New York Times: A War We Just Might Win

On second thought, after seeing Larry King interview Cheney on CNN I think the administration is trying to pull another fast one. Anyone who has helped formulate a war going on its fourth year who doesn't have (or admit to) second thoughts should not be trusted.

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/30/AR2007073001380_pf.html

 

Yet another Democrat pulling for America's defeat for his own political gain:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/31/AR2007073100990.html?hpid=topnews

Mullen might be General Caseyed by lunch.

And Guy, congratulations on reaching a conclusion that the average Harry Potter reader, upon seeing your WP story, would not have.

You hardcore righties, please, even if it's years from now, notify me when you come to the realization that, "We ignored reality, twisted logic like a pretzel, and countenanced all kinds of incompetence and corruption for . . . George W. Bush. George W. Bush."

Because I would pay to see the looks on your faces when that happens.

 

Could somebody please define victory, both in Iraq and in the "War on Terror"?
When can we finally say about Iraq, "Our work is done here. We have won. We can go home now."?
And what, exactly, is victory in the "War on Terror"?

 

I have no clue what this means.

 

OK, Ragu.
Please give me the equivalent on the other side of the Whitewater saga -- not the Lewinsky diversion, but the Whitewater saga. Remember, before you cite Iran-Contra or Watergate, that there was no actual crime in Whitewater at all. After that, please cite the liberal equivalent of the Arkansas Project that managed to get its water carried in the mainstream press the way that the actual AP did.

 

How can we win a war in a country where our troops cannot communicate with each other once they have passed the city limits?

In this day and age, our troops were not prepared for not having satellite communications.

 

Ah, Ragu, the things you do believe. Now, remember, we are talking about the Clintons, and not what an aggressive partisan prosecutor can do with a limitless mandate in one small state. Jim Guy Tucker, the "sitting governor" whom you mentioned, was not convicted of any crimes having anything to do with either the Clintons or Whitewater. He was convicted of crimes he committed involving cable television in an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT development. Web Hubbell went to jail for fraud and for overbilling his clients which, while bad, is the holding penalty of most major law firms. You can call it at any time on any one. (And, as an aside, while he was being racked by the OIC, some Arkansas Project dirty-tricksters doctored a tape so that he sounded like he was incriminating HRC, and that tape got played on Nightline. Damn liberal media.) And, of course, my favorite moment in the whole saga came when the OIC put Jim McDougal on trial and, in his summation, the prosecutors asked the jurors to throw the old crazy guy in prison because of what he'd done to his victims, specifically mentioning the Clintons.
"The people they surround themselves with"" Who? Who are the Haldemans and Ehrlichmans and Roves of the Clinton machine? We aren't getting into Clinton Chronicles territory here are we? That would be a shame. Look, if "they all do it" floats your boat, fine. But don't pretend that it in any sense obviates your obligation to know what you're talking about. Please explain, again, what the "other side"'s Arkansas project would be?

 

Jim Guy Tucker is one of the great tragedies of Whitewater.
He got caught up as a Clinton crony, even though they were political enemies and had a long-running fued.
And in the effort to get a trophy conviction, Tucker was prosecuted and convicted on something that wasn't a crime when it was committed.
Of all the Whitewater tales, of people's lives ruined and families gone bankrupt paying legal fees, his is one of saddest.
Ragu, give me your mailing address and I'll send you a copy of Gene Lyons's Fools for Scandal, because I think you need to brush up on your history. Because all you are doing now is parroting RNC talking points.

 

I thought it was already "Mission Accomplished".

Seriously, those are valid questions SP. Fighting terrorists is a war that cannot be won in a traditional sense. They don't reason. They don't have an opposing general willing to talk about a truce and raise a white flag. They essentially have an unlimited supply of "soldiers." I honestly don't know how "victory" can be accomplished. The Middle East, in general, is an area that's been fighting for thousands of years, Iraq included. And guess what? Two thousand years from now, they're still going to be fighting in the Middle East, Iraq included, regardless of the outcome of this "war."

 

Wars on terrorism have been won.
They were won in Japan and in Germany and Italy in the 1970s and 1980s. One was won in Peru in the last decade, and it can be argued that a war on terrorism was won -- in the sense that it was ended - in Ireland. In all cases, they were won because they weren't treated as a "war" but as a sophisticated, longterm law-enforcement strategy.