RRC Archives

L Day wrote:Ahab, do you have a brain in your fucking head? Or is it just air in there?

no air, mostly just bourbon & bong water. thanks for the concern tho.

Charlie - I'm sorry your friend's dad got so grievously injured, but glad he made it. Max's older brother is an Airforce Intel officer and has already pulled tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, he was very nearly killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq, though he didn't get a scratch. He said the damned thing was so well hidden that he walked all over it without realizing it was there. It only went off after he'd walked some distance away. Of course, he'll never know if the S.O.B. who set it off was pushing the button like mad while he was standing over the bomb, and it just wouldn't go off, or if the guy was waiting for an opportunity to kill more than just one with the blast.

Working in Intel, the older brother knows the enemy kind of up close and personal. He tells me we've turned the corner in Iraq, and I think he knows a lot more about the situation than any of us do.

No doubt about it, war is hell.

charlie wrote:

L Day wrote:Charlie - It we defined every term we used, it would, unnecessarily I think, overburden our comments to the point of making them unreadable. ........

These assumptions are critical in my view. Like the "we're winning" terms you've been dropping lately. Any research into actually understanding the warlords and/or forces unaffiliated with the pentagon will tell you the so called "winning" is more than likely a rest/regroup for when the US troop surge begins to withdraw (if ever).

Shades of grey are what concern me. Not defining these terms are problematic in both understanding the situation (if that's even possible) as well as convincing anyone these efforts are going anywhere.

Keep trying Charlie. But I'm not optimistic that we'll ever get Larry to define his terms. You don't need to get all Martin Heidegger on Larry's use of language to understand that it's critical to propping up his world view. (Or more specifically, it's a fuzzy gauze that keeps all those pointy facts enough out of focus to keep things going.)

Remember - we have always been at war with, er, I mean, winning against Eurasia, er, I mean, our enemies in Iraq! Double-plus winning!

L Day wrote:Charlie - I'm sorry your friend's dad got so grievously injured, but glad he made it. Max's older brother is an Airforce Intel officer and has already pulled tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, he was very nearly killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq, though he didn't get a scratch. He said the damned thing was so well hidden that he walked all over it without realizing it was there. It only went off after he'd walked some distance away. Of course, he'll never know if the S.O.B. who set it off was pushing the button like mad while he was standing over the bomb, and it just wouldn't go off, or if the guy was waiting for an opportunity to kill more than just one with the blast.

Working in Intel, the older brother knows the enemy kind of up close and personal. He tells me we've turned the corner in Iraq, and I think he knows a lot more about the situation than any of us do.

No doubt about it, war is hell.

Maybe he knows that the same guy who tried to turn him into hamburger is now (temporarily) cashing US checks... boy, oh, boy, what a victory.

Twelve of the 18 benchmarks set for Iraq have been met, and there's been progress on most of the remaining ones. Al Qaeda is on the run, Sadr's militia is being ground to bits by the mostly Shiite army, and you still say victory is impossible. Deny, deny, deny, but you know you're being proven wrong on a daily basis. When there is finally a free and democratic Iraq you will be still be shouting from the irrelevant section. THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS VICTORY!, DEFINE FREEDOM!, WHAT'S DEMOCRACY ANYWAY?, and finally IT COST TOO MUCH! But nobody will be listening, 'cause you're just that tiny voice of negativity from the irrelevant section.

L Day wrote:Twelve of the 18 benchmarks set for Iraq have been met, and there's been progress on most of the remaining ones. Al Qaeda is on the run, Sadr's militia is being ground to bits by the mostly Shiite army, and you still say victory is impossible.

Great! As long as we aren't carefully defining "victory", then it sounds from what you claim to believe above that "we've won" in Iraq. It's over and it's time to leave. Right?

Twelve of the 18 benchmarks set for Iraq have been met

That's a D at my school.

A year ago just one of the benchmarks had been met. But that was before "the surge", you know, the surge that was pronounced a failure by the champions of defeat before it even began. It's not over yet, but dramatic progress will continue to be made in the coming months. Sucks to be on the losing side, doesn't it?

Looks like a bunch of Tacky Pakis to me.