Bush can't admit mistakes becaue it would hurt the families...

[briang5000]

I was debating the latest news from Iraq regarding the missing explosives.
My republican friend was getting me upset... she was saying you can't blame the President.

I told her you can blame the President ... at minimum somebody should be fired. It's ridiculous that Rummy still has a job.

I said it's shocking that the President won't admit any mistake in Iraq.

She then hit me with the line; Bush can't admit a mistake because the families of dead troops would be to upset to hear their child had died in a war that was formed on mistakes.

This logic is unreal.... how can people say things like this?

I suspect Hannity, Rush, or O'Riley spews talking points like this.

[Carolab]

1. Tell her John Kerry worked in 1971 to end the mistake

and asked "How Do You Ask a Man to Be the Last Man to Die for a mistake??" Is it better, to your friend, that he continue making the mistake and let more and more young men and women die needlessly?

"Now we are told that the men who fought there must watch quietly while American lives are lost so that we can exercise the incredible arrogance of Vietnamizing (Americanizing) the Vietnamese (Iraqis).

Each day to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam someone has to give up his life so that the United States doesn't have to admit something that the entire world already knows, so that we can't say that we have made a mistake. Someone has to die so that President Nixon (Bush) won't be, and these are his words, "the first President to lose a war (a president who admits he made a mistake)."

Vietnam was a quagmire because it was political, not because it was ideological. This war is worse, because it is not only political, but it is also ideological.

[aquart]

2. Tell her that he explained in 1999 that one must never admit a mistake

Because it would be taken for weakness. That was when he planned to invade Iraq if he were ever president.

[flordehinojos]

3. moreover ... what does that say about your republican friend?

For all the Light of Truth that so many of them claim to have or to be following they are certainly enshroud in a good deal of darkness!

[Tansy_Gold]

4. What would make his death meaningful? That more die?

This is an argument that bugs the hell out of me. It's as if these people are almost thinking, "I lost my son/daughter/husband/father/aunt/cousin/whatever, and the only thing that will make me feel better is for lots of other people to suffer the same loss."

More deaths will not bring the loved one back. More deaths will not mitigate the loss. More deaths will not give the loved one's death "meaning" or "value." More deaths will not make the stupid mistake of going to war change into a noble and just cause.

If the world learns a lesson from the utter folly of this absurd and vicious invasion, if the American people learn enough to vote this monster out of power, then maybe that will give some meaning to the deaths. Continuing the folly certainly won't.

Over 1100 American troops and countless Iraqi civilians and asorted other individuals -- journalists, aid workers, mercenaries, etc. -- have given their lives so boosh and his cronies can line their pockets. More deaths will not reverse this obscenity.

The reality is that all of these people have indeed died for a mistake. The sooner we all can accept that bitter reality, the sooner we can stop further carnage.