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ANOTHER REMINDER THAT IT TOOK FOREVER TO GET IT RIGHT
It’s hard to believe that we launched Operation Iraqi Freedom five years ago today. I remember sitting in front of my television watching the nightvision shots of bombs exploding straight into the history books. Like everyone else, I thought at the time we would be in and out in less than a year.
That mission has obviously been incredibly controversial and it certainly won’t go down as the most popular military operation in American history. But it was the right thing to do.
I supported the endeavor from the beginning, and I still support it today. Unfortunately, it took the politicians almost four years to figure out what the hell we were doing. And a lot of good men and women died or were injured in the process.
It looks like we have turned things around and have been making huge progress thanks in large part to the success of the troop surge. Which is why Sen. John McCain will be the 44th President of the United States… but that’s another story.
Congressman Joe Wilson today said that the courage and professionalism of our troops is the reason we are succeeding. I could not agree more.
“Since coalition forces ended Saddam’s stranglehold on their nation, Iraqis have held elections, drafted and ratified a constitution, and today are beginning to make real progress toward the political reconciliation needed to help this young democracy overcome the recent violence and decades of oppression,” he said. “Now is the time to express our gratitude to the brave men and women who defend our liberties and assure our troops, the American people, and our allies around the world that America is dedicated to a winning strategy.”
I want to join Wilson and others in honoring the brave American military and hoping that the next five years in Iraq — should we have to be there that long — will be far better and far less costly than the first five.
Well, our a president who is a recovering addict <a href=”http://rawdawgb.blogspot.com/2008/03/u-promised-me-rose-garden-folk.html”>he talk like he live in iraq daily</a>. lus he got shite and sunni fighting neighborhood to heighborhood like crips and bloods – progress LOL
Please. Don’t act like if you had known this would be the end result, you would have still supported the invasion 5 years ago; it’s disingenuous.
Iraqi residents have suffered more in the last 5 years than they would have under five more years of saddam.
Oil has gone from $30 to $100 a barrel.
There are currently ZERO army brigades on standby and ready to act if some other international emergency occurs. That is the opposite of safety.
Costs started at $50 billion and bulged to $500 billion; and probably 5-10 times more than that since we all know the tendency of buerocrats to fudge bad numbers. Sure makes it tough to counter a recession when you’re shipping that amount of money off to the desert to get blown up.
The dogma of “conservative” defense spending is astounding; people can’t stand waste in any other government department, but when it comes to guns they can’t get enough money or burned out military readiness. The whole point of having overwhelming military superiority is that the fear it instills in the enemy means you’ll almost never have to use it. Except when you take the bait and use trillions of dollars of resources to fight something that costs millions of dollars to put together.
“Iraqi residents have suffered more in the last 5 years than they would have under five more years of saddam.”
Right. I’m quite sure the Iraqi residents were sad to see the gulags, firing squads, torture chambers, death houses and complete and total lack of personal freedoms go by the wayside with Saddam was overthrown.
http://www.refugeesinternational.org/content/article/detail/9679
2.5 million Iraqi refugees, 2.4 million internally displaced.
Oh wait no, their lives are super and they actually went on vacation.
I’d like to see the gulag or torture chamber that can process a million people a year.
Also, the idea that what they now have could be called “personal freedom” is pretty humorous. I think i’ll make the same argument that people who say the surveillance state is a great thing use: “Freedom doesn’t do you any good if you’re dead (or displaced by that roving local sectarian milita)!”
You’ll forgive me if I take the word of a US Congressman who’s actually been on the ground there multiple times (Afghanistan as well) and seen first hand the progress being made (Democratic politicians have admitted this as well) as opposed to some anoymous message board poster.
And the idea there was only one gulag or death chamber in the entire country during Saddam’s regime really shows how you have no clue as to what’s happened there or what’s going on now.
That’s fine; I expected you to ignore opposing viewpoints or evidence that supports them anyway.
But you should be careful about that whole “trusting politicians” thing; bad stuff happens when you let that go too far.
And i’m not talking about progress. I’m talking about if It should have been done in the first place, which it obviously shouldn’t have. Progress is fine; walking is a good way to make progress towards Seattle.
Pointing out that saddam had multiple prisons and facilities doesn’t counter my point; add all their capacity together and he was still probably only working over some thousands of people a year. In order to claim the number of citizens displaced is better, he would have needed facilities of holocaust proportions.