Whoever didn't think war equaled death needs to stop watching American Idol and crack open a book. OK now I'm going to volley the ball back over and get back on topic.

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An unwavering defender of those I see worth protecting.

"promote the general welfare, not provide the general welfare"

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Here is my uneducated opinion.

I think the U.S. needs to have a presence in the middle east. At least until some level of stability happens. We also need to be within arms reach of any terrorist organizations that may be fueling an attack against the US, Israel, or any other area of the Western world.
Regardless of WMD's which at the time were a great excuse. The US is on the ground in Iraq for more reasons than just Iraq.
It is my belief that having a large US army within a stones throw from other "aggressive" anti-western countries is important right now.
If we pull out of Iraq, I am pretty confident, we are going to be sending an army back to the Middle East as quickly as we can pull out.
And I would also not be surprised if Israel were to come under attack with a US withdrawl from the Middle East.

So now the question of, MORE TROOPS?
If that's what the General's need and that's what the existing troops need, then I say it's a good decision.

No, we might not be able to "win" this war. But what is "winning" a war? We beat Germany in WWII when we killed Hitler and entered Berlin. Well, we entered Bahdad and took care of Saddam.

The problem as I see it, is the war that will continue to exist between people that hate the U.S. and Israel. So if the fighting is in Iraq, it's in Iraq. If it's Afghanistan, then that is where the fighting will be. Iran, who knows... But I don't think it's time to retire the entire U.S. armed services and hope the fundamentalists start to like us.

I don't have an answer on how to win this war against the West. Except maybe, other West countries might realize we are fighting for them too. Things will probably have to get much worse before they get any better.

So, I'm sorry for the coutry of Iraq that the fighting, for now, has to be on their land. But if it's not there, it's going to be somewhere else.

B

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"When two people agree on everything, one of them is not necessary" - Arliss

The trouble with our "wars" is that they become politized, the media adds their $.02, and we end up never following through with what needs to be done. The 1991 Iraq war should have brought Saddam down if we followed through, but the bleeding hearts crying over the "road of death" out of Kuwait brought about a political end to the war instead of a military end. The Kurds thought (and was most likely promised) they would have our help. It cost them thousands of lives. The UN was supposed to oversee the sanctions on Saddam, but instead went to bed with him. Saddam should have been captured and brought to trial in 1991. We did not have enough troops to secure Iraq this time, and we still don't. We had a misguided belief that with Saddam's fall and capture, the country would embrace freedom. We STILL do not understand the influence the many different Islamic mullahs and imans have on the public opinion and the political process. I STILL do not hear ANYONE talking about getting the religious leaders to speak out against the bombings. Until they unite their voices and speak out against the indiscriminant killings, NOTHING'S GOING TO CHANGE.

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Mark _______________________________
2001 X5 4.4i topaz blue/sand Sport, complete Dinan S2 , hitch, V1, tint, BSW Stage 1, Alpine INA-W910BT
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Life is not fair!
You can't protect people from their own stupidity!
Laughter makes life worth living

The war is a combined mistake of political commentary and assuming that military might can change minds...which is only true if you kill everyone. Similar to what happened in Japan in WWII. The idea of losing hundreds of thousands of people gave the Japanese pause. IMO.

__________________

An unwavering defender of those I see worth protecting.

"promote the general welfare, not provide the general welfare"

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Side Note: Has anyone noticed that the new DEFSEC is looking into sending more troops to Afghanistan. Where exactly are we getting all these troops? At this rate, Canada could invade us since we will have no one left in the full time military

Everyone has been so hyped up on Iraq that Afghanistan has received a complete free-ride. They use the US military almost entirely as their military. How come no one is asking for an exit strategy in Afghanistan? How come Karzai hasn't been asked to step up and take control of his country? Oh thats right, Karzai and Bush are old friends from way back.

The US military removed the Taliban, they are now fighting Afghanistan via Pakistan. The US military needs to pull out of Afghanistan, long before Iraq. Afghanistan now needs to protect its own border....6 years later.

__________________

An unwavering defender of those I see worth protecting.

"promote the general welfare, not provide the general welfare"

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

I'm sorry to disappoint you...,
The US troops are in Afghanistan to defend and protect Halliburton interests. Not to prevent terrorism…
I think you guys know that the Hamid Karzai, president of Afghanistan, was ( I quote ) “a top adviser to the El Segundo, California-based UNOCAL Corporation which was negotiating with the Taliban to construct a Central Asia Gas (Cent Gas) pipeline from Turkmenistan through western Afghanistan to Pakistan”.
By the way…congratulations MR. Bush…after the Taliban’s, Afghanistan became the world's top producer of heroin and opium. That’s a coincidence.

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Minds are like parachutes they only work when they’re open.

Well thanks for the obvious

BTW, Afghanistan's main export for decades has been opium..that is by NO means new to the region.

__________________

An unwavering defender of those I see worth protecting.

"promote the general welfare, not provide the general welfare"

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Thanks for the

Afghanistan's main export for decades has been opium...(And that’s not going to change).
But the fact is that there was a major boom in drug production after the Taliban’s.

__________________
Minds are like parachutes they only work when they’re open.

Actually, the Taliban almost got rid of the Opium production entirely in their last couple of years in power:


Afghanistan’s cash crop wilts
Taliban ban on opium yields impressive results

WAZIRAN, Afghanistan, May 23, 2001 - There are few signs of wealth in Afghanistan, but farmer Mohammed Hasan’s shiny late-model Toyota is a dead giveaway. Hasan once grew Afghanistan’s premier cash crop, poppies from which opium is produced. This year is different. He may have to sell his car just to survive.

Last year, Afghanistan was the world’s largest opium producer, with 75 percent of the world’s crop, a staggering output of some 3,500 tons of one of the most addictive drugs on earth. The opium, a key ingredient in heroin, is smuggled into Europe and Asia, where it commands a fortune on international markets.

So stunning was Afghanistan’s opium production last year that the CIA estimates 39 percent of the world’s supply came from just a single province.

For years the ruling Taliban government relied on lucrative opium sales to fuel its war with opposition forces in the north. Farmers like Hasan earned thousands of dollars a year from their crops — a true fortune in a country where the average monthly income isonly a few dollars.

Drug growing deemed un-Islamic

But last July, the Taliban’s leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, issued an extraordinary edict. It banned poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, calling drug production un-Islamic. Few in international law enforcement took Omar’s edict seriously — until now.

Earlier this month, an international delegation led by the United Nations Drug Control Program — which included two U.S. government narcotics experts —visited Afghanistan to study the impact of Omar’s ban.

Delegates told MSNBC.com that during the 10-day visit they found no evidence of poppy crops anywhere in the survey area, which concentrated on the biggest poppy-growing region of Afghanistan.

“There are no poppies,” said Bernard Frahi, the head of the U.N. program’s Afghanistan project. “It’s amazing.”

Ban cripples economy

That in less than a year Afghanistan has gone from being the biggest opium producer in the world to providing a trickle of the global supply may be the single-most successful drug moratorium in modern history.

But relief officials and former poppy farmers interviewed by MSNBC.com said the Taliban’s uncompromising approach to the opium ban, rather than a phased reduction in the crop, is having a devastating effect on the country’s economy.

“It was not a good year to ban poppies,” said one senior aid official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “They are drought resistant, labor intensive — that’s to say, a sector that employed large numbers of people — and the farmers used every part of the poppy, for fuel and fodder.”



And after 2001....

Afghanistan Opium Crop Sets Record
U.S.-Backed Efforts At Eradication Fail

Opium production in Afghanistan, which provides more than 90 percent of the world's heroin, broke all records in 2006, reaching a historic high despite ongoing U.S.-sponsored eradication efforts, the Bush administration reported yesterday.

In addition to a 26 percent production increase over past year -- for a total of 5,644 metric tons -- the amount of land under cultivation in opium poppies grew by 61 percent. Cultivation in the two main production provinces, Helmand in the southwest and Oruzgan in central Afghanistan, was up by 132 percent.

White House drug policy chief John Walters called the news "disappointing."

The administration has cited resurgent Taliban forces as the main impediment to stabilization and reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan, and the U.S. military investment has far exceeded anti-narcotic and development programs. But U.S. military and intelligence officials have increasingly described the drug trade as a problem that rivals and in some ways exceeds the Taliban, threatening to derail other aspects of U.S. policy.

"It is truly the Achilles' heel of Afghanistan," Gen. James L. Jones, the supreme allied commander for NATO, said in a recent speech at the Council on Foreign Relations. Afghanistan is NATO's biggest operation, with more than 30,000 troops. Drug cartels with their own armies engage in regular combat with NATO forces deployed in Afghanistan, he said. "It would be wrong to say that this is just the Taliban. I think I need to set that record straight," he added.

"They have their own capability to inflict damage, to make sure that the roads and the passages stay open and they get to where they want to go, whether it's through Pakistan, Iran, up through Russia and all the known trade routes. So this is a very violent cartel," Jones said. "They are buying their protection by funding other organizations, from criminal gangs to tribes, to inciting any kind of resistance to keep the government off of their back."

Any disruption of the drug trade has enormous implications for Afghanistan's economic and political stability. Although its relative strength in the overall economy has diminished as other sectors have expanded in recent years, narcotics is a $2.6 billion-a-year industry that this year provided more than a third of the country's gross domestic product. Farmers who cultivate opium poppies receive only a small percentage of the profits, but U.S. officials estimate the crop provides up to 12 times as much income per acre as conventional farming, and there is violent local resistance to eradication.

"It's almost the devil's own problem," CIA Director Michael V. Hayden told Congress last month. "Right now the issue is stability. . . . Going in there in itself and attacking the drug trade actually feeds the instability that you want to overcome."

"Attacking the problem directly in terms of the drug trade . . . would undermine the attempt to gain popular support in the region," agreed Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. "There's a real conflict, I think."

The Afghan government has prohibited the aerial herbicide spraying used by U.S. anti-narcotic programs in Latin America. Instead, opium poppy plants in Afghanistan are destroyed by tractors dragging heavy bars. But only 38,500 of nearly 430,000 acres under cultivation were eradicated this year.

Because of security concerns and local sensibilities, all eradication is done by Afghan police, and corruption is a major problem at every level from cultivation to international trafficking. Although the drug trade is believed to provide some financing to the Taliban, most experts believe it is largely an organized criminal enterprise. According to a major report on the Afghan drug industry jointly released last week by the World Bank and the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, key narcotics traffickers "work closely with sponsors in top government and political positions."

The report drew specific attention to the Afghan Interior Ministry, saying its officials were increasingly involved in providing protection for and facilitating consolidation of the drug industry in the hands of leading traffickers. "At the lower levels," the report said, "payments to police to avoid eradication or arrest reportedly are very widespread. At higher levels, provincial and district police chief appointments appear to be a tool for key traffickers and sponsors to exercise control and favor their proteges at middle levels in the drug industry."

Opium cultivation was outlawed during Taliban rule in the late 1990s and was nearly eliminated by 2001. After the overthrow of the Taliban government by U.S. forces in the fall of that year, the Bush administration said that keeping a lid on production was among its highest priorities. But corruption and alliances formed by Washington and the Afghan government with anti-Taliban tribal chieftains, some of whom are believed to be deeply involved in the trade, undercut the effort.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai recently noted that "once we thought terrorism was Afghanistan's biggest enemy" but said that now "poppy, its cultivation and drugs are Afghanistan's major enemy."

Eradication and alternative development programs have made little discernible headway. Cultivation -- measured annually with high-resolution satellite imagery that is then parsed by analysts using specialized computer software -- is nearly double its highest pre-Karzai level.

"There is supposed to be a tremendous energy associated with this," Jones said of the counter-narcotics programs, "but it needs a fresh look because . . . we're losing ground.

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my experience on X5world when I spend too much
time posting in political threads in the lounge...