Got your attention?

I think McBust sees Iraq as his Vietnam….where he got shot down and sat out the war while the brave fought….and he now wants to not lose the war.

Big F***ing deal. Loser.

….a Vietnam Vet

I’m simply puzzled by why you would respect Bush or vote for McCain, since they’ve both have clearly documented records of dishonesty and ineptitude.

I’m going to vote in the election because I can, I think it’s important, and I’m sure I’ll find someone I’m comfortable voting for between now and November.

So, is your problem Bush (who will be out in a few months), or McCain, who doesn’t seem to be guilty of the things you’re charging Bush with?

And in all of this of course, is the REFUSAL by you to address the concerns I raised about Obama.

You’re evidently ok with a man who hasn’t managed anything more than a Senate staff, hung around with a conspiracy promoting “God Damn” America “preacher and bomb-throwing 60′s radicals. I’m not.

It’s clear you’re not interesting in addressing those issues and you’re only interesting in slamming McCain, Bush, and probably any Republican, yet you don’t plan on voting for either. Why are you wasting your time on the election at all.

I’m not wasting any more time on you.

Statistically (and actually) he was safer in his plane than he was driving to it.

He was also ELECTED governor of an entire state.

Obama was also ELECTED to the senate, and the governor of Texas has fewer powers than most governors. While Obama doesn’t have much of a record to look at, Bush’s record of spending like a drunken Democrat, dishonesty, and incompetence (not to mention a criminal record ranging from drunk-driving to illegal wiretapping) is downright disgusting.

Lee -

Bush did learn to fly – and you can get killed just doing that. He was also ELECTED governor of an entire state. He has a helluva lot more experience than Obama (not that I don’t have disagreements with Bush too). But Obama, hanging out with 60′s bomb-throwing radicals? Dedicating your book to a conspiracy promoting “preacher”? He doesn’t respect the country – I don’t respect him, period.

Your trotting out a list of bills BO attached his name to doesn’t mean he has accomplished anything.

What exactly as a Senator do you expect him to do?

Pretty sure he can’t sign bills, deploy the armed forces, or nominate judges.

He is applying for that job.

I can understand not having respect for Obama, but, seriously, what did our current president ever do in his entire life worthy of respect?

Well thats a new one on me, ya know, especially considering that nearly half the members of congress have law degrees. He really tricked the electorate on that one!

For your edification, Scott, law review at Harvard is chosen by blind write-on competition (as are most law schools, though some use a combination of grades). Barack was the first black president of the law review at Harvard, which in addition to being an elected position, is probably the most prestigious position a law student can hold in this country. Your use of “quotas” suggests you’ve been living under a rock for the last, oh, 30 years.

I dare you to define patriotism. ga ‘head.

Obama is just another politician (frankly I’d prefer zero experience at the levers of power), but asinine excuses like yours reveal an underlying pathos. What’s yours?

Your trotting out a list of bills BO attached his name to doesn’t mean he has accomplished anything.

In my opininion all BO has done in his life is hang out with bomb-throwing (literally) 60′s radicals, hate-mongering conspiracy promoting religious charlatans, sleazy business people and skillfully exploit a law-dregree (including a law review editorship that was probably gotten due to quotas and not grades) to promote himself politically.

And, I don’t have to “question” his patriotism (as John MacC said above) – Obama flaunts it.

Quite frankly, the idea of him as presidents makes me puke.

He would be the first president I wouldn’t give any respect to – as I don’t think he respects the office, the country, or the people within it.

To elect a 150 day Senator who has NOTHING of accomplishment in his past

Just because you keep saying it does not mean it magically becomes true.

You do realize that, right?

The video above this thread strongly suggests that McCain being right about something is due to “broken clock syndrome.”

Surely, we can agree that the money we’ve been paying them has a lot to do with it, as well.

In any case, Obama is not so stupid that he would throw away the gains achieved so far. No matter who wins the election, troop withdrawal will happen at a measured pace determined by the conditions on the ground.

Of course he doesn’t. He’s a Republican. He thinks foreign policy is a game you play for personal and national pride. And there are plenty of people ideologically opposed to “the radical left” who want us out of Iraq yesterday. Opposing this war has nothing to do with “left” or “right.”

Liberal paper that they are, the Washington Post editorial board at least recognizes that Iraq isn’t a partisan game, but a deadly serious matter. This July 16, 2008 editorial is quite clear that Obama is in way over his head, and driven by ideology, not facts:

The Washington Post On Obama & Iraq

Early last year, when the war was at its peak, the Democratic candidate proposed a timetable for withdrawing all U.S. combat forces in slightly more than a year. Yesterday, with bloodshed at its lowest level since the war began, Mr. Obama endorsed the same plan. After hinting earlier this month that he might “refine” his Iraq strategy after visiting the country and listening to commanders, Mr. Obama appears to have decided that sticking to his arbitrary, 16-month timetable is more important than adjusting to the dramatic changes in Iraq.
Mr. Obama’s charge against the Republicans was not entirely fair, since Mr. Bush has overseen the withdrawal of five American brigades from Iraq this year, and Mr. McCain has suggested that he would bring most of the rest of the troops home by early 2013. Mr. Obama’s timeline would end in the summer of 2010, a year or two before the earliest dates proposed recently by members of the Iraqi government. The real difference between the various plans is not the dates but the conditions: Both the Iraqis and Mr. McCain say the withdrawal would be linked to the ability of Iraqi forces to take over from U.S. troops, as they have begun to do. Mr. Obama’s strategy allows no such linkage — his logic is that a timetable unilaterally dictated from Washington is necessary to force Iraqis to take responsibility for the country.

At the time he first proposed his timetable, Mr. Obama argued — wrongly, as it turned out — that U.S. troops could not stop a sectarian civil war. He conceded that a withdrawal might be accompanied by a “spike” in violence. Now, he describes as “an achievable goal” that “we leave Iraq to a government that is taking responsibility for its future — a government that prevents sectarian conflict and ensures that the al-Qaeda threat which has been beaten back by our troops does not reemerge.” How will that “true success” be achieved? By the same pullout that Mr. Obama proposed when chaos in Iraq appeared to him inevitable.

Mr. Obama reiterated yesterday that he would consult with U.S. commanders and the Iraqi government and “make tactical adjustments as we implement this strategy.” However, as Mr. McCain quickly pointed out, he delivered his speech before traveling to Iraq — before his meetings with Gen. David H. Petraeus and the Iraqi leadership. American commanders will probably tell Mr. Obama that from a logistical standpoint, a 16-month withdrawal timetable will be difficult, if not impossible, to fulfill. Iraqis will say that a pullout that is not negotiated with the government and disregards the readiness of Iraqi troops will be a gift to al-Qaeda and other enemies. If Mr. Obama really intends to listen to such advisers, why would he lock in his position in advance?

Clayton finishes -

In retrospect, the Iraq war may have been a mistake, and certainly Bush made some very serious mistakes in how the occupation was handled. But with the amount of money, lives, and suffering we have suffered for this war, to prematurely withdraw now and risk putting al-Qaeda and the crowd that tortures people to death with power tools in charge would achieve maximum costs with maximum bad results. I’m no fan of McCain, but at least he seems to understand that foreign policy is not a game that you play to make the radical left wing of the Democratic Party feel good about themselves.

As I said – “To elect a 150 day Senator who has NOTHING of accomplishment in his past because of the opposition to the war is insanity.”

But then the liberal left has pretty proved their un-hinged. God help us.

Your assertation that the Anbar Awakening only happened because of the surge is a load of crap. It happened because Al Qaeda picked a poor strategy in blowing up anyone and everyone they could have, including people who could have been nominally friendly to them. The Awakening officially got underway Sept. 9, 2006. The Surge was announced Jan. 10, 2007. We’re not even talking post hoc ergo propter hoc here. Has the surge helped drop violence? I’d say it’s pretty conclusive that it has. For as much strain as it has put on our military, it was a good tactic for buying time.

But why were we buying time? Oh, yes, the strategy: we needed to achieve Iraqi political reconciliation. How’s that going, by the way? If I recall correctly, the Iraqi parliament has met something like 3 out of the 18 goals we set forth. I suppose 17% accomplished isn’t too bad considering the umpteen billions that have been spent over the last year and a half. Oh, wait, if I had those kinds of performance statistics at work I’d have been fired and rightly so.

The returns on our investment in the strategy have been abysmal, and John McCain can’t see that. We’ll stay there ’til we’ve won, he says, but won’t define what it means to win. We run budget deficits without keeping 150,000 soldiers in a war zone and with no-bid contractors carting off our tax dollars by the wheelbarrow load without doing their jobs to any ethical standard. By McCain’s own statement, he thought the surge came before the Awakening, and that’s another instance where he sees the Military Hammer as the solution to every Foreign Policy Nail that pops up. That’s not leadership, it’s shortsightedness.

McCain can’t define why being in Iraq is good for America beyond vague talk about wanting victory instead of defeat. But you know what? We don’t know what his idea of victory is, because he won’t define it, only that apparently leaving means defeat. We don’t know how staying in Iraq does us any good beyond soothing a bruised ego, and apparently can’t get beyond the fact that this isn’t a zero-sum game. Between being short-sighted and lacking any strategic vision on how he would direct our nation to play a more prominent and powerful role within the world community, he’s not an effective strategic leader. But as long as you keep taking the idea that “ending the occupation of Iraq = defeat,” you don’t have the mental capacity to understand that we’re not having the vote in 2008 to soothe our national ego, we’re having it to define the direction of our nation. Our military is run by civilians for a reason; we don’t elect a commander-in-chief, we elect a president who happens to be the head of the military. When you can realize that it’s possible to say, “Gee, we’ve done what we can for now and we could have done it better… lesson learned, time to move on,” and see that it isn’t losing because it’s not a zero-sum game, then maybe you’ll realize why McCain isn’t a great leader.

The “awakening” only occurred because the iraqi’s finally believed we might actually stick around and finish what we started. If they thought for a second that we were on the road outta town, none of this would be happening. Believe what you will about the war and its aftermath but there isn’t anyway you can say McCain wasn’t correct about this aspect of it. If you want the troops home as quickly as possible, then do what it takes to win and they can leave. Instead, Obama was playing (and still plays) to the crowd that wants the u.s. to leave in defeat. To me, that is an instant disqualification to be commander-in-chief.

If I take McCain at his word that the surge was a success would not the next step to either A)bring the troops home or B)announce what comes next? He has said no the A and will not answer B. Nor does he ever give the conditions necessary to claim victory but then again Bush did not do that either.

Why is there never a mention of the political portion of the surge which has at this point not been meet? What happens after Susani (SP) former officers come back into the country, will the US be able to buy them off, will the bribes hold for those in the country?

Someone mentioned Obama not caring about the human rights of Iraqi’s earlier in the thread. Some one already responded with why is it our responsibility while I understand that reasoning I disagree with that. The question I would ask is do the people of Iraq have more or less rights now than they had before the war? The answer might seem easy but I would say it is differently before the war even with the brutality faced. The women in Iraq where much freer under Hussian, able to drive and wear western clothes where as now in much of the country they are forced to wear bee keeper outfits and vales. The educated class was not forced to leave the country or face systematic genocide. To name but a few examples. There where and are people that had and have much less rights than the Iraqis that we ignored and ignore.