Iran...?

[Wakie]

Here's a dose of reality.

1. The US Military does not currently have the man power to maintain a war on 3 fronts and will not invade Iran any time soon.

In order to move against Iran the US would either (A) have to win broad global support, (B) vastly increase the size of its standing military, or (C) abandon one of its other fronts.  After the Iraq debacle there's no way we can win global support.  We're currently struggling to maintain the size of military so the only way to grow it would be through a draft and that won't happen.  Bush won't abandon either of the other fronts.

2. Iran is actively pursuing nuclear weapons.

Iran's two longest border nations are currently occuppied by massive US forces.  When Iran had a reformer government in place which had reached out to the US, the current US leader publicly described Iran as being part of the "Axis of Evil".  Naturally Iran is nervous and doesn't feel it can trust the good will of the US.  Iran also has seen that after North Korea acquired nuclear weapons the US decided to negotiate with them.  This means Iran's only option for its safety is nuclear weapons.

3. Iran will get nuclear arms.

Since the US can't get the arms and they've made Iran feel that they need them, Iran will spend the time and resources necessary to acquire nuclear arms.


Thanks Bush voters, you screwed the world.

[Wakie]

Thanks Bush voters, you screwed the world.

Would voting Bush out in 2004 made Iraq any less of a debacle than it already was?

And could any voter in 2000 have reasonably been expected to anticipate anything resembling this?


The blame is on Bush himself, not the voters.

I agree that in 2000 no one could have foreseen what would happen in the 4 years that would follow.  Who could have anticipated 9/11 or that the guy who railed against "nation building" in the Balkans would try to do the exact same thing in the Middle East?

But 2004 was the opportunity the US had to bring in a different guy who wanted to involve the rest of the world in rebuilding Iraq.  I truly believe that if Kerry had been elected in 2004 the US would be in the process of withdrawing from Iraq.

I don't blame voters for what happened between 2000-2004 but I do blame them for 2004-2008.

[Wakie]

The only thing that is "stretched" is our ground forces.  We don't need ground forces to keep a virtual knee in Iran's back semi-permanently.  Our (and our friends) Air Forces and Navies are enough to keep Iran from doing anything in either Iraq or Afghanastan.  What exactly could Iran do?  Say we bomb all their important nuclear sites and all their rocket emplacements around the Straits of Hormuz , what are they going to do?  Mobilize their militaries and start invading Iraq?  We haven't seen the USAF blow up standing Armies in what...4 years?  Have we forgotten?  Daisy Cutters are AMAZING things and B52's can carry lots of 'em and we got lots of B52s that ARE NOT tied down in Baghdad.

Oh we can definitely bomb someone back to the Stone Age without batting an eye.  But that ability didn't prevent the North Koreans from acquiring a nuke and I doubt it will stop the Iranians.  I fully expect them to perform a little underground nuclear test sometime over the next 5-10 years.  The real fear isn't that Iran will invade somewhere but that they will acquire nuclear technology and sell it to every lunatic who wants it.

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I'm proud to say I voted 3rd party (Libertarian) both times he's run.  I'm proud to say I've never voted for a winning President in the 4 elections I've voted in.  But I'm not going to blame the people that voted for him in 2000.

2004 on the other hand....the jackasses should have known.
[/quote]

I don't blame the 2000 Bush voters.  As I said in another post, the events of 2000-2004 were unpredictable.  Even more unpredictable was how Bush would do an about-face on everything he claimed he stood for in the 2000 campaign.  But as you say, by 2004 people really should have known better.

[Wakie]

I am not a GWBush fan and would not have voted for his re-election in '04 if the Democrats had given me a choice...........I feel that John Kerry was perhaps the worst Presidential nominee in history with the only possible exceptions being Dukakis in '88 and McGovern in '72

Umm ... I don't think Kerry was a good candidate, but he was far from the worst.  That distinction probably goes to Walter Mondale in '84.  Fritz was a nice guy and all but he foolishly believed you could be honest with the people.

Kerry's problems were:

1. When attacked he didn't respond with indignation.  He thought he could stay "above" things.

2. Kerry didn't hit back at Bush.  When Bush made goofy faces and said stupid things like "got wood" Kerry let him get away with it.  That was the opening for a Lloyd Bentsen comment.  He really should have said "George, if you don't know what is in your personal portfolio how can you be trusted to run a country?"  Bush's people pulled local level dirty tricks and the Kerry folks refused to retaliate.  Oh well, at least the local Dems learned from Kerry's bad moves and hit back in the 2006 Senate campaign (God I loved it when the PA Repubs for Santorum whined on here).

3. He let young idiots run his regional campaign positions.  Seriously.  Clinton, the kid who was in charge of Pittsburgh until something like 4 months before the election, was a moron who was more interested in playing with his friends than running a serious regional campaign.  Pittsburgh SHOULD have been a huge Kerry base, instead it was a battleground.


Even if Kerry was a bad candidate, Bush had already been a bad President at that point.

[Wakie]

But the military kicked ass in Iraq when it was allowed to act like a military.  Forcing the Army to play Police while Bush tries to force Democracy down the throats of the locals isn't something the Army and Marines should be doing.

Bingo.  This is the most accurate statement I've read in a while.  I've been saying for a long time that I firmly believe that if you give the American people/military a clearcut mission with reasonable milestones they will easily accomplish it.  The problem with Iraq is that the planning has never been there.  The mission has been nebulous and the milestones non-existent.