I think what H is saying is that Huckabee can make good decisions in retrospect. Once he sees what the results are, he can look back and see what decisions should have been made.

Apparently he has also figured out that if he were in charge of the All-U-Can-Eat Buffet in Inbredville, AK, he would have asked the Huckabee family to leave before they closed the place down and broke the booth at table 4C.

It has been accomplished with fewer than two hundred thousand total troops, so Shinseki was wrong.

and there is nothing Christian about Socialism.

Damn straight. Jesus was all about acquiring wealth and personal property.

Is English your second language, perhaps? Are you any more adept with your native tongue. To say that someone’s advice was not taken is not at all the same thing as saying that the individual was ignored. Unless you figure out how to be a good deal more accurate with the facts and articulate with the language you’ll never get anyone to pay attention to what you say… much less agree with you.

May I remind you, sir, that our President has great difficulty with his native language and yet he manages to get quite a few people to pay attention and agree with him. You can’t have it both ways, my friend.

I dont have a problem with arrogance, its part of the culture of the blogoshpere, but I am getting a bit tired of your pretentious attitude of language. It’s boring and your remarks are self serving and they don’t help you make a valid point in debates.

Now, I am not saying that they were merely ignored. Rumsfeld and the Bush administration have gone to some lengths to discredit Shinseki and other Generals who have offered a different opinon and it has been revealed that anyone who offered a contrary opinion to Rummy had serious problems with their career afterwards.

The treatment of Colin Powell and the constant derision anyone received from disagreeing with Rummy shows that their advice was not carefully weighed, something you seem to imply. Nonsense!

http://images1.americanprogress.org/il80web20037/ThinkProgress/2006/shinseki.320.240.mov

Smearing of Shinseki

Feb. 25, 2003: Shinseki Suggests “Several Hundred Thousand Soldiers” Needed To Secure Iraq

“Something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers, are probably, you know, a figure that would be required. We’re talking about post-hostilities control over a piece of geography that’s fairly significant with the kinds of ethnic tensions that could lead to other problems. And so, it takes significant ground force presence to maintain safe and secure environment to ensure that the people are fed, that water is distributed, all the normal responsibilities that go along with administering a situation like this.” [Sen. Armed Services Committee testimony, 2/25/03]

Feb. 27, 2003: Wolfowitz Blasts Shinseki

“Mr. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, opened a…war of words on Capitol Hill, calling the recent estimate by Gen. Eric K. Shinseki of the Army that several hundred thousand troops would be needed in postwar Iraq, ‘wildly off the mark.’” [NYT, 2/28/03]

March 19, 2003: Pentagon Smears Shinseki

“A senior Pentagon official dismissed General Shinseki’s comments as ‘bullshit from a Clintonite enamored of using the army for peacekeeping and nation-building and not winning wars.’” [Village Voice, 3/19/03]

March 29, 2003: Rumsfeld Turned Shinseki Into Lame Duck Over Disagreements

“For the past two years Gen Shinseki has been in total eclipse after what appears to have been the most spectacular bust-up with his civilian bosses, in particular Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary. … he had already been turned into a lame duck (‘castrated’, according to the same Pentagon source) by the apparently unprecedented Rumsfeld decision to announce his successor 18 months in advance.” [Guardian, 3/29/03]

April 10, 2004: Smear of Shinseki Silenced U.S. Commanders in Iraq

“Some officers say privately that the rebuke has intimidated commanders in Iraq.” [Washington Times, 4/10/04]

I don’t think he does, he just wants the votes from those he thinks want one. I don’t think most of them really want it that much either. He’s not stupid enough to want to try to do it as POTUS, he’s just stupid enough to say it when he’s campaigning.

Huckleberry is too conservative on religion and too liberal on criminals and the economy and immigration.

Huckabye? Huckabee wants to have adulterers, homosexuals and rape victims stoned to death. He also wants to make alcohol and music videos illegal, and make women 2nd class citizens and to take all girls out of school?

Oops, my bad, that’s another ‘religion’.

Hey, anybody but the PIAPS!

if you’re MAD
punish your country
VOTE for Hillary
.

absurd thought -
God of the Universe says
elect women presidents

who cover for their husbands
who rape other women
.

http://haltterrorism.com/

http://absurdthoughtsaboutgod.blogspot.com/
.

It occurs to me that there is another question to be answered regarding the efforts you cite to discredit General Shinseki, which is why was Shinseki speaking out publicly in the first place?

Public disputes by senior flag-grade military officers with their civilian masters over national policy and strategy are intolerable within our American system, as any number of senior officers have discovered over the course of our history, including McClellan during the Civil War, Patton during WWII, and MacArthur during the Korean War.

Even if Shinseki had been proved correct in his assessment (and I would argue he has not been), his proper course of action would have been to resign first, and then take to the pages of the NYT and WaPo.

On the hand, I admit we won’t ever know whether Shinseki’s plan would have turned out better or not. The US Army went into the conflict with “we aren’t nation building” mindset, when the reality is “oh, yes you are”… No amount of troop presence was going to fix that. Some things just don’t happen over night, and I haven’t seen any evidence that Shinseki had a better handle on fighting insurgencies than any other US general at the time.

(There was this guy in Mosul who was running the 101st back in 2003, who showed some real promise… )

how then can you confidently state that there would have been fewer casualties?

Um, its called simple logic as evidenced when you take a look at the results of the surge. Hint: Troop casualties DOWN as a result of what? Troop surge (or MORE TOOPS)!

In the first place, we were never losing the battle, so your question is meaningless. I always know the Dems are wrong, in any case.

Well, not that were winning, some Generals are admitting we were loosing. And now I am bored with you.

Pure leftwing drivel. And as General Petraeus’ “surge” strategy continues to show positive results, and more US troops are withdrawn from an improving Iraq, fewer and fewer Republicans are likely to view Huckabee’s comments kindly. A dumb mistake.

Far from left-wing, Buchanan thinks the same thing. Confirmed on his appearance on CNN this morning. Furthermore, Huckabee supported the surge, as did I. It’s quite possible to hold both positions without them conflicting.

Huckabee’s cute, homespun analogies aside, that these changes are happening in Afghanistan and Iraq is due to the very policies of Mr. Bush and that “bunker mentality” White House of Huckabee’s criticizing!

There is nothing to suggest any progress is permanent either way. Afghanistan is a mess and Iraq is just now emerging from its previous form of shambles. What makes you so certain that Democracy, as we know it, is going to flourish in either country? What in the wild world of sports make you think this is buttoned up?

Are you just so hung up on hating Huckabee that you put aside any objective viewpoints on Iraq? The ideology Huckabee clings to is more liken to Reagan than Bush. Whats the delio?

This last is just plain silly, assuming that President Bush did not meet with General Shinseki and did not take the general’s suggestions into account. Huckabee, of course, knows neither to be true.

Both Colen Powell and Shinseki were ignored, if not worse, by Bush when it came to proper troop levels. Both were treated as incompetents by the Bush administration. Why do you pretend to not know this?

But attacking a sitting GOP president by saying that he ought not to have done what he didn’t and that he ought to have done what he already has done, displays exactly the sort of muddled thinking and leadership by uninformed perception that we’ve come to expect from Democrats…

Really, what is all this jabber? What are you trying to say here? Nevermind, the Bush worshipping is patently obvious. Americans know the score and they know were in trouble in Afghanistan and they know we diverted funds and military war-fighters to the operational mess that has been Iraq for the last 4 years.

I think Huckabee is going to garner a lot more momentum if he continues down this road. Americans supported the surge, opposed the handling of Iraq and are disappointed in our distraction from Afghanistan to Iraq. Huckabee understands this AND he is a Christian who understands compassionate conservatism better than Bush.

It’s all over. Huckabee is going to be your nominee and he will be a Dem.