President Obama is sending more and more Americans to their deaths. From a president who promised to shut the entire thing down and maintain security.
Is this a miscalculation? An out and out lie?
Rahm Emmanuel and Axelrod are really the power behind the throne? What exactly is going on? Where is Hillary Clinton? Internationally, everything is coming unravelled—very quickly. Who the hell is in charge?
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3 US troops killed in Afghan suicide blast
Attacks up 25% in the first four months of 2009
What has changed since January?
http://www.boston.com/news/wor…
3 Americans die in Iraq roadside bombing
By Liz Sly
Los Angeles Times / May 27, 2009
Email| Print| Reprints| Yahoo! Buzz| ShareThisText size – + IRBIL, Iraq – Three Americans were killed on Memorial Day in a roadside bombing near the town of Fallujah in Iraq’s Anbar Province, the US military said yesterday.Discuss
COMMENTS (1)
The dead included a soldier, a Department of Defense contractor, and a civilian State Department employee. They were returning from a visit to a waste-water treatment plant under construction in the town when their car drove over an improvised explosive device.Two others in the convoy were wounded, said a military statement, without specifying whether they were soldiers or civilian personnel.
The US Embassy in Baghdad identified the State Department employee as Terrence Barnich, of Chicago, who was serving as deputy director of the Iraq transition assistance office at the embassy.
Barnich was a prominent Chicagoan who had served as head of the Illinois Commerce Commission and chief counsel to the governor of Illinois before moving to Iraq in 2007. He served as an adviser to the Iraqi Electricity Ministry before taking up his current position
I fail to see what value inflammatory diaries like these add to the general discourse.
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p>Sabutai was correct in describing MCRD’s glee over possible loss of life charged to Obama as “ghoulish.” Why censor it?
Obama has back off on a number of important promises that he made during his campaign, including the Health Care Reform, the Stimulus Package, the Banks bailouts, and getting out of Iraq, which we’re clearly not going to do, given the fact that he’s keeping roughly 50, 000 troops in Iraq, and, what’s equally disgusting is the fact that Obama’s extending and escalating our war into Afghanistan. Obama’s refusal to release the torture photos is yet another example in point, imho.
I’ve read it in several different sources, and, I’m not obligated to justify and defend everything I say just because you say so.
That said, you’re misstating Obama’s positions as well.
So where is the failed promise there?
If he extends and escalates our war into Afghanistan and Pakistan, then he’s a hypocrite and a phony, plain and simple. he’s just another damned policitian.
On the contrary, Obama said that he would go into Pakistan even if the Pakistanis didn’t like it if it was necessary for our national security.
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p>It would be polite for me to say that I’m surprised you didn’t notice this since a huge deal was made of it. Republican apparatchiks took his statement as evidence of unpreparedness for office. It was all over the news to those paying attention.
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p>It would be polite for me to say that I’m surprised, but it would be disingenuous. The last time we discussed Afghanistan, you resorted to similar misinformation regarding Obama’s campaign position on Afghanistan.
…for an “Unrecommend This Disingenuous Crap” button.
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p>Anyone who has read BMG over any period of time, or is willing to wade through the history of MCRD’s contributions here, will understand that this is exclusively aimed at undermining support for the administration and sabotaging discussion of the topic, and not a sincere expression of concern for troop fatalities. As such, it is a callous, despicable exploitation of a tragic loss.
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p>We could still have an intelligent discussion amongst ourselves about the shortcomings of the administration and its policies without the help of sock puppets and bomb-throwing wingnuts. This post is a textbook example for the case I’ve tried to make over time, which is that what purports to be an internal discussion (it’s actually called the “Blue Mass Group”, folks; I’m not making that up) should be carried on by the interested parties. However, the “we in the henhouse can all learn something from the fox” canard — even as it continues to be perverted and exploited by such as the above — lives on and prevails.
If you wish to support the Obama Administration, that’s your prerogative. I, for one didn’t, from the get-go, and refuse to, still. That’s why I did a write-in at the polls last fall.
You know perfectly well that Obama actually promised to increase troop levels in Afghanistan. And you know perfectly well that Obama did not promise to remove all troops from Iraq immediately. And you know perfectly well that both places are dangerous. Furthermore, you don’t care the slightest bit for the families of the victims of this violence. You are only trying to take cheap shots as usual. And as usual you also miss the mark by a large margin.
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p>It is high time that you stop posting this kind of crap and start acting like an adult.
If Obama cares about our men and women soldiers, not to mention the people lresiding in Iraq and Afghanistan, he’ll get us the hell out of there…now. Come to think of it, Obama could’ve/should’ve helped stop that war by getting on the phone and calling up the appropriate military people the moment he took office last January. He didn/t, which was wrong.
You don’t just take office one day and pull out troops the next. We risk leaving behind at least one failed state if we do.
Obama hasn’t even started pulling our troops out of Iraq as he’d promised to do, and the fact that he’s escalating our war and expanding it into Afghanistan is not only wrongheaded, but extremely hypocritical, to boot.
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p>Therefore, I say; Let the United Nations deal with the whole situation. They’re the ones equipped to help conflicting countries out of present deadlocks and gridlocks. The United States, thus far, I’m sorry to say, have proven to be just the opposite.
First of all, staying in Afghanistan and possibly Pakistan and escalating and extending our wars into those countries, like Obama plans to do is not going to help anything. It’s just going to make bad situations both here in the United States far worse, due to lack of enough money for programs to ameliorate them, and will furthur inflame already-existing anti-American sentiment abroad, particularly in the Muslim Mid-east. Obama got elected on the promises of getting out of Iraq and presenting no more military adventures abroad. Has he kept those promises? No. The fact that Obama also voted for the FISA Bill and to keep funding our war on Iraq and Afghanistan even after having gone on record as opposing that war, was clearly indicative of where he was going pretty much from the get-go. He has sold us down the river, like i knew he wood, which is why, instead of voting for Obama, I did a write-in vote at the polls last November.
You write, “staying in Afganistan and possibly Pakistan”. Do you really inhabit an alternative reality.
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p>The U.S. does not have occupation forces in Pakistan currently.
there’s absolutely no need for you to resort to insults such as this:.
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p>Secondly, there was some discussion about the possibility of extending our war into Pakistan awhile back.
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p>Thirdly, I stand by what I’ve said.
So you “stand by” your assertion that the U.S. has occupation forces in Pakistan. Then you do occupy an alternative reality, you are proud to do so, and I have not insulted you.
You may be interested to know that Obama has been sending unmanned drones into Pakistan, which have killed over a hundred innocent civilians, plus refugees from Afghanistan are streaming into Pakistan due to the extended and escalated surge in Afghanistan produced by Obama. I stand by what I’ve said.
How, dear mplo, do drones constitute an occupation?
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p>In other contexts, my attitude toward Obama’s Afghanistan policy runs from skeptical to critical. However, adorning one’s position with inaccuracies (for example about Obama’s campaign promises or the jaws of pit bulls) does not make one’s position more convincing.
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p>It just makes it more stupid.
Let’s look at it this way, KBusch: How would you feel if you
had to live with the constant, well-founded fear of US bombs dropping down on your house, your family, your friends, and your own head every single day? Think about it.
Maybe my comment “Rules of Evidence” explains why that doesn’t matter so much to you: You seem to want a talk radio “X good” versus “X bad” shout fest.
I think you’re missing the point….by a lot.
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p>Why should the United States keep invading other countries and dropping bombs all over the place with impunity, thereby squandering money that could go into a really comprehensive single-payer Universal Healthcare plan for everybody in the United States, education, the Arts, etc., not to mention killing our own soldiers as well as untold numbers of innocent civilians? The whole idea that invading other countries and laying waste to them and their people is going to provide jobs, money, etc., is a bunch of baloney. Our government has thrown good money after bad at our unnecessary wars and sorties into other countries, which, imho, is wrong. Pakistan and Afghanistan are no exception. Let the UN deal with the situation. They’re equipped for it. Our government, and most governments, are not.
Email me if you really need to keep up this eternal game of not understanding.
I stand by what I’ve said.
See this comment.
Really, you are!
the green cheese
Thanks.
does the petty use of downratings strengthen your argument.
They apply this:
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p>exact same thing.
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p>Also, since when is sending unmanned drones into another country, thereby maiming, sickening and killing innocent civilians OK? It’s not, as far as I’m concerned, and we should just get out of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq once and for all and let the UN deal with it and let these countries take care of their own affairs. We’ve got no business policing the rest of the world.
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p>The late journalist Hunter Thompson had this as his favorite quote:
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p>This says it all…in a nutshell.
So the argument so far has gone a little like this:
mplo:Because the world is flat and the moon made of green cheese, we should leave Afghanistan now!!
kbusch:But the world is not flat. The moon is not made of green cheese!
mplo:I stand by my position.
kbusch:If you think the world flat, you occupy an alternative reality.
mplo:Dread insults! You smite, me sir. You are a scoundrel!
kbusch:Haven’t you done this before in talking about dogs?
mplo:I stand by my position.
kbusch:Not the point.
mplo:Things are bad, bad, bad in Afghanistan.
kbusch:You do your argument no favors by being inaccurate.
mplo:You don’t understand! They’re bad in Afghanistan.
kbusch:I know. I’ve written as much. That’s not the point.
mplo:I stand by my position.
Reflecting on this thread and the Battle of the Pit Bulls you had with lolorb, I suspect that that you have a very different orientation toward evidence and the like than I do. In this thread, you’re trying to say “Afghanistan intervention bad”. Earlier you were trying to say “Pit bulls bad”. In both cases, you asserted things that weren’t accurate and got called on it. I scratched my head over your insisting in both contexts that you “Stand by your position”. This is not how a reasonable person debates issues. A reasonable person wants to get the facts right before slathering interpretation atop them.
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p>Possibly you are willing to assert anything in defense of “X bad” — whether true or false. To you, it doesn’t seem to matter whether your assertions are false or inaccurate provided they justify your point.
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p>That style seems more appropriate to the kind of dialog one hears on talk radio than the exchanges I have with other liberals here.