Here's the answer to anyone clamoring for American intervention anywhere in the world. 6 years of this goddam war and waste and killing. All for this. It's like the right-wing revenge to trap America in a hellhole. If all that money had been applied to social security, or anything useful, how much better off we would all be.

Sadly, it's even worse than that. This is the first war in American history to be funded entirely on borrowed money. We couldn't have spent it elsewhere because we never actually had it to begin with (though we might have paid for the stimulus with more than a hundred billion left over had we borrowed an equivalent amount). Imagine putting twelve billion dollars a month on a credit card for more than six years, and then having to worry about replacing damaged equipment, caring for wounded vets and interest on top of that.

I'm afraid we have not yet begun to pay for OIF. That will fall to our children and grandchildren, who will also have to pioneer the post-fossil fuel economy since we still refuse to admit that the oil is running out.

:-(

What's missed here is the behind the scene myopic focus, or lack of multi-tasking, by the previous administration in getting this SOFA agreement, and not simultaniously pushing hard for the al-Maliki governent to pass an oil revenue sharing plan and bring the Sunni into the government and security services - something that may come back to haunt?

On to another subject of possible interest to you Mr. quillsinister: <link>

All the more sickening when you recall the absolute vicious and stupid bluster with which they entered into this fiasco!

Because of the truly vast stupidity of the Republicans...not just Bush...I've been reading about what happened to China under the Ming...it all does come down to arrogance and racism in the elite...for instance, when the Empress was given money to build a navy, she built a stone ship on a lake in the Forbidden City!! She would not listen to anyone, that elite thought they knew it all, she could not empathize or get her mind around how the world had changed, and very quickly.

That's why I don't plan on having children. To me it's inhumane to subject someone to what's ahead. Shit, I wish my mom didn't have me, because things suck right now. I can't imagine how people live to be 80 and up in today's world. They must've had a lot of goals to accomplish to live that long.

I still worry about the lack of reconciliation between Sunni and Shia, but I wonder if attrition and migration have reduced Sunni numbers to the point where it no longer matters. If things have quieted down, it would seem to indicate that the Sunnis have either accepted their disenfranchisement, fled the country or been otherwise dealt with. Admittedly, reconciliation in a religious conflict that's been around for 1,200 years wasn't the most realistic outcome, but some preludes to reconciliation like profit-sharing might have been a good step in that direction.

Thanks for the link.

:-)

"I've been reading about what happened to China under the Ming..."

Yes, he certainly was merciless.

Oh, wait, I'm thinking of someone else.

;-)

I wouldn't say that things suck, exactly. Things are just interesting, like in the Chinese curse, "may you live in interesting times." To us falls the task of reinventing our society in any way we see fit within the constraints of thermodynamics, since the material basis for that society—namely fossil fuel—is a dwindling resource. My own hope is that changing conditions will drive ideas like sustainability to replace at the center of our psyche the blind push for profit and growth that has brought us to this point. So if we choose to accept the inevitability of this change, the next generation or two can very possibly set the pattern of civilization for the next few hundred years. Of course, if we don’t, then we will very likely witness a fairly epic crash like the Norse in Greenland or the Easter Islanders, only on a global scale. Or maybe our children will snap into action effectively enough to make up for our current lethargic stupor; though I would rather we didn’t leave it all for them on principle. I’m happy my parents had me and I plan on having my own children someday, but I also expect many years of hard work trying to leave them a more promising future than the one I was born into. Just imagine yourself in Lord of the Rings; we’re off to Mordor and it will likely suck getting there, but that is the path that is laid before us and it’s ignoble to shirk the adventure.

:-D

amen to that.

It's past time for the US Congress to require of the Defense Dept that they compose a rational grand strategy for the defense of the United States, leaving out things like defending Taiwan and S. Korea, the democracy-spreading operations, and generally trying to hold the lid down on the kettle everywhere in the world simultaneously.

Problem is, there are too many lawmakers who owe their incomes and prestige to the Defense Establishment. So if it ever happens, it will have to come from a second term President (or a first term President who doesn't want a second term, which is about as likely to appear as a unicorn)

I wonder who's going to get all those Ford Explorers that Halliburton bought for $70,000 apiece for every manager AND his secretary. They ought to have pretty low mileage, because most of those people never left their compounds.

I remember a conversation I had here a few years ago with someone who was trying to explain to me that HAL couldn't be a war profiteer because their profit was capped at 7%. He didn't understand the nagic of "cost plus 7%", when nobody is accountable for the "cost" part.

I'll second that.

Given the fuel consumption of an expeditionary military force, I wonder if diminishing oil reserves might give an insightful political leader the leverage to force the issue and present it to the American people in terms that aren't open to any 'soft on terror' kind of BS counterattacks. This could probably be done now, given how our oil consumption drives negative trade balances and deficits, how much oil we have to purchase from the Middle East and how much of that money ends up in the pockets of people who don't like us.

I love all the numbers thrown around un-sourced and the mention of the forbidden Ford Explorers that people willfully drive around in contravention of this new crackpot, neo-puritan religion and its endles Thou shall not's, made up on the spot and applied to "the other". If government doesn't have the money for a program, the scrap it and fore all those on the government teet. That's all. Over and out