Now, as of last night, I believe John Edwards clearly won the debate, decisively, even taking Barack Obama’s Iraq mantle away. Barack by being a candidate who supports the GWOT and having it both ways with his mentor Lieberman on Iraq and suddenly after funding the war continuously, he is supposedly the anti-war candidate. And now that John Edwards’s commitment to actually leaving Iraq is far greater and genuine than Barack’s commitment, there seems to be a genuine disconnect here, as far as some of his supporters are concerned.
Now I’ve had some people say to me:
"I’m a logistics expert, there’s no way we can get out troops out in one year or anything close to it. There’s too much equipment etc."
Despite the fact that whether someone is or isn’t, I’m always skeptical, when they try to start a conversation like that. I’m a lawyer! I’m a teacher I’m a scientist! I’m a genius! What’s the point, if you’re so sure of yourself? Won’t I find out? Why the bold declaration, if you’re so sure of yourself? Well, here goes the false rhetoric used by some Obama and HRC supporters to fend off their candidates' lackluster Iraq proposal; REAL logistics experts say that we can have all combat troops home within a year:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/...
The 20 ground combat brigades deployed here will fill 10,000 flatbed trucks and will take a year to move, logistics experts say. A full withdrawal, shipping home some 200,000 Americans and thousands of tons of equipment, dismantling dozens of American bases and disposing of tons of accumulated toxic waste, will take 20 months or longer, they estimate.
Now what was implied to me, was that Edwards somehow lying, because they took Edwards out of context, which isn’t surprising these days, but as I have shown Edwards's strong commitment to bringing all troops home is quite valid. Especially considering Obama will have permanent military bases in Iraq, and despite the facts I’ll lay out for you later, he stated at the debate that we must have a mission against Al Qaeda by keeping combat troops within Iraq. Just because it will take 20 months or longer to remove all of our equipment, doesn’t means at all that we can’t have all our combat brigades out of Iraq, says REAL logistics experts. Now I know a lot of the partisans will be fuming, but let's take a look at precisely why John Edwards is head above the rest on this issue, period:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/...
One idea gaining ground is to withdraw all "combat forces" and reassign the remaining troops to fighting insurgents and training and advising Iraq's forces.
Now in fairness, all the top tiers including John Edwards took this position at one time, but something happened; John Edwards progressed, because he is the real progressive in this race. Anyone who wants to deny that, might not like reading this:
But those missions would require almost as many troops as there are in Iraq today, officers said, and would hardly remove Americans from the fight. Those who remained would still require the full spectrum of support: food, housing, medical care, intelligence support and the air cover provided by U.S. strike fighters. As they do now for resupply, all would depend on dozens of daily truck convoys, which themselves require ground troops and air support for protection.
So BO and HRC are disingenuous when they talk about ending the war to this day, but they also support permanent military bases, and a tacit disavowal that there is no military solution in Iraq, by continuing the occupation which could take almost as many troops in Iraq as there is today. Not to mention HRC and BO both mention Al Qaeda as the biggest threat in accordance with what our President has said recently. I don't know about you, but I find that a little worrisome. If they said insurgents, that might be a little better, but I still don't like hearing the same rhetoric coming from them, as I do from President Bush.
Anyway, the fact remains that deploying and reducing casualties of actual people is the first and foremost our most important goal. After all, by decreasing the overall mode of descent by actually deploying and actually showing the Iraqis that we are not trying to rule their country and tell them how to live or what they want; sending the message the only way that we possibly could; by leaving. And equipment is less important than the loved ones and time off that all of our soldiers are entitled to. They have all done their duty.
The Edwards family knows this. They can empathize; Elizabeth Edwards has a fond memory of growing up traveling the world with her father as a military brat. They can also personally empathize with soldiers' families, because of their driving anger that 200,000 soldiers are sleeping under bridges, because of this administration's policies; as well as remembering personal stories along the way that drive home this much needed outrage. It's time to reject this administration's rhetoric in all aspects. It technically may take more than one year to transport all equipment, but there’s no reason to think that we cannot deploy all Combat troops from Iraq as I have also shown. To assume so, to me, seems inaccurate and also ignores history:
http://www.thenews.com.pk/...
When negotiations stalemated, the Nixon administration moved to implement what could be done unilaterally without undermining the political structure of South Vietnam. Between 1969 and 1972, it withdrew 515,000 American troops, ended American ground combat in 1971 and reduced American casualties by nearly 90 per cent. A graduated withdrawal compatible with preventing a takeover by radical Islam in Iraq is also a serious challenge in Iraq.
That’s right we actually had 515,000 American troops in Vietnam and they were deployed home in about a little over two years, since all combat operations in Vietnam ended in 1971 speeding up the process. And to make this better, I’m going to give you a fairly accurate figure from a good source as to how many troops we actually have in Iraq in comparison:
This Brookings institute study has a lot of important information on all aspects of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
So we have 170,961 troops in Iraq as of December 2007
And what’s 515,000/ 170,961? About 3 times the number of troops we have in Iraq. So in two years we deployed about 3 times as many troops that we have in Iraq now, from Vietnam to the United States from 1969 to 1971. So there goes another attempt to portray Edwards position here as not realistic or that somehow it’s exaggerated, because reality and history dictate that deploying all combat troops out of Iraq is indeed possible, when we compare the two examples, because the load is 1/3 the amount during the closing years of our occupation in Vietnam. I’m talking about bringing all the troops home and ending this civil war that we have no business being involved in.
For those who actually think bringing the troops home from policing a civil war is not a good idea. Just say so, but don’t act like you’re making any valid excuses, when one candidate is actually serious about ending this war and one is not. I call that as of now, today. Not 2003. I understand the human condition, and I remember Bobby Kennedy, so your perfect standards for a candidate are unrealistic, and BO is far from that candidate.
For those who don’t know that Al Qaeda is a very small presence in Iraq. Not enough to concern another combat mission, like Obama and HRC have admitted that they still stick to. John Edwards does not support a continuing mission and there is no logical reason why he cannot have all troops out in one year, like he says, and I have proven, despite a few thousand to protect our embassy, while brigades are transferred, as they were in Vietnam also. As you see, 90% of causalities went down, as soon as the Vietnam conflict was coming to an end. That’s the real goal here, is the human cost. And this is a shaky excuse to par off John Edwards’s position here as somehow less progressive.
You know what both HRC and Bo are supporting? The ideology of the Bush doctrine, but in this particular context, it’s pointing and referencing Al Qaeda as the serious problem to bring into the debate. Both HRC and Bo have invoked Al Qaeda as a reason to still continue a combat mission in Iraq, even though we know that there is no military solution, like Vietnam.
This is from 2007, so it’s not that long ago:
http://smallwarsjournal.com/...
A better question is whom are we fighting? The response heard most often is that we are fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq. In May 2007 the President declared "Al Qaeda is public enemy number one in Iraq." The consensus opinion, from the Pentagon to the PFC, is that America is waging a desperate fight against Al Qaeda both in and out of Iraq and it will directly determine the national security on the streets of Europe and America. Additionally, for four years Abu Mussab Zarqawi, AQI’s first leader, was portrayed as the commander of the insurgency. It was an easily consumable media narrative so effective that even the Iraqis believed it until his death.
There is no question that Al Qaeda is a real threat but are they the main threat? Has AQI has been catapulted to the top of the insurgency by virtue of the fact that they carry out the most dramatic and sectarian attacks or hard intelligence? In fact, listening to Washington one would think that the coalition forces are pretty much fighting "All AQI. All the Time." As with most things in Mesopotamia, this is not nearly so clear cut. The answer may or may not surprise you.
How are we going to trust Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, when they are using the same excuse as the President to keep combat missions going in Iraq? To imply that there is no distinctive difference between John Edwards Iraq policy and his own was dishonest and disingenuous. Bush’s same rhetoric was implicitly used by Obama to par off John Edwards genuine stance to leave Iraq. Obama ignored these facts:
http://smallwarsjournal.com/...
We Really Don’t Know Our Enemy That Well - It is well documented that the Sunni insurgency is composed of three wings of insurgents. It is composed of the nationalist Former Regime Loyalists (FRLs) and their former military elements (FREs). This force may be upwards to 29,000 active combatants carrying out over 100 unconventional attacks per day using improvised explosive devices, rockets and automatic weapons ambushes. The FRL-originated Jaysh al-Mujahideen is composed of former Saddam Fedayeen, Special Republican Guard intelligence officers, former-Ba'athists, Sunni volunteers and their families. The second wing is the nationalist Iraqi Religious Extremists (IREs). These are forces including the Islamic Army of Iraq, Ansar al-Sunnah and other smaller groups, which may total approximately 5,000 fighters, sprinkled throughout western, central and northern Iraq. On occasion come into the conversation when one of their attacks is particularly daring or when the coalition claims it is negotiating their departure from the battlefront. Inevitably these "lesser" insurgent groups are portrayed as bit players on the sidelines of the epic.
Finally, the foreign fighters of the Al Qaeda in Iraq and its umbrella group the Islamic Emirate of Iraq (aka Islamic State of Iraq) may be as few as 1,500 fighters and supporters and may also have direct links to the two other tiers. Overwhelming evidence exists that that the FRLs have been waging the lion’s share of the insurgency. Until 2004 they were considered a separate part of the insurgency but recently they have been called ‘Al Qaeda-associated’ because AQI was operating in their area of operations ... by 2007 it wasn’t hard for Washington to make a semantic and rhetorical leap to refer to all insurgency forces as "Al Qaeda."
This is an error worth remembering. For over four years the FRLs (especially the paramilitary Saddam Fedayeen and Special Republican Guard) almost exclusively carries out IED, indirect fire (IDF), sniping, aircraft shoot downs and ambush attacks with conventional weapons with alarming regularity which account for the lion share of the US forces’ 3,500 KIAs. The smaller IREs did the same type of attacks but occasionally peppered their missions with Suicide bombings. AQI almost exclusively perform carries out suicide car bombings and suicide vest bombings (SVBIED/SPBIED). They occasionally perform IED, rocket, MANPAD and even a few impressive massed infantry attacks on Iraqi Police and government buildings (such as the symbolic assault on Abu Ghraieb prison in 2005). In fact, AQI’s impact on US forces is actually quite small in comparison to the FRLs and IREs.
When the first SVBIEDs of the post-war were launched against the Jordanian embassy, the UN’s Canal Road HQ and Sheik Hakim in Najaf the mindset of our commanders was to associate all insurgent related terrorism events to Zarqawi and Al Qaeda. This group-think about the foreign fighters went on right up until Zarqawi was killed in 2006. Faced with an increase in IED and SVBIED attacks after his death, and because some minor groups were joining forces in resistance councils it became convenient to call everyone Al Qaeda in Iraq.
Now, I hope everyone learned a thing or two about which candidates are using President Bush’s rhetoric, TODAY. Not 2003, and John Edwards called his vote, "The worst mistake of my life," but that apparently is lost on deaf ears. people apparently don't remember Bobby Kennedy, but fine, whatever. It doesn't change the fact that John Edwards has taken a major step and his Iraq policy, which calls for, "No permanent military bases in Iraq," as he stated over and over again in last night’s debate, but Obama supporters here and believe what they want to believe.
And I hope I don’t hear anymore so-called military logistics exerts telling me we cannot have all combat brigades out of Iraq, because that is simply false and goes against what REAL military logistics experts have stated. But if you support Obama or Hillary, you support a continuing occupation and you support permanent military bases in Iraq. It’s that simple. Notice how they both quieted down once that was spoken of. Barack Obama’s biggest issue for his supporters was shot down; it doesn’t matter if the pundits don’t recognize this (Tim Russert was willfully ignorant in his post-debate analysis) for they don’t want to. But I better not hear anything else about how Barack is the most genuine when it comes to the Iraq war, because he wrote a speech in 2003, while fully funding it in the senate.
So we can have all combat brigades out in a year; that is no lie, no matter who wishes it was for political reasons. Or that they think military equipment has a family like real soldiers do, who need to get treated for PTSD because this war has taken it’s toll on our brave men and women fighting in uniform. It will take more than a year to end the entire occupation including equipment and removing toxic waste etc. But our troops can be home within a year and like Vietnam casualties will begin to fall 90% during that time, and we can finally end this endless occupation, if you pick the right candidate and study history.
John Edwards has defined this race at every turn and now he has defined himself head above the rest, when it comes to actually ending this debacle, as was shown in last night’s debate. You can argue with me about this, but I’ll just keep repeating, "permanent military bases," until you "hope" yourself away to a magical place where logic and reason apparently up for "change." But seriously, when Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton make this dodge, it’s important to know where it’s coming from and what is actually behind it. We need a candidate with real conviction on this issue and John Edwards is the only one.
We need to nominate John Edwards if w want this war to end and we don’t want permanent military bases in Iraq; we also don’t want to use any of Bush’s non-substantial excuses about Al Qaeda being the number open threat and that we must stay and occupy Iraq to go after them, because that is simply not true as I have shown.
Now my style of a diary is a little hard edged, but I’m angry. I think unless you are angry and want someone to fight for you, you are not really paying attention to how bad things really are. I do respect some of Obama and Hillary’’s supporters, but I’m also frustrated with them; no serious historical changes were brought on by "hoping you can convince irrational people to suddenly have a rational set of views on anything really important that affects America as a whole." I don’t want to find common ground with think tanks like PNAC and the Heritage Foundation. To do so, is a capitulation, as well as finding common ground with Insurance companies, drug companies, and their lobbyists because they are not interested in anything but their bottom line.
It’s time to think realistically and nominate the candidate who is ready for this fight. That candidate is John Edwards.