Maggie's Farm

Al-Sadr..should have been snuffed by a sniper many moons ago.

Still plenty of time for Iranian/Chinese backed chaos in Iraq, especially with their current government. We need to abandon the democracy project, get our strong man in power and go from there.

Their government reminds me of the ending of the David Lean movie "Lawrence of Arabia" where once in Damascus the tribal leaders all sat down togetther in a great hall to yell and scream at each other.

We just need to control the geography and pump the oil..we don't need to enforce intertribal killing that has roots thosands of years old.

Give'em another six weeks to pull it together..if not send them back to the desert life and carpet bomb the cities...heck they flourishes in the desert for centuries.

Lets do a General Sherman on 'em...yeah..

We do, for a time need their oil.

They have shown at no time in their civilization more than the ability to act on a level higher than a tribal one.
Yes, you can find nice people everywhere, just not in abundance in a tribal land once you get two tribes in the same room.

War solves many things, most things as a matter of fact. It's always transient but then nothing is constant but change and war has always been the answer...stopped Hitler, Charles Martel stopped the Muslims from taking over Europe, stopped the Japs....coming up it will stop the Iranians from nuking Israel.....I'm not blood thirsty...more like a realist.

" I just want some sanity and civilization in the Middle East, if it is possible. These Iraqis are generally good folks."

If they are Islamic, then they are bound by Sharia law..enough said..well not quite..they must also by edict of their religion convert,enslave, or kill all infidels ..that's you Barrister. Brutus was Caesars friend, right up until the knifeblade hit his soft flesh ....Barrister don't get wobbly and forget Islamic goals which are TOTALLY antithetical to Christianity. Islam is a killing ideology.

Sure it would help us and then IF they could get it together,. Unfortuneately at this time in history and for the forseeable future that's not the case..we must deal with reality not what we want for Christmas from Santa.
Killing off about 700,000 Islams would send them a clear message to chill out and quite f8cking with us .... Christianity has had to do this a number of times theoughout history ..we're now back at that point for if we don't we'll be dealing with a nuclear bad guy world.Hugo will get them from Iran or Pakistan or China or Russia....and do you think the Israelis are just gonna let Iran go nuclear?

No way.
No apologies for bursting your balloon on what was a great civilization a thousand years ago but..the times they are a chang'in and brother if it's them or us I choose us.

Mr FreeMarket. I didn't read the entire article but it is time for people to make plans.
I've mentioned some of this before but for those who missed it.

Everything runs on electricity in the USA. There are five main electrical nodes in this country. As we all saw a few years ago when the North was hit with an electrical outage that lasted some time it's not hard for these things to, well, just quit. The AQ could knock out all five with dirty bombs.

Once that occurs civilization ends. The criminal element will begin looting. What you have at home is all you're gonna have..no grocery store, no more gas, no more ventilators for the elderly . Most people will be out of food within two weeks, medicine at anytime ..no resupply available ..no phones....prisons will go into lockdown but will also be attacked buy the bad guys and hundreds of thousands of criminals will now form packs to loot neighborhoods..
Got ammo? What 100 rounds of .22 caliber ..we'll you're dead...
The highways will become jammed at first and then become junkyards as cars run out of gas....don't worry, the bad guys will be there to liberate you of your food..paper money will be useless..

National guard you say..they have no magic bullett for a grid down scenario.
Water..no pumping will take place.
The cities will burn first as the loooters take what they want from the plump, easy chair-sitting Average American ..obese and nanny state dependent. Suburbs will go down pronto.

Think about it folks .. it's no fantasy that can't happen..think of the Rodney King riots, add no electricity or cops..their radios will eventually stop working and they'll have no gas. Many will just abandon their posts.

The bad guys will set up roadblocks and demand toll, or simply take what they want ..these guys will be stone cold killers within a day even if they were in the joint for auto theft ..band of brothers deal.

Anyway have a nice day.

Getting Vietnam Right

By Mark Moyar
Published 8/30/2007 12:08:23 AM

In the past week, the criticisms swirling around the President's VFW speech have provided much less insight into the President or the speech than into the critics. Rather than address the speech's central issue -- the 1975 debate over the ramifications of abandoning Vietnam -- these individuals have tried to push their own views on Iraq by mentioning other aspects of Vietnam. Emblematic of the attackers was Senator John Kerry, who said that the President's comparison of Vietnam with Iraq was "irresponsible" and "ignorant of the realities of both of those wars." Kerry explained that in Iraq, as in Vietnam, "more American soldiers are being sent to fight and die in a civil war we can't stop and an insurgency we can't bomb into submission." Senator Ted Kennedy, another opponent of both wars, backed this interpretation with the comment that the United States lost the Vietnam War because the South Vietnamese government "lacked sufficient legitimacy with its people."

Kerry and Kennedy missed key facts about Vietnam, some of them long obvious, others newly emerged from historical studies. The New York Times and NBC News and CNN and so on missed them, too, because they chose to rely on outdated historians or their own prejudices. The insurgency in Vietnam was dead by 1971, thanks to South Vietnam's armed forces, America's forces, and a South Vietnamese civilian population that overwhelmingly viewed the South Vietnamese government as legitimate. During 1972, after all American combat units had departed, South Vietnamese forces defeated a massive North Vietnamese invasion with the help of American air power. The so-called Christmas bombing of 1972 bombed North Vietnam into submission, resulting in a peace treaty. Had the antiwar Congress not slashed aid to South Vietnam and prohibited the use of American aircraft over Vietnamese skies, the South Vietnamese probably could have repulsed the North Vietnamese when they violated the peace treaty in 1975.

The statements of Kerry and Kennedy lure the public's gaze away from the speech's main point -- that antiwar Americans believed that the Vietnamese and Cambodian people would stop suffering if America stopped supporting the anti-Communist forces. It is very much in the Senators' interests, for both espoused this view during the war. In his famous Dick Cavett Show appearance, Kerry said, "There is no interest on the part of the North Vietnamese to try to massacre the people once people have agreed to withdraw." In early 1975, Kennedy objected to President Ford's request of $300 million in military aid for South Vietnam and $220 million for Cambodia by arguing that this aid would "fuel the war."
Another scathing critic of the VFW speech who held such views in 1975 is Stanley Karnow, author of an outdated but still widely read history of the Vietnam War. "The 'loss' of Cambodia," Karnow said, would be "the salvation of the Cambodians." Senator Christopher Dodd, then a member of the House, claimed in 1975, "The greatest gift our country can give to the Cambodian people is peace, not guns. And the best way to accomplish that goal is by ending military aid now ."

Similar comments have recently been heard on Iraq from John Murtha and Bill Richardson and other Democrats. Until recently, they were heard from many more, but some Party leaders have had the sense to recognize that hasty withdrawal would entail exorbitant human and strategic costs and that cutting aid to besieged allies would put blame for the disaster onto the cutters.

Today's Congressional Democrats are relying heavily on another talking point of their Vietnam-era predecessors -- that if they controlled the White House, they could quickly negotiate an end to the war. Democrats then and now believed they would succeed on account of their diplomatic skills, their goodwill, and their recognition that aggressive U.S. military action discourages the enemy from negotiating. Recent revelations from the Vietnamese Communist side have done grievous injury to these notions. When America shied from tough military action -- in 1964, 1968, and 1975 -- Hanoi tried to win the war rapidly by military means. When America and South Vietnam employed their military power effectively -- in 1963 and 1972 -- the North Vietnamese developed a serious interest in negotiations.

In response to the President's comments about abandoning Vietnam, some have argued that abandonment was not that important because Vietnam is now a nice capitalist country. This argument shows a callousness toward the loss of human life (in the late 1970s) and the harsh repression of political dissent (from 1975 to today) that is thoroughly out of keeping with how these people normally view international affairs. Hysterical hatred of the Iraq War and President Bush seems the only possible explanation for such an inconsistency. The present-day capitalist economy of Vietnam, moreover, is not reason to doubt the wisdom of U.S. involvement. Instead, it is reason to doubt the wisdom of North Vietnamese involvement. While America was fighting for capitalism in South Vietnam, North Vietnam was fighting to destroy it.

It is also a mistake to assert, as many have asserted in recent days, that the United States never should have intervened in Vietnam in the first place because Vietnam was predestined to become capitalist. In my research, I found that American intervention in Vietnam saved Indonesia from going Communist in 1965. It probably also prevented countries such as Thailand, Japan, the Philippines, and Malaysia from becoming Communist or pro-Communist. Furthermore, American intervention fractured the Sino-North Vietnamese alliance and tamed China. In the absence of these developments, socialism might well have persisted in Vietnam and other Asian countries to this day.

President Bush has shown that he is up to speed on the latest historical discoveries on Vietnam. Those who are inclined to disagree should first get up to speed themselves.


Mark Moyar is the author of two books on the Vietnam War.

Kennedy,Dodd,Kerry the entire Democratic Party is reponsible for the slaughter in Cambodia,Laos, and Vietnam and yet they have the gaul to continue to lecture us on what's best in fighting our enemies.

The day Ted Kennedy is on this Earth for the last time, church bells should ring out across the land. I know it'll make Mary Jo happy ... and the trifecta will have been completed. Pappa Kennedy,illegal rum runner, Adolf Hitler's ally and friend can finally find a fourth for a round of golf in hell.

Some of the people in Massachusetts, apparently a majority, are certainly lousy judges of character.