Yeah. Damning to the drive by legacy media types… The conclusions were contrary to the supposed leaked conclusion. You might need to get some alternate sources of information… Like the entire declassified report itself. Go to the source… Let me know what sentence in there you think is damning and to whom.

Cujo thinking he was smart quibbled with “stay the course”

Stay the course does not mean do not change tactics. Only STUPID liberals think this is a POINT. The generals/officers and soldiers on the ground have been adapting and changing tactics in order to defeat the enemy. Again you need alternate sources because this has been stated numerous times. The phrase “stay the course” is in reference to not cutting and running or leaving or redeploying or whatever you want to call the strategy that precedes a humanitarian crisis. If you Cujo think our military folk are STUPID and are doing nothing different from day to day and are not changing tactics, finding new ways to find and disarm IED’s, etc, I don’t know what to say to respond to you.

Cujo irrelevantly wrote, “There is no good news from Iraq that balances the bad news of increasing violence, instability, and government corruption and sadism.”

So the answer is redeploy / cut and run? No. The answer is to figure out a way to win. Do you want us to win? Do you want to avert a humanitarian crisis? Or are you in favor of giving aid and comfort to the enemy with your rhetoric and making things harder for us to succeed?

Cujo ignored my question by saying, “What a ridiculous question.” No. It’s not ridiculous. What happened when we left Vietnam? What would’ve happened if we didn’t help reconstruct Germany and Japan for 10 and 7 years? What happened because we didn’t intervene in Ruwanda, Darfur, many other places? We are responsible for removing the Iraqi government just like we removed Japan’s and Germany’s. As a Superpower we should act responsible and humane and try to get stability enough to be able to be next door to Iran and other nations in such a hate filled area of the world. The terrorists themselves have said openly and in videos (do you believe them) that their intention is to win in Iraq and then move past that to establish an Islamic caliphate.

Cujo asked a question and I won’t ignore it. He asked, “Are you one of those who believe that we should remain there so the violence and chaos can continue unabated?” It isn’t unabated. The premise of the question is false. More Iraqi security forces are killed than American this last year. We need to support them instead of letting an unabated slaughter take place. You seem to think they only fight because we are there and will stop fighting once we leave. If that were true (let’s use logic Cujo) they would only need to quit fighting for a few months and we’d be gone. They are NOT after making us leave. Do you Cujo understand this now? Explain logically how you think differently.

We have. Their only replies are tripe and nonsense. Having read the report that Bush leaked by partially declassifying it and the newspaper articles based on the portions leaked by someone else, I have no reason to believe otherwise.

I’m happy that Bush declassified the report so as to pretty clearly show guys like you Cujo that your opinions are pretty far off from the FACTS

Not sure what kind of anti-matter universe you live in, but even the portions Bush leaked are pretty damning. Some statements, which seem to be added for “balance” suggest that a few things are going well, but they provide no supporting data. The bad we can see on our TVs and read about in the papers. The only data that would be hard to obtain for ordinary folks has to do with the Al Qaeda population in Iraq. Since that evidence was probably obtained using torture, er excuse me, “tough interrogation”, I don’t think you can trust it any more than anyone else’s estimates.

So… You disagreed with the 3 year old decision to go to war in Iraq.

An assumption, and not a relevant one. Many folks who agreed with the decision now agree it was a bad one.

Why not look at what we do going forward today?

What’s going forward is that things are getting worse, and will continue to get worse as long as our policy there remains “stay the course”. Unlike you, I’ve noted the insanely optimistic pronouncements of the Administration about Iraq, starting with how the insurgency was “in its last throes”, and how they have continued to be so divorced from reality that you have to wonder what fairy tales they’re reading. Every report of how many security forces are trained and ready to go there is almost immediately contradicted, and even after three years they don’t seem to be keeping anything secure. There is no good news from Iraq that balances the bad news of increasing violence, instability, and government corruption and sadism.

Are you one of those who are for “redeployment” so as to create a humanitarian crisis?

What a ridiculous question. Are you one of those who believe that we should remain there so the violence and chaos can continue unabated? Of course not. That you would even suggest such a thing makes me question your ability to think rationally.

That is your opinion. Why not ask the creators of the document for the reason of classification. You would get an entirely different answer than your opinion. Therefore your opinion is INCORRECT.

Additionally, the declassifying of the area of the report to give context SHOWED pretty clearly that not only was this not an embarrasing report to Bush, but that the leaker and legacy drive by media were in error as to their conclusions of what the report was saying.

I’m happy that Bush declassified the report so as to pretty clearly show guys like you Cujo that your opinions are pretty far off from the FACTS….

So… You disagreed with the 3 year old decision to go to war in Iraq. That decision is long gone. Why not look at what we do going forward today? Are you one of those who are for “redeployment” so as to create a humanitarian crisis? If you disagree that pulling out would create a humanitarian crisis that is fine. That is your right to disagree. Just say so. People can believe your opinions or they can believe somebody else.

Sec. 1.7. Classification Prohibitions and Limitations. (a) In no case shall information be classified in order to:

(1) conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error;

(2) prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency;

(3) restrain competition; or

(4) prevent or delay the release of information that does not require protection in the interest of the national security.

[emphasis mine, of course]

http://www.fas.org/sgp/bush/eoamend.html

The act of classifying this information is quite probably as illegal as the act of leaking it.

Or perhaps it should be: “We were enraged before we were outraged.”

Stratasphere has more.

- Ouch!

- Bang

From the AP, House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra has suspended a Democratic staff member because of concerns he may have leaked a high-level intelligence assessment to The New York Times last month. In a letter obtained by The Associated Press

High-level intelligence leak? Hey, if it hurts Republicans, no problem:WASHINGTON – House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra has suspended a Democratic staff member because of concerns he may have leaked a high-level intelligence assessment to The Ne…

I’m shocked…SHOCKED!!!, I tells ya’!…that Democrats may have been the ones to leak sensitive info to the New York Times:

House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra has suspended a Democratic staff member because of concerns he may have leaked …