One of Ours

...Ron Brownstein reports in the Los Angeles Times that an unnamed Democratic lobby gathered a focus group and showed them a campaign ad accusing Bush of negligence for failing to stop the 9/11 attacks. Brownstein wrote that the focus group exploded with "volcanic" rage against the ad. He quoted a Democratic operative as saying, "They were so angry I thought they were going to turn the tables over." Why do you think a notion that enrages normal Americans is considered worthy of throwing in the president's face at a press conference? At least the reporters didn't ask him if he and Osama hatched the 9/11 attack together. Wouldn't you say they could be a bit out of touch?

...Given the advantage of hindsight, it’s easy to go back and look at all the information gathered throughout the government before 9/11 and conclude that somebody should have been able to put all the pieces together and prevent the attack. On September 10, 2001, though, no one had all those pieces. George Tenet, the man who theoretically should have all those pieces (he is, theoretically—but only theoretically—in charge of the entire U.S. intelligence community) and a common denominator in both the Clinton and Bush Administration failures to fix the system, looks incompetent. But it’s grossly unfair given the realities of the day.

Bureaucracies are incredibly resistant to change. It usually takes catastrophic failures to force major reforms. But even two and a half years after 9/11, the transformation is just barely underway...

Kudos to Spain for giving terrorists a glimmer of hope...Hopefully the terrorists don't see this as an example of their actions on March 11 as a way to tear the Coalition apart. I don't care what anyone says about the "Iraqis want you out" bs. ,b>I've been to Iraq for a year, and I've seen huge improvement there during my combat tour there. Alot of Iraqis would help Americans by bringing forward information on trouble makers. People would wave at us and give us thumbs up. The only place I believe really where Iraqis hate us, is in Fallujah, Ramadi and Tikrit. That is because they all were fat and happy when Saddam was in power. Plus, my friends told me about Fallujah and how bad it was. Other cities I've been to people were so happy to see us. So, I don't buy any of this crap about all this resistance that is growing, the only place I can believe that is in Fallujah and the other cities I named. I remember an Iraqi telling me he saw graffiti on the street saying "1 American is better than 1000 tikrits." So obviously, Baghdadis don't really like them or Fallujah. Alot of them said America should just level the towns with bombs. I am starting to agree with their philosophy.

Them guys at Al-Jazeera really got alot of nerve. They like to point out the fact that the US Army is Himmler Waffen SS. However, they can't look at the mirror and see how the "brave and glorious" resistance in Palestine blow up areas in Israel packed with as many woman and children as possible. In the military, you are trained to be aggressive for one reason, to come home alive. That is mission priority ABOVE anything else, is to come home alive. If that means not winning hearts and minds, then that is going to have to do. I don't know about anyone else, but i'm not going to die just to win hearts and minds. Also, i'm not going into a building packed with enemy fighters and send in my boys and get killed to clear it when the logical thing to do is level the building. I know the US military isn't taking hostages. This is an act of desperation. They can't win in a real fight, so they gotta use dirty tactics, like using Ambulances to carry weapons and ammo and fighters. YES, they really do this kind of stuff, I was there in Baghdad when they figured it out it was being done to get weapons past checkpoints. They also really put woman and children in front of them while fire, this is also not a fairy tale, it REALLY happens, I've seen it with my very own eyes. In combat, it's either you or them, and it's sad, but you may have to kill a woman being used as a shield in order to kill him, but it's a fact of life, and it's very sad. Arabs aren't very renowned for marksmanship skills, as I've seen very often, plus they have showed a willingness to kill innocent people without thinking twice about it, so I doubt all these innocent people getting hurt are from the "evil occupiers."...

Life here is falling into a relatively predictable pattern for most of us here on the staff - wake up, work, eat, sleep...repeat. Like I've said before the quality of life here is actually pretty good. Far, far better than what soldiers faced 14 years ago during Desert Storm. But the recent "problems" we've been having over here have had some interesting side effects. Many of the civilian truck drivers who are working in this area have refused to drive on our convoys and that has slowed down delivery of everything from mail to food (I'm going to stock up on my favorite MREs for when they close the mess hall). I've heard that something close to 200 KBR drivers have quit and the Turkish drivers aren't going past Mosul. So much for Rumsfeld's notion that we can "outsource" all the non-essential jobs in the army to contractors. Unlike a soldier, you can't force a civilian trucker to drive if they don't want to.

So to all Arabs who are saying : “ poor Iraqis they are under the American occupation suffering and dying. We must help them.. we must…we must…”..
Please thank you so much and keep your ‘must’ for you and leave us alone with our ‘occupiers’.. yes.. just forget Iraq as a part of the Arab nation and don’t mix up the two ( Iraq and Palestine ) together, because there is no even one similar point between them..
The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is due to the land.. territories.. and I think everyone will live in peace there once the stupid leaders give up their arrogance and pride.. and stop washing the youth’ brains with thoughts that always lead them to death instead of trying to use them to share in discussions and try to find a solution for their issue peacefully..
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Regarding the situation in Iraq.. you have to be a little clever and forget the ideas of occupation, persecution and exploitation that you’ve been taught since your birth.. and try to understand the American aims first:
Defeating terrorists, make sure that WMD are in safe hands and letting democracy rules the countries that are suffering from the dictators since those are so dangerous and of course they’re supporting and paying for the terrorists…

So this is for all: If you are talking naively, please shut up, and for those who are doing that intentionally and trying to mix the two issues and urging Iraqis to ‘resist’ and ‘revolt against the occupation’.. you have to be stopped by force, the regimes who are paying for you will no longer stay in power…

Iraq on the way of prosperous future in spite of you, so forget us..