We are going to be in &/or near Iraq for several decades now as a stabilizing force, forever the dutch boy holding back the regional sectarian conflagration.

Starting this war under known false pretenses with established prior intent is a high crime. If we love our country and wish to pass the republic onto our children, we owe it to posterity to work for the impeachment, removal and incarceration of those who perpetrated this fraud and carnage upon our citizenry and middle east.

We resume our fight with those who wish us harm, but now that our fearless leader and W too have no credibility left, doing battle in Pakistan without toppling that regime may be impossible.

God Rot Dick Cheney.

Redstate: Angry white men still furious about Vietnam

“how can you ask someone to be the last man to die for a soundbite?”

FeralLiberal @
33

I don’t know why the Dems don’t throw the “emboldening” arguement right back at the Repubs. The current stragegy has resulted in over 3,000 US dead. The insurgents want to kill more. What could be more emboldening to them than blindly following the same policy?

An important but probably little noticed article in Sunday’s New York Times, “Iran’s Chance: US Troubles In Iraq Create Opening for Regional Shift” addresses this core issue. The article provides an analysis of the huge degree of Iranian influence in Iraq that our invasion and overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime facilitated. The Bush Administration achieved this result simply by allowing the large Shiite majority, many of whom feel a sectarian kinship to Iran’s predominantly Shiite population and are sympathetic to the fundamentalist regime in Iran, to replace Saddam’s minority Sunni/Baathist regime that was both secular and openly hostile to Iran. Of course, that result was both predictable and predicted by some, none of whom get invited to be Sunday’s talking heads, but the media never fully spread these views to the American poeple.

In fact, this outcome was predicted by the CIA and the State Department in late 1990 and early 1991 during the buildup to Desert Storm, which is the reason why George H.W. Bush didn’t topple Saddam at that time.

And it’s this very point that the Dems in Congress and on all the talking head shows should repeat again and again…this is the worst foreign policy disaster in American history and it was totally predictable. In fact, so predictable that President George H. Bush did not invade Iraq and depose Hussein during the first Gulf War.

Not only is it true – but it will drive Bush & Cheney nuts. Bush’s daddy was right and Bush/Cheney are dead wrong.

We need to get our troops out of Iraq and move them into Afghanistan so they can crush a resurgent Taliban (really that’s the perfect exit strategy, isn’t it?)

Hayes Press Secretary Tony Snow, June, 1876

Helen, you had a question.

Yes, thank you. What went wrong at Little Big Horn?

I’m not sure anything went wrong.

Excuse me?

Look, Helen. Let me tell you something about war. It’s not pretty and no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy. No one could have forseen that a large group of Sioux would surround our troops and slaughter the very troops trying to secure their land for the United States.

But no one survived.

Look. I’m not going to get into a back-and-forth about who shot John, here. The fact is that we have a plan for the Western territories and we feel we will be greeted as liberators.

So we should view this as a victory?

Yes. And what I mean by that is that sure, would we love to win every battle? Of course. Do we wish things had gone better? Of course we do. But I think President Hayes’ commitment to keeping the buffalo fields out of the hands of the Indians came through loud and clear.

Next question.

Nice snark, and i hope you get your handle’s wish. Meanwhile, the parable continues when one considers the insane hubris on the part of Yellowhair, which caused it all to go wrong. Not that i’m undermining my own troops, mind you.

How fucking hard is it for Democrats to realize that there’s always some reporter or columnist who’ll print what you say if you *talk* about the *need* to *TALK* about being stronger, but who won’t give you the fucking time of day if you are actually *saying* – or better yet, *doing* – or best yet, *BOTH* – what needs to be said and done.

Sheesh, it’d be enough to quote the Post’s own fucking reporting (well, I mean the recent stuff about Walter Reed, rather than the usual fiction from “senior administration officials who speak on the condition of anonymity”) back at their writers and say, “Republicans don’t support the troops. Republicans don’t want to win the war. Republicans want to get more Americans killed for nothing. Any discussion – any *WORDS* beyond those – are superfluous and designed to confuse people from what is really happening – which Republicans are very, very good at.”