quote: I'm saying the same thing he's saying. That's what I'm saying. Have a problem with what I said, but not with what he said?
Yes, I do. Fugu was addressing an actual thing you said. You chose to completely ignore his point and make that comeback which doesn't apply because fugu didn't do those things. Why don't you address what he said? You do exactly what you did here, a great deal, Chad. You ignore what the other posters are saying. Making unsubstantiated claims or what you did with fugu and then changing the subject or ignoring what someone said when you are called on them is NOT okay.
Posts: 104 | Registered: Jun 2004
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"Kerry is saying it's the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time and that is just down right stupid."
Abe, I'm interested in hearing your reason for this. If it IS the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time, why is that stupid? I'm going to assume that you believe that it is NOT the wrong war, or the wrong place, or the wrong time -- but I'm still curious why you feel it is "stupid" for anyone to hold that opinion. What about this war makes it self-evidently right in all its particulars?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote: Is this your idea of supporting the troops?
BTW, you need a high school diploma to join the Marines.Marines.com
YEs I'm supporting the troops. What I'm saying is that these results were takin from such a small percentage of the military. It's like if you go to the world s biggest mall and ask a question. Yes or NO? Then you only record the yes's. That iws what this information is. It isn't accurate.
I didn't know about the high-school diploma but my point still stands. These kids are losers that the press talked too. I have worked with these type of marines in my volunteer service. These select few (like 1%) hate that they're over in the bvattle zone. That is the point I was trying to make. I wasn't trying to do anything else. I support the troops one-hundred percent.
quote: "Kerry is saying it's the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time and that is just down right stupid."
Abe, I'm interested in hearing your reason for this. If it IS the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time, why is that stupid? I'm going to assume that you believe that it is NOT the wrong war, or the wrong place, or the wrong time -- but I'm still curious why you feel it is "stupid" for anyone to hold that opinion. What about this war makes it self-evidently right in all its particulars?
I beleive that if a person wants to be commander in cheif and head of the armed foces that they can't believe that. That was probably the wrong choice of words for the situation. You can hold that opinion but I think that that opinion is wrong. I just think it sends a negative message to our troops.
Posts: 42 | Registered: Oct 2004
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So, you'd rather our president lie to the American people and troops, and send them a feel-good positive message that is false?
Because if you know it is the wrong war at the wrong place but then say it is not, then you are lying - and doing so intentionally. That's one of big problem with Bush's argument there: It boils down to him claiming that Kerry will be a bad president because Kerry doesn't lie enough.
quote: It's like if you go to the world s biggest mall and ask a question. Yes or NO? Then you only record the yes's. That iws what this information is. It isn't accurate.
But does it mean the yeses aren't true? I didn't see anywhere in the article where the author claimed that all troops feel that way.
quote: These kids are losers that the press talked too. I have worked with these type of marines in my volunteer service.
Why are they losers? Because they don't completely believe in the reasons they were sent to war?
quote: These select few (like 1%) hate that they're over in the bvattle zone.
How many units in Iraq have you interviewed?
Posts: 104 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
Abe, I do not disagree with your point that the Marines interviewed by the Washington Post may not represent the majority opinion of the people serving in Iraq. In fact, I specifically stated that in my first post.
What I do disagree with is your reaction that any Marine who talks about the difficulties they face in Iraq is a "high school drop-out" who joined because they have "no life" and "don't believe in America."
Posts: 1592 | Registered: May 2000
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Abe, I still don't understand: is it "stupid" for someone running for president to believe that we shouldn't be in a given war, or is it stupid for him to say it? In other words, is it better in that case for the candidate to appear to support a war effort that he and his constituency believe has been conducted badly?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
I'm back and my post was that some of the "bush haters" on this forum have called bush that and worse.
Fugu may not have, but I didn't state that he had said those things specifically.
My post was to put forth the parallel, that by his own standard of judging posters who call Kerry a Moron (I've name called their Messiah, oh no, I'm doomed) There's a TON of people on this forum who he must question their intelligence because of the labels about Bush.
I'm not claiming Fugu said those things. I'm claiming that those things (and much much worse and MORE) have been said about Bush and that by using his standard, their intelligence is in question as well.
quote: It boils down to him claiming that Kerry will be a bad president because Kerry doesn't lie enough.
No it boils down to putting a commander in chief over troops fighting a war he doesn't believe in.
"I'm against what you're doing, it's wrong, but go and do it well"
No thanks for me. I care more about the troops than to punish them with Kerry as Commander in Chief.
What I do find funny is that Bush is the encumbent president...But Kerry is the BEST they have to offer. He is their best option for commander in chief.
The "Cream of the Crop".
I look at that and shudder.
Unfortunately we have Bush as the encumbent or I'd vote for McCain (would've voted for him last election as well) or if he ran Colin Powell.
My opinion of course.
I await the response of the Kerry Disciples.
Posts: 1533 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
I thought I might bumb this thread back up onto the chart's causeit's such a heated topic...
OKay I understand that i'm dealling with people who probably have a much higher understanding of politics and have actually voted but I will clarify.
quote: So, you'd rather our president lie to the American people and troops, and send them a feel-good positive message that is false?
Because if you know it is the wrong war at the wrong place but then say it is not, then you are lying - and doing so intentionally. That's one of big problem with Bush's argument there: It boils down to him claiming that Kerry will be a bad president because Kerry doesn't lie enough.
I think that yes the president should ie if he believes the war is wrong. HE shouldn't do what he ffells is right but what is right for the people. Now if that and the presidents point coincided thaen it doesn't matter. I think that if Kerry were to be president and he lied and said he supported our teroops he would be held higher. He hasn't truly shwown that support that he says he has. He has said so at all of the debates but he's also said that he's a ginst the war. Ye, Lying is good in this situatuion because if the marines and sailors are out there with no support from their commander in chief they're gonna do worse and worse.
quote: But does it mean the yeses aren't true? I didn't see anywhere in the article where the author claimed that all troops feel that way.
of course there are always those people who believe the war is wrong. So the yesses are true to some respect. I'm saying that these don't show the whole military. Of course not all the troops feel that way. I hope that answered you question.
Will post more later on these questions I've been asked... Wow I really like this place...
posted
Chad, I, too, am confused as to how Kerry would be worse for Iraq than Bush, or how Kerry has been a liar regarding Iraq. I don't see that your links answer those questions.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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One other thing that I'd like to mention is that for better or worse, we, the people, have to decide whether wars are appropriate for our leaders to fight. Certainly, congress through us has to fund the damn things. And, certainly, there is a level of security involved that must be maintained, but to say that we can't judge whether a war is bad or good because we don't have some kind of special information is either an outright attempt to stifle criticism, or it speaks very poorly about the person who has that information that hasn't released it. If Bush hasn't, at least, given necessary information to the very congressmen who are voting to fund that war, then there is a serious, serious problem.
The bottom line is that saying that Bush has some kind of special information pertaining Iraq that allows him to make rosy predictions and estimates of what's going on over there is just speculation and doesn't make sense in this election year.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
Let me also point out this from the link you say wasn't present on MSNBC, Chad:
quote: pc. Colby Buzzell and a handful of others write unvarnished war reporting. But many of these blogs have been shut down.
quote: Buzzell says he was banned from missions for five days because of the blog and has stopped adding new narrative entries.
quote: Jason Hartley called his blog "Just Another Soldier" and wrote unflinchingly about everything from his buddies' families to the conditions on base.
"I think I've been duped," he wrote from a base in October 2003, while his unit was preparing to go to Iraq. "I'm not actually at a modern US military installation, but Sing Sing, circa 1940."
"My commander had a meltdown when he discovered it," Hartley, a sergeant in the New York National Guard, said of his blog in an instant message. "He demanded I take it down."
quote:No it boils down to putting a commander in chief over troops fighting a war he doesn't believe in.
"I'm against what you're doing, it's wrong, but go and do it well"
Kerry DOES believe in what they are doing now - rebuilding Iraq. He just doesn't think we should have gone in in the first place.
Posts: 2432 | Registered: Feb 2001
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Abe, While I'm definitely not pro-Kerry, I am decidedly anti-Bush, and significant part of my opposition is exactly because I don't feel he gives a damn about supporting the troops. "Supporting the troops" has taken on the connotation of agreeing with whatever the Bush Administration does and not criticizing at all. For me, that is the opposite of supporting the acutal troops as living breaving individuals with hopes, dreams, and fears. I feel that the Bush Administration has (to state it pretty strongly) used the military like their own set of toy soldiers without respect for them as human beings.
Going to war should always be a last resort, not just because of the crudity and negative effects this violence on the people we are using it against, but also (perhaps more importantly) because of the responsibilty our leaders bear towards the men and women in our armed forces.
If you're going to send them into harm's way, you must fulfill certain requirements. First, you better have a damn good reason. I can see how opinions on this may vary, but the fact remains, the Bush Administration was extremely deceptive on their reasons for going into Iraq. Perhaps they had an overall reason or set of reasons that made this a near necessity, but with all the poor planning, half-truths, and outright lies, it's sure hard to figure out what this is.
Second, you have to make sure that our soldiers have the best training and equipment that you can afford them. This was obviously not the case. Our troops still don't have the best we can offer in terms of body armor and armored vehicles. Also, they are being called on to performed jobs that they aren't trained for and weren't prepared for. My local paper profiled a guy from here who was in charge of I think it was 1/16th of Bagdad. Prior to this, he was the commander of a calvary division. To put it simply, he drove tanks. He wasn't trained to administer an occupied city. He had a severe lack of people who could speak Arabic. He said that he was getting by largely by applying lessons he learned on the job. That's unacceptable. Also unnacceptable is the fact that many people are coming forward saying that while the attack on Iraq had enough men, the mission to secure it after the attack was obviously undermanned.
Third, you need to acknowledge that things are going to go wrong, that you are going to make mistakes, and have an open channel that will help you identify and rectify these mistakes. I honestly believe that this is lacking.
Fourth, you need a clear mission and most importantly a clear exit strategy. There is no exit strategy for Iraq. The troops are there. The times that many of them have been told that they would be going home have come and gone. There has been a policy of stop-loss orders that make it so they are unable to leave the service even when their agreed upon term of service is up. There is an on-going masssive reshuffling of military personel to get some of those numbers of people who were needed but weren't included in the original plans in Iraq from other stations and into Iraq. I'll repeat, there is no exit strategy for Iraq.
---
I support our troops. I don't support George Bush, the war he started (I did when I was being told that not only do we know Saddam Hussein has WMD, but we also have some pretty good evidence that there is a wide-scale operation going on to hide them from the inspectors), and especially the way he has been carrying it out. Knowing what I know now, I'm still ambivilent as to whether the war was a good idea, but I'm convinced that the way it has been carried out has been just awful, for America as a whole, for the Iraqis, and for our American troops.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
Oh, I'd recommend the Soldiers For The Truth web-site for people who are interested in seeing what some very serious military and ex-military think constitutes supporting our troops.
edit: Before dismissing what is said on the site because you don't agree with it, I recommend giving a serious look at the qualifications and records of the people contributing to it.
quote:Abe, I still don't understand: is it "stupid" for someone running for president to believe that we shouldn't be in a given war, or is it stupid for him to say it? In other words, is it better in that case for the candidate to appear to support a war effort that he and his constituency believe has been conducted badly?
No it isn't "stupid" for a given president to believe that we shouldn't be in a given war. It is stupid for him to say it. What is sayong it going to solve? No matter what happens we are always going to be in Iraq. There is no way we can just revert. So by saying it, Great you said it, now what? Nothing. you can't fdo anything. you have to leave the troops in there.
quote: While I'm definitely not pro-Kerry, I am decidedly anti-Bush, and significant part of my opposition is exactly because I don't feel he gives a damn about supporting the troops. "Supporting the troops" has taken on the connotation of agreeing with whatever the Bush Administration does and not criticizing at all. For me, that is the opposite of supporting the acutal troops as living breaving individuals with hopes, dreams, and fears. I feel that the Bush Administration has (to state it pretty strongly) used the military like their own set of toy soldiers without respect for them as human beings.
You said that the bush administration is using them like toys soldiers, Well that's entirely untrue. I know that they care about the lives of the marines. They don't wish for the Military personal to die. These soldiers are being treated as living breathing individuals. With war comes casualties and that is not posiible to get rid of. Yes you can downscale the number of tradgidies but alot of deaths come from accidents. I have a freind who's brother died in Iraq. He fell down some stairs and broke his neck. It wasn't a gun shot. Most of the deaths are from accidents not just shootings, althought they contirbute a wholesome part too.
quote: Going to war should always be a last resort, not just because of the crudity and negative effects this violence on the people we are using it against, but also (perhaps more importantly) because of the responsibilty our leaders bear towards the men and women in our armed forces.
I think we did use war as a last resort. From what I know the UN wasn't working. Nothing was working. Everything in "peace" was failing.
quote: If you're going to send them into harm's way, you must fulfill certain requirements. First, you better have a damn good reason. I can see how opinions on this may vary, but the fact remains, the Bush Administration was extremely deceptive on their reasons for going into Iraq. Perhaps they had an overall reason or set of reasons that made this a near necessity, but with all the poor planning, half-truths, and outright lies, it's sure hard to figure out what this is.
We did have a "damned good reason." We believed that Saddam had WMD's and was using them.
Did you know that Saddam put people through plastic shredders and made their families watch? Did you know that after that The families had to watch as the remains were given to dogs?
Poor planning? You cannot plan on how to deal with terrorists their are to many variables involved. We don't know the enemies next move we can't have a clear defined plan to leave Iraq.
quote: Second, you have to make sure that our soldiers have the best training and equipment that you can afford them. This was obviously not the case. Our troops still don't have the best we can offer in terms of body armor and armored vehicles. Also, they are being called on to performed jobs that they aren't trained for and weren't prepared for. My local paper profiled a guy from here who was in charge of I think it was 1/16th of Bagdad. Prior to this, he was the commander of a calvary division. To put it simply, he drove tanks. He wasn't trained to administer an occupied city. He had a severe lack of people who could speak Arabic. He said that he was getting by largely by applying lessons he learned on the job. That's unacceptable. Also unnacceptable is the fact that many people are coming forward saying that while the attack on Iraq had enough men, the mission to secure it after the attack was obviously undermanned.
From what I know the Marines are well outfitted. I saw hundreds of HummVees and 7-ton trucks being outfitted with armor. They just revamped the whole vehicle pool in the Military. Most of are men do have the proper armor. We do have enough men to hold Iraq. We don't have those few villages in the northern region where the terrorists have "control" but we have pretty much all the major locations fairly well. I think these people are gald we came and took out saddam. The only reaon we are being attacked is so that we don't settle and actually bring forthdemocracy because if we do Iraq can no longer be a safe haven for terrorists. Think abot it why would the terrorists be attacking us if Iraq meant nothing to them. It does. It is where they lie and wait and plan. why else would they attack us? And yes they don't want democracy. They don't like the "War on terror"
quote: Third, you need to acknowledge that things are going to go wrong, that you are going to make mistakes, and have an open channel that will help you identify and rectify these mistakes. I honestly believe that this is lacking.
No it is not lacking. I think that everyone knows we can make mistakes. I've made mistakes we've all made mistakes but going into Iraq was not a mistake.
quote: Fourth, you need a clear mission and most importantly a clear exit strategy. There is no exit strategy for Iraq. The troops are there. The times that many of them have been told that they would be going home have come and gone. There has been a policy of stop-loss orders that make it so they are unable to leave the service even when their agreed upon term of service is up. There is an on-going masssive reshuffling of military personel to get some of those numbers of people who were needed but weren't included in the original plans in Iraq from other stations and into Iraq. I'll repeat, there is no exit strategy for Iraq.
As I stated earlier there is no way you can have a clear exit strategy. We are fighting more then one opponent. They are fightinig us and e can't plan. There are too many un known variables and factors.
This is my opinion. I support the troops and the war, the president and not only this country but Iraq. I support a world free of terrorists. A world free of hate and contempt. Obviously no hate or contempt is a impossibel goal but it can be downsized. I believe in that and I support everything. well almost everything that the president and this admministration has done.
quote:No it isn't "stupid" for a given president to believe that we shouldn't be in a given war. It is stupid for him to say it. What is sayong it going to solve?
Well, this is an election isn't it? How are the people going to know how Kerry would handle wars like this in the future if he doesn't give his true position? You're saying he should misinform the voters just so the troops can get a feel-good positive message?
quote:I think we did use war as a last resort. From what I know the UN wasn't working.
Republicans may keep claiming the UN wasn't working, in order to justify Bush, but at this point all the evidence points to the fact that the UN was working. The WMD report recently released by the U.S. illustrated that UN sanctions succeeded in disarming Iraq of his WMD programs and that Saddam was growing weaker each passing year as a result of UN efforts. In short, it said the UN efforts worked.
posted
"No it isn't 'stupid' for a given president to believe that we shouldn't be in a given war. It is stupid for him to say it. What is sayong it going to solve? No matter what happens we are always going to be in Iraq. There is no way we can just revert. So by saying it, Great you said it, now what? Nothing. you can't do anything. you have to leave the troops in there."
I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the thought, Abe, that any president should feel free to get us involved in any war he wants, because it's unpatriotic and unfair to the troops for us to speak out against it, no matter what.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote: I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the thought, Abe, that any president should feel free to get us involved in any war he wants, because it's unpatriotic and unfair to the troops for us to speak out against it, no matter what.
I did not say that. A president, like Kerry if he's elected, that comes into a war then he has yot finish the war. He can't just stop it. Otherwise the sacrafice of the men who've died so far would be woth nothing. they woud be pointless deaths.
quote:Well, this is an election isn't it? How are the people going to know how Kerry would handle wars like this in the future if he doesn't give his true position? You're saying he should misinform the voters just so the troops can get a feel-good positive message?
Kerry hasn't done either. IF he's in an election then yes. But he has to say that he supports the troops. Which he says he does. but I still don't know his true standing on Iraq. It "flip-flops" as some like to call it.
Posts: 42 | Registered: Oct 2004
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posted
"A president, like Kerry if he's elected, that comes into a war then he has yot finish the war. He can't just stop it."
I'm not sure I understand the distinction, Abe. If a candidate can't criticize an ongoing war -- and if that candidate, if elected, can't "just stop" the war, doesn't that pretty much amount to what I said? Doesn't that mean that a president can launch any invasion he wants with absolutely no accountability, simply because we don't want to hurt our soldiers' feelings?
It seems to me more respectful of our soldiery to, when we realize that their lives are being wasted, stop wasting their lives instead of simply repeating, over and over and increasingly less accurately, that they're dying for good reasons.
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