Thread: bench marks and timelines

regarding iraq, GWB and his aides have been repeating the phrase 'stay the course' for a few years and demonizing those with differing opinions as defeatists who don't understand the threat of global terrorism.

he also steadfastly refused to consider a timeline, because he claimed that would be defeatist thinking by those who didn't understand the threat of global terrorism.

well, now ol' GWB is cutting and running from the phrase 'stay the course', and has embraced the term 'bench marks'.


for those of you who have been supporting bush and his war....

do you feel betrayed by this flip-flop?

does the rhetoric used last week matter today? domestically? internationally?

by abandoning the phrase 'stay the course' does bush send the wrong message to the iraqi people? is it healthy for long term US foreign policy goals to be directly altered to allign with self serving, short term domestic political considerations?

do you support bench marks? timelines? both? can you explain the difference?

from my humble perspective the major difference is that there are no penalties for not meeting a 'bench mark'.....and as far as 'cutting and running', the US will still be attempting to extract itself from iraq well into the next decade.

by the way, did anyone notice how the white house lied about how many times bush had said 'stay the course'? they said it was 8, while a quick search on 'the google' turned up 29.

Timelines and Benchmarks are political terms.

What's funny is that first it was:

1. Remove Saddam, he is a threat.

2. Remove WMDs.


Number was done, two didn't need to be done.


Therefore, the objective of the Americans has been fulfilled.

But....after 3.5 years, the Americans are still in Iraq.

Why?


You fill in the blanks?