Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: PROLIFE who wrote (736309)	4/11/2006 7:38:54 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Respond to of 769670

Sure! More good money down a rat hole is just Uncle Sucker screwing the taxpayers and America's children. (You wanna keep wasting money, YOU pay for it --- or at least get the public to vote for real-time financing: no more running up the national credit card foolishly and impoverishing future generations.) Anyway: we stand to SUCCEED at achieving our national long-term strategic objectives BEST by standing aside and letting the Sunni And the Shiite extremist fundamentalists have at it --- without Uncle Sucker around to blame all of their failings and problems on! See also: Message 22343274 I've suggested for a long time now that 1/2 TRILLION DOLLARS should be our upper limit for Iraq spending. (Cost measured against potential gain, don't 'cha know.) And, we are rounding on that financial number this year, so I believe --- also since we have ACHIEVED all of our original objectives... Saddam is on trial for his like, Iraqis have an elected government, and there is no WMD threat to the US from Iraq --- that it is much in America's interest to end the occupation now, and let the Iraqis settle their own internal political issues. (Also, since a war in the region between fundamentalist Sunnis and fundamentalist Shiites, even drawing from neighboring nations such as Saudi Arabia and Syria and Iran is likely historically inevitable, but even more importantly, necessary for the political evolution of the region... and is ALSO in the best long-term interests of the West and America... I see no reason to waste further American money or blood in futilely trying to stave-off what is actually in our OWN BEST INTERESTS.) It's just STUPID to shoot ourselves in the foot like that.

To: PROLIFE who wrote (736309)	4/11/2006 8:01:47 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Message 22344513 Re: "Buddy, much as I would LIKE to have President Bush's original goals met, I have to admit, the longer these Iraqi's keep futzing around the more I am becoming to lean in your direction." You seem to be suggesting that some of those original goals HAVEN'T been achieved.... I'm not sure which ones you are saying that about though. I believe if you check 'em off, they have all been achieved for some time now. (Note: 'nation building' in Iraq, or in the broader Middle East, was not exactly one of those 'original goals' the President talked about before the war... or, at least, not anything he mentioned in public. And, since he SPECIFICALLY criticized the very idea of 'nation building' in one of the pre-election Presidential debates, the public could be forgiven for thinking that nation building was not anything he was suggesting.) In any event, I personally believe that 1/2 TRILLION DOLLARS (and a reconstruction budget as large in real terms as what we spent after WW II on rebuilding Germany) is more then enough to wager on Iraq. At some point one has to ask: Are we on the hook for their welfare until the end of time? Re: "Although I would never suggest abandoning the Kurds. jdn" Neither would I. "Lesser Kurdistan" is likely to be the only thing resembling a Democracy to be formed in a part of 'Iraq's' territory. (No doubt for several reasons... the 12 years of so of protection from Saddam given by the no-fly zone... the fact that the Kurdish people have a longing for nationhood, in fact, they represent the LARGEST irredentist movement [largest ethnic/political movement without their own nation] left in the world.) Kurdistan (or an autonomous 'Kurdish Republic' carved out of Iraq in one form or another) is likely to stay very close to Uncle Sam for a lot of reasons - not the least of which because they need the US to keep our other ally, Turkey, off of their neck! For the rest though? Probably the ONLY way for the Middle East to evolve into anything like Western-style pluralism and Democracy is for them to first settle grievances that have built up for centuries around the Sunni/Shiite divide. Likely that will be fought out over the carcass of 'Iraq'... and possibly settled only when 'zones of influence' are carved out for Shiites and Sunni... and likely large numbers of peoples migrate in both directions.