[bradclark1]

Originally Posted by August

Yeah it was worth looking at last week, but it's obviously a case of sour grapes spurred on by the political opposition.

So what? You might as well add to that list; WW1, the Spanish-American war, the Civil war, the Mexican-American war, the war of 1812 and the Revolutionary war. In short we're a country that has always maintained a small standing military in peace time and have been slow to arm for war.

Your problem is you are incapable of understanding what "balanced" means. All you see is that if I don't want small I want huge.

Again, a natural occurance found after every war in our history. Hard for a professional military man to understand, believe me i know, but there's no arguing with facts.

You assume that makes it right? Lets just keep doing the same old crap. And you call me incapable of change.

Our purpose isn't and never was to "hold ground" as an occupier of a sovereign nation. The Iraqis aren't a US vassal state and if you advocate we treat them that way then you haven't learned the lessons of Vietnam.

This is the facts. Iraq police and military control nothing. The U.S. controls the ground they are standing on at that moment. You haven't learned the lessons of Vietnam because history is repeating itself. As long as we are there we are looked at as being an occupying force. You can call it whateve politically correct name you want to call it but it doesn't change the fact we are an occupier.

I see your options as inaccurate and your assesment of the choice being made as incorrect, barring of course a Democrat getting into office in a couple years and ensuring its failure by dismantling the gains that have been made.

I see you didn't come up with any options. Each option is distasteful but it doesn't make them go away.
What gains have we made besides the vote and an ineffectual goverment?
How many years have we been there doing all this good?

I've started reading the books that are coming out on Iraqi freedom. I'm on my second book. The current book I'm reading is "No True Glory" which mainly covers the battle for Fallujah. It would be hilarious if it wasn't so serious. Not the way the book was written but what happened.
This book is written by Bing West who was an assistant secretary of defence under President Regan. Must be an in vogue thing for past secretaries in defence to write books.