McCain also warned that "we need a constructive domestic debate" and that those who were opposing the war were being "irresponsible"

Does anyone catch how contradictory that is? How do you have a "debate" when only one side is allowed?

I know, I know. He likely didn't mean it and won't accept the fundamental error of this insane march into Babylon. Still, it would make a nice slogan against him: "McCain: Against Everyone, and With No-One".

Do it well or don't do it at all. And certainly we don't have the political will to do it well.

Considering who was and is still in charge of this fiasco? You want to discuss "political will"? Geez.

While the "backstabbers" will chafe at the characterization, it remains that their efforts have the same effect.

Are you saying it istn' worth the effort to end a useless, costly, and fundamentally destructive occupation?

Bring home all the troops and pay off the debt.

Yes to the first, yes to the second. Let's hear your plan to do both in our lifetimes.

---We should fight wars with massive bombing campaigns and unleashed force, unconstrained by excessive concerns over "collateral damage" and unimpeded by domestic questioning.---

According to Wikipedia as many as 3.4 million people died in the Vietnam War, only 58,000 of them were Americans. How much f*ckin' collateral damage does it take before these war-loving, genocidal maniacal assh*les reach their gag limit? When would they stop? When every living Vietnamese was finally exterminated? Someone needs to ask them.

That this rabid desire to crush our enemies without regard to the deaths of thousands, even millions of innocent people still reverberates throughout our military and our government - and many of our people - shows just how low we have fallen. We are a menace to the rest of the world.

Does anyone catch how contradictory that is? How do you have a "debate" when only one side is allowed?

You're allowed to debate the best tactics for winning (troop numbers, bombing strategies, etc.), just not whether we should be fighting the war.

Bush, Lieberman and plenty of others made the same point in defining the difference between "responsible" and "irresponsible" debate.

Responsible debate is: "We should fight the war using X Tactic or Y Tactic."

Irresponsible debate is: "We should't be fighting this war."

Experts warned John Kennedy to learn from the French and not get involved in a land war in Vietnam. Result- ignored, death, destruction, defeat

The Russians were warned to not invade Afghanistan because no one had succeeded in history when invading that tribal land. Result- ignored, death, destruction, defeat (US recent invasion could have same result)

Bush was warned that invading Iraq was a bad idea and if he still wanted to do it, he needed 300-500 thousand troops. Result- ignored, death, destruction, defeat

Johny McSame, hell raiser, fighter pilot who never sees his destruction from the ground, poor dent, especially of history, buries all his principles to become president and is prepared to stab his country in the back through arrogance and ignorance if he is elected. And, no doubt will attack Iran a country that has never invaded or attacked another country directly, if Bush doesn't beat him to it.

Can America be stupid enough to elect this misleader?

Barack Obama please expose this McShameful imposter so we can finally learn from history and if you are as smart as I think you are, appoint Glenn Greenwald as a presidential advisor. You and our country needs his penetrating ability to seek, find and speak the truth.

By "do it", shooter means kill women and children. He might claim that such deaths are incidental to the main mission, but they are indeed integral to truly dominating a country and squelching all possible dissent and resistance.

Attacking "insurgents" (armed Iraqi citizens) only is not enough to "win" (eliminate all social groups which could resist our dominance).

That said, I translate shooter242's neocon opinion:

Do it well or don't do it at all.

If you won't kill adequate numbers of women and children to break the back of the country, don't bother attacking in the first place.

And certainly we don't have the political will to do it well.

America (unfortunately) still has enough of a soul to shy from outright wholesale slaughter, even though the population of Iraq is decimated already.

While the "backstabbers" will chafe at the characterization,

Anyone who doesn't want to kill Iraqi women and children anymore is a backstabber.

it remains that their efforts have the same effect.

Americans who oppose the war might as well have literally stabbed a US soldier in the back.

Bring home all the troops and pay off the debt.

Since pussy Americans won't kill as many Iraqis as I like, I'll retrace my steps and pretend to be a conservative who cares about e.g. non-intervention and the national debt. I never cared about these things before the war went so publicly south, I argued with prunes countless times trying to convince him that the debt would never be a problem, and now that my obviously un-American, un-conservative views can no longer be even halfway coherently upheld, I'll pretend I never said all that other stuff.

Conveniently enough, this allows me to blame all of America's problems on the back-stabbing pinko librul Mexicans, instead of on the people who have actually been running things for the lasta 8 years, whom I worship as gods.

What McCain and his slavish Bush-like cadre of worshippers never explain, is that if Iraq is the "front line" in the "war on terror"...that the battle in Iraq will determine the fate of Western Civilization as we know it, then why in the name of God is the United States trying to "win" it without a draft? Why do we continue to borrow literally trillions of dollars from the Communist Chinese to finance the "war" while slashing taxes for the well-to-do? Why are these people unwilling to use nuclear weapons in order to ensure victory?

The answer is easy. Even THEY don't believe in the war. If they did, it would be flat out "shock and awe" 24/7, but, alas, even the most fervent warmongering McBush-ite doesn't have the conviction of their vacuous "principles" to advocate the pervasive destruction and carnage and sacrifice that would constitute "victory".