Having said that, I would now like to take to task the leaders of the protest for stupidly doing this at a military base gate. You can't rally support by doing it there You are wasting time.. You hurt yourselves and chances of acheiving your goal. You should be protesting it in front of Pete Domenici's office, Heather Wilson's office and Steve Pearce's office. They voted for this war for their idol, george bush, and they are the ones who are responsible. Just like the democrats who did the same thing.
Don't come after the men and women who are following orders as they are supposed to. Let me make it clear. I am against this war completely. From its inception in bush's macho brain to the current day. But aiming protests at the military is highly inefficient. They are not the ones who can end this disaster, only our elected officials can. That is something that MoveOn.org will find out from my wallet. No more money for them from me after stupidly saying Petraeus is a traitor. Petraeus deserves heavy criticism and some disgrace, but calling him a traitor is not valid or believeable.
1 comment:
I'm afraid I'm going to have to disagree with you on this one.
09/21/2007, 11:49 AMGENERAL PETRAEUS OR GENERAL BETRAY US? Cooking the Books for the White House General Petraeus is a military man constantly at war with the facts. In 2004, just before the election, he said there was “tangible progress” in Iraq and that “Iraqi leaders are stepping forward.” And last week Petraeus, the architect of the escalation of troops in Iraq, said, “We say we have achieved progress, and we are obviously going to do everything we can to build on that progress.” Every independent report on the ground situation in Iraq shows that the surge strategy has failed. Yet the General claims a reduction in violence. That’s because, according to the New York Times, the Pentagon has adopted a bizarre formula for keeping tabs on violence. For example, deaths by car bombs don’t count. The Washington Post reported that assassinations only count if you’re shot in the back of the head — not the front. According to the Associated Press, there have been more civilian deaths and more American soldier deaths in the past three months than in any other summer we’ve been there. We’ll hear of neighborhoods where violence has decreased. But we won’t hear that those neighborhoods have been ethnically cleansed. Most importantly, General Petraeus will not admit what everyone knows: Iraq is mired in an unwinnable religious civil war. We may hear of a plan to withdraw a few thousand American troops. But we won’t hear what Americans are desperate to hear: a timetable for withdrawing all our troops. General Petraeus has actually said American troops will need to stay in Iraq for as long as ten years. Today, before Congress and before the American people, General Petraeus is likely to become General Betray Us.
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The Senate wasted time being outraged over this ad.
Yet facts were laid out.
And everyone DOES already know, don't they, that Petraeus has personal aspirations to run for president, right?
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According to a report in London's Independent newspaper by the reliable Middle East observer Patrick Cockburn, the U.S. military viceroy in Iraq would like very much to return from his mission and -- like the Supreme Commander of Allied forces in Europe during World War II and of North Atlantic Treaty Organization in its aftermath -- mount a bid for the White House.
Petraeus has apparently been so open in expressing his "long-term interest in running for the US presidency" that Sabah Khadim, a former senior adviser at Iraq's Interior Ministry who worked closely with the general in Baghdad, recalls, "I asked him if he was planning to run in 2008 and he said, 'No, that would be too soon'."
Such are the political calculations of the man whose embrace of President Bush's war has become so complete that he and his aides have radically altered the manner in which statistics are gathered on violence in Iraq in order to foster the fantasy that the fight has taken a turn for the better.
"General Petraeus has a reputation in the US Army for being a man of great ambition. If he succeeds in reversing America's apparent failure in Iraq, he would be a natural candidate for the White House in the presidential election in 2012," explains Cockburn. "His able defense of the 'surge' in US troop numbers in Iraq as a success before Congress this week has made him the best-known soldier in America. An articulate, intelligent and energetic man, he has always shown skill in managing the media."
The problem, of course, is that Petraeus's "open interest in the presidency" might, Cockburn suggests, "lead critics to suggest that his own political ambitions have influenced him in putting an optimistic gloss on the US military position in Iraq "
It is Petraeus's willingness to apply the optimistic gloss that marks him as a worthy successor to George Bush, who in Thursday night speech to the nation pronounced himself well and truly pleased with his general's recitation of the administration's talking points. Based on general's testimony, Bush is claiming "success in meeting (our) objectives."
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And, about those missing guns in Iraq? You did know that Petraeus was in charge of them, right?
The Government Accountability Office reports that more than 100,000 AK-47 assault rifles and another 80,000 pistols that Washington thought it was providing to Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005 are now unaccounted for. More than 100,000 pieces of body armor and a similar number of helmets have also gone missing.
These numbers represent the discrepancy between the equipment ordered by the American commander in charge of training Iraqi forces and the equipment actually logged into the property records of those forces. Disturbingly, that commander was General David Petraeus, now the overall commander of American forces in Iraq.
Pentagon has failed to do the most basic accounting of 110,000 AK-47 assault rifles and 80,000 pistols the United States gave to Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005, the GAO found.
Military personnel handed out those weapons without writing down serial numbers so they could track whether they reached Iraqis that the United States is supposed to be training and equipping.
Petraeus was in charge of training Iraqi troops in 2004 and 2005.
The State Department normally is in charge of U.S. security assistance programs, and has a good record of accounting for weapons given to local forces. But Iraq has been the Pentagon's baby.
The Defense Department's poor recordkeeping has made it impossible to know how many guns actually were delivered to Iraqi forces. Even more disturbing is how many weapons may have ended up in the hands of militants who routinely attack U.S. troops.
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