f13.net

I leave for a few days and...

Should Rumsfeld resign?

Personally, I think that's what the election is for.  Retiring someone for something he had nothing to do with is stupid.  Seriously, this isn't Watergate; This does not go all the way to the top.

edit:  In case you live under a rock.  (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8575-2004May7.html)

Despite my general hatred of the administration, I don't see why Rumsfeld should be held accountable for the torture of prisoners in Iraq. I seriously doubt he ordered such things himself, and I don't believe there was any sort of cover-up. I remember very well the Pentagon press conference in January detailing that investigations were under way into prisoner abuse at Abu Gharib and elsewhere; that people were so monumentally shocked by these revelations now demonstrate nothing other than widespread American indifference to the news except when it is trashy and lurid.

That said, I find it funny that people are up in arms over this scandal. It is certainly damaging to the country's credibility in Iraq, and repugnant to anyone with a shred of humanity in them, but it is nevertheless a tempest in a teacup. If people want to demand Rumsfeld's resignation, why not for something he was directly at fault for, rather than an area in which any connection on his part is dubious? This was the man who concocted discredited reasons for invading Iraq, who contradicted both his generals  and the State Department in the planning of the invasion and was proven wrong by both, and whose relentless unilaterialism has denied us any significant aid during the occupation and rebuilding process. In other words, Rumsfeld has acted with at best minimal competence and at worst absolute incompetence throughout the Iraq affair. The decisions he forced through against general opposition in the government--to keep troop levels throughout the war and occupation to a minimum, to rely on the illusory pro-Western sentiment of the Iraqis, to pooh-pooh both the UN and State Department--have undeniably prolonged the rebuilding of Iraq and led to unnecessary civilian and military deaths.

If he is to resign, let him resign for that, not a prisoner scandal that even I will admit it wasn't his job to be aware of.

You really seem to have absolutely no clue about where a secdef's influences start and stop.  If you want to lay blame for most of the nonsense you've mentioned, lay it at President Bush's feet, definitely not Rumsfeld's.

Shit, I'd be hard pressed to come up with a more efficient, capable, and transformative defense secretary in the past 50 years.  This is a guy who's guided a huge organization in fighting two wars in two years time, who hasn't been afraid to scrap bloated-ass programs like Comanche, and who recognizes that our forces need to be lighter and more mobile.  As far as I'm concerned, the guy's a national treasure.

Uh Oh, Politics. Is this allowed here?


Anyways...Rummy. The man who can win wars (and how was THAT a hard accomplisment for the US!?!?!?)...well one of them was mostly using merc's and the odd B52. The other was aginast one of the weakest armies on the planet that the Pentagon had been preparing for for over a decade...and TOTALLY FAIL TO WIN POLITICALY.

Both Afgaistain (What's the world poppy prodcution now?) and Iraq have ended in near disasters. What's more, Iraq has weakened the US ground fighting forces to years of rebuilding (Did you know the Pentagon is now asking for bullets from FORIGN scorces now?) and destroyed, near completly, US forign policy with nearly all your allies (Apart from England, Australia and a few East Euro countires, all of which have elections coming up).

And Rummy is one of the people directly responsible for these near total faliures. A blind and deaf drunk monkey could beat the Taliban and Iraq.


...oh, he did.

You're focusing on Rumsfeld's formal secretarial powers rather than his actual influence in the executive branch. Everything that I mentioned in my first post did spring from the mind of Rumsfeld, and was carried through despite the opposition of competing authorities; and much of this involved trampling on the prerogatives traditionally exercised (much more successfully) by the State Department.

You could argue that since these failings on the part of Rumsfeld have been outside the formal scope of his powers, that he really shouldn't be held accountable for them: after all, he only gave advice, and it was up to Bush to say yay or nay. I agree to some extent, but Bush can't be fired until November. Besideswhich, such a fate for Rumsfeld seems only fitting: he has routinely nailed his colors to the mast, usually in contravention of expert opinion, often outside the powers delegated to him, and (except in one instance noted below) has invariably been wrong.



Afghanistan was largely a matter of providing logistical support for dissident warlords opposed to the Taliban. The nil-morale Iraqi regular military melted away after token resistance. I would hardly compare his 'accomplishments' in this regard to any of his Cold War predecessors (even his own lackluster first secretaryship under Ford): juggling a large-scale war (Korea, Vietnam) and deterrence of the Soviets versus overthrowing two unstable, impoverished regimes that had no international backing.

As for your latter point, I agree to some extent. The future wars that Rumsfeld would like to see us fight will undoubtedly require a change in appropriations priorities away from main battle tanks, air superiority fighters and mobile howitzers to programs like the... uh, Stryker. But I do think he is in the right on this one, and when I mentioned his opposition to expert opinion earlier, I wasn't referring to his rattling the cages of military brass who have their interests vested in expensive weapons systems intended for superpower confrontations. (Though I have to note that if the Pentagon continues to egg on Taiwan regarding the independence issue, in opposition to the official line coming out of State, we may have one before very long.)

Frankly, if Rumsfeld didn't have the desire to have his fingers in every pie, or if Bush wasn't soft-headed enough to let him, a number of dire mistakes that are resulting in American casualties would not have been made. That is reason even for me for him to be replaced. While some Republicans in Congress have come out to make oracular statements to the effect that it might be best if Rumsfeld resigned, I have no idea what their motives are, and Bush is sufficiently under Rumsfeld's thumb (http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/05/10/iraq.abuse.main/index.html) that I doubt he'll let him go.

It doesn't really matter whether or not he deserves to be fired.  I think that if we have any interest in salvaging some amount of Iraqi and Arab popular opinion after this whole S&M torture fiasco, some high level heads will need to roll.

Bringing the actual perpetrators to justice will be a good thing, but to really swing public opinion, someone a little higher than Sgt. will need to be nailed.

Though Rumsfeld may not ultimately be to blame for the tortue fiasco, he is at least partly to blame for:

1) Intelligence failures (and outright intentional ignornance of intelligence contrary to the administration's political agenda) that were thrust upon the American people as causes for the Iraqi war
2) Misuse of American armed forces resulting in the overextension of our reserves and national guard in active duty
3) It wasn't until recently (post 9-11) that he really started trying to retool our military away from superpower confrontations despite no obvious superpower threat

The people in command at Abu Ghraib (sic) should be court-martialed along with the perpetrators. Even if they didn't order the torture, they were in charge of the men who did. If the torture was so widespread as has been intimated, not only SHOULD they have known, their subordinates should have known and everyone down the chain of command should have known. If they didn't know, they shouldn't be in charge of a prison.

He stood up in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the entire world and said, "These events occurred on my watch. As secretary of defense, I am accountable for them and I take full responsibility."  The next words out of his mouth should have been "I hereby tender my resignation as secretary of defense".

Apparently in NeoConSpeak, "I am accountable and I take full responsibility" means "I take no responsibility whatsoever and absolutely decline to be held accountable."

Bullshit.  It means that a secretary of defense isn't an omniscient being, but that he will get to the bottom of it.

Or is it your position that any time something embarassing happens, or a battle goes badly, that the secdef should resign because it's his responsibility?  Seems to me that that would be pretty goddamned counterproductive, and I shudder to think of the pussy defense secretaries that would be in our future.  

This is analagous to a governor of a state tendering his resignation because of a group of prison guards abusing the prisoners under their charge.  Not too likely, is it?

My position is exactly as I stated it: if he wasn't going to accept responsibility, he had no business standing up before the Senate and saying "I accept full responsibility."  If he wasn't going to allow himself to be held accountable, what the fuck did he say "I am accountable" for?  Does he even know what "accountable" and "responsibility" mean?  I'm certain that Bush doesn't.

No-one has suggested that Rumsfeld personally flew over to Baghdad and started pistol whipping prisoners and forcing them to perform fellatio on one another.  Nevertheless, it is on his authority that the military has been using torture in interrogating prisoners in Cuba, Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001.  He sent General G.D. Miller, the former overseer of the Guantanamo facility to Iraq last August to "Gitmoize" the Iraqi detention operation (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13065-2004May9?language=printer) and to make sure that Iraqi prisoners were being interrogated as aggressively as possible.  He is also the man who is responsible for US troops being so shorthanded in Iraq in the first place, which was one of General Taguba's main criticisms in his report, who noted that the Abu Ghraib facility normally housed between 6 and 7000 prisoners but was operated by only one batallion - inadequately trained to operate a prison in the first place - whereas the High Value Detainee unit was also operated by an entire batallion, to guard around 100 prisoners.  Finally, he's responsible for having known that all this was going on but ignoring it, not bothering to bring it to the attention of either the President, the rest of the cabinet, or the Senate.

In summary, his repeated failures as secretary of defense created the situation, and then failed to correct it or call attention to it, let alone "get to the bottom of it".  I'm happy for you that you don't think he bears any responsibility - but he disagrees, and has publically admitted his culpability.



In a situation like that, the warden of the prison would probably lose his job, and probab ly the state director of prisons too.  And hey, imagine that!  One of the civilian contractors who helped rebuild Abu Ghraib, O. Lane McCotter just happens to be the former state prison director for Utah, who - can you believe it - was forced to tender his resignation after a scandal where a mentally ill prisoner died from being strapped naked to a restraining chair for sixteen hours.  Looks like he got to put his talents to the service of the nation instead.

Where did I say that, genius?

He does bear some responsibility, but it's a matter of degree.  Would you say that a defense secretary is 100% responsible for every illegal action ever committed by a service member?  Every incident of drunk driving, every murder, every rape, and every theft?  Remember that he's got a massive population under his charge and cannot monitor everything.  

His responsibility is to investigate how systemic this was and bring charges against those culpable.  This has already begun, and I fail to see what him resigning would accomplish.

I would say that a defense secretary is 100% responsible for 100% of the things he publicly states "I am accountable and I take full responsibility" for.

Dictionary definition of "responsible", since it appears to hold no meaning for you, with a bonus definition of "accountable" in its political sense (http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=responsible)

If it's found that those acts are systemic in the military prison system, yes, he should be held responsible. If the commanding officers of the prison knew such things were going on and it was not discouraged, the chain of command failed from the top down. If the abuses are as widespread as is being reported, yes, Rumsfeld is responsible for not instilling the correct priorities in the system.

Are you aware of the degree of separation from Sec Def to a batallion commander? Fuck its thousands of people and thats ONE Btn.

Yes, I am aware of the degrees of separation between battalion commander and the secretary of defense. Regardless, he is the leader. He is responsible for those under his command, the policies they hand down to their subordinates, etc.

Were it one soldier, no, I wouldn't think Rummy should resign. So far, the accounts I've heard are pointing to military intelligence giving directives to the military police which were contrary to established protocols on preparation of prisoners for interrogation. Not only is military intelligence not to do that, the military police are not trained for that task and as such were not given clear policies on how to carry out this directive.

Whose fault is it besides the individual soldiers? IMO, the military intelligence apparatus which clearly exceeded its authority, the military police chain of command at Abu Ghraib for not calling military intelligence on the carpet for giving such orders, the generals and the secretary of defense who oversaw troop rotations into the region that put the military police in a situation they were not trained for and should not have been in charge of, as well as the secretary of defense for not having a clear plan of action in place for how civil order and criminal detention would be handled before we attacked.

That is probably the most damning of your complaints. The rest of it COULD be brushed aside with the 'How is he supposed to know about EVERYTHING that happens' defense (although I happen to be on your side in this case), but this war plan was his baby. Not being ready for the occupation is a complete and utter failure.

These charges must be thoroughly investigated, and heads must roll (preferably off of shoulders with a lot of stars on them, or higher). I don't know if everyone realizes the catastrophic effect this is having on the USA's reputation worldwide. We always trumpet our values and freedoms and the big democracy party, but then we turn around and invade a country without widespread support, and THEN exacerbate it by torturing captives. The damage to the goodwill felt toward the US worldwide is incalculable.

If the administration had any brains at all, they would see this and realize that only by firing Rumsfeld or someone equally as visible can they even hope to contain some of the damage.

I'm too lazy to link it, but a recent poll cited by CNN--a proper scientific poll, not the sort that you find on the website's front page--stated that less than a third of the American public believes that Rumsfeld should resign because of the torture scandal.

Though I do agree that his public admission of full responsibility is going to come back and bite him on the ass if he neglects to resign. Even if he doesn't, I would be surprised if the administration didn't offer up one prominent defense leader to American and Iraqi public opinion. Perhaps, as has been floated by some congressional Republicans, Myers will step down as Chairman of the JCS.

If you read the report they were scheduled to be guards only and it was the unit commander who placed them under the MI unit. Just to clarify.



So basicly the theatre commander screwed the pooch on this one.

There should be no need to do this though WAP. The military has proceedures in place as SOP. Honestly I dont place blame for the actions themselves much farther than the BN commander. It was her responsibility to manage all those underneath and she didnt. She filed inaccuate reports and neglected training her troops. As a line level NCO in a Ranger unit I had to give classes to the grunts on what was acceptable when dealing with POWs from the SOP.

I am sure that the military has procedures in place to take care of this, and that the guilty parties will be duly punished. That is not going to be enough to salvage the USA's reputation- a big name is going to have to fall on their sword to show true remorse and whatnot. Logic isn't ruling this- it is emotion.

true dat

All this talk about this prison guard jackasses not having enough training or not knowing what to do is complete and utter bullshit.

How much training and guidance do you need to know that sticking a chemical glowstick up someone's ass is not a good idea?

Every picture I see, the madder I get. Who the fuck are these people? What was going through their minds?

These fuckwit guards have betrayed all of the soldiers who are out there doing good work, all of the Iraqis who are risking their lives to help us and have humiliated and tarnished the honor of the United States.

Rumsfeld need not resign. What he needs to do is make sure the people responsible for this serve jail time and make sure it doesn't happen again. That's how he has to make up for this.

The backlash begins. (http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/05/11/iraq.main/index.html)

I doubt they would have treated this guy any differently without the prisoner abuses, but it gives them a nice convenient scapegoat.

Time to pull everyone out of there and nuke the whole fucking place from orbit. This is just sickening.

This week's Newsweek (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4934213/)

Donald Rumsfeld is the architect of this whole mess.  He set it in motion.  He ordered the rough interrogations in the first place, he signed off on Maj. Gen. Miller's recommendation that military prison guards be instructed to "soften up" prisoners for interrogation, and he ignored Maj. Gen. Ryder's report that abuses were taking place in Iraq in the fall of 2003 as well as repeated confidential warnings from the Red Cross, the State Department and Ambassador Bremer.  The soldiers of the 800th MP Brigade were sloppy, insufficiently trained and undermanned... but ultimately, they were carrying out Rumsfeld's orders.  Do you really think he's going to throw himself in jail?

Don't know how likely that will be, though. In one of the courtmartials that came to light in the wake of the pictures from Abu Gharib, a soldier was found guilty of murdering an Iraqi detainee. He was dishonorably discharged, but he didn't have to serve any jail time. If criminal charges won't be brought against a murderer, how much less so soldiers who tortured short of murder?



You know, if our government hadn't made a conscious decision to invade Iraq, this shit wouldn't be happening. About all that can be said in its defense is that Islamic terrorists might be attacking the United States if they didn't now have Iraq as their homicidal anti-American playground, but that is cold comfort to the people coming home in bags.

I wouldn't come down too hard on the individual enlisted guys.

http://www.new-life.net/milgram.htm

http://www.prisonexp.org/

The Milgram experiment and Stanford Prison Experiment both show clearly that if it were you in that situation you would do the exact same thing. Punish the people who create the situation, not those affected by it. Heads should roll from the top on this one.

People have routinely cited the Stanford Prison Experiment in conjunction with Abu Gharib as if its conclusion was that 'people will be sadistic assholes whenever they have the opportunity to be so,' which isn't actually the conclusion that Zimbardo comes to. In fact, Zimbardo notes that a majority of the 'guards' were either friendly types who never punished the 'prisoners' and did what they could to make the experience more agreeable for them, or people who stuck to the rules and only punished the 'prisoners' when the rules warranted. The sadists made up a small minority.

Yes, in any group of people, there are going to be some who abuse their authority when they have the opportunity to do so. But 'You can't blame the soldiers! It was only human nature!' is a bogus argument not supported by either research or common sense. Most people don't lose their humanity at the drop of a hat.

I don't think you quite understand the findings. In the Milgram case 100% of people went to the point where they thought the subject was dead. This experiment was repeated numerous times with every different type of person you can imagine.  Think about that for a moment. These are rational, well educated people pressing switches on a machine labelled "EXTREMELY DANGEROUS" and "XXX". 70% of the people continued to shock the person after they stopped responding and were presumed dead.

The Stanford Prison experiment is a poor study but a good parallel for Abu Gharib. The findings were flawed by the fact that Zimbardo was the warden and his grad students ran the show, but it reinforces what Milgram showed, which is that people are extremely sensitive to situational factors. You can't blame the people involved as ANY OTHER PERSON in their situation would have done the exact same thing. You blame the persons who created the situation, namely the officers in charge.

The Milgram experiment is relevant if and only if the soldiers in question were ordered by their superiors to torture the Iraqis; it was intended to test the limits of individual suggestibility at the hands of authority figures. While I am perfectly willing to believe that there is a cover-up involved to limit the damage of the revelations, the Taguba report found no evidence (http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=afxIpD3QvwZk&refer=us) that the soldiers at Abu Gharib were ever given written or verbal orders to behave as they did towards the detainees. Though other studies, notably the report by the Red Cross on American use of torture in Iraq, contradict these findings, I don't think that enough evidence has been revealed to confirm that these soldiers were acting under orders.

Unrelated edit: GOP senator claims Abu Gharib detainees were terrorists and we shouldn't worry too much about how they were treated (http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/05/11/inhofe.abuse/index.html); his comments are immediately disavowed by every other member on the Senate Armed Services Committee.



He must really get off on this stuff.

Best part is that he started saying all that while McCain was in the room.

Inhofe is from this state. He's one of those guys who makes me hide my head in shame every time he is on the news.

Wow. Out of touch much? I am surprised that McCain didn't go over the table and choke his dumb ass out.



Amen.

Uhhmmmm to quote the report



Sounds to me like something was done fairly quickly. You just didnt hear about it with pictures and all till now.

I, for one, agree with the Senator.  On one hand, we have sodomizing prisoners with a broom.  Wrong?  Most definitely.  But it is something that happens even in high schools and colleges today.  On the other side, though, we have people who will gleefully murder children, drill holes in heads, mutilate bodies, and decapitate Americans on the Internet.  Not too many frat initiations I have heard of involve decapitating pledges.  

I am not saying that what happened in that prison was right, or that it should continue, God forbid.  What I AM saying, however, is that a little perspective should be used in evaluating the level of remorse and disgust we feel about what went on in that place, versus what those terrorist assholes are doing to US.   And spare me the this was a reprisal for the prison speech, these fuckers would have done it anyway, since their stated goal is to KILL AMERICANS.  I don't condone in the least what went on in that prison, but we are still on the right side of this, and I completely support the goal of rooting out terror and freeing the people of Iraq so they can fulfill their own individual destinies.  

And I am hearing a SHITLOAD more hate for Americans who mistreated Iraqis than I am about those camel-fucking sons of fitchet bitches who cut a guy's HEAD off.  Or about those Americans who were killed and their bodies paraded around the streets and hung from the bridge like some macabre Mardi Gras.  Where is the outrage there?  Do people who live here hate their own country so much that they WANT to see us fail?  It's like going to Boston to see the Sox play and cheering everytime a one of them fucks up.  That would be a good way to get your ass kicked in the stadium, but for 'news' people, it's almost a badge of honor to root for the other side.

As is the case here. The sadists are an extreemly small minority. Course that dont matter cause its all Bush and Rummys fault and whatnot.

Yes lindsey is a good and honorable man. I hunt with him at least once a year and I voted for him. He also says that this isnt a matter of GC issues but a matter of UCMJ issues which is what I was saying from the begining. Let the military justice system work. If a soldier was charged with murder and just got a discharge I can reasonably assume he was found not guilty of murder but a lesser offense. Ive seen court marshals work. They are ruthless in thier prosecution so I honestly belive the evidence of him murdering someone wasnt there.

Go go lowered expectations!

Some of the outcry does come from the fact that shitty actions like lopping off heads is expected behavior from terrorists.  Sure we are disgusted by it, but we don't really set that high a standard for their behavior, so when they drop below even that low watermark, it's not much of a shock.

On the other hand, Americans like to think that Americans know how to behave.  We hold ourselves to a higher standard, and when that standard is violated the outcry is that much greater.

There are also accusations, mentioned in the Red Cross report and hinted at by Rumsfeld when he was testifying before Congress, that other detainees were raped and/or maimed and/or murdered. The photographs Rumsfeld described as more shocking than those that have already been released may contain images of those activities, which is perhaps why there has been debate whether or not those additional photographs should be released.

I agree with Senator Graham and daveNYC on this one: 'what we do to people isn't quite as bad as what some of our enemies do to people' is not much of an argument, especially when the government has put so much effort into placing our activities in Iraq on the moral high ground. The rationale behind Senator Inhofe's comment--that we as Americans are held to the same moral standards as Saddam Hussein and Islamic terrorists--is pretty repugnant. To quote the president, 'That isn't the America that I know.'



That's the same argument I was making. As the evidence stands now, I don't see how Rumsfeld or Bush can be held responsible for the torture of Iraqi detainees. The only thing that would make me change my mind on that was if follow-through on the Red Cross report revealed that systemic torture took place as an accepted part of interrogation in Iraq, rather than being limited to the activities of a handful of sadists. The female soldier who appears in the Abu Gharib photographs says she was operating under orders (http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/05/12/prisoner.abuse.england.ap/index.html) from unnamed superiors; we'll have to wait and see if that's corroborated.

From my viewpoint the theater commander needs his nuts wacked He was the one who TACOPED  the MP Bn under a MI Bn and as stated in the Taguda report these two entities have radicaly different missions and this shouldnt have happened. So now you have a group thats supposed to perform guard dities only being commanded by a MI officer. These 2 are in opposition to each other and should NEVER be in charge of each other or shit like this happens.

Edit: It seems that all of the Muslims who arent jutjobs in Iraq are stepping way backl from this and vowing to "take care" of the situation. As I would expect them to back down and allow us to handle an internal issue in our military I will back down and see what they do. See datante' its a wonderful thing.

Rape (http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=1799462) and mass murder (http://history1900s.about.com/library/weekly/aa041303a.htm) happen in our high schools and colleges too...guess that makes it ok, right? We shouldn't get too worked up about it, since it happens here too.

OT- WTF is going on in Colorado? Gotta be high on my list of "States in which I would least like to send my child to school". Must be the all that damned snow.  Or possibly easy access to the Coors brewery.

I would like to reiterate, since my iteration was ignored, that I am in NO way condoning or dismissing the seriousness of the charges levelled at the troops stationed at that prison.  But until there are real charges of murder, and not just Red Cross allegations, or some kind of serious torture involving a bent coat hanger and a car battery, I think the coverage of this is way overblown.  And I would say that given the sheer number of our guys over there, and the fact that we are in a WAR, the average U.S. soldier is doing a tremendous job.  I would just like to hear more about that average soldier who is helping Iraqis put things together than another interview with the lesbian who just loves to point at arab cock, under orders, mind you.

Ive seen this quote and the like across a bunch of forums, all in similar threads (middle east parking lot etc) and wonder how much thought has ever been put into this.... theres a few minor issues, like an environmental castatrophe, i pity the continent and a few billion people (non muslim) that are downwind. A world energy shortages and a subsequent global economic depression, as well as being able to label the USA as far superior at racial genocide than Hitlers Nazi Germany. They called the First World War the Great War because they thought it could never happen again, but a Second Holocaust, could that really be feasible ?

I wonder how many people really do think the nuclear option would work, rather than it being a catchphrase.

Even though Aslan is a good friend of mine I'm gonna have to disagree with him here. I think the rest of you nailed it on the head. The outcry of this is because we are Americans. We're supposed to be the good guys. When we get caught torturing people it pokes a hole in our own image of ourselves and yes, causes outrage. There is still outrage over the other events, but again, as others have stated, we expect that from terrorists. We're kind of desensitized to it to be blunt, our reaction is basically "they did it again, hope the Army catches em this time."

That would explain why the public reaction here (not officially of course) is less outrage but more in line with "Yeah SURE they are down there to fight for democracy and freedom *eyeroll*".

Lower expectations and such...

Most of the soldiers seem to believe that, that we're there to free them. The politicians know better. Some of the more informed citizens do too. How many of them know better will probably be shown in this year's election. With the way things are going I suspect ole Bush has a 50/50 shot of losing. Not that it matters. No matter who wins we'll still be over there, and now we're committed. If we pull out we leave a power vacuum and things can only get worse for the Iraqis in that situation.