Letters to the Editor
Alkaline
Published Letters: 845 Editor's Choice: 30
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Expect lots of hemming and hawing from the Republicans...
[Read the article: Brown talks about withdrawal from Iraq]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]... particularly the ardent neocons. They desperately want to call "the surge" a success, but they also desperately want to keep our forces in Iraq for a very long time. It will be interesting watching them try to have their cake and eat it too.
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@Juliebird
[Read the article: National Review writer compares Obama to Hitler]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]For a minute there, I thought that was an intended-to-be-serious Elephantman post. Congratulations on your convincing imitation of conservative logic.
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@jebldmm
[Read the article: National Review writer compares Obama to Hitler]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think we may need to suspend Godwin's law for a few days, or the people thinking this way will go unchecked.
A lot of people seem to misunderstand Godwin's Law, perhaps because it might better have been named Godwin's Observation.
Godwin's "Law" doesn't attempt to dictate or suggest behavior. All it says is that the probability that Hitler or Nazis will be mentioned increases as a discussion continues. The Wikipedia entry for Godwin's Law seems to be a good explanation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law
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@Molly A
[Read the article: Obama's grand tour]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I don't care for Sen. Obama pretending to be president, which he is, and trying to ride the wave of success President Bush stragety's is bringing about and Sen. Obama is trying to take credit for it.
"President Bush strategy"? Surely you jest. Bush couldn't pour piss out of a boot even with instructions written on the heel.
If you doubt what I say, then explain why we've been jerking around in Iraq for over five years when we didn't finish the job in Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden is still running around loose and thumbing his nose at us, and he's set up shop in a country that has nuclear weapons!
Dubya is without a doubt the most incompetent excuse for a president ever to disgrace the Oval Office.
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@bungo pony
[Read the article: Obama's grand tour]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Such questions (with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight) are almost inherently designed to set up a particular "gotcha!" answer, since it was impossible for anybody at the time to know for sure if the Surge would work. At least Obama was honest enough not to backtrack on his original position.
AFAIK, we still aren't sure that the surge itself worked. What I have heard is that bribing insurgents to stop fighting was the trick that actually brought about a decline in violence.
Before we even set foot in Iraq, General Eric Shinseki (the top commander in the Army) said that Saddam's army was a joke and would be easy pickings, but that several hundred thousand troops would be needed to keep a lid on Iraq after Saddam was gone. The three stooges (Dubya, Chainsaw, and Rumdum) didn't want to hear that, so they ignored the general's advice and went in with too few troops. The rest is history.
The stooges then spent the next several years pretending that things were getting better in Iraq when they were actually getting worse. Bush annouced "the surge" shortly before he would have to face a new congress with a democratic majority. It was a desperate measure to try to avoid the possibility that congress would force a withdrawal.
The surge only added a few tens of thousands of troops to the forces in Iraq, and the new total was still far short of what standard U.S. armed forces doctrine said was needed to prevent insurgency. The suggestion that such a small increase in forces could stop an insurgency already in progress is at best doubtful.
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@bungo pony
[Read the article: Obama's grand tour]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The point I was trying to make is that Obama might still be right about the surge, even though some people think the surge was a success.
IMO, the surge was a failure, and bribing the insurgents was a desperate ploy to try to make things look better in time for the election.
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@klytus
[Read the article: Obama's grand tour]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I agree.
The nation of Iraq was not born naturally. It was an artificial construct intended to implement British control over territory that they gained by screwing the Arabs after World War One (look up Sykes-Picot for a more complete story). Throughout it's entire existence, Iraq has been held together at gunpoint by despots. AFAICT, Iraqis think the U.S. is just the next despot in line, and they don't like us any better than the previous ones.
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Not a translation issue...
[Read the article: No mistranslation in Maliki interview]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The problem is that neocons are notoriously hard of listening.
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@AKA Smith
[Read the article: Obama's grand tour]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Conserving oil should begin by getting out of Iraq.
The oil we are consuming in Iraq is just part of the problem. Another big part is the decline in the value of the dollar, which is mostly the result of our government creating money to finance the war while big tax cuts were in effect. The dollar has declined more than 40% since Bush took office.
The decline in the dollar doesn't just make oil more expensive. It makes everything more expensive. Our paychecks don't go as far and our savings are losing value. Bush has effectively imposed a tax of over 40% above any beyond any other taxes we have already paid, and he's doing it to money we already paid taxes on. Note that 40% is more that the highest income tax bracket now in effect.
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@tonydavisnelson
[Read the article: No mistranslation in Maliki interview]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Where exactly did this ignoramus get 18 months?
Nouri al-Maliki is the Iraqi Prime Minister. Are you saying that we know what's good for the Iraqis better than they do themselves? If you do think that, perhaps you should abandon the pretense that we are "liberating" Iraq and admit that we are there strictly to serve our own interests.
If you think a little more, you might even realize that McBush wants to keep us in Iraq forever, regardless of any "conditions on the ground". That's why he gets so bent out of shape when people ask him to make specific statements about his plans for Iraq.
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@AKA Smith
[Read the article: Obama's grand tour]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Did our goverment create the money to finance the war by keeping interest rates cheap? Is this sort of a Greenspan thing?
Why bother with something that complicated? All the government has to do is write checks and say they are good checks. Presto, instant new money. Who's going to challenge the government by claiming the money isn't real?