SOTU

[BT]

if it is financed there is debt. But i don't see where we are not servicing that debt.

[Cynthia]

We have dept, then. We have bills to pay.

Do you know how much money this war has cost so far?

[BT]

You indicated that we were not paying those bills. Are you backing off from that claim?

[hnumpah]

1st off, I don't support that Bush is evil, Hitler reborn.

I don't either, just that he is so stupid to have screwed up on such a grand scale.

Secondly, given the intel Bush had, and following the events of 911, it would have been grossly irresponsible for Bush NOT to have gone into both Afghanistan & Iraq, given their connections to Islamic terrorists.  He is charged to protect this nation....NOT to placate illegal immigrants or push Universal Health Care

A. Afghanistan, yes. Iraq, no. 'Given the intel' is a sorry excuse. I heard Bushco's lame excuses for war, and also paid attention to the other reports that were going around at the time, mainly from radio news sources, with some television, an occasional newspaper and a newsmagazine every once in a while, because I was driving over the road at the time. I came to the conclusion then that Bushco was full of crap and the 'intel' they had was faulty, and I didn't have the benefit of the NSA, CIA, FBI, or some pissant Iraqi with an axe to grind and hopes of the US deposing Saddam for him and making him the head honcho. I looked at it with a clear head and ignored all the rhetoric, and sumbitch, I was right. Yet over and over and over since then, I've been accused of not thinking clearly. Go figure.

B. Yep, the president's job is to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States and defend it's citizens - not wage pre-emptive war against a country that posed no threat to us.

Thirdly, it would have been morally irresponsible not to have remained in Iraq, following the MISSION ACCOMPLISHED scenario of taking out Saddam, leaving a virtually completely undefended Iraqi populace without a functional government or defendability at the salivating Islamic Militants who would have swarmed over the area like locusts

Here's the catch, ol' buddy. I agreed with Powell that once we invaded, we owed the Iraqis a start at rebuilding. They have it. They have a government, and they have a military. Now it's up to them to decide whether they have what it takes to pull their country together and make something of it. It is not up to us to spoonfeed them for the next five, ten, twenty or hundred years.

Point being is this.....do you believe Bush is acting sincerely, doing what he thinks is best for the nation, with the occasional mistakes in either judgement and/or basing decisions on flawed intel...

I believe he is sincere. I also sincerely believe he is an idiot. I also have reservations about his honesty.

[Cynthia]

I'll be bluntly honest here, Cynthia.....and have made this answer many other a time.

Sirs, of course I know you are being honest. I don't question your integrity or you stance. I think we all need to visit and revisit points during a war....questioning self...is it working etc.

I realize that I haven't been here in a while, so I am sorry if you have had to reply again to this issue. Bear with me, please.

Point being is this.....do you believe Bush is acting sincerely, doing what he thinks is best for the nation, with the occasional mistakes in either judgement and/or basing decisions on flawed intel....or do you think Bush is an evil Fascist wannabe dictator, brilliant enough to fool everyone into going along with the WMD facade but too dumb not to be able to put his own guy in charge of Iraq or secure the oil wells for AmeriKKKa?

I also realize that some people here have ignited a negative spin with their anti-Bush bandwagon rant....such as Hitler references , AmeriKKKa evil Fascist etc...AND, I think it is a cop out!
  I am not "going there" with my inquiry. Basically, I just want to know how you and others feel about the status of the whole situation as it is now.... as logical, and intelligent men/women. BEing sarcastic as the folks here have done doesn't cut it for me. Your posts are usually very spot on with regard to information, quotes, details etc...as is XO's on the other side of the fence....

I believe strongly NOW, however, that Bush entered into Iraq in the beginning without giving the idea time. Was he trying to do the best for the country? That's a difficult question to ask of any politician. Did he want to show the American people that HE COULD DO IT...or was he afraid of being seen as a whimp? Texans are not supposed to be whimps, even blue blood NE"ers Texans.....



Sure there is victory in any war, especially at the beginning....so Mission Accomplished was clearly an honest reactionary statement (Saddam went missing into hiding). But, when the instability in the country started to come forth as an afterthought......I say who was in charge, and why didn't they think things through before taking on such a big thing (WAR)?

Have mistakes been made in this war??, of course.  Show me a war that ran as perfectly as planners predicted.  I'm not even gonna detail the amount of lives lost in 1 day during actions in WWII that didn't go as planned.

Democracy is a fine thing. WOuld love to see it develop in the mid east. So, I will hold out for hope that this 'war' to find that endgame, I will....but I think one has to admit that it aint yer WW2 gig. The WW2 had the support of  many nations going into the conflict. We were called into the war later, but we fought the enemy directly.  America was the princess and darling of the day.....She had a full dance card! We were on top of th world in terms of support from the world. People wanted to come to America to live that dream. Now, they want to come to America to escape their own nightmares.
The generals, the military, the government, the machinests, the average housewife, heck even American children had a  better strategy to fight (and win) that WW2 war. DO we have that now? Saving rubber, recycling for the war, women working, playing baseball.... ....support, support and more support.....one heck of a strategy, I'd say.

MY point, Sirs, is that we didn't have that going into this war. We should have known that it takes a lot more to win a war. We have History books to help us with that little thing.  Where was the support from European nations in this war from the getgo? Dragging their feet, I'd say.
I think the "mistakes" in this war were based on the preplanning stage.

One would think that mistakes come after the fact...but the major mistakes of THIS WAR were based on pre planning. #'s of troops engaged, equipment failures, judging the cultural layout of the land, the strife for centuries in teh nation of Iraq....the fact that Afghanistan was the key target after 9-11...not Iraq.
Pre planning stage....

I still think that Bush deserves an F for not being very wise on this one. One country at a time, maybe at worst.....but to invade the middle easter nations with fewer resources...unforgiveable.

We are still paying a dept when we could have used the money to hlep our own people with health care, etc.

My thoughts.....just thoughts...i have the right to ask questions and discuss thoughts.....devil's advocate? Maybe..but we must not sit in complacency and respond in pride.
Not saying you do, Sirs. I respect you greatly.

I just want answers that hold water instead of the rhetoric of calling our leader a dictator. I have to admit, I am tired of hearing those responses here too.

Cynthia

[Cynthia]

You indicated that we were not paying those bills. Are you backing off from that claim?

Patience doesn't pay the bills. ....Money pays the bills. The patience/ability to pay the bills might not be enough to get us out of dept. Do you really know if we will be able to pay for this war, for certain? We are paying the bills with money....and we will have to continue to pay the bills with a hell of a lot of patience...will the $$ wear thin?


I didn't mean to imply that we arent' paying bills.....Bill, but I do think that we will be paying said 'bills' off for a very long time.....

 

[hnumpah]

Cost of the Iraq war to date - over 489 billion dollars.

http://www.nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home

[Cynthia]

Cost of the Iraq war to date - over 489 billion dollars.

http://www.nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home

That's a lot of money.

Coulda' had a V-8!

[_JS]

I have to say that he probably had no idea what he was getting into back then...and THAT bothers me, Sirs.

I disagree to a point, since he made it clear from the outset, that this post-Saddam war could take quite a while.  But yes, he probably wasn't prepared for the veracity of the insurgency, and how hard militant Islam would fight to keep the area as unstable as possible.  But the decisions of going in, don't bother me at all.  It made perfect sense, given the intel and events of 911

I have to ask Sirs, and I'm not asking tongue-in-cheek, but in perfect sincerity - why were we unprepared for the veracity of the insurgency? Many people knew it would be very difficult, including people in the Pentagon who had asked for a larger force to be sent in initially. I'm a little unclear as to why it came as a surprise.

[Rich]

Wouldn't it be grand if he did this?

Thanks sirs.

[sirs]

1st off, I don't support that Bush is evil, Hitler reborn.

I don't either, just that he is so stupid to have screwed up on such a grand scale.

I do concede, which needs me to augment my prior post, that there is a 3rd contingent of folks who don't believe the asanine theory of how evil Bush is supposed to be, and simply that he used poor judgement in deciding to go to war in the 1st place.  That said, anyone that believes Bush "lied us into war" by supposedly cooking the intel, and was going to go into Iraq regardless of the events of 911, would fall into the former asanine category.

Afghanistan, yes. Iraq, no. 'Given the intel' is a sorry excuse.

in your opinion, perhaps. 

Yep, the president's job is to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States and defend it's citizens - not wage pre-emptive war against a country that posed no threat to us.

Good thing that's not why we went to war then, isn't it

I agreed with Powell that once we invaded, we owed the Iraqis a start at rebuilding. They have it. They have a government, and they have a military. Now it's up to them to decide whether they have what it takes to pull their country together and make something of it.

Hey, I'm right with you, 'ol buddy.  And as soon as their democratically elected Government believes their ready to take the reigns, then we're outa there

I believe he is sincere. I also sincerely believe he is an idiot. I also have reservations about his honesty.

Kind of an oxymoron there, H.  But whatever floats your boat.  If he's such an "idiot", sure would have been impossible for him to get so many other country's Governments and their intel agencies to go along with his WMD facade, doncha think?

[Rich]

>>God, we must be so rich.<<

We are actually.

The way the left has reacted to President Bush says more about them than it ever could about him.

First, they don't like a religious man. They don?t mind someone giving lip service to God, that is to say. They don?t like someone who actually believes in what he says. That was the President?s original sin.

As for Iraq, we know the Clinton?s, the Gore?s, the Kerry?s, and just about every democrat supported the war for the reason?s President Bush and his advisors gave for waging it. The world believed it.

Were mistakes made? Were mistakes made in the Revolutionary War? The Civil War? Were mistakes made in World War I? World War II? We?ve reached a point in history were the left will forgive any mistake made by Hollywood actors, democrat politicians, and poor folks, but a war must be prosecuted without a single error in judgment. NOT ONE. Any set back is reason to turn and run. Any set back is reason to condemn the president and the military as inept traitors.

What is the motivation being all this ridiculous hate? Bill Clinton. If you press them, you find that revenge for the reprobate Clinton is the real motivator being BDS. It?s not about civil rights. It?s not about how other countries think of us. It?s about revenge for what they went through because they supported a serial adulterer, perjurer, and possibly a rapist. And after Clinton they lost two more elections. That really pissed them off.  So much so that they abandoned all reason and honor and lied about the outcome. They claimed Black people were kept from voting by force. Which was proven false many times. It didn?t stop them from continuing to make the claim. Every time the votes were counted the outcome was the same. That didn?t stop them from making the most outrageous claims and suggesting the most insane conspiracy theories.

I loved this imaginary response from Bush. I can see him flipping the double bird at the camera, turning his back to the asshole reporters, putting him arm around Laura and laughing all the way back to Crawford.

[BT]

Cost of Iraq war = 4 % of gdp

Total defense spending in 2006 will probably be around 4 percent of gross national product, notes Mr. Cordesman. The average since 1992 for this measure has been 3.6 percent.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0519/p01s03-usmi.html



Cost of wwii = 38 % of gdp
http://www.antiwar.com/henderson/?articleid=8727

[sirs]

Perspective is quite the eye opener.  Thanks, Bt

[sirs]

The generals, the military, the government, the machinests, the average housewife, heck even American children had a  better strategy to fight (and win) that WW2 war. DO we have that now? Saving rubber, recycling for the war, women working, playing baseball.... ....support, support and more support.....one heck of a strategy, I'd say.  MY point, Sirs, is that we didn't have that going into this war. We should have known that it takes a lot more to win a war. We have History books to help us with that little thing.  

PRECISELY Cynthia......HISTORY.  We let Hitler go unchecked, and look what it brought about.  I'd argue that history is PRECISELY one of the rationales Bush used in going into Iraq.  We had clear justification following 911, with the connections terrorists had with Iraq, and the WMD that nearly every intel conclusion said Saddam had.  We just watched thousands of our citizens die nearly instantaneously when the planes hit, and when the towers came down.  You actually help make my point.  Sure we "didn't have to" do anything.  France didn't have to deal with Hitler when he broke their treaty.....and they didn't.  Bush wasn't going to let history repeat itself