The Tet Offensive was nothing more than when the scummy lying sack of entrails better known as "Walter Chronkite" secured his place as a hero of Ho Chi Minh.  His lie was no less destructive than the Gulf of Tonkin lies.

If there is ever an "Iraq Tet Offensive" it will be the same... The moment the press crosses the line from merely reporting against the U.S. to joining the enemy and once again proving their treachery.

Hillary and Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Murtha (and any other U.S. leader of either party) should all put their money where their mouths are.  If there is honor in quitting, they should all quit and go home now.

Yes, the enemy has had successes, but we do our troops and our nation a disservice when we amplify the enemy successes and downplay U.S. and Iraq successes.

Propaganda is 90% of any war.  It is disgusting that so many U.S. leaders are willing to be part of the enemy's "90%".

The media has already done that by publishing enemy propganda stories.

The media already did it's deed by supporting the lies that got us into this war. But back to the topic... The only valid comparison between the situation in Iraq and the Vietnam war is they were/are both quagmires. The Iraq war was over in 2003. What we're doing now is occupying the country.

The surge has worked somewhat with the "clear, hold, and build" strategy," but we don't have enough military personnel for it to lead to success in Iraq. To achieve success would require the strategy to be implemented throughout the entire country. We're also shorthanded in Afghanistan which is why Al Qaeda is gaining a foothold.

Fair enough. The question is, how much is being amplified and how much is being downplayed? I've always believed that the press should be as critical as possible.... as they say, the proof is in the pudding. Personally, I believe the news from Iraq has been about as pro-U.S as possible. No matter which way you spin it though, 5 years after we "won"

The Green Zone is still being shelled, and various armed groups have the capability and means to lob mortars at it as they please. Five years after WW 2, U.S headquarters in Germany was not being regularly attacked (not comparing this to WW2, apples and oranges I know, just saying is all)

There are still well armed and organized groups capable of fighting the Iraqi government to a standstill, despite the surge and multiple efforts to get rid of these groups.

I agree, Iraq and Vietnam are completely different. In Vietnam for example 1 in 3 U.S personnel was not a contractor like in Iraq...some estimates now say that 1 in 2 U.S personnel in Iraq are contractors, but this is impossible to verify as the organization put in charge of overseeing all the contractors in Iraq..... is also a contractor! In regards to Tet, there could definitely come a moment when leaders have to publicly admit that the surge is not working and was largely based on the co-operation of multiple armed groups as opposed to the military might of the U.S.

Other similarities are that some countries are very happy the U.S still has 158,000 troops in Iraq five years later, just as many countries were happy that the U.S was tied up in Vietnam for so long. Five years of continuous combat deployments have worn down the U.S military (in men and materiel) that it WILL require a significant re-org once all the troops come home, whenever that may be....

 

 

Arty:

Any word from a terrorist leader is still taken as gospel by the press and the left, while Gen. Petraus is still being considered a liar before he even opens his mouth (although I will admit that Congress treated him a lot better this time).

Tell me the one about "pro US" again? ROFL

I am from West-Berlin.

I lived most of my life in West-Berlin under American occupation.

Can you tell me, in reasonable detail, how that occupation ended?

 

Leauki, that's getting tricky.  If you count occupation as "US troops still stationed there", the "occuption" is still on going.  Having said that, the troops were still in West Berlin because of the armistice treaty splitting control of the city.  At that point, I wouldn't call it an occupation, because any troops present were there due to a treaty agreement, not because of being victors in a conflict.  So... by that second definition, about 1946 ... and it ended by the Soviet Bloc trying to starve everyone one on the free side of Checkpoint Charlie.

A very interesting question that has been answered already. The last few weeks was the Iraqi version of Tet. It succeeded just as well as the Vietnam Tet, and had the same initial results only this time instead of a respected liberal standing on television and declaring that the war was lost, people remembered Tet and waited to see what was true. When all was said and done facts that were not facts were cleared up and people looked at the whole picture rather than a snap shot of the day.

The thousands of Iraqi troops that deserted turned out to be local police not the army in numbers far smaller than in the thousands. The chief difference is that the propagandist could not dispute the fact that the bad guys lost this one and lost badly. The leader Al Sauder (not sure of the spelling I will just call him numb nuts) has already offered his surrender and disbandment of his army. This shocked the liberals of our country that believed we were losing and the attacks were proof of our inability to win. As the last hold out of the unification of the nation numb nuts still living in Iran found he had even less support than when he fled to Iran and could not sustain his offensive.

As far as rescuing the leader of Iraq as a sign of failure what would it say if we allowed him to get killed? We don’t even let the president enter areas that are dangerous why we would let a friend do the same would be hypocritical.



This is true but you fail to understand the mindset of that region. In that part of the world if you lose you are killed. Your family is killed everyone that supported you is killed. You have to be perceived as the winner before anyone will join you or you are a nonstarter. Numb nuts was thought of as the best chance for winning against the evil invaders. He is leaking troops and even he in his deluded mind sees the truth that he can’t win so now he is switching sides again.



Five years after WWII the Soviet Union was not funding insurgents, the nation surrendered and up to six years after the war troops were still being killed. In Iraq you have Iran funding anyone and everyone that will pick up a gun and that is not enough. So far we have captured three Iranian generals of the Special Forces as well as almost a battalion of Iranian troops. The Iraqis want peace and are not joining the revolution as planned. Remove Iran from the equation and you have a few thousand diehards with no leadership. Iran is the problem at this point and with the problems they are having in their own country they can’t afford to break bad anymore. This was their next to last hurrah, the president of Iran ( I call him puss nuts) never had popular support and the clerics are not supporting him as they once did.



Let me see if I understand you correctly, the leader of the opposition which is living in Iran for safety reasons has offered to disband the only militia that is fighting in this war and this leads you to believe the surge is not working. AQ in Iraq has been proven to not be made up of Iraqis but people from other countries. AQ dispatches that have been captured prove this and those same dispatches admit two years ago that the war was lost and would have been over long ago had not Iran not gotten involved. This is your proof that the surge is not working?



Okay, I will try to understand this one as well. 158k troops out of a 2 million man (person) military are deployed in the area. 158k troops is just a little more than the war fighters on active duty in the U.S. Marine Corps, which is the smallest offensive force in the U.S. Military. What I am saying is that if we wanted to we could take all the active duty Marines around the world and put them in the region and send the army, navy and air force home for a year. Instead we are using our second and third line troops (the reservists) to fill in the blanks keeping our best trained people in reserve just in case someone acts stupid. This is not to say that our second and third level people are worse they just don’t have the intensive training as our first line troops. They are getting what we call OJT on the job training. The bad guys are not good enough to warrent sending in our first line of troops.

What is getting tricky?

There might still be US troops stationed in Berlin (I doubt it), but they certainly don't have any privileges or legal power over the population any more.

West-Berlin was officially occupied territory until 1994 (or 1990 if you will).

For the first few years the US army was certainly an enemy army occupying enemy territory.

But using your (valid) definition of a treaty agreement allowing troops to stay, West-Berlin was occupied until 1990 and subject of a treaty from 1990 to 1994, while Iraq was occupied for a year or so and has been subject to a treaty since that time.

If you want to say that a treaty allowing troops to stay ends an occupation, you have seen the end of the occupation of Iraq several years ago. But in the case of West-Berlin there was no such treaty until the end of the cold war and no souvereign representative of the city to sign it.

There was no elected government in West-Berlin except the one acting on behalf of the allied forces.

Iraq has its own army, West-Berlin did not. (The German army had no presence in the city.)

 

Great discussion except for this statement. Yea, Dan Rather is so Pro Bush, he even did a puff piece and lied to do it in September of 04.

Yea right.

Be nice Doc, not everyone can remember that far back accurately. Some suffer from old timers and others were so busy rooting for their guy that they blinded themselves to the truth and what you see as old news is new to them, it takes a while for it to filter down to everyone. Most of the opposition is still trying to defeat President Bush in the 2000 election and don't know that Mr. Bush is done with politics.

I disagree. That is the highlight of the discussion.

We had people like Judith Miller from the NY Times spreading lies to help Bush make his case for going to war.

Paladin

I guesss we're gonna have to agree to disagree on this one. Five years after the end of WW2, the American headquarters in Germany was NOT being regularly shelled. While service personnel overseas have always had to use caution when leaving the base, five years into the American occupation of Germany, service members did not have to worry about being ambushed by squad or platoon sized organized attacks, nor did they require up-armoured jeeps to scoot around due to regular IED attacks.

I also disagree about Al Sadr. His movement is not anywhere near close to disbanding, and the actions in Basra and abroad succeeded in actually strengthening his militia. For the record, Al Sadr has less support from Iran than the militia allied with the government (Badr brigades) so there is quite a lot of confusion as to who is on which side.

He has said he would disband his militia if certain conditions were met. He has always said this, since before the failed U.S attempt to kick him out of power back in 2004. If the ayatollahs tell him to stand down, he will. They haven't, so he won't. At the end of the day, time will tell. I don't think his forces are going to disappear anytime soon.

If this were 1989 or 1990, you would be correct. Since the end of GW1 the U.S military has drastically downsized their combat arms and outsourced significant portions to private contractors (although monetary expenditures have skyrocketed on advanced weapons research, big ticket items like new nuclear subs and of course the ever increasing gravy train of cost plus contracts for the new outsourced fighting force) This was tied in with Rumsfelds supposedly great vision of a leaner more agile combat force as opposed to the traditional big army that goes toe to toe with other big armies in massive tank battles. At minimum, 1 in 3 U.S personnel in Iraq are private contractors right now, partly because these private companies LOVE to make profit off of your tax dollars, and partly because the U.S military is having difficulty maintaining regular  rotations in country. Most of the 158,000 personnel in Iraq right now are not actual infantry or armour but comprise the much larger support base. If the personnel situation were as rosy as you put it-

you would not have vets that have done as many as 3 or 4 tours in Iraq

you would not have rotations that in some cases have lasted 15 months or longer

you would not have had stop-loss

And, the fact that Collin Powell has publicly stated that he believes the U.S military is effectively broken due to continuous long term deployment, and will require several years to re-org once this whole shebang is over (if it ever is over)

Also keep in mind that the U.S has almost 30,000 additional in Afghanistan, and NATO is requesting more because the Taliban is not anywhere near done having their fun yet.

I may come across as being anti-U.S but I assure you that is not the case- I do think that honest assessments of the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan are one of the first casualties in this war. I do believe that most of the fighters in Iraq are NOT foreigners, nor are they terrorists. I believe most of the fighters in Iraq are home grown insurgents, that is why five years later they can still succesfully shell the green zone and then melt into the background- because they are on their own turf.

 

You're right. What many people are calling Iraqi terrorists are actually just Iraqi civilians trying to take their country back. Being anti Bush policies is not the same as being anti-US. In fact, being pro Bush policies is anti-US because of the damaging effect those policies have had on our country.

Yes, and he came out to say it again while in exile, and after his little surge failed to rally more troops. It was a test that proved he was not being supported at home as he once was.

If we failed to kick him out of power why is he now based in Iran rather than in Iraq? Or is this his version of redeployment as the liberals wish to do with our troops? Sure he is in charge of his little army but that army is dwindling every day.



Ok, when I was in the corps we had 190k active duty marines, when I got out Mr. Clinton was president the numbers had dropped to about 150k troops depending on if you include non-combatants such as women in the service. Even if the Corps dropped to 80k it would still be enough to play in Iraq with a little help of the Army. In the real world unlike the one you are in, “The United States Marine Corps, with 186,342 active duty and 40,000 reserve Marines as of November 30, 2007,” this is from the marine corps website. Oh by the way they are expected to ramp up to 202K within the next 5 years. You see there is only one Marine Expeditionary Unit in Iraq, that is roughly a few thousand marines, its parent unit a Marine Expeditionary Force is comprised of 60K troops and there are three of them on active duty around the world. The MEU’s are rotated from the three MEF’s so no one unit is stuck with servicing Iraq. Yes if you volunteer you can go back as many times as you wish, and if you are a reservist your unit will go back more often than active duty personnel. So when we dropped in numbers GW brought the numbers up and will exceed the numbers of troops from when I was in the service.




Yes you would on all of those things. You don’t understand what is happening and with your ignorance you are filling in what you don’t know with guesses. It is not your fault because you are not an American and you are not a member of the military so seeing the way things are done seem strange to you. Hell we have Americans that were in the military and use the funny way things are done to advance their cause because it is so difficult to explain in a 20 second sound bite. This is why people believe we are losing when we are winning. Just like in Vietnam we were winning and told we were losing so we pulled out and lost a war we were winning. You and others are getting the same type of bad information. Remember the mission accomplished sign on the aircraft carrier? It was there for the sailors who were coming home but the political opposition shaped the attack and argument to make it look like the president was saying the war was over. And people believed it, in fact all the president said was offensive actions were at an end. Misinformation has helped prolong the war and get more people killed just to make the president look bad so they could win the last election. It did not work but the troops are still dead, thanks!



I understand your points but you fail to realize that you are being fed bad information you say the military is far less than what is actually is in numbers yet if you bothered to look the factual information is all there and in the open. This is not some right wing news organization like CNN or the CBC it is the Marine Corps own site overseen by congress which means if the information is false people can go to jail.

Like I told you before the military has over 2 million troops to play with and we are only moving around 158k a year. If need be then we can call up whole reserve units but that would be bad and very serious instead we are calling up this little unit and that one to give them combat experience.