McPeak: "Dark chapter in our history: an experiment that it doesn't matter who you elect president."

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/13710030/leaving_iraq_the_grim_truth/1

Not to be crass, but what does that kind of conflict do to the global oil supply?

Juan Cole: During the war between Iraq and Iran, Saddam and Khomeini didn't destroy each other's oil-producing capabilities, because they knew it would make each of them a Fourth World country. But if you get a big multicountry guerrilla war, guerrillas could do what they've been doing in northern Iraq: Hit the oil pipelines. Guerrillas aren't calculating it the way states are as far as mutually assured destruction. If you got pipeline sabotage in Iran and Saudi Arabia and southern Iraq, you could take twelve percent of the world's petroleum production off the market. That looks like the second Great Depression.

(Ret.) Gen. McPeak: This is a dark chapter in our history. Whatever else happens, our country's international standing has been frittered away by people who don't have the foggiest understanding of how the hell the world works. America has been conducting an experiment for the past six years, trying to validate the proposition that it really doesn't make any difference who you elect president. Now we know the result of that experiment (laughs). If a guy is stupid, it makes a big difference.

It certainly does- and that doesn't just apply to Presidents.

He has done all this on purpose, at somebody else's behest.

Let's not let him off so easily by taking the "he's an idiot" defense.

and assume they're incompetent. Typical con, make the mark think he's the smart one while you strip his assets.

between Gore and *, right?:sarcasm:

Hillary wants to continue the war beyond 2009 to protect "vital national
security interests" (oil) but will stand aside and not stop the blood-letting.

Her wing of the party (the McCailiffe wing) tried to provoke an Iraq war in 1998 by starting one, with intensive bombing. If Saddam had successfully retaliated we'd have been in there 3 years earlier (and using classic neoliberal logic, 9-11 would have been averted.)

Gore was much different back then. Putting Bush in power "frees" him to pander to the people he secretly cares most about (us). Putting these Beltway guys in power, however, requires them to answer to the same monied interests that control Bush.

Like the drug companies on whose behalf Gore lobbied the WTO to prevent Africa from manufacturing generic AIDS drugs in 1999.

That sort of thing can hurt a person's campaign, y'know?

Rendall | 3/8/2007, 1:53 pm EST

How can Al Qaeda be stronger when we have killed all of them? How can you have WWIII when we could blow the living hell out of any country? Bottom line is we need Iraq. We need it to face the evil that has spread through our ONLY PLANET PEOPLE. We have to fight because they will not listen to reason. Iraq’s who kill there own people and sleep in there beds. They scurry like rats when the big dog comes, biting at it’s feet. We will secure Iraq; it has to be done, either by us or the Iraq government.


Matt | 3/8/2007, 1:47 pm EST

If we give up what does it say about our resolve to fight evil and spread freedom including 9/11? This may be another Vietnam but this isn’t another 60’s. No other country can come close to doing what we have done, from opening the second front in WWII, Korea and Vietnam. Our hearts are in the right place but there is a price to pay; if this is not it then I don’t know what is.


Canada1 | 3/8/2007, 1:30 pm EST

Canada and NATO will continue to help rebuild Afghanistan so the US can concentrate on Iraq. Iraq is not lost and the security in Bagdad is a great strategy, all we need to do is capture Bagdad and the country will fall. By the way don’t forget Israel just finished up a decent offensive last summer.


Boner | 3/8/2007, 3:52 pm EST

WWIII sounds good.

:rofl:

keyboard soldiers. AKA Assholes. :grr:

True Superpower | 3/9/2007, 10:08 am EST

As the world’s last true Superpower (US) we have an obligation to bomb any country we damn please. You see Iraq’s insurgence will face the great explosion of the MOAB. Also, think about all the experience, technology and skill we are gaining from this. Once again the US is on the forefront of innovation, technology and military power.

I'd reluctantly settle for Gerald Ford or Dan Quayle any day over the psychotic hillbilly we now have in power and his big city ghoul of a Vice President.

That's an insult to hillbillies.

Hell, he's not even from the hills. He's from Connecticut. The same place that gave us JoeMentum.

but I know that he's an ill-mannered, uncouth, uncivilized psychopath. He may not be a hillybilly, but it's the insane part that troubles me, not whether he has a high IQ. I could go for a President who is of average intelligence or even less than average, but who has a good heart and good intentions to serve all of the people. Probably it's an insult to either place to say that Bush represents the ways of the people who live in either place.

He's an embarrassment to everyone of us Americans.