NM Leon
New member
I guess it's pretty obvious where I stand on this since I DID volunteer to come here to Iraq and get shot at as a civilian contractor. I also volunteered to do very similar work (running convoys for the military) in Laos and Cambodia during Vietnam, so I guess my ignorance and stupidity is long standing.
I'm late to the discussion since my job has kept me away from good net access, but allow me to point out some historical fact.
Yes it did take less than 2 years for the S. Vietnamese government to fall after we stopped all support. Put another way, after we abandoned them, they survived for almost 2 years on their own against an enemy supplied and supported by not one but two superpowers (China and USSR).
AFTER the war was over and the south had fallen, the communists killed an additional 2 million people. Most of those were folks who had made the mistake of believing we would help them achieve economic and political freedom.
We did NOT lose the Vietnam war (we won every major battle), we lost the political will to stay there, spurred by blatant lies and mischaracterizations by the media and the Dems (sound familiar?).
Please don't pretend you know better than us old geezers" about what went on there jwp, I didn't learn about it in a classroom, I lived it. I can assure you that the history books you are learning from are replete with inaccurate portrayals of the Vietnam conflict whether factually innaccurate or just mischaracterizations (S. Vietnam didn't fall to the North after we left because of a corrupt government, they couldn't withstand the support for the North by two superpowers).
Islamic terrorism against the U.S. has been a reality since peanuts withdrew support for the Shah in the late '70s, and Khomeini took power in Iran (the Shah was a bad man and corrupt. We couldn't support someone like that /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/shocked.gif).
Iran has been THE uniting force in Islamic terrorism ever since and has been involved in one way or another in almost every Islamic terrorist attack against the west since 1979. While they have rarely been the "official" sponsors, they have provided people and/or support for just about every attack since. That includes al Qaeda and 9/11 where they provided travel assistance for some of the hijackers. One of Bin Laden's wives is the daughter of the head general of the Iranian armed forces.
Look at a map of the middle east paying particular attention to Iran and the Straits of Hormuz. Compare the geopolitical situation re Iran pre Iraq and post Iraq. Still wonder why we are in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Turkey, Georgia, Oman, UAE, and are doing our best to keep Pakistan stable?
Seems pretty obvious to me why we need to be in Iraq (and every other contractor over here). Seems pretty obvious to a whole bunch of military who are over here too, all of whom are ultimately here by choice too (many for the 3rd and 4th tours) since the military makes it extremely easy to get out (if you don't want to be in the service they DON'T want you). There was plenty of justification to be here considering Iraq and Saddam alone, but throw in Iran and our need for major logistics support to tackle them, and it becomes a no-brainer.
But I guess we've all been brainwashed. That's probably pretty easy for our dictator Bush to do since we are so uneducated (run that one by our Marine Colonel with doctorates in poly-sci and government, a masters in economics, and on his 3rd tour here).
By the way, I think the whole WMD thing is nonsense, but here's a question for you guys who think we shouldn't be here because we never found Saddam's stockpiles. Why doesn't the chlorine gas (mustard gas) IED the insurgents used against us the other night (no injuries) count as a WMD? Why isn't the media reporting the sarin stockpiles we found in Ramadi a little while back? Surely that qualifies. Oh yeah, that doesn't fit with their version of reality and wouldn't support the history they are trying to write.
Rant off
I'm late to the discussion since my job has kept me away from good net access, but allow me to point out some historical fact.
Yes it did take less than 2 years for the S. Vietnamese government to fall after we stopped all support. Put another way, after we abandoned them, they survived for almost 2 years on their own against an enemy supplied and supported by not one but two superpowers (China and USSR).
AFTER the war was over and the south had fallen, the communists killed an additional 2 million people. Most of those were folks who had made the mistake of believing we would help them achieve economic and political freedom.
We did NOT lose the Vietnam war (we won every major battle), we lost the political will to stay there, spurred by blatant lies and mischaracterizations by the media and the Dems (sound familiar?).
Please don't pretend you know better than us old geezers" about what went on there jwp, I didn't learn about it in a classroom, I lived it. I can assure you that the history books you are learning from are replete with inaccurate portrayals of the Vietnam conflict whether factually innaccurate or just mischaracterizations (S. Vietnam didn't fall to the North after we left because of a corrupt government, they couldn't withstand the support for the North by two superpowers).
Islamic terrorism against the U.S. has been a reality since peanuts withdrew support for the Shah in the late '70s, and Khomeini took power in Iran (the Shah was a bad man and corrupt. We couldn't support someone like that /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/shocked.gif).
Iran has been THE uniting force in Islamic terrorism ever since and has been involved in one way or another in almost every Islamic terrorist attack against the west since 1979. While they have rarely been the "official" sponsors, they have provided people and/or support for just about every attack since. That includes al Qaeda and 9/11 where they provided travel assistance for some of the hijackers. One of Bin Laden's wives is the daughter of the head general of the Iranian armed forces.
Look at a map of the middle east paying particular attention to Iran and the Straits of Hormuz. Compare the geopolitical situation re Iran pre Iraq and post Iraq. Still wonder why we are in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Turkey, Georgia, Oman, UAE, and are doing our best to keep Pakistan stable?
Seems pretty obvious to me why we need to be in Iraq (and every other contractor over here). Seems pretty obvious to a whole bunch of military who are over here too, all of whom are ultimately here by choice too (many for the 3rd and 4th tours) since the military makes it extremely easy to get out (if you don't want to be in the service they DON'T want you). There was plenty of justification to be here considering Iraq and Saddam alone, but throw in Iran and our need for major logistics support to tackle them, and it becomes a no-brainer.
But I guess we've all been brainwashed. That's probably pretty easy for our dictator Bush to do since we are so uneducated (run that one by our Marine Colonel with doctorates in poly-sci and government, a masters in economics, and on his 3rd tour here).
By the way, I think the whole WMD thing is nonsense, but here's a question for you guys who think we shouldn't be here because we never found Saddam's stockpiles. Why doesn't the chlorine gas (mustard gas) IED the insurgents used against us the other night (no injuries) count as a WMD? Why isn't the media reporting the sarin stockpiles we found in Ramadi a little while back? Surely that qualifies. Oh yeah, that doesn't fit with their version of reality and wouldn't support the history they are trying to write.
Rant off
