Bush: Iraq is no Vietnam

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/chitribts/20040414/ts_chicagotrib/bushiraqisnovietnam&cid=2027&ncid=1480


<snip>
Faced with mounting casualties in Iraq (news - web sites) and dwindling public support for his foreign policy, President Bush (news - web sites) on Tuesday rejected comparisons to the Vietnam war and pledged to send additional U.S. troops to Iraq if American military commanders request them.

In a rare prime-time news conference, the president insisted he would turn over control of the Arab nation to Iraqis by June 30, the target date his administration set months ago, even though he acknowledged he did not know yet who would assume power then. Despite a difficult security situation in Iraq, Bush reaffirmed his commitment to an ambitious schedule of elections that would produce a constitution and government by the end of next year.


Speaking when more than 80 American troops have been killed and more than 560 wounded within two weeks, Bush blamed the escalating violence in Iraq on a small group of terrorists and said U.S. troops would stay in Iraq as long as necessary.


"There is an historic opportunity here to change the world, and it's very important for the loved ones of our troops to understand that the mission is an important, vital mission for the security of America and for the ability to change the world for the better," the president said.


....like he would even know...

The dirty mother fucker knows nothing about Viet-Nam. Due to his cowardice he "avoided" the whole "unpleasant" experience.

No one with a brain Believes the CHIMPANZEE on this one.

The only distinguishing feature is the jungle is missing in IRAQ-NAM. And I do think the Iraqi people are capable of much more outrageous violence to prove their point. And we respond by indiscriminately shooting anything that moves.

More people know about the lies and they still support this idiot!

The similarities and parallels with the Nazi Blitzkrieg are so astonishing I don't know why they are not calling this the Forth Reich.

These people are such fools, they started a war expecting one kind using them tactics, and ended up with another kind that it was politically untenable of operating

http://www.fact-index.com/b/bl/blitzkrieg.html
Nazi Blitzkrieg

In military history, Blitzkrieg, from the German lightning war, describes a military tactic used by the German army at the beginning of World War II, where rapid and unrestricted movement of troops allows no time for the opposition to set up a stable defense. In 2003, the term effects-based warfare and rapid dominance were introduced to describe a modernized version of Blitzkrieg.

Blitzkrieg was a fast and open style of warfare, heavily reliant on new technologies. First aircraft were used as long-range artillery to destroy enemy strongholds, attack troop concentrations, and spread panic. Then combined arms forces of tanks and motorised infantry coordinated by two-way radio destroyed tactical targets before moving on, deep into enemy territory. A key difference to previous tactical models was the devolution of command. Fairly junior officers in the field were encouraged to use their own initiative, rather than rely on a centralised command structure.

The strategy was developed as a reaction to the static attrition of trench warfare during World War I and became practical in the early 1930s, due to the increasing power and reliability of the internal combustion engine, and the invention of the portable radio which allowed for coordination of attacks. A number of military figures in several nations realized that static warfare was an outmoded concept and could be defeated by concentrating forces on a narrow point in a fast thrust.

The key to Blitzkrieg was to organize the troops into mobile forces with excellent communications and command, able to keep the momentum up while the battle unfolded. The basic concept was to concentrate all available forces at a single spot in front of the enemy lines, and then break a hole in it with artillery and infantry, easy enough to do even in World War I. Once the hole was opened, tanks could rush through and strike hundreds of miles to the rear. This allowed the attacking force to fight against lightly armed logistics units, starving the enemy of information and supplies. In this way even a small force could destroy a much larger one through confusion, avoiding direct combat as much as possible.

Precursors and Successors

Although trumpeted as a truly modern style of war, Blitzkrieg's theoretical basis was almost as old as war itself. Similar strategies were employed by Alexander the Great in classical times; Napoleon was a master of them; and they were used on a smaller scale by both sides in the closing stages of World War I. Germany itself had a long tradition of using deep penetration tactics: in the Franco-Prussian War the Prussian army, knowing that the French could field larger forces, devised a war plan that relied on speed. If, on declaration of war, they could mobilise, invade and seize Paris fast enough, then they would be victorious before the vast French army could form and retaliate. This tactic was used to devastating effect in 1871, and was developed into the Schlieffen Plan, which was used at the start of World War I and very nearly succeeded. (See trench warfare and Battle of the Marne.)

The military doctrine of Rapid Dominance or shock and awe is considered by some a modern successor to Blitzkrieg. Rapid Dominance is a primarily air-based doctrine that strikes at enemy command and control structures
(snip)

http://www.why-war.com/news/2003/07/28/thefogof.html
The Fog of War Talk
(snip)
Shocking and Awful War

Sometimes doublespeak can seem very vivid and candid while nevertheless obscuring the real meaning of what is being discussed. For example, "shock and awe" was the term the Bush administration used to announce its strategy of massive, high-tech air strikes on Baghdad. As doctrine of warfare, this term was introduced in a 1996 book by military strategists Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade and published by the Command and Control Research Program (CCRP) within the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense of the United States. Titled "Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance," the book describes shock and awe as a strategy "aimed at influencing the will, perception, and understanding of an adversary rather than simply destroying military capability." It points to several examples in which this strategy has been successful in the past, including the dropping of atom bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Nazi blitzkrieg strategy of World War II.

In January 2003, as the Bush administration moved toward war with Iraq, "Shock and Awe" author Harlan K. Ullman again invoked the example of Hiroshima as he explained the concept to CBS News. "You have this simultaneous effect, rather like the nuclear weapons at Hiroshima, not taking days or weeks but in minutes," he said. "You're sitting in Baghdad and all of a sudden you're the general and 30 of your division headquarters have been wiped out. You also take the city down. By that I mean you get rid of their power, water. In two, three, four, five days they are physically, emotionally and psychologically exhausted."

Upon the onset of actual war, however, military and media pundits depicted "shock and awe" in sanitary terms, claiming that the high accuracy of laser-guided "smart bombs" would make it possible to decapitate the Iraqi military while leaving the country's infrastructure intact and limiting civilian casualties. Similar claims were made during the first war in the Persian Gulf and were later found to be exaggerated. Like other examples of doublespeak, the concept of "shock and awe" enables its users to symbolically reconcile two contradictory ideas. On the one hand, its theorists use the term to plan massive uses of deadly force. On the other hand, its focus on the psychological effect of that force makes it possible to use the term while distancing audiences from direct contemplation of the human suffering that force creates.

The Language of Imperialism

Sometimes doublespeak completely reverses the meaning of words. Paul Holmes observed that "the most Orwellian usage of all has been the recent application of the word 'relevance,' as in 'the United Nations faced a test of its relevance, and failed.' Relevance, in this context, means willingness to rubberstamp whatever demands the U.S. makes. If that sounds very much like irrelevance to you, perhaps you don't understand the might-makes-right world in which we are living."

In normal times, "diplomacy" refers to the process by which nations seek to resolve their differences peacefully, through negotiations and compromise. During the buildup to war, however, "diplomacy" became the process through which the United States attempted to pressure other nations into supporting the war. When they refused, this became the "failure of diplomacy."
(snip)

It took years to get people together like we are doing here. Wait until the Vets come back with their Horror stories.

Wait till the Draft starts

Blood will Flow in the Streets of AMERIKA

I wonder but then try to remember they will never ever be able to get anybody to do anything that they seem to be really wishing for without the use of fear.

To the result they can get people to react to things like 9/11 the assessment of foolish people must be in context of evaluations of how much they have knowledge. I have been quite surprised lately, many seem to have abandoned or put major parts of the Mass (brainwash) media in it's place.

I see hope, lots sometimes :-)

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0919-12.htm

The Striking Similarities Between Vietnam and Iraq: Can You Say Quagmire?

by Bruce Mulkey

We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation. . . . Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why.
--Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense in the 1960s

In the late 1950s and early ’60s, I was the model American boy. I was an Eagle Scout who made good grades. I was captain of my high school football team who played in an all-American game and earned a full athletic scholarship to the University of Tennessee. I was regular participant at Sunday school and Methodist Youth Fellowship.

I believed in mom, apple pie and the flag. I loved guns and spent a lot of time at Boy Scout camp shooting .22 rifles and earning NRA badges. Audie Murphy, the most decorated American combat soldier in World War II, was a childhood hero of mine. Thus it was natural for me to support President Lyndon Johnson when he said we needed more U.S. troops in Vietnam. “The issue is the future of southeast Asia as a whole,” Johnson declared. “A threat to any nation in that region is a threat to all, and a threat to us.”

Despite the culture in which I lived and the values I’d taken on, it quickly became obvious to me that something was amiss. Politicians’ promises of a limited conflict morphed into a huge military build up. While some military leaders claimed we were making Vietnam safe for democracy, a U.S. officer proclaimed that “it became necessary to destroy the town to save it.” We heard reports of atrocities committed against civilians by the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers, but there were also reports of Lt. Calley’s massacre of unarmed civilians at My Lai. Our nation’s leaders predicted “light at the end of the tunnel,” yet the war drug on. Most disturbing of all, of course, were the inflated enemy body counts that were somehow supposed to offset the horror of the thousands of body bags returning to our shores. And no one, including Congress, seemed to have a solution to end the slaughter of Americans and Vietnamese except to increase the U.S. troop and munitions levels. The phrase “credibility gap” entered the lexicon.

you would think they try to hold old man bush accountable....they just fuss over him.

in addition to getting their letters in Stars and Stripes.

http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=125&article=21574

http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=125&article=21575

They are very powerful and heartbreaking.....

that comes out of his stupid mouth. The opposite is true. He has not a clue.

Iraq is to America like Afghanistan was to both Britain and Russia....

"When yer wounded and left
in Fallujah's street,

And the clerics come out
t' butcher ya like meat,

Jes' roll to yer rifle
and blow out yer brains,

An' go to yer God
like a soldier..."

Vietnam did not bring down an Empire. Afghanistan already has twice and with the help of Iraq this time, they are about to bring down a third.

bin Laden must be smiling.

... to end terrorism wasn't that reminiscent of Nixon's secret plan to end the war in Vietnam? If he wants us to believe Iraq isn't Vietnam he better stop making such clear parallels in his statements.

But first you'll have to vote for me and then I'll tell you what it is.

He seemed awfully confident and unruffled by some of those surprisingly tough questions. He is either a) gone around the bend and completely out of touch with reality, b) on Prozac Extra Strength, c) aware of the Diebold machines strategically placed in swing states, or all of the above.

So quit saying that.
Iraq has 4 letters.
Viet Nam has 7 letters.
Iraq has a buncha sand.
Viet Nam has (had?) a buncha trees.
Irag has a buncha sand niggers.
Viet Nam has a buncha slopes and dinks.

So see? They're not alike at all and I just wish you'd quit saying that.
-GWB*

Started for 'geopolitical' reasons? Check

Major combat involvement based on a lie? (WMD=Tonkin Gulf Incident)Check

Natural environment hostile to troops and equipment? Check

Tactical environment precludes use of many weapons systems? Check

Difficulty discriminating between combatants and civilians? Check

Lack of exit strategy? Check

Hearts and Minds, Light at the end of the tunnel rhetoric? Check

Low troop morale based on being trapped in a mis-managed clusterfuck? Check

Assertions that anyone who criticizes the war is a commie-hippie-pinko-unpatriotic-unamerican traitor? Check



Did I miss anything?

There's no room for facts and logic in this argument.
Yer either with us, or agin us.
;-)

like: HUGE no-bid contracts for "friends" in the Military-Industrial complex (Boeing, Remmington, Raytheon, M-D, AM General, etc...)

CHECK!

Check.... :(

CHECK!

Though the AWOL fraud along with cabal has never spoke of withdraw, they have yet to ever be mired in the perception of the failure. The Pride thing seems to be a very glaring example that one should expect them to stay with (hubris).

One of Nixon's biggest lies was something of a round about way of promising to make Peace in Viet Nam to get re-elected, all the while escalating the conflict. It is not to that point yet (doubt they could get away with it today, in context anyway).

None the less using the footing of a War Time pResident to assist in the re-election (election). I just remember what this realy means "AWOL Fraud", from that point everything is simple.

http://speccoll.library.kent.edu/4may70/MissionBetrayed.htm
MISSION BETRAYED: Richard Nixon and the Scranton Commission Inquiry into Kent State.
(snip)
Aside from which, he scheduled a whole series of public relations initiatives: he would meet with university presidents (of his choosing), hold a press conference Friday evening, and meet with the nation’s governors on Monday. He appointed Alexander Heard, universally-respected chancellor of Vanderbilt University, as his special advisor on colleges and youth. But a series of events now conspired to play on the President’s paranoid tendencies and harden his attitudes toward his young critics. The front page of the New York Times for Thursday May 7th headlined the story that his own Interior Secretary, Walter Hickel, had charged his administration with failing the country’s youth. Hickel was ostracized and fired after the matter had lapsed from the public’s truncated attention. But Nixon now felt confirmed in his belief that he could not even trust his own cabinet members. On Thursday the head of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department advised that, on the basis of information that the FBI had already developed at Kent State, it might be necessary to indict the Guardsmen and others for conspiring to violate the civil rights of the slain students.<16> That evening on the David Frost television program, his impetuous Vice President Spiro Agnew blurted out that, if no sniper had fired on the Guardsmen, and they had killed the students in “the heat of anger”, he as an attorney would have to assess it as second-degree murder.<17>

By that time, people were already entering Washington to participate in a rally on Saturday to protest the invasion of Cambodia and the killings at Kent State, for which they also blamed him. As their numbers swelled, the denizens of the White House succumbed to something akin to hysteria. Its grounds were completely surrounded by two concentric rings of D.C. transit buses parked bumper-to-bumper. According to the newly-appointed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, this was done because “this same group that was at Kent” was plotting to get a student killed on the White House grounds.<18> As the president’s press secretary recalled it, “If some made it over the bus wall in numbers, they could be met by National Guardsmen who had been brought into the White House and bivouacked in our halls and offices.”<19> In case the militiamen were overwhelmed by the mob, regular troops from the U.S. Third Army were stationed in the nearby Executive Office Building.

The President fled before the invaders to Camp David, there to immerse himself in briefing books preparatory for the Friday evening press conference, which he now dreaded. (“Had said absolutely no phone calls after .)”<20> From that distance, he rejected Ehrlichman’s latest conciliatory gestures – particularly using the press conference to present his new youth advisor. “not go thru w/ Heard thing – shldn’t rush too fast hold til Mon P. wants to be there when he comes.”<21>

Then two dramatic episodes occurred that suggested to the President that he need not even bother negotiating with the Enemy. The press conference he had dreaded turned out to be a walk-over; the timidity of the reporters rendered it a “pallid… synthetic ritual… a pale shadow of the passion and trauma of the nation… a fusillade of spitballs at 50 paces.”<22> And the great demonstration that assembled on the Ellipse across from the White House the next day disintegrated into chaos while the preliminaries were still in progress, neutralized by the discord among its organizers (assiduously sown by government agents in their midst) and the numbing dread in the minds of all present evoked by the bloody example of Kent State (“These people here understand that we are surrounded by fully armed troops, and that if we started anything we’d be destroyed.”)<23>
(snip)

Much like Nixon they are seen doubling back when seeing the plans going awash and never admiting the mistake. Nixon, even while leaving office, with the saying "I am not Crook"

Tar Baby!

He says it's no Vtnm, as he escalates it w/ more troops...Orwell is doing cartwheels...

"Listen, how many times I gotta say it. 'Iraq is NOT Vietnam. Period. For one thing the weather is completely different. You're not going to have one of those monsoons with waterspouts and runaway elephants and stuff in Iraq. Just like you're not going to have dust storms and Arabs smoking outta hookas on magic flying rugs in Vietnam. So the comparison is just dumb is all. Geez."


(Visit the lounge and smell the CAPTIONS!!)

in those days, and certainly wasn't there!

Iraq ain't Vietnam, it's much, much worse.

Our options: fight a war for a long, long time, spending billions upon billions, getting soldiers and civilians killed, and end up losing to a bunch of people who hate us, or -

Withdraw now and turn the country over to a civil war among people whose only point of agreement is they hate us.

We can only lose this fight and when we lose Iraq is going to be a lot harder to live with than that now-ignored Southeast Asian country.

I watched the film "Fog of War" last week, and it is eerie how many parallels to Vietnam I'm now seeing in Iraq. In the movie, Robert McNamara talks about the lessons he learned from Vietnam -- and ALL are applicable to Iraq.

It's also eerie to hear Lyndon Johnson say about Vietnam: "There are some bad people over there who just need to be killed." It's as if I'm hearing George Bush talking. At that point, I turned to my husband and said: "The problem isn't Democrats vs. Republicans. The problem is morons from TEXAS!"

Briefly. With a fake turkey.

More than he ever saw of 'Nam...

That's about his level of thinking. It's no Vietnam to him, because he has no real understanding OR interest in Vietnam. He was stoned most of the time Vietnam was happening, and none of his rich friends had to serve there... unlike Gore and Kerry.

"We are a western, Christian, pro-Israel country. What part of this don't they understand?"

I think it just sums up the whole futility of this misadventure. We will never establish a peaceful government in Iraq and the reason is obvious to anyone with half a brain.

sovereignty (power?, well something) to Diem, err General Kye, err to somebody. Yes, in just 10 weeks, something or other will be given to a government-to-be-named-later. So how could this be like Vietnam?

How many bodies will be hanging onto the last US helicopter taking off from the roof of the US embassy in Baghdad?

to America(and elsewhere) to wreck havoc on us. Its a friggen Holy War.

To let those Evangelicals in there to do the Bible thumping was one of the worst post "victory" decisions ever. The Mullahs are beserk with rage that we should be imposing Christianity on their Islamic People.

Bush is not a true Leader, never was.