Mariner said:
key word, Free & Fun, which was "oil." You didn't say the other key word, which is "deficit." I believe we can't go after the Saudis properly because 1. we rely on their oil and 2. we rely on them to reinvest that oil money in our Treasury so that we can continue our profligate ways.
First off, the Saudis are not big investors in our debt. Most investors in our debt are from Asia and Europe.
You have obviously never run a business, much less a country. Deficits come and go. You work with them as you can and they are not always bad for a business. My company ran in the red from 2000 - 2002 due to the economic downturn that started in late 1998. My deficit at one time was almost 20% of our revenue (akin to our "GDP"). We stayed with it, borrowed money, restructured and sweat it out. Since 2002 we have been profitable again and 2004 is a banner year (best since 1999) and 2005 is looking even better based on blanket orders we have received with deliveries scheduled in 2005. And you know who we are taking business from? French, German and UK companies!
I'm not advocating punishing anyone's children, F&F. I'm advocating doing the basic police work to locate Osama
Well, you made a comment about how we shoulda went after the Saudis for what a few of their citizens did. So regardless of what you profess, you were advocating punishing the "parent" for the deeds of the "children". And as I told you, we are doing the basic police work. Just because the president isn't briefing you or me personally every day, that does not mean it is not happening.
Furthermore, if you would read anything other than leftist liberal books and magazines, etc., or watched anything other than CNN or CNN International, you would discover that OBL has said that he used Saudi Citizens just for the purpose of driving a wedge between the US and SA.
tackling the Wahabbi movement at its source, and cutting off the terrorists' networks funding. All of a sudden you're for religious freedom--even for terrorist-supporting "faiths"?! That didn't stop us from bombing the Taliban, did it?
First off, I have always been for religious freedom. If you want to quote me otherwise, find a quote from and I will eat my words. This is a typical liberal trick - you imply I have stated something previously that I haven't to provide support to your position. You ain't gonna get away with that with me.
As for the Taliban, we didn't go to war with the Taliban because of their religious views. Again your ignorance (stupidity?) glares through all your bullshit. We went to war with the Taliban only after giving them several edicts to turn over OBL or we are coming. If you didn't have such a short memory (so convenient for liberals) span, you would recall that they refused to turn over OBL and that is why we went to war. The Taliban was in Afganistan for years and we did nothing about it as their religion is their choice. It was only after they refused to turn over OBL that we went to war with them. Sure, relaxing their religious views is an added benefit, but if you go to Afganistan today one will see that many still practice Islam exactly as they did under the Taliban. The difference now is that people have a choice. It is not being forced upon them. Just as Wahhabism is not being forced on Saudis - many are just following it of their own choice which I agree, is not good, but neither is fundamentalism Christianity that teaches one to play with Rattlesnakes, but we can't stop that from happening here in the Appalachians, so how can we stop Wahhabism in a country that is not ours?
Saudi Arabia is one of the most dysfunctional states on earth, and our collusion with their dysfunction could be seen as the true source of 9/11. Why the heck did we fly Osama's relatives to safety within 2 days of the attack? How did we know there weren't going to be more attacks that week, or that one of the relatives might not have known exactly where Osama was? How did we know that they weren't actively funneling him money? 2 days certainly wasn't enough to verify that they were all innocent.
Ask Clark why we let them go. He admitted under oath that it was HIS decision.
When it comes to an Iraqi insurgent who had nothing to do with 9/11, we'll put him in jail without 6th Amendment protection for months, in the name of "national security." We'll waive the Geneva convention. We'll use harsh interrogation tactics. But we let the most valuable potential witnesses and informants on 9/11 go free--on FBI planes, on a day the nation's air traffic was grounded.
Which Iraqi insurgent? Name him. Sure there are some insurgents we have captured in Iraq that we are holding, but we are holding them because they are NOT Iraqi and they are trying to kill US soldiers. They can't say they are defending THEIR country, so what are they doing? They are there only to kill and so therefore, we hold them. So fucking what?
Instead, we should be massively funding alternative energy, killing the SUV loophole, making tax breaks for conservation of energy, increasing the CAFE restrictions on gas economy for vehicles (where 2/3 of our 850,000,000 gallons of daily oil is burned), and erasing rather than running up the deficit, so we don't need the Saudis and the Chinese to pay our bills any more.
Mariner.
Bush is funding alternative energey programs, something Clinton DID NOT do. The SUV loophole is GONE as of the end of September of this year (you didn't know that? I did, cuz I bought and SUV in September right before the loophole disappeared - :moon4: )
As for the Chinese paying our bills, the same was said in the 80's about the Japanese. Are you being racist? The Europeans own more of the US debt than anybody. So why not mention them?
The deficit will go down. Plus, as I mentioned before and which ou continue to ignore, the deficit is NOT EVEN CLOSE to being a record based on it as a % of GDP. And, as I said before, economists will tell you that deficits are not always bad. They only are bad when you can't pay on them and when they go on for too long. It hasn't even been 4 years yet. Hell, we ran deficits for 20 years under the democrats.
Get a life and get an education.
