Ain’t it pretty obvious what the answers to those questions are going to be? I.e.:
Don’t know, don’t care, shut up.
Not pleased. We’ve invested too many dollars and too many souls in a land where the average citizen is most interested in killing someone who doesn’t share his religious beliefs.
Not being aware of Certified Public Accountants involvement, I cannot intelligently comment.
Hindsight being what it is, Mr Bush senior already has admitted that it was a mistake to have not taken Saddam out of power in Gulf War I. Personally? I’d have rather taken over the country, and given our investment, annexed it as a US territory. Call it the state of Iraq, and add a star to the flag. Turn on the oil pipeline, tell OPEC to piss off, and call it a day.
I know it wouldn’t be that simple, but you asked, so I answered.
…I can only assume your joking-anything else would just be really scary-but I assume you know that the CPA stands for the Coalition Provisional Authority?
Anyway-to catch you up, guess what! There is a thread here on the Straightdope about it…
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=257719&highlight=heritage+foundation+iraq
…so now you know a little bit more about the situation-what are your thoughts?
…so you have no thoughts on the 8.8 billion dollars, on not securing the Ministry of Information, or the lack of process to record deaths in Iraq. You know you’re doing a damm good job to keep the stereotype of the “bush bot” alive, don’t you?
Toldya.
Bolding mine.
Which country are you referring to here(USA or Iraq), because the lines of distinction tend to be a little bit on the blurred side these days?
The answer is quite simple, RedFury. The current Republicans are perhaps the first “party before country” party we’ve encountered. A win for these people is getting their way. That is to say, getting Bush’s tax cuts was a win, regardless of whether it resulted in positive outcomes. Doing what they want with Iraq is a win, regardless of whether things end up better. As long as they don’t suffer personally, it’s a win! Party Before Country Republicans.
You may not be so up on domestic American issues, but this party (the current Republicans) is showing a strong a desire to dismantle ethics protections that they championed only a decade ago. Their minions apparently don’t blink. Party Before Country Republicans.
Is the current war justified? Who cares – we support our party, and criticizing the war would be bad for the party.
Is it costing us billions of dollars? Not a problem – it ain’t going to the democrats or their supporters.
Are American soldiers getting killed? Yup, and that’s their job. Our job is to put a magnet in their name on the back of the car.
Are Iraqis being killed by our actions? Who? Who can keep up with all these other people we’re supposed to care for? They would have been dead anyway, or living in Iraq. We’re optimistic about their chances – they look pretty good from over here.
These people are petty and hold a fucking grudge. They couldn’t stand the 1990’s, the fact that Clinton was hugely popular and successful. Getting to do what they want is the bottom line, not what actually happens as a result. (Look at the fact that, with all the things that have gone wrong or been done wrong, nobody has suffered any consequences. The only people who have been dismissed have been those who are not team players – those who do not put their party before their country. Others are given medals of freedom!) I used to be unable to comprehend German citizens in the 1930’s.
A pre-emptive strike:
Why do you hate God and America so much, Hentor? 
As God said on Joan of Arcadia…
“There’s no answer I can give that would make any sense to you.”
You don’t want to listen. You want to attack. So there is no point in having a serious discussion with you.
What is the long list of countries that we invaded at our whim? Iraq and Afghanistan and…?. Granting that you are not bright enough to see that Saddam should not have been left in power in Iraq, what the hell was capricious about Afghanistan?
What the fuck are you blabbering about? The only time that quote comes up around here is when some stupid lefty wants to play at cleverness. Much like the fucktarded 1984 references when some earnest lefty wants to sound educated, or the even more fucktarded ‘Why do you hate America’ that comes soley from the left.
It’s too easy, too convenient, to just write off Bush’s supporters as “Bush-bots.” I don’t think of Bush voters that way because they’re not robots; many of them are intelligent, principled people whose political make-up is too complex to dismiss in a simple, stereotyped description.
I like all the Bush supporters; they’re good people. (Yes, I like you, too, **
Shodan**, just because you annoy the dickens out of me on occasion doesn’t make you any less likable.) I’ve met Bricker and Dances with Cats and they’re both great guys. I’d trust both of them with my money or my life.
So how can I reconcile my respect for them personally and my utter shock at their support for such an incompetent regime?My current thinking is that their devotion to the tenets of American conservative thinking has blinded them to the realities of what Bush has actually done. Starving Artist’s post about “optimism vs. pessimism” is key; to him beleiving in America and being a patriot means supporting the president; people who don’t support the president are therefore not patriotic. He forgets that sometimes the highest degree of patriotism is speaking truth to power, in this case exposing the lies and chicanery of a corrupt regime.
There’s a major fucking difference between me and you. You’re whining that I don’t want to listen, I want to attack you. My attack, if there is one, is kinda verbal, and it ain’t likely to kill you. From the thread you linked to:
You wanted to attack Iraq and actually kill Iraqis. You didn’t want to listen to the weapons inspectors, or pretty much anyone apart from Bush.
You’re rapidly running out of credibility, sport.
I ain’t accepting any more admonitions from people who were pro-war fanatics
And blah blah blah. Thank you. You’ve confirmed my perception that Bush bashers are basically just a bunch of hate-filled, shitbrained assholes.
The invasion of Aghanistan was necessary, but what you miss, Brutus is that Bush didn’t go far enough. He ought to have pacified the country and, yes, engaged in nationbuilding–fixing the infrastructure, rebuild the schools and hospitals and roads, given Afghan farmers incentives not to grow opium–before he hared off to topple Saddam.
And while I agree that gettign rid of Saddam and his vile sons was in itself a good thing, we didn’t take the steps necessary to fill the vacuum of authority left after Saddam’s ouster. Our troops sat, handeds folded, while criminals ran amuck and wrecked Bagfdad. We ensured the comfort of the American occupying grulers while leaving the people of Baghdad without electricity and water. If we had repaired those things in the first days of the occupation to show concern for the residents’ welfare, we would have earned more cooperation form them in pacifying the place. We didn’t consult the religious authorities or show respect to tribal leaders who could have helped us keep the peace. Worse, still, we’ve treated the Iraqi people with contempt, inspiring more and more of them to take up arms against us.
Replacing tyranny with chaos is not a positive result.
:rolleyes:
Whatever. You guys talk amongst yourselves. There’s nothing I can say that would make you change your mind, so I’m not going to strain the hamsters.
Well, given that I was a pro-war supporter (not “fanatic”) who saw the error of my ways, maybe I know more than you how to reach others who have not yet seen through the Bush regime’s lies.
Of course, if you have no interest in educating and converting people to your POV, and just want to spew hate and venom at people who don’t agree with you, I apologize for spoiling your good time.
Applause!!!
Yes, I think it’s possible to be a thinking person and support Pres. Bush, for whatever reasons make sense to the person. And I see the point underlying gobear’s second paragraph.
I do have one thing that hit me hard to bring up here. It’s a thought I’ve expressed before, back in 2003. But I picked up The Crazy Years, the compilation of six years of columns written by Spider Robinson for the Toronto Globe and Mail, named after Robert A. Heinlein’s term for the last part of the 20th Century and the first dozen or so years of the 21st.
And in the last essay in that book, written for it and trying to summarize the points he’s been making in his columns, he mentions Heinlein’s 1950 article “Where To?” (AKA "Pandora’s Box) – an attempt to extrapolate what the America of 2000 A.D. would be like, 50 years before the fact. After making nineteen predictions (with a rather high success rate, I might add), he makes a series of “negative predictions” – things he’s relatively sure won’t happen.
Number four on that latter list is worth quoting, and thinking about, whatever your politics:
That was a core element of the values I grew up with. The good guy never hit first – he defended himself, and came out triumphant, but he never started the fight. It was true for kids, for adults, for the country.
It’s amazing how low we’ve fallen in such a short time.
228 years of American tradition were thrown out in 2003, when we decided that – well, pick your reason; the Bush Administration apparently had a subscription to Justification of the Month Club at that time – was sufficient reason to invade Iraq and throw out the existing, legitimate if despicable, government.
Ties to Al Qaeda? Nah, can’t be proven. WMDs? Aren’t there, weren’t there, but it was handy. Well, it’s a good thing that Saddam isn’t in power any more.
Well, yeah, it is. But doing it the way we did, with the justifications we came up with, violated a principle of our foreign affairs that precedes George Washington’s Presidency. And a standard of American – Western! – values that dates back hundreds of years before that.
Read that Heinlein quote again. He was a strong supporter of our military, and of opposition to tyranny anywhere. If you’ll recall, one of the big fights in Café Society was over the travesty Paul Verhoeven’s film (I use the term loosely) made of his novel Starship Troopers, which was a reasoned justification of the use of military force, and when and where it was appropriate.
But suddenly we became the aggressor, the bully that we used to defend the little guys against.
That’s tragic.
:rolleyes:
If a rollyeyes smiley is the best you have to offer, you might as well cede the argument right now. You’re not even American; you don’t know or care about the political differences dividing us here in the States. so why should I or any American, Dem or Pub, listen to some foreigner tell us how to run our country?