I guess it must be because you want 4 more years of wasting extreme amounts of money and resources of our armed forces.  Ooh, or because they wanted to sign something with this administration because if Obama is elected he probably wouldn't stand for that long of a timetable.  Perhaps the issue shouldn't be about the effectiveness of a "surge", but rather why there needed to be one in the first place.  Iraq has been a mess, plain and simple...I can just leave it at that.

There was this one I played with a deck of cards a while back...eh, but I guess that still left a mess of 52 items.  C'mon, Daiwa.  Are you really assuming that I think all other wars have been clean, well-to-do affairs?  All of the circumstances surrounding this entire situation we have going over there are just ridiculous.  Where are those WMDs?  Is this all about building up Iraq's government in our image or is our true goal to just fight terrorism in this "war on terror?"  Seems kinda sketchy to me while they have a surplus and we're left with....well, more than just the one problem of a deficit.

If we fought Iraq like we fought WWII, it would have lasted far less time, but the left would have had kittens if we fought this one the way we fought that "good war".

Not only are there many brown eyes around, most of them are blind as well.  But they still have their voices and they are intitled to their opinions.  And no one has rescinded the right to stupidity, so rant on brother, lay down that rhetoric.  We get a giggle out of it.

Believe it or not, Erath, this time I am NOT including you in the brown-eyed group, but once you understand the reference, you will realize that even green-eyed people can be brown-eyed on occasion. 

Just for future reference, Erath, saying you know "ONE soldier who..." sounds kinda like the old, "Some of my best friends are....(Fill in the blanks)"  The surge is working not because one village or another cheers the troops.  It IS WORKING because we finally got enough soldiers there doing the right thing to bring about VICTORY.  Eleven out of eighteen provinces are now under the control of the Iraqi security forces...the latest was once the worst stronghold of insurgent activity.  That statistic is the RESULT of the surge...enough soldiers in the place doing what they do best.  All the brown propaganda spewed by this article notwithstanding, we ARE winning, the surge is working and we are finally seeing our way clear to start bringing the troops home in significant numbers.  This is the way you keep score in a war.  Our guys come home with more scalps on their lodgepoles than the bad guys have on theirs. 

I get so tired of the hand-wringing, whining, crocodile tear-shedding from those "opposed" to the war.  Look to the history of war and wonder how the hell we managed to win this damn thing with one hand tied behind our backs.  Once again, the US military had to win a war against an armed enemy plus our own politicians and news media.  Fortunately, that ain't real hard.

Not if you use the whack a mole strategy. Each time a head pops up you pop it and you get fewer and fewer heads popping up. It worked in Israel when we let them use it. It is working in Iraq as well. Homicide bombings were the weapon of choice until the surge and when they saw that they were killing themselves and getting no result they quickly ran out of idiots in DuPont suits. Now they are back to car bombings and the frequency is dropping even when they get to live after the attack.

Terrorism has a play book and rules. Successful terrorism only happens if the terrorists can get the government to give up in the first five years. After that time period the terrorists lose.

Nope that is when the cause begins to fall apart and they become more political than violent. They lose the will to fight.

Yeah, but when did we decided to fight back? I can attack you for decades but when you start fighting back is when the clock starts. The Soviet Union was attacked by terrorists and they fought back and in one year all terrorist activity stopped. We can’t use those tactics such as kidnapping the uncle of a terrorist and sending his body parts back by mail. Finding the wife of a terrorist and raping and killing her on camera and sending the film to the terrorists. We call such tactics barbaric, but in less than a year terrorists stopped messing with the Soviet Union until the invasion of Afghanistan where those tactics don’t work. The Russians are not using those tactics and are plagued by terror attacks now.

The only way to win against that form of terrorism is to declare war on them and hunt them down until they are dead. The Nancy Pelosi whack a mole strategy is what we are doing today and it is working.

We were attacked by AQ for 7 years before 9/11/2001 we are fighting them now and we have stopped their attacks on us. They are looking for soft targets because countries that don’t fight back give them the best chance to win. Old allies for AQ are refusing them open access to their countries unlike before. They tried to go back to Somalia and they were attacked by government troops as well as the US Navy. In less than a month they left looking for another place to set up a base of operations. With few safe havens and dwindling troops, they are on the run and knew it since 2005. The ones that are fighting now are the ones stuck in Iraq and Afghanistan. You don’t read the stories of fresh people running to join the fight any more. Now you read stories of them trying to stop roads being built because every time we build a road they have to move to safer ground, and they are running out of ground. The war is not won but we are winning. They are losing and they know it. Bin Laden knew that as soon as we begin to fight back he had a limited time. That is why his strategy was based on training people to go into countries and build their own networks. That is what AQ did for 10 years and when they attacked US on our soil with a real man in the white house his game ended. All that is left are the networks set up prior to 9/11 and each time they lift their head up they get whacked or arrested. Are there sleeper agents in America? Most likely but they are being hunted down. We get probed twice a year. What I mean by this is twice a year groups of people test our borders and other places within the US. August each year my city is probed and we have caught them each time. I read reports of other cities being probed and have spotted the pattern. Hajj and Ramadan we get probed. When they stop probing it will mean they found a weakness to exploit. So far so good. Outside the country we are dealing with them a bit more harshly or so I have been told.

So yeah, five years for terrorists to win or they lose.

Hey, Brown-eyes, here's a tally for you...last year in June there were three for four IEDs detonated in Iraq per day.  This year in June...3.  Total.  Know why?  Count the scalps on the lodge pole.

Gotta hand it to you, you are persistant. even when faced with facts you still look for loopholes in the argument. I enjoy people who use "there could be" in arguments about how Bush used bad intel. There could have been WMD, but that's not good enough unless its you the one saying it, right?

INdeed, and Charles' point is still valid, is it not?

Are you saying that I've been proved wrong?  Where is that proof?  I'm letting you know how it is not proof, it is just a numerical decrease without a specific causal determination.  Yes, the point Charles makes is valid, but I would like you to recognize that I'm not searching for loopholes in the argument and that I believe the surge has helped reduce violence.  Never once in this thread have I notioned anything otherwise.  Just make sure you look at all angles.

I mentioned nothing about Obama at all in this thread.  What are you talking about, Charles?  Are you searching for your own little meanings behind what I'm saying?  I like to search for important, empirical evidence that will prove a point, but I will not just sit back and give up a position because you or others tell me to just admit some sort of defeat.  Looking for other reasons, as you put it, is a part of both scientific and mathematical approaches to reaching a decision, forming new understanding, or stating fact and expressing proof.

Hi. I'm one of the armed forces ya'll keep mucking on about.

To clear up a few matters - The wars that weren't a mess? Grenada, The War of the Roses (take my roses will ya, you bastard???), and the War of Jenkin's Ear. (extra points if you know that one without looking it up.

Two - The surge went pretty damned good. We kicked ass and took names. (actually, other people kicked ass, but I told them where to, why? Because I took names. And addresses.......) Whether it gets mismanaged from there who knows?

Three - Suicide vests were, and remain a Sunni tactic. VBIEDs were largely, but by no means exclusively Shia. The change in tactics was caused more due to a heavier ratio of Shia insurgents to Sunni, as the Sunni were driven back by the surge to regroup, and the decreased influx of dogmatic (but not stupid) foreign fighters that made up a large portion of the suicide bombers, while the Shia remained more dominant due to the mostly Shiite government. Not because they ran out of morons. Believe me on that one.

Four - I hate Iraq. Period. Iraq blows hard core. It's hot, the people are uneducated assholes, and everything is as corrupt (morally as well as physically rotten) as you could desire. But I prefer maintaining a military and political commitment, (and I would go back again), to leaving and letting it all go to hell, much less the massive quantity of deaths that would follow. Please don't try to save me for my sake. I'd rather know it meant something, and that Iraq might be worth a shit some day.

Five - Give it a frickin' rest will ya? This bullshit article has been giving Bahu points for almost a year and a half now. Jeez. Write your own damned article and hope somebody reads it.