By bringing up Michael Ware, you were attempting to trivialize John McCain's correctness on the Surge while trying to make it seem that Obama's incompetence in failing to vote for and hesitation to acknowledge the Surge was irrelevant.
Um. No. But I can see why someone from the right would read it that way. I read your defense of Bush in the same way--trivializing.
Let me state yet again, for the record, that my interest is in representing what it might look like
from where I stand. What anyone else thinks it's not my concern.
Ware is basically saying the Surge did nothing and wasn't responsible for our victory in Iraq and therefore Obama wasn't a total fool, while McCain's courage was for naught.
Clearly, I have a different reading of what Ware pointed out. The two facts that matter to me are these:
1. The surge (defined as increased troops and involvement) is one aspect of a complicated situation.
2.There are downfalls.
Now these might not be important facts to you or we might disagree on terminology, but that would be another argument. Maybe the "Surge" officially refetred to that two-pronged approach, but regardless, it's understood from where I stand as an
increase in resources-troops specifically. It was a
risk. One that worked. Like the war, which IMO did not.
A similar structure becomes visible here: Judgement on the surge vs judgement of Iraq. Up to the individual where they come down on. There's reasonable positions for both.
in fact, the Surge had both components.
Like I said, To me the central issue against the Surge was precisely the risks from an increase in troops. The frequent back and forth over what to call it suggests how important this was.
so Ware was naive to believe that the Surge was merely sticking in a few more soldiers and nothing more.
I would say a large majority was naive then. Except, of course, Ware is
in Iraq. Might not matter to some. Matters to me in how I judge his information.
Even Obama was finally forced to admit the Surge worked, even if Michael Ware said that it didn't matter. So who do you believe? Barack Obama or Michael Ware?
You think I'm willfully ignoring Obama's concession, I think you're willfully ignoring that Obama is saying essentially the same thing as Ware, albeit more diplomatically.
O'Reilly is just interrupting the crap out of him, maybe that's what you mean by "forced":
SEN. OBAMA: It has gone very well, partly because of the Anbar situation and the Sunni --
MR. O'REILLY: The awakening, right.
SEN. OBAMA: -- awakening, partly because the Shi'a --
MR. O'REILLY: But if it were up to you, there wouldn't have been a surge.
SEN. OBAMA: Well, look --
MR. O'REILLY: No, no, no, no.
SEN. OBAMA: No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
MR. O'REILLY: If it were up to you, there wouldn't have been a surge.
SEN. OBAMA: No, no, no, no. Hold on.
MR. O'REILLY: You and Joe Biden -- no surge.
SEN. OBAMA: No. Hold on a second, Bill. If you look at the debate that was taking place, we had gone through five years of mismanagement of this war that I thought was disastrous. And the president wanted to double-down and continue on open-ended policy that did not create the kinds of pressure in the Iraqis to take responsibility and reconcile --
MR. O'REILLY: It worked. Come on.
In my view, you're taking O'Reilly's position, trying to distill a complicated situation into the simple concept of violence down= win. There's no better example of trivializing than the above.
You will most assuredly disagree.
I reiterate, I'm not trying to convince anyone, just trying to avoid being misrepresented. You're presenting your point of view as if anything else has no sensible logic.
Regardless of whether you believe that report was impartial or not, do you agree that intelligence failures do not equal lying? The report clearly states that incorrect intelligence meant that there were hundreds of lies told. Since when did telling something you believe to be true but turned out to be incorrect mean that you lied? My dictionary doesn't say that.
In the interest of representing my point as fairly as I can, here is one of the examples listed, which I found quite compelling:
On August 26, 2002, in an address to the national convention of the Veteran of Foreign Wars, Cheney flatly declared: "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us." In fact, former CIA Director George Tenet later recalled, Cheney's assertions went well beyond his agency's assessments at the time. Another CIA official, referring to the same speech, told journalist Ron Suskind, "Our reaction was, 'Where is he getting this stuff from?' "
Regardless of the discussion about WMD (which I suppose I might come back to later) this is a particularly interesting example to look at because I'd be hard-pressed to call it an "intelligence failure" especially when a CIA operative is citing a
lack of information while Cheney is giving out information. I'd call it "making stuff up."
But let's go to the dictionary, lying is:
1 a: an assertion of something known or believed by the speaker to be untrue with intent to deceive
A long, incorrect statement given when there is a proven lack of information. Don't know about your dictionary, but if we're going to the above, it looks a lot like lying.
You will most assuredly disagree. *shrug*
To me, any organization that redefines the word, lie, is not as impartial as you believe.
And the conspiracy theories are out. We can go all day on that, I mean I have yet to see your sources for Iraq-- I could just as easily use your argument to invalidate them regardless of there being ample evidence of their credibility.
Just because something disagrees with your worldview that doesn't make it automatically wrong.
You might wish it were though.
A true impartial report would have stated that intelligence failures fooled Bush Administration officials into making incorrect statements.
You mean said what you wanted to hear? Is that what "impartiality" means now? You made your mind up from before and you want to sell it as a "fact." Surprise, surprise, I'm not buying. That's your point of view, you got your reasons, but they're not hard science. Otherwise this dicussion wouldn't be happening.
To repeat, I'm just stating how the Iraq issue looks from my side. Just to get it out there, what anyone else believes or doesn't believe is really not my concern.
But that doesn't mean I'll let anyone walk all over my point of view either.
alcyone
PS
Also, Roger you cannot and do not speak for all military personnel. 
