By George, that is an excellent question! I am looking forward to your answer. Then after you answer that simple question (being sure to subtract the amount in today’s dollars that were involved in simply defending ourselves), you can calculate the amount in reparations (in today’s dollars) that we pulled out of the carcasses of our former enemies.
We have managed to save about 100,000 Iraqis the trouble of having to worry about their future, since they are now dead as a result of our noble mission.
Please. Some “studies” show that almost half that die from second-hand smoke alone. In the US.
How many were buried in mass graves in Iraq?
But Bush is the scourge. I keep forgetting that. I’m trying to allow the indoctrination, but common sense keeps getting in the way.
I’ll try harder, as I know some of you have all the answers to world peace. I really will try to see things as you do.
I’m off to get shitfaced in the hope that I can kill enough brain cells to see your point. This is such a worthless, overplayed argument on these boards I’ll try to limit myself to seeing what insults you can come up with, and stay out of it otherwise.
(Don’t worry about cites being challenged. You’ve linked to them, so that’s all there is.)
Translation: I don’t have any answers to the actual points which have been raised, so I’m taking my toys and going home.
Arguments proffered by ** duffer ** in this thread:
- 300 billion is a drop in the bucket
- We paid to save Europe
- Clinton bombed Serbia
- Iraq war wasn’t about oil becuase that is an old argument
- France was stealing from the Oil for Food program
- Hussien was a bad man
- Some studies show that more people die from 2nd hand smoke than the Iraq war
- Claimed that people were buried in mass graves
- Claims he is resisting indoctrination into Bush bashing (not sure how that is relevant)
Sorry ** duffer ** seems like you are one short of a top 10 list. Looks like you aren’t going to make it on Letterman. Unless of course you have posted yet another argument while I am posting this.
I dunno about other subjects, but on this one, duffer is utterly impenetrable to reason. And he thinks he’s being brilliant when he posts the most inane drivel.
This topic: best to avoid, unless you enjoy driving yourself to an aneurysm.
Just taking the piss here, but you think that figure might go up slightly if they dropped some “Shock & Awe” on your ass? My WAG here is that 2,000 lb. bombs are somewhat more pernicious to your health than second hand smoke.
Recent ones filled by the US or Saddam’s from fifteen years ago?
What you call "common sense"is the dictionary definition for victims of propaganda. Might want send a mug shot of yours for illustrative purposes.
No. Your Fearless Misleader clearly knows best:
Put that in your pipe and smoke it. Oh wait, never mind. You already have – good shit, huh?
Drink away, pal, clearly you need not worry about frying any braincells.
I am not really joining the argument but I would like to say…
Many said we were in it for the oil the first go around “No Blood For Oil”
We got no oil.
Many say the same thing this go around.
I am still waiting for some oil
We better get some oil out of it.
Silly rabbit, the oil wasn’t for you!
Now, ExxonMobil, on the other hand…
That was expected. Keep twisting the responses into what sounds good to you. I’ll never change your mind, but I refuse to be pilloried for seeing the world in a larger context than what I pay for gas at the pump. I’ll take another $1/gallon at the pump before I bitch about gas prices.
And if that’s what you’re worried about, bitch about the multi-taxes you’re paying on gasoline.
Only in America can people be so comfortable in life as to assert a love for communism on a message board. I’d love to see what attitude you’d have in 1967 Poland. Or Latvia. Or any other crushed nation on the ideal that the USSR knew what was best. You seem to have all the answers, yet support a gov’t style that tells you what is best.
You clearly know what is best for us all, why would you allow a dictatorship to tell you otherwise? (No, Bush isn’t a dictator. Don’t weaken your argument saying he is)
And if anyone cares to tell me what immediate threat Serbia was to the US, I’m still waiting.
They didn’t even have the same oil reserves. I can’t understand why we blew up so much shit that even a Chinese Embassy was hit. Talk about misguided reasons for killing innocents.
Why do you constantly assume that because someone is against spending 300 Billion dollars (of YOUR taxes – money you would certainly bitch about being ‘stolen’ from you if it were spent to help your neighbour eat) in an unnecessary war, that suddenly makes then supporters of the actions of Clinton? Do you see nothing outside of Democrat / Republican labels?
Clinton was just another in a long line of smarmy, slimy, war-mongering lying fuckwitted right-wing leaders your country has spawned. But what the fuck has he or his previous actions got to do with this particular thread? You mention him to deflect attention because otherwise you got nothing.
It’s reds under the bed now. Who exactly has asserted a “love for communism” in this thread? If you’re talking about my China analogy, the point was exactly that they’re a bunch of rotten despots who trample their own people {and others} under the iron heel of oppression, and by your high standards of US foreign policy are therefore ripe for a boot in the danglers, yet who continue to trample untrammeled. Oh, and I’m not in America.
Hee hee. A “love of communism.”
The dudes one step away from “why do you hate America?”
Shouldn’t that be internet law of some sort … like Godwin’s, except with neo-con buzzwords instead of nazis?
Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier!
Of course, in this case, the boxer was more like Frasier Crane than Joe Frazier, if Dr. Crane were drunk, stupid and had just had both arms taken off in a thresher accident.
Jack Batty:
*“He’s got WMD’s that he’s going to attack us with tomorrow if we don’t invade!!!111one” turned into a noble liberating of the Iraqi people awfully quick didn’t it?
World War II equates with the this Iraq war about the same way that Ali-Liston equates to sucker punching a frat boy for hitting on your girlfriend.*
duffer:
*Sorry Jack, I keep forgetting how great a man Hussein is. And how wonderful, compassionate and caring his sons were.
I’ll join you in your lament that he and the French can’t steal any more Oil-for-Food money from starving peasants. Poor guy. I’ll lay off him.*
So. As usual with most “if yer not wit’ us, yer agin’ us!” far-right (which lately includes “barely tilted to the right”) yammerheads, “I don’t agree entirely with the reasons we got into this war” = “I love Saddam Hussein and want to have, like, 10,000,000 of his babies.”
Fortunately, according to Michael Savage you can’t call me a liberal because I believe in immigration controls.
Duffer, normally you have some good points. Clearly this is not one of your better threads.
You’ve compared the number of iraqis that have died since the war began to the number of people that die due to second hand smoke. I’d really like to see an explanation on that.
And while I’m there, does that 100k figure involve enemy combatants or are those numbers sctrictly civilian? I think that needs some clarifying.
You’ve equated being critical of the war with loving communism and thinking Saddam Hussein is a great man. That’s retarted. There is no way that you are that stupid.
Jeez, Duffer, you really are a stubborn asshole, aren’t you?
What the fuck does Serbia (or communism) have to do with anything.
Serbia was a country in which groups of people were commiting atrocities and trying to wipe out complete groups of different-thinking people.
The international community decided to jump in and the US followed.
Compare that to Iraq : a dictator of a country with a high level of prosperity, well-educated women that did some gruesome things during his reign. (Not more so than the CIA did in Vietnam, Cambodja or a lot of other dictators do in other countries, like US-ally the United Arab Emirates).
The international community decided that he wasn’t bad enough to start a war but to put economic sanctions on the country (I am not advocating this, since this hurt the population just as much as this war).
Now Mr. Bush unilateraly decides to start a war, because Mr. Hussain is a “direct threat to the safety of America”.
Now it is clear that there are no WMDs they say they wanted to liberate the people from this terrible tyrant.
Can you spot the differences, asshole?
People like you just make me sick to the stomache.
It is too bad that people with such a distorted view of the world are allowed to vote.
Here’s a little info-rant I wrote for my sunday night club.
The larger numbers are to be found here
The others are based on grocery prices at Peapod
It is easy for brother Duffer to stand firm, and say that he would pay the extra dollar, and cough up $3.38 per gallon but the reality, as we all know, is that the one dollar increase at the pump isn’t the problem for most folks. The problem is the increase in price of everything else that that one dollar per gallon causes. Everything from Apples to Zucchini is dependent on hydrocarbon fuels for existance. So despite the bluster, the republicans aren’t doing this for the ‘people’ nor, in fact, are the democrats. They’re in this poorly acted play for themselves and their interests, period.
Nancy Pelosi could give a fuck less that the bill that the republicans passed is anti-anything, there’s nothing in it for HER, hence, she whines. None of these politicians are concerned with anything more than power, money and getting over on the backs of the rest of us.
Now, back to the OP.
300 Billion is, A LOT OF FUCKING MONEY. Percentages be damned, that’s a lot of fucking money. If it’s 7% or .7% is of no real concern. And what that 300 Billion has bought for us is almost universal international scorn, ridicule* a lot of dead, and one nutbag ex-dictator. Oh yeah, and bushels and bushels of money for Halliburton, and eventually, big oil. If we focused as intently on eradicating illiteracy, poverty, hunger, disease and violence right here in the good ol’ USofA, we would have the mandate behind all of our big talk and pomposity about being the “greatest country in the world”.
*I realize that many think that this isn’t all that important, and it’s ok to be hated, as long as you’re feared, and I’m sure I don’t need to go into the consequences, but it’s not a good thing to be universally hated, that’s kinda what caused this mess in the first place.
Sad that nobody picked up on this reasonable question. Anyway, here you go:
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Budget/loader.cfm?url=/commonspot/security/getfile.cfm&PageID=53149
Duffer old man, I’m not sure why you’re trying to defend teh indefensible. Fact is, by any measure, three-hundred billion dollars is a whole shitpot fulla dough - especially with the budget deficits that are projected. Governments, in my estimation, almost never spend money wisely, but this waste of money (not to mention lives) is insane. $150 billion/yr consumes the total GDP of over 4.1 million U.S. citizens. And we’re gonna do that two years in a row.
I also note from the article linked that the Senate version of the bill has earmarked $592 million for a new Baghdad embassy. Goddamn if that don’t seem like an awful lotta cash, too. Five-hundred ninety-two million fucking dollars? For an embassy? To put this in GDP terms again, that’s the total yearly GDP for over 16,000 U.S. citizens.