This guy can either be President, or pick the next one.
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Does this mean 130 Army Reserve troops headed for Iraq one year early as part of the surge ... won't have to go?

BAGHDAD, Iraq Feb 25, 2007 (AP)-- About 130 fresh Iraqi troops from the country's Kurdish north flew into Baghdad on Sunday to join the fight for the nation's capital with the promise of a $200 bonus, nearly a month's pay.

hey nogo pissoff anyone ever tell you that you are grade A asshole? If not I just did. You lowlife piece of dog crap. All you ever do is degrade the country you live in.

Currently our casualties are lower then Clinton(D)'s peacetime army and Baghdad is safer then New Orleans...

Regardless of how "successful" the surge is the (D)emocrats will try to "katrina" the results.

As a disabled vet I honor the returning troops and their families..This is a story more important than that lady that is still dead....I really do believe there has been enough sorrow in our nation. If you want to deride me in a simplistic manner just because I say "No More" ..than go right ahead..

Sunday, February 25, 2007

INDIANAPOLIS -- A morphine drip kept Ethan Biggers comfortable as a steady stream of relatives and friends came to his hospital room to say goodbye -- including two men he served with in Iraq who brought him his Purple Heart.

The Army specialist's service to his country has come to an end.

In recent days, the walls of his fourth-floor room at the Richard L. Roudebush Veterans Affairs Medical Center had become a memorial to the life of the 22-year-old Beavercreek soldier. He died early Saturday morning after spending nearly a year in a coma after he was shot in the head during his second tour of duty in Iraq.

His family filled the room with large photos of special moments and people in Ethan's life in case he woke up.

But as the family approached the March 5 anniversary of his injury, they realized that wasn't going to happen.

Because Ethan never filled out a living will, they struggled with one of the most difficult questions imaginable: What would Ethan want?

He had given his father, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base physicist Rand Biggers, power of attorney, enabling him to make decisions about his medical care. But Ethan outlived his father. Rand died in a traffic accident last July.

Before his death, Rand was clearly conflicted about the decision that awaited.

"I won't leave him in a vegetative state," he said. "I want to give him and God enough time."

It was Matt, the twin brother who joined the Army with Ethan and held his hand during the nine-hour flight home from Germany after he was wounded, who finally decided that it was time to let his brother go.

Ethan's older sister, Liza, prayed for a sign they were making the right decision.

What would Ethan want?

As Ethan's health took a turn for the worse and his fever spiked to 104 degrees, she had her answer. Matt had Ethan's feeding tube removed on Feb. 13.

The Biggers family has struggled to make sense of a year marked by the birth in June of a son Ethan will never know, and the death of the father he idolized.

They've struggled with the awesome task of deciding how long to keep him alive.

"Now I think it gives us some peace with Ethan," Liza said last week. "We feel like my dad's there waiting."

>

It's a tear jerker story, no doubt nogo, but no sadder than the 3,000 deaths were trying to make a one-time thing.

That was not my point...there are a number of vet sites with links to small town papers that report of the returning dead or wounded..These articles give a real person and their family and friends to statistics we are exposed to on a daily basis. I chose this one only because I came across it today. It is not to say that it is a greater or lesser situation..only that it is.

Nogo,

The problem is that your "no more" really means "no more now LOTS MORE LATER"!!

Dam, Joe sounds more warhawkish then the spineless so called conservatives populating D.C.?

Hey Joe, get on page one with Al Sadr and the rest of the libs.

Joe says:

We are now in a stronger position to ensure basic security--and with that, we are in a stronger position to marginalize the extremists and strengthen the moderates;

Maybe so, but by taking over critical security operations and posts in Baghdad we are delaying the ultimate objective of turning over Iraq's security to the Iraqis themselves. The longer we act as a proxy for the Shiites against the Sunnis in Iraq the longer we postpone the day of reckoning when they will have to face each other without the US military there to keep the peace. When that day comes, the Sunnis and Shiites will make the hard choice of whether they want a future together or a future apart (along with the civil war that would ensue).

All we have done is bought them some time but we haven't solved the core issue which is the 1300-year old split between Sunni and Shiite.

Check out Seymour Hersh's article on the Sunni-Shia conflict.

Larkin, that is a powerful article for several reasons both domestically and for the ME.

My question is, if this is true, how will the Shia majority react when they find-out Bush is stabbing them in the back?

Maybe that is why the Brits are cutting and running out of Iraq? They certainly don't want to get caught in the middle of war with Iraqi Shia and Iran.

Nogo, you probably won't like this, but I'm going to say it anyway in hopes that it might actually help you. Take it or leave it: I sincerely honor your sacrifice, but you're still behaving like an ass, constantly spewing bitterness and contempt. You go out of your way to annoy people on Wizbang, as far back as I can remember. I can't recall one civil post. I hope the rest of your life is better balanced.

The highest respect we can show you and your service is to treat you like everybody else, and I mean that. Sorry to say this, but disabled or not, get ahold of yourself and grow up. Bitterness is destroying you. And I'd bet a lunch this isn't the first time you've heard this.

$.02

Jesus Barney. The British aren't "cutting and running." They turned over their sector to the IA and they're moving to Afganistan to take up the slack from absent NATO forces. The IA as in the Iraqui Army who "continues to founder in its confrontations with insurgents?"

Except for all the ones the kill, of course.

Would that be the Seymour Hersh who has admitted he lies? Even Teddy Kennedy calls him a liar. lol. Bwahahahaha.... nice try.

Carry on.

brainy, sure they are. How do I know this, because Dick Cheney said so.

According to Cheney, redeployments is either cutting-and-running, or playing to the al Qaeda playbook.

He says that all the time, so take your pick.

If you're too dumb to see a difference between a group successfully completing its task and being moved to a theater where it would be more useful and a wholesale retreat... what assholes like you call "redeployment" vice its actual meaning... then you're pretty f'n ignorant.

brainy, why is it OK for Britain turn over security to a Shia controlled militia in SE Iraq, but the US can't turn over security to a Shia controlled militia in Baghdad?

The British turned over to government forces in a calm area. Baghdad is not a calm area. You need some colored charts or stick figures...maybe a puppet show...to figure this basic stuff out?

Have we really reached a point..where a simple post concerning the impact Iraq has had one one family is seen as "bitternss and contempt"?

a little NOLA music for the afternoon..
(if ya don't like the words..at least you can tap your foot)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShHe7nh5mkc&feature=PlayList&p=347A4A2CDC010A19&index=4&playnext=4

Don't lay that "Who, me?" stuff on us, nogo. It wasn't a simple post, but almost a year of nasty crap from you.

You like the clip, you listen to it. I won't waste the time.

Brainy, according to the MSM, attacks are the same or increasing against British troops. The attacks are more sophisticated and deadlier.

This article indicates that British troops have ZERO control over Basra.

Toby Dodge, an Iraq expert at London's Institute of Strategic Studies, had little time for such claims. Britain, he said, was being "criminally irresponsible" in abandoning the people of
"Basra to the ravages of "militias, criminals and a police force fighting for control". He added: "Once the British forces withdraw from the city, there will be no restraints at all."

But others believe that Britain has been fighting a losing battle in southern Iraq since the looting and anarchy that followed Saddam's fall in 2003. "The British may not have been defeated in a purely military sense, but lost long ago in the political sense," said Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

The article goes on and on about how the militias are running the province, and not the British or the IA.

So Brainy, again there appears to be no difference between the situation in Baghdad and Basra.

If the British can cut and run, why can't we?

If the British can cut and run, why can't we?

If you listen to Cheney's spin on the British retreat from Basra you can see an indication of what may be the administration's grand political strategy here. The idea is that they will get Baghdad under control, claim victory, and then begin to withdraw in time for the 2008 campaign season. They will savage opponents of the surge and claim if they had their way we would have "lost".

Meanwhile, we will have further bloodied the Sunni insurgency, while giving a free pass to the Shiite militias. The Iraqi police and military will slip even further into the control of the Shiite Islamic extremist political parties and the Iranians will secure their foothold in Iraq. Women will start disappearing into burkhas and religious police will start terrorizing the people on the streets. The Sunnis will be forced out of Shiite areas into an impoverished western Iraq that will be a hotbed for Al Qaeda for the 20 years.

And the administration will, with a straight face mind you, call this "victory".

Well, what the hell, if it gets our troops out of Iraq I'm all for it.

"Toby Dodge, an Iraq expert at London's Institute of Strategic Studies, had little time for such claims."

Ah, yes. The "some guy" in "some article" in "some publication" doesn't "have time" for "some position" as enumerated by "someone else" in "some other article" in "some other publication" defense. Of course. How could I be so blind all this time.

(Rolls eyes.)

Patraeus is a Democrat, but not the "right" kind of Democrap.

He wants victory; the others want to lose.

They're essentially losers.