It would not only bring the kids into the streets, their parents would be right there with them. There are too many parents in this country who are willing to allow other families to lose their children, but not theirs. If they don’t want their children to be in the military, in Iraq, they should be marching in the streets to get the other families children home.

Comment by CaptainMantastic

first, this all didn’t happen in a vacuum. these “unintended consequences” were clearly and flatly ignored by the current administration. furthermore, i am far more likely to support avoiding the “unintended consequences,” domestically, of staying in iraq than i am of getting out. we are losing money, breaking our army and most importantly, destroying lives. we are chasing the pipe dream of endless oil when it should be clear to all of us that we should be weaning ourselves off the stuff. we are stirring up the bees nest in the middle east and ignoring what they have said all along: they don’t hate us for our freedoms; they hate us because we keep intervening in their affairs. they want us out. that’s what this whole thing has been about since before there was an al qaeda to hold up as the faceless enemy we’re all supposed to fear.

america isn’t going to become a caliphate. not tomorrow, not in ten years, not ever. but what it can become is a despotic regime without civil liberties where the citizenry are watched, terrorized and brow-beaten into fear of this faceless enemy.

if this insanity continues, if we go to war with iran, we will be already too far down the path to turn back without some sectarian strife of our own.

this mess has to end now.

the circumstances will be worse, not better, if we retract our troops prematurely from Iraq.

Comment by CaptainMantastic — September 27, 2007 @ 1:44 pm

CaptainMantastic –

I appreciate the fact that your posts are not derogatory or resorting to namecalling; however, you say the above comment as though it is fact. What about the retired Generals? What about our NIEs? General Batiste sums up the situation very well in his Op-Ed. Our NIEs, which is compiled information from all of our intelligence agencies do not believe that the “terrorists” will follow us home. How are you so sure you are right and the majority of America and its intelligence agencies are wrong?

Even if you are right and circumstances would “get worse”, who cares, the Iraqis want us out. How do you justify occupying a country when the people of that country want us out? We can’t fight for their freedom if we aren’t going to let them be free and make their own decisions. Not to mention the support and credibility we have lost and continue to lose throughout the world.

If it gets worse, that is the decision of the Iraqis and we may have to deal with that, but justifying a continued occupation (and indirect oppression) of a foreign country is inexcusable. Also, there is no guarantee it won’t “get worse” if we stay. Considering we are pissing off more and more Iraqis and other Muslim countries in the area, it isn’t much of a stretch to think that more and more people will turn against us the longer this drags on.

Our military needs to rest, refit, and get prepared for the next threat. Next time, our government as well as the American people better not betray (dare I use that word) the trust of our brave men and women in uniform and ensure that there are truthful and valid reasons to use the greatest fighting force in the world.

In typical MSM fashion the reporter notes “At least one miltary commander now admits the US Army is stretched too thin” yet fails to note the concerns so recently voiced by Pace, Pace’s replacement Adm. Mullen, CentCom Adm. William J. Fallon, Odierno, Abizaid, Geren, Powell, etc. This is not a new story. These misgivings first came to our attention 3-4 years ago. Apparently this wasn’t worth reporting. At least not until it was painfully obvious that our country had soured on the war and the Dems won the mid-term elections largely through a “Stop the War” platform.

Out of all the top leaders at the Pentagon, it appears that only Army Maj. Gen. Richard Sherlock believes that Despite Commitments, U.S. Forces Ready For Any Contingency So many senior officers in disagreement with Sherlock, he is either delusional or is the stooge hand-picked to counter this growing groundswell to cut troop levels.

AF

This is the legacy of George Bush. An ill thought out invasion and an unwinable situation is what he has laid on our table. With more losses of blood and treasure. All of which could have been avoided and none of the principles have yet to acknowledge as on their shoulders.

The withdrawl will be complicated. It will also be much better thought out than the invasion. The only remaining choice is how many more soldiers will die and how much more of our debt will be created before the realization that it is for the Iraqis to determine their future.

first, i have to say that none of those so-called “front-runners” speaks for me and i find myself hard-pressed to say i would vote for hillary, especially after her vote on the lieberman-kyl amendment essentially ceding a war declaration against iran.

second, i have to say your reading comprehension skills need a brush-up.

as i said in the first graph of my response to you:
“it’s politically impossible to say now that iraq will be stable in 16 months — let alone 5 years.”

the 16 months between now and january 2009 also happens to precede 2013, in case you hadn’t worked that out. so any chaos that erupts in iraq or iran over the next 16 months puts a cloud over any proclamation of policy, whether it relates to 2009 or 2013.

all those triangulating candidates are doing is acknowledging the truth: bush has created a huge mess and he’s leaving it for his successor to clean up. and no one can say — 16 months out — how much worse the mess will be by january 2009.

your weak arguments are veiling your horrible truth — you support the position of our idiot president: let’s keep this quagmire growing and then pass the buck.

what a great leader. and you are a great follower.

So Right Wing Loon, it makes you proud that you have a President who fires anyone in the military who disagrees with him? It makes you proud that the only way someone in the military can tell their truthful opinion is to leave the military. All those people who are telling their opinion (which by the way is probably the opinion of all active duty military too), have been fired by Bush or have retired from the military so they can tell the truth. There’s nothing in that to be proud of.

I will respectfully disagree with your assessment. During the debates last night there wasn’t a disagreement with withdrawl of troops. There were differences in the speed and timeframe of withdrawl, but not whether it should be done or not.

Trust is something I left along time ago. The General did request for a public hearing which is unusual. I went to the US. Senate website to hunt for when this was scheduled but was unsuccessful.

I don’t know if the Generals will openly admit the political side or not. I do know that politics is a big part of the military at that level. I’ve worked for past OCSA and saw it first hand. I’m not a cheerleader for Gen. Casey but I do believe this is significant.

This probably has filtered thru the military already and will come up again.

“The current demand for our forces exceeds the sustainable supply. We are consumed with meeting the demands of the current fight and are unable to provide ready forces as rapidly as necessary for other potential contingencies.”

This quote is from the top of the Army. There is no wiggle room to squeeze more out. I believe it is not so much to coincide with Webb’s legislation as it is to put a halt to the war drums against Iran.

Comment by lonesomerobot — September 27, 2007 @ 12:53 pm

reasonable con = oxymoron

just saying

I know there are more like me who are screaming WHERE IS OUR REPRESENTATION! Who is strong and savvy enough to stand up for real american values.

D

R

A

F

T

Coming to a vocabulary near you soon??

and what do you think the republicans will do? will they say, ‘you know, you’ve got a point there…’ or will they say, ‘OLD NEWS, IRRELEVANT, and YOU’RE TWISTING THE GENERAL’S WORDS! QUIT ATTACKING THE ARMED FORCES!”…?

you see these generals will deny that they’re politically motivated, but the timing of this is completely political. it’s like the friday news dump. when the topic comes up again, it’s old news and they’ll pull out petraeus again (yes, that poor, poor man who got his feelings hurt by an ad) to say everything’s fine, casey’s not in iraq, never mind what he says…

he probably wanted to say this a week ago but was told by the administration to wait until after the webb amendent failed so they could call it old news and bury it. this is par for the course.

getting out now or at any point previously would have been achievable. not invading in the first place would have been the wisest course of action.

continuing the slow bleed for another 16 months until january 2009 is only leaving our troops open to the inevitable disaster — whether its the false flag that gets us into war with iran, or the powder keg of sectarian strife that completely erupts in iraq, unleashing a bloodbath.

any reasonable con could probably recognize that.