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Originally posted by Spanky
I don't know you tell me. But has Powell said we should have used more troops?
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Over and over and over again. Start
here and if you want more, google. You'll find he even said this publicly while still Secretary of State, though he was somewhat more forgiving in his tone at that point in time.
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Why will he always tow the party line? Other retired generals are not. Why is he any different? Won't he do what he thinks is in the country's interest? He is from the military not the Republian party. If he says something, why shouldn't we trust him? If you say you trust him, why are you questioning his veracity or his intentions now? Why should we trust what anonymouse sources are saying and not trust this guy you say is competant. .
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Books by other generals are not exactly anonymous sources. Again, feel free to look into this, but you'll find lots of first hand accounts on the subject. Franks' memoirs have been noted as unreadable military line-towing. You haven't hung around the military much, have you?
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I don't think it is ranting. I would like us to succeed in Iraq and if we fail I would like us to have tried everything we could have done to win. The success of the occupation is really important. When I hear people saying it is too late, or the eggs are broken and they can't be fixed, that sounds like people who are not committed to winning. It would be one thing if the people saying that could be sure that we can't win, but they cannot be sure. There are no certainties in this thing, so when people talk in certainties, it just says to me that they don't know what they are talking about and are pushing a political agenda. People saying it is too expesive, costing too many lives, I doesn't sound to me like people understand the stakes. If we could succeed, the price we have paid so far is incredibly cheap for what we would accomplish. If we could insure victory by spending ten time the lives and ten times the money we have spent I think it would be worth it. But of course we can't know that.
Do you thing we should give up? I believe if you decide to do something you give it your best shot. So if we have not decided to give up, what is our best shot. What is the way we can insure we did everything we could to win? Why is that so crazy?
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Identify winnable objectives in the real world and I'm all for it. Wishing it won't make it so. Spend a little time looking at those polls and tell me how we convert the population to people who trust western style Democracy. It is time to pull the troops out and send the businesspeople in -- I have more faith in building support for Democracy in Iraq through trade than military force at this point,
because there are not identifiable military objectives that help the cause.
