Slashdot Mirror
Obama Sets End of Iraq Combat For August 31st
eldavojohn writes "President Barack Obama has announced that on August 31st the United States will cease all combat operations in Iraq, although 50,000 troops will remain until the end of 2011. It's been a long seven-and-a-half years, with no guarantee of this announcement actually signifying the end of violence. Pundits are already speculating on whether or not this withdrawal speech is 'Mission Accomplished 2.' It's possibly the most significant confirmation of and commitment to a withdrawal the world will hear from the United States in Iraq."
It's about time.
What a scoop!
You're kidding, right? It guarantees that the few remaining insurgent groups will prepare for the date, and then attack with whatever they have left. That's why you *don't have a specific date* nor do you release your plans to the enemy.
The war, over there, has been over for years. Now, they are just working as cops. Not the type of job the military was ever cut out to do.
Someone going to tell the insurgents to stop?
"Mission Accomplished, Re-accomplished!"
I am with Linus on this one
Linus is right
The man makes sense
He is absolutely correct on this one
We shouldn't have been there in the first place.
Living With a Nerd
The president used a microphone to make the announcement. Microphones are technology.
Real Americans don't give up so easy. A measly 7.5 years? Puhlease... If McCain had been elected we'd be there for another 7.5... along with 30 years in Iran and who knows how long on the Korean peninsula. I mean really, which party would you rather have in office?
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
Let's hope the insurgents and other ne'er-do-wells get the message they're supposed to stop blowing people up on August 31.
From TFA: "While the US has been scaling down its troop presence in Iraq it has been stepping up its military commitment to Afghanistan, with the president ordering a surge of 30,000 additional soldiers there. " So, we're pulling our armed forces out of Iraq, just to send them to Afghanistan. A couple of nukes and they can all come home! I'm just saying...
Target practice?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
You're kidding, right? It guarantees that the few remaining insurgent groups will prepare for the date, and then attack with whatever they have left.
That was the criticism in the article based on two car bombs and a drive-by killing eight in Iraq today -- the day of this announcement. I guess a better question should have been "will Iraqi security forces be able to contain the unavoidable violence following this withdrawal?"
That's why you *don't have a specific date* nor do you release your plans to the enemy.
Or perhaps you gamble and show the world that the situation is under control by releasing your "plans" of withdrawal showing that those now in charge are very capable hands. Otherwise what do you do? Sit there and then just magically disappear one day? And when that happens, you think you're not in the same scenario you just mentioned? No matter how you cut it, it's a delicate situation.
My work here is dung.
This probably just means we can now devote more of those troops to Afghanistan. *sigh*
I wonder how much we're spending on all those troops in Germany, South Korea and Japan? Bring all the troops home from everywhere, cut the military budget in half, and we'd have no economic woes, and still have a gigantic military.
So does this means the libs are admitting that the surge worked?
Now the carnage can really start. Should make for great TV on CNN.
With which the owners of this site can buy technology, so yeah, it's technology related.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
if bush i in iraq i had decided to push on to baghdad and topple saddam in the early 1990s after racing across the desert unimpeded, then the world would have seen that as justified
however, the political fear of americans coming home in bodybags was too much, so they turned around and left saddam in power. kuwait was liberated, saddam was cowed, end of story... not
of course, the shiites who revolted under the false impression or false covert promise of american support were massacred. and of course, the tragedy is saddam was removed when war hawks in the usa sensed the political will finally existed after 9/11 to finish the job. not that 9/11 had anything to do with saddam hussein, but it had everything to do with agendas and the willpower to get them done. the world sensed this massive disconnect and the seedy trumped up lies, and therefore did not support the americans at all the second time around
and it was done at the price of probably many more american, and iraqi, body bags, many years later, under bush ii in iraq ii
so colin powell and assorted numbnuts: you screwed up in 1991. you should have gone all the way. if you start a job, finish it completely. leaving it half done meant a problem that festered
yes, you had the highest and noblest of intentions in mind, but war is messy and has nothing to do with nobility and good intentions, and you need to take some ugly jobs to completion, or don't start the ugly job at all
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
My guess is rebuilding homes and buildings that were destroyed?
Silly troll, the Obama halo will make it so.
What's the slashdot angle on this one?
Nooooooooooo coincidence there.
Unlike those chickenhawk Republicans, Obama isn't playing politics with the lives of our troops, no sir, not him.
Guarding the oil.
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Mussolini
No coincidence, nope nothing to see here. Move along.
Unlike chickenhawk Republicans, Obama will NOT be playing politics with our soldiers' lives.
No sir.
No Him.
Yes, because obviously the presence of troops means that combat operations are underway.
Oh, wait...
Jesus Christ. Not only are you trying to play the race card, you're trying to play it in a game of marbles.
Why was this modded as flamebait?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
So, we are ending "combat operations" but keeping the soldiers with guns there? It's only slightly comforting to hear that nothing has changed in the military since I got out (Only in an "at least it isn't me" way). This used to be the trick they would pull on all the missions I was on. When people get tired, just tell them it's almost over, whether it really is or not. Since I'm allowed to think now, what does an end to combat operations really mean? It sounds like they are just going to end combat pay.
Seek professional help. Seriously.
loverevolutionary@yahoo.com
Escorting Haliburton trips to nowhere?
When Israel and the U.S. decide to bomb Iran, the U.S. troops in Iraq are going to be in some serious trouble. My perception of the country is that the population feels a much stronger affinity with their religious beliefs than with any concept of Iraqi nationalism. What do Obama and friends expect the Shiite majority government and military in Iraq to do when Israel and the U.S. start dropping bombs on their Shiite bretheren across the border? I'm guessing that U.S. soldiers are being pulled back inside fortified positions in preparation for the inevitable counterattack.
I sincerely hope I'm wrong and that this pullback process is somehow proceeding as planned.
(no, I'm not a Republican)
Obama seems to be timing this to give his party a boost in the upcoming election. It's really sad to see that he's willing to grease the wheels of his political machine with American lives. Why couldn't this have been done six months ago? Why isn't it being done six months from now? The timing is heavily suspicious, smacks more of pandering to voters for political gain than doing the right thing at the right time.
...except we already invaded Iraq and were doing military operations against it on a daily basis.
It's just that they were "nice clean air attacks" so no one really paid attention or objected. Our forces were pretty much completely safe. We were basically playing the role of bully. So there were no body count to disturb the Television viewers back home.
Iraq War 1 never really ended.
People just didn't care because it didn't seem to impact them.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
First, this "draw down" is a perfect example of political agendas fucking up military strategy. We should have drawn down a long ass time ago! Recent interviews I've read talk about the lack of professionalism in the IA/IP, the lack of running water and electricity, and have heard in numerous interviews with Iraqi's a theme, that at least dictatorship was more merciful on the general population. Any other similar wars like this going on....? We should have never been in Iraq in the first place, and we must expose and punish all those involved in blatantly sending Americans to their deaths and to kill innocents. My prediction is that Afghanistan will follow this pattern, the shift of focus to another "enemy" (Probably the unjustly demonized Iran) and in while the American public forgets about Ganny we will do the same thing, will the same ambiguous and debatable results, with almost no benefit to America other than some control of natural resources. We despise and often actively undermine true democracy in the middle east (See Iran, Lebanon etc). This is all just political posturing with little tangible improvement for us, but I guess its better late than never...
"It's ok, I'm completely secure as long as my iron is off"
yro=yeah right, obama
Starting a war (even a war with collateral damage) is not a war crime; the idea of a war crime is simply to state that one's legal means to wage war is not unlimited. Deportation of entire populations for deprivation and/or genocide, for instance, is right out. To compare US conduct in Iraq to such things is histrionic nonsense.
Well, if the carnage remains or intensifies after this month, that will show that it is not about the foreign invaders and never was. It's about embracing the 13th century over the 21st century that the real world is living in.
Oh, and here's what we end up with for our efforts and our dead. Muqtada al-Sadr, the influential Iranian supported insane religious nut hate monger, is withdrawing his so-called "support" for the current Nouri al-Maliki compromise government. We will have exchanged a fairly dangerous hateful sectarian dictatorship for an extremely dangerous hateful totalitarian religious madhouse insanity like the ones in Iran and other such hellholes. You remember, the general type of scum who were actually behind 9-11. Not the Iraqis as they were.
The US has had a long sequence of stupid and ineffectual presidents with little substantive difference between the two sides of the aisle. And so it continues.
Which motherfucking mod modded the Parent 'Insightful'?
What the hell are you smokin,' boy?
-- Ethanol-fueled
Spending. Yes, spending. That's all there is to it.
Once you realize (or admit) that government is a business with a primary goal of generating profit, from that point on everything government does will make perfect sense.
Iraq's oil production capabilities are around $20B/year. We're spending $300B/year on the war. There literally isn't enough oil in the ground there to pay us back for the last 7.5 years, and it would take a century even if they tried. Can we please do some basic math and stop the stupid "it's all about oil" line of attack - it makes you look like an idiot.
Do you have ESP?
We no longer need the oil! Obama motors has designed an electric cat that can travel 40 miles a day for the low price of $40,000! That's almost as far as an electric golf cart can go that you can get (with government rebates) for $0! Since nobody needs to live farther than 20 miles (you need to drive back home after work), the need for oil is now non-existent! We have no need of any fossil fuels since we have electric cars now!
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Can I subscribe to your blog?
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/nation/stories/DN-obamairaq_28nat.ART.State.Edition1.4ab6cce.html 08:29 AM CST on Saturday, February 28, 2009
"Let me say this as plainly as I can," he said. "By August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end." -
What the hell are you smokin,' boy?
-- Ethanol-fueled
Troll weed, obviously. At least I amuse myself...
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
So when can we expect Obama's version of "Mission Accomplished"?
It actually adds up, you just have to use "fuzzy math."
50,000 troops in an advisory role? Like one advisor for every four Iraqi soldiers? Sounds more like squad leaders to me. This is now really turning into Vietnam. Eerie. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_Army
Only I can judge you.
Hey now. Don't get your politics up in my cool technology. The Volt is some cool shit even if it's just an intermediary step on the way to better solution. Please do not troll the Volt.
(The Volt includes an unknown glowing substance which fell to Earth, presumably from space. Do not taunt the Volt.)
Not surprising at all, considering the fact that the Chinese have gotten the green light to develop the oil fields.
"To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." --Robert Jackson, chief American prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials
Just because other people commit more serious war crimes doesn't mean starting a war isn't one. Also, how about that torture?
Hear hear. I watched the Bush administration grapple unsuccessful to justify starting that war for over 6 years and I sincerely doubt some comment on slashdot will solve the riddle now.
either you are an empire or not. behave like one or don't. no one is giving out gold stars for being a "nice" empire, whatever the hell that is supposed to mean. it's not like the middle east is joyful we didn't kick out saddam hussein. no one on the arab street is going "the usa is a nice empire, they left saddam hussein stay alive". no, they are going "evil american empire left their anti-iranian puppet in place as a reward/ {pick your own consipriacy theory)"
there was absolutely nothing gained stopping at the gates of baghdad, whatever the hell our agreements with the saudi were, which reflected the insecurities of a few nitwits in the saudi ruling class, not the man on the streets of riyadh or baghdad
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'm baffled by our strategy in Afghanistan.
It seems all we've done is flushed some of the terrorists into hiding into the nether regions of Pakistan. Wouldn't it be easier to find and bomb them if we allowed them to openly congregate in an open space like a desert for their terrorist training camps? I think we should withdraw our troops and just increase satellite and predator drone coverage. Isn't it also safer to drop bombs on Afghanistan, than a nuclear possessing country like Pakistan? Where is the common sense in strategy here?
Tim S-
Your pithy comment might look good on a bumper sticker or t-shirt, but it's not really this same thing and we both know it. It's about as dumb as the arguments from the right "when will we stop occupying (Chicago or other city) as there are more deaths there in (time period) than Iraq.
Germany is a strategic ally and fellow NATO member. Simply having operational bases in a country is not the same as occupation. The US does not patrol the streets of Germany, nor do they perform operational missions within Germany's borders aside from training simulations. Assignment in Germany is normally a cushy job and one many soldiers hope for.
US presence in Germany was scaled back following the re-unification of the two Germanys. Early in the Clinton administration early discharge was offered to many US soldiers as a scaling back "peace dividend" (I remember this personally because my wife took the opportunity to return to civilian life). Many troops who were stationed in Germany were moved to Saudi Arabia.
Iraq was a bad idea from day one, and Obama should have completed our exit right now. But more importantly, Obama should also work on ending the recession he caused here in the USA, instead of making it worse by adding another $4.3 trillion in unfunded mandates.
Your calculation is wrong.
You assume $20B/year - $300B/year = $-280B/year
This is how the people running the war see it.
$20B/year + $300B/year (in cost plus contracts) = $320B/year = War oil is much better than regular oil!
in line with U.S. goals with Iraq, I assume you are counting the oil production for the whole gulf region, control of which, directly or indirectly, was our primary goal? No? Then go back to the drawing board, buster. You can take your twenty bil and shove it.
Starting a war (even a war with collateral damage) is not a war crime; the idea of a war crime is simply to state that one's legal means to wage war is not unlimited. Deportation of entire populations for deprivation and/or genocide, for instance, is right out. To compare US conduct in Iraq to such things is histrionic nonsense.
That's not correct. The laws of war are more-or-less just a set of treaties, and a war crime is more-or-less just a treaty violation. So if we've signed a treaty that says we won't engage in military aggression, then military aggression is a war crime. The UN Charter is such a multilateral treaty, as was the Kellogg-Briand pact before it, etc.
In fact, one of the Nuremburg prosecutors stated that it was important for the Germans to know they were being prosecuted not for losing the war, but for starting it.
If military aggression is NOT a war crime, then we owe the Germans an apology.
I mean, correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't this the plan outlined by former President Bush.
Only difference is if a man with a [D] after his name does it. The media will praise him. If a man with an [R] after his name does it, they'll demonize and attack him.
The Nuremburg Trials have been criticized for bringing up the "war of aggression" charge, which never existed before that trial. It certainly is not in the Geneva Convention, which regulates only the conduct of war, not its existence. The problem with the "war of aggression" charge is that it is so vague and nebulous that it can only possibly be applied by the winner to the loser. For instance, if the US has tried Saddam for a "war of aggression" with regards to belligerent actions in UN no-fly zones. It's a ridiculous political charge. Not a war crime.
Also, who has jurisdiction to bring such a charge? The International Criminal Court is specifically prohibited from exercising jurisdiction over "crimes of aggression" (at the moment, the term is left undefined by the Rome Statute, and therefore unenforceable, because no nation on earth would willingly give up the prerogative to unilaterally initiate war).
You mean the Iraqi's and the pissed off Iraqi's?
It's all about the oil.
Let's say we're protecting oil wells owned by Shell capable of producing oil that will give Shell a profit of $5 billion. Now, the US government may spend $50 billion per year to protect those wells, but that costs Shell only $500,000 in bribes^H campaign contributions, so this arrangement is quite agreeable to Shell because they collect $4.5 billion in this arrangement.
Now you might think that the various fiscal responsibility types in Congress would raise a stink about this sort of waste, but they generally don't.
I am officially gone from
Iraq's oil production capabilities are around $20B/year. We're spending $300B/year on the war. There literally isn't enough oil in the ground there to pay us back for the last 7.5 years, and it would take a century even if they tried. Can we please do some basic math and stop the stupid "it's all about oil" line of attack - it makes you look like an idiot.
The value of oil comes not from its commercial sale, but rather the energy we extract from it to do useful profitable work and get around in our autos.
Those who make their money from the sale of the oil, are not the ones footing the bill for the occupation.
Oil companies don't have to pay for the wars, US taxpayers do. Same people who expected to get rich are going to do so.
This. And what was said below about securing oil production for the region in general, providing a base from which to launch operations in other mid-east countries if need be, reassuring the Saudi regime, etc.
There isn't enough oil in the ground in Iraq to pay back what the US has spent of the public fiscus, but that doesn't mean that it wasn't profitable in other ways. Those who have a vested interest in that oil (refiners like Halliburton, investors and speculators, etc) aren't the same people who are footing the bill for the war—they aren't the respublica in general, but rather private negotiatores. Moreover, having bases in the region allows the US (both as a public entity and as representing private interests) to project force into the central theater; Iraq and Afghanistan represent two gimonstrous entry points for US interest into the region and conveniently perforate the Muslim south-central-east Asian axis that scares the bejeezus out of some Americans.
That said, declaring defeat and bringing the troops home immediately would help immensely with the economy. The US economy, for all its glory, can't sustain two technologically advanced, losing wars against cave-dwelling goatherders halfway across the world; it's time we owned up to that fact.
That $300B/year comes out of the pockets of the taxpayers and into the pockets of defense contractors. The $20B/year comes out of the pockets of oil consumers and into the pocket of the oil corporations (minus a little to gov't official to grease the gears). Those defense contractors and oil corporations are the ones who started the war and kept it going all of these years. It absolutely is about the oil (along with maintaining a pretext to fund a ridiculously large military) .
question is in the title.
Read radical news here
Starting a war (even a war with collateral damage) is not a war crime
It is unless there's a clear self-defense justification (and not a BS one like "Saddam Hussein will give his mortal enemy Osama bin Laden non-existent weapons of mass destruction"). It was defined as the war crime of "aggression" at Nuremberg as a crime against peace, again in the UN Charter (Principle VI), and is also within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.
Now, in practice, hardly anyone gets charged with it, but in theory most of the Bush administration could be.
I am officially gone from
As everyone knows, before Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, he was a real sweetheart. Gassing Kurds, brutally oppressing any competing political parties, fighting the Iranians. And just how did he hold on to power for so long?
Back in the 60s, the Iraqi government was getting real friendly with the Soviet Union, which was bad news. Our installed dictator in Iran was keeping the oil flowing, but Iraq had a lot more of it and was right next door. So we supported a young man named Saddam Hussein and has Ba'athist Socialist party when the former government was coincidentally overthrown (wink wink). We liked Saddam, because he was a secular lawyer who liked Western culture, and in his 1970 Iraqi Constitution even mentioned things like equality for all religions, races, and genders. Even if it was an empty promise, that was some pretty radical stuff for an Arab state. But he also had stuff like, "Iraqi resources belong to the People," so we continued to favor the Shah in Iran. That is until 1979, when after decades of secret police torturing and killing Iranians so they could sell their oil more cheaply to Western powers, they overthrew their government and the Ayatollah came to power. From then on, Saddam became our primary political tool in the region, mostly for fighting the proxy war against Iran.
My favorite moment in US-Iraqi relations is when Reagan removed him from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list in 1982 so American firms and other international corporations could sell him biological agents and weapons. I'm sorry, I meant "dual use technology" and "farming equipment."
Or maybe it was when Ambassador Gillespie told Saddam that the US didn't care about Arab-Arab border conflicts just days before he sent his troops in to take over Kuwait.
Or maybe it was when the Kuwaiti Ambassador's daughter got up in front of Congress and lied about Saddam's troops placing babies on the floors so they would die - which was an amazing piece of propaganda, and a total fabrication.
When he was following orders, we ignored his crimes. When he stopped following orders, we suddenly remembered them. Unfortunately for us, the rest of the world doesn't stop and start history at our whim. An Iraqi will not forget that Americans were training Saddam's men to torture in the 1980s. They won't forget being left to die after the first Gulf War when we decided taking Saddam out would cause too much instability, and our choice to let Saddam mow people down with helicopters while we were still in control of their airspace. They will not forget starving in the 90s due to our embargo. They also won't forget that Saddam was our man until 2003. They won't forget our choice to use American companies to rebuild their infrastructure instead of Iraqi companies, or our choice to let Western oil companies get their pick of the oil field contracts without any input from their own government. They also won't forget that "terrorist" and "freedom fighter" can be the same person, depending on our political strategy that day.
They will never forget that the Americans cannot be trusted to act on any set of principles, because we simply don't have any. And the moment the Iraqi people try to kick out our corporations, we won't be too shy about reminding them.
Yes, but, the $300 billion comes from tax dollars, and the $20 billion goes to friends of George Bush and Dick Cheney. (A lot of the $300 does, too, for that matter.) Granted, it's not a perfectly efficient system. But oil executives and defense contractors are not the ones shelling out.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
You get a potential windfall of trillions in oil and minerals for your corporations, plus bases to keep Iran honest. You keep oil being sold in dollars, not Euros. You get to keep your military spending up which is good for jobs as it isn't outsourced. Then you get the benefit of 2 puppet governments which you can then sell infrastructure and military hardware to.
Why are you all such wimps about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars?
You would lose more men in a single day in Korea or WW2 than you have in the 10ish years of these wars. Even better is that the troops are professionals and not conscripts so it's not as if people are being forced to die, they chose to be soldiers. If there was no war these people would have no jobs. What would you do with all these poorly educated, violent, young men if they weren't signing up?
If you just hold on you can make a lot of money for your country - though your leaders have already made theirs through deals with you arms suppliers and PMCs, so maybe they are satisfied already.
Ah, but it's not necessarily about total cost/profit. It's only the profit that ends up in a certain few people's hands that matter.
That is incorrect. A "war crime" has a legal definition that does not fit what you've just said.
Real Americans don't give up so easy. A measly 7.5 years? Puhlease... If McCain had been elected we'd be there for another 7.5... along with 30 years in Iran and who knows how long on the Korean peninsula.
I mean really, which party would you rather have in office?
Its obvious you prefer the group who quituples the national debt destroying the economy, increases unemployment 5X, increases taxes after promising that all but the highest 2% would see decreases, institutes socialized medicine which will further double the debt and destoy our healthcare system, takes over the nations largest banks and companies and is planning to give 25 million illegal aliens amnesty.
And everyone knows the hair-growing consequence of self-amuse
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
I don't fear the Presidents dick (well, I was worried about Clinton's because he used that for most of his important decisions) but I do fear that fact that he is an utter moron. Black, white, whatever. Stupid is stupid. BO is the bottom feeder of all presidents (makes GWB look brilliant).
Many thanks to George Bush, David Petraeus, and our magnificent volunteer military for making the Surge work.
war is hell when you get right down to it, losing the war is really the only war crime. Basically, the current list of war crimes is really just a list of stuff "we haven't didn't do, but the enemy did". Both sides do horrible things. If the allies had lost the war, I assure you we'll have found ourselves staring at a list of our own war crimes.
Remember the Iraqi Antiquities Museum? Looted because the US refused to provide guards as they were required to under various conventions. 2 million refuges later and the electricity still isn't back on.
July 2010, deadliest month in iraq in 2 years
The surge is a sham, a failure, a propaganda campaign to secure more of your tax dollars. There will never ever be victory in Iraq. Who the hell told you it worked? Wheverer there's a 'surge' the Al-CIA-duh blends back into the normal populace until troops leave.
Please stop spreading this misinformation. You definition of victory can't be dozens of troops killed.
Starting a war is not a war crime
the nuremberg principles would like to have a word with you
So all Obama has to do is announce the violence will end on a particular date and it is done. Make is so number one. Engage!
You can't really be that stupid are you? Who is currently paying for the Iraq war? Taxpayers. Who is making the profit off the Iraq oil? It sure as fuck isn't tax payers. Follow the money works for nearly everything, especially wars.
That means in about 10 years we will have a metric fuck load of bad Hollywood movies re-writing history and claiming America won the war, single handedly.
But we don't get any cut of the $20B/year. So, it's $300B/year. I actually agree with what you're saying about war profiteers, but the bottom line is that the pittance of oil in that country is unrelated.
Do you have ESP?
Slavery is alive and well. How do you think most license plates are made? Go read the thirteenth amendment. It specifically allows for slavery, as long as you're convicted of "a crime." Anything. And both the federal and the state legislatures spend all day, every working day, coming up with new ways to qualify citizens for just that role. So much so that is has become understood and broadly accepted that if you engage in many harmless acts between entirely consenting adults, you're now qualified for enrollment in the slave program, and as an additional bonus, relegated to the new, unemployable underclass.
And strangely enough, if you look into any prison, you'll find that the majority of the residents are the same color as those who used to work in the plantation fields.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
No one ever said that the profiteers were the US government in their capacity as representatives of the American public. Obviously the American public is not making a dime on this whole ordeal. It's the private sector buddies of the government leaders that are lapping up all the contracts.
The $300B/year is paid for by American taxpayers, with a large portion going to the buddy corporations holding support/infrastructure/whatever contracts.
The $20B/year paid by Iraqis goes almost fully to those same buddy corporations, through oil contracts and "reconstructing your country that we destroyed, on your dime" contracts that were awarded mainly to US companies. Not to mention all quasi-imaginary "debts" the Iraqis will keep paying for the rest of their existence.
Where is the contradiction?
Am I missing something?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_aggression
What makes you think that oil companies need to get the oil out of the ground in order to get rich? The more supply an oil company controls, the more say they have over the price. Shut down oil production in Iraq, sell the middle east oil from surrounding regions at a high premium, and they'll still get rich.
There will be 50,000 US troops there through 2011; no doubt after 2011, there will still be troops there. If you need something to compare this to, you know the "yellow / orange / red" alert the idiots flash on tv? This is like that. A superficial change in announced status that means absolutely nothing.
Iraq is presently seventh among all nations in the amount of petroleum products exported to the US. That tells you exactly what will happen with our troop presence: nothing that would allow that status to diminish by dint of action by the natives.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The health care bill is going to cost many of us a lot and we get nothing in return. Health care costs are going to go up a lot. Someone has to pay for all of those people who will not pay for their health care. That is what the added cost the rest of us are paying is being used for. Forcing everyone to have health care only hurts those people that are working. Usually the middle class. So much for no taxes or tax increases on the middle class (or those making less then $250k, er $200k, er .. what ever the amount is now).
This new health care system is for citizens of the United States. So if you are not a citizen, sorry you pay. That would be good to see but it will never happen. If you have your own health care coverage, use that. No free rides.
No military force has ever walked away from Afghanistan as a winner.Not Alexander the Great, not the British Empire, not Russia nor will the U.S.. The only winners are those that just walk away.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
I don't think anyone is particularly interested in meaningless noise-making from the UN. People use "war crimes" as a reasonably specific set of terrible things that you just don't do while conducting a war. Conducting a war in the first place is not among them. This is its regular use, regardless of whether some professional nobody politician can find some interpretation to figure otherwise. The UN is a joke. An additional, meaningless bureaucracy that may as well be abandoned, and we all know it.
Health care costs are going to go up a lot.
They're already going up yearly without any government assistance.
Someone has to pay for all of those people who will not pay for their health care.
We already do. This isn't new and it wasn't started with the recent health care bill.
That is what the added cost the rest of us are paying is being used for.
Actually, the added cost is mostly to cover bullshit administrative tasks. A point that gets ignored by most of the public despite it being one of the most critical points against the bill.
Forcing everyone to have health care only hurts those people that are working.
Meh, hurts the employers a lot more than the employees. (Note: One can argue that hurts the employees as consequence. Fair enough point, but that still puts the initial pain on the employer.)
So much for no taxes or tax increases on the middle class (or those making less then $250k, er $200k, er .. what ever the amount is now).
Wake up to reality: People promising you tax cuts are full of shit and do not have your best interest in mind. They want your vote and they don't give two shits with respect to how much you'll benefit from a 1% tax cut. More importantly, these tools don't give a damn about balancing our debt problem; that's what you should care about in the end, because long term debt will determine tax rates when debt and Social Security payouts end up driving the government's "income" dispersal.
So tomorrow is two days after August 31?
The whole country pays, but only oil companies get the profits, do you see where the tricky part is?
The difference between them is Dubya's daddy didn't know when to pull out.
despite being pedantic, because one would hate for people to think *we'd wasted money we'd spent on your education (Assuming NCSU is your alma mater or current school): http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/get-down-to-brass-tacks.html it's brass tacks, not brass tax some federal funding right? that's why it's we.
Only I can judge you.
Iraq's oil production capabilities are around $20B/year. We're spending $300B/year on the war. There literally isn't enough oil in the ground there to pay us back for the last 7.5 years, and it would take a century even if they tried. Can we please do some basic math and stop the stupid "it's all about oil" line of attack - it makes you look like an idiot.
That $300 billion dollars a year that 'We' are spending isn't going up in smoke but into massive profits for a handful of war profiteers. The idea that any of the oil profits reaped from iraq will go to pay 'Us' back makes you look like an idiot.
Sorry, that should have been a trillion dollars... not a billion... and that doesn't even count the fucking patriot act and the "homeland idiocy" department costs.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Americans only have so much resolve. If you hold out long enough we will give up and go home.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
amazing that the american people didn't take to the streets to oppose a war against a company that began under false pretenses because bush, cheney, and rice lied about the WMD's. my position all along was if iraq has WMD's, who the fuck cares, because they don't have a delivery system. Without ICBMs, WMD's are not much of a threat.
George W. Bush & his entire regime should be in prison for lying to the american people and sending thousands of soldiers to their deaths for their campaign of deception. Iraq was not a war we needed to fight, nor could afford to fight, and financing it through loans from China could end up spelling the end of American global dominance. this corrupt and stupid show of hubris still makes me angry, for I know how great america could have been, had we not flushed trillions of dollars down the toilet at the whims of a silver-spooned sycophant who deserves nothing better but to be offered up to the Hague as a war criminal, along with our apologies to the Iraqi people.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Finally, someone speaks the truth!
You are mistakenly ambiguating who is receiving and paying money when you make your money in vs money out comparison. Investment bankers, oil CEOs and politicians are only losing a little money directly to these war occupations to taxation and the like. They are not spending 300 billion per year on this. We are. However, they are receiving a disproportionately large portion of the return on this 'investment' through oil well contracts or lobbyist bribes and the like.
For that reason alone, the 'it's all about oil' line of attack is not stupid. While it is true that there are plenty of other reasons(if you can call things like getting money through no bid cost plus contracts, pressuring Iran, shoring up the petro dollar a bit from inflation, and creating speculative energy bubbles reasonable), your justification for why it is not is false.
Simply put, WE may be losing money, but the ones who give the orders are laughing all the way to the bank.
Has anyone played Risk? 1) You strategically place a number of soldiers in country A 2) Invade neighboring country B 3) Strategically move soldiers to country B 4) Invade country C . . Look at the Iraq/Iran/Afghanistan map, it's all there in black and white. Iraq: Oil - Secured. Afghanistan: Trillion-dollar mineral deposits - Un-secured. Iran: Nuclear power = Less imported oil = Oil prices drop = That's a no no from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, etc..
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Although, it would be truly hilarious if, contrary to stereotypes, he were tremendously under endowed. Then he could whip it out and say, "See, white men? You have nothing to fear from my tiny penis!" and we could all live in interracial harmony and peace.
Seriously though, that whole attempt to denigrate the black race by dehumanizing them kinda backfired, "Those blacks are ANIMALS! Huge, hulking, sexy animals with magnificent physiques and throbbing, oh God damn it, why didn't we think this through? Ladies! It isn't true! It was meant as an insult! Where are you going?"
The truth is, race is and always has been a red herring used in the class war by the aristocracy, as a means of keeping the proletariat divided.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
The topic was Two days before elections, may US primaries are happening tomorrow ahead of the November elections. How stupid are you?
I grant it's not a good bang for the buck.... for the taxpayer.
For big oil and big military business, fantastic return on the money.... best politicians money can buy...
There's plenty of Oil in Iraq to pay us back, and then some.
http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/weekly/aairaqioil.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves#Estimated_reserves_by_country
However, that is not the point. Do you really think that the private oil corporations care how much tax payer money is spent securing those oil fields? But even that is a secondary point. Controlling energy is much more important than making money off it.
Google a bit about James Baker, silk road, Afghanistan pipelines, to see plans drawn up in the 1990's to limit China and Russians access to oil and natural gas reserves in the region. Basically building a bunch of pipelines all the way to the Caspian sea. Its no surprise that we are in Afghanistan.
Now.... the powers that be may have waited until they had an excuse to enter those countries, but control of energy, power, and money are huge factors in deciding to go to war. For proof, please see any genocide in Africa, and the US response to it.
The smart one!
Touche, but since NCSU is largely an engineering school I'd be more concerned if I WAS paying for someone to spend days researching the etymology of random phrases during the course of a college education. I should have picked up on that in my own reading. But I suppose that's what Carolina is for ;)
I have seen more than 1/2 dozen presidents come and go in my life and this one, well, this one is by far the most incompetent jackass I have had the not-so-pleasurable experience of paying. Stop going on TV shows and golfing and get back to fucking work you moron. I dont pay you to play.
So tomorrow is two days after today in your nutcase conservative fairyland?
Anyway, only three primaries are happening tomorrow: Kansas, Michigan, and Missouri. How important are those? Bugeaterr meant August 31 and the general elections. See here for his retraction. Of course, accepting that would assume you are honest, and obviously you are not.
Because nothing says, lets put aside the differences we've fought over for hundreds of years and work together like blowing up a sacred monument and creating hundreds of thousands of martyrs.
Do you think if Al-Queda blew up the white house that Americans would realise they were beaten and just give up?
No. Thought so.
Then why the hell do you think blowing up Mecca will help?.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Just before the invasion, Saddam was about to start trading oil in Euros. Iran and Venezuela have been making noises about moving away from the dollar too.
Think what would happen if every middle east country converted all their oil assets in every overseas bank away from the dollar. This would mean they could buy their own currency, and undermine investment in America. There have been successful attacks on a currency before. George Soros once forced the Bank of England to temporarily withdraw from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism by betting against the pound. A similar attack on the dollar by moving the oil economy onto another currency could well have a similar effect.
The value of keeping Iraq trading in dollars should not be underestimated. $300B is only worth as much as the dollar is worth, so protecting the dollar underlies many of America's interactions with oil producing countries. There are more bankers and oil men dictating America's foreign policy than war hungry military types, and they are familiar with how a currency can be used as a weapon of war.
Citation needed.
Is that Iraq's current production or Iraq's 1998 production because I'll clue you in sparky. Iraq has not been permitted to trade that much oil since 1992 on account of the UN embargo against them. The gulf patrols and no fly zones which the US, British and Australian navies maintain to this very day.
What are the reserves?
That's because those who envisaged this war never actually understood that maybe, the Iraqi people dont want to be liberated and will resist them or start a civil war. Bush and co never imagined the war would cost US$300B in total let alone US$300B a year for over 7 years.
The war was to gain control of Iraq's oil reserve. Don't let the fact that they failed to achieve that objective convince you otherwise.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Iraq's oil production capabilities are around $20B/year. We're spending $300B/year on the war.
Citations, please?
Can we please do some basic math and stop the stupid "it's all about oil" line of attack - it makes you look like an idiot.
Bad figures aside, what do you figure it's about?
Bringing democracy to the middle east? Believing that is what it was about really shows up the complete, utter, ignorant stupidity of the people who thought it up.
Bush Jr wanting revenge on the guy that, supposedly, was responsible for a hit team targeting his dad? Ditto.
Corporate lobbyists looking for a war to fill their coffers?
Then what, exactly?
How little you know.
1) The US isn't in a position to bomb anything at the moment.
2) Israel will never bomb Iran. Israel knows that Iran is not a threat and has not really fought a war of aggression and won, they know this. Defensive wars give Israel the upper hand. Unlike the US, Israeli military leaders will not follow a failed strategy just because they started it.
The strange thing about the Jewish (Israel) and Persian (Iran) people is that they get on like a house on fire. When the Islamic republic started expelling certain religious people (Zoroastrian leaders, Baha'i, Jews and so forth) most of them fled to... Israel. There are several Iranian Jews are members of the Israeli government, Moshe Katsav, 8th president of Israel was Iranian. If Israel attacks Iran this will galvanise the people under the Islamic government and Israel knows this. If Iran attacks Israel, Iran knows full when Israeli tanks, lead by Farsi speaking Persian Israeli's arrive in an Iranian ville, no one will give a shit what religion they follow because someone's uncle has come home. Persian Iranians (Read, the vast majority of Iran) dont hate Jews or Israel, the Arab government hates Israel but knows it can never attack them without losing support of the people because the animosity between Arabs and Persians is legendary.
Now the Islamic government of Iran is facing a crisis it has never head to deal with. When the Iran Iraq war of the 80's started to deplete the Iranian population the leaders issued an edict, "start making babies" and the people followed. How old are the babies born in 1984-1989 today? Now a large, young population is angry and want to express it, they've never had 20 somethings in any significant number before, they aren't old enough to remember how bad the Shah was and why the Islamic revolution was supported. All they know is that they dont like the current government.
So Iran is no threat, if anything Israel has taken to supporting the current regime in order to distance Tehran from their Israel hating allies (Hezbolla and Hamas).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
That's a fine bit of revisionary history there.
There was never a good reason to be in our current iraq war. First it was because 'Saddam has weapons of mass destruction' then it was 'Saddam supported terrorists' which was also blatantly false. Then we went in to liberate the population, inviting terrorism into their land. Now we're there because we can't remove ourselves from the tangled mess we created.
The whole war has been bullshit, and many Iraqi's were better off under Saddam.
I propose that when the Islamists hit us, we hit them back harder; with maximum effect, and minimum cost. They do not have bombers; bombs; military worth consideration... etc. What they have are young men who will strap on bombs, go out, and with no effect on the family other than lowering their food bills, blow our shit up.
It is my opinion that we should extend the cost of those boys back to the families, and more to the point, to the religion, that is spawning them.
We have the capability to hit them much, much harder than they can hit us. We should use that capability.
As for "sacred monuments", I don't give a rat's ass about their superstitions, or yours. If they want to preserve their culture, they need to learn to not attack highly technological cultures with big weapons.
But that's not going to happen; because we're not at war to win: We're at war to make money.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
You dumbass. It's not about Iraq's oil per se. It's about Saudi oil. The Saudis maintain the oil cartel. If you are in, you stay in - you only go out in a bag. Sadam tried to break the rules. He had to hang around for a bit. That's why we went in. Now we are making sure that the next guy follows the rules, and that the country does not fall to outsiders. Otherwise we will have to go back. The trillions of dollars? No big deal - that belonged to the suckers. Fuck them! They only make a mess when they're not dirt poor anyway. Hello?
Social Credit would solve everything...
Idiot yourself - it is about the "petrodollar", and always has been. If you can't see where the word "oil" fits into that concept, there's no helping you at all. It's the same reason that Iran is being demonised - propping up the worthless US dollar. You zeppos are all fucked sideways by your M-I-C, and all you want to know is who on American Idol is gay or smokes weed. Fucking hopeless culture - the sooner you break up into smaller states, the better it will be for the entire population of the planet, animals, fish, birds, plants.... and if we're lucky, we humans might still be around to recover from the eco-raping in the name of McDo burgers and Cuke(TM).
Of course it is not about oil money going to taxpayers. It is about the gov't subsidizing oil companies making profits on that oil.
Actually, you are wrong. It is about the oil. It is about the oil profits, actually: the US pays $300B/year for the oil companies to profit $XXX/year; $XXX might be less than $300B, but it doesn't matter: if those $300B were not spent, the oil companies execs wouldn't have the million dollar bonuses.
Yeah! We just told the enemy when we are going to surrender.
Before you start about this being "flame bait"... Why on earth would you announce "we are ending this war on [blah]". All this is going to do is let the enemy know when they can go back to business as usual and punish those that stood against them.
When is a war over? When one side surrenders. Last time I looked the enemy has not surrendered; therefore, we are surrendering -- they won. The troops that we have sent have died in vain, and for what??? Politics.
"Elections are coming around and my party is going to lose big unless I pull a rabbit out of my hat!" How many lives are worth a seat on the Senate?
I can only imagine if 9/11 (you remember, when they declared war on us) occurred with this man was in office.
can't stand it. anyone with a supple enough mind doesn't mind it
therefore i drive away brittle minds, so i don't have to deal with them, and brittle minds don't read my words, and don't have to deal with me. win-win
its the same logic tattooed/ pierced people use: they cannot deal with shallow feeble nitwits. so they mark themselves in a way that the nitwits can't deal with. anyone with a relaxed open mind has no problem. so the nitwits win: no scary tattooed people to deal with, and the tattooed guy wins: no nitwits to deal with. again, win-win
consider modified writing on the web an online version of people with heavy body modifications: you radicalize your appearance in order to manipulate how people react to you. you purposefully introduce noise of a certain frequency into the signal that in some minds drives them nuts and drives them away, and in other minds is not a bother. and i do this out of necessity: small brittle minds and small brittle thoughts make me want to kill someone. so i do it so i don't go into a murderous rage at how petty and feeble some people can be
this is my character, and this is how i deal with my weakness: the desire to kill people who are petty feeble and small-minded is not healthy, so i purposefully attenuate my appearance to the world to protect myself from such people, and also protect them from me. i am a moral person, i realize the desire to kill flaky people is not healthy, nor right. so i must protect myself, and them, from my murderous rage at the shallow end of the mind pool
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Which group is that? It isn't the Democrats, nor is it the Republicans. New Whig party?