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Old 01-13-2007, 11:49 PM   #14
David Orange
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Location: Birmingham, AL
Join Date: Feb 2006
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Re: An Alternative Proposal for Bush

Quote:
Mike Sigman wrote:

David Orange wrote:
"I don't remember what Franks said, but it looks to me like Shinseki had it dead on. A typical Bush tactic to fire (or smear) those who tell the truth."

Mike:
I'm going to stop right here. You don't know what you're talking about, once again. Franks listed himself and all the generals that wanted a small, rapid force. You're picking and choosing your facts in a rather clueless way.
Mmmm....no. It looks like Shinseki was 100% correct and we have today what he said we would have. And if Franks said we could do it with a small force, he was wrong. But why did Cheney change his tune? He said at the end of Gulf War I that it would be a fool's errand to invade Baghdad. We'd have to end up rebuilding their government, which is not what we're about. We'd be stuck in a bloody quagmire, etc. Franks covered his ass, it looks like to me. And he kept his job. Shinseki told the truth and got canned for saying we needed more troops.

After Bush flipper-floppered (long after more troops could help), Abizaid said we didn't need more troops. And where is he now? OUT. That's the shame of being an honorable, intelligent military man: a self-serving political bully can bring you down in a heartbeat.

Quote:
Mike Sigman wrote:
David Orange wrote:
"I think it's far more insulting to put a chickenhawk in charge of their lives, send them into Iraq without sufficient armor, renege on the limits of their time in combat, send them back before their time is due, and all the other indignities Bumbya has heaped upon them."

Mike:
You may have missed a few of the fairly analytical dissertations about the characters of people who make this "chickenhawk" charge.
"The people" who make the "chickenhawk charge"???

I don't know who "they" are. I'm the one who said it. And I don't need to read any critiques of anyone's character when I can see Bush's character right in front of my eyes, every day for the past seven years. He's a chickenhawk. He got out of Viet Nam, shirked his duty in the Air Guard, never put himself in harm's way, but now sends other people to die for NOTHING but his own cowboy ego.

Again, I say that Afghanistan was on the right track, but he abandoned that job half done and the Taliban are taking over there again.

Quote:
Mike Sigman wrote:
It's pure personal attack.
He's a terrible leader who sends others to do what he wormed his way out of doing. That is the definition of "chickenhawk."

Quote:
Mike Sigman wrote:
Where did you serve?
You quoted in another thread that "If one isn't a socialist at 20 he has no heart. If he's still a socialist at 30, he has no head."

Well, similarly, if you were born in 1945 and didn't go to Viet Nam, you had no patriotism. If you were born in 1955 and did go, you just weren't paying attention to what was going on in the world.

I was on a military track from birth until 17. My father was on carriers in the Korean conflict and I aimed to be a fighter pilot my whole life. I was up for an appointment to the Air Force Academy but I backed out because I had seen too much crookedness in the way our sorry leaders were handling Viet Nam. It had turned into a big testing field for high-tech weaponry, an endless conflict for conflict's sake, mismanaged by politicians and bean counters who didn't give a damn about a soldier's life, much less his lousy arm, leg or face. And the Viet Namese people? The sure didn't give a damn about them. We were supposedly there to "save" them, but by 1972 even a teenager could see that that was not what was happening over there.

I gave up my chance to fly the finest aircraft known to man. I put myself at risk for the draft, which was still going and for which I had registered. Unlike Bush, who got to fly great jets, got paid and probably still gets verterans' benefits despite not showing up for duty and being declared unfit to fly, I wouldn't serve that system at all. While Viet Nam was winding down and was finished by the time I would have been a military pilot, I didn't trust them not to send me into some similar debacle for some other politician's glory at the cost of innocent blood.

Quote:
Mike Sigman wrote:
Maybe we should bring up the point that Al Gore tried to prevent the votes of servicemen from counting in the 2000 election because he knew that most military votes are Republican....
You mean the allegation, the political Rovian smear?

Quote:
Mike Sigman wrote:
for the simple reason that the percentage of Dem's and libs who serve in the military is very small. They complain... but they don't serve in meaningful numbers.
Well, Gore did. Kerry did.

Who didn't? Rove. Cheney. Limbaugh. Wolfowitz. Gingrich.

It's an impressive list, all the cons and neo-cons who wormed their way out of service during Viet Nam although they whole-heartedly supported sending other people and who, decades later, engineered the disastrous fiasco in Iraq: in other words, "chickenhawks."

David

"That which has no substance can enter where there is no room."
Lao Tzu

"Eternity forever!"

www.esotericorange.com
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