Why Bush still thinks we are winning in Iraq

A new study on compulsive gambling sheds some light on how our brains work. Check it out here...

www.scientificblogging.com...

“When we want to justify engaging in an activity which could potentially be irresponsible – like gambling – we may need to distort our memory of the past to rationalize the decision,” Cowley explains. “People who have frequently spent more money than planned on gambling edit their memories of the past in order to justify gambling again.”

Feel free to substititute "like sending troops into battle" for "like gambling".

As Cowley explains, the further apart the big win and the big loss, the easier it was for losers to isolate their memories and focus only on the positive, a “silver lining” effect.

So, Lil Bush sees Daddy Bush win Desert Storm. He gives it a try himself and has a big win. 4000+ losses later and he's still going strong on that silver lining big win. Looks like compulsive gambling with US troop's lives to me.

reply to post by Evil Genius


I'm surprised you didn't just call him a power-crazed warmonger.

Eloquence has it's advantages, you realise?

Lets see.............

1.4,000+ troops dead
2.Steadily increasing gas prices
3.More and more terrorists being created in Iraq daily
4.Talk of war with Iran on the horizon
5.Cost of food increasing

Oh ya,things are going just peachy

reply to post by Evil Genius


I am interested in wondering where you think we stand in this "win loose" situation..

If we are not "winning"

Are we "loosing"

And how do we define "winning and loosing"

Or is it just a stalemate?

Rockpuck,

While it's obvious we entered Iraq and defeated their conventional army, I think it's also obvious that as we occupy their country and fight insurgents we are losing. History has shown that it is an impossible fight, and one that we will never "win". It's hard to win when they won't just stand up and fight. Didn't we start the whole process of guerrila warfare vs. the British in the Revolutionary War? They all wanted to line up and shoot us. We ran into the forests and wouldn't cooperate. Unfortunately, we refuse to learn from history and are doomed to repeat it.

What a load of mule muffins.

Maybe the president has a backbone to see the job finished.

Maybe he lives in the real world and knows that in war you cannot win without losing lives.

Your assessment is so full of holes that it would be comical if it weren't such an insult to academic standards, the nation, and all those who have died to establish the kind of freedom you enjoy in Iraq.

This is nothing more than intellectual chicanery. No, actually it's an insult to intellectual chicanery, too.

Originally posted by GradyPhilpott
What a load of mule muffins.

Maybe the president has a backbone to see the job finished.

Maybe he lives in the real world and knows that in war you cannot win without losing lives.

Your assessment is so full of holes that it would be comical if it weren't such an insult to academic standards, the nation, and all those who have died to establish the kind of freedom you enjoy in Iraq.

This is nothing more than intellectual chicanery. No, actually it's an insult to intellectual chicanery, too.

Awful lot of maybes there. I'm not quite sure how you finish a job that was started based on a lie (ie. WMD's). And I'm not sure how to define a "win" at this point.

My assessment is that we will never "win" in Iraq. And while I appreciate the freedoms I have here in America (not Iraq), I'm quite sure there are more important things our government needs to be focusing on at home.

What would be your definition of a win?

Originally posted by Evil Genius

What would be your definition of a win?

Placing that in concrete terms isn't easy, considering how complex the situation is.

However, a victory would include an eradication of al Qaeda forces, or at least creating an environment that would make their operations less difficult somewhere else and reduce factional fighting so that a functioning democracy can flourish.

These are not easy goals, but they are worth fighting for.

It is also important to remember that Iraq is a front in the war on terror, which must be won.

For awhile, I began to lose faith in the Iraq war myself, although I recognized the importance of seeing the job through.

But, now I can see more than ever that whether or not Saddam had WMDs, which he did an excellent job of convincing the world that he did, it is now clear to me that deposing Saddam was an essential key toward accomplishing our goals of defeating al Qaeda in the Middle East.

It is hard to imagine how hard it might have been to fight the war in Afghanistan with Saddam in power in Iraq and who would have found every opportunity to send missiles into Israel as he did in the first Gulf War and otherwise create mischief in anyway possible. Let us not forget the almost nonstop shenanigans that he was up to during the Clinton administration in violation of UN sanctions and the number of air strikes Clinton ordered against Iraq during that time.

I realize that my view of victory is full of holes. At this point, we can only speak of objectives and cannot imagine just how the future might unfold.

However, there is one thing we must all hold fast to if we want to prevail in this war.

Victory is absolutely possible until we are utterly defeated or as we did in Vietnam, simply throw up our hands and leave because the enemy turned our streets and campuses into war zones.

I am reminded that after the the invasion of Europe in WWII, Eisenhower and Montgomery believed that the war would be over by Christmas.

They could not have been more wrong.

In fact, by the time Christmas rolled around, the Germans had created the bulge in the allied line along the Ardennes in Belgium and the toughest combat of the war was yet to come.

The troops were poorly trained, winter uniforms had not been issued, food was in short supply, the weather was brutally cold to the point that allied commanders called the weather their greatest enemy. Frostbite and trench foot caused almost as many casualties as the Germans. And on top of it all, the allies were out numbered and out gunned.

At that point, if we had the population we have today connected by the internet, the war would have been called unwinnable and Roosevelt would be nearly universally called a lunatic for not calling for an immediate withdrawal. Yet, somehow, the allies struggled on and two tank divisions were finally brought in and the Germans were repulsed.

But, back to my original point. The thing that I objected to most in your original post was citing a story about the psychology of gambling as an explanation for GW Bush's commitment to our efforts in Iraq.

It was flippant, mean-spirited, and irrelevant to the real life and death struggle that is taking place in Iraq today.

It implied without basis that Bush is acting out in some compulsive manner and completely out of touch with the goals and challenges of Iraq.

I know that you believe that these things are true, but to build your case on the basis of the article on gambling is academically dishonest or at the very least, sophomoric.

It's just armchair psychology and cannot in any way be substantiated and smacks of just one more attempt to smear our president and our war effort by any means necessary, no matter how irresponsible.


[edit on 2008/4/24 by GradyPhilpott]

I'm sorry I have to chime in here....while I have no love for the current president, when people bring up the WMD thing I laugh. The U.S. GAVE Saddam chem weapons in the 80's....he used them...but apparently people have forgotten that...lmao...did he use them all up?maybe but doubtful.But he never had ANY chemical weapons

We won in the American Revolution because we isolated the British forces with French help. Forcing the commander of all British forces to surrender.

Any chance the insurgents can do that?

The US has won the war in Iraq, if you think of the war in a conventional sense,

1. Infantry
2. Tanks
3. Boats
4. Helicopters
5. Fighter Jets

This feat was not difficult, considering what capabilites Iraq had in the first place. The 45 minute warning still cracks me up.

What I think The US will not win, is the war of wills. John McCain will not be able to keep a sizable troop deployment in Iraq for 100 years. The electorate will not allow this. Will the intent of insurgency decrease? most likely not.

The US will also not win the war of hearts and minds. Kind of diffcult when you have intentionally or unintenionally killed 100,000's of Iraqi civilians.

[edit on 25-4-2008 by Pendu]

reply to post by deltaboy


Easily, if the commander in question, and his political allies, are dependent on the votes of the people who are being sent over there to die.

Not all pressure is of a military nature, and not all wars are won on the battlefield. If the US kicks off with Iran, we'll see just how easily the US can be routed from the middle east.

We never had a war with Iraq we invaded Iraq,

Bush will never admit defeat, as he is to become a former president he will never leave office with a defeat in his back the same way that even when we are in a recession Bush will never admit that either.

Not good for the historical archives.

Originally posted by deltaboy
Any chance the insurgents can do that?

*thinks about it*

Well... it depends on whether or not they can subvert the new iraqi security forces.

In otherwords, yes.