The Green Zone 2

QM:I'm happy to see that you accept the label 'right wing nutjob', that saves us time.
I wonder where you get your 90% figure (or your implication that 100% of teachers unions are democrat)...if true, why don't right wingers believe in education and journalism? No one is stopping them from being teachers or journalists.
You're part right about McCain, I did respect him for the most part (but didn't always agree with him) until he sold his soul and lost his mind in/after 2000 when the 'straight talk express' took a 90 deg right turn into a sewage filled ditch of lies, direction changes, blatant pandering, and BS. It makes me shudder to think what might have been if he had been president during his 'right wing wind sock' days, turning whichever way the right wing wind blew that day.
You have no idea when or how I was raised, so you should refrain from commenting on that subject. Let's just say your statement is wrong, as I'm sure are most of your assumptions about me.
The idea that the left is 'running roughshod' over the right is more complete insanity, the left is incapable of being cohesive enough to do much of anything intentionally. The right is cohesive, but their ideas are insane and proven repeatedly to be wrong for the most part. I do give them credit for knowing how to get their agenda furthered, I just disagree with their agenda as enacted.
Obama is on track to spend more than bush, but he has not yet. The reasons for the respective spending sprees and amount of each is another discussion in itself.
All taxpayers tired of being 'over' taxed are not right wing nutjobs, or even right wingers. That's an utter falicy and insulting BS. It's seemingly easy for you to point at the failings of one underfunded, over administrated program (public schools) and make the leap to the theory that all governmental programs are failures, but that is a gross simplification of a multifaceted problem. Even so, that theory doesn't hold water. The 'free market' for higher education shows that many, if not all completely 'private' schools provide sub par education (if any at all) while many schools using 'public' funds are among the highest ranked in the nation.
I'm sure you did call the feds attempt at stoping the failed CEO's from looting the failing companies we had just bailed out "obamatrons trying to loot corporations in the name of "social justice" ", so why isn't it 'the far right trying to loot the pensions and paychecks of the teachers' in the name of social justice? What's good for the goose...right? A legal contract is a legal contract, right?
I'm not sure if you are ignoring my last statement there or if that's some kind of 1/2 assed, racist response. Either way, TOTAL FAIL.
>> ^quantumushroom:
Dear right wing nutjob: Stop calling anyone or anything that isn't lock step in line with your insane far right wing agenda 'liberal' or 'democrat'. Because someone doesn't agree with your narrow, self centered world view, does not make them part of the groups you wish them to be in. Not everything that's left of the farthest right possible is liberal or democratic, only nutjobs think that way.
Labels save time, especially when they're accurate. American teachers' unions and 90% of American journalists are democrats, which used to mean liberal but now means socialist.
You, sir, are a tool. (please note I don't use the term 'conservative' because the right wing nuts of today are not conservative in the least, they want to make social laws fostering their viewpoint alone, that's not conservative, and they spend more liberally than their 'liberal' counterparts whenever they can.)
One of the many flowers in your garden of ignorance can be traced to this root: you were raised with the idea that "good conservatives" are RINO assholes like McCain who keep silent and compromise on every point in order to to be liked, while leftards and their failed schemes run roughshod over them. Now that the real Right has found its voice, there's a real chance at real change, however small.
The Kenyanesque Hawaiian has spent 3 trillion dollars in 3 years with more on the way. Spare the lecture about RINOS and spending, they're amateurs by comparison.
Your second point has already been dealt with...because the far right will take everything public servants have worked for and were contractually due and reduce them to minimum wage part time workers without benefits, those public servants were forced to unite and fight for what they worked for and earned.
'Dealt with' but not properly defended. The "far right"? And who might that be? Taxpayers who have had enough? People who see government schools for what they are? Dummy factories. Indoctrination centers. The free market does a better job teaching at half the cost. No wonder the unions hate vouchers and charter schools.
The Age of the Union is past. Put another way, if you can make a union competitive, fine by me, just don't expect GM-style bailouts. Ever. And to hell with all government unions. You may disagree and that's fine.
It's funny, I recall you being a voice for the CEO's of banks when they took golden parachutes after bush bailed them out of the ditch they drove into, saying they had contracts, and contracts must be enforced...why does that not apply to those making less than 10 million a year?
>>> You're bringing up stuff that has nothing to do with my original statement. The closest thing I remember to "defending CEOs" is calling out obamatrons trying to loot corporations in the name of "social justice". Utter crap.

Letting right wing nutjobs re-write contracts and negate our obligations was one of our biggest mistakes.
Fail. The Kenyanesque Hawaiian never met a spending cut he liked. He's overclocked this economy because he wants to cripple it. Here comes the broom to sweep the moonbats out of the belfry.
Speaking of rewarding failure.

Dear right wing nutjob: Stop calling anyone or anything that isn't lock step in line with your insane far right wing agenda 'liberal' or 'democrat'. Because someone doesn't agree with your narrow, self centered world view, does not make them part of the groups you wish them to be in. Not everything that's left of the farthest right possible is liberal or democratic, only nutjobs think that way.

Labels save time, especially when they're accurate. American teachers' unions and 90% of American journalists are democrats, which used to mean liberal but now means socialist.

You, sir, are a tool. (please note I don't use the term 'conservative' because the right wing nuts of today are not conservative in the least, they want to make social laws fostering their viewpoint alone, that's not conservative, and they spend more liberally than their 'liberal' counterparts whenever they can.)

One of the many flowers in your garden of ignorance can be traced to this root: you were raised with the idea that "good conservatives" are RINO assholes like McCain who keep silent and compromise on every point in order to to be liked, while leftards and their failed schemes run roughshod over them. Now that the real Right has found its voice, there's a real chance at real change, however small.

The Kenyanesque Hawaiian has spent 3 trillion dollars in 3 years with more on the way. Spare the lecture about RINOS and spending, they're amateurs by comparison.

Your second point has already been dealt with...because the far right will take everything public servants have worked for and were contractually due and reduce them to minimum wage part time workers without benefits, those public servants were forced to unite and fight for what they worked for and earned.

'Dealt with' but not properly defended. The "far right"? And who might that be? Taxpayers who have had enough? People who see government schools for what they are? Dummy factories. Indoctrination centers. The free market does a better job teaching at half the cost. No wonder the unions hate vouchers and charter schools.

The Age of the Union is past. Put another way, if you can make a union competitive, fine by me, just don't expect GM-style bailouts. Ever. And to hell with all government unions. You may disagree and that's fine.

It's funny, I recall you being a voice for the CEO's of banks when they took golden parachutes after bush bailed them out of the ditch they drove into, saying they had contracts, and contracts must be enforced...why does that not apply to those making less than 10 million a year?

>>> You're bringing up stuff that has nothing to do with my original statement. The closest thing I remember to "defending CEOs" is calling out obamatrons trying to loot corporations in the name of "social justice". Utter crap.

Letting right wing nutjobs re-write contracts and negate our obligations was one of our biggest mistakes.

Fail. The Kenyanesque Hawaiian never met a spending cut he liked. He's overclocked this economy because he wants to cripple it. Here comes the broom to sweep the moonbats out of the belfry.

Speaking of rewarding failure.

just added Green Zone, Rendition, and Redacted to my Netflix queue.

Also, it's interesting that those scenes were removed from Charlie Wilson's War... I thought that was common knowledge that the Taliban was armed/trained by the CIA to fight the Russians in Afghanistan at the time.

Although a far cry from a cinematic masterpiece, even Rambo III (1988) pointed out the fact that no one will win a war in Afghanistan.

I couldn't tell if Michael Moore liked Red Dawn, or was being sarcastic.

The Green Zone's been built, U.S. will maintain a presence for decades there. Keep the troop's moving, the money keeps flowing, and the corporations keep raking it in.

Your tax dollars at work. (And I know you were all for going into Iraq in the first place.)

I just read the iraqi is still in jail and is being well beaten and tortured and also can't see his lawyer, he's being held in the Green Zone.
Hope he gets out alive, with that act he's been immortalized, pure symbolism.

Saddam never had concentration camps. I have no idea where exactly you pulled that one from. Yes he was an oppressive dictatorial leader. But the violence begets violence, the violence inflicted in removing him has created not one Saddam but a thousand, from the Sadr loyalists, the 1920 brigades, the Bader brigades, the AQI, the sunni killers, the shia killers and countless other movements that inflict terror in Iraq today.

Stability is coming I agree, but I do not agree that such a unilateral course of action should have been taken in removing Saddam, it wasn't like this was well planned at any stage, there was no concrete coalition plan to restore order in Iraq, the CPA dismantled the Iraqi army that was willing to impose a semblance of order and let loose a chaotic environment pushing more military trained men into insurgent forces. The US started planning a reconstruction of Germany and Japan plans nearly 5 years before the end of world war 2, plans to restore Iraq were ignored and actively thrown out in favor of appointing naive young republican bleeding hearts, who sat behind in the Green zone without ever connecting with the Iraqi people they were to govern.

I understand what you are trying to say, and I would have agreed with you had this war been carried out with international support, with a realistic time table instead of pushing invasion as soon as possible (the war started in less then 3 months), with a clear and defined goals for the reconstruction effort, and so much more.

But it wasn't. It was a cowboy shotgun adventure paid in the lives of both US, coalition and Iraqi lives.

I wouldn't mind the war on terror if it wasn't so unilateral, poorly conceived, poorly planned, poorly carried out by a inept organization of leaders who really didn't understand what they were doing and passed off the difficult job to the armed forces and fresh idealistic young republicans who didn't know what the hell they were doing in the Green Zone.

Not to mention the fact that the same people gave billions in private military contracts to organizations (AEGIS) that have a poor record of success carrying out their obligations, to PMCs that ran under any form of legal oversight in Iraq.

The world is no more dangerous than ever. To claim that terrorism is a bigger threat than the times of the Cold war, is to buy into the created narrative of those who cement power through fear mongering.

But never mind go to sleep sheeple.

I have a friend from Basra, whose parents won't let him come home to visit them because they're afraid he'll be killed.

It doesn't matter if the surge is working or not, because we don't care about reconstruction. We only work with destruction and mayhem. More troops, but still no planning. This war was started on an aggressive stance, with no foresight as to the period after toppling Saddam. Sure, they had a vote and they have a President, but do they have local governments to keep order and begin rebuilding what they've lost? No. They have rival sectarian militias who Saddam kept at bay. Now they have civil war.

Baghdad has the Green Zone to protect American diplomats, while the rest of the city has nothing but a broken sewer that is left untreated, and hopelessness.

We treat our POWs with torture; what surprises us about the way we ignore the struggling of the average Iraqi citizen?

>> ^garmachi:
We're like a cop that shoots a kid who refused to take his hands out of his pockets "just in case" only to find out he wasn't packin'.

It's more like a dirty cop who catches a drug dealer sitting on a huge cache of drugs, and the cop kills the dealer so he can take the drugs and sell them himself.

When he files the police report, he makes up a story about thinking the punk was carrying.

It's worse than that metaphor still though, because it wasn't just one guy involved on either side. We didn't just kill Saddam, we killed his entire family, turned his house into our command center (the Green Zone), kicked his entire political party out of government, disbanded the military, and let those recently fired soldiers steal most of the weapons they'd been issued.

Then we announce we're going to hold elections. The Sunni's threaten to boycot the election, but we hold one anyway. Now there's a Shi'ia government running Iraq, because no Sunni's voted. That leaves us with a ton of pissed off Sunni's, including those fired soldiers running around, fighting to get their country back. There's also Shi'ia dissidents who don't like how this new Shi'ia government is working with the U.S. so closely.

In the midst of the chaos, we get a new Sunni terrorist cell that decides to call itself Al Qaeda. It takes them a while before they really affiliate with the Osama bin Laden run Al Qaeda, but our government conflates the two almost immediately. Listening to them now, they say the war is about fighting the spread of Communism, oops, I mean Al Qaeda and islamic extremism. This too, is just a sales job. If they cared about that, all our focus would be on Afghanistan and Pakistan, not Iraq.

Bush and the neocons want to stay despite all this, purely so we can steal their oil, and create a military ally in the region who's government owes us, because we installed them.

WMD's, Al Qaeda, and 9/11 never really figured into the war in Iraq, they were just part of the sales job.

Lurch, i would refer to bases in germany, uk, lithuania and literally scores of other countries as a form of occupation, it's a kind of quiet empire. The presence of those bases gives the USA considerable political leverage.
"state sponsored killing" referred to collateral damage, not bases. i would definitely call the US Army blowing up Iraqi civilians "state sponsored killing". Hope that explains it.

As for the whole "there will be bloodshed if we withdraw"... damn, as if there isn't bloodshed now, and as if the bloodshed will stop quicker with an occupying christian army on their soil. Comparisons to Vietnam are interesting... last time I checked Vietnam was not a communist stronghold bathing in blood.

What you are saying, by extension, is "there should be US troops in every country where there's bloodshed" and that is totally impossible. What is so different about Iraq? Why not go prevent the bloodshed in Sudan or Burma or China or Russia? No war proponent has ever explained this to me.

About those bases you say aren't permanent:

We're talking about a U.S. embassy compound under construction these last years that's meant to hold 1,000 diplomats, spies, and military types (as well as untold numbers of private security guards, service workers, and heaven knows who else). It will operate in the Iraqi capital's heavily fortified Green Zone as if it were our first lunar colony. According to William Langewiesche, writing in Vanity Fair, it will contain "its own power generators, water wells, drinking-water treatment plant, sewage plant, fire station, irrigation system, Internet uplink, secure intranet, telephone center (Virginia area code), cell-phone network (New York area code), mail service, fuel depot, food and supply warehouses, vehicle-repair garage, and workshops."
...
When it comes to American construction projects in Iraq, the sky's really the limit. Just recently, National Public Radio's Defense Correspondent Guy Raz spent some time at Balad Air Base about 70 kilometers north of Baghdad. As Thomas Ricks of the Washington Post reported, back in 2006, Balad is essentially an "American small town," so big that it has neighborhoods and bus routes -- and its air traffic rivals Chicago's O'Hare International Airport.
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174858/baseless_considerations

i can certainly imagine many scenarios that would make a video like this severely raise your temperature.
Right you are, MINK. As far as signing up to fight wars I disagree with, well, I signed into the delayed entry program in 2002, and a year later I went to boot camp in June of 2003. At this time, even the hard-core lefties thought it was a justified war.
Knowing what I know now, would I change it if I could? No. It was a really great experience for me. Especially when I was in Iraq. A lot of those people wanted us there. I was there for the first election, and it was amazing to see the amount of people lined up at the front gate of the base to come and vote. Mind you, this wasn't the "green zone" where soldiers can walk around without body armor. I was at Al-Mahmudiyah. Also pleasantly known and a corner in the Triangle of death. And for anybody that wants to bash me on here (yes, it's happened before) please know what you're talking about, unlike memorare in that comment to me about "techs in Kuwait". I remember hearing that more people per capita showed up to vote than in the U.S. We've had democracy for over 200 years now, and most people don't care. They bitch and whine about things, but when it comes times to vote, they're too lazy thinking about whether or not they want fries with their next big mac. I honestly believe that we are doing good for their country.
Anyone can throw up the "destroyed infrastructure and schools" argument, and I'll be glad to discuss how we do every thing we can to protect and rebuild them.
Really, it boils down to this: A lot of Arabs have hated us for years. Now they finally have the chance to come and shoot us.

And as always, MINK, I thoroughly enjoy your comments and discussions.

And how's that for a title?

That's awesome Memorare. Yeah, personal attacks are on? Fine. You're not going to find me sitting in the green zone or in Kuwait, or even floating off shore.
Ever heard of the Sunni Triangle of death? Guess what, asshole? That's where I was.
Hmm... I find the physics hard to work out over this next one: If I'm sitting in the green zone, off shore or in Kuwait, then please, memorare, PLEASE explain to me why 1) I've been shot at, 2) I've shot at others, 3) I've killed others, 4)I've been mortared countless times, and 5)I feared for my life on a regular basis.

Ever walked down a crowded Iraqi street not knowing if it will be the last time that you'll walk? Or even BREATHE!?!

You don't think that I haven't shed tears for my fellow Marines, soldiers and sailors that have lost their lives in that conflict? That I had to use all the strength that I had to not cry when I was standing at attention saluting my fallen comrades, my friends in their remembrance ceremony?

If you weren't so quick to make an ass out of yourself, you might have fucking noticed that the US isn't going to end the war anytime soon. All I was saying is that by staying put, we're saving lives that would otherwise be risked in a move.

Wow, I can not believe I'm going to say this... but QM, I agree with you there (somewhat).

That's awesome Memorare. Yeah, personal attacks are on? Fine. You're not going to find me sitting in the green zone or in Kuwait, or even floating off shore.
Ever heard of the Sunni Triangle of death? Guess what, asshole? That's where I was.
Hmm... I find the physics hard to work out over this next one: If I'm sitting in the green zone, off shore or in Kuwait, then please, memorare, PLEASE explain to me why 1) I've been shot at, 2) I've shot at others, 3) I've killed others, 4)I've been mortared countless times, and 5)I feared for my life on a regular basis.

Ever walked down a crowded Iraqi street not knowing if it will be the last time that you'll walk? Or even BREATHE!?!

You don't think that I haven't shed tears for my fellow Marines, soldiers and sailors that have lost their lives in that conflict? That I had to use all the strength that I had to not cry when I was standing at attention saluting my fallen comrades, my friends in their remembrance ceremony?

If you weren't so quick to make an ass out of yourself, you might have fucking noticed that the US isn't going to end the war anytime soon. All I was saying is that by staying put, we're saving lives that would otherwise be risked in a move.

As always QMs argument consists of nothing but assumptions, conjectures, and malicious retreading of history rather then basing anything in reality.

The National Intelligence Estimate has clearly stated that the surge has failed to bring about the most important objective of the 'surge' to allow drawdown in US combat forces letting the Iraqis take over, and this is after General Petraues toned down it's findings. Generals in Iraq operate in quick spurts of over blown security, political and press delegations are taken in on DOD/Pentagon secured dog and pony tours of the country, with high security provided by US forces boosted further PowerPoint presentations behind the secured walls of the Green Zone. Top commanders are differing on their own assessments about the way forward. The House is going to hold it's own hearings on the Iraq war because it probably cannot trust the White house anymore. Thus the picture being presented is false.

But that doesn't really matter because the same policy will stay in its form until about April 2008 at least, I don't see any surprises as about the testimony from Petraeus and Crocker coming up on September 11th (or whatever date it is now), just more of "Give us time and we will achieve success", much like what we heard in Vietnam over and over again until the US had no choice but to leave.

Which to me ultimately reads more like a fervent hope then any real strategic plan or foresight, I mean we supposedly 'accomplished the mission', 'turned the corner', were on the verge of success so many times before, yet goshdarnit we just missed it every time mostly at the expense of Iraqi and American lives.

At the end of the day a maintenance of the current strategy in the long term will result in two very obvious consequences;

US ground forces will capitulate as you cannot simply extend tours to 15 months and expect people to go back for the 5th or 6th time, the draft would have to be re-instated to provide more ground forces (for Iraq, Afghanistan and any planned incursion in Iran). More reliance would be placed on private military contractors to provide additional force components.

The expenditure towards the conflict would simply sap the US economy eventually, as it's foreign debt obligations increase further, and as the administration pulls more and more funding into the Iraq war without any logical consequence or trickle down to the actual forces doing the fighting. I mean the US will not fail catastrophically, it will just mean that spending on everything else will just vanish. Higher taxes are obviously out of the question, so that would mean more borrowing from other nations.

Bush plans to ask Congress next month for up to $50 billion in additional funding for the war in Iraq, which would come on top of about $460 billion in the fiscal 2008 defense budget and $147 billion in a pending supplemental bill to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Meaning the war costs come to roughly 3 billion every week. Who pays for that eventually? the US taxpayer who is already on track for a $59 trillion obligation. Now there is talk of a confrontation with Iran.

Strategic oil resources are an important unmentioned factor in all this, the US doesn't want Iran influencing the actions of any Iraqi goverment structure that could possibly come into effect, yet it believes that that it is the only one that stands in the way of such a thing occurring, even as it's spent nearly $20 billion in supplying arms to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Kuwait and other smaller GCC nations.

All the war drumming against Iran in the US is only helping Iranian goverment clamp down further on political dissenters because it can point out a clear foreign threat that is gathering - eliminating civil liberties, attacking free press, and intellectuals by labeling them as foreign agents trying to destabilize the goverment. So in many ways both the Bush and Ahmadinejad are reaching their own objectives, Bush gets a pass on the Iraqi war by labeling Iran as a new threat, Ahmadinejad gets to garner more power and install more cronies into the goverment replacing technocrats.

But then again you probably read Blackfive so I wouldn't bother going into too much detail lest the facts overwhelm your preconceived assumptions.