FUBAR in Iraq- Career soldier opinion

Capitol Hill Blue ^

[BlackJack]

No exit strategy for Iraq is the main problem. This will get very expensive over time. We should concentrate on destroying terror cells around the world, not get into expensive occupation situations.

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[stands2reason]

Capitol Hill Blue + unnamed source....


I think I'll pass...

[sitetest]

Dear BlackJack,

Is this "professional soldier" as reliable as Douglas' last anonymous source? The "intelligence contact" he'd "known" for 20 years?

LOL.

No thanks, I think I'll pass.


sitetest

[sitetest]

LOL. Ya' beat me to it.

[Gunrunner2]

Exactly. . .especially this part: "From the restaurant window we could see the Pentagon, including the section taken out by a hijacked airliner on September 11, 2001." The side where the Pentagon got hit overlooks the Navy Annex and Arlington Cemetary, no restaurants that I can recall.

I think the writer is making things up.

[Old Sarge]

Those were my thoughts, too.

Anti-military anti-Bush anti-America hit piece...

[tet68]

, I thought about a day more than 30 years earlier. A young man returning home from war walked through an airport terminal in Los Angeles, back on American soil after too long away.

An older man approached and asked: “You been in Vietnam son?”

“Yes sir, I have. Just got home.”

Tears welled up in the old man’s eyes. He spat in the young man’s face and walked away.

So he's saying this happend to him?

I'm saying this happend to me, coming through that same airport, yes I got some nasty looks, but that same old man with tears in his eyes, took me aside bought me a meal and a beer and thanked me for doing my duty as he had done during wwII.

This article smells like bad fish.

[HairOfTheDog]

As my friend, a no-longer-proud career soldier, walked away to his car, I fought back my own tears.

Oh brother.... Little heavy on the drama there buddy.

The war is won.... this is no Vietnam. We hold a country not all of which are happy we are there, and they act out and are quashed. Our losses, while heavily reported, are fewer than we lose to crime in this country every day. And the job of rebuilding there (the success of which is not reported) is what we agreed to do when we decided to take over and control another country. We have an exit strategy.... to not rush to leave before there is an infrastructure in place and a government we can live with that can survive.

Come on.... those of us safely at home, don't be so easily scared. Because someone shoots back we must run away home? We have had a great success.... losing great soldiers as we always will in a war, but fewer in the whole conflict than would often be lost in a DAY in Vietnam.

Continued strength to our forces.... which I know they have.... and please.... lets have a little fortitude back home.

[Alas Babylon!]

That's what I was thinking. Maybe from Crystal City if you eat up on the roof and got a 1/2 mile long neck.

This story is 180 degrees from what I'm hearing from career military returning from Iraq. Maybe this guy is Sgt Joe Wilson????? Don't out his wife!

[montomike]

From his bio:

Despite his success in new media, Thompson remains a newspaperman at heart and lives by the creed that it is the role of a newspaperman to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."

Sounds like all he has done for his country is be a newspaperman. What the hell has he ever done for his country but suck its blood and put it down.

[dighton]

For your evaluation.

[Seydlitz]

Newspeak Definition: Exit Strategy = Telling the enemy what conditions he must achieve in order to get the United States to leave.

Can any of these "exit strategy" freaks elaborate on FDR's exit strategy for World War II?

[Gunrunner2]

LOL. . .half mile long neck would just about do it.

[Gunrunner2]

Good on ya.

[reformedliberal]

It seems to me that rebuilding a democratic Iraq and turning it over to the Iraqis, who will be equipped to deal w/their own problems w/o us, IS an exit strategy.

VN sucked. I lived in this country all thru Vietnam. People I loved were there and came home changed & not for the better. This is not Vietnam, except for the media trying to do now what they did then: turn the American people against the war and forestalling any democracy in country.

If we had had the Internet and FR in 1972, would it have turned out differently? I think so.

[Columbine]

No way!

I still remember that Doug Thompson had to back down from his last unnamed source.

Anyone ever hear anymore about his proof? I thought not.

Thompson has absolutely no credibility with me.

[ItisaReligionofPeace]

What do you mean by exit strategy. The exit strategy is to help rebuild the country's infrastructure, get the government going and to build a permanent strategic base in Iraq. Six month after the war it's looking pretty good.

[martin_fierro]

Ditto that.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice...

[Joe Marine 76]

To Doug Thompson:

This piece is a load of bull hockey!

Is this "careerist" an Officer or Staff Non-Commissioned Officer? You gave no grade or time-in-service; you gave only the vague "I missed Vietnam" line. If this "soldier" really exists and had the courage of his convictions he would at least let the world know if he was a Colonel, Lieutenant Colonel or Sergeant Major or perhaps Master Sergeant. Maybe you should have asked how he did on his last "Performance Evaluation or Fitness for Duty Report" as these reports tend to color the perceptions of many soldiers', sailors' and Marines' thoughts of "how things are going" whether they are serving in a theater of war or in garrison.