Talk-Polywell.org

Skipjack wrote:

Diogenes wrote:
You mean letting an inexperienced man-child have control of a nation turns out to have been a bad idea?

I assume you are talking about GW Bush? I saw it coming over a decade ago. We should have never went there in the first place!

And what country did you come running to while your own is turning into a chaotic maelstrom?


Yeah, i'm not terribly impressed with the political opinions of ExPat Euroweenies.


Obama makes George W Bush look like Einstein Newton.

GIThruster wrote:I'm not certain about Sharia in Iraq during Saddam's reign, but I know women had to keep themselves covered, and were not allowed to learn to read nor be educated in any way, and were not able to serve in government. I think we have a national interest in seeing this sort of human rights violation put an end to. the whole world is at risk because of these abominable practices and those to pursue them. We can hide and wait for the jihadists to come get us, or we can push back. I say, push back. No reason to look for a fight, but we already had commitments to these Kurds. We owe them.

I have no interest whatsoever in these justifications. I think a reality based view would recognize that the middle east is a human rights cesspool and always has been. It's simple minded fools (Jimmy Carter) that think they should upend such societies to instill foreign ideas of compassion and equality in such non-fertile ground.


The only thing I cared about was whether Saddam could create or already had an atomic weapon. Given the evidence available at the time, and given the risk posed by such a threat, Invading the country was exactly the right thing to do.


Once having established that the threat was not so great as we had been led to believe, we should have packed up most of our crap and left. That business of trying to re-engineer Iraqi society was utter bollocks, and we should have never attempted it.


And that is where we went wrong.

MSimon wrote:

Diogenes wrote:I'm thinking it's just your version of Gleichschaltung.

More like J'accuse. i.e. false imprisonment due to prejudice. Say didn't I mention that up thread?

Well, you *ARE* doing a lot of J'accusing around here.

MSimon wrote: Modern Prohibition/The War on Drugs is the most destructive, dysfunctional & immoral domestic policy since slavery & Jim Crow. - Retired Police Detective Howard Wooldridge

I guess he's never heard of the "War on Poverty" then? Someone should inform this guy. We don't want him going around sounding like a fool, now do we?

Sorry, but the mistake was we gave them Pepsi.
If we had given them Coke, they all would have been singing and living in perfect harmony.

Diogenes wrote:

MSimon wrote:

Diogenes wrote:I'm thinking it's just your version of Gleichschaltung.

More like J'accuse. i.e. false imprisonment due to prejudice. Say didn't I mention that up thread?

Well, you *ARE* doing a lot of J'accusing around here.

MSimon wrote: Modern Prohibition/The War on Drugs is the most destructive, dysfunctional & immoral domestic policy since slavery & Jim Crow. - Retired Police Detective Howard Wooldridge

I guess he's never heard of the "War on Poverty" then? Someone should inform this guy. We don't want him going around sounding like a fool, now do we?

Inform him yourself:
http://www.citizensopposingprohibition.org/
He lobbies Congress so he is used to opposing opinions.

And for your further amusement: Retired Police Captain demolishes the War on Drugs

MSimon wrote:
And for your further amusement: Retired Police Captain demolishes the War on Drugs

I think I already saw that movie, but it was with a radioactive dinosaur and it took place in Tokyo.

Diogenes wrote:

MSimon wrote:
And for your further amusement: Retired Police Captain demolishes the War on Drugs

I think I already saw that movie, but it was with a radioactive dinosaur and it took place in Tokyo.

Did the radioactive dinosaur reduce traffic fatalities and youth drug use? Cure stage 4 (metastasis) cancer? Reduce epileptic seizures by a factor of 100 or more? An a few thousand other things. Heck of a dinosaur you got there buddy.

I seen that movie TOO, it was a radioactive dinosaur.

Diogenes wrote:The only thing I cared about was whether Saddam could create or already had an atomic weapon. Given the evidence available at the time, and given the risk posed by such a threat, Invading the country was exactly the right thing to do.


Once having established that the threat was not so great as we had been led to believe, we should have packed up most of our crap and left. That business of trying to re-engineer Iraqi society was utter bollocks, and we should have never attempted it. And that is where we went wrong.

That was your man Bush Junior that tried that ill-considered idea. His daddy had more sense making our allies (and the Saudis) pay us to dislodge Saddam Hussein from Kuwait..in spite of the incompetence of our ambassador April Glaspie that lead Sadam to think we didn't care if he invaded Kuwait.

What should we do now? Well if we have to go back make those Iraqi SOB's pay us through the nose for the privilege. We have them by the short hairs; they’re the ones facing a noose around the neck from ISIS not the other way around:

williatw wrote:If ISIS keeps kicking the crap out of the Iraqi Army....then at some point Maliki(gone good riddance) and the Iraqi gov will be so terrified they will be on both knees begging us to come back. Then we agree, provided they pay for it...stick it to them to the tune of 10's of billions up front, following by a yearly stipend of many more billions for every year we have to keep those 50-100K troops there. The Saudis are just as frightened of ISIS extremists to...bet we could hit them up hard too; you think we need to be there to prevent WWIII 20yrs from now fine, but make that lot pay for our trouble. Stop acting like generous Uncle sucker...if we are all that is preventing global war, then make them pay for our blood with their treasure.

Play hardball...you negotiate a deal that makes them pay generously for the privilege of our protection, they can more than afford it with all the money Maliki and his cronies stole from the Iraqi economy...otherwise they can "negotiate" with their soon to be ISIS masters. We will get out our trillion dollars back from Iraq plus interest. If we have to be the world's policeman to prevent WWIII down the road, then make the world pay us rather than the other way around.

The problem - and it is this throughout the Middle East - is that poverty breeds terrorism. It also gives loathsome groups like ISIS, or bad but much less loathsome like Hammas, political advantage because they have money and logistics to provide aid on the ground.

Malaki has to go for lots of reasons. And it would be good - though maybe impossible - to get a less corrupt government. Rather like the US political system if you need to make promises to interest groups to get elected it can be difficult for an untied person to get power.

If you think that taking money away from Iraq will remove it from corrupt politicians rather than increasing the poverty - and therefore lack of willingness to cooperate finding non-violent solutions - of half the population you are wrong.

The best you can have is strong political pressure to get a less bad leader - and that is what has been done.

williatw wrote:
What should we do now? Well if we have to go back make those Iraqi SOB's pay us through the nose for the privilege. We have them by the short hairs; they’re the ones facing a noose around the neck from ISIS not the other way around:

williatw wrote:If ISIS keeps kicking the crap out of the Iraqi Army....then at some point Maliki(gone good riddance) and the Iraqi gov will be so terrified they will be on both knees begging us to come back. Then we agree, provided they pay for it...stick it to them to the tune of 10's of billions up front, following by a yearly stipend of many more billions for every year we have to keep those 50-100K troops there. The Saudis are just as frightened of ISIS extremists to...bet we could hit them up hard too; you think we need to be there to prevent WWIII 20yrs from now fine, but make that lot pay for our trouble. Stop acting like generous Uncle sucker...if we are all that is preventing global war, then make them pay for our blood with their treasure.

Play hardball...you negotiate a deal that makes them pay generously for the privilege of our protection, they can more than afford it with all the money Maliki and his cronies stole from the Iraqi economy...otherwise they can "negotiate" with their soon to be ISIS masters. We will get out our trillion dollars back from Iraq plus interest. If we have to be the world's policeman to prevent WWIII down the road, then make the world pay us rather than the other way around.

The problem - and it is this throughout the Middle East - is that poverty breeds terrorism.

From 2007:
Princeton Economist Says Lack of Civil Liberties, Not Poverty, Breeds Terrorism

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/201 ... _terrorism

http://scholar.harvard.edu/barro/files/ ... rty_bw.pdf

paperburn1 wrote:I seen that movie TOO, it was a radioactive dinosaur.

The radioactivity they emit causes cancer (depending). But we have a cure for that. If it was legal.

double post

tomclarke wrote:The problem - and it is this throughout the Middle East - is that poverty breeds terrorism. . . .

If you think that taking money away from Iraq will remove it from corrupt politicians rather than increasing the poverty - and therefore lack of willingness to cooperate finding non-violent solutions - of half the population you are wrong.

I think you'd have serious trouble identifying that as a causal relation. Lots of people live in poverty, even in the Islamic world, and don't become terrorists. In fact, it's fair to say the vast majority of the Islamic world are poor. Its only in places like Qutar where the people share in the benefits of selling their natural gas, that they're not. Islam panders to poverty, and empowers people through hatred, so I would pose the real cause of terrorism is not poverty but Islam. If you read your Koran you'll see, it's all about killing the infidels, dominating the women, and pretending to be things people simply are not. The trouble is the demonically inspired religion, and we won't see serious stops put on international terrorism so long as we treat Islam as something other than the plague it has been to the planet for 1,500 years. While moderate Islam doesn't cause these kinds of troubles, history and common sense observations about the teachings of the Koran, say that Islamo-fascism is the intended purpose of the Koran.

Even the most historically ignorant person who holds some popular caricature of the Crusades, usually knows they were instigated not by the overabundance of fighting men in Europe who needed a more benign activity that killing each other, and not by the Pope who preached Holy Crusade, but by the Moslems who had for centuries been kidnapping, torturing and murdering pilgrims to the Holy Land. This is precisely the kind of activity that Islam breeds. It teaches it. Kidnapping is right in the text. Its misguided to think Unholy Jihad is the result of poverty when the cause is so easy to identify. It is caused by the writings of Mohammad.

edit: http://www.ijreview.com/2014/08/170555- ... orld-live/

GIThruster wrote: Even the most historically ignorant person who holds some popular caricature of the Crusades, usually knows they were instigated not by the overabundance of fighting men in Europe who needed a more benign activity that killing each other, and not by the Pope who preached Holy Crusade, but by the Moslems who had for centuries been kidnapping, torturing and murdering pilgrims to the Holy Land.

Uh.. no. Emph. added.