:(

[Jennie@ifish]

WAR! What is it good for?

Absolutley nothing!

I'm sorry. I'm not going to argue. But, this breaks my heart.

Jen

[Straydog]

GGeezzzz........ :depressed:

My heart goes out to the families of these folks..... what a darned waste!

[Jennie@ifish]

"They were on their way home."

...and they are, indeed.... home, home, at last.

:depressed:

Jen

[1pump]

222 dead since major combat operations ended in Iraq on May 1st. :depressed:

[TheRogue]

No such thing as a "good" war, regardless of the reasons. And this one....well....been enough said.

One of the worst tragedies of this police action so far.

TR

[happybrew]

Truly a horrible thing. My old National Guard unit, 2/162 INF just got sent off. Pray for their safety.

happybrew

[fisheromen]

Whatever you believe about this war, if you believe in God above you can also pray that these deaths won't be in vain and that good will come from us making the sacrifice to be there. Because just or not, good or bad, for these families it is a sacrifice!

Kind of breaks one's heart.

When my brother Samuel was in Vietnam my parents lived in constant terror of this type of news. Since he was involved in special forces sometimes we didn't get letters from him for weeks at a time.
Once while he was over there we were working in the yard and this Western Union delivery truck pulls up with a telegram for my parents. The look of fear they exchanged without saying a word was one of the indelible images of my life, I'll never forget it.
The telegram turned out to be nothing concerning my brother thank God.
It wasn't long after this incident that we received word that his best friend, a helicopter pilot in the Army, was shot down and killed in action. One of the few times I ever saw my father cry.
I feel for the loved ones of these brave soldiers God Bless them all

[ 11-02-2003, 07:07 PM: Message edited by: Stew ]

[Thumper]

I lost 9 college classmates in Vietnam, mostly helicopter and F-105 pilots. Young lives tragically taken. It is a sad day for America, but our resolve must not weaken. My prayers are for the families of these heroes.

[Jennie@ifish]

I just can't buy it, Thumper. I've tried to change my mind. I just can't. I'm frustrated with what is going on. Very frustrated.

Jen

[Thumper]

Jennie:

Your feelings are widely held. The question is whether you feel that freeing 50,000,000 human beings and removing a worldwide terror threat is worth the price of several hundred American lives and a pricetag of about $1,000 per American.

My opinion is that the only reason that thousands more Americans have not died in this country since 9/11 is that we have carried the war to the homelands of the terrorists. We are winning this war. The price in American lives is not insignificant, but compared to earlier wars it is very, very small.

There are many Americans who feel that Iraq posed no threat to American security. Our leaders and the national intelligence community felt otherwise. The leadership in Iraq thumbed its nose at the world, refusing to allow meaningful inspections of WMD that were admitted to in past years. There has never been a question of whether or not WMD existed. The only question is whether or not they still exist in Iraq or have been relocated. Time will tell.

We are in a war, and the question is whether the majority of Americans feel that is a just war. Next November we will all make that determination.

[1pump]

I've been against this insane war since Day One, but pulling out now would be the worst thing we could do. Especially with Saddam on the loose.

We shouldn't have put ourselves in this position, and we know who's to blame for that, but it's far too late to simply back out.
"Resolve" and "will" are two words we hear frequently from politicians in regards to this mess. We should send a few members of Congress over there to man checkpoints, patrol the cities, eat MRE's and not bathe for a few weeks.
Let's see how their "resolve" is then. [img]graemlins/eek13.gif[/img]

[Jennie@ifish]

Did you fish today, Jack? How is the Lewis doing?

:smile:

Jen

[Thumper]

The Lewis is fine, but not full of biters. We are still outfitting the new boat. Soon!!! :smile:

[happybrew]

I do not feel that the invasion was justified, however, now that we are there, we need to make the best of it. We would be doing a disservice to the Iraqi people if we pulled out now, and far more Iraqi's would die than Americans will if we stay. Their lives are just as valuable as ours. After the first Gulf War, it was a bloodbath among the Shiites. A long, bloody civil war would result with out pullout. Like it or not, we have to finish what we started. In Vietnam, more people died in the year after the South fell than during the fighting. We have a large Vietnamese population now from all the people who had to flee for their lives. A priest who was in my parish had to flee when he was a child. He's grateful to the U.S. for what we stand for.

happybrew

DOH! No, that wasn't really political. Not really. Fell of the bandwagon, gotta get back on. :shocked:

happybrew

[Jennie@ifish]

I just love Andy Rooney.
Anyone listen, tonight?
Jen

[Albacore Tuna Captain]

War is good for nothing. Every man or woman who has ever served in combat knows this. War is the result of failure of deplomacy. There is no way to quantify the loss of a single life in combat. The nations sacrifice of its young people to obtain the goals of its leaders must be worth it. In the second world war, we fought to free Europe of **** regime. How many people would have been killed at the hand of Hitler if he was allowed to continue? How many people would have died if Saddam had been allowed to continue?

Was our war in Iraq justified??? Depends on your political point of view. If we have saved 1,000 lives with the sacrifice of over 200 of our own, is it worth it??? How about 100,000?? HOw about a million???

I just wished deploymacy would work.

[happybrew]

Originally posted by Jennie@ifish:
I just love Andy Rooney.
Anyone listen, tonight?
Jen

<font size="2" face="verdana,arial,helvetica">No. What did he say?

[Thumper]

I don't think it is going to be possible to win this worldwide war on terrorism, or the skirmishes in Afghanistan and Iraq, very quickly. As the administration has pointed out it is a new kind of war, an insidious one. It will take decades. And for many years we will have troops in those areas getting shot at. Hopefully as the coalition trains more Iraqi police the burden will progressively transfer to them. But it is going to be a long, long war.

The upside, of course, is the likelihood that the war will remain on their turf rather than on ours, and that total losses will remain minimal. Hopefully.

[DanS]

total losses will remain minimal

<font size="2" face="verdana,arial,helvetica">The losses are hardly minimal if it is your son, husband, brother, uncle, or father being killed.

Man, what did we get ourselves into this time?

[FallRiverGuy]

HB,

I can't remember exactly what he said, but he did offer to write a speech for the President. Basically Andy outlined a speech where the President would recall a comment he had stated in the past, then lament that he should not have said that. In other words, it was designed to list a series of statements that seem rather untrue at this point in time.

[Jennie@ifish]

If I were Bush's speech writer....

If it were your son, wife, or daughter, could you call it minimal?

I sure couldn't.

Jen

[ 11-03-2003, 03:55 PM: Message edited by: Jennie@ifish ]

[lost_sailor]

VOTE

[fisheromen]

Who is to say? We can second guess all we want. From my standpoint we have a president that I trust to be less influenced by outside pressures and more influenced by personal conviction than most. He and his advisers, whose job it is to know the big picture, weighed the risks and costs and outcomes and made a decision. Was it a perfect one? We live in an imperfect world so of course it wasn't.

Would the US or the world have been safer and better off if we hadn't gone in? People come to that argument full of bias. There are GOOD arguments on both sides and I think reasonable people know that.

I guess I don't see the point of doing so much second guessing. The decision was made - now let's do what needs to be done instead of debating it to death. Focus and get the job done. Be more vigilant and proactive in the future so we don't find ourselves in the same boat. But you know we will, and the judgement call will have to be made again. There will always be truly evil people in the world.

[happybrew]

Wow. Good speech.

happybrew

[Jennie@ifish]

I don't know... I think this war will take 50 years... I don't have that long of a focus!

[Thumper]

I agree. This war, the war on terror, will take many, many years, likely decades. And I predict that American losses will be in the millions of lives as terrorists obtain and employ weapons of mass destruction. And they will. Most of us will live long enough to awaken one morning to find at least one major American city a smoking hole.

We have, however, been free of any major terrorist attacks on our soil for more than two years. That has been no accident. Say all you want to about the imagined loss of freedoms resulting from the Patriot Act, complain bitterly about John Ashcroft if you like, but you and your children have been safe here for over two years.

The losses in Iraq and Afghanistan are tiny compared with conflicts of the past. More than 50,000 lives lost in Vietnam, a similar number in Korea, 30,000 lost in only a couple of weeks in the Pacific Theater during WWII. I know that it isn't very fashionable or "sensitive" to point that out, but it is the truth.

In Iraq we have, in only 6 months, conquered a significant army, restored most of the infrastructure of the country, and created an exciting new beginning for millions of people. All that at a cost of a few hundred American lives. I am not trivializing the loss of lives, but in reality it has been minimal.

A recent Gallup poll found that more than half of all Iraqis support the American presence there and mainly fear that we will leave too soon. Many liberals would indeed like us to leave soon, but that step would lead to a bloodbath both in Iraq and elsewhere, including right here in America.

Those in America failing to remain resolute are just providing aid and comfort to the Iraqi terrorists who are convinced that Americans are a soft and weak people who will turn tail and run as American casualties climb. The terrorists watch the polls too.

As for Andy Rooney, he is a proud liberal and has spoken publically of that in interviews with Larry King and others. He has even pointed out that Dan Rather is also "a transparent liberal". His political comments are amusing, but consider the admitted left-of-center source.

[ 11-03-2003, 07:52 PM: Message edited by: Thumper ]

[Jennie@ifish]

Thumper. You believe what you believe. I'll believe what I'll believe.... then let's go fishing. :smile:

Jen

[Thumper]

Cool.

[pdxkevin]

The sooner it ends, the better. The loss of a single life is tragic. We need to use any and all means within our arsonal to end it swiftly and decisively. Walking away will only bring the war over here. Yes, lives will be lost. No, it's not going to be easy. Fighting in a 'gentlemanly manner' against an opponant not constrained to the same 'rules of engagement' is not the way to win. It is a guarentee to get bloodied and prolong the war. Finishing the war swiftly will hopefully deter the next group from contemplating starting another one.