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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (177533)	11/5/2003 1:27:30 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1574615

Yes true, unless you are a nitwit trying to make some obscure point. No, not true at all and the point isn't obscure. The "this context" that I was referring to, in which the labels discretionary and non-discretionary are not significant is the context of considering how overall government spending or overall non-defense government spending is growing. Required by law or not, the burden of the taxes to cover the spending is the same. Required by law or not congress has the power to change the spending, or in other words the spending is at the discretion of congress. dictionary.reference.com 5 entries found for discretion. dis·cre·tion ( P ) Pronunciation Key (d-skrshn) n. 1. The quality of being discreet; circumspection. See Synonyms at prudence. 2. Ability or power to decide responsibly. 3. Freedom to act or judge on one's own: All the decisions were left to our discretion. dis·cretion·al adj. dis·cretion·al·ly adv. Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

To: Road Walker who wrote (177533)	11/5/2003 1:38:54 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1574615

re: And it was very costly in terms of causing Iraqi suffering. And now they are doing so well, supported by the US taxpayer? Now they are not doing well but they are on their way to doing much better then they would have been under Saddam. As for "supported by the US taxpayer", that support is only partial and temporary. If it shows any sign of becoming permanent esp at levels anywhere close to the current levels I would oppose the support but for now I think it servers the US's interest. I would have taken the ~200,000 troops that went to Iraq, blasted into the Pakistan mountains where he is hiding, and killed the son of a bitch. Probably with less casualties than we have had (so far) in Iraq. I don't think Pakistan would have exactly gone along with that. Do you suppose we should have given them no choice? And what would have happened had we moved 200,000 soldiers in to that area? Either Al-Qaeda would have melted away to go somewhere else (in which case we would have probably had less casualties then Iraq but we would not have accomplished as much as you seem to think we would have), or they would have fought and would have been joined by other local people, in which case we would have taken more casualties then we have taken in Iraq. Either way a lot of Al-Qaeda's important people and resources would have escaped while we where building up the force, and that many soldiers would be difficult to support on the Pakistani/Afghani borderlands. If you think Iraq is an inhospitable place for US soldiers, that area of Pakistan is even worse. The terrain is rugged, its no near the sea, and the area is crawling with not just Al-Qaeda types (who we want to fight so that we can wipe them out) but also others who would join up if the US moved in to the area with such massive force. An argument could be made that such a massive and risky attack should be made but anyone who tries to make such an argument should be clear about the problems and risks in such a strategy. Tim