Maybe ed sometime it takes men of courage and ability to see beyond the
silver lining of the present..

Have you after 40yrs of been trained as a TAC trained killer changed
your ways?


i dont think so...

Military people like me who is in training at present are cut off from
the world in initial training... so we have no knowledge or interaction
as we learn how to kill others...this is done to isolate us and make us
brainwashed and do what the military aka govt of day requests us to do.

This is a reason why vietnam and other war vets can not adjust to life
is cause thy are still in a military mindset. they have no idea how to
adopt to a civil world...

That is the simple aim of being in a military force... and funny notice
how we in australia generally except for current period of under
"howardism" defend the country or help defend others...not go and murder
people aka iraq.... the us mil other hand is never structured to defend
but only to attack other countries...hence nukes and chemical and bio
weapons and etc etc..


Alot of the world can see the us is dragging it self into a modern day
revised epic of the vietnam era. hence term - quagmire... when you
loose more people dead after the war , then in a war something is
seriously wrong..


could be maybe arabs dont like americans ...? and americans dont like
arabs, much same as most americans didnt like Vietnamese and vice versa
40yrs ago.

Deny all you want currently iraq is a quagmire .. but it may change..
elections are not long off... bush will do something... we wants to stay
in power...gota slow down the coffins in a box returnin home on the
block abit more...


But tell me why is the leader of your ****ry scrambling as we speak to
get other countries who had no such involvement in invading iraq to take
over from it.. bizzare foreign policies he we come again ..sigh

The us FP is so twisted and distorted they never see the impact until
long after and they then deny it was ever created...


I know a well respected friend of mine who flew BUFFs over nam ... he
QUIT the usaf cause of the bull**** the govt was doing in 1972.. he
couldnt handle it how they had ROEs and killing of civilians etc...

I was surprised to hear this come from a BUFF driver but then he totally
hated the US govt .. after 4yrs of flying in a ****ed up warzone...

So in iraq if this war is so popular why is nearly ever us troop so
desperate to leave the country? maybe says they went into the wrong
one...

If loosing 10 troops a day either dead or a mix of injured every day in
iraq doesnt concern you, maybe the thought that the war and peacekeeping
is not ending anytime soon might ...... this is where a quagmire is
formed and sticks to the issue...

Vietnam started off been a illegal war, remember in order to have war u
must declare it. remember ed... you guys bombed the north vietnamese a
fair bit...

Vietnam wasnt declared a war at any time tho it lasted 17yrs - gota
wonder why.. cheap way of cutting the weaklings from the us popualation
aka death in combat and same time helped the mil complex make record
profits...

So issues just keep going around and around....arabs are just as stupid
as americans... and vice versa

both want death and fame.. until one side actually thinks - the whole
shamble will just continue the same


If im ever asked to be deployed to fight a war with the US military i
am going to object in my unit and say no,regardless of the consequences
- i joined to defend Australia. and that what i will do, not defend
some other pathetic superpower who cant even hold its own ground.




Ed Rasimus wrote:

(phil hunt) wrote:

On Fri, 12 Sep 2003 16:57:21 GMT, Ed Rasimus wrote:

Also it seems our incendiary Aussie friend can't tell the difference
between ten years of war and five months; can't tell the difference
between 58,000 dead and less than 200;

These statistics aren't the most important. More important, IMO,
are opinion polls of US support for the occupation of iraq.

From http://www.greenleft.org.au/current/547p14.htm:
A Detroit News poll, published on July 23, found that 48% of voters
believe the White House misled the US people about the need to
invade Iraq, while 47% didn't believe they were misled. Seventy-one
per cent were concerned that the US occupation of Iraq would be
"expensive, long and deadly".

I'd have to question the efficacy of conducting foreign policy by
opinion poll. Based on the poll quoted from "greenleft" (wonder what
their particular political bias might be) at ".au" (wonder how many
polls taken in the US they had access to and why they choose this
one,) I'd say a 1% difference is within the margin of error.

I'd also say that the much larger sampling of polls that gets
published within the US indicates about 55% (lowest of seen) support
for the Bush administrations conduct of the war on terror, and about
70% support for Iraqi Freedom.

The issue isn't, however, what was under discussion here--it was the
likening of Iraqi Freedom to Vietnam. The use of the value-laden term
"quagmire" for this very brief engagement isn't appropriate.

It took more than five years of involvement for the US in Vietnam
before David Halberstam attached the term to the policy.

In five months, we clearly don't have "the making of a quagmire",
we've barely gotten started.

Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (ret)
***"When Thunder Rolled:
*** An F-105 Pilot Over N. Vietnam"
*** from Smithsonian Books
ISBN: 1588341038