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Haliburton NewsNothingman, Your opinion most certainly counts. And while we still have a democracy (don't know how much longer we will, haven't checked international papers yet) keep on voting. Best, Lance Man
Andrew, your correct, except that we are not an opressive force come to subdue the general populus. Give it time and once the economy of Iraq / Afganistan gets rolling and these people have jobs and are able to support themselves you see a change in that society.
These people see themselves as oppressed, and since we have all the money and power we are the easiest target for that anger. Once the general quality of life begins to improve this oppessive feeling will wain and with it the desire to launch strikes on us. 60%+ approval rating? How is that not a majority? Second the US is not a democracy! It's a Represenative Republic! Understanding the difference will answer alot of questions you have about the electoral college among other things. Bush does not have to consult the people on every decision he makes, the government was not designed to be run by galop polls. If the decisions he makes are not acceptible to the american people then he will face that in his reelection bid. No the US asked the UN to carry through on the 18 resolutions that were not obeyed by Iraq. It wasn't a court hearing in anyway. Every one knew that Iraq was not obeying the resolutions. Its just that no one wanted to do anything about it. Each objecting country had and underlying financial reason for objecting. Let me ask you how you would feel about this if a member of your family was an intelligence agent that was undercover in a terrorist organization and was providing the evidence. In releasing the intel it would lead the terrorist closer to discovering that your family member is a spy. Do you think they will waste the time making sure they have all the evidence against them? Releasing it to the public to get the publics approval to kill your family member? Your example of a court does not hold up here because in a court both sides agree to play by a set of rules with a judge to clear up any issues that arise that seem to conflict with those rules. Here the other side plays by no rules. And as such the US government has to falls back to what really equates to grade school playground rules, which basicly equate to how our parents taught us to react. Some parents tell their kids to come out punching, others say to walk away. While some say try and just talk it out. There are no rules on the international playground and you have to be ready for all kinds of kids. You might wanna reread the my post and the one I was refering to, cause your supporting my argument with your statement and I don't think thats what you entended. On a side note: The truth about war site doesn't carry any weight with me as they are still trying to defend Saddam by trying to make the case that he didn't gas his own people. Its a flat out lie and if theres one lie, chances are there are more! Sorry ![]() "When I disagree with a rational man, I let reality be our final arbiter; if I am right, he will learn; if I am wrong, I will; one of us will win, but both will profit." - Ayn Rand
Mglenn, I take your point on this. Going to court should involve both sides agreeing to a set of rules. However it does bother me that because we're on the international stage here and the 'other side' isn't playing by the rules we set (decent ones), you see fit to disband with rules of all types... should we really argue that on the international stage all rules are abandoned just because you know some countries aren't playing by them? I could see the argument for not releasing the evidence prior to the war. I can't see it now that the war is over. I do honestly hear what you are saying about putting the source at risk as a result, but it still sticks in my throat that as a result the public shouldn't be able to assess the decision-making of its government. All I want to see is a group of people TOTALLY independent of the government and verified as such, and of course obliged to strict confidentiality in order to protect our intel sources, look at the same set of facts the UK and the US used to justify war and to state whether or not, in their opinion, the governments of the day took what could be described as a 'reasonable' decision. I want this to happen before the next election so I can exercise my vote accordingly. Of course no information is classified forever and the truth will always out but I want it to be sooner rather than later because I want to be able to exercise my vote when it counts, not when these politicians are sunning themselves in the tropics during their retirements. --------------------------------------------- http://www.urban-hills.blogspot.com --------------------------------------------- Nice theory, doesn't seem to be working to well in practice. US soliders and aid workers are still being killed in Afghanistan. Afghanistan's economy and security situation is still a mess. About how long do you figure before the US is seen as anything but occupiers? A year? Two? Ten? Incidentally when will our economy get rolling again? Here is a link to a story about former Secetary of the Army White's view on the numbers of US troops needed to occupy Iraq: http://edition.cnn.com/2003/US/06/03/sp ... aq.troops/ Best, Lance Man
I guess I didn't specify that the rules the US fell back to are the rules set forth in The Fourth Geneva Convention aka the rules of war. We can play all the games about what could have happened and what should have happened in the past. But the fact remains that Iraq was destablizing the middle east and that was going to lead to nothing but more attacks. As I have stated isolationism did not work for the US. Indirect support did not work. Containment was not working. That left only one alternative in my opinion, direct military involvement. I agree with you on government oversight, but play out those ideas in your head. There is no way that it could happen. First off the group would certainly have a preconceved idea that the war was either justified or not and that would slant the reviews as well as how those reviews were recieved. Second there is no such thing as strict confidentiality. Information would get out and the more details there are the easier it is to track it back to its source. So your still endangering the intelligence assets in the field. This is the NOW NOW NOW mentality that I spoke of. It took the US and the allies 7+ years to rebuild the economies of Japan and Germany and they had preexisting infastructure. Both Iraq and Afganistan are rich in natural resouces, but there is no infastructure to process and export those resources. It must be built. Once built it must be protected from attacks. But the building will also have to wait till a certain amount of security is in place. Once thats done, and the people get jobs, earn money and begin to pull themselves up you'll start to see a change in the society at large. It most likely will not happen in the current generation but in this generations children. Its sorta like showing your great grandfather a computer or Tivo. They are not going to understand it and they will never like it. but show the same thing to your kids and they can't get enough of it. Social change does not happen overnight! I've heard this argument since the beginning of the war. Remember when we were five days in and suddenly we didn't have enough troops? Ofcourse 2 days latter we basicly had Baghdad surrounded! You must understand that there is a fundimental change occuring in the US military today away from the massive tank and air battles in western europe against the soviets, to a light highly mobile set of forces able to work on multiple fronts. And there are many generals in the military that do not believe that this can work. The problem is that it has worked we were able to take Iraq, maintain Afganistan and still maintain a level of force needed to deter N. Korea from doing anything stupid. We have really put a bite in the shorts of the Chinese by doing this and they are not happy that we can do it. Iraq used Soviet Strategy and we destroyed them. The Chinese military is set up for the same type of warfare as is N. Korea. Read Clancy's Into the Storm where Fred Franks talks about how this started, and look at how the first gulf war was fought verses this time around and you'll see. This is also the reason you didn't hear much from Norman Schwarzkopf as he was a believer in the former vs. Tommy Franks who used the light-mobile planning strategy. Schwarzkopf used almost no Special forces, he very reluctantly used them for Scud hunting, relying instead on Tank and Air power. Franks used his tank assest against their tanks but relied more on Seals, SAS, Rangers and Delta for the lead assult elements. You can also see the seeds of this in We Were Soldiers, Once and Young with the forming of the Air Cav. I'd also recomment SunTzu's The Art of War. "When I disagree with a rational man, I let reality be our final arbiter; if I am right, he will learn; if I am wrong, I will; one of us will win, but both will profit." - Ayn Rand
I admit I don't know too much about this but surely these rules include some rules about when it is legit to enter into a war in the first place...? The fact that the rules of war differ from the rules of ordinary life I'm aware of. I'm just not sure that the criteria for going into war were satisfied in this case. I disagree. I work in an environment where commercial confidentiality is taken with the utmost seriousness, even by people whose primary role is teaching and research. Sometimes it's necessary to keep stuff secret. I write the agreements to do that. People have to take it seriously or they get sued. Whoever knows the information right now, they're not saying, are they? The leaks have been that there isn't information. Confidentiality can work... look at the formula for Coke. That was a trivial thing by comparison yet was kept secret for god knows how long. I don't believe that if people were told 'hey, you blab this and someone dies. Now sign this agreement.' that they'd be disclosing it. --------------------------------------------- http://www.urban-hills.blogspot.com ---------------------------------------------
Interesting, Yes, I have heard of this "fight" going on within the military about the size of force deployments. These arguments have been going on since the end of the Cold War. I read an article at the "end" of Gulf War II that said that overall the Russian military was very disheartened by the rapid defeat of Iraqi forces. The one caveat being that the US lost an usually high number of Abrahams tanks to a new Russian anti-tank missile. Predictably orders from Syria and Iran for this weapon immediately followed. Best, Lance Man
I'd not heard that, but I would guess thats why the 4th ID was rapidly redeployed with their new Abrams A2's to counter that threat. It was known from the first gulf war that the russian t-72 and t-55 tanks did not have the range of the Abrams and as such the Abrams could engage and destroy the soviet tanks before they could get into range. The only time there was an issue was when the 7th corp drove over a dune and almost right on top of an Iraq Special Republican Guard unit that was retreating. The lead Abrams destroyed 8 tanks of the opposing force before they even fired their first shot. (Abrams are manually loaded, where as the soviets use an autoloading system that is much slower, but requires less training.) "When I disagree with a rational man, I let reality be our final arbiter; if I am right, he will learn; if I am wrong, I will; one of us will win, but both will profit." - Ayn Rand
Yeah, I read about in an April issue of Christian Science Monitor. If I find the article again I will post it for you. Best, Lance Man
Upon review of the thread, I concur that I was initially confused on the point. My conclusion now is that the administration cannot be trusted, and sometimes produces information that does not support its own agenda. However, some of this unsupportive evidence cannot be trusted either, since it came from an untrustworthy source. I apologize if my earlier post muddled an already convoluted thread. Here are the sources for the Truth About War articles cited thus far: Bush administration lied about satellite intel: http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0906/p01s02-wosc.html
Saddam did not gas his own people: The report of the War College on Halabja is still classified; you can read an article in the New York Times written by the study's head researcher: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/31/opinion/31PELL.html Note: The NY Times requires a free, if cumbersome registration to view their online articles. The same story can be read here. Scroll past the intial commentary to read the article. You can see that Stephen Pelletiere is listed as a previous researcher employed at the Strategic Studies Institute, a part the United States Army War College: http://www.carlisle.army.mil/ssi/pubs/authors.html You can read about the SSI here: http://www.carlisle.army.mil/ssi/about.html You can read about the U.S. Army War College here: http://www.carlisle.army.mil/stratplan.asp#mission Finally, to the best of my knowledge, the people at TruthAboutWar.org have never used their articles to defend Saddam Hussein or to imply that he is anything other than a wretched tyrant. I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.
-- Clarence Darrow I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it. -- Mark Twain WMDHey all,
Over the weekend UN Weapons Inspector Chief Hans Blix commented on the irony of the Administration's appeal for patience and time from the world at large while they search for WMDs in Iraq. Blix said that before the invasion of Iraq he had asked from the very same thing from the Administration and was refused. Best, Lance Man can we all say 'hypocrisy'?
oh yeah... --------------------------------------------- http://www.urban-hills.blogspot.com --------------------------------------------- "Oh yeah, big time." http://www.agonist.org/archives/003386.html "Your imagination, like a child, will explode with unrestrained possibilities for adventure."
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