quote:

Originally posted by hardcore trancer do you sit around like a loser all day to see who posts on TRANCEADDICT?? get a life man you are like 36 yrs old.

HES 36????

ahaahahahaha holy fuck.. I truly thought he was in his early 20's after seeing how immature his posts were.

At least Opus resounds his maturity.. Laz is just a sad case

___________________
"This place isn't big enough for me to blow it up."
-MARCO V

quote:

Originally posted by DevilDogUSMC Muslims turning on each other killing muslims. You should direct your bitching and crying to them to stop killing each other. Oh and the other muslims like Iran and terrorists formenting the violence...

I have and continue to do so. However, let's also keep in mind on who helped create the current state of affairs as they are now. How easily you have forgotten who destroyed the country in efforts to rebuild the infrastructure with too few a manpower in the process. Or have you forgotten that small point already.

quote:

"failure to give the armor" Didn't you whine about republican spending? With the dems cutting and cutting defense spending leading up to the war of course the entire military wouldn't have fully armoured and upgraded hummers and such.

Please. Do you need a fucking history lesson in the process? Trying to mix the two separate points up in the process? Here's a trip down memory lane for you - who was it that proposed cutting, actually gutting the fuck out of military spending back in the late 80's? I'll give you a hint - it was a Congressmen who's now the VP.

Who was it that closed down more military bases and cut military spending with a much greater proportion:

a) George Bush Sr.
b) Bill Clinton

(hint: it's not "b")

Try and do us all a favor and get your facts straight before you begin to create an argument first. You may be a bit new here, but this has been argued before by me and others. All you have to do is a bit of searching and you'll find the threads. And let's also keep something in mind here champ, who the hell controlled Congress during those Clinton years?:

http://www.okimc.org/newswire.php?s..._comments=false

Blame all you want on Clinton, but the cutting in defense was started in Reagan's second term, endorsed by the likes of Cheney, and continued through until 9/11.

And yes, I will continue to complain about the ridiculous budget policies of this Administration - cutting taxes WHILE increasing spending and borrowing with no end in sight DURING A FUCKING WAR is unheard of historically and completely insane. Bush Jr's. discretionary spending alone should have him bitchslapped.

Fuck, he even spent more than Carter. Here's an article from the libertarian Cato institute back in '03, and things have only gotten worse since then:

http://www.cato.org/dailys/07-31-03.html

quote:

Plus stuff like that takes time like the new vehicles to counter IEDs.

Irrelevant. Granted it takes time, but that does not in any way excuse this:

quote:

– The Pentagon gave a contract for thousands of the ceramic plate inserts that make combat vests bulletproof to a former Army researcher who had never mass-produced anything. “He struggled for a year, then gave up entirely.” – In shipping plates from other companies, the Army’s equipment manager “effectively reduced the armor’s priority to the status of socks….Some 10,000 plates were lost along the way, and the rest arrived late.” – Going into the war, the Pentagon decided against asking Detroit automakers like General Motors to start making armored Humvees because they would need too much time to set up new assembly lines. But the Pentagon originally under-ordered from its sole contractor, O’Gara-Hess & Eisenhardt, and the company is not expected to reach the Army’s current 550 per month demand for the vehicles until this spring. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/07/i...print&position=

Merely handwaving away something like this is not excusable or dismissed with the asinine rationale of "takes time". It's flagrant. And it's the epitomy of Rummy's post-war planning, or sincere lack thereof. Can you at least try to counter these posts with a stronger argument than that?

quote:

You can complain and complaing about lack of 'planning' for years but point is no one expected the Iraqis to turn on each other and not be more tolerant of each other's faith and be more responsible.

Bullshit. Pure and utter complete bullshit. How many Limbaugh talking points do you have down?

Here's a few of those predictions made "back in the day":

quote:

“The longer a U.S. occupation of Iraq continues, the more danger exists that elements of the Iraqi population will become impatient and take violent measures to hasten the departure of U.S. forces. … The impact of suicide bombing attacks in Israel goes beyond their numbers, and this fact will also capture the imagination of would-be Iraqi terrorists.” [Army War College, Feb. 2003] http://www.globalsecurity.org/milit...ing.pdf#page=40 “But if we’re going to invade, we need to prepare for a worst-case scenario involving street-to-street fighting, with farmers like Mr. Khal taking potshots at our troops. Is America really prepared for hundreds of casualties, even thousands, in an invasion and subsequent occupation that could last many years?” [Nicholas Kristof, New York Times, Sept. 2002] http://mediamatters.org/items/200509280002 “We must be prepared to occupy the country and stay there for a very long time at very great expense in treasure but also in risk to lives. There can be no question that the military cost of this option will be enormous.” [Morton Halperin, Senior Fellow on the Council on Foreign Relations, July 2002] http://www.iraqwatch.org/government...02.htm#HALPERIN

Back in 2004, USA Today wrote this:

quote:

"[m]ilitary and civilian intelligence agencies repeatedly warned prior to the invasion that Iraqi insurgent forces were preparing to fight and that their ranks would grow as other Iraqis came to resent the U.S. occupation and organize guerrilla attacks." http://www.usatoday.com/news/washin...nce-intel_x.htm

Here's an interesting tidbit as well by Conrad C. Crane and W. Andrew Terrill from the Army War College:

quote:

The longer a U.S. occupation of Iraq continues, the more danger exists that elements of the Iraqi population will become impatient and take violent measures to hasten the departure of U.S. forces. At the same time, a premature withdrawal from Iraq could lead to instability and perhaps even civil war. By ousting the Saddam Hussein regime, the United States will have placed itself in the position where it will be held responsible by the world should anarchy and civil war develop in a post-Saddam era. Having entered into Iraq, the United States will find itself unable to leave rapidly, despite the many pressures to do so. http://www.globalsecurity.org/milit...ing.pdf#page=40

They also warned:

quote:

"The impact of suicide bombing attacks in Israel goes beyond their numbers, and this fact will also capture the imagination of would-be Iraqi terrorists." http://www.globalsecurity.org/milit...ing.pdf#page=44

Also the CIA's National Intelligence Council in an August 14, 2003 article:

quote:

The intelligence community's doubts were fully aired to top Bush administration officials in the months before the war in multiple classified reports. The National Intelligence Council, which represents the consensus view of American spy agencies, reported to top policy makers at the start of the year [2003] that "what the administration was saying was a rosy picture," said a senior intelligence official who read the report and asked not to be named. "The report's conclusions were totally opposite." http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0814-06.htm

That's from a Boston Globe article, BTW.

In May, 2002, the CIA began a series of war game exercises to assess the best and worst-case scenarios after Saddam being overthrown. These exercises assessed the civil disorder after the fall of Baghdad and led the CIA to this:

quote:

The CIA also considered whether a new Iraqi government could be put together through a process like the Bonn conference, which was then being used to devise a post-Taliban regime for Afghanistan. At the Bonn conference representatives of rival political and ethic groups agreed on the terms that established Hamid Karzai as the new Afghan President. The CIA believed that rivalries in Iraq were so deep, and the political culture so shallow, that a similarly quick transfer of sovereignty would only invite chaos. http://www.epic-usa.org/Default.aspx?tabid=185

That was a $5 million project that produced 13 volumes of reports on this issue. A NYTimes article mirrored their analysis:

quote:

Their findings included a much more dire assessment of Iraq's dilapidated electrical and water systems than many Pentagon officials assumed. They warned of a society so brutalized by Saddam Hussein's rule that many Iraqis might react coolly to Americans' notion of quickly rebuilding civil society. [...] The working group studying transitional justice was eerily prescient in forecasting the widespread looting in the aftermath of the fall of Mr. Hussein's government, caused in part by thousands of criminals set free from prison, and it recommended force to prevent the chaos. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/19/i...artner=USERLAND

These same analysis was what prevented Bush Sr. from invading in Gulf War I. James Baker stated as such back in 1999:

quote:

"Removing him [Hussein] from power might well have plunged Iraq into civil war, sucking U.S. forces in to preserve order," ....."Had we elected to march on Baghdad, our forces might still be there."

Interesting insight, ain't it?

And let's also keep in mind who said this:

quote:

I would guess if we had gone in there, I would still have forces in Baghdad today. We’d be running the country. We would not have been able to get everybody out and bring everybody home. And the final point that I think needs to be made is this question of casualties. I don’t think you could have done all of that without significant additional U.S. casualties, and while everybody was tremendously impressed with the low cost of the (1991) conflict, for the 146 Americans who were killed in action and for their families, it wasn’t a cheap war. And the question in my mind is, how many additional American casualties is Saddam (Hussein) worth? And the answer is, not that damned many. So, I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the President made the decision that we’d achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq.

Guess who said that, champ? Tricky Dick Cheney after the first Gulf War. Funny how easily folks like him and yourself forget things like this.

There were criticisms, but you dipshits didn't listen. Instead, you had to pass muster with how you'll fucking vote instead:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...1600193_pf.html

You didn't listen:

quote:

A half-dozen intelligence reports also warned that American troops could face significant postwar resistance. This foot-high stack of material was distributed at White House meetings of Bush's top foreign policy advisers, but there's no evidence that anyone ever acted on it. "It was disseminated. And ignored," said a former senior intelligence official. http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/9927782.htm

So spare us your GOP talking points about how this never could have been predicted. You bull-headed dipshits just refused to listen to the intelligence analysis given.

quote:

That whining is 'monday quarterbacking', "we shoulda did this, we shoulda did that", we went with what we had and still overran the enemy.

From what I just gave you above, apparently it was a bit more than what you imagined.

quote:

Of course guerilla tactics hurt abit but wtf do you expect, us to drive around in tanks everywhere all the time?

Actually I expected Bush to keep his attention on al Qaeda and bin Laden rather than divert his attention elsewhere and give that job to the corrupt warlords, but I guess it's just wishful thinking anyway.

quote:

It's improving out there

Really? Wow, so "we're making progress", and it's business as usual? Hmmm, I guess I shouldn't listen to all those intelligence and analysis reports that clearly state otherwise:

quote:

“The Long Shot to Overcome Ethnic and Sectarian Politics” (most optimistic scenario): “This is an Iraq that slowly, in fits and starts, trudges down the difficult road of creating a functioning state.” “Lebanonization” (militias wage a civil war in the capital): “Unable to maintain control, the United States is itself a target when it becomes involved. … U.S. troops largely retreat behind fortifications, distant from population centers, and head north to Kurdistan.” “Descent Into Hell” (worst-case scenario): Most of Iraq’s neighbors are drawn into open regional warfare, and it ends with Iran conducting strikes against Saudi Arabia’s oil industry http://www.usip.org/pubs/specialreports/sr174.pdf

That's a nonpartisan government agency, btw.

I guess "we're making progress" is also the reason why Bush is likely going to advance sending more troops as a last resort to help stabilize the region.

I also guess that we're making so much progress that Bush refuses to even state as such anymore.

Really, can you talk any further out of your ass for all to hear?

quote:

stop the crying and second guessing, saying the same line for years, it's old man.

Hey, I hear ya - who wants to hear the grim news of how bad this Administration fucked up so horribly! It's so unpatriotic, so unAmerican, ain't it?

quote:

Of course everything couldn't have been perfect, quit nitpicking like a girl...

Hey, I'm with ya! It's so girlish to live in the reality-based community, ain't it?

What's with you military boys calling out dissenters with feministic qualities? You and Q both have a propensity for that. Is there some sort of hidden feelings and projectionism going on here? I know there's quite a "don't ask don't tell" thing in the military and all, but you really don't have to hide your feelings to us if you choose not to. I really don't care what you are attracted to personally. As a librul, I fight and stand for your sexual preferences with consenting adults, so I'm always on your side, champ.

___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...

Opus, you just destroyed that guy LOL

thanks for your informative post

___________________
"This place isn't big enough for me to blow it up."
-MARCO V

quote:

Originally posted by Shakka +1 And if there weren't a single coalition casualty in this whole multi-year operation, people like Opus would still call it a collossal failure.

Excuse me, Rummy-lover, but it doesn't take a fucking genius to see how swell things are going right now. Perhaps that's why Bush will likely send in more troops - for a big celebration party being thrown in Baghdad.

Jesus, come back to earth just this once.

___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...

quote:

Originally posted by Q5echo i wonder what Erdega thinks about Ethiopia pre-emptively invading and striking the Islamo-fascists in Somalia. Bravo for Ethiopia BTW. prolly nuthin...cause they're African and not white...and thats prolly just one of the many double standards he deals with on a daily basis...and prolly b/c Erdega knows he's about as intellectualy outgunned here as Rosie O'donnell at a MENSA seminar.

Hmmm, must be the same reason why the U.S. has led the charge in fighting all the genocide in Darfur and elsewhere in Africa, for humanitarian purposes in the same manner as invading Iraq, of course.

Then again, let's keep in mind whose policy helped secretly fund and arm those Somali warlords:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...1601625_pf.html

However, short-term military victories do not necessarily equate with long-term democracy and stability:

quote:

"The feelings are very bad, very confusing -- everywhere, it's confusing," said a businessman in Mogadishu who did not want to be identified. "I didn't expect this scale of war, but most Somalis, even if they were fighting each other before on a clan basis, they are united now against Ethiopia. And there's a feeling that the international community is not helping." ... Analysts believe that Ethiopia's offensive is intended to force the movement back into negotiations by changing the situation on the ground. But some analysts have expressed fear that ... even if its superior military initially routs the Islamic movement, the ideologically driven militias will become only more motivated to pursue a guerrilla-style war or terrorist attacks across the region. ... "Hasn't anyone heard of Iraq?" said John Prendergast, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group in Washington. "A military strategy of 'countering terrorism' never works and will likely blow up in their faces." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...2500154_pf.html

It's also interesting to note that by us backing Ethiopia, we are backing an "increasingly authoritarian leader":

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...2500154_pf.html

who's tried to crush political opposition:

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/01/12/ethiop12417.htm
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/01/18/ethiop12308.htm

Oh well. The continually interesting web Bush weaves supporting dictators on the one hand while killing some in the other.

___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...

You have way too much time on your hands opus...
So you agree it takes time to have vehicles

ready for IEDs, so we should have waited years
before launching the invasion till we were perfectly
ready for it? And we'd still have casualities and
you'd still be whining about why they each don't
have a personal tank... So we wwent with what we
had. Throwing money at the problem and commitees
in congress squabling would have taken way too long
to appease you.

___________________

Electric Zoo 2010! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVE-RutexSE

Man devildog, you really are showing your utter lack of understanding of some of the basics military strategy and theory.

You spout on about the TMTW doctrine like the country was ever, post vietnam draft years, ever able to put forth enough numbers to fullfill the basic tenets of said doctrine. A doctrine which Bush used as a campaign tool in 2000 saying we needed more troops. He then got into office and began putting into place a modified version of Gen Shinseki's "transformation" plan to make the military more flexible to smaller scale, flare-up style events which the TMTW doctrine is sorely inadequate in fighting (hello 10th Mountain Division being labelled "unprepared" because they carried out the majority of land operations in recent years and were overworked while several armor divisions were sitting on their laurels maintaining their M1-A2s stateside). I might add that Al Gore was a supporter of transformation and discounted the validity of TMTW.

The saddest thing about your comment about it being "one general" who said we needed more troop strength to secure Iraq is not that it was only one person. It is that the person you are obviously thinking of is the VERY person who spearheaded the transformation doctrine of a "lighter, faster, more flexible" military, Gen. Eric Shinseki. This is while the person who thought up the whole blitkrieg sans-occupation plan that the administration used was not even a general and had been pretty much ignored inside of the pentagon as being out of touch with reality for a long time. Shinseki made the political "mistake" of saying publicly to congress that which the vast majority of senior brass felt, and it effectively cost him his career.

The bottome line about the Iraq "strategy" was that the neo-conservative hawks spit in the face of the only member of the administration at the time who had any real military experience, Colin Powell, basically saying "yeah we know the Powell doctrine was all en vogue 10 years ago, but we really think your 30 years of military experience, including the time you spent on the ground in Vietnam disqualifies you from having a valid opinion. Go be a good team player and lie to the world to bolster our case. Thanks."

You spout on and on about these matters like you have some huge insight into them because you are "a marine" and have an avatar of a guy (possibly you) in class A's. Some people obviously think that gives you credibility.


MrS

___________________
Click the sig to see MrSquirrel

-"Reality" is the only word in the language that should always be used in quotes.

quote:

Originally posted by DevilDogUSMC so we should have waited years before launching the invasion till we were perfectly ready for it?

Makes sense from even basic a numbers point of view, if you take half of what you need to do a job like painting a house which might take 4 people 2 days and instead take 2 people it takes 4 days.

Keeping the train of thought that blundering in half prepared does make you a perfect candidate for management material one day though

quote:

Originally posted by DevilDogUSMC You have way too much time on your hands opus... So you agree it takes time to have vehicles

I agree it takes time to assess the problem, but what follows in what I posted is inexcusable. Here it is again:

quote:

– The Pentagon gave a contract for thousands of the ceramic plate inserts that make combat vests bulletproof to a former Army researcher who had never mass-produced anything. “He struggled for a year, then gave up entirely.” – In shipping plates from other companies, the Army’s equipment manager “effectively reduced the armor’s priority to the status of socks….Some 10,000 plates were lost along the way, and the rest arrived late.” – Going into the war, the Pentagon decided against asking Detroit automakers like General Motors to start making armored Humvees because they would need too much time to set up new assembly lines. But the Pentagon originally under-ordered from its sole contractor, O’Gara-Hess & Eisenhardt, and the company is not expected to reach the Army’s current 550 per month demand for the vehicles until this spring. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/07/i...print&position=

Now take your hands away from your eyes and read that again - do any of those points demonstrate a difficulty with timeline of assessment?

quote:

ready for IEDs, so we should have waited years before launching the invasion till we were perfectly ready for it?

Who said having a post-war plan would have taken years?

Who said invading at all was a worthwhile and attainable act?

quote:

And we'd still have casualities and you'd still be whining about why they each don't have a personal tank... So we wwent with what we had.

Really, dipshit, can you cease with the "whining" bullshit anytime soon? My complaints have not been refuted by you as of yet, so do yourself a favor, get off your lazy fucking ass and try and address the criticisms with supporting evidence rather than sidestepping the issues and calling any dissenters as "whiners". Fucking sophmoric as hell.

quote:

Throwing money at the problem and commitees in congress squabling would have taken way too long to appease you.

Ahh, but throwing $ in the order of tens of billions to cronyism is just fine and fucking dandy with you?:

http://home.ourfuture.org/reports/r...-profiteers.pdf

Speaking of body armour, read that link above - it has nice juicy tidbits for ignorant fools such as yourself like this:

quote:

Roughly twenty U.S. companies can make the required vests, but David Brooks, CEO of Point Blank Body Armor, successfully lobbied for a contract to produce all the body armor –even though Point Blank alone could not possibly manufacture enough to satisfy the full demand in time. The Brooks bottleneck created a shortage that kept soldiers and marines out of modern armor for months, at a literal cost of lives and limbs. • After securing the exclusive contract, Brooks’ personal compensation rocketed from $525,000 in 2001 to more than $70 million in 2004.17 To celebrate, he spent $10 million on a party in New York City’s Rainbow Room, featuring music by Aerosmith rockers and Brooks himself reportedly cavorting in a hot pink, metal-studded suede pantsuit.18 • The price of Brook’s additional salary could have manufactured 63,000 new interceptor vests – enough to fill the entire shortfall.19 • Not until eight months after combat operations were declared over, did all military in Iraq have appropriate body armor.

Now if this is too difficult a reading level for you, let us know and I'll try and break it down in laymen's terms if you like.

___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...