Kennedy Speech on the House Floor

by Yerusalyim 14 Replies latest social current

Yerusalyim

Attached is "Swimmer" Kennedy's attack on Bush recently, my comments...which I sent to him in the format below...are in red.
http://kennedy.senate.gov/index_high.html
I have heard many of my colleagues today discussing my remarks on this Administration's go-it-alone policy in Iraq. The Administration has NOT had a "go it alone" policy in Iraq. We have a coalition...one which is growing. France has decided not to oppose the proposed Security Council Resolution' Germany is back on board with us, and it looks as Russia is too. Rather than coming back from the UN empty handed, the President is building support.
This Administration and my colleagues across the aisle are trying to deflect attention away from the Administration's failed policy in Iraq. In what way is it a "failed policy?" Progress is being made all the time. Why not actually VISIT Iraq before you criticize.
For the sake of our troops, it's time for this Administration to speak honestly about its failures in Iraq. What failures? Many Americans share my views, and I regret that the President considers them uncivil and not in the national interest. Your views and these comments are not in the national interest. Your public comments have put US soldiers in greater danger by encouraging the terrorists.The real action that was not in the American interest was the decision to go to war unilaterally, without the support of our allies, and without a plan to win the peace. We did not go to war "unilaterally", we went with the support of more than 40 nations...and the coalition is GROWING. We went without the consent of Russia, Germany and France who had 120 billion reasons not to want Saddam out of power. We ARE winning the peace...just ask the Iraqis...but it takes money to rebuild.
There's no question that this White House sees political advantage in the war. And there's no question you and the democrat critics find political advantage in criticizing the President...but you lack a plan...It's easy to complain...but much harder to lead...try leading for a change. You can see it in Karl Rove's speeches to Republican strategists.
Just this morning, the New York Times reports that "the White House goal is to show substantial improvement in Iraq before next fall's reelection campaign." Sure, and by the same token it's the goal of you and other democrats to block the president and try to establish that no progress is being made...but that's a lie.
And you can see it in the way they attack the patriotism of those who question them. It's not the questioning that's being called unpatriotic...it's the unwarranted criticisms and partisan politics that are being called unpatriotic. What you fail to understand is your harsh, unfair, and untrue comments in this speech encourage terrorists and endanger american lives...and you've yet to offer a solution...only complain.
There are valid questions and deep concerns about the Administration's rush to war in Iraq a Rush of 12 years and 17 UN resolutions...did you vote to authorize the use of force senator?? its rationale, to take out Saddam before he acquired nukes...and because of his ties to Terrorists...and because he was a block to peace in the middle east...and many other reasons...yet blocked at every turn by those who Saddam owed money to. whether there's a plan for winning the peace, how the money is being spent, and when our troops can come home with honor. There IS a plan for peace, and progress is being made...it takes 20 Billion and more to rebuild the infastructure of a country...the troops can't come home with honor until Iraq is a secure democracy...help build that...and stop dishonoring the soldiers that died with your partisan comments.
Our troops, their families, and the American people deserve answers, not more politics as usual. I agree so shut up with the politics and start helping us in Iraq.
The Administration has no plan for Iraq, and it shows. American servicemen and women are paying with their lives. You have endanger soldiers lives with these comments...and we do NOT appreciate them...we resent them.
The President's trip to the United Nations this week is now the most important journey of his Administration, but it didn't have to be this way. A successful trip too.
The situation in Iraq is out of control, and American troops are paying the price every day with their lives. Like I suggested earlier...why not actually visit Iraq...progress is being made on a daily basis.
We have now lost more troops since the President declared an end to major combat than during the war itself. The Administration says it has an international coalition, but it's paper-thin. America has 85 percent of all the coalition troops on the ground, and we're taking 85 percent of the casualties. And you encourage the terrorist to take more lives with your unjustified criticism...FINE share a difference of opinion...but offer a solution.
This Administration is muddling through, day-by-day, while the lives of our soldiers are at risk and their families worry here at home. This is unjustified, and unsubstantiated..YOU are putting soldiers at risk and YOU are worrying the families at home.
The Administration has been unwilling so far to make the compromises needed at the United Nations to obtain the support our troops need to ease their burden and bring stability and peace to Iraq. When has the UN ever been successful at something of this nature? The US will compromise, but not sell out. Remember, our cheif opponenets are owed 120 billion dollars by Saddam...this is the cheif cause of their opposition. The American people want to know from President Bush, when can their sons and daughters, their husbands and wives, their fathers and mothers, return from Iraq with dignity, having fulfilled their mission? The mission isn't complete until the peace is secure. We soldiers know...and I think most Americans know...that the US presence in Iraq will last for years.
The White House may be saying things are going well and we should stay the course. But the American people know that major changes in policy are essential. We need a plan from the Administration ? a real planWhere's your real plan? ? before we write an $87 billion blank check to pay for this Administration's hollow policy in Iraq. A policy that is working.
Terrorists are sabotaging the reconstruction efforts, lashing out in every way they can. U.S. casualties continue to rise. The Headquarters of the United Nations was devastated by a truck bomb that specifically targeted and killed the UN's highly respected Chief Representative in Baghdad. Nothing is sacred. And your comments are encouraging a continuation of this sort of thing. A key Shiite cleric was assassinated in the bombing of a mosque. Even the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad was bombed, in an ominous message to other nations in the Middle East who cooperate with the U.S. Terrorists are said to be streaming into Iraq to take advantage of the new breeding ground that our failed policy has given them. Yet you don't talk about the schools rebuilt or the hospitals, of kids going to school, of people beginning to work...of democratic self government on a local level beginning to happen. From all FAIR reports there's more good news than bad. President Bush has asked Congress to provide $87 billion more in the coming year to set it right in Iraq, but it's essentially a blank check. He says he'll internationalize the conflict, but he doesn't want to share power on the ground. Share yes, turn over NO...France has an agenda, billions of dollars worth of agenda, and are no ally, I've worked with them in too many places...their government sticks it to the US at every turn. They did this under Clinton, and now under Bush. You don't share power with someone that doesn't share your vision. France has compromised with Terrorism...France doesn't share our views.
The Administration had a brilliant plan to fight the war, but no plan to win the peace. It had a brilliant plan to overthrow a government, but no plan to deliver on the promise of democracy. Sure they did, it was called establishing security, establishing a provisional government.and rebuilding..letting them write a constitution, having elections...and it's on track.
The American people are confused about why we fought this war, and what our strategy is for winning the peace. No really we aren't
Last fall, the President said that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons. Then, he said Iraq maintains an active weapons of mass destruction program. All of which Clinton believed...George Bush Sr beleived...and you yourself. And this has yet to be disproven. Then, the rationale was that Iraq was linked to Al Qaeda. Yet the Czech government to this day insists that the meeting between Atta and Iraqi intelligence happened in Czech. A leading Al Qaeda figure came to Baghdad for surgery. Ya don't do stuff like that in a totalitarian society without permission for the tyrant. None of these are true. I've just shown that statement to be false. No one doubts that Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator, but what was the imminent threat to our national security? The Administration's rationale was built on a quicksand of false assumptions. The same "false assumptions" believed by the UN, by the Clinton administration and Congress.
In terms of how we will win the peace, the Administration also seems confused. The Secretary of State has argued that additional time is needed to establish a new government in Iraq. A few weeks ago, he said, " it will be some time before any new government could take over the responsibilities inherent in being in charge of security."
But Secretary Rumsfeld, in an effort to assure that we are not getting bogged down, says that things are "moving at a very rapid pace in Iraq."
Which is it? It's both depending on perspective...we are making progress, RAPIDLY, but it will take time for Iraq to be ready to take on self government and security by itself.
These and other facts there was a fact in there? lead the American people to question whether the Administration has an effective plan to share the security burden with the international community, reduce the burden on our troops, and deliver on the promise of democracy. Yes, it does...Russia and Germany are on board...France isn't oppossing, democracy doesn't happen over night....oh...and your plan is to what again?
The American people deserve answers. What they don't deserve is these partisan ramblings.
How will the Administration obtain a broader international mandate ? through the United Nations ? to bring in other countries' troops and provide a greater role for the United Nations in the political development and reconstruction of Iraq? Ask Russia and Germany...
How many additional troops are needed to prevent the sabotage undermining the reconstruction? Your comments are almost as dangerous as the sabatoge.
What nations will supply troops?
What is the estimate of the duration of the US military occupation and the likely levels of US and foreign troops required for security? YEARS, we all knew that.
What is the estimate of the total cost of security and reconstruction, including the likely amount of international contributions? That might be unknowable at this point.
What is the schedule for restoring electricity, water, and other basic services to the Iraqi people? As soon as the Infastructure is rebuild...the infastructure ignored by Saddam for over a decade. It's being improved upon daily.
What is the schedule for the deployment of Iraqi police and Iraqi armed forces? As quickly as we can get them trained....some 40,000 are already in place.
What is the long-term schedule for the withdrawal of foreign and American armed forces? When the peace is secure...how long did we stay in Germany? OHHHH we're still there...darn, I keep forgeting...winning REAL peace is a long term commitment.
The Administration must answer these questions and provide a credible long-term plan for Iraq. We can't afford to continue our failed strategy of making it up day-by-day as we go along, when our soldiers are paying for it with their lives. PURE Rhetoric, you've yet to show how the policy is failed and you've yet to offer alternatives.
We all hope the window to peace will stay open. If it closes, history will have no mercy ? it will say this is how we went to war against Iraq, for the wrong reason, and lost the war on terrorism. That's the precipice we now stand on and you would push us over it. If we fail, history will also show that your unwarranted criticism was, in part, to blame for any failures.
The Administration needs to show the American people and the world a plausible plan to correct this colossal failure in our policy. You have yet to show the plan is a failure...or to offer an alternative.
In addressing the United Nations, the President should have taken responsibility for his Administration's mistakes in going to war without the broad support of the international community.Like Clinton in Kosovo, come on Senator...the UN oppossed us because France Russia and Germany want their money back, and Kofi Annan has a Napolean complex. Remember, it was the UN's administration of the oil for food program that allowed Saddam to siphon money and from his people to build palaces. There was no oversight of the administration of this program...why not demand the UN give and accounting of the money? We need to involve the United Nations in a meaningful way in the transition in Iraq. Our policy cannot be all take and no give. Nor can our policy be to bow to those that have placed money above the fight for security...seems Bush has involved the UN...or did I not see Germany and Russia relaxing their wrong minded stance.
The President should work with the United Nations as long as it takes to get an agreement to help our troops and bring stability to Iraq. Our troops are doing their jobs in Baghdad; now President Bush must do his in New York. And he has...stop giving aid in comfort to the enemy by such harsh partisan and UNWARRANTED Criticism.
Stacy Smith

LOL@Swimmer That cracks me up.
Kennedy has had a few cases of Wild Turkey too many. He lost his good looks because of the booze years ago and it appears he has finally lost his mind as well.
Good retort to his speech Yeru.
Yerusalyim

Thanks Love!
Perry

I think 'ole Kennedy is towing the party policy of "pre-emptive surrender" ... LOL
BTW, when was the last time that a democratic president actually won a war?
Swickley
And now, for something completely different, and more accurate -- by Max Cleland:
"The president of the United States decides to go to war against a nation led by a brutal dictator supported by one-party rule. That dictator has made war on his neighbors. The president decides this is a threat to the United States.
In his campaign for president he gives no indication of wanting to go to war. In fact, he decries the overextension of American military might and says other nations must do more. However, unbeknownst to the American public, the president's own Pentagon advisers have already cooked up a plan to go to war. All they are looking for is an excuse.
Based on faulty intelligence, cherry-picked information is fed to Congress and the American people. The president goes on national television to make the case for war, using as part of the rationale an incident that never happened. Congress buys the bait -- hook, line and sinker -- and passes a resolution giving the president the authority to use "all necessary means" to prosecute the war.
The war is started with an air and ground attack. Initially there is optimism. The president says we are winning. The cocky, self-assured secretary of defense says we are winning. As a matter of fact, the secretary of defense promises the troops will be home soon.
However, the truth on the ground that the soldiers face in the war is different than the political policy that sent them there. They face increased opposition from a determined enemy. They are surprised by terrorist attacks, village assassinations, increasing casualties and growing anti-American sentiment. They find themselves bogged down in a guerrilla land war, unable to move forward and unable to disengage because there are no allies to turn the war over to.
There is no plan B. There is no exit strategy. Military morale declines. The president's popularity sinks and the American people are increasingly frustrated by the cost of blood and treasure poured into a never-ending war.
Sound familiar? It does to me.
The president was Lyndon Johnson. The cocky, self-assured secretary of defense was Robert McNamara. The congressional resolution was the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. The war was the war that I, U.S. Sens. John Kerry, Chuck Hagel and John McCain and 3 1/2 million other Americans of our generation were caught up in. It was the scene of America's longest war. It was also the locale of the most frustrating outcome of any war this nation has ever fought.
Unfortunately, the people who drove the engine to get into the war in Iraq never served in Vietnam. Not the president. Not the vice president. Not the secretary of defense. Not the deputy secretary of defense. Too bad. They could have learned some lessons:
Don't underestimate the enemy. The enemy always has one option you cannot control. He always has the option to die. This is especially true if you are dealing with true believers and guerillas fighting for their version of reality, whether political or religious. They are what Tom Friedman of The New York Times calls the "non-deterrables." If those non-deterrables are already in their country, they will be able to wait you out until you go home.
If the enemy adopts a "hit-and-run" strategy designed to inflict maximum casualties on you, you may win every battle, but (as Walter Lippman once said about Vietnam) you can't win the war.
If you adopt a strategy of not just pre-emptive strike but also pre-emptive war, you own the aftermath. You better plan for it. You better have an exit strategy because you cannot stay there indefinitely unless you make it the 51st state.
If you do stay an extended period of time, you then become an occupier, not a liberator. That feeds the enemy against you.
If you adopt the strategy of pre-emptive war, your intelligence must be not just "darn good," as the president has said; it must be "bulletproof," as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claimed the administration's was against Saddam Hussein. Anything short of that saps credibility.
If you want to know what is really going on in the war, ask the troops on the ground, not the policy-makers in Washington.
In a democracy, instead of truth being the first casualty in war, it should be the first cause of war. It is the only way the Congress and the American people can cope with getting through it. As credibility is strained, support for the war and support for the troops go downhill. Continued loss of credibility drains troop morale, the media become more suspicious, the public becomes more incredulous and Congress is reduced to hearings and investigations.
Instead of learning the lessons of Vietnam, where all of the above happened, the president, the vice president, the secretary of defense and the deputy secretary of defense have gotten this country into a disaster in the desert.
They attacked a country that had not attacked us. They did so on intelligence that was faulty, misrepresented and highly questionable.
A key piece of that intelligence was an outright lie that the White House put into the president's State of the Union speech. These officials have overextended the American military, including the National Guard and the Reserve, and have expanded the U.S. Army to the breaking point.
A quarter of a million troops are committed to the Iraq war theater, most of them bogged down in Baghdad. Morale is declining and casualties continue to increase.
In addition to the human cost, the war in dollars costs $1 billion a week, adding to the additional burden of an already depressed economy.
The president has declared "major combat over" and sent a message to every terrorist, "Bring them on." As a result, he has lost more people in his war than his father did in his and there is no end in sight.
Military commanders are left with extended tours of duty for servicemen and women who were told long ago they were going home. We are keeping American forces on the ground, where they have become sitting ducks in a shooting gallery for every terrorist in the Middle East.
Welcome to Vietnam, Mr. President. Sorry you didn't go when you had the chance."
Former U.S. Senator Max Cleland volunteered for duty in Vietnam where he lost both of his legs and his right arm in a grenade explosion. He headed the Veterans Administration in the Carter administration and was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1996. In 2002, Cleland lost his bid for reelection when his opponent ran attack ads that questioned his patriotism and featured photos of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. He has received numerous awards for his bravery and service including the military's Silver Star for Gallantry in Action. When the Reserve Officers' Association named Cleland its "Minute Man of the Year" for his work in the Senate, he joined past Presidents Bush, Reagan and Ford in receiving the association's highest honor. Currently, Max Cleland is a distinguished adjunct professor at American University's Washington Semester Program.
SanFranciscoJim

Kennedy has had a few cases of Wild Turkey too many. He lost his good looks because of the booze years ago and it appears he has finally lost his mind as well.

In the early 70's, when Volkswagen still sold the old "Beetle" in the USA, their advertisements bragged about how air tight they were. One of the VW ads showed a beetle floating in the middle of a lake. National Lampoon ran the same picture with the caption: "If Ted Kennedy had driven a Volkswagen, he'd be president today!"
When a lawsuit was threatened by Volkswagen, National Lampoon ran the following retraction: "Even if Ted Kennedy had driven a Volkswagen he wouldn't be president today."
Swickley

SFO-Jim -- that is too funny (a sad subject, but funny what VW did!)
Perry
And now, for something completely different, and more accurate -- by Max Cleland:

"The president of the United States decides to go to war against a nation led by a brutal dictator supported by one-party rule. That dictator has made war on his neighbors. The president decides this is a threat to the United States.
Kinda like when Hitler made war on his neighbors.
In his campaign for president he gives no indication of wanting to go to war.
As opposed to what other recent president who ran on a platform for wanting war?
In fact, he decries the overextension of American military might and says other nations must do more.
So what?
However, unbeknownst to the American public, the president's own Pentagon advisers have already cooked up a plan to go to war. All they are looking for is an excuse.
Hmmmm let's see, Isn't that the job of the pentagon.... to be prepared? What the hell else should they be doing? Taking cooking classes?
Based on faulty intelligence, cherry-picked information is fed to Congress and the American people. The president goes on national television to make the case for war, using as part of the rationale an incident that never happened. Congress buys the bait -- hook, line and sinker -- and passes a resolution giving the president the authority to use "all necessary means" to prosecute the war.
Last I heard Saddam thumbed his nose at the UN amd failed to account for his WBD that he himself admitted to having.
The war is started with an air and ground attack. Initially there is optimism. The president says we are winning. The cocky, self-assured secretary of defense says we are winning. As a matter of fact, the secretary of defense promises the troops will be home soon.

I always heard how we should be prepared to be in the fight for the long haul.
However, the truth on the ground that the soldiers face in the war is different than the political policy that sent them there. They face increased opposition from a determined enemy. They are surprised by terrorist attacks, village assassinations, increasing casualties and growing anti-American sentiment. They find themselves bogged down in a guerrilla land war, unable to move forward and unable to disengage because there are no allies to turn the war over to.

Last night Bruce Willis went on national television after returning from Iraq. He presented an opposite view from his experience.
There is no plan B. There is no exit strategy. Military morale declines. The president's popularity sinks and the American people are increasingly frustrated by the cost of blood and treasure poured into a never-ending war.
Sounds like he's watching CNN. Communist News Network. "Never-ending war"? This is just hype.
Sound familiar? It does to me.
The president was Lyndon Johnson. The cocky, self-assured secretary of defense was Robert McNamara. The congressional resolution was the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. The war was the war that I, U.S. Sens. John Kerry, Chuck Hagel and John McCain and 3 1/2 million other Americans of our generation were caught up in. It was the scene of America's longest war. It was also the locale of the most frustrating outcome of any war this nation has ever fought.
Yes, and aren't we glad that another democratic president isn't losing another war for us.
Unfortunately, the people who drove the engine to get into the war in Iraq never served in Vietnam. Not the president. Not the vice president. Not the secretary of defense. Not the deputy secretary of defense. Too bad. They could have learned some lessons:
What arrogance.
Don't underestimate the enemy. The enemy always has one option you cannot control. He always has the option to die. This is especially true if you are dealing with true believers and guerillas fighting for their version of reality, whether political or religious. They are what Tom Friedman of The New York Times calls the "non-deterrables." If those non-deterrables are already in their country, they will be able to wait you out until you go home.
Isn't that the point in war.... for the enemy to die? It is unless your point in war is to surrender.
If the enemy adopts a "hit-and-run" strategy designed to inflict maximum casualties on you, you may win every battle, but (as Walter Lippman once said about Vietnam) you can't win the war.
More hype. I saw hundreds of Iraqi police in the streets of Baghdad today, running, fighting and defending their country from paid bullys from Saddams Billions of oil money. I'm not too sure if the Iraqi police read Walter Lippman. Just what exactly is the democrats complete obsession with surrender to an enemy?

If you adopt a strategy of not just pre-emptive strike but also pre-emptive war, you own the aftermath. You better plan for it. You better have an exit strategy because you cannot stay there indefinitely unless you make it the 51st state.

There is another way to not "own the aftermath" and that is by adopting a policy of pre-emptive surrender. Then, your enemy owns the future as well as you.
I was going to finish this... changed my mind. Too ridiculous.

If you do stay an extended period of time, you then become an occupier, not a liberator. That feeds the enemy against you.
If you adopt the strategy of pre-emptive war, your intelligence must be not just "darn good," as the president has said; it must be "bulletproof," as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claimed the administration's was against Saddam Hussein. Anything short of that saps credibility.
If you want to know what is really going on in the war, ask the troops on the ground, not the policy-makers in Washington.
In a democracy, instead of truth being the first casualty in war, it should be the first cause of war. It is the only way the Congress and the American people can cope with getting through it. As credibility is strained, support for the war and support for the troops go downhill. Continued loss of credibility drains troop morale, the media become more suspicious, the public becomes more incredulous and Congress is reduced to hearings and investigations.
Instead of learning the lessons of Vietnam, where all of the above happened, the president, the vice president, the secretary of defense and the deputy secretary of defense have gotten this country into a disaster in the desert.
They attacked a country that had not attacked us. They did so on intelligence that was faulty, misrepresented and highly questionable.
A key piece of that intelligence was an outright lie that the White House put into the president's State of the Union speech. These officials have overextended the American military, including the National Guard and the Reserve, and have expanded the U.S. Army to the breaking point.
A quarter of a million troops are committed to the Iraq war theater, most of them bogged down in Baghdad. Morale is declining and casualties continue to increase.
In addition to the human cost, the war in dollars costs $1 billion a week, adding to the additional burden of an already depressed economy.
The president has declared "major combat over" and sent a message to every terrorist, "Bring them on." As a result, he has lost more people in his war than his father did in his and there is no end in sight.
Military commanders are left with extended tours of duty for servicemen and women who were told long ago they were going home. We are keeping American forces on the ground, where they have become sitting ducks in a shooting gallery for every terrorist in the Middle East.
Welcome to Vietnam, Mr. President. Sorry you didn't go when you had the chance."
Former U.S. Senator Max Cleland volunteered for duty in Vietnam where he lost both of his legs and his right arm in a grenade explosion. He headed the Veterans Administration in the Carter administration and was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1996. In 2002, Cleland lost his bid for reelection when his opponent ran attack ads that questioned his patriotism and featured photos of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. He has received numerous awards for his bravery and service including the military's Silver Star for Gallantry in Action. When the Reserve Officers' Association named Cleland its "Minute Man of the Year" for his work in the Senate, he joined past Presidents Bush, Reagan and Ford in receiving the association's highest honor. Currently, Max Cleland is a distinguished adjunct professor at American University's Washington Semester Program.
teejay

Yeru,

America is in the mess it's in in Iraq because the Bush Administration has made serious mistakes from the planning stages forward. Even members of the President's own party (inluding individuals in the military) have admitted as much. That people like you choose to remain in the dark that is why a yet untold number of servicemen will be killed and billions more of American taxpayer's money will be lost.

Yes there is a "coalition" but Bush's policy was "we're going in whether we get help or not." He thumbed his nose at the U.N. and before a global audience called it irrelevant. Now because of his plan lacked sufficient foresight he is forced to acknowledge the enormity of his folly by crawling back to the U.N. and begging for the help the "coalition" so desperately needs. If you think there have been no failures in Iraq then you are even more clueless than I think you are.

Yes he and the Republicans have tried to make political hay out of the war just as the Democrats have. That?s what politicians do -- spin events to their own ends. You're either totally ignorant or thoroughly dishonest if you say anything different than that. Despite what you seem to think, George W. Bush is not some valiant knight that's stepped off the pages of a kid's fairy tale. He's a political animal who will do whatever it takes to hold onto the position he has. No one should have to point that out to you but kudos to Teddy for trying.

It has been established that the evidence supporting a military action against Iraq was faulty at best and most likely non-existent. Are there WoMD in Iraq? Who knows? No one knows now just as no one knew a year ago. The fact is, though, that there was not sufficient evidence indicating that there are WoMD like Bush said there was, and no reason whatsoever to support the preposterous idea that America was at risk from an imminent attack -- the reasons Bush had for his pre-emptive strike in the first place.

You can continue hiding your head in the sand and ignore these fair points of concern, Yeru, and you can keep on spouting the "my president / Party / country, right or wrong," but don't be surprised or upset when others (who are more inclined to look at the facts) take advantage of their freedom to disagree with this Administration and point to its egregious mistakes in Iraq, mistakes which have and will continue to carry with them enormous costs both in human life and dollars.
Panda

Yeru, Excellent choice of words for swimmer Kennedy. The man has no interest in public welfare. He wants to remain a serial politician for life. If he read some of the founding fathers works he would know that political office was meant to be a part time job served for the good of the nation. AND why do we not mention that he should've gone to Vietnam. Shoot his brother started the whole deal anyway. Let's see JFK=Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, and the race for space...anything else?
Vietnam: Someone ought to read the nearest textbook to discover the amazing truth about Vietnam. While the US was implementing the Marshall Plan in EUrope the European nations were finding it difficult to hold onto their "colonies." The French could no longer control the country and keep the communists out. If you'd been to VietNam you'd know that the Vietnamese language is spoken similar to Chinese and even more interesting the language is written in Chinese characters. It doesn't take much to translate between the two. So Perhaps the fights with the Chinese over Vietnam stretched long into the past. Perhaps. Anyway, because the French had made promises the US was asked to help them out. So our government sent in advisors while the French went home defeated. Some French did stay because they had families in Vietnam. Shoot... HoChiMinh learned all about communism in Paris where he wroked for slave wages as a dish washer and got his political education. After Kennedy then Johnson wanted to establish the typical hegemon. Didn't LBJ ask "what's wrong with those people, we just want to build them roads and hospitals?" But the people didn't want Western help to build institutions. And in the south part of the country they just wanted western money and protection. So we know none of this works.
Today we know that free markets lead to freer politics and a liberal democracy. The old hegemon and capitalism are no longer what political science and nation building are about. So if you care to pay attention this Iraq war and post war are all about the people and stabilizing them in order to allow a hopefully continued liberal democracy and free markets. This is also the reason that the President wants the $$$ we spend in Iraq to be a gift and not a loan. Afterall, who would the loan be to when there is no government to sign. And how would we be any different than the French or Russians who didn't like seeing SH go because of the loans he owed them.
But we are different now, we have not fought another Vietnam, and we never will. In Vietnam bombing was indescriminate. Not so in Iraq. Some of our own have died because they want to be absolutely sure before they shoot someone.
Also, now pay attention to this one because it is the future to ending terrorism --- as Iraq democratizes the big money supporter of terrorism will go down. You know who I mean. That nation which now supports 5000 princes and their families. People who did not build schools but rather lavished themselves in the ways of sheiks and kings of the 14th century. Palaces, camel races, horses, jewels, silks, cars, gorgeous wives and strictly Islamic... now imagine them falling and the new liberal democracy next door teaching the people how to live. Then the idea may move further , maybe to Syria, Jordan, Egypt. Who knows? But we do know that now SaudiArabia has got to go.
Patriotic Panda Ponders Petrol Prices Periodically pugnaciously praying "Porfavor" pay pennies please.!

Kennedy Speech on the House Floor

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