no, i disagree. iraq was not beaten thoroughly. our armies were poised on the edge of bagdad. we were going to attack the next morning. in the morning the iraqi army had just disappeared. so our guys declared it destroyed and victory. their army dispersed and went into hiding taking what weapons they could. lots of weapons too were stockpiled different places. the so called insurgency in my opinion was well planned. they knew they couldnt win a pitched battle against our fierce firepower. but they are winning what is happening now. picking us off a few at a time.

this strategy is not a lot different than what we did against the british in our revoulution.

tom w

Ah yes, the Tet offensive. In which the US Army and Marine Corps handed the VC and NVA their asses on a platter but the US news agancy reported it as a defeat.

If that knucklehead McNamara had a pair of balls he'd have followed those defeated elements into North Vietnam and and Laos and annhilated the NVA. Chicken-*****.

B

How was Japan a threat? Pearl Harbor? Why did they do that again?

They do. However, wanting and being able to do it are two different things. There are too many things that re dependent on oil and I am not talking energy. How many things do you know that are not oil tainted besides energy? Lets say you came up with a new machine that produced electricity from something else besides oil. Would that work? I don't think so. Why? Well, it would be like selling you my business. You'd pay one set fee and that is it. Kinda like the difference between renting and buying a house. I haven't spoken to my Realtor and builder for 10 yrs. You never want to sell the machinery. You want to sell the product. However, sooner or later, they will develop their own versions of the product anyways. Then there is the question of price. How will you settle on a price that they can afford and it is right for you? Even if you do all this, how will you replace the other myraid of products that come out of oil? You are only looking at oil as a source of gasoline. Can you replace the other products that are probably just as important? Matter is neither created nor destroyed. What will this new tech make power out of? If you do succeed, will there be a fight over this new resource? JUST DO IT is a good slogan for Nike but not much else.

All true. However, the problem was that the military was directly controlled and micromanaged from the White House. Look at the military today. Do they have control of what they buy and in what quantities? Nope. Imagine a mechanic where you tell him how to do his job, what tools he needs to work with and what brand and when to do this, that or the other. A mechanic has the privilege of telling you to DIY whereas the soldier has to make do with the crap he gets.

Oil.

As to the ability to do without... If your gas bills are rising, and you can't afford the cost, you insulate yourself the best you can. Any other strategy is secondary to the imperitive of long term survival. How much corporate profit in the 90's came from efficiencys and cost reductions? A sound plan for self sufficency, (and by that I mean begining to demonstrate to the players that there is a future beyond oil) to the degree it is possible, is missing from our policy... particularly when you factor the defense budget into the cost of energy, there is room to promote non-enemy energy sources. And if there is not, why muck around with democracy when the potential outcome is not necessarily in line with our real goals.

Are we unwilling to expand the war to the degree necessary to influence the outcome? If there is a sound stratagic goal then it is being executed in a fainting manner that was orchestrated by the CIC and a big part of the propagandas success is the reality on the ground.

Wether defensive or offensive, the best strategy is to weaken the enemys position relative yours. Make his position untenable and you have won. But the esscence of current policy is that his position will always be paramont.

Like I've said several times before - go ask the guys on the ground, get their assessment of what the situation is, and then formulate your strategy.

Co-worker at Freightliner just came back from a year in Iraq with the reserves, in the Balat and Tikrit areas. His assessment basically boiled down to "What's the f#####g point? They hate our guts".

I don't think there's ever been an army in human history that didn't ***** about everything from the Emperor to the mascot, and every one of them thinks they could do a better job than the (choose one: sgt, Chief, Lt, maj, Lcdr, Lcol, Cdr. Capt, Adm, Gen ... President).

B

Didn't the Bush administration pass some kind of Bill that prevents them from being prosecuted for anything concerning the Iraq war?

In our form of government, the President doesn't pass bills, he signs or vetoes bills passed by both houses of congress.

No I am not. Henry Ford was making trunks out of soybean way back then. Yes petroleum will and always should be a valuable commodity, but there are replacements for just about everything that sources it... which we will have to discover sooner or later as the oil runs out. Better sooner than latter in our case.

Seems ot me you are suggesting we should just be a steady state system.

You can replace oil totally. However, at this time the cost is way prohibitive. If there were no oil, these items would now have to be used. As to oil running out, it probably will at some point. When, nobody knows. They predicted oil running out since before the first well was sunk. What "oil runs out" seems to mean is "oil which is extracted at the current difficulty level with the current technology." Oil out of dry wells is commonplace today. Why? Because at the time, it was too expensive. Today, we have the technology to lower the cost and so it is cheap to work with, relatively. So yes, if you are sure oil runs out in 20 years, your premise would be right. If not, probably not. Look in your car. You don't have to use plastics. You can go back to wood and metal. Can you afford that? cost and weight wise? Lets say you do. Wood will become the new oil. A commodity that will run scarce sooner or later.

I am saying that alone, we cannot do much about it. Unless you can get everyone else that we depend on and is dependent on us along, you won't have much. Also, even if you do, it won't solve anything since we will squabble over the next "oil". We have been having wars and fights over pretty much anything since who knows when and today, oil is the hot topic. If we find a new "oil", we will squabble over that too. I guess what I am saying is that it doesn't matter what happens. We will have strife and hardship anyways. So even if oil disappeared tomorrow, whatever the new "oil" is, we will fight over it.

Oil is simply an issue. Solving it will only band aid the situation. If I could sink you a well in Texas that guarantees o have enough oil for the USA for the next 200 years, will that solve anything? Unless you have enough for everybody, it will be SSDD. The root cause was, is and will be human nature. Till you can fix it so that we can cooperate with each other instead of trying to win the race every time, you have nothing, zip, nada, zero. Even in the USA itself, we cannot fix that problem. Can you solve it for the world?

So what you are saying is roll over and let things just happen.

That might be the way you want to live, not for me though. Enjoy the status quot my friend, I'm heading out to foment change, one step at a time.

What I am saying is that I fight a battle where I have a decent chance of winning. I don't do Mission Impossible. Like I said, even if you come out with an oil replacement, we will still fight over something. So, if you are saying we need to come up with a replacement for oil because I want to stop the fighting, that is MI. If the impetus for finding a substitute for oil is because it is running out, and we need to be in the best competitive position, that is a totally different story. One is MI and the other has a decent chance of success. I don't bang my head against the wall. People have fought wars since who knows when. We have not changed in the last 5000 years. Only the items fought over have changed. Mankind is still mankind. Expecting a change in the next 50, 100 or even 150 years when they have shown nothing for the last 5000 years is the definition of MI. Kinda like an employee that has not made the cut for the last 10 years and promises that he can improve tomorrow.

As to the oil running out, nobody really knows so the motivation is not there. Remember Y2K? Why was it a big deal? We knew about it since the 60s. Because nobody wanted to wreck their budget until they had no choice. Desperation is the mother of invention. So, until oil actually runs out and not just more difficult to extract, few things will be invented except by accident.

Comparing the Y2K boondoggle with the realities of available/affordable oil or the possible conseqences global climate change brought about by burning fossil fuel?

Now that is a streach. The two aren't even remotely on the same plain.

Despite what you want to believe, we are effecting very real positive change right here in our small community in the area of clean, renewable, domestic liquid stored solar energy. One step at a time.

No. What I am saying is that we can see from the Y2K example that people won't act till it is almost upon them. Mostly it is reaction and not action. Global climate change is still a theory. Which way is open to debate although the favorite is global warming and the ex fav is global cooling.

Yes, one step at a time. We'll be decayed in the ground long before it becomes reality. But lets say you have figured out how to do it. My point is that you just change the squabble anyways. Oil is merely the symptom. The root cause is mankind's nature. There will always be something we covet. Look at those years before oil was even important. Think there were no wars? My point is that even if you do solve the issue of oil, mankind will still find something to fight about. Look at the history of mankind and tell me that things have really changed. Were there wars before oil was even discovered? You bet. Will there be wars after oil is over and done with? You bet. That is why I say it is hopeless to bother to change the item we fight over. All you do is substitute one item for the other. Kinda like a guy I knew. He was an ex-alcoholic. Recovering alky if you will. sound good? Well he substituted alcohol with pot and other interesting pharmaceuticals. What changed? He was still an addict. Drug changed this time.

Self serving reasons? Try WMD: http://bizzyblog.com/?p=760

Like Vietnam? The goal there was to stop the spread of communism in SE Asia and we succeeded. If we had stayed and occupied we would still be there so it was best to leave, although it wasn't done out of brilliance at that time.

And look at you calendar, 9/11/01 came before 2003 and don't fool yourself into thinking there is no Iraq-Al Qeuda link. We didn't create it, it has been ongoing for 30 years.