Posted on 06/17/2006 6:37:29 PM PDT by Barracks 1414
My political leanings are probably to the right of Atilla. I'm interested in finding answers. You seem more interested in statistics or picking a fight. If it's the latter, take up boxing. If it's the former, you're in the wrong forum.
Lord how I hate the America hating left.
Off topic: A terrific new freeper, Ikez78, has uncovered some interesting information; it's fully sourced here:
Big news last night in the Saddam - al Qaeda connection. al Baghdadi is a man leading the insurgency in Iraq currently. He was a Republican Guard officer for Saddam, companion of Zarqawi since the start of the war AND HAS BEEN FRIENDS WITH BIN LADEN SINCE MEETING HIM IN AFGHANISTAN http://markeichenlaub.blogspot.com/2006/06/abu-abdullah-rashid-al-baghdadi-former.html
I hear you.
Excellent, Peach!
And if you'd read Free Republic more in the year since you've signed up, you'd understand that what you've stated isn't much of a defense here -- claiming to be "to the right of Atilla" and interests "in finding answers" have been worked to death by too many trolls.
Show us your faith by your works and words, and spare me the comments on the propriety of my choice of forum. If you wanna Freep, Freep, but don't get your feelings hurt when others note that you don't seem to be doing so...
I don't know about the other guy, but I would prefer that to having our guys being killed. Warn them is it coming and then fire bomb the hell out of them. Actually I wish we had just nuked Bagdad and not had any of our men killed, at all. We should have nuked afghan and Iraq and to hell with world opinion. We wouldn't be seeing any planes flown into buildings in this country again for a long, long time. My opinion.
Give it a rest with this line of Bush-excusing logic. Reagan was busy fighting and winning the Cold War, the Third World War, and he didn't have time to get caught up in a distraction in a turd world s$#thole called Lebanon. It was the right decision to withdraw. Europe and strategic nuclear weapons were the game then. After 9-11, it was a different game, and the same logic the Reagan applied to the cold war would have had him fighting this war much differently than "ROP" Bush.
... and it should have been done 30 months ago!
EagleUSA, thank you very much for your service. I hope you get the gratitude long overdue to you and your buddies you served with...
That said, I respectfully disagree with you on this, and here is why.
If we wanted to flatten them, we could in a heartbeat. But I don't think we should.
The Nazis did that kind of thing. (Okay, please don't invoke Godwin's Law on me just because I mentioned Nazis!)
I am as Un-PC a person as you will ever find. But I cannot subscribe to what I call "The Glass Parking Lot" course of action. I am sick at heart anytime I hear about our troops being injured or killed by IED's or some kind of terrorist sponsored activity. But to say we should just load up about 100 B-52's with a full internal load of 50 Mark 82's and lay waste to Ramadi or anywhere else is just not a logical option. Believe me, there are times when I think that would be a good idea, such as when those savages hung the charred corpses from the bridge outside Fallujah or on 9/11, but think for a minute.
If you ask yourself the question of why we have fought the way we have in Iraq and Afghanistan, the logical (in my opinion) reason is because we want to try to find a way to make ourselves safer. In the view of those forming policy in our country, that means (from a Mulsim perspective) making your education, family, job, friends, community and future MORE important and valuable than strapping explosives on your chest and walking into a pizza joint full of unbelievers and detonating yourself.
We are not desperate enough to carpet bomb. In WWII, things WERE different. There was no pre-determined outcome (although many people today look at the allied victory as a forgone conclusion) and we were engaged in a life or death struggle. It was clearly going to be all of us or all of them, and we knew in advance what life under their heel was going to be like.
Now, if some Islamic terrorists set off a nuclear weapon in one of our cities (or perpetrate some other thing resulting in mass casualties on a scale or frequency dwarfing 9/11, I will be the first one to support a glass parking lot or some other equivalent response in certain localities.
But we cannot do that now. I understand many disagree with me on this, but I assure you, my reluctance does not stem from any kind of guilt. It stems from proportionality.
I often find it useful, when trying to formulate my personal stand on a given issue, to delineate the spectrum by "driving a stake in the ground" at either end of the spectrum which can be agreed upon by the majority of people, or at least most people know.
For example, in this case, most of us could agree that Islamofacist terrorists killing one person would not be just cause for dropping a nuclear weapon on a capitol city in the Middle East. So that would be one end. On the other hand, Islamofacists setting off a nuclear weapon in a large American city and killing millions of people would be just cause for choosing an appropriate target or targets to drop a thermonuclear device on. Perhaps Tehran, perhaps Damascus. But it would not be unreasonable to think that some measure of evidence pointing in a direction might be adequate to choose a target and act on it. So that might be the other end.
The issue is, where is the point, contained in that defined spectrum I just outlined, that would serve as a threshold?
A hundred dead? A thousand? Ten thousand? A hundred thousand?
A million?
I readily admit that the threshold will be different for many people. Mine is just higher than some, less than others. There are people who would push the button even if nobody had been killed, and there are others who would rather die and see all we know obliterated before THEY would push the button, which means 'Never".
I personally just do not think we are at the point where we can drop 5000 500lb bombs in a single raid on an undefended city with unevacuated civilians.
Or a nuclear weapon.
Again, this is MY opinion, I understand others feel differently. You in particular, EagleUSA have a background I will never be able to relate to, so I can understand why you might feel differently. I just don't think we can do that kind of thing
What would that do? To firebomb the Sunni triangle? First of all, it wouldn't happen before the whole world knows about it, so people would have time to get away. Quarantine the whole area? Good luck with that.
What needs to be done, is the media needs to be booted out of Iraq. Everythig we do over here is onthe news before it happens. That needs to stop. We need to have the element of surprise. We announce we are taking out fallujah and that gives these people time to get out or make other plans. The media is our crutch, and they must be stopped.
Dems declare this war unwinnable at a time when we need to stand strong the most. That is what irks me. The government is finally starting to take form. the military is standing up. The people want to be free. Yet politics at home and a hatred for our Commander in Chief is stronger than seeing a country succeed. I cannot believe it when I hear people calling for a pull out right now. when things are moving forward. It is bothersome to me and the troops who are risking all. But they stand tall. They beleive in what they do. No Democrat could ever take that away from them.
About these missing troops. These people better pray Allah is out there. Because if they are harmed and they make their little videos and Al Jazeera puts it out... As the song says, "no where to run to baby, no where to hide...."
"they will face a rain of ruin from the air the likes the world has never seen" (harry truman 1945) HT would have taken care of these carpet flyers long ago.
Nah, Reagan and Eisenhower were ultimately politicians ,not necessessarily bad, but you are looking for a Patton!! Is there one there?? Does politics constrain a "Patton" there.
Anyone??
Nah, Reagan and Eisenhower were ultimately politicians ,not necessessarily bad, but you are looking for a Patton!! Is there one there?? Does politics constrain a "Patton" there.
Anyone??
One would hope even they would have more sense but it's inevitable that any public gruesome fate for these guys will lead to calls from some for immediate withdrawal, which is of course the objective of the terrorists, as usual playing the media like pros.
When you think of it, it's rather surprising that this hasn't happened before other than the unfortunate Sgt Maupin(sp) - was he taken prisoner or an MIA mystery ?
Without any inside information, I have a good feeling that we're gonna find these soldiers alive and liberate 'em and dust the morlocks who grabbed 'em.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.