$100 billion failure

[DavidS]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/world/middleeast/14reconstruct.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all

 

[Old Rocks]

The incompetance of the last eight years is simply staggering. Our nation has been damaged in so many ways.

 

[dilloduck]

The incompetance of the last eight years is simply staggering. Our nation has been damaged in so many ways.

try 16 years

 

[Old Rocks]

Really? Of course Clinton made some policy mistakes, most notably NAFTA, but we never were in a extreme recession rapidly becoming a major depression. And torture was not a policy of this nation at that time. I think the number of soldiers dead from combat during his two terms was less than 100. And the debt ratio to GNP was actually declining. Your statement is simply an adult version of "you're one two".

 

[dilloduck]

Really? Of course Clinton made some policy mistakes, most notably NAFTA, but we never were in a extreme recession rapidly becoming a major depression. And torture was not a policy of this nation at that time. I think the number of soldiers dead from combat during his two terms was less than 100. And the debt ratio to GNP was actually declining. Your statement is simply an adult version of "you're one two".

bullshit---the policies all started years ago---get off your damn partisan bs

 

[DavidS]

try 16 years

16 years? Who started the war in Iraq? Who organized private corporations to go over to Iraq and help build infrastructure? Who spent all of this money on the war in Iraq?

Not the Clinton administration.

 

[DavidS]

Really? Of course Clinton made some policy mistakes, most notably NAFTA, but we never were in a extreme recession rapidly becoming a major depression. And torture was not a policy of this nation at that time. I think the number of soldiers dead from combat during his two terms was less than 100. And the debt ratio to GNP was actually declining. Your statement is simply an adult version of "you're one two".

And to play tune to my centrist qualities, after bashing the right, I am now going to bash the left.

Some policy mistakes including NAFTA? Do you have any idea how bad NAFTA is screwing our economy? It allows corporation to outsource American jobs to Canada or Mexico so those companies can save money and the big fat-cat CEOs can make billions more while average mom & pop workers get laid off because their healthcare benefits are too expensive and they actually need more than $10,000 a year, which is NOT more than what an average worker in Mexico needs. Do you know that before Clinton signed NAFTA into law, nearly 50% of Mexicans were living in poverty and now that number has plummeted to only 18%? Where did all of these jobs magically appear from in the mid-late 1990s?? What's even worse is that these companies actually took American jobs away and gave them to Mexicans.

And to further my argument against the Left, if we didn't torture in the 1990s, then why did six people die and why were over 1,000 more injured by the World Trade Center bombing? Why were 19 American soldiers killed and 39 more injured aboard the USS Cole in 2000? How many people were killed in the 1998 bombings of Kenya and Tanzania?

What about the Spaniards? Do they torture people because they lost nearly 200 people and over 1200 were injured on 3/11/04. And the London terrorist attacks? The list goes on and on of people who do not torture yet were killed as a result of Islamic terrorism. Now, do you really want to go on about the BS of our soldiers dying because we torture or do you want to admit that these thugs are using that, our support of Israel, our way of life, the brightness of the sun in the sky and every single other imaginable excuse to bomb us because in the end they have no other reason for killing us other than being blood thirsty animals. Oh, but please, go on and keep talking about how evil America is and how we deserved to be attacked on 9/11. I'm sure that'll make the victims' families feel a hell of a lot better. Do you side with Timmothy McVeigh as well who used our government's policies in Ruby Ridge as an excuse to attack the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995? I'm sure the 19 children who were in the building's daycare center who were killed as a result of the blast are justifable means to an end, eh?

Don't like the government's policies? Kill innocent people. And you side with that. You give it a reason, you give it an excuse... you legitimize it. You should be ashamed of yourself.

 

[FistyTheBadger]

16 years? Who started the war in Iraq? Who organized private corporations to go over to Iraq and help build infrastructure? Who spent all of this money on the war in Iraq?

Not the Clinton administration.

What happened in the past affects the present. I would go all the way back to say that FDR and JFK had hands in the current financial breakdown and national debt and budget deficit.

 

[Chris]

My friend, who is an ex FBI agent and a big right winger, called me the other night because he is going back to Iraq for a second tour of duty. We were talking about Iraq, and he says, "You know the Iraqis all told me they were better off under Saddam. In fact some of the Iraqis even say, 'Bring back, Saddam!' "

I was actually shocked to hear this. I didn't think it was that bad.

 

[Chris]

What happened in the past affects the present. I would go all the way back to say that FDR and JFK had hands in the current financial breakdown and national debt and budget deficit.

Reagan and Bush are responsible for 90% of the National Debt. You cannot cut taxes and have massive increases in military spending without running up huge deficits.

ReaganBushDebt.org

 

[FistyTheBadger]

Reagan and Bush are responsible for 90% of the National Debt. You cannot cut taxes and have massive increases in military spending without running up huge deficits.

ReaganBushDebt.org

Unless you also have massive cuts in other programming.

 

[DavidS]

My friend, who is an ex FBI agent and a big right winger, called me the other night because he is going back to Iraq for a second tour of duty. We were talking about Iraq, and he says, "You know the Iraqis all told me they were better off under Saddam. In fact some of the Iraqis even say, 'Bring back, Saddam!' "

I was actually shocked to hear this. I didn't think it was that bad.

Saddam is a light weight in the number of Iraqis he was responsible for having killed vs. the number Bush is responsible for. 6 years, over a million Iraqis. That's about 45 Iraqis a day or 16,500 a year. Hussein only killed about 300 a year.

 

[Skeptik]

From the link in the OP:

“We spent as much money as we could, and got as little for it as people could make up their minds to give us.

Yes, that about sums it up, doesn't it?

 

[Old Rocks]

And to play tune to my centrist qualities, after bashing the right, I am now going to bash the left.

Some policy mistakes including NAFTA? Do you have any idea how bad NAFTA is screwing our economy? It allows corporation to outsource American jobs to Canada or Mexico so those companies can save money and the big fat-cat CEOs can make billions more while average mom & pop workers get laid off because their healthcare benefits are too expensive and they actually need more than $10,000 a year, which is NOT more than what an average worker in Mexico needs. Do you know that before Clinton signed NAFTA into law, nearly 50% of Mexicans were living in poverty and now that number has plummeted to only 18%? Where did all of these jobs magically appear from in the mid-late 1990s?? What's even worse is that these companies actually took American jobs away and gave them to Mexicans.

And to further my argument against the Left, if we didn't torture in the 1990s, then why did six people die and why were over 1,000 more injured by the World Trade Center bombing? Why were 19 American soldiers killed and 39 more injured aboard the USS Cole in 2000? How many people were killed in the 1998 bombings of Kenya and Tanzania?

What about the Spaniards? Do they torture people because they lost nearly 200 people and over 1200 were injured on 3/11/04. And the London terrorist attacks? The list goes on and on of people who do not torture yet were killed as a result of Islamic terrorism. Now, do you really want to go on about the BS of our soldiers dying because we torture or do you want to admit that these thugs are using that, our support of Israel, our way of life, the brightness of the sun in the sky and every single other imaginable excuse to bomb us because in the end they have no other reason for killing us other than being blood thirsty animals. Oh, but please, go on and keep talking about how evil America is and how we deserved to be attacked on 9/11. I'm sure that'll make the victims' families feel a hell of a lot better. Do you side with Timmothy McVeigh as well who used our government's policies in Ruby Ridge as an excuse to attack the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995? I'm sure the 19 children who were in the building's daycare center who were killed as a result of the blast are justifable means to an end, eh?

Don't like the government's policies? Kill innocent people. And you side with that. You give it a reason, you give it an excuse... you legitimize it. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Whoa there, David. When have you ever seen me defend torture? Nor have I said that America caused the terrorism that presently stalks the world. In fact, one of the major things I hold against Bush is that Bin Laden is still alive. At least Clinton got all but one of the people that bombed the WTC the first time.

Timothy McVeigh was an insane coward, and recieved his just accounting. As far as siding with people that kill innocents over percieved government policy, you really have me mixed up with someone else.

 

[Lycurgus]

The incompetance of the last eight years is simply staggering. Our nation has been damaged in so many ways.

Old Rocks, I understand you like to share a very partisan opinion and that's fine. Further, I really don't disagree with you on Bush's failures in and with Iraq. But what all this points to and describes is not new, nor limited to merely the past 8 years or to one party or the other.

for me, this story only goes to illustrate why it is so important to keep the private sector private and out of government hands. The less government involvement the better. Yes, we do need laws, safety guidelines and so on, within reason and yes those things need to be regulated and enforced, again, within logical and reasonable reason.

How many times at all levels, local, state and federal, do we see government screwing up projects, wasting money, stealing money and so on?

Yet, we want to give them more control?

IMO ............ It's time we begin regulating them!

If anything is bipartisan, it is how they screw things up, waste and steal our money!

 

[Xenophon]

The big mistake was ignoring the expert, Jay Gardner in favor of the fool, Paul Bremer.

 

[FistyTheBadger]

The real mistake was that the voters did not take their job as the ultimate check seriously enough.

 

[editec]

Bush II kept screwing up.

Congress kept enabling them to do so.

One hardly knows who to hang first.

Among the overarching conclusions of the history is that five years after embarking on its largest foreign reconstruction project since the Marshall Plan in Europe after World War II, the United States government has in place neither the policies and technical capacity nor the organizational structure that would be needed to undertake such a program on anything approaching this scale.

The bitterest message of all for the reconstruction program may be the way the history ends. The hard figures on basic services and industrial production compiled for the report reveal that for all the money spent and promises made, the rebuilding effort never did much more than restore what was destroyed during the invasion and the convulsive looting that followed.

By mid-2008, the history says, $117 billion had been spent on the reconstruction of Iraq, including some $50 billion in United States taxpayer money.

The history contains a catalog of revelations that show the chaotic and often poisonous atmosphere prevailing in the reconstruction effort.

¶When the Office of Management and Budget balked at the American occupation authority’s abrupt request for about $20 billion in new reconstruction money in August 2003, a veteran Republican lobbyist working for the authority made a bluntly partisan appeal to Joshua B. Bolten, then the O.M.B. director and now the White House chief of staff. “To delay getting our funds would be a political disaster for the President,” wrote the lobbyist, Tom C. Korologos. “His election will hang for a large part on show of progress in Iraq and without the funding this year, progress will grind to a halt.” With administration backing, Congress allocated the money later that year.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/wo...pagewanted=all

 

[del]

Saddam is a light weight in the number of Iraqis he was responsible for having killed vs. the number Bush is responsible for. 6 years, over a million Iraqis. That's about 45 Iraqis a day or 16,500 a year. Hussein only killed about 300 a year.

leaving the dubious quality of the statistics you cite aside, you may want to sharpen the old math skills, bubba.

 

[del]

Bush II kept screwing up.

Congress kept enabling them to do so.

One hardly knows who to hang first.

please post a link for your quote or edit it out.
thanks