Have you tried to re-read yourself become clicking "submit"?
Yes- and I happen to stand by what I wrote.
In one sentence you summarized your level of idiocy, ignorance and mental sickness. Mod me troll or flamebait, blast my karma, but I am sorry, I cannot read such a misguided statement without reacting. That is because of people like you who are blindlessly and blissfully ignorant that things like the Iraq war happen in the first place.
And I'd say it's your total ignorance of Radical Islamic teaching that is the cause.
Do you really think that a mother of four with her children are all terrorists? I don't.
The mother may not be- but the kids growing up in a fatherless home where the father was killed by coalition forces most certainly ARE POTENTIAL TERRORISTS that will attack the United States one day. Ignorance of the meaning of family in Middle Eastern cultures won't stop those kids from one day strapping on bombs to take out an American Tourist Bus. The fact that you don't understand this is proof of just how insular your thinking is.
This is just plain sick reasoning.
From the culture you were raised in, yes. The whole concept of the reasoning behind terrorism is sick to you, because YOU ARE NOT A TERRORIST. It would be worrying if you had any other reaction. I, on the other hand, have contemplated becoming a terrorist. Have contemplated what might make me act that way. Have even gone so far at times to stockpile the weaponry needed. I understand where the Shi'ites, Sunnis, and Kurds are coming from- I understand because my own Cherokee, Nes Pierce, and Kwakiutal ancestors were faced with the same problem of a foreign group imposing their genocidal behavior and laws and language on us. You are not in that position. Thank God that your ancestors were never in that position. But don't denegrate the desparation of those who are- or you will one day find your own relatives targets of the hatred.
If you had been reading me all along on this topic, you would already know that I support either one of two exit strategies for the War On Terror- genocide or surrender. Guess which one I support more. I'll give you a hint- it's easier to redesign an economic system than to create a new religious/moral system.
Ok so let me clear this up.
Good luck- better men than you have tried to pin me down and failed miserably.
In your fscked up, racist dream world,*You* believe that:
Make that in my totally passionless realism world based on past behavior of the peoples involved.
Every person in Iraq is a potential terrorist.
I'll modify that slightly for you- Every person in the middle east who subscribes to Nation of Islam theology or Zionist Jewish theology (you know, the two that say the only way to build a just world is under a theocracy) of any tribe or sect is a potential terrorist under the current definition of the term.
If all Iraqis don't voluntarily give up their wepons, they should be shot
This is the definition of being the losing population under a foreign occupation under every successfull ocupation I've ever seen or read about.
Problematic spots should be nuked
This is separate from the current discussion- but as a rule turning a problematic region into radioactive glass serves as a warning for future generations not to mimic the same behavior. But it doesn't take nukes to do it- General Titus in 70 AD stopped Zionist rebellion in the region for 1600 years using nothing but bronze swords, ploughs, and salt. Of course, he killed somewhere around 50,000 Jews to accomplish this task- but hey, he was hampered by his tools.
To cover for a shoulder-to-shoulder weapons sweep of the entire country a draft should be instantiated.
If we're going to invade at all- there's always the other option in a war against terrorists, isolationism and armed surrender. That's Kucinich's method and is far preferable to the other alternative- but like you say, Bush and Kerry have chosen the other alternative (or chosen to lose, I'm not sure which yet).
You'd rather have thousands more dead Americans than have even small groups of armed insurgents.
Those who choose safety over liberty are deserving of neither.
You believe it is possible to obtain *every* wepon in the hands of people in the *entire* country of Iraq
It's possible to do *anything* you put your mind to doing if you are resolute enough. Isn't that what Bush has been trying to tell us?
You can't reliably bury wepons (um, put them in a crate dumbass)
You *really* don't know very much about firearms, do you? Or about the climate of Iraq?
Any house you can't search fully should be razed to the ground.
Military Strategy 101: NEVER leave behind a building that you're not going to use yourself, no matter how harmless it looks. Any 14-year-old playing Starcraft can learn that- why can't Mr. Bush?
You believe that 1.5 million of armed MPs should gaurd our coastlines at the same time, hell let's draft the entire able bodied population
Just like we did during WWII. Better yet- if we draft the entire able bodied population, and put them to work REDUCING OUR ENERGY USAGE and CREATING NEW ENERGY SOURCES, we might just get by with ONLY guarding our borders. But only if we're willing to truly close them off to anybody who would invade here.
So then after you raise the armed forces number to like 3 million
Nah, let's get it up to 100 million.
and therby having to switch to a wartime economy, the economy will get better.
In the past, wartime economies have *always* been better- our economy profited from the Civil War, from the Spainish American War, from WWI, from WWII, from Korea, from Vietnam, and from the first Gulf W
Works- from a Libertarian point of view. Also from a Democrat point of view- "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country"- John F. Kennedy.
Christians fought and killed eachother and other religions in the past as well. And still do today, but not nearly as much.
There does come a time for religions to mellow out- it seems to come around the two to three millenia mark. Islam won't be there for another 400-600 years yet.
So what is to say it is not the time for Islam to recognize the need for peace and the chance to start something here?
Age for one. It's not time yet for that religion to mellow. Mellowing takes a sense of history- and Islam is still very much in the early reformation stage, not nearly ready to look at itself critically yet.
And most of the people here have more electricity and more water than a year ago!
And, apparently, not nearly as much as they had when Saddam was in power.
Many have more electricity than before the war. It is more equitably distributed now than it was then, so some Iraqis have less.
And you don't think that the ones who have less aren't going to be pissed off about it?
If they'd stop trying to destroy their own infrastructure, there would be a lot more progress.
And gee- who gave them the weaponry and explosives to do that, do you think?
If Sunni and Shi'a are radical Islam, then what isn't radical Islam?
Islam is in the middle of their reformation period- the only non-radical Islamist is a Moslem Agnostic, also known as a Sufi. But they don't exist in Iraq.
Yes there are radical Sunni, radical Shi'a, just as there are radicals in every other religion. The entire sect is not radical.
Yep- tell that to the guy who gets beat up for not answering the prayer bell. Or try to tell the Shi'ite who lost family members to Saddam's Sunni gas attacks that the Sunnis aren't radical. Try to tell the Sunni who is deathly afraid of retaliation that the Shi'ite isn't radical. Try to tell the Kurds that the Sunis and the Shi'ites won't invade the north the second coalition troops leave. The hatred goes a lot deeper than you imagine.
The government here has been drafted carefully to try to prevent any one group from being in complete power,
Currently, yes- but it wouldn't be democracy without the possibility of that changing very quickly.
but ultimately the shape of Iraq's government is in the hands of its soon to be elected government.
It wasn't great for the Textile Workers- NAFTA laid them off by the tens of thousands. Wasn't great for most manufacturing actually. And while the poverty rate did go down- it bounced right back up after 1998 and the begining of the dot bomb crash. The Clinton years were the the tail end of the manufacturing phase of the American Worker Replacement Program- and with the H-1b bill, pushed through Congress late at night in early October 2000 and signed into law by Clinton, the Knowledge Worker Phase began (and was acellerated under W until I personally began to wonder if we'd have any middle class left by now).
Like that is conceivable with 3/4 mil troops. Right. See the americans coming? Just move to a place they've already searched before.
How do you get the weapons across the solid line of troops to the places that they've already searched? Come on man- think logically.
Bury wepons. Hide them in walls and under subfloors.
Yep, bury your gun in the sand, so that when you dig it up again it explodes in your face. Hide them in walls and subfloors, so that when the Americans raise the building they can be buried in the rubble.
How do you garuntee that the populace has been disarmed??
By killing those who aren't, and by blowing up weapons caches as you go. Sure, it takes longer- but at least you've done the job (unlike the current administration, which hasn't).
What happens to people that don't want to give up their guns?
They end up in the mass graves of terrorists that you're going to create anyway.
You think this would *lessen* the civilian casualties in Iraq?
Like I said before, there are no civilians in Iraq- only future terrorists.
You're like what, 12?
33- and apparently more grown up than a President who spent half his life drunk and high.
Bullshit. Not every Iraqi wants to take up arms.
Then why are there still Kurds, Sunnis and Shi'ites in the country? All of those groups have taken up arms against one another in the past, and will do so again.
What a rediculous stereotype. They want what Americans with guns want. To defend their families.
The best way to do that would be to give up old tribal rivalries.
Given the current state of Iraq is that a too much to give them?
Apparently, YES. Considering the way they've misused the right repeatedly over the last 5000 years or so.
Would you also have America disarmed?
Iraqis aren't Americans and never will be. You're deluding yourself if you think 5000 years worth of tribal rivalries will disappear merely because we force them to sign a Constitution.
I suggest you Mike Moore's first flick. The root of the problem isn't guns.
Agreed- the root of the problem isn't guns. It's a bunch of people who have been bred over the past 5000 years to hate the other 2/3rds of their own country. Giving them guns just adds to the problem.
With 740000 troops you think there would be *less* than the current number of American dead?
Not likely- but there wouldn't still be an insurgency either.
After systematically disarming an unwilling populace. Right. If you try and do that you lose all of you allies, and *then* you are an occupying force.
We're an occupying force no matter what- the second we crossed the border from Kuwait we were an occupying force. Denying it doesn't make the problem any easier.
The moderate iraqis now fight *you*.
They already are- haven't you seen the news lately?
Disarm the populace?
Yep- easiest way to end the problem.
Look how well it worked for the Russians in Afganistan.
It wasn't even TRIED by the Russians in Afghanistan- who never controled more than 1% of the country anyway.
How many Russians died? You seriously think blindly sending in more troops is an unequivolenty good idea?
Actually, I seriously think that sending NUKES in is a unequivolently good idea. But this President and the next are not likely to do it.
So where were we going to get those 740,000 troops?
Within the first two weeks after 9-11, when everybody was comparing the attack on the WTC to Pearl Harbor, we had the opportunity to increase our Armed Forces and to mobilize our nation in EXACTLY the same way that FDR did during WWII- with all production retooled to war material, and all excess labor soaked up to either production of stuff necessary for the national defense or the army. Bush WASTED that opportunity- and did the second of many actions that have since disillusioned me on the entire American Political System.
I know damn well how many of our people have been killed by small arms fire. And it'll be a lot better when the civilians, of which there are a lot, take charge of more of their own safety and security.
And when will that be, do you imagine? The Kurds, Sunnis, and Shi'ites have been fighting for control of Iraq off and on for about 5,000 years now. What makes you think that they'll stop now?
All the people here have their own self-interests, but MOST of them are not fighting.
Most of them are still looking for the electricity and water we promised them a year ago. But given their history, I'm sure they'll get back to fighting soon enough- they always have in the past.
The process has been started and we will finish it. Iraq as a free, democratic, self-elected, modern Arab nation will be a reality in the long-term and far more valuable as a foothold against the cancer of RADICAL Islam that plagues our world than for whatever political cost or gain in the short term.
And which one of the three radical Islamic Groups do you suppose will be elected to power? My guess is the Taliban, the politcal arm of the Shi'ites, as they have the most votes.
Um, what?? How many troops are you talking here? 2 million? Do you have any idea of the cost? You think that GWB didn't disarm the populace because of his feelings on gun control ???
If McArthur could disarm Japan- GWB's generals could certainly have done an equal or better job disarming Iraq. But the politicians didn't even give them the chance- because they did not think of it.
It would be next to impossible to do, and wouldn't leave the iraqis with much of a warm feeling for their "liberators". Street fighting is where Americans die fastest, and they were right to stay mostly out of town.
There was NO chance that the Iraqis would have any "warm feelings" for their "liberators"- because we aren't liberators, we're an invading army. High time we started acting like one.
Besides, the *whole* strategy of the invasion was to get into Bagdad is quickly as possible, much like the wildly-successful island hopping campaign of the Pacific during WWII. And again, the invasion was wildly succesfull. The problem comes in at post-war planning, and the much touted "exit-strategy". Did GWB screw the pooch on that on? Yep. Would've Kerry or any other Dem done differently? I don't think so. It's just talk.
During the island hopping campaign, we made DAMNED sure we didn't leave behind insurgents to attack us, either with carpet bombing or with massive invasion forces overwhelming each and every island. Our failures were few- there were a few, and some of them didn't come out of hiding until the 1960s- but we certainly didn't leave behind millions of people to attack us either.
You say this as a good thing. A draft? Are you serious?
Actually, I personally thought it should have been done within a week of 9-11 when patriotic fever was still high. We could have had a mobilization that would have ended the economic recession, given us more than enough troops to conduct the War on Terror on several fronts, and also given us the troop strength to (gasp) protect the Homeland better than the Bush Administration is doing now (say, by adding a million or so uniformed MPs to the shipyards to help search the 1.2 million shipping containers crossing our border each day, or actually securing the Arizona border so that the Mexican Army can't run drugs and terrorists into Tuscon anymore).
Are you a cloaked republican?
No, just a disillusioned one who re-registered as a Democrat briefly, and then after finding out that the Democrats were just as corrupt, re-registered Technocrat. I voted for Kerry because I'm in a swing state that uses mail in voting only, and my wife was going to the library anyway and I didn't want to waste a stamp.
You must be dreaming if you think kucinich would've considered a draft.
I said that KERRY would have considered the draft, not Kucinich- Kucinich would have followed Augustine's City of God and never bothered to involve a third country in the War on Terror to begin with (or even a second one).
Give me a break. I lot of Democrats voted *for* the war after seeing the same intellegence as the president. You can't confirm every detail. You are living in a dream world if you think that any of this would've happened. I'm not a Republican, I'm not voting for Bush, but you're scenario is utterly inconcievable and pure conjecture.
As is any scenario the Bushites come up with saying that Kerry would pull out a week after taking office, so what?
+4 insighful?!? You want more friendly fire incidents??? Troll.
That bit is just realistic- even Kerry's currently scaled back version of adding 40,000 more troops to Iraq (which can be accomplished without a draft) WILL result in more friendly fire incidents- whether we like it or not, adding more people will increade the number of accidents involving those people alone.
What does American Freedom have to do with the rights of an occupied ENEMY population? Did McArthur let the Japanese keep their guns and swords? NO- he disarmed them. Why should the Iraqis be allowed to keep their weapons?
Jesus H. Christ. We have about 300,000+ reservists we haven't called up yet, not to mention all the regular troops sitting on their ass in Germany and eastern europe.
We could triple the number of troops in Iraq and still not need a fucking draft.
Estimates I've seen say that if we were to do the invasion over, properly, according to the estimates that the Joint Chiefs gave Bush in January 2003, we would need more than FOUR times the current number of troops in Iraq, which is only 160,000. As in 740,000 men- far more than every reservist we have. And the troops in Germany and Eastern Europe long ago went to a skeleton force- that's where we got the troops we sent to Afghanistan, remember?
The Drudge Report isn't worth the bandwidth it takes to download it- and what I said comes from Kerry's website, not Drudge's load of unchecked rumors from Republicans. The fact that you believe what Drudge is willing to link to and post, shows why you can't understand that 70% taxes would save your children from foreign bondage.
Alright smart guy, you come up with a plan to disarm the people.
Let's start with something VERY simple- and move on from there. Have enough troops to search every building in the country- I've seen estimates around 740,000 troops needed for this- BEFORE you invade. As you go, if you find a weapon, TAKE IT, or DESTROY IT- don't leave it around for some insurgency a month or six months later to use!
disagree with a lot of things about this war, and I think it could have been planned better. But you are welcome to come over here and disarm the people so they can be killed by the bad guys who still have weapons. AK-47s do not represent a significant threat to our forces!
Tell that to the 200 or so out of the 1000 dead who were shot by AK-47s.
It is far more valuable to have lightly armed civilians capable of defending their homes and neighborhoods from the bad guys(TM) (which they are starting to do now) than it would be to have spent months or years trying to disarm the entire population!
That's the big mistake Bush has made- there ain't no such thing as civilians in Iraq. Only various factions of verious fanatical terrorist groups. Saddam knew this- heck, he actually warned that if we took him out of power the whole thing would degrade into civil war. And gee- that's exactly what is happening. Do a job right the first time, and you don't have to do it twice. Do a job wrong, and in this case you'll have more casualties the second time you take Fallujah- and the third- and the fourth- and the fifth- and the sixth- until you wisen up and DISARM THE POPULACE.
Who cares whether the GOVERNMENT had enough revenue? Or whether investors had enough revenue? The purpose of bothering with having a stable money supply and economy to begin with is so that the PEOPLE have enough revenue to live lives without government help- and that simply didn't happen very well at any time in the last 40 years, let alone during the Clinton Administration. In fact, it hasn't really happened since Ronald Reagan, President of the Screen Actors Guild, talked Congress into reducing the top tax rate from 95% to 75% during the Eisenhower Administration. Everything since then has been bad news for the middle class and good news for select groups of friends of the party in charge (whichever party that happened to be).
A flip-flopper is someone who can't make up their mind where they stand on an issue. This week it's good one way, the next week it's good another way. Not the sort of behaviour you want from a President when the country is a war, no matter if you think the war is legal/justified or not.
Changing plans based on new evidence is EXACTLY the kind of behavior I'd want from a President during wartime. It's the other type that would have you still figuratively rooting for the Astros to win the World Series after the Red Sox took it home.
Uh- Kerry always said he would have gone to war too, that's why I voted for Kucinich in the primary. The difference is he would have gone with more troops- even if it meant a draft- and more planning- even if it meant giving the inspectors a few more weeks- and better intelligence- even if it meant confirming every detail- and probably would have actually *bothered* to guard or destroy munitions depots as we went. Plus, as a Democrat, he wouldn't have given in to the Iraqi NRA- he would have disarmed civilians as we invaded as well (how stupid do you have to be to invade a country, destroy it's entire civil government, and NOT disarm the people?). I think all of that would have ended up with fewer battle casualties- and more friendly fire incidents.
.... and because he happened to be president during the longest largest boom in human history.
Sure- if you count the DOW hitting 10,000 while the soup kitchens get overcrowded as a BOOM. I consider it to be more of a bust myself- and the harbinger of the process to turn the United States into the third world bananna republic it is today.
Found this. He uses a slightly different definition than I would (he includes non-citizens and even really old people in his definition of labor), but his numbers are better than mine- His LUCY is running in the low 70s right now.
Next thing you know your going to say parents shouldn't get excited about having a baby because millions of people have them every day, its just another lifeform in the world nothing else.
I'm a father and it's worse than that- a baby is just a screaming meatloaf until it can crawl on it's own and do cute things like kissing on command.
I'd really appreciate that. One thing I seem to hear a lot is the small businesses tend to be underrepresented in employment estimates. It's getting ridiculous when one party says the economy's good, and their Kool-Aid drinkers believe it fully, and the other party says the economy's bad and _their_ Kool-Aid drinkers believe THAT fully.
Small businesses are underrepresented in Labor Bureau statistics in three major ways, one of which is good for the strong economy side, the other two of which support the bad economy side: 1. Small business owners are not covered by unemployment insurance in all 48 states in the union, and therefore do not show up as a part of the labor force. 2. Small business owners are really often just single individuals working on independant contracts for other businesses- and as such are doing a job while not being counted as an employee. 3. Small business owners usually have no health insurance coverage or other benefits, yet have to pay double their own standard taxes.
Thus, as a rule, small business owners would be in the "underemployment" category, counting the same on the labor utilization scale as a part-time employee, yet usually working four times as many hours for equal reward.
After the election- when I have more time, I'll turn it into a Journal Entry (because I'm absolutely sure that a Kerry Presidency, should it happen, will not reverse this before then). Labor utilization is a very complex topic- but you should be aware up front that just because somebody's labor is under-utilized does NOT mean, in our economy, that they're not making money. In fact, some of the most idle people in our economy make the MOST money- those people living entirely off investments.
Slashdot Mirror
Have you tried to re-read yourself become clicking "submit"?
Yes- and I happen to stand by what I wrote.
In one sentence you summarized your level of idiocy, ignorance and mental sickness. Mod me troll or flamebait, blast my karma, but I am sorry, I cannot read such a misguided statement without reacting. That is because of people like you who are blindlessly and blissfully ignorant that things like the Iraq war happen in the first place.
And I'd say it's your total ignorance of Radical Islamic teaching that is the cause.
Do you really think that a mother of four with her children are all terrorists? I don't.
The mother may not be- but the kids growing up in a fatherless home where the father was killed by coalition forces most certainly ARE POTENTIAL TERRORISTS that will attack the United States one day. Ignorance of the meaning of family in Middle Eastern cultures won't stop those kids from one day strapping on bombs to take out an American Tourist Bus. The fact that you don't understand this is proof of just how insular your thinking is.
This is just plain sick reasoning.
From the culture you were raised in, yes. The whole concept of the reasoning behind terrorism is sick to you, because YOU ARE NOT A TERRORIST. It would be worrying if you had any other reaction. I, on the other hand, have contemplated becoming a terrorist. Have contemplated what might make me act that way. Have even gone so far at times to stockpile the weaponry needed. I understand where the Shi'ites, Sunnis, and Kurds are coming from- I understand because my own Cherokee, Nes Pierce, and Kwakiutal ancestors were faced with the same problem of a foreign group imposing their genocidal behavior and laws and language on us. You are not in that position. Thank God that your ancestors were never in that position. But don't denegrate the desparation of those who are- or you will one day find your own relatives targets of the hatred.
Troll.
,*You* believe that:
If you had been reading me all along on this topic, you would already know that I support either one of two exit strategies for the War On Terror- genocide or surrender. Guess which one I support more. I'll give you a hint- it's easier to redesign an economic system than to create a new religious/moral system.
Ok so let me clear this up.
Good luck- better men than you have tried to pin me down and failed miserably.
In your fscked up, racist dream world
Make that in my totally passionless realism world based on past behavior of the peoples involved.
Every person in Iraq is a potential terrorist.
I'll modify that slightly for you- Every person in the middle east who subscribes to Nation of Islam theology or Zionist Jewish theology (you know, the two that say the only way to build a just world is under a theocracy) of any tribe or sect is a potential terrorist under the current definition of the term.
If all Iraqis don't voluntarily give up their wepons, they should be shot
This is the definition of being the losing population under a foreign occupation under every successfull ocupation I've ever seen or read about.
Problematic spots should be nuked
This is separate from the current discussion- but as a rule turning a problematic region into radioactive glass serves as a warning for future generations not to mimic the same behavior. But it doesn't take nukes to do it- General Titus in 70 AD stopped Zionist rebellion in the region for 1600 years using nothing but bronze swords, ploughs, and salt. Of course, he killed somewhere around 50,000 Jews to accomplish this task- but hey, he was hampered by his tools.
To cover for a shoulder-to-shoulder weapons sweep of the entire country a draft should be instantiated.
If we're going to invade at all- there's always the other option in a war against terrorists, isolationism and armed surrender. That's Kucinich's method and is far preferable to the other alternative- but like you say, Bush and Kerry have chosen the other alternative (or chosen to lose, I'm not sure which yet).
You'd rather have thousands more dead Americans than have even small groups of armed insurgents.
Those who choose safety over liberty are deserving of neither.
You believe it is possible to obtain *every* wepon in the hands of people in the *entire* country of Iraq
It's possible to do *anything* you put your mind to doing if you are resolute enough. Isn't that what Bush has been trying to tell us?
You can't reliably bury wepons (um, put them in a crate dumbass)
You *really* don't know very much about firearms, do you? Or about the climate of Iraq?
Any house you can't search fully should be razed to the ground.
Military Strategy 101: NEVER leave behind a building that you're not going to use yourself, no matter how harmless it looks. Any 14-year-old playing Starcraft can learn that- why can't Mr. Bush?
You believe that 1.5 million of armed MPs should gaurd our coastlines at the same time, hell let's draft the entire able bodied population
Just like we did during WWII. Better yet- if we draft the entire able bodied population, and put them to work REDUCING OUR ENERGY USAGE and CREATING NEW ENERGY SOURCES, we might just get by with ONLY guarding our borders. But only if we're willing to truly close them off to anybody who would invade here.
So then after you raise the armed forces number to like 3 million
Nah, let's get it up to 100 million.
and therby having to switch to a wartime economy, the economy will get better.
In the past, wartime economies have *always* been better- our economy profited from the Civil War, from the Spainish American War, from WWI, from WWII, from Korea, from Vietnam, and from the first Gulf W
Works- from a Libertarian point of view. Also from a Democrat point of view- "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country"- John F. Kennedy.
This is your President (show Bush I). This is your President's Son after 40 years of booze, cocaine, and politics. (Show Bush II). Any Questions?
Christians fought and killed eachother and other religions in the past as well. And still do today, but not nearly as much.
There does come a time for religions to mellow out- it seems to come around the two to three millenia mark. Islam won't be there for another 400-600 years yet.
So what is to say it is not the time for Islam to recognize the need for peace and the chance to start something here?
Age for one. It's not time yet for that religion to mellow. Mellowing takes a sense of history- and Islam is still very much in the early reformation stage, not nearly ready to look at itself critically yet.
And most of the people here have more electricity and more water than a year ago!
And, apparently, not nearly as much as they had when Saddam was in power.
Many have more electricity than before the war. It is more equitably distributed now than it was then, so some Iraqis have less.
And you don't think that the ones who have less aren't going to be pissed off about it?
If they'd stop trying to destroy their own infrastructure, there would be a lot more progress.
And gee- who gave them the weaponry and explosives to do that, do you think?
If Sunni and Shi'a are radical Islam, then what isn't radical Islam?
Islam is in the middle of their reformation period- the only non-radical Islamist is a Moslem Agnostic, also known as a Sufi. But they don't exist in Iraq.
Yes there are radical Sunni, radical Shi'a, just as there are radicals in every other religion. The entire sect is not radical.
Yep- tell that to the guy who gets beat up for not answering the prayer bell. Or try to tell the Shi'ite who lost family members to Saddam's Sunni gas attacks that the Sunnis aren't radical. Try to tell the Sunni who is deathly afraid of retaliation that the Shi'ite isn't radical. Try to tell the Kurds that the Sunis and the Shi'ites won't invade the north the second coalition troops leave. The hatred goes a lot deeper than you imagine.
The government here has been drafted carefully to try to prevent any one group from being in complete power,
Currently, yes- but it wouldn't be democracy without the possibility of that changing very quickly.
but ultimately the shape of Iraq's government is in the hands of its soon to be elected government.
Which will be what, exactly?
It wasn't great for the Textile Workers- NAFTA laid them off by the tens of thousands. Wasn't great for most manufacturing actually. And while the poverty rate did go down- it bounced right back up after 1998 and the begining of the dot bomb crash. The Clinton years were the the tail end of the manufacturing phase of the American Worker Replacement Program- and with the H-1b bill, pushed through Congress late at night in early October 2000 and signed into law by Clinton, the Knowledge Worker Phase began (and was acellerated under W until I personally began to wonder if we'd have any middle class left by now).
Like that is conceivable with 3/4 mil troops. Right. See the americans coming? Just move to a place they've already searched before.
How do you get the weapons across the solid line of troops to the places that they've already searched? Come on man- think logically.
Bury wepons. Hide them in walls and under subfloors.
Yep, bury your gun in the sand, so that when you dig it up again it explodes in your face. Hide them in walls and subfloors, so that when the Americans raise the building they can be buried in the rubble.
How do you garuntee that the populace has been disarmed??
By killing those who aren't, and by blowing up weapons caches as you go. Sure, it takes longer- but at least you've done the job (unlike the current administration, which hasn't).
What happens to people that don't want to give up their guns?
They end up in the mass graves of terrorists that you're going to create anyway.
You think this would *lessen* the civilian casualties in Iraq?
Like I said before, there are no civilians in Iraq- only future terrorists.
You're like what, 12?
33- and apparently more grown up than a President who spent half his life drunk and high.
Bullshit. Not every Iraqi wants to take up arms.
Then why are there still Kurds, Sunnis and Shi'ites in the country? All of those groups have taken up arms against one another in the past, and will do so again.
What a rediculous stereotype. They want what Americans with guns want. To defend their families.
The best way to do that would be to give up old tribal rivalries.
Given the current state of Iraq is that a too much to give them?
Apparently, YES. Considering the way they've misused the right repeatedly over the last 5000 years or so.
Would you also have America disarmed?
Iraqis aren't Americans and never will be. You're deluding yourself if you think 5000 years worth of tribal rivalries will disappear merely because we force them to sign a Constitution.
I suggest you Mike Moore's first flick. The root of the problem isn't guns.
Agreed- the root of the problem isn't guns. It's a bunch of people who have been bred over the past 5000 years to hate the other 2/3rds of their own country. Giving them guns just adds to the problem.
With 740000 troops you think there would be *less* than the current number of American dead?
Not likely- but there wouldn't still be an insurgency either.
After systematically disarming an unwilling populace. Right. If you try and do that you lose all of you allies, and *then* you are an occupying force.
We're an occupying force no matter what- the second we crossed the border from Kuwait we were an occupying force. Denying it doesn't make the problem any easier.
The moderate iraqis now fight *you*.
They already are- haven't you seen the news lately?
Disarm the populace?
Yep- easiest way to end the problem.
Look how well it worked for the Russians in Afganistan.
It wasn't even TRIED by the Russians in Afghanistan- who never controled more than 1% of the country anyway.
How many Russians died? You seriously think blindly sending in more troops is an unequivolenty good idea?
Actually, I seriously think that sending NUKES in is a unequivolently good idea. But this President and the next are not likely to do it.
Unlike Heinlein, I'm not a Randroid. But I must admit- I've always liked this quote; as well as the whole concept of exiling criminals internally.
So where were we going to get those 740,000 troops?
Within the first two weeks after 9-11, when everybody was comparing the attack on the WTC to Pearl Harbor, we had the opportunity to increase our Armed Forces and to mobilize our nation in EXACTLY the same way that FDR did during WWII- with all production retooled to war material, and all excess labor soaked up to either production of stuff necessary for the national defense or the army. Bush WASTED that opportunity- and did the second of many actions that have since disillusioned me on the entire American Political System.
I know damn well how many of our people have been killed by small arms fire. And it'll be a lot better when the civilians, of which there are a lot, take charge of more of their own safety and security.
And when will that be, do you imagine? The Kurds, Sunnis, and Shi'ites have been fighting for control of Iraq off and on for about 5,000 years now. What makes you think that they'll stop now?
All the people here have their own self-interests, but MOST of them are not fighting.
Most of them are still looking for the electricity and water we promised them a year ago. But given their history, I'm sure they'll get back to fighting soon enough- they always have in the past.
The process has been started and we will finish it. Iraq as a free, democratic, self-elected, modern Arab nation will be a reality in the long-term and far more valuable as a foothold against the cancer of RADICAL Islam that plagues our world than for whatever political cost or gain in the short term.
And which one of the three radical Islamic Groups do you suppose will be elected to power? My guess is the Taliban, the politcal arm of the Shi'ites, as they have the most votes.
Um, what?? How many troops are you talking here? 2 million? Do you have any idea of the cost? You think that GWB didn't disarm the populace because of his feelings on gun control ???
If McArthur could disarm Japan- GWB's generals could certainly have done an equal or better job disarming Iraq. But the politicians didn't even give them the chance- because they did not think of it.
It would be next to impossible to do, and wouldn't leave the iraqis with much of a warm feeling for their "liberators". Street fighting is where Americans die fastest, and they were right to stay mostly out of town.
There was NO chance that the Iraqis would have any "warm feelings" for their "liberators"- because we aren't liberators, we're an invading army. High time we started acting like one.
Besides, the *whole* strategy of the invasion was to get into Bagdad is quickly as possible, much like the wildly-successful island hopping campaign of the Pacific during WWII. And again, the invasion was wildly succesfull. The problem comes in at post-war planning, and the much touted "exit-strategy". Did GWB screw the pooch on that on? Yep. Would've Kerry or any other Dem done differently? I don't think so. It's just talk.
During the island hopping campaign, we made DAMNED sure we didn't leave behind insurgents to attack us, either with carpet bombing or with massive invasion forces overwhelming each and every island. Our failures were few- there were a few, and some of them didn't come out of hiding until the 1960s- but we certainly didn't leave behind millions of people to attack us either.
You say this as a good thing. A draft? Are you serious?
Actually, I personally thought it should have been done within a week of 9-11 when patriotic fever was still high. We could have had a mobilization that would have ended the economic recession, given us more than enough troops to conduct the War on Terror on several fronts, and also given us the troop strength to (gasp) protect the Homeland better than the Bush Administration is doing now (say, by adding a million or so uniformed MPs to the shipyards to help search the 1.2 million shipping containers crossing our border each day, or actually securing the Arizona border so that the Mexican Army can't run drugs and terrorists into Tuscon anymore).
Are you a cloaked republican?
No, just a disillusioned one who re-registered as a Democrat briefly, and then after finding out that the Democrats were just as corrupt, re-registered Technocrat. I voted for Kerry because I'm in a swing state that uses mail in voting only, and my wife was going to the library anyway and I didn't want to waste a stamp.
You must be dreaming if you think kucinich would've considered a draft.
I said that KERRY would have considered the draft, not Kucinich- Kucinich would have followed Augustine's City of God and never bothered to involve a third country in the War on Terror to begin with (or even a second one).
Give me a break. I lot of Democrats voted *for* the war after seeing the same intellegence as the president. You can't confirm every detail. You are living in a dream world if you think that any of this would've happened. I'm not a Republican, I'm not voting for Bush, but you're scenario is utterly inconcievable and pure conjecture.
As is any scenario the Bushites come up with saying that Kerry would pull out a week after taking office, so what?
+4 insighful?!? You want more friendly fire incidents??? Troll.
That bit is just realistic- even Kerry's currently scaled back version of adding 40,000 more troops to Iraq (which can be accomplished without a draft) WILL result in more friendly fire incidents- whether we like it or not, adding more people will increade the number of accidents involving those people alone.
What does American Freedom have to do with the rights of an occupied ENEMY population? Did McArthur let the Japanese keep their guns and swords? NO- he disarmed them. Why should the Iraqis be allowed to keep their weapons?
Jesus H. Christ. We have about 300,000+ reservists we haven't called up yet, not to mention all the regular troops sitting on their ass in Germany and eastern europe.
We could triple the number of troops in Iraq and still not need a fucking draft.
Estimates I've seen say that if we were to do the invasion over, properly, according to the estimates that the Joint Chiefs gave Bush in January 2003, we would need more than FOUR times the current number of troops in Iraq, which is only 160,000. As in 740,000 men- far more than every reservist we have. And the troops in Germany and Eastern Europe long ago went to a skeleton force- that's where we got the troops we sent to Afghanistan, remember?
There are no civilians in Fallujah, or anywhere else in the Sunni Triangle- just future suicide bombers. Might as well get 'em while they are young.
The Drudge Report isn't worth the bandwidth it takes to download it- and what I said comes from Kerry's website, not Drudge's load of unchecked rumors from Republicans. The fact that you believe what Drudge is willing to link to and post, shows why you can't understand that 70% taxes would save your children from foreign bondage.
Alright smart guy, you come up with a plan to disarm the people.
Let's start with something VERY simple- and move on from there. Have enough troops to search every building in the country- I've seen estimates around 740,000 troops needed for this- BEFORE you invade. As you go, if you find a weapon, TAKE IT, or DESTROY IT- don't leave it around for some insurgency a month or six months later to use!
disagree with a lot of things about this war, and I think it could have been planned better. But you are welcome to come over here and disarm the people so they can be killed by the bad guys who still have weapons. AK-47s do not represent a significant threat to our forces!
Tell that to the 200 or so out of the 1000 dead who were shot by AK-47s.
It is far more valuable to have lightly armed civilians capable of defending their homes and neighborhoods from the bad guys(TM) (which they are starting to do now) than it would be to have spent months or years trying to disarm the entire population!
That's the big mistake Bush has made- there ain't no such thing as civilians in Iraq. Only various factions of verious fanatical terrorist groups. Saddam knew this- heck, he actually warned that if we took him out of power the whole thing would degrade into civil war. And gee- that's exactly what is happening. Do a job right the first time, and you don't have to do it twice. Do a job wrong, and in this case you'll have more casualties the second time you take Fallujah- and the third- and the fourth- and the fifth- and the sixth- until you wisen up and DISARM THE POPULACE.
Who cares whether the GOVERNMENT had enough revenue? Or whether investors had enough revenue? The purpose of bothering with having a stable money supply and economy to begin with is so that the PEOPLE have enough revenue to live lives without government help- and that simply didn't happen very well at any time in the last 40 years, let alone during the Clinton Administration. In fact, it hasn't really happened since Ronald Reagan, President of the Screen Actors Guild, talked Congress into reducing the top tax rate from 95% to 75% during the Eisenhower Administration. Everything since then has been bad news for the middle class and good news for select groups of friends of the party in charge (whichever party that happened to be).
A flip-flopper is someone who can't make up their mind where they stand on an issue. This week it's good one way, the next week it's good another way. Not the sort of behaviour you want from a President when the country is a war, no matter if you think the war is legal/justified or not.
Changing plans based on new evidence is EXACTLY the kind of behavior I'd want from a President during wartime. It's the other type that would have you still figuratively rooting for the Astros to win the World Series after the Red Sox took it home.
Uh- Kerry always said he would have gone to war too, that's why I voted for Kucinich in the primary. The difference is he would have gone with more troops- even if it meant a draft- and more planning- even if it meant giving the inspectors a few more weeks- and better intelligence- even if it meant confirming every detail- and probably would have actually *bothered* to guard or destroy munitions depots as we went. Plus, as a Democrat, he wouldn't have given in to the Iraqi NRA- he would have disarmed civilians as we invaded as well (how stupid do you have to be to invade a country, destroy it's entire civil government, and NOT disarm the people?). I think all of that would have ended up with fewer battle casualties- and more friendly fire incidents.
.... and because he happened to be president during the longest largest boom in human history.
Sure- if you count the DOW hitting 10,000 while the soup kitchens get overcrowded as a BOOM. I consider it to be more of a bust myself- and the harbinger of the process to turn the United States into the third world bananna republic it is today.
Found this. He uses a slightly different definition than I would (he includes non-citizens and even really old people in his definition of labor), but his numbers are better than mine- His LUCY is running in the low 70s right now.
Next thing you know your going to say parents shouldn't get excited about having a baby because millions of people have them every day, its just another lifeform in the world nothing else.
I'm a father and it's worse than that- a baby is just a screaming meatloaf until it can crawl on it's own and do cute things like kissing on command.
After seeing the leaked Diebold code- I've started avoiding ATMs manufactured by that company.
For exporting Terrance and Phillip and making juvinile deliquents out of the kids of South Park, of course!
I'd really appreciate that. One thing I seem to hear a lot is the small businesses tend to be underrepresented in employment estimates. It's getting ridiculous when one party says the economy's good, and their Kool-Aid drinkers believe it fully, and the other party says the economy's bad and _their_ Kool-Aid drinkers believe THAT fully.
Small businesses are underrepresented in Labor Bureau statistics in three major ways, one of which is good for the strong economy side, the other two of which support the bad economy side:
1. Small business owners are not covered by unemployment insurance in all 48 states in the union, and therefore do not show up as a part of the labor force.
2. Small business owners are really often just single individuals working on independant contracts for other businesses- and as such are doing a job while not being counted as an employee.
3. Small business owners usually have no health insurance coverage or other benefits, yet have to pay double their own standard taxes.
Thus, as a rule, small business owners would be in the "underemployment" category, counting the same on the labor utilization scale as a part-time employee, yet usually working four times as many hours for equal reward.
After the election- when I have more time, I'll turn it into a Journal Entry (because I'm absolutely sure that a Kerry Presidency, should it happen, will not reverse this before then). Labor utilization is a very complex topic- but you should be aware up front that just because somebody's labor is under-utilized does NOT mean, in our economy, that they're not making money. In fact, some of the most idle people in our economy make the MOST money- those people living entirely off investments.