Article here. The title refers not to false premises proffered for the invasion, but to the ways American corporations have been allowed to take advantage of the situation.
Strong stuff! Does this, well, overstate the case? Or not?
Apropos to nothing, it must be pointed out that Rolling Stone didn’t “expose” anything – they editorialized on a fairly popular topic.
Well, from your own quote:
:rolleyes:
Do you even think about these articles at all before you cut-and-paste your OPs?
I hardly think that poorly considered sentence is the thrust of the article, of which you are invited to an opinion. Outside of remarkling on BG’s abundant character flaws, have you anything of substance to offer?
It speaks volumes about the authors.
It wasn’t a remark, it was a question.
Your glass house is showing.
I see. I’m an asshole, BG is an asshole, the authors of this piece are assholes. Is that it, then?
But they did a pretty good job of piecing it all together. Read the whole article.
You can’t really credit Rolling Stone with exposing this story. The fact that corporations are milking the Iraq war like a cow with the full support of the Bush administration hasn’t been a secret.
I remember when *Rolling Stone * was about music…
Damn. I’m getting old.
I remember when *Rolling Stone * was about music…
Damn. I’m getting old.
No, that’s not it.
I wish we could just get rid of that damned roll-eye thing; it seems to attract people who have no contribution to make other than attempting to impress others with their self importance.
It’s always had political articles, hasn’t it?
Watch this film “Iraq for Sale”
The question that keeps occurring to me is why isn’t this on the news more and more and why aren’t we the American public more pissed of than we are?
Do we accept this as business as usual as long as we still have cable TV and cell phones? As long as me/we personally are doing okay then it’s more of an intellectual discussion rather than a real threat? What do we have to lose to make it important to us?
This war is costing the American people billions. So, it makes sense that some of that money comes back to them through American corporations, doesn’t it? Maybe there is truth in the argument that this is what the war is all about, but if it isn’t it still makes sense to me to give what business there is to your own companies. Why would you give it to companies from other countries who won’t pony up troops to support your efforts?
Some points in regards to the article. Re: “modern day chattel”:
Have you ever been to a place like the UAE? 80% of the people in the country are expats. Most of them are from the third world and are payed dollars a day. Few of them are herded onto boats and planes against their will because dollars a day is better than what they had where they came from. Not that I think this is right, but it is reality. And yeah, companies make a profit when they don’t have to pay western wages. But, I’m kind of confused as to why you seem to think they should have to pay western wages in the east?
Re: privatizing services usually run by the government:
A difference in philosophies is a good thing. It allows us to innovate and try new ideas. If it doesn’t work you try something different, or go back to what you were doing before if it is the best available way of doing things.
Re. obscene profits:
Companies are working in essentially a war zone. I’d expect them to make larger profits to cover the risk. Also, do these companies have guns to the heads of those who are paying? No, the guns are in the hands of the payers.
Re. two centuries of flawed white-people thinking:
Which also got us to the moon, a standard of living never before seen in the history of human kind, and a whole lot of medicines that we didn’t have before with a life expectancy to match. Could other cultures and civilizations have come up with this? Yep, but they didn’t, so there you have it. If we are going to say that ‘white’ people are have caused great damage to the ‘brown’ people of the world, then we are allowed to make all sorts of arguments about what the ‘brown’ people are doing both good, bad and indifferent.
And this sentence is just ridiculous, “It was an awful idea, perhaps the worst America has ever tried on foreign soil. But if you were in on it, it was great work while it lasted.”
The gist of the article was the war was all about money for American corporations and how much they are making in profit. If they were making a profit (as the article claims) then the war would be a great success from their point of view. If they aren’t making a profit then the war was a failure. The only awful idea would be if the war was about kicking out Saddam, freeing the Iraqi people, and installing a democratic government, and if that goal wasn’t accomplished. So, which was it? Was the war about money or about removing a despot?
The fact that war can be, and usually is, incredibly profitable is not exactly breaking news.
US private industries made billions off Vietnam, WWII & I, hundreds of millions off The Civil War, off selling arms to France when they were fighting the British and off selling arms to the British when they were fighting the French. And probably trillions off fighting the Cold War.
But, so what? It doesn’t in and of itself totally negate the moral/political/national purpose of any of those conflicts.
I think the purpose of the Vietnam War was to ‘stand against communism’, not to funnel funds to the backroom military/industrial complex shadow government. And even though I think that Vietnam was an incredibly wasteful, wrong, inefficient way to ‘stand against communism’ and therefore its not exactly pleasant to think that US military contractors made huge profits from it, I’m not going to make the great creative leap of illogic and say that’s why it was fought.
Even acknowledging that it was a bad, wasteful way to fight communism, it still was fought to, well, fight communism. Just as WWI and II were fought to stop fascism and despotism, and the Civil War to stop slavery and the dissolution of the Union. War profiteering didn’t change that.
Unless of course you’re a tree-hugging hippie who thinks no cause is ever worth fighting for so it has to always be about the money… 
It’s OK everyone, remember when we elected the Dems and they held all those war profiteering hearings and cleared away the problem? Oh, I guess we haven’t done that since the 1940s…
As opposed to the contribution you’ve made? Which is what, exactly?
:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
Roughly equivalent to the ones you’ve made.
To my post #19, please add the words “in this thread, anyway.”