Hate to see more guys ordered to Irag!

[MarAzul]

I don't know what their orders entail, But I sure hope they take it as foremost to keep themselves safe. Until someone defines victory and how to achieve said victory, I think sending more people there is a gross error.

 

[BrianFromWA]

didn't you read the press conference? They're "non-combat" "advisors".

 

[MarAzul]

didn't you read the press conference? They're "non-combat" "advisors".

I know, I have read that sort of shit before.

Advising to do what? Sort of bothers me having that undefined and how it is they are non-combat. Who the fuck agreed to leave them be?

 

[Rhal]

didn't you read the press conference? They're "non-combat" "advisors".

As someone who has served in the United States Military could you please explain what exactly a "non-combat Advisors" is. It seems like even if they are not sent there for combat purposes they will still be in areas were it is extremely dangerous and will be under fire at times.

 

[Denny Crane]

http://time.com/3380424/what-are-those-1600-so-far-u-s-military-advisers-doing-in-iraq-so-far/

Seems like a reasonable explanation.

 

[magnifier661]

didn't you read the press conference? They're "non-combat" "advisors".

Didn't Kennedy do that in Vietnam?

 

[MarAzul]

http://time.com/3380424/what-are-those-1600-so-far-u-s-military-advisers-doing-in-iraq-so-far/

Seems like a reasonable explanation.

It's no explanation at all.

"So it’s a relatively tiny force. But just what are these troops doing? More importantly, what are they not doing?"

Nothing about what victory is or how we are going to achieve it. What we have is a few hundred , then some more troops , now some more. Not a damn thing about how many it is going to take to do what ever.

This is just as much bullshit as ObamaCare saving you something or Vietnam with just a few advisors.

Would your Senator, or mine support this crap? We have a right to know. No I take it back, they have an obligation to tell us, Just as the President has an obligation to confer with them and then to approve or not.

 

[barfo]

Nothing about what victory is or how we are going to achieve it.

When was the last time we knew that about any war?

barfo

 

[MarAzul]

When was the last time we knew that about any war?

barfo

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=12239

 

[barfo]

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=12239

Exactly right. So why would you expect clarity on the current operation?

barfo

 

[MarAzul]

Exactly right. So why would you expect clarity on the current operation?

barfo

One Democrat knew how to do it. The current should also, or be schooled.

Bush #1 was pretty clear also. Saddam will not have Kuwait. This will not stand! Or something very close.

 

[barfo]

One Democrat knew how to do it. The current should also, or be schooled.

Bush #1 was pretty clear also. Saddam will not have Kuwait. This will not stand! Or something very close.

That's not that close. As I recall we took back Kuwait pretty quickly. We didn't stop there.

barfo

 

[MarAzul]

That's not that close. As I recall we took back Kuwait pretty quickly. We didn't stop there.

barfo

Looks like 43 day did the trick. Not much to bitch about.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/index/iraq/nirq050.htm

 

[barfo]

Looks like 43 day did the trick. Not much to bitch about.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/index/iraq/nirq050.htm

Yeah, agreed. I had thought we screwed around long after that, but apparently not.

barfo

 

[MarAzul]

Yeah, agreed. I had thought we screwed around long after that, but apparently not.

barfo

Dang I have to bump this, it was a first.

 

[jlprk]

Marazul, did you demand the same answers when the President was a Republican? Many of us did, and he had only jingoistic answers.

This board had a thread about the famed woman who moved to Portland to get her recent assisted suicide. Compared to her, the media hid news of the following Portland antiwar demonstrator's death. For background, watch the article's 9-minute video from the ABC program Nightline, made a year before he died 2 days ago from pain, not suicide.

Tomas Young, an Iraq War Army veteran who was paralyzed by a sniper's bullet and became one of the first veterans to oppose the war, has died at age 34. Young passed away in his sleep early Monday morning at his home in Seattle, just one day before Veterans Day, his wife Claudia Cuellar Young told ABC News. Young was paralyzed in April, 2004 at the age of 24 in a battle in Sadr City, Iraq, after being in the country for just five days. He was riding in an unarmored, open air Humvee when he was shot by a sniper's bullet and instantly paralyzed from the chest down, confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. He had joined the Army two days after September 11, 2001 and became one of the first veterans to publicly oppose the war, recorded famously in the 2007 documentary about his life “Body of War” co-produced by Phil Donohue.

Cuellar Young said they had only moved to Seattle a month ago after her husband’s pain medications were tapered down by the Veterans Affairs Hospital in Portland, Oregon, where they moved last September from Young’s home in Kansas City. Cuellar Young said she was “battling” with doctors at the Portland VA who she believes labeled him a “junkie” and she hoped her husband would be able to get his normal dose of pain medication if they relocated to Seattle. “I don’t know why he had to beg, he fought for his country,” Cuellar Young told ABC News Tuesday evening.

When they relocated they did see a doctor in Seattle, but were told, according to Cuellar Young, they would need to come back November 24 to meet with the pain team. He didn’t make it that long. Cuellar Young said she tried to stretch out his pain medicine, but he would wake in the middle of the night with “breakout pain.” She said she called the VA in Seattle to tell them she was running out of pills and told them “my husband took a bullet for his country,” but was told to “calm down.”

...In March, 2013, after almost 10 years of struggling with a paralyzed body, deteriorating health, a regimen of dozens of pills a day, intense abdominal pain that led to the removal of his colon -- and on top of all that, a pulmonary brain embolism in 2008 that made him even less mobile -- Young decided he was done fighting. That decision, he realized, meant he could be abstaining from medicine, food and water for weeks until he died...

Young said he wanted the country to learn from his struggle that "war is the last resort" and in future conflicts the American government should try diplomacy and "if they are still not cooperating they should send in a small group of elite trained forces not 125,000 19-year-old kids whose first cultural experience is eating at the Olive Garden or Taco Bell." "I want our government to try every possible outlet with the country before invading it, before going to war," Young told ABC News in a previous interview in March, 2013.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/tomas-youn...tivist-dead/story?id=26846330&singlePage=true

 

[MarAzul]

Marazul, did you demand the same answers when the President was a Republican? Many of us did, and he had only jingoistic answers.

This board had a thread about the famed woman who moved to Portland to get her recent assisted suicide. Compared to her, the media hid news of the following Portland antiwar demonstrator's death. For background, watch the article's 9-minute video from the ABC program Nightline, made a year before he died 2 days ago from pain, not suicide.



http://abcnews.go.com/US/tomas-youn...tivist-dead/story?id=26846330&singlePage=true

During my life, most wars of any significance have started with a Democrat Commander in Chief. The exceptions the two Irag wars and I have no problem with the first. The second, I though went off the track when the mission became creating a Democracy. That is not our job.

Page one of the Art of War has some truths I think should be noted:

"The Moral Law Causes the people to be in complete accord with their ruler; so that they will follow him regardless of their lives undismayed by any danger."
Obama is and utter failure right out of the gate. The people do not know the mission nor how we will be successful.

"The Commander" is the example of our power in his wisdom, courage, command presences. The best Commander usually win if the cause is moral.

We have no Commander identified, no Stormin Norman! As far as I can see, Valerie Jarrett is advising the President on troop levels necessary for this unknown mission. You can name the Commander(s) of every war we have ever had, except this one. I don't think this Commander in Chief places any value on any Commander except self.

 

[jlprk]

When Bush became (he wasn't elected) President in 2001, in his first week he bombed some Iraqi stations just to tell Saddam, I'm coming for you. Bush then spent a year and a half trying to justify why we should start a war with a country which was no threat to anyone, not even Israel.

The best theory for why he started the war is that in the 1980s, with the U.S. helping Iraq fight Iran with the purpose of them mutually destructing, his oilman father made some secret deal with Saddam for more U.S. assistance, and Saddam reneged on his end of the deal.

All we know is that Big Bush was mighty bitter against Saddam. The best theory for Little Bush's war is that he was salvaging Big's reputation after he wisely held back from marching to Baghdad in 1991.

You say you want a clear purpose before initiating a war. Did you say that in 2001-03 when Bush went through about 5 reasonings for his Iraq war, persuading no one but war lovers who needed no reasons anyway?

 

[jlprk]

Back in my day, we made Democratic presidents justify their wars.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/this-day-in-politics-henry-clay-112842.html?ml=tl_10_b

 

[BrianFromWA]

I wish we had a couple more Henry Clays right now in Congress. He got people to compromise on strong-held opinions about things like slavery, annexation and war.

Though it's odd that you bring him up, as he was one of the biggest proponents of the War of 1812 (also on a Democrat's watch).

 

[jlprk]

I wish we had a couple more Henry Clays right now in Congress. He got people to compromise on strong-held opinions about things like slavery, annexation and war.

Though it's odd that you bring him up, as he was one of the biggest proponents of the War of 1812 (also on a Democrat's watch).

I think he was a Whig. Never trust a Whig. In Lincoln's time, Republicans were the liberal party, opposed to slavery. That made the South Democrats. The magnetic poles flipped between Roosevelt and Johnson, as the new CIA undercut domestic Communism by overthrowing the FBI's policy of institutional racism.

 

[BU54]

Combat or non combat either way these troops are targets to the barbarians in the middle east.
My son joined the army in may. In february he is being deployed to kenya(yes obombas home country)to help train the kenyan troops to fight terrorists in somalia. Whats worse iraq or ebola africa?

 

[BrianFromWA]

Ebola's in the West. It's like being deployed to Miami if Ebola was centered in California, except no one really traveled across country because Who Goes to Kenya?! and there's a big-ass jungle in between.

(See the "size of Africa" thread)

Now, there are a bunch of soldiers being deployed to "Ebola Africa". But Kenya's not it. And Iraq would be worse.

 

[BU54]

Ebola was spread across seas to the US of A why wouldn't it be spread on the same continent to kenya?

 

[BrianFromWA]

because way more flights go to the USA, because way more infected people come to the US for their health care, because have you tried to get a flight from Monrovia to Nairobi? Kenya Airways suspended all their flights to West Africa.

To a more specific point, there have been no cases confirmed in Kenya. They thought one guy might have been, but it turned out negative.

 

[BU54]

because way more flights go to the USA, because way more infected people come to the US for their health care, because have you tried to get a flight from Monrovia to Nairobi? Kenya Airways suspended all their flights to West Africa.

To a more specific point, there have been no cases confirmed in Kenya. They thought one guy might have been, but it turned out negative.

You might be convinced but I'm not.
Besides didn't obomba say not long ago no more troops to iraq? Yes I know that doesn't mean shit coming from a politicians pie hole.

 

[BrianFromWA]

I'll put it this way...as someone who's been deployed to West Africa, Afghanistan, and read up on some of the "advisory" work going on in Iraq, if your son is being deployed to a "hazardous duty" area, Kenya's one of the best places to go right now. Tell him to use his time trying to learn something, and not just follow around soldiers-being-soldiers. A lot of opportunity, and a good first deployment. Good luck to him.

 

[MarAzul]

Combat or non combat either way these troops are targets to the barbarians in the middle east.
My son joined the army in may. In february he is being deployed to kenya(yes obombas home country)to help train the kenyan troops to fight terrorists in somalia. Whats worse iraq or ebola africa?

Spot on! Targets! Geez, without a known mission, without an objective, without knowing what victory is, and without the consent of the people. Then we have Ebola! Sending troop to fight Ebola is abuse of the military, in my opinion. Send the CDC, Send the Peace corp, Send the Progressives for Open Boarders, but damn! Sending the troops is abuse of them and abuse of the power of the Commander in Chief.