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I Don't Support Our Troops

valve bouncer

Master Dildoist
Feb 11, 2002
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BurlyShirley said:
Yeah, I agree in reality. I think that at best we can hope for an israel type situation. Mostly peace with a democratic govt., but still the odd coffee shop bombing every few weeks. Still better than Kurd gassings, no?
I think the best we can hope is that when they finish sucking the oil out of it the whole friggin' place implodes.;) The place will stabilise eventually, the present level of chaos can't be sustained I feel. The problem however smacks of the classic line from Vietnam -"In order to save the village we had to destroy it".
 

fluff

Monkey Turbo
Sep 8, 2001
5,673
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BurlyShirley said:
Yeah, it was real stable for the kurds. They love "stability" saddam style.
Also, we do have assurance that the next governing party wont be the same. They know we'll come own them too if they get to annihilating whole races of people. BUT even if we didnt have that assurance that they wouldnt, at least we dont have the assurance that the ARE!
For someone who claims to love peace and hate killing, it sure is sickening that you think things were better under saddam. With that line of thinking, the US would still be better off under the rule of great britain, as no people would have died in the revolutionary war.
Actually the Kurdish region of Iraq wasn't that bad before the invasion. It had been a while since Saddam had been able to really screw them.

And I'd not be so sure about the assurance of 'owning', once the US gets out of Iraq I doubt there'll be any rush back and the example of Afghanistan three years on is hardly shining. If the US is so bothered about wholesale ethnic genocide they'd be looking a lot harder at Saharan and Central Africa.

Still, so long as the US confiscate all the copies of the Koran when they leave the Iraqis will have to be nice to each other as they'll have lost their crib-sheets...:cool:
 

Old Man G Funk

Choir Boy
Nov 21, 2005
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BurlyShirley said:
So you're supporting the war. Thanks.
No. I'm for not making anything worse. If I thought that pulling out right now would accomplish that, I would advocate that. If the Iraqi gov. were to ask us to leave, I would support that. It doesn't mean I support the war, especially since I'm talking about simply now trying to limit the damage.
 

Old Man G Funk

Choir Boy
Nov 21, 2005
2,864
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BurlyShirley said:
Yeah, it was real stable for the kurds. They love "stability" saddam style.
Is it that much better for them now? Do they have electricity or clean water?
Also, we do have assurance that the next governing party wont be the same. They know we'll come own them too if they get to annihilating whole races of people. BUT even if we didnt have that assurance that they wouldnt, at least we dont have the assurance that the ARE!
There's already reports that Shiites might be torturing and killing Sunnis. We at least knew what we had with Saddam, we don't know what we will get now.
For someone who claims to love peace and hate killing, it sure is sickening that you think things were better under saddam. With that line of thinking, the US would still be better off under the rule of great britain, as no people would have died in the revolutionary war.
They were better in some ways for the people. They might end up being better in the end, but we don't know that yet, nor do we know what might have happened if we hadn't taken action. Sure, Saddam sucked, but was it worth breaking the rule of law and turning the whole world against us to go in there and possibly make things worse?

Also, don't try to make a parallel between the American Revolutionary War and the Iraq War. In the ARW, we had a situation where citizens rose up to demand democratic representation, while in the current war we are going in and pointing guns at the Iraqis and demanding that they be democratic.
 
Old Man G Funk said:
Actually, we DO have a clue. The Congressional inquiries into this were very clear. Saddam had no ties to 9/11, there were no WMD, Iraq was NOT a direct threat to us. You can stick your head in the sand all you like, but it doesn't change the fact that we do know what happened, and what happened was the administration lied and hyped up s*** in order to get us into a war. I don't have to be against all war in order to know that what happened is f-ed up and decide not to support it.
What happened then is different than what has happened since. The bottom line, again, is that at the time almost all were for some action against Iraq based on information they all had. The Bush haters say he lied, the non-Bush haters say that the intelligence was not as good as they thought. I'll give the benefit of the doubt to the Bush admin. because I'd rather think he tried to do what was right rather than just do some crazy scheme to send us into war for no reason at all. My judgement is not clouded by some ridiculous anger at some guy that I don't know that got elected President.
 
Anyway, the thread was about a jackass writing something about not supporting the troops, basically saying how can you support troops and not support the war.

I suppose his goal was to get people to pay attention to his useless editorial...it worked.

I don't like his position because he is under the impression that none of the military want anything to do with it either and that they have a choice. His point is that a true pacifist will not support troops or the war...not so much just this war. I don't think anyone on this thread, based on the debates, is a deep down pacifist, so I guess the discussion is a little off.

The military is what it is. It is volunteer, the rules are not mysterious, everyone knows the consequences when they join. If ours was different, where you could join, then just walk away, we'd be Canada's bitch by now.

All I know is that it isn't to hard to say that I'm glad there are people that want to be in the military because I know it's not for me. I'm glad they were there before Iraq and after and will be there for some other conflict.
 

ohio

The Fresno Kid
Nov 26, 2001
6,649
23
SF, CA
pterodactyl said:
My judgement is not clouded by some ridiculous anger at some guy that I don't know that got elected President.
I would hardly call it ridiculous anger, nor would I say we don't know him. We know him as well as we have probably ever known anyone outside our close circle of friends. We know his words, his actions, his family, what he claims as values and beliefs. We know what he does on vacation. We know most of his history: business, personal, and political. We make judgements about people based on far less all the time. How do you feel about Hillary Clinton? Do you know her better or worse? Rush Limbaugh? Jesse Jackson? Just as an extreme example, how well do you know Hitler? Probably not nearly as well as you know Bush.

How can you NOT judge a president, either positively or negatively, and still call yourself a responsible citizen and voter?
 

fluff

Monkey Turbo
Sep 8, 2001
5,673
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pterodactyl said:
All I know is that it isn't to hard to say that I'm glad there are people that want to be in the military because I know it's not for me. I'm glad they were there before Iraq and after and will be there for some other conflict.
Given your viewpoint there it is more important that you wish the government to exercise good judgement in which conflicts it chooses to engage in as contentious and ill-advised ventures such as Iraq are likely to reduce the number of people willing to take up a military career.
 

Old Man G Funk

Choir Boy
Nov 21, 2005
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pterodactyl said:
What happened then is different than what has happened since. The bottom line, again, is that at the time almost all were for some action against Iraq based on information they all had. The Bush haters say he lied, the non-Bush haters say that the intelligence was not as good as they thought. I'll give the benefit of the doubt to the Bush admin. because I'd rather think he tried to do what was right rather than just do some crazy scheme to send us into war for no reason at all. My judgement is not clouded by some ridiculous anger at some guy that I don't know that got elected President.
I'm sorry, but you can't go back and re-write history. Bush and co. were talking about the 9/11 Saddam link and pushing it, even though it was pretty roundly criticized AT THE TIME. Also, the UN weapons inspectors were not finding WMD and said so, but the Bush admin kept pushing that they were there instead of listening to the people on the ground. Plus, we find out that the intel that was sent to the Senate (the Dems. especially) was NOT the intel that Bush got, but a doctored version. I'd be willing to give the benefit of the doubt too, if the president weren't shown to be a liar and disproven on just about every point (and hotly criticized at the time he made the lies and doctored the intel.)
 

Changleen

Paranoid Member
Jan 9, 2004
14,335
2,448
Hypernormality
In September 2002, President Bush said Iraq "could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given." The next month, he delivered a major speech to "outline the Iraqi threat," just two days before a critical U.N. vote. In his address, he claimed without doubt that Iraq "possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons." He said that "Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons" and that the government was "concerned Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs for missions targeting the United States."

On March 6, 2003, just weeks before the invasion, the president claimed, "Iraqi operatives continue to hide biological and chemical agents."

On September 25, 2002, Bush said, "you can't distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam."
 

Old Man G Funk

Choir Boy
Nov 21, 2005
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Changleen said:
In September 2002, President Bush said Iraq "could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given." The next month, he delivered a major speech to "outline the Iraqi threat," just two days before a critical U.N. vote. In his address, he claimed without doubt that Iraq "possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons." He said that "Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons" and that the government was "concerned Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs for missions targeting the United States."

On March 6, 2003, just weeks before the invasion, the president claimed, "Iraqi operatives continue to hide biological and chemical agents."

On September 25, 2002, Bush said, "you can't distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam."
Don't forget the yellow cake from Niger.
 

Changleen

Paranoid Member
Jan 9, 2004
14,335
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Vice President Dick Cheney continues to say without a shred of proof that there is "overwhelming evidence" justifying the administration's pre-war charges.

Top administration officials repeatedly ignored warnings that their assertions about Iraq's supposed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and connections to al Qaeda were overstated. In some cases, they were told their claims were wholly without merit, yet they went ahead and made them anyway. Even the Senate report admits that the White House "misrepresented" classified intelligence by eliminating references to contradictory assertions.

In short, they knew they were misleading America.

And they did not care.
They knew Iraq posed no nuclear threat

There is no doubt even though there was no proof of Iraq's complicity, the White House was focused on Iraq within hours of the 9/11 attacks. As CBS News reported, "barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq." Former Bush counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke recounted vividly how, just after the attack, President Bush pressured him to find an Iraqi connection. In many ways, this was no surprise--as former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and another administration official confirmed, the White House was actually looking for a way to invade Iraq well before the terrorist attacks.

But such an unprovoked invasion of a sovereign country required a public rationale. And so the Bush administration struck fear into the hearts of Americans about Saddam Hussein's supposed WMD, starting with nuclear arms. In his first major address on the "Iraqi threat" in October 2002, President Bush invoked fiery images of mushroom clouds and mayhem, saying, "Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program."

Yet, before that speech, the White House had intelligence calling this assertion into question. A 1997 report by the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)--the agency whose purpose is to prevent nuclear proliferation--stated there was no indication Iraq ever achieved nuclear capability or had any physical capacity for producing weapons-grade nuclear material in the near future.

In February 2001, the CIA delivered a report to the White House that said: "We do not have any direct evidence that Iraq has used the period since Desert Fox to reconstitute its weapons of mass destruction programs." The report was so definitive that Secretary of State Colin Powell said in a subsequent press conference, Saddam Hussein "has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction."

Ten months before the president's speech, an intelligence review by CIA Director George Tenet contained not a single mention of an imminent nuclear threat--or capability--from Iraq. The CIA was backed up by Bush's own State Department: Around the time Bush gave his speech, the department's intelligence bureau said that evidence did not "add up to a compelling case that Iraq is currently pursuing what [we] consider to be an integrated and comprehensive approach to acquiring nuclear weapons."

Nonetheless, the administration continued to push forward. In March 2003, Cheney went on national television days before the war and claimed Iraq "has reconstituted nuclear weapons." He was echoed by State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, who told reporters of supposedly grave "concerns about Iraq's potential nuclear programs."

Even after the invasion, when troops failed to uncover any evidence of nuclear weapons, the White House refused to admit the truth. In July 2003, Condoleezza Rice told PBS's Gwen Ifill that the administration's nuclear assertions were "absolutely supportable." That same month, White House spokesman Scott McClellan insisted: "There's a lot of evidence showing that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program."
They knew the aluminum tubes were not for nuclear weapons

To back up claims that Iraq was actively trying to build nuclear weapons, the administration referred to Iraq's importation of aluminum tubes, which Bush officials said were for enriching uranium. In December 2002, Powell said, "Iraq has tried to obtain high-strength aluminum tubes which can be used to enrich uranium in centrifuges for a nuclear weapons program." Similarly, in his 2003 State of the Union address, Bush said Iraq "has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production."

But, in October 2002, well before these and other administration officials made this claim, two key agencies told the White House exactly the opposite. The State Department affirmed reports from Energy Department experts who concluded those tubes were ill-suited for any kind of uranium enrichment. And according to memos released by the Senate Intelligence Committee, the State Department also warned Powell not to use the aluminum tubes hypothesis in the days before his February 2003 U.N. speech. He refused and used the aluminum tubes claim anyway.

The State Department's warnings were soon validated by the IAEA. In March 2003, the agency's director stated, "Iraq's efforts to import these aluminum tubes were not likely to be related" to nuclear weapons deployment.

Yet, this evidence did not stop the White House either. Pretending the administration never received any warnings at all, Rice claimed in July 2003 that "the consensus view" in the intelligence community was that the tubes "were suitable for use in centrifuges to spin material for nuclear weapons."

Today, experts agree the administration's aluminum tube claims were wholly without merit.
More:
 

Changleen

Paranoid Member
Jan 9, 2004
14,335
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pt 2:
They knew the Iraq-uranium claims were not supported

In one of the most famous statements about Iraq's supposed nuclear arsenals, Bush said in his 2003 State of the Union address, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." The careful phrasing of this statement highlights how dishonest it was. By attributing the claim to an allied government, the White House made a powerful charge yet protected itself against any consequences should it be proved false. In fact, the president invoked the British because his own intelligence experts had earlier warned the White House not to make the claim at all.

In the fall of 2002, the CIA told administration officials not to include this uranium assertion in presidential speeches. Specifically, the agency sent two memos to the White House and Tenet personally called top national security officials imploring them not to use the claim. While the warnings forced the White House to remove a uranium reference from an October 2002 presidential address, they did not stop the charge from being included in the 2003 State of the Union.

Not surprisingly, evidence soon emerged that forced the White House to admit the deception. In March 2003, IAEA Director Mohammed El Baradei said there was no proof Iraq had nuclear weapons and added "documents which formed the basis for [the White House's assertion] of recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger are in fact not authentic." But when Cheney was asked about this a week later, he said, "Mr. El Baradei frankly is wrong."

Bush and Rice both tried to blame the CIA for the failure, saying the assertion "was cleared by the intelligence services." When the intelligence agency produced the memos it had sent to the White House on the subject, Rice didn't miss a beat, telling Meet The Press "it is quite possible that I didn't" read the memos at all--as if they were "optional" reading for the nation's top national security official on the eve of war. At about this time, some high-level administration official or officials leaked to the press that Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife was an undercover CIA agent--a move widely seen as an attempt by the administration to punish Wilson for his July 6, 2003 New York Times op-ed that stated he had found no evidence of an Iraqi effort to purchase uranium from Niger.

In recent weeks, right-wing pundits have pointed to new evidence showing the Iraq uranium charge may have flirted with the truth at some point in the distant past. These White House hatchet men say the administration did not manipulate or cherry-pick intelligence. They also tout the recent British report (a.k.a. The Butler Report) as defending the president's uranium claim. Yet, if the White House did not cherry-pick or manipulate intelligence, why did the president trumpet U.S. intelligence from a foreign government while ignoring explicit warnings not to do so from his own? The record shows U.S. intelligence officials explicitly warned the White House that "the Brits have exaggerated this issue." Yet, the administration refused to listen. Even The Butler Report itself acknowledges the evidence is cloudy. As nonproliferation expert Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace recently pointed out, "The claim appears shaky at best--hardly the stuff that should make up presidential decisions."

But now, instead of contrition, Republicans are insisting the White House's uranium charge was accurate. Indeed, these apologists have no option but to try to distract public attention from the simple truth that not a shred of solid evidence exists to substantiate this key charge that fueled the push for war.
They knew there was no hard evidence of chemical or biological weapons

In September 2002, President Bush said Iraq "could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given." The next month, he delivered a major speech to "outline the Iraqi threat," just two days before a critical U.N. vote. In his address, he claimed without doubt that Iraq "possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons." He said that "Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons" and that the government was "concerned Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs for missions targeting the United States."

What he did not say was that the White House had been explicitly warned that these assertions were unproved.

As the Washington Post later reported, Bush "ignored the fact that U.S. intelligence mistrusted the source" of the 45-minute claim and, therefore, omitted it from its intelligence estimates. And Bush ignored the fact that the Defense Intelligence Agency previously submitted a report to the administration finding "no reliable information" to prove Iraq was producing or stockpiling chemical weapons. According to Newsweek, the conclusion was similar to the findings of a 1998 government commission on WMD chaired by Rumsfeld.

Bush also neglected to point out that in early October 2002, the administration's top military experts told the White House they "sharply disputed the notion that Iraq's Unmanned Aerial Vehicles were being designed as attack weapons." Specifically, the Air Force's National Air and Space Intelligence Center correctly showed the drones in question were too heavy to be used to deploy chemical/biological-weapons spray devices.

Regardless, the chemical/biological weapons claims from the administration continued to escalate. Powell told the United Nations on February 5, 2003, "There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more." As proof, he cited aerial images of a supposed decontamination vehicle circling a suspected weapons site.

According to newly released documents in the Senate Intelligence Committee report, Powell's own top intelligence experts told him not to make such claims about the photographs. They said the vehicles were likely water trucks. He ignored their warnings.

On March 6, 2003, just weeks before the invasion, the president went further than Powell. He claimed, "Iraqi operatives continue to hide biological and chemical agents."

To date, no chemical or biological weapons have been found in Iraq.
They knew Saddam and bin Laden were not collaborating

In the summer of 2002, USA Today reported White House lawyers had concluded that establishing an Iraq-al Qaeda link would provide the legal cover at the United Nations for the administration to attack Iraq. Such a connection, no doubt, also would provide political capital at home. And so, by the fall of 2002, the Iraq-al Qaeda drumbeat began.

It started on September 25, 2002, when Bush said, "you can't distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam." This was news even to members of Bush's own political party who had access to classified intelligence. Just a month before, Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), who serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said, "Saddam is not in league with al Qaeda‚ I have not seen any intelligence that would lead me to connect Saddam Hussein to al Qaeda.
What does sincere mean again?
 

Changleen

Paranoid Member
Jan 9, 2004
14,335
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genpowell71 said:
You know, its nice to see that after taking a 5 month vacation to the desert that even after that much time, your still a schmuck chang.

Just so you know, I did miss our little fights.
:love: Did anybody shoot at you?
 

The Amish

Dumber than N8
Feb 22, 2005
645
0
genpowell71 said:
You know, its nice to see that after taking a 5 month vacation to the desert that even after that much time, your still a schmuck chang..
My new hero:)
 

MikeD

Leader and Demogogue of the Ridemonkey Satinists
Oct 26, 2001
11,669
1,713
chez moi
Hey, GP71, welcome back! Where in GA are you? I'm here temporarily; until the end of the month. If we're close, I need to buy you a beer...

MD
 

valve bouncer

Master Dildoist
Feb 11, 2002
7,843
114
Japan
MikeD said:
Hey, GP71, welcome back! Where in GA are you? I'm here temporarily; until the end of the month. If we're close, I need to buy you a beer...

MD
Stop hitting on him...Shirley'll get jealous.:p ;)
Be good to hear some stories too General. Any chance of that or was it all hush hush?;)
 

Old Man G Funk

Choir Boy
Nov 21, 2005
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Here's a poll showing that the military is not 100% behind Bush. In fact, they are barely 50% behind Bush right now.

http://www.militarycity.com/polls/2005_main.php#ARMY
Troops sound off
Military Times Poll finds high morale, but less support for Bush, war effort


Support for President Bush and for the war in Iraq has slipped significantly in the last year among members of the military’s professional core, according to the 2005 Military Times Poll.

Approval of the president’s Iraq policy fell 9 percentage points from 2004; a bare majority, 54 percent, now say they view his performance on Iraq as favorable. Support for his overall performance fell 11 points, to 60 percent, among active-duty readers
of the Military Times newspapers. Though support both for President Bush and for the war in Iraq remains significantly higher than in the public as a whole, the drop is likely to add further fuel to the heated debate over Iraq policy. In 2003 and 2004, supporters of the war in Iraq pointed to high approval ratings in the Military Times Poll as a signal that military members were behind President Bush’s the president’s policy.

The poll also found diminished optimism that U.S. goals in Iraq can be accomplished, and a somewhat smaller drop in support for the decision to go to war in 2003.......
 

fluff

Monkey Turbo
Sep 8, 2001
5,673
2
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Changleen said:
What do you mean? 54% is a HUGE MANDATE!

:p
To be fair that is the % in favour. Given that there is always a % of no opinion it is not necessarily correct to assume that 46% are against. I tried to find that detail in the article but it wasn't given (that I saw).
 

Old Man G Funk

Choir Boy
Nov 21, 2005
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fluff said:
To be fair that is the % in favour. Given that there is always a % of no opinion it is not necessarily correct to assume that 46% are against. I tried to find that detail in the article but it wasn't given (that I saw).
That's correct, but it does contradict the sentiment of a couple posters in this thread who made generalizations about how supportive the military is of this action.

It should also be noted that the sample was largely from career military guys, who historically have been much more supportive of actions and are much more Republican leaning than the average soldier.
 

ashleylynn

Chimp
Jan 27, 2006
7
0
Old Man G Funk said:
it does not diminish the fact that your argument that all service members support the current actions is incorrect
Don’t put words in my mouth. I never said all service members support current actions.
 

Old Man G Funk

Choir Boy
Nov 21, 2005
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ashleylynn said:
Don’t put words in my mouth. I never said all service members support current actions.
So, if you aren't making that argument, then why bring up the anecdote of a couple friends who do support the war? It's utterly pointless. Either it is anecdotal evidence that doesn't support whatever argument you are trying to make, or it is empirical evidence of a fact that no one is disputing.
 

ashleylynn

Chimp
Jan 27, 2006
7
0
Old Man G Funk said:
So, if you aren't making that argument, then why bring up the anecdote of a couple friends who do support the war? It's utterly pointless. Either it is anecdotal evidence that doesn't support whatever argument you are trying to make, or it is empirical evidence of a fact that no one is disputing.
Obviously you did not read whom I was replying to. Jodysbike said he lost friends in Iraq. I simply replied and said so did I. Then I stated why they did not die in vain.
 

Old Man G Funk

Choir Boy
Nov 21, 2005
2,864
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ashleylynn said:
Obviously you did not read whom I was replying to. Jodysbike said he lost friends in Iraq. I simply replied and said so did I. Then I stated why they did not die in vain.
I hope they didn't die in vain either, but that isn't assured yet.

Hopefully you can at least see now that one does not have to support the war in order to support the troops.