Capitalism

[Kirkland Laing]

Say what you will about George W. Bush but I tend to think his words meant a bit more to other leaders because of what we did to Iraq...and perhaps the leaders are trying to test Barry right now and when he's in Europe just slamming his own country for policies etc...I don't think they take him as serious as W. On the other hand it may be that China is feeling a little bit bolder these days.

And Kirk all I have ever done is get after Barry for how he has dealt with this crisis.

Also with North Korea it's not that they will use the missles but maybe they will sell them to some country that will use them. Is that not a legitimate worry? Didn't North Korea sell nuclear material to Syria and maybe missles to Iran...those countries aren't friendly to us or to our allies.

http://images.smh.com.au/2009/04/03/...w420-420x0.jpg...all W did was dance with the dude

America showed the world the limits of its military capability in Iraq

This is laughable. There is no military objective that hasn't been met in Iraq. Someone as schooled in history as you should know that holding a terrain feature or body count do not equate to winning in an asymmetric war. We were not going to kill our way out of there. When American troops were decisively engaged they have slaughtered their counterpart. The 2/30 Inf Battalion while patroling NE Baghdad had 3000+ killed or captured enemy combatants in 14 months. Thats ONE battalion. Even to go back to the beginning of the war the Iraqi Army was quickly routed in what 100 Days. American soldiers have taken on such a broad role in Iraq it is a testament to the tremendous level of individuals we have serving. As an Infantry squad leader that has served in both theaters I spent just as much time playing cop, city planner, social worker, intel analyst and lawyer as I have closing with and killing the enemy. These jobs are well outside my normal scope. Considering we started with a military trained to destroy Soviet tank columns and looking at the end state in Iraq: To suggest anything other than the United States Military is the most lethal and dynamic force in the world is just absurd.

America never lost a single battle in Vietnam but still got kicked out by the Vietnamese. And Iraq was a dismal failure by the US militay, who sent every available man there, couldn't defeat a bunch of guys armed with garage door openers and then humiliatingly had to resort to putting Al Quaeda and other terrorists on the payroll to cut the number of US deaths to manageable levels. And then they claimed victory! If Bush had told the American people before he invaded that they'd end up paying taxpayer dollars to Iraqi and other Arab members of Al Quaeda to stop them killing US soldiers I don't think anybody in America would have seen that as a succesful outcome. After Bush spent years claiming that only total victory would do in Iraq and to countenance anything else was anti-Americanism, he ended up forced to pay the terrorists a wage to stop them killing so many American soldiers. The natioanl strategy in Iraq also failed as he was forced into free elections by an Iranian Ayatollah and then saw the country handed over to the Ayatollah's chosen represenatives inthose elections. But the Iraqis wouldn't let the US organise them or the constitution-writing process as nobody trusted them anymore so Bush was forced to go begging to the UN to set up elections/constitution-writing. And then claimed credit for it! Then the US military spent the next few years fighting and dying to keep the Iranian exile parties in power, something covered every day in Arab and world media with a mixture of ridicule and outrage. The stated overarching strategy, to fight terrorism, was also a disaster, Bush giving AQ and Sunni fundamentalist groups in general a huge propaganda victory by installing Shiites, their hated enemy in power in Iraq. And the real overarching strategy, control over Iraq's oil, was foiled by the Iranian exiles who forced Bush into signing a deal that meant all US troops had to leave before the end of 2011. But apart from all that it was a huge success.