busyLivin

adrien_j9

It's all good now. No worries.

"Our lives are not determined by what happens to us, but how we REACT to what happens; not by what life brings to us, but by the ATTITUDE we bring to life. A positive attitude causes a CHAIN REACTION of positive thoughts, events, and outcomes. It is a catalyst... a spark that creates EXTRAORDINARY RESULTS."

BoneCrusher

min0 lee

China.

Crono1000

If there is a draft...

it will get cold

Big Smoothy

Iraq war is not winnable, says expert

By Our Correspondent

WASHINGTON, Aug 28: Like Vietnam, the war in Iraq is not winnable because there are no clear military targets to achieve, says an article published in The Washington Post on Sunday.

The author, Lewis M. Simons, an ex-Marine who covered the Vietnam war for the Associated Press and the Post, says that he had an ‘eerily reminiscent experience’ when he visited Iraq recently to write a piece for National Geographic.

After a month in Iraq, he returned home, ‘certain that this war, like Vietnam, will never be won … Since, in my judgment, we were wrong to go in, I’m afraid there’s no good way to get out’.

In an attempt to understand the concept of winning the war in Iraq, the author asks: “What would ‘winning’ in Iraq mean, anyway? A democratic society that’s free to elect an anti-American, pro-Iranian, fundamentalist Islamic government? A land of gushing oil wells feeding international oil company profits at US taxpayers’ expense? Shias, Kurds and Sunnis joining hands to end terrorism around the world?”

Like Vietnam, says Mr Simons, the Americans do not understand Iraq. “The truth — that Iraq was not a terrorist haven before we invaded, but we’re making it into one today — has been thickly painted over with unending coats of misinformation.”

Comparing the two wars, the author notes that ‘where 392 Americans were killed in action in Vietnam from 1962 through 1964, the first three years of the war, (and 58,000 by the time of the US withdrawal in 1975), after two years in Iraq we have nearly 1,900 American killed in action. Where two million Vietnamese were killed by the war’s end, we have no idea how many Iraqis have died since we unleashed ‘shock and awe’. Is it 10,000, 20,000, 30,000? More?”

Mr Simons says that this ‘blithe American disregard’ for their lives infuriates Iraqis.

He warns that what American failed to understand in Vietnam – ‘that people who want foreign occupiers out of their country are willing and prepared to withstand any kind of privation and risk for however long it takes – are failing, once again, to grasp in Iraq’.

MILITARY SOLUTION: Discussing his experience in Iraq, the author says that in a country where planes have to make emergency landing to avoid being hit by the enemy’s rockets and where American soldiers and citizens have to be protected by Humvees and helicopters when going out in the streets, ‘there can be no military solution’.

The author also notes that some American soldiers in Iraq are most bitter about their perception that the Bush administration’s effort to wage the war on the cheap applies only to them, while private contractors grow rich.

“On the green plastic wall of a portable toilet at Baghdad military airport, I read the following graffiti, scrawled by a civilian contract employee: ‘14 months. $200,000. I’m out of here. [Expletive] you Iraq.” Beneath it was a response from the ranks: ‘12 months. $20,000. What the [expletive] is going on here?”

Arguing that there’s no ‘good way’ to quit Iraq, the author says that if America stays, the ‘insurgency’ continues. If it leaves, the insurgency will most likely expand into an all-out civil war, the fragmenting of Iraq and the intervention of Iran, Turkey and Syria, followed by the collapse of promised democracy in the Middle East: a kind of reverse domino theory.

He says that before the mid-term elections next year, President Bush may withdraw several thousand US troops, but the bulk of the US forces will stay, giving the guerillas an excuse to fight.

The author believes that the Bush administration will leave this mess for the next administration, which may find equally difficult to deal with it.

He quotes a senior US diplomat in Iraq as saying that if the US is serious about establishing democracy in Iraq, it would take two generations of soldiers fighting there.

“That’s 40 years. You may want to pass that along to your grandchildren,” warns the author.

Link: http://www.dawn.com/2005/08/29/int1.htm

Military men are dumb, stupid animals, to be used as pawns for foreign policy
– Henry Kissinger (January-February 2003 edition of Eagle Newsletter)

busyLivin

DOMS

This first sentence indicates that the rest of the article is a farce. That's to say: absolute shit.

There is a clear goal, it's just not a military target and this is what your 'expert' is hoping that his readers will ignore. The goal is to provide a stable enough country to create a permanent government (which is happening) and the leave when the new government can take care of itself.

This doesn't mean that there will never be attacks by terrorists (you know, the assholes who target civilians). Israel experiences such attacks on a common basis but is still a sovereign state. This is pretty much how Iraq will end up because that's pretty much how the Middle East is.

TJ Cline

I cant remember the age they stop drafting people but I'm past it ( 38), but back in the day????? if we were attacked by another Country I would join up that same day to go kick their ass...
But if it was Nam or the illegal Iraq war.....Canada here I come.

busyLivin

I believe it's 25.

TJ Cline

From what I have read the first wave is 18-26 or 25...
But the second wave I believe is or was 31......and they were talking about boosting it to 36.

Witmaster

Interesting how you didn't put "serve in the military" as one of your options.

NEVER write a check with your mouth that you can't cash with your ASS!!

I can run faster mad than you can scared

"All right brain... I don't like you and you don't like me. So let's just do this and I'll get back to killing you with beer" ~ Homer Simpson

DOMS

That's liberals for you: removing all the choices they don't like.

Really, liberals are far less tolerant than they would have you believe.

Here's a simple game you can play at home: Read both liberal publications (New York Times, for example) and conservative publications (Wall Street Journal, for example) and see which is more likely to print articles that go against the overall political bent of that publication.

Simply put, a conservative publication is more likely to print a liberal article than a liberal publication is less likely to publish a conservative article.

bio-chem

and how is the war in iraq illegal exactly?

chronic

i voted canada, but thats jus caus i live in canada and would gladly serve in tha canadian army(herd of buffalo and a couple canoe's) if they would let me hold a gun, but i made tha call last year to tried to apply and they said i couldnt hold a gun cause i'm blind in one eye all i need is one eye and my trigger finger, not like i neva shot a gun b4, so i told him "I aint joining tha damm army to be a fuckin potatoe peeler!!" and hung up

TJ Cline

Because I say so!

TJ Cline

bio-chem

now i understand

maniclion

If in all honesty they wanted to draft me I would fight it with everything I have because I feel that I am already fighting the real problem by working in the alternative energy field. I believe my senators would back me on that.

"We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Natures inexhaustible sources of energy — sun, wind and tide. ... I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that."
Thomas Edison: In conversation with Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone

TJ Cline

I believe in Santa.

FishOrCutBait

The only reason there would be a draft, is if China decides to attack while we've got our pants down. Which, they could. The only reason Russia's communism failed is because their economy went down the pooper, China can actually support communism, and IMO, is the next world power, after they turn us into a smoking crater.

This is my journal. Click it and such

"tried and true theory on one's self is probably the only non-biased proof that something works for someone." - juggernaut

http://www.ronpaul.com/

Eggs

Sorry bud... in reality, their nuclear delivery vehicles can only reach the California coast. So its going to be you that is a smoking crater. And the rest of us, we're going to have marshmellows

Hehe, just kidding, dont take that seriously

Twigz

I would proudly serve. But sense I can not do to physical disability, I would gladely drive around in my patrol car and round up all you usless, whinny, bitches that would adandon your country in a time of need.

ILLEGITIMIS CON CARBORUNDUM!!
(don't let the bastards grind you down)

I love vegetarians, they're a great source of lean protien!

Big Smoothy

I agree, mate.

But when was the last time the U.S. was in a time of "need" in the 20th Century?

Not in WWI

Perhaps Not in WWII (Pearl Harbour was allowed to be attacked)

Not in Korea (1950-1953)

Not in Vietnam

Not in Grenada, 1984

Not in Panama 1989

Not in Kuwait 1990

Not in Samolia

Not in Haiti

Not in the former Yugoslavia

Not in Iraq.


So....when was the last time our country was in "need?"

Military men are dumb, stupid animals, to be used as pawns for foreign policy
– Henry Kissinger (January-February 2003 edition of Eagle Newsletter)

Eggs

You are quite wrong there. If the Germans had been able to conquer all of Europe, there indeed would have reached a time when they looked across the lake. That was recognized and put an end to.

The policy of containment might have ended up being beneficial. Its hard to try and guess exactly what the world would be like now had we not acted the way we did. Perhaps it would be no different, but perhaps there would be many large differences that were not to our favor. Whats done is done, and some of it has definitely been to our benifit. Unfortunately not all has worked out that way.

I see you conveniently forgot Afghanistan and 9/11. Typical Snaf... too typical!

Big Smoothy

I do believe that if the Germans would have attained the ability to get the Atomic bomb they would have used it. And, the Japanese leaders did claim that they would have used the atomic bomb also.

Some argue that we helped Stalin's Soviet Union too much, and the mroe Germany ravaged the USSR the better it would have been. (i.e., Pat Buchanan has said this).

It's all for speculation, now.

Good point. One cannot foretell history, but decisions are made in large part due to financial interests.

Wow. I didn't even know I forgot to include Aghanistan and 9/11.

Maybe it's because I'm so burned out on all of the hype and actions that resulted from it.

It was a bad attack, but the number of casualties were very minimal.

More of a symbolic attack: WTC: economic symbol - Pentagon: military symbol.

White House/Congress attempt: political symbol.

Military men are dumb, stupid animals, to be used as pawns for foreign policy
– Henry Kissinger (January-February 2003 edition of Eagle Newsletter)

icanrace

anyone know what the prime age range is/was?

I assume now, the gov't could make a new set of rules anyway...........

TJ Cline

post 41.

read the thread

PapaDaca

I got kicked out the army due to knees injuries and ankle injuries they wont be calling me back.