Fox & Friends runs with claim that Obama never said the word "win" during West Point speech

How about Jack Ass,Stupid Ass & last but not least Dumb Ass.

Don't be so dense. The issue isn't what exact words are used. F&F is trying to imply that victory in the conflict was not a consideration for Obama. The fact that he referred to a successful end in Afghanistan and defeating al Qaeda means the exact same thing as achieving victory. F&F is being deceitful and so are you.

Define "win" or "victory" as relates to Afghanistan Cheneybot.

Calling people "phony" anything is a bit of a stretch for you, guy with the really offensive name. You claim to be conservative, yet, I've never seen ANYTHING you post to shown any sort of conservative ideology.

Oh, and in Roget's Thesaurus, you will find that among the synonyms for success are "win" and "victory."

http://thesaurus.reference.com/browse/success

Maybe you should quit spending so much time listening to all of your non-conservative, uneducated, unintelligent Fox and hate talk radio hosts. An education would be helpful.

My what short memory you have or could it be that you simply believe the talking points you allow yourself to be inundated with by your talk radio masters? Bush used that setting as a photo op. The White House was behind that banner being there. They hung it there then orcherstrated the photo op where Bush flew in and stood around in his flight suit and then told the sailors on that ship and this nation that ""In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed." and that major combat operations in Iraq have ended.

Furthermore, why would the President land on an aircraft carrier when he could have just flew there on Marine one, and give a speech announcing the end of combat operations in Iraq instead of simply congratulating the crew for completing their 10 month tour? I mean really, if that's what this whole charade was about, don't you think they went a little overboard?

"Since you phony liberals like to parse words, the Mission of that ship was indeed Accomplished."

Since you phony vice presidents like to parse words, try parsing the ones that were uttered in front of that Banner. The speech was not about the Lincoln or the accomplishments of her crew:

Admiral Kelly, Captain Card, 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.

Our nation and our coalition are proud of this accomplishment, yet it is you, the members of the United States military, who achieved it.

Because of you the tyrant has fallen and Iraq is free.

Otherwise, please feel free to point out which part of the speech where Bush tells the Lincoln crew exclusively that their mission is accomplished.

The mission of the 'SHIP'? W-H-A-T ?

'phoney liberals' - really, do the words RACIST, PARTISAN HYPOCRITES ring any bells?

Maybe you might like to define 'WIN' to the White House, set them straight, eh?

"Since you phony liberals like to parse words, the Mission of that ship was indeed Accomplished.

AND...Successful and Successfully are not WIN or VICTORY. So it is absolutely true that Obama never used those words."

That is the most intellectually dishonest thing I've ever read, almost as dishonest as the actual "Mission Accomplished" banner.

If it was truly accomplished, we would not have had our troops there for the next 7 years and 3 months... and that is if President Obama is successful in withdrawal by August of 2010 as he stated.

HEY,CHENEY, you brain dead moron, if the mission was accomplished how come we are still in IRAQ 6 years later?

Successful and Successfully are not WIN or VICTORY.

Terrific, now you can forget about ever claiming that Al Gore "invented" the internet again. Expect an angry email from your fellow trolls.

The "mission" of that photo-op must have been simply to arrive back in port safely, because if their policies were to end the debacle called Iraq that we're still saddled with, they didn't "accomplish" a single thing. They managed to dupe Americans into thinking we were "winning" the Iraq war, when in fact, we were not.

Anyone named or supports a "Cheney" anything is really separated from reality.

Bush used the word "WIN" daily....he didn't win!
There is a reason Bush didn't win, Bush was incompetent!
There is NO way to really WIN in Afghanistan.
Just ask the Russians!
Recently declassified documents from archives in the former Soviet Union and memoirs of senior Soviet military and political leaders present the complex and tragic story of the ten years of the Soviet military involvement in Afghanistan. Most observers agree that the last war of the Soviet Union created or aggravated the internal dynamics that eventually culminated in the dissolution of the country itself. The documents presented here shed light on the most important moments in the history of the Soviet war in Afghanistan—the Afghan government’s requests for assistance, the Soviet Union’s initial refusal of troops, the reversal of this policy by a small group of the Politburo and the Soviet decision to invade; the expansion of the initial mission to include combat operations against the Afghan resistance; early criticism of the Soviet policy and of the People’s Democratic party of Afghanistan (PDPA) regime; and the decision to withdraw the troops. Taken together, these materials suggest some lessons that might be drawn from the Soviet experience of fighting a war in Afghanistan.
The decision to send troops was made after a long deliberation and repeated requests from the leadership of the PDPA, Prime Minister Hafizullah Amin and President Nur Mohammad Taraki. The Politburo discussions show that the Soviet leaders were very reluctant to send troops, and responded to the Afghan requests with shipments of military equipment, but not troops, throughout the spring and summer of 1979. However, the overthrow of Taraki by Amin in September just after Taraki’s return from Moscow heightened Soviet paranoia about the possibility that Amin would become another Sadat and turn towards the U.S. The actual decision to invade was made in secret by a very small group of Politburo members, against the strong and openly expressed opposition of the military, and only then rubber-stamped by the other Politburo members. Both Chief of USSR General Staff Marshal Ogarkov and his Deputy General of the Army Akhromeev voiced strong objections to introducing troops on the grounds that the proposed limited contingent of forces would not be able to fulfill its objectives.

The decision to send troops was made on the basis of limited information. According to Soviet veterans of the events, KGB sources were trusted over the military intelligence (GRU) sources. This partly reflected the growing influence of the KGB Chairman Yu. V. Andropov, who controlled the flow of information to General Secretary Brezhnev, who was partially incapacitated and ill for most of 1979. KGB reports from Afghanistan created a picture of urgency and strongly emphasized the possibility of Amin’s links to the CIA and U.S. subversive activities in the region. (President Carter had already signed a secret “finding” in July 1979 authorizing covert aid to the Afghani opponents of the Taraki-Amin regime.)

Afghanistan did not fit into the mental maps and ideological constructs of the Soviet leaders. Their analysis of internal social processes in Afghanistan was done through the conceptual lens of Marxist-Leninist doctrine, which blinded the leadership to the realities of traditional tribal society. Believing that there was no single country in the world, which was not ripe for socialism, party ideologues like Mikhail Suslov and Boris Ponomarev saw Afghanistan as a “second Mongolia.” Such conceptualization of the situation led to the attempts to impose alien social and economic practices on Afghan society, such as the forced land reform.

The Soviet decision makers did not anticipate the influential role of Islam in the Afghan society. There were very few experts on Islam in the Soviet government and the academic institutions. The highest leadership was poorly informed about the strength of religious beliefs among the masses of the Afghan population. Political and military leaders were surprised to find that rather than being perceived as a progressive anti-imperialist force, the Afghanis as foreign invaders, and “infidels.” Reports from Afghanistan show the growing awareness of the “Islamic factor” on the part of Soviet military and political personnel.

The Afghan communist PDPA never was a unified party; it was split along ethnic and tribal lines. The infighting between the “Khalq” and the “Parcham” factions made the tasks of controlling the situation much more challenging for Moscow notwithstanding the great number of Soviet advisors at every level of the party and state apparatus. The Soviet underestimation of ethnic tensions within Afghan society was one of the reasons of the unsuccessful policy of national reconciliation.

The war in Afghanistan had a major impact on domestic politics in the Soviet Union. It was one of the key factors in the delegitimization of Communist Party rule. Civil society reacted to the intervention by marginalizing the Afghan veterans. The army was demoralized as a result of being perceived as an invader. . The prominent dissident and human rights activist, Academician Andrei Sakharov, publicly denounced the atrocities committed by the Soviet Army in Afghanistan. The image of the Soviet Army fighting against Islam in Afghanistan also contributed to a rapid rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the Central Asian republics and possibly to the strengthening of the independence movement in Chechnya, both of which continue to pose major security threats to Russia today.

The Soviet Army also quickly realized the inadequacy of its preparation and planning for the mission in Afghanistan. The initial mission—to guard cities and installations—was soon expanded to combat, and kept growing over time. The Soviet reservists, who comprised the majority of the troops initially sent in, were pulled into full-scale combat operations against the rebels, while the regular Afghan army was often unreliable because of the desertions and lack of discipline.

The Soviet troops had absolutely no anti-guerrilla training. While the formal mission of the troops was to protect the civilians from the anti-government forces, in reality, Soviet soldiers often found themselves fighting against the civilians they intended to protect, which sometimes led to indiscriminate killing of local people. Operations to pursue and capture rebel formations were often unsuccessful and had to be repeated several times in the same area because the rebels retreated to the mountains and returned to their home villages as soon as the Soviet forces returned to their garrisons. Soviet traditional weaponry and military equipment, especially armored cars and tanks were extremely vulnerable on Afghani terrain.

The Soviet troops also suffered from the confusion about their goals—the initial official mission was to protect the PDPA regime; however, when the troops reached Kabul, their orders were to overthrow Amin and his regime. Then the mission was changed once again, but the leadership was not willing to admit that the Soviet troops were essentially fighting the Afghan civil war for the PDPA. The notion of the “internationalist duty” that the Soviet Limited Contingent was fulfilling in Afghanistan was essentially ideological, based on the idea that Soviet troops were protecting the socialist revolution in Afghanistan whereas the experience on the ground immediately undermined such justifications.

The realization that there could be no military solution to the conflict in Afghanistan came to the Soviet military leadership very early on. The issue of troop withdrawal and the search for a political solution was discussed as early as 1980, but no real steps in that direction were taken, and the Limited Contingent continued to fight in Afghanistan without a clearly defined objective.

Early military reports emphasized the difficulty of fighting on the mountainous terrain, for which the Soviet Army had no training whatsoever. Parallels with the American War in Vietnam were obvious and frequently referred to by the Soviet military officers.



Just Saying

One in which our troops get out alive.

What a loser. SMH.

Congratulations. You just made it to a higher plane of honesty than Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck put together. You admitted a mistake. Keep on evolving.

And this changes your mind about what exactly? Don't you guys ever get of exposing and then attempting to excuse your simple minds? Do you feel foolish when you post these things?

It wasn't a campaign speech. He thought he should be serious, and I only remember a couple of times when he paused for what should have been applause.

I liked that he mentioned something that I've pointed out - that his delay didn't 'hurt' anything. There was never an option to send troops until Spring of 2010, so his 2 months of thoughtfulness only provided time to think about all the options and come up with the best option.

It's a positive, not a negative. Unlike the Bush Administration, which screwed up the Iraqi invasion in about every way possible. Can you imagine not sending enough troops to keep the peace and safeguard Iraqi military supplies? How stupid can you get?! Not having enough body armor in this day and age? Invading when we were almost certain that there were no WMD's, which was the whole premise of the invasion?

Obama knows that we can't "win" the war on terror. So, just like they did with John Kerry in smearing him over his military record, when in fact his record is something that was clearly a positive thing, they are smearing Obama for being cognizant of the fact that we can't "win" against all terrorism, but we can be successful in Afghanistan.