"Jim" wrote in message
...
wrote:
On Tue, 13 Jul 2010 10:20:42 -0700, "nom=de=plume"
wrote:

wrote in message
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On Mon, 12 Jul 2010 22:19:56 -0700, "nom=de=plume"
wrote:

I think we'd both be surprised by how quickly the military can deploy
in
great numbers.
We sure have not seen them do it, ever in my life, unless you count
Granada.
It took 6 months to get into Kuwait and the "surges" take about that
long
They did rush into Somalia without proper support and got their ass
kicked by a street gang. The mountains of Afghanistan is infinitely
harder that Iraq, Kuwait or Somalia. Just keeping 5000 men in food and
ammo takes a significant effort in a place with no airports and not
much flat ground to create drop zone.

We had plenty of time in Afg. There was a fairly long run up to that
war. We started bombing in October.


We did not have any time. Where are you getting that?

It's all over the place. BL didn't leave until mid-December.

They didn't
start until October and that was not in the area around Tora Bora. We
started in the areas where we had local support and we did pretty well
there with our covert forces. We lost OBL in Tora Bora about 2 months
later and that is only 6 miles from Pakistan.

6 miles by air.
Maybe 30-40 via slow, arduous, snow-covered mountain paths.
And he was only squeezed into Pakistan by the incompetence of
Franks/Rumsfeld.

There was no way we
could bring in the number of troops to secure that area from half way
around the world before he could run 6 miiles.

Pure bull****. See cite below. Plenty analysis of Tora Bora everywhere.

We dod bounce the rubble
for a couple weeks and hoped we would get lucky. They may have been
able to get the air strikes in faster but that was about all we could
do.

Apologist tripe.
Don't try to change written history.
Tora Bora had undergone air bombardment for a month before Bin Laden
escaped on December 16th.
Bin Laden was there and could have been killed/captured.
Tommy Franks screwed the pooch.
For what reason isn't known. I suspect he was just gun shy.
At that time I think the only American casualty was that CIA agent
killed in the prison breakout.
Franks didn't want our troops killed, and we would have suffered
substantial casualties, no telling how many.
Lousy General. Paying criminals to do his job while he sat in Tampa.
And he denied those 4,000 Marines the honor of killing Bin Laden.
Any one of them had more courage than Franks, and knew what was expected
of them. Franks was unsuitable for command.
If Bush says we'll get Bin Laden dead or alive, he god damned better
make sure his general gets the job done.
Rumsfeld and his entire crew was weak compared to Gates and his.
But there's no changing history. 4000 Marines were there, plenty to get
the job done, but not put to use.
And with the slightest foresight a general should possess, there should
have been many more troops at the ready, and Bin Laden surrounded by
American troops before being chased to Pakistan by ineffective aerial
bombing and the criminal Afghani thugs hired by Franks.
The primary mission in Afghanistan was to kill Bin Laden.
The CIA located Bin Laden, then Centcom screwed everything up from there.
Rumsfeld was probably pulling Frank's strings.
One of the worse Secretarys of Defense. Kicked out far too late.
Utter command failure.
Both Rumsfeld and Franks went out with a whimper, and neither is missed
by anybody as far as I know.
Like GWB. Disgraced.
Not killing Bin Laden at Tora Bora was a huge mistake, and is still
costing us big time. By not sacrificing as needed at Tora Bora, AQ
leadership and morale lived on.
Wonder how many GI's died in Iraq because of that.
Many more than would have been lost at Tora Bora I'd wager.
You and GWB might forget who was behind 9/11 but a lot of us don't.
Bin Laden is just one more GWB mess for Obama to clean up.
Your excuses are bull**** revisionism.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/11/ma...gewanted=print
"One of them was Brig. Gen. James N. Mattis, the commander of some 4,000
marines who had arrived in the Afghan theater by now. Mattis, along with
another officer with whom I spoke, was convinced that with these numbers
he could have surrounded and sealed off bin Laden's lair, as well as
deployed troops to the most sensitive portions of the largely
unpatrolled border with Pakistan. He argued strongly that he should be
permitted to proceed to the Tora Bora caves. The general was turned
down. An American intelligence official told me that the Bush
administration later concluded that the refusal of Centcom to dispatch
the marines - along with their failure to commit U.S. ground forces to
Afghanistan generally - was the gravest error of the war."


Jim - Anti-revisionist.

Thank you.

wrote in message
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On Wed, 14 Jul 2010 08:52:11 -0700, "nom=de=plume"
wrote:


The only reason you say that is because he says things you agree with,
same for Rush and his listeners.

No. I say that because one lies on a regular basis. The other doesn't lie,
and he corrects his mistakes

That is just your opinion. I have seen him take things out of context
and present them in ways that make them untrue. You don't see it
because you agree with him, again, the same as a Rush listener.

No, I don't "agree with him" on everything. And, yes, there's a difference.
As I said, an example?

They are both polarizing figures who would rather be controversial and
get ratings than to be objective reporters. They both take themselves
far to seriously as do their fans.

Yes, they're polarizing figures. But, Rush just lies and lies. His "fans"
are called ditto heads. They do and think what he says. No so with Olbermann
fans. They think he's entertaining, but no everything he says is considered
as fact.

If you want to see where our deep divide comes from, it is these hate
merchants.

It is BY FAR weighted from the right on the hate side. Faux spreads the lies
on a daily basis.

A third of the country thinks MSNBC lies and a third think Fox lies,
the rest don't pay a lot of attention to either of them. Put me in the
latter category. "News" has become less fact and more opinion over the
last couple decades and that is particularly true of cable news. CNN
may be the pick of the litter but it is still not the objective news
outlet Ted Turner created.
Some of these shows are just road runner cartoons.

It's not a matter of thinking someone is lying vs. whether or not they are
actually lying. Facts can be checked.

wrote in message
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On Wed, 14 Jul 2010 08:54:54 -0700, "nom=de=plume"
wrote:

We could have brought in many more troops if Rumsfeld had set up the
invasion that way. He didn't.

They were really trying to avoid an invasion for political reasons
both here and in Kabul.

WHAT??? The whole point of going after Afg. was bin laden. The politics
were
go for it in the American public's view. Something like 90% approval.

There was a 90% approval to "get Bin Laden" but if you polled the
country about a 60,000 man force, going to 100,000 men by the end of
this year you would have been polling at around 40%. where Obama is
now.

To the Afghanis, we are just the Soviets invading them again.
That was what we were trying to avoid.

Jim's contention that 4000 marines was going to get the job done is
countered by the fact that 60,000 isn't getting the job done.

You have a cite for this Bush-era poll? I doubt it. Not sure about Jim's
contention. I didn't see it.

wrote in message
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On Wed, 14 Jul 2010 09:40:07 -0700, "nom=de=plume"
wrote:


wrote in message
. ..
On Wed, 14 Jul 2010 08:54:54 -0700, "nom=de=plume"
wrote:

We could have brought in many more troops if Rumsfeld had set up the
invasion that way. He didn't.

They were really trying to avoid an invasion for political reasons
both here and in Kabul.

WHAT??? The whole point of going after Afg. was bin laden. The politics
were
go for it in the American public's view. Something like 90% approval.

There was a 90% approval to "get Bin Laden" but if you polled the
country about a 60,000 man force, going to 100,000 men by the end of
this year you would have been polling at around 40%. where Obama is
now.

To the Afghanis, we are just the Soviets invading them again.
That was what we were trying to avoid.

Jim's contention that 4000 marines was going to get the job done is
countered by the fact that 60,000 isn't getting the job done.

You have a cite for this Bush-era poll? I doubt it.


I used your 90% quote, I didn't believe it but you said it.

"Something like 90% approval"

That was Bush's approval rating after 9/11. He could have done just about
anything he wanted. He was able to invade a country that didn't need
invading, so it seems likely he could have invaded Afghanistan with the
right number of troops.

wrote in message
...
On Wed, 14 Jul 2010 10:38:57 -0700, "nom=de=plume"
wrote:


wrote in message
. ..
On Wed, 14 Jul 2010 09:40:07 -0700, "nom=de=plume"
wrote:


wrote in message
m...
On Wed, 14 Jul 2010 08:54:54 -0700, "nom=de=plume"
wrote:

We could have brought in many more troops if Rumsfeld had set up the
invasion that way. He didn't.

They were really trying to avoid an invasion for political reasons
both here and in Kabul.

WHAT??? The whole point of going after Afg. was bin laden. The
politics
were
go for it in the American public's view. Something like 90% approval.

There was a 90% approval to "get Bin Laden" but if you polled the
country about a 60,000 man force, going to 100,000 men by the end of
this year you would have been polling at around 40%. where Obama is
now.

To the Afghanis, we are just the Soviets invading them again.
That was what we were trying to avoid.

Jim's contention that 4000 marines was going to get the job done is
countered by the fact that 60,000 isn't getting the job done.

You have a cite for this Bush-era poll? I doubt it.


I used your 90% quote, I didn't believe it but you said it.

"Something like 90% approval"

That was Bush's approval rating after 9/11. He could have done just about
anything he wanted. He was able to invade a country that didn't need
invading, so it seems likely he could have invaded Afghanistan with the
right number of troops.


He didn't have 15 UN resolutions and the precedent of a 10 year air
war to back up an invasion of Afghanistan.

BTW I doubt Bush ever had a 90% approval rating


?? Why would he need that for Afg.? We were attacked and that country was
harboring the attackers.

http://www.hist.umn.edu/~ruggles/Approval.htm