bush pc

Congress should fund troops "without telling our military how to conduct this war,

Maybe I'm confused, but considering that Congress is supposedly the only entity that can authorize war and authorize peace accords, it might be important for them to be have some influence over how the military conducts itself beyond just assessing funding. It's truly annoying to have the 'emperor' bothering the general once he has committed to battle, agreed. But the whole committing to battle and not committing to battle is a political question. While it's nice to win battles, it's important to understand what are we fighting for. And it's not clear what that is in Iraq and it never was. First it was WMDs, then freedom, and now. .terrorism? There's a laudable goal somewhere in building a free and stable country, but if you're building something, it helps to have a stable foundation on which to build and build from. A castle made of sand will just blow away eventually. Iran or Lebanon are much more ripe for democracy than Iraq will be for many years. Even Palestine is probably better equipped than Iraq.

Given what I've been seeing, it sounds like the 'surge' is having some effects. But it is not really a surge that is doing anything, because they radically changed tactics. Someone figured out that they were in guerrilla warfare and started behaving accordingly. There's a play book for fighting unconventional warfare. Much of it includes being active and present in communities that are threatened in order to provide at least a semi-positive image of troop disposition. Cooperation with locals allows for cutting off supplies of men and material, better reconnaissance, and a safer working environment for everyone. Sitting on forts and escorting diplomats or supplies through dangerous territory by shooting at anything that moves does not. I'm glad someone at the Pentagon was smart enough to figure that out..after 4 years. Unfortunately they apparently forgot to tell the mercs to behave.

"Bush had "knowingly" disregarded or misrepresented intelligence. "This is ... exactly what he did in the run-up to the war in Iraq, in consistently exaggerating the intelligence," -- This on Iran, after reports now that Iran has halted it's nuclear weapons program as of several years ago. It is true that any country with nuclear reactors and uranium enrichment facilities can build a nuclear weapon. But to do it under international scrutiny is fairly difficult. This was principally why I was not committed to Iraq in the first place because it was so difficult to produce such facilities and weapons under both sanctions and scrutiny. Why we rushed to believe intelligence suggests that we were willing to assume that Saddam was a bad guy, which he was. And that he wanted to do something dramatic, which he might. What we really should have done then is just put a bullet in his head or a bomb on the palace he was sleeping in, but that apparently is against our laws. Something about risking assassination of the President, even though that's only happened from domestic sources, and probably will continue to be so long as we have a huge military. If we're that worried about it, we could have taken the case to the UN and said "look the sanctions are only making Saddam and his cronies rich (as well as the UN). Why don't we just take care of this problem the old fashioned way and shoot the guy." Barring that, we could have sent people in to detain him for international tribunal (which if you notice, he was only charged with things that happened before the US started selling him weapons in the 80s to kill Persians but used against his own citizens as well). Occupying a country and attempting to build a regime that was favorable to our positions is not a tenable foreign policy stance (though it worked sometimes during the Cold War for a while, it always backfires; just look at Iran and anywhere in Latin America). Shooting international criminals however is probably fine.

"commented on the case of a 19-year-old Saudi Arabian woman who was gang-raped and then punished by a Saudi court which sentenced her to 200 lashes and six months in prison."
--- While it is true she was punished, her crime was not being raped. It would do to distinguish the inanity of strict shariah law. Her crime was meeting with an unrelated male alone, not being assaulted and raped by several men. Supposedly shariah law recognizes that rape is rather unpleasant at least, but given that the otherwise strict judicial code did not execute the rapists, or at least castrate them... I might have been mistaken. If they're willing to saw off people's hands for theft, then I'd think the least that could be done is cut off a rapist's tools as well.