For the war? Against it?

When Mike can't address reality, he crawls away from it with an idiotic and superficial remark.

I don't think Iraq is an indicator of anything of the sort. Iraq is a protracted war, much like Viet Nam. We didn't, and we haven't, pulled out all the stops then or now. I doubt we'd handle the Chinese likewise. It isn't as though they wouldn't be the first to lob a nuke.

As it was with the Soviets. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

You're hopelessly naive and stupid. At least I've listened when my father has talked about his Vietnam experiences, especially when he said the Americans there were regarded as occupiers, even by those Vietnamese who were on our side. But don't trust me or my father; read what Winston Churchill and TE Lawrence had to say about their experiences in the Middle East and Near East and why foreign occupation is doomed to failure.

You're also wrong to believe we're fighting radical Islamic terrorists in Iraq. We're mostly killing ordinary Iraqis who have no sympathy for al Qaeda but who simply belong to one Iraqi faction or another battling it out for national dominance. In other words, it's a civil war.

You've shown no understanding at all of what's going on because you're too drunk, senile, and out of touch with anything outside the Republican party bubble and its cocaine-fed foreign policy. You're dumb and naive enough to think the Iraq war is about fighting terrorism (it's not),

If we lose Afghanistan, it'll be because we diverted our attention away from it and toward Iraq.

So why haven't we?

For what purpose? You DEMONrats couldn't comprehend them.

>

Then how do you explain those really wide lapels in the 1970s? If you check YouTube, there were nights when Johnny Carson's lapels extended beyond the shoulders. I seriously doubt that consumers back then had a stronger hankering for wide lapels than Bruce Dickerson did for cowbell.

Nuclear weapons are powerful, but don't forget the exercises of the

1950s and 1960s where American military personnel were placed very close to the centers of explosions and survived with no protection but foxholes. The mountains and tunnels of Afghanistan afford far more protection than that.

We haven't come anywhere close to making an effort in Iraq that matches what we did in Vietnam, nor will be because we don't have the national will, that is, a president who will put us on a wartime mobilization rather than keep the war swept under the rug with our all- volunteer force. As with Vietnam, we simply deployed too small a force to win. Furthermore, I've been told the Iraqi national army isn't nearly as good as the South Vietnamese army was.

Whoever said that about the Iraqi army is a liar and a traitor for contradicting comrades Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld. It's a spectacular army. Along with the Iraqi police, they'll be ready to handle their own security in 6 months tops.

Oh wait - that's what our comrades said in 2003, several times. Also in

2004. Not so much after that.

We are not. We are instead playing dumb because we haven't infiltrated al Qaeda or its allies to any significant extent, and we haven't established any credibility among Islamic fundamentalists through front organizations. Bin Laden is able to hide so easily because, despite being a foreigner, his bribes come with more credibility and moral authority than our bribes do.

Every ill-advised effort to fight Cold War Soviet communism has come back to bite us, while the wiser efforts, such as land reform, are still working in our favor.

It's not just OBL who knows how to maintain support for his cause. In Iraq, we can't even restore basic services. If the militias can do it, we lose face. Some idiot will now come along here and say "It's only been a month", but that's a crock. This story has been repeated over and over again during the past 2-3 years.

"But almost a month after American and Iraqi forces pushed into the area, there are no signs of reconstruction. Instead, the streets are filled with mounds of trash and bubbling pools of sewage. Many neighborhoods are still without electricity, and many residents are too afraid to brave the cross-fire to seek medical care. Iraqi public works officials, apparently fearful of the fighting, rarely seem to show up at work, and the Iraqi government insists the area is not safe enough for repairs to begin. On Saturday, three Sadr City residents gingerly approached an American Army position to deliver a warning: Unless the Iraqi government or its American partner did something to restore essential services and remove the piles of garbage, the militias would gain more support. "

Clinton took a shot at him. Bush cancelled a shot at him when special ops forces were actually on the plane, ready to go. Why? Because he didn't want to offend the Pakistanis by operating in their country.

What a bullshit pansy-ass reason.

Exactly. Both wars were not the U.S. fighting at their best. It wasn't, and hasn't, been "allowed".

Which is why this war will fail for the same reasons. Bush has utterly failed to learn from history.

In more ways than one.....

The silly child can fete 9000 people when the pope comes to town, but he can't get his no-bid contract buddies to build sewers.

The

Tax dollars were just being used to pay for one load of sewage versus another.

Why isn't the funding for Iraq and Afghanistan wars on budget? You don't know this but the entire debacle has been funded with emergency funding requests, completely off budget.

What is the reason again you are not enlisted and over there?

What is the reason why your sorry, DNA defective foetus wasn't aborted?

If you think government health care will cost YOU LESS than what the non-profits like Blue Cross/Blue Shield are paying Hospitals today, you do not understand it is the GOVERNMENT, through Medicare and Medicaid that has set the HIGH rates we pay TODAY. The federal government sets the higher Medicare / Medicaid rate to compensate hospitals for covering those that have no insurance when they go to an emergency room, under the Hill Burton Act, that requires hospitals to treat all patents

Blue Cross/Blue Shield and the insurance companies are the ones negotiating the lower prices that hospital and doctors are accepting to day from them. My doctor must charge the Medicare rate of $180 for an office visit. Blue Shield pays him $50 and I pay a $10 copay. If I used Medicare instead of private insurance he would have to charge $180 or he would be charge with Medicare fraud

My drug provider has negotiated prices for the drugs that I need that are one tenth of what Medicare pays for the drugs you receive when you are in the hospital.

The VA negotiates drug price but the VA drug list is only a small portion of the number of drugs available through Medicare.

Do you think you will get the quality of care you get today, if the government is in charge? If you do you were never in the military.

I recently had some minor surgery, the Medicare cost was $7,800, The Blue Cross "negotiated" price was only $3,400. In other words if we had national health care the cost would have been $7,800

A friend of mine had a hart attack while Montreal Canada, he was in the hospital for THREE days before he was seen by a cardiologist, in the US you will see a cardiologist as soon as you get to the hospital.

Why are you always telling Americans we can't have government provided healthcare - like you have; or low national defense spending - like you have; low priced prescriptions drugs negoatiated by your government - like you have? Why? Because you are a mental defective, emotionally stunted, intellectually dim. And because you have all the things you say WE shouldn't have.