It’s not impractical. We do it all the time. If you get a job, you have to prove legal residence. If you want Medicaid, SCHIP, or TANF, you have to prove legal residence. In a lot of states, if you want a driver’s license, you have to prove legal residence. So it’s not like we don’t have experience implementing a proof of legal residence requirement, or that we have, in the past, considered that an unreasonable burden.
Revisionist bullshit. But it’s what I expect from you and your ilk who seek to paint this disastrous war of choice - based on a web of lies and jingoism - as some noble cause that has been proven noble because of all of the poor Iraqi’s that we saved … except, of course, for the ones who were scrambled in your retarded omelet of freedom.
No, me bucko. 'Twas not me that said:
That statement says it’s impossible to claim that the benefits of regime change are worth 736 billion dollars, plus lives lost.
I say it IS possible to claim that. For example, if I say the cost of a 14 year old girl being kidnapped and raped under color of the law, with the authority of the government, is $100 million, then we need only identify seven thousand such victims before we’ve covered the money part of the equation.
One of the concerns that opponents cite about this bill is that it doesn’t specifically exclude illegal immigrants, which is the point I’m addressing. The broad scope of who is elligible is another, but that’s not what I’m getting at.
[/quote]
I’m sure you’d love to characterize the bill only in terms of “what you’re getting at.” But the fact of the matter is that the bill covers much more than "“foreigners who worked in this country to clean up the World Trade Center site after 9/11,” and when you claim that’s all it does, you create a materially false impression for the reader. The reader feels he must choose between excluding aliens and "“foreigners who worked in this country to clean up the World Trade Center site after 9/11.” But in fact, choosing the bill does much more than just that, and you know it, or should know it.
Because the U.S. government has no rule that says, “all persons must be helped equally.” I am sure your kindergarten teacher had such a rule, but the government does not. The government can permissibly choose to help the people of Iraq and not help sign-painters who worked in lower Manhattan for one day in 2003 without being fundamentally wrong.
You of course may disagree that the government’s choice is the wisest one. But you cannot claim that their choice is evil, or so incompetent as to be absurd.
Hello, goalpost mover! How’s the job going? Good, I see.
Original question: what was the cost- benefit breakdown associated with the Iraq war?
New, stealth question, slipped in by Goalpost Movers 'R Us: Why was the war started?
No, since the purpose of the screening is to determine eligibility.
No. There is a Special Master and dozens of administrators who determine whether claimants’ conditions are 9/11 related.
No more than 25,000 may be eligible at any one time.
“If the law required all pregnancies to be aborted it would open up a real can of worms!”
“The law doesn’t require that.”
“I know!”
Would we even need a cost-benefit breakdown associated with the Iraq war if the goddamned thing hadn’t been started in the first place?
But never mind that. It’s much more fun to play with the dollar figures (that we pissed away and will never get back).
If there were any illegal immigrants who worked at the WTC site, do they deserve to live without the 24/7 health consequences of working under toxic conditions?
What about the legal workers at the WTC site, and the consequences they’ve suffered? If some fraction of the $7 billion is spent on illegals, just think of that as “break(ing) a few eggs”.
'Twasn’t me who said that, either.
Never said that.
Never said that.
I’m not trying to characterize the bill, I’m trying to characterize my question to you and Starving Artist, since you seem not to have understood it.
Maybe it would help if you went back and re-read my previous posts in this thread. There are only two of them.
[QUOTE=Starving Artist;12758683
You’ll
And cosmosdan, this is one of those occasions where unfortunately you have to break a few eggs in order to make an omelet. Despite the casualties that have occurred to Iraqis because of the war, far fewer people died overall during the war than were dying or being killed by Hussein and his policies before the war, and millions and millions of Iraqi citizens now and in the future no longer have to live in fear of Hussein, his sons and his henchmen. We take casualties in every war because we know they’re necessary for the greater outcome, and the same holds true for the Iraqi citizens who’ve unfortuantely been killed or injured in the war. The deaths of thousands of Iraqis is the unfortunate price necessary to allow millions to live free of Hussein’s arbitrary and random reign of torture, rape, murder, intimidation and the constant, constant fear that its citizens had to live wth.[/QUOTE]
That’s all a nice justification. There’s no doubt in my mind that Saddam and his sons were brutal and saddistic, but there are no real numbers to indicate “far fewer people died” because there’s no way to have accurate numbers.
What we do have isthis
I understand the horrors of war for some greater good but that isn’t why we went there. Operation Iraqi freedom was the last rationalization and lie. Our history of interference in the middle east is dismal. Our goverment has served our economic interests not human rights. Hundreds of thousands of lives and almost a trillion dollars with no guarentee of long term stability unless we spend more to maintain a miliatary presence. The lies we are willing to swallow to mainain our lifestyle here at home will eventually cost us even more than they have so far.
Nice appeal to emotion counsellor.
Of course as a lawyer, you’ll be familiar with the fact that corporations, governments and statasticians put a value on human life all the time.
If she were an cute American girl, she’d be worth about 6.9 million dollarsaccording to the EPA and other sources.
If she was a cute little girl from Bhopal, $500 sounds about right according to Union Carbide.
Lets use a figure in between - 3.5 million dollars. do you think that the 2 Trillion dollar invasion “saved” over 560,000 lives? That is, do you think that there was a net “savings of lives” of 560,000 due to the invasion (of course, you will have to subtract the number of lives, both Iraqi and others lost due due to the invasion).
This is your post.
You did say “some fraction,” and I apologize for missing that.
Why is Union Carbide’s number particularly persuasive in this context? Did Union Carbide officials plan the Iraq War?
And why is the EPA’s? That’s a generic life, not a life punctuated by rape and kidnapping. And why should I accept the EPA’s number anyway? Did EPA officials plan the Iraq War?
And if I reject both the EPA’s and Union Carbide’s, then obviously I reject yours, which merely strikes a halfway position between them.
I believe we can all see the broken eggs. And we will see the omelet…when, exactly? When Iraq oil revenues pay for the reconstruction? When that promised statue of Bush appears in downtown Baghdad? When hundreds of thousand of Iraqis march in gleeful unity to express their abiding love of the USA? Well, maybe that’s just Iraqi culture, to restrain gestures of gratitude, don’t want to overdo it.
We were led by fools and scoundrels into a ruinously expensive, needless, and futile war. We’ve been had. Buggered with great enthusiasm.
When I think of all the good and worthy things we might have done with the money, I am reminded of Lincoln’s story about the little boy who stubbed his toe in the dark, and announced that he was too old to cry, but it hurt too much to laugh.
As for all the lives wasted…no, can’t do it, there is a limit to obscenity. no curse is adequate to the task. I have no mouth, and I must scream.
Did anyone planning the Iraq War claim to be doing it for 14-year-old rape victims?
OKay, point taken. There would still be a cost associated with that processing but I can’t claim any numbers to show it’s not financially worthwhile.
I can see the question ‘What would Jesus Do’ isn’t popping into the head of either the Republicans or the self-professed ‘Christian’ (but aren’t in any meaningful sense) conservatives on this board.
Well now that we’ve established what you are, I guess all that is left is to haggle over your price.
I would have thought that was self-evident. You know, given that none of them have died for our sins.
Yes, at least if you generally mean “Did anyone consider the benefits of deposing a murderous dictator?” It’s true that the immediate necessity was the WMD, but the human benefit of getting rid of Saddam was certainly a factor.
The human benefit was particularly important after the “immediate necessity” turned out to be a stinking load of donkey cobblers.
So how much is a cute 14 year old Iraqi life worth counsellor? I’m sure you’re familiar enough with the calculations. You’ll have to balance it against the lives lost due to the invasion.