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Cry Me A Riverbend II

Thursday, August 18, 2005

Who Was SPC Casey Sheehan?

UPDATE

I've updated the Who IS Cindy Sheehan post to link to the Open Letter from a Mother whose son enlisted in the Army at Casey Sheehan's encouragement.



Army SPC Casey Sheehan was the son of Cindy Sheehan. He was killed April 4, 2004 in Sadr City. But you wouldn't recognize him from his mother's description of him today.

His is not the story his mom tells of how he was an infantalized dummy who was fooled into joining up.

Army SPC Casey Sheehan was a war hero and he was a real man. Having recently reenlisted with the Army, SPC Sheehan volunteered to be part of a Quick Response Force (QRF) into Sadr City to rescue soldiers trapped by obstacles under serious enemy fire on the day of the heaviest fighting and most casualties suffered in Iraq since Baghdad's fall; known to the troops as Black Sunday.

Here is Melinda Liu's coverage of the battle for Newsweek. She says:

"Suddenly, Aguero found his unit heading into a Mad Max gauntlet of burning tires and road obstacles of every imaginable description: concrete blocks, metal market stalls, air conditioners, scrap metal, truck axles, even refrigerators. The burning debris put out so much choking black smoke that visibility was down to 300 meters. The street had become 'a 300-meter-long kill zone,' recalls Aguero. The vehicles swerved and ran onto sidewalks, rolling on the rims of flat tires, as gunmen kept up the barrage of bullets.”

Here is another one by Melinda Liu with Rod Norland.

Read the full story here by Ed Marek.

Ed Marek is not the writer that Liu is. His telling has more of the feeling of a "brain dump" than a careful ordering of the facts. But if you are patient, you will gather both a story of a tragic confluence of events and a saga of real heroes including SPC Sheehan.

He takes Liu's reporting and statements from participating soldiers to provide a military expert's account the Black Sunday operation. Point-by-point he fisks and elaborates on eye witness-statements and Liu's reporting of the events of that day, he provides an exceptional analysis of the events that combined to create a perfect storm for the soldiers of the 1st Armored Cavalry Division that day in southern Baghdad -- the most important of which to my mind is this:


The point we wish to leave you with here is that the Battle of Sadr City occurred on April 4, 2004. Formal changeover of responsibility for Baghdad and Sadr City occurred on April 15, 2004. For the April 4 battle, most soldiers had been there for only a week or two, and most of the officers had been there only a month. The commander responsible for the main thrust into Sadr City officially took command about 15 minutes after the battle got nasty. He fought valiantly, as did his soldiers, but one cannot ignore this timing when analyzing the April 4 battle.

Marek also reports how Sheehan volunteered for the mission to rescue his fellow soldiers -- he didn't have to, and he wasn't the only one:

"They had guys who normally don't fight who volunteered to help their buddies. There were guys fighting to get on that convoy."

Cindy Sheehan knows he volunteered for that mission despite now memorializing him has a useful idiot of the Neo-cons. Since we are letting her speak, lets hear what she said to Marek about this too:

“And the sergeant said, 'Sheehan, you don't have to go,' because my son was a mechanic.' And Casey said, 'Where my chief goes, I go.' "

Why should Cindy Sheehan's opinions carry more weight than SPC Sheehan's opinions?
His sister, Carly, said:

“He didn’t have to go,” said Sheehan’s 23-year-old sister, Carly. “He would do anything for anybody. He’d give you the shirt off his back. He was just a loving and caring person...That’s all he wanted to do was serve God and his country his whole life...He was a boy scout from age 6 or 7 and an Eagle Scout. It was kind of a natural progression to go into the military from that. He said he was enjoying the military because it was just like the boy scouts but they got guns.”

Check it out.

21 Comments:

  • This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 12:42 PM  

  • It uses an improvised "Tic Tac" to permit advertising on the left side should I desire to do it. It's an experiment really.

    I like Tic Tac because it of the Quotation Marks graphic that appears with the "blockquotes" tag. It's just very cool for a blog with a lot of quotations.

    By Blogger CMAR II, at 1:10 PM  

  • God gives each of us the ability to choose in life. We all follow God's will until that time. He chose to fight for Iraqis that had been brutalized by the monster saddam hussein. He died so that Iraqis will not have another monster running their lives. He made the choice God gave him the right to have. His mother dishonors his choice and God that gave him that choice.
    Jack

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 10:13 AM  

  • Steve-O,

    Regardless of what he told his radically liberal mother, SPC Sheehan re-enlisted in 2004. If he were really against the Iraq operation he could and surely would have not done that.

    I've no doubt he told his mother what she could take so he wouldn't have to hear what she's said for the last 9 months.

    Actions speak louder than words.

    By Blogger CMAR II, at 6:06 PM  

  • Steve-O,

    So you think that SPC Casey would have re-enlisted to go to Iraq to fight a war he thought was for materialism and oil (as his mother does)?

    If you believe that, then you don't have a very high opinion of SPC Casey.

    By Blogger CMAR II, at 7:31 PM  

  • Steve-O,

    Cindy seems to be quite clear on what the war is for. She is telling everyone she can. It is to protect the interests of the Jews and to control the oil of the Middle East. I think you should listen to what she says and then you'll know what she thinks. See the post just prior to this one for a sampling.

    She met with the President last year. She was no more in favor of the war then than she is now. She seemed to think President had listened carefully to her at the time based on what she said.

    You may think you know why SPC Sheehan re-enlisted. I don't say that I do. All I know is that he was 24 years old and knew what he was going to face. The war had been going on for a year, and Cindy Sheehan knew what he would face as well...but it didn't matter because it was her son's decision not hers.

    Since his death, Cindy had decided to denegrate his memory by asserting to whomever she can (apparently it hasn't gotten you yet) that he died for nothing, or that what he did die for was not worth dying for (e.g. his country).

    You don't have have believe the Iraq Liberation was a good thing to honor the fact the choice to go was SPC Sheehan's decision; that he wasn't tricked or lied to to get him to go. Either his mother doesn't realize or she is cynically using his death as a political prop. I prefer the former.

    By Blogger CMAR II, at 3:02 PM  

  • Steve-O,
    Let qualify my comment (the actual post needs no qualification since I didn't say anything about SPC Sheehan's politics there).

    I don't think SPC Sheehan held the same opinion about the Iraq war as his mother -- nothing close to it. I DON'T believe he was likely completely upfront with his mother given her obviously strong feelings about the WOT.

    His sister has implied that he re-enlisted because "all he wanted to do was serve God and his country his whole life."

    Cindy Sheehan has said however that she "passed on" the "bullsh*t" that "America is good" and that that was why he enlisted.

    So it appears that your explanation for why SPC Sheehan enlisted does not agree with (or at the least does not wholly encompass) the explanations of Cindy or her daughter (which are compatible).

    I'm not going to quote for you Cindy Sheehan's opinion about the reasons for the War in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan and the WOT because I've already done so here, because other places have done so more extensively than I, and because you obviously have NOT read even MY post or you would not continue to say something as ignorant as Cindy Sheehan is "not saying he died for nothing", "Cindy doesn't KNOW what the war is for", and she's only asking "the administration to come out and say what it was he died for".

    Read what I've posted on that and then we'll talk.

    By Blogger CMAR II, at 8:17 AM  

  • What Cindy is saying is that the current situation

    No, Steve-O. That's what you say she said. What she said PRECISELY was this:
    "I was raised in a country by a public school system that taught us that America was good, that America was just. America has been killing people...since we first stepped on this continent, we have been responsible for death and destruction. I passed on that bullshit to my son and my son enlisted.

    I'm glad you quoted her poem. So we agree that Cindy is quite convinced that she knows why we went to Iraq and why her son was killed. So what does she expect to gain from a second meeting with the President?

    I notice that when you quote the "This country is not worth dying for" bit, you parse out "If we’re attacked...

    The problem is that Mrs. Sheehan has a difficult time believing we were ever attacked by anyone. She implies that even 9-11 was staged by the neo-cons. I don't think we should have waited for her to be satisfied on this matter.

    I submit to you, sir, that you are either being pigheaded or intentionally disingenuous.I've said multiple times in this thread that I understand why Casey re-upped. I don't think (and I don't believe his mother does, either) that he was tricked.

    I'm being neither. I simply can't understand which of your synapses is misfiring. Cindy has given several reasons why her son re-upped including that he believed in "bullshit" that "America was good, that America was just". Why do you insist on picking between them?

    Actually the quote you are continually referencing in which Cindy says he re-upped for his fellow soldiers is actually from a conversation that apparently took place after he re-upped when he was being sent to Iraq:
    I begged Casey not to go. I told him I would take him to Canada. I told him I would run over him with a car, anything to get him not to go to that immoral war.
    This is where Cindy gives the other reason her son died in Iraq: He was "brainwashed".

    But this says nothing as to why SPC Sheehan re-upped when he knew he would likely go to Iraq if he did. In that case, I think Cindy's and her daughter's other quotes are pertinent:
    Casey did it for love of country.

    The military trusts that our elected representatives will labor long and hard over other solutions before committing our flesh and blood to battle. Mrs. Sheehan doesn't think that happened.

    Actually, Cindy Sheehan thinks they did think long and hard over this liberation. She thinks they did it for oil, for a "PNAC Neo-Con agenda to benefit Israel", and to make George Bush's "friends richer".

    Further, She has allied herself to Marxist organizations who's stated goal is the violent overthrow of the U.S. government.

    I don't see what Cindy Sheehan could gain from another meeting with the President other than a chance to vomit all the radical nutcase crap she's been saying for the last 6 months which he can already read on the Internet whenever he wants. She is certainly under delusions, but not the delusion you are under that she doesn't think she knows why her son died.

    By Blogger CMAR II, at 11:11 AM  

  • Steve-O, Steve-O, Steve-O,

    I've asked you and asked you to read this post, but you haven't done it. You've only cursorily glossed over it to grab something to respond.

    There are no Marxists left in Russia. Their last hold-out is in San Francisco and Berkely.

    The International Socialist Organization may sound like an racket out of the 1930s but it is a *contemporary* racket that hosted an event in which Cindy Sheehan spoke last May prior to her notariety. So, she attached herself to them. And, yes, they are made-up of San Francisco nut-cakes that proudly declare their their intent to overthrow the US government, police, and judiciary by violence since they are capitalist institutions that cannot be reformed with in.

    ISO co-hosted the event with Students Against War (SAW). An easy way to locate Marxist mailing lists is to Google for "Students Against War" since that seems to be their favorite way of getting the word out about their events. SAW hosted a forum at SFSU asking the question "Should We Support The Iraqi Resistance?" So apparently they may not be against all war. This Iraqi Resistance are the people that actually killed Cindy's son.

    This is what she said:
    "I just want to say that you students, Students Against War, you have all my support and all my organization’s support. I told Kristen if you have any actions and you need a ringleader, that I only live about an hour away. I’ll be here. If I can sleep on somebody’s floor, we can have this, we can camp out, do whatever we need.

    See? She attached herself to them.

    I can't imagine you being this forgiving if you learned George Bush spoken at an event put on by white supremists, and having such glowing things to say about them.

    Sheesh, Steve-O. If you are not willing to take the least effort to read the pertinent facts so we can talk from the same page, what is the point?

    Furthermore, you need to stop imagining in your mind what Cindy stands for and what her goals are, and read for youself what they are.

    By Blogger CMAR II, at 1:32 PM  

  • Steve-O,

    The veterans you are referring to have, as you put it, attached themselves her. It is Cindy who attached herself to Marxists in San Francisco (whose stated goal is the violent overthrow the US government) well before her notariety. See the difference?

    It doesn't matter that the Marxists she's attached herself to are looney enough to set that as an acheivable goal. On second thought it does, because they're living in a bizarre little world and Cindy found it to be just the world she would be comfortable in. It is indicative of the mind of the person the Anti-liberation Left has selected as their symbol.

    Cindy wants the government to come up with a stated plan to get our folks out of Iraq. End of story.

    I can't keep up, Steve-O. Before you said she only wanted to meet with the President to have him explain what her son died for. Now that has become plain from quotes BOTH of us have provided that she is already convinced of why her son died and that a meeting would be less than useless, you are telling me she is looking for an exit strategy.

    But there IS an exit strategy Steve-O, and it is the same exit strategy that was declared when we went in: Victory. A free, stable, Iraq that does not threaten its neighbors and whose government does not host international terrorists. Cindy (and you) hardly need to have that restated.

    You might not think that it is achievable (people of your thinking said the same about elections last January although I expect you to deny remembering it), but victory was the only exit strategy we had against Germany in WWII and against Japan as well.

    Conversely, I don't recall an exit strategy being discussed for Bosnia or Serbia and I don't recall hearing you complain about that then.

    By Blogger CMAR II, at 7:49 AM  

  • Wow. The exit strategy is a stable Iraq that isn't a threat to its neighbors?!? Government that doesn't host international terrorists? I thought it was to "disarm Saddam".

    There were many excellent reasons for taking out Saddam. "Disarming Saddam" was what we attempted for the 12 years previously; not our goal in the invasion, it seems to me. In the invasion we separated Saddam from his weapons rather than attempting anymore to separate his weapons from Saddam.

    In addition, I seem to recall an enterprising anti-liberation college student logging 23 separate reasons given by Administration officials for why it was necessary to go into Iraq. That sounds about right. But the only reason pertinent to the UN was that he had failed to comply with the terms of the 1991 cease-fire.

    And I thought the "Mission" was "Accomplished".

    Since you have been in the military, I'm sure you understand that there are many mission within every enterprise. Some of them you cannot know until you start.

    I glad to hear we agreed about Bosnia. You didn't mention Serbia, but I'm sure you appreciate that there have been no Cindy Sheehans getting coverage regarding any US soldiers that have died in Bosnia in the last 8 years. And no one is asking why we blew up power stations and water treatment plants in Serbia. I was against the Serbian enterprise as well, but there was no way I was going to lend my voice to in effect defending the butcher Milosevik while American servicemen were risking their lives against him.

    I'm still gappling with your philosophy on foreign policy but currently, based on your statements so far, I am inclined to think of it as not far from Pat Buchanan's.

    I personally didn't say anything about the elections in January

    That's why I put it in parenthesis. My point, which seems to have gone over your head, was that anti-liberationists prophesied the elections would not succeed, that they were an irrelevant fig leaf that most Iraqis would not participate in, would not see as significant, and would in fact cause a civil war. Apparently, you were among them to some extent and nothing you saw January 30th changed your mind. I supposed that's why the analogy passed you by.

    Japan attacked us. Germany declared war on us due to a mutual defense treaty it signed with Japan. That war was not discretionary. Nothing you say can change the fact that this one WAS.

    Actually, America had never been attacked by Germany or Italy (just as with Saddam). Germany and the US traded a few naval pot-shots at each other due to the US' Lend-Lease program but we didn't make a big deal over it because it if the American people had believed the program was getting us in the middle of a European war and endangering US seamen, they would have stopped it.

    Nor were Germany and Italy in any position to do us any real harm in 1942. But we siphoned the majority of our resources from the war with Japan to take on Germany & Italy. Why? Because if they were successful, it was likely they would be in a position to hurt us later. Just like Saddam.

    For that reason, I don't see either our war in the Europe or our war in Iraq to be discretionary. But one is not thinking hard (and I understand you pride yourself on that) if he argues one was discretionary and one wasn't.

    But then, Cindy Sheehan is sceptical whether our war in Afghanistan was discretionary (to attempt to carom us back on subject).

    By Blogger CMAR II, at 1:52 PM  

  • who has the better view on what SPC Sheehan might have believed before his death - his mother or the anonymous poster...who began these comments? I still believe his mother would know more than anonymous.

    Well, if we're going to give Saddam the benefit of the doubt at every juncture, I see no reason not to give it to the anonymous poster as well. Who knows what it is he knows! ;-)

    My point is that, to my knowledge Cindy Sheehan doesn't really say what SPC Sheehan personally thought about the war beyond that "he wished he didn't have to go" (and who wouldn't?)

    So you believe that in stating your opinion regarding the Serbian enterprise in an effort to get the government to stop killing however many American kids have died over there, you would be selling those kids out?

    I guess I just don't equate "sending US soldiers to fight" with the government "killing American kids". I didn't agree with the policy to bomb Serbia to dust because, as I saw it, we were choosing sides between two genocidal war criminals. But I don't particularly care if bad things happen to Milosevik or the Serbs that supported him. You weren't going to catch me passing out "Hands Off Serbia" flyers. I wasn't going to be Milosevik's apologist as so many Americans were for Saddam in the lead up to the necessary war in Iraq.

    So answer me this - were the activities of Newt Gingrich and the entire Republican contingent in Congress treasonous?

    No. They had a job to do, and whenever they expressed doubts about the war in Serbia before hand, that’s what they were doing. I don’t use the word “treason” about people protesting a war with troops in the field but to the extent Congressmen did it, they were wrong. They had a chance to voice their opinion beforehand. Get over it.. But aside from Congressmen of both parties with large Serbian communities, neither party trashed the war or its overall goals. What's not consistent are the "War Is Not The Answer" crowd who sat on their hands during that war and then claimed there was something especially nefarious about removing Saddam.

    My philosophy on foreign policy is very simple. America should defend American interests...Surely you see the inherent wisdom in that.

    You've crystallized my point of view exactly.

    Or do you buy into this "Spreading American democracy makes the world safer" nonsense? If so, please explain to me how it works. I'm honestly curious.

    I'm glad to see I'm so transparent. If you have time, here's how it works. It is based on an example: Sept. 11, 2001; the day in which America was born in some ways:

    1) During the late seventies and eighties we supported insurgents against the USSR. After the USSR pulled out, we stopped our involvement there, because, it was not in our interests to involve ourselves further. Afghanistan collapsed and soon the cruel Taliban took control and established order. But what do we care? If Afghanis follow leaders that insist on killing each other and the majority embrace a dictatorship, that's the Afghanis business/problem. Well, not exactly: because Afghanistan also became a base for al-Qaeda.

    * Point: The US did not concern itself with Afgh. INTERNAL freedom, only its external independence. And the result generated a problem that came back to bite us.

    2) In 1991 we had Saddam on his knees but we didn't remove him. Why? Because if we did, the only way to prevent Iraq from falling into civil was nation building. That's expensive. That will mean American "kids" (you should know better than to use that term) getting killed. Americans would have tolerated neither. But another MAJOR consideration was that we wanted a strong united Iraq to offset Iran. That was in our interest.
    Furthermore Bush 41's Coalition would have abandoned us. The UN would have withdrawn support since we agreed not to depose Saddam.
    So we left the Ba'athists in place, hoping against hope that the Iraqis oust Saddam without overturning the undemocratic system. That was in our interests.
    Saddam did not comply with the terms of the ceasefire. The Ba'athis regime did not oust Saddam. Saddam's regime became far less secular. The nation was devolving into a failed state. It was becoming a harbor and bankroller for terrorists. Furthermore, the sanctions had become a "recruitment poster" for al-Qaeda and other groups. We knew that the UN, France, Russia, and the Arab nations were stealing from the Oil-For-Food program, but *some* funds were still getting to the people so we didn't want to shut it down. But we were locked in an unbreakable hold with Saddam: we had to "keep him in a box", but the box was becoming a bomb in our hands.

    * Point: Democracy for Iraq was considered too risky for us and expensive for us. But the risk was rising anyway.

    3) It had long been known that the US was most popular in M.E. countries that were hostile to us. Among our “allies” there, the people saw us as in league with their oppressors. Furthermore, those same autocracies kept their people in line by "externalizing" their problems: claiming they were caused by the US or Israel.

    The 9-11 terrorists all came from "friendly" countries in the M.E.

    * Point: Remaining disinterested in the governmental models of M.E. countries (as long as they were favorable to us) was actually generating terrorists.

    4) Now America had an intractable problem that was eloquently summed up by C. Rice before the 9-11 Commission:
    "Our Afghanistan policy wasn't working because our Pakistan policy wasn't working...which wasn't working because our Middle East policy wasn't working."

    So they swept aside the previous M.E. policies formed during the Cold War and started anew with this one:
    "A lack of self-determination among people even on the other side of the planet is a danger to the U.S. As Lincoln said 'No nation can remain half slave and half free', the same is true in this shrinking world. One will have to win over the other, eventually. Therefore, the US should consider democratization to be its goal whenever and wherever it can feasibly do so."

    This policy explains why we risked pissing off Uzbekistan, even though it was an "ally" in the WOT.

    _______________________________

    Germany = World-class power, with armed forces better equipped, trained, and organized than any other country on the planet.

    Who was involved in a two-front front war with an island with the most powerful, advanced navy in the world; and with a vast nation with the largest population in Europe. Over the last 2 years, it had been bled almost dry. The Battle For Britain was a failure and Reich Minister Hess had been captured in a desperate attempt to arrange a truce. However, Germany DID have submarines which are analogous to terrorists today.

    Iraq = Third-world country, with a decimated army never allowed to re-form after its defeat in 1991.

    But Iraq was bank-rolling and harboring terrorists which after 9-11 were found to be just as dangerous and harder to defend against than a B-1 bomber. Just the THREAT of another terrorist attack caused 1 million jobs to be lost to the US economy after 9-11.

    Germany = The guys who were going to invent the atomic bomb FIRST if someone hadn't done something about it.

    We had no knowledge of that…certainly none in 1942. All we had at most was the knowledge that if WE were thinking of it, they were too. But the same could be said of Japan. We didn't fight Germany first to stop them from getting the Bomb.

    Iraq = Weapons of Mass Destruction Program related activities. Maybe.

    Every major intelligence agency in the world (including France's) believed Saddam had stockpiles of WMDs. The fact that Saddam acted so guilty was in itself a further confirmation to most agencies that Saddam had them. It turned out that he was only hiding the PROGRAMS and equipment he had retained to restart the WMD programs after the world looked the other way (as the Administration said he would with his nuclear program). And the world soon would have. There would likely be no sanctions on Iraq today even if Saddam were still in power. Wilson's report from Niger was that Iraq had definitely TRIED to buy uranium from Niger, and we knew the same was true in other African countries. They had the scientists who COULD engineer a bomb. We now KNOW he had the equipment. If Germany was worth fighting over the possibility that they might get the Bomb, then surely Iraq was too considering the knowledge that he could hand a terrorists a suitcase with a nuke in it, and forever claim he had nothing to do with it. Nope. Saddam was a disaster waiting to happen.

    Germany = Declared war against us on December 11, 1941...In fact, Hitler accused FDR of making the war inevitable.

    Yes, by his Lend-Lease program with Britain. But again, Germany was in no position to do us serious harm. Much less than the Japanese. We went to war with Germany in 1942 for the same reason we did it in 1917: to "make the world safe for democracy" (gasp! What nonsense!).

    Iraq = Was satisfying the terms of UN resolution by allowing inspectors full access to the country. Unfortunately, it was rather difficult for Iraq to prove the absence of WMD. Or programs. Or related programs.

    I'm assuming you are not trying to be funny.
    1) It was Iraq's duty to VERIFY the destruction of his WMDs and WMD programs. We don't disagree that he HAD them in 1991, do we? It was not the job of the inspectors to FIGURE OUT if he had done so. Nor was it possible for them to prove a negative as you pointed out yourself.
    2) We now KNOW that one of the things Saddam was hiding (causing him to act so guilty) was the equipment and documentation for restarting those programs IN CLEAR VIOLATION of the UN ceasefire.

    Saddam was NOT satisfying the terms of his agreement and among informed people (I presume you were not aware of any of these facts) it is impossible to construe that he WAS doing so without resorting to mere sophistry to apologize for Saddam.

    We turned our attention to Germany first because we held talks with our allies and came up with a joint strategy, which involved taking on Germany first to provide relief to the Brits and the Sovs, who were losing lots of people and industrial capacity.

    The USSR was only our ally in our war with Germany. With the narrow exception that we both wanted Germany to lose, we had NO interests in common. The USSR had only 2 years before had a peace treaty with Germany as it took down France. In our war against Japan, Russia was a competing interest. We didn't WANT Russia's help. You speak of consulting our “allies” as if there was some reason to consult them beyond how fight Germany (such as whether to fight her).
    Britain was an ally, but not for any immediate self-interests. What would it mean to an 18 year old in Nebraska if the British Empire collapsed and the island made into a client of German like (Vichy France)? Nothing.

    There was no reason to fight Germany in 1943 following the foreign policy you have laid out.

    Was there a state of war with Iraq before we initiated one?

    There was no state of war when we went to Kuwait...or when we bombed Iraq throughout the late 1990s...or Serbia...or Bosnia...or when we bombed Sudan..or Somalia...or Korea. I'm sure I could think of more but why bother? The Congress authorized the President’s actions. It doesn't matter if they CALLED it a Declaration of War. They said "go" and they funded it.

    Would American lives face imminent risk if there were no state of war with Iraq?

    We had no way of knowing the answer to that in 2003. The danger was mostly nil or extreme dire. Saddam had already used a terrorist to attempt to assassinate former US President. He had the terrorists, he had the intelligence operatives, he probably had the WMDs (and if he didn't, he had 12 years to prove he had destroyed them). Any President who sat on his hands with that knowledge that failed to attempt real action, if another terrorist strike came and if it came from Iraq, would and should be impeached.

    But even with hindsight, it seems obvious to me from what we know now that Iraq under Saddam would always be a threat – a cloud hanging over us—and it would have been only more difficult get the job done later had we waited.

    There's the definition of discretionary.

    'nuff said.

    By Blogger CMAR II, at 11:48 AM  

  • Wait...darn it. I should have ended this post on topic.

    The point of my post is still that SPC Sheehan was not duped. He wasn't a kid. He knew re-enlisting would result in him being sent to Iraq. I'm suspicious that he was especially against the war. I'm positive he didn't see it the way Cindy Sheehan does.

    By Blogger CMAR II, at 11:51 AM  

  • Equating Iraq to Germany is nonsense.

    Yeah. Forgive me for taking refuge in reason and historical facts. I'm always the first to grab that old saw.

    9-11 was a bloody nose. It didn't "end our innocence". It didn't "prove to us that we needed to take national defense seriously"...We should have dealt with 9-11 the same way the Clinton administration dealt with the millenium plots

    This statement so utterly head...er...in a hole that I don't know what to say.

    What 9-11 proved was that treating terrorism as a criminal issue isn't practical anymore. The old way was not a Clinton thing, it was not a Democrat or Republican thing...if anything, it was a J.Edgar Hoover thing. We tried dealing with the first WTC bombings that way and we found out they just tried it again with more success. We were looking at a steady stream of such actions into perpetuity with ever escalating results until someone left a dirty bomb or a nuclear bomb in Washington DC or NYC. We never did catch whoever mailed those antrax letters, remember? A single terrorist with simple or readily available tools could shut down the country. After 9-11 we lost 1 million jobs. This was more than a case-by-case police matter.

    The comparison between pirates and terrorists is simply brain-dead. Pirates are at least businessmen. If you turn the heat up on them enough they will go somewhere else or do something else. What can you do to deter someone who wants to DIE during his activities?

    Plus, many of the criminals we could identify and locate were harbored in criminal regimes like Afghanistan and Iraq. So all the desires for criminal prosecution were futile anyway.

    That old policy was not practical. It could not be reformed. It had to be remade. And I suppose if you can't see something so obvious, you are not going to see it. And the futility of reasoning in some cases is the same reason why we went ahead and handled Iraq without waiting for UN approval (not for the first time either).

    By Blogger CMAR II, at 7:38 AM  

  • So...if the Clintonian response is such a horrible thing, why were the millenium plots stopped before anyone (not just any AMERICANS, but ANYONE) was killed?

    Err..perhaps because everyone KNEW there would be a terrorist attempt on the millenium? And the only questions were where and how? As opposed to a common everyday Tuesday like Sept. 11, 2001? Do you really believe our law enforcement authorities could maintain that kind of vigil without eternal martial law?
    Did the "clintonian" response (since he inherited it from every President since the 1920s it is hardly the proper name for it) work to stop the first WTC bombing? Did it stop the USS Cole attack? The African Embassy attack? Did it bring a single al-Qaeda leader to justice from their Afghanistan stronghold? So we stopped ONE terrorist attack after a decade of them in the 90s. Is that a good enough record for you? Would it be good enough for you, should a terrorist explode a nuke or dirty bomb in Los Angeles, and if we "brought the perpetrators to justice" five years later? What if the perpetrators were all dead? Sheesh.

    They tried to bomb the World Trade Center after the first time? With more success? During the Clinton administration? Wow - those historical facts and reasoning again. They're inescapable.

    Oooh. You think they wanted to fly planes into the WTC during the Clinton Administration but Bill Clinton had proven himself soooo clever after the first successful attempt that they waited until he was out of office? Are you kidding me? That's just dumb. You are aware that the CIA and the FBI were overseen and operated by the same people in both Administrations, right? Right?

    We were looking at a steady stream of such attacks? Imagine that. We've been looking at a steady stream of murder, kidnapping, rape, and boy bands for the last... well... forever, I guess. We're the big boys on the block. People are going to try and mess with us, for whatever reason. It's a consequence of our stature.

    Okay. You just compared a biological, chemical, or radioactive attack to common crimes. That is deliberately stupid. Do you remember how just a few envelopes sent to Senators shut down their offices for weeks? Imagine shutting down cities. Yes, we're the big boys. We have a lot to lose from suicidal fools planting bombs everywhere. That's why we don't sit around and wait for them to hit us at a time and place of their choosing.

    Clinton policy was to find these guys before they pulled any triggers and arrest them, not to ignore repeated warnings.

    Apparently you paid NO attention during the 9-11 Hearings because what they determined was that the Clinton Administration did ignore repeated warnings. The Bush Administration kept the same people in the same positions implementing the same policy until a new policy could be worked out. Time ran out. It ran out on the old policy.

    You keep calling this the Clinton policy, but Clinton made regime change in Iraq the official US policy. John Kerry asserted in 1998 that we would have to do this dance with inspectors for a while but in the end we would have to enter Iraq and depose Saddam by force and without UN approval if they wouldn’t go along. The only difference is that Bush actually did it. I'm not saying that makes Bush the better man. Without 9-11, probably he wouldn't have gone in either. But it's not the Clinton method vs the Bush method. It is pre-9-11 and post-9-11.

    The terrorists used box-cutters on those planes as you said...which were permitted to be carried on the planes. They claimed they had a bomb. They pretended this was one of those "reasonable" hijackings the passengers were so familiar with from the past. The murder-suicide terrorists RELIED on that belief. And that's the problem with handling terrorism as a criminal matter. Bank robbers want money so you can plan on them acting in certain ways in their own interest. Rapists want to rape and get away without being identified. Same thing. But these terrorists only want to kill and die. Normal security depends on criminals wanting to get away with their crimes. If someone only wants to kill you and die, then the only option you have is to kill them first. If your plan is to wait around for them to pick the time and place, you will always lose...because 9 failures is a reasonable loss to them if they can have one spectacular success.

    Our fight against Al Qaeda WAS a police matter. And we were winning.

    If it were a "police matter" then we should have listened to Michael Moore in 2002 when he told us Osama bin Laden was "innocent until proven guilty, that's the American way."

    And we were and are winning in Afghanistan, but before we moved into Iraq, the same beasts sneaking into Iraq to fight the Infidel now were sneaking into Afghanistan then. (I realize anti-liberationists have no short term memory but that is the case.) Afghanistan, was not an ideal place to beat the Islamofascists. I think it was not the intention to fight those morons in Iraq instead of Afghanistan, but it is good for us that we are. Iraq has an international airport, it has a network of modern roads, it has a modern thinking population (99% of them). Afghanistan did not favor our 21st century war and intelligence methods. Iraq is an excellent place to fight this war in every way Afghanistan was not. And we are winning in Iraq too. If you would stop listening to people who are ideologically committed to the failure of Iraq, it would be obvious to you.

    I love your faux-gangsta terminology. "Yo, Saddam, prove to us you don't have the weapons UNSCOM destroyed and Slick Willie bombed to oblivion, or you're gonna get DEALT with."

    What's amazing is that you have no idea of how stupid this statement is. Clinton did not destroy Saddam's weapons. We didn't target his weapon depots. UNSCOM destroyed some materials when they found them but it determined that there were more unaccounted for. Do you understand the difference between Saddam VERIFYING that he had destroyed all his weapons and inspectors wandering around Iraq trying to discover whether there were any there or not? Whether or not Saddam was getting better at hiding weapons? I've already gone over this and apparently you couldn't comprehend it.

    But semantically speaking "are HANDLING Iraq" would be better n'est ce pas? They obviously haven't been handled yet.

    It is a big job, yes. But we don't have to worry about Saddam restarting his WMD programs after the world looks the other way anymore (that's what John Kerry said he would do back in 1998).

    Define to me these "readily available tools"...1) The drrty bomb. Hard to make

    Unrefined byproducts from any nuclear facility, packed in a suitcase with explosives? What's so hard to make about that? You don't even have to bring all the radioactive materials into the country at the same time.

    hard to transport

    It's a suitcase. It is MADE to be easily transported. They make some with wheels.

    hard to deliver.

    What's so hard about carrying a suitcase to Times Square, the front of the NY Stock Exchange, the Washington Mall or anywhere in downtown New Orleans or Las Vegas?

    Easily detectable.

    I suppose it is if we plan to have cops with detectors on every street corner forever. And task the coast guard with inspecting every ship in the Gulf of Mexico. Or do you mean only "at the borders"? We have a rather extensive unprotected border with Canada. Do you want us all to hold hands along the 49th parallel forever to keep them out?

    If one managed to be...set off by ONE FREAKING GUY, some people would die. Country not shut down. Operation fails.

    You see, this is the lack of imagination that aided the 9-11 killers. A dirty bomb would make anyplace it was set off uninhabitable for months until it was cleaned up (best case scenario). After one was set off, the economy would screech to a halt as people discovered it could happen anywhere. Property insurance would become unobtainable for small business in a downtown area. And who would be stupid enough to go to Disney World?

    Anthrax or any other biological weapon. Difficult to obtain, even harder to deliver effectively.

    Ask Senators Daschle and Leahy about this. It can be made in a garage, but if you have a rogue government feeding it to them...

    Blister agent really difficult to transport, impossible to deliver without complex delivery system.

    With the help of a rogue government all a terrorist would need to supply is a plane. Even smuggling in sufficient equipment to launch a small armed missle is absolutely conceivable given an unlimited amount of time unharassed from a rogue regime and freedom to pick where it will be launched.

    Casey Sheehan... were really thinking of when they died.

    I judge people by their actions. If SPC Sheehan thought the war was for oil or the Joooz like his mom, he wouldn't have re-enlisted knowing he would be sent to Iraq for the first time --not returned to Iraq to help his buddies he’d left behind there…sent for the first time.


    I’m afraid this last post of yours has caused me to lose respect for you as someone that can sanely order facts. You are an unrealist...someone utterly given over seeing the world as you would like it to be, not as it is. I had hoped with your military background this thread would result in something valuable for posting about, but...well, it just didn't. The rantings of the schizophenic outside my apartment would be more interesting.

    You can post a response to this and I won’t delete it unless you spout profanity or something, but I won’t respond. Thanks for the conversation.

    By Blogger CMAR II, at 4:55 PM  

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