hamburger wrote:spendius wrote :
Quote:You ain't there now mate. That's stale bread.
since i often hear about "the founding fathers" and that their musings were so important that even today they must not be changed , i didn't think that my quote was that unusual.
Those musings (i.e., the Constitution of the United States of America), "the supreme Law of the Land," as of now, has been lawfully changed (i.e., amended) 27 times.[/color]
Those often enough i have heard that the supreme court should not touch what "the founding fathers" declared .
anyhow , i just quoted what another american said , who seems to think that something is to be learned from that advice to the president .
hbg
Our fourth President 1809-1817, James Madison, took the USA to war against the so-called
Barbery Pirates in North Africa to finally stop them from stealing our ships and abducting our sailors. At
that time our ships and boats were propelled by wind, sails, and oars; we lacked rockets, aircraft, and SUVs.
huh? What's the relatiionsihp?
cicerone imposter wrote:huh? What's the relatiionsihp?
Early in USA history, we rejected Wasington's advice and invaded another country to cause it to discontinue causing us harm. We have rejected Washington's advice several more times in our history to stop bad governments from causing us harm.
By the way, Washington and Adams, USA Presidents 1 and 2, each agreed to bribe the
Barbery Pirates into stopping the stealing of our ships and the abduction of our sailors. Didn't work!
These pirates stopped only for a short time each time. Jefferson, President 3, went to war against the
Barbery Pirates but only shot at and did not invade their country--Jefferson got a negotiated short term peace agreement. Finally, it was Madison who possessed the gonads to invade the
Barbery Pirates's country and finally stop them.
Of course Afghanistan and Iraq presented different threats to our country. In both their cases they did not cause us harm directly. Instead they permitted sanctuary to those who had declared war against us and had caused us harm.
No, I mean what's the relationship between George Washington and the Iraq war?
From ABC News:
In the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, 71 percent of Americans say the country is headed seriously off on the wrong track. Sixty-four percent call the war a mistake, more than said so about Vietnam during that conflict.
cicerone imposter wrote:No, I mean what's the relationship between George Washington and the Iraq war?
Paraphrasing George Washington, he advised future American governments not to mess with the governments of other countries. Let them do their thing and they'll let us do our thing.
Madison ignored George Washington's advice, because Washington's advice applied to the
Barbery Pirates didn't work for previous presidents.
Many American Leftists are in effect protesting the failure of Bush to follow Washington's advice in coping with Iraq.
George Bush ignored George Washington's advice, because Washington's advice applied to the al-Qaeda terrorists didn't work for previous presidents.
cicerone imposter wrote:From ABC News:
In the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, 71 percent of Americans say the country is headed seriously off on the wrong track. Sixty-four percent call the war a mistake, more than said so about Vietnam during that conflict.
You left out the percentage of those polled who want us to fail in Iraq: less than 40%.
By pulling out of Iraq before the Iraqis are capable of protecting themselves against MMONM (i.e., Mass Murderers Of Non-Murderers), the US will fail in Iraq.
We've already failed. Terrorism has continued to increase for the past four years. FACT: 150,000 American troops is not going to change the past four year's trend of increased loss of life.
According to most polls, Americans want our soldiers moved out of Iraq.
February 13 2007 at 05:25PM
Nearly two-thirds of Americans - 63 percent - want US troops home from Iraq by the end of 2008, according to a new poll published on Tuesday by the newspaper USA Today.
Monday, December 18, 2006
CNN poll: U.S. support for Iraq war falls to 31 percent
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Fewer than a third of Americans still support the war in Iraq, and more than half say they want U.S. troops out of the country within a year, according to a CNN poll released Monday.
ican, You're in the third; not even close to support for this war.
here is just an excerpt from a very interesting article on america's early history :
Quote:On March 2, 1815, ten weeks after the end of the War of 1812, the United States formally declared hostilities against Algiers. Retribution, long delayed but richly deserved, was dispatched in the form of ten tall ships under the command of the scourge of Barbary, Stephen Decatur (Pike, 2001).
The punitive expedition arrived off Algiers in June. Decatur promptly shot up the flagship of the Dey's fleet, capturing it with 486 prisoners. He then sent an ultimatum to the Dey: Free every slave at once, pay an indemnity of $10,000 to the survivors of the brig Edwin, and cease all demands for tribute forever.
Numbed by Decatur's ferocity, the Dey whined that perhaps there had been a "misunderstanding" which he would like to correct with "the amiable James Madison, the Emperor of America" (Castor, 1971).
Tunis and Tripoli were next on Decatur's list. The Dey of Tunis groomed his beard with a diamond-encrusted comb and complained, "Why do they send wild young men to treat for peace with the old powers?" Still, he paid the Americans $46,000 to go away. In its turn, Tripoli felt Decatur's wrath, paying him a $25,000 indemnity and freeing its slaves (Castor, 1971).
The "old powers" never again molested any American ships. Decatur's swift and firm action impelled the other European powers to follow the American example. The degrading yoke of tribute and the raiding of the Barbary corsairs were over.
America's involvement in the Tripolitan War suppressed pirate terrorism in the Mediterranean only after resolute action. It also saw the development of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps with their proud traditions, and for the first time America made its presence known, not as a "fat duck" but as an eagle in the world of the old empires.
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it seems quite clear that the american government was determined to teach the pirates a lesson and ensure the safety of their ships .
i can't find any mention that the u.s. government had any interest into forcing the fiefdoms of the barbary coast to adopt a democratic system of government - they wanted their ships to be able to travel free and unmolested .
imo iraq had been defeated and did not present any danger to the united states when the war action ended under president bush senior .
u.s. and british air force controlled the skies over iraq and made it next to impossible for iraq to mount any action against the united states .
imo the united states would have been far better off , had they suppported the kurds and other iraqi opposition to SH .
it could have led to the formation of a new government based upon the wishes of iraqi citizens - even if it would not have been a democratic one .
now the cart seems stuck in the mud and it'll be difficult to pull it out again - in one piece .
hbg
...UNITED STATES DEFEATS THE BARBARY COAST PIRATES...
Talk about pirates. "Alleged intel fixer Chalabi to assume new role as part of 'surge'" Brian Beutler
Published: Friday February 23, 2007
Ahmed Chalabi, the former deputy prime minister of Iraq who has come under suspicion for his pre-war involvement in supplying questionable intelligence supporting the invasion, has assumed a new role within the Iraqi government, according to a report in today's Wall Street Journal.
According to the Journal, "Mr. Chalabi will serve as an intermediary between Baghdad residents and the Iraqi and U.S. security forces mounting an aggressive counterinsurgency campaign across the city. The position is meant to help Iraqis arrange reimbursement for damage to their cars and homes caused by the security sweeps in the hope of maintaining public support for the strategy."
In his new position, Chalabi will be responsible for security tasks. The Journal reports, "Mr. Chalabi's writ is supposed to be limited mainly to security, according to aides to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, but he is already speaking ambitiously about playing a larger role in economic, health and reconstruction efforts as well. In his new capacity, Mr. Chalabi answers directly to Mr. Maliki and is already taking part in weekly planning meetings with senior American officials such as Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq."
Chalabi, who is wanted by Jordanian officials for bank fraud, has had a rocky history with both the American and Iraqi governments, in large part because of his role in the buildup to the war.
As head of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) Chalabi became central to the neoconservative push for regime change in Iraq as early as 1997, and is alleged to have begun fabricating evidence for weapons inspectors around the same time. In 2001, the INC set up a program to transmit stories from Iraqi exiles directly to the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, with the intention of doing an end run around the CIA. These stories, many of which are also alleged to have been fabricated, were additionally propagated by journalists such as Judith Miller at the New York Times.
Although neither the CIA nor the State Department trusted Chalabi, he remained popular with the Neocons in the Pentagon and in Vice President Cheney's office as the Bush administration moved towards an invasion of Iraq. Chalabi was instrumental in transmitting the claims of an Iraqi defector codenamed "Curveball" about mobile chemical weapons laboratories that the administration used as part of its war rationale.
Despite his background, Chalabi has continued to play varying roles in the government of Iraq since the invasion. He was named by the US to the interim Iraqi governing council in 2003, becoming the council's president that September, but his unpopularly within Iraq frustrated any higher political ambitions. In 2004, Chalabi came under suspicion of currency fraud and of transmitting US state secrets to Iran, but he was never arrested, and he served as deputy prime minister and acting oil minister in 2005.
Chalabi has been critical of President Bush for his mishandling of the war. However, before the November elections brought Democrats into control of Congress, Congressional Quarterly reported that then-vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence John Rockefeller (D-WV) had said that "Republicans protected Bush by preventing the investigation into Chalabi's group from going anywhere near the White House."
hamburger wrote:old europe wrote :
Quote:In other words: you're waiting for a "decreasing trend" in death counts to resume posting your predictions.
and wait , and wait ... and wait , while in the meantime more people die and are being maimed every day .
(sorry for taking your sentence out of context , old europe , but it seems that's what ican is waiting for)
hbg
No worries... That
is pretty much the context. I found it quite enlightening, though, that ican pretty much admitted that he stopped posting the numbers because they didn't match his rosy predictions.
here is what the BBC reported about the former "ally"
of the united states in 2002 :
Quote:Ahmed Chalabi was, before the fall of Saddam Hussein, one of the best known Iraqi opposition figures in the West. He has fallen from grace dramatically since, and now faces a warrant for his arrest in Iraq.
Ahmed Chalabi led the foremost Iraqi opposition movement, the US-backed Iraqi National Congress [INC].
The 57-year-old former businessman was even been tipped by some analysts, and some leading officials in Washington, as a possible successor to Saddam Hussein.
A Shia Muslim born in 1945 to a wealthy banking family, Mr Chalabi left Iraq in 1956 and has lived mainly in the USA and London ever since, except for a period in the mid-1990's when he tried to organise an uprising in the Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq.
The venture ended in failure with hundreds of deaths. Soon after, the INC was routed from northern Iraq after Saddam's troops overran its base in Irbil.
A number of party officials were executed and others - including Mr Chalabi - fled the country.
Chequered career
A seasoned lobbyist in London and Washington, who studied mathematics at Chicago University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mr Chalabi is often described as a controversial figure, charismatic and determined but crafty and cunning at the same time. I am not seeking any positions. My job will end with the liberation of Iraq from Saddam's rule
Mr Chalabi has been accused by some opposition figures of using the INC to try to further his own ambitions.
There are also allegations of financial misdemeanours. In 1992, he was sentenced in absentia by a Jordanian court to 22 years in prison with hard labour for bank fraud after the 1990 collapse of Petra Bank, which he had founded in 1977.
Although he has always maintained the case was a plot to frame him by Baghdad, the issue was revisited later when the State Department raised questions about the INC's accounting practices.
'Not seeking office'
In interviews after the fall of Saddam Hussein, Mr Chalabi discounted the possibility he would take a role in any future government.
"Personally, I will not run for any office, and I am not seeking any positions. My job will end with the liberation of Iraq from Saddam's rule," he is quoted as telling the German weekly Die Zeit.
He had strong backing among some sectors of the US Congress and the Pentagon, but had little grassroots support in Iraq and a number of opposition groups sought to distance themselves from the INC.
In 1998, the then US president, Bill Clinton, approved a plan to spend almost $100m to help the Iraqi opposition - principally the INC - to topple Saddam.
But only a fraction of the money was ever spent, and the INC subsequently suffered leadership infighting.
Fall from grace
In May 2004, Mr Chalabi's home and offices were raided.
He denounced the raid, which he said was carried out by American agents and Iraqi police, as politically motivated.
There were whispers from Washington that Mr Chalabi had all along been duping the Americans by spying for the Iranians.
It appeared that he was being sidelined by Washington because he and his organisation were one of the sources for intelligence about Iraq's weapons of destruction capability that is now widely viewed as faulty.
In August 2004, Mr Chalabi and his nephew Salem Chalabi has arrest warrants issued against them while they were outside Iraq.
The charges against Ahmed Chalabi relate to alleged counterfeiting activities. He denies the charges.
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i remember seeing chalabi being interviewed on TV several times .
it would have been difficult to find a more dispicable person to represent
"the new and democratic iraq " .
if the united states truly will use chalabi in iraq , things must be going pretty badly - but i'll hold further comments .
hbg
On the "real" cost of war in Iraq.
Nearly 800 contractors killed in Iraq
By MICHELLE ROBERTS, Associated Press Writer
33 minutes ago
In a largely invisible cost of the war in Iraq, nearly 800 civilians working under contract to the Pentagon have been killed and more than 3,300 hurt doing jobs normally handled by the U.S. military, according to figures gathered by The Associated Press.
Exactly how many of these employees doing the Pentagon's work are Americans is uncertain. But the casualty figures make it clear that the Defense Department's count of more than 3,100 U.S. military dead does not tell the whole story.
That's why the money's good c.i.
You dont think you can earn at those rates sat safely in an office in Peyton Place do you?
Don't you understand the laws of supply and demand?
spendius wrote:That's why the money's good c.i.
You dont think you can earn at those rates sat safely in an office in Peyton Place do you?
Don't you understand the laws of supply and demand?
It isn't that it's unexpected that these mercs have been killed; but that it's gone unreported that they have been in such numbers.
Cycloptichorn
spendi, My knowledge of economics is just fine, having studied macro and micro economics in addition to principles. Having worked as a controller for several companies, and was the fiscal manager for several companies.
In that case c.i. you should know that the more deaths the higher the rate.
That there are winners and losers.
Cycloptichorn wrote:spendius wrote:That's why the money's good c.i.
You dont think you can earn at those rates sat safely in an office in Peyton Place do you?
Don't you understand the laws of supply and demand?
It isn't that it's unexpected that these mercs have been killed; but that it's gone unreported that they have been in such numbers.
Cycloptichorn
What part of UNREPORTED do you, spendi, not understand?
