He (Roadwhatsit) has insulted my schooling and intelligence more than once and called me a wanker twice for disagreeing with him but you think other people on this thread (obviously you are referring to me but dont have the balls to say so) that have disputed his dodgy and unsubstatiated "facts" and kept the insults to a minimum are being even more irrational?
You want citizenship bad don't you?

You've also complained about the way this thread has progressed because 2 factions have/want and are continuing to argue points yet you are still viewing it and posting sarcastic comments. Why still read the thread if it bores you?

Cant karma but nice logical reply....dont expect the same in return.

yes I mean you but not just you.
Much (but not all) of what RWfromLP posted has been perfectly valid but you and several others have wilfully chosen to misinterpret most of it.

And no I don't want citizenship any more than you do.

So when he said the US forces alone could've defeated the Germans in Europe...we misinterpreted and you agreed with him?
When he said that Vietnam was a victory for the US because they killed more VC than killed them....we misinterpreted and you agreed with him?
When he said the it was the US forces that defeated the Iraqi's..we misinterpreted and you agreed with him.
and lastly and to the whole point of the thread.
When he assumes that without the US forces Britain would have been defeated and not have maybe sued for peace or possibly even defeated a vastly weakened (by Russia) Wehrmacht we misinterpreted and you agreed with him?

You still didnt answer why you're still posting if this thread is passed its sell by date and bores you now.

so do you want me to answer or not?

anyway, I certainly did NOT agree with any of the above because (and here's my point) that basically isn't what he actually said.

It was exactly what he said and no amount of him pretending that he has an insight into the reasoning and thoughts of the US public is going to change that fact. If so, why would he not quote any of his sources or as Sally pointed out infact word most as his own opinion? I am suprised you were niave enough to really believe he is the unofficial voice of America and not just some smug sceptic talking bollocks.

Oh never mind. I suspect we could go round the houses for a while on this one but I can't be arsed.

But just for you I'll do my best not to be so naive in future.

There's a good lad.

Apparently, you did a lot of plowing, but not a lot of reading.

I hate to deconstruct a thread that all of us are capable of reading, but go back to follow this point --

Your response was to my post #277, which was a rebuttal that goes back ultimately to Rushman's post #218, which was a "rebuttal" (if one dare call it that) of my original post #187, in which I explained the source of the "save your asses" mentality that many (not all) Americans have. Clearly, Rushman didn't understand a damned thing I said, because he utterly missed the point that I was providing an interpretation of a broader societal view that I made it obvious that I did not personally hold for myself. (Again, I claim no personal bragging rights for WWII -- none of my family had even emigrated to the US prior to 1945, so it's not my win to claim, even indirectly.)

As to his other nonsense, he would like to claim that the Korean War was strictly a US effort, when it clearly wasn't (perhaps you didn't know that 40% of UN casualties were not American troops) and that the war achieve its later goals (it pushed the North Koreans back to their original border).

He'd like to claim that the military component of the Iraq War was not won, even though all of the basic definitions of victory were achieved (capital taken, government and military eliminated.) That does not mean that the occupation has been successful -- as of now, it is clearly nothing worth emulating -- but that does not change the fact that the conventional war phase was a victory by the typical definition.

Clearly, Vietnam was not a military defeat, in that the US won most of the battles and killed a lot more opposing forces. The point of mentioning this was not to claim any wonderful achievement, but to show that doing well militarily was not enough and was a good blueprint for what is going wrong in Iraq. (Just because we blow up more stuff does not mean that we are winning the war.)

If you'd like to disagree, you are free to do so, as I welcome good debate. But to continually distort my statements so that you can have a strawman argument is crap. I do appreciate Elfman intervening in my absence, but honestly, it really shouldn't be necessary. Maybe next time I'll type more slowly...

Just that is just shameful nonsense...

Some yanks asked a group of Brit squaddies why they
were not in Vietnam.

What for , said one of the squaddies, the NVA are doing
well without our help.

Perhaps the words 'victory' and 'defeat' have different meanings to us. Seeing the last few people scramble aboard the last helicopter out would suggest defeat to me. RWLP's argument sounds like my FIL's take on Newcastle games - say the final score is 3-2, he'll still say. "We won the first half though"

I am no Vietnam expert ..but by no stretch of the imagination
was it any sort of victory ...

[QUOTE=RoadWarriorFromLP;5336608]

He'd like to claim that the military component of the Iraq War was not won, even though all of the basic definitions of victory were achieved (capital taken, government and military eliminated.)
UNQUOTE]

[QUOTE]
Clearly, Vietnam was not a military defeat, in that the US won most of the battles and killed a lot more opposing forces.
[UNQUOTE]

So Vietnam wasn't a victory because it doesn't meet the basic definitions.
It wasn't a defeat. What was it? a draw? Is it due to go to penalties or will there be a replay?

[QUOTE=Yorkieabroad;5336750][QUOTE=RoadWarriorFromLP;5336608]

He'd like to claim that the military component of the Iraq War was not won, even though all of the basic definitions of victory were achieved (capital taken, government and military eliminated.)
UNQUOTE]

I made the point earlier. The US defeat was a political one, not a military one, per se.

The mistake that American conservatives tend to make is in their belief that the ability to "kick ass" will fix everything. They don't realize that while the United States is extremely effective in its ability to marshal large forces, build expensive exotic weaponry, and blow up a lot of stuff (achieve military victory) that all of this does not equate to winning the political end game.

This is the key to understanding what went wrong in Iraq. There was no doubt before the fact that the Iraqi military would be easily defeated, particularly when the coalition had air superiority literally years before the war began. Furthermore, the war was actually won in the sense that all the territory got captured, the armies surrendered rather quickly and the government capitulated in a matter of a few weeks. Yet it doesn't matter, because they still can't control the place and there is no one who can be trusted. They could have a "surge" of another million troops and spend every dime in the Treasury on this mess, and it still won't fix it.

That's the thing they should have learned from Vietnam. The US won virtually every battle, killed lots more people, had far better equipment, and all the rest. But the US still lost, regardless because it was a war of attrition that it could never win -- it didn't have home field advantage and it was as vested in it as its opponent. We live, but we don't learn.