Is it the beginning of the end for Wahhabism? This is a necessary if not sufficient condition to reform radical Islam.

I'm not an expert, but that sounds backwards to me.

I thought Bandar and his side were the pro-western ones, and Abdullah and his guys were the strict reactionaries. That's what I've heard for years, and this reading of the situation just doesn't make much sense unless the writer wants to make the claim that Bandar and his team's pro-western orientation (and related ostentatious lifestyle) was really a smokescreen back to the 80s, and it just seems a little hard to buy.

Not that I trust any of them farther than I can throw them.

This would help with a Long War against radical Islam.

More MPs, more rapid reaction light infantry, more speakers of Arabic.

Sounds like a non-sequitur to me, Bill. But that's not unusual for you. I'm always amazed to think you're a lawyer.

Rand, lawyers invented the non sequitur.

You actually read the Airplane Glue Huffers Post Bill?

President Marks 40th Anniversary of Vietnam Conflict

April 7 2005, (APUPI) President George Bush noted the 40th anniversary of the US commitment of front line combat troops
to VietNam. President Bush paid homage to the 500,000 men
who had died and the nearly 3 Million wounded, saying
"He would not demean their sacrifice by withdrawing
before a peaceful vietnam could join the company of nations".
The president commented that the only way to lose in
vietnam would be to quit, and that the threat of communism
still lurked in asia. The president left appearing to not hear
the shouts of war protesters being held behind fence lines
at the speech site.

You missed the part where after tank divisions (not insurgents, we killed most of those in Tet) rolled into Saigon and imposed a government that killed hundreds of thousands and caused many more to flee in tiny boats across the ocean, while next door a like-minded group took over and killed over a million more.

But, hey, we were out of Vietnam, what did we care?

Anonymous,

Why do you have such a hard time understanding the concept of 'staying on topic'?

If you want to post about Viet Nam, wait until Rand starts one. Then we can talk about how Teddy Kennedy and his corrupt cabal betrayed the South Vietnamese by cutting off all military aid in 1974.

Or better yet, go to blog_spot and start your own blog where you and your moonbat friends can have your own great big off-topic circle jerks all by yourselves!

Puckett

You spent 8 years in the military

Would you have been willing to spend 4 of those in Nam?

Simberg doesn't like talking about Nam. Reminds himself
too much of Lebanon and Iraq.

I'm glad you spent 4 years in the military. Would you have
been willing to spend 4 years in operation against the NVA
and VC in Nam? How would you have been willing to
win Nam in 1974? How many men, how much money,
How long would you have been willing to be there?

The LBJ conduct of the Vietnam war is a perfect illustration of the idiocy of amat*urs and the peculiar partisan Democrat obsession with aggregate numbers. Think 'boots on the ground' or 'not enough troops'. The Democratic party prescription for success in Iraq is identical to the escalation failure they employed in Vietnam.

As far as the notion that Vietnam was unwinnable, that's utter nonsense. The VC were crushed by 1969, though at too high a cost in American lives. The NVA came rolling in on waves of tanks in a very conventional invasion in 1975 that only succeeded because the U.S. choose to abandon further support of South Vietnam.

If a policy combining the best aspects of American support of Greece in 1949 (native anti-insurgent forces) and American support of South Korea in 1950 (American forces to stop conventional invasion) were applied in Vietnam, then South Vietnam would be a free nation today and probably one of the economic 'Asian Tigers'. Instead LBJ and McNamara made a micromanaged mess of Vietnam because war was 'too important to be left to the generals'.

"How would you have been willing to
win Nam in 1974? "

Providing continuied logistical support and air support would have been more than sufficient for the south to have maintained its borders. It would have required virtually no US ground troops whatsoever. All we would have had to do was to have not cut and ran from the policy of
Vietnamization.

The only war the Libtards won't cut and run from is the War on Poverty which after 40 years we are no closer to winning and multiple trillions in the hole.

Who is this Mike Puckett and how does he know everything in the world?
If I didn't know better, I'd think he was my 18 year old lurking...
(HE knows everything!)