I look to the well-reasoned, the gritty thinkers of the DU...

[dave123williams]

The desperation taking over the GOP right now is nothing if not entertaining. I am expecting, with faith, a switch in at least the house...as bad as these guys are fucking up, maybe the senate, too.

So, the question(s) for the opposition are these:

How is Iraq a win for us now? How is it ever going to be a win?

I'm not looking for editorial nuance; I'm looking for a thread that addresses the direct responses to those particular questions.

Hammer that point, and maybe, at long last, there's one signifigant win for....the 'light side of the force', if you will.

[HCE SuiGeneris]

1. No win... "War "on terror is an eternal thing

And only the neocon repugs have the wherewithal to carry on an eternal "war"... Get the f'krs out of office!!:spank:
We need to redefine "war". This term is being used too broadly and subversively by the "war" mongering reich wing.

[ShortnFiery]

4. No one WINs a war.

This perpetual war crap is a farce that repetitively spewed to scare us peon "chattering classes" to allow the neo-cons and their corporate war machine the permission to gut our government.

We only have "fear itself." Fortunately they've played the 9/11 card so many times, it's now falling on deaf ears.

Thank God!

[pacalo]

2. Supposedly, James Baker is going to present his group's "recommendations"

in regard to Iraq after the elections. We already know that Baker said during his recent visit to Iraq that the place "was a mess", so we know his presentation isn't going to reflect well on the boy king he helped install into the WH. The current buzz is that the U.S. can't win in Iraq, but will Baker say that outright?

[TheWraith]

3. I'm afraid there's no good answer here, if that's what you seek.

The bottom line is that this is the Alamo. There's no winning here, only choosing between death and accepting the inevitable.

To use a sports analogy, we're down 147 to 3, and all of our starting players have been pulled out on injuries.

We can't come back from the atrocious deficit in trust that we've created with the Iraqis, and we can't eliminate the insurgents without creating more insurgents. Our presence in Iraq is like an infection, and the longer we're there, the more that the body is going to try and attack us and drive us out.

[PurityOfEssence]

5. You're right; there's no good solution

Unlike many here, I don't see a real solution other than forcing the Republicans to take the lead and make whichever mistake gets made.

Leaving now would help the place go up in flames, and that would be shirking our moral responsibility to fix what we broke. Staying, however, also fans the flames and there's no real hope of us restoring order. Our troops are just sniper bait and whatever patrols they do are seemingly pointless.

From a purely selfish political stance, however, if the Democrats take power and force through a "solution", it'll be seen as weak-kneed and cowardly. It's sad to sit in my comfy home office and parse the tactics by which ever more numerous people get killed and maimed, but this is truly the most important issue of the day.

Junior wanted to strut and show the world how tough we are, but in the end, we will leave with our tails between our legs and the local radicals will be proved right: we don't have the resolve; we're weak and self-indulgent. I don't think we'll actually "leave", but I do think we'll hunker in the bunkers and not try to fight among the locals; we're there for the oil and to secure Israel, so we're not going to pull out.

What a colossal bunch of epic fuckups these thugs are. By their blustering puffery, they've made us more vulnerable than we even imagine. Trying to force us into the mindset of besieged victims, they've forced us into the role of conquerers. We've failed. It will only get worse.

They need to be left in the driver's seat, or else we'll never hear the end of the carping from the reactionaries about how "we weren't allowed to win" and "we were betrayed by lily-livered traitors at home." Ever notice how the conservatives' revisionist bellyaching along these lines about Vietnam sounds like German conservatives in the 20s and 30s complaining how they were a victorious army in 1918 that got betrayed by leftists? It's the same crap all over.

There's no easy solution, and it's going to be messy and costly. The only thing that quells my disgust is my dismay.

I don't want this petty, vicious little nobody impeached, I want him called to testify before the House on the deliberate lies and distortions used to sucker us into giving him his ugly adventure. It needs to be shown how calculated and cynical the whole thing was.

As for ending the conflict, I want the Republicans to be the ones to pull the plug. Even they will get the message at some point.

[zanne]

6. It'll be a shorter slaughter with us.

It'll be a mess, alright, no matter who wins. Of course, we'll be blamed for the civil war overtaking Iraq. When we finally withdraw, it'll be very messy and alot of people will die. But, if we stay, even more people will die. There's no easy way out of this colossal mistake. We'll be blamed for our terrible "solution", no matter what. The Republicans are like a guy who sets fire to his house, then blames the fire dept. because somebody died.