Still and all, even if I'm right, this is the lesson for the world:
3000 deaths in the U.S. = The terrorist network is severely crippled and two Islamofascist governments are toppled
Not a bad result. The tiger has teeth; don't f*ck with it.
Manpower
There was mention of Syria next (or sometimes Iran, occasionally Lybia, though Gadaffi seems to be getting himself off the list) before the Iraq invasion, and in the immediate aftermath of the overt war phase. The difficulty in winning the peace is forcing a reality check. Nigh on half our boots on the ground are currently in Iraq. Nigh on another half are recovering from a tour in Iraq and getting ready for another tour. To maintain the occupation - even undermanned - we must block soldiers from leaving the military when their enlistments expire, and use reserves on foreign soil for year plus deployments.Originally Posted by Kiff 1961
This is causing serious recruitment problems. The current all volunteer / reserve system will likely recover if the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions are an aberration. If the intent is to launch more invasions as soon as the troops come available, we'll have to restructure the military. A return to Cold War manpower levels might do it, but that would require tax increases. It would be hard to do while paying off the deficit. There is also talk of returning to the draft.
More likely, the pace of the War On Terror will slow to what we can reasonably do with our current force size... unless we get another catalyst...
Not!
Modern journalists tend to be muckrakers, people who grew up under the credo "Don't trust authority". They aren't going to be giving Kerry a free pass.
I'm talking about conventional journalists, of course. Add in the internet, etc.... No, Kerry will not get anything close to a free pass if elected.
I want people to know that peace is possible even in this stupid day and age. Prem Rawat, June 8, 2008
No the Vietnam War was a real war fought in Vietnam between 1945 and 1975. What makes it a quagmire was its enormous length and the inablity of the colonial power or its successor to prevail, despite superior power. It shares this feature with the war of Dutch independence, sometimes called the Eighty Years War, which I also used as an example.
This is silly. What does hearts and minds have to do with the Eighty Years War, which was a quagmire if there ever was one?The "quagmire" thus was one that took place not on the physical battlefield, but rather in the hearts and minds of those who fought it.
Re: Manpower
Your overall post is good, but that sentence above is false in the ordinary sense.
I, for one, am amazed that it is, but it apparently is:
Military Numbers Are Rising
Americans continue to volunteer for duty and are re-enlisting at record rates...
"The war is not only not having a negative effect, but it is helping to reinforce the number of people who want to join," said Cmdr. John Kirby, a spokesman for the Navy's Bureau of Personnel.
Even the Army National Guard, which has had 150,000 citizen soldiers mobilized for up to a year, has seen retention rates "going through the roof," said Guard spokesman Maj. Robert Howell.
"Mass exodus has not been the case in the Army National Guard," said Howell, deputy chief of the Strength Maintenance Division at the National Guard Bureau in Washington....
The Guard fully expects to again reach its recruiting goal of 56,000 members this year, to maintain its total strength of 350,000...
A key point is that last point; they are meeting and surpassing their recruiting goals which were set so as to maintain current troop levels.
If current troop levels are low for our current needs, however, as I agree they are, then all it means is, due to the continued extraordinary dedication of our service members, we are just eeking by.
I'm not sure we should just count on this trend to continue. Yes, "reality check" is an accurate phrase. In the digital age, we cannot just move on to another country while Iraq is still struggling.
In WWII, we left whole populations to starve, but that was then. This is now.
Considering the above article, however, I still think if Bush had, in the 9/11 aftermath, spent a little less time asking people to shop, and had instead encouraged Congress to enlarge the Army and strung a few patriotic sentences together encouraging young people to freely enlist, we'd have tens of thousands more fresh troops now, if not 100,000 more. Of course, that would cost money.
Hey: Federal revenues are way up. I guess the labor situation is improving...
As far as the U.S. was concerned, there was no other "end stragedy" in Vietnam other than a "containment" of expansionist Communism in Indochina. As with Korea, and other conflicts that required a military response, there was no offical "declaration of war," and there was no declaration of what constituted victory (as with FDR and Churchill's "unconditional surrender" terms in 1943).
By your definition the Cold War itself was either a "quagmire" or, in Saari's words, a "not war."
Not framed within the context of the larger battle, a battle that had it taken place on a real battlefield would have meant WWIII.This is silly. What does hearts and minds have to do with the Eighty Years War, which was a quagmire if there ever was one?The "quagmire" thus was one that took place not on the physical battlefield, but rather in the hearts and minds of those who fought it.
Thus, for all intents and purposes these real battlefields, where blood was shed, appeared to be like quagmires because they were so long and drawn out (and with only ceasefires as a result).
Uhhmmhhm
1) The Taliban were "islamofascist" (as defined by the folks who recently made that word up). Who was the second? Saddam was secular. Fascist? - sure, though 'socialist' is also an accurate descriptor. Islamo-? - not in the slightest. It was well recognized that the religious trapping he (lately) cloaked himself in were a cynical ploy for support.
2) You have an interesting understanding of the concept "crippled". In my mind, for example, a "cripple" would not be able to pull off a major stunt involving coordinated bombings at a number of locations in a major metropolitan area (in a country currently at war with terrorism). But maybe you see "cripples" as being more capable than that? In which case, what good does it do to "cripple" an enemy?
Keep in mind, the 9/11 strikes were ten years in the planning, by all accounts. Just because you and many of your countrymen have ADD doesn't mean the rest of the world does, too. Some are capable of taking the long view.
__________________________
"There are certain great principles, which if they are not held inviolable, at all seasons, our liberty is gone. If we give them up, it is perfectly immaterial what is the character of our sovereign; whether he be King or President, elective or hereditary - it is perfectly immaterial what is his character - we shall be slaves - it is not an elective government which will preserve us." -- John Randolph
You haven't listened to FOX(hole) News lately, have you? The mouthpiece for the Ultra Right Wing Facisits (ie: current administration) would be an apt description. "Fair And Balanced" Ahlers and his "daily memo" on what is to be and not to be discussed on the network. A memo which is probably dictated by Karl Rove each day. Wake up!
Today, we have a news media blatantly opposed to Bush, actively trying to derail him.
So, no, no Syria while Bush is in office. Certainly not before the election, and probably not afterwards (unless something really bad happens, like 20,000 dead in Amman.)
We were already at war with Iraq. The same cannot be said of Syria. The WOT will go slower from now on (like the Cold War).
On the other hand, if Kerry wins, he'd have a pretty free hand, with a friendly press...
:lol: Unbelievable! Those pesky neoconic neo-fascists just do not give up! They live by the lie and they shall die by the lie. And as long as there is breath in their body, they will bring the lie to the four corners of the earth, including this dinky little Internet bulletin board known as T4T. They are like Luciferian missionaries bringing you the Word of their "lord" concerning Hubris, deceit, death, carnage, murder and mayhem. Yeah, catch the "spirit"!I seem to remember that Rumsfeld mentioned something about Syria last year -- it was news for one day or so, and then it was dropped.
So is Syria next?
Actually, it was. I remember seeing the story on at least one of the cable news networks and hearing it on NPR. I think it probably got drowned out by the Fallujah story and then by the "Nightline" controversy and finally the Iraqi prison scandal. Notice, too, that Thomas Hamill's escape isn't getting quite the attention that Jessica Lynch did.Now, last month, Al Qaeda attempted to attack Jordan with chemical weapons which all agree could have killed tens of thousands of people had the attack not been stopped. (Why was that not headline news?)
I think there are at least some people in the administration who know that if they did gin up evidence, and got caught at it, they'd be absolutely crucified, especially in today's climate.It's very strange, is what it is. Nobody can claim that the Bush administration is ginning up any evidence in its favor, that's for sure...
I'll look for that when I read the book. :wink:* Oh, and BTW, in his new book, Joe Wilson now says Iraq DID seek uranium yellowcake from Niger after all, explaining why said yellowcake has been found in Europe mixed in with scrap metal from Iraq, as confirmed by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Actually, the embedded post within that "freespeech.com" link is from a Washington Post article by Susan Schmidt and includes the following passage:
Saw as a possible effort to buy uranium? Was Baghdad Bob explicit about this request or wasn't he?It was Saddam Hussein's information minister, Mohammed Saeed Sahhaf, often referred to in the Western press as "Baghdad Bob," who approached an official of the African nation of Niger in 1999 to discuss trade -- an overture the official saw as a possible effort to buy uranium.
Later in the WaPo article:
But this Niger official still won't go any farther than that! Sorry, it's not good enough to discredit Joe Wilson's original claim.In his book, Wilson recounts his encounter with the unnamed Niger official in 2002, saying, he "hesitated and looked up to the sky as if plumbing the depths of his memory, then offered that perhaps the Iraqi might have wanted to talk about uranium."
Add to that "Bush Is Incompetent," I'd say.But keep the "Bush Lied" meme going, people! It's only the real life we're dealing with here.
"What went unforeseen, however, was that the elephant would at some point in the last years of the 20th century be possessed, in both body and spirit, by a coincident fusion of mutant ex-Liberals and holy-rolling Theocrats masquerading as conservatives in the tradition of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan: Death by transmogrification, beginning with The Invasion of the Party Snatchers."
-- Victor Gold, Aide to Barry Goldwater
At P.R. campaigns, that is...
Since Joe Wilson's original claim is that he found no evidence at all that Iraq sought uranium from Niger, yes, Joe Wilson's original claim is discredited - by his own book.
Besides, it was always Joe Wilson's tea conversations versus British Intelligence, anyway.
You didn't comment on the IAEA comfirming that uranium was found in scrap metal from Iraq.
Whatever, go back to sleep, you've already made up you mind.
Is see, Justin. You say Iraq is not an Islamic society, just because Saddam was "secular" (except for all the times he put on the garb of Islam).
All those mosques must not be real, then.
See nit. See nit being picked.
Weak point, dude. Pretend I just said "fascist" then. Satisfied??
Yes, but not all the participants shared this objective with the US. This is why we lost. An objective to "contain" can hardly be matched with an objective for independence.
The cold war was exactly that, a cold war. A cold war is a period of diplomatic conflict typically accompanied by an arms race that falls short of outright war. It is a not quagmire because neither side wishes to fight each other, preferring instead to conduct their struggle as a contest of endurance and staying power, that is a long drawn out conflict.By your definition the Cold War itself was either a "quagmire" or, in Saari's words, a "not war."
A long and drawn out armed conflict (i.e. "hot" not "cold") in which the more powerful side doesn't win is a qaugmire. They look like quagmires because they were quagmires.Thus, for all intents and purposes these real battlefields, where blood was shed, appeared to be like quagmires because they were so long and drawn out (and with only ceasefires as a result).
Quagmires are a likely risk of US military action nowadays because we tend not to have clear objectives or we rule out the most effective approach. For example shortly after 911 when I suggested we could declare war on al Qaeda, I was told we can't do this because al Qaeda isn't a state. And you go on about how the WOT has to be some long drawn out thing like the Cold War. Why? What is wrong with winning quickly?
"By all accounts", eh?
Hey, Brian, isn't this some sort of logical error?
Justin, I demand you prove that "all accounts" indicate that the 9/11 strikes were ten years in the planning.
Not two, not five. Ten.
ALL accounts.
Otherwise, per Brian Rush, you are a liar.
Umm. Then you are incorrectly including the Talibs. They were (so far as I have read) tyrannical, but far from fascist.
How about, rather than "satisfying" anyone in particular, you just aim for basic accuracy? At least you'd have a leg to stand on against anyone who criticized...
---
Also, wrt the "by all accounts" -- I'm hoping you are being sarcastic, since you are all too keen to point out linguistic nit-picking in others. Regardless, my use of a phrase with a specific meaning merely to aid the flow of my sentence without regard to that meaning was neither helpful nor particularly considerate to a reader. I apologize. Perhaps I can amend to : "so far as I have seen."
__________________
"Power rests on nothing other than people's consent to submit, and each person who refuses to submit to tyranny reduces it by one two-hundred-and-fifty-millionth, whereas each who compromises only increases it." -- Vladimir Bulovskiy
Ok, fine. I wouldn't want to sink to Brian Rush's level.
Oh, I do, I do. As a matter of fact, I originally typed "Middle Eastern", but changed it because I thought some wiseacre like you would point out that Afghanistan is not in the Middle East.
(It's HARD to escape criticizism on a board filled with rabid Bush-hating moonbats! Just what IS it about S&H that attracts them? The possibility that S&H theory holds out for a radical change in their favor? I can't wait to see their faces when the opposite occurs.)
Anyway, the perfect phrase would have been "enemy nation".
I challenge anyone to dispute that the Taliban and the Baathists were our enemies. After all, the Taliban and the Baathists would agree with the characterization. Plus, I wouldn't want N. Korea to feel slighted.
That, or "bad guys" would have been spot-on. :wink:
Hmm. "Long view", eh? If both you and Mark Steyn are right, then maybe I should be worried.
...As to ?BUSH?S FAILURE TO ACT!!!!? on a feeble August memo of Islamism For Dummies generalities, what act would the media have allowed the Feds to get away with at the time? Investigate Zac Moussaoui or the large number of other young Arab men who were passing through American flight schools? This was after an election campaign in which Al Gore solemnly promised that his first act as President would be an executive order prohibiting police from pulling over African-Americans for ?driving while black?. In the wake of the Wen Ho Lee debacle, the media?s assumption was that he too had been racially profiled ? arrested for no other reason than ?working in a nuclear weapons laboratory while Chinese? (as Lars-Erik Nelson wrote). We don?t need an investigation to know why in 2001 Federal bureaucrats were reluctant to be flayed all over again by media scolds ? this time for prosecuting the new hate-crime of ?flying while Arab?.
After September 11th, some of us wondered whether, for all its tactical prestige, the destruction of that day wasn?t a strategic error for the Islamists. If you take them at their word, their object ? as outlined in their most comprehensive ?Letter To The American People? (November 2002) ? is the west?s ?complete submission? to Islam. It sounds a taller order when you look at the specifics ?? reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling?s [sic], and trading with interest?...
But it?s remarkable how week by week many of the pieces seem to be falling into place ? in the name of multicultural sensitivity, there are more and more restrictions on mixed bathing at municipal swimming pools from France to Australia; porcine statuary is banned by an English council as offensive to Muslims; a Sharia court has been recognized for the purposes of family law in the Islamic communities of Ontario. The notion of a dar el-Islam across the whole planet may sound ridiculous, but just below the surface pretty much everything seems to be going their way.
The problem with 9/11 was that it was above the surface: it caught the eye and demanded a response. This seemed, in Talleyrand?s phrase, worse than a crime; it was a blunder. It removed al-Qa?eda?s hosts in Afghanistan and splintered the terrorist networks. On balance, one would have concluded that 9/11 was a setback for the inauguration of a global caliphate.
But, if you take the longer view, it was still a useful exercise in that it revealed the limitations of American power. The less insane Islamofascist leaders understand that you can?t militarily defeat the west, and that you don?t have to: the west will defeat itself, and it?s only necessary to be there to inherit when they do. In that sense, both the Spanish election results and the 9/11 hearings confirm the Islamists? view that the west is weak-willed and defeatist...
If the Bush doctrine ? fixing the problem at source by reforming dysfunctional states ? is a long shot, what?s the alternative? If failed states stay failed, and we permit ourselves only to fight defensively, through e-mail chatter and airport security, and railway bombs neuter American allies even more thoroughly than they already are, and a suitcase nuke goes off in Dallas or Detroit, then at some point it?s going to be a choice between the Bruce option or a slow surrender. And, given the pitiful performance of Bob Kerrey, Bob Byrd, Ted Kennedy et al these last few weeks, the latter looks the better bet
So? He doesn't have to believe in it, or care about it, to use it, and by using it to be part of it and give it additional force.Uhhmmhhm
1) The Taliban were "islamofascist" (as defined by the folks who recently made that word up). Who was the second? Saddam was secular. Fascist? - sure, though 'socialist' is also an accurate descriptor. Islamo-? - not in the slightest. It was well recognized that the religious trapping he (lately) cloaked himself in were a cynical ploy for support.
The word is new, but it describes something real. I'm not sure how significant it is, but there are some weird links between the survivors of the Nazi state, especially some of the more metaphysically-inclined, and some of the elites of the modern Islamcist movements. Some of the same writings and same names turn up in the oddest contexts.Uhhmmhhm
1) The Taliban were "islamofascist" (as defined by the folks who recently made that word up).
But they are also almost uniformly liberals, and they'll be instinctively inclined to trust Kerry more than any Republican. In fact, if anything, I suspect they would regard President Kerry much as the right wing regarded Bush I, as being too centrist and not liberal enough.Not!
Modern journalists tend to be muckrakers, people who grew up under the credo "Don't trust authority". They aren't going to be giving Kerry a free pass.
I'm talking about conventional journalists, of course. Add in the internet, etc.... No, Kerry will not get anything close to a free pass if elected.
But the press wouldn't give him a fraction the resistance they give Bush, the moreso because he's also a northeasterner.
I empathize. This is definitely a FUBAR of major proportions.
I was all for the invasion and even the flouting of "international opinion" to that end when I believed the Bush Administration when they said Hussein's regime was an "imminent threat".
Turns out it wasn't. Furthermore it's becoming more and more clear from whistleblowers that Iraq was on the agenda all along. Did Iraq have WMD? It sure looked like they did at the time, and Saddam's own flouting of international demands to prove it made it seem a slam dunk. But did the data point to a strong connection with Al Qaeda or did it show that Iraqi agents were on the loose in the States? No. There's a better case for Iran supporting Al Qaeda, a better case for Pakistan or Russia potentially losing nuclear material to Al Qaeda, a better case of North Korea being a direct ballistic threat, and a better case that China has agents running around the US.
Just to further their agenda the Bushies engaged in Pre-emption when it should've been the LAST and/or DESPERATE resort and put the US in an awful position now in Iraq and the world community.
I wish to God McCain had gotten the nomination.
Americans have had enough of glitz and roar . . Foreboding has deepened, and spiritual currents have darkened . . .
THE FOURTH TURNING IS AT HAND.
See T4T, p. 253.
Disney has a right to distribute (or not distribute) any movies that it chooses; after all, it's Disney's name on the deal. It's not a 1st Amendment issue, since it's not the gov't which is preventing its release. Also, as the article notes, Miramax is free to sell the movie to another distributor.
Still, it's a rather cowardly move on Disney's part:
So, it's clearly a political decision by Disney as well as a financial one. What's even more interesting is why it's a political and financial risk to distribute the movie:
So, through the mechanism of a convoluted tax code, a lack of checks and balances, and a dash of nepotism, the pResident has leverage to suppress dissenting political voices... what can be done about these sort of abuses?
I'm going to make a very un-Liberal suggestion: abolish the corporate income tax. (Yes, I know this about the State of Florida, not the IRS, but similar principles apply.)
Here is my reasoning:
1) Revenues from this tax are relatively small, and getting smaller. Corporate taxes accounted for less than 8% of total Federal tax receipts last year. In addition, more than 50% of corporations that reported profits paid no income tax at all. Zilch. Nada.
2) Costs of compliance to businesses are huge. Exxon-Mobil spends more than $1 billion per year on tax compliance: not in paying its taxes, but in filing its taxes (its tax return is over two thousand pages long.)
3) Even the compliance costs for the IRS itself are huge. For example, the WSJ reports "The US system for taxing overseas profits of American companies is so riddled with loopholes and credits that the government would collect $6 billion more each year if it stopped trying to tax those profits altogether, according to a new estimate by congressional tax experts."
4) A convoluted, loophole-plagued tax system provides too many opportunities for manipulation and undue favoritism, as the above article shows.
5) The actual revenue loss would be fairly small, since the increased profits would be passed on to employees, investors and shareholders, who already pay normal income taxes on those profits (i.e. the "double taxation" would be eliminated.) I calculate that the lost revenues could be replaced with a 25 cent per gallon gas tax, for example.
Any thoughts?
Lawmakers as armbreakers
How would our politicians shakedown the corporations for campaign "contributions" if the protection racket of tax exemptions and tax impositions were eliminated.
Or, do you propose to "sic, 'em" on us? :shock:
