USMC850T

Studies show that it takes roughly 8 points of contact to get low and mid propensity voters to show up at the poles. They usually don't bother the high propensity voters, it has a negligable effect. The campaigns try and get the points of contact through door knocking and phone banking. I agree about the robot calls though, but worst comes to worst you can always hang up.

The republicans have a far more effective system of microtargeting than the democrats tactic of just blanketing a swing district.

On a more republican note: I am pumped that the campaign I was working on was able to come back and win after the foley scandal broke. When it broke we were down something like 10 points, and over the few weeks we had between that and the election we were able to squeek out a 5 pt margin last night. I am speaking of course of the Reynolds campaign. It was pretty neat to see how the RNC's grassroots efforts work - definately more effective than the Democrats methods.

Those aren't reasons for going in Iraq, those sound much more like short term goals. The Chairman of the RNC also has nothing to do with policy. He is part of the party orginizaiton, not the party in government. Rumsfeld's resignation may have political motiviations, but trust me, no one is going to press charges and have a comittiee investigation on what a retard he is. I think that bringing in someone with new and vastly different perspective and experiences certainly has the potential to help the situation in Iraq. I do not share your view that he was incompetent though. He did a great job handling the military and political aspects regarding Afghanistan, and the first portion of the Iraqi war was quite remarkable in many ways. As far as how he handles the press, he usually doesn't answer questions, and when he does, he is a total smart ass with them. Oh and I guess your S60 runs on sunshine and smiles - "Your party" isn't any less concerned with oil than the Repubs. Our economy is dependant on oil, so you can believe that regardless of which party holds executive or legislative office, it will take the necissary steps to ensure we have a supply until such a time as we can transition to an alternative(s).

My ears are open and that's exactly what I heard on the news earlier today. What is the new reason? I'm sure it's the same as it always has been.

He just said that he didn't want it to have any impact on the elections last night. Oh and PS I don't think there has ever been a politician that hasn't lied, and that shouldn't be news to you.

If democracy will not work in the middle east, what explains Saudi Arabia's recent democratic reforms?? They are taking steps towards a democracy under mounting pressure from a growing democratic movement, but pfff.... that will never work No you don't, otherwise you would not have brought up the "geneva accords" Wrong. I believe it is quite focused, as the people whom conduct the interrogations are probably quite busy, and don't have time to just interrogate anyone off the street. That doesn't just happen, and the torture you cite occurred in a Syrian prision. You are also going to have a fairly difficult time trying to make an arguement based on the exception to the rule. Maybe you mean Mahar Arar. Yes he was detained an interrogated by us, until he was deported to Syria. All his torture occured in Syria. And now for the kicker: Wait a goal? I think those have been pretty clear from the start. And random insurgents? By random you mean the Syrian, Iranian, and ethnic death squads causing our problems in Iraq? So we should change our goal of trying to train up the Iraqi police and army so they can take control and we can leave? Should we no longer resist the insurgents? You really aren't listening to anything anyone is saying in this debate, and you keep blundering around bringing up random examples that are at best loosley based in facts, if not nothing more that conspiricy theorist paranioa. YES EVOLVE, THEY WANT TO WISK US ALL OFF THE STREETS AND TORTURE US!!!1!11!1!1 YOUR DAY WILL COME NIAEVE ONE!1!1!!!111

The magazines you qouted have no official affiliation with any of the branches of service.

A lot of people forget our main focus has not really been on the security of Iraq. Since the hostilities between us and their army, we've mainly been trying to train the police and army as quickly as possible so that they may assume responsibility of controlling the nation. While I wish they would have concentrated a little more on the security aspect of things, the poeple charged with creating these policies do have far more information and experience than any of us monday morning quarterbacks when they make those decisions.

If you can cite one battle that was won at the cost of innocent human life I might be impressed. You are so hung up on the innocent civillian thing. Guess what, they die in wartime. It sucks, no one will argue that. This point seems to be one of your large objections to the war. I assume you are also opposed to the vietnam war, Korea, WWII, WWI and all the other wars where a much much greater number of non combattants were killed. Well I'm not sure what the geneva accords have to do with this, perhaps you meant the geneva conventions? If in fact you did mean to refer to the rules by which we treat prisoners of war, and not the terms by which the french military arranged a cease fire with cambodian and vietnamese forces, don't worry - they don't apply to terrorists.. The patriot act does not invade the privacy of your average citizen. It does, however, make it easier to monitor the communications of those whom come in contact and deal with known terrorists inside the country. Neither the NSA or any other of the intel bodies could give a flying fuck about you or anyone else. If for some reason they did want to know what we were up to, they wouldn't pass a bill to do so, because they can do it anyways. The patriot act helps legalize for court purposes the information they could collect anyways. Maybe you should take the time to actually read up on it. As far as haebeas corpus is concerned, again, I see no application except for a detainee which has American citizenship. P.S. The rules of War (aka geneva conventions) only apply to uniformed soldiers committing violence on behalf of recognised governments. They do not apply to non state actors, committing acts of violence on behalf of non govovernmental orginizations, not following any of the recognised rules of war themselves.

No, I went to OCS this summer, and will be going back for more this coming summer. I have gotten the chance to talk with quite a number of Marines who have spent time over there. They have a much different story to tell than you will ever find in a newspaper or on TV.

Pretty sure it was business. He had a few failures with companies but made his money as a baseball team owner.

I think he has a bach from yale and masters from harvard

I've heard it's some kind of learning disability problem. People call him stupid, but incidentally he did do better at yale than Kerry did.

Do some research on your own, the CIA factbook is an excellent reference. If all else fails, Wikipedia it for some general background knowledge, which you are certainly bereft of when it comes to the history of this region beyond a few years ago. Yes, the kurds were involved in a defacto, not dejuris civil war prior to ODS. You may be citing information relavent to other segments of the kurdish population outside the Iraqi borders. If you aren't, then I guess you're wrong. That's something you'll have to come to terms with on your own though. Che is also telling me to stop beating a dead horse, not to accept what someone is telling me. Oh and just because someone agrees with Bush, or posesses a realist ideology pertaining to geopolitical relations doesn't mean that they are ignorant. It may in fact be quite to the contrary.

I don't listen to the UN for much of anything. They are largely irrelevant when it comes to anything important except humanitarian relief operations. I certainly don't listen to anything that Kofi Anan had to say about Iraq, since he and Saddam had a nice little thing going called the oil for food scandal. I don't let other people make up my mind for me, or tell me how to think. I don't believe it when someone on CNN or in some blog says the war is unwinnable. I read quite a bit, and form my own opinions. What we are seeing in Iraq is typical of 4th generation warefare. We have the US, a large hegimonic power, fighting against much smaller, non-state insurgencies. The problem with this is that these non state actors are not fighting according to the rules of war. They fire from inside crowds of bystanders to protect themselves. They do not wear uniforms, and instead hide and seek protection from within the civillian population. We target with extreme discrimination, they blow up ied's and car bombs in the middle of markets, killing indiscriminately. The battlefield is chaotic, and engagements are not decisive. The insurgency can win by not losing, and we can lose by not winning. Until another nations grows powerfull enough, or percieves themselves to be powerfull enough to challenge our hegimonic domination of geopolitics, this will be the model for conflict. We will not have a worthy challenge to our hegimonic domination for 20+ years, but I have a feeling it will come from china, or india, or perhaps even russia again. Don't get me wrong, the situation in Iraq is certainly not where we want it to be. There are some deep religeous / ethnic issues present which act only to fuel the violence. Until the Iraqi people are willing to put an end to the ethnic fighting, we will probably not see the situation improve very quickly. And I know you say we should withdraw because we are worsening the situation, but withdrawing will not have your desired effect. In fact, it will do nothing. If we leave, the violence will worsen until we have one ethnic group which gains control. If that were to happen, we will have the same conditions that were present under saddam. I will tell you again, the Kurds were not associated with the Iranians. They were fighting a small civil war against the Iraqi Govt, And regardless of whether they were or not, you are still condoning their genocide.

Like turning the entire area into a parking lot? That would be a simple solution, but the entire arabic world is being represented by the current bunch of shitbirds causing trouble over there, and they are not doing enough to distance themselves from those said shitbirds. Violent Democratic revolution is probably the best thing that can happen in Iraq's surround nations. saudi Arabia is headed in that direction, as their has been much unrest in segments of the population regarding their desires for democratization. The SA government has also bowed some to those requests, putting up a large portion of their legislature's seats for the population to vote on. And by population, I mean only the men . Personally I can't wait for America to develop an alternative to petroleum based energy. I hope we do it first, and subsequently the world comes to us for it. The day that we can stop worrying about and turn our backs on all the unstable radical theocratical shitbirds in power over there will be a happy day, I can only hope it comes in my lifetime.

I don't know what point you are talking about, but i think I have provided you with enough information to the contrary to show that you are wrong. US troops fight Persian Gulf War. After victory, the US establishes a large permanent military presence in the region, including Saudi Arabia. The presence in SA was limited to the Air assets REQUESTED by the Saudi Government for protection against potential iraqi invasion, and to enforce the no fly zones. There was no massive presence in SA postwar. He turned on us when we invaded their holy land after the Gulf War. Wrong. We did not invade his holy land. When you are invited by a nation to protect them, that is generally not considered to be an invasion. take your conservative ok? oil wanting You need oil just as much as I do Mr S60. arrogant, Now just because someone doesn't agree with you doesn't mean you have to call them names. holy-land invading cronies ok this is just stupid, we've addressed this already. Don't use buzzwords like "cronies" either. Think for yourself. Maybe after 100,000 people die in Iraq , you will see (American troops I mean, we have already killed twice that number in innocent Iraqi citizens. at best that is plain old wrong, but I think i've put it to bed already. Oh and you don't need to tell us you are filling out applications to stanford or UC, we don't care. If you want to brag, let us know when you get in, and then when you graduate. I got into one of the top 10 music schools in the nation to play jazz guitar, but I don't feel the need to tell people about it. Heck, I've attended, and come next summer will have completed what is regarded as the most intense and thourough leadership evaluation and training programs on the planet. And then after than, I'll complete some of the best pilot training in the world too , but who's keeping score? Bragging like that doesn't make you seem smarter to anyone here. Making a coherent and logical arguement derived from emperical evidence does though, so try it sometime.

The Saudi's, and nationalist religeous extremists are two extremely different people Evolve. Just because a very small faction of a population wants something doesn't mean we make it happen. There are factions of the US and German population which would like to see the blacks and jews killed or sent back to Africa. Should we take what they say and wish seriously? If we don't do it, and they blow something up, should we say oh stuff we should have seen this coming lets give them their way!! Now here's another thing I have a problem with. You're so quick to write of the US military as murders for "killing the innocent Iraqi civilians" and have yet to provide any examples (note I provided you with 1), yet you are condoning the genocide of unarmed kurdish men women and children. No, they Iraqi's didn't commit genocide on them because they supported Iran. The Kurdish were not helping Iran...they could give a flying monkey about them. They were concerned with their own self detirminiation. I'm not sure where you got the helping Iran bit from. There had been some fighting between the iraqi military and kurdish rebels from the 60s through the 70s. During the Iran Iraq war, the fighting escalated into a small scale "de facto" civil war. The Iraqi response in 88 was systematic genocide. Iraqi aircraft began using chemical weapons against kurdish towns and villiages, instead of targeting kurdish combattants (like how our military operates ). I do not think we turned to Iraq because we could not get bin laden. The campaign in Afghanistan has been largely successful. The taliban is no longer in power, and that was certainly one of the main objectives. OBL is another main objective, but there are some territorial issues which are coming into play. Pakistan is not exactly on the level with us, and they are not permitting us to operate in the mountains on their border, where it is accepted that OBL is operating from. I have already put out the reasons I feel we entered Iraq for, so I'm not going to re iterate them. You article on the dealth toll in Iraq is not adequate to place blame for 100,000 deaths in the hands of American soldiers. It cites potiential sources for dealths as US airstrikes. I would also say that Iraqi AAA fire at our aircraft has a large hand in this too. What goes up certainly must come down (or maybe liberals subscribe to different laws of physics), and some of those shells are very large. AAA fire was one of the causes for destruction in civilian population centers during ODS. I'm sure you saw the video of the sky being lit up by fire hoses of AAA rounds. The unfortunate thing is that you're only seeing every 6th or 7th round as a tracer. Those go up, don't hit anything, and come down and blow up wherever they land. And there were undoubtedly millions of them shot at our aircraft during the first few hours and days of the campaign. The article you cite is pretty much saying that Iraq has become more dangerous after our invasion, which is a pretty valid point (incidentally not the point you are trying to make). Is it the only nation that this trend has ever been seen in? Certainly not. Colateral damage is quite unpleasant. It it not something that anyone fighting in a war wants, but it is an unfortunate reality of industrailized warfare. It sucks, but that's why we take every step possible to preserve innocent life.

Evolve, we do not change our foriegn policy because radical fundimentalist moslems disagree with it. The base in Saudi Arabia was set up during operation desert shield, the precursor to ODS. It was put there because the Saudi's wanted us there. Believe it or not we are actually allies with them, and the base certainly helped them out during ODS. It's really wierd how putting a US military base inside your borders tends to discourage your neighbors from fucking with you. This is from the global security site regarding why they were there, and their removal in 2002. By and large the saudi's had no problem with US being there, it was the fundimentalists which disliked our presence and thought we had no place in the Arab Peninsula. Now evolve you keep mentioning all these innocent Iraqi's dying, where do you get these figures from? Move on.org?? I would be willing to bet that more Iraqi's have been killed or injured from the IED attacks, and the insurgency car bombs and market bombs than were hurt during the war. Also, do you know why there was a no fly zone in the north of Iraq for 7 years? Ever hear of the Kurds? Approximately 200,000 were killed by saddam through gas attacks, the destruction of towns and cities, and mass excecution from 1987-89. Immediately following ODS Saddam went right back to it until the NFZ was enforced. Where is your sympathy for these people? I have a feeling you haven't a clue who they are at all. Evolve, you have a tough time arguing because you lack a fundimental understanding of history. I assume you are just really young, which is why all you can come up with is "but were killing innocent people....". Do you have any idea how many non combattants were killed during WWII? Europe was leveled! I can't tell you enough how discriminant we are when it comes to targeting and engauging our enemies. We go to extreme lengths to ensure noncombattants are not injured. During the actual war, Saddam parked his mobile SAM radars and launchers next to schools to protect them from our weapons. Did we blow their shit up?? you bet, but we would do it at night, or during lunch hour when the school was vacant (everyone goes home to eat). He also liked to park his tanks in neighborhoods, using his own innocent civilians as protection. Instead of using an incindeary bomb to kill the tanks, we started taking GBU's (guided bomb units) and removing the explosive part. This was replaced with cast concrete pieces. Jets would then drop these "kenetic" energy bombs, which were really just guided pieces of concrete onto the tanks. They would hit the tank with enough force to kill it, and break the concrete into small pieces, thus eliminating danger to anyone who was not standing in it's immediate viscininty. These are just two examples that I could think of off the top of my head. It's unfortunate that we have incidents like Haaditha, but they are certainly highly uncommon.

Our armed forces go to every length possible to ensure that non combatants aren't harmed. Unfortunately, the insurgency uses them for cover so that US forces cannot engage them. It's quite cowardly, but Evolve, I hope you're not under the impression that they are just running around and killing everything that moves over there.

That would certainly be nice wouldn't it. I think it was Colin Powell that said if you break it, you've gotta fix it. It's kinda the same situation as post WWII Europe with the Marshall plan. If we pump the money and effort into it we can ensure that a government friendly to US will survive.

The Army takes more casualties because they are a larger orginization. The Marine Corps is much smaller.

well here it is. our very own thread.

Marines don't do diddly squat. That is one of the most misinformed statements I've ever heard. Tell you what Marines do... They stack bodies. That's their job. First into the shit, and they've been doing it since 1775 . I take it you've never heard of Belleau woods, or Iwo Jima, Okinowa or maybe the Chosin Resivoir. Who's armour captured baghdad? Who was sent to clean house in Fallujah? It seems we are angering the mods so we can discuss this further in that war thread I guess.