Hehehe. It's interesting to me that the people who are repeatedly and tragically wrong so often about Iraq are being so smug to those who were so right about everything.

I've always been interested in this option, but it never went anywhere and now seems to be off the table.



I agree, though I think doubling troop strength would help immensely.


As for being wrong all the time, there are only a few major decisions at play here:

1) The decision to elect Bush. I felt about Kerry how I currently feel about Hilary, I could never vote for that. It was an easy choice, a lesser of two evils. I would vote the same way, even now, knowing what I know.

2) The decision to invade Iraq. I feel this was also the correct decision, especially given the faulty intelligence. Unlike you, I don't fault Bush for acting on intelligence that the entire world got wrong. I honestly believe he made the right decision based on what he thought were facts.

3) The decision on how to deal with Iraq after. This was bungled to high heaven. From the announcement of war's end on, it has been a complete nightmare. Bush, Rumsfeld, the Generals, blame it on whoever you want. I don't think any of them have done a good job.

So I consider 1 outa 3 to be a trip down the wrong path, and to be honest, here's who I blame the most:

The UN

I hate the UN, I wish the USA would back out of the UN completely ala WWII. They are a joke. This is thee single biggest event taking place in the world, they should be there, this should be a world effort, not a US effort.

Problem is, the world is content to sit by and watch us burn, and apparently THAT's OK.

That's the funniest thing I've read all week!

why dont we just face facts....we need the fucking oil, don't wE?

Et tu, excelsior?

Threadcrapping your own thread? I thought this was about the '08 election...

The Iraq war for me is completely pointless because of the fact that it served no tactical benefit whatsoever for the United States. I think Beeble and Bradley know how I judge wars since we debated it a while back but for those who don't know this is why I beleive it was idiotic in the extreme.

1. Saddam provided an effective bulwark against any Iranian agression in the Arabian theatre hereby guaranteeing the oil supply which the US and Western economies so crave. Yes Saddam was a despot but that is totally irrelevent when taking into account the best strategic position for America. Successive US Presidents have done Devil Deals over the past 100 to benefit the US regardless of how it effects the people involved and dispite how callous this may sound thats the Presidents job when it comes to foreign policy, get the best deal possible because playing nice will just get you killed.

2. The emotional iraqi democracy arguement is quite frankly hilarious to me indeed there is a famous conversation involveing General Pershing back in 1912 on the subject of US incursions into Mexico on the pretext to helping in the growth of democracy which rings true here.

An American who's name escapes me at the moment: What if the Mexicans don't vote the way we want.
Pershing: Well we invade again and help them vote the right way
The other American: And even if that doesn't work.
Pershing: We'll keep invading until they do vote right then.

The democracy arguement is a complete fraud because if the Iraqi people were actually allowed elect a government they truly wanted it would resemble the Iranian Theocracy we currently see today and you can guarantee it would be hostile to the US. But of course the charade of democracy and freedom must be kept up as it makes good print for the press and allows people to take some false sense of Right out of it.

3. Indeed where this whole thing was doomed to failure was its insistance on idealism and Right as the reason to go to war. Going to war for "Freedom" (outside of an independence struggle) is never the smart thing to do and very rarely do such wars end well. America never went to war in WW2 over freedom for example, it was a simple clash of ideology and empire and thankfully the US won out, indeed if it was over Freedom do you think that Truman and Co would have surrendered Eastern Europe so meekly? No they were thinking Tactically and with realism the best tools of War.

4. The uncorking of the Sunni, Shia antagonism that this war has brought is disasterous for Western interests in the region. Saddam was Iraq's Tito, he kept people who hated each other from fight out of sheer brute force, and just as when Tito died the former Yugoslavia began to fall apart so to has Iraq. Anybody who thinks Iraq can be saved as a viable state is kidding themselves, the Kurds have no interest for one. Indeed the whole Kurdish seperatist issue may end up damaging Turkey one of America's NATO allies, a truly moronic move tactically.

So please anybody using the old Freedom, giving the Iraqi's a chance, we did good nonsense please stop. Im not even going to bother blaming bush because the entire US body politic which went along with this including most Democrat's deserve scorn and blame.

Nothing kills quite like idealism and Right.

Seeing as how the Iraqis are more or less doing this themselves, then it should be on the table and seriously considered. And replacing this administration replaces the whole table and what's on it.



The only problem is that we don't actually have them. So that option does not exist for all practical purposes. We're left with Bush's wrong-all-the-time-agenda, and withdrawal.



First of all, viewing Kerry as lesser than Bush (while claiming not to be political) is such a compellingly stupid decision (made by you, not the administration) that it absolutely reinforces the notion that your judgment is highly dubious on this issue.

Bush has not only bungled Iraq, but he has implemented torture, warrantless wiretapping on Americans, indefinite detention of Americans, the suspension of habeas corpus, an anti-science crusade against global warming, stem-cell research, etc, he DOUBLED the national debt and the national budget.

Name ONE thing that Kerry would have definitely done that would have been WORSE than any of this.

As for the administration being wrong ONCE this whole time (forgetting for a moment that your one time example of their mistake is quite a fucking doozy), that's simply part of the bigger picture of your delusional fantasyland. Apparently I need remind you of "we'll be greeted as liberators," "the insurgency is in its last throes" and the "mushroom cloud" comment among thousands of others.



Ah, so finding blame isn't so difficult for you after all. You just don't like it when the blame is on you. Hypocrite.



Again, your smugness in the face of being wrong and supporting an administration that is so catastrophically wrong over those who were RIGHT, because they aren't rushing in to clean up Bush's fucked up mess is just laughable.

If someone lights your house on fire, you'd rather blame the bystanders who told you all along that this guy was going to do it instead of the guy who actually did it. And to top it off, you'd vote for the arson over Kerry.

If there's a consolation here, it's that the people like Eagle and their brainwashed refusal to deal with any sort of facts or reality, especially about their own errors in judgment, are now the minority in this country. Bush's approvals are in the toilet and most Americans support a withdrawal from the Iraq mess. The American ship may be slow to turn, but one hopes that reality does in the end win out as it seems to have in this case.

Btw, Bush didn't "get it wrong." He lied. It's right there in the CIA (who have no love of Bush for blaming them for everything) reports and subsequent bi-partisan findings. Bush cherry-picked information to support a war that had already been decided upon. And if you go back a few years, you'll find that not everyone was fooled, as Eagle would have you believe. Too many people were far too trusting of Bush, it's true, but not everyone.

Also, acting on faulty intelligence is, by definition, being wrong. Just because you mean well (provided one buys this ludicrous description of the administration) doesn't make it factually less wrong. After all, there was no such understanding by Republicans when Clinton mistakenly bombed an aspirin factory was there?

I'd blame Bush primarily but there were certainly Democrats who made the colossal mistake of trusting his word. They also were pandering to their polls, which is another travesty. They should be rightly lambasted for their vote to authorize force. While Edwards, to his credit, has admitted his mistake, Hillary flat out refuses to admit she was wrong. And I mean that she has stated it publicly that she will not admit she was wrong.

Obama opposed the war from the beginning, which I think explains why he's on such sure footing among the Democratic base.

Speaking of this war, it is already un-winnable. Look how out of hand it has gotten.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/ame ... 293485.ece

Anybody who opposed it from the get go has at least some brain cells and good instincts, which i'd imagine is rare considering some of the downright scary clips of Senete debates I have seen on the Daily Show.

I truly hated how anybody used the nonsenseical Coward or loony tag on these people as well.

But we DIDN'T elect this Bozo. We wanted Gore.

What's even more, I can't think of a single success you can give him on his own terms. What have his own goals been? Peace in Iraq? Capture bin Laden? A balanced budget? A medicare plan that works? Decreasing poverty? Stopping illegal immigration? Passing an amendment banning gay marriage? Improving America's image in the world? Stopping our trade deficit? Limiting our need for foreign oil?

Seriously, can you name one accomplishment of this administration?

A strong stock market and housing market. Without 9/11 though, I doubt both of those would have been as strong. There is no doubt in anyone's mind that Bush is a moron of epic proportions.

Actually we did. Just like in a baseball game, if you hit 4 home runs for 6 runs and I hit 2 home runs for 8 runs, that doesn't mean you won the game because you hit more homers. It means you lost. It means the "we elected Gore" bit is irrelevant to the discussion.

I support the troop increase and I hope like Hell that it works, just like Beeblebrox does.

This election, just like all elections, will be claimed to be "the most important ever". Personally, I think maybe 1860 was a more important election year.

Another one from the "wrong about everything" camp.

I do NOT support the escalation. I certainly hope no more troops pay the price of Bush's incompetence and YOUR support of his incompetent policies. And I absolutely hope that if they get captured that they are not tortured, another policy/tactic both you and Bush support.

To me that means we STOP listening to you and the other people who have been wrong about this war every step of the way and start listening to the people who were RIGHT.

Hehehe, I agree. Among the current field of Democrats, we have Obama, Kucinich, and Howard Dean (not running for prez but head of the DNC) who opposed the war from the beginning. As Bill Maher says, Dean has been a regular Nostradamus about what would happen during the war. But he's unelectable because he once yelled "yeeha" at a public event.

Among those who supported the war but now admit it was a mistake, we have Edwards. And we have one lone holdout who, for some reason, thinks she can adopt Bush's "never admit you made a mistake" strategy and still win over your base.

Among those who supported the war and believe that we should keep listening to Bush despite his horrifically tragic policy track record of incompetence are every single Republican candidate.

Sure... It's the same issue/point driven home, more poigntly by Mr. Treadeu... Isn't it?? There's no quick/easy change.. Generations at least.. Cartoon exaggeration, for effect... my point was america was really only thinking of 'next season'... Either way, we both 'say' short-sighted... .... Doonesbury and I make the same point, wrong 'time-frame/mind-set'...
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I met him once, at the'96 Olympics...

My point was that your prediction of 40 odd years is 'next season' compared to the 600 odd years referenced in the cartoon. We can't use Western standards to judge Middle Eastern situations, it has been proven over and over again to fail. In the not so far future, America will be a long gone fallen empire collapsed under it's own weight, while Iraq will be continuing in it's millenia long history...

You need to be reading more than the bumper-sticker news.

I follow the stock market. Although I don't follow it too closely, I know that most of those "gains" in the stock market are because of mergers, rumors of acquisitions, acquisitions, stock buybacks, private equity buyouts, credit expansions, companies delcaring "bankruptcy" for the sole purpose of dumping off pension promises, and the like. If companies were confident, they would be investing profits in jobs and infrastrcuture, yet they hoard it as billions in CASH on hand. This is all a contraction of business, not an expansion. In other words, few companies are making money the old-fashioned way, by earning it. Stock prices are going up by psychology and games and the good faith and credit of China.

And the DOW was always a lousy indicator anyway. It's made up of big safe companies. If the Dow goes up and nothing else does, it's like stock investors putting money in a mattress. The S&P is a better indicator, but look. The Dow goes up 25%, the S&P goes up 0%. Somebody's hunkering down.





I *do* follow the housing market closely. Housing had a nice run-up until early 2003, then they ran out of buyers. Banks (and Alan Greenspan), desperate for more buyers, opened the credit floodgates in the form of too-low interest rates, unwise ARM's and exotic loans to deadbeat people who have no business buying a Slurpee on credit, much less a $400,000 house. The housing bubble is now rife with unoccupied shoddily-built homes, "underwater" owners who owe more on the house than the house is worth, investors foreclosing, subprime lenders going under, sales at a standstill, and no more appreciation which means no more HELOC money to fuel consumer spending. The vaunted job expansion in bubble areas was mostly in real estate and related industries. Just wait until all those "teaser rates" and "interest only loans" and Adjustable rate mortgages adjust. Mortage payments, which used to be called "FIXED" for a reason, are no longer fixed. Payments are going go up 50% for some people. When housing goes, those jobs will go too. Housing is in for a MAJOR crash.

I know you don't support the escalation. I meant the you hope that it does work . Yes, I support torturing people but no I do not see the correlation between us torturing people and second parties torturing people.

I agree! The entire world got it wrong based on what Bush told us.

"That tar pit is safe to swim in. I have proof."

"Thank you. Hey, wait, we're stuck! It's not safe to swim in at all!"

"My information was incorrect. But you can't hold me responsible for the fact that you believed me."

"You're right! It's all our fault, since we all believed you. We all got it wrong, not you."

That's like saying that I oppose you jumping from a 50 story building, but IF YOU DO, I hope you survive the landing. Yes, I hope no more troops die at the hands of Bush's incompetence if he's stupid enough to send them (and he is that stupid), and I know you do too!

But my real hope is that we stop listening to you people who have been wrong and that we start listening to the people who have been right and that the troops aren't sent off that 50 story building in the first place.

There are rumblings in the press now that Congress might revoke the war authority. God willing.



You support torture. I'm just saying that I hope none of the troops are subjected to the kind of torture that you support as a matter of legitimate policy, especially if they have valuable information and are tortured because YOU THINK THAT'S OKAY.

I'm always surprised to hear that anyone actually advocates the torture of American soldiers -- and it's even more surprising that those same people probably have a the giant 'Support Our Troops' bumper sticker on the back of their Chevy -- mind boggling cognitive dissonance...

It amazing how you people think you're right when you don't even know what would've happened if we wouldn't have attacked Iraq. We could be in a worse situation.

Don't be fucking assholes.