read more carefully: JFK was not the president that started the Vietnam conflict. That was my point. Personally, I am not a huge fan of JFK and believe that revisionists have played up the Camelot image to an obscene level.

Two words: domino effect. US didnt want to see it happen. As flwaed as the logic may seem today, it was a real concern.

Oh yeah... quagmire is another good one. LBJ didnt have an easy task in front of him when he inherited the Vietnam conflict.

 

That's it, chime in and run away... You have impressed me beyond belief with your own 'arguing skills'...

Seriously, the e-mail in this thread is in no way a fair generalization of what right-wingers think. However, the creator of the above farse has definitely given the party a bad name in this case.

Oh, and you've really moved on to sheep already? I'm so proud!

 

tl;dr

:P

 

Who do you think dreamt up the domino effect idea? McNamara, Kennedy's secretary of defense. Read my above post. On the one hand, LBJ (the president after kennedy) inherited a vietnam conflict, but on the other, JFK did not start it??? Why did he order 16000 troops to vietnam and start awarding contracts to build billions worth of military bases and fortifications to US companies there?

Anti-Communism was what Kennedy was ALL about, and that's why he got us involved in vietnam. Good or bad, it was Kennedy that pushed it.

 

troops = advisors

 

Well by this logic then Dubya inherited Iraq from Carter.

 

i didn't take it personally, i was just stating that it made me laugh, i thought it was funny.

 

In a sense his dad did, it was during the carter administration that the Iran-Iraq war got going, as our boys in the CIA couldn't come up with a better way to get back at Iran, so they used their tool Saddam to put the heat on.

Reagans guys were dealing directly with the Iranians, (remenber a little thing called the Iran Contra scandal?)-so in effect we were like kids in the schoolyard goading on two boys duking it out- only thousands, actually millions of peoples lives were at stake.

Reagan shifted emphasis from Iran/Iraq to the Soviet "Evil Empire" which was engaged in Afghanistan, our spooks (advisors) went over and set up guys like Osama Bin Laden and a lot of the Taliban's militants as Mujahadeen "freedom fighters" in their "war" against the USSR.

Meanwhile, that quagmire combined with economic stagnation and general dissatisfaction with the status quo eroded the base of support for the USSR and it essentially collapsed over a period of about 7 years, resulting in the independant republics we are dealing with now.

When GHWPB came into power after Reagan, he knew they had a problem with a couple of guys, Noriega in Panama and Hussein in Iraq, he put the drop on both of them, but because of Iraqs oil, he felt that it would be too obvious and not acceptable to push on and take over Iraq, GB sr also respected the advise of his generals who advised him of the likelyhood for a prolonged and bloody challenge in securing the peace.

So instead he stuck us into a mess in Somalia, still with no real strategy or tactic for securing the peace, knowing that either he could escalate it if re-elected, or leave his succesor with a cruel and embarassing retreat, which proved itself out.

GW is far less pragmatic and is being driven from a blind faith and belief that he gets advice from god, when in fact there is a massive, greedy, and bloodthirsty military/industrial/energy/finance/media complex pulling the strings to unbalance world stability and impose "new world order" dominance on whoever is left after the next couple of decades of continuous war acheive the first goal, that being to reduce the "surplus" population- oh yeah and complete control of the worlds remaining petroleum reserves.

Kerry talks different, which might slow the decent a bit, but I'm afraid short of a near-revolution in awareness and accountability, we as a nation are on hot rails to hell.

Just watch how it goes the next little while- Venezuela in the next few months, then over the next 5-10 years- Iran, Saudi Arabia, and on the opposite side of the world, China and Korea all of these going at the same time are going to become unwinnable situations for our conventional armies.

So we'll nuke 'em, they'll nuke back, and we'll all lose big time.


enjoy life while you can.

"the heat from below can burn your eyes out"

(extra points for identifying the source of that line)

 

Blue Oyster Cult - Hot Rails to Hell

 

winner!

 

gotta love google

 

Psoper did I make an AFDB wisecrack at you yet?

 

not yet, but I sense its coming- if that wasn't it right there

 

LOLs

 

props psoper... that was a damn fine rundown