Maybe more of a vent than debate..
 

mods, please move to the appropriate forum if this isn't it.

Lately I've been involved in more than one conversation involving the latest politics about the United States, George W. Bush, and our troops in Iraq. Too much I've seen and heard people verbally bash these three things. I am not of the type "Love it or get out," as I respect everyone's right to their own opinion, and giving my opinion I want to address these three things.

United States- (Fact) The country in which I was born and grew up in. (Personal feeling)I love it, will always love it. I will show my love for my country for flying my flag, speaking the official language of English, paying my taxes, obeying the laws, and protecting it with my life if need be. I make no apologies for any of the above nor will I stop doing any of the above just because it may offend someone.

George W. Bush- (Fact) current U.S President. Elected by majority vote according to the Electoral College.
(Personal Belief) I did not vote for him. I do not agree with all of his decisions. I do believe in the fact that while I do not necessarily sway toward President Bush's choices, he is still our President and I support the Office if not the man.

U.S. Troops on foreign soil- (Fact) there are U.S. Troops stationed in countries other than the United States.
(Personal Belief)The troops have made their choice to join the military at one point or another. They are fulfilling a contract that they by their various reasons, a choice that they made. They are now fulfilling the orders of their commanders, the Chief of which, by the laws of America, happens to be the President.

(My opinion to follow)
If you do not like the state of affairs, then do your job as an American Citizen or Legal Immigrant. Vote when and where you can, make the choices that put the wheels into motion to get the outcome you desire. Making your opinions heard is wonderful. That is our RIGHT of Free Speech. But I ask and implore you that while you are debating with your fellow countryman, do not degrade his values for supporting his country.


I wish peace to all, and mercy until it is.

-tenchi.

Well stated.....and I fully agree.

Every citizen has the right, if not duty to "Be an American", and there is no one version of this title. Some will express loyalty to country as wholehearted unwavering support for government policy, and some will not.

Yet , both are as American as you and I.

English isn't our official language because we don't have one, but anyone offended because you speak english here is an idiot. I also don't see how it would offend someone if you pay your taxes, follow the law, and defend the country. Good on ya ;)

George W. Bush- (Fact) current U.S President. Elected by majority vote according to the Electoral College.[/quote]

This is actually a matter for dispute in both elections. In fact in the first term he was not elected at all, but appointed by the supreme court. His second term may or may not have involved ballot cheating - we can't ever know because the electronic voting machines (that the CEO of the manufacturer promised would "deliver the state of Ohio for President Bush") are too easy to hack and don't have a paper trail.

Yes, and if i were in the military I, like most of the soldiers out there, would have joined because I feel defending my country is an important thing to do. I would not have joined so that I could help my country invade other countries that aren't doing anything to us - in fact this, in MY personal opinion, is anathema to everything the US should stand for.

Quite true - which is why we don't hold animosity toward the soldiers for the situation we're in now - - - that animosity is directed squarely at the idiot in charge. While this war is astonishingly like Vietnam in that we should never have gone there and now that we ARE there we're running it like a bunch of monkeys, the one main difference is that the soldiers are NOT being maligned by the general population.

I would say one of the most American things you can do is to vocalize your dissent with policy when it occurs. American was not formed on blind patriotism. In fact one of the clauses of our founding documents states as Americans it is our duty to stand up to our government when it isn't fitting our needs. While one way of doing this is voting it is not the only way our founding fathers intended us to do it. This is why they placed free speech, free press, and arguably the right to bear arms into our constitution.

In the run up to this war, and the first few years of it, the bashing that I was the most familiar with was of the "you're an unpatriotic bastard for questioning this war" variety. I direct anyone to see the movie "Shut Up and Sing" for more details of how that went. For, you know, voicing an opinion.

While I agree with the theme of the OP, bashing goes in (and has gone in) two directions.

My personal belief is that being called unpatriotic for questioning things is far worse than anything that I see happening to the other side now.

I don't love my country any more than I love my car or my house or my hat. I pay for them, I am responsible for them, and I use them. I'm not sure what loving my country would entail, but I'm sure that I don't love it in the same way that I love freedom or love my family. I think that the idea of loving one's country can cloud one's ability to run said country, and the protective nature of that love can be used to control people.

George W. Bush stole 2 elections can should probably be serving a prison sentence. He has ignored people much smarter than he, and has made a fool of every US citizen repeatedly. We have lost athe respect of our allies, and we have lost many lives. Allowing him to serve as president has been one of our country's great follies, and our children will no doubt question our sanity one day for allowing this.

If we had good relations with our allies, we wouldn't need to have troops stationed anywhere but in the US unless we were attacked. Unfortuantely, we are in a dangerous cycle with the miliatary industrial complex controling much of military spending, which puts pressure on politicians to constantly be in a state of conflict or war. Tha constant state of conflict or war means that we need to streth our resources thin to deal with problems that we often start, and that we rarely fix. A proper democracy doesn't need to have military stations across the globe like an empire.

I do what I can to allow my ideas to take root in the minds of others, but nothing will be done to stop them unless people are able to rally behind a cause and see the resolution to the end.

Years ago I asked a lady I was dating if she would like to go conoeing down a river. She said yes. I told her what to expect and that it would be demanding. She said yes again. We rented a conoe, they drove us up river, and dropped us off, so we could conoe down river back to our car.

Not five minutes after the van left, she started complaining. It was too hot, it was too dirty, too many bugs, it is too hard. She said she didn't want to do this and that it was a mistake. After biting my lip, in my calmest voice, I said: look we are on this river together, there is no turning back, I am sorry I got you into this. However, complaining is not going to get you out of this conoe any faster. At this moment the best thing you can do is shut the hell up and row.:icare:

I see the Iraqi war the same way. Democrats gave Bush the authority to use force. As soon as he did, they started bitching and complaining. The difference is that the bitching and complaining gives comfort to the enemy making things more difficult. At this point Democrats need to shut the f*** up and help row.

Well the main difference is that you were honest in your parable about the lady. You told her it would be hard. You told her what to expect. You also told her you'd be canoeing on a river, and that's what you did. You didn't tell her you'd be canoing on a river and then took her rafting on the ocean instead.

Bush told us it would be easy. With SHOCK AND AWE we would roll over Iraq like a steam roller on the Pillsbury doughboy. We would be fighting the "terr-ists." We would be getting rid of the WMD's that we KNEW were there (they're between Baghdad and Tikrit said Rumsfeld).

Then we got there, and despite Bush having declared the mission accomplished, we're still there, getting killed every day, not having found one WMD or one terrorist who didn't come into the country after we destroyed the borders so as to LET them in. In short, while you told your lady friend the truth, Bush lied through his teeth, repeatedly.

And while you and she were canoeing down the river, you weren't secretly directing that all the other boaters be carted off to a hidden pond where they'd be tortured for years on end.

Bush, on the other hand, authorised a CIA "Extraordinary Rendition" program in which they fly suspected terr-ists and innocent people they just feel like questioning off to countries like Egypt, Syria, and Uzbekistan. There, as CIA interrogators look on, workers in those countries torture these people constantly - sometimes to the point of death. They're bent in half so they can't breathe. They're chained to the wall in a room that slowly fills with water until they nearly drown. They're beaten. Razor blades are used to make small one inch cuts all over their bodies, including the penis. They're fed rotten food and given only yellow, disease infested water, and that's only scratching the surface. If you think Abu Ghraib was nasty, that's not even half as bad as what the Syrians can dream up to do to you, and all while the CIA watches, under orders from the top - the president. (source for this entire paragraph, Ghost Plane by journalist Stephen Grey. Good read, but if you're at all human it will piss you off)

Now, if you seriously think I'm going to sit here and help row the boat that ferries innocent victims to the torture chamber, you're out of your mind.

As far as i know (i could be wrong) neither boatin, nor the vast majority of the people generally reviled for not supporting the war ever voted to authorize the invasion of iraq.

In the context of your story these people would be akin to someone who never wanted to ride your canoe and, once in the canoe and complaining, are accused of hating nature.

After numerous UN resolutions, after countless speaches about the threat, the Bush administration laid out their concerns to the world and to Congress. He was clear and said it would be long and difficult. When Bush asked for authority to use force, no one can honestly say that they thought he was not actually going to use force. If they did ... what can I say.

I certainly understand complaints from people who have been consistently against the war from the begining until now. However, that has not been the Democratic party in Congress and has been a very small percentage of the American public.

It is a difficult situation to reconcile. I firmly believe the way we engaged Iraq was a mistake (a belief I've had since the start of the war), but looking forward, I understand we hold a great responsibility to avoid a worst case scenario.

But at the same time, I want George Bush held accountable for the mistake. I'm not referring to impeachment, but just being held accountable in a political sense is good enough. I don't want to give him everything he asks for, whether it be more troops, more time, what have you. And I think people, in a sense, want Iraq to fail at this point as a way to hold Bush accountable for the initial mistake of starting the war in the first place. And I sympathize with that notion. What message does it send that a manipulative war-mongering president gets everything he asks for? Now, if the cost of seeking that retribution weren't what it is (countless Iraqi lives, vast instability in the Middle East, future terrorist havens) I'd be all for it. Others think the dangers of letting presidents like George Bush get away with what he's done is a greater price to pay. Again, I find it difficult to reconcile.

Ace.. we've discussed how I don't like getting wrapped up in metaphors before ;) but what if there's a waterfall at the end of that river? do you swim to the shore, or go careening off the edge?

And perhaps I'm just naive in my views of Congress approving the use of force in Iraq... but just because Congress gave him the OK, that doesn't equate to a free pass from being held accountable. What George Bush did with the military with Congress' approval, as commander in chief, is still his own responsibility. If things go bad, he should bear the brunt of that responsibility. Congress gave Bush just enough rope to hang himself. Whether he does, is up to him. (.... there's a Saddam/hanging joke in there somewhere, i just know it.)

Was the river in Egypt?

Even assuming all the above is true (but I would characterize it as mostly bullshit), why would reasonable, intelligent people continue to "row" for a leader who misled them at every opportunity since before the invasion, mismanaged and mishandled nearly every political and military turn in your "imaginary river" of Iraq since the invasion, and who is willing to throw himself and those who follow (including the loyal and courageous men and women in unform who cannot speak out) over the falls into the abyss for an ideological obsession.

What does it mean if I think everyone on this thread makes good, valid points?

Political beliefs, in most of us, are closely associated with our core moral beliefs. Thus political discussion between people of different political beliefs often becomes emotional. No one likes to have their core moral beliefs poked at with an invalidating stick. It's a natural side-effect of the conflict of these kinds of ideas.

That said, I think the level of opprobrium and vilification in this forum is extremely mild-mannered and civilized. I've said it before and I say it again.

And that said, I think both sides often put their impulse to "be political" before the implementation of common sense and a desire to solve problems. At this time, our country is nearly paralyzed by this crippling phenomena to be sure.

I would hope we could work as a team to reach our final goal.

On my date after a while she finally realized the situation, gave me the silent treatment and focused on rowing. She broke up with me afterward, but I did have to endure a mouthful on the drive home, which was o.k. because she needed to vent her anger. I think she started dating a guy who liked writing poetry and taking black and white pictures of flowers, I think she was much happier, so was I.

And perhaps I'm just naive in my views of Congress approving the use of force in Iraq... but just because Congress gave him the OK, that doesn't equate to a free pass from being held accountable. What George Bush did with the military with Congress' approval, as commander in chief, is still his own responsibility. If things go bad, he should bear the brunt of that responsibility.... Congress gave Bush just enough rope to hang himself. Whether he does, is up to him.[/QUOTE]

Here is a link to the authority given to Bush:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0021002-2.html

Democrats who say they were and are against the Iraqi war voted in favor of this. Certainly Bush should be held accountable for mistakes, but it seems to me that you should hold all members of Congress equally responsible for us being in Iraq.

Also wars have peaks and valleys. At one point we were losing the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and WWII, in those wars in paticular I am very happy we continued fighting. I feel the same way about the war in Iraq.

ace, the invasion of Iraq was a crime of aggressive war....
http://www.benferencz.org/arts/83.html

Mr. President? Is that you? You're ignoring the metaphorical waterfall, ignoring the safe alternatives, and continuing to advocate this nebulous goal, which you still haven't clearly defined and which, to stay with the metaphor, is drowning more and more people every day. Meanwhile the boat keeps hurtling toward the waterfall while you try to distract us from the roaring noise of our impending destruction.

This metaphor turned out to be extraordinarilly apt - you are reacting to it EXACTLY as Bush is reacting to the real world.

I can agree with you on that Ace. I would just clarify that the President should still bear more, if not most, of the responsibility, simply because he is commander in chief, and members of the House and Senate are not. I do not give members of Congress a free pass either. If I were to list the pros and cons of a particular congressmen, voting for the war would go in the "con" column. It is not irrelevant. But that has less bearing on my overall opinion of them, than it does with the commander in chief. Perhaps that is just a personal preference of mine.

See, I don't believe that engaging Iraq was, definitively, a bad idea. With proper international support and valid exit strategy, getting rid of Saddam and his government would be A Good Thing, for many reasons. But circumstances being what they were, we did not have those going into the war, which is where my disapproval stemmed from the start. But, Bush claimed he could do it, and Congress let him try. It was a political, financial, and diplomatic gamble for all involved, to say the least. And it might be one that has no winners.

The worst part of Bush's speech, though, was the fact that he did very little to convince anyone (or me, at least) that his plan had a probable chance of succeeding. I got the distinct impression that Bush was treating this as a last ditch effort, that could very well not work out. That scares me.

LOL :lol: :lol:

When you come to a waterfall, you portage the canoe. As a team we row to shore, pickup the canoe and carry it to a point past the waterfall, put it back in the water and continue.

Thanks for the compliment.:D

I read this before from you. Perhaps you assume I spend my life in front of a computer, but like I said before, who cares. Personally I don't respond to what I think is bullshit. And I am getting better at ignoring personal attacks, but I have a ways to go. One improvement is that I no longer meet an attack with another. My mom would be proud.

If for no other reason, to get back to the car.:p

Gotcha, so leave Iraq together before it's too late, bypass Iraq, then go on with our business.

http://skepdic.com/sunkcost.html
In your analogy you have to continue because there is no way to leave, this is not the case with Iraq. We have methods to leave.

The victor of war determines its legality.
Winning a war requires aggression.

So what is your point, I don't get it.

Good one. Remind me to never go canoeing with you, we would get lost in the fog.

Not true. The most efficient way to get back would be to row. She could have swam, walked, ran, hitchiked, etc, etc. The best way to end the war in Iraq is to defeat the enemy because they will not stop fighting until defeated. even if we left, their war against us would continue.

So.. the fog represents... Iran? No, wait, it represent the Jews, yea that's it.


This is where using metaphors quickly turns absurd. Different aspects of it mean different things to different people, so we all run around ending at different conclusions, each of us thinking we won the game.

I say we talk about Iraq.

You and Bush may believe the notion that we must fight them there so that we dont have to fight them here, but the majority of the American people know better.

Most of death and destruction now occuring in Iraq is not the work of terrorists with broader goals of attacking the US - Gen. Casey testified to that effect recently, noting that only an estimated 10% of the "enemy" are "terrorists" from outside Iraq. The Sunni insurgents (former Baathists) are fighting for their survival, the Shia militias (particularly al Sadr and his 50,000+ armed Badr brigade) are fighing for absolute sectarian control...and our military forces are in the crossfire. Neither group have designs or ambitions to attack us at home.

And, according to an NIE earlier this year, our invasion created and our ongoing presence in Iraq continues to create more potential terrorists in other countries in the Middle East and Europe with growing ant-american sentiments and ambitions.

Sen Durbin expressed it best in his response to Bush:
The majority of the American people want us out, an even larger majority of Iraqis want us out, and even a majority of our forces on the ground in Iraq now want us out (or dont belive a "surge" will help). So who is really in a fog?

Lost in the fog > hundreds of thousands dead...

But seriously, this canoing trip was made to finish the trip, but what if you clearly have no idea how to stop? What if it's clear to canoing experts that you never should have canoed in the first place, AND you have no idea how to canoe, AND people are losing their lives because of it?

while the unfolding of the implications of the canoe trip analogy ace was kind enough to venture earlier seems a potential thread in itself, i wanted just to respond to the op for a minute...

i dont see anything wrong with debate--including often passionate-to-snippy debate--amongst folk about the course the present administration has embarked on in iraq. i have never understood--and still do not understand--anything about what i think is still best characterized as the busby berkley school of political debate-you know, "come on, kids, let's all pull together as a team and put on a really great musical..." as if:
(a) fundamental disagreement is somehow a problem in politics (it isnt)
(b) power in any meaningful way resides with the people in the united states (it doesnt) such that there is any direct correlation between what "the people" want and how political power is exercized. last night's new course speech from the Dear Leader would have been impossible were there any such connection, for example. it aint like that: we the people have indirect power one day every two years, and really one day every 4 years.
(c) there is no coherent notion of the "national will" that you can appeal to either in order to cement the argument that we all need to pull together in the same way in order to make of this wreckage a happy, shiny musical. democracies are characterized by the diversity of viewpoints--even a shallow one like the american version requires it if it is to be healthy. so i would think that vigorous debate would be understood as a hopeful sign in itself, even if it happens in spaces that could notbe more removed from actual power like this one.
(d) i have never been persuaded that there is any single agreed upon way to define what working in the common interest looks like. i would think that principled dissent IS a way of trying to work for the common interest. so from my viewpoint, the idea that we all need to hold hands and sway together in the same way around a campfire so that the whole edifice does not collapse is just narcissism. so i see no problem at all with any and all modes of opposition to the war in iraq, say--not in principle at least (the contents of actual arguments are what really matter in any event)--nor in principle do i have a particular problem with such support as there is for it--but i also have no hesitation to say that i think the folk who support this war are somewhere been misinformed and wrong--and i see nothing about that which would indicate one way or another whether i (or anyone else) did or did not want the best for the united states--where i live too--across such debates. there are simply disagreements about what constitites the best for this place, just as there are disagreements about how this place is as over against how it culd be, and how the world it dominates is as over against how it could be.

for myself, i simply do not accept that the present state of affairs is the best that we--or anyone--could do.
if by thinking that way in general, it means that in the eyes of some i do not want to participate in the higher calling of putting on a musical, then so be it: but that it a judgment that comes entirely from how the sentences are read, and so refers to the reader, rather than from any coherent understanding of how is intended when the sentences are written.

civility is another matter: another way of reading the op is as another call for civlity. same arguments as above could apply to this--there is no reason that civility should be used as a wedge to exclude positions, as if by saying x you are a priori not being civil. on the other hand, i think most who play here have found that it is more functional to take some of the edge off the posts we make from time to time. and that sometimes this editing is more successful than others. goes with the territory, i think.

my my, wasnt that fun?
yes, madge, it was fun.

I wonder how many Republicans will not shut the f*** up and will join with the majority of the country and stop "rowing".
Perhaps the "rowing" should be more aptly described as "flapping their arms in the wind", risking more American lives and getting nowhere

"The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind"

I've seen you make that reference before and I assumed you were talking about some great kaleidoscopic political distraction, that when one had the curiosity to examine more closely, turned out to be just a bunch of rather cut-rate looking showgirls, errrr, I mean, politicians lying on the floor and moving their arms and legs around.

But seriously, I don't think the opinion that we should pull together to find a workable solution to the quagmire in Iraq necessarily means being cheerleaders for Bush & co. I certainly am not. But I also believe that we have a vested interest in, no, I'm starting to hate that word - interest, we have a responsibility for the future of Iraq that we didn't have before. And it's not going to go away even if we pulled all of our troops out tomorrow. I'm of the opinion that "unilaterally" pulling our troops out of Iraq would be just as damaging to us and to our reputation as our invasion has been. And I'm not at all at ease with the idea of abandoning them to decades of intractable civil war. This shouldn't be an easy bit of mathematics for any liberal. It is not only an American "hot-button" political issue. To treat it like it is also a narcissistic exercise in one-dimensional navel-gazing. Don't get me wrong, I believe there should be debate and, fuck yes, passionate debate! But I also think people should strive to break free from their ideological and political constraints - often and with great courage. :)

The CIA in '05 reported on the problem in a manner on the surface supports the position that our presence has exacerbated the problem. I am not sure where you stand, either Iraq is or is not the central point in the war on terror. In my view Iraq is attracting those who want to make war against the western world not creating them. If Iraq is the central point, Iraq is a problem and we need to be there. If Iraq is not the central point for the war on terror, I agree we have made a grave error.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2005Jan13.html

I ask the question, why would that be true? Have you wondered the same? Personally I think we have attempted to handle this conflict in the best possible way. Are we hated because we fight for the freedom of others as well as our own? Are we hated because we removed an evil dictator? Are we hated because we support Isreal?

Sen Durbin wants to re-deploy the troops, or bring them back home. I do to. I want to do it after we get Iraq under control. Under no circumstances do I want to leave the impression that we left Iraq unwilling to confront the chaos and the civil war we are in-part responsible for, I agree with Powel - we broke it, we must fix it.



Just for the record. No one wants to be involved in a war. However, those of us who support the war in Iraq see it as somthing that needs to be done. In my view we will fight the war 1,000 times if we pretend we are not at war, or we will fight it once. We failed in the first Gulf War because we did not finish the fight, I hope we don't make the same mistake again.

Who is doing surveys of what the people in Iraq want? We do know about the millions who participated in the formation of their government. I don't doubt that they want us out and that they want peace. I bet the response to the "survey" would be based on how the questions were asked.

There can be only one commander-in-chief. Again, a man or woman away from home, family and friends, if asked, would obviously want to come home. Again, I bet the way the question is asked would determine the tone of the response.

I am. I can admit this is a complicated issue with no easy answers. If everything is clear to you - you have my compliments, and I suggest you use your talents to help lead the way.

I am using my talents by not shutting the f*** up. :).

To suggest such a solution ("At this point Democrats need to shut the f*** up and help row") is anti-democratic and stiffles a healthy debate.

We are hated for a shitload of stuff going back for generations. Basically, we are hated for mass murder and colonialism, but it's a lot more complicated in reality. It should be made clear, though, that we are not now, nor have we ever fought for the freedom of the Iraqi civilians. We are not there to help them. I hope that was made clear as Bagdad burned in the bullshit "Shock and Awe campaign", as civilian's homes were broken into night after night with no warrant, as the civilians in Falujah were burned alive with illegal white phospherous.

We, actually meaning the US government and military, are hated because we have never been anything but an enemy to these people. We make promises of freedom and help them fight their wars, while all along using them and not actually helping them at all. As we supplied Iraq and Iran with weapons and intel to be used against each other, we ewre simply using them for our own ends, to the detriment of stability in the ME and the loss of so many lives.
That's not actually true. The PNAC were planning a war of aggression years ahead of time, and had every intention of starting that war despite what the intelligence community was ACTUALLY saying at the time. When you handpick evidence and trust untrustworthy sources to start a war, it's clear that you actually WANT a war.
Actually, we'd function a lot better without the office of president. Yes, it's important to have a figurehead, but giving one man that much power is a foolish thing to do. That any one man can declair war is madness. I don't recognise Bush as president, anyway, as I've seen enough evidence to be certian that the 200 election was stolen. Unfortunately, Inconvenient Al was not hungry enough and we've all suffered.

My position won't change. I would say the same about Republicans. Republincan's don't have the same history and level of hypocracy as do Democrats. If this was just a question of debating troop levels, I would join the debate on that subject, but we are still debating being in the war.

I really don't respect Democratic leadership wanting to wait for poll results before laying out a specific alternative to Bush's plan. Given the circumstances why haven't they started their hearings? Is there anything more imortant today, right now?

Only the weak minded would be stiffled by my comment. However, wise people know when to row and know when to talk.

Absolutely. I agree we have a moral obligation that requires something other than pulling out unilaterally, just not more of the same failed tactics and strategies. IMO, we should be working diplomatically much more aggressively and with much greater urgency to bring the regional powers (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and even Iran/Syria) in to create a "stabilizing force" under the auspices of the Arab League to replace US forces.

If we had skilled diplomats and not ideologues conducting our diplomacy, (ie, someone like Colin Powell who was fired for not being an ideologue), perhaps we could convince them that it is in the interest of every country in the region to remove the US face of occupation...and we can begin to draw down in the coming months as they take our place, with limited US forces to continue training the Iraqis.

Wise people know when to hold 'em and know when to fold 'em

And btw, the Dems started hearings today. It was reasonable and respectful to wait for the President to present his "plan" as Commander in Chief, and the self-admitted person responsible for the failures to-date.

Only the wise are trying to row towards the shore.

Confucius say, "The weak minded canoer rows hardest before the waterfall."

I agree with you. We should be making much more effort in engaging regional resources in Iraq. And I'd go so far as to say especially Iran and Syria. If we can come away from this fiasco with Iraq being at least on the road to being a better, freer, more democratic nation than it was when we entered it AND engage Iran and Syria in the making of it? Pish, that would be just the kind of unbelievably ironic scenario that just might make the initial nightmare...not worth it...can't think of the word...politically salvagable. Although that's not it, either. Maybe you get my drift. I understand the push for and the efficacy of democratizing the middle east. And it's not all about the finite resource of OIL. It's also about security, not just for us, but for our whole little world, too. And if you are concerned about human rights, you don't have to look far to see that it is about human rights, too. It's about opportunity. It's about the global marketplace and free and open access to it. Not only the rich benefit from these things.

Ahhhh, but I tend to get all teary-eyed and optimistic about these things. But I want it to turn out as well as possible for the people it really matters to. No matter whose legacy will benefit from it.

Which brings up another thing. GWB & friends only have two years left in the White House. After that, this mess is going to be left up to somebody else to fix. If it's going to be the Democrats, well, that's a pretty daunting challenge for us to face (I am still a registered Democrat, after all :p ). And I will be pretty dismayed if we spend the following four years pointing our fingers at GW's back...just like the conservatives did with Clinton like...yesterday, for crying out loud. :rolleyes:

I want answers, goddammit! Do the Democrats have them?

That's the thing, right there. I couldn't help but notice, today, that the poll numbers indicate strongly that the "surge" has the same percentage of support as Bush's current approval rating. Guess what: it's the same people!

My theory is, either you're in the 27-30% of American who think that because you're an Ammurkin, you owe fealty to your Pres'dent, who's out being macho and fighting the terrists, or you know that patriotism calls for something more than blind obedience, and you give the president and his policies the skepticism that is their due.

Re the OP: I decline to participate in the delusion that the nation of my citizenship requires my support of the current holder of "the office of President". I have plenty of respect for the office--enough that I want this bumbling jingoistic frat boy OUT of it. One question: did you feel that way when Clinton was in office?

not sure who's trying to fool who, but anyone with a brain should realize that this country is dead. It is not the USA that was created by the revolutionary war. It is not the country that existed prior to the civil war. Hell, it's not even the country that existed after the civil war. The socialists/communists have won. freedom is dead. quit your bitching and revel in the downfall most of you helped to create.

yeah, we get it dks, you can't have a tank so we've destroyed the bill of rights and freedom has been flushed down the toilet. That's getting old, to be honest.

as far as answers, mixedmedia, there are no good answers. This situation is unwinnable. We pull out, we're screwed. We stay there, we're screwed. Fact is, Bush has gotten us into one HELL of a mess, and there is absolutely NO course of action we can take at this point that will be palatable.

Given that, we should leave. Now. We can't do any good there, at least we can save a few soldier's lives.

So Bush is a socialist, eh?

DK, all gun debates aside, what you just said makes absolutely no sense and is frighteningly similar to what McCarthy would say if he were alive today. Communism fell in the former Soviet Union 20 years ago. Democracy ultimately lost when capitolism was embraced, but where we are now is the opposite of socialism. If you want to see a more socialist democracy in action, one only needs to look north. The socalists, like myself, have lost time and again, but we still believe that we can exist as a higher and more altruistic society and we push so hard. I know that socalism won't really take root here for a while, but I'm willing to wait and do what I can to help in the meintime. The funny thing is, as bad as things get, most people are onestly good. Lazy, sure. Complacent, probably. People ultimately want to do the right thing.

The socalists and communists are a fringe part of the democratic party, and a majority of the green party....so how could they possibly have won anything?

dk:

You would not be just a nuffin'
Your head all full of stuffin'
Your heart so full of pain.
You would dance and be merry
Life would be a ding-a-derry
If you only had a brain...;)

...and the vision to support, (in response to MM's quest for solutions from Democrats)....

...A Statement of Principles and a Policy Agenda for the 21st Century from the Democratic Leadership Council - the centrist Democrats.

http://www.ndol.org/upload_graphics/bp39-dlc-box.jpg
link

(yeah, yeah, I know its just more socialist/communist american-destroying propaganda to you, DK)

It has alot more to do with the whole way the constitution is now 'interpreted', than just the 2nd Amendment, so back off the notion that I'm bitching that I can't have a tank, etc.

In the early 1930's the new deal democrats in congress did more than stretch the limitations of power that the constitution gives them. They convinced the USSC to accept that interstate commerce also includes anything that affects interstate commerce, including intrastate commerce OR any activity that has a 'substantial effect' on interstate commerce. They also imbued themselves with the power of not having to show any cause or correlation that interstate commerce is affected, just make the claim that it is. That is why a once limited federal government is as bloated and cancerous as it is today.....and it's been that way for so long now most people just accept that this is the way that it is.

Look at bill of rights cases in the last 70 years compared to what they were in the 18th and early 19th century cases. The individuals rights are no longer protected, except for freedom of speech. That little puppy gets alot of attention but is catered to because it makes people 'feel' like they have freedom still, but the rest are ALWAYS judged on how much compelling government interest OR how much societal benefit is garnered by infringing on the individual rights. Look at Kelo v. New London....or almost ALL eminent domain cases. Police power is practically unlimited and nearly unaccountable for any infringements of civil rights. The supremacy clause is used dozens of times a year to deny just compensation or redress of grievances to the citizens, who are the ones that the constitution was designed to protect and empower.

No, the socialists and communists have indeed won because nearly all of you resignedly accept that monopolistic practices of a government run amok and are not only unwilling to change it by vote, but do nearly all you can to keep the parasites in power.

As for 'centrists', that just means that they are a whole new group whose sole purpose is to get you to agree that the individuals rights matter less than society as a whole by using 'moderate' as a compromise.

dks, to be totally blunt, that's a load of crap. Socialists have lost. Period. Capitalism has won. The corporation is the only thing that matters now. Corporations can get away with just about anything as long as they make money at it. Everyone likes to get down on Enron -their real crime? Not making money. Hiding it is what got them in trouble. Haliburton is so evil as to make Enron look like a fairy tale, but they haven't been stopped or even impeded. Why? Because they make money.

I don't see how you can sit there and say the republicans have done so much better when, since Reagan first got his hand in the country, corporations have been moving more and more toward total domination of society.

Small businesses can't make it because the corporations are too huge. If you want employment and you're not lucky enough to have started a unique business for which there is no competition, you have to work for a corporation where you're expected to give everything you have to the neglect of your personal time, your family, and even your health. Yet that loyalty is not returned - the corporation will cast you adrift in a heartbeat if they think they can be more profitable (even just in the short term) without you.

There are countless stories of executives and middle managers who once had a solidly middle class lifestyle and did their best for their corporate masters - and are now working menial jobs at Home Depot and Walmart just to get by because they were "downsized."

I guarantee you this dks - you can take this to the bank. The current system of capitalism is not sustainable. A revolution is coming - it's just a question of when - and the longer it takes to get here, the worse it's gonna be when it does.

Reagan kicked off the idea that it would be terribly fun to widen the gap between rich and not-rich. Now it's a yawning chasm - that's simply not sustainable. Eventually the poor and middle class will be fed up with watching the country's elite spend more money in a day than they make in a year while they worry about having enough money to buy groceries. Eventually that anger will reach a breaking point. It's happened before (the French revolution comes to mind) and it will happen again, I guarantee it.

A couple of things you have wrong here. I have NEVER said that the republicans have done much better than anyone else. They may have done less damage, but only slightly. Also, what we have today is not capitalism, unless you wish to redefine capitalism. If people still wish to deny that what we have is fascism, well they can deny all they want, but thats still what we have. The socialists changed so much of the united states until Reagan that they won. The only thing that the republicans have done is alter the new deal to benefit big business, which still isn't capitalism.

Trickle down economics would have been a great economy booster, had it been limited to a very short term...much like the new deal. patents and intellectual property laws were abused to the point of isolating a specific industry to benefit just a few. That is the fault of both parties. Blame the new deal for fostering big business to get people working. Blame this new fascism for putting profit on the stock market and hampering small business.

how will this revolution be attained? sticks and stones? what will happen when your property is taken away to increase a tax base? what will you do when your living area will be searched for anything illegal, at will? No revolution will happen if people do not have the means.

dk....the founding fathers knowingingly and wisely drafted a Constitution in very general terms leaving it open to future interpretation to meet changing and evolving nature of the country.

The Supreme Court's power of "judicial review" was confirmed in 1803, when it was invoked by Chief Justice John Marshall in Marbury v. Madison. In this decision, the Chief Justice asserted that the Supreme Court's responsibility to overturn unconstitutional legislation was a necessary consequence of its sworn duty to uphold the Constitution. That oath could not be fulfilled any other way. "It is emphatically the province of the judicial department to say what the law is," he declared.

As Marshall also noted in McCulloch v. Maryland, a constitution that attempted to detail every aspect of its own application "would partake of the prolixity of a legal code, and could scarcely be embraced by the human mind . . . . Its nature, therefore, requires that only its great outlines should be marked, its important objects designated and minor ingredients which compose those objects be deduced from the nature of the objects themselves."

What it comes down to is that the interpretation in 20th and 21st century American may be more expansive than in the 19th century....a natural progression envisioned by the founding fathers.

But decisions that you dont agree with are hardly a communists/socialist plot. While many basic interpretations of Constitutional rights stand the test of time, a 19th century interpretation of a more complex 21st century law or government action, which you seem to suggest is the correct role of the Court, would be as irrelevant and irresponsibile as it is ignorant.

Alright, I'll give you that, my apologies.

Yes, it is. The almighty dollar is the only thing that matters. That's capitalism in a nutshell.

Considering you still haven't managed to point us to a definition of fascism that differs enough from it's actual definition to make your point valid, I'm gonna go ahead and call BS on that one.

Socialism and big business are not generally used in the same sentence - at least not without a derisive snort.

If trickle down economics would have worked at all (it wouldn't, it's inherently flawed) it would have had to be instituted more than short term, because it would take awhile for that wealth to trickle down to the masses. Of course, the fact that it simply cannot work, at all, ever, makes all of this moot.

The new deal got people jobs. Twisting that idea into allowing corporations to get away with damn near anything was never part of the new deal.

It's not fascism. Go get a dictionary.

If you think the problem stops at the stock market, you've got another think coming. It's corporate greed, plain and simple. Look, if we're going purely on stock performance, then we don't have to pay the CEO hundreds of millions of dollars - - no, the CEO is screwing over the little guy because it means he gets one more mansion.

Pure economics. Used to be laborers were vastly underpaid and overworked. Then they got together and formed unions. That's coming for the white collar workers as well - - it's the only way for them to survive.

What do you mean WHEN? It's already happening. Eminent domain has turned into "we'll steal your land and give it to the highest bidder."

That has absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand.

OK fine, you want people to have guns. Stop bringing EVERY thread around to that, it's old and annoying. I'm not even going to address it here because, again, it has nothing to do with this topic.



I'll tell you how government can stop this mass downsizing trend that's destroying the middle class. Pass a two-fronted legislation requiring unemployment benefits for at least a decade after you downsize someone, and requiring large companies to extend the same benefits to independent contractors as they do to regular employees. Remove the profitability of treating people like chattel, and the corporations will stop doing it. It's a whole lot cheaper to keep that well trained worker on than it is to pay his salary for 10 years AND pay the guy in India who took over his job.

Legislation taxing the holy crap out of imported labor would also help - I'm thinking a variable tax based on the gap between the US worker and his foreign replacement. If your US worker made $20 an hour, and your 3rd world worker makes $1, then the tax is $19 an hour. Remove the profit from the unpalatable activities, and they'll magically stop.

Bottom line, to end this threadjack, the US is not even close to being socialist in any way. Suggesting so shows a massive misunderstanding of both socialism and the world around us. Also, this thread has nothing to do with guns. How would you like it if I brought up the 9/11 conspiracy in every thread?

And, There it is.....dont you just hate it when reality gets Ugly?

I guess a lot depends on what you might consider palatable.

Well, ok, if you consider it palatable to have killed tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis and over 3,000 Americans in pursuit of an illegal war that the president had to lie to get us in to. . . I guess we'll just have to disagree.

If you consider it palatable to now be faced with the reality that absolutely nothing can prevent an Iraqi civil war, and probably nothing can prevent a regional war in the Persian Gulf, we'll have to disagree there as well.

NOW you're thinking like George!

What you've said here is: My opinion is right, and won't ever change. Others who disagree with me are wrong, and are hypocrites, and probably bad people. And I have no respect for elected representatives who are actually interested in their constituents' views--especially not when 70-odd percent of those constituents disagree with me. Better things keep going the disastrous way they're going (in fact, let's pour some gas on the fire), because I believe in it without any evidence or support or rationale for that belief.

Even Bush admitted errors this week. Can you really be so narrow-minded?

Shakran, if only the world were that black and white.

I deeply wish literally every political decision in this country didn't come down to party lines.

Other than your possibly being right
I'm still uncomfortable when our resignation becomes trite ;)

I'm not at all sure that there is nothing we can do to secure a more functional and secure Iraq.

And quite frankly (I say to no one in particular), us losing military personnel doesn't even enter into the equation of whether we should leave or not. Granted, that is just my opinion, but I find discussions of how many US soldiers we're losing to be distasteful considering what is happening in Iraq now. I think we're all familiar with the casualty numbers. Not to mention that many of the people who would be able to contribute to the maintenance of a functioning, healthy society are either dead or have fled the country with their families. We are responsible for it now. I can't settle for the purely political "republicans did it, it's not our problem now" point of view. I can't wrap my head around that kind of aloofness.

I don't have that viewpoint Mixed. I mean, yes, Republicans did it, and they were dumbasses for doing it, but that doesn't mean we can ignore the problem.

However, if we stay the country will degenerate into years of bloody civil war.

If we leave the country will degenerate into years of bloody civil war.

there is NO way to prevent the civil war. None. At all. It's like a tire fire. Once it gets going, you are NOT going to put it out. It will burn until it's out of fuel. You have 2 choices. Send your firefighters in where they might get hurt and inhale toxic fumes, and do absolutely nothing towards getting the fire out, or pull 'em back and just watch it burn. Either way, the result in the tire pile is the same, but the 2nd option at least lets you preserve the life and health of your firefighters.

Iraq is no different. We've sparked the conflagration. It's going to happen. Nothing will stop it. Why not at least pull our guys back so they don't get hurt any more than they already have?

The parallels of this war to Vietnam are becoming more obvious every day. Back then we said "oh we can't pull out, what will they do without us," and it was only when people finally realized that the country was sunk with or without us that we finally pulled out.

The fact is that when we stick our nose in where it doesn't belong, bad things happen - especially if we let incompetent boobs that couldn't even lead a kid to the crapper take charge.

And now not only does Mr. Bush want to stay in Iraq where we will do precisely no good, he wants to move on to Iran as well. This insanity has got to stop some time - it may as well be now.


Oh, and desal75, if you're going to make fun little snips at what those of us in this thread have to say, perhaps you should come out with an opinion of your own. These little quips frankly make you look more like a troll than a debater. If you think I'm seeing the world black and white then please, by all means, educate me. Show me where the grey is.

If you think it all depends on what I call palatable, then give us your definition of palatable and tell us your solution.

Otherwise you're just taking useless pot shots which might work on Fark, but around here, we're not very impressed by it.

I think the parallels have become more like Bosnia, but sectarian rather than ethnic. As the violence and ethnic cleansing became unbearable in the fomer Repub of Yugoslavia, all parties, including the US, realized that there was no military solution and only diplomatic and political solutions could bring peace.

And thus, the Datyon accords:
Twenty-one days of negotiations and they came to a workable solution.

It could work in Iraq, with the only difference being to minimize the US role and face in the process and let Sunnis and Shia, through the Arab League, conduct the negotiations and replace US forces with an Arab Implementatin force.

Its hardly a perfect solution, but IMO, more likely to lead to the cessation of sectarian violence then adding more US troops and maintaing a US occupation.

Before anyone laughs it off, I do recognize that al Queda and other outside terrorists now in Iraq, although small in number, are not open to peace negotations. But they can be marginalized if the US presence is removed and the Iraq people and regional powers (Saudis and Egypt putting political pressure on Iran) demonstrate a commitment to route them out.

The result would be providing for three self-governed regions in Iraq, under a loose central government. The current Iraq was a creation of western geo-political colonialiism. Its time to give it up.

Thank you for clarifying your point of view, shakran. I didn't want to point fingers and accuse you of the crime of lassitude. :)

But that said, I do believe there is a measure of that attitude behind the popular pressure for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. I've grown quite skeptical of the political imperatives of both parties on this issue. Surprise! :p

Your tire fire analogy is very compelling. I'm just not sure we are dealing with a conflagration out of control, yet. I'm just not sure.

there might be a way out of the iraq mess via an internationalization of the conflict. the americans would have to recognize that there is no way out FOR THEM because they are and have been from the outset--that is from the invasion--a party within the civil war.

jacques chirac proposed an international congress of some unspecified type that would address these problems last week: i started a thread about it, which went nowhere.
one option would be the un.
another would be something like a congress of vienna, i dont know: but the idea seems far more likely to actually accomplish something positive in iraq than any of the options that are on the table right now--i understand that something like this is an element of biden's plan for iraq as well.

what i see as the primary obstable to this is that from the far right/neocon viewpoint occupied by the bush people, any such internationalization of the conflict would be tantamount to defeat. so the primary obstacle is the hyper-nationalism of the bush administration, the neocon "realism" that remains intact (even after its obvious pulverization by events)---from the start, i have thought that the best document for thinking about the rationale behind the invasion was the project for a new american century website: if you look at it, it is clear that this iraq war is about the first iraq war and the Problem was less saddam hussein than it was the un.

a subtext for the "surge" appears to be saber rattling at iran:

source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,1990962,00.html

and this at a point when iran really must be included in a larger dialogue that would enable the americans to make themselves less central to the debacle that they have unleashed (thanks, bushco)....

so with the bush administration still anywhere near power, it seems to me that the americans have no good options. there ARE options, but the ideological worldview of the bush people seem to preclude them. after losing in the polls, the right is now hiding a bit of its ideological underpinnings: they are still as ideologically incoherent as before november, but now prefer to downplay ideology and instead to act as though its alternative universe was a fact of nature, its strategy reasonable and its sense of alternatives legitimate. reality has demonstrated that none of this is true. the people of the us, despite republican gerrymandering efforts, rejected the policies of bushco. the american system of governance is now an ongoing demonstration of the problematic version of democracy we have: bushco is still in power and is still in a position to impose its blinkered, dysfunctional worldview on iraq, on american troops, on their families, on all of us, on the international community--and there appears to be nothing to be done about it.

this does not mean that there are no alternatives: but it does mean that with george w bush in power, these alternatives will not be explored.

meanwhile, again, lots of people will die as the far right cycles through version after version of its idiotic politics based on its idiotic fetishism of the american nation-state as global military hegemon. lots of people die and the bush administration is not, and in all probablility will not be held to account for it. quite the system we have here.

More on the Biden plan:
http://www.planforiraq.com/

Maybe I'm just a succinct person Shakran.

And I would think calling another's post useless is more in the vein of being a troll than anything I said. I did not make a personal attack upon you and I'm at a loss to explain why you retaliated the way you did but I guess that is neither here nor there. Its not my job to educate you. Its not the job of this forum to educate you. As far as I know this is a place to express ones political ideas.

Finally, I apoligize for ever giving you the idea that I would post to impress anyone.

...which you haven't done.

It may not be much but I would argue that this qualifies.

At the risk of sounding elitist, I'll reiterate what shakran said: it might qualify on Fark, but we'd prefer a little more "meat" in the expression of your political ideas here.

So, if you please: tell us what you feel is "palatable." Show us the gray area between the black and white you mentioned.

I'm intrigued by the way this thread has become less about politics and more about teaching me how to use this forum. What is Fark anyway?

As for palatable, I wasn't trying to force what I think is or isn't on anyone. I was simply stating that what is needed is different to different people. Some would argue that any loss of life due to war is unnecessary. Others see justifiable reasons for killing and death, no matter on what scale.

The grey area is that in any conflict there is no easy answer. Especially in conflicts like Iraq where the opposition isn't easily distinguished and the goals not easily expressed. Even the notion of winning or losing a conflict such as this is not easily defined. Some would say victory has already been achieved while some would argue that victory can never be attained. The grey is that both arguements have merit.

Thank you for finally expressing an opinion beyond a soundbite/drive-by.

Back on topic, I doubt that I can find anyone stupid enough to try to argue that Iraq isn't SOME form of quagmire at this point, at least based on the information we have now. We're back to figuring out the "least bad" option to extricate ourselves whiles still maintaining some sort of dignity. In the meantime, I just received an email from a client purported to have originated from some Marines in Iraq who, by standing in formation, spelled out something to the effect of "we remember 9/11 and why we are here" despite the fact that the upper echelons of government have admitted that there's no real plausible link between the Saddam regime and the terrorist attacks. I'm starting to come to the conclusion that any sort of pullback without at least the facade of victory would do long-term damage to the national psyche. It may be that that damage is necessary or even welcomed, but I'm not sure of either.

mr. jazz: what exactly is the national psyche?
just wondering.
i really havent any idea.

my husky grows impatient, wanting to go outside and flounce about in the pseudo-snow, so maybe more later.

Some of us, including the Bush administration, still believe we can win, that we can accomplish our original goals.

Sadaam is dead. Sadaam's regime no longer exists.
The connection with 9/11 is Islamic extremist are at war with us. The war front is currently in Iraq. If we leave Iraq, the war won't end. If Islamic extremist obtain and hold Iraq they will expand their offensive. I don't know what would be next, but you can believe the war will continue.

I think you nailed it. Some think this is some kind of a "feel good war", "a war of choice", " a war of US emperialism", etc, etc. This is a war to defend our freedom and the freedom of billions of people in the world, it is not about "national psyche" but far too many people see it in those terms or in terms of "feelings".

Exactly? I don't know if I can answer it that way, but I can give you my opinion. In my above post, I meant middle America's pride in the armed forces, their inability to be critical of servicemen and -women and the willingness to enforce patriotism. Basically the vast majority of Americans who see "Born in the USA" as an anthem instead of the protest song that Springsteen meant. Those folks aren't stupid although they allow themselves to be blinded by the glare of the flag sometimes. When Bush declared "victory", that was his target audience. Obviously, they've come to realize that the declaration was something substantially different than the reality of the situation, and without any sort of way to extricate ourselves (which is what John Q. Public now seems to want) with a measure of dignity, I can only see even more voter apathy ahead, which is the worst way to make any changes to the system beyond the calls for violent revolution that go echoing through TFP on a regular basis. As a student of revolutions (1905, 1917-24 in Russia), I'm honestly afraid for me and my family should something like that happen here.

So do you consider Saddam to have been an Islamic extremist?

Of course you wouldn't know what it is, roachboy. Reagan and Bush '41 believed it existed, and they successfully manipulated it to lull the sheeple into a state of amnesia induced, national pride and self satisfaction:

Ace, I understand where you're coming from, but I just can't buy into most of your response.

So the WMD are going to magically appear someday? Even if I temporarily conceed that they did exist and were spirited away to Syria, they're never going to materialize. That was the majority of the arguement for our invasion in the first place. Our goals then shifted to making Iraq "safe for democracy", etc. but I don't see how anyone can consider us closer to those goals now.


I don't think that I was clear enough with my description of the email, but there was a definite tone linking Iraq to Al Qaida. However, I think that what I highlighted in your statement is the gist of my arguement - the war won't end. I think it's important to note that the war won't end if we stay either. The big problem is that there's no real way to quantify sucess in this conflict. The only positives are lack of negatives. Given that there are lots of negatives, it appears (whether it's true or not) that we're losing.


I can't accept this statement in any fashion. If this were a war about defending our freedoms, we would have done better to focus on real threats to our freedom, such as the Chinese who seized an American military plane operating in internation airspace months before the Iraq war. Or we could have faced off against the North Koreans who I think I can easily catagorize as the loudest saber rattler in the world. If it were about getting the terrorists, why didn't we go after the head of the snake in the Saudi and Egyptian citizens that finance Al Qaida et al? Make no bones about it, the Bush administration chose to prosecute this war in the face of diplomacy. We chose the time and place for it and followed through on our threats.

ace....$400 billion spent, 3000 plus US soldiers dead and 10,000 plus more permanently removed from the fighting force and as "fit and functioning" members of US society.

Hundreds of billions more spent on an intelligence apparatus and a department of fatherland security that has it's head up it's ass....

In Negroponte's first annual Threat Assessment testimony, he mentioned only the farce of a criminal investigation in Lodi, CA to describe the grave threat we face in America from "Islamic Fascist Butcher Killers", ace.....
http://www.senate.gov/~armed_service...2002-28-06.pdf

....from a sympathetic corner, ace:
...I'll continue to post here, tirelessly, until we reach a point where you are too embarassed, ace, to post such nonsense as a belief that the US expenditure has been "worth it". There was no foreign terrorist threat in Iraq before the US invaded, ace. Powell's presentation to the UN in Feb. ,2003, was bullshit. It was never verified that Zarqawi "sought medical treatment" with the approval of Saddam's government, or that a "poison camp" in Kermal or Kermil, or Khurmal, existed in any area of Iraq that was under the control of Saddam's regime, but there is much evidence that a camp of that name with "terrorists" loyal to Zarqawi, existed in the area under control by the Kurds, and accessible to the Americans.

We were told, after 9/11, that there were "thousands" of "terrorist sleeper cells" in the US, ace, can you point to one that was "busted up", by the US government?

There were all those cells that Jack Bauer went after....but that's it.

A lot of people have onest trouble differentiating between the fantasy spun by the media and reality. In reality, there is no evidence to suggest that there are terrorist cells in the US. There is no evidence that Saddam was a threat to the US. There is no evidence that the war in Iraq has decreased terrorism, in fact there is staggaring evidence that shows it has INCREASED terrorism substantially. There is no evidence that the US has done anything but hurt Afghanistan, and now warlord are making millions of dollars on drugs that could easily fund 'terrorism'. There is no evidence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction following the destruction of most if not all his weapons in the early 90s. There was no link between 9/11 and Iraq whatsoever. There is, however, evidence that the US does not have the funding or manpower to 'win' against the 'terrorists' (they are not actually terrorists, but rebels) in Iraq.

No.

We took out Sadaam because he was a threat. He used weapons of mass destruction and would develop and use them in the future if he remained in power. He was in violation of, I don't know how many, UN resolutions, he used his military to attack us in the no fly zone. He sponsored terrorists to the tune of $25k. We should have taken him out in the first Gulf War.

Absolutely. But getting Bush loyalists to admit that we were lied to...even while espousing their own various ad hoc reasons for us going to war...is like pulling teeth. I'm not sure why it's so difficult to admit when faced with the obvious.

i was thinking about this while i ws being dragged around outside on the far end of a huskyleash: the "national psyche" as a construct, the ideal-typical recipient for conservative ideological memes, and so the subject-position built into those memes, taken in sequence: the optimized receiver post, the presumed addressee of these messages. when you read them, or receive them (these memes) you can allow yourself to be enframed by them, so they appear to speak to and for you. since this positioning is never without accompanying claims, this act of being-enframed (interpellation in althusserspeak) is never neutral: so you position yourself as you allow yourself to be positioned, and you position yourself via assent as an element within this "national psyche".....and because the whole of conservative ideology is predicated on the notion of the nation, and within that on the notion of a "national will" it follows that to position yourself as an element within the "national psyche" is to position yourself on conservative ideological grounds.

conservatives like to imagine this national will/national psyche as being identical with themselves, politically speaking, and by extension as being "unified" it would follow that the "national pysche" or will has to be referenced in the singular, as if by dissenting you fall outside of it, fall outside of the "nation" as conservative like to think of it.

seems a pretty effective way of getting folk to police what they think, doesnt it? and to experience it, all you need to do is buy the underlying mythology enough that conservative ideological propositions--which effectively tell you how to react as they tell you about the world as that ideology allow it to be understood--seem to make sense to you intuitively.

if that happens, then dissent in any meaningful sense of the term threatens to push you off the edge of the earth. and all that is Out There is chaos.
so it is no wonder that you worry about that, mr jazz: if you find these types of sentences to be compelling, and you read them as they "should" be read, you react as you are instructed to without that requiring much of any effort beyond the normal assimilation of infotainment in written form.

its all about this goofball noun "nation" and what it entails.
and in the hands of the right, that noun is about the least democratic possible. because its inclusive effects are all about exclusion. what you see in it depends on where you find yourself falling in relation to the propositions that use it.

i dont find anything commonsensical about that word. i dont find it to be anything other than an ideological function.
when i read books of american history written by americans, i find the same tic everywhere: the american mind, the american people, the american nation: all are first person plural names that get to run around and do things: it (the noun) assesses, reacts, does stuff, goes to a bar, has a few beverages, stumbles home, like the good mr. zappa talked about back in the day.
it is all about a strange, and very particular fantasy of unity where none necessarily exists.
i have never understood why americanists indulge this particular mythology, but they do, and all the bloody time.
i guess the word "nation" appeals at some level, so the host of analytic problems that should be raised about it arent raised.
and so all these first person plural standins for nation get to do stuff.
very strange.
anyway, without the notion of nation, conservative ideology has no signifieds. it already has no referent, but in that it is not different from anything else.


the material host posted above gets to the same point, i think, in a kind of historically oriented fashion.

i wonder if this qualifies as a rant.
huh.

So he was not an Islamic extremist, yet it was fitting to wage an all-out war against Iraq in the fight against Islamic extremism? Why does this make sense to you?

No
Other reasons were given as well.
In war, conditions change. We are in war with an enemy that adapts to changing conditions they develop plans and strategies just as we do. We have unrealistic expectaions involving wars today.
The Germans had nothing to do with Peril Harbor. We declared war on Germany and Japan. The two were linked. Sadaam and Al Qaida had a common enemy, it was us.
it will end when we win.
We will have a military presence in the Middle East for decades into the future. Regardless of which party has control of the White House.
No civilian casualties due to terrorists attacks in our borders.
Not in my view. My biggest concern is that we don't have the will to finish the job and we will leave it for future generations to fight.
If you disagree on strategy that is one thing, but I am not sure you agree with the threat to our freedom. If that is true why are you concerned about North Korea, etc, etc.

I understand the confusion but the two are seperate issues. If 9/11 never happened and there were no Islamic extremist wanting to kill us, Sadaam would have still been a problem. At some point there would have been a confrontation. I am relived it happened when he was in a weakened state with no weapons of mass destruction or chemical weapons, aren't you? Don't you agree, that Sadaam was a problem, that he wanted to re-build his military, that he wanted to control the Middle East and cause great harm to the US?

O.k. you were lied to. Bush tried to sugar coat the fact that we wanted to use Iraq as the global front in the war on terror. Removing Sadaam was a secondary benefit. But, wait - he actually said that, he just did not put enough emphsis on it, so you are still right you were lied to.

Also, he lied because he left some with the impression the threat was more imminent than it actually was. I think we are splitting hairs. I think it all depends on how you define imminent, as Bill would say.

Two were given: WMDs and a link to al Qaeda. Not only have those proven to be faulty, but it is clear now that evidence that went against those two ascertions was ignored by the administration.
Conditions change, but Saddam didn't go back in time and destroy his weapons or disable his links with the al Qaeda terrorist organization. Those simply were false ascertions made by our gallary of ignorance better known as the Buhs administration.
Germany attacked our allies and was a clear and immediate threat to us. The same cannot be said of Iraq.
This is exactly the point. If we can't win, this will never end.
Which is like saying that we are winning the war against the martians becuase they havn't attacked. We were never in any danger.
Odd language. They aren't a threat to our safety, they are a threat to our "freedom"? Are they carving up the BOR? Are they getting wire taps without warrents? Are they suspending Habius Corupus?

"Terrorists" are not a threat to our freedom. They *might* be a threat to our safety becuase they have been galvanized together becuase the US attacked Iraq without provocation, but they are certinally not a threat to our freedom.
Saddam wasn't a problem, though, and that's clear as crystal now. He had no links to any terrorist organization, and he had no real weapons. As was made clear by the Shock and Awe massacre, we would wipe the floor with him and get almost no collateral damage in he process. Saddam was losing control of his country, he was starting to go broke, he had lost most of his allies, and revolution was on the horizon. Saddam wanted to rebuild his military, but he didn't have the means.

Saddam was no threat to us. He was even losing his power in his own country.

Primary reason was our global war on terror.

We were wrong about weapons of mass destruction. Isn't that a good thing? Al Qaeda was not directly linked to Sadaam, Bush has said that many, many times.

We acted sooner in the war on terror than we did in WWII. Isn't that a good thing? If we had a re-do on WWII I know I would have acted sooner, not later.

As long as others want to steal the lives and freedoms of others, the fight will continue, don't you agree at least in theory?

This is real, not fantasy.

They want us dead. They want our allies wiped off of the map. They want you to be Muslim and live by their rules or die. I don't understand your point.

Perhaps some kind hearted person can go and interview them and findout what they want? I think that person would be murdered.

Why did Sadaam invade Kuwait? Why do you think he would not want to do it again? Why did Sadaam send missles into Isreal? Why don't you think he would want to again? Why did Sadaam declare war on Iran? Why do you think he would not do it again? Why did Sadaam kill thousands of his own people? Why do you think he wouldn't do it again? Why did Sadaam burn oil fields? Etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.

No, the primary reason we were there was the WMDs and links to al Qaeda, if you judge by speeches given by Bush, Rice, etc.
Is it a good thing there were no WMDs? Obviously. He has shown that he's not responsible enough a leader to have weapons when he attacked the Kurds. Bush said in mid 2004, "The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda: because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda." That's pretty cut and dry.
That's not really an apt comparison. Germany had the power to take over all it's neighbors and had one goal: global domination. the al aeda, for example, has goals more like "removeal of Western militaries from the Middle East".
I will continue to figh Bush as long as he sees fit to steal our freedoms in the name of a fight that he is making worse. The real quesion is: Who wants to steal our lives and our freedom? There have been no real civilian targets hit on US soil by radical Islamic terrorists.
[QUOTE=aceventura3]This is real, not fantasy.[/QUOTE
Iraq being a threat to the US was fantasy.
You said they are a threat to our freedom. That's silly. How are they keeping us from practicing free religion, press or speech? It's nonesense language intended to stir motions and cloud logic. If there is anyone or any organziation that is a threat to our freedoms, it has been made clear it is the current administration.
And if they sent someone over here to figure out why we keep bombing them and attacking them and getting into wars with them, they would be tortured. So?
Saddam invaded Kuwait because of he made the false assumption that Kuwait was a part of Iraq and that Kuwait had been slant drilling in other Iraqi territories.
He can want to do things all he wants but Kuwait has a lot of allies because of their oil, and Saddam had lost his ability to make war.
You mean the scuds back in 1991? Iraq was trying to provoke Israel into unilateral action. Again, we're talking about then, when Saddam has military power, and 2003, when he had almost none.
He can't. After the early 90s, Saddam no longer had the means to wage war.
Saddam invaded Iran after many border disputes and after Iran was calling for Saddam's regime to be overthrown.
Why? Iran would have raped Iraq had he tried anything after the early 90s. Iran is actually quite powerful. Iraq became nothing more than a bug.
He couldn't control his family, government and he is quick to rash action.
Again, he lacks the means.
Duh.

Actually Will Saddam had well documented ties to Palestinian terror groups and Ansar Al-Islam a group with ties to Al Qaeda who operate out of Kurdistan. As for the weapons issue, there have been weapons found, there have been precursors found, there has been evidence found atesting to programs being in place, just because we didn't a million gallons of Anthrax doesn't mean there weren't weapons found.

Also last time I checked Bush hasn't suspended Habeaus Corpus as no American citizens, except for Jose Padilla, have been held in any matter contrary to normal American common/criminal/civil law, and at the same time if memory serves Padilla's detention was upheld by the courts; also his FISA wire taps have not been deemed illegal by American courts, so unless I missed something in recent months that would counter my statements made you should really stop levying such accusations.

Agreed.

Such a statement about Al Qaeda is disingenuous, their purpose is Jihad and establishing the Caliphate again.

What Freedoms have been stolen from me again? I've asked this many times here, never gotten a legit straight forward answer... if I didn't know better I'd think it was baseless...

Oh yeah and (cough) 9/11.

They seemed to do a decent job of disrupting things in Spain a few years back, perhaps if they were able to strike here again, and more people had a mentality such as yours our freedoms could be in trouble.

I guess the question was: if you were the president and had the benifit of hindsight, would you have attacked a basically defenseless country?
Habeaus Corpus was suspended when the Senate that passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006. The habeays provision in the act violates a clause in the Constitution that says the right to challenge detention shall not be suspended except in cases of rebellion or invasion. As it is clear that we are not dealing with a rebelion or invasion, this is a breach of the Constitution.

Why does Habeaus Corpus hate America?
Jihad isn't a purpous. Jihad is a call to arms, but it doesn't give the "why". As far as Caliphate, that is a long term goal. The immediate goal is to remove all outside influences, mainly including Western powers, but also including Israel.
Habeaus Corpus can be suspended legally now. Let me break down what that means:
First Ammendment: if you're in prison, you wave your rights
(as we already see in our prison system)
Second Ammendment: do you think you can have a gun in prison?
Third Ammendment: A OK
Fourth Ammendment: you can be searched for any reason a any time in prison.
Fifth Ammendment: Due process? Obviously not.
Sixth: No lawyers if you skip the trials.
Seventh: Speedy trials? It happened so fast that no one saw it!
Eighth: No bail if you skip the trial.
You get the idea....

NOT ONLY THAT, but wiretaps no longer require the FISA court, apparently. You can be wire tapped for no reason at any time, be you a US citizen or not. You ask how your freedoms have been effected, and I've answered.
Again, how in God's name does a terror attack effect my freedoms? The only way it effects our freedoms is it allows our leaders, and their enemies, to make bullshit laws that don't even take into consideration that we have a Bill of Rights.

BTW, the 9/11 attack was a military operation and struck 2 military targets. Let's not pretend that the attacks on the Twin Towers or the Pentagon would be the same as a biological attack in downtown Baltimore or a nuke going off in Denver.

Well, be glad. Instead of ignoring you for posting pointless posts, we're trying to bring you into the fold. Smile, and join us :)

http://www.fark.com


so in other words you didn't say much of anything. That's kind of like saying "you're either 100% wet, or 100% dry, or somewhere in between." We all already know that there are lots of opinions on what is or is not palatable. We want to know YOUR opinion.


When did you get the idea that I thought any of the possible answers would be easy? They're not. They're all hard. Unfortunately ALL of the possible answers end up in a worse situation than we had before.

Well that's half the problem isn't it. The goals keep changing, and they've always been nebulous. Hell that's more than half the problem, that's the whole problem.

It would be if we'd set solid goals and work toward them, but the Incompetent-In-Chief won't do that, so we shouldn't be there until we can define it.

Yeah, Bush tried that from the deck of a carrier. Unfortunately for him, no one buys it any more.

No, they don't, and they can't until as you said, we know what victory is. Once we've defined what victory is, we can determine whether we can do it, and how to do it. Until then, we're just spinning our wheels getting our troops killed.

ace, sometimes I envy you. It is so much easier to blot out all of the contradictions and simply <b>believe....like you do.</b> My head is about ready to explode, because of one question....believe ??? Believe what ???

They've consistently used the troops as props, cannon fodder, and muzzled them:
The Iraq war is in "the shit", ace. Gates is not qualified and he knows that it is a hopeless situation for US troops to be in the midst of:
[quote]
Since it's 2006 purchase of Knight-Ridder, ace, McClatchy is one of the largest US new services. Read this. It is not an op-ed, it is a news article:
Both of Bush's press secretaries have been habitual liars, ace:
[quote]The preceding indicates that Tony Snow dredged up lies told by Bush and McClellan, et al, that were already exposed as such, by the press in 2003:

On Sept. 16, 2001, Cheney told us that Saddam was "bottled up" and that bin Laden "hated us because of our freedom and democracy.
Cheney and Bush did attempt to address bin Laden's grievance, <h3>by lessening freedom and democracy in the US:</h3>
Bush took a record amount of vacation time, and each August, Cheney was on vacation at the same time Bush was.:
<b>Read my "sig", ace, the quote about how often "we have to be right"! </b>
If Bush's GWOT was intended to be something other than an "Op" to terrorize, and thus, control me, I'd need to see a li'l more truth from the white house, more concern and empathy for "the troops" and their families, a president who guesses correctly at least once in a while, and a lot less grandstanding photo ops and vacation time.

I believe were lied to because certain strategists in Washington believed that removing Saddam Hussein would inspire a far different reaction from Iraqis than it did and that Iraq would shortly become a model democracy in the ME from which would flow a regional renaissance toward free and open societies which would, in effect, fight terrorism for us. Not an ignoble vision, no. Ignorant of ME history and the level of sectarian volatility? Absolutely, yes.

We were lied to because they knew that Americans would never accept such a grand and visionary adventure. "The threat" was pure smoke and mirrors. But I guess I'm still splitting hairs.

I love it, now when a president lies and someone calls him on it, they're splitting hairs.

I tend think it's very important that they lied. I think it's very important that they decided to use 9/11 to try and make America into the purveyors of an unpopular and untested worldview while Bush and Cheney and Condi and Powell did a little softshoe number in front of the curtain.

I'm probably the most forgiving liberal on this board when it comes to our epic failure. I agree that opening up the ME to democracy and the global economy will marginalize terrorism. As well as make a lot of rich folks a lot richer - that was the "added benefit" - and as a matter of fact, it was what led to one of our biggest mistakes. We pushed away the ME strategists and people in the neo-con movement who would question the efficacy of our plan and strategy in favor of the businessmen who understood it as a monumental opportunity to make money without really understanding the risks involved. As businessmen so often do. They are impatient and under the illusion of their own infallibilty until they lose. And they lost.

You're forgetting the other 2 reasons. Bush wanted to play army, and Bush wanted revenge because Saddam tried to kill his daddy.


Absolute power corrupts absolutely. . .


I tend to think you're absolutely right. I also tend to think it's pathetic that the American public fell for it, considering the lies were never very good to begin with.



Very good summary, and you're right on the money. They purposely excluded anyone with any expertise on the middle east because they knew full well that someone who knew what they were talking about would tell them things they didn't want to hear, such as "it will never work."

O.k. let's start fresh with two questions.

Are we at war?
Who declared war first?

We were at war with Iraq. Now we are mercenary referees in a civil war.

We declared war on Iraq.

1) yes.

2) We did.

Yes, I know, you're going to say that the terrorists declared war first, and that's true. But we chose not to pursue that war. Instead we abandoned Afghanistan (where the guy who declared war on us was hiding) and declared war on Iraq (which was not threatening us, and where NONE of the 9/11 terrorists came from)

In one respect, we are starting fresh with the re-opening of the internal DoD investigation of Douglas Feith on the manipulation of pre-war intelligence to justify an invasion of Iraq. Along with the release of the full Phase II Senate Intel Committee investigaton of the use of pre-war intelligence.

The DoD internal investigation focused specifically on the actions of Feith and the Office of Special Plans (OSP). As earlier as 1998 while at a neo-con think tank, Feith called for the US to remove Saddam, and when he came to the DoD as Rumsfeld's second highest deputy, he created the OSP for the purpose of creating the intelligence to justify such action:
The Dems on the Senate Armed Services Committee did release a report in 2004 detailing how Feith manpulated intelligence to show a Saddam-al Queda connection (link - pdf)

Rumsfeld and the interim DoD Inspector General successfully stalled the DoD investigation for more than two years, but Gates has assured the new chair of the Armed Servies Committee and the Intel Committee that it will proceed (we shall see).

In any case, how the war (invasion) started is only helpful for historical purposes at this point. The issue that matters is where we go from here to end the quagmire created by such an ideologically driven and ineptly managed folly.

Ace...lets start again with a question that really matters and not rehash why we got to where we are today.

Why do you think the Bush plan is better, and has a greater likelihood of success, than the Biden plan or even the Iraq Study Group recommendations, both of which put a much greater emphasis on political and diplomatic options as the best way forward?

I believe we are at war.

I believe war was decared on us by Islamic extremists. I believe we have been in an undeclared war for decades in the ME. Isreal has been at war since it came into being as a country, we are hated in-part due to our support of Isreal. We are also hated because of our freedom and our culture, many Islamic leaders fear both for some reason. We are also hated because we have a presence in the ME, commercially, culturally and militarily.

The Bush plan is better than the Iraq Study Group recommendation because the recommendation includes items outside of our control.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/package...1206_btext.pdf

I think we have to get the situation under control before any diplomatic efforts will be effective. Also, diplomacy requires a willingness from at least two parties. Nations in the ME have historically been slow to use diplomacy to solve problems.

I don't know what the Biden plan is.

Ace...the Bush plan is totally dependent on items outside of our control, specficially, the will and capacity of Maliki to control the sectarian militias - the SCIRI Badr Brigade and al Sadr and his 50,000+ thuggish militia, the Mahdi Army, that has as much support among Shias as does the fragile government.

From the NY TImes yesterday:
And here is the Biden plan again: http://www.planforiraq.com/

I guess the amout of control we have in Bush plan depends on one's perspective. I put my focus on our military being freed to do what an army is designed to do. I again say - we have to get the situation under control. After that, then I think Maliki will be tested. If he fails he will be removed from power, one way or another.

I read the five point Biden plan. It may be the long-term or mid-term solution. I think in the short-term there has to be a strong show of force.

I am not sure how Biden determined which incentives to include or exclude, but it seems to me that Shiites, Sunnis, and the Kurds need to determine what they would accept. The question is how do you get them to sit down and talk. My answer is - A show of force to put an end the the chaos. We won't stop all violence, but we can not expect any long-term solutions when the parties are in the current circumstances.

Apologies in advance for such a loooonnnnng detailed post, but the quote above of your opinion, indicates that you aren't yet grokking the details..so..

Mojo, please consider that there is overwhelming support for my contention that <b>there is nearly a 100 percent probability that you are wrong</b> about Saddam's "well documented ties" to "Ansar Al-Islam a group with ties to Al Qaeda", and about the WMD and WMD programs assertions of Bush, Cheney, and yourself:

<h3>During his Aug. 21 ,2006 press conference, Bush falsely said that Saddam "had relations with Zarqawi, and Bush directly contradicted the Duelfer report's finding that Iraq had no plan or capacity to make WMD at the time of the March 2003 US invasion. Cheney, however....chose to tell identical lies on Sept. 10, the day after the BBC article, as well as numerous other reports, made clear that there were no "ties" found between Saddam and Zarqawi / Ansar Al-Islam !</h3>

<b>Mojo, the following is an excerpt from my Sept. 16, 2006 post, refuting your assertion about Saddam's "ties":</b>
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...9&postcount=47

As stated inside the following quote box, there is a link to an early Sept. 2006 post that contains 16 links to articles that support the "notion" that Saddam's regime had no ties with Cheney's "poison camp", and some evidence that the US knew about the "camp" and deliberately allowed it to continue to operate:

I think this issue is being made more complicated than it needs to be. To me - I look at the fundemental questions - because we may never know all of the facts.

Did Sadaam, Ansar Al-Islam and Al Qaeda have a common enemy?

Was their focus on that enemy greater than their focus on any of their other enemies?

If given the opportunity would they have cooperated against their common enemy?

If you are in battle with one do you have to watch your "6" ("3" and "9") against the others?

So depending on how one answers those questions, second guessing after the fact is pointless. Or, we can simply say you were lied to, when you were not lied to, but that would be a lie too, wouldn't it?

But I am sure you would answer those questions honestly, and if you did - you would see a connection. No, no, no, you say - because we can not prove they had lunch together, or sent each other birthday cards. Now I am getting all confused - how do you define "ties" in this context? Would it be like - them holding hands walking in the park? Text messaging each other on their cell phones? Drawing pictures in their note books of each other with little hearts? Please help clarify.

The answer to any or all of those questions is hardly a reason to attack a country unprovoked causing the deaths of over a hundred thousand people and unleashing a brutal civil war on their streets.

Being made more complicated than it seems. How can you even bring yourself to type something like that? This is exactly the sort of sentiment that gives Americans the reputation of being obtuse.

Let's be fair. In previous posts I gave the reasons why I support the war in Iraq. This is a different question. The US military is not responsible for hundreds of thousands of people dead. Today the UN released a report saying the Iraqi death toll was about 34,000 in 2006, the headline in my local paper blamed Bush's invasion. I was shocked. Terrorists make a choice to kill women, children, elderly, red cross workers, and other non-military personnel - but we get blamed like we are forcing people to kill their fellow country men and women.

It is not difficult. When people say they want to kill me, my family, friends - simply because of our national origin - it is pretty simple and I take it serious. Don't you?

"When PEOPLE say they want to kill me.." What people? You think farmers in Iraq really want to kill you and your family? They don't give a crap about you just like you don't give a crap about them. They hate our government, not our people. You haven't dropped thusands of bombs on them. You didn't invade them. You aren't arresting people and holding them without trial. You're just supposrting the people that do that.

We are to blame for invading and crippling the social structure that kept this violence at bay. It is our war, our responsibility and we are to blame.

Who in Iraq vowed to kill you, your family and friends?

Flimsy rhetoric finds no purchase here. Sorry. Save it for the water cooler. :p