Wars are fought to be won. When you pull out they call that retreat - which means you have been defeated. When you start a war as we have, there are only two ways to go. I am rooting for our troops to win and not be defeated.
When did "pullout" come to substitute for the words retreat and defeat anyway?
we've already won the part of the war that our forces were designed to win. the administration never updated its message, its just a constant mantra of "stay the course". the public message needs to be much broader then that.
changes are coming in 2006 - troop reductions, giving iraqi forces more responsibility, especially for missions like transportation and checkpoint duty - the US takes almost all its KIA from IEDs and car bombs. our forces will become more "base centric" and be used for major offensive operations. And all of these moves are good ones. The administration, at some point, is going to have to explain the coming strategy. They are not doing it now because they fear it will signal "withdrawal" at the wrong time. But as time marches on, they will have to update the message as the military strategy evolves.
"Wars are fought to be won. When you pull out they call that retreat - which means you have been defeated. When you start a war as we have, there are only two ways to go. I am rooting for our troops to win and not be defeated.
When did "pullout" come to substitute for the words retreat and defeat anyway?"
I think Bill had Monica write a memo to that effect when he was giving my kids SEX101 on the nightly news.
You're the one suggesting they are synonyms. A pullout just means to leave. We liberated Iraq. That was our mission (or one of them, the one we could pull off) and so it's perfectly reasonable to leave a field of battle after the mission is accomplished.