Edward Dolan wrote:
"jeff" wrote in message
...
Edward Dolan wrote:
[...]
Iraq was the central battleground as long we we there. Even the Islamic
extremists agreed with that.
Hows that? There was no alQaeda in any part of Iraq that Saddam
controlled. There was only after we invaded. Get the difference?
There were other good and sufficient reasons for taking out Iraq.
So it had nothing to do with the real reason. And just what was that?
What justifies the loss of 4K Americans, 100's of thousand of
innocent civilians and the inexorable rise of Iran?
Once we
invaded we got two for the price of one. Get the difference?
There is little benefit for the cost paid. Your reasons look like
accidents.
What difference does it make whether we kill
them in Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan or anywhere else. The important
thing is to kill them wherever they are.
The crew in Iraq didn't exist before. Iraq turned into a huge recruiting
boost for alQaeda. One of the reasons, now that we are on the way out,
that their influence has fallen.
That is because we defeated them in Iraq, something that would never have
happened if liberal Dems had been in charge.
Wrong. The alQaeda threat in Pak remained, it didn't move to Iraq so we
could kill them there. It grew dramatically. You think alQaeda just got
on the bus and moved from Islamabad to Baghdad. Crazy. The amount of
foreign born alQaeda in Iraq was never more that 5% or so of alQaeda's
strength.
[...]
So far, Obama is making a mess
of everything.
Except the economy is on the mend. GDP is up, unemployment heading down.
Much success in killing alQaeda. Millions of people retained their
unemployment benefits.
Nothing much is happening yet if you ask me.
Doesn't seem like you know much.
http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/nati...ewsrelease.htm
Real gross domestic product -- the output of goods and services
produced by labor and property
located in the United States -- increased at an annual rate of 5.7
percent in the fourth quarter of 2009,
(that is, from the third quarter to the fourth quarter), according to
the "advance" estimate released by the
Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the third quarter, real GDP increased
2.2 percent.
But the recession comes first. Note that the value of the dollar which
had fallen so much under W is up under Obama. That borrowing rates are
historically low and that the % debt to GDP was higher post war.
You can not lower taxes and fix the debt. It has always been the
opposite. Even Reagan and George Bush 1 had to raise taxes after a
while. Trickle Down does not work.
Trickle down works in the short term, but not in the long term. We all
believe in the progressive income tax, don't we?
All that money that W gave to the rich didn't help the economy. It
wasn't invested in productive work. A lot of it went into those exotic
financial instruments that wrecked the economy.
Nope, we had a good economy under Bush until the bubble burst.
Really. It was all bubble. The size of the workforce rose by less
than 2%, normal growth is 2% a year, not over 8 years.
GDP was markedly worse than under Clinton, or almost anyone else.
The financial system collapsed.
And that is your opinion of a good economy?
The economy did very well under Clinton with a top marginal Tax Rate of
39.6%. Not that anyone pays that after tax breaks. What's wrong with going
back to that?
Yes, I am in favor of that too.
Good.
There is little discretionary spending that can be cut, and the right
refuses to consider tackling mandatory. The only plan they had was to
privatize SS, the safety net. How many people would be destitute now if
that had been in place?
Agree with you on the above.
I'm glad we agree on something!
Bush was a big spender and he never vetoed anything. He was not a true
conservative by any means.
He was the darling of the conservative set, how can you deny that? You
still defend and admire him.
I admire Bush for taking on the Islamic extremists, something Clinton
never did. The invasion of Iraq was a stroke of genius. Bravo Bush!
Nope. Clinton had a comprehensive plan, one that was handed off to W who
did nothing. Read Richard Clarke, George Tenet, Paul O'Neill, any of those
who worked in the W Whitehouse (all Republicans) and they will tell you
that W was obsessed with Saddam and cared not a whit about alQaeda,
until... and then the first reaction was to go after Iraq.
It was time to accomplish several things at the time. Only Bush had the guts
to do it.
Exactly what did he accomplish? He didn't finish anything and left a
huge deteriorating mess in Afghanistan. The first thing Obama did was
double the commitment to Afghanistan, something that had been needed for
years and was turned down under W.
Mind you that the designers of the first WTC attack were all arrested
and successfully prosecuted.
Clinton never woke up from his slumbers. He treated them as criminals, not
Islamic terrorists that were at war with us.
Er, how was Richard Reid prosecuted under W? In fact there have been
many successful terrorist prosecution and absolutely none under a
military commission. You believe in a fairy tale.
While all that was happening the right repeatedly said that Clinton was
too obsessed with alQaeda. The focus shifted when W took office.
And, you do realize there was no alQaeda in any part of Iraq that Saddam
controlled. After the invasion, those were alQaeda converts, that didn't
exist before. All for the loss of thousands of American Military personnel
and many many innocent civilians (The average civilian death toll was on
the order of a hundred a day for years) and a trillion dollars or so.
Who cares how many Iraqis die for whatever reason.
Well that sums up your feelings doesn't it?
Jeff
Did you care about the
Iraqis that were being murdered under Saddam? Did you care about the Kurds
that were being gassed to death by Saddam?
American losses have also been minimal. You like statistics so much, why not
compare our military losses with losses from road accidents on our highways.
Or is a soldier more valuable than a civilian?
Regards,
Ed Dolan the Great - Minnesota
aka
Saint Edward the Great - Order of the Perpetual Sorrows - Minnesota