The Iraq War As We See It - Seven U.S. Soldiers Speak out.

I wanna iPod!

I can see it now, "Hey Pedro, cover me!", Pedro: "No comprende, no habla ingles!"

rotfl cdominus.

upvote on trust.

*lies'

Adding video to channels (Lies) - requested by looris.

Talk about greedy cowards.

The Republicans have been hiding behind the troops from day one.

Screaming hippies denouncing FOX as biased...where are they now as Moyers uses tax dollars to shill for liberals?

Just go to Canada already. No one cares.

Bill Moyers is simply presenting/culling reports from various media sources; White House Press releases, Bush's own speeches, Ad campaigns from Freedom Watch, National Public Radio, US Army Ads, The Observer, NBC news, Associated Press, Stars and Stripes, US Army website and the New York Times (a story written by soldiers from the 82nd Airborne).

I don't even know how you can compare that to Fox News.

Just go to Canada already. No one cares.
No, QM, that's where you're wrong. There are quite a number of people who care, and most of them vote. You call Moyer's report "liberal" because it examines the policies of the current administration? There were no exaggerated episodes, denials of reality, or invented facts in that report - all tactics approved of and used by our current administration.

Wow, intense Starship Troopers flashback. Service guarantees citizenship! Would you like to know more?

QM: As Stephen Colbert once said, while standing next to Bush: "Reality has a well known liberal bias."

I think that pretty much sums you up.

Oh please, fellows. Moyers cherry-picks news sources to paint the picture he wants, and as usual it's standard liberal elitist rubbish, contemptuous of the military and America.

BRM: Actually, you've got it backwards. If leftist policies were in-line with reality, there would be no need for the constant propaganda spewing from mostly-liberal "news" sources and college pulpits. In every place people want freedom and the right to enjoy the fruits of their labor, you find conservative values. In places where the majority lives off the labors of everyone else, you find liberal non-values.

For further info, look to the Tweel.

...except that they DID find biological weapons in Iraq. Iraq violated numerous U.N. resolutions. Congress backed the President (Including Hilary) before the war. The majority of Americans (and several of the USA's allies) backed the war at the beginning, and Bush told us all along it would be long and hard. Have we forgotten?

2 Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times reporters (Liberals) have recently praised the surge effort upon visiting Iraq and interviewing soldiers.

^____ harhar. That is some funny shit. The picture caps it.

In my eyes, a stable, free, and democratic Iraq must be considered the only acceptable outcome of this conflict, for their sake especially, for our sake partially, and for the sake of the middle east in general. Considering the problems with the recent decade's international geopolitical and religious situations, it would be the most valuable proof of concept in 50 years, maybe more. Surrender would be devastating to the political climate world-wide. Not to mention that it would severely damage the credibility of the US military. I think we'll all find very soon that the "surge" was a good idea and well handled. If I'm wrong, well, then we try something else. Put the white flags down folks. Failure cannot be considered an option whatsoever.

War = failure. Every war. No exception. How can we make it worse? Just keep doing it.

People like to point to the US revolution and WWII as "good" wars. I still say no. WWII was the result of the failure of the "victors" of WWI to realize that a perpetually humiliated and insolvent Germany would grow desperate and crazy like a caged dog poked with sticks all day long. It took a whole extra war to realize that real victory requires a Marshall Plan, not pointier sticks. Blame Chamberlain? It was already too late no matter what that guy did.

And the American revolution? Did all that violence (which includes 1812) really leave us better off than the Canadians, Australians or New Zealanders are today? It did enable the US to keep slavery legal for much longer than in the commonwealth though.

And the "unmistakable legacy of Vietnam?" Please. Guess what, we lost in Vietnam and what difference did it make? None. The dominoes didn't fall and the world didn't end (but the Cold War did). You can now vacation in Ho Chi Minh City. How much better off would we be now if we had stuck with it long enough to "win"? None--probably less. Piles of dead civilians afterwards? Yes. But we killed many more civilians over the many years we were there (estimated at 5.1 million) than were killed in the aftermath of our exit. What produced those killing fields and boat people? The war itself. None of that would have happened if the US had never intervened on behalf of French colonialism.

Saddam is dead. Whatever. I, personally, am ready to declare Iraq a total victory and George W. Bush an unprecedented genius--exceeded only by the enormity of his own (not gay!) penis. Fine. Let's all go home.

By the way, those two "Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times reporters that recently praised the surge effort"? I suppose you mean Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution - the author of "The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq" - and his colleague Michael O'Hanlon, another longtime war booster, who just returned from a Pentagon-guided tour of Iraq and declared that the surge was working.

First, they are not "New York Times reporters", they contributed an op-ed; Republican presidential candidate Sam Brownback has also done this--does that make him a liberal? (His editorial was a defense of creationism.) Nevertheless, these two are currently being portrayed as repentant "liberals" just because they were published in the Times and have occasionally and briefly criticized some aspects of the war's execution. In reality, these are war supporters reaffirming their vows.

"..except that they DID find biological weapons in Iraq."

Hilarious how you misconstrue a report which confirms exactly the opposite of a credible threat. Also, very clever of you to not refer to them as WMDs, because that's exactly correct, they're not! If such a gimped arsenal represents so huge a threat then why aren't we out there invading far more militarily endowed + willfully naughty countries (world police we are)? What we found are old stockpiles of leftover components from the 80s and early 90s, which were found after the fact that we invaded with little to no evidence, popular consensus or not; surely a big enough "threat" to invade/disrupt a whole country & region (including our own) for, right? Stop blindly towing the official party line.

quantumushroom said:
In every place people want freedom and the right to enjoy the fruits of their labor, you find conservative values. In places where the majority lives off the labors of everyone else, you find liberal non-values.


This is total horse poop.
In the USA, a wealthy minority benefits from the work of the majority of the world. The stock market is a prime example of this. Every burger-flipper out there works so that shareholder value is maximized. Every job outsourced overseas is an example of the wealthy few benefiting from the labors of the impoverished multitudes.

Additionally, declaring that the majority of a population lives off the labors of everyone else, implies a system where a small minority is responsible for the generation of most of the wealth and productivity. The closest you get to that, is oil kingdoms, where the wealthy elite hoard most of the resources, and then give a little bit of the wealth to "the people". I'm sorry, but none of those areas can be called "liberal".


http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
In the United States, wealth is highly concentrated in a relatively few hands. As of 2001, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 33.4% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 51%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 84%, leaving only 16% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers).



http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/dec2006/ineq-d08.shtml
According to the report, published by the World Institute for Development Economics Research (WIDER) and based on data from 2000, the top one percent of the world’s adult population (about 37 million people) owns 40 percent of the world’s wealth, while the top two percent owns over half and the top 10 percent owns 85 percent. Wealth is defined as physical and financial assets minus liabilities.
[...]
According to the report, the top one percent of the population in the US owns 32.7 percent of the wealth, trailing only Switzerland, where the top one percent owns 34.8 percent.

This is total horse poop.

OH SNAP! YOU GOT SERVED!!

hah! your figures and sources are no match for QM's broad generalizations, formed based on extensive interviews with family and friends over his lifetime.

"^____ harhar. That is some funny shit. The picture caps it."

Lol. Read his bio. I think he's "cruising" VS. Hey, blue-eyes... meet me in the bathroom at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on Thursday afternoon. Tap your foot twice so I'll know it's you.

Typical "conservative"... accepting as gospel, and then regurgitating Bill'O and Rush sound bites here.


@bamdrew,

Why even bother with QM? He's a clueless, raging lemming. Then again, lot's of gullible minds here ready to be molded by any catch-phrase they can glom onto and make their own.

And all this recent "surge" and the influx of new troops to Iraq will just get our countrymen killed faster, because more troops will be pushed to the battlefield without proper training.

When's that impeach Bush march?

"Just go to Canada already. No one cares."

You are an embarrassment.

Fox News does one (1) negative Bush piece in the six years that Bush has spent ruining our country and terrorizing the people of Iraq and Afghanistan – and you call that Fair & Balanced.

Bill Moyers tells the TRUTH about what Bush has been doing, and you call him a shill.

You are a disgrace.

"And all this recent "surge" and the influx of new troops to Iraq will just get our countrymen killed faster, because more troops will be pushed to the battlefield without proper training."

I don't think that is really true when it comes down to it. I get the argument in theory, but I don't think it's supported in real life. I have several family members in the armed forces and they are very well trained. The current crisis has only strengthen our training programs, not weakened them. Our military is basically the most trained and skilled in the world with a few exceptions. Sending more of our very well trained troops into hostile territory, doesn't mean we need to rush some through the process. We have a large military... volunteers only I might add, unlike most countries. We're also the most well-equipped in the world.

In addition, the more secure Iraq becomes, the more people we can bring home. Things have been looking better lately and even Bush said that troop withdrawals are finally looking likely in the next months. Iraqis that have attacked us in the past are fighting against Al Qaieda instead of us, wanting their streets free of bombs and chaos. Due to our recent change of strategy from a broad "attack the terrorists" approach to a street-by-street "keep the peace" approach has convince many ordinary Iraqis that we are there to secure the country and help the ordinary folks there. We used to just shoot at the enemy, now we are assigning people and units to basically spend all their time in one area getting to know the people and getting to gain their trust and hope. They reach the ordinary folks and play "neighborhood-watch" for them while they're stationed there. At that point the folks living there tend to have the strength to join us in the fight... if at least as informants... against the bombings and terror that plagues their streets. When they know we are not the enemy, they join us against who they KNOW are their enemies. Reports are saying we may be able to leave Iraqi security entirely to the Iraqis in as early as 12-18 months... which really is pretty early when you're thinking of what we were up against when we went there in the first place.

I'm not disturbed by people wanting out of Iraq. I'm disturbed by people who want to surrender and people who want us to lose on principle. Wanting your own nation to lose just isn't right. If you disagree with your country enough to want it to lose a war, it might be time to leave. I hear New Zealand is beautiful.

I know the Sift is LOADED with pretty radical liberals, but I don't think anything I said was too outrageous. I don't agree with Bush most of the time. I don't think he's a good president. But, I'm not ready to throw up the white flag on what is our single most important fight since WWII. I personally think that a secure, free Iraq is worth a tremendous price. If I could die today in order to know Iraq would be free and secure, I'd do it. It is just too important to the world and the advance of the middle east. There is too much untapped prosperity there to let it go to waste in constant dictatorial squander.

...I was looking for the video about the troops' change of strategy to that of helping the little neighborhoods and I haven't found it of yet, but if I do, I'll try and sift it here to let you all see it and judge for yourselves.

Over the last few years there were reports that showed the US military dropping recruitment requirements and offering waivers in exchange for military service.

Reports of the Army unable to supply sufficiently armored vehicles and other equipment against IED threats, pre and post surge. Soldiers are now familiarizing combat driving techniques using simulators because there is a shortage of M-1114s.

America does possess formidable military forces, but we are talking about soldiers on the ground currently not total combined forces; which would take into account navy and air.

Extended tours (from 12 to 15 months), with multiple returns are common, fatigue is taking it's toll. A secondary surge has already taken place to bolster troop numbers, by sending more combat brigades and extending tours for troops already in Iraq.

Troop levels would thus increase to around 200,000 by the end of this year, a record since the start of OIF. These numbers of course do not include the large number of private military contractors in Iraq, also surging in numbers, paid for by US taxpayers under contract from the DOD. Meanwhile the Army is shedding officers at an alarming rate, 44% left, the highest loss rate in 3 decades.

With regards to the Al Anbar success stories, one must remember that is only occurring because previous Sunni insurgents have turned against Al Qaeda, making US forces the most convenient allies in driving out foreign radical Islamic terrorists. The relationship is tenacious, it also means the US forces now have to bolster previous Sunni insurgents and make them components of the Iraqi government, which is filled with Shia militias who do not want minority Sunni influence.

"To bolster that case, Bush made his own surprise visit to a U.S. military base in Anbar province on Sept. 3 to tout growing cooperation between Sunni tribal leaders and American forces.

But the sheiks didn't seek out U.S. help because an additional 30,000 U.S. troops had been shipped to Iraq. Rather, the sheiks had found themselves caught between al-Qaeda extremists on one side and Shiite-dominated government forces on the other.

The Americans became the enemy and erstwhile friend, respectively, of my enemies – and thus an ally of convenience for the Sunni sheiks.

Indeed, the Anbar situation could be viewed as evidence that the political and ethnic divisions of Iraq continue to deepen – with Sunni traditionalists growing only more desperate. But these shifting sands of allegiances have become the foundation upon which Bush is building his case for open-ended U.S. military involvement in Iraq."

- How VIPs get 'Brainwashed' on Iraq by Robert Parry.

The important thing to consider is; will such success be replicated in other provinces? Will the forces join into the Shia dominated government which opposes Sunni influence? Thus how long will this commitment last. All questions to which officers within the armed forces cannot answer, because the situation is that fragile.

After posing gamely with the troops at the Al-Asad base, Bush celebrated the return of Sunni areas to the control of U.S.-armed militias-composed largely of former insurgents who have at least temporarily decided that their Shiite rivals, currently in control of the central government, are a more pressing enemy than the American occupiers. Speaking of one such group of Sunnis trained by the Americans and dubbed the “Volunteers” by their instructors, a U.S. soldier told The Washington Post, “I think there is some risk of them being Volunteers by day and terrorists by night.”

The National Intelligence Estimate reported that Iraqi goverment is precarious, violence remains high, a decrease in Baghdad violence due to sectarian cleansing. The Government Accountability Report, a congressionally mandated report, showed that the Iraqi goverment met 3, partially 4, and did not meet 11 of its 18 benchmarks. The NIE was tweaked favorably by Gen. David Petraeus, the GAO was attacked by the White House as being 'inadmissible', 'harsh' and 'locked into failure'.

With regards to your comments about losing Iraq on principle, it was never a war for us to win in any sense, it was a systematic fear mongering campaign driven by PowerPoint presentations with aerial photographs about WMDs that got us into Iraq.

After 4 years of being constantly lied to about hostilities ending, turning the corner, mission accomplished, and witnessing the daily ineptness of the way the current administration has and is handling the war we are again on the brink of giving this administration another pass on the war up to 2009 since the current surge will remain up to and until April 2008. To have President Bush then compare the Iraq war to Vietnam; As Andrew Sullivan put it:

His speech yesterday actually managed to shock. You might think that, in wartime, a president would acknowledge what no one denies is a terribly grim decision in front of us - whether to pursue a clearly unwinnable war in order to govern a clearly ungovernable country - or withdraw and redeploy in ways that will doubtless lead to even more bloodshed. But no. There is no gray here; no awful decision for the least worst option; not acknowledgment of his own moral culpability for such a disaster. There is instead an accusation that those who reach a different judgment about the course of the war are, in fact, enemies of the troops:

Our troops are seeing this progress that is being made on the ground. And as they take the initiative from the enemy, they have a question: Will their elected leaders in Washington pull the rug out from under them just as they're gaining momentum and changing the dynamic on the ground in Iraq? Here's my answer is clear: We'll support our troops, we'll support our commanders, and we will give them everything they need to succeed.

To place all the troops into the position of favoring one strategy ahead of us rather than another, and to accuse political opponents of trying to "pull the rug out from under them," is a, yes, fascistic tactic designed to corral political debate into only one possible patriotic course. It's beneath a president to adopt this role, beneath him to coopt the armed services for partisan purposes. It should be possible for a president to make an impassioned case for continuing his own policy in Iraq, without accusing his critics of wanting to attack and betray the troops. But that would require class and confidence. The president has neither.

For more I would refer you to an excellent post - Thirteen Ways not to think about the Iraq war.

With regards to your comments about losing Iraq on principle, it was never a war for us to win in any sense, it was a systematic fear mongering campaign driven by PowerPoint presentations with aerial photographs about WMDs that got us into Iraq.

I disagree with that statement entirely.

There is a reason France and Germany refused to support the Iraq war, because they know that Imperialism doesn't work. To deny that it is anything but that is to deny the reality of what's going on the ground.

Don't mention that the two most undemocratic states in the Middle East are Saudi Arabia and Egypt, both allies of America, both recieve billon dollar donations to prop up their military without a single word towards questioning their political process.

So I highly disagree that democracy is what America is trying to estabilish in Iraq.

Democracy in the Middle East on American terms only.

*waronterror

Adding video to channels (Waronterror) - requested by MarineGunrock.

*dead

This published video has been declared non-functional; embed code must be fixed within 2 days or it will be sent to the dead pool - declared dead by Farhad2000.

Awarding EDD with one Power Point for fixing this video's dead embed code.

*findthumb

The thumbnail image for this video has been updated - findthumb requested by eric3579.