Annika,

I think it must be very upsetting for a GI to be mortared and to hear that his ability to retaliate is hamstung by ROE. I wonder however about the leap he makes to "if we really wanted to we could win this pretty quick" from aome difuse and possibly apocraphal storise about our forces being held back because of collateral damage.

Just an observation.

I think, Annie the Victory Door is nowhere to be found. You can not kill the opposition becasuse it is pervasive and the Iraqi army will never stand up.

STFU and begone fucktard. It's a subject you know NOTHING about.

It is unforgiveable that we're not firing counter battery fire on these mortar harrassment attacks. Then again, I've seen some predator video of us stalking these guys, and whacking them, which is the delicate way to do it.

PRESIDENT Kerry has courage! He speaks up for rights (besides white Amerikkkans) and for what is right!

And he WAS elected PRESIDENT!

ps Strawman speeks THE TRUTH!

I wonder if the 250 insurgents that were stalked and sent to Allah yesterday know that we aren't fighting back.

Perhaps the unthinking assholes who occasionally frequent this blog can explain to them that we don't know what we are doing.

The little fucker in black is now suing for peace; I hope he meets it at the end of a small Tomahawk.

Touche!

Perfect example of why these ROEs are stupid. When we were in Somalia we were there with the French Foreign Legion. They would do their patrols, we would do ours. People would throw rocks and take pot shots at you while you were on patrol. The Legion got sick of this and for around a week they patrolled with loud speakers saying that if it kept up they were going to fire back. The next week a crowd of about 200 threw rocks and popped of some rounds, the Legion patrol opened up on the entire crowd with a machine gun mounted on a vehicle. I have no idea how many they killed but as far as I know no one ever threw rocks at a Legion patrol after that.

Due to our ROEs people still took pot shots at our patrols and threw rocks at us.

Our Sgt liked the Legion so much from what he observed he joined when he got out of the Corps. I often wonder whatever became of him and if he was happy with his decision but that is beside the point.

Being hamstrung by stupid ROEs is exactly what I hated so much about the little brush fire wars under Clinton and I think it's stupid we persist with them during the Bush administration as well.

What if FDR had not been able to run for a 4th term in 1944? Would Dewey had said "The war is going to be left to his successor, and I really resent it"?

Hillary Clinton has the soul of a petulant child.

Interesting that the "new" strategy has not been publicized. Probably for a very good reason. I think that Petraeus has his marchng orders and that they read something like "Do what it takes to put down the insurgency". He wrote the book, remember.

So far, they have announced that there are no safe places to hide; as soon as they take out a couple of mosques, the militias will disappear, as they have no place to hide except to lay down their arms and try to wait until we are gone.

Then we will have a chance to stand up a real force that can keep them at home.

But they need to kill that little fucker in black.

I didn't know Hillary wore black.

Are you kidding? A black belt dominatrix like her not wear black?

But, that's not the little fucker I was talking about. He's in Baghdad or Sadr City or Fallujah.

If we level them all, we're bound to get him.

Bridge on the River Kwai is one of my all time favorite movies. Leave out the David Lean direction, the story is a classic, Hamlet in WWII Burma. It's all summed up in the question to the young Canadian Lt Joyce, "Can you kill a man with a knife?" Joyce was unsure. It was the wrong answer, but they didn't have a lot of personnel options.

Ultimately, it's a story of the struggle between romanticism, and realism. The Colonel willing to die for the ideals of soldierly virtue, and Holden willing to do anything to survive, including digging graves so he could rob the dead. You know at the end, that he'll do what needs to be done. He'll swim the river, and use the knife. Even the romantic ultimately comes to the point where he has to deal with reality; the Colonel's dying realization, "My God, what have I done?", as he falls upon the hellbox, destroying his creation.

We live in a society where the romantics are in full rut, since they perceive no consequence for their madness. The rest of us have to be prepared to use the knife.