More Troops, Less Troops, or.... Both?

Lol...

Dixie said:
Look, I know it's difficult when you are a hard head, but BB's explained it, I've explained it, Maineman understood it, and you are the only one on the board who doesn't get the explanation. In short, BB said that IF we hadn't withdrawn, we WOULD have won in '75. Of course, we weren't there in '75, and he never said that we were, if we had been, we WOULD have won, that WAS his point. Is that so difficult for you, or should we break out the crayons?
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Thank you he was giving me a migrain...he never did tell us what he was doing in 75 while gaining all this war history to throw at conservs...in 2006!;)
 
maineman said:
so....you are saying that even though Saddam didn't trust Osama as far as he could throw him, and even though Saddam was known to have killed members of his inner circle with little or no provocation, you now want us to believe that members of Saddam's regime would have given Osama bin Laden some of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction behind Saddam's back????

Do you have any idea how much you need to stretch reality to make that seem anywhere near sensible?

And just because AQ in Iraq is targeting US forces and attempted to stir the pot, and former baathist sunnis in Iraq are targeting US forces and attempting to disrupt what they see as a march toward shia theocracy does not mean that they are "working together".
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Okay, let's remember Saddam was a megalomaniac. He didn't "trust" anyone! The fact that you point out, he killed members of his inner circle, is proof that Saddam didn't "trust" a damn soul! This is often the case with megalomaniacs. So, no, Saddam didn't "trust" alQaeda any further than he could throw them, it wouldn't mean that he couldn't work with them or perhaps thinking he could manipulate and use them for his advantages in some way. It also doesn't mean that his cronies wouldn't have worked with them, or that they didn't meet with them, because that is documented, they did do that.

Saddam could have very well loathed alQaeda, and still been willing to 'make a deal' with them... I'll give you a place to train and safe haven, maybe some technology to build WMD's, but you have to promise to keep your radical shit down in my country. I'll scratch your back if you'll scratch mine. Both sides have a mutual enemy, and you can look back in history and find plenty of examples where two diametrically opposed sides joined together for a common objective. Your argument that Saddam didn't like alQaeda is totally irrelevant.
 
Battleborne said:
Had we been allowed to finish the war...we would have had trading partners in VN for the last 31 years!...beats anything GW can muster now!:)
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Good plan, Mr. Vietnam Vet.

Slaughter tens of thousands of more americans, spend billions of more dollars, so we could have a trading relationship with a small, pathetic little third world country with a tiny economy prior to the early 1990s.
 
and how many more americans were you willing to sacrifice for 31 years of trade with Vietnam? How many millions of tons of shrimp would you think would be a fair trade for the lives of 75 -100 -150 thousand more men? How many tons of cheap rice are those dead americans worth? Would the opportunity to sell Chevy chevettes to the Saigon market really have been worth another giant pile of dead american boys from our generation?
 
Cypress said:
Good plan, Mr. Vietnam Vet.

Slaughter tens of thousands of more americans, spend billions of more dollars, so we could have a trading relationship with a small, pathetic little third world country with a tiny economy prior to the early 1990s.
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Like Japan? Some people alive remember when everything made in Japan was crap... Hmmm... Just because they are "tiny" doesn't mean they couldn't now be a powerhouse.
 
maineman said:
and how many more americans were you willing to sacrifice for 31 years of trade with Vietnam? How many millions of tons of shrimp would you think would be a fair trade for the lives of 75 -100 -150 thousand more men? How many tons of cheap rice are those dead americans worth? Would the opportunity to sell Chevy chevettes to the Saigon market really have been worth another giant pile of dead american boys from our generation?
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Not really any.
 
Damocles said:
Like Japan? Some people alive remember when everything made in Japan was crap... Hmmm... Just because they are "tiny" doesn't mean they couldn't now be a powerhouse.
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Did we fight japan to make them our trading partner?

BB is saying the reason to continue the war, was to make vietnam a trading partner 19 years earlier than we ultimately did.
 
Dixie said:
Okay, let's remember Saddam was a megalomaniac. He didn't "trust" anyone! The fact that you point out, he killed members of his inner circle, is proof that Saddam didn't "trust" a damn soul! This is often the case with megalomaniacs. So, no, Saddam didn't "trust" alQaeda any further than he could throw them, it wouldn't mean that he couldn't work with them or perhaps thinking he could manipulate and use them for his advantages in some way. It also doesn't mean that his cronies wouldn't have worked with them, or that they didn't meet with them, because that is documented, they did do that.

Saddam could have very well loathed alQaeda, and still been willing to 'make a deal' with them... I'll give you a place to train and safe haven, maybe some technology to build WMD's, but you have to promise to keep your radical shit down in my country. I'll scratch your back if you'll scratch mine. Both sides have a mutual enemy, and you can look back in history and find plenty of examples where two diametrically opposed sides joined together for a common objective. Your argument that Saddam didn't like alQaeda is totally irrelevant.
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Dixie...does this make any sense:

"OK ....you gang of crazy Hell's Angels bikers..... If you guys PROMISE not to kill me and rape my wife and daughters, I will let you stay in my game room and drink beer all night and then I will GIVE you these automatic weapons if you PROMISE to leave ME and MY family alone and go slaughter that snooty neighbor of mine who had the gall to put in an inground swimming pool and then never invite me over...and then leave town and don't swing back by here when you're done and do any harm to me....OK????"
 
Dixie said:
Look, I know it's difficult when you are a hard head, but BB's explained it, I've explained it, Maineman understood it, and you are the only one on the board who doesn't get the explanation. In short, BB said that IF we hadn't withdrawn, we WOULD have won in '75. Of course, we weren't there in '75, and he never said that we were, if we had been, we WOULD have won, that WAS his point. Is that so difficult for you, or should we break out the crayons?
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Give cypress a break. It's difficult to accept that a (suppsedly) adult American could believe something so unutterably stupid.
 
you can never go back in history and find two mortal enemies who shared a common enemy and one of them had weapons of mass destruction and gave some to the other on the PROMISE that they would only be used against the common enemy.
 
No bonehead...

Cypress said:
Did we fight japan to make them our trading partner?

BB is saying the reason to continue the war, was to make vietnam a trading partner 19 years earlier than we ultimately did.
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I answered a question posed by maineman...relating to GW's trade mission in Vn today...he asked what the difference would have been in 75 compared to now...I just gave the answer...did not say it was an excuse to continue the war!
 
Battleborne said:
I answered a question posed by maineman...relating to GW's trade mission in Vn today...he asked what the difference would have been in 75 compared to now...I just gave the answer...did not say it was an excuse to continue the war!
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and my question stands: what sort of a result would you have wanted to see that would have been worth another 50K dead boys our age?
 
maineman said:
and how many more americans were you willing to sacrifice for 31 years of trade with Vietnam? How many millions of tons of shrimp would you think would be a fair trade for the lives of 75 -100 -150 thousand more men? How many tons of cheap rice are those dead americans worth? Would the opportunity to sell Chevy chevettes to the Saigon market really have been worth another giant pile of dead american boys from our generation?
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There is no reason or justification to think that we would have lost those kinds of numbers in another year or two of war. This is nothing but pure liberal emotion, without any rationale or reasoning. Vietnam was not about trade, it was about the aggressive spread of Communism. A few more dead soldiers to secure a victory and preserve the honor and valor of the 58,000 who gave their lives for the cause, would have been well worth the price, in my opinion. The difference between a generation of Vietnam vets who were castigated as "baby killers" and ostracized from society to the point of living a life of chronic depression under a bridge somewhere, and being duly respected for their noble and heroic victory in Vietnam, would have been worth a few more lives at that point.

We face much the same question today with Iraq. Do we abandon the objective and relegate the sacrifices made so far, to nothing more than 'cannon fodder' in a pointless war? Or do we try to preserve something our nation and military can be proud they were a part of, like establishing democracy for 25 million people in a place where it never existed before?

In light of Vietnam, I can't see the advantage, long or short term, in just throwing in the towel and calling it over in Iraq. To me, it would be an even worse mistake than not winning Vietnam, because essentially, we've defeated the army we went to war against, we are now dealing with an insurgency and the aftermath of the war. Abandoning Iraq now, would be the equivalent of abandoning WWII after Normandy and before Berlin fell. Or like the Union abandoning the Civil War after Sherman burned Atlanta.

The point is, whether you were for this war or against it, whether you were for Vietnam or against it, whether you think it is worth it or not, regardless of your party, the best case scenario here for the US, is to come away with some sense of victory in Iraq, and not allow the terrorists to claim a win by forcing us to leave.
 
Dixie...so...according to you, because we lost and didn't stick around a few more years and "win", we somehow failed to stop the spread of communism. Please explain that in light of Bush's visit this morning. Please explain how staying a few more years longer and "winning" at a cost of who fucking KNOWS how many more Americans..please explain how that outcome would have been so much better than where we are today vis a vis both Vietnam and the spread of world communism.

I'll wait
 
Excuse me....

maineman said:
and my question stands: what sort of a result would you have wanted to see that would have been worth another 50K dead boys our age?
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The Vietnam experience lasted from roughly 1964-1974 when full combat troops were deployed in Nam...during that ten year period we lost some 55,000 troops(please correct the exact number) how do you figure we would have lost another 50,000 in the remaining three months to finish the job...after all the NVA generals even admitted they would have been defeated totally had we not pulled out...they were really hurting for troops,supplies and the will to continue the fight...of course they did get a real boost from Jane and Lt.Kerry in the will dept...and for the record...anyone remember that stupid little Island called Iwo Jima WWII lost 6,000 Marines in just 36hrs...was that stupid Island worth the 6,000 marines! Just food for thought for those who love to throw out numbers!
 
why are you avoiding the simple question: what sort of a result would you have wanted to see that would have been worth ANY more dead Americans? Are you really going to say that trade with Vietnam earlier would have been worth those additional lives? What would you have had us WON? What would "victory" in Vietnam have looked like in 2006? Would "victory" have looked any different than being an active trading partner with our former enemy? With NO other nations on the southeast asian penninsula becoming communist? with no hordes of communists toppling democracies throughout the pacific rim like dominoes????? what would have been worth more dead Americans?
 
Being blunt...

maineman said:
why are you avoiding the simple question: what sort of a result would you have wanted to see that would have been worth ANY more dead Americans? Are you really going to say that trade with Vietnam earlier would have been worth those additional lives? What would you have had us WON? What would "victory" in Vietnam have looked like in 2006? Would "victory" have looked any different than being an active trading partner with our former enemy? With NO other nations on the southeast asian penninsula becoming communist? with no hordes of communists toppling democracies throughout the pacific rim like dominoes????? what would have been worth more dead Americans?
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As the old saying goes: "in for a penny in for a pound" we had invested over ten years of our youth,treasury et al just to pull out in the last remaining months! This caused all my buds who lost their lives to have done so in vain...we were in it regardless of how anyone felt about it...to finish it would have been the right thing to do!...and the loss as you stated is way off base...how do you come to the figure of another 50,000 troop loses in just three more months...Maybe the Navy has different estimate scales!
 
again...you say that the lost their lives in vain..... how can you say that? what would a "victory" in Vietnam look like so that their lives would have any more meaning today than they already do? what was "in vain" about our efforts in Vietnam? Don't you think that if someone said that if we stayed and won the war, that thirty years later, we would be trading partners with out former enemies that you would have said that sounded like a nice outcome?

And regarding your "3 month" number.... I have NEVER seen anyone who is credible say that had we stayed three months longer than we did, we would have achieved total victory.
 
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