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To: roses of sharon
Re: Post 232

Oh please, cut the drama it does not work with me.

You are given evidence that McCain was championing the surge with news releases over a year old and you are fixated on the fact that McCain criticized one of your beloved talk show hosts and disagreed on how Bush and Rumsfeld were handling the war.

Again you show the foolishness of believing that not hurting the feelings of certain individuals is much more important than doing what it takes to actually win the war.

The fact remains that McCain was right and History will judge Bush as an abysmal war leader. We are one election result from losing a war that should already have been wrapped up.

BTW, Gen Petraeus would laugh at your assertion that Bush and Rummy did not want a better plan to counter the insurgency,

Sure they wanted a "better plan". Obama wants a "better plan". So do Ron Paul, Ralph Nader and Dennis Kucinich.

A child that is going to write to Santa Claus to bring him victory in Iraq wants a "better plan".

But, which plan worked?

The plan that McCain was championing against bitter opposition from 82% of public opinion and which Rumsfeld was opposed to.

The historical record documents the fact that Rumsfeld rejected the idea of The Surge.

Deal with the historical facts and not your hero-worshipping emotions, sweety.

Four years later enter "The Surge" and the news is the upcoming rotation of Gen. David Petraeus out of Iraq to assignment as the head of U.S. forces in NATO. In Army terms, that's a plum transfer for one of the most coveted commander slots around. ..... In my estimation it's well-deserved. Both the surge and Petraeus' service as a soldier have both been misunderstood and subsumed to the larger political discourse. ... The surge has been a repudiation of Rumsfeld's own repudiation of Gen. Eric Shinseki, the former chief of staff of the Army, who put forth the proposition that 500,000 troops would be needed to get the occupation right. For his troubles and insight, Rumsfeld - who wanted no more than 150,000 troops involved - gave him the old heave-ho out of the Army.

*******

On the subject of troop size for Iraq, I have heard Gen. Zinni, who headed Central Command before the Iraq War, state that their extensive, long-standing war plans called for a large force like the one proposed by Shinseki. Rumsfeld rejected these plans and Gen. Franks went along with him.

*******

“In September [2007], Rumsfeld had rejected the idea of a surge when retired general Jack Keane, a former vice chief of staff of the Army and a member of the advisory Defense Policy Review Board, met with him and Pace.” But by December, “with Bush favoring a strategy nearly identical to Keane’s, he didn’t object.” Fairly or not the conclusion one can draw is that Rumsfeld’s attitude was: “Surge, splurge. Who cares? I’m more interested in tinkering with the Future Combat System!”

285 posted on 02/28/2008 12:47:33 PM PST by Polybius
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To: Polybius
LOL, BDS reigns, sorry, as I said before if one is prone to believe that good men like GWB and Donald Rumsfeld, VP Cheney, Britain, Australia, Japan, the Iraqi Gov, all the Generals, and hundreds of others in two war theaters conspired to kill more troops for their own.....whatever conspiracy or sinister motive you believe, then I can’t help you.

I can all day long, or all week long post articles, transcripts from Gen Petraeus testimony (stating that Rumsfeld wanted his plan), and all the other Generals who were there, or, we can wait for History Channel to debate for years on end if a giant footprint and invasion would have worked better, if we should have shot looters, if the State Dept should have come in, the UN, or an American General should have taken charge, and a million other hindsight decisions, we could go on and on.

We shall see how President McCain runs Iraq, (after all the hard work has been done), especially if he has a “maverick” of his own, running to the MSM and the DNC to bite his ankles at every move, working with the enemy to lower support for our mission, and working to lower President McCain's poll numbers.

Of course this brilliant CIC will have to also fulfill his promise to Americans that the government will also fight "global warming", his promise that he and his government will control the weather and the earth's temperature too.

LOL, now that is really a plan and a man one can "worship", hon.

293 posted on 02/28/2008 1:34:05 PM PST by roses of sharon (Who will be McCain's maverick?)
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