but i thought iraq was to depose saddam due to WMD's?
oh..wait..yeah..
but didnt they say it was to "spread democracy"?
douuh!
well thank god i bought an asston of stock in haliburton and blackwater!

>> ^imstellar28:
Selfishness is much more complex than you may or may not realize

No, it really isn't.

Selfishness is the likes of Madoff, Abramoff, and credit card swindlers who jack up APRs for no other reason than to squeeze what they can out of a person.

Selfishness is KBR, Haliburton, and Xe.

Selfishness is what screwed this country and threatens the world.

Your paean to selfishness is not very well thought out, and not very funny, either.

The opposite of selfishness isn't megalomaniacal philanthropy, it's simple fairness.

What? $7.8 billion in earmarks?

That's about, what? Two weeks in Iraq?

Only we're spending the money on projects in America instead of giving it to warmongering cocksuckers like Cheney and Haliburton and the rest of the war machine?

Glenn Beck is a fuckwad's dream come true.

Limbaugh appeals to the conservative bigots, and Beck makes the stupid cons feel smart.

How much will the 50,000 left behind for "support" cost us?
US now has a PERMANENT (ie 50 year+) base in Iraq just like the ones in Japan and Korea.
Yet another win for Cheney and Haliburton and the New World Order.
Semper Fi my ass.

They don't call him Dick Army for nothin!

I love how the GOP is just going to pretend that for the last 8 years they have not been behind the biggest redistribution of wealth in the history of this country. How many BILLIONS to the Military Industrial Complex? How many BILLIONS to no-bid contracts to companies like Haliburton and Black Water and "cost-plus" contracts that reward a contractor with bigger profits the more they spend/waste? How about the BILLIONS in bailout money given out in just the last 6 months with tens of MILLIONS going to guarantee CEO salaries and bonuses for a job well done?

I'm pretty sure that this is safe for work. Unless you work for Haliburton or something =/

Just watched the movie, and it's just very hard to watch. It's like watching a parody that for the most part isn't funny. The portrayal of Cheney, Haliburton and Blackwater is all done well enough, but one scene just goes beyond satire to neither funny nor insightful and ruined the entire film for me.

At one point an 'American' gunship cuts down a crowd of 'Iraqi' refugees, and then 'American' soldiers walk through the dead and dying men, women and children shooting the survivors at point blank range. Just read that again if you haven't watched the film and try to picture it.

The world badly needs a film and strong voice to condemn the actions this administration has taken and the way the war has been conducted. This scene though, defies words. I honestly just sat there, speechless. For those unfamiliar, in the real Iraq, Saddam used helicopter gunships to recreate this scene from the movie, though he did one better by using poison gas as well. The only thing that prevented this from continuing was the unilateral American act of war enforcing a no-fly zone over Northern Iraq. In the real Iraq, today, those same Kurdish people victimized as depicted in the movie, fight alongside the American forces as their staunchest allies. A movie scene instead showing American forces ruthlessly murdering civilians in this context just left my jaw on the floor in shock for the remainder of the movie.

Thanks NetRunner, I'll take that into consideration.

Cute, Blankfist - a self-referencing reference. Good thing you're not in the Matrix.

You know why I've never liked Libertarians? Because they are the anarchists of conservatism.

They are the people who finally woke up and saw what a sham the Republican party was, but were still too spineless to denounce it outright.

So they simply claimed that it wasn't conservative enough for them.

Not one real leftist was for the invasion of Afghanistan or Iraq.

Not one of us was for the torture of "enemy combatants."

Not one of us was for unwarranted domestic surveillance.

Not one of us was for giving the military industrial complex (e.g. Haliburton, KBR, Blackwater, and all of those other leaches) power over our politics, foreign and domestic.

You call the Bush administration "leftist" simply because you cannot bear to face the fact that you sided with the devil.

If Bush is “left” what am I? A commie?

The fundamentals of the economy?

Maybe he's refering to the military economic system...

You know? The one that involves the ranking repulican's calling for war, and then handing the billion dollar contracts to their own companies.

See - the real money is in the Haliburton supply chain. If the occupation of Iraq is indefinite - imagine how rich they can get sucking money out of the US tax payers?

Banks don't really matter - all the really wealthy people have their money off shore

Well, Deedub81 is right, McCain won't raise taxes, but nickreal is right also, Obama gives more tax relief to more people. Both candidates want to cut taxes, and according to MANY tax professionals, both of them are doomed to failure. The problem is that we've got this huge fucking war going on, but the people who wanted the war (i.e. those who voted for Bush) don't want to pay for it.

Obama's plan gives the most tax relief at the lowest, gradually offering less relief, until you start making over $250k, when the taxes start going up.

McCain offers tax cuts across the board, but he offers the smallest relief to those making the least, and the most benefit to those making the most. For someone who thinks the fundementals of the american economy is the average joe worker, he certainly isn't going to be doing any favors for them.

Now, I'm not endorsing either plan. I think that the government needs to raise taxes until it can have a balanced budget, and once we're no longer in other countries pockets, start downsizing itself.

Unfortunately, after the extreme of Phil Gramm's deregulation and Cheney wrapping up our tax dollars and giving it to Haliburton and the oil companies, we REQUIRE a very strong democratic economic agenda. Its not the perfect form of government, and I really hope it doesn't last for long (I would have voted Libertarian till they nominated Bob Barr).

Your homework, children, is to read an actual analysis of the plans, rather than spouting off whatever Hannity or Matthews tell you to be upset about. I'd recommend starting with the excerpt from this analysis to get you in the mood:
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/publications/url.cfm?ID=411749


>> ^deedub81:
McCain wants to raise the tax for everyone? I don't know where you're getting your information but it's wrong.
Try again.

>> ^nickreal03:
>> Obama would do an even worse job. Part of the reason the American economy
>> is on hold is knowing if Obamarx makes it in, people stand to lose even
>> more to taxation.
The taxation is the the problem. The problem is who you are taxing... In Obama he wants to raise the tax to the top 10% and lower the tax for the rest. Mc Dogle here wants to raise the tax for everyone. So you want less tax for you then vote Obama.

>> ^BillOreilly:
Oh the irony, Lansing is the capital of Michigan, run by what? Oh that's right, a DEMOCRATIC canadian wench for a governor who has tried (and mainly succeeded) in running the state into the ground.

Sure, Bill, and she was also responsible for Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brother...oh, wait, she wasn't.

And those banks that gave out all of those bad loans, they're all owned and run by a bunch of liberal Democrats, too, I guess.

Oh! And the Democrat in Lansing is responsible for sending our troops to Iraq at the cost of half a trillion dollars (and counting), and she's in cahoots with other liberals like KBR and Haliburton and Blackwater who have a history of overcharging for their services, too.

Yeah, it's all her fault.

So... what exactly does he mean when he says he did "two tours?"
He strapped on some gear and went on some missions? He did a couple comedy "tours"? He took a couple tours through the luxury Haliburton barracks?

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Sarah Silverman, war, iraq, psa, money, haliburton' to 'Sarah Silverman, war, iraq, psa, money, halliburton' - edited by my15minutes

I am comparing the motivation of the political leaders who invaded these nations, and I see a similarity between political agendas being served.


That is fair enough, but even if we assume that both leaders motivations are equally self serving, the nature of the countries being invaded is still important. I'll even offer that given America's VP is Haliburton's former CEO it seems pretty likely that oil was the dominant factor in the administration's decision. That still means we have a selfish America invading a genocidal dictator that used chemical weapons and annexed his neighbors every chance he got. On the other side we have a selfish Russia invading Goergia, which had done none of these. There is a distinction there still, and to say it is a fine line ignores just how horrific Saddam's acts were.


I'm not just talking about the crises in Sudan and Rwanda. Africa is marred by violence and famine, and dictators run most of it with an iron fist, thus causing millions of deaths across the continent. If we are so gung-ho about stopping genocide, why not start there instead of in the Middle East?

I whole heartedly agree that removing genocidal dictators in Africa first would have been better. But at the end of the day, I say stopping them in the middle-east is better than not stopping them anywhere. And that even means if the only motivation of the nation chasing them out is a self serving one. Fortunately for Iraqi civilians selfish American interests include an independent, stable and secure Iraq.


You don't know what a civil war in Iraq looks like? Have you not heard the body count of civilians caught in the crossfire of the Sunni-Shi'ite battles?


I was clearly saying no-one knows what a civil war against Saddam's army would have looked like. We already know for a fact he was an absolutely brutal dictator willing to use any and all weapons and targets available to him. If an Iraqi civil war began and Saddam prevailed, it's a safe bet that the genocides in Sudan and Rwanda, or at the least like that of the Kurds, would have been repeated yet again. Would you care to compare those body counts to present day Iraq?

EDIT:grammar

Didn't I just read that Bush is now immune of any war crimes going back to 9/11? So what difference does it make? I wouldn't be surprised if he gets kidnapped or killed after his Secret Service protection runs out. Of course, he's got enough money stashed away from his Haliburton deals that he and Cheney will be able to hire security until the Earth spins out of orbit, thus putting more innocent people in harm's way. Fuck Bush. Fuck him up his stupid ass.