au1929 wrote:As to the costs involved in providing the promised benefits to veterans. If there is enough money to give large tax cuts to the wealthy...
Brandon9000 wrote:Your allegation was that the tax cut was for the wealthy. Aside from repeating the statement, how have you demonstrated it? The tax cut is not really that far from a flat percentage back across the different brackets. How is this for the wealthy?
au1929 wrote:My allegation was not that the tax cuts were for the wealthy. However, within those tax a fair amount of the money went to the wealthy. If they could afford to cut tax for the wealthy One would think that surely they should be able to find funds for the veterans.
True.
I do not know much about how the treatment of veterans has changed during this administration, and will only accept
neutral sources of information that describe the entire situation.
au1929 wrote:Turn about is fair play. If you as you can ask me to prove he was AWOL. Why is it improper for me to ask you to prove he wasn't? The evidence is inconclusive in either case. OH! I forgot you are a republican a paragon of truth and integrity. Bull Crap.
Because when you accuse someone of a crime, you have to present convincing evidence. The accused is not obligated to prove himself innocent. So present some real evidence that he did, not just that he might have. But here's the really interesting question. If you believe that the evidence that he was AWOL is "inconclusive," then was it not dishonorable for you to refer him as being AWOL "again" in a previous post?
Brandon9000 wrote:What lie did he base the preemptive attack upon.
au1929 wrote:Need I really say it WMD's.
When did he lie about WMD? Please cite a statement by him and provide evidence that it was a lie. However, I will not accept anything that could easily be his true opinion at the time as a lie without evidence that it is. If I am having dinner with friend and say, "Joe will be here too," but Joe never shows up, it is only a lie if I knew it was false when I said it.
au1929 wrote:And all he succeeded in doing is Kill almost 1000 American service people, Grievously wounding 26000 more as well killing and wounding thousands of Iraqis. Men women and children. In addition he squandered billions of dollars basically looting the treasury and putting us under staggering debt for many years to come.
Brandon9000 wrote:Are you saying that all wars are inherently improper? Most of them fit this kind of description.
au1929 wrote:I am saying that the killing is unwarranted because this war was unwarranted
This war was not only warranted, but made absolutely necessary by the lack of evidence that Iraq had destroyed all WMD and WMD programs, and the long time behavior of Hussein suggesting that he wanted to deceive the inspectors. Had he still been developing them, we could not allow him to stall us while he completed the work. We had been trying to get him to verifiably disarm for a very long time.
Brandon9000 wrote:1. Based on the totality of the history with Iraq, at the time of invasion, there was significant probability that Iraq still had WMD and WMD programs. We had been trying to negotiate this for a dozen years. Had Hussein been developing and stockpiling WMD, there would have been a finite window of time to stop him. One single WMD used in a western city could kill an unimaginable number of people all at once - conceivably a million in some scenarios.
au1929 wrote:At the time of the Invasion the inspectors were in Iraq looking for these supposed WMD's. That is what the UN was asking for and that is what they were getting. There is and was no justification for the invasion. Except that Cowboy George that great and knowledgeable military tactician wanted it.
The justification was that we had been playing this game with Hussein, who has promised to destroy the weapons and programs, for a dozen years, and he had demonstrated an intention to deceive. Someone who wants to disarm isn't going to take 12 years to do it. The unimaginable power of the weapons forced us to take the matter very seriously. One single WMD of certain sorts could probably wipe out Washington, DC in one event. That's one use of one weapon. We did not have a very good view of what Iraq might have been working on behind the scenes and couldn't take the chance that it was in an advanced stage with the WMD programs which it had been known to possess before. We couldn't safely allow the game to drag on forever.
Brandon9000 wrote:2. We cannot invade NK because they already have the bomb and could kill on a colossal scale the minute we started an invasion. In fact, we invaded Iraq to prevent Hussein from achieving this near invulnerability.
au1929 wrote:Right you are we can't attack an enemy that can fight back. So I guess it is OK if they drop a bomb on one of our cities. PS. I am not advocating that we attck N. Korea
Do you believe that we can attack them - a country that has nukes now and could kill a million people in the first hour of the conflict? That's madness. Yes, they might use one of their nukes on our cities. That is absolutely true. That is why we are negotiating with them to disarm. Unfortunately, the fact that they already have nukes means that even if they are utterly unreasonable, we cannot leave the negotiating table. We could not allow the possibility of Hussein achieving this level of near invulnerability by stalling us until he could complete his WMD development programs.
Brandon9000 wrote:3. Iran has many factors pro and con invasion. It is a much more complex situation. But to name just one factor, we have not been trying to get Iran to live up to a promise to disarm for a dozen years.
au1929 wrote:OH, so it is time of defiance that counts. Iran has basically told Bush and the US to screw itself. But that is OK because it was only for a short period of time. By the way how long is to long.
First of all, I said that there are many factors pro and con and that that was only an example of one of them. However, to respond to your comment, a failure in negotiations is not usually a reason for war, but a very prolonged failure of negotiations together with a lot of evidence of bad faith on the other side can be in some cases.
au1929 wrote:I should note that we the US in working on new tactical nuclear weapons all the while insisting that others should not posses them. Does that meet with your approval?
Yes and no. First of all, the world will never be safe as long as anyone possesses nuclear weapons, so in the long term it would be desirable for all of them to go away. Second, the fact that we have them does not in the least make it unfair for us to say that the worst of the worst dictators cannot have them, when a few other criteria are also met. The fact that I own a gun (if I did) would not make it unfair for me to prohibit an ex-con with a history of violent crime from owning them. Thirdly, I strongly disapprove of the idea of us ever using nuclear weapons except in the case of imminent danger to the nation. Part of what has kept the world safe since WW 2 is the precedent that nuclear weapons are too terrible to ever use.
Brandon9000 wrote:So, then, you think that FDR should have lain awake all night racked with guilt about WW 2? The deaths in a war are always tragic, particularly of non-combatants, but the deaths that would be caused by one single WMD being used are probably unimaginably higher.
au1929 wrote:I would not doubt that Roosevelt was more disturbed over the deaths of our servicemen that Bush is. And one must remember that WW2 was a war of necesity not choice.
Many people in this country feel that the invasion of Iraq was a war of necessity, and at the time, I believe that more than half did. Obviously Bush feels that it was necessary. Also, I am pretty sure that you do not know how Bush feels about the death of soldiers under his command.
