WHY I AM SUPPORTING JOHN KERRY. Risk Management (Sullivan)

1) Insurgents don't come from Syria and Saudi. Those are terrorists.

Then why didn't we deploy enough troops to seal the borders.

2) Name a single war that went "exactly as expected"..

None, but the miscalculations in this one are very troubling because it was a war of choice.

3) Your backhanded insinuation that we're better off with Saddam in power and no definitive word on WMD's, than we are with no Saddam and no WMD's, is ludicrous on it's face. .

It's the fact that WMDs were the reason for War in a war of choice.

[Who didn't anticipate the strength of the insurgency? It's no stronger than I anticipated it would be.] The war planners - they were thinking of bringing the troop number to 30,000 two months after "mission accomplished"

First of all (not that I necessarily doubt you), which "war planners"? "The"? All of them? Do you have a link?

Second: "thinking of"? Ok, well, I was thinking of winning the lottery. Didn't happen. Big deal. When it transpired that I didn't win the lottery, I made life decisions accordingly. When it transpired that it didn't make sense to reduce the troop # to 30000 (if indeed "the" war planners ever seriously entertained such an idea), they didn't.

The point?

BTW, *my* point is that it's frivolous to point to these logistical and tactical issues and call them 'mistakes', as if there has EVER been a war in which one side or the other didn't regularly make such 'mistakes'. The bottom line is, whatever they were "thinking of", in reality, they never did reduce the troop #'s to 30000, did they? So even if you consider that contingency-plan a 'mistake', it never happened thus had no effect. They adjusted.

All grownups should understand that this is what war is, you know, like. The nature of war is such that there is an enemy working against your wishes. This idea that you can "calculate" (by computer?) precisely what should be done, and get the "right answers", and then the war goes perfectly - the only word that comes to mind is, infantile.

1) Insurgents don't come from Syria and Saudi. Those are terrorists.
Then why didn't we deploy enough troops to seal the borders.

Why would we do a daft thing like that? Would you rather have terrorists in Iraq facing M1-A1s, or here in your grade schools? Bush alluded to this at his acceptance speech in his acceptance speech, but it was subtle and went right over everyone's heads. A major undeclared policy goal in Iraq seems to have been to draw terrorists, and kill them. Of course, you don't announce that to terrorists.

2) Name a single war that went "exactly as expected"..
None, but the miscalculations in this one are very troubling because it was a war of choice.

The only real major miscalculation in the war is underestimating the degrees to which a Fifth Column Socialist media will go to undermine policy. This includes your daily casualty reports, Abu Ghraib, and the latest attempted mountain of QaQaa, just for starters.

3) Your backhanded insinuation that we're better off with Saddam in power and no definitive word on WMD's, than we are with no Saddam and no WMD's, is ludicrous on it's face.
It's the fact that WMDs were the reason for War in a war of choice.

It's the announced reason, and still a good one. Every credible world figure and intelligence source including your boy Kerry agreed: before the Iraq war it was believed Saddam had, or was seeking to acquire, WMDs. Saddam's failure to comply with U.N. directives could only be interpreted as circumstantial corroboration of the notion. Even if he had no WMDs and knew it, he wanted people to think he did.

Your argument is similar to this: say a man were to walk into a bank with his hand in his pocket, telling the clerk he had a gun. A security guard shoots him. His cooling corpse is searched and no weapon is found. According to the point you are arguing, you would be more troubled by the failure to find a gun, or the shooting of the robber was a "shooting of choice." This is what we call in the vernacular, "a piss-poor argument." Sane people would be more troubled by there being a robber in a bank, and would be relieved that he was blown away.

By all means, feel as troubled as you wish; vote for Kerry and file complaints against all those security guards who shoot bank robbers while you're at it.

It's the fact that WMDs were the reason for War in a war of choice.

Not exactly. It was the potential nexus between Saddam, a know user of WMD and the terrorists we chased like cockroaches out of their caves in Afghanistan. Do you remember the video found in a cave of a puppy being gassed?

How could we even pretend to be fighting a WOT with Saddam sitting in Baghdad paying suicide bombers $25,000 each, hosting some of the worlds most wanted terrorists, and shooting at British and American planes daily.

The WMD issue was emphasized because it was the only common ground at the pathetic UN.

In fact they all agreed, until the day of reconing arrived.

If you really think this was a war of choice then you must have been out of town on 9/11. Do you miss the good ole days when Clintoon just ignored the terrorists. After all HE was President the first time these scumbags tried to knock down the World Trade Center, he did nothing to fight back for 8 years, that's why we have this mess in the first place, if you really liked those good ole days you'll love President sKerry.

Are you a troll? I do not have a problem getting moving past anything accept the drastic changes Kerry will force on this country if elected. If Kerry wins, most of the values that made this country strong will go down the crapper like so much other horse dung that Kerry puts out.

You liberals think that your have the market cornered on smarts and from this viewpoint, it just is not so. How anyone could vote for a person who was a traitor to his country and comrade in arms is beyond me.

This Sullivan person says he wants to leave his doubts to democracy. What a sorry excuse to vote for Kerry. That kind of attitude lends itself to incompetence in the system. Democracy is not something to be left to the whims of waffle minded people like John Kerry. Democracy is something that needs participation.

I believe John Kerry and his ilk believe that 9-11 did not change them. A person has to ask what kind of person would not be changed by the ramming of airplanes into occupied buildings. Do you really want a person who would admit to being so heartless as to summarily dismiss as no big deal the deaths of 3,000 of our precious citizens? I doubt that those individuals jumping out of the 95th floor of the Twin Towers would have agreed with your thinking.

It is scary that John Kerry can lie and conjure up illegal stories. He does this for anything that suits his fancy. Like Al Dimwit Gore, he is so arrogant that he can do nothing but complain about a president that may be just the greatest of all time. Kerry and his crowd have based their whole election on hate. The last time we saw that scenario Adolph Hitler was taking over Germany.

I would ask you Andrew to rethink and vote for a free and safe America.

It's the fact that WMDs were the reason for War in a war of choice.

Do you have any proof of this? Hint: Read the congressional war resolution that Kerry and Edwards signed. Also, do you have proof that WMD have not been found? I keep hearing this clap-trap from the Kool-Aid Brigade, but from what I've read, the only WMD-related criteria for going into Iraq have been fulfilled by what has been found.

When you post stuff on Free Republic, please be ready, willing, and able to back it up.

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