Political Crossfire Forums

[mindwarrior]

Read the following quotes and make some judgements...

Kissinger, Ford, and Congress: The Very Bitter End in Vietnam

T. Christopher Jespersen

[quote]Kissinger: Iraq military win impossible

By TARIQ PANJA, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 3 minutes ago

LONDON - Military victory is no longer possible in
Iraq, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said in a television interview broadcast Sunday.
ADVERTISEMENT

Quote: Although not elected to the office, Gerald Ford nonetheless had the opportunity to change the nation's course in Vietnam when he assumed the presidency in August 1974. He did not do so, leaving the burden of ending the war there to the U.S. Congress. Contrary to what some policymakers and historians have subsequently argued, Congress did not sell out a healthy, viable South Vietnamese government to the communist in 1974 & 1975. Instead, the senators and representatives who voted to reduce, not cut off, military and economic assistance to the government of Nguyen Van Thieu made the correct and proper decision in the face of that regime's obviously untenable nature and the overwhelming desire of the American people to curtail support for it. Rather than working out a plan to end the war and remove those South Vietnamese who had worked with the Americans over the years, the Ford administration, led by the President himself, his Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, and Graham Martin, the U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam, chose to pursue a deliberate policy of denial, one designed to place the blame for the loss of South Vietnam on the shoulders of Congress. The resulting tragedy left thousands of Vietnamese to face life as the clear losers in a civil war.

Quote: Kissinger presented a bleak vision of Iraq, saying the U.S. government must enter into dialogue with Iraq's regional neighbors — including
Iran — if progress is to be made in the region.

"If you mean by 'military victory' an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible," he told the British Broadcasting Corp.

But Kissinger, an architect of the Vietnam war who has advised
President Bush about Iraq, warned against a rapid withdrawal of coalition troops, saying it could destabilize Iraq's neighbors and cause a long-lasting conflict.

"A dramatic collapse of Iraq — whatever we think about how the situation was created — would have disastrous consequences for which we would pay for many years and which would bring us back, one way or another, into the region," he said.

Kissinger, whose views have been sought by the Iraqi Study Group, led by former Secretary of State James Baker III, called for an international conference bringing together the permanent members of the
United Nations Security Council, Iraq's neighbors — including Iran — and regional powers like India and Pakistan to work out a way forward for the region.

"I think we have to redefine the course, but I don't think that the alternative is between military victory, as defined previously, or total withdrawal," he said. Yahoo News

It seems that Henry Kissinger has a bad habit of guiding our political leaders into quagmires and then being the king of cut and run. His statement that a military victory is impossible is ludicrious. What we are currently facing is "light resistance" We will not be able to bring Iraq under control without some serious efforts, but impossible is not the correct term. It is really sad that people put so much stake in his views. Let us be thankful that he was not guiding the British in 1940 or the Russians in 1942.

To win in the middle east, we need to acknowledge who our enemies are and engage them with overwhelming force. We need to forget about national boundaries and chase after the enemies supply lines and support We need to invade Iran, and Syria at the very least. We may not need to occupy those nations, but we need to bloody their noses to get them out of our Iraq affairs. We need to give them some work on rebuilding and knock out their offensive forces, so they are too busy to deal with us.

Victory in the middle east should be sought at all costs. Bush is in office for two more years. The chance of us winning is remote, because he seems to have lost his confidence as a leader. This is a very dangerous situation. If we are going to leave Iraq, we should do so without hesitation in a 30- 60 day timetable. Otherwise, we should immediately ramp up there and in Afghanistan. We need around 500,000 troops in Iraq and another 250,000 in Afghanistan. We need an additional 250,000 for a strike into Iran, and another 150,000 for Syria. Neither of those countries needs to be occupied, they just need to be neutered.

I think Charlie Rangel is right and we may indeed need the draft... Good democratic view.

I think the message from Kissinger is dangerous and highly negative for our morale. We are not fighting an enemy in the middle east that will settle down when we leave. They attacked us before we went over there. We are fighting a defensive war, but are projecting power, because we can.

Just my opinion, but defeatism is not in my vocabulary.

[Charlie Man]

Howsabout realism?

I'm seeing a few lacks of that here... for instance, "they" didn't attack us. Al Quaida attacked us. The people who fight us now in Iraq are significantly different people. Less sunni, more shiite kind of thing.

As for invading Iran and Syria "At the very least" I'm sure that additional chaos in the region we're trying to stabilize can only be for the best.

[Kilo Tango]

don't know what your source was, but here's how 'Nam went down...

1. We left all of the fighting up to the South Vietnamese - we ran.
2. We cut off funding to the South Vietnamese...this was done by the Congress (Dems).
3. South Vietnam fell to the communists - we, what was left, ran again. Remember those quaint shots of helicopters leaving and dropping civilians off the landing gear?

So basically, we ran, cut, and ran.

Tens of thousands of Vietnamese were consequently tortured and murdered by the communists.

The same thing is happening now. Dems are yelling that the Iraqis have to do it all and that we are leaving if they don't. Next they will start cutting funding, then we'll start withdrawing, then, when the Iraqi govt is dissolving and the insurgents and terrorists start taking over, well cut off all funding and bug out completely.

The Dems have learned nothing from history. They don't have the will to win. They are the party of weakness.

[Lumina]

[quote="mindwarrior"]Read the following quotes and make some judgements...

Kissinger, Ford, and Congress: The Very Bitter End in Vietnam

T. Christopher Jespersen

Quote: Kissinger: Iraq military win impossible

By TARIQ PANJA, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 3 minutes ago

LONDON - Military victory is no longer possible in
Iraq, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said in a television interview broadcast Sunday.
ADVERTISEMENT

Quote: Although not elected to the office, Gerald Ford nonetheless had the opportunity to change the nation's course in Vietnam when he assumed the presidency in August 1974. He did not do so, leaving the burden of ending the war there to the U.S. Congress. Contrary to what some policymakers and historians have subsequently argued, Congress did not sell out a healthy, viable South Vietnamese government to the communist in 1974 & 1975. Instead, the senators and representatives who voted to reduce, not cut off, military and economic assistance to the government of Nguyen Van Thieu made the correct and proper decision in the face of that regime's obviously untenable nature and the overwhelming desire of the American people to curtail support for it. Rather than working out a plan to end the war and remove those South Vietnamese who had worked with the Americans over the years, the Ford administration, led by the President himself, his Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, and Graham Martin, the U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam, chose to pursue a deliberate policy of denial, one designed to place the blame for the loss of South Vietnam on the shoulders of Congress. The resulting tragedy left thousands of Vietnamese to face life as the clear losers in a civil war.

Quote: Kissinger presented a bleak vision of Iraq, saying the U.S. government must enter into dialogue with Iraq's regional neighbors — including
Iran — if progress is to be made in the region.

"If you mean by 'military victory' an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible," he told the British Broadcasting Corp.

But Kissinger, an architect of the Vietnam war who has advised
President Bush about Iraq, warned against a rapid withdrawal of coalition troops, saying it could destabilize Iraq's neighbors and cause a long-lasting conflict.

"A dramatic collapse of Iraq — whatever we think about how the situation was created — would have disastrous consequences for which we would pay for many years and which would bring us back, one way or another, into the region," he said.

Kissinger, whose views have been sought by the Iraqi Study Group, led by former Secretary of State James Baker III, called for an international conference bringing together the permanent members of the
United Nations Security Council, Iraq's neighbors — including Iran — and regional powers like India and Pakistan to work out a way forward for the region.

"I think we have to redefine the course, but I don't think that the alternative is between military victory, as defined previously, or total withdrawal," he said. Yahoo News

It seems that Henry Kissinger has a bad habit of guiding our political leaders into quagmires and then being the king of cut and run. His statement that a military victory is impossible is ludicrious. What we are currently facing is "light resistance" We will not be able to bring Iraq under control without some serious efforts, but impossible is not the correct term. It is really sad that people put so much stake in his views. Let us be thankful that he was not guiding the British in 1940 or the Russians in 1942.

To win in the middle east, we need to acknowledge who our enemies are and engage them with overwhelming force. We need to forget about national boundaries and chase after the enemies supply lines and support We need to invade Iran, and Syria at the very least. We may not need to occupy those nations, but we need to bloody their noses to get them out of our Iraq affairs. We need to give them some work on rebuilding and knock out their offensive forces, so they are too busy to deal with us.

Victory in the middle east should be sought at all costs. Bush is in office for two more years. The chance of us winning is remote, because he seems to have lost his confidence as a leader. This is a very dangerous situation. If we are going to leave Iraq, we should do so without hesitation in a 30- 60 day timetable. Otherwise, we should immediately ramp up there and in Afghanistan. We need around 500,000 troops in Iraq and another 250,000 in Afghanistan. We need an additional 250,000 for a strike into Iran, and another 150,000 for Syria. Neither of those countries needs to be occupied, they just need to be neutered.

I think Charlie Rangel is right and we may indeed need the draft... Good democratic view.

I think the message from Kissinger is dangerous and highly negative for our morale. We are not fighting an enemy in the middle east that will settle down when we leave. They attacked us before we went over there. We are fighting a defensive war, but are projecting power, because we can.

Just my opinion, but defeatism is not in my vocabulary.

What, exactly, is Kissinger "at" again?

[mindwarrior]

I don't see this halfhearted defeatism as realism. With Kissinger, it seems to be systemic. As for the reality of the situation: due to who and what we have leading this nation, I have no doubt we will be defeated in Iraq. I also have no doubt they Al Queda and the like will come here for an attempt at domination and forced capitulation. They know what we know, "keep your enemies on the defensive and instill defeatism". The French and English have learned this lesson very well. We will learn it next.

I fear that the outcome will be -putting the US on the defensive and especially since we need to collaborate with the people of the region for our energy needs. I am pretty sure that they will eventually push us somewhere very dangerous, something like a suitcase nuke or a dozen in US cities, and we will respond with something more terrible than can be imagined.

I am sure we have weapon systems that are very effective and may include tactical nukes, as well as direct energy weapons.

I hope things do not come to that. We need to use adequate force to protect the innocent peoples of the region and create stability there. We need to understand this is going to be costly and it is going to take decades. If they know we will not leave until things are controlled, eventually they will make things get controlled. Right now, they are effectively manipulating a "left wing" media and the American political scene. A few to maybe 15 thousand insurgents are tipping US foreign policy on its ear because the American people are too weak to stay the course and just relax. Even the casualties they are now inflicting on us are not worth getting upset about. While I am sure someones rebuttal will say, "if it were my son". No doubt that is true, but we cannot win with emotion ruling logic. The president and his advisors warned of 10,000 casualties when we invaded Iraq in the first place. Everyone had those flags flying from their Toyotas and Hondas then and were in such a fervor they just didn't care. They wanted blood for September 11.

Now they have forgotten.

Iraq was a terrorist supporting nation, by the way, in the first few days of the war, we destroyed several large terrorist training camps in Iraq. Saddam also funded suicide bombers families with death benefits. Anyone who thinks they were not active supporters of terrorism, (just because the idiots at major news outlets keep repeating the line and the lie, need to check historical news accounts), even from them.

Here is an article on Salman Pak

Quote: Salman Pak / Al Salman

Former Iraqi military officers have described a highly secret terrorist training facility at Salman Pak, where both Iraqis and non-Iraqi Arabs receive training on hijacking planes and trains, planting explosives in cities, sabotage, and assassinations.

The Salman Pak biological warfare facility was located on a peninsula caused by a bend in the Tigris river, approximately five kilometers (km) from the arch located in the town of Salman Pak. The facility area comprised more than 20 square km, and might have been known as a farmers (or agricultural) experimentation center. The peninsula was fenced off and patrolled by a large guard force. Immediately inside and to the east of the fence line were two opulent villas: the larger built for Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and the other for his half-brother, Barazan al-Tikriti. A main paved road ran through the center of the Salman Pak facility/peninsula. [GulfLINK]

Plans were made in the mid-1980's to develop the Salman Pak site into a secure biological warfare research facility. Dr Rihab Taha, head of a small biological weapons research team, continued to work with her team at al-Muthanna until 1987 when it moved to Salman Pak, which was under the control of the Directorate of General Intelligence.

Located at the facility are several buildings. The probable main research building at the site is a modern building, composed of twenty four rooms, housing a major BW research facility. Using current technology the research area alone had sufficient floor space to accommodate several continuous-flow or batch fermenters that could produce daily sufficient anthrax bacteria to lethally assault hundreds of square kilometers. Adjacent to the research building is a storage area which contains four munitions type storage bunkers with lightning arrestors. Two of these bunkers have facilities for storage of temperature sensitive biological material. Approximately a mile down the road from the research area is a complex US intelligence believed to be an engineering area. One building in this complex was thought to contain a fermentation pilot plant capable of scale up production of BW agents. A construction project comprising several buildings was begun in early 1989 adjacent to the engineering area, and was near completion in 1990. This new complex was assessed as a pharmaceutical production plant. As such, this facility would have an extensive capability for biological agent production. [GulfLINK]

Salman Pak, located 30-40 km SE of Baghdad, engaged in laboratory scale research on Anthrax, Botulinum toxin, Clostridium, perfringens (gas gangrene), mycotoxins, aflatoxins, and Ricin. Researchers at this site carried out toxicity evaluations of these agents and examined their growth characteristics and survivability.

Equipment-moving trucks and refrigerated trucks were observed at the Salman Pak BW facility prior to the onset of bombing, suggesting that Iraq was moving equipment or material into or out of the facility. Information obtained after the conflict revealed that Iraq had moved BW agent production equipment from Salman Pak to the Al Hakam suspect BW facility.

The Qadisiya State Establishment [aka Al-Qadsia], involved in the program to produce Al Hussein class missiles, is apparently located nearby, along with the Al-Yarmouk facility which according to some reports was associated with the chemical munitions program [and which other reports place at Yusufiyah.

Iraq told UN inspectors that Salman Pak was an anti-terror training camp for Iraqi special forces. However, two defectors from Iraqi intelligence stated that they had worked for several years at the secret Iraqi government camp, which had trained Islamic terrorists in rotations of five or six months since 1995. Training activities including simulated hijackings carried out in an airplane fuselage [said to be a Boeing 707] at the camp. The camp is divided into distinct sections. On one side of the camp young, Iraqis who were members of Fedayeen Saddam are trained in espionage, assassination techniques and sabotage. The Islamic militants trained on the other side of the camp, in an area separated by a small lake, trees and barbed wire. The militants reportedly spent time training, usually in groups of five or six, around the fuselage of the airplane. There were rarely more than 40 or 50 Islamic radicals in the camp at one time.



It is ashame that everyone has forgotten why we invaded Iraq. It is just more expedient to bury your heads in the sand and wait in line for your new X box.

Just my opinion

[Richard Owl Mirror]

mindwarrior wrote: ~snip~
Just my opinion, but defeatism is not in my vocabulary.

Quote: Victory in the middle east should be sought at all costs.

Please define Victory, and for whom victory should be sought at all costs.

Is Victory, when ISLAM is no longer a driving force in Middle Eastern Society?
Is Victory, when Capitalism reigns Supreme throughout the Lands?
Is Victory, when Middle Eastern Culture is displaced with the
USA's Suburban - 2.5 kids - Mall shopping - consumer driven culture of personalities?

Quote: "If you mean by clear military victory an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible," he said.

The Bush administration f****d Up the entire Middle East with his invasion of a country we were not at war with nor could not do this nation any harm.
Now, unfortunately the only course of action is to allow the Middle East heal thy self which, in the end will have created the situation of making Islamic culture that much stronger of an influence and a turning away from Western culture.

Good going George :gdgf:

[Lumina]

Richard Owl Mirror wrote: mindwarrior wrote: ~snip~
Just my opinion, but defeatism is not in my vocabulary.

Quote: Victory in the middle east should be sought at all costs.

Please define Victory, and for whom victory should be sought at all costs.

Is Victory, when ISLAM is no longer a driving force in Middle Eastern Society?
Is Victory, when Capitalism reigns Supreme throughout the Lands?
Is Victory, when Middle Eastern Culture is displaced with the
USA's Suburban - 2.5 kids - Mall shopping - consumer driven culture of personalities?

Quote: "If you mean by clear military victory an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible," he said.

The Bush administration f****d Up the entire Middle East with his invasion of a country we were not at war with nor could not do this nation any harm.
Now, unfortunately the only course of action is to allow the Middle East heal thy self which, in the end will have created the situation of making Islamic culture that much stronger of an influence and a turning away from Western culture.

Good going George :gdgf:

Gee, I hope you're wrong. And I do think you are.

Don't think, however, that the victory of capitalism necessarily guarantees homogenous landscapes blighted by McD's and KFC.

I am certain, however, that when individuals are allowed to enjoy the fruits of their labors and to live and work and love in relative peace, good will ensue.

[Richard Owl Mirror]

mindwarrior wrote: ~snip~
It is ashame that everyone has forgotten why we invaded Iraq.

Just my opinion

Yeah how did those excuses work out ? WMD my Ass !

WHITE HOUSE WARNED OF IRAQ UAV ATTACK
Quote: A Bush administration official told senators last year that "Iraq not only had weapons of mass destruction, but they had the means to deliver them to East Coast cities," Florida Today reports.

According to Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), "about 75 senators got that news during a classified briefing before last October's congressional vote authorizing the use of force to remove Saddam Hussein from power....

"Nelson said the senators were told Iraq had both biological and chemical weapons, notably anthrax, and it could deliver them to cities along the Eastern seaboard via unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly known as drones."

That echoes public statements from the President, who said at the time, "We're concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs for missions targeting the United States."

But this tale of drone attack was beyond unlikely last year - and looks even more absurd now.

According to every public report about Iraq's "unmanned air force," Saddam's UAV fleet consisted of, at best, a couple of ancient Czech training drones. These planes have a maximum range of 800 miles or so -- not nearly enough to reach anywhere close to American shores. In fact, only the world's most-advanced UAVs, like the American Global Hawk, could make such a trip.

The only realistic way such drones could hit the U.S. – and this isn’t terribly realistic - is if Saddam packed them onto boats, which would then have to sneak past the U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf, slip through the Suez Canal, tiptoe through the Mediterranean, and make their way to the middle of the Atlantic. Only then could this unmanned cargo - packed with the chemical or biological arms that have so far proved so elusive – be launched from these ultra-stealthy ships.

Pretty unlikely stuff.

So here's my question: did this "administration official" actually believe the credulity-stretching story he spun for the Senate? Did the President believe it when he warned of UAV attacks?

Or did they just flat-out lie?


Bush's Mushroom Cloud as a Smoking Gun Speech
Quote: Tonight I want to take a few minutes to discuss a grave threat to peace and
America's determination to lead the world in confronting that threat.

The threat comes from Iraq. ( October 7, 2002 )
It arises directly from the Iraqi regime's own actions,
its history of aggression and its drive toward an arsenal of terror.
~snip~


:gdgf:

Why did they flat-out lie?