Not to be a “meany-meany name caller”, but it now appears there is some question regarding the veracity of the “rampaging Shia militia” story that many on the left—including some of our delightfully doctrinaire commenters here (see, for example, this comment by john, who can barely contain his glee at the prospect of a good ethnic burning)—would very much like to be true. Because if incidents like these are true, you see, our anti-war friends can then rend their garments and pretend they care for the well-being of anyone or anything other than vindication for their own failed ideology, which, from what I can see, tends to mutate depending upon what their political opponents are up to.
I mean, anybody here think either actus or monkyboy were GHW Bush supporters? Or that they were fans of Kissingerian realism? Realpolitik?
Yeah, I thought not. But to be generous, we’ll call this tendency of theirs “opportunistic” rather than, say, craven.
Anyway, Curt from flopping aces has more on the torching of women and children here.
john, bless his defeatist heart, didn’t provide links when he cited the earlier AP account—which as I pointed out in the original thread prevented any of us from making an informed critical assessment. Wonder if that was intentional…
Anyway, here’s a bit from a follow-up AP report:
The U.S. military said Saturday that Iraqi soldiers securing the Hurriyah area had found only one burned mosque and could not confirm reports that six Sunni civilians had been burned to death with kerosene.
Yes, but how can we believe the dullard killbots of the neocon empire?
Well, that’s a choice you’ll have to make for yourselves, but should you wish to, you might factor in the following information dug up by Curt:
Doing a search via Google I began reading the stories printed about the burned six and each and every one had one thing in common. The only person stating that this incident happened was one Capt. Jamil Hussein. Every news report printed this man as the source of the information.
[…]
Since this guys name is in every single story printed about the burning six I have to dig way down to get to older stories involving this guy.
This one from April:
In yesterday’s worst violence, the bodies of six handcuffed, blindfolded and tortured men were found in the Baghdad neighborhood of Dora, said police Capt. Jamil Hussein.
This one from May:
Violence resumed Saturday as a bomb in a parked car exploded near a busy bus station in southern Baghdad, killing at least four civilians and wounding seven, police Capt. Jamil Hussein said.
[…]Elsewhere, a policeman was killed and an officer wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near their convoy in Baghdad’s western district of Mansour, Razzaq said. He also said three policemen were wounded when gunmen ambushed a convoy of Interior Ministry commandos in the southern neighbourhood of al-Bayaa in the capital.
Gunmen in three speeding cars also ambushed a patrol in western Baghdad, wounding 10 people, including six policemen, and two other policemen were injured in drive-by shootings in a nearby neighbourhood, police Capt. Jamil Hussein said.
Two other policemen were injured Saturday in drive-by shootings elsewhere in western Baghdad, when gunmen in two speeding cars attacked their patrol in Amiriya neighbourhood of western Baghdad, police Capt. Jamil Hussien said.
Here is one from June:
Two explosions struck an Interior Ministry patrol and a market in the Baghdad area on Monday evening, killing at least seven people and wounding 16, police said. The first attack was a car bomb that struck an Interior Ministry patrol in western Baghdad, killing four commandos and wounding six, Capt. Jamil Hussein said. About 30 minutes later, a bomb exploded in a market in Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, killing three people and wounding 10.
Gunmen also ambushed a bus in the predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Amariyah in western Baghdad, killing six passengers, including a woman, and the driver, police Capt. Jamil Hussein said.
A suicide truck bomb slammed into a Baghdad police headquarters on Wednesday, killing seven and wounding at least double that many, in a deadly 24 hours that saw more than 45 killings in Iraq, including two American soldiers, authorities said.
The truck bomb attack in the southern Baghdad neighbourhood of Dora came at 07:45 as policemen were coming on duty and the blast razed the building, said captain Jamil Hussein. He said the number of casualties was expected to rise.
His name is mentioned quite a bit when Sunni’s are attacked it seems.
Now all I have to go on is the earlier AP report in which Iraqi and American forces say they cannot find evidence that these six were burned alive, no proof yet that the incident didn’t happen. But if it turns out that this story is a fairy tale how much more of the information given from this Capt is suspect?
[…]
Here is the […] press release from the military:
Contrary to recent media reporting that four mosques were burned in Hurriya, an Iraqi Army patrol investigating the area found only one mosque had been burned in the neighborhood.
Soldiers from the 6th Iraqi Army Division conducted a patrol in Hurriya Friday afternoon in response to media reports that four mosques were being burned as retaliation for the VBIED attacks in Sadr City on Thursday.
The Soldiers set up a checkpoint near the Al Muhaimen mosque at approximately 2 p.m. and found the mosque intact with no evidence of any fire at the location.
While investigating the Al Meshaheda mosque, the patrol received small arms fire from unknown insurgents. The patrol returned fire, and the insurgents broke contact and fled the area. A subsequent check of the mosque found the mosque intact with no evidence of a fire.
At approximately 3:50 p.m., a local civilian reported to the patrol that armed insurgents had set the Al-Nidaa mosque on fire by throwing a gas container into the mosque. The patrol pursued the insurgents but lost contact with them.
The Soldiers called the fire department and set up a cordon around the mosque. Local fire trucks responded to the scene and extinguished the fire at approximately 4:00 p.m. The mosque sustained smoke and fire damage in the entry way but was not destroyed.
An alleged attack on a fourth mosque remains unconfirmed. The patrol was also unable to confirm media reports that six Sunni civilians were allegedly dragged out of Friday prayers and burned to death. Neither Baghdad police nor Coalition forces have reports of any such incident.
So the Baghdad police had not received reports fo this burning either? Who in the hell is this Capt. Jamil Hussein then? Is he part of the Iraqi police or an insurgent stringer for the AP?
Well, Curt. He could, perhaps, be both. After all, allowing one’s ideology to color one’s behavior toward one’s own country seems to be a universal that crosses the bounds of Otherness with little or no need for cross-cultural translation.
When Coleridge wrote of the willing suspension of disbelief, it’s doubtful he had in mind those who would consistently take at face value only those stories that they found damaging to their political opponents. But he may as well have. Because no matter how many times stories such as these are painstakingly debunked—or at the very least are pressured by available facts such that they become nothing more than dubious anecdotes we are no longer surprised to find being printed as established “truth” by a media whose editorial decision-making engine seems to be running on nothing more than the lumpy fuel of partisan wishful thinking—those who oppose the war in Iraq rush to relate them as not only true (which is bad enough), but worse, as somehow indicative or symbolic of a larger failing of the US, its soldiers, its foreign policy, and anything attached to those entities, in this case, an Iraqi military trained by the US that is beginning to wear the taint of Bushco in the minds and words of anti-war critics.
What is even more disturbing is that actus, m-bot,john, et al. berate American efforts to try and install consensual government in place of a bloody-handed dictator. You know, they deride and berate ‘neo-cons’, which foreign policy is Wilsonianism. With the history of the first half of the Twentieth Century, the failure to support democracies at the expense of the fascist dictators of Europe, and now they turn on an attempt to push back the dictators and bring in democracy?
Where do their loyalties truly lie? With oppressed humanity, or with the boots (no mattter the color – red, black – makes no difference) that are pressing down on humanity?
Just that should make one pause, and wonder why should any of their objections be taken seriously.
People like actus, m-bot and the rest aren’t worth two shits. They care for nothing but themselves and are so intellectually disfigured that they undermine the very idea of what it means to be a moral human being. As Dennis Prager said, a man who doesn’t know the difference between good and evil is worth nothing.
They’re worth nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Maybe what we need, Mikey NTH, is a handy menu of selections posted in the sidebar for our trolling leftist liars to conveniently select from:
1. War is itself evil. We condemn the Iraq effort.
2. War is not evil. The neocon Pubbies are chickenhawks. Democrats are courageous and have A Plan.
3. There is no threat. Wholesale pullout = peace.
4. Although there is no threat, if there were, it’d be because the West earned it.
5. Except Europe. Europe is merely being assimilated by the Religion of Peace.
6. Europe is not being assimilated.
7. There are no nukes.
8. There are nukes, but of the non-threatening variety.
9. Bushco invented war for oil.
10. If Bushco didn’t invent this war for oil, he did it for the Religious Right. Liberal Christian values suck; any alternative philosophy does not suck, its violence, intolerance, bigotry, oppression and other failings notwithstanding.
11. Iraq bad, Afghanistan good. Or, if you prefer, Afghanistan bad, Iraq good, especially under SH, except for that part where we all agreed he was a murderous tyrant and and made completing the Iraq mission in the win column Bushco’s responsibility.
12. Either way, we all voted for it before we voted against it. We were duped into virtually unanimously approving an effort we (a) knew was bogus, (b) didn’t know was bogus, (c) knew we didn’t know if it might be bogus, and/or (d) didn’t know we knew it might not be bogus. Or not.
13. Brown people. (a) Don’t deserve democracy, (b) can’t handle democracy, (c) vote but don’t know what for, (d) deserve the full support of The Democrat Plan, (e) deserve no support with Bushco in office, at least as far as our political futures are concerned. Depending on outcomes, we’ll decide on the principle of the thing later.
14. Violence. Under Republicans, bad and our fault. Under Democrats, unavoidable and the Republican’s fault.
15. Media = conservative lackeys.
16. Media = enlightened liberalism.
17. Winning under Bush = bad.
18. Winning under [insert Democrat here] = good.
19. Miscellaneous: Nork nukes no threat/big threat depending on (a) outcome and (b) party affiliation of sitting POTUS. Repeat as needed for all other totalitarian regimes, collectives, experiments, and theories.
20. Capitalism simply blows dead weasels.
21. Tyranny did not kill an average of a million a year for the last century. Nyah, nyah, nyah. And brown people still can’t do democracy.
21. [Optional: Insert any other relativity that diverts the reality of any given reality here. Use liberally. No pun intended.]
Operation Forward Together was supposed to quell the violence in Baghdad…instead it increased.
Even the U.S. military admits that.
So it would seem that even our best efforts are wasted.
And then there’s the little matter of the $100 billion a year we’re spending on Iraq…
The last sentence of the post has 118 words!
LOL, carry on….
Actus should be forced to confront this Q and A in every post:
Q: Who the hell is killing all these Iraqis?
A: Other Iraqis; it’s who they are, it’s what they do.
6 Gun, you’re beginning to understand the Tables Moral Heraldry. With the Tables, you don’t have to think, the answer is already pre-programmed.
For instance: Two people have a fight. Who is in the right and who is in the wrong? A normal, thinking person would want to get the facts first. But with the Tables of Moral Heraldry you don’t need facts! You don’t have to think at all!
Person A brown; Person B white. = Person A is morally correct.
Both persons white, but Person A Jewish and Person B Christian? = Person A morally correct.
Both white and Person A Muslim and Person B Jewish? = Person A is morally correct.
Both persons white Christians? = The poor person is correct.
See? play these out, work out the values of who is more oppressed, plug in the identification factors (situational facts? We don’t need no situational facts!) and he Tables will provide your answer! No thinking needed! You can preen and strut with the rest of the smug intellectuals once you have your copy of the Tables of Moral Heraldry!
Order yours Today!
This Iraqi Captain doesn’t necessarily need to even be stringing for an insurgent group. It’s just as possible he’s merely guilty of relating secondhand gossip.
You know how it works: one mosque is burnt, no people killed. However, by the tim the story is retold for the 100th time 8 blocks away, it’s 4 mosques burnt and 6 people (women and children no less) killed. Pretty soon you have a Lancet study.
hmmm, monky, you’ve been posting here for a few weeks now and have yet to convince anyone that we should give up in Iraq or that China is the economic utopia you claim it is. so, uh, maybe you should give up commenting here. Think of the time you’re wasting.
it would seem your best efforts are wasted.
or cannibals in the Superdome.
Where did monkey claim China was an economic utopia? I could use the comic relief!
Try to see it the other way round, maggie.
The people who want America to stay in Iraq need to keep making their case come January…
Seth, the real comedy is in the Balloon fence.
Oh yes. But that’s not such a laughable idea. I just got a balloon fence to keep in all my balloon animals. Works like a charm.
Hehe, I would respond, but I assume the above posts will soon be deleted under the new, strict thread hijack polcy Dan is implementing…
Meany-meany name-caller!
Next, you’ll be suggesting that the LA Times refuses to report on the military’s denial of unverified stories by an anonymous stringer, or that the AP has assigned someone with a visceral hatred of Israelis to cover Israel.
And monky, you would respond if you had a response, even if it’s as laughably bizzare as the balloon fence. But it’s nice to see you admit to going completely off-topic in other threads, poo-flinger that you are. Hehe.
Just so everyone knows, only the author of a post (and Jeff, I’m sure) has the ability to alter the comments to a post. I, for instance, cannot touch anyone’s posts but my own, except to comment as everyone else does.
That applies to my threads only.
Look on the bright side, Karl.
Soon America won’t have to rely on the press for information about Iraq.
Come January, we will have a constant stream of…
Bush administration officals(past and present)
Pentagon generals and lower-ranked troops who have served in Iraq
Defense contractors
Iraqi officials
..all testifying, under oath, about what’s really been going on in Iraq (which has now exceeded America’s involvement in WWII in duration, btw).
If everyone has been telling the truth, support for the war may actually increase…
you don’t beleive them now. why will being under oath make a difference?
The only thing I expect to increase is political grandstanding and howls of “Lies! Lies! Lies!” from the left if and when the narrative told in those hearings fails to gel with the pre-determined liberal story-line of “incompetance, dishonesty, and failure”.
Or does the left have the intellectual honesty to admit that perhaps they haven’t been on the side of angels in this one?
I’m not a betting man, but I’d love to know the odds on that.
Yes I will, maggie.
As we learned during the Watergate hearings, people who face loss of income or jail time if they lie tend to be remarkably honest.
I’m particularly looking forward to finding out exactly where and to whom every penny of the $500+ billion we’ve spent on the Iraq War went…
All truth seekers should be looking forward to the upcoming Congressional hearings.
Me? I’m just looking forward to the big fucking baloons.
Monkeyman,
Why exactly are you looking so forward to seeing where the money for Iraq reconstruction has been spent?
spunkyboi’s latest trolling strategy is to adopt a bogus, vague, presumptive innocence in order to evoke a reaction. There’s still no there there; just a series of simplistic one liners designed to make folks pause, muse, and react over the sheer mendacity.
ahem gets it:
The fact that there seems to be a single source for these six deaths should totally get way more attention than the one to two hundred other deaths. Because, you know we’re totally caring idealists, unlike you harsh peddlers of reality.
Of course, lets also google away Imad Al-din al Hashemi, who appears to be a second source. Google like the wind brave warriers, there’s a home fire that needs to fanned.
You know, I don’t know if youve noticed this, but we’re not really attempting to bring in democracy. At least we’re not trying very hard at it. But if we were, I don’t think we’d like the results: an anti-israel and pro-iranian regime rich in oil wealth.
You should also wish for a pony.
Because he BELIEVES.
monkyboy BELIEVES to the core of his being that most of that money went into the pockets of eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil Corporations for the benefit of BUSHCO (spit) and Halliburton (make the sign of the Evil Eye). It therefore follows that if we get true testimony it will confirm his BELIEF—and, equally, that if it does not confirm his BELIEF it isn’t true testimony. “True”, you see, is defined as “confirming monkyboy’s beliefs and assertions.” No portion of what is laughingly known as “the real world” is required.
monkyboy BELIEVES, for instance, that the money paid to Dick Cheney by Halliburton during the first few years of his Vice Presidency was a bribe to get him to funnel government contracts their way. That’s a simple, bald-faced lie—the money represents “deferred compensation” from Cheney’s earlier employment as CEO, paid in installments for tax reasons and to avoid sudden chunks out of Halliburton’s bottom line, by contract signed before Cheney ever contemplated running for office—but that doesn’t matter. monkyboy BELIEVES, therefore his BELIEF is Revealed TRVTH.
monkyboy, like all moonbats, BELIEVES that All That Money Went On Non-Competitive Contracts and that Most Of It Went To Halliburton. Never mind that the two statements are mutually contradictory; by the Government’s own records, available on the Web for all to see, 97% of all monies paid to Halliburton by the Government were as a result of competitive contracts, and no other Government contractor comes anywhere close to that. But because monkyboy BELIEVES, both statements must of necessity be TRVTH.
There’s much, much more, of course; that’s only the tip. It’s Tinkerbell politics with a nasty edge. Moonbats across the land are closing their eyes and BELIEVING that all their nonsense is TRVTH, and that their BELIEF can make it TRVTH. That would merely be charming eccentricity, except that they’ve also got Captain Hook’s sword in hand. Their absolute requirement is that anything that confirms their BELIEF is TRVTH, and any testimony that fails to confirm their BELIEF is deserving only of a visit to the headsman—whereupon it will be picked, excerpted, and twisted to confirm the BELIEF, and where that isn’t possible, discared and ignored in toto.
What’s confusing you is that you haven’t encountered rock-solid, unshakable BELIEF before. Take notes. There will be a quiz.
Regards,
Ric
I’m still waiting for monkeyboy’s response. I don’t have any real ulterior motive, I’m just curious about his expectations.
MB and his ilk are going to push the DEmocratic Majority in Congress to embark on a course that is just short of, or maybe over the edge of national suicide.
Long, in depth hearings on the conduct of the war will produce no good results as far as I can see.
So I want to know why this little prick is so desparate to see them happen?
Why do you, “monkeyboy” want to see the U.S. fail in Iraq?
There is a lot of you out there, more than I really thought.
So tell me, exactly,What do you hope to accomplish?
No, billy!, you haven’t quite got it.
monkyboy and his ilk feel themselves absolutely invulnerable to any force outside the United States. They are egotistical, bigoted isolationists, so comfortingly certain of their own Absolute Virtue™ that even if, e.g., the Iranian mullahs get the A-bomb, they themselves are perfectly safe because no one would ever attack anyone so Kind™ and Nice™.
And, since it’s absolutely clear to anyone and everyone who understands that everything they do and say is For The Benefit Of All™, it follows that they can attack anyone they please with impunity, because it’s For Their Own Good™; and that any so-called “defense” against such attack is pure Vileness, to be suppressed with whatever force may be necessary. Except, of course, you can’t call it “force”—it’s “dynamic argument”, perhaps. Force is such an evil concept…
Strange as it may seems, there are actually people who (gasp! choke!) do not agree with them. They wouldn’t sully their mouths with the actual word, but the concept is clear: Heretic! Heretic! Foul Unbelievers! Burn them! Burn them all!
And because they BELIEVE to the depths of their beings in their own Righteousness and Invulnerability, it follows that the question you ask is nonsense. monkyboy doesn’t believe in “Iraq”; for him, “Iraq” exists only as a phantasm into which people are throwing money that rightly belongs to him to buy poor people with. “Failing” in “Iraq” has no consequences because “Iraq” exists only in the fevered brains of rascally conservatives and neocons, and the sooner they are wrested away from the money-tit and properly medicated the better. At that point all the nasty, supposedly-external troubles will go away, and all will be sweetness and light.
Send not to ask for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for monkyboy and his allies, and no one else, because no other entities worthy of bell-tolling exist. So if monkyboy does respond, it will only be a repeat of his chants about money and lack of attention to him and his friends. You have asked him, in effect, why pink is so blue, and all he’ll be able to do is bluster (or sneer) at the nonsense.
Regards,
Ric
Actus. I’ve got to hand it to you. You don’t say much, but when you do, you don’t say much.
There is a 100-yr old confusion in this country that democracy is another word for freedom. It isn’t so, as Socrates found out when the people of Athens voted to have him drink hemlock. The Founding Fathers knew that, and they specifically tried to avoid creating a democracy when they wrote the Constitution. They recognized that democracy is just the tyranny of the majority.
As actus rightly points out, if we establish a democracy in Iraq, we will end up with an Islamist, pro-Iranian, anti-Israeli state. If we want the Iraqis to be free, we have to do what we did in Japan: Completely pacify the country, impose a constitutionally-limited, republican form of government on them, and maintain an occupational government long enough for freedom to gain a consituency. It would have helped a great deal if we had started by nuking a couple of cities just to let them know that we are serious, but our ‘shock and awe’ somehow turned into ‘aw shucks’. That’s what happens when you assume that you can overthrow a corrupt culture by removing 52 people from it. The only way to correct the mistake at this point is to send in more soldiers, declare martial law, kill Muqtada Sadr, wipe out his militia, and begin carpet bombing Iran and Syria until they surrender.
…somehow I don’t think actus was taking such a nuanced view…
I prefer to light the spark, so that then i can bask in the glory of full wingnut faux-wilsonian idealism and its dreams of carnage, rather than waves of democracy and freedom.
No, no! I assure you that Actus and I are in lockstep agreement. We both want to see the Middle East reduced to rubble. The only quibble we have is that I would like to see it happen before Manhattan is destroyed.
Ok, actus. Why would we go through the motions of having them elect an interm government, then draft and approve their own constitution, and then elect a sitting government? What more do we have to do for it to be a genuine effort in your estimation? Seriously, what threshhold do you set?
I don’t quite go the direction of ardsgaine—which seems to be basically a few hundred thousand more deaths, in Iraq and its neighbors. But he does have a good point about our commitment to rebuilding and re-organizing japan. We remade societies there, not just governments.
Right now Iraq has as much democracy as the palestinean authority. Probably even less, given that their government seems to have less authority and power than the palestinean one. I think that’s lacking. I think for democracy you have to have more than just electing the people who are going to have ministries and death squads. Democracy takes civil society. Democracy is a process. It takes getting that process going, and making it go. We’re not. I don’t think we ever will.
We’re going to be making an authoritarian government with various factions whose sizes roughly represent the sizes of populations across the country.
Wow,
So many posters seem to know what I believe already, there’s almost no need for me to reply, but…
Iraq represents an investment of over $5000 for every American family, made on our behalf by the U.S. government.
I don’t think it’s out of line to want a complete accounting of where and how all that money’s been spent.
The Bush administration and its supporters should welcome the opportunity to show the $500+ billion has been well spent.
If everything has been on the up and up, support for a continuation of the war should increase.
So your main opposition to the efforts in Iraq stems from a deep rooted sense of fiscal responsibility?
In other words, you are all on board with the neocon agenda in IraQ as long as you can assured that your tax dollars are being well spent?
Our trouble in Iraq is as much due to our desire to appear impartial to all factions in the country as any other misstep. For there to be victory, there must be a loser…yet we can’t bring ourselves to back one faction over another.
And yes, we have to establish order. That possibly takes more troops, but it definitely takes a firmer hand less fettered by civil liberty considerations. To win, one must break the will of one’s enemy.
A commitment that we only made once we had obtained their unconditional surrender. We defeated Japan first, then we rebuilt it. We are trying to rebuild Iraq without defeating it first. That is the fundamental problem with what Bush is trying to do in Iraq.
Part of the problem has been that there are various agendas with various levels of competence promoting them.
And this was pointed out to them—there were those who said we’d need several hundred thousand for the occupation. They weren’t interested in being told that. But they knew what that meant.
It’s all about the money, isn’t it? You really ought to strike the “k” from your moniker. Money money money moneymoneymoneymoneyboy. All that money spent, and not one Democratic voter exists as a result. Such a waste.
Wonder how many hundreds of thousands of dollars per man, woman, and child in the United States have been spent in the War on Poverty over the last forty-odd years? After all this time and all that expense, there are (as Democrats will be sure to remind you) still poor people. Clearly it’s a total failure. Where is the plan for “orderly withdrawal”?
And if anybody, including you, thought that the object was “…a complete accounting…” there wouldn’t be any further discussion. We know what’s coming. The only good thing about it is that it’s likely to distract Pelosi, Murtha, et al from tax increases and the like.
Regards,
Ric
With all due respect Mr. Williams, your, and my, opinion doesn’t matter so much any more. We are not going to pursue victory in Iraq.
Once again, we are not going to pursue victory in Iraq.
We are going to get out of Iraq with our collective tail between our collective legs.
I’m curious as to why, and monkeyboy here has proposed it is a case of simple smart budgeting.
I wish he would expand on this.
Truly monkeyboy, please, please share your thoughts.
Well, maybe, billy.
Iraq sold about $30 billion worth of oil last year.
In addition, America spent about $100 billion on Iraq last year.
Yet its GDP, according to the CIA, was only $46 billion last year, down 7% from 2004.
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/rankorder/2003rank.html
So, even after our massive investment of more than twice Iraq’s GDP, the economy actually shrunk…only 7 out of 216 countries managed to shrink their economies last year.
One of those 7 countries, Montserrat, was wiped out by a volcano…and their economy performed better than Iraq’s.
It would appear that the neocon’s economic policies in Iraq have caused as much trouble as their political and military policies…
In short, if we pulled out our troops and just doled out the $100 billion a year we’re spending in Iraq to the citizens of that country, we’d triple everyone’s income…which may curb the violence by itself.
billy, I hope you’re wrong but fear you’re right. In either event, I don’t think it’s pointless to consider what went right, and what went wrong.
Completely pacify the country, impose a constitutionally-limited, republican form of government on them, and maintain an occupational government long enough for freedom to gain a consituency.
I don’t have a problem with it.Democracies, even if they don’t like you, usually refrain from actually attacking each other. We’ve been occupying S Korea for a long time now.Besides. If it keeps the jihadists out of our country it can’t be bad.
Why is everybody in such a hurry to bomb the crap out of Iran and Syria. Take out the management and the population will take care of the rest.
Nice to see actus actually pony up. It’s still the party line, but at leat he said it.
Monkeyboy is nothing but a lying troll who will say anything that pops into his head if he thinks it will tie up the opposition for one more round of posts. It would be much better for everyone to simply ignore him.
monkey said:
That’s assinine. First of all, how much of that $100 billion is on military operations? How much of that money spent on military operations is actually paying ourselves (ie: soldier’s salaries, money spent on American made munitions)?
Second of all, if we were to give $100 billion to Iraqis…who do you think actually gets that money? Ultimately the guys with guns, further fueling factionalism.
Money is niether the cause or fix of the troubles in Iraq.
Worked well in Iraq!
Care to point out what part of my post is a lie, Ards?
Iraq’s non-oil economy is only $16 billion a year…despite the fact that we’re spending over $100 billion a year there.
Quite a mystery, don’t you think?
Most people come to that conclusion eventually. However, if you feel like having a pointless dustup, there are a few who are there to provide a “debate.”
They were guilty of thinking that the Iraqi people were just like all those Eastern Europeans who had longed for freedom for so long, and finally threw off their oppressors when given the chance. It was a tragic miscalculation. The only way it could have been more tragic is if they had done nothing, and the sanctions holding Saddam in check had crumbled. I have a problem with how the war has been conducted, but I don’t have a problem with the war itself. Iraq should have been a stepping stone to a wider war in the Middle East with Iran as the ultimate target. Instead, a whole lot of wishful thinking went into the notion that we could turn Iraq into a model of democracy–without having to engage Iran militarily–and the entire infrastructure of Middle East tyranny would come crashing down. Instead, the tyrannies are fighting back, and our leaders have tied their hands by putting a fragile Iraqi government in the driver’s seat, and giving them veto power over our military decisions.
There’s so much to critize in Bush’s conduct of the war, and such fertile ground for improving on his policy decisions, yet all we get from the Left is: “RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY!!”
monkey, you keep repeating that $100 billion figure like it’s some kind of mantra. Where do you pull this number from? How much of it is spent on military operations (essentially, on ourselves)? These are highly relevant questions.
monkeyboy claimed:
Sounds like aid to African nations.
Yes. They would be just like yoguslavia without Tito.
Only to the ill-intentioned and/or terminally ignorant, moneyboy.
Tell you what: by chance I happen to be going to John Murtha’s district in a week or so. If I take the digital camera along, I bet I can find half a billion of that without trying hard—I already know where a few tens of millions went. Got a few thousands, myself.
Conflating money spent on Iraq with money spent in Iraq is uncommonly dishonest, even from you.
Regards,
Ric
You know, if monkeyboy got run over by a truck tomorrow, I think the rest of us could still find enough differences of opinion to generate a good debate now and then. Perhaps nothing to match the comedic value of mile-high berms and balloon fences, but we would survive.
Damn it boys, didn’t I tells ya to throw out the sophists?
Don’t talk to ‘em, just give ‘em the boot.
Keeps it cleaner in here.
There’s plenty of archives for anyone who wants a primer/full course on donkyboy or actuse. (The Stubborn Ass and the Obtuse Dissembler)
Hell, this sh*t is in the Bible. Look at this.
Proverbs 11:9
The dissembler with his mouth deceiveth his friend: but the just shall be delivered by knowledge.
You know, just layin’ it out, Old Testament style.
Exactly my point. Only, you know, well said.
I’m just savoring the monky’s reliance on the CIA for his information. ‘Cause the Agency has such a great track record over the last 30 years or so.
(hint: The IMF, the World Bank and private sector estimates disagree with that CIA figure.)
BTW, is actus suggesting we nuke a couple of major cities in Iraq? ‘Cause that’s how we “remade” Japanese society, not with troops.
Dang, now that the Dems hold Congress, we are seeing some strange new hawks.
I can’t tell if you’re agreeing with me, or disagreeing, or making some totally different point.
Ah, yes, you mention having a good debate. There have been good debates here before, and there will be again. No question. That’s why I put the scare quotes around debate when referring to certain others who frequent this place.
Well, you asked me why I am looking forward to the Congressional hearings and I answered.
Imagine if the families of America were given the choice of an extra $112,000 a year in income or a foreign army occupying their country…what do you think they’d choose?
Beyond parody, this monky fella.
The value of moneyboy and actus is that they tell us what the current Official Party Line is. actus occasionally has an original thought but always reverts, and stays in the game by never giving anyone enough to hold on to; moneyboy just cuts and pastes, not varying the Doctrine in the slightest, and remains by being totally oblivious to counterarguments.
My own replies are more for the edification (or so I hope) of the other posters than anything resembling actual counterargument, which is (more or less by definition) impossible in both cases. actus occasionally shows signs of growing up. Arguing with moneyboy is like arguing with an MP3 player with a stuck “select” button.
Regards,
Ric
The official line of which party, ric?
There was a time when Republicans were for balanced budgets and open government books…
Are you saying it’s the Democrats who believe in those things?
I almost always get something out of your comments. You certainly clarify many issues that have been discussed here.
Perhaps the most important observation in the thread. One perceptive and important enough to be rightly but inadvertently confirmed by the resident idiot:
As with the causes for the Democrat takeover, only to a goddamn moron.
I cannot say how happy I’ll be not to be a Democrat come ‘07…
moneyboy, if you believed that “…balanced budgets and open government…” were what you were arguing for, your posts would look a lot different.
Regards,
Ric
6gun,
I have never actually seen a post from you that contained any facts…only childish name-calling.
Those days are over, son.
Get used to it.
Ric,
No matter how you slice it…we’re spending over $100 billion a year to try to Iraq into a democracy…
The best way to allocate that huge chunk of money is the question, isn’t it?
River, even a little more modern than Proverbs:
“If you can bear to hear the words you’ve spoken,
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools…”
-Rudyard Kipling
Monkyboy – I’m thinking that in large measure the money we spend on the Iraq deployment is repatriated in that it’s spent on salaries and materiel. As you have pointed out, some percentage of what we spend on *reconstruction* efforts is repatriated as well. That’s the genius of war-profiteering. I hope that helps you sleep better.
The fact you’re an idiot, spunky, is undisputed. Given the stakes, pointing to such is neither name-calling nor childish. You’re simply a mendacious little idiot.
But to the point you’re asserting, is your unique brand of chronic rhetorical lying by driving goalposts all over the universe, on the other hand, somehow mature?
Keep that up and I will call you names.
Hell, keep this up and I may:
How so? Brown people not worth us spending them free and rich? Since when would a leftist reject Keynes?
monkeyboy,
Many hours ago I asked you a simple question.
To wit: why are you so looking forward to Congressional hearings?
After much posting and hurling of insults, that question remains unanswered.
Please, I beg of thee, tell me why.
– You’re all wsting your time Bro’s, just as I have on many occassions. One universal TRVTH is that, once a Theist/Egoist, always a Theist/Egoist. They define themselves in the very matra’s they preach, so they can’t give up their BELIEF systems, any more than they can stop breathing. They don’t come for discourse, or debate, they come to reinforce those core beliefs with the tools of clever/not so clever, reductionism.
– Find some pithy sounding dogma, that strips things down to carefully selected self-avered truisms, followed by snarky little one liners, that portend to some over simplistic seeming irony, and there you have it. Authoritarian absolutism run amok. You might call it the “Samuel Clemens” approach to politics, wrapped arouond a never ending quest for the holy grail of Marxian Socialistic utopia.
– There is no WOT. That contrivance is an invention of the NeoCons, to insure a control of the worlds resources and America’s revenues, maintaining american hedgemony, and suppression the poor, and a large variety of “identity groups”.
– All, and everything is Statetism, Loyalty to the teat of the government money nipple. Anything that departs from that ideal, needs must be evil/demonized, debunked, marginalized, bad mouthed, scorned, ridculed, obstructed, undercut, decried, suppressed.
– You see that set of obssesions so clearly in monkydorks posts. It’a all about that wonderful pile of money that could be doled out to his “poor brown” identity groups, or some other, any other, Socialistic agenda. The WOT drains all that in his mind. He will not, can not, ever understand the difference between services rendered, yes even in waging a war, and simply handing money out. No concept of Nation building, no concept of economics, no interest in human variables, it’s all just simply redistribution of the wealth, to him and his.
– I for one, having listened to the endless obsessive rhetoric, care not a fig for their comments.I’m not interested in trying to teach the brainwashed, and narrowly informed, or the hobbled Socialist. Its a plan, without a purpose, because I have in all this time, never once, saw a single instance where a moonbat said: “I guess I was wrong”.
– Thats all you really need to know about the NeoLeft, SecProggs, anti-Frumps, Jackass’s, whatever they want to call their gaggle of ankle biting idiotarians. What I do klnow is they hate, and deny, the very foundations of our morals, religions, and principles. Fuck them. Fuck them all.
What occurred to me when I read Jeff’s post is that while people are getting better at deconstructing media bias, there remains a huge difficulty in deconstructing melodrama. Someone who understands communication far better than I could maybe take a stab at how melodrama can be recognized and countered without those doing so being readily dismissed as being “in denial.”
I love it when you get hot, BBh…
Jeff, it is so obvious….
Capt. Jamil Hussein is everyman.
Oh well.
My question will remain unanswered. I’m giving up on the ol’ tubes for the night.
But just a thought before I sign off.
The fastest growing political ideology in the world today is one that purports that America, specifically that which America stands for, is a tool of Satan. Dieing and killing in effort to defeat America is the highest calling a man can aspire to.
Countering this ideology is known as “the War on Terror” This war has provoked a variety of reactions.
There are four categories of response to the war on terror today:
a) there is no war on terror
b) we deserve to lose this war on terror
c)I don’t give a shit
d)how do we win
I’m category d).
Where are you?
Wait, which one is the Neo-con line?
And the US military was right about Pat Tillman being hit by enemy fire and Jessica what’s her name being a hero too, right?
Just because they claim something, that doesn’t mean it’s the absolute truth.
Where do you stand actus?
Somewhere between (a) and (d). I’m not so sure ‘war’ is the correct term, but I sure do luvs winning.
It was Jessica Lunch, and she looks fabulous.
um, *Lynch*, she’s not *that* hot
Well.
If you really don’t know.
Five fucking years after 9/11
Then I don’t think you ever will know.
Well, there have been other terms bandied about. But those aren’t the people that make me unsure.
Okay.
You’ve linked to Heritage article twice.
Twice.
I’m quite impressed’ Now to the matter at hand where do you stand?
The neo-kissengerians and the willing suspension of disbelief? Or your multiple choice test? The latter I answered. ON the latter, I think the suspension of disbelief is on those who imagine themselves idealists because they want to disagree with those who look at reality. That and everything else i’ve said so far in this and previous threads.
Oops, i mean, “on the former.”
BBh,
How, exactly, is wanting an accounting of how our money’s been spent in Iraq “leftist?”
If you ran acompany that had allocated $500 billion to a project and it turned out like Iraq…wouldn’t you investigate where the money went?
monky, I just came across the most interesting article.
so i’m curious about what “exceeded” means to you. once again, you seem to be posting from the future.
We didn’t declare war until Dec. 8, maggie.
Youngsters tend to forget that…
so you’re saying the reporter got it wrong?
well, but there’s also the fact that the article says “fought the axis” which, i’m thinkin’ we did on Dec. 7th. even if we did get beaten up.
even if we go with your estimate, it’s equal.
don’t mind me, i’m just gonna argue with myself. thanks, i’ll be here all week. try the veal!
It’s close enough, maggie.
It’s not We will be greeted as liberators or Iraqi oil will pay for the war level of wrong.
As we head towards a Vietnam length war, maybe people will stop using phony analogies to WWII.
*sigh* sure…. sure. sometimes i wonder about what kind of a charmed life you must live. you know, the one where everything turns out like you expected and you’ve never made a mistake.
I don’t think the people running the war think they are “wrong,” maggie.
If I raised pigs for a living, I’d certainly support a government program that forced Americans to choke down half a trillion dollars worth of bacon every year…
so for you it’s all about money? oooooookay, i guess we’re back to where we started.
It’s not just about the money, maggie.
I’d settle for anyone making a buck on the war being required to wear a propeller beanie whenever they appeared on TV…