Political Punch

After hearing General Petreasus Speak you are left with no choice but tho vote for McCainm, the only person with expierence.

The General is running the operations in Iraq, he is not running the security of the US directly (he is indirectly by defeating the enemy) that question is more suited for the Defense Secretary not the General.

By the way libs have we been attacked in the since 2001?
In the same time frame during Lib President Clinton how many times were we attacked?

If you truthfully answer then you will see the lite, President Bush has kept us safer and so safe people do not see the danger anymore which is dangerous!

Note under Clinton -12 times 7500 soldier died

For those of you who prefer Obama to Clinton and vice - versa and have decided to vote for McCain if their candidate doesn't get the nomination, after the hearing on Iraq today, I don't know why someone would vote McCain. McCain doesn't have a clue about who's fighting America in Iraq. He's been corrected on five occasions and he still believes in his own BS story. We spend close to $12b a month, look at the economy & infrastructure. Just imaging that CYBORG as president of America! Haven't we suffered enough? That dude belongs in a Home,period

sophillyfatz says: "The American economy and the military cannot sustain this tragic effort. We'll be bankrupt before it ends, with a military unable to engage anywhere else, gas prices over five dollars a gallon and our national debt spiralling completely out of control."

I agree. By staying there, Alqaida is winning. They're bankrupting the country, killing our soldiers, and even worse, turning 10's of thousands of our soldiers into nut cases and cripples. How can that possibly be better than anything that Alqaida could have thrown at us here. And really, how many soldier's lives is worth one civilian? I say their lives are worth just as much as mine.

I also thought a good question from Obama would have been for him to ask Petraeus and Crocker what they thought of his plans to pull out.
It was worthless for Obama to ask them about abstract goals. If he becomes CinC, he'll be the one setting the goals and determining how to achieve them.
He would have been brave to ask the two top men in Iraq if they found his proposals workable.

"You may notice, nowhere in there is the direct answer: yes, the war in Iraq is making America safer." - It's a stupid question because it's outside the General's purview. Since there hasn't been another attack in the US one could say yes, would this be true because we're in Iraq or have we've just been lucky? He's a military general, not a fortune teller. Run an buy a Tarot deck, I doubt that will give you a direct answer either because there is no direct definite answer... Only fools answer questions asked by fools. (Jake! ABC can't afford the cost of making higher quality podcasts? 48kbps bitrate is a joke!)

I absolutely agree with this, from commenter Lowell:

==========
Safer than what?

Warner's question is meaningless. If he had asked "safer than if we quit now and brought the army home", then Petraeus might give a different answer than if he had asked "safer than if we had not gone into Iraq in the first place".

[snip]
The question of safer than if we hadn't gone is not interesting. Feel free to beat Bush up (I do), but pulling out now will not make us safer than if we left now before the job is done.

Perhaps the question, too complex for a yes or no response, was for show only. We may be no safer, but we created the situation and we need to accept responsibility. Anti-war activists and spineless politicians had the final word on the Viet Nam War. Tens of thousands of American soldiers, and millions of Vietnamese paid the price. It would be disgraceful to repeat that debacle in Iraq.

A 1000 more Americans than were killed in the 9/11 attacks died a violent death in Iraq.

This war has hit us considerably harder that the Al Qaeda attacks, and it is still going on. How could we be safer then? We're losing American lives every day.

Seems to me that both Petraeus, and especially Crocker, may have their eyes on the exit just as much as Bush does.

Glad to see even the GOP starting to reflect public opinion on the war, and especially to start talking about the expense of it. Now that that can has been opened by both parties, it won't close.

Can some one recall how many times Obama's surrogates have made "unneccessary" comments and apologized again and again?

Maybe this type of pattern would not end for a while...

When people looks near the top of world, they just can't control themselves.......

Petraeus is the best we have and he can't say for sure if what we're doing in Iraq is making us safer. Time to wrap this Iraq thing up!

ED S - Look we got us a situation where we're damned if we do and damned if we don't. Same with the General. Iran WILL get their nuclear weapons and if they do threaten Israel who has 300 plus nukes ready to go then we will be the first humans in the history of mankind to witness nuclear warfare on a scale none of us can imagine. God help us all.

This is absolutely the fundamental question. This is the current Bush rationalization for our presence, repeated at every availability. The fact is, it's not at all clear that we're safer. Petraeus's answer reflects that.

Our war on terror is against al-Qaida. Al-Qaida has deminished in Iraq as a result of their radical measures and the hostility the Shiites have for al-Qaida.

We are continually told that a withdrawl date cannot be divulged because it would tip off our enemy...which is fair. My question is, who is our enemy? Some low level al-Qaida operatives trying to recruit in war-torn Iraq? We have become the referee of a civil war, we have propped up a secular goverment in the middle of the Arab, Muslim world and it appears to this midwesterner that the various sect leaders in Iraq do not want a secular goverment. Explain to me how any exit strategy is going to work?

As soon as we leave, the Shia majority of Iran will serve the Shia majority of Iraq. Bush knows this, Rice knows this and anyone that spent a few hours doing some simple research would know this. There is NO WAY we can be successful in this fight. We can only provide diplomacy to help achieve our goals.

The only way to prevent Iran from overtly influencing the future of Iraq is to get Syria, Suadia Arbia, Jordan and the rest of them to help Iraq succeed as a nation. And to do this, we have to allow Iraq to develop a goverment that those neighbors will buy into...unfortunately that is not a democracy.

If we don't allow that, than we better be prepared to overthrow Iran as well.

Safer than what?

Warner's question is meaningless. If he had asked "safer than if we quit now and brought the army home", then Petraeus might give a different answer than if he had asked "safer than if we had not gone into Iraq in the first place".

Its too late folks. Even if you think that Bush is a total idiot and that we should NEVER HAVE GONE THERE you have to deal with the fact that we are there now.

The question of safer than if we hadn't gone is not interesting. Feel free to beat Bush up (I do), but pulling out now will not make us safer than if we left now before the job is done.

Besides, we have been in Germany since 1945. We'll probably be in Iraq just as long and for the same reason -- that is good for us to have forward military presences. The first 10 years after WWII ended were pretty bad over there -- its just that back then the media weren't a bunch of hand-wringing American haters.

Sometimes you have break eggs to make an omlet. Of course this is little consolation to the dead and injured soldiers, but it is the truth.

He's saying without saying it: The war is not worth it, he just follows orders.

I think that Petraeus's answers clearly tells us that even a great military man could never be a President. He's taking orders, he's giving orders, but the higher rationale of it all is beyond him.

Just as the difference between Sunnis and Shiites is already far beyond John McCain, who DOES understand what a surge is.

Petraeus is in a very difficult situation. It probably isn't a fair question to ask him. We have the Military under Civilian rule for a reason, and I would think that question ought to be asked and debated among our political leaders. His job is to do the best he can, the problem really stems from the politicians not giving the military what they need, or needed to do the job to begin with.

Can the military be expected to give civilian, sectarian rule in Iraq?

That kind of question is grandstanding.

Three Billion dollars a week and thousands of American dead is NOT sustainable. It doesn't matter anymore whether this terrible war has been a disaster from the very beginning FIVE years ago. The American economy and the military cannot sustain this tragic effort. We'll be bankrupt before it ends, with a military unable to engage anywhere else, gas prices over five dollars a gallon and our national debt spiralling completely out of control.