Listen to Christopher Hitchens’ account of life in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, based upon his first hand observations after having been there, and perhaps you’ll begin to get an idea as to why some of us feel that the Iraqi populace is much, much better off now than it was under Hussein, despite the Iraqi casualties that were an unavoidable result of the war and which we took considerable pains to minimize.
Then add to that the elimination of a serious threat to some of our allies in the region and the risk of present of future WMD which Hussein either had or would never have stopped trying to develop, and you have a scenario in which a great many ‘competent’ people could find the Iraq war not only excusable but necessary.
Sure you have. You’ve accused me of selfishness and hatred and you’ve used those accusations to explain my comments.
No, you haven’t. But prescience and past experience with the hive mind of this board shows that any opposition to liberal attitudes on illegal immigration will almost immediately followed by accusations of racism and hatred of “brown” people. I just thought I’d head them off (your own or anyone else’s) at the pass. And for once, it seems to have worked.
This is what happens when I post in haste; you most certainly have accused me of racism, albeit not directly. Remember when you said that I “really was that hateful…”? Who were you thinking of as the subject of all that so-called hate, if not “brown people”?
First you claim that your premptive strike has “headed off” accusations of racism, then, in your next breath, decry such accusations. Well, which is it?
And just so you know, “hateful” is a descriptive of character, not opinions. It is not synonymous with “bigoted”. One can be utterly misanthropic without any such distinctions of race, color, or creed.
Ah, here we go again. Remember when I asked why any opposition to liberal goals is always met with insults toward their opponents and lies about their motives?
But all that aside, now you’re just being silly. Your answer as to why you labelled my support of Republican thinking on this bill as “hateful” is because I just hate people in general? I’m just a big ol’ misantrope who doesn’t want anybody anywhere being helped by anybody anywhere? And I’m an “asshole” to boot!
In the first place, I’m hardly someone who doesn’t want his money helping others. I have spent tens of thousands of dollars over the course of my life trying to help certain people, and many of them were people who most felt didn’t deserve it. But I do have certain objections to having the government decide how much of my money is needed to help people and how it’s going to be used. If I feel the expenditure is unwise, harmful, casts too wide a net, or is being done primarily to gain political capital, I will object and that objection has nothing to do with hatred of “people”. :rolleyes: You were really grasping at straws with that phony excuse.
Probably after it’s developed a reputation for using WMD on people from other countries as well as its own, and after it’s invaded another country in order to seize its oil, and after it has lobbed missles at our allies, and after it…well, you get the idea. The welfare of the Iraqi populace wasn’t the only reason ‘competent’ people found the war to be necessary, but it was a significant one and one which I agree with wholeheartedly.
It’s interesting to me that so many of the people around here who become so outraged over Iraqi casualties from the war are simultaneously completely unconcerned when it comes to the death, torture, fear and misery that millions of Iraqis had to endure under the rule of Hussein.
Far more people have become “casualties” at the hands of Saddam Hussein than have ever become so because of the war, and they would still be occurring today (and in the future under his reprehensible and even more sadistic sons).
In other words, you’ve got nothing and had to resort to self-aggrandizing trumpeting and flinging vague insults at “liberals.”
No wonder you like Rush Limbaugh. Looks like you’ve learned a thing or two from him.
So why didn’t he? He could have developed any WMD he wanted, short of nuclear weapons in a matter of weeks. And yet we find nothing. Hell, Belgium could develop WMD, if they wanted. And yet Saddam had none. What was he waiting for?
Your scenario demands more than a hatred of America, it demands a suicidal hatred of America. Well, if that were true, what was holding him back? Saddam’s number one enemy wasn’t the USA, Saddam’s number one enemy was Iran. That was the basis of a previously cozy relationship between Saddam and the US, back before anybody cared how terrible a dictator he was.
You want to see those pictures again, Cheney in Baghdad, shaking hands with Saddam? Haven’t forgotten, have you? Don’t recall a lot of hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth about what a terrible, terrible person he was.
None, because “regime change” didn’t become a stated goal of the Iraq invasion until the first stated goal was quietly abandoned. The American public and the UN Security Council were sold a false bill of goods.
The calculus would have been quite different had we gone to Iraq to save Iraqis from Saddam. We didn’t.
Again, nobody gave a shit about “life under Saddam” until there weren’t any WMDs. The rationale for the war wasn’t “let’s get rid of that bad man”, but “don’t let the smoking gun be a mushroom cloud”.
The elimination of a serious threat to our allies? Really? The net effect of the invasion of Iraq - which, I’ll remind you, was supposedly the greatest battle of the War on Terror - was to create a Factory of Terror.
X% was that the bill is bad in its current form.
Y% was that the way the Democrats brought it to the floor was inappropriate
Z% was to keep the Democrats from having an easy victory this close to the mid-terms.
The distribution I am sure varies by Rep, and should also include some portion of “The Whip told me to vote this way.”
It is never up to us to decide another sovereign nation has a government too evil to continue. To say the Iraqi people are better off without Saddam and sons is overly simplistic bullshit.
What I’m saying is, the Dems have more than a majority in both houses. They did not need to use the 2/3rd procedure to pass it. I’m assuming everyone is aware that for a “bill to become a law” (there was even a cartoon released in the 70s explaining this), you have to have a majority of both houses of congress pass the same bill, send it to the President who then ratifies it.
The only reason for going with the 2/3rds majority procedure was to deny Republicans the chance to make political hay out of a tangential illegal immigrant aspect of it.
Now, I’ll totally get behind people that think the Republicans are being stupid twats. But at the end of the day, it’s a Democratic House, Democratic Senate, and a Democratic White House. The Republicans can only play ball on the Dems terms, and the Dems are the only ones to blame if they can’t pass legislation.
Well, more than just make political hay. The illegal immigrant amendment would have killed the bill, because enough Democrats would have voted for the amendment that it would become part of the bill, and then enough Democrats would have voted against the final bill to kill it.
No it isn’t. We don’t get to gaze out at the rest of the world and decide which governments are behaving well and can continue to exist. We live in a world where we must respect the sovereignty of other nations. We even signed on to international law supporting the sovereignty of other nations. There are times when human rights violations can be the exception to the rule. Kosovo is an example
but that is not something we get to decide arbitrarily
Although Saddam was a brutal dictator nothing rose to genocide.
It was a war built on lies that cost hundreds of thousands of lives, hundreds of thousands of severe injuries, and over 700 billion dollars. Personally I find it astonishing that you can defend and try to justify the war and then bitch about potential waste in this bill.
When you consider the total impact of the effort in lives lost and forever changed and hundreds of billions spent, to then say. “The Iraqi’s are better off without Saddam” is indeed oversimplified bullshit to justify the war.
Considering the evidence it’s akin to believing in a flat earth that was created 6000 years ago.
I’d agree that the Dems have been pussies in terms of getting things done. My complaint isn’t even that the GOP voted no. My bitch is what Weiner said, sincere or grandstanding. If you vote no then defend your vote on the merits of the bill. Don’t blame proceudre and whine that you wanted it to pass. Vote yes or no on the merits of the bill and defend your vote on the merits of the bill.
The illegal Immigrant amendment was bullshit. It had no place in the bill. You want to prevent waste there are other areas that need it more and better ways to do it in this bill. Reduce the amount and narrow the criteria for recipients if you need do but get something done.
How would an illegal immigrant get this health care in the end?
Ok, let’s say that this bill passes without any amendments. Juan Gonzalez was a 9/11 worker and applies for benefits. While checking his employment history, the feds discover that he is an illegal immigrant!
So, isn’t he deported instead of receiving health care?
I’ve never understood this aspect of any of these “denial of X to illegal immigrants”. Once they are found to be illegals, don’t any benefits immediately cease and they go to a detention facility to await deportment?