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Banned
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We have company !!! I'll leave it to readers to google the conservative credentials of Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, and what it means to be a "John M. Olin fellow", and "a research fellow at the Independent Institute, and senior
research fellow at the Hoover Institution."
Both of these pieces were written by:
Quote:
Paul Craig Roberts is
the John M. Olin fellow
at the Institute for Political
Economy, a research
fellow at the Independent
Institute, and senior
research fellow at the
Hoover Institution.
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<a href="http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/cgi-bin/roberts.cgi">The Latest From Paul Craig Roberts</a>
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Will Neocon Fanaticism Destroy America?
The “cakewalk war” is now two-and-a-half years old. U.S. casualties (dead and wounded) number 20,000. As 20,000 is the number of Iraqi insurgents according to U.S. military commanders, each insurgent is responsible for one U.S. casualty.
U.S. troops in Iraq number about 150,000. Obviously, U.S. troops have not inflicted 150,000 casualties on the Iraqi insurgents. U.S. troops have perhaps inflicted 150,000 casualties on the Iraqi civilian population, primarily women and children, who are the “collateral damage” of the “righteous” and “virtuous” U.S. invasion that is spreading civilian deaths all over Mesopotamia in the name of democracy
What could the United States have possibly done to give America a worse name than to invade Iraq and murder its citizens?
According to the Sept. 1 Manufacturing & Technology News, the Government Accountability Office has reported that over the course of the cakewalk war, the U.S. military’s use of small caliber ammunition has risen to 1.8 billion rounds. Think about that number. If there are 20,000 insurgents, it means U.S. troops have fired 90,000 rounds at each insurgent.
Very few have been hit. We don’t know how many. To avoid the analogy with Vietnam, until last week the U.S. military studiously avoided body counts. If 2,000 insurgents have been killed, each death required 900,000 rounds of ammunition.
The combination of U.S. government-owned ammo plants and those of U.S. commercial producers together cannot make bullets as fast as U.S. troops are firing them. The Bush administration has had to turn to foreign producers such as Israel Military Industries. Think about that. Hollowed-out U.S. industry cannot produce enough ammunition to defeat a 20,000-man insurgency.
U.S. military analysts are beginning to wonder if the United States has been defeated by the insurgency. Increasingly, Bush administration spokesmen sound like “Baghdad Bob.” On Sept. 19, The Washington Post reported that U.S. military spinmeister Maj. Gen. Rich Lynch declared “great success” against the insurgency that had just inflicted the worst casualties of the war, including a three-day mortar attack on the “safe” Green Zone.
Anthony Cordesman, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., says: “We can’t secure the airport road, can’t stop the incoming (mortar rounds) into the Green Zone, can’t stop the killings and kidnappings.” The insurgency controls most of Baghdad and the Sunni provinces.
With its judgment lost to frustration, the U.S. military has 40,000 Iraqis in detention—twice the number of estimated insurgents. Who are these detainees? According to The Washington Post, “Many of the men detained in Tall Afar last week were rounded up on the advice of local teenagers who had stepped forward as informants, at times for what American soldiers said they suspected amounted to no more than settling local scores.”
Obviously, the United States, not knowing who or where the insurgents are, is just striking blindly, creating a larger insurgency.............
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I am always impressed by the commitment of the "converterted".......Dr. Roberts' further comments on the same linked page as his above article, could have been written by.......me !! I am looking forward to having an easier job of it, here, as credentialed conservatives speak their minds, on in the name of the truth, and I feature their writings in future posts..........
Bob Barr, former Georgia congressman who prosecuted Clinton in his senate impeachment trial. evidently thinks enough of Paul Roberts' opinion about Bush, to post this on his website,
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http://bobbarr.org/default.asp?pt=newsdescr&RI=545
The Sins of Clinton vs. Bush
by Paul Craig Roberts
Copyright 2003 Antiwar.com
Thursday, August 19, 2004 at 9:00 AM
Unsure how to judge the Bush administration? Read former U.S. Rep. Bob Barr's book on the Clinton administration.
Bob Barr is an unusual person, a prosecutor who cares about civil liberty. Barr served four terms (1995-2003) as a Republican congressman from Georgia. He was one of the more intelligent members of the House.
Barr is old-fashioned in the sense that he has an idealistic view of government. To Barr's mind, government is not about ego, prestige, and how the pie is divided. Government is about doing the right thing and serving the country's best interest. Barr believes President Bill Clinton failed in this task, and he is unapologetic about leading the movement to impeach President Clinton.
In his newly published book, The Meaning of Is, Barr provides his account of the impeachment and failed conviction of President Clinton. Barr's use of language creates the impression that he is writing in the spirit of a very partisan Republican. In truth, Barr's choice of words reflects his disappointment in the integrity of government. As a constitutionalist, he has no home in either party...............
...........Barr is convinced that Clinton did great damage to the country and its security. Barr makes a strong argument. However, to anyone who has paid attention to the lies and deception used by the Bush administration to take us to war against Iraq, and to Attorney General John Ashcroft's war against our civil liberties, Clinton's reign seems innocuous.
<h3>By helping us revisit Clinton's transgressions, Barr unintentionally enables us to judge the deterioration in Oval Office behavior under Bush.
Lying about a sexual affair is just not on the same scale as lying about war.</h3>
The petty penny ante real estate deal known as Whitewater pales into insignificance compared to the multi-billion dollar fraud of the Iraqi reconstruction contracts.
This is not to argue that Clinton should be excused. It is to say that matters have become worse......
...........Republicans should have noted that President John F. Kennedy remains a political icon, although he certainly out-womanized Clinton.
The notion of powerful men as womanizers and sexual predators is suspect on its face. The desire for top bragging rights that come from sleeping with powerful men makes women equally responsible...........
..............If anything, Clinton showed restraint. This is especially the case if Republican stories are true that Hillary had to issue orders to shameless White House female staffers not to show up for work without their knickers on.
Barr believes that truth matters. If he is correct, George W. Bush is in for a hard time.
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I predict that those who still vehemently support Bush, and even those who view him as the "lesser of two evils", will find themselves, if they look for signs of it, "surrounded" by both "Ted Kennedy and John Conyers" democrats, as well as by "Bob Barr and Paul Craig Roberts" republicans.
I forsee the day......suprisingly soon....where the majority of the links that I post here at TFP politics, will be from conservative oriented websites, and thinktanks, and news services, because, as Dr. Roberts wrote, "Barr believes that truth matters".
I have renewed confidence that many more former Bush supporters believe the same............
Last edited by host; 10-01-2005 at 08:15 PM..
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