Politics – For most Americans, the Iraq war is both distant and never ending. For Private Matthew Zeimer, it was neither.
Not a member? Sign-up today!
maneetion
mrrmr160
elliotthicks1965
peter.andreson4
ewomugi
oqasuzi
adojuxi
dexlovex2
stwor
camions
uncogito
Donnaich
popbob
trnscndr
Radiofreeeuropa
Joydelta
cohenvega
Chiyonofuji
JustCallMeV
Obtruder
lenseview
TheVisionary
ETproductions
kwilco
wolt76
cinattra
Slardibartfast
GloryB
wonkydonkey
fudgie
rebner
Macas
Havasu1
Fabienne
chinstahova
JohnQPublic
gamahuche
ThePro1
PsychoHosebeast
cyclo
hellobigworld
A.W.
djapollo2k
Prismoon
fmnews
CatholicRedneck
Green84
daniukid
sudosu
cole122386
354)
This situation is deplorable !! Where did the billions and billions and billions of taxpayer's money go ?? Certainly not to our troops !! The $$ has gone and will go to line the pockets of Halliburton (Cheney), private industry/companies with no bid contracts with US and "payoffs" to Iraqi leaders we use as puppets !! AND BUSH WANTS MORE $$$$ !! STOP THIS INSANITY NOW !! Support our troops and bring them home !! Congress should cut off the funds forcing them home....things in Iraq will never change despite $$ and the blood of our children/spouses !!
We have a problem so let's retreat and surrender. Nice plan.
The problem is Bush...after 4 years, billions and blood it isn't going to get better !!
But the surge along with the change in tactics is having a positive effect. Take a look at this piece from ABC News "In Parts of Baghdad Surge is Working"
http://news.netscape.com/story/2007/04/04/in-pa...
Cutting the deal with regional leaders that allows them to make independent oil deals with petroleum companies to develop their oil fields is what is working...not our troop surge. Bush essentially picked sides and sold out the Sunnis who have no oil. Shiites now have a reason to join the Iraqi army and kill "insurgents"...i.e. Sunnis. It's a form of sanctioned genocide and suppression. In response to our picking sides, the King of Saudi Arabia came out within the past 10 days and called our occupation of Iraq "illigitimate". Our military presence has been irrelevant. Giving the Shiites a green light to supress the Sunnis and cut their own independent oil deals has set the political stage and motivation such that thre are now clear good guys and clear bad guys. All we did to create the 'favorable' outcomes was to pick one side and sell the other side out so a new political equilibrium can be reached. Go study low intensity conflicts and social psychology.
bravo, do u have a link that tells whats going on with the oil splitting laws? im curious as to how the kurds and sunnis were treated
also why wouldnt it be good to ask for oil money for the american peops at least until the cost of rebuilding and security r paid...which honestly we know is gonna last decades(if ww3 doesnt end things first)
is it unrealistic to name the real objectives? which i see as guarding the canal and the oil feilds
lastly, i think its the saudis and the iranians that we need to get talking since they seem to be 2 major influences to the opposing sides in bagdad
The article on the changes in oil revenue laws was only in the press for one day...I'm not sure how to find it again.
I think we should name the real objectives: 1) protect the Suez Canal and secure the Red Sea trade route. 2) Ensure our competitiveness in the global economy by controlling the oil. This either, or both, gives us access to cheap energy; or, raises the cost of energy to our competitors.
The President of Iran said a couple months ago that the US and Iran are natural allies. Whoever is pulling his strings is 10 times smarter than Bush and has been a step ahead of all of us.
ty 4 ur response,i agree about the objectives and i think being honest about them and getting out of the cities would help make this occupation easier for the average american to take
i noticed u didnt comment on amercians getting part of that oil money to cover the cost of the security or rebuilding and while i think it would be wrong to go to war for money,we r there so i see no reason that the usa should be banqrupted to provide security for the wells,canal...also maybe and this is just a thought,if we had the money,fighting "contractors" (that r already being used) could possibly replace the guard troops and the ovr extended us army peops
i know these r outta the box ideas but i think we have to start looking outta the box because what we r doing is tearing america apart,a part of me thinks lots of this could be fixed with money but it has to be money in the right hands and i dont trust exxon or bp to do the fixing
I don't see any problem with our taking some of the profits on the oil or being the ones to develop the fields. The problem is that we've been so incompetent and have consequently caused so much damage that politically it's going to be hard to take any of the profits. I expect the Iraqis will cut deals with someone other than us to develop the fields. Once the deals are cut they will be able to finance their own defense forces without using contractors or us.
The only good news is that Iran clearly wants to do business with us. They just need a plausible story that allows them to do that. Right now, they are more clear on what they are doing than we are.
the prob with them financing their own defense tho is the sunnis get genocided,i agree that everything has been bungled to this point but with the right person talking i think things could still be worked out but NO politician is willing to stand up and say,hey money is big part of the prob for americans,lets look at getting the american treasury repaid
I agree, I'm just skeptical that we have enough clout remaining to achieve the goal you describe. We've lost so much of the initiative.
We already took the profits. Then we stacked the cash on pallets and sent it to incompetent contractors in cargo planes.
that was actually iraqi money that had been seized before the war in sanctions but u r correct that it was given back in the a foolish manner
Right, Iraqi money. Down payment, profits, what's the difference?
Yes but we the taxpayers had to replace the lost Iraqi money with our own money. We didn't just loose their money and say Sorry our bad". The Iraqi Government got the money at the expense of the U.S. taxpayers.
i never heard that. do you have any source for that?
its my understanding that the official story of that money was that it was 'lost.' it was just irresponsibly distributed with no receipt or record. i don't know that any of it was reimbursed.
but i don't know that it wasn't either, i guess.
i dont have a link but i saw the investigation on c span
the way i understood it ,it was iraqi money but when the US went to turn it ovr to them, the US official in charge loaded pallets of cash on a plane and peops were handing it out to like newly elected iraqi officials,and that was the point,no accounting of all that cash...
i forgot a 'not' up there... i thought the official story was NOT that it was 'lost.'
-sorry
Even the lowest private in the army is forced to pay for equipment that he loses. Lately even the wounded have been charged for equipment shot off of them in combat or removed by medics. If that's fair why don't those responsible have to pay back the money they can't accout for?
This forcing the men to buy their own gear and pay to replace it when deployed was severely frowned upon when I was in. It forces the soldier to focus on something other than killing the enemy. Making sure soldiers didn't walk off and leave a rifle because they were so tired and were essentially sleep walking, or making sure they didn't drop gear because they were tired of carrying the weight was the squad leader's job. He got to make the call whether the soldier was culpable and had to replace the gear or whether it was a legitimate loss in battle.
Think how brilliant taking the 15 British military personnel was. 1. They took them with ease. 2. They got 'confessions' without months of 'torture' in secret prisons. 3. They created a situation that they knew would lead to direct talks with the British. Not only direct talks but talks they intended to be successful. Talk about setting up a favorable setting for future diplomacy... 4. They took the moral high ground by releasing the Brits soon after showing they could have "put them on trial".
In short they've created a favorable diplomatic resolution and have mocked the US practice of extraordinary rendition and torture in secret prisons in front of the world (especially the Muslim world).
I thought our side was supposed to be that smart.
again i agree with u,not only did the iranians come out looking like they had the moral high ground but they also r gonna get access to the 5 iranians the us has been holding(i hope we come out looking half as good when their imprisonment is examined)
THe difference is Iran was demonstrating "diplomacy" to some extent and showcasing to the world audience. When Bush acts its in response to an event and he has to take action that his "faithful" can see as standing up to the "bad" guys. Working behind the stage is NOT something Bushies relate to, it has to be a bar room brawl
This is what we get for letting a C-student legacy/social promotion run the country.
"also why wouldnt it be good to ask for oil money for the american peops at least until the cost of rebuilding and security r paid..."
So, after we bomb the crap out of their major cities, kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens, destroy their infrastructure, decimate their economy, we present them with a bill for services rendered?
well the oil story split i saw was 25 iraqis and 75 oil comps,im not saying take part of the iraquis money but what about the oil money>? if in fact 1000s of iraquis will be slaughtered when we leave,why does it have to banqrupt america to protect em>?
i would nevr have gone to war with iraq but we r there now and we have changed the situation,i trust congress and the american peops to help iraq with their own money better than i do exxon or bp
im a realist...i dont think the neo cons r gonna give up that oil or the canal so im tryin to think of a compromise that lets america survive
But But But But BoBo kept saying it wasn;t about oil. Man were those Republicans lieing again?
A hallmark of conservatives is their inability to comprehend anything except the superficial features of a problem. Thus, Bush talks tough, waves the flag, kisses babies and uses the word "patriotism" but can't plan his way out of a paper bag, let alone efficiently plan and supervise to completion a project like Iraq.
focusing on something so trivial as a misspelled word is trivial to the point of seeming stupid. Another hallmark of neo-conservatives is that when faced with issues requiring deep reflection they do things like insult and name call rather than focus on the issues. Thus, Bush's fallback position is always to call people who disagree with him "unpatriotic".
"Outcome-based education strikes again! It's interesting to see illiterates pretending to be intelligent. No wonder Dunkirk is a liberal. lol"
Where's the insults and/or name calling?
He called him illiterate. After reading his WRITTEN post. It's not only an insult, its an ironically inappropriate insult.
Then he equated being a liberal with being illiterate, simultaneously insulting an entire group of people AND insinuating that those who disagree with him MUST be a liberal and inherently bad.
ROFLMAO, nothing like the Republicans continuing to prove that they cant see the forest since they spend so much time looking at the trees. I guess YOU didnt learn much from last Nov elections.
shame on America
in parts of baghdad surge is working?
which means in other parts of baghdad the surge isn't working?
the insurgency is just laying low until the heat dies down. anyone with half a brain knows this.
and outside baghdad violence has doubled. the worst bombing since the war began took place last week.
face it people, bush is a total and complete failure.
Not that I don't think that Bush is "a total and complete failure," but you can't pounce upon negative results (like the recent massive bombing) then dismiss positive results (as the insurgency waiting it out.) that's not fair. I think things are going poorly enough over there, that when good news does come out of it, like regional down turns in violence, we should at the very least applaud the news for what its worth. Because what a down turn in violence (for whatever reason) might be worth, is quite a few human lives.
Appreciate your desire to steer something of a middle course between the posters who seem to get their rocks off by abusing each other. Alas, what you say would be more to the point if there really had been a a regional downturn of violence. Its clear that the insurrection has simply moved a few kilometers away and continues unabated. Check the casualty figures! Someone has already quoted them.
After reading the Time article carefully I would be willing to bet a very large sum of money that the US will suffer such acute war-fatigue in the very near future that they will grasp any face-saving excuse to high-tail it out of there as fast as they can run.
The whole project was a non-starter from the beginning and most people knew it. Saddam's dead and that black farce is about the only tangible "achievement" to date.
personally i am unaware of any down turn in violence in any region. that doesnt mean its not there... i was simply speaking on principle.
The surge is only working to stall the inevitable. The stalling to allow this scoundrel administration pass off this war to the next President so that they can take the blame for the blunder.
Well thats silly. No one else is going to take the blame for this blunder. He can't pass it on Tenet any more. Any time people bring up the belief that Iraq had WMD, some talking head points out that Clinton thought they too, trying to pass the invasion off on him... but no one has bought it. and noe one will. Bush is forever tied to this massive failure of humanity, policy, diplomacy, and logic.
but as far as stalling the inevitable. sometimes when you put something off long enough, the inevitable changes. not always, or even usually, but when there are no positive choices left, it is a credible belief that waiting and stalling in the hopes that the status quo changes and an amiable solution arises, is not a bad idea.
its been our policy with Israel/Palestine since Carter.
And Israel/Palestine is a good model of what??
its a good example of averting an all out war through a cold war. The U.S. Russian Cold War is a GREAT example. rather than do something militarily about the cold war we waited it ut until there was another option... crush them economically and turn their own people against them.
This is only in hind sight. during the 50,60, 70 etc common thought that a direct conflict(NATO)against USSR would have no winner.This is not the case today,no military force can go toe to toe w/U.S.A. Let alone NATO
i realize the thread is dead... but hind site or not. it was the right thing to do. it doesnt discount the legitimacy of the tactic.
People in general are silly. And by the way, there are people that to this day blame Carter and Clinton for all the woes our country has experienced for the last 30 years. I do agree that your theory is plausible as well. but we do agree that the tactic is the same, "Stalling". A hail mary effort at your own 20 yard line with 3 seconds to go in the game. Most coaches like to call a lot of timeouts at this point of a game to try to stall the inevitable.
yeah we agree. but theres no use ending the game in a loss if you still have time outs left. to use your sports anology. though i do understand that there are human costs to simply being there at all...
It's called "whack-a-mole". Parts get better because the insurgents go wherever we just left.
lol.
All the surge has accomplished is to move the violence out of Baghdad and into the outlying areas.
3 years ago we were losing troops at a rate of some 40 deaths per month! Today that number has doubled to more than 80 yet you contend that the surge is working! 3 years ago Iraqi civilian deaths numbered some 1500 a month - today that number has better than tripled yet you continue to insist that the surge is working!
What a fool you are!
Bobo,
Sorry, you don't understand war and its twists and turns. If you have been in a war that lasts for over 3 years especially when ethnic tension is involved, you can tell me that the surge is working. It will never work period. No outsider can solve an ethnic problem by putting his army in the mist. Tell me in your own words what your final objective is in Iraq - freedom and democracy? You have failed woefully!!!!!!!!!!!!