Letters to the Editor
Jeffrey P. Harrison
Published Letters: 387 Editor's Choice: 40
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Of course, this is all bullshit.
[Read the article: Buying Time 101: The Petraeus plan for Iraq]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Does that get us "victory"?
The emperor has already won. The emperor made the initial illegal attack on Iraq under the guise of eliminating Saddam Hussein's terrifying WMDs and removing him from power such that he couldn't develop new and improved WMDs or use the ones that he purportedly had. Well. The results are in. No WMDs and Saddam Hussein is dead. Seems to me that the objectives of this illegitimate war have been attained.
Does it transform Iraq into a "free nation that can govern itself, sustain itself, and defend itself"?
Could somebody tell me what the hell that has to do with sequestering WMDs and removing Saddam Hussein? But let's skip that question. Let's look at the statement.
1. Iraq will not be free as long as there are 160,000 plus heavily armed American troops in their country.
2. Iraq is governing itself. That governance may not be to the liking of the emperor but, just as cooperation isn't a whole bunch of people doing what I say, governance isn't running the show the way the emperor wants it run.
3. Sustainment is a much squidgier issue. But one thing we know for sure. Sustainment is made much more difficult if half your population is in refugee status and most of the country's best and brightest are included in that number. That portion of the population has clearly voted with their feet and they're not likely to come back as long as we're there.
4. Defend against whom? Iran? Syria? Turkey? Iran might have a bone to pick with Iraq since Iraq started the Iran-Iraq war but Iran doesn't have a history (as we do) of attacking their neighbors. Syria has enough problems of their own since their only foreign exchange are the victims of our extreme rendition program. We won't sell 'em anything else. Turkey may want to kick some Kurdish ass over the Kurdish insurgency in their country but they're not going to want any more Kurds than they already have. So who?
This is all so stupid. What the emperor did in attacking Iraq was dumber than dirt but it's long past time when the Iraqis should have been left alone to sort things out themselves.
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It's not like building a bicycle
[Read the article: "Neither of us believes we can see past next summer"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It has occurred to me more than once that "nation building" isn't like assembling your kid's bicycle. So when I hear about the "end state" that these people envision, I wonder if they realize that, unlike putting a bicycle together, there isn't a picture that tells you what the final product looks like. If our picture of the final product doesn't look like the picture that the Iraqi's have of the product, we're never going to get there from here.
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Not all ARMs are equal
[Read the article: Season of the ARM reset]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You need to differentiate between a normal ARM which is made at market rates and where resets change the rate only when prime goes up (or down) and which have a cap on the maximum increase at any one reset and a cap on the maximum rate increase in the life of the ARM and the predatory ARMs which were made below market rates so that the first reset is guaranteed to raise the rate.
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What they're really doing...
[Read the article: One-sided rules of political debate]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Is to attack the messenger. Rather than attempt to discredit what the critic has said, which might be difficult, they instead attack the form of the message in what appears to be a serially successful effort to avoid any discussion of policy, principle, or action.
OBTW, I do feel that Petraeus has betrayed us in the sense that if a battlefield commander fails to provide unvarnished and accurate information about the battlefield to his civilian superiors, he betrays their trust in his leadership.
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And...
[Read the article: Bush on 9/11: The emergency continues]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]To declare himself el presidante for life under the terms of the patriot act that the fools in congress passed.
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Consequences?
[Read the article: The endless, meaningless blather from the Washington establishment]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Whenever anybody talks about the consequences of the Iraq invasion, what you usually hear about is the Republicans losing even more seats in the Congress, the beltway talking heads looking like idiots, nobody going to Shrub's Presidential library (of course not, there won't be anything in it, it's all classified), etc. etc. etc. But these consequences - loss of power, prestige, etc - are really just embarrassments. What about real consequences?
Mr. Bush has been the proximate cause for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis. For no more than that we have a parade of Serbian political and military leaders (to whom I'd be glad to lend a few vowels) being brought through the world court. The Spanish courts want Mr. Pinochet for his version of extreme rendition. While I will grant you that your chances of surviving an American rendition are better than surviving a Chilean one, the process is the same - snatch somebody without court approval or oversight, torture them, and then, if they survive, kick them loose to try to put their lives back together or, if they don't, stick them in an unmarked grave.
Maybe Bush & Co should meet those they wronged by them in an international court. It sure as hell won't happen in an American court.
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Stop using ATMs
[Read the article: The Bank of America's ATM heist]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Go into the bank instead. If banks had to start hiring more tellers because people weren't using their ATMs (which saves them big bux)and/or a few banks decided to offer free foreign ATM transactions, it might stop this heist mid-stick up. It certainly can't be worse than going to the banc de grocery store.
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Awww...
[Read the article: Limitless wrongness]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If "they" thought that the moveon.org ad was reprehensible, maybe they should have avoided savaging John Kerry, Max Cleland, and Jack Murtha. I personally find their reaction to being on the receiving end of the kind of crap "they" put out in the 2004 election hilarious.
More importantly, the surge never had a hope of "succeeding" (whatever that really means). Armies fight battles, they don't make peace. Diplomats and politicians make peace. The presence of our military in Iraq is pointless. They have no battles to win, only population to subjugate.