USMC850T

When starfish says liberal, he is talking about liberals as in the American political ideology not Liberal Democracy as in the form of government. Maybe it's just me but I never the two concepts and given the context it was pretty clear what he meant.

I've got a 25 page paper getting between me and finishing the report. Hopefully ill be done with the paper tonight but we'll see.

Is that really required?

There is a prominent war theorist / author who has actually suggested we let Iraq fall into a full out civil war, and use our military to attack any side which gains any type of advantage in order to prolong the ordeal. I totally forgot why he suggested it but i'll see if he can dig up the article.

FYI the word Neo Con means new conservative, meaing a newer generation of conservatives, differentiated enough from the conservatives of the 60s-70s to warrant the prefix Neo. The people I hear using the word are usually pundit tools and the people who read their blogs. I usually stop listening to someone as soon as it comes out of their mouth because it is usually followed by some sweeping generalization of conservative ideology.

But the hope is candidates will be more experienced, not wet behind the ears.

Of course the Arab nations don't like israel. I can understand why, they were basically carved out of their territory following WWII. What legitimises it form me is when the entire arab community around israel attacks them and is repulsed time and time again. The israelis have earned their land in my mind.

Well when i came upon the the statement "the situation is more a result of our policy in the Arab - Israli conflict" I felt it was rediculous and really doesen't explain much of anything and has little bearing on the iraq situation. I still have about 75 pages left so I am trying not to make up my mind until then but there are some things i definately don't like, but some i do.

One of the reasons why the government is weak now is because it has been de baathified, and there are few people presently in the government with the kind of experience they had. They were the ruling party and knew how to run the government. They really don't have a major presence in the current government, are are faaar more prevalent in the Sunni Insurgency. I agree with that for the most part. I don't feel that it is as close to an al qaeda playground as the pundits make it out to be though. The Sunni insurgency and al aqaeda have a kind of mututally beneficial relationship going, however al Qaeda is definately hated by the shiite millitias. And what better place to engauge al Qaeda than on foriegn soil, and against our military instead of our population centers? Ok again the entire United States armed forces have no official political views. At the highest levels, the JCOS, they do advise the President about capabilities and courses of action. This is different from expressing offical political views. The military tries to be an entirely apolitical orginization, since they exist solely to execute the policy courses deceided by civillian policy makers (congress & prez). Also, the enlisted ranks of the forces are almost always more liberal in their own personal ideology than the officer corps, which tends to lean conservative. I mentioned that because i have been repetitively called dumb by a 17 year old who cannot form complete & coherent sentances. Just because I take a different point of view, or am persuing a career in the military does not mean that for some reason i am stupid. I have taken plenty of courses and read plenty of the literature on the subject we are discussion to formulate my own views, and none of it has come from the military. More arabic speaking intel officers and translators will only help things, I agree, which is why t hey are recruiting heavily for those talents. As far as the raids are considered, most of the soldiers and Marines that have been there for any length of time know some arabic for exactly those situations you are describing. The Marine Corps has made efforts to improve what they call "cultural intellegence". Before a deployment they will take classes in the local culture and some arabic. In the town of Hattin, the local commander has religous leaders from the town teaching his troops arabic on a regular basis. Nobody blindly follows athority. There are such things as illegal orders, those which would force someone to break the geneva conventions, or other treaties which govern the conduct of war. The military does rely on discipline and obedience to orders, but look at what their job is. Without discipline, would they be able to accomplish anything?? And do you think that you somehow won't have someone telling you what to do in the civillian world? Ever hear of a boss or manager? Challenge their authority and you may find yourself unemployed. I will be commissined as an officer, so I will be doing most of the issuing of orders, but of course I will be having people tell me what to do too. I didn't decide i wanted to join for money - If that's what i wanted I would have joined the army. I didn't join because I wanted to go to Iraq either, I honestly wouldn't mind though. I joined because I am going to strap an F-18 on my back and rain fire on the enemies of the United States. I have always wanted to fly, and I can think of no greater challenge in aviation than being a military pilot. There are a lot of people in the Armed forces who did not join for college money, they just want to serve their country. Too bad that seems to be a declining trend these days. Iran would invade a US backed iraqi democracy?? I don't think so. Not unless they wanted to sacrafice every single piece of military hardware that crossed into Iraq. While the US military is not best suited in dealing with insurgency or guerilla threats, they are undeniably the best in the world at force on force encouters, which is exactly what an Iranian invasion of a democratic Iraq would involve. I think you should instead focus on a solution to the problem, rather than how or when we should get out.

Ok you're missing my point. I said may of 2003, which was a year and a half after afghanistan but good reading comprehension on your part non the less. We did win the war. There is not debatable in the least. What part of Baathist former Iraq is still existing today as it did in may of 2003? I'll admit our occupation is not going well and getting worse by the days. You don't have the slightest clue why this is happening, which is why you cannot contribute any type of suggestions or solutions, making you just as worthless to the problem as all the other bitching whining bring the troops home idiots. Secondly, we don't start wars based on assumptions. Our intelligence services, along with the majority of the worlds intel, came to the exact same conclusions. Retarted, baseless, wrong, and irrelavent. Incomprehensible babbling. I don't have a fucking clue what it is you're talking about. Of course we did. Were we going to turn it over to another totalitarian figure and let it turn into the same situation w/ saddam? A democracy smack dab in the heart of the middle east is undeniably in our best interest. The Marine Corps, along with every other branch has no official political views, so I cannot possibly be following their position, because it does not exist. The armed services do not formulate policy, only execute it. By the way im still on school and have a semester left before i would go back to ocs, so im not in the MC yet, so please stop making references to me being stupid or dumb because i have an association with the Marine Corps. You are some little shit in high school eating up everything his teacher has to say and getting your news from moveon.org, I am a semester away from a degree in political science and intel analysis, so trust me, I'm not dumb by any stretch. You would also be suprised at just how educated and intelligent the officer corps is, especially the field grade officers. But go ahead and be cool....QUESTION ATHORITY MAAAN!!!1!!1 And since when does a war not going as planned make it a disgrace?? The planners did not anticipate the insurgency to develop as it did, but that's not a disgrace by any means. I mean I can't think of a single war in all of history that went down as planned. Have you never heard of murphy's law??

Evolve i guess you forgot what happened in may of 2003, or maybe you were to young to remember. There is absolutely no question that we have won. Look around, do you see ANY aspect of Saddams regime still in place? The US forces also smashed the record for the fastest advance during thunder run. The postwar period of occupation has become far more ambigous, as is typical with 4th generation warfare. If you're interested in reading about that at all, look for an author named Lind. Reading his articles will definately give you a better understanding of what 4GW entails, and will give you a better understanding of why we "are loosing" as some say. I feel the situation is becoming dangerously out of hand. We have done almost everything to give the Iraqi's the tools they need to succeed. The failure or success of the Iraqi state will ultimately be determined by their new government and the populace. There are positives coming out of Iraq, jjust look north. The Kurds have managed to secure most of northern Iraq and are doing quite well up there. I'm sure they are quite glad to no longer be governed by president hussien. Has anyone read through the Iraq study group's report? The begginning details the problems and complications fairly well i feel. I was quite turned off by it though when i read that that '...the problems we face in iraq the manifestation of our Israeli / palistinian policies..

I am only about halfway through it and so far i feel it has been next to useless. I hope it gets better!

Chavez is a fuckin twat who thinks he is important because he has oil. He just has his panties in a bunch cause we told him we will not provide any more spare parts for the F16's we sold him.

Insurgencies and gurellia wars tend not to work without outside intervention. US independance - France. etc. We can certainly seal up the borders quite well with all the air assets we have in theater.

Don't forget how many people were thinking / saying the same things 2 days after it happend. I'm still all for killing their leaders and followers, but i could care less what religion they practice.

Yes, brutality is certainly one way to handle the situation. The US army is showing us how for the given situation there are other alternatives which certainly can work better.

People who say the war is unwinnable fail to grasp exaclty what is going on over there. They are the same people who said after the TET offensive vietnam was unwinnable. Anyone who is remotely familiar with Veitnam knows TET was a disaster for the vietcong and marked the beggining of their demise. By no means is it going to be easy, but then again our nation is not standing where it is today because we took the easy way out of things. I feel that I've articulated my views more than enough times. I am currently working on the first half of my senior thesis paper which addresses 4th generation warfare, what it is, the difficulties it poses, and whether we should approach it using the military or police model. I will be sure to post it up here when i've finished it.

Interesting to read the different articles across the web about it. I can understand though why he was detained and held. I guess he was in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong shit in his trunk.

He seems like a very good candidate to say the least.

It's a slippery slope argument. 1% this year, 1% next year...

But the reason why that is true is not because of our current tax structure, it's just economics. CDB is almost always passed to the consumer in full.

Oh and your policy of increasing taxation on business and citizens is already in effect here in NY, one of the highest taxed states in the nation. It's not working out so great. Cost of doing business is so high here that both business and people are flowing out of the state, along with jobs. Who knows though, it might work out after all :tdown:

Ok I've been pretty civil in the pages of debate that have been on here, but time and time again people have told you things, but it's not going anywhere. You have at best sophmoric grasp on any of the concepts we've been debating about. The national debt is not something that came to existance yesterday, and by taxing everyone just a little bit extra, it's not going to go away. As far as your super sweet tax plan goes, not everyone in this country of 300 million can pay taxes. A great number of those people are minors, or don't work at all. Then even further, some people are just poor. Unfortunately, you still want their extra 500 dollars. Your robin hood tax plan is of good intentions, but it would never work. The rich already pay plenty of taxes, and so do the corporations. Want to know why else it wont work?? Rich people make waaay more donations to political campaigns than the poor or middle class. Now as far as me being dumb, I think through my responses in the other thread i've show, or hope I've shown, that I'm far more intelligent than you. Now I know that's not fair, because you're still in high school and I'm finishing my degree, but someday you'll be able to put together a coherent argument. If i were following bush out of blind obedience, I would not go to the lengths I do to clarify and explain my thoughts as I have in the war thread. I also have been studying political science for a few years now so I've had plenty of time to develop my own Ideology, and since my school it quite liberal, I've had plenty of oppertunites to defend it. Just because you have different views than me doesn't make you stupid, your repetitive posts do that. And I had no idea you knew so much about the United States Marine Corps. Last time you mentioned it you said they didn't do anything. And none of our military branches teach blind obedience, and to say so is quite ignorant, and im sure that it would piss off the other members of the services whom browse this board if they were to read that in this thread. Obedience is quite different from blind obedience. And guess what, both republicans and democrats in the military are obedient, because they are there to serve the government as a form of "politics by other means". The military itself is an apolitical orginization because of that, they do not debate or formulate policy, only excecute it.

Evolve, 2 Billion ain't shit for the U S of A. You have no Idea what our federal budget is do you?

It's an indicator of investment, which is an indication of the national economy as a whole.