I said that 400K would do you no good because Sadamn Hussein had so much time to prepare in our “rush to war”. Also that many troops would not do well as then you would have an occupying force of troops. You might then have to put down a true insurgency. Not this mock thing that idiots from the MSM have created.

But like usual Brian you are wrong. We did lose men post WW2.

U.S. Army Center of Military History shows that at least 39 combat deaths occurred in the first few months of the occupation.

Here is the link so you don’t have to take my word on it. http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed092303d.cfm

Lastly. I don’t AT ALL take to you questioning my concern for the deaths of American soldiers. DO YOU understand me Sir. It is the same quotes you use that are be replayed on Al-Jazeera to incite violence toward our troops. But yet you insist you are only concerned about the troops. You are the person that REFUSES to have a hope for a future. You hang on to the same old tired arguments that have been proven wrong over and over again. I would like to personally thank you for proving so many of my points and reinforcing my belief that conservatism is the only right thinking. YOU NEVER answer a single question you just try to deflect constantly with your BS. But to accuse me of having no concern for our troops is below the belt. – Lorica

I think I’ve said over 100 times that your false accusations aren’t true and there are plenty of things that you as a mistake obsessed person (including making them yourself) could outline if you wished to in a time of war. There were mistakes in every war Brian. There were 5 innocents killed by our soldiers just yesterday. There were plenty of mistakes committed by the 4 presidents who oversaw Vietnam. Plenty during WW2. Your problem is that you are obsessed instead of seeing the big picture. You sound like (I’m not sure) you are ready to impeach the president for beeing imperfect (your pattern of moving the goalposts again).

Brian asked a question with a false premise (don’t you get tired of writing things that are false?), “Do you really think that things in Iraq are going as well as they possibly could?

I never said that Brian! In fact, I think I’ve said more than 10 times that the liberals and their rhetoric are the reason that the “insurgents” have so much initiative and energy. And… I’ve said that we’ve been too “nice” during this war. Nicer than any other war and you laughed at my perspective. Then with lack of focus you act like I think things are hunky dory.

Your last paragraph shows you missed the point (got it wrong again:roll. My point was, “I would never think that any of those actions would help my future! The actions I was talking about was looting hospitals and schools and burning buildings and cars. That’s a message that the press doesn’t get and it seems you don’t get because it was contained in the article you linked. The blame lies entirely/squarely on the looters for the situation they are in (always). Everytime!

It seems that no matter what mistakes were made in Iraq, you’re going to defend the Bush administration unconditionally. Do you really think that things in Iraq are going as well as they possibly could? Do you really think that our military couldn’t have done any better than this?

If you are comparing a governor losing an election to a dictator being overthrown after an invasion by another country, you’re the one that doesn’t have common sense.

There wasn’t a single American soldier killed by insurgents in Germany after World War II even though the Germans had over three years to prepare for it There have been over a thousand Americans killed and probably over 10,000 wounded since President Bush declared victory in Iraq. Do you really think this is the best we could do? How bad would things have to get before you would consider things to be going badly? Does it matter to you that over 1,000 American troops have been killed after the Iraqi Army was defeated? What is your basis for saying that 400,000 troops wouldn’t be enough to control the border? Do you really think that 400,000 troops couldn’t do a better job of bringing stability to Iraq and securing the borders than 150,000 could? I think you’re the one that is in denial.

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Nov2005/20051118_3381.html

We are finding weapons caches like this just like all that cash. Sadamn liked to bury stuff. From what I heard in an interview with one of the weapons inspectors, Sadamn had over 50 square miles of weapons depots. That’s alot of acreage. – Lorica

- Sorry KosKiddies. No cigar. Late entries, Xeroxed copies at that, will not be considered as a viable substitute for what passes as “elitist thinking” these days….

- The Dems have only one workable option – get any kind of social plan, drop the rabid “get Bush” campaign, and break the stranglehold of the extreme left on their party or they face even more years as “howling dogs” in the political wilderness……

First 4 paragraphs were speculation without recognition that the military and pentagon had in writing MANY plans for the Iraq invasion.

This guy talks as if there was one. That wasn’t the truth.

The guy also exaggerated what Shinseki’s true estimate was. It was “several hundred thousand” That could mean anywhere from 250,000 to 350,000. But the writer said 400,000 conveniently.

He went on to say that Wolfowitz saying, “recent estimates were wildly off the mark” was a public rebuking of Shinseki. Just like calling Murtha’s plan reprehensible was calling Murtha names. What do you call the left’s treatment of Bush? Public Rebuking? oh.. the double standard..

Before I quit let’s look at these assinine paragraphs:
As the looting breaks out, U.S. troops don’t do anything. Explain what happened.

One of the many elements of the Iraqi conundrum that will take a long time fully to explain, I think, is why there were no orders to prevent the looting. It was harder than it might have been, simply because the U.S. troop levels were lower than they might otherwise have beenLET’S NOT BLAME THE LOOTERS LIKE IN NEW ORLEANS, LET’S BLAME THE LEVEL OF TROOPS EVEN THOUGH THERE WERE CLEARLY ENOUGH TROOPS IN THE PICTURES I SAW, and the northern frontier was not secured. But clearly, even the troops that were on hand could have had different orders. … So why exactly there were no orders to prevent looting is still not known.

One background factor, however, is that in the month or two before the war, there was a view of the administration that occupying powers have certain responsibilities to impose order, but we were not going to be an occupying power. This was a liberating armySTILL IS ONE – THEY ARE LIBERATED!, so this sort of thing was not our responsibility.

The immediate tangible consequences were to make a mockery of the precision bombing campaign the U.S. had actually carried out. I forget the actual statistic, but something like 10 times as much of the power grid was destroyed in the couple of weeks after the war as was destroyed by U.S. bombing during the war. The bombing had been very careful; the looting was very indiscriminate. So all the things that were going wrong then, in terms of hospitals being stripped bare, schools not being able to run, no electric power — that was from the looting, not from the war WE SHOULD PUBLISH THAT FACT EVERY DAY FOR OVER 100 YEARS SO THAT PEOPLE WOULD LEARN COMMON SENSE – IN THE LA RIOTS OF 1992 AND THE AFTERMATH OF IRAQ BEING LIBERATED – YOU IDIOTS DESTROYED YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD /YOUR FUTURE – WE HAD TO COME IN AT GREAT EXPENSE AND REBUILD WHAT YOU TORE DOWN.

Let me just quickly say that I wan’t shouting. I was just distinguishing what the person without common sense wrote for opinion versus what I wrote.

Let me also say that after we gained freedom here in CA from Gray Davis, NONE of my friends nor I went out and looted hospitals and schools or broke down the energy grid (or burned cars ala France). I would never think that any of those actions would help my future!

Iraq did greet us with open arms. I know I saw it on TV. Ex-Military Bathist were going to die in trial anyway, so what do they have to lose by fighting. Not a good point when one is discussing “freedom fighters”, which is what real insurgents would be. Which these are not. We were finding Nazis for years after WWII, and yes those men fought too. Hell Israel is still searching for Nazis.

As far as watching the borders of Iraq. I doubt you could do it effectively with 400k men. After all thanks to some good Dems Sadamn had 18 months to prepare for this. Soooo this point is moot also.

Brian keep believing what you are reading but again I ask you. Why can you not enjoy the hope of a future that the Iraqi people have?? It was not so long ago that some Dems were saying that the Iraqi’s would never have an interim government, or a constitution. They now have both. Soon there will be a permenant government, and the leftist in this country will still be in denial. Seems to me you would want to give up a losing argument. Unless you are a Dem the plan seems to be working. Not perfectly, but it is working. – Lorica

What is so bad in Iraq? It is now more than two years since we took over Iraq, and American soldiers and Iraqi civilians are still being killed on a regular basis by Iraqi insurgents and terrorists from other countries.

You asked if it is against the law for a general on active duty to call the President of the United States a liar.

Military law prohibits “contemptuous words” against the president and other political leaders.
LINK

Prior to the invasion of Iraq, the U.S. Army had a plan for invading Iraq, which called for the use of 400,000 troops, which they felt was needed to be able to occupy a country of Iraq’s size and population. LINK

Donald Rumsfeld did away with this plan and instead decided to use a much smaller force. His entire plan was based on the premise that Iraqis would welcome us with open arms. There were no plans for dealing with an insurgency or bringing stability to Iraq. We are paying the price for those poor decisions now.

There is an insurrection going on in Iraq with large numbers of Iraqi insurgents. There are large numbers of ex-Iraq Army officers and Bathist insurgents as a result of the Bush Administrations flawed policies. After the U.S. military took over Iraq, the Bush Administration decided to dismantle the Iraq Army throwing hundreds of thousands of well-trained fighters out of work. The administration also decided to over 100,000 former members of the Bath regime out of work which also turned many Iraqi people against the U.S..

Besides the Iraqi insurgents there are also many foreign fighters who have entered Iraq to attack American forces and Iraqi civilians. Even more than two years since the U.S. took over Iraq, foreign fighters are still entering the country because the U.S. did not send in enough troops to secure Iraq’s borders.

Regardless of whether or not it was the right decision to go to war with Iraq, President Bush and his administration have made one bad decision after another in planning and carrying out the war in Iraq.

However, 2 points:
1)General Tommy Franks has since retired and relayed that the second point is true!
2) The second point is that Bush has said more than 10 times including in debates with John Kerry that he has given the generals the # of troops they asked for.

3rd, what is the Democrats point. They want it BOTH ways. They criticize the president for not listening to John McCain and a general not in the field because they want more troops. They also criticize the president for being in Iraq and want the troops to start withdrawing.

They have no coherent plan and want to criticize the president for having no plan (even thousgh he does have a plan and he’s sticking to it).

And THEN as icing on the cake, if anyone ever engages one of their criticisms they are said to:
1) be silencing the critics (or wanting to silence the critics)
2) Be calling the criticizer unpatriotic
3) be a chickenhawk.

Check out the irresponsible media in this story People should feel comfortable about expressing their opinions about Iraq,” Bush said, three days after agreeing with Vice President Dick Cheney that the critics were “reprehensible.

Cheney didn’t call the critics “reprehensible”. He called their calls for immediate withdrawal “reprehensible”

I heard Cheney’s words a couple of times. The media shouldn’t be allowed with making news. They should report exactly what was said instead of making erroneous interpretations.

They are doing it on the $50 billion dollar CUTS in social services. The media isn’t reporting the truth. The social services that are being looked at WERE going to increase 7.9% and now I think the number is 7.1% or 7.4%. That isn’t a cut.

Sorry I went off topic ST!