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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: geode00 who wrote (261965)	4/19/2008 9:26:29 PM
From: neolib	Respond to of 281500

Exactly right! Bring back the lockbox idea and people will understand, much more clearly than they do now, how much of the disposable income of the Federal Government goes to making war on people who were no threat to us.

To: geode00 who wrote (261965)	4/19/2008 9:39:47 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

No, what I am trying to explain to you is that Social Security payments are not part of the disposable income of the US Government. The are indeed part of the disposable income of the US government, and the government disposes of them by spending the money on SS. There is no requirement, other than the desire of the politicians and the people, to continue to spend any money on SS. Your mortgage is a debt, and you have a contract to pay back that debt. Social Security payments are not repayments of debts, nor are they contractually required in any way.

To: geode00 who wrote (261965)	4/19/2008 9:40:31 PM
From: Ruffian	Respond to of 281500

Iraqi Forces Take Last Basra Areas From Sadr Force Khaldoon Zubeir/Getty Images Iraqi forces moved into the Hayaniya neighborhood of Basra with little resistance on Saturday. By the evening, with American and British help, Basra was calm. By JAMES GLANZ and ALISSA J. RUBIN Published: April 20, 2008 BAGHDAD — Iraqi soldiers took control of the last bastions of the cleric Moktada al-Sadr’s militia in Basra on Saturday, and Iran’s ambassador to Baghdad strongly endorsed the Iraqi government’s monthlong military operation against the fighters. Sadr City Fighters Lay Defenses Amid Latest Official Efforts at Calm (April 19, 2008) By Saturday evening, Basra was calm, but only after air and artillery strikes by American and British forces cleared the way for Iraqi troops to move into the Hayaniya district and other remaining Mahdi Army militia strongholds and begin house-to house searches, Iraqi officials said. Iraqi troops were meeting little resistance, said Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, the spokesman for the Iraqi Interior Ministry in Baghdad. Despite the apparent concession of Basra, Mr. Sadr issued defiant words on Saturday night. In a long statement read from the loudspeakers of his Sadr City Mosque, he threatened to declare “war until liberation” against the government if fighting against his militia forces continued. But it was difficult to tell whether his words posed a real threat or were a desperate effort to prove that his group was still a feared force, especially given that his militia’s actions in Basra followed a pattern seen again and again: the Mahdi militia battles Iraqi government troops to a standstill and then retreats. Why his fighters have clung to those fight-then-fade tactics is unknown. But American military and civilian officials have repeatedly claimed that Mahdi Army units trained and equipped by Iran had played a major role in the unexpectedly strong resistance that government troops met in Basra. Whether to counter those allegations or simply because, as many Iraqis have recently speculated, Mr. Sadr’s stock has recently fallen in Iranian eyes, the Iranian ambassador, Hassan Kazemi Qumi, on Saturday expressed his government’s strong support for the Iraqi assault on Basra. He even called the militias in Basra “outlaws,” the same term that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has used to describe them. “The idea of the government in Basra was to fight outlaws,” Mr. Qumi said. “This was the right of the government and the responsibility of the government. And in my opinion the government was able to achieve a positive result in Basra.” Strikingly, however, Ambassador Qumi simultaneously condemned American-led operations against the Mahdi Army in the Shiite enclave of Sadr City, where major new clashes broke out on Saturday. He said the American-backed fighting in that densely populated district was causing only civilian casualties rather than achieving any positive result. “The American insistence on coming and having a siege on a couple of million people in one area and striking them with warplanes and shelling them randomly — many innocent people will be killed through this operation,” Mr. Qumi said. “The result of this operation will be the sabotage and destruction of buildings, and many people will leave their homes.” The events in Basra, in contrast with the Mahdi Army’s continued fighting in Sadr City, renewed questions about where the Sadrist movement stands in Iraq’s unstable political landscape. While his faction has often played the spoiler in Baghdad’s Shiite political structure, his followers also represent the poor and disenfranchised, who were battered under Saddam Hussein, making it difficult for the government to write them off. In his statement on Saturday, Mr. Sadr seemed to be claiming the moral high ground despite having to cede territory in Basra. He compared the Iraqi government to that of Saddam Hussein and said that the government had become the enemy along with Sunni extremists and the Americans. “You are using the politics of Saddam and his followers when he banned the Friday Prayer and displaced women and children; when he created divisions among groups of Iraqis; and used the politics of assassination,” the statement said. “If you do not stop we will announce a war until liberation.” Still, at one point he sounded an almost plaintive note, saying, “This government has forgotten that we are their brothers and were part of them.” The combination of the Iranian ambassador’s stance and the retreat of militia fighters in Basra may give fuel to accusations by some American and Sunni Arab officials that Iran has taken a powerful and increasingly open role in Iraqi politics. Mr. Maliki’s abrupt assault on Basra last month has been widely criticized as being poorly planned. But it is believed to have been encouraged by the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a crucial element of his governing coalition. Many members of the armed wing of the council, called the Badr Organization, joined the government’s security forces early in the Iraq conflict, and have been battling the Sadr-led forces. Mr. Sadr’s political movement is also an important rival of the Supreme Council. Because leaders of the council and its armed wing spent years and sometimes decades in exile in Iran during Saddam Hussein’s regime, it was assumed that the silence of the Badr Organization during the Basra offensive indicated that Iran had given at least tacit approval for the move.