[iamthewalrus109]

The type of talk that Marchiko is using is exactly why we can't earn a decisive victory in Iraq. It comes down to the man in the field now. George Bush and the Congress of the United States are responsible for deploying the troops, not generals. They need to wage the war they see fit once deployed.

I hate to say it but we are descending into a Vietnam style mess up here. We need decisive action from a non-partisan soldier, period. None of this, "Well what will these people think?" That was done the day we stuck it to the UN. If you truly follow a policy of pre-emptive war, and a go it alone attitude then heckling with international governments for 4 months while Saddam packs up any illegal goodies and gets the terror war ready is exactly the kind of thinking that got us in this mess. Yeah, let's tell people were coming and give them plenty of time to booby trap the position and get key personell out of the hot zone. This is the worst offensive tactics I've ever seen. We fight a blitzkrieg style war in Spring 2003, then lead a flopy occupation effort. The night we got into Bagdad it should have been 0 tolernence curfiew. We should have kept more Saddam era funtionaries in place longer, offerred them more power in the new government, and set about
creating a new government. Starting from scratch was a disaster and foolish to boot.

And what if we actually get these foriegn insurgents on the run, and they start to cross back over the borders to Syria, where most of these crazys are from, what then? We stop at the border and call the UN, screw that. This is where we stand now. Furthermore many of the countries on the security council had much to gain from keeping Saddam in power. The new invesitgatiion into the oil for food program shows that France, Germany, and Russia may all be implicated in this scandal, hmmmm, isn't that strange, the same bozos who didn't want to topple Saddam. Besides the fact that if all these countries could they would have been selling the guy nuclear secrets and missle guidance systems.

The bottom line: We now find ourselves in a precarious situation in Iraq obviously. Pulling out is going to earn us any respect anywhere, decisive victory is our only recourse. With Iraqi popular sentiment turning towards outside combatants I think there needs to be a non stop offensive effort by commanders in the field, not Washington, to kill and or neutralize these fighters, period. It comes down the guy next to you out there in the field, we all know that, and these commanders need to put the lives of their men first. This means whatever it takes to meet security standards for free elections. Then, and only then, do you consider an exit strategy. Too many folks have died, as GW Bush would say, and in part he's right, but you don't honor their memory by fighting the same stupid war. Now its not just about Saddam and whether or not he had arms, its about foriegn fighters and terrorism. They're not fighting for Iraqis, in fact popular support for these foriegn fighters is starting to erode. This is not like the VC here people, these individuals are not fighting for a free communist Iraq.

Finally, in regards to the UN's standards of a "just war" are simply outdated and irrelevant in today's context. These standards are just as irrelevant as the Leauge of Nations standards were in 1933. This goes for the Geneva standards as well. We are fighting an enemy that recognizes nothing but Allah. Western conventions, and civilities are only going to end up getting us all killed. There needs to be some sort of logical and coherent suspension of these "play nice" rules to root out this plauge on humanity, once and for all.

-Walrus