Indeed, the United States invaded another country in order to stand up for freedom and virtue;
Or at least to stand up for high popularity, quieted dissent, economic distraction, and lucrative back-room construction and drilling deals. That freedom and virtue tag along is a nice fringe benefit, no question.
Saddam Hussein for too long had tortured and murdered his people.
Can't argue with that.
It was a country with one of the worst human rights records in the world, ranking about third on the scale of baddies after North Korea and Saudi Arabia.
Well, if you really want to add up the numbers, Iraq is probably more like seventh or eighth when you also count Rwanda, Turkey, Sierra Leone, the Congo, and Cambodia. You remember them, right? Because the government sure forgot about them fast enough.
In this context, I would call it better that there is one less place in the world where people are able to hurt each other so horrendously, and safer for the Mideast, and the world at large, that one lowly despot can no longer screw everyone else over who's around him.
With this I completely agree. I just believe the victory would be that much sweeter if we had come to it through more legal and honorable means.
to say nothing of the potential blackmail ability with having any weapons of mass destruction to threaten neighbors as far away as Turkey.
Don't go shedding any tears for Turkey. They can handle themselves. Turkey has one of the world's largest armies and has brought it to bear numerous times. Mostly on their own minority Armenian and Kurdish populations. They could deal with Iraq on their own.
It said lots and lots of things on Iraq, decreed them from supposèdly the highest authority in the world, the Security Council, in the most powerful forms of resolutions that it can make... and yet it was doing nothing in the slightest to support them.
Except for weapon inspections. But since those inspections didn't support the call for U.S. military action, clearly they don't count. In addition, last I recall, green-lighting wars took a back seat in the U.N. to debate and due process. Apparently the U.N. is only effective when it's shirking its duties and kowtowing to U.S. pressure.
I understand why, why France, Germany, Russia, and China did not want to damage the very lucrative oil contracts they had with Saddam Hussein, which most likely will not be accepted by the new order of Iraqis that will take control.
Any Iraqis that take control of their oil will likely sell it to the highest bidder. Probably European concerns. The Iraqis need that money to buy things like food, and medicine. I doubt they'll have much concern for where it came from. This is all assuming that the Iraqis get the oil, or that the oil is put in a U.N. trust. As for Russia, they never had a stake in Iraqi oil. Russia's got it's own oil. Billions of barrels of it.
It was about oil for them, and oil is a very important commodity, especially for countries in Europe where they have virtually no oil of their own and must buy it entirely from the Middle East.
Or from Russia or Norway. The world's second and fourth largest producers of oil, respectively.
Thankfully, the US doesn't have to worry about oil at all; we have more than enough of our own on our own soil.
Which is exactly why we get the vast majority of our oil from Columbia, Saudi Arabia, and Russia. Hey, wait a minute... Maybe we should get off of oil until we have our facts straight.
As for making more enemies, more people who don't like us, I fully expect that. People are idiots;
And dirty, foreign-type idiots at that, I'll bet.
Americans take more chances than that. Having the extra spending money encourages people to buy, and to invest. Doing that improves the economy far more than any service funded by taxes ever could.
Exactly. This is what I've been saying all along. Who needs homeless shelters, free clinics, and youth rec-centers when we could just give the money to the Bill Gate's and Kenneth Ley's of the world and hope they'll spend it on big screen TVs and pleasure yachts so the money can trickle-down to hard working janitors and bus boys. I mean, we can trust tycoons to spend the money and not horde it away in vast offshore corporate holdings or use it buy smaller competing companies, right? If you can't trust the executives of Citicorp, Shell, GE, or *gasp* WorldCom, who can you trust?
Actually, proportionally, they're getting even less than expected; the average citizen's taxes are quite small compared with a wealthier person's,
Yes. This is called a progressive tax. It's worked for centuries and was used to balance the budget in 1999 and drive us into surplus in 2000 and 2001.
and yet the average citizen will get far more relief than the rich man will.
Not under the current tax cut which benefits those between the 15 and 40% brackets who are married with children. Those who are in the 10% bracket and single, or those hard working, salt-of-the-earth, back-bone-of-America types who qualify for the EITC get squat.
but we can understand at least that it's a fairly just arrangement.
Not when you consider all the federally sponsored benefits that the rich have exclusively available to them. Everything from education subsidies to business tax breaks to convenient tax shelters.
But you're right, the tax cuts do have a large concentration on the economy, on jumpstarting it by jumpstarting buying, and selling, and investing... and though they are the smallest part of the population, the wealthy do the largest portion of the activities that improve the economy.
I thought Reganomics were proclaimed dead and buried after they failed to produce any successful results in the late eighties. Have we learned nothing? If anyone can show me one study demonstrating the successful real-world application of the trickle-down theory, I'll happily eat crow with some rosemary potatoes and perhaps a nice white wine.
Besides, who wants a marrage tax?
Me. It's like a tax on the foolish. While we're at it, I'm also for taxing children, death, and illicit narcotics.
I'd say those terrorists have done some questionable things to sacrifice their own civil liberties.
Really? I thought the burden of proof was on the prosecution. You know, innocent until proven guilty, and all that. Or maybe due process under law was one of those civil liberties you were talking about. Any other amendments you'd like to throw out?
Besides, we could strip away half of our vast wealth of civil liberties and still be more free than the average European
Which average Europeans would these be? Western Europeans? Eastern Europeans? How many Europeans have you asked about this oppression? I'd love to hear a few good stories about Danish Secret Police holding citizens without formal charges or access to council, or Swedes tear-gassing a group of student protesters, or the English wire-tapping conversations between suspects and their attorneys. Because if you've got those stories, I've got a few stories of us Americans doing the exact same things.
it's just the little things, but we're only talking about the little things anyway
Life is in the details. Our country is founded on a core of civil liberties. That's why we tacked on a bill of rights to that moldy old document popularly known as the Constitution. To curtail one is to erode them all. Like tipping over the first domino.
Keep in mind that this is how it's always been; people have been incarcerated in such a way, without trial, lawyer, bail, etcetera, for countless decades.
And it was just as illegal and unconstitutional then.
But, as these events are so very public, we're merely hearing about them now.
Are you somehow suggesting that because we're not covering it up, that makes it all right?
Though it essentially seemed to conflict with freedoms of the people,
Actually, the Jim Crow laws conflicted with the freedoms of the people as defined by the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments. Having the National Guard escort children to school didn't conflict with anyone's rights. Not even the rights of southern bigots to protest and stew in their own, hateful juices.
Apply that to the Adminstration's foreign policy, and you can see a similar moral rectitude.
I see one administration standing up to the majority and upholding the bill of rights. I see another administration using bills and executive orders to unconstitutionally re-write it.
Please, do define 'warmongering'
From the Miriam-Webster Abridged Dictionary:
war*mon*ger: noun
: one who urges or attempts to stir up war
: Jingo
Hope this helps.
Ever read Leviathan
Many times. It's a fantastic book. But make no mistake; Bush is no more a Leviathan than a hand puppet is a human being. But since we're bringing up great thinkers, how about this: when the Pope, the Dalai Lama, Kofi Annan, and Nelson Mandela all tell you that you're wrong, maybe it's worth considering.
Clearly, America is very different. Indeed, we invented most of the Socialistic reforms that the Europeans claim to cherish so very much.
Not entirely, some existed in practice before America, some existed as theories and were first implemented by America, and some, like the abolition of slavery (a big one I think), were popular in Europe a century or more before we got the bright idea to follow suit.
We have healthcare,
No, we have Medicare. Healthcare is very different. Please see Canada or Denmark for further details.
medical insurrance (not regulated by the government, but encouraged strongly),
Thanks in no small part to kickbacks and large campaign contributions.
social security,
It's going...Going...it's GONE!!
and everything else, from roads to ramparts, that our taxes pay for. That's why we have taxes.
Precisely. And as we hack and slash away at taxes to fund our wars and upper-class tax breaks, you can kiss them good-bye one by one.
Well right, our Radical Republican President (much as Lincoln was)
Republican is a party. Conservative is an ideology. The two are not joined at the hip. Bush is a republican and a staunch conservative. And Bush is no Lincoln.
-Phil.
