Thread: Bush's Failure

Bush's utter failure in Iraq
Posted: November 15, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern

It's time to acknowledge the truth.

President Bush's policies in Iraq have been an utter failure.

I say this as someone who supported the invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein – and as someone who still believes these were noble and morally right endeavors.

When we undertook the decision to invade Iraq, there were good reasons to do so:

* Saddam Hussein was an ally and supporter of Islamic terrorists, including al-Qaida;

* Saddam Hussein was a brutal tyrant responsible for unimaginable torture, repression of his own people and a war in the Middle East that killed more than 1 million;

* Saddam Hussein refused to disclose where his stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons had gone – some of which had already been used to kill thousands of Kurds in his own country;

* Saddam Hussein had a long history of efforts to develop nuclear weapons and we – all of us, Democrats and Republicans alike – were all uncertain about the status of his progress.

President Bush had rightly declared that we would fight the kind of enemy that had attacked us Sept. 11, 2001, wherever we found it. And, there was no question that enemy had an ally in Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

It was a logical – if not the only – possible next front in our war on Islamofascists. And, make no mistake about it, Saddam Hussein, though hardly a pious Muslim, fit the description of Islamofascist to the T.

The war was conducted brilliantly in its first phase – the toppling of the dictator.

The second phase, we all understood, would be trickier. Bush and his spokesmen rightly predicted that Iraq could prove to be a battleground that attracted our Islamofascist enemies from around the world. That would be a good thing, they explained. Better to fight them on the battlefield of our choosing than on the battlefield of their choosing. Better to fight them over there than over here.

So far, so good.

The tragic mistake came in the execution of this second phase of the war – which today, we're told, is not a war at all, but a "situation."

Brave, dedicated, well-trained and well-armed U.S. soldiers were given new orders. They could not crush the enemy under new rules of engagement. They had to fight with one hand tied behind their back. This was more akin to a police action than a war. U.S. soldiers were court-martialed left and right. Military decisions had to be made in consultation with Iraqi leaders and politicians in Washington. When enemy strongholds were identified, we could no longer simply engage and destroy them.

Iraq did become, in a sense, another Vietnam – though U.S. casualties never rose to similarly shocking numbers. It was never about not having enough troops on the ground, as some suggested. It was a matter of not allowing them to kill people and break things – which is what soldiers do.

The mantra for the Bush administration became "stay the course."

When progress is measured in years and billions of dollars and rising casualty figures, "stay the course" is a losing slogan – as we all found out on Election Day.

Bush had become Lyndon Johnson in 1968. And now, having orchestrated the Democratic takeover of the Congress, he is Richard Nixon in 1972.

America is now waving the white flag again. Now it's just about finding a way out of Iraq – an "honorable" retreat. Bush missed the opportunity to do what he set out to do – or told us he set out to do. He refused to defeat the enemy by any means necessary. He refused to go for the jugular and achieve victory over the Islamofascists. And, in war, anything short of victory is defeat.

No matter what you might think about our entry into this war in Iraq, the undeniable reality today is that we are fighting al-Qaida – the terrorist group that attacked this country Sept. 11, 2001, killing 3,000 Americans, destroying the World Trade Center and even damaging the Pentagon itself, something no enemy in America's history had ever accomplished.

That's who we are fighting in Iraq now. Just as Bush and his spokesmen had promised, they came from around the world to engage America – not in an attempt to defeat our troops on the battlefield, which they understood they could never do, but simply to make our stay there costly and uncomfortable. Their goal was the same as the North Vietnamese Communists' goal – bleed America in a dragged out conflict of low intensity so that opposition forces back home make it impossible to stay.

That's exactly what happened.

Now, it's just a waiting game for our enemies. They have won. The die is cast. The opportunity to destroy the Islamofascists on the battlefield of our choosing has been squandered.

With this bad experience behind us, it is unlikely we will choose to fight them again on any other foreign battlefield.

And that means only one thing – we will be forced to fight them here.
WorldNetDaily: Bush's utter failure in Iraq

Over-all, not too bad. I agree with some points disagree with others.

Utter failure?

Saddam Hussein has been sentenced to death by his own countrymen.

They've been having elections.

They're finally starting to arrest their own police who are collaborating with the enemy.

This stuff takes time, why is it so damn difficult for the "I Want it NOW!" Generation to figure that out?

Are things perfectly on track? No. Are they ever? No. So at least that's on track.

Has the situation for the US been aided by the incessant Surrender Monkey talk from the American lefties? No, of course not. Quite the opposite. We've told the terrorists they can hide in mosques. We keep telling them that we really don't like being there, and if they can hang on long enough, we'll run away. After all, what the left clearly wants is to force congruence between this conflict and their fond childhood memories of Vietnam. I'm certain they're saving spit up for when the troops come home. Probably a bunch of them have full spittoons in their freezers.

When we undertook the decision to invade Iraq, there were good reasons to do so:

* Saddam Hussein was an ally and supporter of Islamic terrorists, including al-Qaida;

Terrorists yes. Al Qeada, no.

* Saddam Hussein was a brutal tyrant responsible for unimaginable torture, repression of his own people and a war in the Middle East that killed more than 1 million;

That's certainly not an excuse to go to war. We let Stalin keep Russia, didn't we? And Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, and Ho Chi Minh.

We can pitch over any dictator we want at any time. Our choice, always. But that means it's not a special reason to do so.

Also the lefty refrain that the US shouldn't be the policeman of the world holds true. We should only act when we get something for doing so.

* Saddam Hussein refused to disclose where his stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons had gone – some of which had already been used to kill thousands of Kurds in his own country;

And it later turned out that those stockpiles existed largely in the imaginations of western fear mongers.

* Saddam Hussein had a long history of efforts to develop nuclear weapons and we – all of us, Democrats and Republicans alike – were all uncertain about the status of his progress.

Not really. We'd only been bombing them for ten or twelve years before we invaded them in 2003. They didn't have the facilities to build nukes.


Eh, for the most part the assessment isn't too bad. The major flaw is the statement at the end, conceding victory to the enemy. Those kind of falsities have a perverse way of making themselves true. All we have to do is beleive it, run away, and voila, the lie becomes truth.

Originally Posted by Freedom for All

This stuff takes time, why is it so damn difficult for the "I Want it NOW!" Generation to figure that out?

Exactly. People for some reason have the inability to look at this war with any historic comparison, I guess thinking that history started the day they were born. I guess it's easier to listen to and agree with the liberal parroting of " It's Bush's fault" than doing any objective thinking and realizing that yes, war is hell and if it doesnt suit your immediate satisfaction standards than its a total and complete failure

Im not suprised that the press in this or other countries reports absolutely NOTHING positive coming out of Iraq but what does suprise me is the intellectual lazyness and or blind allegiance of so many people.

Originally Posted by Invayne

Bush's utter failure in Iraq
Posted: November 15, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern

It's time to acknowledge the truth.

President Bush's policies in Iraq have been an utter failure.

The only failure is the failure of the American People who were told at the start by the CIC of the US Armed Forces that the road could be long, the going could get tough. The war on terror proves only one thing and that is some Americans are fair weather friends and would probably cut and run at the sight of a purse snatching in a WalMart Parking lot.

Typical "yes/but" leftist ploy, first acknowledge a litany of common sense agreements to corrall suckers, then finish it off with what amounts to Bush is not just a failure but an "utter" failure...the goal from the start.

Winning by a hair is what it's all about to yoyos inching toward a cause. A cause with all the attributes of someone being "educated" to wear their pants below their ass or "educated" by a media to know the whereabouts of Britteny Spears disposed pregnacy test but not know where Arlington National Cemetary is located. When asked, these are the people who will tell you they are democrats. The label, "utter failure" belongs where?

The truth to a liberal is anything that they think is in your best interest, sort of like a pacifier. Suck on it if you want, it's a free country...for now.

Originally Posted by JohnInLa

The only failure is the failure of the American People who were told at the start by the CIC of the US Armed Forces that the road could be long, the going could get tough. The war on terror proves only one thing and that is some Americans are fair weather friends and would probably cut and run at the sight of a purse snatching in a WalMart Parking lot.

Typical "yes/but" leftist ploy, first acknowledge a litany of common sense agreements to corrall suckers, then finish it off with what amounts to Bush is not just a failure but an "utter" failure...the goal from the start.

Winning by a hair is what it's all about to yoyos inching toward a cause. A cause with all the attributes of someone being "educated" to wear their pants below their ass or "educated" by a media to know the whereabouts of Britteny Spears disposed pregnacy test but not know where Arlington National Cemetary is located. When asked, these are the people who will tell you they are democrats. The label, "utter failure" belongs where?

The truth to a liberal is anything that they think is in your best interest, sort of like a pacifier. Suck on it if you want, it's a free country...for now.

When are people like you going to wake up and realize you cannot defeat a concept. To kill hatred in the world, you'd have to destroy all of humanity, which seems to be the agenda you support anyways...

Hitler's concepts were not concepts of hate?

When are people like you going to wake up and realize you cannot defeat a concept. To kill hatred in the world, you'd have to destroy all of humanity, which seems to be the agenda you support anyways...
__________________
"The flag is a symbol of the fact that man is still a herd animal."

Albert Einstein

Silly, silly libs, always labeling anyone who will not buy your product as, "eeeeeeeeevillle.
Your misconception tells me you should disassociate yourself from Einstein, you do not wear it well.

Originally Posted by Fishmint

Over-all, not too bad. I agree with some points disagree with others.

You have a link for Darfurgenocide on your post. You say that we should not have toppled Sadam's governmnet in Iraq I take it. But then why this link to Darfur? Do you suggest we should get out of Iraq because it is a civil war but then get involved in a civil war in central Africa?

Originally Posted by JohnInLa

Silly, silly libs, always labeling anyone who will not buy your product as, "eeeeeeeeevillle.
Your misconception tells me you should disassociate yourself from Einstein, you do not wear it well.

Terrorism is a concept... how do you defeat that? With your warmongering attitude? Hardly...