Originally Posted By: whomod
 Originally Posted By: Wonder Boy
Well, again, I don't see it that way. I see Republicans as responding directly to specific statements by Democrats when they attack them. Not just personally smearing Democrats, but specifically criticizing the poor judgement and wrong policies of what specific Democrats have said.

For example, Sen Dick Durbin's inflammatory and ill-advised remarks saying U.S. soldiers were comparable to the Pol Pot regime, Soviet Gulags, and Nazi storm troopers

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 Originally Posted By: Wonder Boy
But I disagree that "support the troops" is used to discourage criticism of the leadership conducting the war (both of military/Pentagon leadership, and of the higher Bush cabinet leadership).
As I've said often: constructive criticism, in a checks-and-balances way asking valid questions, and pushing for an efficient war and diplomatic policy, is supportive.

But the scorched-earth rhetoric of Democrats, likening the minor abuses at Abu Ghraib to "atrocicties" comparable to the genocide of "Nazi storm troopers, Soviet Gulags and the Pol Pot regime..." (Democrat Sen Dick Durbin, and similar rhetoric from Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, Harry Reid, Jon Murtha, etc.)... this is falsely painting these abuses to be larger than they are.
Smearing all the 150,000 troops in Iraq with the same brush, and ignoring that the military prosecutes and punishes these abuses.
Undermining the morale of all the troops, not just the prosecuted abusers.
Undermining public opinion and support for all the troops, not just the abusers.

Democrat(ic) leaders, and Democrats at the grassroots level, have been spiteful and indiscriminate, mouthing damaging rhetoric that undermines the entire war effort, not just the mistakes and setbacks in the mission.
And at every stage, Democrats have demoralized our soldiers' efforts, encouraged their immediate removal, and questioned their ability to do the job under any circumstances.

And ultimately, Democrats are providing defeatist un-American soundbytes, that are re-broadcast in the Muslim world. That inflame, encourage and give new life to the Iraq insurgency by raising the constant spectre of premature U.S. withdrawal, and painting a tiny number of abuses (which are punished) with the unmitigated beheadings and mass killings of our enemy.

I see absolutely nothing supportive or constructive about Democrat(ic) participation in the Iraq war dialogue. It is absolutely not supportive of the troops for precisely these reasons.

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 Originally Posted By: Wonder Boy
I love the part (at my link, but not excerpted above) where Sen. Bond brings up Sen. Durbin's nationally televised remarks a few weeks ago ( where Durbin compared U.S. military treatment of prisoners to that of the Nazis, Russian Gulags, the Cambodian Pol Pot regime's extermination of over 3 million of that nation's civilian population between 1975-1979, ad nauseum. )

Remarks for which Sen. Durbin received so much heat for the hyperbolic distortion of his own remarks that he finally retracted them.
And in this PBS discussion, tries to deny he even made them.


This is often true of inflammatory remarks by Democrats: that if the remarks are given visibility, it exposes them to be false, and downright anti-American in their partisan rhetoric.

Smearing the reputation of our troops, branding our soldiers falsely as thugs and murderers in the eyes of the world, just to pander to the liberal fringe that is their voter-base.

Liberal rhetoric that is emotionally charged, but devoid of any factual basis.



But when repeated enough by Democrats in Washington, and reported unchallenged by a complicit liberal-dominated media, becomes perceived as fact, although having no factual basis.

A corrosive deception that recent polls reflect.

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 Originally Posted By: Wonder Boy
Democrats are saying that our troops are comparable to : "Nazi storm troopers, Soviet Gulags, and the Cambodian Pol Pot regime."
( Dem Sen. Dick Durbin)

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I guess this was mostly Wonder Boy's point of contention since a casual search could not find the same outrage being expressed by G-Man. So Bush's nominee for Attorney General and his anti-American, Anti-troop inflammatory remarks are going to receive the same intense denouncement and assumptions of doing Bin laden's dirty work from you as well?

EDIT:

It has been well over 24 hours, and I am still waiting for the collective freak-out from the frothing right about Mukasey’s traitorous proclamations yesterday.

Where are all the patriots? As we learned with Dick Durbin, we must condemn Mukasey’s comments or mullahs everywhere will be laughing at us.





I've had better things to do than deconstruct your latest misrepresentations.

Musakey did not make, as you allege, the same kind of comparisons of U.S. soldiers in Iraq to "Nazi storm troopers, Soviet Gulags and the Pol Pot regime..."

Musakey was speaking in the abstract of a hypothetical situation, saying: "whatever is specifically defined as torture, if we did allow our nation to use torture..." it would negate the very principles this nation stands for. But he left it for others to define whether "water boarding" (i.e., simulated drowning as an intimidation technique during interrogation of prisoners) is or is not torture.

Richard Lowry on PBS' News Hour on Friday pointed out that waterboarding can't be that bad, if U.S. soldiers endure it during military training, and if even journalists have volunteered to be subjected to it, to understand what it is. No one would volunteer for something that is truly torture.

 Originally Posted By: Rich Lowry
I think waterboarding -- look, reasonable people can conclude it's torture, but I sort of apply a commonsense standard here. Journalists are volunteering to be waterboarded to see what it's like. You would not do that with any infamous, obvious torture techniques. Journalists wouldn't volunteer, "Please, pull out my fingernail. I'm really curious how that feels."

And they're only volunteering because it's two minutes of panic. It's a horrifying procedure, but then you walk away. And we use it in our own training for the Army and the Navy, the training of survival and resistance. If it's torture, that training itself is illegal and wrong and shouldn't be happening.

So, look, obviously it's right up there, right to the line. I think it's a technique that should be used in reserve, that we should have in reserve, in extremely limited circumstances, in cases where you have very high-level al-Qaida officials who might have knowledge of ongoing plots. So you don't have time to deal with them over a period of months and you want to break them quickly, and that's exactly what happened with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.





Democrats on the Senate panel were infuriated that Musakey wouldn't specifically say whether "water-boarding" fell in the category of torture or not, but Musakey said repeatedly that his job is to enforce the law, and that it is for others to decide whether water-boarding falls within the law or not.

But even so, Sen Chuck Schumer (D- NY) and Sen Diane Feinstein (D- CA) both had enough confidence in Musakey's interpretation of the law to say they will vote "yes" for his Attorney General nomination.

So the facts are not as you represented them here, Whomod. Not by a long shot.