Yeah, I'm gonna feel real sorry for them.

NOT.

Al queda and the democrats must be pissed.

They already have it figured out. Victory was achieved because of the dems numerous, meaningless and incoherent resolutions that were forwarded and then withdrawn due to public outrage. Yeah, thats it.

Great the surge worked, bring our troops home. The only reason to keep them there is for war profiteering.

Mark:
Please explain why you link to Kuwait. I find that very odd in light of your previously stated positions. That same information has been reported in the (so called) MSM. Although; (what with the internet and global communications,) I guess all media can be labled "mainstream" in reference to its ultimate direction. It is the tides and eddys that swirl around as backwaters until the force of gravity once again reclaims those waters into the main...stream.
All water flows towards the equator. Derivate that why don't you and get back to me.

Great the surge worked, bring our troops home. The only reason to keep them there is for war profiteering.

Our troops? The soldiers who are fighting in "our" war? Just want to be sure you are accepting all facets of American citizenship and not simply cherry-picking.

"...incoherent resolutions that were forwarded and then withdrawn due to public outrage." by: Bacon-I Will Miss Thee

Bwahaha! So true!

It's great that the surge is so successful.

Oh, come on you Knuckleheads. Get real and smell the coffee. The drop in violence due to the surge is just a blip, ultimately the surge will be seen as a failure like all of Bushes efforts. Mark my words, Mark.

Canuckguy,
I hope you are wrong. I would love to see it work so we could start bringing our troops home.

It must be working because of Speakerette Pelosi's fulfilling her campaign promise of "doubling the Special Forces."

Oh wait, she hasn't done anything there yet? All she wants is to figure out the best way to undermine the Troops and Bush and make Bush look incompetant?

Josh, maybe you should be telling Hillary the Troops need brought home now. After all, she is the one now saying she sees American Forces remaining in Iraq (into her administration)to protect the American Embassy and other personnel, train and equip Iraqi forces, and conduct “targeted counter-terrorism operation.”

Canuckguy- Can you give some examples from history where adequately supplied reinforcements were a tactical disadvantage? I wouls say three solid examples might show that you at least have some reasoning behind your predictions. less than that, and I would say you are simply wishing for that outcome.

The fact that for years less than 16% of the military says they are Democrat is really starting to show. You Democrats are incredibly ignorant of military affairs. And worse yet, you don't really want to learn.

God bless our troops and God bless President George W. Bush, the greatest president in american history.

i really wish the violence would go down. However, I think its premature to make any statements. If you look at the number of incidents over the past few months for example you see all sorts of these bumps up and down. For example in January the number of IED deaths was a factor of 2 higher than it was in February or December. Does that mean that what we were doing in January was any better or worse then the Feb or December - I doubt it.

Hopefully the violence will go down - but until we see a trend that lasts I wouldn't conclude anything...

Canuck,

It must be a weird world you live in, along with the American left - a world in which a few thousand ragged terrorists can best the United States military. Sorry, but it doesn't work that way - our troops are really, really good and as long as they aren't cut off at the knees by defeatists and traitors here at home, they will prevail.

Wife beaters stop when the police are at the door too.
We have accomplished the 3 directives we were told 4 years ago. Saddam is dead. There were no WMDs and Iraq, as much as it is, is in compliance with the U.N. There is no defined mission, the troops don't know who they are fighting or whose side we are on. It has been a civil war for well over a year and we are in the middle. And yet the same troops have been deployed over and over and over again. And if one looses a limb they end up in Walter Reed. This battle cannot be won by military means. Those people hate each other and have for centuries.

tomjeff - so.... they're not fighting over oil? Or, they've been fighting over it for centuries, or what? Did Muslims fight over oil in the 1600's? Wasn't that whole area part of the Ottoman Empire until World War One? Baaahhh - Facts. Anyone can manipulate facts.

You say they've been fighting and we should get out. Sooooo, you don't care if we could prevent a slaughter? Or possibly a regional war? To hell with THEM?

Makes sense I guess. Thats how we handled Cambodia and Rwanda. Yah. Yah, I see it now. Let there be genocide. Let there be a huge war in the region. Let them kill each other. Who cares?

Kahn:
You're deranged.

Kahn:
You're deranged. Go outside and yell.

tomjeff,

Kahn is insane, but you're the one who thinks that your brothers and sisters in Iraq can't see reason and are just a bunch of bloodthirsty savages?

Geesh!

"It has been a civil war for well over a year and we are in the middle. And yet the same troops have been deployed over and over and over again." by: tomjeffairplane

Again, I'd like to point out what should be obvious to everyone. The War in Afghanistan is an Afghani Civil War. The Taliban are Afghanis. The Karzai government is Afghani. Afghanis are fighting Afghanis.

In fact, Afghanistan was in the midst of a Civil War before the US declared war on it, three weeks after 9/11. The Afghanistan Northern Alliance was fighting a war against the Afghanistan Taliban. Today, the war in Afghanistan is between Afghanistan's Karzai government/US allies vs. the Afghanistan Taliban/Al Qaeda terrorists.

For those who want to run from Iraq on the basis that Iraq is in the midst of a Civil War, logic suggests that the same reasoning/course of action would also have to apply to Afghanistan's Civil War.

Freedom, along with Afghanistan being a "civil war," isn't Darfur also just another "civil war?" And yet, the left demand intercession there as well? What about Bosnia/Kosovo?

Funny how they pick and choose which "civil wars" to interfere with.

You're right, Lew. The left is totally hypocritical.

In addition, President Clinton started the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo without Congressional authorization. President Clinton said that he had the constitutional authority under the commander-in-chief clause to use force without congressional consent. link

Neither Bosnia nor Kosovo were a threat to the USA at the time President Clinton waged war against them, but Bosnia has since become Al Qaeda Terrorist Central. Now, Bosnia is definitely a threat to the US.

President Clinton started the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo

Clinton started those wars?

You forget one important thing. Operation Allied Force was NATO's military operation against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia that lasted from 24 March to 10 June 1999 and is considered a major part of the Kosovo War. It was the second major combat operation in NATO's history, following the September 1995 Operation Deliberate Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Not Clintons wars, NATO's wars

My main point was that Clinton waged wars in Bosnia and Kosovo without Congressional authorization.

"Clinton started those wars?"

Actually those wars were started by the locals centuries before. President Clinton was the one who involved America in those wars when he attacked Bosnia and Kosovo. If you want to say that NATO started those wars, you can, but you'd be wrong.

Clinton screwed up big time. Al Qaeda terrorists are flourishing in Bosnia, now. The area's a major threat to Western Europe and America.

For those who want to run from Iraq on the basis that Iraq is in the midst of a Civil War, logic suggests that the same reasoning/course of action would also have to apply to Afghanistan's Civil War.

Posted by: Freedom1 at March 15, 2007 02:48 AM

Do other neocons think like this? Afghanistan's government allowed Bin Laden to openly set up camp and plan the attacks that killed 3,000 Americans. Each and every turn Republicans miss the point.

I really really really implore you not to make such sweeping generalizations.

"The left is hypocritical because Clinton did X"

Why? Sure those who will stand up and say its ok for Clinton to do X and not for Bush to X are being hypocritical. But that DOESNT MEAN everybody on the left is hypocritical - its possible to think BOTH did something wrong?

You really have to move past sweeping generalizations, cartoonish views of the world, name calling, and the like. It doesn't get us anywhere

Look, Kblack is attempting to take the moral high road again. Do we need to remind you of the names you've called people around here, AGAIN?

Attention Rich: I don’t disagree with your premise that adequately supplied reinforcements are a tactical advantage. Of course I agree. Also I am not wishing failure; I will be the first to eat my words (joyfully) if the US military succeeds fully in Iraq.

I have stated in a previous post that I don’t believe the number of surge troops is enough. I am not a military man but speaking just as another armchair general like many here, my opinion is that at least 100,000 should have been sent and not all to Baghdad obviously. Now that’s reinforcements!! However I also don’t believe those numbers are available for reinforcements.

Attention Mark: As for your comment, well things ARE NOT going well in Iraq, in case you haven't noticed. I was just stating the obvious based on the past failures and once again I stand in awe of your never ending unquestioning simple faith in the Bush Administration planning prowess.

Tomjeff,
I imagine you already know why Mark linked to the Kuwaiti website -- but for the true believers here, I'll briefly explain.
The article referred only to American casualties in Baghdad. In fact, over 70 U.S. troops were killed in Iraq during the time in question, a drop of 37 (not 60) percent over the more than 100 KIA the month before.
The mean number of U.S. daily KIAs is still higher than it was back in the heady days of "Mission Accomplished."
Mr. Noonan's ability to swallow any lie put out by the right and then cherry pick news items (the few that seem to lend his posts some credence -- at least for folks that don't check "facts" -- is well known and understood by those who frequent this blog.
The obvious fact that, being fairly skilled guerillas, the insurgent forces and militias have decided to lay low or change their AOs rather than fight head to head with the more powerful occupation forces seems to have escaped the military geniuses here -- but that's not unusual either.
This BS started at Drudge and I'll be surprised if some version of it doesn't pop up on every right-wing blog within a day (I think they actually read "talking points memos"). Next to the "it's all Clinton's fault" defense and its tu quoque twin, "Clinton did it too," this will dominate the next couple days.
Have you noticed the palpable fear on the right?
Lol!

Being a conservative means that every day is Thanksgiving.

Today, as on every other day, I am profoundly thankful that I am not a so-called liberal, those we now identify as Liberals. Because as a conservative, I know that what is good for my country is good for me.

I am thankful, every single day, for the fact that I do not have to hope and pray for bad things to happen to the United States of America, to its military or its leaders or its citizens, just so my personal political agenda might score a few points.

It is a great gift to be able to be happy when good things happen, when we prevail, when we have victories. It would be awful to live my life in such a way that victories for my country represent failures for my party, for my philosophy.

I am also thankful that I can simply view facts as they exist, and not have to waste my time and energy filtering them, editing them, and manipulating them to justify my position on fairness, justice, national security, or human rights. I don't have to continually redefine terms to make them fit my goals, such as creating new definitions for "lying" and "illegal". I can just define them as they have always been defined, and for that I give thanks.

The waistline won't allow for a feast every day to show my thanks, but it is in my heart, and I am aware every day of how lucky I am to be able to celebrate goodness and success and honesty and courage, instead of being threatened bg them.

Too soon to say what the results of the surge will be over the next few weeks but a couple of things are certain.

1. The US created the mess by not having a plan in place to provide security in Iraq and are responsible to the Iraqi people who just want to have a normal life, to provide them security and support.

2. That the anti-war people don't really care about anything except stopping the war and lie and manipulate facts even more than Bush did before going into Iraq. They really don't care how many Iraqis die because of removing US troops.

Salvelinus:
I was shocked to see a Kuwaiti source. No offense to the Kuwaiti people but talk about double negatives to try to validate an unsupportable position.

Yes, I have noticed the fear. They fear the facts of reality like the wicked witch of the west fears water. Some people believe in the Easter Bunny too.
Neoconservativism is a dead ideology and the few remaining supporters are withering like vampires on a day pass. I am sure that there is a psychological term to describe a form of schizophrenia where the inner world is mistaken for the outer and no consideration is given to skepticism. The wheels are not coming off the extreme right sometime in the future, they have already come off and what we are wittnessing is the actual crash in slow motion. I suppose that if I believed with all my heart and soul in a movement only to be betrayed by its utter inability to be a representative template, I would be angry to. Zombies ARE upset.
I enjoy the debate on this blog and I am glad that Mark takes the time to host it, but some of these comments make me think; come on! I may have been born at night but it wasn't last night.

The Left says, "We have to get out of Iraq because they are in the midst of an Iraqi Civil War!!!!!!!"

Oh, but Afghanistan is also in the midst of an Afghani Civil War.

The Left says, "Um, um, oh, yeah, well that doesn't matter!"

I was wondering how the Left would try to justify their opposing positions. I got my answer-not very well.

"Only 17 members of the US military in Iraq have been killed since February 14 till March 13, compared to 42 from January 13 to February 13; the rate was on the decline during the first month of the security crackdown, compared to a month before."

This is a lie. 70 US troops were killed during this time. Whether you agree with the war or not posting outright lies will not help your cause.

//sarcasm//

But there were no WMD, so this is an illegal, immoral war, caused by global warming!!!

//sarcasm off//

"...caused by global warming!!!"

lol
:)

This would be great news if it were true but unfortunately, it isn't. The article only counts the number of U.S. troops killed in Baghdad, not all of Iraq. The number I came up with when totaling the number killed each day during this time period is 76.

http://icasualties.org/oif/
http://icasualties.org/oif/SumDetails.aspx?hndRef=5

Cool... Brian...another person who hopes for more death so that he can be proved right. How sad.

Wawilliyo,

All I did was correct what was reported by the Kuwait News Agency. How on earth do you interpret this as hoping for more death? Are you able to read and comprehend English?

Afghanistan's government allowed Bin Laden to openly set up camp and plan the attacks that killed 3,000 Americans. Each and every turn Republicans miss the point.

Correction, Josh. Afghanistan's Former government allowed Bin Laden to openly set up camp.

We overthrew the Taliban and allowed the Afghani's to set up their own government, which is now embroiled in the Taliban waging a Civil War comeback.

In Iraq, Saddam's government was financing terrorists and he too was overthrown. Hard core terrorists flooded into Iraq in an effort to overthrow the government set up by the Iraqis.

Not a whole lot of difference.

Seeing as the issue at hand in this Thread is about the Troop Surge into Iraq, only addressing casualties and violence in Baghdad is in order.

It's called comprehending what the topic at hand is. All you wanted to do was throw out more death to prove the surge isn't working. If that wasn't what you were doing, than explain that.

Further, you use a website that has in the past been proven to calculate casualities in a way that wasn't accurate.

But again, why don't you explain why you were trying to inflate the violence in the Baghdad area.

Wow, yet another robotic mumble about the dreaded "neoconservative". Of course, no one actually knows what a "neoconservative" IS, other than proof that if a new word is introduced and presented to the rabble as an insult to the Right, it will quickly enter daily use by those eager to prove their eligibility for the LLL.

The problem is, if the political spectrum is divided into liberal and conservative, by far more Americans would consider themselves to be conservative (no matter what their political party affilliation) and the Libs have to disguise themselves as conservatives, run as conservatives, and try to substitute the hackneyed and equally inaccurate label of "progressive" because the term "liberal" is poison.

So what to do? Create a new word that includes the word "conservative" and constantly use it as perjorative, hoping that some will latch onto it and think "conservative" is a bad thing.

What's so funny is that it is the conservatives who really want to PROGRESS---to modernize the SS system, to revamp the educational system so it actually educates (including switching to a voucher system to make public education competitive, accountable, and therefore better), to modernize the military, to reform the election system, and in general to move forward---the old definition of progress, before the Left got ahold of it.

And it's the self-styled "progressives" who oh so desperately try to hang on to the outdated union model, who fight so hard to keep our schools locked into the old and inefficient (but union-friendly) ways, who fight SS reform, who fight election reform, who either want to remain static or move backward to failed socialist systems, who somehow manage to lay claim to the term "progressive" without laughing out loud.

They really represent a total vindication of Orwell's vision.

Wawilliyo,

The issue at hand in this thread is about the number of soldiers being killed in Iraq. Did you read the article Marked linked to? The article says, “The rate of killings of US troops in Iraq has been on the decline, down by 60 percent”. This is not correct.

You also disputed the accuracy of the web site I linked to. According to the web site, there have been 3,207 American troops killed in Iraq. Do you dispute this number?

Almiranta,

A neo-conservative is a conservative who supports interventionist policies in foreign affairs as opposed to isolationist policies.

Correction, Josh. Afghanistan's Former government allowed Bin Laden to openly set up camp.

We overthrew the Taliban and allowed the Afghani's to set up their own government, which is now embroiled in the Taliban waging a Civil War comeback.

In Iraq, Saddam's government was financing terrorists and he too was overthrown. Hard core terrorists flooded into Iraq in an effort to overthrow the government set up by the Iraqis.

Not a whole lot of difference.

Posted by: Lew Waters

Exactly, Lew. Well said!

Of course, no one actually knows what a "neoconservative" IS

No, it's just you who has decided that a very real and well-known group (that counts many well-known folks among its ranks...or at least, it used to before it became synonymous with failure) actually doesn't exist because, well, you don't want it to exist. It's one of your funnier attempts at denying reality, particularly when your denial of a real and well-known group is coupled with your insistence that these various nonentities that only exist as silly nicknames in your head are real. Now that's some over-the-top subjectivism!

I'd tell you to Google the term or something, but that would imply that you simply don't know what a neocon is and could be educated on the matter. Of course, you do know what a neocon is (and likely fear that you are one yourself, and with good reason); you simply want to pretend that you don't know--and that neocons simply don't exist-- because it makes things easier for you. Better for you to wallow in solipsism than live in the real world.

Brian... it's about the Surge... which is specifically addressing violence in the Capitol City of Baghdad and it's suburbs.

That's what it's actually about. But go ahead, and try to make it seem worse than it really is.

It's how you get along in life... wanting more death to prove your point.

By the way SEES... a neo-conservative had to be a liberal at some point in order to be a "neo"-conservative. Or you had to believe in using US Foreign Policy to affect global political change. Explain to me how Dick Cheney was a liberal who turned into a conservative or where he's identified with plans to systematically change the governments of the world to Western-style democracies.

From that bastion of truthiness, Wikipedia:

"The prefix neo- refers to two ways in which neoconservatism was new. First, many of the movement's founders, originally liberals, Democrats or from socialist backgrounds, were new to conservatism. Also, neoconservatism was a comparatively recent strain of conservative socio-political thought. It derived from a variety of intellectual roots in the decades following World War II, including literary criticism and the social sciences.

Irving Kristol,[1] Norman Podhoretz[2] and others described themselves as neoconservatives during the Cold War. In general, however, the movement's critics use the term more often than supporters.

This is so inane. The definitions for "neo-conservative" according to Brian and Sees' Wikipedia entry would mean that liberals and Democrats who support interventionist policies like going into Darfur to stop the genocide are "neo-conservatives". It would also make Bill Clinton a "neo-conservative" for his 1998 foreign policy of regime change in Iraq; not to mention his interventionist foreign policy of waging war on Bosnia and Kosovo.

Btw, read what President Bill Clinton said in The Iraq Liberation Act October 31, 1998-

Statement by the President

Today I am signing into law H.R. 4655, the "Iraq Liberation Act of 1998." This Act makes clear that it is the sense of the Congress that the United States should support those elements of the Iraqi opposition that advocate a very different future for Iraq than the bitter reality of internal repression and external aggression that the current regime in Baghdad now offers.

Let me be clear on what the U.S. objectives are: The United States wants Iraq to rejoin the family of nations as a freedom-loving and law-abiding member. This is in our interest and that of our allies within the region.

The United States favors an Iraq that offers its people freedom at home. I categorically reject arguments that this is unattainable due to Iraq's history or its ethnic or sectarian make-up. Iraqis deserve and desire freedom like everyone else. The United States looks forward to a democratically supported regime that would permit us to enter into a dialogue leading to the reintegration of Iraq into normal international life.

My Administration has pursued, and will continue to pursue, these objectives through active application of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions. The evidence is overwhelming that such changes will not happen under the current Iraq leadership.

Brian, you say: "A neo-conservative is a conservative who supports interventionist policies in foreign affairs as opposed to isolationist policies."

Do you consider this a good thing or a bad thing? Do you favor "isolationist policies"? Do you think that those who hurl the term as an intended insult do so based on their disdain for "interventionist policies"? And is there a litmus test for when "foreign affairs" become our business, or is what happens in any country beyond our borders always considered a "foreign affair"?

I guess the best example would be if Mexico were to be invaded by Iran. Would an "interventionist policy" be held only by "neocons"? How close would an invading nation have to come to our borders to be considered our busines and not just a 'foreign affair'? Is there ever a situation which takes place in another land which has sufficient impact on the United States to justify intervention?

And how did the prefix 'neo' meaning 'new', come to be attached to that approach to 'foreign affairs"? Would an 80-year-old conservative who had always believed there are times we have to be involved in 'foreign affairs' be considered a "neocon"?

Sees, you use up a lot of perfectly good words to say absolutely nothing of value. What a good little Liberal you are. And thanks for illustrating your belief that you don't need to know what you are talking about to talk, and that merely using big words, even when you don't know what they mean, serve to support your agenda, especially if they can be used as insults. Again, a fine Liberal footsoldier here.

Will, thank you so much for pointing out that the term "neoconservative" would, naturally, mean "new conservative", as I have pointed out in many posts on other threads, and as such can't possibly relate to the perjorative use of the word by ignorant Libs who somehow have gotten the impression, probably by hearing the sneering viputerative use of the word by such as Ranty Rhodes, that it means something bad.

I keep asking the LLL to define the word because I am curious about a couple of things, including what THEY think it means and why they think it is an insult.

I'm intrigued by the roots of the term as a reference to former Liberals who have become some type of conservative. I suppose in that case I might actually qualify as a neoconservative, as I was once a Liberal and now have realized the error of my ways and the foolishness and naivete required to be one, and have become a conservative. But I adopted the true conservative philosophy, and did not try to form a hyrbrid Liberal/conservative position, melding elements from the two philosophies.

But going by the "truthiness" of Wikipedia, which is so often cited by Libs as THEIR source of definitions, "neocons" would seem to be at the more liberal end of the conservative spectrum, and therefore much more acceptable to Liberals than the true hard-core traditional conservative.

So I still wonder why the LLL use the word as an intended insult. Based on what you say, Will, it is a little like an identical twin insulting her sister by calling her 'ugly'.

why they think it is an insult

Touchy, touchy, Almiranta! Well, I'll indulge you because I imagine your response will be quite funny....

"Neoconservative" by itself isn't an insult. It's just a descriptor, a reference to an ideology. But seeing as how Bush has rendered the neoconservative ideology a failure (as noted in particular by former neocon intellectual Francis Fukuyama, who correctly claims that neoconservatism now joins countless other failed ideologies in history's scrap heap), it doesn't exactly carry positive connotations. Funny how touchy you get about it, though--it isn't insult, but you sure take it to be one, or at least want it to be one.

Well, you at least appear to be backing down from your ongoing "'neoconservative' doesn't mean anything/it's a discredited term" snit. I guess that could be construed as progress. Certainly nothing that's going to break you out of your solipsism, but baby steps forward are better than nothing, I suppose.

By the way, if I used too many "big words," just let me know, and I'll try to dumb it down for you.