Isn’t that what you guys were saying a year ago, two years ago and three years ago? Their military won’t stand up as long as we’re the ones taking the hits. Further, nobody knows whose side the Iraqi military will be on when they do stand up.This war, from start to finish, was based on an ideology that was flawed and failed over a century ago. Unfortunately, the neo-cons never read their history lessons, so we’re stuck with repeating them.

BELL AIRE SOLDIER

4-30-07 – 21-year-old Alex Funcheon died in Baghdad over the weekend when the humvee he was riding in hit a roadside bomb. All three soldiers in the vehicle died.Alex went to Heights high school and joined the military right after high school. His parents describe him as fun and happy-go-lucky, but serious about his position in the army.He is survived by his parents of Bel Aire and his 18-year-old sister. The funeral will take place sometime in the next week to ten days.”O God, our Heavenly Father, we remember before Thee this day,those who laid down their lives in the service of their country.We remember their courage and devotion to the Sovereign and the country they served.We pray that their labours be not in vain but that their spirit may live on in us and the generations to come.We pray that liberty, truth and love may spread over all the world ’til war shall cease to be.We remember our brethren who are in sickness or distress.We remember the widows and other dependants.We dedicate ourselves to Thy service in the name of those whose memory we revere.We ask this in the name of our Lord.” “Amen

OK — how about a discussion about how we, (the rest of the nation that doesn’t live and work in the beltway) , have failed to do our part to support the war effort?

Starting points for discussion:

1. We did not ask or demand more oversight of the war effort from Day 1. Particularly in planning and defining goals? … and insuring our troops had all the right equipment, support and medical care for them and their families?

2. We allowed ourselves to be “SOLD” on the war and not “ENLISTED” for the war.

3. We don’t demand adult behavior from our leaders — we let them get away with spin, name calling, pork barrel, questionable ethical behavior, we really don’t hold them accountable …. add your own…

4. Our attention span is very short …..

5. We elected these clowns — all of em …..

… but we don’t want to talk about that — it’s “their” fault

What a joke

Isn’t tomorrow Commander Codpiece Day?

I think THAT may explain a lot, lol.

You know, I’m surprised we haven’t seen Commander Codpiece contests yet. In fact, I’m surprised some enterprising young person hasn’t yet thought to organize a Marching Codpiece Brigade or some such in this years River Festival. I think codpieces and kazoos would go well together, probably get a big laugh along the parade route…

Hell, lots of potential there. Just think, maybe Commander Codpiece Day will someday be a Federal holiday.

Nice ring: May 1, Commander Codpiece Day!

When do the next posting orders come down for y’all?

Kev, with all due respect it’s just that kind of hysteria that got us into Iraq in the first place.

Calm down, and think.

For instance, some people who are close to Augustus Stupidus and who know the situation in Iraq disagree with you and the president.

From the Newsweek link:***************************************But in private, some of Bush’s most senior aides dispute that scenario. One senior administration official with extensive knowledge of the region, who didn’t want to be identified discussing sensitive policy matters, tells NEWSWEEK that the chances of a regional war in Iraq are low in the event of a U.S. withdrawal. When asked if a regional war would break out, the official said: “Possibly, not probably. It’s more likely that other powers would support their favorite militias, as they’re doing already.”

The senior official said the genocidal bloodbath that Sen. John McCain outlined recently was also unlikely, pointing to the militias’ ability to secure their own neighborhoods after the attack on the Golden Mosque in Samarra in early 2006. (The official’s main concern: the Iraqi government’s failure to unify the nation and address the root cause of sectarian conflict. “Both the Sunni and Shia are too afraid of each other,” the official said.)

***************************

The US military is finished with its mission in Iraq. There are no military solutions there because the US simply blew the chance to build a meaningful coalition in 2003 that could have provided the 300,000-500,000+ troops it would have taken (in 2003-4) to secure Iraq and incubate a nascent democracy.

And that’s assuming a lot, frankly. I guess many Americans still don’t know that Islam skipped the Enlightenment. The US is a country born of the Enlightenment (in fact, believe it or not right here in Kansas public schools it used to be taught to all students that the US Declaration of Independence and the Bill of rights were the greatest products of the Age of Reason) and we’ve had roughly 230 years to work out just how reason or rationality is the basis of all governmental power, not religion.

That’s a 230+ year head start on Iraq, and I don’t think anybody in Europe or anywhere else reasonably expects the US to incubate Iraq through its own Age of Reason.

The only solutions remaining in 2007 are political. They must come from Iraqis themselves, and Iraq must travel a road of its own unique design. The US military has finished its mission in Iraq; our presence now only prolongs the inevitable and lengthens Iraq’s journey. That’s what the “senior US official” in my link is talking about, too.

May they never forgive the Democrats using them as a political football.

I bow down to your greater wisdom.And thanks for showing yourselves.I apparently have no further reason to listen to either one of you.

I NEVER called for the assasination of anyone – but if these people led this country into war on false premises, they should be executed.

Fair enough?

“cut the crap. Nobody is going to listen to BS like that. It only makes your rantings more difficult to even consider. Get a life”

I hope you are being preposterous for preposterous sake. I certainly was. Calling for the execution/ assination of those you disagree with evidence of a madman. I suspect that you are not that, socut the crap. Nobody is going to listen to BS like that. It only makes your rantings more difficult to even consider. Get a life

FLOP

WORST PRESIDENT EVER!

Technically, that is true and my statement (I was working from memory) was false.

However, the Bush administration is apparently backing away from their claim that training troops is going to do any good even while Bush continues to claim it:

U.S. plan backs off training of Iraqis

Policy shift entrusts security to American troop buildupApril 22, 2007

BY NANCY A. YOUSSEF

MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS

WASHINGTON — Military planners have abandoned the idea that training Iraqi troops will enable U.S. troops to start coming home and now say American forces will have to defeat the insurgents and secure control of troubled provinces.

Training Iraqi troops, which had been the cornerstone of the Bush administration’s Iraq policy since 2005, has dropped in priority, officials in Baghdad and Washington said.

. . . .

Although President George W. Bush said in a speech Friday in East Grand Rapids that Iraqi forces are leading the attacks on insurgents, evidence has been building for months that training those troops is no longer the focus of U.S. policy and that the troops have been ineffective.

Pentagon officials said they know of no new training resources in U.S. plans to dispatch 28,000 more troops to Iraq.

*****

Say one thing, do another. That’s my George.

Worst. President. Ever.

Do it and get it over with it.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/btw/transcript1.html

RICHARD PERLE (ABC THIS WEEK 11/18/01): Weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein, plus his known contact with terrorists, including Al Qaeda terrorists, is simply a threat too large to continue to tolerate.

BILL MOYERS: Among their leading spokesmen were Richard Perle and James Woolsey. Both sat on the Defense Policy Board advising Donald Rumsfeld. And they used their inside status to assure the press that overthrowing Hussein would be easy.

RICHARD PERLE (CNN 11/19/01): We would be seen as liberators in Iraq.

BILL MOYERS: Major newspapers and magazines gave them prime space to make their case, including the possibility that 9/11 had been “sponsored, supported and perhaps even ordered by Saddam Hussein.” The president, they said, should take “Preemptive action.”

WILLIAM KRISTOL (MEET THE PRESS, NBC, 10/7/01): The biggest mistake we have made-it’s our mistake, it’s not the mistake of the Arabs– was not finishing off Saddam Hussein in 1991.

BILL MOYERS: No one got more air time from an arm chair than Bill Kristol, editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD And a media savvy Republican strategist.

In the 1990s Kristol organized a campaign for increased military spending and a muscular foreign policy. In 1998 he and his allies wrote President Bill Clinton urging him ‘to remove Saddam Hussein from power.

And now, just days after 9/11 with many of their allies serving in the administration, they wrote an open letter to President Bush calling for regime change in bagdad. Over the coming months Kristol’s Weekly Standard kept up the drum beat.

FRED BARNES (BELTWAY BOYS, Fox 11/24/01): What are the consequences if the US does not finish off this Saddam Hussein as a second step in the war on terrorism?

WILLIAM KRISTOL: It would mean that the president having declared a global war on terrorism didn’t follow through– didn’t take out the most threatening terrorist state in the world.”

TIM RUSSERT (MEET THE PRESS, NBC 12/30/01): Safire will you wager Ms. Wright, right now that Saddam will be out of power by the end of 2002.

WILLIAM SAFIRE: Absolutely. I’ll see you here a year from now.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: (FOX NEWS 9/22/01) If you go after Iraq you’re gonna lose a lot of allies, but who cares.

BILL MOYERS: Charles Krauthammer and other top columnists at THE WASHINGTON POST also saw the hand of Saddam Hussein in the terrorist attacks . . .

Jim Hoagland implicated Hussein within hours after the suicide bombers struck on 9/11.

. . . and the POST’s George Will fired away on the talk shows.

GEORGE WILL (ABC 10/28/01): The administration knows he’s vowed-Hussein has vowed revenge, he has anthrax, he loves biological weapons, he has terrorist training camps, including 747’s to practice on . . .

*****

If I had gone on TV and said all that bullsh*t, I would have expected to be fired.

But IOKIYAR.

It’s their story, and they’re sticking to it.

“One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line.”President Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998.

“If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program.”President Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998.

“Iraq is a long way from [here], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face.”Madeline Albright, Feb 18, 1998.

“He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983.”Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb, 18, 1998

“[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq’s refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs.”Letter to President Clinton, signed by Sens. Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, and others Oct. 9, 1998.

“Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process.”Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998.

“Hussein has … chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies.”Madeline Albright, Clinton Secretary of State, Nov. 10, 1999.

“There is no doubt that . Saddam Hussein has reinvigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In addition, Saddam continues to redefine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies.”Letter to President Bush, Signed by Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL,) and others, Dec, 5, 2001.

“We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandate of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them.”Sen. Carl Levin (d, MI), Sept. 19, 2002.

“We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country.”Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002.

“Iraq’s search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power.”Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002.

“We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seing and developing weapons of mass destruction.”Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, MA), Sept. 27, 2002.

“The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons…”Sen. Robert Byrd (D, WV), Oct. 3, 2002.

“I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force — if necessary — to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.”Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Oct. 9, 2002.

“There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years . We also should remember we have alway s underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction.”Sen. Jay Rockerfeller (D, WV), Oct 10, 2002,

“He has systematically violated, over the course of the past 11 years, every significant UN resolution that has demanded that he disarm and destroy his chemical and biological weapons, and any nuclear capacity. This he has refused to do.”Rep. Henry Waxman (D, CA), Oct. 10, 2002.

“In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons.”Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), Oct 10, 2002

“We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction. “[W]ithout question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime … He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. And now he has continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction … So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real …Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Jan. 23. 2003.

Of course, your proposition is preposterous, but makes the point.Is say we execute one congressman for each yay vote authorizing the action. I say that we start with former President Clinton. Cut the crap. Execute one person each day that now controls the purse strings if they don;t cut off the funds for Iraqi missions immediately. Have the balls or go home.