Okay, so what will the reality be, should we stay there for another; five, ten. twenty years?
Just like Vietnam, when we leave, the guys with the biggest guns, and most people will take over the country. PERIOD!
Then a number of years after that; just as in "Nam" we will once again re-establish trade with whom so ever might be in power!

The question once again becomes; who will be the terrorist leaders, and will they train their children to perform suicide acts agaisnt us.

IMO there are no defenses to protect anyone anywhere against terrorists!

Spending $460 billion dollars a year will never be able to stop some radical extremist from doing this:
first you get a bunch of shotgun shells
you open them up and set aside the b b's
now you get one can of childrens playdough clay
flatten the playdough out to form a disc 1 foot in diameter
place all the gun powder in the center
form a ball around the gun powder
place a wick in the top
light the wick
approach your target and die

We use to make our own M-80 firecrackers using this method, and given enough gun powder you can effectively kill yourself with a number of others around you.
That is what I-E-D's are all about.
Given how extreme these Muslim people are, there is no-amount of protection we can offer, that will prevent the suicide bombings taking place in Iraq.

These monies would be much better spent developing equipment able to sniff out the components of homemade bombs. Then even with this type of technology, the people who carry out such horrible acts. Will be satisfied with just getting to blow up the people who would be operating the equipment.

War's of this nature can never be won!
And those who would have us believe we are winning are out and out liars!!!!

We have not, and will not, be able to provide any security to those who are subject to such extremism. And if President Bush or any other leader of our nation has convinced you otherwise, well, shame on you.

We can not protect ourselfs from a kid who can't stand life anymore, and takes a gun to school.

You yourself can not protect yourself from and thug on the streets with a knife!

Why would you support a war, sacrificing your own father, mother, sons and daughters for a people who will go back to doing business as usual once we're gone???

I see many other topics here at "TV" where you would better spend your money.

Many many things, far and away more personally important than this WAR !

We are doing the same tragic things to the people of Iraq, that we did to the people of Vietnam.

We pray upon their hopes for a better life, we talk them into to helping us, (like interpeters for instance) and then we leave them there to face the people who hate our guts to exact their revenge!

The families of the people who have assisted us in Iraq are being slaughtered every day, and we aren't even trying to protect them.

So how can you believe it possible to bring peace to their country when we are unwilling to help those who have helped us?

Just because you drive around with a bumper sticker proclaiming your support for our troops doesn't mean that you haven't deserted them.

Just as you did to us "VIETNAM VETERANS"

Yeah this time you hug them and bless them when they have come home after serving their tour, but you do nothing to prevent "Uncle Sam" from sending us back for our second, third, or fourth tour.

Sure you are all up in arms about "Walter Reed Hospital" today. What about the dozens of other "Vet Hospitals" ?

Take the headlines off of us, and you go right back to sipping your mint julips and care nothing of us you have left behind closed doors!

I guess, I'm really venting now, because you guys won't even march in protest agaisnt this war, or even march for more troops in order to shorten this war!

Send over another million troops, and we can then call Iraq, "AMERICA ANNEX NUMBER ONE"

Heck when we have sucked up the last bit of oil, we will just pack our bags and go home anyway!

Now I will apologize for being so harsh.
I can only explain my anger this way; "many of us here have no right to even debate the issues of this war while we sit confortably in our homes, with full bellies and quenched thirsts!"

I am just as guilty of this as any of you!
I must be willing to get off this computer at times and voice my thoughts where they might just make a difference!

Someone here has got to know how to organize us someway. And together we will then be able
to do something other than just; "flap our gums" !

Hi John,

I'm going to have to disagree with you on a few points.

{{You yourself can not protect yourself from and thug on the streets with a knife!}}

Yes I can and have been doing it for the last 47 years. Knife fighting was the popular thing when I was in school but my parents wouldn't allow me to carry one so I had to become proficient at taking them away from the other guy.

{{We can not protect ourselfs from a kid who can't stand life anymore, and takes a gun to school.}}

We could if they allowed Teachers that have concealed carry permits to carry in school.

{{{We are doing the same tragic things to the people of Iraq, that we did to the people of Vietnam.}}}

Talked to to many of our troops that have been there, John, and the answer is, No, we are not!!! Already had one grandson there and he's going back again and few more are getting ready to join.

{{Take the headlines off of us, and you go right back to sipping your mint julips and care nothing of us you have left behind closed doors!}}

Not hardly, John, I was in the service before you were, remember? John, I deplore they way this Government ran the Vietnam war, but this one is being conducted differently. You would have to talk to those that were in both wars to understand what I'm talking about.

I apologize Samuel, forgot who reading these things besides me. Yep, I pity the guy who pulls a knife on me! Guess I was just speaking in general.

I see your point about arming the teachers, but who is going to police the police?
A teacher can become just as disgruntled with kids as kids can get with teachers.
I would be the first in line to re-institute paddling by principles and teachers.
" I never dared talk back to a teacher!"

I have listened to many of the returning "Vets" from Iraq, and the only distinction I have been able to see; is that they are just moving targets that occasionally get into a firefight.
In "Nam" we got many many hugs from the villagers who were horribly attacked for having allowed us to help them. Same in Iraq.

One of my best friends is a Captain in the U.S. Army. He is now a Tank Division Rear Commander. I repeat a Tank Division Rear Commander. The reason I repeated that was because here is a twenty four year old Captain that is leading an entire Division and now hold on to your hat: this kid is making over $7,500 a month. Good Lord that is $90,000 a year!!!! I only hit that income level once while driving trucks for Jeep and that was with a heck of a lot of overtime! He works on average; 2,500 hours a year, and that's only five hundred more than a guy working forty hours a week.
Man sign me up! Even the grunts make over $2,000 a month. Then you include overseas pay, hazordous duty pay, clothing, food, and everthing.
Show me a job where highschool grads can start out making that kind of money for some company here!
By the way, I was all patriotic when I enisted also!

HERE IS A CHANCE FOR ANYONE WHO IS SQUEAMISH TO SKIP THIS PART

The only time "Captain" killed anyone he told it to me, it went like this: " I looked through the nightvision sights. They lit up on the screen and I pulled the trigger and they fell down ".

The first time I killed anyone: I was pinned down with the rest of my platoon, and I saw a guy with a gun fire on, and hit "Too Tall Johnson" who was not too far from me. Got him in the shoulder.( I left out his first name on purpose)
I aimed at my enemies head, fired, and watched his head snap rearward from the strike of the of of my round. My "ENEMY" couldn't have been more than fourteen years old.
The worst part of this memory is: I was elated for getting my first kill, and my buddies threw me a party back at base.

Yeah I was "Gung Ho " when I was fighting for peoples rights not to be overrun by communists. But I now know personally, that they are doing better today than at any time we were proctecting them from "The Evil Reds" !

I know that I have becomed jaded.
And it has become my opinion that anyone who has served in both wars either; cannot make it in civilian life, or is a warmonger and likes what he or she does for a living.
So while I support your grandsons dedication, I do not support this war.

And before you question my patriotism; " I too would have pulled another tour, had I not been shot twice and blown up once!!!
And they way the public treats our vets.
While they are all so good at patting us on the back when we are laying there in the hospital and the news camera's are all around us, but once the band pulls away with the wagon, the public goes with them!

I go to the Vet Hospital as often I can. When I visit with Vets from WWII and Korea, and Vietnam. They lay there in some pretty nasty surroundings and now a lot of then don't even have their families coming to visit anymore!
Oh! everyone gets all up in arms over the condition of WALTER REED with it's paint peeling off the ceilings, but as quick as the evening news goes on to other headlines, the public is no-longer interested in VETS!

Sorry to vent this to you, being that your also a Vet, but I have had all the recognition from the "PUBLIC" that I will ever want! ( I was lumped in with all the other "BABY KILLERS" even though I had received three purple hearts!)
Yeah even my mom and dad never visited me in the hospital. I was at San Franciso Vet Hosp. and they lived in Mich.
But that's another story.

Hi John,

I know what you mean about the Army pay of today. When I joined (now I'm going to go dating myself) as an E-1 we got $74. a month, as E-2 it was $84. and month, E-3 was $99. a month, E-4 was $128. a month and with 2 years longevity we got $178. a month, and here's the BIG one, as E-5 we got $224. a month. Now for those that are a little slow at adding and E-3 made a total of $1188 a year, I have made more than twice that in a week working Construction.

My dad was a disabled Vet of WW 2, John, so I know the conditions of the V.A. hospitals. He was in and out of them the majority of my life but considering when, where, and under what conditions he grew up under he felt that he was treated magnificantly.

I know what you mean about the public's memory problems too. But those of us that served remember every day don't we, John.

IMO there are no defenses to protect anyone anywhere against terrorists!

Spending $460 billion dollars a year will never be able to stop some radical extremist from doing this:
first you get a bunch of shotgun shells
you open them up and set aside the b b's
now you get one can of childrens playdough clay
flatten the playdough out to form a disc 1 foot in diameter
place all the gun powder in the center
form a ball around the gun powder
place a wick in the top
light the wick
approach your target and die

We use to make our own M-80 firecrackers using this method, and given enough gun powder you can effectively kill yourself with a number of others around you.
That is what I-E-D's are all about.
Given how extreme these Muslim people are, there is no-amount of protection we can offer, that will prevent the suicide bombings taking place in Iraq.

These monies would be much better spent developing equipment able to sniff out the components of homemade bombs. Then even with this type of technology, the people who carry out such horrible acts. Will be satisfied with just getting to blow up the people who would be operating the equipment.

War's of this nature can never be won!
And those who would have us believe we are winning are out and out liars!!!!

A far better approach would be to remove the targets from the presence of potential IEDs.

That sounds like a capitulation approach.

At what point would you stop giving in to terrorism?

There would be even more terrorist groups if they knew that the could get what they want all of the time.

Since these groups don't all want the same things, it would be impossible to give in to all of them, so we would have to stand up to some.

Sorry, logic and common sense dictate that your plan of capitulation will not work. Especially against terrorist organizations that do not use logic and common sense in their actions.

We spend a lot of money standing up against terrorists, however, it pales in comparison to the amount we would have to spend to repair the damage that they would (as history demonstrates) continue to cause if they were encouraged through capitulation.

I agree with the majority of this post, but I wanted to point out that the ease with which IEDs can be made, and the variety of methods, would make spending money to "sniff out the components of homemade bombs" pretty useless as well. When someone can use shotgun shells and playdough, or a million other methods, the detection will always be extremely hit-and-miss. The improvised nature of these bombs means one device will likely be very different from another in design and chemical content. A far better approach would be to remove the targets from the presence of potential IEDs.

{{We can not protect ourselfs from a kid who can't stand life anymore, and takes a gun to school.}}

We could if they allowed Teachers that have concealed carry permits to carry in school.
Are you completely insane Samuel. Letting teachers take guns to school? You are obviously not a teacher, but I am, and all it takes is for that teacher to snap and shoot a student that irritated them that day. Or, better yet, a student gets ahold of the teachers gun and accidently shoots someone. Guns have absolutely no place on a K-12 campus. If a student brings a gun to school, all you can do is pray the situation gets solved peacefully

Giving teachers gun permits certainly makes finding a weapon much easier for the wayward student: just overpower a teacher and take his pistol. All this does, it seems, is to add to the reserve fund of potential weapons at school so students need not worry about metal detectors or finding ways to obtain weapons outside the school yard and then sneak them in.
And of course, if there are wayward students, there would never be wayward teachers (or postal workers, for that matter).
Z