Or simply spend 1 year's war cost on renewable energy technology and we solve the problem overnight.

Ok JAPR, "“(4) Ideologically based violence.—

“The term ‘ideologically based violence’ means the use, planned use, or threatened use of force or violence by a group or individual to promote the group or individual’s political, religious, or social beliefs."

What the fuck do you suppose this means, as opposed to what you think it may mean.

ask yourself the reasons for the need for an act like this....is it cause the radical Muslims are gonna get us? OR, the government is afraid of a civil uprising that could mean a house-cleaning to root out both the Democrats and Republicans in Congress who want to see this bill law or others out there who want to re-instill democratic principles originally defined by some serious politicians and statesmen, like the founders were.

I might want to encourage folks to stop paying their income taxes, and actually get a few to do it, would you call me a criminal, or would you call a system put in place to cover war costs in the 40's, and never suspended, criminal?

The real fuck all, is who gives a damn anyhow, we're to busy wage slaving to give a fuck anyhow.....

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.

Federal Reserve board of governors reports to the Congress once a year(you can see their reports here http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/rptcongress/).
Also the Congress can request the presence of Fed Reserve governors in person. Just just google Greenspan/Congress and you'll find transcripts of Congressional meetings with him. So you can see that the view that the Fed is somehow a shady isolated entity is misleading today (maybe it wasn't when Milton wrote his book)

The Congress can amend/change/curtail the Fed's responsibilities through a statute, or dissolve it completely. Given such power that the government has over the Fed, one could see that it would try to serve the purpose assigned to it, which is to provide economic stability.

As far as depending on Fed because the govt owes them money...come on, the government *makes* money. If the dependency was a problem, they could print enough money to pay off the Fed.

During World War II some governments did just that, they printed money to finance their war costs. US instead borrowed money. It might seem strange for the US government to "borrow dollars" when all the dollars in circulation are created by the US government. In reality there's not much difference between "borrowing" and creating more money, since the government still got the same amount of extra work out of it's citizens.

Interesting points raised by scottishmartialarts however as of mid-November 2006, there were already approximately 152,000 US troops deployed to Iraq. So the large force presence you mention is already there. <ahref="http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iraq_orbat.htm">Global Security source.

I would agree on most of what you raise had it not been the current administration that carried out the tasks. One of the biggest reasons for escalation of insurgent forces and destabilization factors was the disbanding of the entire Iraq army, giving extremist groups unemployed soldiers. It has proven time and time again that it doesn't know how to deal with the problem.

Every week the war costs the tax payer 2 billion dollars and more lives lost. American strategic influence in the Middle East is already assured through the military presence in Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Strategic objectives at further cost to the debt ridden US economy? Low political support from the population?

The same reasoning you raised scottishmartialarts was raised during Vietnam, because the administration kept seeing it as part of the Cold War and not the civil war that it was. I remember reading the same arguments 'American strategic presence in South East Asia is important to keeping the communist menace at bay'.