Do you think there will be children of kindergarten age today in America...

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Wildkow @ Apr 17 2007, 11:47 PM) [snapback]425183[/snapback]</div>

Wow. Mark and Eagle answered this so well in their above posts, they left me nothing more to say. Thanks guys.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Apr 13 2007, 10:00 AM) [snapback]422606[/snapback]</div>

We can't defend ourselves from Mexico now.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dbermanmd @ Apr 18 2007, 08:57 AM) [snapback]425257[/snapback]</div>

Wow. Stalin is my idol! Never knew that before.

We don't hate America, we want to see America strong as well, but spending money on things that only destroy or can't be used (like insane amounts of nuclear weapons) is not the way to make America strong. It also won't defend us against terrorism - that is fought by small agile forces, cooperation and good intelligence.

It sounds like you are firmly in the hate-the-world camp. Apparently we're the shining city on the hill and everybody else deserves to roll around in the swamps. I'm a realist, and only by looking at our strengths and weaknesses can we make ourselves better. Blindly following the president does not fulfill your patriotic duties (Teddy Roosevelt said that, not me, altho I paraphrased it). We have a good combination of a system of government, large natural and human resources, and are founded by motivated people (definition of an immigrant). But our morals are no better or worse than other successful countries. Trying to put democracy and free elections in a place that only understands autocracy at the high levels and village/tribal based leadership at the local levels is not something that will automatically work or even be welcomed. Especially when it's an outside force pushing it on you without any real local input.

I am deeply worried for my son - he's in elementary school right now. I don't think we'll be in Iraq, but the repercussions of this will continue, and oil will be more expensive, and we could easily fight more wars for oil. (Why did we attack Iraq, and not say, Yemen, which has more terrorist ties, or Saudi Arabia, which supplied most of the terrorists in 9/11 but also sells us oil? Only Iraq was bucking the system and trying to sell oil in Euros instead of U.S. dollars, and only they were likely to upset the existing balance of power in various oil-producing mideast states.) My hope is we'll learn from this long enough to last a generation, like Viet Nam did.

 

Pinto Girl and the rest of you liberals always seem to surprise me..

Why do you always blame America for the bad things going on? 9/11 happened, it's our fault.. Terror in the Middle-East.. our fault..

Yes, it is a rhetorical question - I know you America-hating-liberals are incapable of answering with facts and reasoning.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(desynch @ Apr 18 2007, 12:29 PM) [snapback]425411[/snapback]</div>

I didn't say it's "our fault."

I "don't blame America for all the bad things going on."

What I'm saying is, you obviously assert that we're a world leader, with some if not tremendous influence on most of the peoples of the Earth.

Furthermore, I get the feeling that you're willing enough for America to take credit for most if not all of the "good" things which happen (and which, I think, we do, regardless of your reply)...then the converse is that, naturally, due to the very nature of our world dominance, we would also stand to bear some degree of responsibility for the "bad" things which happen.

Right...?

Did you once coin the phrase, "victory has a thousand fathers, and defeat is an orphan?" It sounds like it to me.

FYI, I'm a social liberal and a fiscal conservative, and don't appreciate in the least how you and you knuckle-dragging neocon friends lump together how one handles one's finances with how one chooses to live one's life.

These are two very different issues; the mere fact that this is obfuscated by the Right is cause enough to doubt their veracity.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(nerfer @ Apr 18 2007, 01:22 PM) [snapback]425405[/snapback]</div>

this war for oil theme that keeps repeating like bad pizza - tell me why is gas sooo expensive if we fought this war for oil. how much oil do we get from iraq? what companies have the contracts on those fields? if we wanted to invade a country for their oil would you choose Iraq? why not canada - much closer, absolutely less of a power militarily than iraq, they speak the same language for the most part - the part that doesnt wants out anyway, -- it would have been a one or two day way - done - and then we would have all that oil. how about mexico - imagine we get all the illegals and turn them into soldiers with the promise of citizenship at the end of the conflict? what about just drilling here??? anwar, the gulf, off the coasts - between all the new areas we could drill we would be ok....

in fact, i would propose that your war for oil we are fighting would be unneccesary if you guys would only let us drill at home - you are the reason for this war - or all those that deny us our ability to quench our thirst for oil from our own local supply. ha - you are responsible for all those needless deaths - for not letting saddam still rule and kill and murder and torture and fill those mass graves - how unthoughtful of you.

 

Wow... Berman blaming America for the war. this is a first.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dbermanmd @ Apr 18 2007, 01:11 PM) [snapback]425449[/snapback]</div>

Because we're losing the war.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dbermanmd @ Apr 18 2007, 01:11 PM) [snapback]425449[/snapback]</div>

Sound and fury, signifying nothing. We don't attack Canada because they are WHITE and it's pretty much impossible to villify their cultural differences...since they look and act so darn much like us! As for Mexico, we exploit them in other ways already.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dbermanmd @ Apr 18 2007, 01:11 PM) [snapback]425449[/snapback]</div>

Oh, Doctor. Surely you're able to write yourself a prescription for Valium or something...?

Do it.

Now.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(eagle33199 @ Apr 18 2007, 02:31 PM) [snapback]425463[/snapback]</div>

i guess blaming america is something you are an expert at - which is why i take your post seriously - if you identified something about me blaming america it must be real.

that being said - for the record i do not blame america for anything. i am sorry if i did.

again, you are good - real good - shows you have a lot of real life experience in this matter.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Pinto Girl @ Apr 18 2007, 01:01 PM) [snapback]425440[/snapback]</div>

Knuckle-dragging neocon friends? Awesome..

I'm not a Neocon, but I'd much rather be considered one than a bleeding-heart liberal.

You're worse than Kerry.. total flip flop. Just look at your other posts.. you blame America. You blame Christianity.. you blame Democracy.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Pinto Girl @ Apr 18 2007, 02:45 PM) [snapback]425475[/snapback]</div>

only because you and your ilk want us to. tell harry and nancy to fund the troops - you know the ones they support :blink:

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dbermanmd @ Apr 18 2007, 01:51 PM) [snapback]425482[/snapback]</div>

Ding ding ding ding ding...

Liberals WANT America to lose.



<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Pinto Girl @ Apr 18 2007, 01:45 PM) [snapback]425475[/snapback]</div>

You truly are clueless.

You think this is a RACE issue? We don't attack Canada because they're not a terrorist threat to our way of life..

 

You seem to forget that we were all told we were attacking Iraq because of 9/11, and yet... no connection. So clearly the weapons of mass destruction we didn't find and the terrorists we helped enter the country were really a danger to us...

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dbermanmd @ Apr 18 2007, 01:51 PM) [snapback]425482[/snapback]</div>

Regarding the declaration of a 'win' or a 'loss' in Iraq: How many people must we kill until you call it a victory? Tell us more about how, specifically, you define 'victory' and 'defeat.' I suppose that once WalMart (an ambassador of American culture, as you asserted some time ago) has stores on every corner, that would do it for you?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dbermanmd @ Apr 18 2007, 11:11 AM) [snapback]425449[/snapback]</div>

See, this is the reason even conservatives should be against the shrub: If you want to have a war, the last thing you want is a moron for a commander-in-chief. Because when your military decisions are being made by a moron, you're going to lose the war. Not all the military technology in the world can make up for having a moron at the helm.

We're getting no oil from Iraq because we lost the war, and we lost the war, in spite of our military strength, because we had a moron running it.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(burritos @ Apr 18 2007, 08:47 PM) [snapback]425727[/snapback]</div>

Well..

No.

He's more like.. an evil genius.

 

Well, these are easy answers.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dbermanmd @ Apr 18 2007, 01:11 PM) [snapback]425449[/snapback]</div>

Um, yeah, and how much oil are we getting from Iraq, compared to what we expected? The 'rebuilding' was supposed to pay for itself, I thought. If it wasn't for oil (from a country that didn't want to sell to us and threatened to destabilize the oil-rich region) why didn't we go to where the terrorists really were - like Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Egypt? Afghanistan made sense, that was impossible to overlook, altho apparently Bush wanted to invade Iraq first, but was counseled against it.

Because we already get most of their oil and they're happy to sell it to us.

Well, if you hadn't noticed, American oil production peaked about 1970 and has been generally declining since then. We import about 60% of our oil, we can't drill our way out of that. I agree with you entirely that being dependent on foreign oil is a dangerous thing, especially in today's world, but can't be avoided without good conservation tactics (you would think conservatives would like that). Eventually I imagine we'll drill in ANWR and other fields in the Gulf, but why not save those for when oil is really expensive, and maybe after we've cleaned up what we've already done.

I have no problem with taking Saddam out - he was an evil, bad man - but we should have went in for the right reasons - crimes against humanity, like Slobodan Milosevic. The terrorist connection was completely contrived, and the sanctions against WMD were apparently working (even if we could justify taking somebody else out because they might eventually try to poke a comparatively little stick at us). The second mistake was that Bush tried to manage the war instead of listening to the generals back in 2003, 2004. Now he's using the same card on Congress, that they're trying to manage the war instead of the generals. Looks like the generals will never get a turn. (That's the difference between Gulf War I and II - in I, Bush Sr. let Colin Powell and the generals run the show, and they decided not to get into Baghdad because there was no good exit plan.)

Which brings up that old joke, but for a new target: What do George H.W. Bush and his father have in common? They both should have pulled out sooner. (Hint: for his father, we're not talking about Iraq).

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(desynch @ Apr 18 2007, 02:31 PM) [snapback]425519[/snapback]</div>

The clueless action here is thinking another American wants something bad for America. We all want America to be strong and prosperous, and there's a couple ways to get there. One works for a brief time (fighting everybody who looks at you wrong) and another method is sustainable, preserves our economy and creates friends for the next generation of Americans.

 

WARNING: The following rant strays off topic and will probably piss a lot of people off.

Wow, the same stupid arguments back and forth from both sides.
Doesn't either side tire of it? You all must really like to argue.
I don't think either side ever can see the forest for the trees.

We don't attack Canada because they are white? No, Canada continues to export oil to us, so we are happy customers. (Even though Canada is importing oil for their own need, and would be a net importer if it was not burning up all its natural gas to produce sand oil).

FYI: America DID play a role in starting Iraq1. We gave Kuwait the drilling technology to drill laterally under the border and into Saddam's oil. Saddamm complained to the US about it, as we were previously his allies and supplied him with weapons, poison gas to attack Iran, and we helped start their nuclear program too! Goerge Bush senior told Saddam, "we don't care! do what you have to do." So Saddam attacked. Bush, the Carlisle Group, Halliburton, and the entire multi billion defense industry all sent up a cheer. "Hooray, we finnally have a reason to sell arms again! And off to war we went.

Why is gas expensive? Duh... they want it that way. We are NOT in Iraq, to pump out the oil and lower the gas price, that would hurt the profits of both the US energy economy as well as Iran, Saudi, and all of OPEC's economy. We are in Iraq because it's pretty damned clear that it might behoove us to have a military presence in the middle east when 80% of the world's DECLINING oil production is in that region. We wore out our welcome in Saudiland, as evidenced by the % of 9/11 attackers that were Saudi. Iraq's better situated anyways! We will pull out, but only out of Bagdad, which we really don't care so much about.

As peak oil hits, we will protect the Iraq oil (not people) and use said oil to build our NON-oil infrastructure that we SHOULD BE BUILDING ALREADY! For goodness sake, If we spent as much on future infrastructure as we do on the war, we wouldn't NEED to be there to protect it, but certain political powers (BOTH SIDES of the ailse) would not be making nearly as much money in the process.

Here's my prediction:
Peak oil and it's timing is all understood behind closed doors and they are very carefully trying to time the switchover so that we do NOT leave cheap oil on the table for China, India, etc. to use as a competitive advantage against the US. We need to "powerdown/swithcover" precisely at the same rate as the peak oil decline. This is true not only from the point of view of the oil industry, but also the renewable energy industry (Often the same money behind them both). If we switch and slow our use of oil too soon, we risk lowering the price of oil to where China, et al get to have the same Cheap oil bonanza (though breif) that we have enjoyed for some 80 years. And/or the renewable industry get hacked off at the knees due to a drop in oil prices.

Global Warming will not play any role in any of this, no matter how true or overhyped it may or may not be. Peak oil will take care of that problem on it's own. GW is still a very valid reason to switch off oil.
Our country is stuck in a TASTES GREAT! - LESS FILLING! argument. We've replaced it with Global Warming! Vs. Energy independence/Screw the Arabs! Yet very little of the "beer" is actually being produced at the moment!