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Author Topic: 500 Chemical Weapons Found In Iraq Since 2003
aspectre
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http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13493736/
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TomDavidson
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quote:
I am a soldier and I am what I do, my mission defines my role in the world
Out of curiosity, BC, do you believe it's possible for soldiers to be misused? In other words, are all your missions good ones, even the ones that aren't?
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Bean Counter
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It is certainly possible for leadership to make tactical blunders that costs lives, that happens way below the level of Strategy for the most part. A soldier also has a responsibility to not follow orders that violate the rules of war and code of conduct.

But if you are asking if soldiers can make sweeping political decisions like 'this is an unjust war' then no, a soldier needs to focus on 'is my weapon clean, did I PMCS this vehicle, do I have a full tank, an MRE, how are my coms, are all my guys in full armor, etc...' then at higher levels they must think about the best way to carry out the mission, and in Iraq we often needed to find our our own Intel to guide mission selection.

Military force is a violent solution, so it is hard to throw words in common usage out to describe it because in military terminology they have different meaning, for instance it can be good to kill three hundred people in a military engagement, sometimes because it is a large number, sometimes because it is small. For non military the concept of violence itself is negative, whereas like Eskimo's with snow, the military breaks violent action into many flavors.

So there is no such thing as a "good" military mission by civilian standards, they are effective, the meet objectives, they conserve assets, they alter the battle space in ways we intend. The military is a tool, so it can only be used competently or incompetently, with skill or with disdain. The current administration has certainly used it better then one before. I do know of a case of gross military misuse, Hillary Clinton once made her Marine security detail serve drinks in Dress Uniform...

BC

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Morbo
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quote:
Originally posted by Bean Counter:
I do know of a case of gross military misuse, Hillary Clinton once made her Marine security detail serve drinks in Dress Uniform...BC

Off with her head!
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Lyrhawn
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That's a case of gross military misuse? What would it be called if, say, the President orchestrated a publicity stunt where he appropriated military hardware and landed on the deck of a carrier before a press conference?

And I think there are certainly good military missions from a civilian standpoint.

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TomDavidson
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quote:
It is certainly possible for leadership to make tactical blunders that costs lives...
On a non-tactical level -- on a strategic level, in other words -- is it possible to misuse the military?
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Bean Counter
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Its his aircraft carrier, his plane and we are his men. We were sure as hell glad to see him there, to hear him speak, Since we were doing the fighting I am glad he did not check with you before he boosted my morale.

I think there were strategy errors in every war we ever fought, then even higher a kind of 'policy' error. I think we should have pounded the Chinese in Viet Nam, I think we should enforce freedom of religion in all the new governments we build. But I will say this about our fight in Iraq, it has been strategically brilliant, we have flexed with reality in record time on a hundred issues, we have implemented new strategy quickly and used new technology to build whole new strategies from scratch. Where is the book on how to fight this kind of fight? We are still writing it!

Redesigning the military, fighting two wars and redesigning combat operations all on the fly, I think anybody who does not consider Rumsefield and Bush to be the best leadership the military has had since the cold war ended and changed our priorities forever is existing in a vacuum of information.

BC

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TomDavidson
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quote:
Its his aircraft carrier, his plane and we are his men.
So, to clarify, if Bill Clinton had required his security detail to serve drinks, that would have been an appropriate use of the military? The inappropriate nature of Hillary Clinton's request was due to the fact that they weren't hers to order around?

quote:

I think there were strategy errors in every war we ever fought, then even higher a kind of 'policy' error.

Okay. Given that you concede this, how do you reconcile that concession with this statement: "I am a soldier and I am what I do, my mission defines my role in the world, support me and support the mission."

That's another quote of yours.

In your opinion, if there have been both strategy and policy errors in almost every war ever fought, should it be the role of civilian leadership to identify those errors and seek to correct them -- or is a soldier's purpose more fulfilled when he dies due to policy or strategy mistakes than when his "mission" is altered by civilians?

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Samprimary
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quote:
How much poison is enough? How much support for terror is enough, the answer seems to depend on your political agenda, three thousand dead American Civilians are not enough for some people, two thousand dead soldiers are too many for some.
Yes, how interesting that some people would dare consider Iraq to be something different and unrelated to 9/11.

quote:
But I will say this about our fight in Iraq, it has been strategically brilliant
This is absolutley untrue: it is acknowledged by military strategists that Donald Rumsfeld's operation of the war with minimal initial troop numbers, in defiance of military reccomendation, created a significant operational and peacetime power vaccum that allowed the insurgency (and sectarian warfare) to take root.

quote:
I think anybody who does not consider Rumsefield and Bush to be the best leadership the military has had since the cold war ended and changed our priorities forever is existing in a vacuum of information.
I find that position to be hopelessly misguided, and I feel that it is because I've been paying attention to debacles such as the Shinseki fallout. A "Vaccum of information," from your perspective, is probably anything short of administrative kowtow.

quote:
We have broken the terrorist and are slowly teaching the everyday Iraqi basic morality, a much more tedious and ubiquitous process which neither side likes very much, they love their corruption and we despise it. Get behind the damn mission and help us get it over with or shut up.
Yours is the sort of purposefully ignorant, willingly obsequent genuflection that I refuse to allow the present administration to have a free ride off of.

I would have trouble finding a sentiment less 'patriotic' than the idea that critics should remain silent, so don't bother telling me to shut up.

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Dagonee
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quote:
it is acknowledged by military strategists that Donald Rumsfeld's operation of the war with minimal initial troop numbers, in defiance of military reccomendation, created a significant operational and peacetime power vaccum that allowed the insurgency (and sectarian warfare) to take root.
This is a significant recasting of what that original criticism was. Most of the original "quagmire" predictions were about the main offensive. The contention that more troops were needed was that we would not be able to defeat Iraq's military quickly enough.

It was only after the "quagmire" of the original invasion turned out to be a 1 week pause that the insurgency quagmire (which had been predicted by some strategist before) was suddenly adopted by the strategists who had been wrong about the major combat operations. "See, we told you there'd be a quagmire." Yeah, but they were wrong about what type.

There are plenty of strategists who think more troops would have encouraged the existence of more insurgents and/or more adventurism elsewhere by other states.

I'm not saying they didn't make mistakes. I am saying that presenting the opinion of some military strategists as if it were fact is pretty much the flip side of what Counter is doing.

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fugu13
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Yeah, the troop numbers thing is mostly a non-issue. The problem was with a complete lack of good post-invasion planning for the troops we did use.

http://www.policyreview.org/dec04/ohanlon.html

There were widely known planning problems long before the invasion of Iraq that the State Department tried to get the DoD (which had taken over post-invasion planning from the State Department at the administration's direction) to address. Needless to say, the concerns were not addressed, and problems even a simple plan would have prevented mushroomed into crises.

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Morbo
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quote:
Originally posted by Dagonee:
quote:
it is acknowledged by military strategists that Donald Rumsfeld's operation of the war with minimal initial troop numbers, in defiance of military reccomendation, created a significant operational and peacetime power vaccum that allowed the insurgency (and sectarian warfare) to take root.
This is a significant recasting of what that original criticism was. Most of the original "quagmire" predictions were about the main offensive. The contention that more troops were needed was that we would not be able to defeat Iraq's military quickly enough.
This turns out not to be the case, Dag. The professional uniformed military had many strategists, including head of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Shinseki, commander of the invasion Gen. Tommy Franks, and the Army War College, as well as the civilian Secretary of the Army White who insisted that high troop levels would be needed in post-war Iraq to maintain order. It was Rumsfeld and others in the Pentagon , particulary his deputy Wolfowitz who argued for low troop levels. The final troop levels were apparently a compromise between the 2 camps.

Now, if you're talking about armchair generals (like me, and basically anyone on the internet) and MSM analysts, that's different. My concern pre-war, and the main reason I was always against it, was the general one that the occupation would be much more difficult than the conquest (without the specifics available to professional analysts, of course.)
Plenty of MSM analysts had various views about quagmire in the conquest and/or the occupation phases of the war. But Samprimary's point was about Rumsfeld ignoring the advice from the military, not other analysts.

From an interview with Army Secretary White:
quote:
Frontline interviewer:How much of the concern was there around troop levels that would be in place in Iraq immediately after the war?

White:Shinseki's concern and my concern was, if you were to look at the postwar tasks that had to be accomplished, the special weapons sites that had to be inspected, which numbered in the hundreds -- The size and scope of the concentration of people in Baghdad, for example. The fact that this was a country as large as the state of California with a population of 25 million people. We were very concerned that there wouldn't be sufficient boots on the ground after the operation to provide for security and get on with the stabilization activities.
That was our principle concern, from an Army perspective.


Frontline interviewer:There are those who argue that no one could have forecast that the Iraqi state would have collapsed as it did. Is that a fair enough defense?

White:I don't think that's an adequate rationale to not have done a better job of planning. We have more experience in the United States Army in peacekeeping operations, because of the Balkans, than probably any army on the face of the earth. All of us in the Army were very, very concerned that if it wasn't a war of liberation, if lawlessness broke out, that we would have a very difficult time stopping that.

There are two ways you could have sized the force to go into Iraq. One was the way it with done, which is necessary to win the war, and then assume that you would need fewer and fewer troops to ensure the peace after the war.

The other was to say the real force driver here is the stability operation following combat. So even if we launched the combat operation early to achieve, to guard against these other problems, the torching of the oil fields and so forth, we still need to keep the force flow going and get additional forces in there so that we can secure the peace.

Unfortunately, the latter course was not the one that was adopted. I think to a certain degree, it was foreseeable. … We were absolutely convinced that it would take an enormous number of people to stabilize the [postwar] situation. Short of those people, a great deal of mischief would occur. I guess you take a bit of satisfaction that your view has been vindicated by the way the results played out. But at the same time, this is something that could have been anticipated, I believe.

Paul Wolfowitz, also Donald Rumsfeld, were very strong, outspoken in criticizing the army's views on troop levels needed.

Well, yes. There's a certain amount of arrogance to both of them in this regard. Neither man is a man that I would say was burdened by a great deal of self-doubt. Having been right in Afghanistan with conducting an operation with basically special operating forces and indigenous forces, their view was that they would be absolutely right here.

Our view was that they were going to be terribly wrong. Their response, publicly and privately, was basically that Shinseki and I didn't know what we were talking about. I suppose, looking back on it, it is hard to believe that rational people looking at that situation before the combat operation could have thought it was going to come out in any other way than in fact it did.

I mean, here you have a population which is fractured, with the Kurds, the Sunnis, and the Shias. It's a huge country. It's been ruled with an iron fist by a tyrant. As soon as you take that iron fist off the population and don't replace it with an obvious presence of law and order, I don't think it was that hard to divine what was going to occur.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/invasion/interviews/white.html

interview with journalist James Fallows:
quote:
Frontline interviewer: Specific to prewar, what was the main reason the Army wanted so many troops -- why they thought the numbers that they were talking about were necessary?

Fallows:The Army had both a specific and a larger metaphysical reason for wanting to have a lot of troops going in. The specific reason was their very precise argument that it would be harder to occupy Iraq than to conquer it. You would need a relatively small number of troops actually to beat Saddam Hussein's military, but then occupying this quite large and quite fractured country would be quite hard, and would take a lot of troops.

The metaphysical reason was the Army's sense that, once the sort of glory of the short war was over, the people that would actually be there would be the U.S. Army, not some international force, not the Air Force. The U.S. Army would be taking the heat for whatever went wrong. We wouldn't have enough of them there.

Frontline interviewer:Explain the reasoning of the head of the U.S. Army, Gen. Shinseki, on how important the first days after the fall of Baghdad would be.

Fallows:Shinseki of the Army drew not only on his experience in the Balkans, trying to administer a fractious region postwar. [He also drew from] all the corpus of evidence that had been produced by the Army War College, by every other group that looked into this, to say that there was a crucial moment just after the fall of a regime when the potential for disorder was enormous. So there would be ripple effects for years to come, depending on what happened in those first days or weeks when the regime went [down] ….

The Army War College study had worked out a very detailed checklist for how the military, and the Army in particular, should start thinking about the postwar, well before it actually went to war. One of their conclusions was that it was best to go in heavier than you actually needed to be, so that at the beginning of the postwar period your presence would be so intimidating that nobody would dare challenge you. You'd set a tone that would allow you then to draw down the forces very rapidly. So it was better to go in heavy and then draw down, than the reverse.


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Morbo
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I wouldn't say troop levels are "mostly a non-issue", fugu.

I guess I would say, better pre-war planning for the occupation phase is the most important lack, was needed, and would have suggested higher troop levels.

Oooh, I can add Bremer to my list. From fugu's link:
quote:
As the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, Ambassador Paul Bremer, later argued, “The single most important change . . . would have been having more troops in Iraq at the beginning and throughout.” Bremer claimed to have “raised this issue a number of times with our government” but to have been overruled.

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MrSquicky
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quote:
This is a significant recasting of what that original criticism was. Most of the original "quagmire" predictions were about the main offensive. The contention that more troops were needed was that we would not be able to defeat Iraq's military quickly enough.
That doesn't match up with what I know/remember at all. There were voices from the military, most blatantly Shineski, saying exactly that the troops levels would be insufficient for post-combat challenges. A great deal of the criticism I remember both hearing and saying at the time was that the initial combat was going to be by far the easier task. This was also the understanding of planners ever since the first GUlf War. Heck, George H. W. Bush dedicated a significant portion of a book about why they didn't topple Saddam Hussein when they had a chance, with the inevitable long, protracted, and bloody occupation - or "quagmire" - this would necessitate being the main concern.

At the beginning of the first Gulf War, the Iraqi army was the 5th largest in the world with formidable supplies and equipment. At the beginning of the second, they were significantly weaker in terms of manpower and supplies. I'm having problems picturing people focusing on beating the Iraqi military as being something we wouldn't be able to accomplish as being taken seriously.

edit: Also, considering that the point up for debate was fully realized by the planners of the first Gulf War, I can't buy that it wasn't realized by the planners of the second. Actually, I could buy it - I mean George W. Bush seemed almost proud he didn't ask his father for advice - but I couldn't then see it as anything but an amazing display of incompetence.

[ June 26, 2006, 12:28 PM: Message edited by: MrSquicky ]

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Bean Counter
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Wow I stand corrected, the mission is wrong, the war is wrong, soldiers are bad, I am going to go kill myself now by climbing a water tower and shooting people until the cops get me...

BC

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MrSquicky
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If it makes you feel any better BC, you're not actually a soldier. You just lie about being one on messge boards.
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Dagonee
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quote:
There were voices from the military, most blatantly Shineski, saying exactly that the troops levels would be insufficient for post-combat challenges.
True. Doesn't contradict a single thing I said, of course.

quote:
I'm having problems picturing people focusing on beating the Iraqi military as being something we wouldn't be able to accomplish as being taken seriously.
And, yet, it happened.

Go back and review the commentary during the time we were "stalled" outside Bahgdad.

quote:
If it makes you feel any better BC, you're not actually a soldier. You just lie about being one on messge boards.
Wow, you are in an arrogant pissy little mood today, aren't you.

You might not want to make absolute personal charges you can't back up.

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TomDavidson
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quote:
Wow I stand corrected, the mission is wrong, the war is wrong, soldiers are bad....
This doesn't logically follow, either.

The mission MIGHT be bad; it might not. Soldiers MIGHT be bad; they might not.

What I'm trying to point out to you is that it's perfectly possible for good soldiers to be used on a bad mission, and perfectly reasonable and loyal for people to observe that a mission is bad without concluding that the soldiers themselves are bad.

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Bean Counter
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What I am teaching you is that to a soldier it matters not at all that you are splitting hairs in your own mind, when you break on the mission the soldiers do not feel supported reguardless of the PC rehtoric, so just make your choice, support the troops on their missions or be the other thing. We will police up our bad soldiers, we will provide feedback to the policy makers so they can adjust the mission.

In the end we always hold ourselves to a higher standard of conduct then any soldiers in history, the end is this, our soldiers are on a mission against evil, and we have leaders who believe in both good and evil and try to fight on the side of good. That is where I place my blood and bone and that is where I vote.

BC

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Dagonee
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quote:
What I am teaching you is that to a soldier it matters not at all that you are splitting hairs in your own mind, when you break on the mission the soldiers do not feel supported reguardless of the PC rehtoric,
Change that to "some soldiers" and you would be accurate.

I know many soldiers who have said that they don't feel unsupported by people who oppose the mission but wish them the best.

quote:
We will police up our bad soldiers, we will provide feedback to the policy makers so they can adjust the mission
I know MANY servicemen who are utterly offended by this idea. In fact, I've heard quite a bit of complaining from people in the service about soldiers who try to claim exclusivity of comment on military matters.
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TomDavidson
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quote:
We will police up our bad soldiers, we will provide feedback to the policy makers so they can adjust the mission.
And if the policy makers don't adjust the mission in response to your feedback, do you believe your useless deaths are good ones?
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Bean Counter
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Useless Deaths? If nothing else the Left will try to use the death nee?

BC

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TomDavidson
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Will you consider that an appropriate use of your corpse?

At what point, BC, do you believe that your leadership is capable of betraying your trust and no longer deserving of your unquestioning obedience? Is your answer to that question "never?"

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Bean Counter
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Until they ask me to violate the rules of war, I do as I am told, If I have to fight Iran, China, Russia, Somalia I will do the best I can for those with me and for the people I love. There is no question for a soldier about these things, I choose to be a soldier if I want to pick my own targets I would have to go freelance as a serial killer.

Do you think that my name and that of the rest of my family is beyond the reach of terrorists? We caught lists of our mail return addresses in the hands of insurgents that were compiled from our thrown away mail, they will bring it home to us if we do not take it to them. Breath the free air in the space we provide, use it for something nice like making inroads into Space, don't trip us up as we try to give you room.

BC

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TomDavidson
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quote:
Until they ask me to violate the rules of war, I do as I am told...
That's still not the question.
I'm not asking "should you obey?" I'm asking if people should offer advice to and criticism of your leadership while you are required to obey those leaders, or if you believe your effectiveness is reduced by any and all attempts to make your leadership more effective (and, consequently, your obedience most useful.)

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Sterling
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Firstly, if Iraq was in violation of UN resolutions, it was far from alone in that regard.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=2417

And yet, notably, the UN did not authorize invasion of Iraq.

Now, if you want to get into treaty violations, that's a whole other ball of wax. Just be warned there's a lot of treaties and cease-fires violated around the world. Even the U.S has been guilty of a few.

Secondly, while functional mustard gas and sarin may be WMD. However, a "mushroom cloud" specifically refers to a nuclear weapon.

Never mind the question of whether a non-functioning nerve agent can be called a weapon at all, let alone a weapon of mass destruction.

If one were to lay off specifics and just accept that the administration has been, shall we say, fairly disingenuous, it would be fair to leave it at that.

Thirdly, if "all the world's intelligence agencies were in agreement, it's odd to have George Tenet attesting that "US Analysts never claimed Iraq was an imminent threat";

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4049012/

and that the infamous Downing Street memo implies that numerous holes and dissensions on the subject of intelligence would have to be covered to make the case for war:

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/special_packages/iraq/intelligence/11901380.htm

The unanimity of international intelligence on the subject of Iraq and its weapons programs is a fiction. There wasn't even a unanimity of intelligence within the United States.

I'm not even going to bother joining in the dogpile on Bean Counter. Someone who screams constantly about fighting for America while deriding the basic democratic principles it stands for isn't worth the breath.

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Dagonee
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quote:
However, a "mushroom cloud" specifically refers to a nuclear weapon.
Yes, it does. However, there was NEVER a contention that Iraq had a working nuclear weapon. There was a contention that it had working chemical weapons.

The mushroom cloud quote is irrelevant to this find except to refute the contention that the find proves Bush's claims were all correct.

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Bean Counter
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The noisemakers only trouble me to the extent that they get listened to, so long as the administration can remain steadfast and listen to intelligence gathered by the military about the situation instead of the media I am fine.

We all got good laughs at Bush's plummeting poll numbers, it is so cute to say "look if we could only have the election now instead of two years ago people would agree with us..." In reality people are ignoring the furor and going about their business until they have to do their duty again, and keep the Left away from the Presidency.

As for deriding Democratic principle I have no idea when I have ever done so. A democracy at war is not the same as a democracy at peace, and some principles should be enshrined beyond the touch of mere mob rule, but I am a big fan of Democracy, fan enough to fight and die for it, fan enough to vote.

BC

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TomDavidson
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quote:
A democracy at war is not the same as a democracy at peace...
Can you explain why this should be so?
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Lyrhawn
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I don't understand your way of thinking. It's narrow minded, to a degree that just boggles my mind from someone who grew up in America.

You strike me as an Ann Coulter fanatic, and that says it all for me.

Good luck. And even though you don't think it matters, I wish you well over there, but I don't support the war.

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Bean Counter
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I am back home, but I did do well over there.

BC

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Bean Counter
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A secret known by three people is public knowledge, if you have a Town Hall discussion dictate policy during war time you are certain to have your decisions known to your enemy.

If you want to take your enemy with the least loss of life on your side, you cannot beat surprise. That is as simple an example of why you cannot discuss military maneuvers in a public forum as I can offer.

I trust you are just naive to need to ask this question at all, it is interesting how this fell from common knowledge in a couple generations.

BC

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Sterling
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quote:
As for deriding Democratic principle I have no idea when I have ever done so. A democracy at war is not the same as a democracy at peace, and some principles should be enshrined beyond the touch of mere mob rule, but I am a big fan of Democracy, fan enough to fight and die for it, fan enough to vote.

Any time anyone says that others should shut up and let those who "know better" run the state, they deride democracy.

At this time, the democracy, or rather, republic, is "at war" only in as much as those who "know better" say it is. And frankly, they want to have it both ways, gaining credit for victory but remaining "at war". There's no single organized enemy to declare surrender or call for cease fire; there's no easily definable fronts which can be declared taken and held when insurgents fight with IEDs. And there's certainly no clear evidence that the occupation in Iraq is a fight against enemies who would otherwise attack America, or even are necessarily capable of attacking America. As has been repeatedly noted, exactly zero of those responsible for the 9/11/01 attack which has been so pilloried for the pleasure of those who sought to invade Iraq were actually from Iraq.

"The Left" is not something seperate from that democracy. It is a vital part of it. It is inseperable from it, and should be. The people who disagree with you are crucial to democracy, and they're no less doing their "duty" than you.

God help us all, if people are doing their "duty" they WON'T "shut up and let the people who know better" do their thinking for them. They'll speak up and try to convince people to go their way. On both sides. That's democracy.

Otherwise, hell, God save the king.

Give it a couple of years, we'll see who We, The People should decide make the big decisions. And we'll complain bitterly about those decisions, too, no doubt. That's part of the process. It's the immune system. The "we don't let a knuckleheaded idiot keep making bad decisions until we're run into the ground" process. I'm not claiming to know who will hold the office next. I'm not that stupid. The polls certainly don't tell me that. They do strongly imply this nation doesn't remotely swing right, right or wrong. If it came down to a Clinton-McCain race, I don't even know for sure who I'd vote for.

quote:
Yes, it does. However, there was NEVER a contention that Iraq had a working nuclear weapon. There was a contention that it had working chemical weapons.
An insinuation, perhaps. A contention, harder to nail down.

Whether they had working chemical weapons remains under question as well, however. But I believe you noted as much.

Notably, arms expert David Kay claims that in all likelihood any weapons that have been discovered are presently degraded to non-lethal intensities:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-06-22-iraq-report_x.htm?csp=34

One opinion, of course.

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Lyrhawn
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I don't think there was ever a claim that they had nukes, but I'm positive that Bush or Administration officials have said at least a dozen times that Saddam was actively seeking them. Basically, "Saddam might get them in a decade, thus, this is urgent!"
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Bob_Scopatz
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quote:
What I am teaching you is that to a soldier it matters not at all that you are splitting hairs in your own mind, when you break on the mission the soldiers do not feel supported reguardless of the PC rehtoric, so just make your choice, support the troops on their missions or be the other thing.
Sorry you feel that way. I'll keep paying my taxes anyway. But I guess I'm the "other thing."

I am not splitting hairs, by the way. I am resolving a major dilemma between what is right and what my country sometimes does in my name. The fact that soldiers sometimes perform duties that I disagree with gives me three options:

1) Adjust my thinking to align with whatever the soldiers' leaders say is right.

2) Exercise my role as a citizen to try to ensure that the government represents the highest ideals, as written in our laws and as embodied in our society's basic principals.

3) Actively fight against the government because I consider it corrupt.

#1 is not really an option that I can make work. In some cases, it would mean going against my faith, but in others it's just plain orneriness on my part -- refusing to give up simply because I know the arguments against my position are wrong.

Suffice it to say we're left with #2 and #3.

I choose #2 -- It preserves the United States in the truest sense of the word and does so in a way that #1 cannot.

It would take a lot for me to get to #3.


quote:

In the end we always hold ourselves to a higher standard of conduct then any soldiers in history,

Not to be a pain, but do you have anything to back this assertion? Every military historian-type I've ever asked about this points to the Brits as taking top honors in this regard. I don't mind being first, mind you, but I was just wondering if there was some sort of military ethics competition and we'd recently scored an upset victory.

quote:
the end is this, our soldiers are on a mission against evil, and we have leaders who believe in both good and evil and try to fight on the side of good. That is where I place my blood and bone and that is where I vote.
I try to fight on the side of good too. If I see my government committing evil, I will work to stop it. If I see my government failing to do the best it can do, I will work to encourage it to do better. If I see us sacrificing our principles for the sake of expediency, I will raise questions.

I would expect ANY American to do likewise.

The main thing that's special about a time of war is that the stakes are higher. That's when having people who force us to stick to our ideals matters the most. It's not sedition to insist that the government act out our ideals.

If you understood what a gut punch launching a pre-emptive war was to what my underestanding of American values, perhaps you'd understand the disgust I have for the circumstances under which our troops arrived in Iraq. That alone has colored my feelings about the mission there. I find it difficult to imagine the good that will come from something so fundamentally against our unspoken principles.

The other things I dislike about the mission in Iraq pale against that one first problem. Unfortunately, my view of that also colors my perception of the good parts of the mission too. I worry that we didn't take the time to plan this whole thing well, and that people on both sides are dying as a result of that lack of careful planning in advance.

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TomDavidson
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quote:
If you want to take your enemy with the least loss of life on your side, you cannot beat surprise.
Believe it or not, I think you dishonor our soldiers by suggesting that our highest priority should be ensuring surprise. By that same logic, we'd be better off keeping them at home.
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BlackBlade
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quote:
Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:
A democracy at war is not the same as a democracy at peace...
Can you explain why this should be so?
Democracy is effective as a means to keep a stable government in times of peace. But in terms of being able to make effective decisions during a war a democracy is woefully inadequate in terms of speed. Many democracies temporarily invest powers in a select group of people so that they can be effective during war time rather than demanding total oversight on what the military does in a conflict.
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Destineer
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quote:
Democracy is effective as a means to keep a stable government in times of peace. But in terms of being able to make effective decisions during a war a democracy is woefully inadequate in terms of speed. Many democracies temporarily invest powers in a select group of people so that they can be effective during war time rather than demanding total oversight on what the military does in a conflict.
... which is really no different from how a representative democracy handles non-military issues like education and interstate highways. Responsibility is delegated. Big whoop.
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BlackBlade
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quote:
Originally posted by Destineer:
quote:
Democracy is effective as a means to keep a stable government in times of peace. But in terms of being able to make effective decisions during a war a democracy is woefully inadequate in terms of speed. Many democracies temporarily invest powers in a select group of people so that they can be effective during war time rather than demanding total oversight on what the military does in a conflict.
... which is really no different from how a representative democracy handles non-military issues like education and interstate highways. Responsibility is delegated. Big whoop.
Responsibility is delegated because the entire legislative body does not have TIME to deal with EVERYTHING those responsibilities entail. During war time decisions must be decisive and efficient. Neither of which is possible in a democracy. Just look at how the founding fathers organized the constitution and the declaration of independance. There was a HUGE debate on how much the delegates HAD to represent the people and how much they could make decisions FOR the masses. During the civil war Lincoln suspended writs of habeus corpus, and though he was scolded by the legislature (something that simply had to be done) many of the people in the legislature still said publically that Lincoln really had no choice as it was war time and he needed to make quick decisive action.

I imagine its like football. When do you scold the quarterback for changing the play at the huddle? Everytime, regardless of whether or not the outcome is favorable? Or only when the play goes south?

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Dan_raven
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Supporting the Troops Consists of...

1) Insuring they know we respect and admire thier courage and dedication and that we know they step in harms way not for glory or for money, but for us.

2) Insuring that we welcome them home with open arms and gratitude for the services they have done.

3) Making sure the sacrifices they are called on to make are used to the utmost to help everyone in the US, our goals and our beliefs. That not one drop of US Military Blood be spilled in waste.

4) Making sure that they are equipped with the best equipment available.

5) Making sure that those that are injured recieve the care that hero's deserve, not the care that the beaurocrats think we can afford. Whether that is psychological, medical, or lifestyle support (as in a Quadroplegic lifestyle that requires special mobility, help, or nursing) does not matter.

6) Ensure that the reservists have their jobs when they return, that their families have our support while they are gone, and that the full time soldier can find great jobs when they leave the military.

7) Make sure that once home they are safe from enemies, foriegn and domestic, who would belittle thier sacrifices for political gain or who seek violent misplaced vengeance.

Anything less than this support is TREASON.

But what is not included in this support is...

1) Unconditional backing of the politicians who use our soldiers.

2) Small little magnets on our car that proclaim our support.

3) Political support of people some soldiers believe we should support.

4) Surrendering of our own personal freedoms or responsibilities to those who have bled for us.

This is my opinion.

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Bob_Scopatz
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I agree with Dan.
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aspectre
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The Dubya&Gang have decided to give the "person of interest" in the anthrax attack upon the Senate (more accurately upon the Senate office building occupied by Democrats) $5.8million to quash his lawsuit against the government.

BTW: That "Iraqi sketch of mobile WMD laboratories" -- which Dubya used as evidence against the Saddam regime -- was actually drawn much earlier by Hatfill in his capacity as advisor to the US government on biological weapons development.

[ August 01, 2008, 02:32 AM: Message edited by: aspectre ]

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Destineer
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Ah, this thread... one of Bean Counter's golden oldies.

That guy was something else. And by 'else' I mean 'deeply biased against Arabs.'

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Rakeesh
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Of course everyone is going to agree with Dan's list. I mean, it's a nice list and all, but kind of fluffy.
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Zemra
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Wow, that's one of the best bumps I've ever seen. 2 years and 13 hours after the last post... if I wasn't paying attention, I might not even have noticed the delay.
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Samprimary
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quote:
I wasn't paying attention, I might not even have noticed the delay.
Sure you would. This is an anachronistic level of militaristic jingodronism. An archaic remnant of a darker time.

Fellows like Bean Counter now spend their days complaining about how Bush was actually too liberal, when not forwarding important and helpful emails about how that obama feller is a muslim.

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aspectre
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"One of the nation's top biodefense researchers has died in Maryland from an apparent suicide, just as the Justice Department was to file criminal charges against him in the anthrax mailing assaults...
"Bruce E. Ivins, 62, who for the past 18 years worked at the government's elite biodefense research laboratories at Fort Detrick, Md., had been informed of the impending prosecution, people familiar with Ivins, his suspicious death and with the FBI investigation said."

Convenient considering that it allows the FBI to close future investigation.....without ever providing any public argument showing that they were actually targeting the guilty party.

BTW: While Health and Human Services Secretary TommyThompson was lying to the public inregard to the "unknown" source of the anthrax -- allowing the DubyaAdministration to scatter FBI investigators on a worldwide wild goose chase -- it was already known through DNA analysis that the particular anthrax strain used in the attacks could have come only from FortDetrick.

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The Rabbit
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I hate to be nitpicky (well not that much actually), but this is a case when it would have been much better to start new thread rather than resurrect this old one.

1. The information about Ivins suicide is at best cursorily related to the original thread topic. It is a new event and likely to be of interest to people who were never interested in this thread.

2. Resurrecting this two year old unpleasant thread draws more attention to what was already proven to be an overblown claim by a wight wing wacko.

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aspectre
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Yeah, there is that. However since I believe it unlikely that there would be a great deal of response to a new thread upon the topic, and the original anthrax attack thread was deleted by a forum crash, it seemed better to just attach the "how it all came out in the wash" to an old (somewhat) related thread.
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Kwea
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quote:
Originally posted by aspectre:

BTW: While Health and Human Services Secretary TommyThompson was lying to the public inregard to the "unknown" source of the anthrax -- allowing the DubyaAdministration to scatter FBI investigators on a worldwide wild goose chase -- it was already known through DNA analysis that the particular anthrax strain used in the attacks could have come only from FortDetrick.

No, it was suspected. I should know, I worked there for 2 years in the safety office. There are a lot of reasons why they look at more than one possible origin. One reason is that there are people out there that no LONGER work at USAMRIID who could make this grade of anthrax, but could have made this in a home made lab. The techniques aren't that hard, per say, but the knowledge is the hard thing to come by.

Also, there isn't even a consensus regarding what technique was actually used to create it, or what grade it actually was upon delivery. All that is KNOWN is that at least two different levels/grades were used.


If it was that simple, you would hold office (god forbid).


And before you go off on yet another useless, pointless and uninformed rant not backed by any actual proof at all, keep this in mind.....I am hardly a fan of this administration. I think that this admin botched a lot of things, including this investigation....but there were a lot of areas of interest when this broke, and it is easy to second guess the people investigating years after the fact.


I worked with Dr. Ivins, and while I don't remember him well, what I do remember (from people who worked with him directly) is that he was a decent guy. I hope they find he wasn't responsible, and I feel for his family.

[Frown]

[ August 02, 2008, 01:03 AM: Message edited by: Kwea ]

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