The Iraq war.
 

The war in Iraq has taken another ugly turn. Now that the possibility for an all out civil war is looming closer and closer it confirms the belief that I've held that Saddam should have remained in power. Sure you can complain about the way Saddam ran the country but Iraq's history has shown that the country was always a deadly corrupt filled nation that had one violent take over after another. Saddam has kept the nation from complete civil unrest for the last 30 +years until the U.S invaded that is, he understood the complex makeup of the country w/it's many ethnic and religious groups fighting for control. Now that he's gone all hell has broke loose ethnic fighting, outside terrorist, the influence of Iran. It's begining to look like Iraq was a hell of a lot better w/ Saddam as pesident.

Re: The Iraq war.
 

But his tactics included the rape, torture, and murder of those who disagreed with him. It's much easier to keep things under the surface when you are murdering your critics.

I can't buy in to the thought that Saddam staying in power is the best thing for Iraq in any senario.

I do wish we could have figured out some way to remove him without this war. I think that would have been possible. The war was sold to us for all the wrong reasons in my opinion, IF the real reason for it was to overthrow a murderous dictator.

One thing I thought we learned in the Vietnam Conflict is that some societies simply aren't ready for democracy. It appears that Iraq may be one of them.

Having said that, I don't believe that this is the right time for a total US pullout. The lives, money and resources we've spent there would almost certainly be wasted -- as was the case in Southeast Asia if we were to do that at this point.

We've put ourselves in a very uncomfortable position.

Again.

DA, you know that you & I don't usually agree about politics, but I think that's one of the best summations I've read yet.

It's the "IF" that we'll probably never know, in totality.

How would it be possible to remove him? The entire world was propping him up.

You're right about some societies not being ready for Democracy. It is some stupid notion that Democracy is everyone's right. In general, the right to live is forgotten by many of us because we believe in all these wonderful "Freedoms". These people are nothing more than a bunch of morons that will kill if there are cartoons they don't like - I do not think they have any right whatsoever to govern over themselves or others.

I think now is the perfect time for a pullout. We should encourage them to just kill each other and get the hell out. Maybe we can even sell all the poor citizens handguns.

-Rudey

Happy Birthday War In Iraq

Bump

I personally think the war is a crock. We got pulled into it for all the wrong reasons (ie. non-existant weapons of mass destruction) and continued to stay in it because as Americans we have this insane notion that it's our job "to fix" everyone else. When other countries need money, they come to us (probably why our deficit is in the billions).

I think we need to pull out. (Although I completely understand that a complete pull out of US forces isn't something that can be done, I just think we should be doing a gradual withdrawal, not talking about putting more troops over there)


According to the US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, for January 2006, there were approximately 6,148,125 people unemployed in the US, (6,307,925 if you count Puerto Rico).

That's really high. We need to stop worrying about other countries and their lack of diplomacy issues and star worrying about ourselves.

(Here's the link to the website for the stats)

http://www.bls.gov/schedule/archives..._nr.htm#BM2006

Your understanding of the economy is much appreciated on this website.

-Rudey

Rudey, if your making fun of me, that's okay :D. If you're being serious, I really don't understand the economy so very much. I tried an economics class and I was totally lost. LOL. I can just read and add statistics. :D

The easiest way to start here is to understand the statistics - 6-some million sounds like a lot, but it's not - it's 2% of the US population, and 5.1% of the employable population (non-child, non-retired).

Now, saying that just over 1 in 20 Americans is unemployed sounds kind of like a lot, too - but again, it's not. Unemployment has to be viewed through the lens of 'transient' workers - workers who are between jobs or simply do not desire employment. Generally, around 4% is considered the baseline for this (IIRC; Rudey can prob correct this figure if wrong) - that means the effective 'zero unemployment' is equivalent to 4% (total) unemployment. In that light, 5.1% is not a very high number.

In fact, it's also LOWER than last year, according to the BLS - last January, unemployment was at 5.7%.

Thus, I would posit that the statistics actually show improvement, a positive sign for the economy (and subtley, the reverse of your point).

But it (unemployment) going down .6% isn't something we should be jumping for joy for.

That's fine that you feel unemployment isn't too high, it's your opinion.

My feeling is that it is too high and that we (and when I say we I'm talking The President & Congress) should be worrying about "our own" and not people in a different country.

Again, you're missing the point here - obviously the government IS caring for its own, as unemployment has dropped significantly . . . and saying it's "only" 0.6% is kind of ridiculous, since that's greater than 10% of 'gross' unemployment, and MORE THAN A THIRD(!) of the 'actual' unemployment (since, again, 4% is effectively full employment).

Here's a link to an article on the topic . . . it doesn't give an exact figure, since economists don't agree on it, but I'll take the lowest figure given by the US Gov't, to prevent biasing in my favor.

How about we just agree to disagree?

You think unemployment isn't to high, I think it is. We're not going to change each other's minds, so let's just agree to disagree.

I don't feel the government is caring for it's own, you do. That's fine, it's your opinion.

But from my perspective, as a teacher (plumbers make more than I do. I am at the bottom of the barrel), the government hasn't done crap for me except make my job 10 times harder than it needs to be, force me to continue my education (to keep my certificate) and not pay for this "continuing education" or let it count towards a pay raise. So no, I don't think the government has done a damn thing for me or my students.

But that isn't the discussion here and obviously I didn't mean to get so off track with my earlier posts, the discussion is the war.

I don't agree with it. You might. And that's totally fine. It's your opinion. :D

Here's the thing, though - I can see where you're coming from here. I just don't think it's at all related to unemployment.

There are literally dozens of areas you've made valid points, but using unemployment statistics really isn't one of them, from my end.

I do feel for teachers, in many ways - while many people are forced to pay for continuing education (attorneys pay out the ass for CLE, often) to stay certified, many make more than teachers. I'm not sure I know the solution, though - it's obviously partly supply and demand . . . around here, the 'better' teaching jobs often get hundreds of applicants for a single position. It's also difficult to say where the money should come from - is it the Federal Gov't's job to pay teachers, who are not Federal employees? I don't really know . . . I'm fairly sure, though, that you can't just take the dollars going to Iraq and give them to teachers - but perhaps I'm wrong.

So yeah - I feel where you're coming from, but I don't have any clue where to even start. Any suggestions?