Letters to the Editor
ELYDOG
Published Letters: 498 Editor's Choice: 43
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Q
[Read the article: Leave the Muslim world alone]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Victoria,
My source is the present Brookings Institution report on the 'surge'. Page 8. This graph is titled "Enemy initiated attacks against the coalition and partners." It shows most attacks (not fatalities) against armed forces, not civilians. I, however, don't know what the Brookings Institution considers an "attack."
Many Iraqi civilians ARE dying, and it is partly by the hands of the jihadists, the Sunni and Shiite militias, the Iraqi puppet government and the U.S. military, which has stepped up bombing. These numbers are not all being done by Al Quaida, as your president repeats ad nauseum.
The U.S. military and your president supposedly don't even track civilian casualties, which is how much they care about them. The numbers are being tracked by independent observers and they show there is no peaceful success in Iraq. Iraq has been rated a 'failed state', second from the bottom. Iraq's own armed forces are now less ready to act without U.S. aid than a few months ago, also recently evaluated by our own government.
The threat of terrorism has increased due to the events in Iraq, and this is confirmed by the U.S. government's own NIE analysis.
There won't be any 'democratic' government in Iraq imposed at the barrel of a gun. Democracy does not grow like that. Maybe in your fantasy land, but not there. Like I said, we need 'intelligence' of all types - political, cultural, economic, military, cultural, organizational, etc. to defeat Islamic reactionaries. The president has displayed no intelligence whatsoever, except a greed for oil, and a hankering for Biblical prophecy.
And that is the best aide HE can give to Al Quaida.
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Can't tell a leftist from a liberal
[Read the article: U.S. to merge with Mexico and Canada?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Hal2001 is typical of the ignorant folks who can't tell a leftist from a liberal.
Many liberals love Bill Clinton and NAFTA. Lefties hate them. Liberals love the World Trade Organization. Lefties hate it. Liberals are open to the merger of these 3 countries. Lefties aren't, because they know it will be run by corporations. Can you say lowest common denominator?
Of course we'd be open to it IF it was run by the working class. You know, 'one world government' and the international Soviet and all that...
Simple. Even the left-posters from Canada here let us know what they thought. Thumbs down.
So HAL2001, if you are coming on this site with all your 'genius' and arrogance, I think you should understand this fundamental difference. We don't have to go to a Canadian website to tell us what our guts tell us.
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Permanent Bases
[Read the article: Walkin' the neocon line]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Both Kevin Phillips and Greg Palast's recent books point out that unexplored Iraqi oil is the key to understanding the latest invasion.
This should be a no-brainer for most people, but I think Americans are so schooled in a 'lite' understanding of politics, and a naive belief in the good intentions of both political parties, that they miss the real point.
And those immense, expensive, hardened bases in Iraq? Do you think even the majority of Democrats are going to advocate hundreds of trucks, tanks, etc. head for the Kuwaiti border and completely leave the country? No, the troops are going to pull back to the bases. That is what the discussion really is between the two parties.
After all, Jimmy Carter announced in the "Carter Doctrine" in, what, 1979, that the middle east was a 'strategic' area for the U.S. This is what he based U.S. support for the Jihadist's in Afghanistan against the Soviets on, and helped create the present Frankenstein.
Honesty is not what politics is about. Hiding your real intent is fundamental to an imperialist power. If you don't know that is where we live, you are like the Roman citizen who thinks it really IS just a circus.
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Democrats
[Read the article: Walkin' the neocon line]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Oil and power are intimately connected. They are not opposites.
I notice the frustration with the Democrats on this blog. I am a former member of the Labor Party, as we tried to start a new left mass-based third party based on about a third of the Union movement. It exists still, but it failed. They never really ran a candidate, and you can't be a party without doing so.
In Minnesota we had a pretty good Green presence, which has diminished since 2000. In Wisconsin right now, the Greens are winning elections and growing impressively. In certain neighborhoods in Minneapolis the Greens are the second party. The Republicans run a far third and the Independence Party barely exist. However, the Greens, for all their good points, do not have the immersion in the labor movement that you need to start winning bigger and bigger races, to provide money and numbers and legitimacy with regular working people.
What to do? The Democrats clearly moved to the left with the last election. They were pushed by the electorate. They were mostly on-board with the war for many years. Certainly, pressure on them is making them continue this new course, in a somewhat odd, weak way. But I do not think they really will push for a complete pullout from Iraq because they are invested in the Carter Doctrine ... too. So they have to be hounded, but without a strong mass third party in the U.S., we are unable to actually change things fundamentally.
Now, REALNAME, I've never seen this kind of anti-semetic post before, but this punk has lost any legitimacy in any discussion at Salon. Me and my burly friends will meet you at a bar in Mpls and 'syonara', no more hiding behind a fakename.