DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Tailgate Forum Sheehan resigns as Iraq war protest leader

I'm not denying your point. But you must admit,we've been there for FOUR plus years.

Those who "joined" about four years ago,went in under a completly different "understanding of WHY we were going there".

For the past couple of years,people have understood there is no nuclear porogram. They understand that Sadaam was no "immenant threat". And that's fine and well. But the same does not hold true for those who joined at the very beginning of this thing.

All I'm saying is,those that joined BECAUSE of those alligations,at the very beginning,have cause to question and feel quite differently if they so choose. You don't have to agree with "everything" your country does to Love it and be Proud of it.

You can't change what people "believe" and how they "feel" about the war,one way or the other. We all have a choice in that. Even our military members....................

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Sort of like what the Bush administration has done to the moral majority huh?

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Absolutely outstanding post

According to some; yes.

But in reality, his beliefs are all gone with him.

We can say, Oh he said this, or was supposed to do this---but it isn't really possible to prove he felt one way or another.

I guess saddam giving the world the finger was his downfall then. If you recall all the news about the inspectors before the war, he was doing everything he could to hide something. He might have been worried about Iran invading or something along those lines, but having inspections was his punishment for invading Kuwait. The intelligence was flawed because we couldn't inspect.

I personally believe it was a mistake to go into Iraq, because Iraq was stable and a blood enemy of the regime in Iran. I believed that before the war and I still do now. I also realize that I can change the past as easily as I can convince you about my point. We are there. For better or for worse, our troops are in that country. We can either win this war by establishing a stable government in Iraq, or we can return in about 5 or so years and remove a new Talibaneque regime that is partnered with Iran. I prefer the former.

BTW- Even after Colin Powell gave his "concrete evidence" to the worlkd (the U.N.),the world said "don't attack". So I guess WE kind of "flipped off the world" too didn't we?

I guess that word "coalition" means our army, marines, navy, and air force. Part of the world was with us, part was not. The French have since changed their minds about their ultra left wing views. The British have changed PMs, but the new Labor party PM sees the need to fight these islamic fundamentalits. As for your "Would we be better to "go back" in 5 years,or still "be there" in five years?" question, we would be better off establishing a stable government in the country before we leave. Either we do it now or do it later.

You know,it won't be long untill we've been there five years TRYING to do that

And where are we now? To some,I suppose continuing to spill the blood of our soldiers to help a disfunctional government that won't even help itself for an endless period of time is quite acceptible. To me,they need to be held accountable. If they're not willing to start "standing up" it's time for us to start "stepping down".

I wouldn't even take care of my brother for four years without forcing him to get a job and stand on his own two feet. To make HIM pay his own bills. To make HIM be accountable for his own actions. So I'll be damned if I'd do it for Iraq.

JMHO

Here's another little tid bit I didn't know if you were aware of. Did you know the majority of Iraq's" democraticly elected parliment" WANTS US OUT??? Well,they do.


Majority of Iraqi Lawmakers Now Reject Occupation

More than half of the members of Iraq's parliament rejected for the first time on Tuesday the continuing occupation of their country. The U.S. media ignored the story.

Posted May 9,2007

On Tuesday, without note in the U.S. media, more than half of the members of Iraq's parliament rejected the continuing occupation of their country. 144 lawmakers signed onto a legislative petition calling on the United States to set a timetable for withdrawal, according to Nassar Al-Rubaie, a spokesman for the Al Sadr movement, the nationalist Shia group that sponsored the petition.

It's a hugely significant development. Lawmakers demanding an end to the occupation now have the upper hand in the Iraqi legislature for the first time; previous attempts at a similar resolution fell just short of the 138 votes needed to pass (there are 275 members of the Iraqi parliament, but many have fled the country's civil conflict, and at times it's been difficult to arrive at a quorum).

Reached by phone in Baghdad on Tuesday, Al-Rubaie said that he would present the petition, which is nonbinding, to the speaker of the Iraqi parliament and demand that a binding measure be put to a vote. Under Iraqi law, the speaker must present a resolution that's called for by a majority of lawmakers, but there are significant loopholes and what will happen next is unclear.

What is clear is that while the U.S. Congress dickers over timelines and benchmarks, Baghdad faces a major political showdown of its own. The major schism in Iraqi politics is not between Sunni and Shia or supporters of the Iraqi government and "anti-government forces," nor is it a clash of "moderates" against "radicals"; the defining battle for Iraq at the political level today is between nationalists trying to hold the Iraqi state together and separatists backed, so far, by the United States and Britain.

The continuing occupation of Iraq and the allocation of Iraq's resources -- especially its massive oil and natural gas deposits -- are the defining issues that now separate an increasingly restless bloc of nationalists in the Iraqi parliament from the administration of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose government is dominated by Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish separatists.

By "separatists," we mean groups who oppose a unified Iraq with a strong central government; key figures like Maliki of the Dawa party, Shia leader Abdul Aziz Al-Hakeem of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq ("SCIRI"), Vice President Tariq Al-Hashimi of the Sunni Islamic Party, President Jalal Talabani -- a Kurd -- and Masoud Barzani, president of the Kurdish Autonomous Region, favor partitioning Iraq into three autonomous regions with strong local governments and a weak central administration in Baghdad. (The partition plan is also favored by several congressional Democrats, notably Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware.)

Iraq's separatists also oppose setting a timetable for ending the U.S. occupation, preferring the addition of more American troops to secure their regime. They favor privatizing Iraq's oil and gas and decentralizing petroleum operations and revenue distribution.

But public opinion is squarely with Iraq's nationalists. According to a poll by the University of Maryland's Project on International Public Policy Attitudes, majorities of all three of Iraq's major ethno-sectarian groups support a unified Iraq with a strong central government. For at least two years, poll after poll has shown that large majorities of Iraqis of all ethnicities and sects want the United States to set a timeline for withdrawal, even though (in the case of Baghdad residents), they expect the security situation to deteriorate in the short term as a result.

That's nationalism, and it remains the central if unreported motivation for many Iraqis, both within the nascent government and on the streets.

While sectarian fighting at the neighborhood and community level has made life unlivable for millions of Iraqis, Iraqi nationalism -- portrayed as a fiction by supporters of the invasion -- supercedes sectarian loyalties at the political level. A group of secular, Sunni and Shia nationalists have long voted together on key issues, but so far have failed to join forces under a single banner.

That may be changing. Reached by phone last week, nationalist leader Saleh Al-Mutlaq, of the National Dialogue Front, said, "We're doing our best to form this united front and announce it within the next few weeks." The faction would have sufficient votes to block any measure proposed by the Maliki government. Asked about the Americans' reaction to the growing power of the nationalists, Mutlaq said, "We're trying our best to reach out to the U.S. side, but to no avail."

That appears to be a trend. Iraqi nationalists have attempted again and again to forge relationships with members of Congress, the State Department, the Pentagon and the White House but have found little interest in dialogue and no support. Instead, key nationalists like al-Sadr have been branded as "extremists," "thugs" and "criminals."

That's a tragic missed opportunity; the nationalists are likely Iraq's best hope for real and lasting reconciliation among the country's warring factions. They are the only significant political force focused on rebuilding a sovereign, united and independent Iraq without sectarian and ethnic tensions or foreign meddling -- from either the West or Iran. Hassan Al-Shammari, the head of Al-Fadhila bloc in the Iraqi parliament, said this week, "We have a peace plan, and we're trying to work with other nationalist Iraqis to end the U.S. and Iranian interventions, but we're under daily attacks and there's huge pressure to destroy our peace mission."

A sovereign and unified Iraq, free of sectarian violence, is what George Bush and Tony Blair claim they want most. The most likely reason that the United States and Britain have rebuffed those Iraqi nationalists who share those goals is that the nationalists oppose permanent basing rights and the privatization of Iraq's oil sector. The administration, along with their allies in Big Oil, has pressed the Iraqi government to adopt an oil law that would give foreign multinationals a much higher rate of return than they enjoy in other major oil producing countries and would lock in their control over what George Bush called Iraq's "patrimony" for decades.

Al-Shammari said this week: "We're afraid the U.S. will make us pass this new oil law through intimidation and threatening. We don't want it to pass, and we know it'll make things worse, but we're afraid to rise up and block it, because we don't want to be bombed and arrested the next day." In the Basrah province, where his Al-Fadhila party dominates the local government, Al-Shammari's fellow nationalists have been attacked repeatedly by separatists for weeks, while British troops in the area remained in their barracks.

The nationalists in parliament will now press their demands for withdrawal. At the same time, the emerging nationalist bloc is holding hearings in which officials from the defense and interior ministries have been grilled about just what impediments to building a functional security force remain and when the Iraqi police and military will be able to take over from foreign troops. Both ministries are believed to be heavily infiltrated by both nationalist (al-Sadr's Mahdi Army) and separatist militias (the pro-Iranian Badr Brigade).

The coming weeks and months will be crucial to Iraq's future. The United States, in pushing for more aggressive moves against Iraqi nationalists and the passage of a final oil law, is playing a dangerous game. Iraqi nationalists reached in Baghdad this week say they are beginning to lose hope of achieving anything through the political process because both the Iraqi government and the occupation authorities are systematically bypassing the Iraqi parliament where they're in the majority. If they end up quitting the political process entirely, that will leave little choice but to oppose the occupation by violent means.

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/51624/

But hey,who are they to tell us anything about their own country? I mean we wanted their people to "elect a democratic government". That's not saying we have to listen to them,right?

So our soldiers are dying trying to protect and help build a government that doesn't even want us there anymore. Kind of hard to "help" people that don't want your help isn't it?

Does "who wrote it" change things? Does that change that the majority of their democraticly elected parliment signed it?

Let me guess...................................................

We just stay no matter what their government wants. We stay no matter what Iraq says.

So you advocate we preach democracy and play the part of dictator untill we "get the results we want"? So just put another "puppet government in place"? We did that with Saddam,remember?

You must have also missed this statement.

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Reached by phone in Baghdad on Tuesday, Al-Rubaie said that he would present the petition, which is nonbinding, to the speaker of the Iraqi parliament and demand that a binding measure be put to a vote. Under Iraqi law, the speaker must present a resolution that's called for by a majority of lawmakers, but there are significant loopholes and what will happen next is unclear.

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They are learning from our government. Passing non-binding resolutions is kind of like stomping your feet. Once they pass their non-binding resolution into law, we should leave immediately.

Fantastic,because it won't be long now.................

Just like the dems ending the war. One of those backscratching losers might grow a backbone one day.

January 09.


And that's really sad. I HATE monopolies in our government by either party. But Bush is handing to them on a silver platter.

Oh,you missed the speech about "the axis of evil" the "mushroom cloud from Saddam" the "tons of biological weapons".

Lots of these kids didn't miss it and that's why they joined. They may not have been "misguided BY the oath" but they sure were misguided on the way to take it. So were millions of Americans who didn't take it...................

Thats just a statement from one not in the know.
Everything that is in that oath is explained to you prior to you taking that oath.

LMAO, must be in your mind that GW himself talks people into joining...

Not the case. Recruiters do. Who are the recruiters? Active duty personnel. One would be not only niave, but down right stupid to join the military based itel about any specific country whether or not it was good or bad intel. Intel changes, priorities change, alliances change etc etc.

Bottom line, if you joined, you agreed to "I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me"

Not "I will do the above if it suits me"

I do think when a president gives a moving speech describing an imminant dangfer to our country and our citizens,it DOES promote patriotic young men into joining the military.

And it's very noble of them to do so. But yes,I think MANY volunteered based on that speech. When the president tells you "if we don't get this guy,we may face a nuclear attack in the not to distant future"? Yes,that's pretty good motivation.

But you assert that had nothing to do with it huh? I see.........

I'm all for the fact they should serve if they join. But that DOESN'T mean they have to "believe in the action" they're serving in. Lots of guys serving in Iraq don't believe in the mission or the strategy used. That was my point.

That's fine and I admire you for your stand and your belief.

But I do feel when someone thinks something is just plain "wrong" they have some sort of moral duty to speak out when life of others is on the line.

I just uphold their right to speak their peace. That is part of that constitution you swore to uphold,is it not?

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Does "who wrote it" change things?

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You're usually the one to attack the author when someone posts an article you disagree with.

I do sometimes attack the "slant and bias" in articles depending on who the author is. But you can't really argue a "straight line vote".

The point I was making was how the Iraqi Parliment voted. Nothing more. So in that respect it's not a "subject of debate" on the portion I was relating to.

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I shut the hell up and just did my frikkin job,

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Then you would be the only one !! When I was in we bitched about everything we did as long as we were working as we were whinning the brass never said anything . That was the expected part of every exercise ...the complaining, but as I said we did it while we were doing the job. Looking back it seems like it was a safety release of sorts, letting the guys get some steam out while moaning about whatever . I am sure there are plenty of guys who don't buy into the program but I am also confident that 99% of those guys will do the job they signed up for. I wouldn't like doing the job ( Iraq ) if I were still in but like the men and women who are currently serving I'd still do the job that was mine to do .