relevant only in his own mind and down at DNC planning closets.
If there is one thing that GWB has done well is show a keep interest in going after and killing the bad guys or rounding them up and showing them a wet towel over their faces while strapped to a board.
That said there’s a hell of a lot more that could have and should have been done the past 18 months instead of having our guys get bled slow. Syria’s military should have been vaporized by now and Iran should have been dealing with massive acts of sabotage inside its own borders along with other deniable disasters.
Pat you jackass, since when is victory EVER “assured?”
This guy USED TO be intelligent.
Pat jumped the shark years ago.
Does Saddam's Iraq pose a nuclear threat to the USA and it's allies? It did before 2003. It does not today because the United States verified it does not.
I wonder if this thread by a hasbeen trying to be relevant will get more postings than a truly important thread directing folks to listen to the wisdom of Newt Gingrich at his best as an Historian applying lessons learned, at least learned by him? The other day at Enterprise Institute (I think that’s the one), Newt applied the tools of an Historian reviewing most recent History. We had better listen to the man while we still can, and apply some of what he posits as strategic offense.
That's because every time our boys shot up a mosk minaret the media and Democrats screamed blue murder. Heaven forbid should they kill a black robed devil.
And there are plenty of success stories in Iraq, you just never hear about them in the media.
It's true that there were some blunders made, such as letting Mookie live (I still can't understand the logic behind that one) but nothing that couldn't be corrected with raw projection of power, IF we were able to use it.
The problem was and still is however, that we are operating in a subordinate position in Iraq. We can't just go blow up the things we want to without the OK from Iraq's infant government. And then there is the problem with media here at home making everything we do look evil. This country is full of traitors.
Well, he was ahead of his time on the invasion of our southern border.
But in dealing with Iraq in the way that we have Iran was allowed to move closer and closer to getting a bomb. Saddam was a murdering thug, Ahmanutjob is something worse, a true believer.
Let's not mention that one, Pat. How pathetic is it that the inept A-holes who orchestrated this nonsense have ended up accomplishing something that Ahmadinejad himself could not have imagined in his wildest dreams back in 2002.
As for the "cakewalk" crowd that accused opponents of the war of lacking in patriotism, they never repented of their demagoguery. Despite the pre-invasion propaganda they pumped out about Saddam's awesome weapons and ties to 9/11, or their assurances that U.S. troops would be welcomed with candy and flowers, like Paris in '44, and their prediction that a democracy would arise in Iraq to which Islamic nations would look as a model, they have never been called to account.
Love him or hate him, Mr. Buchanan is absolutely right on this one.
That's a lot of baloney. We can't have it both ways. This administration has been thoroughly incompetent one way or another -- either by waging a war that was completely unnecessary or by thoroughly mismanaging an "essential" war by invading that country with only 135,000 troops.
That wasn't intended to be a prediction. It was aimed at accomplishing two things: 1) setting very low expectations in the event of short-term failures; and 2) giving his administration the cover to do whatever it deemed necessary to fight this silly "war on terror."
The invasion was fine....what to do afterwards was the real bitch. Too many people drank the Kool-Aid and were unwilling to take tough advice on troop levels, likely insurgency, problems with Iran, etc.
Nice article there, Pat, but we should fight al Qaeda anytime and anyplace that we find ‘em.
They are in Iraq, right now.
[shrug]
That discussion (Mexican Illegals Invasion) has been going on since before he was born if you are talking about a prediction of his. Many have discussed the topic over the years, not just Buchanan.
Pat doesn’t slip off the deep end, he jumps off.
Absolutely. But Bush doesn't have the power to do that. Thank the American people.
None of that is reason to throw up our hands and walk away however. What we need to do is elect a strong REPUBLICAN party with a CLEAR mandate to go kick ass.
I've already lost a son to this Iraq mission, and I'll be damned if it was all for nothing. I don't care if we have to blow up every single mosk and re-write the Koran, and train a bunch of new age Imams. We are there to change that part of the world, and damn it we have to finnish the job.
How? The same "international community" ranting against Iran nuclear ambitions in 2003 is still playing out. The foot dragging still continues in the face of Iran using the same play book that Saddam used to fool the IAEA.
The West should be overjoyed at, "One down, one to go...for now."
Excuse me, but I don't remember a referendum on this issue alone. We were picking candidates but they weren't just pro war and anti war candidates.
This is framed illocically.
In mid-term elections for any president, there is often a drop off of same party members in the House and Senate. That doesn't mean it is due to one specific issue.
That claim can be made, but there's no reason for anyone agreeing with the right to adopt that point of view.
I do not accept that our House and Senate members lost on this issue alone.
I think I understand your point reading your other posts now. The US securing Iraq is preventing our offensive into Iran...correct?
I know a lot of people on this forum think Saudi Arabia is bad today. Let me say that if the terrorists took over Iraq and set up a Mullah rule there, it would be terrible for the U.S.
If Iran style leaderships took over Iraq and Saudi Arabia, they’d move on Dubai and other Middle-Eastern nations. Before you could say ‘Pat was a dope’, we’d essentially be in the position of having to deal with one big state of Iran that covered the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq and Iran.
Then what Pat? Do we sit on the global street corner begging for a barrel of crude that we’ll pay for next Tuesday?
Good grief! When it comes to foreign policy, Pat suffers from dementia.
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