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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JDN who wrote (441349)	8/11/2003 5:00:53 PM
From: sea_biscuit	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

One, if we have any MORE troops, there can be NO rotation. Two, if Rumsfeld made a mistake, he should resign. How many more "mistakes" is he allowed to make? (this one wasn't a mistake; it was a colossal blunder -- assuming that they are honest that is). Three, what the Iraqis want is probably a theocracy, like Iran has (at least the Shias; and who knows what the Sunnis, Kurds, Turkomans want?). So as long as the US insists on having a bunch of puppets rule them, it IS essentially preventing the formation of a government of THEIR CHOICE.

To: JDN who wrote (441349)	8/11/2003 9:37:59 PM
From: cnyndwllr	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

JDN, re: >>"The reason I hate to call this a guerilla war cause unlike Vietnam we are there to HELP the indigineous population not to overthrow a government of THEIR CHOICE."<< I don't understand your post. In Vietnam we alleged we were there to protect the South Vietnamese from aggressors from the North. We weren't trying to "overthrow" the S. Vietnamese government, it was a puppet government that WE had installed. If that's all that's standing between you calling this a guerrilla war, the coast is clear. I'm not sure that you're right about Hackworth. If you read the article carefully, the concerns he has aren't concerns that are dependant upon Rumsfeld screwing up. It's just that screwing things up made a potential problem more probable. It's hard to say whether "most" of the Iraqis welcomed us. It's clear that most of them welcomed the end of the Saddam Hussein rule and that gave us some early credit. Whether they welcomed us with the knowledge that we intended to stay for years, take over the governance of their everyday lives and determine what, when and how they would "choose" their future, is another question. The most alarming thing in the article should be the portion where he is talking, from experience, about why and how guerrilla resistance creates fear, overreaction and, ultimately, more guerrilla resistance. If the Bush people had any sense, they'd have seen this as inevitable in a land with many factions, many armaments, a different culture and a long history of resistance to occupation. I think it was clear to most military men BEFORE we invaded that this was a problem we would have to take into consideration and weigh as a human and economic cost. We're paying that human and economic cost now.

To: JDN who wrote (441349)	8/11/2003 11:11:04 PM
From: Thomas A Watson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Hackworth is an idiot who has risen to his level of incompetence. The article spoke of complaints of a lack of spare parts. The limits of logistics in Military from the clinton error. We went to War when it was judged we would have more the adequate forces to do the job. The job of removing Sadam was done quickly with minimal loss of life. So we wait some months to have more logistics and now we fight 122 degrees in the shade. Two Americans died of heat over the weekend. Now if all those Americans were fighting in the heat, how many more would have died during the rigors of battle. Rumsfeld made no mistakes. All the armchair taking heads have to have something to say to get face time. I just heard O'Reilly and Hunt demonstrating their own stupidity. Samo samo.