power is a drug and the world seems to be run by addicts....imo
LOL, no kidding.
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Need2KnowPosted:
Tue Jun 17, 2008 6:34 am
pax wrote:
Thanks for your reply n2k.
I don't want our governement to spend our tax dollars fighting holy wars.
I understand, but what if that holy war has the intentions of crippling this country and the very economy you are worried about? Pax, I think you know a little bit about me, I don't come to conclusions without basing them on very real, hard facts. The fact that many of these Islamic regimes are totally committed to our destruction and that of Israel is no fantasy tale, it is very real and many in our government are well aware of it. Do not let their fake diplomacy fool you and every Amercian needs to wake up to that. It is only a matter of time before another major terrorist attack is attempted or is successful. We have a very open society and our borders are not even close to being secure. Some experts feel there are a large number of cells in the US now and the plans are in the works. These people do not want peace, they want destruction, that is their goal.
N2K
Joined: 06 Jul 2006
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yankee-in-francePosted:
Tue Jun 17, 2008 10:29 am
pax wrote:
Thanks for your reply n2k.
I don't want our governement to spend our tax dollars fighting holy wars.
I don't want our government to spend our tax dollars fighting illegal and unjust wars.
YIF
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Need2KnowPosted:
Tue Jun 17, 2008 11:19 am
yankee-in-france wrote:
I don't want our government to spend our tax dollars fighting illegal and unjust wars.
Agreed. What about the very real issue that this country faces with terrorist cells who are already here and/or abroad who are presently and constantly working at accomplishing another 9-11 event? Do we concern ourselves with that or should we all have short memories and just pretend the danger is not real?
N2K
Joined: 06 Jul 2006
Posts: 8839
dugoPosted:
Tue Jun 17, 2008 11:37 am
The US stoppping a war? LOL
Nazi Germany was defeated in '45 .. US troops are still in Rammstein ..
Japan surrendered in '45 US troops are still in Okinawa ..
North Korea agreed w/ an armistice in '53 .. US troops are still south of the Han River
Kuwait was liberated in '91 .. US troops are still in Camp Doha
The Philipines got independence in '46 .. US troops are still in Olongapo
Panama was briefly invaded in '89 .. US troops are still in Colon
etc.. etc...
US troops just don't ever leave unless they get their ass kicked badly (Vietnam).. In 100 years the US will still occupy the green zone in Baghdad.
Dashing Dutch Dynamo Dude
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Location: L4L
Need2KnowPosted:
Tue Jun 17, 2008 11:42 am
dugo wrote:
The US stoppping a war? LOL
Nazi Germany was defeated in '45 .. US troops are still in Rammstein ..
Japan surrendered in '45 US troops are still in Okinawa ..
North Korea agreed w/ an armistice in '53 .. US troops are still south of the Han River
Kuwait was liberated in '91 .. US troops are still in Camp Doha
The Philipines got independence in '46 .. US troops are still in Olongapo
Panama was briefly invaded in '89 .. US troops are still in Colon
etc.. etc...
US troops just don't ever leave unless they get their ass kicked badly (Vietnam).. In 100 years the US will still occupy the green zone in Baghdad.
If you say so. Just pointing up to your first line, so you really believe that if the U.S. was not heavily involved in WW2 that Germany would have been defeated? You would be hailing a fuhrer right about now. If you really believe that then everything else you say will fall on deaf "eyes" for me. Contempt for the United States should not blind you to the truth of the sacrifice this country has made in defending freedom. How easy to sit there and type that nonsense.
N2K
Joined: 06 Jul 2006
Posts: 8839
dugoPosted:
Tue Jun 17, 2008 12:48 pm
Need2Know wrote:
If you say so. Just pointing up to your first line, so you really believe that if the U.S. was not heavily involved in WW2 that Germany would have been defeated? You would be hailing a fuhrer right about now.
Where did I say that?
Need2Know wrote:
If you really believe that then everything else you say will fall on deaf "eyes" for me. Contempt for the United States should not blind you to the truth of the sacrifice this country has made in defending freedom.
done with the knejerk already?
Need2Know wrote:
How easy to sit there and type that nonsense.
It is not nonsense.. In general USAian troops don't leave. after hostilities are over.
If you care to dig up the ladenese epistel, maybe you wil be able to connect the dots to general discourse of people that are trying to defend what they call fredom.
Dashing Dutch Dynamo Dude
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paxPosted:
Tue Jun 17, 2008 2:53 pm
Need2Know wrote:
I understand, but what if that holy war has the intentions of crippling this country and the very economy you are worried about? Pax, I think you know a little bit about me, I don't come to conclusions without basing them on very real, hard facts. The fact that many of these Islamic regimes are totally committed to our destruction and that of Israel is no fantasy tale, it is very real and many in our government are well aware of it. Do not let their fake diplomacy fool you and every Amercian needs to wake up to that. It is only a matter of time before another major terrorist attack is attempted or is successful. We have a very open society and our borders are not even close to being secure. Some experts feel there are a large number of cells in the US now and the plans are in the works. These people do not want peace, they want destruction, that is their goal.
I understand there are very real security threats. We should secure our borders and break up terrorist cells. Israel and U.S. aren't in imminent danger of complete destruction. Israel has between 150-300 nukes. Recall the six-day war in 1967. Israel trounced Egypt, Jordan, and Syria in under a week. I think winding down the war is best for our national security and our economy. The question for me is how do we do it most effectively.
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Posts: 16031
Location: Wish You Were Here
paxPosted:
Tue Jun 17, 2008 3:01 pm
dugo wrote:
The US stoppping a war? LOL
Nazi Germany was defeated in '45 .. US troops are still in Rammstein ..
Japan surrendered in '45 US troops are still in Okinawa ..
North Korea agreed w/ an armistice in '53 .. US troops are still south of the Han River
Kuwait was liberated in '91 .. US troops are still in Camp Doha
The Philipines got independence in '46 .. US troops are still in Olongapo
Panama was briefly invaded in '89 .. US troops are still in Colon
etc.. etc...
US troops just don't ever leave unless they get their ass kicked badly (Vietnam).. In 100 years the US will still occupy the green zone in Baghdad.
You're correct dugo. Some of those governments want our presence. What are your thoughts?
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Need2KnowPosted:
Tue Jun 17, 2008 3:43 pm
pax wrote:
I understand there are very real security threats. We should secure our borders and break up terrorist cells. Israel and U.S. aren't in imminent danger of complete destruction. Israel has between 150-300 nukes. Recall the six-day war in 1967. Israel trounced Egypt, Jordan, and Syria in under a week. I think winding down the war is best for our national security and our economy. The question for me is how do we do it most effectively.
Winding down the war was not how or why our current discussion began and is not what I was posting about.
N2K
Joined: 06 Jul 2006
Posts: 8839
paxPosted:
Tue Jun 17, 2008 4:19 pm
Need2Know wrote:
Winding down the war was not how or why our current discussion began and is not what I was posting about.
Please add whatever you want to say. I enjoy the discussion.
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paxPosted:
Tue Jun 17, 2008 4:55 pm
Need2Know wrote:
I understand, but what if that holy war has the intentions of crippling this country and the very economy you are worried about? Pax, I think you know a little bit about me, I don't come to conclusions without basing them on very real, hard facts. The fact that many of these Islamic regimes are totally committed to our destruction and that of Israel is no fantasy tale, it is very real and many in our government are well aware of it. Do not let their fake diplomacy fool you and every Amercian needs to wake up to that. It is only a matter of time before another major terrorist attack is attempted or is successful. We have a very open society and our borders are not even close to being secure. Some experts feel there are a large number of cells in the US now and the plans are in the works. These people do not want peace, they want destruction, that is their goal.
Your points are well-taken n2k. It's not easy and we shouldn't be naive. Terrorists should be killed. I don't think U.S. national security or economic interests directly correspond with the interests of hawks in Israel. I think it's in the best interest of the U.S., both economically and militarily, to withdraw from Iraq in the safest manner possible.
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dugoPosted:
Thu Jun 19, 2008 2:50 pm
Need2Know wrote:
The fact that many of these Islamic regimes are totally committed to our destruction and that of Israel is no fantasy tale, it is very real and many in our government are well aware of it.
What type of destruction are you thinking of? I don't see the mullahs dropping a nuke anywhere near el aksa even if they ran out of parking space for them on their own soil..
Dashing Dutch Dynamo Dude
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paxPosted:
Sat Jun 28, 2008 11:11 am
It Was Oil, All Along
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
June 27, 2008
Oh, no, they told us, Iraq isn't a war about oil. That's cynical and simplistic, they said. It's about terror and al Qaeda and toppling a dictator and spreading democracy and protecting ourselves from weapons of mass destruction. But one by one, these concocted rationales went up in smoke, fire and ashes. And now the bottom line turns out to be....the bottom line. It is about oil....
It would be laughable if it weren’t so painful to remember that their erstwhile cheerleader for invading Iraq – the press mogul Rupert Murdoch – once said that a successful war there would bring us $20 a barrel of oil. The last time we looked, it was more than $140 a barrel. Where are you, Rupert, when the facts need checking and the predictions are revisited?
Four thousand American soldiers dead, tens of thousands permanently wounded for life, hundreds of thousands of dead and crippled Iraqis plus five million displaced, and a cost that will mount into trillions of dollars. The political analyst Kevin Phillips says America has become little more than an "energy protection force," doing anything to gain access to expensive fuel without regard to the lives of others or the earth itself. One thinks again of Daniel Plainview in “There Will Be Blood.” His lust for oil came at the price of his son and his soul.
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dithersPosted:
Sun Jun 29, 2008 9:58 am
Bill Moyers is an asshole. Once I saw his name I didn't bother to read any further.
Pretty in Blonde
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paxPosted:
Sun Jun 29, 2008 10:44 am
The bland assurances about the war were inaccurate. We're often misled by nice folks. If possible, examine the criticism not the critic.
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dithersPosted:
Sun Jun 29, 2008 11:13 am
pax wrote:
The bland assurances about the war were inaccurate. We're often misled by nice folks. If possible, examine the criticism not the critic.
I must examine the critic because Moyers uses PBS (ie. public tax dollars) to push his extremely biased liberal left-wing agenda. I was once a great fan of Moyers until I discovered what he's truly about.
His puff piece interview with Rev. Jeremiah Wright was an embarrassment. When the shit hit the fan over Wright and his comments, Moyers was made to look like a fool for his attempts to give him cover and make him out to be a misunderstood saint only a few days earlier.
Pretty in Blonde
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paxPosted:
Sun Jun 29, 2008 11:23 am
Rupert Murdoch said a successful war in Iraq would bring us $20 a barrel of oil. It's now over $140 a barrel.
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dithersPosted:
Sun Jun 29, 2008 5:39 pm
pax wrote:
Rupert Murdoch said a successful war in Iraq would bring us $20 a barrel of oil. It's now over $140 a barrel.
There's your problem. You're listening to Rupert Murdoch. He's only a media guy.
Just like with the Tom Friedman adoration on another thread. Why anyone puts any stock in what professional news reporters/columnists write is beyond me. If they were so smart they'd be running the world and not simply critiquing the efforts of those who do.
Pretty in Blonde
Joined: 17 Apr 2006
Posts: 3468
yankee-in-francePosted:
Mon Jun 30, 2008 5:35 am
dithers wrote:
There's your problem. You're listening to Rupert Murdoch. He's only a media guy.
Just like with the Tom Friedman adoration on another thread. Why anyone puts any stock in what professional news reporters/columnists write is beyond me. If they were so smart they'd be running the world and not simply critiquing the efforts of those who do.
What is it in Tom Friedman's article that you didn't agree with?
YIF
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Location: France
dithersPosted:
Mon Jun 30, 2008 8:13 am
yankee-in-france wrote:
What is it in Tom Friedman's article that you didn't agree with?
Mea Culpa, YIF. I admit I hadn't read the article simply because, as with so many of the columnists today, everything eventually always boils down to blame Bush.
So in fairness, I just went back and read the article. You're right and Friedman is right - as long as the argument stays non-partisan. But that isn't likely to happen.
We focus so much on the Presidential race but it's the clowns in the Legislative branch - many entrenched for 30+ years - who continually fail the American people. But they continue to get reelected without so much as a discussion. The entire town needs to be flushed out with a big giant hose IMO.
Pretty in Blonde
Joined: 17 Apr 2006
Posts: 3468
Need2KnowPosted:
Mon Jun 30, 2008 8:32 am
dithers wrote:
Mea Culpa, YIF. I admit I hadn't read the article simply because, as with so many of the columnists today, everything eventually always boils down to blame Bush.
So in fairness, I just went back and read the article. You're right and Friedman is right - as long as the argument stays non-partisan. But that isn't likely to happen.
We focus so much on the Presidential race but it's the clowns in the Legislative branch - many entrenched for 30+ years - who continually fail the American people. But they continue to get reelected without so much as a discussion. The entire town needs to be flushed out with a big giant hose IMO.
I totally agree with the "hose down" theory. Term limits would be one way of doing this. It is shameful what this institution of "public service" has actually become. We the people have lost our collective voices.
N2K
Joined: 06 Jul 2006
Posts: 8839
paxPosted:
Mon Jun 30, 2008 10:03 am
I agree with both of you that the legislative branch is abysmal. Democrats who support the war are hypocritical to blame the Bush administration. It's difficult to safely utilize our troops and deal with terroristic threats. It requires serious bipartisan effort.
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paxPosted:
Mon Jul 14, 2008 3:27 am
My Plan for Iraq
By BARACK OBAMA
Published: July 14, 2008
Chicago
THE call by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki for a timetable for the removal of American troops from Iraq presents an enormous opportunity. We should seize this moment to begin the phased redeployment of combat troops that I have long advocated, and that is needed for long-term success in Iraq and the security interests of the United States.
The differences on Iraq in this campaign are deep. Unlike Senator John McCain, I opposed the war in Iraq before it began, and would end it as president. I believed it was a grave mistake to allow ourselves to be distracted from the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban by invading a country that posed no imminent threat and had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. Since then, more than 4,000 Americans have died and we have spent nearly $1 trillion. Our military is overstretched. Nearly every threat we face — from Afghanistan to Al Qaeda to Iran — has grown.
In the 18 months since President Bush announced the surge, our troops have performed heroically in bringing down the level of violence. New tactics have protected the Iraqi population, and the Sunni tribes have rejected Al Qaeda — greatly weakening its effectiveness.
But the same factors that led me to oppose the surge still hold true. The strain on our military has grown, the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated and we’ve spent nearly $200 billion more in Iraq than we had budgeted. Iraq’s leaders have failed to invest tens of billions of dollars in oil revenues in rebuilding their own country, and they have not reached the political accommodation that was the stated purpose of the surge.
The good news is that Iraq’s leaders want to take responsibility for their country by negotiating a timetable for the removal of American troops. Meanwhile, Lt. Gen. James Dubik, the American officer in charge of training Iraq’s security forces, estimates that the Iraqi Army and police will be ready to assume responsibility for security in 2009.
Only by redeploying our troops can we press the Iraqis to reach comprehensive political accommodation and achieve a successful transition to Iraqis’ taking responsibility for the security and stability of their country. Instead of seizing the moment and encouraging Iraqis to step up, the Bush administration and Senator McCain are refusing to embrace this transition — despite their previous commitments to respect the will of Iraq’s sovereign government. They call any timetable for the removal of American troops “surrender,” even though we would be turning Iraq over to a sovereign Iraqi government.
But this is not a strategy for success — it is a strategy for staying that runs contrary to the will of the Iraqi people, the American people and the security interests of the United States. That is why, on my first day in office, I would give the military a new mission: ending this war.
As I’ve said many times, we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 — two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and, so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training Iraqi security forces. That would not be a precipitous withdrawal.
In carrying out this strategy, we would inevitably need to make tactical adjustments. As I have often said, I would consult with commanders on the ground and the Iraqi government to ensure that our troops were redeployed safely, and our interests protected. We would move them from secure areas first and volatile areas later. We would pursue a diplomatic offensive with every nation in the region on behalf of Iraq’s stability, and commit $2 billion to a new international effort to support Iraq’s refugees.
Ending the war is essential to meeting our broader strategic goals, starting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Taliban is resurgent and Al Qaeda has a safe haven. Iraq is not the central front in the war on terrorism, and it never has been. As Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently pointed out, we won’t have sufficient resources to finish the job in Afghanistan until we reduce our commitment to Iraq.
As president, I would pursue a new strategy, and begin by providing at least two additional combat brigades to support our effort in Afghanistan. We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more nonmilitary assistance to accomplish the mission there. I would not hold our military, our resources and our foreign policy hostage to a misguided desire to maintain permanent bases in Iraq.
In this campaign, there are honest differences over Iraq, and we should discuss them with the thoroughness they deserve. Unlike Senator McCain, I would make it absolutely clear that we seek no presence in Iraq similar to our permanent bases in South Korea, and would redeploy our troops out of Iraq and focus on the broader security challenges that we face. But for far too long, those responsible for the greatest strategic blunder in the recent history of American foreign policy have ignored useful debate in favor of making false charges about flip-flops and surrender.
It’s not going to work this time. It’s time to end this war.
Barack Obama, a United States senator from Illinois, is the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
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