Why are you supporting this?

Sorry if this is is a little ON topic

But I think the idea of supporting the troops while not supporting the war is very logical. It depends on what you mean by 'support'. I find many disagreements and flaming conflicts are simply a difference in definition of terms.

I don't support this war. I don't agree with it, I think it's wrong, illegal, immoral and ineffective. I am not against war, just this war.

I do support the troops. At least the ones who are fighting for what they think is right and who don't abuse and torture other people. I support their belief in fighting for their country. I support their willingness to give their life for what they perceive to be a just cause. I support and respect their adherence to the honorable code of the military even in the face of the tragedies they face. I am thankful to them, even if I disagree with the form of their sacrifice.

I can no more group all the troops together and give 100% support to all of them than I can condemn them all for the actions of a few.

ECK: Thanks!

Faust: Fine enough. I tried.

Herman: Thanks for your response! I'm kind of busy at work right now (only have time for short, quickie posts while the boss is away) but will try to respond to address each of your points in more depth by the end of the day.

Benevolent Heretic: I couldn't agree with your points more. The vast majority of soldiers in Iraq are good people doing a good job under unthinkable conditions, and deserve our respect and support when they return. We have to make sure the distinction between them and the politicians who mis-sold this war is made clear.

-koji K.

[edit on 31-7-2005 by koji_K]

Some people simply can't wrap their minds around my position: I support the troops 1000% - that is why I am so outspoken in my criticism of the way they have been used and abused. The "men" that sent them into this unwinnable conflict did so b/c of the most perverse, morally reprehensible reasons. 'Cos they wanted to. These morons think they can just take whatever they want and not be held uncountable to anyone for anything. And what makes them (NEO CONS) so incredibly bad is that none of them ever stepped foot on a battlefield. Yet, they have the temerity to send others off to fight their wars of greed and fantasy. It's abhorrent.

What is the total american troop casuality figure in Iraq since it all began?? Nearing 2000 I think....
I can see the day when it'll surpass the 9/11 figure itself..

In all honesty, though I have no real figure to back this claim up, I believe our troops' death toll is well over 2000 at this point. REmember, they don't count those who die in transit (out of country) and those who die later. We've had a terrible amount of troops being maimed for life, too. Now some 30% (its being reported) of our troops are having to deal with combat related mental problems. That is so not unexpected, though. I've been afraid of that all along. It's been a great source of anxiety for me and my veteran friends - especially a colleague of mine at work. He is a Vietnam vet (purple heart recipiant) and a helluva good guy - someone you'd definitely want there with you in the trenches - he's actually taken leave from work and sought VA counseling b/c its been so difficult for him to watch. He is just as opposed to it as I am.

A friend of my dad's was in special forces in Vietnam. He had a hard time coming back, but came through, went to med school, and is now a private-sector psychiatrist who sees a lot of veterans as patients, who feel comfortable with him (I assume) because he is a veteran, too.

He has never been as busy as he is now. He says we can expect to see something on the scale of the post-Vietnam homelessness/mental illness problem if the war continues. Because of advances in medical care, the casualty rate is lower than it was in Vietnam (I'm talking about in terms of this one factor, not in absolute figures or ratios here, which I haven't researched)... but the number of people with mental problems coming back, as a result, is larger than we would assume given the relatively small (so far) number of troops in Iraq compared to Vietnam. He also says the situations are similar, in that there is no real "front line," no area behind the line the troops can go to where they can feel safe, because of the way the insurgents operate the troops are psychologically on alert 24/7 for the duration of their tour. This, like in Vietnam, was a huge cause of various mental problems on returning. As a side-note, many of his cases are people who can't drive without speeding, losing control, or displaying aggressive behavior, due to their experiences driving in Iraq.

I am going to make sure whoever I vote for next election has a damn good proposal for providing the care that our troops are going to need.

-koji K.



[edit on 31-7-2005 by koji_K]

[edit on 31-7-2005 by koji_K]

Even having been in the Gulf War, I can only imagine the kind of paranoia those folks must wrestle with. We were attacked in "the rear" also, but we had such a huge presence on the ground advancing forward, we didn't have to deal with all the IED's and suicide attacks. In most cases, unless we flew forward, we mostly had to deal with incoming SCUDS (for a time). And that was a trip. So.. that was nothing like what these people have to deal with, like you said, 24/7. When you get back, how do you just turn that anxiety off? I imagine, many, many of them simply turn to drugs and alcohol without ever flagging anyone to their deteriorating mental state. If they're like me, the last thing I would have ever wanted to do is go admit to having problems, ya know? The Army culture didn't exactly embrace that approach. But then again, to be fair, right after the war ended and we came home, they were pretty concerned about possible cases of PTSD and told us to tell them... they did not want a repeat of Vietnam. Things are back to the bad ol' now though, unfortunately.

Seems to me, this administration just wants to sweep all that under the rug.

[edit on 7/31/05 by EastCoastKid]

Ok, as promised...

Originally posted by Herman
Damn it,

I just made a long, well though-out response to this, but my stupid computer decided to dump it. Oh well, I'll try to replicate it...

Happens to me all the time... doesn't it suck? Thanks for taking the time to write it out again.

Ok, so because of what some random poll depicted, you're willing to accept something this irrational as fact? I've never been one to believe in polls. Polls are polls, and a lot of them are extremely inaccurate. Before the election, I saw polls indicating Bush would lose considerably, and some saying he would win considerably. I've seen polls saying that 90% of Iraqis favor U.S. involvement in Iraq. Also, polls can be manipulated based off of how the questions are phrased. (eg: Have you ever eaten Doritos...or done coc aine) *Yes, I did steal that from Mitch Hedberg* Besides, I've never been polls. Polls can depict different results depending on regions where the polling was done. etc. etc.

Yes, not all polls can be trusted, and you can find a poll for just about anything. But this was a Zogby poll, and Zogby is noted for being a pretty good polling group. I think it's OK to think that 50% of New Yorkers are incorrect, but I think as polls go the conclusions of this one are pretty accurate. Plus, I can back it up (to myself, at least) with experience. I live in NYC and most people I speak to here about the subject would subscribe to some theory, from the conservative to the downright extreme, based on the premise that the Bush administration made a conscious decision not to act, and had foreknowledge of what happened, on 9/11.

Oh yeah, his CIA advisor. [George Tenet - had to remove link cause I couldn't get it to format right- koji K.] How very selective of him! Forgive him for using his CIA advisor instead of some other random opinion that was BOUND to come up.

More like Douglas Feith. I was referring more to question of the alleged Iraq/al-Qaeda connection. Sen. Carl Levin, Ranking Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has told the (damning) story in a very eye-opening report, the Report of an Inquiry into the Alternative Analysis of the Issue of an Iraq-al Qaeda Relationship. (Every American should read this report.) If Bush had stuck to the story about WMDs, I could understand. But he had to connect Iraq to 9/11 somehow, which I can only describe as one of the most sickening acts of deliberate deceptions ever performed by a US President.

Slaughter of innocent Iraqis? What kind of orders would these be exactly? Our attacks are precision strikes, we don't just go around bombing random buildings. And yes, unfortunately, there will be civilian casualties.

Call them "precision strikes," "surgical strikes," or whatever you want. I haven't seen war up front, but I have a feeling up close it's anything but surgical. (And I know we're talking about Iraq here, but in Afghanistan we outright carpet bombed the place.) The President ordered the US armed forces into a war, and war, as you mentioned, entails civilian casualties. Lots of them. Civilians always have been, and always will be, the number one victims of war, no matter what kind of buzzwords the leaders invent to make it sound like its strictly the "good guys versus the bad guys" with all the non combatants tucked safely away on the sidelines.

If you start a war, you have to account for that blood which will inevitably be on your hands. Accordingly, your cause has to be just, and the only way you can justify your cause, and let history decide, is if you are honest about your motives. I'd say we have now killed more innocent Iraqis than could have pulled off 9/11 AND worked on any WMD program ten times over, at the least. I am not saying Bush ordered the intentional slaughter of civilians, but he started a war with Iraq, and as Commander in Chief he has to take the responsibility for his actions. Not just as a matter of prinicipal but as a matter of international law.

I should add, I don't put *all* the blame on dead Iraqis on Bush, obviously the insurgents are responsible for a large amount of dead innocents also. But I am talking strictly about Bush and what *he* needs to be held to account for here, because he has done these things in my name. And let's face it, at the end of the day, Saddam was brutal, yes, but at least since the end of the Iraq/Iran wars, nowhere near the number of innocent Iraqis were being killed under his regime than they are now.

Basically I'm not arguing directly for these propositions, although I would at another time. I'm just backing them up as examples of how some of the so-called "left wing conspiracy theories" really aren't "conspiracy theories" at all.

-koji K.





[edit on 31-7-2005 by koji_K]

[edit on 31-7-2005 by koji_K]

EastCoastKid, do you really think this war is unwinable???

Also, if you measure the time length from the start of this war to current time and add all the KIA's as to compared to WW2 or the Korean War or the Vietnam war measured to the same amount of time, then the results aren't even close. The percentage os life lost versus enemy life lost in comparison to what has been achieved - the results are very inspiring. How anyone can look at this as a failure is beyond me.

Ok, some don't agree that this war was "right". Fine. But come on, lets stop bitchin about it and come to the realization that our troops NEED our support and just rally behind them with all our energy INSTEAD of using it all in a negative way to a president that'll be gone in a few more years.

Also, here's a compliled list of those that have fallen. At least scroll through to look at their faces:
www.cnn.com...

Originally posted by Herman

Bush was selective in the intelligence he relied on to present his case for war to the American people. He relied on a group set up by neocons called the Office of Special Plans, which in turn gained its intelligence from Iraqi defectors with an axe to grind. (Link: New Yorker Article), and Link: Wikipedia on the OSP). Bush gave less weight to the findings of the CIA, the State Department, and the DoD, in favor of a group made ad hoc by the neocons for the express purpose of promoting their special interests in the wake of 9/11.

Oh yeah, his CIA advisor. (George Tenet, a Clinton apointee by the way) How very selective of him! Forgive him for using his CIA advisor instead of some other random opinion that was BOUND to come up.

To address the WMD issue specifically, I forgot to add, the CIA, as I mentioned earlier in this thread, warned Bush that while it thought there may have been WMD's, Saddam was not likely to use them against the US unless he felt threatened by US invasion. Ultimately, the CIA thought invasion was a bad idea. So Tenet's "slam dunk" remark was only in regards to the existence of WMD's, not the appropriateness of invading.

There are many reasons I was against this war, but this is perhaps one of the simpler ones... Bush had three options:

• Assume Iraq had WMD's and treat Saddam as a "rational monster," through containment, which was working fine.
  
• Invade a WMDless Iraq and lose inestimable "blood and treasure" in the process for no WMD related reason.
  
• Invade a WMD armed Iraq and risk Saddam using his WMD's against us.
  

Note that this only addresses the choices regarding WMDs, I'm not talking about terror here, which raises a whole other can of worms. Of all these options, the first one seemed the safest. Instead, Bush chose to invade- knowing that either Saddam was likely to retaliate with WMD's or the invasion would be fruitless and costly. Claiming he wanted Americans to be safe from WMD's, he chose the one choice that, in the CIA's opinion, was the most likely to result in WMD's being used against us!

The reasons why Bush chose what he did could fill a book, and have. But for whatever reasons he chose to gamble between death and more death instead of playing it safe and focusing on the more pressing issue of rooting out Al Qaeda. This is (one reason) I don't support the war.

-koji K.

[edit on 4-8-2005 by koji_K]

[edit on 4-8-2005 by koji_K]

There are many reasons I was against this war, but this is perhaps one of the simpler ones... Bush had three options:

• Assume Iraq had WMD's and treat Saddam as a "rational monster," through containment, which was working fine.
  
• Invade a WMDless Iraq and lose inestimable "blood and treasure" in the process for no WMD related reason.
  
• Invade a WMD armed Iraq and risk Saddam using his WMD's against us.
  

-koji K.

First off, containment WASN'T working "fine". 10 years had passed by since the Gulf War and Saddam was STILL refusing to abide by the demands of the spineless U.N.

Koji, let's PRETEND that you are president on the morning of 9-11-01. For 8 years the Clinton administration had constant reports that Saddam had WMD's. Saddam HATES the U.S.A. for obvious reasons. Al Queda has stated REPEATEDLY that they want to buy WMD's. CIA agents photograph known Al Queda members conversating with members of Saddam's inner circle.

Now, having all of that information weeks after 9-11 as president of the U.S.A., WHAT do YOU do? Before you answer that REMEMBER as the president, your NUMBER ONE job is "TO PROTECT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE".

Originally posted by Faust

First off, containment WASN'T working "fine". 10 years had passed by since the Gulf War and Saddam was STILL refusing to abide by the demands of the spineless U.N.

Koji, let's PRETEND that you are president on the morning of 9-11-01. For 8 years the Clinton administration had constant reports that Saddam had WMD's. Saddam HATES the U.S.A. for obvious reasons. Al Queda has stated REPEATEDLY that they want to buy WMD's. CIA agents photograph known Al Queda members conversating with members of Saddam's inner circle.

Now, having all of that information weeks after 9-11 as president of the U.S.A., WHAT do YOU do? Before you answer that REMEMBER as the president, your NUMBER ONE job is "TO PROTECT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE".

I would read my Intelligence Community reports, which would tell me clearly that there were no substantial links between al Qaeda and Iraq. I would then shift my attention to those regions that posed the largest threat, and devote the largest block of our resources, diplomatic, military and intelligence-related, towards assessing all possible ways of dealing with those regions. Saudi Arabia would be one, the source of most of the world's terror funding. And then Pakistan, Russia, and North Korea, all nations from which al Qaeda could much more easily purchase WMD material than Iraq.

Instead, what we get is people like Wolfowitz recommending to the president on Sept. 15th that we invade Iraq even if there was only "a 10 percent chance that Saddam Hussein was behind" the attack. And people like Doug Feith, suggesting "perhaps deliberately selecting a non-al Qaeda target like Iraq." And we get people like Cheney, sticking to the OSP's reports of Iraqi contacts with Mohamed Atta, which again, the Intelligence Community did not have faith in, your claims to the contrary notwithstanding. It's all in the report I linked to earlier, if you want a combined source, but this is on record in many other places also.

All this is not to say that Iraq posed no threat at all, but it was not the invasion we needed in the wake of 9/11 by a long shot. It was something planned long beforehand and dusted off at the earliest opportunity by an administration which has shown it doesn't give a flying rats ass about the safety of the american people.


-koji K.

[edit on 4-8-2005 by koji_K]

Originally posted by koji_K
It was something planned long beforehand and dusted off at the earliest opportunity by an administration which has shown it doesn't give a flying rats ass about the safety of the american people.


-koji K.

[edit on 4-8-2005 by koji_K]

Well, as an American i feel safe. How many terrorist attacks has the U.S. had since 9-11?

Originally posted by Faust

Well, as an American i feel safe. How many terrorist attacks has the U.S. had since 9-11?

My family lives in London, so I'm not feeling as secure as you these days. They're American, too.

-koji K.

[edit on 5-8-2005 by koji_K]

[edit on 5-8-2005 by koji_K]

right, last i checked Britons do security in London, not Americans.

Originally posted by Faust
right, last i checked Britons do security in London, not Americans.

That has what to do with what, exactly? We were discussing America's actions in fighting the global war on terror, not domestic security policies. And those actions have struck home in nations which not only are perfectly reasonable for Americans to assume some degree of safety in, but which also have taken similar actions. When I talk about safety as an American, I mean my safety as an American, not just my safety inside America's borders.

But that's besides the point, it's just my own opinion and really has nothing to with the big picture. I can accept that the President should give priority to domestic safety, but he clearly hasn't. He's sent the bulk of our military overseas on false pretenses to fight a war which only increases the terror threat. If Britain isn't safe, why are you so confident America is? Clearly the rationale of 'fighting them in Iraq so we don't have to fight them at home' is flawed, if "they" aren't staying in Iraq.

-koji K.

Is it just my browser messing up, or are there no "Edit post" buttons anymore in this thread?

EDIT: Hrm... ok, now I see it, but only for this post... I guess the posts must "lock" after a certain amount of time passes.

-koji K.

[edit on 6-8-2005 by koji_K]

As i see it,Madman Hussein,is out,captured and up for trial,by his own people.It's time to bring ALL the allied troops home,safely and securely.I see it this way.......

I'm sitting here,at home,with everything i have around me.I can protect and defend my property,by being here,not in another place,singing liberty,when i can't tell who the good guys are anymore overthere.These men and women from all these nations,can't solve everyone elses problems!!Hell,they've probably got enough of their own.They have lives,they have families,but above all,a home and a nation,they want to protect.

With the recent problems in Spain and London,i think it prooves the only way to end all this crap,is to have the defense at home.I've heard several times over the past few months,that with all these nations,having their forces scattered to the four winds,that there's hardly enough left at home,to defend their flags anymore,on their own soil.

I'd just say this........

Thanks to all you men and women in uniform.Your countries need you home,come back safely!!!!!!!!!!

[edit on 08/09/2005 by britcitusa]