Kitt

Your example is irrelevant, because the same is true of even combat units in the Army and Marines; when your EAS is up, you leave. But that is different from wholesale switching around of people within a unit, especially while in combat.

We're not talking about the odd guy leaving here and there. In Vietnam you'd sometimes have a 40% turnover in a unit in as little as six months. That's no way to build a cohesive fighting force.

Also, I don't remember too many Navy destroyers being in heavy combat in Vietnam, although those sailors certainly served honorably.

-- Hornet Driver

Well, you have paragraph after paragraph proving that you just make shit up. My brother was on a Destroyer...in combat...in Vietnam...he wasn't the "odd guy". He was part of a unit/crew...but his time was up. As I'm sure happened frequently to his crew members over the period of his three tours to Vietnam on the same Destroyer that he was on during his four years of service.

What Is It (Good For)

If the definition of war is that the enemy must be a nation state, how did our Civil War qualify?

-- SusanMc

What do you mean? The South succeeded from the Union and became the Confederacy. Basically, they became a Nation State. They were all in one block and their army had uniforms. They had their own flag that they flew in battle and over their Capitols. I don't see any comparison between that and the 'all over the world' no uniform terrorist organizations of many stripes.

Looseheadprop of FDL is a woman. A really smart one. Also, looseheadprop is a position in hockey. Which is the origin of her FDL handle.

And who the hell was it who decided that "blue" meant democratic, and "red" meant republican. What the hell is going on, I ask you.

-- casual_observer

Actually, there is an innocent explanation for that but I've forgotten what it was. Besides, it doesn't matter anymore because whatever the explanation was it has been bastardized beyond recognition. That much I do remember. That's how powerful 'framing' and repeating a lie until the truth finally gives up on getting it's boots on is in politics.

Oops, yep. It's rugby. Guess I'll have to be a bench-warmer for not even getting the name of the sport right.

let's make it a requirement that you have to have served in the military to run for public office. Enlistments would go up since all the ambitious types would need service to get to the top.

-- tiberius

That's a recipe for disaster. Reminds me of when the Courts Order dui offenders to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in order to avoid paying too big of fine or going to jail. The "Anonymous" Alcoholics at those meetings resent the courts and the 'reach around' dui offenders for showing up at their - key word "anonymous" meetings just to save themselves from having to 'do the time'.

People who join the military because they want to serve their country, or even to get an upper hand on bettering their selves later with discounted college expenses don't want opportunists of the worst kind using them and the military.

Besides, what makes you think you and "lets" could make anything a requirement. You've been happily turning over any say you might have had in anything over to GWB for as long as you have been posting here.

What's going to become of this Blackwater kicked out of Iraq business?

It would be fabulous if that really happens, and happens right damned quick. But what, realistically, might we expect?

Is the Giuliani who is so outraged at Hilary Clinton and at MoveOn.org for questioning a military general the same Giuliani who pointed his finger of blame at the "troops on the ground" who passed by the huge arms depot for allowing that depot to be raided and confiscated by the insurgency? Yes, by golly, I think it is the same Giuliani.

Tibby or nabalnose, or one of those dead enders, predicted how the whole landscape would change after the illustrious general Patr told us how we have "turned a corner" (once again). I thought not and told them to please reply when the opinions of the general populace chimes in. We'll see if they (Tibby and Nabalnose) admit to having been full of excrement once again.

"They are all "Baghdad Bob" now."

-- Wabanatta_3

In the battle of the Noise Machines and Echo Chambers, we are getting outflanked and massacred. People like Cohen and Broder can take marching orders from the rightwing slime machine and still purport to be serious, non-partisan and even vaguely left. From this stance they can effectively dictate the parameters of acceptable discourse, and marginalize MoveOn.Org while tacitly admitting the Swift Boaters into the national discourse.

-- thomas c

That may be and it should be brought out and fought off. But on the other hand, it may not be. Just look at how not 'serious' these phonies are being taken now, without even an 'official' fight back. Their rhetoric is so stale that it just falls on deaf ears. Betrayus is the word of the month. And it is not only leveled at the General, but it is leveled on the entirety of the Administration and on the 'wolf crying beltway media.

Well, let's see, could it be an unacceptable questioning of authority? If you have a certain viewpoint, that is more important than the war itself.

-- Mike Sulzer

"Unacceptable" according to whom? To the 28%ters? Who gives a ****?

Ask the Dixie Chicks.

-- DrEyeBall

Would you like to clarify that remark? After all, The Dixie Chicks won every grammy available, and had their song and CD sell tremendously well, all over the civilized world, even without any airplay from the Republican owned monopoly of Clear Channel radio stations which are prominent all over the US.