Is That Legal?

It’s important to note that the President's answer demonstrates his myopic posture regarding the war. While Stephanopoulos was attempting to have the President comment on the growing opposition to the war...asking if voters might be at a tipping point...the President sought to make the point that the terrorists might be attempting to create a Tet Offensive moment. Essentially, his answer virtually ignores the political implications and suggests that he is holding fast to the strategy that connecting the Iraq war to terrorism will produce GOP support. I don't think voter sentiment is moving in the direction that the President may think it is or hope it will.

In 2004 most GOP candidates were traveling downstream in their "swiftboats" attacking every Democratic candidate that dared to criticize the Bush administration's war in Iraq. In 2006 you not only can't find the GOP "swiftboat", you can't find a Republican candidate willing to jump in and try to navigate the hapless dingy against the strong current of voter dissatisfaction with the seemingly never ending war.

One, voters appear to have decided that the President's plan is a failure. Two, despite the fact that the Democrats haven't actually offered a cohesive or comprehensive alternative plan, voters are convinced any change might be better than more of the same. That stands to help Democrats on November 7th...but it also means that voters are hoping for change come November 8th...and that may prove to be the beginning of an even larger problem for both parties.

In my opinion, it will behoove both parties to find some tangible solutions to the Iraq mess if they hope to have any success in 2008. If one thinks voters are unhappy now, imagine their mood if Iraq is still at the top of their list of issues two years from now.

Read more here:

www.thoughttheater.com

Funny. John Ashcroft on the Daily Show last night also alluded to a "secret plan" for the internal safety of Americans...

I'm glad all these secrets are in our best interest, and we have the leadership that inspires such confidence that we don't even have to know what the plans are. The Bush Admin is like warm milk at the end of a long day; sleep my pretties, sleep.

(and I said I would no longer watch John Stewart)

Nixon's secret plan involved cutting and running. I wonder if that's the republican plan.

Your nostalgia for Vietnam is touching, but alas, your memory is faulty. I clearly recall images of Hue in ruins, with civilian bodies everywhere. According to the history of Tet on the website of Vets With a Mission (a group dedicated to reconciliation):

"A month after the [Tet] offensive began, US estimates put the number of civilian dead at some 15,000 and the number of new refugees at anything up to two million and still the battles went on."

http://www.vwam.com/vets/tet/tet.html

During the entire war in Vietnam, something like a half million civilians perished.

Also worth mentioning is that the American abandonment of Vietnam left millions subject to execution or "re-education" by the communists. No-one knows how many perished in the re-education camps, but they were bad enough that more than a million (1 in 20) were willing to leave everything to flee in unseaworthy boats to an uncertain welcome elsewhere (that is, a million survived the trip; many thousands must have died attempting escape).

There can be no doubt that the war was bad for Vietnam's civilians. Unfortunately, America's abandonment was worse.

Here goes the old canard again that America's abandonment of Vietnam left people prey to the "terrible" forces of the Communists, ignoring the fact that the alternative US government wasn't much better.

The Communist Party that came to rule, like most other Maoist inspired bureacratic states, was rife with abuses and ethnic extinguishing (particuarly of the Hmong), and the damage left from the war combined with corruption and inefficiencies in the centrally planned economy, led to a famine that led to the so called "boat people" problem, of people fleeing Vietnam looking mostly for anyplace that had decent food security. In fact, it was the Vietnamese government that took Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge (who WERE responsible for a massive genocide of up to 2-3 million people) out of power,

This is not to say that Communist Vietnam is a bastion of human rights or free association. It's crackdowns on independent labor unions and the efforts of some nationalist and indigenous movements with in it mark it as notoriously hostile to anything that will erode its grip. But then again, as evidenced by Iraq's crack down on trade union groups and leftist political parties, theres not much freedom underneath the new government thats supposed to be "free" anyways.

Regardless of anything done either in Vietnam or Iraq, there is no way that American involvement can aid anything. Or in the future with regards to Iran, Syria, and N. Korea. Our meddling with other countries across the world has been a net loss on all issues.

I'm not surprised at the idea of a "Secret Plan." Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden both claim to have plans to take us out of Iraq which they are publicizing as lynchpins to their 2008 presidential bids. Calling the GOP's plan a "secret" makes it sound authoritative, confidential, and workable. (Incidentally, my own plan is located here, and I'd love feedback.


The real question is: how is the new Secret Plan different from the binary issue of whether to send in more troops, or to pull out some of the troops - which seems to me to be the majority of the Iraq question - and if it isn't any different, why is it so secret?

Jack Larkin
www.DemocratBlog.org

If I remember correctly General Westmoreland had a secret plan for Vietnam. Involved the use of a few tactical nuclear devices. Since Bush is using the anology of the Vietnam war maybe that is the strategy he is going to copy. There is a large "convential" 700 ton explosion planned at the Nevada test site; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_Strake.
More than likely to be used for modeling a bunker buster or small yield nuclear device. Variable yield devices are already in the arsenal, but with these I would guess that a smaller yield = dirtier bomb and more contamination. Then how could oil companies operate with all that contamination? KBR would'nt make any money in oil field services, that would definitely be a big no-no with our VP.

41 Senators are all that are needed to stop this war, which goes to show how much they value human lives.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17011.htm