General McChrystal......................

[pamagain]

  No I'm not mad at Rolling Stone. I like to read it. I'm of the if you cant say it to their face dont say it behind their back variety.

  I just think McChrystal is the kind of man who DID say it to their face......they didn't like it and used the article as an EXCUSE to get rid of him. Not like he's the FIRST general that's happened to. He strikes me as a warrior not a politician.....politicians don't LIKE warriors.

[jerry wagner]

Rolling Stone ?? Does anyone but Obama still read that Liberal rag ?
Personally, I think the General knew exactly what he was doing. I think he had a gut full of fighting a war while the politicians had their grubby little paws wrapped around the Generals scrotum ( thought we learned a lesson from Vietnam but I guess not )
He asked for more troops and it took months for the Big Zero to commit. Then the "build up' trickled over at about the same rate as troops rotated home. What a troop surge Then you have these stupid ass rules of engagement.

The commander in chief is a civilian.... those are the rules that govern our system... if the warriors don't like it, that's unfortunate, but it is the nature of the beast.

[Diane Amberg]

Sadly those rules of engagement go back a very long time. Al's father ( WWII, CBI ) talked about the soldiers not being able to shoot into the rubber plantations because of the politics. Of course Viet Nam was full of it. I'm sure it got and still gets people killed. Look what happened to Douglas MacArthur over Korea also. At least perhaps McChrystal's  wife can renew her relationship with her husband.    

[pamagain]

 Jerry , I'm gonna jump in on the side of the warriors........yes the commander in cheif is a civilian......I am one of those people who think that if the president doesn't have experience of war he REALLY ought to at least LISTEN to people who HAVE been there done that because the LIVES of HIS citizens ride on the decisions he makes.

The lives of BOYS and GIRLS who have to MEN and WOMEN at a MUCH younger age than he did. To say it is just the nature of the beast devalues their sacrifice and it IS a sacrifice. It should just be a sacrifice for something WORTHY. Their hands should not be tied by rules of engagement formulated in a conference room somewhere FAR away from the war zone with POLITICAL objectives that use their lives as currency.

[jarhead]

Thank you Pam. You hit the nail on the head.
Jerry, I aint got a clue as to what you say applies to my quote------but that's OK. You don't have to try and explain it.

[Diane Amberg]

It seems to me that there have been, for better or worse, at least a dozen Presidents who have not had any military experience of any kind. Personally, I think congress is the big fly on the pie for the military, even more so than any President. As far as the big surge, I don't understand any of that. Don't we have people in Germany that could have been moved very quickly? Is it a matter of not having the right kind of uniforms or the right kind of weapons for the locale?   Not enough vehicles to move them around? Are they behind on rations etc.? Not enough people who have desert training? I know that was problem part of the time during Vietnam.They got behind in  jungle training.You can't send people who don't yet exist.   Is it like WWII that the companies who make all the war supplies see the end coming  and aren't making as much as fast because they don't want to be stuck with it?

[jarhead]

Do what Dianne ?? We got behind on jungle training during Vietnam  ?? Now that's a new one I've never heard. "Jungle training " you learned OJT (ON JOB TRAINING )

[Diane Amberg]

Sorry Jar, I was just being descriptive.  OJT doesn't describe what Ft. Polk LA was like, with the jungle huts and "swamps "and all . I had no personal experience of course, but had lots of friends who did.That's when they also shortened basic by a few weeks too, to crank 'em out faster. Al had had 12 weeks, right after that it was shortened to 9.

[Varmit]

Pam, this is one time you will get no argument from me, you hit it center mass.