wrote in message
...
On Mon, 12 Jul 2010 09:33:41 -0400, I am Tosk
wrote:

In article ,
says...

On Sun, 11 Jul 2010 18:18:45 -0400, Harry ?
wrote:

On 7/11/10 6:12 PM, wrote:
On Sun, 11 Jul 2010 15:08:08 -0400,
wrote:

Genghis Khan was quite a few steps up on the ladder of civilization
from
the clowns that now rule Afghanistan. For one thing, he was a uniter,
which distinguishes him from, say, George W. Bush, who was a divider.

Actually Clinton was the divider. The last president to **** off that
many people was Andrew Johnson. Bush just drove the wedge in a little
deeper on your side.

But anybody who doesn't goose step, drives a wedge in there. The party
in general is narrow and intolerant..

I really blame the media. They are the ones who invented Red and Blue
and the ones who relish in pitting the most radical elements from both
sides together in a shouting match every day on TV.
It encourages everyone to put everyone else in a box.
Just because I hand some of the blame for our problems on Clinton it
is assumed I must be a Bush fan. Nothing could be farther from the
truth. I consider Clinton, just another Bush, in fact he calls himself
the 4th Bush brother. Unfortunately think they have adopted Obama too.

The people who are being totally ignored in this country are the ones
Nixon called the silent majority. That is those people in the middle
who actually decide elections and the ones who think both parties are
wrong. That is why we have a congress with a lower approval rating
than pond scum. At least pond scum is doing something about CO2
without taxing us.

Except that Obama won the popular vote by quite a bit. So, the "silent
majority" seems to have spoken.

wrote in message
...
On Mon, 12 Jul 2010 10:51:05 -0700, "nom=de=plume"
wrote:


wrote in message
. ..
On Sun, 11 Jul 2010 18:13:50 -0700, "nom=de=plume"
wrote:


wrote in message
m...
On Sun, 11 Jul 2010 18:16:48 -0400, bpuharic wrote:

On Sun, 11 Jul 2010 15:41:59 -0400, wrote:


I don't believe the Kabul government really has much influence in the
area where the AQ guys are hiding. That is why we failed at Tora
Bora.

we failed in TB because scum bag bush refused to send in US troops
when we had osama cornered. the 'new republic' had an excellent
article earlier this year on this exact event

I don't think BL was going to stay put for the month or two it would
take to safely deploy a division. We saw what happens when you don't
do the groundwork in Somalia.
This started as a quiet hit on Bin Laden but by the time he got to
Tora Bora that was not going to work. Bush didn't want another war.

Come on. We had him in a corner. We just needed to finish the job, but
instead we handed off the responsibility to paid thugs who let him go.

Bush didn't want another war? Are you sure? After all, he was
"listening"
to
his generals (until they contradicted Rumsfeld anyway).

You were going to have a mission shift if we went into Afghanistan in
force. The original plan was a covert hit squad.

Who is "you"? Bush let Rumsfeld dictate a tiny army with no ability to
have
boots on the ground, despite the recommendations from the military.

The rhetorical you.
We are proving a huge army is not much more effective in the mountains
than a little hit team.



You simply can not move a mass army as fast as they had to if they
were going to get Osama by brute force. It has been almost 10 years
and we still don't have that much power in that area.
When we started chasing OBL we had local support but he was moving
into an area that would rather shoot us than help us. It is still true
today and we still do not really have any operational control there
with 140,000 people on the ground.
There are still 100 al queda there that we can't catch.

We have about 95K in Afg. and about the same number in Iraq.

That is the number after we finish the surge, that has taken months to
get going and we were already there in force . How long do you think
it would have taken to deploy the army you think Bush should have used
at a moment's notice? Do you think OBL would have waited patiently for
them?

We had the opportunity to finish him at Tora Bora. Rumsfeld decided to
outsource it. It failed.

I think we'd both be surprised by how quickly the military can deploy in
great numbers.

You act like we can instantly drop a division into an area nobody
actually knows much about, with no real way to support them and expect
more than half of them to survive.

We could have if we had prepared properly. Rumsfeld/Bush prevented that by
firing any general who even talked about it.

If you want to say we wasted a lot of our "covert" resources in Iraq,
no argument but from where we were, we did about all we could do.

Sure. With the forces that we had. Which were inadequate.

I do believe a small covert force, working with the locals was the
only way we would get OBL.

Now perhaps.

We had a hard enough time finding Saddam and it was in a totally
conqured country.

wrote in message
...
On Mon, 12 Jul 2010 10:53:12 -0700, "nom=de=plume"
wrote:

Buy off the *******s and covertly murder the ones who won't go along.
Even Obama has said that is OK.

I wouldn't call it murder, but ok. Isn't that what we're doing? ... drone
attacks, covert teams...

I am talking about one bullet one kill, not blowing up the whole
village.

It's rare when that happens.

"John H" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 11 Jul 2010 22:17:44 -0400, Wayne.B

wrote:

On Sun, 11 Jul 2010 18:17:58 -0700, "nom=de=plume"
wrote:

With all du respect, you won't find many generals who will say "we
can't win" no matter how hopeless the mission is and they have no
authority to question the objective of the mission.

Seems to me that they would give honest opinions if asked.

Giving honest opinions is not conducive to a long career in the
military.

That really depends on the integrity of the one to whom the opinion is
offerred.
If he/she is the type that can take only good news, then your opinion is
correct.
--

I hope your day is simply *SPECTACULAR* !!

John H

So, basically Bush was without integrity. I certainly agree with that.

"Wayne.B" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 12 Jul 2010 10:57:04 -0700, "nom=de=plume"
wrote:

In any case, they've already gotten their "stars." So, when asked for a
military opinion, it seems to me they've earned the right to be honest.

Once, and only once.


?? Not sure what you're saying.

wrote in message
...
On Mon, 12 Jul 2010 10:57:04 -0700, "nom=de=plume"
wrote:


Generals do not get their stars by saying "That's too hard", they get
them by saying "Can do sir"

In any case, they've already gotten their "stars." So, when asked for a
military opinion, it seems to me they've earned the right to be honest.

In that case it is keeping their stars.

Oh come on. So, we shouldn't listen to the military when it comes to force
sizes? Who should decide, maybe Barney?

wrote in message
...
On Mon, 12 Jul 2010 10:59:35 -0700, "nom=de=plume"
wrote:

GTMO is still operating.

And, Republicans have blocked moves to allocate funding to getting it
closed, and they're blocking moves to transfer the detainees to federal
facilities here.


Obama admits now Gitmo is not going anywhere. It still serves a
purpose for his administration.

"The president had insisted he would close the detention center by the end
of his first year in office, only to be met with a Republican backlash and
concern among many Democrats. An alternate site was located in upstate
Illinois, and the White House insists that it remains committed to Gitmo's
closure. But little has been done to compel Congress to appropriate funds
for the move, according to Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) chair of the Senate
Committee on Armed Services."

A trillion dollar economic stimulus program has failed.

Untrue. It staved off a depression.


We will see won't we. Hoover "staved off the depression" for 3 years
too.

Huh? Hoover did basically nothing except cut spending.

How bad it might have been is just conjecture and the real question is
whether we would have come out healthier if we had taken a little more
pain.

There is absolutely no data to suggest that would happen. It would have
gotten much, much worse.

We are still in Iraq.

And, the troop numbers are dropping.

We are escalating in Afghanistan.

As per what Obama said would happen.


Yes, but they'll be drawn down in the next year or so, as per policy and
agreement with the Afg. admin.

I really haven't noticed any "change". Have you?

Yes, but I can't help what other people refuse to see.


Lets talk in 2012. That is when the poll that counts will be taken.
If Obama has not fulfilled any of these promises, he will go the way
of Carter, Bush 1 and Johnson because he will have lost his base.
The left is as mad at him about the war, human rights and the failure
to get a real health care plan (public option) as the right is about
him being from Kenya. ;-) ducking for cover

Any of these promises? It's all about the economy at this point. No one
really gives a hoot about anything other than jobs and perhaps a little bit
about the wars.

You forgot to mention that he's illegitimate and hated his mother.

"nom=de=plume" wrote in message
...

wrote in message
...
On Mon, 12 Jul 2010 10:57:04 -0700, "nom=de=plume"
wrote:


Generals do not get their stars by saying "That's too hard", they get
them by saying "Can do sir"

In any case, they've already gotten their "stars." So, when asked for a
military opinion, it seems to me they've earned the right to be honest.

In that case it is keeping their stars.

Oh come on. So, we shouldn't listen to the military when it comes to force
sizes? Who should decide, maybe Barney?

Finally....someone with a sense of humor.

In article ,
says...

You were going to have a mission shift if we went into Afghanistan in
force. The original plan was a covert hit squad.

Who is "you"? Bush let Rumsfeld dictate a tiny army with no ability to have
boots on the ground, despite the recommendations from the military.

The rhetorical you.
We are proving a huge army is not much more effective in the mountains
than a little hit team.

Most people have no concept of what the military is like and what it
requires. The military is like a viper. The dangerous end is the head
but, the rest of the body enable the had to keep moving. The larger the
head, the larger the body must be. Once the body gets to a certain size
the head becomes immovable due to the fact that it doesn't have the
energy to drag the rest of the body along with it to where it needs to
quickly go.



You simply can not move a mass army as fast as they had to if they
were going to get Osama by brute force. It has been almost 10 years
and we still don't have that much power in that area.
When we started chasing OBL we had local support but he was moving
into an area that would rather shoot us than help us. It is still true
today and we still do not really have any operational control there
with 140,000 people on the ground.
There are still 100 al queda there that we can't catch.

We have about 95K in Afg. and about the same number in Iraq.

That is the number after we finish the surge, that has taken months to
get going and we were already there in force . How long do you think
it would have taken to deploy the army you think Bush should have used
at a moment's notice? Do you think OBL would have waited patiently for
them?

You act like we can instantly drop a division into an area nobody
actually knows much about, with no real way to support them and expect
more than half of them to survive.
If you want to say we wasted a lot of our "covert" resources in Iraq,
no argument but from where we were, we did about all we could do.
I do believe a small covert force, working with the locals was the
only way we would get OBL.
We had a hard enough time finding Saddam and it was in a totally
conqured country.



A division of war fighters requires about 30,000 support troops. So for
every guy carrying a gun there are at a minimum 3 REMFs in support of
him.

On 7/13/10 7:44 AM, BAR wrote:
In ,
says...

You were going to have a mission shift if we went into Afghanistan in
force. The original plan was a covert hit squad.

Who is "you"? Bush let Rumsfeld dictate a tiny army with no ability to have
boots on the ground, despite the recommendations from the military.

The rhetorical you.
We are proving a huge army is not much more effective in the mountains
than a little hit team.

Most people have no concept of what the military is like and what it
requires.

Sure we do. The military is like a garbage disposal in which you pour
$500 to $600 billion a year and then watch your money go down the drain.

Once we are out of the Bush Recession/Depression, and there are real
jobs around, we need to cut military spending by half, and, at the same
time raise pay and benefits substantially for a much smaller active duty
force that would be better suited for the sort of trouble and nonsense
we face today.

The $300 billion a year we'd save could go to far more important needs,
such as rebuilding infrastructure, funding schools properly, providing
life-long job training for working adults, et cetera.

These days, massive military expenditures get you...nothing.