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shawa
CNO
Joined: 03 Sep 2004
Posts: 2004
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 Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2005 1:40 pm Post subject: THE REAL TARGET |
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Excellent article!
God bless our troops and their families who sacrifice so much to keep us safe.
http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/26483.htm
| Quote: | THE REAL TARGET
By RALPH PETERS
August 4, 2005
In Iraq yesterday a roadside bomb killed 14 Marines. Two days earlier, six Marines from the same outfit were ambushed and killed. Yet those Marines were not the terrorists' primary target.
You were.
Our enemies know the Marines won't quit. But they hope you will.
The terrorists realize now that they can't defeat our military. Instead, they hope to achieve what the North Vietnamese did: To blur the reality on the ground and convince the American public that we're losing.
Those Marines were tactical targets of opportunity. You're the strategic target. The terrorists hope that our media will create an atmosphere of failure and that you'll give in to a sense of defeat.
The Marines are looking for a few good men (and women). The terrorists are looking for headlines.
The Marines who died on the Euphrates River battleground were closing down crucial smuggling routes from Syria. Recent operations have made life ever more difficult for the terrorists. Our enemies are fighting fiercely because they're cornered.
They certainly want to kill Marines. But that doesn't require video cameras. The rush to document and publicize their occasional successes makes it clear that the terrorists are fighting, above all, a media campaign. It's their only hope.
That's no comfort to the families of the Marines we lost, of course. And the fact that 20 fatalities within three days came from the same Ohio-based reserve unit, the 3rd Battalion of the 25th Marines, magnifies the pain.
But the unit's losses reflect the importance of its mission.
The terrorists want to hit that battalion as hard as they can, to break the unit's morale and gain some breathing space. They've been doing what any thinking enemy would do concentrating their resources on a decisive point. They probably studied the forces tightening the noose around them and decided that hitting a reserve unit offered the best chance of success.
They don't know the Marines.
Our troops will keep the pressure on even as they mourn. The Marines have faced far tougher enemies not least the suicidal Japanese, another enemy who showed no mercy (and beheaded prisoners, as well).
The difference is that the extremists in Iraq don't expect a battlefield victory. They're fighting for time. They hope to wear us down, to maintain a level of photogenic chaos in just enough of Iraq to keep the media hot. They'll keep chipping away at our forces, praying that our will will prove far weaker than our weapons.
They don't expect to force out our military through violence. They hope our political leaders will withdraw our troops. The terrorists have done their homework. They know that a disheartening number of our politicians share one of their beliefs: a low opinion of the American people, a notion that we're weak, that we're quitters.
The terrorists know that our Marines aren't afraid of them. But they believe that our politicians are terrified. Of you.
So you're the target of every bomb, bullet and blade our enemies wield. Those Marines were killed to discourage you. They were targeted to ignite political discord in the USA. They died to give ammunition to those in Washington who view our dead only as political liabilities.
There are many practical military issues the administration hasn't addressed. Our forces in Iraq have always have been too few. Much of the equipment with which our Marines and soldiers are equipped is old, inappropriate and inadequate. We went to war with a military designed by defense contractors, not by warriors.
But while those issues are real, we can't afford to play politics with the vital global struggle of our times, the battle with the psychotic strain of Islam that generates terror. Ultimately, the fate of Iraq won't be decided by our enemies. And it won't be decided by our troops. It's going to be decided by you. By your voice and your vote.
The terrorists mean to help you make your decision.
Ralph Peters' latest book, "New Glory: Expanding America's Global Supremacy," will be published this month. |
| Quote: | | The terrorists hope that our media will create an atmosphere of failure and that you'll give in to a sense of defeat. |
In hearing the media reports on these Marine deaths, I noticed the slant of phraseology of the media over and over "And things in Iraq CONTINUE TO GET WORSE, 14 Marines were killed today......"
I would prefer that it had been phrased "14 Marines died today protecting the safety and freedom of the American people....."
But "CONTINUE TO GET WORSE" is the drumbeat. They want us to give up.
_________________
I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death. (Thomas Paine, 1776) |
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coldwarvet
Admiral
Joined: 03 Jun 2004
Posts: 1125
Location: Minnetonka, MN
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| Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2005 2:09 pm Post subject: |
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AMENWe got their play book. We veterans will not stand down. We will not give in. We will set the record straight with the American people. We are their in spirit to stand steadfast with our troops that are in harms way keeping the enemy occupied in Iraq that they do not have resources to attack us here on the home land.
CWV
_________________
Defender of the honor of those in harms way keeping us out of harms way.
"Peace is our Profession"
Strategic Air Command - Motto
USAF 75-79 Security Police |
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Me#1You#10
Site Admin
Joined: 06 May 2004
Posts: 6503
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| Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2005 5:29 pm Post subject: |
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Sedition abounds yet the practitioners continue to push the envelope with apparent judicial impunity. Here's more from George Galloway courtesy of Powerline and MEMRI...I don't know how much longer the Brits will continue to tolerate this traitor in their midst...
| Quote: | <snip>
MEMRI's latest television report is of the update by Member of Parliament George Galloway on Lord Haw-Haw. Galloway appears to be promoting war on British soldiers among others through interviews and a speech broadcast on Arab channels: "Foreigners are raping two beautiful daughters, Jerusalem and Baghdad." (view the video here /me#1) (MEMRI has posted an appeal for support here.)
The Brits executed Lord Haw-Haw (William Joyce) for treason after the war, despite the fact that he was not a British citizen. The father of our occasional reader William Shawcross -- British Attorney General Sir Hartley Shawcross -- successfully argued that Joyce's "possession of a British passport, even though he had lied about his nationality in order to get it, entitled him to British diplomatic protection in Germany and therefore he owed allegiance to the King." Is it too much to hope that the Brits might recover in full the "moral health and martial vigor" that they once had?
Powerline - cont'd |
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LewWaters
Admin
Joined: 18 May 2004
Posts: 4042
Location: Washington State
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| Posted: Fri Aug 05, 2005 2:21 am Post subject: |
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Ann Coulter made mincemeat out of BOR this evening making this very point. LOL, poor Bill, he just can't handle strong willed conservative women 
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Clark County Conservative |
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dusty
Admiral
Joined: 27 Aug 2004
Posts: 1264
Location: East Texas
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| Posted: Sat Aug 06, 2005 5:12 am Post subject: |
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All the more reason to get behind a major publicity campaign to show support for our troops and their/our mission.
http://www.veteranssupportourtroops.org/blog/
We need to all get as heavily involved in this effort as we can each afford and physically do. imho anyway.
As the words immortalized on an airliner in the sky over Pa., "Let's Roll."
If we don't make this happen big time, we will all get to see a repeat of what happened back here at home while most of us were 'over there' so many years ago.
We can not allow this to occur again.
Dusty |
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Bill Faith
Ensign
Joined: 27 Oct 2004
Posts: 70
Location: Lawrenceville, IL, USA
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| Posted: Sat Aug 06, 2005 5:35 am Post subject: |
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Thanks for the support, Dusty, and for mentioning this thread in the email you sent me. I'd already had that "The Real Target" article on my list to include in a blog post I'm trying to write and there may be some things in this thread that fit in as well. I've been busy enough trying to get the Veterans Support Our Troops blog up and running that I haven't been paying the attention I should to this forum, but I'll try to do better.
_________________
Bill Faith
bill.faith@gmail.com
http://smalltownveteran.typepad.com/
USAF 1970-1974
Viet Nam 1971-1972 |
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