Redstate

Makes it seem clear that he would shut them all down. As you well know, it makes perfect sense to pull out guns in a primary knife fight. But once elected, ensure your enemy has a Tomahawk to counter your gun.

Erik

that can be linked to terror would undoubtedly be to McCain's benefit. If anything, the lack of any attacks has lulled Americans on the severity of the threat. McCain is a victim of Bush's success. I think Obama and the boys are hoping mightily there is no attack, because for America on National Security, Obama is the guy she dates, McCain is the one she marries.

Bill Dupray at The Patriot Room

If there are no attacks...then it validates our current policy.

If there *is* an attack...then it validates our current policy.

This is sort of like the old witch trials: If you drown you are innocent, but if you float, you are then hanged for witchcraft.

Our policy should be based around meeting real-world milestones and as those goals are met (or not) our policy should change. This may mean that many people, including myself, will be forced by the reality of facts-on-the-ground to admit that they were wrong.

We should communicate these milestones. That way our citizens will know that the war is not going to last forever, and the enemy knows what they must do to stop us from killing them.

"Our policy should be based around meeting real-world milestones and as those goals are met (or not) our policy should change."

Isn't our main "real-world milestone" not having any terrorist attacks at home? So we are meeting that one.

If an attack happens, then we try even harder by looking in the rat-holes we already checked once. If there is an attack, it will not be one in a long series of failures here at home. If it were, voters might be inclined to let your guys have a go at it. But since it will be one isolated incident that slipped through an otherwise impermeable shield (to date), the candidate that will keep up the policies, wire-tapping foreign callers, staying on offense, etc. that has kept us safe (that would be McCain) will be strengthened, and the rookie will be weakened. After all Obama is not exactly the poster boy for strong national security.

But I think you knew all that and were just pretending to be foolish.

Bill Dupray at The Patriot Room

there is an another 9/11 or worse who gets the credit/blame then according to the MSM?

Is what they signed up for. The uniform serves primarily as a target.

"Always be honest with yourself. Even if you are honest with no one else."
--me

Gerry, MSgt, USAF (Ret.)

Let's boil it down to the most basic level -- in order to save a relatively small number of American civilians, we are willing put a whole lot of Iraqi civilians in harms way.

How many Iraqi civilians is each American civilian worth?

It's a disgusting question on the face of it, and when the answer turns out to be "as many as necessary" or "all of them", I really have to wonder what the heck has gone wrong with our values.

The Iraq War has been a disaster for the Iraqis -- they've gone from a secular despot to a low level civil war among radical Islamic parties, the rights of women have been trampled, honor killings (woman gets raped, or woman talks to wrong man, she has offended the family honor and must be killed) are conservatively estimated at 300-400 a year, al Quaeda is blowing people up, the infrastructure has collapsed and infant mortality is skyrocketing. We destroyed the secular government by getting rid of all the Bath party members in that government, and pretty much left the moderate Iraqis to the wolves. Lancet says 650,000 Iraqi civilians are dead, the Iraqi health ministry puts it at 400,000, let's assume they're both inflating the numbers and it's really 250,000 -- how many American civilians have been saved by these 250,000 deaths?

And I don't think it's turned out all that well for America either -- we have deposed a rather nasty and brutal secular despot who was well contained, and opened the door for another fanatical Islamic regime that will be a greater threat to us.

Fanatical Islam (is there any other kind in that region?) and Democracy do not go together. It doesn't take a genius to figure that out ahead of time.

Iraq was a mistake -- besides being poorly conceived, it could have waited. We had the troops to win the war, but we didn't have the troops to do the nation building after the war, because they were all bogged down in nation building in Afghanistan.

And then there's the whole question of intentionally using our troops as bait. If we were going to get into moral calculations of the relative worth of people, I'd put our troops (who have volunteered to serve our country and possibly die for it) far above our civilians (who have volunteered to sit on our asses and blog about it), maybe 10:1. We're not using them effectively.

"If we were going to get into moral calculations of the relative worth of people, I'd put our troops (who have volunteered to serve our country and possibly die for it) far above our civilians (who have volunteered to sit on our asses and blog about it), maybe 10:1."

You have no right to even discuss that calculation.

How many people make up a "relatively small" number? Where do you get the number from?

Yes, we've gotten rid of an evil dictator who murders his people. Now we have a war for freedom. Good point.

Were the rights of women not trampled under Saddam? Was there even a conception of right under Saddam? Please link to his human rights declaration. Yes, Al Qaeda is blowing civilians up. That's why we're killing them.

Yes, infrastructure tends to take a hit during war. Also, people tend to die during war.

Where exactly did you get your info regarding infant mortality rates? From Saddam?

Links to your numbers? Even a website called antiwar.com says "There is no agency that keeps track of accurate numbers of Iraqis killed." Then they link to iraqbodycount.org which has the number at 84k-91k. So even your liberal buddies think you're ignorant.

--------------------

Small is beautiful.

when you say is there any other kind of Islam than the radical type? Yes, yes there is.

Morocco, Indonesia, and Turkey are Islamic states which are not in any way radical. Millions upon Millions of muslims live as a minority in democratic India with no more violent incidents than can be expected in a diverse nation of nearly a billion people.

"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle

Attacks during Reagan's term: Reagan's fault
Attacks during Clinton's term: isolated instances or Bush I's fault
9/11: Bush's fault for failing to connect the dots

Bill Dupray at The Patriot Room