It also isn’t about making up useless speculations, Mitsu, about what Shinseki would have done in your opinion.

And I would like to put in a word for Putin. Nice guy, bad guy, czar or red or thug, he has picked Russia up off the floor. I can see how he is a Russian Reagan, to Russians anyway. Time has rightly noticed this.

Lastly, a question for you paleocons: What is your objection to a strong and Orthodox Russia?

Iraqis of all sectarian and ethnic groups believe that the U.S. military invasion is the primary root of the violent differences among them, and see the departure of “occupying forces” as the key to national reconciliation, according to focus groups conducted for the U.S. military last month

That is good news, according to a military analysis of the results. At the very least, analysts optimistically concluded, the findings indicate that Iraqis hold some “shared beliefs” that may eventually allow them to surmount the divisions that have led to a civil war.

Can we leave Iraq? They don’t want us there

Wonder what’s America’s best that tried in Iraq?

Did you mean the distraction of the statehood of Iraq? YES

We did not allow the Sunnis to get hammered,

Did you really know what is Sunni before and now? I doubt it?
Why you care about them and what they done for you?

national socialism is just as alive now as it was back then..

When you and other prod binding American, this some sort of national pride for you and others, thus whey Iraqi nationalists considered as enemy on their land occupied by American nationalists?

American’s nationalists some sort of Ideologies don’t die, so other country ‘s nationalists,

And Merry Christmas to you too, Ymarsakar.

Richard, I think some of your reluctance may have to do with the fact that people are willingly to allow the destruction of civilian populations just so they can come back and attack with more justification. This is the old ethical argument between pre-emption and waiting to be attacked so we can attack back harder and with less PR problems.

In the case of Iraq, America tried our best and so did our enemies. It just so happens that we came out on top. We did not allow the Sunnis to get hammered, they were able to do that themselves pretty well without our help.

Wisdom cannot be bought, after all, it can only be earned.

War is only one of the many methods of understanding what is.

it’s not as though they thought fewer troops would be enough and Shinseki and others thought we needed more:-Mitsu

Casey and Abizaid made it very clear to Rumsfeld and Bush that less troops was the way to stabilize Iraq, in order to get an Iraqi face on the problem. Don’t you remember what they were advocating and telling the press in 2004-5?

Regardless of whether Rumsfeld thought fewer troops would be enough, that is what his military commanders recommended and wished to go with. Shinseki wasn’t in a position to contradict the combat commanders on the ground, Abizaid and Casey. Not in a way that would convince Rumsfeld or the President, or me.

Also, the President heard from the “loyal opposition” that Americans were seen as occupiers so the President wanted a light footprint. You also can’t blame Rumsfeld for what the President wanted done when he heard the advice of the Dems.

it’s that they thought things would be stable relatively quickly after the war.

The less troops strategy was being implemented long after the IEDs of 2003.

we had was Rumsfeld wanted to prove his lightweight, air-centric approach would work in Iraq

You’re attributing things to Rumsfeld that just didn’t exist. Certainly Casey or Abizaid prefered a lightweight approach, but that doesn’t mean Rumsfeld wanted to prove something. The man’s been rotating around the department leadership for many presidencies now. As such he has many enemies and allies inside the bureacracy and the Pentagon.

because no one is ever willing to admit making a mistake,

We’re not willing to admit that you and your faction were right, because you all weren’t. That has zero to do with making mistakes, except mistakes made by your faction. Do you not understand that people can make mistakes, but that doesn’t mean you were right about those mistakes either?

A “commie front organization”? Does anyone seriously say things like that anymore?

It is true for Code Pink, you know. Such things do exist, even though their Masters fell from power in the Cold War.

a longstanding policy created in the aftermath of the Church Commission report, why did Bush leave it in place after he took office?

Bush wasn’t ruthlessness enough to put a dagger in Chirac’s back. How do you think he would have dealt with the DoS wolves?

In any event, I think everyone now agrees that the “wall” was a mistake, myself included. I simply assert that it wasn’t something that the Clinton Administration invented ex nihilo, and it was, in fact, continued in the Bush Administation.

Whether Clinton made the wall stronger or created it, is immaterial to the discussion or the points made by Gray/Occam.

I’m sure Jimmy Carter, that infamous darling of international thuggery, put up some intelligence walls as well. That is separate from what informed Clinton’s domestic political agenda, though.

I find it hard to believe that the Bush Administration has maintained the wall.

Patriot Act broke some of it down, but Bush doesn’t issue Executive Orders, which would be of more immediate effect and be invulnerable to Supreme Court nullification without Congressional majority votes.

Because Communism is dead and thoroughly discredited?,/b>

Ideologies don’t die, for the spirit of humanity lives on. On that note, Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

The American military and the lessons of Vietnam: A study of military influence and the use of force in the post-Vietnam era
“The Vietnam experience left the military leadership feeling that they should advise against involvement in counterinsurgencies unless specific, perhaps unlikely, circumstances obtain — i.e. domestic public support, the promise of a quick campaign, and freedom to employ whatever force is necessary to achieve rapid victory. In light of such criteria, committing U.S. units to counterinsurgencies appears to be a very problematic proposition, difficult to conclude before domestic support erodes and costly enough to threaten the well-being of all America’s military forces (and hence the country’s national security), not just those involved in the actual counterinsurgency.”

By the way, did anyone ask Patraeus why the 50:1 rule of thumb for counterinsurgency operations (20 soldiers per 1000 population) was so completely ignored for Iraq?

We can definitely learn from our mistakes, and we need to discuss mistakes for that reason.

Take a look HOW Human Rights initiativesguys doing in Iraq, and HOW they learn from “Thier” mistakes