Letters to the Editor
-
Do you ever listen to yourself?
Absolutely correct.
Let me walk you through this.
* Since WW2 we have been through many armed conflicts. None have come out well.
Yes, those Grenadians and Panamanians kicked our asses! We had 4000 casualties in the Balkans! Guess which one of those conflicts the Queen of Denial here opposed? I could go on...
* We did it yet again in Iraq, because we over reacted to an act of terrorism we didn't understand. Now we know better.
Now the little asp is plagiarizing me, almost verbatim. We did not overreact in Afghanistan, we used an old CIA plan that worked fine on the cheap, but we decided to use 9/11 as cover for Iraq. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld hadn't even wanted to go after OBL. That wasn't just an overreaction, it was a strategic blunder on many levels and flat out attacking the wrong target. And what do you mean "we," white man?
* It's time to stop getting into armed conflicts, period. We don't have the national will to see them through, and it's time to let the rest of the world (that includes dictators) solve their own problems without our military. Sounds good, yes?
You are misrepresenting and conflating and there is no "we". You are not part of "we the people" that know what's right. Few Republicans are. You'll find that out in Novemeber in no uncertain terms.
-
This is the 'graf that jumped out at me....
There were growing signs that Sadr's cease-fire, which he declared in August and renewed in February, was unraveling. The cease-fire is one of the principal reasons for the downturn in violence and U.S. troop deaths this year.
File under "8 out of 10 generals recommend the Surge® when encountering domestic opposition to longstanding policies......"
-
@shooter242
This comment is directed to Shooter242:
It seems to me, from reading your various comments to Glenn’s post of yesterday, that you are a neocon, nothing more, nothing less. Your world view is one where the U.S. is required to take out dictatorships, especially when the dictator’s territory sits on a “sea of oil.”
There’s no doubt that Saddam was a terrible dictator. Is he any worse than Somoza or Kaddafi, or half-a-dozen other terrible dictators of the last 40 years? Iraq has been a ‘broken’ nation since 1923 or so, or at least one that was kobbled together by fiat and not by the natural choice of its ‘citizens.’ The real issue is the “sea of oil” that Iraq sits upon: America could not resist invading Iraq because of its oil.
Now we have a real mess on our hands, courtesy of the neocons, for which there is no easy way out. We definitely do not want any neocons, including John McBush (McCain) in the White House next year.
As for the “sea of oil,” what use will it be if we are drowning in tens of feet of water from global warming? It’s well past time to develop alternative sources of energy, including solar and wind energy, on a massive scale.
-
@ GC!
She does. You do. It would be nice if we, like the other animals, were so placid, and self-contained. Unfortunately, our sense of kinship is more abstract, and therefore more problematic. What rituals of cleansing are appropriate for us when we kill what it's our responsibility to nurture? Not a simple question, as Cain understood very well before us.
You're a good teacher, GC! At your best, there isn't any better.
-
State-sponsored terrorism, 101
What is not allowed in the Media?
Think about it. If we actually had honest, rational, logical conversations about this war, we'd begin with these facts.
1. The invasion of Iraq was unprovoked and totally unnecessary.
2. Hundreds of thousands of people have died because of that invasion. Two million fled the country and two million more are internal exiles.
3. The invasion destroyed the health care sector, infrastructure, educational systems, and the economy.
4. The invasion has cost more than 4000 American lives, perhaps as much as three trillion dollars, increased hatred against America exponentially, and set the stage for OBL's escape.
*5. If someone were to describe the relative military and economic might of both parties in the conflict, left out their names, and noted the massive destruction, people would call the invaders "terrorists".
*In Richard Dawkin's recent book, he describes a test done with Israeli kids recently. Children were split into two groups. One group was given the Old Testament story of Joshua destroying Jericho, as is. The other was given the same story, but with the names, the time and place changed. In the second case, Joshua becomes a Chinese general, the setting is ancient China, etc.
In the first case, the children pretty much said Joshua was justified in his genocide. In the second, the kids said the Chinese general was guilty of genocide.
To me, this says it all . . . .
-
Rumsfeld's War
Wasn't there Bush's War on PBS? Missed it, but if you caught it, you might want to go back and look at the prescient Rumsfeld's War.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/pentagon/view/
Bookends of Catastrophe.
Has there been a Cheney's War or something?
-
Shall we compare dictators, shooter?
Saddam Hussein. At the beginning of the current "Bush's War" as frontline called it, he was accused of killing 100,000 people, keeping ten thousand political prisoners, torture and 'rape rooms'. Of course, as the war dragged on, perhaps anticipating future Iraqi casualties, the Bush people quickly escalated the number he was supposed to have killed, until now they've been throwing around the figure 300,000 for several years.
George W. Bush. Regardless of what he is in the United States, he is a dictator, and a foreign one, in Iraq at this moment. They have no choice about him, and he rules by sheer military might there. He is, to them, an occupier and an illegitimate tyrant. Number of extra deaths due to the war over baseline - between 547,000 and 750,000. Bush is keeping 14,000 prisoners in Iraq (another 13,000 in Afghanistan) and estimates of the number in the last 5 years of those prisoners subjected to the torture and inhumane conditions, portrayed so vividly during the Abu Ghraib revelations, run to 15,000. Gang rape is a frequently used device of the Iraqi "troops" set up by the U.S., and has also been alleged of some U.S. troops, particularly in the confines of the military prisons. At his wildest moments of bullshit, Ahmed Chalabi accused Saddam Hussein of creating a diaspora of 1,000,000 people. Your guy has created 2 million external refugees and 2 million internal, plus most of Chalabi's supposed diaspora remains diaspora.
All in all, then shooter, I'd say the dictator you and your kind back in Iraq has been a worse monster than the one he deposed. Your man is crueler, more inhumane, killed more people, and has delivered, as others have pointed out, no social services, no electricity, no gas, no nothing. Back your monster, pal. If you want to say we are advocating a dictator, fine. But let's be honest. The dictator you are accusing us of backing did far less damage than the one you fervently support. The one you accuse us of backing, hung for his crimes. Would you support trying and punishing your monster with the same fervor?