PFC Herrgott's aunt is not correct when she says that President Bush said that combat was over. His speech was carefully written so it would not say that all combat was over. This is what he said:

"Admiral Kelly, Captain Card (ph), officers and sailors of the USS Abraham Lincoln, my fellow Americans, major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed."

then later in the speech he said

"We have difficult work to do in Iraq. We're bringing order to parts of that country that remain dangerous. We're pursuing and finding leaders of the old regime who will be held to account for their crimes. "

There were many comments in the media following this speech concerning the President's use of the word "major". Before the speech attention was given to the fact that the President would not say all hostilities had ended. Watching the evening news each evening after his speech would have emphasized the fact that major military operations were over but Iraq was still a dangerous place for our troops to be in even though many combat units were sent home. The news each night has presented ideas about who are behind the attacks on Coalition forces so that is really not a big mystery.

There are no words that would make PFC Herrgott's family or friends feel any less saddened by his death. When a young person is killed in such a tragic fashion, it hurts us all. I can understand his aunt's desire to assign the responsibility for her nephew's death. In every war the same or similar feelings rise up in the hearts of those close to soldiers that are killed.

Watching Peter Jenning's report tonight from Baghdad about the radical changes that have taken place in Iraq because of the sacrifices our troops have made is a small measure of justification for their death or injury. Whatever the benefits the long oppressed people of Iraq get from this war there will never be enough justification for the families of those who have lost family members in the war there.

Walking silently through Arlington National Cemetery looking at row after row of graves and solowly walking the length of the wall on the mall with tears in my eyes on a rainy day made me wonder whether there is ever a good justification for all young men and women that have been taken from us. There are some young, crazy guys I served with in the Marines buried in Arlington. Their names are chiseled into the black granite on the wall. They, like PFC Herrgott and all young people like him, had hopes and dreams for the future.

PFC Herrgott's aunt is not correct when she says that President Bush said that combat was over. His speech was carefully written so it would not say that all combat was over. This is what he said:

"Admiral Kelly, Captain Card (ph), officers and sailors of the USS Abraham Lincoln, my fellow Americans, major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed."

then later in the speech he said

"We have difficult work to do in Iraq. We're bringing order to parts of that country that remain dangerous. We're pursuing and finding leaders of the old regime who will be held to account for their crimes. "

There were many comments in the media following this speech concerning the President's use of the word "major". Before the speech attention was given to the fact that the President would not say all hostilities had ended. Watching the evening news each evening after his speech would have emphasized the fact that major military operations were over but Iraq was still a dangerous place for our troops to be in even though many combat units were sent home. The news each night has presented ideas about who are behind the attacks on Coalition forces so that is really not a big mystery.

There are no words that would make PFC Herrgott's family or friends feel any less saddened by his death. When a young person is killed in such a tragic fashion, it hurts us all. I can understand his aunt's desire to assign the responsibility for her nephew's death. In every war the same or similar feelings rise up in the hearts of those close to soldiers that are killed.

Watching Peter Jenning's report tonight from Baghdad about the radical changes that have taken place in Iraq because of the sacrifices our troops have made is a small measure of justification for their death or injury. Whatever the benefits the long oppressed people of Iraq get from this war there will never be enough justification for the families of those who have lost family members in the war there.

Walking silently through Arlington National Cemetery looking at row after row of graves and solowly walking the length of the wall on the mall with tears in my eyes on a rainy day made me wonder whether there is ever a good justification for all young men and women that have been taken from us. There are some young, crazy guys I served with in the Marines buried in Arlington. Their names are chiseled into the black granite on the wall. They, like PFC Herrgott and all young people like him, had hopes and dreams for the future.

Wouldn't "major" combat operations be those combat operations in which the majority of soldiers were killed?

Woops.

Walking silently through Arlington National Cemetery looking at row after row of graves and solowly walking the length of the wall on the mall with tears in my eyes on a rainy day made me wonder whether there is ever a good justification for all young men and women that have been taken from us.

It makes me remember that these people fought and died to secure and then to protect our liberties. Those self-same liberties which the current administration wants to strip from us. If we allow it for "whatever makes us safe" we have done a grave dishonor to those men and women.

MKK

I think what upset the aunt was not so much the misunderstood statement about how major the combat was that had been declared over, as it was the "Bring it on" speech.

That particular line sounded to many in this country like a schoolyard bully asking for someone to make trouble so that we could demonstrate our strength. Given that we are now, by the way we entered Iraq, the only force (with the British) present, any reponse triggered by our presence or by Bush's remarks is going to come in a fashion like that which killed Private Herrgott.

And it doesn't matter whether the attack was carried out by a Ba'athist thug, a black marketeer trying to clear a path for free trade, or by an Iraqi patriot fired by the highest aspirations of pride in a nation under a foreign boot. The dead of all sides are still dead, and the pain of their survivors is great.

What we should aspire to is to find a way to engage all parties in Iraq to the ends of rebuilding that nation.

Schoolyard taunts aren't the way to do this.

Eric:

It is hard for me to believe that there are actually intelligent people in this world taking time to try to make a major issue out of a simple macho sounding bit of sports hyperbole used by untold thousands of Michael Jordan wannabes daily. Does anyone actually believe that there are there people in Iraq carrying RPGs around everyday that are going to be more energized by this utterance?

There have been significant steps taken to rebuild Iraq. You just don't hear much about them. Things like repairing electrical transmission facilities just are not front page news stories in the US. For a better view this article might be helpful:
http://www.baghdadbulletin.com/pageArticle.php?article_id=15&cat_id=17 It seems that every part of Iraq infrastructure with exception of one, the Baathist Party, was in shambles prior to the war.

Initial steps have been taken to institute a government. From what I have read there was every effort made to include all parties in Iraqi society. There exists a big danger in Iraq that fundamentalists assisted and directed by Iran dominate the new government. These elements have a distinct advantage over other groups - leadership and money.

It is interesting and exciting to see reports of people with smiles on their faces vigorously developing newspapers and television outlets that will compete with one another. These people would have been murdered 6 months ago.

Once Iraq is secure and free from attacks from within, I believe the world will be amazed at what develops. Bush took a major gamble in removing Saddam Hussein from power in order to remove Saddam as a threat to his own people, the region and the world. It is a gamble that he is apparently going to pay a political price for at home no matter what the final outcome in Iraq turns out to be. It is up to the Iraqi people to make that gamble pay off.

We are already seeing the benefits of the middle east without Saddam Hussein in most countries in the region. Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabria, and Palestine/Israel seem to be all undergoing significant changes primarily because Saddam is no longer there with his armies, missiles, his support of terrorism, and his weapons of mass destruction. The governments in the region also know that there is a US President who will act and get involved instead of just talk or lob an occasional missile at Baghdad when politically convenient. The changes in these countries are not the ones predicted by the anti-war crowd. They predicted total chaos in the region if Saddam was removed from power if you recall. There was that possibility. That is why it was a gamble. A gamble, in my view, that needed to be taken. This very short war of liberation could be a defining moment in history.

MadJayHawk:

"It is hard for me to believe that there are actually intelligent people in this world taking time to try to make a major issue out of a simple macho sounding bit of sports hyperbole used by untold thousands of Michael Jordan wannabes daily. Does anyone actually believe that there are there people in Iraq carrying RPGs around everyday that are going to be more energized by this utterance?"

Perhaps not, but it can't have helped. And the President of the United States, the ostensible leader of the free world, has a little bit more responsibility to watch his words than the average playground hoopster. (Not to mention that that sort of trash talk gets playground hoopsters killed sometimes too.)

The President of the United States, using a tacky bit of sports hyperbole, to describe an actual shooting war?

No, I don't think that's excusable. The President should know better.

It is hard for me to believe that there are actually intelligent people in this world taking time to try to make a major issue out of a simple macho sounding bit of sports hyperbole used by untold thousands of Michael Jordan wannabes daily.

Isn't this rather a low bar to set for the behavior of the Commander in Chief when our troops are under fire?

If he'd said it to Gov. Dean, fine. Asinine, but fine.

He said it to what the generals in the field are now acknowledging to be an organized and growing guerilla opposition force.

Anyone who attacks us now in Iraq has the extra cachet of giving George W. Bush a personal slap in the face.

There are lots of people in Iraq right now who wouldn't mind seeing that.

The grownups are supposed to be in charge now. Grownups don't play the dozens and get twenty-year-olds shot.

Yes, Julia, that puts it nicely. Of this administration, its supporters said "The grownups are in charge now."

But even leaving everything else aside, the President is behaving like a frat boy.

Julia:

Let me sarcastically repeat myself:

It is hard for me to believe that there are actually intelligent people in this world taking time to try to make a major issue out of a simple macho sounding bit of sports hyperbole used by untold thousands of Michael Jordan wannabes daily.

Low bar? The bar for stupid behavior was set by the last president. Bush has a long way to go to get under that. A long, long, long way.

There is not armed opposition in Iraq because of the worn-out sports cliche Bush used. The people that are killing our troops are a tad brighter than that and do not need locker room bulletin board type snippets from the President to motivate them.

The Iraqi people have freedom now. Freedom can not be eaten. Food can. Freedom doesn't come from a faucet. Water does. Freedom does not mean security. Laws, courts, and police do. Many people blame the US because they do not have water, food, and security. They will have these things eventually. They do have the freedom now to complain about it and do so. Who gave them that freedom?

Keep in mind that before the war, Iraq had power for only 12 hours a day, water supplies were contaminated (they were dumping 500,000 gallons of raw sewage into the Tiberus each day), 65% of the food came from government handouts based on their political standing, and people would have been murdered or tortured for complaining. The US did its best to not bomb critical infrastructure and therefore many important facilities are intact. That helps. Things in Iraq are improving. Slowly. There will be no miracles. Only hard work and dedication will overcome their problems. If the lights go off or the water is bad that day, the US and President Bush will be blamed. Democrats do the same thing in this country. Expect complaints especially if a camera and mic are present.

I have to say I agree with MadJayHawk at least to the extent that under the circumstances, the "bring it on" comment doesn't seem worth all this attention after the fact. At the time I took it to be generic politician's bravado, with perhaps a touch of a feeble politician's attempt to show he's hep to how the kids are talking these days. These things aren't unique to Bush; Bush isn't very good at them, but we knew that before he was elected. I don't think this particular line would have elicited much comment if we weren't reading it against the background of everything else Bush and his officials have been saying the past couple of weeks, such as, for instance, cheerfully lying through their teeth about Nigerian yellowcake. Given that we have these real, damaging crimes against the truth and against the American people (including the troops in Iraq) to talk about, why waste our energy complaining about yet another example of lousy speechwriting?

MadJayHawk, your comments about rebuilding Iraq make sense in themselves, and I don't know enough about the pre-war situation there to comment. The thing is, though, that the Bush Administration is giving the impression of being considerably less informed on the subject than you are; at least, they keep changing their minds about how long our troops will have to be there, they (i.e., Rumsfeld) directly contradict the accounts of officers in Iraq as to the nature of the continuing conflicts there, and so forth. In general they're sending a message that they just didn't think their Iraq strategy through this far, and they're not totally sure what they're doing now. This is an unfortunate message to be sending subordinates who are getting shot at, as the reports of low troop morale in Iraq bear out. Your own descriptions of the situation are internally consistent, but compared to the public statements coming from the Bush administration, they seem more like post facto rationalizations of actions that are themselves unplanned and badly informed.

Low bar? The bar for stupid behavior was set by the last president.

Yeah. Damn him. The clumsy oaf.

Peace, prosperity and jobs, and an attempt to take out bin Laden blocked by the Republicans in congress.

It's astonishing. At some point in this argument, the pro-Bush position descends into an astonishingly grotesque fantasy world.

Doesn't it make you uncomfortable to shine that much light into the dark corners of your mind for the benefit of strangers?

Did somebody say the Iraqi people have freedom?

Oops, try that again.

Actually, I was trying to make the point that the "bring it on" speech made Bush and, by extension, the rest of us, sound like jerks, and at the same time it sounded as though he wanted to extend that schoolyard character of argument to anyone who attacked the US in Iraq.

The people fighting back against our soldiers are not kids on the basketball court. Some are vicious thugs, raised to follow in the traditions of Saddam Hussein (who was a vicious thug at least since adolescence, and whose character was already evident based on news reports that I read twenty years ago, at the time when Rumsfeld was over there, shaking his hand and offering US support for his good, anti-Communist, anti-Iranian regime). Some are good people, who have been indoctrinated through much of their lives to believe that they lived in a nation that had rights under international law, and that these rights have been trampled. Some are agents of religous or national extremists utterly repugnant to any rational mind. Some may have the same moral beliefs as our own founding fathers did. Some are desparate individuals with rationales you and I can't understand without meeting them. To lump them all into a single category, as schoolyard-bully wannabes, is a disservice to them and to us.

No, I don't think his remarks are making any more attacks happen. I do think that they trivialize the attacks. And that is why Private Herrgott's aunt was so upset. She felt as though Bush had announced to the world that her nephew's death wasn't really important. It was just something that happened while the bully was strutting his stuff.

I'm not going to try to address any of the other material you raised. It's not relevant to the real point of this particular topic. The real point is a family that has lost a member, and feels that the person ultimately responsible for that loss doesn't really care.

No, I don't think his remarks are making any more attacks happen. I do think that they trivialize the attacks. And that is why Private Herrgott's aunt was so upset. She felt as though Bush had announced to the world that her nephew's death wasn't really important. It was just something that happened while the bully was strutting his stuff.

Elric: Good point. As a close family member I might feel the same way.

I still do not feel what Bush said is worth all the huffing and puffing going on outside of PFC Herrgott's immediate family. The Left has been trying to stigmatize this man for 3 years as a moron and this is just one more example of it. So far as the political game progresses on the Field of Dreams the score is probably somewhere around Bush 7 The More Intelligent 0. We will have a vote in November 2004 on President's Bush's intelligence level.

Julia: you stated "Isn't this rather a low bar to set for the behavior of the Commander in Chief when our troops are under fire?" when talking about President Bush using a common sports related cliche. President Bush made this throw away remark to a group of reporters.

You want Bush to be seriously accountable for popping off with some sports cliche while ignoring and excusing the reckless personal behavior of the previous President that virtually shut down the government for a year by chirping the usual worn-out and inappicable canard about peace and prosperity.

Equating the mouthing of a simple cliche with commiting seriously illegal acts that results in disbarment and having a law license suspended earns you a free trip to Fantasyland.

I think that the "Bring 'em on" remark was silly, but doesn't rise to the level of impeachable offense.

What does concern me is Bush/Ashcroft and the Bill of Rights, especially the 6th Amendment:

Amendment VI

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

I don't see anything in there that says "Unless the President decides you're an enemy combatant."

The Fourth and Fifth Amendments aren't faring much better.

Recall that the Bill of Rights was designed by people who were familiar with the tricks of a tyranny. Recall too that the soldiers who are currently dying in Iraq (another one today), are all sworn to uphold that same Constitution.

As for November of 2004, that's a long way away. Reality has a habit of trumping the fancy theories of the Rumsfeld/Bush/Cheneys of this world. We'll see how clever Bush looks then.

It's an almost Godwin-like law: when the Bushistas knows they're losing a debate about the idiotic behavior of that moronic frat-boy, they start blaming Clinton for whatever it is. Or just saying "yeah, well Clinton..." whether it's relevant or not.

I personally don't think the "bring it on" statement is going to add to the attacks on our guys, or not very much. I do think it's another example of what a flaming jackass this loser in the Whitehouse is.

And his lies are on matters of substance. Fortunately, he's rather stupid, so it's relatively easy to catch him: his most recent one is just jaw-droppingly empty-headed. But that's another thread.

Julia: you stated "Isn't this rather a low bar to set for the behavior of the Commander in Chief when our troops are under fire?" when talking about President Bush using a common sports related cliche. President Bush made this throw away remark to a group of reporters

I would disagree if that is what took place. Luckily we don't have to go there, because it isn't.

A reporter tried to move on, and Bush _shut him up_ because he was so anxious to get "Bring it on" on the record.

This would not be professional behavior for the seventeen year old night manager of a gas station. It's cheap, emotionally retarded posturing bullshit from the commander in chief.

This would not be professional behavior for the seventeen year old night manager of a gas station. It's cheap, emotionally retarded posturing bullshit from the commander in chief.

Do I detect a little anger here?

You want anger? On this subject I have some. I like to think I count as intelligent,and his comment, and the way it was presented, pissed me off.

Left me glad I was not in uniform, so I could flip the man the bird. I have biases on this one, because that taunt was personal. I have friends who are still over there, still at risk, and (whether or not the comment incites anyone) tossing out a challenge like that makes it seem they are not merely expendable (which we are) but cheap.

Inviting someone to oneself is one thing, inviting them to punch another something else altogether.

Inviting them to kill someone else is reprehensible.

Terry K.