Too late. You are about 6-7 years too late. After eight years of futzing around what would you think if you were them? Just like when the Russians held Kubul, but nothing else and we hold Kubul, but nothing else, it's over folks.

Oh, and where's Shaun Mullen, disparaging this lowlier-than-any-previous-low-life, Obama, in the “grand,” “great,” “honorable” tradition of protesting and rising up against “another Vietnam”?

My wife was shaken the other day when she heard a story about some American soldiers that stopped a farmer and his teen-age children. If the soldiers let them go, they might tell the Taliban their location. Yet the soldiers had no basis to hold them. So maybe the soldiers should kill them since there would be nobody to complain?

In the end, the man in charge of the soldiers let them loose. Less than an hour later the soldiers were attacked and all were killed except the man that made the decision to let the farmer and his kids go. That's a nice note to carry the rest of his life, don't you think.

Obviously, that farmer didn't want us there, just like he didn't want the Russians there.

Have you studied why and how the Russians carried on their campaign? I have and I will be happy to discuss it with you. It is NOT as the popular American media portrays it. The stinger missile didn't win that war.

Why?

Agreed, but I don't think Bush, Cheney, and the rest of the warlords *wanted* just to snatch the responsible parties and leave. Maybe that's why Osama bin Laden got away. Then the war would have been over, and the warlords did not want it to be over.

You think, like LBJ did, that escalation will solve this? That the stinking Karzai government is better than that endless parade installed in S. Viet? All the other side has to do is what Ali did to Foreman — rope-a-dope.

Voluntary or involuntary, wars are wars. The way WWII was won was the entire country was mobilized in less than a year. No “measured response” there. Now, GM says it takes them 5 years to get a car to market.

I don't think that Nixon was lying when he said, “new leadership will end the war” and I don't think that Kissinger was lying when he said, “Give us six months, and if we haven't ended the war by then, you can come back and tear down the White House fence.”

I think they both thought they knew what they were doing and that they were “exceptional.” After all, Laird was a lot smarter than McNamara, wasn't he?

That's the point I was trying to make. It's a shame I had to use an example where people automatically equate “Nixon = Lying, but I can't think of a better example where a President had to assume a war like this.

How is the new Democratic-led Congress likely to act?

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle in Congress have expressed dismay at the increasing size and frequency of the supplemental requests. Sen. John McCain, (R-AZ) added a provision to the FY 2007 defense authorization act compelling the administration to put future such requests through normal channels. However, President Bush released a “signing statement” to the bill later which made clear he would submit emergency requests as he saw fit, leaving the issue unresolved. Since winning control of Congress in November 2006, Democrats, too, have expressed an interest in seeing the war’s costs subject to the scrutiny of the normal budget process, which implies more hearings and sharper oversight. Last month, the bipartisan Iraq Study Group noted: “The war is in the fourth year and the regular budget process should not be circumvented. Funding requests for the war in Iraq should be presented clearly to Congress and the American people.”

Biddle, the CFR senior fellow, suggests the supplemental issue may be the best target for Democrats wary of embracing more far-sighted prescriptions for salvaging Iraq policy given the uncertain situation. “There’s an opportunity politically for the Democrats to criticize the administration once again for their management of the war effort without looking like ‘Defeat-o-crats’,” he says. “Opposing this shoddy funding mechanism is one nice way to do it.” But even there, some say, political danger lurks. John Keller, executive editor of the trade journal Military & Aerospace Electronics, suggests Democrats may shy away in the end to anything that might be perceived as cutting off the troops during wartime.

http://mae.pennnet.com/display_article/280481/3…

Many forces are at work that will influence the Democrat Congress as well as the Republican administration. It’s clear that the United States is at war-in the mountains of Afghanistan, on the streets of Iraq, and in the minds al-Qaida chieftains and those of other international terrorist syndicates.

The war in Iraq in particular may be unpopular, but the U.S. and international militaries have significant forces deployed there that need material and financial support. The troops in Iraq will not be left hanging, even as Democrat leaders plan how they’ll bring pressure to bear for their early redeployment.

An immediate pullout from Iraq would leave the United States vulnerable and embolden the nation’s enemies. Democrats know that, even if they’re reluctant to admit it out loud, so any changes in American military deployments will come slowly.

The influential Government Electronics and Information Technology Association (GEIA) predicted before the elections that U.S. defense spending will grow to an annual $609.4 billion over the next decade, up from planned expenditures this year of $439.3 billion.

The second was an amendment by Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) which required the president to report to Congress on the status of the 18 benchmarks he established for progress by the Iraqis when he proposed the troop surge. It would cut off economic development funding for the Iraq government if progress was not being made and also required the president to withdraw U.S. troops if requested by the Iraqi government. The amendment was defeated in a 52-44 vote (60 votes were needed).

Where is the cutoff of funding?