Cindy Sheehan quits Anti-War movement

Your right about Hussein's refusal to disarm. However, with the events of 9/11, our most pressing focus should've been rooting out and killing the terrorist who attacked us in Afghanistan, not a preemptive war with Iraq for UN sanctions he'd been violating for years.

As for Al Qaeda getting into bed with Saddam, who knows, maybe we could've captured/killed enough of their leadership to where that couldn't happen had we devoted enough resources to the cause from the beginning.

I will say that hindsight is 20/20 and there's really no point in debating cudda, shudda, wudda anymore. The fact is we created this mess in Iraq and as much as I'd like for there to be a way to pull out, the fact remains if we do so prematurely, Iran will more than likely assume control there and then we'll have what amounts to a fundamentalist Islamic superpower.

 

On that, we can 100% agree. I think the Dems are finally seeing that as well.

You say tomato, I say tomahto.

 

My 2 cents,
Surprised that I agree with Cindy Sheehan and a few people that we are more interested in American Idol than the casualties overseas.
Some thoughts come to mind as why this could be.

A lot of us are frustrated because we've been to easy on the Iraqis, Iran and Syria in Iraq for one thing.
The strategy also hasn't been very good down the road.
There is nothing else we can do but vote because neither side seems to be listening.

A great deal of the left is also more worried and interested in global warming and being a citizen of the world than being American, winning the war in Iraq.
They don't think we should win because entering Iraq wasn't justified so therefore we should lose or draw like Vietnam.
I think the left prefers negotiating with anyone and sending love packages or money to the poor and around the war, they would rather not fund the military if they could get away with it.

Part of the problem being that many Americans like myself can live a normal life during a war, first time ever with the exception of the Gulf War?

 

My final and most important point.
You have Iran denying the holocaust and sounding war drums of destroying a country and exterminating a race and no ones paying attention.
Sound familar?

The Dems have met with the enemy of Syria and would in Iran if they could because they believe they can negotiate with them.
I think they also believe they can negotiate with terrorists also.

Ok, now the Iraq commission and their supporters back the idea of meeting with Iran, see the above, once again they think they can reason with a country that wants to exterminate other people.
The question is are they willing to give up the extermination of a race for peace?
I think its quite possible.

 

This is just wrong headed. Those of us who oppose the war don't hope we lose or draw, we look at the situation, and if the objective is to establish a stable democracy in Iraq, we think the likelihood of success is low. Thats just a realistic assessment, not a wish.

The Sunni, Shia and Kurds don't like each other. The minority Sunni's gassed the Kurds, and annihilated whole villages of Shia if they caught wind of a plot against Saddam. There is a 1,400 year old religious schism between the Sunni and Shia. This is not a prescription for a stable state.

These hatreds are fanned by neighbors who would be threatened by a successful democracy, and by Al Qaeda who enjoys attacking us.

This is simply not a situation stacked in our favor. We knew it in 1991 and wisely stayed out of it, and we knew it going in this time, I posted that link in the last couple of days.

Today I posted a link where the adviser to the commander in Iraq says the odds are a long shot of the surge succeeding.

There is no coherent plan, nor has there been one, that leads directly to the goal we seek, a stable democracy in Iraq. So, how long are we supposed to give the lives of 100 great Americans a month, and 300 a month injured so bad they can't return to combat duty, absent a plan to realistically achieve the goal we seek?

I'd love to see a plan for a successful democracy in Iraq, they deserve it after all they've suffered. But I don't see the plan, nor the ingredients.

This is all at the feet of Bush and the neocons, the New American Century crew, extend American values through asserting the military. Yea, right into a quagmire, the fools. Quagmire is the word Cheney used in 91, explaining why we were staying out.

 

I don't agree with you whole post, but I do agree with you on this point. I was watching Combat Diary on the Military Channel and it profiled some soldiers who had some of the company killed by an IED. They chased the insurgents into a mosque, but weren't allowed to enter it or call in airstrikes because of fear for offending 'non-terrorist Muslims' (whatever that is).

Eventually, they were ordered to back off and the insurgents ended up escaping. Talk about a kick in the balls to a soldier's morale. How the f**k are we supposed to win a war with this kind of restrictions placed on our guys?

 

One of the biggest mistakes of the war was not allowing the Marines to continue taking Fallujah in April of '04. We pretty much had the entire city under our control and the politicians came in and forced us to pull out. We wouldn't have had to go back in in November. Who knows what could've happened. I know all of this is coulda woulda shoulda, but thats okay when you're doing a battlefield study.

 

If you hadn't kept all of this information to yourself and passed it on to all of the dummies in Congress, the White House and the Pentagon, we wouldn't be in Iraq today.