Letters to the Editor
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@xanadu
Our containment policy (average cost: $5 billion per year) was vastly preferable to this. It had problems too -- all the abuse of the UN oil-for-food program -- but I'll bet fixing those would have cost a bit less than a trillion dollars.
I have not and am not agreeing with the Bush's strategy and management - if you want to call it that - of the Iraq war. What I"m arguing with is the hard left's presentation that Saddam was somehow benign and the left's too often stance of being antiwar for the sake of being antiwar.
And we had no "containment policy". I think you're confusing things with the cold war with the USSR.
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@Ferraro
So I guess I qualify as an older feminist woman who can tell you, Rebecca, that you don't need to feel bad if you pull the lever for Obama
At least not until you watch McCain get inaugerated anyway.
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Clinton, Obama, and Dirt
I too found myself in the quandary of being an undecided voter. But because I had an absentee ballot to put in the mail by last Friday, I have had to make my choice. The exuberence and excitement of Obama is fantastic for our country. But what else is there? Does he have any plans? Hm. I couldn't find any.
Quite honestly, I voted for Clinton because I know the Repugs are out of fresh ammunition. They spent the entire eight years of Bill Clinton's administration digging for dirt. What else is there? Now Obama on the other hand, he will be RIPE for a swift-boating, and if he wins, it will bring years of digging yet again. Whether they find anything or not, who knows. But I don't want to go through that again. Though everyone laughed at the time, what happened to the Clintons was a vast right wing conspiracy. Sure, they provided some opportunities, but were any of the investigation into them necessary or vital to the operation of our country?
The Clinton Witchhunt of the 90s appears to me today as an attempt to destabilize the government. If that doesn't scare the hell out of you in light of what we have seen the Bush Administration doing, you do not have a pulse.
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Re Obama's "experience"
1) the experience that you suggest Hillary has makes her a good candidate for the White House, 2) that her experience is an indication of her ability to make good, moral, transparent decisions as chief executive, and 3) her experience is in any way shape or form superior to that of Barak Obama.
You're right - after all I'm sure any smart person , as opposed to an idiot like myself, will recognize that a lifetime of activism and 8 years in the WhiteHouse with the most successful Administration of our lifetimes will pale in comparison with an 80% noshow record of one incomplete Senate term.
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except
that I don't buy the argument that Clinton is the more electable candidate. Frankly I don't know which of the two runs better against McCain, but Clinton looks like the bring-out-the-vote candidate for Republicans.
--Ferraro voter
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@anonymous
that I don't buy the argument that Clinton is the more electable candidate. Frankly I don't know which of the two runs better against McCain, but Clinton looks like the bring-out-the-vote candidate for Republicans.
You're right. I'm sure the commercials McCain and the GOP run over and over in red America showing Obama on stage with the Kennedy's, Kerry, the National League of Abortion Rights and so forth won't incite the Republican base of conservatives to come out and vote at all.
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@Anonymous
Anonymous: "Maybe or maybe not. Nonetheless, ironic as it may be the red state rurals are among the most environmentally friendly folks around (however inadvertently)."
La di da. You're the one who brought this up. I didn't say anything about rural people. Why are you arguing on behalf of their environmental wonderfulness?
Anon: "They don't drive long commutes,often farm or raise a good deal of their own food and supplies, don't buy bottled water, and generally live pretty lean."
I don't buy bottled water either. I actively avoid it. I don't drive a long commute; I purposely live near where I work and walk whenever I can. But anyway, who cares? You brought this garbage up. Why did you even bring it up to begin with?
Anonymous: "Wrong. Saddam was NOT our friend."
He was a friend of the U.S. up until he started getting his own ideas. I am not saying that was a good thing then, either -- it wasn't. But the U.S. propped him up, gave him resources and military aid, etc. to keep him in our pocket as a proxy force in the Mideast. You do know this, don't you? Even when he gassed the Kurds, the U.S. response to him was a tepid diplomatic wrist-slap. Only when Kuwait and Saudi Arabia started worrying about his military force getting too big and too imbalanced did the U.S. turn against him. Kuwait was, in fact, cross drilling into his oil fields and we de-facto greenlit his invasion via back channels. Then after he invaded, for the primary purpose of a show of force and to take over an oil field, did we slam him and devastate his retreating army. The whole thing was planned way, way in advance of the actual war -- we knew if we did X, Saddam would do Y, and then it would give us an opportunity to do Z and be where we wanted to be, in a situation where we contained him and his army, kept him and his entire country relatively impoverished (much to the devastation of common Iraqis), and hoped that his own people would topple him (which they didn't, as he was very skillful as a Mafioso don-style dictator). Read your history, man. The U.S. and Saddam-led Iraq are like abusive cousins in the same family.
Anonymous: "Taking him out was a good thing - unless you have a better plan for supplying our endless demand for cheap energy, which so far no one has come up with."
Ha ha, why don't you just admit the entire war is about oil. Remember Paul Wolfowitz: "Iraq's oil fields can fund the country's reconstruction"? That sure worked out, didn't it?
We had many other available options besides an invasion and occupation of Iraq. They would have taken time, effort and money, but nowhere near on the scale that the war has required. We bungled every aspect of the war from day one -- it was a total disaster. At this point taking Saddam out doesn't mitigate anything at all. It's a joke to even suggest it. What we have now is far, far worse than Saddam, and anybodoy who suggest otherwise has his head up his ass.