John Quincy Adams said it best: ================= And now, friends and countrymen, if the wise and learned philosophers of the elder world, the first observers of nutation and aberration, the discoverers of maddening ether and invisible planets, the inventors of Congreve rockets and Shrapnel shells, should find their hearts disposed to enquire what has America done for the benefit of mankind? Let our answer be this: America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable rights of human nature, and the only lawful foundations of government. America, in the assembly of nations, since her admission among them, has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held forth to them the hand of honest friendship, of equal freedom, of generous reciprocity. She has uniformly spoken among them, though often to heedless and often to disdainful ears, the language of equal liberty, of equal justice, and of equal rights. She has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations while asserting and maintaining her own. She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart. She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that Aceldama the European world, will be contests of inveterate power, and emerging right. Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force.... She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.... America's glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is, Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been her Declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice. ============
Notice that Iraq produces very little oil to be a major concern but the people in charge of double speak want you to believe that Iraq produces allot to make prices jump up when there's a problem there. This game has been played out over and over and I, for one, am fed up with the bullshit the double speakers are always telling us so that they can make more money by being deceitful and greedy. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
In the words of Jean-Luc Picard "Make it so." Your attitude will not permit that and thuse you will be culpable in the deaths that follow. Still, you seem quite comfortable with that, so it shouldn't be a problem for you.
Actually, you are using the wrong numbers. The US is one of the world’s largest oil producer, but it also a net importer of oil. It doesn’t produce enough oil to satisfy its demand for oil. The key metric for this discussion is oil exports. Iraq is the eight largest oil producer, producing over 3.2 million barrels per day. It is the 6th largest exporter of oil exporting more than 3 million barrels per day, and it has the 5th largest proven oil reserves. And 3 million barrels per day isn’t insignificant as you claim. http://www.eia.gov/countries/country-data.cfm?fips=iz http://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/For-OPEC-the-price-of-oil-is-just-right-for-5546594.php And none of this changes the fact that you don’t invade a country and leave it in shambles as you advocated. You break it, you fix it. Else, you might not like what arises out of the rubble (e.g. Nazi Germany). Unfortunately when the US invaded Iraq we had an incompetent in the presidency courtesy of the activist Republican Supreme Court.
If you read my statement I said to get Saddam then leave. I said that only took less than a year then another elected president was installed. What was destroyed there the people there could have rebuilt especially when you say that Iraq produces so much oil that it should be rolling in money. Why should America pay for all the clean up when Iraq makes so much from their oil production?
Mostly I think you are making no sense whatsoever. By 'thuse' did you mean 'thus'? I can't understand you. It sounds like you mean to go on a murdering spree. And, no I'm not comfortable with that. It is a problem for me. Please don't! You can't say 'that' and 'it' repeatedly in such a brief post and expect any one to understand what you are actually talking about. It's poor pronoun reference. What does Picard's quote have to do with anything we've discussed on this thread? If you mean to say the U.S. has some righteous obligation to do 'something' ( what that would be you in no way make clear), I don't think you've read or understood the Adams quotation. It's amazing that you would presume to tell me what my attitude is. How would you know what I think? Especially since you haven't understood the passage I commented on. Perhaps you are one of those who still believe all the great things you were told about America when you were knee high. Is that it? In any case, it is not for you to tell me what I think. Tell us what you think, if you like, but for goodness sake be coherent next time.
Why did we have to get Saddam? We didn't. It was a stupid move on the part of Georgie Junior and his merry band of Republicans. Yeah, Iraq is rolling in money but they are also rolling in debt and corruption. Why don't we charge them for our services? Georgie thought he could get the Iraq government to pay for reconstruction too. But it didn't work out for him. Because, Iraq is basically a one industry country. Oil revenues finance about 90% of the Iraqi government and account for 95% of its foreign exchange earnings. And the Georgie Bush installed Iraqi government suffers from a severe case of corruption and incompetence. Not to mention the fact the Iraqi government is deeply in debt. Saddam's wars left the country deeply in debt to its neighbors. Remember, that is why Saddam invaded his neighbor. Those debts didn't go away with the US invasion and occupation. You mix Georgie Bush's incompetence with the incompetence in the Iraqi government he created and you have incompetence on steroids. That is Iraq today. That is why the Iraqi government is collapsing. http://blogs.wsj.com/middleeast/2013/06/21/corruption-continues-to-plague-iraqi-government/
Iraq has always been a corrupt country. While I agree with you about America going there I only said what I did because that was the way he wanted it no matter how wrong he was. Now the Suni's will take control once again, like I said as did many others and we are back to square one. So what's to become of the trillion dollars spent there and the 5,000 lives lost. Then the trillion dollars to fight in Afghanistan and America is ready to leave there with nothing accomplished but a few Taliban deaths. Seems to me these wars were only for the military to make money and get newer supplies for whatever happens next.
Well the Afghanistan invasion was legitimate and necessary. However, the incompetent bungling of Afghanistan and Iraq was not. As for what has happened, nothing is going to change what has occurred. The money has been spent and the dead are dead. We don't have a time machine. The question is, where do we go from here? For starters, I suggest we change the systems that put an incompetent in the White House and whole bunch of incompetents in Congress to help him out.
Part of Quds Force is in Iraq. Iraq asks for help USA doesn't respond Iran deploys it's best: Quds and Saberin al-queda is Sunni, iran will only tolerate them if/when they don't cause trouble for it's friends, allies, or proxies. This ain't our fight.
Lots and lots of corporations made fortunes from the War on Islam. There are so many consulting firms supporting DoD that the government doesn't even know how many! The government has spent more than three trillion dollars on these wars of opportunity, and you can be sure that the actual military isn't getting most of it: it's going to corporations. What's even more outrageous is that they haven't been paying for it! Every major war in our history was financed largely by selling bonds to the citizens and raising taxes, but Backward Baby Bush established the new tactic of simply borrowing the money from China. So now we're in a recession (largely caused by the Bush administration's approval-by-default of the subprime mortgage fiasco), which makes it impractical to reduce government spending or to raise taxes, and Obama is blamed for the budget crisis! Every war since the end of WWII has been fought almost entirely for the purpose of enriching the corporations who sell weapons, aircraft, chemicals, etc., to the military. Eisenhower warned us about the power of the military-industrial complex, but we didn't listen. Bush claimed that he was bombing Iraq because Saddam Hussein was a major participant in the planning and execution of 9/11, but in fact almost all of the planning, financing and execution was done by Saudi Arabians. King Abdullah is his daddy's buddy in the energy industry, so he couldn't very well start bombing Riyadh and Mecca. So he distracted our attention by insisting that Iraq and Afghanistan were the culprits. I still don't understand why he wasn't prosecuted for treason. Well wait... he was Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces; does that mean he could be court-martialed?
Saddam was threatening the universality of the us dollar. His choice to trade oil in euros meant that, if others did so also, the dollar could tank. Most of our European allies didn't want us to invade as the transition would have been good for their economy. So we invaded anyway. This is not something a commander could admit to without endangering that which he would save(the value of the dollar). So he lied------that's his job! Countries don't have friends, just allies of convenience and lies for/to their citizens. If corporations see this weakness and capitalize on it, that is their job!
Oh hogwash. Unfortunately that is just so typical of the idiocy that permeates the conspiracy web sites on the web. Not even in Saddam's best wet dream could he hope to threaten the "universality" of the US dollar. The US Dollar is universal because of the size, power, and stability/safety of the US government. Nothing Saddam could do would change any of those reasons. If China with a several trillion dollar economy cannot successfully challenge the "universality" of the US Dollar, and it does indeed want to make that challenge, how is little old outcast Saddam with a 250 billion dollar economy going to represent a serious challenge? If that is how you want to view it fine. I like our Canadian allies of convenience.
You did notice how the us dollar tanked against the euro and gold just before(during the planning and nato negotiation phase) and following our invasion? Did you think that a wild coincidence?
I am a little perplexed as to why you think that is relevant. The value of the dollar, the value of any currency goes up and down every trading day. It is the nature of currency and certainly doesn't affect any of the reasons why the US Dollar is the world reserve currency. There are times when the Euro depreciates, "tanked" against the dollar too. The value of gold goes up and down too. But none of that is relevant to the US or Saddam's ability to influence the status of the US Dollar as the world reserve currency. The fact is people prefer to hold US Dollars for all the reasons previously given. "As of 2014 the United States dollar is the world's reserve currency, and the world's need for dollars has allowed the United States government as well as Americans to borrow at lower costs, granting them an advantage in excess of $100 billion per year.[2] However, by increasing the value of the dollar, its status as a reserve currency hurts U.S. exporters.[3][4]" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_currency
