Yeah. I didn’t think Kevin wanted to go down that road.

Fine, then we’ll go once again through the littany of lies about the litany of lies the left has told about Bush & Co since all of this started,

Then the liberals confirmed him why???

Wesley “Ashley Wilkes” Clark, now there’s a ass kissing chicken shit if I ever saw one.

BTW, I doubt the US has more than a few hundred soldiers in the Balkans at this point.

Without going into IPS and its numerable credibility problems, let us take them at their word that Admiral Fallon and General Patraeus are not on the same page.

The “old school” war college people do not see the military as an occupying and police force. Never mind that we have used the military in that fashion more often than not in the past half century. The “old school” boys favor a clear objective, overwhelming force and a clear exit plan. Unfortunately, politicians do not sign on to that prescription and the military finds itself having to improvise to facts as they unfold.

The reason Bush 41, General Powell, James Baker and the rest wanted to scram after the Gulf War is because they did not want to confront an Iraq in turmoil. They chose to leave Saddam in power. If anyone thought the UN was going to straighten things out, that someone fell off a turnip truck.

This Commander in Chief ordered the end of Saddam’s power. It was accomplished in a matter of days. What was never clear and is still not clear is the exit strategy. That messes up tidy military planning. But it deals with political truth.

When will the US leave the Balkans? Where is the exit strategy there? Also Korea, Japan, and Germany. What is our exit strategy in propping up Turkey, Egypt, Israel, Thailand, etc.? Sorry, but chalkboard designs for battle strategy and geo-political forces do not often coincide, if ever.

Gee, maybe MoveOn was too nice in its ad.

While any reduction should have an inverse relationship to security, which are the specific conditions to which the President refers? If he does not lay out a clear strategy for stability/withdrawal including concrete, attainable goals, then this ‘announcement’ only serves to among other things embolden anti-war actvists and their representatives in Congress by allowing them to think they forced the Bush administration into concession.

However, the eventual drawdown of military personnel is inevitable. If Pelosi were smart, she would recognize opportunity and greet the announcement with a press release and interviews claiming partial victory. But an all-or-nothing approach almost never works in politics and after all, peace and stability is the one scenario the Democrats cannot afford.

The Senate needs sixty one votes to cut off funding for the Department of Defense. That would supposedly “check-mate” the Commander in Chief. Then, the troops would be “redeployed” to (Okinawa ala Murtha, home ala Moveon.org, or …. ?) somewhere besides Iraq. Redeployment is the politically correct word for the military word “retreat.”

Then, the Senate will open the funding and “rebuild” the military. Only Pelosi knows what that means.

Then we will refocus our nation’s efforts on fighting terrorism without profiling, without disturbing the privacy of their communications, without getting involved in their weapons programs, abandoning the Jews, keeping our borders open and providing amnesty to illegal aliens and bringing legal charges against terrorists so they can be tried in open court. Let us pray.

Sounds like a resonable scenario, but it is not true. The United States reconstructed the government of Japan. It was done from McArthur’s HQ that sat next to the Imperial Palace where the Emperor was demoted from deity to house arrest. Our armed troops swarmed the islands and helped people figure out when they could burp. They had a Constitution written for them and they received enormous help in implementing it. It went well enough, but the rosy scenario Kevin paints just ain’t so.

Germany was jointly ruled by the US, Britain, France, and Russia at the point of a gun. The Naziis were hunted down, arrested and tried. That goes for the Naziis that fled, as well. To this day, owning or displaying Nazi symbols or items is a felony in Germany. The US wrote their Constitution and controlled its implementation. The Russians, the French and the British had all been badly beaten up by the Germans. The Germans had every reason to fear their occupiers.

We have not “occupied” Iraq. If we had done so, we would not be even thinking about leaving. Peace and stability there (except in the Kurdish region) is years away. Furthermore, al-Qaeda is on a religious crusade, so dealing with the enemy within Iraq makes it a religious war, whether we wish it to be or not. You can not pretend not to care about the differences among the sects of Islam, because their smoldering fundamental differences are deadly serious to them and the root cause of their terrorism.

Anyone who wants us out of Iraq now needs to admit that we are running away to fight another day. Or, that they have figured out how to unite the Islamic sects and stop the world wide violence at the hands of the radical Islamists. You could start in the lower provinces of Thailand as your proving ground. Good luck!

Look at these pictures and tell me again that the anti-war side is smart, sane, and patroitic.

And you know this. If you don’t like W (which in my opinion is the *real* reason you are complaining) fine. I never voted for him, if that makes you feel better.

5: And what lie(s) would that be? Should we go once again through the littany of lies we’ve been told by Bush & Co since all of this started, going all the way back to the still elusive weapons of mass destruction that brought us there in the first place?