Bush Vows No Retreat from Iraq Despite Mounting Toll

[Say_What]

I remember LBJ saying pretty much the same thing about Viet Nam. SmirkBoy's in deep sh*t--this is gonna be way more than what those cretins bargained for. Mission Accomplished??? Not quite. </sarcasm> KABOOM!!!

:nuke:

<clips>

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Faced with a mounting military and civilian death toll and stiffening guerrilla resistance, President Bush (news - web sites) vowed on Monday that the United States would not run from its "vital" mission in Iraq (news - web sites).

Within hours of Bush's pledge in a speech in Alabama, a large explosion echoed across Baghdad, followed by mortar fire near the headquarters of the U.S.-led administration in Iraq.

The president's comments were his first since 16 American soldiers were killed when guerrillas shot down their CH-47 Chinook helicopter on Sunday in the worst single attack since the American invasion on March 20.

"The enemy in Iraq believes America will run. That's why they're willing to kill innocent civilians, relief workers, coalition troops. America will never run," Bush said, despite falling approval ratings in the United States.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=2&u=/nm/20031103/ts_nm/iraq_dc

[janx]

1. Wait--when did he say this? Since the explosions?

Or before?

[Journeyman]

17. The article says. . .

"Within hours of Bush's pledge in a speech in Alabama, a large explosion echoed across Baghdad. . .", so I assume his speech came before the recent wave of bombings and mortar attacks.

[tom_paine]

2. What is going to happen if one day we REALLY need our military?

I mean, for something other than defrauding Bilions of Dollars from Imperial Amerikan Subjects and Iraqi Serfs...

:scared:

[Sideways]

8. Well Tom I'm Afraid We Will Be Neck Deep In Doo-Doo

And frantically searching for a diaper. Too bad by then all avaiable huggies will be being worn by congress and the snark boy's administration.

[Beetwasher]

3. I'm More Convinced Than Ever

That they are in fact going to retreat or rather cut and run.

This rhetoric and propoganda about not retreating etc. is all cover for when they do retreat.

It will go something like this:

They will round up as many former military as they can a build a rag-tag, untrustworthy security/police force.

They will draft a constituion and hold a sham election.

They will build a few heavily fortified bases around oil wells and refineries.

Then, probably by March or April they will begin bringing the troops home except for the ones stationed around and protecting the above mentioned bases around the refineries and oil wells.


They will say "We have now accomplished all of our objectives in Iraq! They are free, they have an army, a constitution and elected leaders and now it is up to the Iraqi people to make it work!"

[soleft]

5. you and Starpass are on the same page

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=639238

[lovedems]

6. They will do all of that

just in time for the election so they can shout "VICTORY!" and half the slow minds in this country will fall for it.

[beanball]

15. I can see it now.

A parade,a victory parade with Jessica Lynch as grand marshall with Arnuld driving the parade marshall's new convertable furnished by the Carlyle group,Ann Coulter and Sean Insanity covering the parade for faux tv.America loves a parade/suckers.

[Say_What]

23. and US Sheeple with BLINKERS ON lovin' it all

:puke: :puke: :puke:

[MidwestTransplant]

11. Bingo

[el_gato]

13. what about the pipelines?

It seems like they will not be able to keep their investment, i.e. the oil.

Can't extract those resources without the pipelines running.

[Beetwasher]

19. Cost Benefit Analysis

They might do (or already have done) a cost benefit analysis and come to the conclusion that the billions they've already sucked from the US treasury are enough. They might actually ditch their designs on Iraq's oil...for the moment...That part of my scenario regarding the bases protecting the refineries is not totally necessary. Theoretically they could completely cut and run...Though there may be strategic benefit in keeping several fortified installations for launching future operations...

[Voltaire99]

30. I hope so

Such a withdrawal is in everyone's interest. Even if one doesn't buy the moral case, the pragmatic case for quitting Iraq is overwhelming.

Innocent Iraqis will be rid of colonizers. Our troops will live. We can begin repairing relations with our allies. We can focus on our real defense needs. We can save billions. We can cease lighting fuses in the minds of young Arabs. We can begin to make amends to the world for this vicious transgression against all norms of decency.

It matters not one whit to me if the US is as dishonest leaving as it was invading. Just leave!

I'd pull us out this year - effect an immediate handover to the UN which the entire world will support, fire the neocons, let McClellan say some bullshit about how the president got "bad advice," etc. Every single soldier home by Christmas, leave a few CIA spooks behind in fake beards, and that's it.

I doubt that Bush can risk leaving Iraq, however, without the oil to show for this invasion.

[remfan]

37. Of course they're going to cut and run

RULE NUMBER ONE -- the GOP doesn't DO policy, they do POLITICS.

bush CANNOT afford to stay in Iraq past the spring - his election is the ONLY thing they're concerned with. Every single thing they do and every single thing they say should be seen through that prism.

[cliss]

4. that's right.

What if some REAL emergency came up, where we really needed the troops to defend us?

I was thinking over the weekend: are there any parallels with VietNam and Iraq? I'm curious to see what the tolerance level was with the public, and when they finally decided they'd had enough.

[Say_What]

22. MLK's speech "Beyond Vietnam" and LBJ's declaration in 1965--

a "massive new effort to improve the lives of the people of Southeast Asia."

<clips>

...The peace movement had taken a while to get organized, mostly because liberals' trust in the Kennedy-Johnson White House was as blind then as conservatives' trust in the Bush White House is today. It wasn't until two years later, on April 4, 1967, that Martin Luther King Jr. finally spoke up against the war. He'd kept quiet until then, fearing that lending his voice to the anti-war movement would dilute his leadership of the civil rights movement. But it was an absurd separation of purpose, as he himself belatedly recognized: "Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam." A prophetic warning that now begs repetition, with a change of venue.

"Beyond Vietnam" is one of King's least-known, most powerful speeches, a 40-minute assault on the imperial arrogance of "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government." It isn't the kind of speech that makes it into pupils' little portfolios during Black History Month, and certainly not the kind of Martin Luther King his piously correct admirers want to hear. This is King as mirror to America's horrors and indifference to decency even as it pretends to sow peace and justice in the lands it conquers. "They must see Americans as strange liberators," he'd said of Vietnamese. "Their questions are frighteningly relevant. Is our nation planning to build on political myth again and then shore it up with the power of new violence?"

Military or historical comparisons between Vietnam and Iraq are indeed silly. Two vastly different countries, different peoples, different eras. But it is sillier still to suggest that no comparisons at all apply simply because some comparisons don't. There are serious, fundamental similarities, not between Vietnam and Iraq, but between American presumption in the 1960s and American presumption today, between President Johnson's imperial conceit then ("We can turn the Mekong into a Tennessee Valley") and Bush's messianic hubris now ("Operation Infinite Justice," "Operation Iraqi Freedom").

The strength of King's speech isn't drawn only from its attack on America's Vietnam policy, his call on soldiers to refuse to serve in Vietnam or his appeal to dissenters "to match actions with words by seeking out every creative means of protest possible." The strength of the speech is rooted in its challenge of America's purpose beyond Vietnam, in a call for "a true revolution of values" that confronts "the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism" and the "glaring contrast of poverty and wealth" at home and "those conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice abroad" that are the fertile grounds of what was then called communism, what is now called anti-Americanism. "The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve."

That was April 4, 1967. On April 4, 1968, King was assassinated -- the fourth of five assassinations between 1963 and 1968 that simultaneously confirmed America's legacy of violence and insured a leadership gap that afflicts the country to this day. With Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, John Kennedy, King and Robert Kennedy shot, it is no wonder the country became reactionary by default and then, with little opposition to prevent it, by design. There are no repetitions between the Aprils of the 1960s and April 2003. But there are enduring consequences and dispiriting contrasts.

Something else happened on April 17, 1965, the day of the first anti-war march in Washington. While 12 F-105s dropped 36 tons of bombs on targets near the Laotian border, other planes dropped tons of leaflets on North Vietnam -- a speech by President Johnson about his "massive new effort to improve the lives of the people of Southeast Asia." That, too, is a monolith of deja vu, but the kind of monolith you see at the beginning of "2001: A Space Odyssey," that big, black, rectangular thing that suddenly appears in a prehistoric colony of bemused apes. In 2003, we are those apes.

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0409-13.htm

---

<clips>

"Beyond Vietnam,"
Address delivered to the Clergy and Laymen Concerned
about Vietnam, at Riverside Church

4 April 1967
New York City

.... Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and dealt death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it
must be ours.

This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words, and I quote:

Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the hearts of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is
curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom, and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism.

Unquote.

If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately, the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horrible, clumsy, and deadly game we have decided to play. The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways. In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war.

http://www.africanamericans.com/MLKjrBeyondVietnam.htm

[Voltaire99]

29. Tolerance levels over Iraq and Vietnam

That's an interesting question, Cliss.

The public tolerated US dead by the thousands annually in Vietnam for roughly six years or so. During the last half of that period factors such as growing casualties, official dishonesty, a perception of a lost struggle, and protests suppressed violently at home helped turn more of Nixon's "silent majority" - today's Bush America, or Wal-Mart America - against the war.

If Vietnam is still a yardstick for US quietude, then Iraq has a long way to go and we have barely scratched the surface of the number of US casualties that the public will tolerate. But if, as I imagine to be the case, the post-Vietnam era is very different, then it's hard to say.

One huge difference: an all "volunteer" (read: mercenary-fed-by-poverty) army. That removes the biggest lever that the anti-war movement had over Vietnam, namely the fact that the draft meant a much broader swath of the population had a stake in who was dying, as well as the fact that the draft compelled service. Maybe it's not too cynical or farfetched to observe that the trendlines in American life since Reagan veer far away from public compassion; we are in the post-welfare, lock-'em-up drug war epoch, the step-on-the-weaklings era, the age of Rush and O'Reilly.

I will simply guess that half or more of the country isn't deeply troubled by the deaths in Iraq and will actually find them worthwhile if fuel prices drop. Bush can give a teary-eyed speech at Arlington afterwards, covered with hushed reverence by our Brokaws and Rathers, and then the good times can roll!

The media has a huge role in what happens - something the Bush administration, with its sickening propaganda bids, realizes. Interestingly especially after the media's complete lionization of thugs like Bush and Giuliani following 9/11, we are seeing the resurgence of an instinct - or at least the twitch of a muscle - of critical reporting. Sure, it's smothered by loads of crap, but it's there, a manifest glimmer of the conscience of Americans who do care, don't find slaughter acceptable, don't want a fraudulent murderous war to continue. So if this narrative takes hold at all, and it very well could given the reflexive nature of election year coverage, then there's hope we'll be out of Iraq in the next year. I expect there'll be nearly 1,000 US casulaties first, though.

[LeftHander]

7. Vital essence....err I mean vital mission...

Wee need to protect our prescious bodily fluids from contamination of evil Iraqi weapons....

[starroute]

9. Time for a chorus of "Neck Deep in the Big Muddy"

(And the big fool says to push on)

[DinahMoeHum]

24. "Waist deep in the big SANDY" (updated verse)

"...and the big fool says to push on..."


:nuke:

[Bake]

32. Wasn't it "Damn" fool says to push on?

That's the way I remember it.

Bake

[truthisfreedom]

10. bush vows no retreat even if it costs him election...

and it will...

[BLUEBOY]

21. We can only pray...

but I still think the economy will make a bigger difference to most people.

[nomaco-10]

12. I guarantee you somewhere in the bowels

of the pentagon, they are writing up their new vision for the new draft to be added to PNAC. They somehow forgot to add that into the original version for the new, glorious Amerikan Century.

[Whoa_Nelly]

14. Dimbo always does the opposite

of what he states. WooHoo! Could this mean that troops will begin withdrawal within the next few months? (partly sarcasm/partly really wondering...)

[KansDem]

16. This irks me!

I’ve heard/read this comment and find it inflammatory. Just who in the Hell does Bush thinks he is! (I know, I know…he thinks he’s the US President). But really, don’t you get angry when he includes YOU in what he and his criminal regime are doing? His declarations that “America will never run,” and “…the mission is vital,” would be laughable if there weren’t such tragedy involved. Bush speaks as if he had a mandate; Bush speaks as if he actually WON the 2000 election. Someone needs to slap some sense into him and bring him back to reality. Stop including the American People in his plans for illegal, immoral, inhuman wars for global domination and cheap oil.

He is a criminal; his administration is loaded with criminals. They are The Mob transposed to the world stage. Al Capone would be green with envy.

This is reminiscent of Nixon’s “Peace with Honor” bullshit: Americans wanted peace; Nixon wanted honor. Peace finally came but it took years and many American lives. Nixon never got his “honor.” So shut the f*ck up, Georgie! WE don’t care about your plans for PNAC!

Get out of Iraq, NOW, and stop this charade!

[ProudGerman]

41. Actually, I prefer that to what he usually states

Most of the time, from him, it goes like "My govermnent this, My government that". Now that doesn't only just irk me, it bugs the shit out of me.

I see the part you pointed out as an improvement, marginal, but an improvement nontheless.

[AWD]

18. Screenshot that, QUICK!

America will never run," Bush said

Get that saved! More fuel for the fire when he pulls out of the war we TOLD him he couldn't win.

[Say_What]

26. Save this one as well...

[gratuitous]

20. Well, it's not like he's in any danger

So, what's the problem? "Some of you will be hurt or even killed for the oil of Iraq, but that's a risk I'm willing to take." Quick, was that W, the Prince from Shrek, or some other cartoon character?

Please keep off of the grass,
Shine your shoes,
Wipe your . . . face!
Duloc is a perfect place.

[0007]

25. How come we don't hear from Ahmed Chalabi anymore....

The U.S. could make him a General and he could lead the Charge. Chalabi told us he knew the Iraqi people and knew what they wanted.

[gratuitous]

27. He was in charge only during September

In the "king for a month" contest, Chalabi was the Grand Poobah for Iraq only during September, when he got to go to the UN and watch Chimpy grovel for international goodwill and lucre. He's rotated out of the position now, so we don't have to see his weasel-like visage for a while. I'm sure that right now, he prefers it that way.

[nomaco-10]

28. He has fell out of favor with

King George's court, seems that they got soma dat der bad intelligence from 'em. He told the emperor chimp that the Iraqi people would welcome us with sweetbreads and flowers.

[Malva Zebrina]

31. this is the guy

that could not admit he loses to anyone. Remember during the campaign it was brought out that he would not admit he lost to a tennis opponent when he was beaten, and would make that opponenet keep playing and playing until Bush finally won? He, in his adolescent, puny little boy mind, thinks if he can athletically beat someone that proves he is a real man. He thinks the Secret Service is trying to keep up with him on these runs in the hundred degree heat--without having the analytic ability and the sophistication, to realize that he is their boss and of course he will come in first! Very Oedipal--as that cartoon I saw on DU today calls him, from President baby.

In this case, however, his stubborn president baby ego is causing the unnecessary deaths of our precious children--he will try, desperately, to preserve his pathetic "manhood" by insisting that he win--but it is becoming increasingly clear that he is losing--and we are losing our children to his folly.

[DoYouEverWonder]

33. Bush: U.S. Will 'Never Run' From Iraq - Yahoo News Headline

Yahoo News

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - President Bush (news - web sites) came here to talk about the nation's economy but it was his message about Iraq (news - web sites) — a day after an Army helicopter was shot down — that brought a crowd to its feet Monday when he declared: "The enemy in Iraq believes America will run ... America will never run."

The president did not mention it specificially, but it was clear that the 16 Americans killed in Sunday's helicopter crash were on the minds of the 350 people gathered at a crane company for his speech.



Maybe the US will never run, but all W has ever done in his life is run. He ran from Vietnam, he ran from Alabama, and he ran on 9-11. He couldn't even bother to fucking get up yesterday and express his condolences to the families of the troops that had just gotten killed in the worst attack since the start of the war.

Besides, how the hell can you run from some place if you've never fucking been there W?

[dArKeR]

34. Saddam offered a dual to Bush to solve this. Bush is the coward?

Just think of the agony Bush could have saved America!

If Saddam let Bush pick the weapons between a fighter jet and rifle I'm sure Junior would have chosen
the rifle because he never fly a jet. I can feel this one in my bones! And I've never seen any picture or indenpendent (honest) report of a person claiming they actually saw him fly solo.

[pinniped]

35. LOL!...I remember that!

BULLshyt is indeed a POS rat coward.

What was that cretins excuse again? Or did Rattus norvegicus even issue one?

The only thing that POS imposter pres. aka R. norvegicus ever flew was that Disneyland plane at Tomorrowland. And even then R. norvegicus had to have his mommy take the controls.

[rocktivity]

36. Major combat operations have JUST BEGUN, and we're LOSING!!!

What part of that does he not understand?


rocknation

[Kinkistyle]

40. We're not losing, but the Iraqis are losing big-time.

When I say Iraqi's I mean the average Iraqi citizen. They are the ones who are losing (safety, property, lives). Unfortunately I believe that some Americans would rather just "mow them all down" and glass the Fertile Valley than admit loss.

[mumon]

38. "America will never run..."

http://www.ironworks.com/comedy/python/cheeshop.htm



Customer: Good Morning.

Owner: Good morning, Sir. Welcome to the National Cheese Emporium!

Customer: Ah, thank you, my good man.

Owner: What can I do for you, Sir?

Customer: Well, I was, uh, sitting in the public library on Thurmon Street just now, skimming through Rogue Herrys by Hugh Walpole, and I suddenly came over all peckish.

Owner: Peckish, sir?

Customer: Esuriant.

Owner: Eh?

Customer: 'Ee, ah wor 'ungry-loike!

Owner: Ah, hungry!

Customer: In a nutshell. And I thought to myself, "a little fermented curd will do the trick," so, I curtailed my Walpoling activites, sallied forth, and infiltrated your place of purveyance to negotiate the vending of some cheesy comestibles!

Owner: Come again?

Customer: I want to buy some cheese....



Customer: Any Norweigan Jarlsburg, per chance.

Owner: No....



Customer: Cheshire?

Owner: No.

Customer: Dorset Bluveny?

Owner: No.

Customer: Brie, Roquefort, Pol le Veq, Port Salut, Savoy Aire, Saint Paulin, Carrier de lest, Bres Bleu, Bruson?

Owner: No.

Customer: Camenbert, perhaps?

Owner: Ah! We have Camenbert, yessir.

Customer: (suprised) You do! Excellent.

Owner: Yessir. It's..ah,.....it's a bit runny...

Customer: Oh, I like it runny.

Owner: Well,.. It's very runny, actually, sir.

Customer: No matter. Fetch hither the fromage de la Belle France! Mmmwah!

Owner: I...think it's a bit runnier than you'll like it, sir.



Sorry folks, that's what I thought of when I heard this sound-bite.

[sungkathak]

39. Of course, the dead is not his children

And he wants to maintain the grasp of oil field for his boss.