Keith Olbermann is my new hero

[James]

I don't know if this has been posted, but I have to say gave me a sense of pride in someone who still says it like it is...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTNttuZm ... ed&search=[/youtube]

[sam]

We did this once before in the Philippines. It took 14 years and 4,300 US killed to bring that to a close. With almost three times the population and four times the area, it's hard to be optimistic about our short-term chances of success.

[Irock]

I've been watching this debate from a distance, and I keep coming back to one question: what's the alternative? It's cant just be to get out asap, can it? I think that for better or worse (and it was for worse), we disrupted this country and we have an obligation to help make it right, to whatever extent that is possible. So where do we go from here?

[James]

Yes, it's easy to say that we shouldn't have gone in in the first place, and offer no real solution. I said it then and I'll say it now still.

But that doesn't solve the issue. In my mind, the US Government decided to go in to Iraq (and the UK) and therefore should be held accountable for the rebuilding. This is being done, but not nearly as quickly as it should be. If the US troops were going in to protect the workers rebuilding the country, that would be one thing. If they need the troops to train the new Iraqi army that's another, or the Iraqi police force.

I think Olbermann's response is something that is long overdue. It has happened here in the UK and Blair hasn't been the same ever since. It's a sense that people are fed up with being lied to and being scaremongered into doing these things, only to have 9/11 thrown back in their faces.

There are no easy answers, but it's a sign that the will of the people will soon be at a tipping point...if it's not already...

[sam]

I think the 'cut and run' response is ridiculous. Just as ridiculous as accussing opponents of not having an alternative. My question is, an alternative to what? I think that is the biggest point KO was trying to make. We don't have a plan for what we are doing right now. It's just more money and more lives and no questions. Rebuilding is not happening. No one can trace where our money has been spent because the rebuilding sites are considered secret. The current administration needs to show that they have a workable plan. The problem is, as I was tring to suggest with the Phillipines parallel, a workable plan would include our commitment to being there far at least another decade among many other things that would be political suicide. Look at other counter-insurgencies like the Boer Wars, three plus Afghanistans, etc. It takes decades, if ever to make these things work.

If we leave now, Iran steps in to dominate Iraqi affairs. I'm beginning to think that would always have been the outcome in the long run. So, somebody find a big-ass bow to tie this gift up with and lets get on with it.

[Tracy]

I am not a student of history. I am the mother of an 18-year old son who had to register for the Selective Service even though there is presently no draft.

I think whatever is going to happen there will happen whether the US is present or not. Maybe we are slowing the process down but I think in the long run the result will be the same.

So much of our tax money has been wasted on government contracts that have not produced. Cheney's (former) company, KBR in Houston, has received huge contracts for rebuilding in Iraq but the power is still on only a few hours a day in areas. There is little, if any, accounting of where the money goes.

[Sybil]

I am not a student of history. I am the mother of an 18-year old son who had to register for the Selective Service even though there is presently no draft.

Yeah, nothing like having a kid that age to slam things into perspective.

I remember many years ago, during the Viet Nam war, something a priest said on the Sunday following the Kent State killings. He was clearly in despair over those events, and he gave a very impassioned sermon saying that the true "silent majority" in this country was the mothers. If mothers everywhere would refuse to send their sons off to war, well, then that would be the end of it.

A lot of the women at church that day were pissed off - it was a very emotional time in this country. I didn't get it then, but now I have children, and I can promise one thing - they will take my son off to war over my cold, dead body. I have never figured out why all parents don't feel the exact same way.

Sybil