Israel says Iran will have nuclear bomb within a year

we should prudently evaluate the evidence in a piecemeal and patient fashion with the assistance of those involved within the international community.

Sounds like exactly what we did for 13 years with Saddam.

Worked wonders.

I’m looking at Iraq now and there is nothing “failed” about it. It’s been a remarkable success story. The early strategy did fail, as happens often in every war we have engaged in. But Bush adapted and sent in new leaders with new ideas who turned it around. Thats what good leaders do.

It would be kind of stupid now for Iran to Israel since they would be late to the party. The big “secret” of Israel, is the Jewish population is not only fairly small, it’s getting smaller at least as a percentage. Iran would end up nuking a bunch of Muslims instead. There are about 5.4 million Jews in Israel. There are slightly over 6 million Jews in the U.S. In the world there are about 13.3 million Jews. Iran’s total population is nearly 66 million. Iran could sit back with its proxy war for a very long time.

Iran would most likely use it’s nuclear weapons as a means to ward off attacks and embargos. In short it’s ment to ward off attacks by the U.S.

Curt,

The Iraq Study Group forced bush to be a “good” leader”; saying otherwise is historical redaction. Stating simply Bush “adapted and sent in new leaders with new ideas” ignores what goaded him to do more than “adapt”.

I remember clearly seeing him hold the report in his hands like a smelly diaper; I remember seeing him hating the first ISG news conference where he was asked 6 questions (Major Garret’s question really pissed him off).

As the words “grave and deteriorating” echoed throughout the public’s mindset like a poker stoking a fire Bush was forced to look for “New Way Forward”.

The ISG was a mechanism for a change of course: gone was “stay the course”; gone was Bush’s talk of Iraq as a beacon of democracy in the Middle East; and gone was any talk of victory:

“We had to move the national debate from whether to stay the course to how do we start down the path out,” said one of the ISG’s commission members, according to The New York Times.

While Bush didn’t like the ISG (as well as the 06 election), it goaded him to meet with the State Dept and Pentagon to plan a ‘New Way Forward For Iraq.’

Rofl….I find it curious that you think a President taking suggestions from a “study group” is somehow a bad thing? Wasn’t the critisism of Bush was that he didn’t listen…he just cowboyed up? Typical BDS. He’s damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t.

Listen, this is what good leaders do. They listen to suggestions, criticisms, and accolades and adapt when things don’t work.

Stay the course was not gone, we ARE staying the course. We haven’t cut n’ run as the Democrats wanted, we stayed the course and are winning because of it. Only the naive believe that strategies don’t change in war. There is an opponent we are fighting, an opponent who also changes strategies which we then have to adapt to.

As far as Bush being cool to the ISG…of course. They wanted concessions to Syria, talks with Iran, and getting Israel to give up land….silly ignorant suggestions. Bush said he liked some of the ideas, and disliked others. Hardly surprising with a list of 79 suggestions. He took some of the good and ditched the bad. As a good leader should.

Sky. To have invaded a country, taken a dictator out, propped up a democracy, beat back al-Qaeda and a strong insurgency and have trained a new Iraqi army with a little over 4,000 in US casualties….I would most definitely call that a success. An achievement of a magnitude never seen before.

As far as infrastructure goes there is a new poultry industry beginning, new markets opening up in areas people could barely move around in the past due to violence, a sewage treatment plant being build in Fallujah (an area which never has had one before), new police stations being opened, agriculture expos being put on for farmers, and new bridges being completed.

For anyone to expect that an infrastructure that has been neglected for decades to suddenly and immediately become 100% efficient is foolhardy. It’s a slow process but it most definitely is improving.

Major General Kevin Bergner:

[...]In Al Zatia, Nahrwan, a local Iraqi company, recently finished the construction of two windmills. This is an innovation of a local proprietor to pump water from wells for drinking water and the irrigation of nearby fields. The project now provides water for 150 local families in that community. In Iskandariyah, an area formerly known as the “Triangle of Death”, local citizens are rebuilding fish farms and hatcheries with the help of micro loans. This industry—destroyed by al-Qaeda—is steadily reviving and providing employment for many local residents. East of Salman Pak, other agriculture sectors are also being revitalized. An agriculture exposition sponsored by the Iraqi Ministry of Agriculture showed recent growth in beekeeping and honey production, new techniques in land management, and programs for date palm inoculation. In fact, the Government of Iraq has completed the date palm aerial spraying in Babil Province which comprises about 37% of the crop that’s to be treated this year by aerial spraying. These civilian crop spraying efforts, using civilian pilots and civilian aircraft, are administered by the Iraqi Ministry of Agriculture.

[...]In addition to the operations against these criminal elements and the operations to emplace better security barriers, the Government of Iraq and the Iraqi Army’s 11th Division in coordination with Multi-National Division – Baghdad have established a combined civil military operations center that Dr. Sheikhly referred to in his remarks. And as he mentioned, this combined effort provides a central point for residents…for citizens of Thawra to process claims, request essential services, and apply for aid. It also coordinates reconstruction projects for the district including those described by Dr. Sheikhly. The short-term projects for the next 30 days include street lighting, trash and rubble removal, sewage disposal, distribution of food rations, provision of medical supplies, and the delivery of small generators and reconstruction supplies. All of this is a coalition effort in support of the broader effort that the Government of Iraq has committed to and is undertaking on the local level. Over the next 90 days this combined effort will coordinate longer term projects to refurbish three medical clinics, to revitalize the Jamilah Wholesale Food Market, to issue micro loans to businesses, and to renovate schools. By coordinating these projects, this civil-military operations center—this combined effort by the Government of Iraq and coalition forces—will expedite some $2.5 million worth of aid and reconstruction investments

“For anyone to expect that an infrastructure that has been neglected for decades to suddenly and immediately become 100% efficient is foolhardy.” — Curt

Yes, but if we run away and aver our eyes, we can pretend that wasn’t true.

“The Iraqi public services infrastructure was on the verge of collapse after 20 years of neglect, with little to no investment in many key areas.
. . . .
The Iraqi education system indoctrinated a generation of children and did not provide them the skills needed to manage and grow an economy.”
http://www.state.gov/p/nea/rls/rpt/60857.htm

Yep, it is all our fault -NOT!

EVERYTHING THEY KNOW IS WRONG!

Curt:

Doug is absolutely correct!!! We are not staying the course the coursed changed after Bush was forced to make changes. The ISG and 2006 elections forced his hand. Do you really think Rumsfeld could have screwed up the months and years after “Mission Accomplished” any worse. We are not “Staying the course.” If we were Rummy would still be running the damn war.
Rummy knew how to invade the country and take out Saddam’s army. However, he was totally lost and made error after error from that point on.. But your buddy Bush continued to say “STAY THE COURSE”. What an idiot!!!

Read the last part of my post above, Flyboy Skye. You and Doug could not be more incorrect. The change in course is the Surge. A change fought to the death, unsuccessfully, by your beloved DNC held Congress of cowards.

David (#14)

Precisely!

I wonder Sky.

Do you judge your entire life based only on your failures and the times that you fell short of where you would have liked to have been? Do you only consider those times when things went wrong or when you did something that didn’t turn out just right?

Or do you consider your life as a whole, in its entirety when deciding whether you have been a failure or not?

***

The rest of these folks have certainly addressed your comments as well as Doug’s so I belabor those points.

I do, however, want to address some of the things that you said.

You mention “Mission Accomplished” in your post. Can you tell me what you mean by that?

You also mentioned the number of soldier deaths last month. Do you have any idea why there was an uptick in deaths?

Also, please define for me exactly what “stay the course” means and how it is different now than prior to the ISG report that you and Doug are touting so strongly.

I just want to see if you are able to clearly enumerate for us what the differences, if any, are.

I already know what answers are. Do you?

Puhlease.

Inside his own administration, Bush had few allies on a surge in Iraq aside from the vice president and a coterie of National Security Council (NSC) staffers. The Joint Chiefs were disinclined to send more troops to Iraq or adopt a new strategy. So were General George Casey, the American commander in Iraq, and Centcom commander John Abizaid. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice favored a troop pullback. A week earlier, the Iraq Study Group, better known as the Baker-Hamilton Commission, had recommended a graceful exit from Iraq.

The presence of former secretary of state James Baker, a longtime Bush family friend, on the commission was viewed in Washington and around the world as significant. It was assumed, correctly in this instance, that Baker wouldn’t have taken the post if the president had objected. (At least one top Bush adviser faulted Rice for not blocking the amendment by Republican representative Frank Wolf of Virginia that created the commission in the first place.) Baker was seen as providing cover for Bush to order a gradual retreat from Iraq.

But retreat was the furthest thing from Bush’s mind. “This is very trite,” he told me. “Failure was no option .  .  . I never thought I had to give up the goal of winning.” He wanted one more chance to win.

At the Pentagon, Bush listened sympathetically to the complaints and worries of the chiefs. He promised to ease the strain the war had put on the military. Bush knew the idea of deploying more troops and changing the strategy would be a tough sell. It had been hatched outside the Pentagon. Co-opting the chiefs was “tricky business,” an aide said. It “would be the most demanding civil-military challenge the president would face.”

Some of the president’s aides feared the chiefs would raise such strenuous objections to a surge that Bush would back off or, worse, they’d mount a frontal assault to kill the idea. Neither fear was realized. The session in the Tank lasted nearly two hours. When it was over, the chiefs were unenthusiastic. Weeks earlier, when Bush aides had asked them to draft a plan for what a surge would look like militarily, the Pentagon had dawdled. Now, with Bush doing the asking, the chiefs agreed to produce a surge plan. Bush had gotten all he needed from them–acquiescence. The surge was on.

You put WAY too much stock into the ISG. Not surprising coming from you Doug….but its put into the wrong place.

The summer before Bush’s visit to the Tank [ed. Dec 13, 2006], success in Iraq had seemed unattainable. As sectarian conflict mushroomed and violence in Baghdad lurched out of control, the president had reluctantly concluded the war in Iraq was being lost. His hopes for a stable Iraq, buoyed by three elections there in 2005 and the installation of a democratic government, had been dashed. “There was just a constant stream of reporting about an impending civil war or innocent people being just run over by lawlessness and armed gangs,” he told me when I interviewed him recently. “The cumulative effect of the rise in violence suggested to me we were going to have to do something different.”

By early November, the president had a pretty good idea what that something should be. On November 5, the Sunday before Election Day, he met with Robert Gates, deputy national security adviser and eventually CIA director in the administration of Bush’s father, at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. Bush was looking for a replacement for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, whose departure was to be announced the day after the election. Gates, president of Texas A&M University at the time, was his first choice.

Gates “informed me in the course of the conversation that, as a member of the Baker-Hamilton Commission, he favored a surge of additional troops in Iraq,” Bush said. This matched the president’s own view. “I was thinking about a different strategy based upon U.S. troops moving in there in some shape or form, ill-defined at this point, but nevertheless helping to provide more security through a more robust counterinsurgency campaign,” he said.

The president had been impressed by a plan developed by his NSC aides with advice from a loosely knit group of retired and active duty Army officers and civilian experts. It called for adding troops, protecting Iraqi citizens, securing Baghdad, and eventually pacifying the country. Bush received a daily written report on Iraq, and as conditions worsened in the fall he began to question NSC staffers informally about his options in Iraq. “Not every meeting in the White House is a formal meeting,” Bush told me. “A lot of times decisions can be formulated outside the formal process.”

The surge decision certainly was. By the time a formal NSC review began in October, followed by an “interagency” task force that met from mid-November to early January, Bush was quietly but solidly pro-surge. Had another credible plan for victory in Iraq come to his attention, Bush might have latched onto it. None did.

The ISG report certainly helped him see that the new ideas being brought to him were pretty good but that report in no way was responsible for the surge idea.

Read the article I quoted above and you will get your answer

Your retarded if you think Bush has listened to polls. If he was like a Clinton he would have withdrawn long ago.

The summer before Bush’s visit to the Tank [ed. Dec 13, 2006], success in Iraq had seemed unattainable. As sectarian conflict mushroomed and violence in Baghdad lurched out of control, the president had reluctantly concluded the war in Iraq was being lost. His hopes for a stable Iraq, buoyed by three elections there in 2005 and the installation of a democratic government, had been dashed. “There was just a constant stream of reporting about an impending civil war or innocent people being just run over by lawlessness and armed gangs,” he told me when I interviewed him recently. “The cumulative effect of the rise in violence suggested to me we were going to have to do something different.”

So he changed his strategy.

Your partisan blinders are pretty thick aye?

While Bush didn’t accept the recommendations of the ISG, the report did goad him into developing another plan.

That plan was under development before the report came out….you would know this if you have read the article. Figured you to be a partisan hack….was not disappointed.

Doug seems to have an infinite capactiy as a naysayer. No, we can’t do X, Y or Z is about all I ever get from his comments. He has yet to offer ONE practical, effective alternative that would WORK to SOLVE these PROBLEMS.

Sorry Doug, but talking to Iran is not a plan, nor is it a solution, nor does it work.

Time for you and your chosen one to come up with something more than negativity.

What Iran loves is people like you John Ryan, Doug and 55110.

Everytime we back down in the face of Iranian provocations or aggression they get the green light to do more and more.

As you know, I’m reading former Sec. of State George Schultz’s memoir “Turmoil and Triumph.” I’ve just concluded the section where he discusses how Lebanon collapsed in civil war. He rightly concludes that after the Israelis were pressured into withdrawing from Lebanon without a corresponding agreement that Syrian forces would be removed both Syria and Iran were emboldened to step up their campaign. That led to the murder of 243 Marines in the Beirut barracks bombing by Iranian/Hezbollah suicide bombers.

Everytime you “withdraw now” people start your constant refrain of defeat and surrender, the enemy, which is Iran in case you didn’t know, is encouraged to do more and more.

It is the attitude of YOU PEOPLE that is encouraging Iran to build nuclear weapons and to make war using their proxies on the people of Lebanon, Israel and Iraq.

Again, you have nothing constructive to offer as an effective alternative. No ideas, nothing.

Perhaps you should just shut up and let the adults do the work you and your fellow Dems are so clearly incapable of doing.

Sky,

You didn’t answer my questions.

I’m not surprised.

Care to try again or are they too difficult?

I noticed that you still haven’t answered the questions.

Imagine that.

“The “mission accomplished” statement refers to the day BUSH said “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended,”

what the hell do you call what is happening now??? ”

I’ll give you a hint. It’s not major combat.

“To suggest the Iraq war is a success is ridiculous.”

Let’s see.

Oppressive thug regime defeated. Check.

Freedom for millions of people who have never experienced it before. Check.

Saddam finally at the end of his rope. Check.

Assurance once and for all that there are not stores of WMD ready to fall into the hands of terror groups. Check.

No more disappearances in the night. Check.

Mass graves no longer being filled. Check.

Torture chambers shut down. Check.

People no longer being bound and thrown off the roof of three story buildings. Check.

Libya disarmed. Check.

A democratic ally in the Middle East. Check.

Sounds pretty successful to me.

“Let’s see americans still being killed by at the same level as 3 years ago.. check”

Really? You have proof of that? Or is that another one of your wild exaggerati