I'll say it.(at great risk I suppose)Our troops are dying for a mistake

[goodboy]

I support our bravest with all my heart. They deserve so much better than this. They deserve to be told the truth about why they're being asked to lay down their life. They need to know we will never send them unless we have to.


No WMD
No 911 Connection
No Gathering threat
No Harboring of terrorists
No NOTHING.


on edit: Regime change in and of itself is not a reason to invade a sovreign nation.

[CrispyQ]

1. Worse. They are dying for a lie.

And all the blood of the dead, both soldiers & Iraqi civilians, is on the hands of Bushco.

[goodboy]

3. My heart sinks when I think of those poor Iraqi's...they didn't want this.

So many dead. So many hurt.

[chaumont58]

2. You are right!

In my mind, Bush is a war criminal. Germans were hanged at Nurenburg for the same thing chimpie has done.

[goodboy]

5. There's a reason why we won't join the world court, and you said it.

[Booster]

4. I posted this on another thread, but will here too. I had

dinner with 3 young people and one young man is a cop. The draft was brought up and he said if he were drafted he would go. I asked him "why would you want to go to a foreign country and kill people who have done absolutely nothing to us?" He didn't have a response, of course, but just shrugged his shoulders and moved to another topic. I think it's really sad when young people drink the kool-air cause they're the future. Not one of these young people knew any of the issues or where the candidates stand - just sad.

[goodboy]

7. They just don't understand the consequences of what we've done!

This will take GENERATIONS to get past. These wounds will never, ever, totally heal.

[Longhorn]

12. My son enlisted in the Marines when he was 19.

He said he wanted the Marines to make a man out of him (he was smart enough to know that he needed to grow up but too lazy to make himself do it, which he readily admitted.) He wanted to do something honorable, such as serve his country, and I honestly think at that point, he didn't understand that his country could do something so dishonest as to risk his life for greed and politics. He knew how we felt about the war but he was also at that stage in his life when he was more likely to rebel against our views than accept them, to prove his independence.

A year later, he has an entirely different view. Fortunately, he's stationed in a computer lab in Japan but he's already lost one friend from boot camp and another from high school is at risk in Iraq on his second deployment. He's matured quite a bit in a year and after seeing F 9/11, he visited Michael Moore's site and pledged to register five others to vote. If he had a choice, I'm not so sure he'd still be a Marine but he will keep his commitment.

[goodboy]

15. I honor your son's commitment to serving his country. (nt)

[Longhorn]

20. Thank you. I truly appreciate that

and I know he does, too. :hi:

[goodboy]

21. It's the least I can do. I would like to see each of them honored

personally by having a commander in chief committed to their charge. To protect and defend the constitution of the USA. From all enemies, including Bush.

[Moonbeam_Starlight]

6. It's ok to say that

I am a veteran's wife and we've been saying that in this house for quite some time now.

They are dying for a LIE. Really a pack of them.

[goodboy]

9. I honor all veterans, and servicepeople. Thanks to your husband and your

family, for you all must have made sacrifices for us.

[cheshire]

8. This is the truth. The risk was taken but a chum bucket full of heartless

a$$holes. I pray they are treated to the same fate as baby murderers when they are sent to the worst prison in history after they are publicly shame in court and the f**king media. I guess it's a good thing I'm a pacifist.

[goodboy]

10. LIES are the ultimate Weapon Of Mass Destruction (nt)

[KittyWampus]

11. You Are Wrong. They Are Dying Because They Were Doing Their Job

if you can't understand that simple fact... then you need to expand your outlook.

Do NOT mistake the Sword for the HAND that wields it.

Troops die in the line of fire. When they are in harms way.

They die because they signed up to protect this country.

[goodboy]

13. I don't disagree that the troops do not have a choice...

But they do depend on their commander in chief to tell them the truth. Otherwise they are not doing their job. They are doing someone's dirty work.

[Mountainman]

14. Attacking Iraq is not protecting this country

I was drafted to go to Vietnam and never once did I feel I was protecting this country from Communism. I had a couple of choices. Go to Canada, go to Vietnam or hide out someplace. I thought that I might survive the war and that the best thing I could do for life after the war was to do my time and get out.
I think many of the soldiers in Iraq feel the same as I did.

[catbert836]

16. Everyone should see that by now.

Will it take 30,000 more dead soldiers and a reinstated draft to get the American people to wake up?

[goodboy]

18. Sadly I think so...half of the American people still haven't been awakened

What's it gonna take?

[JohnyCanuck]

17. It was NO mistake.

No WMD
No 911 Connection
No Gathering threat
No Harboring of terrorists
No NOTHING

But

Lots and lots of oil,
Lots of no bid, sweetheart deal contracts for the Dickster's war profiteering buddies at Halliburton.
Lots of windfall profits for Halliburton
Lots of vacant space to build 14 permanent US military bases to be used to impose US hegemony on the region.


On April 19, 2003, Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt of the New York Times wrote Pentagon Expects Long-Term Access to Four Key Bases in Iraq, a front-page piece about plans to build four permanent bases in Iraq. The story was denied by the Pentagon. No major paper in the United States had even mentioned them again by October 2003 when, in "The Time of Withdrawal," I wrote:

"When thinking of withdrawal, it's important to remember that it was never a concept in the Bush administration's vocabulary. Despite all those years of Vietnam ‘lessons' and Colin Powell's ‘doctrine' which said that no military action should be undertaken without an ‘exit strategy' in place, Bush's boys had no exit strategy in mind because they never imagined leaving. Of course, they expected to quickly draw down American forces in the face of a jubilant and grateful population. But there was no greater signal of our long-term intentions than our dismantling of the Iraqi military, and their planned re-creation as a lightly armed border-patrolling force of perhaps 40,000 with no air force. Put that together with the four permanent bases we began building almost immediately and you know that we were expecting to be Iraq's on-site military protector into the distant future."

<snip>

And yet somehow, despite a blanket of self-censorship or inexplicable indifference, the subject has suddenly bubbled up out of the precincts of the Internet and into our Iraq conversation in recent weeks. To offer but two examples, William Pfaff, columnist for the International Herald Tribune last week wrote a piece entitled 'De Gaulle option' may be our best Iraq exit strategy which had the line, "The principal purpose of the invasion of Iraq was to make it into Washington's new strategic anchor in the Middle East, with permanent U.S. military bases there, and an assured American role in its economy and oil industry"; while in The Last Deception, columnist Paul Krugman of the New York Times wrote on September 21:

"But if the chance to install a pro-American government has been lost, what's the alternative? Scaling back our aims. This means accepting the fact that an Iraqi leader, to have legitimacy, must be able to deliver an end to America's military presence. Unless we want this war to go on forever, we will have to abandon the 14 ‘enduring bases' the Bush administration has been building."

www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=1876

[goodboy]

19. I agree. I wish I could change my title, but that question was posed

to JFK in the debate last week, and with the final report of the Iraq Survey Group today, I thought it was relevant to post this in that context.

Thank you for listening, and thank you for your contribution, I really enjoyed reading it.