Ok...now I'm really confused. Oh, and thanks Andy for not adding me to your ignore list. And for the record no one is on my ignore list. God bless America.
If God sees fit to bestow some blessings on the United States, that will certainly upset the bleeding heart liberals and put them at a political disadvantage.
yup i see iraq turning into a place that is totally safe for american companies. kind of like saudi arabia. ive never heard of workers being threatened or killed over there so i think this new halliburton and new texaco idea for iraq is great!! i mean they love us over there so it would be easy for those american companies to establish themselves!! GREAT THOUGHTS GUYS!!
So far, you haven't stooped to personal attacks and mindless parroting of RNC materials. Should that become your pattern, then sadly you will make my ignore list too. It isn't too hard to avoid my ignore list, just come up with meaningfull dialogue rather than mindless vitriol.
Let's face facts here -- the liberals wouldn't be reacting with such animosity if what Faos and Roxran were saying wasn't true. It's hitting home and it's striking a nerve with the liberals. The truth hurts.
You made the point that God is not Sam and I responded with the statement that GWB is ALSO not God and, in fact, doesn't have any clearer idea of God's will than I do.
If true, this explains a lot. No one posts with more animosity here than Jorge, bama or Uncle Tim. Is it really because the truth hurts? Makes a lot of sense.
No Batman, you post with the most animosity by far. It's not even close. My posts are filled with merriment. Ho ho ho!
For the life of me I can't understand why you drug GWB into a discussion about Sam putting me on his ignore list. My reference to God was Sam's "almighty" attitude he tends to display at times. It's funny how some people complain about our rights being taken away in one thread but if someone else expresses their freedom of speech - and it doesn't go along with the thought of some others - they are put on a lame ignore list. But, hey, to each is own I guess.
Count me as one liberal who has some serious admiration for Zarqawi. I mean, how many other dead, peg-legged people do you know who have magically come back to life with no sign of gimp? He's Frosty the Snowman of the middle east!
Who Lost Iraq? By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: June 29, 2004 ARTICLE TOOLS E-Mail This Article Printer-Friendly Format Most E-Mailed Articles Columnist Page: Paul Krugman Forum: Discuss This Column E-mail: krugman@nytimes.com TIMES NEWS TRACKER Topics Alerts Iraq Bremer, L Paul III Privatization he formal occupation of Iraq came to an ignominious end yesterday with a furtive ceremony, held two days early to foil insurgent attacks, and a swift airborne exit for the chief administrator. In reality, the occupation will continue under another name, most likely until a hostile Iraqi populace demands that we leave. But it's already worth asking why things went so wrong. The Iraq venture may have been doomed from the start — but we'll never know for sure because the Bush administration made such a mess of the occupation. Future historians will view it as a case study of how not to run a country. Up to a point, the numbers in the Brookings Institution's invaluable Iraq Index tell the tale. Figures on the electricity supply and oil production show a pattern of fitful recovery and frequent reversals; figures on insurgent attacks and civilian casualties show a security situation that got progressively worse, not better; public opinion polls show an occupation that squandered the initial good will. What the figures don't describe is the toxic mix of ideological obsession and cronyism that lie behind that dismal performance. The insurgency took root during the occupation's first few months, when the Coalition Provisional Authority seemed oddly disengaged from the problems of postwar anarchy. But what was Paul Bremer III, the head of the C.P.A., focused on? According to a Washington Post reporter who shared a flight with him last June, "Bremer discussed the need to privatize government-run factories with such fervor that his voice cut through the din of the cargo hold." Plans for privatization were eventually put on hold. But as he prepared to leave Iraq, Mr. Bremer listed reduced tax rates, reduced tariffs and the liberalization of foreign-investment laws as among his major accomplishments. Insurgents are blowing up pipelines and police stations, geysers of sewage are erupting from the streets, and the electricity is off most of the time — but we've given Iraq the gift of supply-side economics. If the occupiers often seemed oblivious to reality, one reason was that many jobs at the C.P.A. went to people whose qualifications seemed to lie mainly in their personal and political connections — people like Simone Ledeen, whose father, Michael Ledeen, a prominent neoconservative, told a forum that "the level of casualties is secondary" because "we are a warlike people" and "we love war." Still, given Mr. Bremer's economic focus, you might at least have expected his top aide for private-sector development to be an expert on privatization and liberalization in such countries as Russia or Argentina. But the job initially went to Thomas Foley, a Connecticut businessman and Republican fund-raiser with no obviously relevant expertise. In March, Michael Fleischer, a New Jersey businessman, took over. Yes, he's Ari Fleischer's brother. Mr. Fleischer told The Chicago Tribune that part of his job was educating Iraqi businessmen: "The only paradigm they know is cronyism. We are teaching them that there is an alternative system with built-in checks and built-in review." Checks and review? Yesterday a leading British charity, Christian Aid, released a scathing report, "Fueling Suspicion," on the use of Iraqi oil revenue. It points out that the May 2003 U.N. resolution giving the C.P.A. the right to spend that revenue required the creation of an international oversight board, which would appoint an auditor to ensure that the funds were spent to benefit the Iraqi people. Instead, the U.S. stalled, and the auditor didn't begin work until April 2004. Even then, according to an interim report, it faced "resistance from C.P.A. staff." And now, with the audit still unpublished, the C.P.A. has been dissolved. Defenders of the administration will no doubt say that Christian Aid and other critics have no proof that the unaccounted-for billions were ill spent. But think of it this way: given the Arab world's suspicion that we came to steal Iraq's oil, the occupation authorities had every incentive to expedite an independent audit that would clear Halliburton and other U.S. corporations of charges that they were profiteering at Iraq's expense. Unless, that is, the charges are true. Let's say the obvious. By making Iraq a playground for right-wing economic theorists, an employment agency for friends and family, and a source of lucrative contracts for corporate donors, the administration did terrorist recruiters a very big favor. link
Makes you proud... An Iraqi flag flies over a building now run by the new Iraqi government in Baghdad, Iraq (news - web sites) Monday, June 28, 2004. A new national flag was designed during the administration of L. Paul Bremer but was rejected by most Iraqis. The new Iraqi government has reverted to the old flag.
Time to call Iraq war a failure The New York City schools this year implemented a very controversial program to end social promotions. One of the fail-safe points comes in the third grade, when students, for some odd reason, have to prove they can read and do some math. It's a good thing for the Bush administration that Mayor Bloomberg was not doing Paul Bremer's job. If so, Iraq would have been left back. Instead, Iraq graduated to sovereignty two days early - a ceremony accelerated not because Iraq was doing so well but because it was doing so badly. The real failure here is not Iraq's, of course, but the Bush administration's. It is the parent and it once set out certain goals for its progeny that, by any measure, Iraq has not met. Iraq is by no means secure, nor can it stand on its own. About 130,000 American troops remain there, fighting an insurgency that even the Pentagon, not known for its frankness, concedes is "much stronger" than anyone anticipated. Beyond that, no one seems to know who leads it. To quote "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," "Who are those guys?" The ceremony in Baghdad is the appropriate time to pronounce the war in Iraq a failure, maybe even a debacle. Its only success was the removal of Saddam Hussein - an ogre, yes, but one who had been largely defanged by years of UN sanctions, arms inspections and his own stunning incompetence. No meaningful link to Al Qaeda has been established, no weapons of mass destruction have been found and no diminution of terrorism has resulted - an astounding trifecta of failure. In fact, there is more worldwide terrorism than ever before. More successes like Iraq, and Americans won't want to travel farther than Bruce Springsteen's Jersey Shore. Yesterday's ceremony was propelled partly by the upcoming American elections. The apparent policy of the Bush administration is to keep combat deaths to a minimum - even if that means letting the bad guys go. It has enacted the doctrine first enunciated by Richard Nixon's attorney general John Mitchell, who, in paraphrase, said, "Watch what we do and not what we say." So watch when American soldiers do not clear out infestations of militia fighters, as has already been the case in Fallujah. That might be bad for Iraq but it's good for Bush in November. We all should wish the graduate well. If Iraq implodes, then the Middle East that Bush wants to transform into an Islamic Iowa is going to go to pieces. Already, the Kurds are making noises that sound suspiciously like a declaration of independence and no one, it seems, knows what the Iranians are up to. A supposedly new Iraq was born this week, a graduate going off - really being kissed off - without the necessary skills. The insincerely proud parent of this miserable misfit is the Bush administration, whose incompetence has been staggering. Monday's charade, though, is only half done. Graduate the kid, if need be, but fail the principal. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ideas_opinions/story/207131p-178685c.html
U.S is still overruling the Iraqi Judicial after the Transfer.. Prisoner 27075 learns limits of sovereignty By Nicolas Pelham in Baghdad Published: June 28 2004 19:57 | Last Updated: June 28 2004 19:57 Iyad Akmush Kanum, 23, learnt the limits of sovereignty on Monday when US prosecutors refused to uphold an Iraqi judges' order acquitting him of attempted murder of coalition troops. US prosecutors said that he was being returned to the controversial Abu Ghraib prison because under the Geneva Conventions they were not bound by Iraqi law. A few hundred metres from where outgoing administrator Paul Bremer formally ended the US occupation of Iraq on Monday, Mr Kanum - prisoner number 27075 - cowered handcuffed on a backroom floor in the Central Criminal Court, where Iraqis are tried for attacks against coalition forces. "Iraqis who have been detained as a security threat can still be detained until firstly the coalition leaves or secondly they are considered to be no longer a threat," said Michael Frank, deputy special prosecutor for Multinational Force-Iraq (MNFI), who oversaw the case dressed in military fatigues. The prosecution alleges Mr Kanum was in the car from which a gunman was firing an AK-47 rifle at Iraqi and coalition troops on the outskirts of Baghdad. Mr Kanum denies the charges, saying it was a case of mistaken identity. The Central Criminal Court is a hybrid legal institution, created by the American-led occupation, in which US lawyers prepare cases for Iraqi prosecutors to present to Iraqi judges, who were in turn chosen by the coalition. It tries cases based on Iraqi law and coalition decrees. Despite the end of the US occupation on Monday, US prosecutors said the Court would continue unchanged after the handover. <snip> http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentS...y&c=StoryFT&cid=1087373324911&p=1012571727088
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/na...,3826763.story?coll=bal-nationworld-headlines 60% see handover as sign of failure, poll shows But 75% in U.S. approve transfer to Iraqis anyway Associated Press June 29, 2004 WASHINGTON - Americans are deeply skeptical about the handover of political control to Iraqis when the country has not been stabilized, according to an opinion poll released yesterday. By a 2-to-1 margin, Americans say the handover of political sovereignty to Iraqis now is not a sign of success but a sign of failure, because the country's stability remains in question, according to a CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll. Still, three-fourths of the poll respondents approved of the U.S. handover of authority to Iraqis. The U.S.-led coalition in Iraq transferred sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government yesterday - two days early. In the Gallup poll, six in 10 said the handover of authority at such an unstable point is a sign of failure, while about three in 10, 32 percent, said the handover of authority on schedule is a sign of success, according to the Gallup poll taken last week. Six in 10 said they think it is unlikely that internal security will be established in Iraq in the next five years, and 63 percent said U.S. troops will be in Iraq for another three years or more. Americans say they prefer a shorter U.S. military presence. Seven in 10 respondents said the United States should have a significant number of troops in Iraq for two years or less. The Gallup poll found that despite their doubts, a majority, 54 percent, say the transfer of authority could improve the situation in Iraq. Public opinion about Iraq has been slipping in recent weeks. Last week, a majority of Americans said for the first time in a Gallup poll that the United States made a mistake in invading Iraq. And more than half said the war in Iraq has made the United States less safe from terrorism. The Gallup poll of 1,005 adults was taken June 21-23 and has a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
