Mr. President, staying in Iraq can't prevent the slaughter that was destined to happen the moment you sent troops into Iraq - it can only delay it. And during this delay Americans are being injured and killed.

All this talk is just Bush working on his alibi so he can try to avoid the blame that he alone deserves.

What a fucking moron.

For the past four years he's been telling us that Iraq was nothing like Vietnam (a war that his rich daddy helped him dodge and go AWOL from just the same).

Suddenly, Iraq is like Vietnam.

Ergo, Bush got America into another Vietnam.

Q ...Mr. President...some people are comparing Iraq to Vietnam and talking about a quagmire. Polls show that support for your policy is declining and that fewer than half Americans now support it. What does that say to you and how do you answer the Vietnam comparison?

THE PRESIDENT: I think the analogy is false. I also happen to think that analogy sends the wrong message to our troops, and sends the wrong message to the enemy. Look, this is hard work. It's hard to advance freedom in a country that has been strangled by tyranny. And, yet, we must stay the course, because the end result is in our nation's interest.

Source

Arrest that fool.

" Mr. President, staying in Iraq can't prevent the slaughter that was destined to happen the moment you sent troops into Iraq"



Word, Iraq was a nice peaceful place before we went in there. Saddam was a benevolent man.

one thing to say: War Crimes Tribunal. These guys have been covering their asses all along.

Anyone got a link to a speech where rumsfeld et al say "this is not like vietnam" ?

oh, and bill, iraq was secular, had running water, electricity, and a middle class. four steps back is not one step forward. by your logic, it would be ok for me to kill tony blair, because violent crime and corrupt officials existed in the UK under his regime, and he never had the support of more than 50% of the country.

Tony Blair was not as bad as Saddam, but does that mean we are only allowed to criticise one of them rather than both?

"oh, and bill, iraq was secular, had running water, electricity, and a middle class. four steps back is not one step forward."

Word, Iraq was a great place to live. The Iran-Iraq War, Persian Gulf War, chemical weapons, torture and killings of civilians, executions for "treason", I'm sure the middle class was really something to behold... Don't you kids ever study history? Ever? Do they not teach it in schools these days? Or is it just the Videosift anti-Bush kids that conveniently forget everything pre-George W?


"Tony Blair was not as bad as Saddam"

Really? Are you sure?

Bill O the fool talking about history?

Saddam killed 20,000 Iraqi's over the course of 20 years.

America killed 650,000+ in four years, and displaced 2,000,000.

Iraq was a paradise compared to what America and assholes like you have turned it into.

And did you notice that your hero, George W, claimed that it was harmful to the troops and helpful to the enemy both before and after he equated Iraq with Vietnam.

The guy was so drunk and out of it during Vietnam he still doesn't even know how to pronounce "Laos".

Rougy, read the reasons behind the statistics. You make it sounds like Americans killed all those people. Iraqis are killing Iraqis. It's not a two way battle it's a free-for-all kill fest. You have numerous despots, religious factions and warlords killing each other.

Conservatives love to forget all kinds of history.

Let's forget the Bush Administration cutting troop pay and benefits, not giving them proper gear or properly armored vehicles. (We can't afford it they say while they give the top 1% rich massive tax cuts).

Let's forget Cheney explaining, on several occasions, why invading Iraq would create a quagmire. (Let's just tell ourselves that 9/11 changed everything and made all centuries old middle-eastern sectarian hatred disappear magically.)

Let's forget Bush bankrupting every company he was ever put in charge of.

Let's forget what Bush Administration members and other conservatives say week to week on TV. They change their excuse every week. The most hated "liberals" out there are the people who record a neo-con on TV twice and play both clips back-to-back.

Bill... you said Iran Iraq war????? Do you even know who paid for that? you're so wrong you must be a sock puppet.
It's not nice to live in a dictatorship where secret police kidnap your family members and kill them for no reason, I am not saying Iraq was nice, but I know a lot of people 2 years ago who were mumbling something about "the world being better without saddam" and I am just not so sure that's true.

Oh younglings, forget you that eventually crazy people come after the non-crazy people? Oh, maybe happy thoughts will cure the world's problems! Yaaaaaaaaaaay!

Gorgon - the reason so many Iraqi's are dying, besides our killing of them, is because we have made their country a very unsafe place to be.

That was our doing.

A little responsibility is in order.

gorgonheap... saddam seemed to have more success stopping the anarchy... so i guess you support saddam, right?

Way to make an incredible leap in logic there mink. I really have a hard time seeing how you managed to twist my words into a vote for Saddam. The Clinton administration called for you, they need a new General Attorney.

There is such an enormous divide between what he and his speech writing team put together and what every American I know wants their President to say.

What would I like to hear?...

"We were wrong. Now we're in trouble. We're losing more people, bankrupting our country, making more enemies, crapping on our reputation, etc., BUT, we have a few options to fix this mess... here is a list of the most notable options, compiled with the help of our military, both retired and active, our Iraqi allies, representatives and envoys from the governments and military of other countries, from many members of my cabinet, members of the Supreme Court and multiple U.S. District Courts, and Representative from our U.S. House and Senate. There are columns outlining costs and benefits, evidence for a method's effectiveness and problems that method may run into, and a rough ranking of their likelihood for achieving their objective. .... We're starting a very simple, non-anonymous, user-tracked wiki's with a few version of this, and we're interesting in your responses to these proposals as well as towards developing an effective method for weighting and organizing the data collected. We've got a lot of brains in the country and abroad who would like to see us get through these tough times. Thanks for you time, thanks in advance if you choose to participate, and God Bless America."

... and yes, this is why I'm not a politician.

Oh thank you barndrew. I am one of those bleeding heart, Bush hating liberals -- but Colin Powell got it right when he said "you break it, you buy it." The American people supported this war in the beginning. We can't back out now and leave the Iraqis with this mess. I'm not a politician either, barndew, but that is the most intelligent response to the situation as it now stands. It's too late to say we shouldn't have gone in. We did it. Now we have to pay for it with the lives of American soldiers while we come up with some plan that minimizes the mess.

I just don't see what drumming up support for the continued occupation accomplishes if the new plan appears to be ' lets put a new General in charge who wants to raise troop levels in a certain area, and extend tours for everybody...'. I'm no military strategist, but that sounds like putting a bandaid over a bulletwound.

I guess if you were to really look at the problem as its series of components you'd quickly run into America's awkward foreign policy, where we establish bases here, sell arms there, give military expertise here, support this regime, block support for that regime... each time drawing some groups close while alienating others. We weren't fighting a war against another military after the first month, its something much more complicated and requiring much more nuance and change than more troops here, more troops there. Petraeus is a smart guy, and I'm sure he's working his ass off, but the military is a small part of the solution. And I really hope that, despite what this speech might suggest, this administration understands that its them (and, in effect, all of us) who need to be implimenting new diplomatic/economic/socio-political policy moves to help get these people back on their feet.

So, anyhow... (sigh)...

Lay off the hate on him... listen to his words. He's absolutely right in summarizing the reason why withdrawing from Vietnam was wrong. The Khmer Rouge coming to power (as a result of America abandoning the Cambodian government) was one of the worst catastrophes in the history of mankind. Look at the piles of skulls, talk to my Cambodian friends, bleeding hearts, and tell me with a straight face that stopping the bombing of the Khmer Rouge was the right thing to do, in any conceivable meaning of the word.

Am sorry you need to go back and read a history book.

The US goverment 'illegally' bombed VC positions in the Cambodian border, this not even mentioning the fact that these bombings a) attacks on a sovereign nation b) were kept secret until the press found out; B-52s would take off on bombing missions in Vietnam, and get re-diverted to different targets, this was all handled by Henry Kissinger. It was not bombing the Khmer Rouge.

"Kissinger played a key role in a secret American bombing campaign of Cambodia to target PAVN and Viet Cong units launching raids against South Vietnam from within Cambodia's borders and resupplying their forces by using the Ho Chi Minh trail and other routes, as well as the 1970 Cambodian Incursion and subsequent widespread bombing of Cambodia. The bombing campaign inadvertently contributed to the chaos of the Cambodian Civil War, which saw the forces of dictator Lon Nol unable to defeat the growing Khmer Rouge insurgency that would emerge victorious in 1975."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Kissinger#Vietnam_and_Cambodia

This lead to a larger movement against the ineffective goverment in Cambodia which wanted more then anything to stay out of the Vietnam war, leading to rise of the Khmer Rouge by garnering support from the peasantry affected by the bombing. In case you misread that...

"Historians have cited the U.S. intervention and bombing campaign (spanning 1965-1973) as a significant factor leading to increased support of the Khmer Rouge among the Cambodian peasantry. Historian Ben Kiernan and Taylor Owen have used a combination of sophisticated satellite mapping, recently unclassified data about the extent of bombing activities, and peasant testimony, to argue that there was a strong correlation between villages targeted by U.S. bombing and recruitment of peasants by the Khmer Rouge.

Kiernan and Owen argue that "Civilian casualties in Cambodia drove an enraged populace into the arms of an insurgency that had enjoyed relatively little support until the bombing began. In his study of Pol Pot's rise to power, Kiernan argues that "Pol Pot's revolution would not have won power without U.S. economic and military destabilisation of Cambodia" and that the U.S. carpet bombing "was probably the most significant factor in Pol Pot's rise."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge#Path_to_power

And finally, Bush using the rise of the Khmer Rouge as in some way connected with the withdrawal of US forces after General Westmoreland was given everything he needed to win the war is a fallacious argument that borders on the surreal.

all this useless banter can be summed up in a couple a sentences-

In the quest for absolute control, the entity with the most influence, will manipulate who they will, lie, steal, kill, cheat, re-write history, plan invasions, coops, etc., to achieve their ends.
If governments happen to get in the way, they are either altered or eliminated.

Bush is a small player in this game, a pawn if you will.....and so will whoever he is replaced with, until the paradigm is altered, or replaced.

The U.S. is a holographic construct, resembling very little, a democratic republic, a democracy, or whatever fanciful notions one may use with which to describe it.

Blah Blah Blah Bush sucks, blah blah blah Rumsfeld, blah Gonzales...blah blah blah terrorists.......

Excellent comment by Farhad. It was a jaw dropping speech to even amateur modern-history buffs.

And to Choggie; no constructive criticism of the speech? No constructive argument for how to effect basic changes in this 'holographic construct' of a nation? ... not that its a requirement, but you know, you're comment basically reads, "all your comments are worthless, the world only works like this, and the problems that arise are too big to ever be resolved, so stop whining!"

*waronterror

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