A soldier's viewpoint

[Undertoad]

We could focus on those seven minutes. Or we could focus on the hard questions. TW prefers not to focus on the hard questions so he uses a lot of name-calling and invective and emotional appeal.

If Centcom is asked to draw up a war plan do they get "angry"? Or is that an obvious emotional appeal, since Generals are asked to draw up war plans ALL THE EFFING TIME, IT IS WHAT THEY DO. Isn't it possible that Woodward wanted an interesting narrative for his book?

Do you not think we have a plan to invade N Korea? Drawn up by Eastcom or whatever that sector is called? Do you think Centcom doesn't have an Iran plan on the table? Of course. They had an Iraq plan too, they just wanted it updated to reflect the current thinking. (And then they depended too heavily on getting rights to go through Turkey so it was a faulty plan from day one.)

[tw]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

We could focus on those seven minutes. Or we could focus on the hard questions. TW prefers not to focus on the hard questions so he uses a lot of name-calling and invective and emotional appeal.

When Scott Ridder said there were no weapons of mass destruction, then you called him a pervert and child pornographer.

Those seven minutes in a FL classroom prove what too many say about George Jr. He does not make decisions. Again, as Bob Woodward reports, "The president kicked everyone out of the Oval Office but Cheney. ... The others came back in. Finally at 7:12 PM, the president said, "Let's go." It was three minutes before Frank's deadline. Powell noted silently that thing didn't really get decided until the president had met with Cheney alone."

We know from the September 11 report that George Jr in FL had trouble contacting Cheney. Therefore Air Force One sat motionless on the runway in FL until finally the Secret Service demanded the plane take off now and decide where to go later. Where to go? George Jr waited for Cheney to tell him what to do. Tell me those seven minutes in a FL classroom don't expose how decisions are really made. The president could not even testify before the September 11 Commission without Cheney at his side. This is a decive leader? No wonder he need not read his memos. Those seven minutes in a FL classroom only confirm decisive George Jr leadership - waiting to be told what to do.

So those seven minutes of not authorizing fighter pilots to go 'weapons free' is not important? Seven minutes just sitting in a FL classroom, doing nothing; waiting to be told what to do while "America is under attack". George Jr never even authorized the military to defend America.

Please explain how this president is competant. And please explain how Scott Ridder went from being a responsible human being to becoming a pervert - only because he told the truth about WMDs. Unfortunately, this is the reasoning used to advocate "Four More Years ... in Iraq".

[Undertoad]

Scott Ritter's buddy got paid a lot of bribes in the food for oil program, and Ritter did completely fail to explain why he solicited sex from a 16-year-old in a Burger King. These facts are not irrelevant to trying to figure out what's really going on.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Scott Ritter's buddy got paid a lot of bribes in the food for oil program, and Ritter did completely fail to explain why he solicited sex from a 16-year-old in a Burger King. These facts are not irrelevant to trying to figure out what's really going on.

And that proves that weapons of mass destruction existed? That is proof that the aluminum tubes were for uranium centrifuges? What you post is about as relevant as Lookout123's repeated claims that Gen Franks did not have a mini-explosion. Again nonsense posted to obfuscate the facts - that George Jr is an incompetant president. When do we go after bin Laden? Why is Iraq about terrorism when secular governments are the enemy of terrorist?

This is about being responsible to the troops. Those troops signed up to defend America - not promote a lying presidents political agenda.

Its called focusing on real problems - a president who does not read his memos. A president who let bin Laden go free. A president who cannot make his own decisions without first being told by Cheney, Rice, Rove, etc what to do. A president that has subverted 40+ years of diplomatic work. A president that subverts science. A president that makes adversaries even of our allies.

Where does Scott Ridder's sex life or the actions of a friend have anything to do with this. All this from the same person who outrightly ignored technical facts to say those alunumim tubes were for weapons of mass destruction? UT, you had facts that said otherwise. You denied those facts to support a lying president. You said Scott Ridder was wrong because of sex allegations (nothing proven) and allegations of a friend. At what point do we go back to the real issues and use relevant facts? At what point do you use real facts to defend this president?

Fact - this president lied like we have not seen since Richard Nixon. Fact - this president is so incompetant as to sit there for seven minutes - did nothing - after being told "America is under attack". I ask many others what they would have done. Everyone - literally everyone - says they would have gotten up out of that chair and left the room. George Jr, "god's choose president", could not do that? Those are facts that go right to the issue (without being sexed up). This president is not just incompetant. He is dangerous. He has literally subverted in only four years what took American diplomacy to accomplish in 40. This from major American diplomats dating back to the Nixon administration. This president subverts science - from tens of American Nobel prize winners. Where did I once mention anyone's sex life? Its called keeping the facts relevant.

You must post those allegations to promote the lies of George Jr just as you posted only George Jr progaganda about those aluminum tubes. Those allgetons remain as credible as Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. Is that were you got those allegations? Allegations posted to support and defend a lying president. I am not reading them in responsible news sources. Using sex to defame the president's critics? When do you use same to defame the Jersey girls? This is the stuff I would expect from sleazy politicians. Are they your news sources? Is that why you could not concede those outright lies about aluminum tubes? You are a supporter of George Jr. Can you even answer those hard questions? When are we going after bin Laden? No, instead we have unproven allegations of Scott Ridder's sex life. Its called relevance and credibility.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Scott Ritter's buddy got paid a lot of bribes in the food for oil program, and Ritter did completely fail to explain why he solicited sex from a 16-year-old in a Burger King. These facts are not irrelevant to trying to figure out what's really going on.

More news from Fox and Rush Limbaugh? Only allegations, unproven, that have no relevance to the president's lies. When do we go after bin Laden? A relevant question, without sex allegations, that George Jr supporters avoid.

[Undertoad]

"Incompetent" is not spelled with an "a". (I only go after spelling when it's ironic.)

Ritter's woes don't prove anything except that he is, at best, an unreliable witness not to be trusted, regardless of whether he is right or wrong. I wasn't the one who put him in that position... he did that to himself.

Lastly I have not been a W supporter for some time now and regularly point this out to you. Your repeated insistent ignorance on this matter is really annoying at this point. Do you not have anything more substantial?

[Undertoad]

Had to go back to my own post of early last year to remember the details. Funny how you people accused me of getting the details from Fox back then, too. A year and a half and it's the same old shit and only getting older. Newsnight is a CNN program:

Originally Posted by me

I don't take Hannity's word for anything. I watched Ritter commit media suicide on Aaron Brown/Newsnight. It was pathetic and sad. He had every opportunity to give an explanation. He whiffed badly and he knew exactly what he was doing.

There was an agreement to seal the records. The arrest happened well before Ritter's current interests in upsetting the apple cart. The leak of the arrest is what is convenient, not the actual arrest. Ritter's response was that it shouldn't have been leaked. He refused to explain anything further than that.

Mr. Brown patiently explained that Ritter had no legal reason to stay quiet about the events and that if he didn't give an explanation he would become a non-entity. Mr. Ritter stuck to his approach, and that was that. His credibility is near zero.

[Undertoad]

Had to go back to my own post of early this year to remember the details...

Originally Posted by me again

Following up the original post, it turns out that one of Saddam's benefactors was a guy named Shakir Alkhalaji, who financed an anti-war film produced by former WMD inspector and anti-war activist Scott Ritter.

http://windsofchange.net/archives/004539.html

Ritter if you recall is the one former WMD inspector who claimed that Saddam did not have any WMDs and that the US would lose the war and that it wasn't really that big of a deal that there was a children's prison in Baghdad.

One out of three ain't bad, but now we know for sure that his film was paid for out of Saddam's Oil-for-Food program.

If nothing else, I hope that the oil contract money list puts Madeline Albright's old comments about the sanctions in a fine perspective. Her comments were that the sanctions led to the death of 500,000 Iraqi children and many leftists have taken that claim to mean that the US is indirectly responsible (as many leftists seek to believe that the US is indirectly responsible for everything bad that happens in the world).

Well no. Against the will of the UN, and right out from under their noses, some of the oil-for-food program for those kids went to financing pro-Saddam films made in America. And a ton more of it went to international blackmail to keep the regime in power.

Do any leftists, or tw, now want to hold the UN or Scott Ritter, or at least Hussein himself, responsible for at least some those deaths?

[Undertoad]

What these add up to is: it doesn't really matter that Ritter was right, even if he was right on the basis of fact; his status as a Hussein bribee and non-denyment of internet sex predatordom makes him extremely suspect. No intellgent, unemotional evaluator of facts would take him seriously.

[Undertoad]

Mari, the story counts insurgents as civilians. Nothing to see here, it's media bias.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Mari, the story counts insurgents as civilians. Nothing to see here, it's media bias.

If there are that many insurgents, then things are even worse than the news has reported. But then, these are the same statements made in Vietnam times. It was called body counts. If they were dead, then they must be VC. Certainly the press lies when they said "We had to burn the village to save it" and "We have met the enemy and he is us". Thirty some years later, with so many not then alive to watch the news, then another president can use the same lies all over again.

Either the number of insurgents has increased sharply, or the number of civilians killed is increasing. Which is it?

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Mari, the story counts insurgents as civilians. Nothing to see here, it's media bias.

The Pentagon says it has no plans to assess the number of Iraqi civilians killed http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...nguage=printer. Well, that leaves a rather large vacumn just dying to be filled, now, doesn't it?

"Nowadays civilian casualties, and even specific incidents, can have a strategic effect on a conflict out of all proportion to their size, especially in an age of instant video transmission around the world," says military analyst Marcus Corbin of the Center for Defense Information in Washington. "If the Defense Department doesn't have its own estimates, even if [only] a broad range, it cedes the territory to opponents who may use wildly inflated estimates, which may unfortunately be readily believed by gullible foreign populations." http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0331/p15s01-wogi.html

These "opponents" include such wild eyed splinter groups as these:
Human rights watch http://www.hrw.org/press/2003/10/iraq102103.htm
Amnesty International http://electroniciraq.net/cgi-bin/ar...iew.cgi/10/597
The Vatican http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=32380
Christian Science Monitor http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0522/p01s02-woiq.html
And of course entities like these:
http://www.iraqbodycount.net/
http://civilians.info/iraq/

Gee, nobody like us. I wonder why? OK, let's say that the entire rest of the world is filled with an unreasoning hatred of the US, and the damn left wing media inflates civilian casualities all out of proportion. Here's my question to you: Since the Pentagon itself does not deign to estimate civilian casualities, upon what basis do you make your assumption that the majority of those killed were actively fighting for the other side? There are no grounds for you to assume that the civilians were actually enemy fighters. We have nothing to go by except reports from the Iraqi interim government, the Red Cross, and other international agencies like Amnesty International. Most telling of all, why on earth would the VATICAN express concern? These are not good church going Catholics we're talking about being killed here, but Muslim infidels. Why would the Pope wish to risk antagonizing American Catholics (who give a nice chunk of money to the Church) for the sake of a groundless expression of concern? The boys at the Vatican aren't stupid (remember the Jesuits?). They are not going to be influenced by every flimsy rumor that comes along. On what do you base your comment of media bias other than possibly some belief that we're the good guys and a few anecdotal stories about a nice old man with a bomb?

[Undertoad]

You can pretend to care about the Iraqi civilians, but you don't really, right? You really only care about winning a political point.

After all, Hussein was better at killing them than we are, half a million died under sanctions, and if the country falls into a state of anarchy there is the possibility that millions more will die.

We have seen watched videos of them having their tongues cut out, arms cut off, having their hands tied and being shoved off the roof of a multi-story building to teach the populace a lesson. And those were the ones who didn't wind up in plastic shredders or mass graves. What do you say to such things? You ever point them out?

Because Amnesty International didn't, even though it was their job; they made excuses for the regime to curry favor with their donors.

You don't want to solve their situation; you would have many more of them die. You just want the right to brainlessly complain about it.

Also, the Vatican is regularly extremely moronic on many matters of foreign affairs. They should shut the fuck up and manage their own house.

Originally Posted by Undertoad

You can pretend to care about the Iraqi civilians, but you don't really, right? You really only care about winning a political point.

I have repeatedly mentioned on this board my concern for the atrocities which go on everywhere in this world - Sri Lanka and its horrible civil war, Rwanda,etc. Your statement that I am using civilian deaths for the purpose of some political agenda is equivalent to saying that we used Jewish deaths in Nazi Germany to have an excuse for the Nuremburg trials. Yes, civilian deaths in Iraq are part of the reason I'm against Bush, I admit it. Certainly, conditions under Saddam were very bad. Does that mean we have the right to go in and kill even more people? Where's the logic in that?

Originally Posted by Undertoad

After all, Hussein was better at killing them than we are, half a million died under sanctions...

Er..., wasn't it the US who imposed those sanctions?

Originally Posted by Undertoad

i]Because Amnesty International didn't, even though it was their job; they made excuses for the regime to curry favor with their donors.[/i]

Could you please give me a cite for this statement? Why would Amnesty International want to make Saddam look good for their donors? What donors? Amnesty is not some outfit that just whines about the US. It works for the humane treatment of prisoners throughout the world.

Originally Posted by Undertoad

You don't want to solve their situation; you would have many more of them die. You just want the right to brainlessly complain about it.

Right. God forbid that anyone might point out that all is not well in Iraq under the American occupation of it. How brainless of me.

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Also, the Vatican is regularly extremely moronic on many matters of foreign affairs. They should shut the fuck up and manage their own house.

Why do you call everyone who disagrees with your assesments brainless or moronic? So far all you have done is give opinions with no hard facts to back them up. The Vatican is a Christian organization, remember? You know, "love one another," "peace on earth," caritas and all that good stuff? Acting in this capacity, the Vatican IS minding its own business when it expresses concern over civilian casualties in Iraq. Too bad George Jr. doesn't read his Bible beyond the old testament. He might get the idea if he did.

[Undertoad]

Originally Posted by marichiko

Er..., wasn't it the US who imposed those sanctions?

No... the UN.

Why would Amnesty International want to make Saddam look good for their donors?

So their words wouldn't be used to go to war over it. This would make them a tool of the right which would be unacceptable.

What donors? Amnesty is not some outfit that just whines about the US. It works for the humane treatment of prisoners throughout the world.

Sometimes. At other times it's boldly political: Iraq war cover for human rights abuses

Why do you call everyone who disagrees with your assesments brainless or moronic? So far all you have done is give opinions with no hard facts to back them up.

I write a lot here and I rarely call anyone brainless or moronic without evidence at hand.