:hehe: You do really think that America won the Vietnam war. :hehe:
Here have a look at what the US Senate is saying over Iraq…
US ‘needs help in Iraq’ - US Senate Resolution.](BBC NEWS | Middle East | US 'needs help in Iraq')
Let's see,
This Iraq conflict has US casualties of 250 soldiers. It just passed the death toll from the first Gulf War. (Lesson here, always defeat your opponent, do not let the UN talk you out of complete victory.)
Death toll from Vietnam, more than 50,000. Not even close.
Vietnam was a political failure, not a military one.
Now let's see some other issues.
Saddam's troops are not supported by any other neighboring state which can provide aid, comfort, financing, fighters, and supplies. There is no Ho Chi Mihn trail.
There is no Laos and Cambodia to provide safe haven.
There is no General Giap to provide leadership. (Saddam being perhaps the worlds worst general).
Saddam was generally hated by his people, the people of Vietnam supported the Viet Cong.
We are not even sure Saddam is directing any of the actions against the US.
We invaded Iraq. No one likes to be invaded. Any country that is invaded will have patriots who simply hate to see foreigners in their land. Simple as that. And Iraq has more than it's share of prutal people. When progress is made on the political and economic front, and people realize that the US does not intend on staying, and that Saddam will not return, Iraq will become more peaceful.
And everyone lived happily ever after. 
Whether you agreed with the US or not, it's a done thing. The question is, how do we make things better for the Iraqi's? Undoubtedly there are those that will make the issue, "How can we make it worse for the US.".
And, yes, most Americans believe that the Iraqi's will be significantly better in the years to come. But this is not a matter of weeks or days.
And in the mean time the US gets a great base to assist Iranian dissidents, and gets to shut off the oil flowing into Syria!
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Ohioguy: *
And in the mean time the US gets a great base to assist Iranian dissidents, and gets to shut off the oil flowing into Syria!
[/QUOTE]
Oh so this is the next assignment the Israelis have given to the Americans.
Yes sir!!! Yes sir!!! three bags full sir.
Oh no, the Israeli's did not have to ask!
What they wanted was a refuelling stop on their way to the nuclear plants in Iran!
Yes, of course 58,000 American soliders killed and it’s just a political failure.
How many smilies would you have posted if 100,000 Americans had died? I’m glad to see American deaths give you joy 
The goal behind America’s involvement in Vietnam was to contain the spread of communism in SE Asia. Where is communism today?
You are such a sensitive person aren’t you? The smilies are for those people who have claimed that America won a military victory in the Vietnam war.
The goal of America’s 11-year long military involvement was to stop the South becoming communist, and falling to the forces of the North. We all know what happened don’t we? 
Rumsfeld expects more attacks very soon, Julian Borger
The Guardian, 14 July 2003
Three months will extend into six months, which will extend into one year, then five years and/or an indefinite period of time. No WMD, no Iraq-al Qaeda link, and now no guarantee of leaving the country after invading and occupying it.
US forces not going home soon, BBC, 15 July 2003
American soldiers who had been expecting to be sent home from Iraq soon have been told they will remain in the Gulf indefinitely. The army announced that much of the Third Infantry Division is to stay in place due to ongoing attacks against coalition forces.
Soldiers - and their families - reacted with dismay to the news that they would not be home in September as they had hoped. Britain’s representative in Iraq, John Sawers, said UK troops would stay until elections had been held in Iraq - possibly next year - and that troops could stay longer if the new government needed them.
“Don’t do that to us. Don’t pull our heartstrings that way,” one army wife said after being informed by e-mail that her husband’s tour of duty had been extended. Julie Galloway’s husband, Sergeant Michael Galloway, was sent to the Gulf in November, the Associated Press reported.
The BBC’s Jonny Dymond in Baghdad says it is very difficult to find a US soldier who likes being in Iraq.
Burdened by their equipment and armour in the heat, they know they are not welcome, he says.
Iraqis, too, will be disappointed that the US troops are staying, he says.
Who is calling this a Guerilla War now?
The new man at the top of US Central Command, General John Abizaid, acknowledged on Wednesday that US forces were indeed facing a “classical guerrilla-type campaign”.](BBC NEWS | Middle East | US faces up to guerrilla war)
This quote sums it all up:
Iraqi archbishop condemns US, Tom Geoghegan, BBC, 17 July 2003
One of Iraq’s most senior archbishops has sharply criticised the US for its administration of Baghdad.
Severius Hawa, Archbishop of the Syrian Orthodox Church in Baghdad and Basra, told BBC News Online the electricity shortage was crippling the city and putting lives at risk.
People were sweltering in temperatures of 50C, with no telephones, no jobs, food shortages and increased illness and disorder, he said. Speaking through an interpreter, at the end of a three-week trip to the UK, the archbishop, who opposed the war, said even supporters of the invasion were now losing patience.
But he praised the British for getting Basra back on its feet, and said the anti-war stance of the Church of England had prevented a Muslim backlash against Iraqi Christians. His trip to the UK included preparing for the proposed visit to Iraq in October by his English counterpart, the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams.
He said: "Since the Americans have been in Iraq, nothing good has happened for us. What we were looking forward to did not happen.
“In Basra, it is better because the British know how to administrate and know the thinking of the Iraqi people because they share a history.”
Another US soldier is killed…
U.S. Soldier Killed in Iraq Bomb Attack](Yahoo News: Latest and Breaking News, Headlines, Live Updates, and More)
as more and more people make parallels with Vietnam and other intractable insurgencies.
** Will the U.N. Bail Out Bush?**](Yahoo News: Latest and Breaking News, Headlines, Live Updates, and More)
Aftermath of War - The next West Bank?](http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/07/17/ED51513.DTL)
‘Time running out’ to secure Iraq](BBC NEWS | Middle East | 'Time running out' to secure Iraq)
:konfused: i think Ariel Sharon is the only person who actually wants the US/UK to stay in Iraq. The whole world seems to be sending one message - get out and return full sovereignty of the country to its people.
UN chief ‘seeks Iraqi handover’, BBC, 18 July 2003
The United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan is set to call for a swift handover of sovereignty to the Iraqi people, the BBC has learned.
The recommendations are contained in a report due to be presented to the UN Security Council next week, a copy of which has been obtained by the BBC.
The report says there is a pressing need for the Iraqi people to be given a clear and specific sequence of events leading to the end of the military occupation.
Top Pentagon advisers have warned that time is running out for the United States to establish law and order in Iraq, where another US soldier was killed by a bomb on Friday.
Yea, its that simple hand it over to the Iraqi people. Like the ones raping the Iraqi woman? Or maybe back to Saddam? Back to reality folks.
Back to reality?
We could stay in an occupied territory while not repairing electrical/sewage/water/health infrastructures, not improving domestic security, and claim - in the midst of an actual guerilla warfare campaign - that the Iraqi people are so glad that we are occupying their country.
The above scenario, or, we could temporarily hand over power to an interim UN authority and pull out all British and American troops.
Window of opportunity closing
Pentagon report: Window of opportunity in Iraq closing](http://www.csmonitor.com/specials/sept11/dailyUpdate.html)
The BBC reports that a high-level advisory team sent to Iraq by the United States Defense Department says the window of opportunity to establish law and order is rapidly closing. If urgent action is not taken, the five-member Pentagon team reports, then it will be much more difficult to provide security, basic services, and political and economic opportunity for the Iraqi people.
The Washington Post reports that the team, organized by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, concluded that the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority in charge of reconstruction efforts is isolated and underfunded. The team advises the US to “turbo-charge” its efforts in Iraq, and internationalize the rebuilding of Iraq, particularly in light of the “rising anti-Americanism” in parts of Iraq. The Christian Science Monitor reports that US Secretary of State Colin Powell has been talking this week with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan about increasing UN involvement in Iraq. Also, the Wall Street Journal reports that up to 10,000 National Guard troops will be called up by this winter to serve in Iraq. One senior US defense official, asked by the Journal if he had ever seen the Army stretched so thin, said: “Not in my 31 years” of military service.
The Pentagon report comes out as US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz begins a five-day tour of Iraq. The tour is designed to give Mr. Wolfowitz a closer look at the situation there. But just as he arrived, a member of the Iraqi Reconstruction and Development Council submitted his resignation to Wolfowitz. The Toronto Globe and Mail reports that Professor Isam al-Khafaji of the University of Amsterdam, a member of the council since last fall, resigned because he feared his role with the reconstruction council was sliding from what he had originally envisioned – working with allies in a democratic fashion – to collaborating with occupying forces [boldface added].
Back in the US some columnists have started to call for the resignations of Wolfowitz and his boss, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, because of how they failed to foresee what would happen after the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime. H.D.S. Greenway of the Boston Globe says the two men should be sacked immediately.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the Pentagon has retaliated quickly against the soldiers and officers from the Second Brigade, Third Infantry Division who talked earlier this week on TV about their declining morale and how they the anger they felt towards US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. (One inidentified soldier even said he had his own “most wanted” list, with Paul Bremer [the governor of Iraq], Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and President Bush on his playing cards.) The division, whose troops have been in the Mideast since last September, were told recently their stay in Iraq has been extended indefinitely.
Space Daily reports that back in Hinesville Georgia, home base of the Third Infantry, anger about the delayed return is growing among the families of the Third Infantry troops. “These guys who fought the war from the start should be the first back,” a private, among those back at headquarters said. “People here really feel that those who fought the war should be brought back now, some people are even calling up Mr. Rumsfeld to tell him how they feel,” he said.
While British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s visit to Washington may have given him and Mr. Bush a chance to restate their conviction that going to war against Iraq was the right thing to do, it has not dampened the resolve of those who want to call the White House to task over the inclusion of questionable intelligence in this year’s State of the Union address. The Washington Post reports that administration officials now say that the State Department had copies of what turn out to be forged documents suggesting that Iraq tried to purchase uranium oxide from Niger three months before the president’s speech. Until now, the White House has said that it did not have the documents before Bush mentioned them in the address.
The Los Angeles Times reports that in closed-door testimony on Capitol Hill, CIA officials named a senior White House aide [Bob Joseph, the director for nonproliferation at the National Security Council] who persuaded the agency to allow a questionable allegation about Iraq in President Bush’s State of the Union address, a senator involved in the classified hearing said Thursday. Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois, a member of the committee, said the witnesses’ testimony made it clear that the Bush administration had ignored warnings not to include the material. “They weren’t searching for the right words; they were searching for a way around the obvious,” said Mr. Durbin.
But Clifford May of the National Review Online says there are other questions that the administration’s critics should be asking about what some are now calling “Yellowcakegate.” Such as why did the CIA assign to a diplomat, and not its top spies, to the important task of finding out the facts behind the reports of Iraq buying uranium in Africa. And how does the US know for sure that officials from Niger weren’t bribed to say nothing had happened?
Finally, police England say a body found this morning matches the description of Dr. David Kelly, the man named by the British government as the possible source for a controversial BBC story on Iraq. Dr. Kelly had denied the charge. He had been missing from his home in Southmoor, Abingdon, Oxfordshire since yesterday. Conservative MP Richard Ottaway, a member of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee which took evidence from Kelly this week, said if Kelly was dead, the political ramifications for the Blair government would be “quite serious.” On his way to Tokyo, Blair issued a statement saying an independent judicial inquiry would be held into Kelly’s death, if he was indeed dead.
==========
As you can probably see, this summary is not soley about the Pentagon report concering the “closing window” in Iraq. It is a round-up of the past day’s events. Not a good sign at all.. if anything it indicates that the “window” is not only closing for domestic reform in Iraq, but for the political fertility of incumbents with a hand in the jar everywhere.
Wonder why Tenet (DCI) still has a job? Sacking him due to professional ineptitude would raise the same questions (more credulously than at present) with regards to Rumsfeld and his posse.
For the military, morale is non-existent.. and steadily turning to hate. The chain of command is being flooded by complaints everywhere, not just Iraq–though it it one of the root causes. Desk-bound officers are constantly at each others’ throats. Retention and recruitment just plain stinks. America is not up for the physical fight.
Domestic politics in America have finally found their foothold against the admin in the African uranium saga. Expect that to lead to more. And.. a new poll doesn’t look good for Bush.
The window is indeed closing…
Another American soldier killed, and the US wants to go running back to the UN to save it’s tail…
U.S. Soldier Killed in Iraq, UN May Be Asked to Help](Yahoo News: Latest and Breaking News, Headlines, Live Updates, and More)
More American soldiers killed today, this time in Northern Iraq…
Two US soldiers have been killed and another injured in a Kurdish-controlled area of northern Iraq](BBC NEWS | Middle East | US forces hit in northern Iraq)