Comments Posted By r4d20
Displaying 21 To 30 Of 53 Comments
They made no secret of their desire to sap the will of the American people and to cause a humiliating defeat of the United States.
What a cop out. Of Course the radical left was going to oppose this war and propagandize against it - anyone with half a brain knew that beforehand. Its not the job of Iraq war opponents to shut up - its the job of the it's supporters to make a better case... a job that they totally failed to do well!!!!
Saying the Libs or the MSM "sapped our will to fight" by publishing (completely true) stories of carbombs and mass carnage is a pathetic cop out made by people who dont have the balls to accept their failure to shore up that will.
They blame their countrymen for not having the balls for a long fight - but it was the war supporters who, through 2002, loudly proclaimed we would be out of Iraq in less than 1 year. Then they had 3 years to make a case for staying that would resonate with America and again they chose to tell comforting lies - telling us it was the "last throws" of some "dead enders" rather than making the case for the necessity of a longer conflict.
And only NOW that they can no longer maintain support by continuing to lie about how easy it will be do they feel it opportune to tell the public the hard, inconvenient truth about how we need to be prepared for a long conflict - and then fret because people don't believe their predictions of what will happen if we leave. Well,its their own damn fault. Like the Boy Who Cried Wolf, they lied so much about so many, mostly trivial, things that it is now THEIR fault, no one else's, if people don't believe them when they actually are telling the truth.
The Left may have invented the notion of "false consciousness" but today it is the Right that embraces the concept the most and it is utterly pathetic. Like a terrible salesman who blames the customer for their own shortcoming, facing overwhelming majority opposition to their cause they are reduced to blaming the very people they wanted to win over - their own countrymen - for weakness in the face of so-called leftist subversion. The truth is that it wasn't "subversion" that cost them the support of the people - it was their own lies!!!
Comment Posted By r4d20 On 27.06.2007 @ 17:23
you have joined the ranks of the better Red than dead crowd.
Red is temporary. Dead is permanent. Keep talking tough though.
Comment Posted By r4d20 On 27.06.2007 @ 16:05
PROVEN: CONSERVATIVES ARE SEX PERVERTS
There is no "smear" in pointing out that people who are the most concerned about the behavior of others usually have their own issues/compulsions. It's called Psychological Projection and its quite common. A cheat will suspect everyone else of trying to cheat, a liar will rarely trust anyone else at their word, and a sexual pervert will suspect everyone else of harboring twisted desires of their own.
Comment Posted By r4d20 On 21.05.2007 @ 18:31
COMEY'S TALE RAISES STAKES FOR BUSH
THERE IS NOT ONE IOTA OF PROOF - NOT ONE ANYWHERE - THAT THIS PROGRAM WAS USED FOR ANY BUT ITS INTENDED PURPOSE
One rarely has proof of a crime before the investigation starts. Yes, yhere is no proof of improper behavior by the WH but it
(1) is consistent with previous behavior, such as
(2) is consistent with their ideology regarding presidental authority during "wartime" and their rhetoric about how their political critics assist the enemy.
(3) is consistent with their stonewalling refusal to do anything to allay such suspicions other than tell us they did nothing wrong.Of course, I thought Saddam had WMDs for the same reason, so who knows.
Comment Posted By r4d20 On 17.05.2007 @ 18:55
Carole: "I do not know all the answers but the one I believe in is trust, and the Iraqi people will never ever trust any American again."
The blunders of this administration have already largely erroded Iraqi confidence in the US. The process started almost immediately with the Admins near-complete neglect of basic security. It continued with the Admins utter failure to make good on the promises of local military commanders regarding reconstruction projects necessary for establishing our credibility with Iraqis (Their position was simple: Reconstruction projects can wait. The most important thing is keeping costs down (or at least hiding them from the public)). It continued further with the many public pronouncements about the "last throes" of the insurgency - statements which were the told the Iraqis that the Administration was more concerned with exploiting the domestic politics surrounding the occupation than running the occupation competently. Then there was Abu Ghraib (a direct consequence of the Admins "TV tough-guy" policy that it's "better to anally violate 10 innocent suspects than let 1 guilty one avoid the fate"), the problem with the lack of oversight regarding "Private Contractors" (and the casual murder of Iraqi civilians for sport: http://www.abovetopsecret.com/Aegis-PSD.mov)
YEah, they probably won't trust us again for a very long while. Staying there longer aint gonna change that though
Comment Posted By r4d20 On 11.05.2007 @ 22:05
RICK: "Clearly, this is not going to be Saigon circa 1975 with desperate Iraqis clinging to the last helicopter leaving the American embassy (even though many liberals would dearly love to see that scenario play out)."
Ok, yeah. I scope out DailyKos and, yes, there are "liberals" who are so consumed with contempt for this Administration that they would take pleasure in anything that makes the Admin look bad - regardless of the humanitarian consequences (they would just blame Bush for them anyways because "it never would have happened if Bush hadn't invaded").
Still, shaedenfreude is universal. Every single minor success in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the GWOT in general, has been followed, among rightwing columnists and bloggers, by childish, and often plain stupid, exultation directed against liberals. From the death of Uday & Qusay to the capture of Saddam to the killing of Zarqawi, the FIRST reaction of the right has NOT been to ask "how does this actually effect the situation in Iraq?" but rather to claim "This proves how wrong those lefty naysayers are ... I'll bet that sticks in their craw!". Even the meaningless 72-hour lull in the violence at the beginning of the "surge" was greeted with ridiculous levels of triumphalism despite the fact that such short lulls are commonplace in the ebb and flow of war and could also easily (and, it turns out, RIGHTLY) ascribed to a calculated pause by our enemies rather than a sign of their imminent collapse. Frankly, judging by the amount of "ink spilled" one could make a case that currently the right, for all their talk, is as much or more concerned as the left with waging the "culture war" against their enemies at home than the "war on terror" against our enemies abroad.
RICK: ". Learning the lessons from this fiasco will make sure that we will win through to ultimate victory in this war against Islamic extremism."
Absolutely right, but (call me a cynic) it's not going to happen because any honest analysis of Iraq will undermine too many of the pleasant fictions of both sides.
1. As I'm sure you know, much of the anti-war Left has absorbed the "it was doomed from the start" narrative and are largely incapable of acknowledging any minor successes that might indicate any chance of larger success ever existed.
2. Much of the pro-war right, OTOH, are very emotionaly invested in the false and egocentric notion that "We can't lose over there. We can only lose over here!" and that therefore the blame for failure rests not with the leadership who made the mistakes but rather with those who "emboldened the enemy" and "undermined" domestic support for the war by bringing public attention to those mistakes - as if simply believing we were winning will make it so. Any honest acknowledgment of the mistakes and failures will, of course, contradict this narrative because it will show that we DID "lose it over there" on account of MASSIVE political errors brought about by near-criminal incompetence on the part of the Administration who kept willfully ignoring the advice of people in a position to know what they were talking about. This is simply NOT going to be palatable to many pro-war rightwingers with their immature notions of "patriotism". Look at your own recent experience on this blog with those who wrote you off for even acknowledging the empirical obstacles to our "victory".
I hope I'm wrong, but I am not optimistic. Right now I think its most likely that everyone will "learn" the lessons that they already "know".
Comment Posted By r4d20 On 11.05.2007 @ 21:37
"NOBODY HERE 'CEPT US INCOMPETENT JIHADIS..."
This can't be true.
We are fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here, ipso facto there can be no terrorist plot in America so long as we are in Iraq.
These idiots obviously didn't read the rules.
Comment Posted By r4d20 On 9.05.2007 @ 11:05
U.S. troops are withdrawn and we leave Iraq, it will be next to impossible for the U.S.A. to EVER confront another enemy anywhere
Do you have any idea how ridiculous this sounds?
Comment Posted By r4d20 On 30.04.2007 @ 15:23
TIME IS NOW THE BIGGEST ENEMY IN IRAQ
"we are a nation of cowards and shirkers"
Sounds like someone is part of the "Hate America First Crowd".
Comment Posted By r4d20 On 29.04.2007 @ 20:14
A TEXTBOOK EXAMPLE OF MEDIA BIAS
1. We are not abandoning the training of the Iraqi army in any way, shape or form.
...
3. We are making progress in training the Iraqi troops at a tactical level and that the takeover of many combat operations by them by December is still on track.Yeah. Too bad large swaths of the rising Iraqi Army are more loyal to sectarian and tribal factions that their federal government, let alone American interests. Some of them are even soldiers by day and insurgents by night.
2. There is no evidence that the Iraqis are going to sit on the sidelines while we fight the insurgency as the reporter intimates in the first graf.
1. Your statement implies a completely false dichotomy between "Iraqis" and "the Insurgency". The Insurgency is primarily made up of Iraqis. The Foreign Fighters are a minority comprising only about 15% of the total strength of the insurgency and, although primarily responsible for majority of despicable attacks on Iraqi civilians, is NOT the main source of attacks on US forces.
Comment Posted By r4d20 On 20.04.2007 @ 18:05
