Mods: “Well, that’s progress.”

Libs: “Damn, that sucks.”

Yet Obama will continue to repeat the liberal chakras while the lemmings of the left follow blindly.

cannonball on May 27, 2008 at 2:40 PM

Aren’t Lemmings supposed to jump off a cliff….at some point in their lives? Get on with it you Do-Do birds!!!

Here’s a link to the data, thanks to Mr. Bennett.

Yet Obama will continue to repeat the liberal chakras while the lemmings of the left follow blindly.

Kaptain Amerika on May 27, 2008 at 12:26 PM

if he were actually brilliant, then we’d be done and he wouldn’t be leaving Iraq Command… yes he gets to command it and even more from the new position… but to me all this Command changing is a sign of weakness

That’s faulty logic. Generals change commands all the time in war and it is hardly “weakness” to get promoted to a more responsible job. Given your reasoning, Tommy Franks should still be out there commanding.

Gen. Douglas MacArthur? now there is a General who was one of the Greatest Americans… the country of Japan you see today is a product of his doing…

General MacArthur was a traitor who forgot that he wasn’t the Commander-in-Chief. Great American generals don’t plot political strategy behind the President’s back.

I think people are just in general pissed off.

As for the violence, 15 troops have died in Iraq this month. Two of them were from non combat related causes. Another soldier died in Chicago when he came home on leave and was killed by a hit and run driver.

For the names of lost soldiers and how and when they were killed go to Global security. It has numbers for every month.

Assuming you are willing to “really require the willing suspension of disbelief”…
I agree with you, but 30% of the people don’t.

right2bright on May 27, 2008 at 11:29 AM

R2B,I agree too. Try to put that 30% into prospective. At any given time in this country there are probably 30% who believe there are aliens living among us. 30% who believe in gov’t conspiracys, black helicopters and such. And the freakiest of all….30% who think Pelosi & Reid are the best thing since baked bread! UGH!! My point is, in all likelyhood 30% of our country are idiots! he-he-he

Kaptain Amerika on May 27, 2008 at 12:26 PM

There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity….Gen. MacArthur

Upon the fields of friendly strife are sown the seeds that, upon other fields, on other days, will bear the fruits of victory.Gen. MacArthur

General Petraeus should go down in history as one of our greatest Americans ever. What a brilliant man.

WisCon on May 27, 2008 at 10:27 AM

let’s not get carried away… a good man, doing a good job, with a bad deal of the hand… but Greatest Americans ever?

if he were actually brilliant, then we’d be done and he wouldn’t be leaving Iraq Command… yes he gets to command it and even more from the new position… but to me all this Command changing is a sign of weakness to our enemy. you fight a war, you fight the whole war and all the way through… the Islamic countries are still acting and running their policies as they have for thousands of years… they only respect the strong. they will endeavor to exploit the weak…

Gen. Douglas MacArthur? now there is a General who was one of the Greatest Americans… the country of Japan you see today is a product of his doing… a people that were decimated by their enemy, allowed him to Nation Build a new democracy and they thrived… why could America’s current generals not do the same with such a smaller, weaker nation?

one word… ISLAM

It’s almost impossible to imagine how badly things would have spiraled out of control if the Democrats had succeeded in forcing a U.S. withdrawal a year ago.

General Petraeus should go down in history as one of our greatest Americans ever. What a brilliant man.

WisCon on May 27, 2008 at 10:27 AM

Assuming you are willing to “really require the willing suspension of disbelief”…
I agree with you, but 30% of the people don’t.

Yes McCain was ahead of the curve (or on the fight-don’t-pussy-foot curve) but he was NOT the architect of the surge.
That honor belongs to the men and women in the Pentagon who fought tooth and nail to put the war on a different footing.
Petraeus and the commanders and officers of the 101st, 82d, 4th ID, 3rdACR, 2nd and 1st Marines, and a whole lot of others who put together a strategy and most importantly the TACTICS to turn this thing around.

I applaud McCain for thinking but most of all I applaud him for listening to the troops on the ground and giving them the support they needed to throw away Rumsfield’s fort up and wait for sunrise strategy.

It was the generals folks. Some politicians got on the bandwagon willingly, some had to have their arm twisted, and some just flat out stuck their head in the sand.

Saying McCain is the great visionary of the surge is like saying FDR layed out the order of battle for Normandy.

Imagine the phenomenal progress we could have made in Iraq and throughout the Middle East if the Dems and the MSM had openly supported the Bush Administration policies from the get-go.

fogw on May 27, 2008 at 10:37 AM

I have an even better imagine. Imagine the progress we could have made and how much less costly in American blood and treasure it would have been had the global community stepped up to the plate and/or stuck with the fight when the fighting got tough.

The institutions and most of the democratic alliances set up post WWII have utterly failed to live up to the challenges of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

right2bright on May 27, 2008 at 10:54 AM

Amen

It is too early. He’ll go in June or July (July 4th probably) with a throng of reporters now showing how presidential he is. . . that will take away this argument for McCain. And there’s no way he’ll share the spotlight with McCain on his trip. He’ll use it to say now we can REALLY bring our troops home and bolster his argument.

However,

His vision of counterinsurgency warfare saved Iraq from collapsing into a Somalia with oil when that result appeared inevitable at the end of 2006.

Isn’t this Bush’s call? How about the removal of Rumsfeld to allow Gates’ call? I understand that McCain agreed, but to say that it was McCain’s ‘vision’ seems a little revisionist historian to me. This was Bush and Gates’ vision after having messed up under Rumsfeld for 4 years.

McCain insisted on a “Surge” approach and he got it.

The Political situation in Iraq has improved significantly over the past month. Sadr is a footnote.

a number of those terrorists appear to have hotfooted out of the area before Maliki’s arrival

, where did they go? Were there American troops surrounding Mosul waiting for them? Is there any word on what the American troops did while the Iraqi Army went into Mosul?

Iraqi civilians in the cities probably prefer the terrorists to be chased out by their fellow countrymen than by American soldiers, but they probably don’t care who sends them to the 72 virgins out in the boonies.

General Petraeus is a military genius and a true American hero, and is probably seen that way by many Iraqis as well.
If the “surge” was partly McCain’s idea, now is a good time to start the debate over who REALLY has “judgment to lead”. Where would Iraq be now if we had followed Obama’s judgment?

“There’s progress here, but….. we should never have been here in the first place” – Obama, speaking in Iraq, in the future

Seixon on May 27, 2008 at 10:48 AM

He’ll try to make the case that the cost was too high, at which time I hope someone spanks him with this:

” Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

Imagine the phenomenal progress we could have made in Iraq and throughout the Middle East if the Dems and the MSM had openly supported the Bush Administration policies from the get-go.

that “permanent Republican Majority” likely would’ve materialized if the Dems were like the Old-School Dems. So they politicized/lied about the entire thing and have completely brainwashed the public about something this important….all for power.

note: My father did no fall on the battlefield but, because he was the veteran of two wars, Memorial Day was a much respected holiday in our home.

12thman on May 27, 2008 at 10:21 AM

Memorial day is for the living, to honor those who paid the ultimate sacrifice.
The ones who lived, often carry the burden of the many comrades who had fallen.
A friend in VietNam, got up to go to the head in the middle of the night, his barrack was mortared, and to this day he still wonders why he didn’t wake up his buddy to go with him.
Memorial day the veterans see what could have been, what should have been…the real veterans do see dead people.

If Barack Obama accepted John McCain’s challenge to visit Iraq, what would he hear from General David Petraeus?

Barry would squint his eyes shut, put his thumbs in his ears, and sing lalalalalalalala really loud in order to drown out the truth.