Time for Druff to abandon his delusion about George W. Bush and the Iraq War

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Originally Posted by DRK Star

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Originally Posted by MumblesBadly

I don't buy the money-making conspiracy angle, either. [/url]

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Its almost ALWAYS about money. I dont know many things in this world that arent.

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It's about *power*. Power to control the flow of oil from the Middle East for the rest of the century. The neocons arent concerned with the relatively piddling amount of money earned from war contracts. They are concerned about the loss of military domination of the world if the US economy is strangled by the loss of access to cheap energy from the Middle East. Money is simply a tool to achieve that objective. Because Cheney could have been massively richer, by an order of magnitude, if he had stayed as CEO of Halliburton. Instead, he gave up that position to work towards advancing the neocons' political objectives.

http://www.historycommons.org/timeli...influence_pnac

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Originally Posted by Dan Druff

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U.N. inspectors had identified many United States manufactured items that had been exported from the United States to Iraq under licenses issued by the Department of Commerce, and [established] that these items were used to further Iraq's chemical and nuclear weapons development and its missile delivery system development programs. ... The executive branch of our government approved 771 different export licenses for sale of dual-use technology to Iraq. I think that is a devastating record.

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This doesn't say that the US sold them chemical and biological weapons. It says that the US sold them "items" which were then used for weapon development. It also doesn't say that the US itself sold the items -- only that the Department of Commerce approved licenses for these sales by private companies.

And it turns out that's exactly what happened. Some US-based companies sold various materials for commercial purposes, and then Iraq turned around and used them to build weapons.

Dumb, yes, but as typical of the government, the Defense Department warned in 1985 that such items (such as computers and an electron-beam welder) should not be sold to Iraq because they were attempting to develop WMDs, but the Department of Commerce never got the message. These sales mostly occurred in the late 1980s -- before the first Perisan Gulf war in 1991.

There is zero evidence that the US ever knowingly helped Iraq build or obtain materials to build WMDs.

So I don't get your point. Once this mistake was made in the 1980s, and we were sitting there 15 years later in 2003, should we have just shrugged our shoulders and told Saddam it's cool to keep using this stuff to make WMDs? Because that's what he was doing during most of that time.

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On a scale of 9 to 27 how gullible are you ? You actually think that you sold Saddam medicinal anthrax in good faith that it wouldn't be weaponized at the time they were in war with Iran ? And you're correct US never directly sold Saddam shit, but they did hand him the money and approved all the export licenses. And then that shit got used against Iranians and Kurds. Kurds would be the folk that fall under the category off Irakis that were killed during Saddam's reign.

There's no delusion from Druff.
He knows GWB gave proxy control of the US military to Israel's radical right. They lied us into a couple wars, slammed the US with massive debt and thousands of deaths. Threw in a tax cut and blamed it on Obama.
Druff's response, he named his kid after Netanyahu, haha ok I made that part up.

He's hardly alone either, at one time over half the country was on board. It was bullshit but you know what? Elections have consequences and fuck them Muslim whackos. I would be executed in Saudi Arabia for being a bit of a skeptic on religion. 4dragons and Muck would be executed for being gay. So yea is what it is.

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Originally Posted by gimmick

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Originally Posted by Dan Druff

This doesn't say that the US sold them chemical and biological weapons. It says that the US sold them "items" which were then used for weapon development. It also doesn't say that the US itself sold the items -- only that the Department of Commerce approved licenses for these sales by private companies.

And it turns out that's exactly what happened. Some US-based companies sold various materials for commercial purposes, and then Iraq turned around and used them to build weapons.

Dumb, yes, but as typical of the government, the Defense Department warned in 1985 that such items (such as computers and an electron-beam welder) should not be sold to Iraq because they were attempting to develop WMDs, but the Department of Commerce never got the message. These sales mostly occurred in the late 1980s -- before the first Perisan Gulf war in 1991.

There is zero evidence that the US ever knowingly helped Iraq build or obtain materials to build WMDs.

So I don't get your point. Once this mistake was made in the 1980s, and we were sitting there 15 years later in 2003, should we have just shrugged our shoulders and told Saddam it's cool to keep using this stuff to make WMDs? Because that's what he was doing during most of that time.

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On a scale of 9 to 27 how gullible are you ? You actually think that you sold Saddam medicinal anthrax in good faith that it wouldn't be weaponized at the time they were in war with Iran ? And you're correct US never directly sold Saddam shit, but they did hand him the money and approved all the export licenses. And then that shit got used against Iranians and Kurds. Kurds would be the folk that fall under the category off Irakis that were killed during Saddam's reign.

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Read my post above.

In 1985, the Defense Department warned the Department of Commerce that they should NOT be approving these exports.

They repeatedly warned about this over the next several years, but the Department of Commerce ignored them.

This has been proven. It's not clear why the Department of Commerce ignored them, but it seems much more likely idiotic government bureaucracy (of which there is plenty in this country) rather than a conspiracy to held Saddam build WMDs.

If this were a devious plan to arm Saddam, the DoD wouldn't have been asking a different department NOT to approve these sales. They would have conveniently looked the other way, but that's not at all what happened.

I'm sorry that this doesn't fit into the convenient leftist narrative that Saddam's WMD program was the plan from the US government all along.

But let's say for argument's sake that you're right, and that our government in the '80s knowingly enabled Saddam to build WMDs. So what then? Just ignore Saddam's WMD program two decades later, simply because mistakes were made in the '80s enabling it? Either way, you have to take care of the problem. So that's still a lousy reason to say the invasion wasn't justified. Even if Saddam said, "B-b-b-but you guys HELPED me to do this when we were fighting Iran", the proper response is, "Yeah, that's before you were using these weapons to kill your own people and invade Kuwait. So this is going to stop."

This is all moot, though, because I don't believe the US knowingly helped Saddam develop WMDs, and there is no evidence pointing to that.

If there was a conspiracy, its not like they would lay out their plans on a website for everyone to see, that would just be stupid..*cough* *cough* PNAC...


Is it soooo unbelievable to think that shady back room deals happen around the world? We can't count on crooks to be upfront and honest about how they screw us. You can't be so naive druff, you analyze everything as if you were some kind of judge on the bench. But just like a court room, you never have all the facts, you only have the facts that are allowed to be shown. Its just common sense, these greedy fucks stop at nothing to scam us out of money and have us do their dirty work. I don't believe I've ever heard of anyone reaching a billion in worth with out screwing over alot of people.

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Originally Posted by Mintjewlips

If there was a conspiracy, its not like they would lay out their plans on a website for everyone to see, that would just be stupid..*cough* *cough* PNAC...


Is it soooo unbelievable to think that shady back room deals happen around the world? We can't count on crooks to be upfront and honest about how they screw us. You can't be so naive druff, you analyze everything as if you were some kind of judge on the bench. But just like a court room, you never have all the facts, you only have the facts that are allowed to be shown. Its just common sense, these greedy fucks stop at nothing to scam us out of money and have us do their dirty work. I don't believe I've ever heard of anyone reaching a billion in worth with out screwing over alot of people.

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I still don't understand how the DoD would be telling the Dept of Commerce NOT to approve exports to Iraq in the '80s if this was some conspiracy to allow Saddam to build WMDs.

But as I said, even if this was some sort of conspiracy to help Saddam in the '80s, that doesn't mean we just bend over and take it from him when he abuses that assistance in subsequent years.

I am posting defenses of all of this because I keep seeing "facts" being stated by the left which are either untrue or unsubtantiated.

"GW Bush attacked Iraq simply to finish what his Daddy started."

"Cheney tricked Bush into attacking Iraq so Halliburton could make big money."

"There were no WMDs, and Cheney lied to everyone and hundreds of thousands of people died for nothing."

"The US helped Saddam build WMDs in the '80s."

All of these statements sound shocking and make Bush/Cheney look like heartless war criminals, but upon further examination, none hold up under scrutiny.

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Originally Posted by Dan Druff

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Originally Posted by Mintjewlips

If there was a conspiracy, its not like they would lay out their plans on a website for everyone to see, that would just be stupid..*cough* *cough* PNAC...


Is it soooo unbelievable to think that shady back room deals happen around the world? We can't count on crooks to be upfront and honest about how they screw us. You can't be so naive druff, you analyze everything as if you were some kind of judge on the bench. But just like a court room, you never have all the facts, you only have the facts that are allowed to be shown. Its just common sense, these greedy fucks stop at nothing to scam us out of money and have us do their dirty work. I don't believe I've ever heard of anyone reaching a billion in worth with out screwing over alot of people.

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I still don't understand how the DoD would be telling the Dept of Commerce NOT to approve exports to Iraq in the '80s if this was some conspiracy to allow Saddam to build WMDs.

But as I said, even if this was some sort of conspiracy to help Saddam in the '80s, that doesn't mean we just bend over and take it from him when he abuses that assistance in subsequent years.

I am posting defenses of all of this because I keep seeing "facts" being stated by the left which are either untrue or unsubtantiated.

"GW Bush attacked Iraq simply to finish what his Daddy started."

"Cheney tricked Bush into attacking Iraq so Halliburton could make big money."

"There were no WMDs, and Cheney lied to everyone and hundreds of thousands of people died for nothing."

"The US helped Saddam build WMDs in the '80s."

All of these statements sound shocking and make Bush/Cheney look like heartless war criminals, but upon further examination, none hold up under scrutiny.

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None of them hold up to scrutiny because they are all exclusive absolutes. There is no one reason why Bush went after him, but the melange looks something like:

- lol oil / national security
- hubris
- saddam sent assassins after daddy
- bad judgement, which is the cornerstone of neo conservative foreign policy
- real concerns that israel could simply be vaporized by any one of a dozen nuclear armed protagonists, leaving us without a viable middle eastern intelligence hub
- lol spreading "democracy"

Shit like WMDs were just sales points drummed together to justify what was supposed to be a feather in America's Human Rights Export cap.

Also respectfully if you think shit like DoD memos guide actual boots-on-ground policy implementation, two words: Oliver North.

Bush's end game was pretty much building another Tangiers or Morocco.

But because he was surrounded by stone idiots running on Jesus Power and Tom Clancy books, things didnt really pan out.

Riiiiiight so the excuse for everything that happened in the 80's in Iran is that you were just that fucking stupid at the time. Most of the Iraq's WMD attacks happened during the war...

..."For example, the United States and the UK blocked condemnation of Iraq's known chemical weapons attacks at the UN Security Council. No resolution was passed during the war that specifically criticized Iraq's use of chemical weapons, despite the wishes of the majority to condemn this use. On March 21, 1986 the United Nation Security Council recognized that "chemical weapons on many occasions have been used by Iraqi forces against Iranian forces"; this statement was opposed by the United States, the sole country to vote against it in the Security Council (the UK abstained)."...

...just a random quote from simplest source cause i'm not gonna rewrite shit that's common knowledge. So in the 80's US kept pumping hardware to Iraq and actively sabotaged UN's efforts to even acknowledge what was happening. Something that pretty fucking directly led to Iran being the second most affected country by WMDs after Japan (wonder what happened in Japan).

So we going with just that fucking stupid, but don't worry we got this shit under control 2 decades later. We're just gonna shoot off a few trillion dollars of tax payers money and get more than half a million people killed because waiting for few months for UN to handle this is really really hard.

Yup.

I looked up some random shit i wrote about this in 2003-2004 to RPG. It's gonna be TLDR type of shit and mostly what i have written here again. Oh and rip Gary Carson.

"nah i didn't say lie, i said lies...hundreds of milatary personnel have
died because of multiple lies that have been spewed by your "President"

If you really want "proof" then try pondering why did you attacked Iraq.
What was that urgent need to attack a 3:rd world country in the middle of
frickkin nowhere that possessed no threat to even it's own neighbours (as
was pretty much proven)?

Try following the money trail just for fun. Who made money out of all the
happy killing fun in the Middle-East and who were suckers that paid it all?

What proof do you need when you got little weasel saying Iraq gots WMD and
capability to use it, and then you find out that Iraq doesn't have WMD, no
connection to al-qaida and never possessed any threat to any of it's
neighbours or any country for that matter (as was known before the war, as
is known in the middle of the war and will be known after the war if it
ever ends).

Ps. When american corporations were selling dual-use shit (stuff that
could be used peacefully and otherwises:-)) to Saddam in the 80's he paid
them with loans that were US government backed (back a day when he was
honorary citizen of Detroit). The end result was that a few big corps. got
$, Saddam got his shit and american taxpayers paid for the
merrines...funny part is that that's exactly what happened again...you
don't attack another nation if you don't stand to gain what it costs
(money/lives) even in the best case scenario, unless you're on freeroll :-)"...

...WMDs referred to nukes here since that was the big fear mongering selling point at the time. As a Nation there just wasn't enough for US to invade Iraq at the time. At the time i thought it had more to do with oil, but in the end oil was just used to buy the silence of the rest of the world. The real meat was in the contracts. Out of the trillions that were shot off quite a few ended up being profit for a select few corporations and i would be surprised if those same corporations didn't buy the wars in Afganistan and Iraq. What's treason among friends. Obv it didn't matter where or what those wars ended up being. When you're in the business of war sometimes you have to create demand yourself. For that it's pretty sweet there's a country where buying politicians is practically legal...

"Can't give you a link, forgot, ruined my eyes reading too much shit of the
screen, but i was able to find something, as badly as remember things in
general.

During the Iran-Iraq war till the first US-Iraq war US government granted
771 licences to dual-purpose products (products with a civilian and military
applications) to be exported to Iraq.

Out of 771 licences you inspected that 1 was actually used for civilian
purposes, 770 may or may not have been used to build WMDs.

For products that were more sensitive and only had use in the military you
used South-Africa and if i remember correctly Chile as middlemen.

Specifics you're going to have to google (arms trade Iraq US) yourself, i
already burnt my eyes.

All and all it looks like Bushys evidence that Iraq gots WMD was a bunch of
old receipts.

I can picture the heads of major countries gathering together to ponder what
who sold to Iraq back then and what have they been able build out of the
whole lot."

And the receipt angle from 2003. Still the same, if you want more info, do work son. I ran through far too many walls of texts looking up this back then. I'm not even sure if wiki was around back then or even remotely useful and in no place related to this were there titties nor dragons.

I forget who said it so im tempted not to quote but its important; the story goes that after the FBI caught the Iraq assassins sent my Saddam to harvest Bush Sr, Bush Jr basically said that one way or another he would end Saddam's life.

His fathers protests fell on deaf ears, predictably.

Jesus. I really try not to read these threads but it seriously shows off your lack of reading if you still think Saddam tried to have Bush Sr. assassinated. They had a Library of Congress load of information on Saddam and not one iota of data linking Sadaam to that. Plus if you understood Saddam as a person in the first place it could never be possible for him to do that. He knew he'd be drawing stone dead to ever get a shot at Bush Sr.

Saddam was a madman... but he certainly wasn't stupid or suicidal.

"1992
Halliburton subsidiary Brown & Root is paid $9 million by the Pentagon (under Cheney's direction as Secretary of Defense) to produce a classified report detailing how private companies (like itself) could provide logistical support for American troops in potential war zones around the world. Shortly after this report, the Pentagon awards Brown & Root a five-year contract to provide logistics for the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers. The General Accounting Office estimates that through this contract, Brown & Root makes overall $2.2 billion in revenue in the Balkans.

1995
Without any previous business experience, Cheney leaves the Department of Defense to become the CEO of Halliburton Co., one of the biggest oil-services companies in the world. He will be chairman of the company from 1996 to October 1998 and from February to August 2000. Under Cheney's leadership, Halliburton moves up from 73rd to 18th on the Pentagon's list of top contractors. The company garners $2.3 billion in U.S. government contracts, which almost doubles the $1.2 billion it earned from the government previously."

Looks legit. I don't see anything fishy here.

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Originally Posted by Brittney Griner's Clit

Jesus. I really try not to read these threads but it seriously shows off your lack of reading if you still think Saddam tried to have Bush Sr. assassinated. They had a Library of Congress load of information on Saddam and not one iota of data linking Sadaam to that. Plus if you understood Saddam as a person in the first place it could never be possible for him to do that. He knew he'd be drawing stone dead to ever get a shot at Bush Sr.

Saddam was a madman... but he certainly wasn't stupid or suicidal.

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Yawn.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfmATUzBwxY

Do you honestly think I don't know about that video? This isn't some conspiratorial thought. This is Newsweek and Time Magazine and every other mainstream publication out there. No one thinks he made an attempt on his life anymore. Do just an ounce of research before you post for fucks sake. I think a good lesson you can learn from this experience is to not trot out a George W. Bush video to back up your point... like ever.

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Originally Posted by Brittney Griner's Clit

This isn't some conspiratorial thought.

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:lol


Hows the family, sheboon?

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Originally Posted by Dan Druff

I still don't understand how the DoD would be telling the Dept of Commerce NOT to approve exports to Iraq in the '80s if this was some conspiracy to allow Saddam to build WMD's

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I feel foolish even writing this.

Do you really view the government as a seemless and coordinated institution with some singular purpose, Druff?

You don't think the DoD and the DoC might be working at cross purposes?




There were several selfish and nefarious motives.

The WMD's were just a digestible "sales point" as Sonatine suggests.

Speaking of WMD's. In hindsight, knowing that 500,000 people would be killed over there would you have advocated a limited nuclear option?

Somehow this course of action has been more palatable?

Literally every time I lower myself to read one of Sonatine's asinine posts where he just plucks random thesaurus words and combines them into sentences he has it all wrong. Like all the fucking time. He probably knows he does. Hell maybe all of you are in on it and you know he's constantly wrong. it just doesn't seem that way to me. To mee it looks like honest folks are buying it. If I say something off the wall I either make it clear it is an opinion or (most often) provide sources. You literally never provide sources and are wrong CONSTANTLY. I just continue to look the other way and figure oh that's just fatty's way of feeling important. Whats the point of arguing. But when other GOOD people glob on to your jibber jabber it's too much. I just think it's irresponsible for you to say things like Saddam tried to assassinate H.W. When obviously that has been disproven years and years ago. They had EVERYTHING on him. If you believe that Saddam sent into motion a plan to assassinate H.W. then it is YOU that is the conspiracy theorist. Nothing even leads to that. It's unreal that you can ever win an argument here when you almost always start off with way less information than the next guy. Almost like your internet is broken or you literally never read. One google search puts all your shit to shame.

It honestly made me feel sad when 4Dragons put up Dubya's shameful speech as if it was something other than an embarrassment then and an even bigger embarrassment now. But that's how you have these guy's buffaloed. Like 4D was so sure that you were right and I was wrong that he literally posted that video without reading anything on the subject. These guys follow you like AIDS victims to Magic Johnson's bathroom cabinet.


When you notice that you were totally beaten and you feel the need to call out my suffering relationship with God and Ishtar and the whole family it makes you look like a sad pathetic man. Maybe learn to admit you are wrong. It's ridiculous that you haven't learned this skill when you are wrong in almost every political post I've ever seen you write.


You have no duality. You are 100 percent Satan. You have none of the virtue and charm of Lucifer. You are SonATINe and I feel sorry for you.

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Originally Posted by Brittney Griner's Clit

Literally every time I lower myself to read one of Sonatine's asinine posts where he just plucks random thesaurus words and combines them into sentences he has it all wrong. Like all the fucking time. He probably knows he does. Hell maybe all of you are in on it and you know he's constantly wrong. it just doesn't seem that way to me. To mee it looks like honest folks are buying it. If I say something off the wall I either make it clear it is an opinion or (most often) provide sources. You literally never provide sources and are wrong CONSTANTLY. I just continue to look the other way and figure oh that's just fatty's way of feeling important. Whats the point of arguing. But when other GOOD people glob on to your jibber jabber it's too much. I just think it's irresponsible for you to say things like Saddam tried to assassinate H.W. When obviously that has been disproven years and years ago. They had EVERYTHING on him. If you believe that Saddam sent into motion a plan to assassinate H.W. then it is YOU that is the conspiracy theorist. Nothing even leads to that. It's unreal that you can ever win an argument here when you almost always start off with way less information than the next guy. Almost like your internet is broken or you literally never read. One google search puts all your shit to shame.

It honestly made me feel sad when 4Dragons put up Dubya's shameful speech as if it was something other than an embarrassment then and an even bigger embarrassment now. But that's how you have these guy's buffaloed. Like 4D was so sure that you were right and I was wrong that he literally posted that video without reading anything on the subject. These guys follow you like AIDS victims to Magic Johnson's bathroom cabinet.


When you notice that you were totally beaten and you feel the need to call out my suffering relationship with God and Ishtar and the whole family it makes you look like a sad pathetic man. Maybe learn to admit you are wrong. It's ridiculous that you haven't learned this skill when you are wrong in almost every political post I've ever seen you write.


You have no duality. You are 100 percent Satan. You have none of the virtue and charm of Lucifer. You are SonATINe and I feel sorry for you.

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lol furious.

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Originally Posted by Brittney Griner's Clit

Do you honestly think I don't know about that video? This isn't some conspiratorial thought. This is Newsweek and Time Magazine and every other mainstream publication out there. No one thinks he made an attempt on his life anymore. Do just an ounce of research before you post for fucks sake. I think a good lesson you can learn from this experience is to not trot out a George W. Bush video to back up your point... like ever.

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Originally Posted by Sanlmar

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Originally Posted by Dan Druff

I still don't understand how the DoD would be telling the Dept of Commerce NOT to approve exports to Iraq in the '80s if this was some conspiracy to allow Saddam to build WMD's

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I feel foolish even writing this.

Do you really view the government as a seemless and coordinated institution with some singular purpose, Druff?

You don't think the DoD and the DoC might be working at cross purposes?




There were several selfish and nefarious motives.

The WMD's were just a digestible "sales point" as Sonatine suggests.

Speaking of WMD's. In hindsight, knowing that 500,000 people would be killed over there would you have advocated a limited nuclear option?

Somehow this course of action has been more palatable?

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For some bizarre reason, Druff believes that the behemoth collection of agencies that constitute the US government operate more effectively than Caesars.

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Originally Posted by MumblesBadly

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Originally Posted by Sanlmar

I feel foolish even writing this.

Do you really view the government as a seemless and coordinated institution with some singular purpose, Druff?

You don't think the DoD and the DoC might be working at cross purposes?




There were several selfish and nefarious motives.

The WMD's were just a digestible "sales point" as Sonatine suggests.

Speaking of WMD's. In hindsight, knowing that 500,000 people would be killed over there would you have advocated a limited nuclear option?

Somehow this course of action has been more palatable?

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For some bizarre reason, Druff believes that the behemoth collection of agencies that constitute the US government operate more effectively than Caesars.

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After the Supreme Court declared the FBI to be unconstitutional, pretty much every Agency that wasn't specifically mentioned in the Constitution was rolled up under the Treasury Department. Everything revolves around controlling commerce now. That is the objective and where all laws stem from and are enforced over.

Aaaand it looks like they re-tooled it again to put it under the DOJ

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Originally Posted by 4Dragons

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Originally Posted by MumblesBadly

For some bizarre reason, Druff believes that the behemoth collection of agencies that constitute the US government operate more effectively than Caesars.

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After the Supreme Court declared the FBI to be unconstitutional, pretty much every Agency that wasn't specifically mentioned in the Constitution was rolled up under the Treasury Department. Everything revolves around controlling commerce now. That is the objective and where all laws stem from and are enforced over.

Aaaand it looks like they re-tooled it again to put it under the DOJ

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Huh? The FBI has *always* been a part of the DoJ. And it was formed to circumvent having to hire detectives who worked for the Secret Service, which was (and still is) an arm of the Department of the Treasury, to do investigations.
https://m.fbi.gov/#https://www.fbi.g.../brief-history

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Originally Posted by Dan Druff

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Originally Posted by GrenadaRoger

the wars (Afghanistan & Iraq) were stupid, but what made them especially bad was doing that after cutting taxes in 2001 & 2003

so to pay for the war he ran up the national debt something fierce...


if you recall, near the end of the Clinton administration there was talk of someday paying off completely the national debt because with the federal government running a surplus for the year and projected continued surpluses...

Bush cut taxes, there went the surplus, then started a war, which required borrowing, mostly from the Chinese.

The stupid fuck Bush must have bribed his professors of the finance/risk management courses he took while getting his MBA at Harvard.

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Don't worry. If not blown on the war, the Democrats would have blown the money on entitlements anyway.

Also the "projected" surpluses wouldn't have continued anyway. The dotcom bust and the economic slump related to 9/11 killed that.

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When was the last time the Democrats created a new entitlement program or altered an existing entitlement program so that it cost more, and didn't build in the way to pay for it so it would not increase the deficit?

Affordable Care Act: deficit-neutral
food stamps & welfare: Clinton cut them

Contrast this to the medicare prescription drug benefit, a huge expansion of medicare, pushed by W and passed by Republicans who controlled both the House and Senate, without anything in the legislation to either raise revenue or cut other spending to ensure it didn't affect the deficit. The legislation specifically prohibits medicare from negotiating the price of drugs with Big Pharma--not very Jewish of them not to use their huge purchasing power to negotiate better rates!--which unnecessarily makes it much more expensive.

It's also totally irresponsible to cut taxes when you need money for war. Families of those fighting in that war and being hit with IEDs were buying their loved ones' body armor! Shouldn't Uncle Sam spring for the body armor?

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Originally Posted by Dan Druff

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Originally Posted by DRK Star

I just immediately assumed that Cheney told Bush to start the war so his former company could make a shit ton of money


http://readersupportednews.org/news-...on-on-iraq-war

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Left wing conspiracy BS.

Cheney left Halliburton well before the war -- in 2000.

He was given an "early exit" package from Halliburton when he left to run for Vice President. This sort of package is very common for ANY CEO of a major corporation who leaves. Recall the recent discussion of Yahoo owing Marisa Mayer $161 million if they were to fire her now.

Conspiracy theorists say that his $34 million departure package was a bribe to get him to start a war where Halliburton would benefit. There is no evidence of such an agreement, rather just conspiracy theories invented by Cheney's critics who see that Halliburton profited a lot from the Iraq war after he was already gone.

There is no substance to these allegations, and in fact Cheney's package when he departed was pretty standard.

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True. But as with any politically powerful industry, there is a revolving door between government and the war industry. They take care of each other.

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Originally Posted by sonatine

Bush's end game was pretty much building another Tangiers or Morocco.

But because he was surrounded by stone idiots running on Jesus Power and Tom Clancy books, things didnt really pan out.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wlHNCoqpxY

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Originally Posted by hongkonger

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Originally Posted by Dan Druff

Don't worry. If not blown on the war, the Democrats would have blown the money on entitlements anyway.

Also the "projected" surpluses wouldn't have continued anyway. The dotcom bust and the economic slump related to 9/11 killed that.

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When was the last time the Democrats created a new entitlement program or altered an existing entitlement program so that it cost more, and didn't build in the way to pay for it so it would not increase the deficit?

(1)Affordable Care Act: deficit-neutral
(2)food stamps & welfare: Clinton cut them

Contrast this to the medicare prescription drug benefit, a huge expansion of medicare, pushed by W and passed by Republicans who controlled both the House and Senate, without anything in the legislation to either raise revenue or cut other spending to ensure it didn't affect the deficit. The legislation specifically prohibits medicare from negotiating the price of drugs with Big Pharma--not very Jewish of them not to use their huge purchasing power to negotiate better rates!--which unnecessarily makes it much more expensive.

It's also totally irresponsible to cut taxes when you need money for war. Families of those fighting in that war and being hit with IEDs were buying their loved ones' body armor! Shouldn't Uncle Sam spring for the body armor?

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(1) While revenue-neutral, this was only achieved by levying a 3.8% surtax on investment income for higher income folks. (A huge reason why so many GOPers *hate* Obamacare.)
https://www.atr.org/full-list-ACA-tax-hikes-a6996

(2) Clinton more than tripled the cost of the amount of tax credits for lower income folks (mostly families) by increasing tax credits for low income folks under the Earned Income Tax Credit.
http://benefitsplus.cssny.org/pbm/ta...it-eitc/184566

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Originally Posted by MumblesBadly

Quote:

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Originally Posted by hongkonger

When was the last time the Democrats created a new entitlement program or altered an existing entitlement program so that it cost more, and didn't build in the way to pay for it so it would not increase the deficit?

(1)Affordable Care Act: deficit-neutral
(2)food stamps & welfare: Clinton cut them

Contrast this to the medicare prescription drug benefit, a huge expansion of medicare, pushed by W and passed by Republicans who controlled both the House and Senate, without anything in the legislation to either raise revenue or cut other spending to ensure it didn't affect the deficit. The legislation specifically prohibits medicare from negotiating the price of drugs with Big Pharma--not very Jewish of them not to use their huge purchasing power to negotiate better rates!--which unnecessarily makes it much more expensive.

It's also totally irresponsible to cut taxes when you need money for war. Families of those fighting in that war and being hit with IEDs were buying their loved ones' body armor! Shouldn't Uncle Sam spring for the body armor?

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(1) While revenue-neutral, this was only achieved by levying a 3.8% surtax on investment income for higher income folks. (A huge reason why so many GOPers *hate* Obamacare.)
https://www.atr.org/full-list-ACA-tax-hikes-a6996

(2) Clinton more than tripled the cost of the amount of tax credits for lower income folks (mostly families) by increasing tax credits for low income folks under the Earned Income Tax Credit.
http://benefitsplus.cssny.org/pbm/ta...it-eitc/184566

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(1) I realize this. But the point is they paid for it. They didn't leave it to future Congresses to figure out how to pay for it like Bush with his war.

(2) The EITC only benefits people who are working, and is designed such that it is always more attractive to earn an extra dollar in wages/salary than to get another dollar of EITC. Yes it costs the government money, but economists calculate that the combination of more labor force participation (the working poor rarely pay income taxes but they still pay payroll tax and sales tax) and lesser reliance on other government benefits makes the EITC roughly revenue-neutral.