Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ish who wrote (132579)	5/11/2004 7:48:20 AM
From: Harvey Allen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

But like an airline captain reassuring passengers that their flight is only suffering from short-term turbulence when in fact they can see smoke pouring from one of the engines, the defence secretary appeared unable to recognise that the crisis in Iraq has gone beyond the point when it can be solved with claim forms. His statement opened with a bleak description of the violence that is overwhelming the country. But it did nothing to address the essential task now facing the government, that of resetting the moral compass directing coalition actions in the country. It left even Labour MPs who endorse the occupation, such as Anne Clwyd, the prime minister's personal envoy to Iraq, critical. They will not have been encouraged in their support by Mr Blair's astonishing admission yesterday that he had not found the time to read the ICRC report that his defence minister dismissed so easily before MPs. The prime minister's problem is that he is being damaged by association with people he appears powerless to control. Those people are being directed from Washington, not London. The mentality that led to the grim images from Abu Ghraib prison is the same mentality that led to the assault on Falluja and has left coalition claims to be concerned only with the reconstruction of Iraq in tatters. It is a mentality that led General Mark Kimmitt, the deputy director of coalition operations, to tell an Iraqi journalist earlier this year that the children of Iraq should not be terrified by low-flying US helicopters. "What we would tell the children of Iraq is that the noise they hear is the sound of freedom." It is a mentality that has caused a dark stain to spread across the country as resistance moves from hardline defenders of Saddam's legacy to a far wider movement fuelled by popular despair at their occupation. politics.guardian.co.uk

To: Ish who wrote (132579)	5/11/2004 12:24:34 PM
From: cnyndwllr	Respond to of 281500

Someone with 8 weeks of learning how to march and salute then 8 weeks of learning how to fight won't be nearly as effective as the soldier with 5 years experience. That's only true if you assume that the two have the same "talent" for war. I do, however, appreciate the fact that you're apparently stating that you're not denigrating our prior draftee's abilities by using the inferences of those like Rumsfeld who, in my view, say the word "draftee" like it's something used to describe those who "lost the war in Vietnam." As far as whether basic training and infantry training prepare a person to be an effective combat soldier; I agree that those aren't the last pieces of necessary training. That most important training, as I suspect you're very aware, is that which you get by surviving in actual combat. As I said, I'd be very careful about denigrating the abilities of the draftees that fought for America in Vietnam, WW11 and in other killing conflicts. In these times where the chickenhawks seem intent on telling us why "it's not like Vietnam" because, in part, we're an "all volunteer army," we should be wary of such simplistic and misleading thinking. We should especially keep in mind that every one of those bureaucrats in our current Administration making such inferences have never seen draftees in battle and, in fact, have never seen ANYone in actual combat. Cause hey, their mouths went to war but they didn't.