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McCain going after Myers

sanjuro

Tube Smuggler
Sep 13, 2004
17,373
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SF
I first heard about this on The Daily Show, but it is a good story:

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/351237p-299460c.html

Mistakes' in Iraq
By RICHARD SISK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU
Friday, September 30th, 2005

WASHINGTON - The disputes and doubts over the Iraq war boiled over yesterday at a Senate hearing where the nation's top general admitted "we've made a lot of mistakes along the way."

Under pointed questioning, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and three four-star generals said the number of Iraqi battalions able to fight on their own had dwindled from three to one, and that efforts to seal the Iraq-Syria border had failed so far.

The Senate Armed Services Committee hearing came as five U.S. Marines were killed by a roadside bomb in Ramadi, about 65 miles west of Baghdad, bringing the total of U.S. troops killed in Iraq to at least 1,933. And three suicide attacks in Balad, north of Baghdad, killed at least 60 people and wounded 70 others.

While owning up to "mistakes," Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, insisted he had never painted a rosy picture of the situation in Iraq.

"I don't think this committee or the American public has ever heard me say that things are going very well in Iraq," said Myers, who retires today after 40 years of service.

Rumsfeld acknowledged insurgents had infiltrated the ranks of the Iraqi police and army, but said it was the same "problem that's faced by police forces in every major city in our country - that criminals infiltrate and sign up to join the police force."

Senators from both parties challenged the Pentagon leaders' overview that the U.S. was making steady progress in Iraq.

"We can't even secure a 6-mile road from the airport to Baghdad. We just don't see the success of the strategy you described," Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) told the generals.

The most heated exchanges came between the usually courtly Myers and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who spent 5-1/2 years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. McCain questioned U.S. offensives on cities "where we go in, we take control and we leave, and the bad guys come back again."

Myers, also a decorated Vietnam veteran, retorted that the Iraq struggle is "a complex situation that is not well-understood by folks who fought in Vietnam."

A seething McCain, who has called for more U.S. troops to be sent to Iraq, shot back that Myers "seems to assume that things have gone well in Iraq," and that "support for our conflict there is not eroding."


"Things have not gone as we had planned or expected nor as we were told by you, Gen. Myers," McCain said.

At a Washington conference, Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, a former ambassador to Iraq, said, "Much more could still be done in terms of finding out now what the nature of that insurgency is."
 

Changleen

Paranoid Member
Jan 9, 2004
14,335
2,448
Hypernormality
Negroponte - Let me tell you the nature of the insurgency - It's very ****ing simple.

Arab people across the world are really fvcking pissed off that America has invaded an Arab sovereign nation for no good reason other than the personal interest of a few of it's leaders, killed upwards of a hundred thousand of their brothers, sisters, mothers and cousins doing so and reduced a fairly prosperous and advanced country to a 3rd world backwater.

Do you understand?
 

DRB

unemployed bum
Oct 24, 2002
15,242
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Watchin' you. Writing it all down.
Changleen said:
Negroponte - Let me tell you the nature of the insurgency - It's very ****ing simple.

Arab people across the world are really fvcking pissed off that America has invaded an Arab sovereign nation for no good reason other than the personal interest of a few of it's leaders, killed upwards of a hundred thousand of their brothers, sisters, mothers and cousins doing so and reduced a fairly prosperous and advanced country to a 3rd world backwater.

Do you understand?
Then help me understand why these Arabs are killing off fellow Arabs way more than they are US soldiers? It seems rather an obtuse way of getting your point across that you are unhappy with the US. Let me kill the future policemen, soldiers and politicians of my country so that the US never leaves and has to maintain an armed force forever. I'll really show them.
 

valve bouncer

Master Dildoist
Feb 11, 2002
7,843
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Japan
DRB said:
Then help me understand why these Arabs are killing off fellow Arabs way more than they are US soldiers? It seems rather an obtuse way of getting your point across that you are unhappy with the US. Let me kill the future policemen, soldiers and politicians of my country so that the US never leaves and has to maintain an armed force forever. I'll really show them.
I think in any kind of conflict the worst treatment is meted out to those who are considered to be traitors or colloborators. Also while I'm sure they want the Americans out it would be a lot harder to kill them if they weren't here. The chance to kill Americans is what is drawing a lot of the foreign fighters to Iraq.
Interesting titbit- the Iraqi PM said the other day that foreign fighters in Iraq plan to use the lessons learnt in Iraq when they return to their home countries. Cheery thought, isn't it?
 

Reactor

Turbo Monkey
Apr 5, 2005
3,976
1
Chandler, AZ, USA
Changleen said:
Negroponte - Let me tell you the nature of the insurgency - It's very ****ing simple.

Arab people across the world are really fvcking pissed off that America has invaded an Arab sovereign nation for no good reason other than the personal interest of a few of it's leaders, killed upwards of a hundred thousand of their brothers, sisters, mothers and cousins doing so and reduced a fairly prosperous and advanced country to a 3rd world backwater.

Do you understand?

He'll never understand. He has NCSB (Neo-Con selective blindness), symptoms include not seeing huge budget deficits, not clearly seeing the cost of huge new government programs like the prescription drugs program, and not seeing a major insurgency. Advanced cases can include making "Mission Accomplished" banners, and providing tax cuts while running a deficit and claiming to the party of fiscal responsibility.
 

Changleen

Paranoid Member
Jan 9, 2004
14,335
2,448
Hypernormality
DRB said:
Then help me understand why these Arabs are killing off fellow Arabs way more than they are US soldiers? It seems rather an obtuse way of getting your point across that you are unhappy with the US. Let me kill the future policemen, soldiers and politicians of my country so that the US never leaves and has to maintain an armed force forever. I'll really show them.
Like VB said, co-operation with the enemy is generally looked down upon in war. I believe even now, traitors in the US army can be awarded the death penalty, right?
 

Changleen

Paranoid Member
Jan 9, 2004
14,335
2,448
Hypernormality
DRB said:
Then help me understand why these Arabs are killing off fellow Arabs way more than they are US soldiers? It seems rather an obtuse way of getting your point across that you are unhappy with the US. Let me kill the future policemen, soldiers and politicians of my country so that the US never leaves and has to maintain an armed force forever. I'll really show them.
Did you play Half Life 2? I know that sounds like an odd question, but I have a serious point. If you didn't I have to think of another analogy.
 

jaydee

Monkey
Jul 5, 2001
794
0
Victoria BC
I don't believe in the Iraq war, but I also can't see that Al Qaeda type insurgency has to do with anything but narrow-minded rabid fundamentalism, insecurity in one's beliefs, ethnic cleansing, brainwashing of youth, and criminal intolerance. My calendar seems to indicate that the Al Qaeda holy war predates the Iraq war. The current Iraq war is just a convenient excuse to continue the serial killing and genocide. There is no excuse for either Bush's actions in Iraq or the ongoing mass murder by the homicidal maniacs of Islam fundamentalism. The extermination of both would leave the world a much better place.
 

Changleen

Paranoid Member
Jan 9, 2004
14,335
2,448
Hypernormality
jaydee said:
I don't believe in the Iraq war, but I also can't see that Al Qaeda type insurgency has to do with anything but narrow-minded rabid fundamentalism, insecurity in one's beliefs, ethnic cleansing, brainwashing of youth, and criminal intolerance. My calendar seems to indicate that the Al Qaeda holy war predates the Iraq war. The current Iraq war is just a convenient excuse to continue the serial killing and genocide. There is no excuse for either Bush's actions in Iraq or the ongoing mass murder by the homicidal maniacs of Islam fundamentalism. The extermination of both would leave the world a much better place.
Go for it dude!