Has Iraq become another Vietnam?

Agreed. IMHO it is in both liberals' and conservatives' (and whoever else) interests that Iraq not become a failure... no matter the circumstances surrounding the start of the war.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(fshagan @ Jun 6 2006, 01:40 AM) [snapback]266518[/snapback]</div>

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(fshagan @ Jun 3 2006, 12:59 PM) [snapback]265181[/snapback]</div>

Perfect!! Especially the part about the peace movement not giving a wit about human life!! Could not have said it better myself.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(imntacrook @ Jun 24 2006, 09:52 AM) [snapback]276348[/snapback]</div>

Its a stronger sentiment than I usually give, and I express it that way only because I was very sympathetic to the peace movement in those days. My sympathy was mainly due to religious reasons, as I was very close to the philosophy of pacificism as expressed by the Society of Friends. But I was horrified by both the ensuing blood bath and the casual dismissal of it by those who were most active in the movement.

Sometimes war saves more lives than it takes.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(rudiger @ Jun 3 2006, 09:27 AM) [snapback]265168[/snapback]</div>

Thank you for your service. What branch, if I maight ask?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(fshagan @ Jun 3 2006, 09:59 AM) [snapback]265181[/snapback]</div>

"Partisan"? "...care not a wit [sic, it's 'whit'] about human life..."? "...wants to duplicate the racist outcome...in the 70's..."?

I'm surprised, as these thoughts seem unworthy of you (but I don't know you).

I attended almost every anti-war demonstration in D.C., 1969-71. None, or few of us were motivated by humane feelings? It was all a "hate Johnson/Nixon" ego trip? I think you know better.

For once, I have to challenge your knowledge of history. First, there was no way of knowing ahead of time what the Khmer Rouge would unleash in 1975. It shocked the world. Second, the U.S. never had large fighting forces in Cambodia. The tragedy there was that by virtue of our "incursion", which consisted mainly of intensive bombing of Viet Cong supply routes, we destabilized the Cambodian government just enough to encourage the Khmer Rouge to rise up; but there were (by then) NO circumstances under which we would have opposed them on the heels of our losses in Vietnam. And there was no "bloodbath" following the Communist victory in Vietnam comparable to what Pol Pot did in Cambodia. Yes, there were "superfluous" killings.

My wife is a Cambodian whose parents and college-student brother were among those killed. She and her sisters were spared, due both to being young and free labor for the Khmer Rouge-run agricultural communes, where she put in two years before escaping. Until that time I didn't know Cambodia from Columbia. After I met her (she had spent another two years in a Thai refugee camp before joining an aunt in being relocated to Utah), I learned everything possible about Cambodia, and together (after being married) we sponsored others in her remaining family to come to the U.S.

I do not understand your comment about racism, unless you simply mean that we abandoned SE Asia because they were Asians, as opposed, say, to "staying the course" in Bosnia. I do not think that was the case. By 1974-75, the U.S. was demoralized more than at any time in my lifetime, from more than 10 years of a losing, costly struggle, AND, to be sure, from about 6 years of wrenching internal turmoil.

One cannot ever forgive Nixon for his desparate and fruitless dragging of Cambodia into a hell it might otherwise have avoided, although this is not certain.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(wstander @ Jun 25 2006, 04:51 PM) [snapback]276591[/snapback]</div>

I was part of a cobbled-together Army Reserve unit, B/325 MI Bn, BIAP/Abu Ghraib.

The prison was a bad place. I knew a guy who was killed there in Sept, '03. A mortar exploded directly behind him as he was walking back after returning an interrogated detainee to his cell.

I was never at Abu Ghraib but I knew the two MI guys in the abuse pictures. One got eight months (suspended, I think) for 'actively' participating. He was a jerk and deserved more.

The other guy was a good friend but just a kid who was there for 15 minutes at the instigation of the jerk (but he was there long enough to get into a couple of pics). These two guys from my unit in the pics were the main justification the MPs used to say that it was MI personnel who were ultimately behind the abuse.

I was lucky. Except for the two photograph guys, the unit returned stateside in March, '04. It began to get really bad over there the following month. That's when the four civilian security guards were killed, and in retaliation for dragging their bodies through the street, the US military really began to 'get tough'.