hypocritexposer
Well-known member
Reader, could you provide links to the stories you post, please. I know I've been blasted for not doing so in the past.
Thank-you
Thank-you
"The other big thing," Mullen said, "is to re-mission everbody. Clearly, you can't have people there without having force protection and it takes troops to be able to do that."
reader (the Second) said:http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/02/gates-and-mulle.html
I posted this to applaud the Bush administration on the surge which made this possible btw.
Posted By "FF": Thu Nov 01, 2007 11:59 am Post subject:
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The "surge" is not working. Your own article shows it's not. For those with very, very short memories, we were supposed to be sending extra troops to quell the violence so the Iraqi government could pass laws that would unify the various segments of the population. Instead they went on vacation for a month, several groups have resigned from the government, millions of people have left the country, neighborhoods have been "cleansed", they've built barriers around other neighborhoods to protect the residents, the US has armed warlords in ANBAR who may well turn those guns on our soldiers, etc.
reader (the Second) said:I see it as positive that Obama left Gates in place and appears to be listening to his military advisors for the most part. Which is better than Rumsfeld did btw.
Steve said:"The other big thing," Mullen said, "is to re-mission everbody. Clearly, you can't have people there without having force protection and it takes troops to be able to do that."
so if 50,000 non combat troops are left... who is watching their backs?
reader (the Second) said:Many Democrats may have been against the surge. I don't have the polls to know that. What I know is that it was widely agreed that Rumsfeld should have listened to the generals who wanted more troops in the first place and that people understood that we could not in good conscious leave Iraq in the shambles it was in and that only a surge would combat the lawlessness (in addition to an investment in training the Iraqis).
So many were in fact in favor of the surge and prayed it would help lessen the violence.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Bush_administration_approval_ratingsMay 5, 2007: Newsweek Poll (conducted May 2-3): 28% approve/64% disapprove of the way Bush is doing his job; 25% are satisfied/71% dissatisfied with the way things are going in the U.S.; and 62% believe Bush's recent actions on Iraq show that he is "stubborn and unwilling to admit his mistakes".
April 25, 2007: Wall Street Journal/MSNBC Poll (conducted April 20-23): 56% "agree more with the Democrats in Congress who want to set a deadline for troop withdrawal" vs. 37% who "agree with Bush that there shouldn't be a deadline"; 55% believe "victory in Iraq isn't possible", 49% say "situation in Iraq has gotten worse in the last three months since Bush announced his so-called troop surge", 37% say "situation has stayed about the same", and only 12% think the situation has "improved"; only 22% think country is on right track.
April 18, 2007: CNN/Opinion Research Poll (conducted April 10-12): 32% favor/66% oppose the war in Iraq; 60% are more likely to support Democrats in Congress on the Iraq dispute, while 37% support Bush; 35% support an immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq, 26% support withdrawal by March 2008, and 37% support keeping troops in Iraq; only 28% said things are going well in Iraq, while 69% said they are going badly; 21% think the U.S. is winning in Iraq, 18% think the insurgents are winning, while 63% said neither side is winning; 29% said additional troops is more likely to help U.S. goals in Iraq, 17% said additional troops are less likely to help, and 52% said additional troops won't make any difference.
April 17, 2007: ABC News/Washington Post Poll (conducted April 12-15): 35% approve Bush's overall job performance; 51% "think U.S. will lose war"; 66% "think Iraq was not worth fight"; 57% "reject Bush's argument that winning in Iraq is necessary to win the broader war against terrorism"; 65% oppose "surge" plan; 51% agree/48% disagree on setting any deadline for withdrawal from Iraq
March 17, 2007: Newsweek Poll: 32% supported Bush's approach to the war in Iraq, while 59% "support Democratic legislation to require the withdrawal of U.S. troops by the fall of next year."
January 9, 2007: USA TODAY/Gallup Poll (conducted January 12-14): Regarding plan under consideration by Bush administration to deploy up to 20,000 additional U.S. troops to Iraq: 61% opposed/36% approved of plan; only 26% approved of job Bush is doing in Iraq.
2006 election as referendum on Iraq War
Polls showed that after the 2006 general election, “A substantial majority of Americans expect Democrats to reduce or end American military involvement in Iraq if they [won] control of Congress”.[23] This view of the election as a referendum on the war was endorsed by Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi who in the final days of the campaign said, “This election is about Iraq. If indeed it turns out the way that people expect it to turn out, the American people will have spoken, and they will have rejected the course of action the president is on.”[24] The news media viewed the Democratic victory in both houses of the US Congress as “punishing President George W. Bush and his Republicans over ethics scandals in Washington and a failing war in Iraq.”[25]
[edit] Democrats announce priority to be on changing Iraq policy
After her party's victory then House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi (who would a month later make clear her disdain for the "surge proposal"[26]) wrote an article entitled "Bringing the War to an End is my Highest Priority as Speaker". The article explained that after visiting wounded Iraq War veterans at the Bethesda Naval Medical Center "I left there more committed than ever to bringing the war to an end. I told my colleagues yesterday that the biggest ethical issue facing our country for the past three and a half years is the war in Iraq. ...When the House reconvenes on January 4, 2007, Democrats will take power and I will take the gavel knowing the responsibility we have to you and to the country. The new Democratic Congress will live up to the highest ethical standard... [we] are prepared to lead and ready to govern. We will honor the trust of the American people; we will not disappoint."[27]
HARRY REID: "This war is lost, and that the surge is not accomplishing anything, as indicated by the extreme violence in Iraq yesterday."
reader (the Second) said:I see it as positive that Obama left Gates in place and appears to be listening to his military advisors for the most part. Which is better than Rumsfeld did btw.
On January 10, 2007, President Bush announced in a nationally televised address that he planned to send an additional 21,500 U.S. troops into Iraq to help secure the country. The "surge" in troops was supported by General David Petraeus, who weeks prior had been appointed to the post of top U.S. military commander in Iraq. As a condition for the troop increase, the Iraqi government reportedly agreed to provide more of its own forces in Baghdad, as well as increase efforts to end political and sectarian interference with security operations and permit U.S. forces to operate in all areas of Baghdad.[1][2]
Sen. Obama announces he will introduce bill to cap troop levels and begin redeployment
On January 17, 2007, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) announced plans to introduce a resolution calling for not only a cap in troop levels, but also a phased redeployment of U.S. forces in Iraq. He stated, "I cannot in good conscience support this plan (troop surge). As I first said two months ago, we should not be sending more U.S. troops to Iraq, we should begin redeploying them to let the Iraqis know that we will not be there forever and to pressure the Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds to finally reach a political settlement...Escalation is a failed policy opposed by generals, Democrats and Republicans, and now even the Iraqis themselves, and the fact that the President is already moving ahead with this idea is a terrible consequence of the decision to give him the broad, open-ended authority to wage this war in 2002.”[39]
On the night of January 30, 2007, Obama sent his bill, the Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007 (S.433), to the Senate floor calling for complete withdrawal of troops by March 31, 2008.[40]
Obama released a statement saying, "Our troops have performed brilliantly in Iraq, but no amount of American soldiers can solve the political differences at the heart of somebody else's civil war," Obama said, alluding to Michael Scott Doran's essay "Somebody Else's Civil War" published in the Foreign Affairs journal in 2002. "That's why I have introduced a plan to not only stop the escalation of this war, but begin a phased redeployment that can pressure the Iraqis to finally reach a political settlement and reduce the violence." The legislation proposed by Obama is similar to the plan called for in the Iraq Study Group report issued in December, 2006.[41]
reader (the Second) said:Rumsfeld should have listened to the generals who wanted more troops in the first place
Obama To Send 17,000 More Troops To Afghanistan
by The Associated Press
The additional forces partly answer a standing request from the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, who has sought as many as 30,000 additional U.S. troops to counter the resurgence of the Taliban militants and protect Afghan civilians.
"There is no more solemn duty as president than the decision to deploy our armed forces into harm's way," Obama said. "I do it today mindful that the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan demands urgent attention and swift action."
"I believe demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk."
- Kenneth Adelman, member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, 2/13/02
"Support for Saddam, including within his military organization, will collapse after the first whiff of gunpowder."
- Richard Perle, Chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, 7/11/02
"Desert Storm II would be in a walk in the park... The case for 'regime change' boils down to the huge benefits and modest costs of liberating Iraq."
- Kenneth Adelman, member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, 8/29/02
"Having defeated and then occupied Iraq, democratizing the country should not be too tall an order for the world's sole superpower."
- William Kristol, Weekly Standard editor, and Lawrence F. Kaplan, New Republic senior editor, 2/24/03
"I would be surprised if we need anything like the 200,000 figure that is sometimes discussed in the press. A much smaller force, principally special operations forces, but backed up by some regular units, should be sufficient."
- Richard Perle, Chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, 7/11/02
"I don't believe that anything like a long-term commitment of 150,000 Americans would be necessary."
- Richard Perle, speaking at a conference on "Post-Saddam Iraq" sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute, 10/3/02
"I would say that what's been mobilized to this point -- something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers are probably, you know, a figure that would be required."
- Gen. Eric Shinseki, testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, 2/25/03
"The idea that it would take several hundred thousand U.S. forces, I think, is far from the mark."
- Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, 2/27/03
"I am reasonably certain that they will greet us as liberators, and that will help us keep [troop] requirements down. ... We can say with reasonable confidence that the notion of hundreds of thousands of American troops is way off the mark...wildly off the mark."
- Paul Wolfowitz, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, testifying before the House Budget Committee, 2/27/03
"It's hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam's security forces and his army. Hard to image."
- Paul Wolfowitz, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, testifying before the House Budget Committee, 2/27/03
"If our commanders on the ground say we need more troops, I will send them. But our commanders tell me they have the number of troops they need to do their job. Sending more Americans would undermine our strategy of encouraging Iraqis to take the lead in this fight. And sending more Americans would suggest that we intend to stay forever, when we are, in fact, working for the day when Iraq can defend itself and we can leave."
- President George W. Bush, 6/28/05
"The debate over troop levels will rage for years; it is...beside the point."
- Rich Lowry, conservative syndicated columnist, 4/19/06
"Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties."
- President George W. Bush, response attributed to him by the Reverend Pat Robertson, when Robertson warned the president to prepare the nation for "heavy casualties" in the event of an Iraq war, 3/2003
"Why should we hear about body bags and deaths? Oh, I mean, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"
- Barbara Bush, former First Lady (and the current president's mother), on Good Morning America, 3/18/03
"I think the level of casualties is secondary... [A]ll the great scholars who have studied American character have come to the conclusion that we are a warlike people and that we love war... What we hate is not casualties but losing."
- Michael Ledeen, American Enterprise Institute, 3/25/03
"Iraq is a very wealthy country. Enormous oil reserves. They can finance, largely finance the reconstruction of their own country. And I have no doubt that they will."
- Richard Perle, Chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, 7/11/02
"The likely economic effects [of the war in Iraq] would be relatively small... Under every plausible scenario, the negative effect will be quite small relative to the economic benefits."
- Lawrence Lindsey, White House Economic Advisor, 9/16/02
"It is unimaginable that the United States would have to contribute hundreds of billions of dollars and highly unlikely that we would have to contribute even tens of billions of dollars."
- Kenneth M. Pollack, former Director for Persian Gulf Affairs, U.S. National Security Council, 9/02
"The costs of any intervention would be very small."
- Glenn Hubbard, White House Economic Advisor, 10/4/02
"When it comes to reconstruction, before we turn to the American taxpayer, we will turn first to the resources of the Iraqi government and the international community."
- Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, 3/27/03
"There is a lot of money to pay for this that doesn't have to be U.S. taxpayer money, and it starts with the assets of the Iraqi people. We are talking about a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon."
- Paul Wolfowitz, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, testifying before the Defense Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, 3/27/03
"The United States is committed to helping Iraq recover from the conflict, but Iraq will not require sustained aid."
- Mitchell Daniels, Director, White House Office of Management and Budget, 4/21/03
"Iraq has tremendous resources that belong to the Iraqi people. And so there are a variety of means that Iraq has to be able to shoulder much of the burden for ther own reconstruction."
- Ari Fleischer, White House Press Secretary, 2/18/03
"Now, it isn't gong to be over in 24 hours, but it isn't going to be months either."
- Richard Perle, Chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, 7/11/02
"The idea that it's going to be a long, long, long battle of some kind I think is belied by the fact of what happened in 1990. Five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that."
- Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, 11/15/02
"I will bet you the best dinner in the gaslight district of San Diego that military action will not last more than a week. Are you willing to take that wager?"
- Bill O'Reilly, 1/29/03
"It is unknowable how long that conflict will last. It could be six days, six weeks. I doubt six months."
- Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, 2/7/03
"It won't take weeks... Our military machine will crush Iraq in a matter of days and there's no question that it will."
- Bill O'Reilly, 2/10/03
"There is zero question that this military campaign...will be reasonably short. ... Like World War II for about five days."
- General Barry R. McCaffrey, national security and terrorism analyst for NBC News, 2/18/03
"The Iraq fight itself is probably going to go very, very fast. The shooting should be over within just a very few days from when it starts."
- David Frum, former Bush White House speechwriter, 2/24/03
"I think it will go relatively quickly...weeks rather than months."
- Vice President Dick Cheney, 3/16/03
Tam said:Since you or I have no idea what the intell was telling the US military advisors neither one of us could possibly know why they said what they did. Unless you can get Alice to loan you the crystal ball. The thing to be remembered by the fairer minded (which excludes you I realize) is that they did make some misjudgement in the beginning, BUT they didn't just walk away like Obama (someone else that was in the war room) and the Dems wanted them to. They made adjustments and won the war.
If You are going to bash Bush Cheney and Rumsfeld for not sending enough troops to win are you going to bash Obama for sending 17,000 when his advisors requested 30,000. Are you going to blame Obama when the body bags start arriving on American shore because he didn't send enough troops to clean up Afganistan I doubt it. :roll: