You are a libertarian and most would not know it from what you wrote. You write like a liberal. You support liberal causes whether you want to agree or not that is what you do. try to understand this but it may be too simple for you.

Libertarians, liberals, and conservatives all want what is best for our nation. Each as their own way of getting there. Liberals are on a dead end road because they only want to make the attempt to fix things but their lust for power demands they keep people unhappy in order to keep their votes.

Libertarians want what conservatives want with a few exceptions that upset conservatives. Libertarians support the legalization of illegal drugs and taxing the use of it, the same with prostitution.
So much for no taxes and then they go off the deep end.

Conservatism is not perfect either but at least it is logical and will benefit the nation rather than hurt the nation even when they are wrong.

You my friend stereotype the republicans as conservative even though it was pointed out to you many times that republicans are not conservative. Just like the democrats we have a conservative wing, well the democrats have a conservative feather somewhere in one of their wings.

Just because you say you are conservative does not make you one. Conservatives don’t believe in racism unlike your party and the democrat party. We don’t blame races for ills of mankind we blame people.



You are doing a lousy job of it. Here is where you fail you assume that once people read what you read they will logically agree with your point of view. Anyone that fails to agree with your point of view is not seeing the big picture therefore you will restate your position still out of context because they must see it now. I don’t see your points let alone any view. You have yet to state your own opinion until pressed and probed giving the impression that you are lying or hiding something. The first thing you hid was that you were a libertarian by calling yourself a conservative. Yet you know nothing of conservatism other than talking points. You claim the Bush’s are conservatives proving they are not the true conservatives the libertarians are. I point out that they are liberals within a political party and you have yet to address that point of FACT. Instead you restated your points that they are not true conservatives. This gives me pause as you are either ignoring a fact and restating a lie or you are so ignorant you don’t see the facts when pointed out to you several times. It was not until I looked at that stupid video did I understand your point of view and that you were dishonest from the start.

How is one to debate with a dishonest person? And if you are dishonest from the start then any supposed facts you might bring up are easily dismissed out of hand because you have already proven your dishonesty. My point is that you invalidated your arguments before you started. Had you come out and stated you were a libertarian rather than a conservative you would have faired better. Had you said you were of the conservative wing of the libertarian party you would have had me all ears and eyes. I would love to pick the brain of a committed libertarian, Bortz and the magician Penn are the only ones I know of with any credibility and I have no access to them other than their shows. But you were dishonest. What you say becomes suspect even if it is a fact. Grow up, learn to tell the truth and maybe, just maybe you will reach people.

I'm going to just calmy have to agree to disagree paladin77. You basically play the time card again without taking time into the consideration that things have gotten worse. You even go to the lengths of admitting all wars are immoral, which I agree just an extent but then why repeat them? I'm not going to go over all the topics because it's you who basically repeat the same thing over and over and so do I in return. On practically no topics have we made each other change our minds. I'm not trying to spread any "illogical lies". And please stop sayin things are too simple I may not being able to understand.. that's the whole thing, it isnt. You really look at parties like they're these mythical entities instead of many individuals who make them up and not all want to help this country. There's a huge energy of corruption going on in this country right now and that's lobbying. Parties are not that simple.

 

As for the constitution, no one said it was "legal" it was still congress's job to declare war but they handed that to bush and he didnt'. Also now your saying he can't declare war because it's on Al Qaeda? Well that only streghens my case. The congress may have agreed but they still didn't offically delcare it, that's why its illegal simple as that. These wars are just "floating" in the air. It is corruption on a large scale that you can't seem to grasp.

Going by your own logic about the wars just supports my views. If they're so immoral then why continue them? especially for hunting down a small group which seems to hip-hop all over the place with many secret bases while thousands of innocents die on the hunt for them. It obviously requires different tactics.

As for Ron Paul, he didn't make the video personally. The Video creator chose the images. All ron paul did was the speach in the background. So if thta's your proof he is a racsist then your the one spreading illogical lies. Also if you truly believed in most of the conservative beliefs I have you would know Ron Paul supports them wholeheardly. Not any racists bs. And you back noting up with statements like "he would destory our nation". Sorry I bring up everything about what this war is costing, whether it be raw money, degrading dollar itself, lives etc and you still play the time card. So I don't think you would know what is really hurting our country.

Like I said, we're both basically repeating the same things. First you ask for evidence and now you say I don't think on my own... I still getting mad at what and how you are treating me in this debate, espeically for being so old. I haven't lied once about what I believe in. You're the one calling me so many party names while I am conservative, to which you even agreed were my beliefs. Maybe you're the one who has some growing up to do.. You are so stuck with this idealistic parties that's its stilly. Parties in essence are just groups of individuals who happen to share the same beliefs, that's what truly powers them, the indivuals and the beliefs. It's funny how you try to make my beliefs into "points" and that they are just a hollow part of what a party is...

I wish you luck in your future and hope we both end up on the right track for this country to get better even though I felt this was vey unproductive time spent and wished I would never have even started it. Let me repeat this, I have stated my ideas and haven't changed them and so have you. All of your negatives with me can mirrowed straight back at you too. It's that simple.

Quick - How many wars were started by the us in the last 100 years?

Answer - 0 (zero, zip, nada, zilch).

This has to be the lamest argument yet. That the fact that the non-agressor defending cause the death and suffering of the innocents. The simple fact is that innocents will always suffer in war. And it is not the fault of the defender, but the agressor. And in the last 100 years, that has not been the US.

In my experience those who speak for the "majority" and of "innocents" usually don't care much about people.

For example, which media outlet cares about the Iraqi Kurds or the Iraqi Shiites and how they have been treated before the invasion vs how they live today?

Which media outlet even tells us about pre-invasion Iraq so we can compare and see whether it really got worse or not?

Which media outlet (apart from Fox) even mentions the WMDs they did find when they claim that they found none, and which media outlets mention Saddam's ties to the PLO when they claim that Iraq had no connection with terrorism?

Paladin, look up a book called "Fiasco" by Thomas E. Ricks- it's a fairly non-biased and concise account of the whole affair. Basically what happened is that the Administration pursued their goal of invading Iraq entirely on ideological grounds. Their rationale, and all of their solutions were based on ideology. Whenever reality contradicted their ideology and dogma, they ignored it or fought vigorously to discredit or silence those who put forth the heretical viewpoint. Let's look at a few examples:

1) The Commander of the United States Army, General Eric Shinseki openly stated that the post-invasion operation would require several hundred thousand troops for several years to be done properly and would be the most dangerous part of the operation. This contradicted Rumsfeld's and Feith's ideological belief that the Iraqis would gladly sing "freedom" and start buying freedom fries and big macs as soon as Saddam and the Baath party were out of power. This was a naive belief, as any and every nation on earth (especially after a tumultous overthrow of it's entire previous system) requires a lot of TLC and intensive manpower to maintain security and rebuild it's infrastructure. Rumsfeld and Feith believed that within 6 months there would be less than 30,000 U.S personnel to provide military advisors and airbases in country.

In the end, Shinseki turned out to be right and Rumsfeld, Feith and Wolfowitz (the main propopents of the invasion) were wrong. This is illustrated by the fact that we are now in year 6 of the occupation, there are still + 130,000 U.S military (far, far more if you count the mercenary forces aka 'security contractors') in country and the U.S has had approximately 35,000 casualties (dead + wounded)

2) In the lead up to the invasion, the CIA and various military intelligence reports came back stating that there was indeed no grounds for believing that Iraq had any substantial WMD's or capacity to produce such or mount any kind of attack against the U.S, either directly or indirectly. What happened was Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz were established in a government organization called the "Office of Special Plans" or some such thing (may not be the exact title, I'll double-check) What this office was responsible for was being the focal point for all intel on Iraq. Whenever a report came in stating that there was no grounds for invasion, they sent it back saying "not good enough, re-write it" This is a clear indication of refusing to acknowledge the reality of the situation in favor of pursuing an ideological goal. Rather than gather intel and THEN make a decision based on that, they had already made the decision and were "fixing" the intel (this means lying) to support their decision. This is further illustrated by the downing street memo Catguy mentioned earlier.

3) When things started going contrary to the "greeted as liberators" plan that had been cooked up, again there was a refusal to acknowledge reality. There are documented cases both during and shortly after the invasion in which high ranking military officers (division level commanders) sent requests up the chain saying "what do we do once we've won?" To which the reply, if any came, was "don't worry about it, we're working on it". The truth is there was no comprehensive plan for post invasion security or reconstruction. This is because, again, the proponents were basing everything on their ideology. According to that ideology, once Iraq was "free" from Saddam everything would be great. The free market would magically step in and within a few months everyone would be happy. They never planned or made any provisions to look after the water supply, power grid, phone system, police and security, food distribution, all of the things that make up the basic framework for a modern society to exist. By the time the CPA started to get to those things it was already too little too late, AND the CPA made the further error of operating on an ideological basis as well. Which leads to the next blunder

The CPA- was one of the biggest flops in modern history and a textbook example of how NOT to govern a country. Why? Again, it was all based on ideology of free markets and "natural" economic forces with no regard for the reality on the ground. 

The CPA was staffed by the wrong people. It should have been comprised of folks who had experience in working abroad and re-building war-torn countries. Instead, it was mostly staffed by people loyal to the Republican party who had little or no experience outside of the United States. A mid-twenty something former intern for the Republican party, for example, was tasked with the responsibility of creating the Iraqi stock market even though he had no experience in that area at all. These kinds of staffing choices permeated the whole department. Because the CPA was staffed almost entirely by people with no actual experience in the jobs they were given, all of their decisions were based on their conservative ideology. That ideology called for a minimum of government control or intervention, and that "the free market" would magically cure all ills. Part of this free market ideology meant that the country was opened up to foreign business. This meant big firms from the U.S, Dubai, Kuwait bidding on and winning major reconstruction contracts. This meant foreign companies coming into Iraq with foreign workers, overcharging vast sums of money for their work, while unemployed Iraqis could do nothing but sit around and watch while foreigners came in to do piecemeal work. Meanwhile the basic services that everyone depended on, like water, sewer and power were mostly neglected as the major contracts went after things like building new government offices and repairing pipelines etc.

So, going back to # 3, people started getting angry and rebelling. This went contrary to the "greeted as liberators" plan (or lack thereof). When this happened, instead of saying "oh man, we screwed up!" the administration did what it does best..... it stuck to ideology!

Their line of thinking therefore was this:

"We've given freedom, the greatest gift possible to the Iraqi people but now someone's attacking our soldiers and the interim government we're putting together. Since we're blameless and have done everything right, the only possible reason why people are shooting at us HAS to be that foreign terrorists who hate freedom have infilitrated the country and that's why we're being attacked."

Again, the Administration and CPA refused to acknowledge the reality that many Iraqis were unhappy with the state of affairs and were resisting. They refused to acknowledge that there was an uprising of mostly local origin, and that that uprising could have been avoided entirely if they would have had a more concrete plan for post invasion security and reconstruction beyond "the free market".

So, they did what they do best. Ignore the facts and stick to ideology. This led to an increase of force. This led to the "compassionate" act of levelling the entire city of Fallujah and arming various militia groups to go after each other, knowing full well that they would also go after innocents who belonged to rival groups as well. This led to raids on entire neighborhoods in which all military age males found were instantly suspect and rounded up for further questioning. This led to the use of illegal and immoral interrogation techniques that contradict the Geneva convention of treatment of prisoners, all in the quest to get "actionable" intelligence.

Paladin, Catguy has provided more than enough proof which is easily verified and can be found with a few minutes of searching online. For the record, Carter was one of the best presidents in the history of the great country that is the United States of America and his legacy will live on far, far longer and be seen as a helper of humanity around the world long after Bush has faded into obscurity.

I don't actually remember President Bush saying anything about Freedom Fries and Big Macs.

I do remember that President Bush and most Republicans are FOR keeping a military presence in Iraq (which you claim is necessary) whereas Obama and many Democrats are AGAINST keeping a military presence in Iraq.

I find it interesting that you apparently analyse the situation correctly, but then turn the positions around and assign to the neo-cons the position Obama holds and vice versa.

Yes, Iraq needs an American presence for many years. And President Bush supports that idea.

I do remember how neo-cons (including myself) have compared Iraq to Nazi Germany, including the long military presence after the war. I never assumed that the troops would leave a short time after the invasion.

Perhaps Democrats did?

That's a joke, right? What did he even do?

(And please don't credit him for Sadat's heroic peace offer! That was president Sadat's doing, not Carter's. Sadat had planned the entire years before Carter became even a candidate.)




Yes, I am afraid that could be true. I was hit by the legacy of appeasement when Hizbullah shelled my university in northern Israel.

Northern Israel and southern Lebanon were in rubbles because of the idea that terrorists can be talked to, but Carter's legacy will live on.



I have seen pictures of people demonstrating on the streets in some of the -stans for George Bush to come and bring democray to them. Albanians love him. So do Kosovo-Albanians. Iraqi Kurds love him. The Lebanese Druze leader has credited George Bush for the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon.

Are there people out there celebrating Carter like that? For what?

Yea, like Hardings.

You are correct. I was referring to the comments made by the likes of Feith, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and Cheney that we would be greeted as liberators with flowers and the like littering the ground to pave the way. I never stated that Bush is solely to blame for this, and it has been well documented that much of his decisions on this issue were based on the counsel he received from his neocon handlers (many of whom I listed at the beginning of this paragraph) If anything Bush has a cowboy mentality and a desire to be a "war president" without ever having gone to war (a dangerous combination) This is nothing new, and has been seen in leaders down through the ages who enjoy playing "dress up soldier" without ever knowing the consequences of their actions. It is well documented that Bush greatly admired the British PM Margaret Thatcher, and the way she turned public sentiment to her favour with the Falklands war. Bush has been quoted in the past stating that what Thatcher did was the key to good leadership- that, being to engage in a short, victorious war.

Whereas the British had the Falkland Islands invaded by Argentina, Bush wanted to use 9/11 as his excuse for a short victorious war. If he really were truly concerned about "the war on terror" he would have thrown everything after getting Bin Laden and stuck with it as he was the one who actually perpetrated 9/11. Instead we see a very brief, limited campaign in Afghanistan followed up by "the main show" against Iraq which had absolutely nothing to do with it in the first place. There was far more emphasis, manpower and materiel expended on getting Saddam than there ever was getting Bin Laden.

So, Bush wanted his short war, and Feith, Perle, Wolfowitz and the like said "here you go... invade Iraq!" People like Wolfowitz believed strongly that invading Iraq would be a short campaign and that post-invasion security and reconstruction would be a breeze because of military actions carried out by John Abizaid in defending the Kurdish northern area of Iraq in the years after GW-1.

This was a little publicized campaign in which U.S airpower combined with Kurdish ground forces and very limited U.S ground forces effectively kept much of the Iraqi army out of the north and unable to do serious dammage to Kurdish fighters. The U.S forces involved were very small, depended on speed and C3 more than brute firepower and of course good air support. They believed that using this same formula across all of Iraq would have the same effect, but didn't think about the fact that the Kurdish north was the exception to the rule, very different from the rest of the country. 

So in short, Bush's handlers and closest confidants had a pipe dream that Iraq would be a short, victorious war that would coincide nicely with their geo-political goals (Iran would have been next, had things gone the way they wanted) Bush, while not an evil or sinister fellow, wanted a war that would make him look good and decisive ( he was poo-pooed from going after Afghanistan too heavily by Rumsfeld who complained that there were no good targets there) and rather than excercise the art that is statesmanship, he jumped at the first opportunity he was given to be the CIC of a "real war".

That's funny... I thought this article was about why Bush's approval rating was so low. Obama is extraneous to this debate, except perhaps for the fact that he was against the invasion in the first place. Stating that the argument is about whether or not to keep forces in Iraq skips over a vital point.... that being that the invasion should have never occurred in the first place. The where and how this conflict may end is another debate entirely. The points that I'm going after are

1) It never should have happened in the first place

2) After it did happen, even though it was wrong, the U.S had an opportunity to pull off a big win. Iraqi sentiment was very hopeful shortly after the invasion, but it quickly soured when they realized that the basic necessities were not being looked after (no real plan for rebuilding the country after effectively smashing it to bits) The U.S fumbled the ball and have been playing defense ever since.

In regards to the next step, a nice place to start perhaps would be an apology. "Sorry we needlessly invaded your country, we screwed up!" would probably be a good start for Mr. Bush. Instead he will never apologize to the Iraqi people that he authorized a needless war of choice.

As to stating that the Republicans are "for" keeping troops in Iraq and that democrats are "against" keeping troops in Iraq that is an oversimplification. If it really were true, the democratic congress would have pulled funding for the war more than a year ago. Instead they've authorized hundreds of billions (just another 165 billion the other day, actually) with no strings attached to keep the occupation going, despite the fact that your domestic economy aint doing so hot.

I've no love for the democrats or Obama, btw, nor am I one of their chearleaders.

As for the summer war of 2006 that Israel lost against Hezbollah, again it is an oversimplification. The IDF had long had a plan to get rid of Hezbollah and the cross border incident in which IDF soldiers were killed and captured (which goes back to existing hostage-exchange negotiations falling apart, which is yet another story) was used as the justification for levelling entire areas of Beirut and other heavily populated civillian areas in a failed attempt to smash Hezbollah's launch sites and areas of operation (launch sites that were largely mobile so the bombardment had almost no effect except for killing civillians AND turning public sentiment further in favour of Hezbollah). In no way am I justifying or defending Hezbollah's actions, but it does take two to tango! The whole point of the 2006 summer war was to get rid of Hezbollah so that Israel would have removed one of it's main threats on their border. Then they would be able to focus on going after Iran without having to worry about rocket attacks from the north.

Journalist Seymour Hirsh has a very concise piece written all about this in which senior IDF officials approached the Pentagon months in advance for U.S green light approval of their plan. Also, the use of massive airpower to go after hardened underground facilities was to serve as a showcase or dress rehearsal for what would ideally be reproduced on Iran after the Hezbollah threat was neutralized (a dress rehearsal that DID not go according to plan!)

 

Sorry I misunderstood, I thought it was a debate and discussion. So far you have not shown anything factual to suggest my way of seeing the world is wrong or incorrect. You have ignored facts presented to you so it means you are a true believer one that only believes what you have been conned into believing. If you had facts you would present them and we can debate points of view of those facts. Your goal is to convert me to your way of thinking by the use of lies, misrepresentations, and ignorance. Please understand that I believe you are not telling me all lies. Some of the things you present have been presented to me for decades so it is not new to me, though they may seem new to you.



You still don’t get it. Not because you are dense but because you never bothered to check out the information I provided. Look up the war powers act. Congress made it a law. It is constitutional because it has been challenged and stood the test of law. Congress does not have to make a formal declaration of war unless they want to.



Because the nature of war is immoral but it does not mean that it should not be waged. Just as you foolishly defend the belief that just because war is immoral it should not be fought, others believe that the alternative to not fighting a war is worse than the immorality of war itself. People protested WWII and said we should not attack Germany because the only nation that attacked us was Japan. Germany declared war on us not the other way around. We never had a formal declaration of war against Germany. Once war was declared on us we fought.



Did Mr. Paul refute the video, did he demand that it be taken down?



You have yet to show me this corruption you speak of. Where is it? Who is doing it? What can be done to stop it?

Doc, I thought I warned you before never confuse the issue with fact and logic.

You left out a component that was not considered by either side. If you remember right after the invasion and offensive actions had come to an end, there was a week or two where we saw happy Iraqis smiling for the camera, and mopping up action was started. Just as predicted by Mr. Rumsfeld, then we had AQ move in because they could not sustain the fight in Afghanistan, this was followed by Iranian troops in civilian clothes fighting our troops. To date we have captured three Iranian general officers, and almost a regiment of Iranian special operations troops. Both groups claimed to be Iraqi citizens, giving the media the myth of a civil war breaking out. As well as making it look like the Iraqis were not interested in freedom. Over the course of time we have seen them all fail. AQ in Iraq is almost gone now, Iran is looking to play nice as they did right after the 9/11 attacks because they realize that we can’t be beaten with their tactics.



I love this argument because it is only used by people with no understanding of how the intelligence community works.

Rarely is there a definitive piece of information one way or the other and to hedge their bets they produce pro and con reports. This way no matter which side is right in the end they had documents proving they were right. If there was justification to go to war they have a report given to the president and he acted or failed to act. If there was no WMD then they have a report that said they didn’t think they were there in the first place and the president ignored the facts presented. The reality is that both reports were presented to the president and based on the current intelligence at the time he made his decision. It is called CYA. The reports are valid and each have enough credibility that it can go either way, neither is definitive and it is left to the reader which one to give credence to.

It was not a matter of fixing the intelligence to match their way of thinking it was more of which one will cost the least amount of lives. If the no WMD report was true then we had no worries. If the pro WMD report was true then we could be looking at the death of between hundreds of American citizens and millions of citizens. Which one do you roll the dice on without the benefit of hindsight? Look at how the president was attacked for not preventing 9/11.
There was no way he could have stopped it because all the pieces were in place within our borders before he took office. He was getting over his first crisis of his presidency when China brought down one of our spy planes. He got the tax cuts and then the summer recess started and with congress on vacation, there was nothing for the president to do. He had reports of AQ planning something but that was vague and out of date. The CIA is prohibited from doing any work within our borders so they could not track them even though they knew they were in the country. Because of the wall created by congress in 1975 between FBI and CIA the CIA can’t share information with the FBI so they could only legally wait and watch and hope the bad guys leave the country and they might be able to get them then, only if the new president allowed the CIA to go lethal as they had requested with the last administration but were turned down several times. The findings of the investigation showed the president did not lie, he did not mislead, he went with the best information he had at the time and we sit back with a few years of hindsight to say he should have known this or that.



Yeah and that regiment of Iranian troops captured in Iraq please ignore the Syrian troops captured there, none of that would not have anything to do with the shooing thing right? The fact that the IED’s have been traced back to Iran might have a little to do with this whole unhappy Iraqi people thing, maybe. Let’s not pay attention to the fact that the majority of the nation had been quiet and peaceful for most of our time there and that only three areas of the country had any unrest and that has dwindled down to one area now. if we were so hated by the Iraqi people why has the fighting only in areas supported financially and militarily by Iran? Not all Shiites support the Iranians and what they are doing in their country. This means you can’t even make the claim that it is a religious civil war.



Have you taken leave of your senses? Please be so kind as to point out what president Carter did during his presidency that meets with your statement. He took us to double digit inflation, raised taxes to the point of clasping the nations economy, got 20,000 troops killed our poor economy caused a financial ripple that most of the world has not recovered from, and he was only in office four years.



Okay so the films on CNN, FOZ, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and others of the Iraqis giving candy and flowers to our troops after the war was over was fabricated?



So when the President said in his speech to the nation that the war would most likely last longer than he would be in office this is short to you? Or when he said it would take decades to get AQ. I know you want to believe the lies but his public statements say otherwise. Winning the war in Iraq was easy it only took two weeks. We had a two week lull in fighting, by then Iran, Syria, and AQ moved in. they did their damage and are losing. Even the most liberal news organization has had to retract the lie they told of a Civil war in Iraq. Now that the facts are out no one is calling it a civil war in any way shape or form. As pointed out to you in several debates, we have had troops in Germany since the end of WWII the same is true in Japan. We still have troops in South Korea because that war is not over yet after 50 years. With all that history in how we do occupation forces you suddenly think we should be in and out of a country in less than ten years? That is the way we lose a war. Leaving creates a vacuum and bad guys love a vacuum. We leave and we undo all we have accomplished and the lives lost will be wasted. Your statement defies logic as well as public statements.



You are right, I have not heard any of this.



Again this contradicts the facts as we knew them. The stated goal was to liberate Iraq and allow freedom and democracy to grow and flourish. With that happening Iran would fall internally. All publicly gathered information shows that Iran has more people under 30 than people over 50. the young majority wants to re-establish friendship and diplomatic relations with the US and abandon the religious oppression they have been under since President Carter refused to help the dictator of Iran allowing the nation to fall into the hands of religious zealots. Yes he was a cruel dictator the shah of Iran was but he was our dictator. But after 30 years of the new dictators they seek freedom from both. Having a democracy on their border will help that happen. This was the stated goal and is still the hope that they will find the ability to get rid of the madmen that are running and ruining the nation.



Well with that stated we should all go home and forget the whole thing. Oh wait, that won’t work as seen in Vietnam. We stay until it is finished or we get attacked again. I know this because we get probed every day. They are looking for ways to get through our security and they have failed so far. The killing in Iraq has depleted their ranks and they are running out of suicide bombers. The ones they have are having second thoughts according to the ones that turn themselves in with bomb vests attached. This is not because they don’t want to die it is because they don’t want to die for a lost cause. If their own people see it as a lost cause why are we so quick to surrender?

That seems to match what I read elsewhere:

http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/2007/11/an-edgy-calm-in-fallujah.php

Also see:

http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/2007/09/anbar-awakens-part-ii-hell-is.php

One of the articles also has a picture painted by Iraqi children on a wall in Fallujah(?). It shows Iraq as a sword manipulated by a strong arm with an American flag on it slaying a dragon. The dragon stands for Al-Qaeda.


The Iraqis who fought Al-Qaeda with the US have even offered to help in Afghanistan:

http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/2008/06/another-wave-of.php


"If the US had invaded, say, Bolivia - Osama bin Laden would have completely ignored it. And those who would have claimed invading Bolivia had nothing to do with the War on Terror would have been correct." - Michael J. Totten

Thanks for the support. I don't surff the web that much anymore because my job does not allow even my home comutter to go to certain areas. Thanks again.

Paladin77, you are welcome.