And you wonder why

[onmyknees]

If you can stomach this...check it out. Fannie and Freddie. This is why we say the government should limited. Anything they touch they fuck up. Let's get in the mortgage bussiness and give everybody a chicken, a pot and a house with zero money down ! These fuckers should be in a Federal Penn. And at a time when we're borrowing 60 cents of every dollar we spend from our daddy ( China) , we're not only paying the salaries of these crooks, and paying to bail out Fannie and Freddie, we're paying thier legal bills to boot, and the meter's running ! Franklin Raines...that's the guy that at a congressional hearing on the matter , Maxine Waters assured us..."Fannie and Freddie are doing just fine under the fine leadership of Mr. Raines" She should be in a cell right next to them. So the next time you ask yourself...geeze...why are these Tea Partiers so angry....whip out this article and re-read it.



http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/24/business/24fees.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

[Odelay]

Half of Wall Street should also be in a Federal Penitentiary. If you think Freddie and Fanny operated in a vacuum, then you're naive. Wall Street was the co-pilot from start to finish throughout this housing collapse.

In other words... some people in the private sector suck! Suck big time.

[Chief1860]

If the liberal ass NY Times is trashing anything on the left you know the shit has hit the fan. Now if they could only stop blowing Obama.

[trish]

If the liberal ass NY Times is trashing anything on the left...it attests to the fact that it's reporting is without bias.

[onmyknees]

Half of Wall Street should also be in a Federal Penitentiary. If you think Freddie and Fanny operated in a vacuum, then you're naive. Wall Street was the co-pilot from start to finish throughout this housing collapse.

In other words... some people in the private sector suck! Suck big time.

I don't deny that...( half of wall street should be in a Federal Penitentiary) but that would pretty much wipe out Obama's economic team, and his Czars !!!!!!!

Wall Street went along for the ride, but this dates back to the Clinton Adminastration and HUD Secratary the esteemed Andrew Cumuo. Fannie and Freedie were stuffed with political hacks to carry out that policy. Wall Street was but one leg of a three legged stool, and the housing crisis was caused by bad policy, and the falacy that home ownership is a right. The same old great society shit just repackaged. Nobody's naive, but some of us have our heads buried in the sand.

[Faldur]

it attests to the fact that it's reporting is without bias.

Lol, I actually shot a little coffee across my desk on that one. And Fox news is fair and balanced. And the tooth fairy... well we can all see where this is going.

[onmyknees]

Lol, I actually shot a little coffee across my desk on that one. And Fox news is fair and balanced. And the tooth fairy... well we can all see where this is going.



I like Trish, but she's on a roll lately ....A Big FAIL roll !! Trish has a thing for the NY Times....most progressives do. I understand that. I sit next to people on airlines all the time that like everyone on the plane to know they're reading the Times. They think it makes them seem smart!! Their editorial opinions spill over into the news stories so often it's laughable, and everyone knows it. The other day when we were arguing about who should be the arbiter of what is dangerous and inflammatory political rhetoric, I asked her Trish rhetorically..." who should be the arbiter Trish...The NY Times? " It was I the context of the disgraceful coverage by Krugman and others at the Times in the aftermath of Tucson. Her reply was ( and I'm paraphrasing) " Why of course we should allow them to arbitrate "


You see, the NY Times stopped being the NY Times more than a decade ago, but because they lean far left, progressives are in denial. If you doubt that Trish, or Hippy or Odelay here's a perfect example of what they do, on a daily basis...and how they either omit facts, or shade them to fit their agenda. Many times it's subtle, and lots of lazy people who lack intellectual curiosity and don't read competing periodicals will come away with exactly the view the Times wants. It's one reason why they are bleeding money. Political satirist PJ O'Rourke says reading the Times is like visiting a senile old aunt in a nursing home. This is a Fascinating article..I'd say James Taranto body slams the Times and pretty much exposes them for the shills they are , and why the NY Times should hardly be the arbiter of anything, but they are the voice....The voice of the left.

Advocate of Violence

Frances Fox Piven and the New York Times's dishonest campaign for "civility."


By JAMES TARANTO (http://online.wsj.com/search/term.html?KEYWORDS=JAMES+TARANTO&bylinesearch=true)

In the olden days, Frances Fox Piven was a cutting-edge social theorist of the hard left. In a 1977 book, she and her husband, Richard Cloward, argued "that the poor and unemployed are so isolated from the levers of power in America that their greatest potential impact is to withhold 'quiescence in civil life: they can riot,' " as Stanley Kurtz (http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/257733/frances-fox-piven-s-violent-agenda-stanley-kurtz) reports in National Review Online:

At the heart of the book, Cloward and Piven luxuriously describe instances of "mob looting," "rent riots," and similar disruptions, egged on especially by Communist-party organizers in the 1930s. Many of those violent protests resulted in injuries. A few led to deaths. The central argument of Poor People's Movements is that it was not formal democratic activity but violent disruptions inspired by leftist organizers that forced the first great expansion of the welfare state.
Toward the end of the book, when Cloward and Piven describe their own work with the National Welfare Rights Organization, they treat the violent urban rioting of the Sixties as a positive force behind that era's expansion of the welfare statePiven is now in the autumn of life, 78 and widowed nearly a decade. But she still dreams of revolution, as evidenced by this article in the Jan. 10 issue of the soft-core hard-left periodical The Nation (http://www.thenation.com/article/157292/mobilizing-jobless):

Before people can mobilize for collective action, they have to develop a proud and angry identity and a set of claims that go with that identity. They have to go from being hurt and ashamed to being angry and indignant. . . .
An effective movement of the unemployed will have to look something like the strikes and riots that have spread across Greece in response to the austerity measures forced on the Greek government by the European Union, or like the student protests that recently spread with lightning speed across England in response to the prospect of greatly increased school fees.The first paragraph of this passage could describe the Tea Party movement. But the Tea Party is nonviolent, and the second paragraph makes clear that is not what Piven has in mind. In fact, Piven has nothing but scorn for the Tea Party, which is the subject of a bigoted rant she delivered last month, which you can hear on Glenn Beck's site TheBlaze.com (http://www.theblaze.com/stories/frances-fox-piven-the-tea-party-is-all-about-sex/):

These voters . . . are older. . . . They're white, they're all white. . . . These are the people in American society--and you know, they are always there. . . . For them, change is for the worse. After all, there's an African-American in the White House. That's sort of beyond their cultural experience. The American population is darkening. That's also beyond their experience. . . . And you know, I don't have any data on this, but I am absolutely sure that sex is very important in what is happening to older people.No doubt the Tea Party's individualistic orientation also makes it anathema to the superannuated socialist. Piven has gained a degree of notoriety of late thanks to Beck, who has frequently and harshly criticized her ideas on his radio and TV shows. In a Saturday news story, the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/22/business/media/22beck.html) reported that "her name has become a kind of shorthand for 'enemy' on Mr. Beck's Fox News Channel program."
A three-part, 15-letter, five-syllable name is "shorthand" for a five-letter word? As we shall see, that isn't the only thing the Times got backward about this story.
This passage in the Times story sums up the Piven-Beck ruckus:

Her assertions that "an effective movement of the unemployed will have to look something like the strikes and riots that have spread across Greece," and that "protesters need targets, preferably local and accessible ones," led Mr. Beck to ask on Fox this week, "Is that not inciting violence? Is that not asking for violence?" Videos of fires in Greece played behind him.
"That is not a call for violence," Ms. Piven said Friday of the references to riots. "There is a kind of rhetorical trick that is always used to denounce movements of ordinary people, and that is to imply that the massing of people itself is violent."It must be said that the answer to Beck's question is no. Piven is not inciting violence.
http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-MA045_botwt0_C_20110124095726.jpg YouTube/"Democracy Now" Piven: "Sex is very important."



The legal standard for incitement was spelled out by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1969 case of Brandenburg v. Ohio. (http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=395&invol=444) A local Ku Klux Klan leader was convicted of "criminal syndicalism" for "advocat[ing] . . . the duty, necessity, or propriety of crime, sabotage, violence, or unlawful methods of terrorism as a means of accomplishing industrial or political reform."
Brandenburg had been filmed at a KKK rally, where he said: "We're not a revengent organization, but if our president, our Congress, our Supreme Court, continues to suppress the white, Caucasian race, it's possible that there might have to be some revengeance taken." He also spoke of his desire to "return" blacks--to whom he referred by a now-unprintable six-letter slur--to Africa and Jews to Israel.
In a unanimous unsigned opinion, the justices overturned Brandenburg's conviction: "The constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action."
There was no risk of imminent lawless action when Piven wrote her piece in The Nation. It is highly unlikely that the magazine's readers are numerous and energetic enough to stage an actual riot. Thus Piven, like Brandenburg, was merely advocating violence, not inciting it. She crossed no legal line.
She did, however, cross a moral line. In the past few weeks we've heard a lot, especially from the Times, about the dangers of violent rhetoric. Most examples of such "rhetoric" consist of innocuous metaphors: a political action committee's map of districts whose congressmen are targeted for defeat, or a representative's urging her constituents to be "armed" with information. Piven's statement that "protesters need targets," taken on its own, would fall into this category. But her endorsement of European-style riots constitutes actual violent rhetoric.
The Times, however, inverts the story. In the paper's telling, Piven, the advocate of violence, is the victim; Beck, her critic, is the villain. The headline reads: "Spotlight From Glenn Beck Brings a CUNY Professor Threats."
Podcast

James Taranto on Piven and the Times. (http://podcast.mktw.net/wsj/audio/20110124/pod-wsjtaranto/pod-wsjtaranto.mp3)


Piven claims to have received at least three threatening emails, which an editorial in The Nation quotes (warning: obscene language at link (http://www.thenation.com/article/157900/glenn-beck-targets-frances-fox-piven)). None include a direct threat, but all are hostile and offensive, and two wish her dead. It is wrong to send such foul communications, and if police conclude that any of these are true threats, the senders should be prosecuted. Neither the Times nor The Nation reports that such a determination has been made.
Years ago, we covered (http://alturl.com/x7tvv) a Ku Klux Klan rally in New York. The 16 Klansmen who showed up were vastly outnumbered by the scores of police on the scene to protect them from thousands of angry counterprotesters. The event must have cost the taxpayers a bundle, but that is the price we pay for freedom of speech, even morally repugnant speech. If Piven is genuinely under threat, the New York City Police Department should provide her with extra protection.
But the idea that Beck is to blame for these alleged threats is baseless. That is why the Times makes this accusation only indirectly, through insinuation and innuendo, consistent with its recent journalistic modus operandi. Indeed, what exactly is Beck supposed to have done wrong here? There is no allegation that anything he has said about Piven or her ideas is untrue, save for her denial in the Times that she has advocated violence, which is contradicted by her own quote in the previous paragraph.
Nor is there any claim that Beck has advocated threats against Piven. Quite the contrary, the Times reports that his website has suppressed them:

One such threat, published as an anonymous comment on The Blaze, read, "Somebody tell Frances I have 5000 roundas ready and I'll give My life to take Our freedom back." (The spelling and capitalizing have not been changed.)
That comment and others that were direct threats were later deleted, but other comments remain that charge her with treasonous behavior.Now, "treasonous behavior" is strong language, but it reminded us of something we read in 2009:

So the House passed the Waxman-Markey climate-change bill. In political terms, it was a remarkable achievement.
But 212 representatives voted no. A handful of these no votes came from representatives who considered the bill too weak, but most rejected the bill because they rejected the whole notion that we have to do something about greenhouse gases.
And as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn't help thinking that I was watching a form of treason--treason against the planet.That was Paul Krugman (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/opinion/29krugman.html), star columnist of the New York Times. Glenn Beck's website enforces on its commenters a standard of civility comparable to the standard the Times imposes on staff columnists for its op-ed page. That may be an indictment of Beck, but it is not one that the Times can credibly hand up.
(We should note here that Beck's TV program appears on Fox News Channel, which, like The Wall Street Journal and this website, is owned by News Corp. His radio show and TheBlaze.com have no connection to News Corp.)
The Times story on the Beck-Piven conflict is in furtherance of a public relations campaign launched last week by a group styling itself the Center for Constitutional Rights. Its press release (http://ccrjustice.org/newsroom/press-releases/ccr-appeals-fox-news-president-help-silencing-glenn-beck-misinformation-camp) announcing the effort accomplishes a Times-like inversion in the very headline: "CCR Appeals to Fox News President for Help in Silencing Glenn Beck Misinformation Campaign Against Progressive Professor."
They may not agree with what you say, but they'll fight to the death for your right to remain silent.
And the New York Times will cheer them on in that fight. Why is a newspaper that has been posturing as the scourge of violent rhetoric now siding with a purveyor of such rhetoric, and blatantly slanting the news as it does so? Because her opponent is a prominent media figure from outside the old media establishment. Because Glenn Beck is a threat to the authority of the New York Times.

[Ben]

And Eliot Spitzer tried to take on the corruption and criminality of Wall Street and look what happened to him....

YouTube - Client 9 : The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer - Official Trailer [HD] (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WldZazpFy7I)

YouTube - Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer Clip HD Exclusive (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6JNFusV3ZI)

[trish]

I actually shot a little coffee across my desk ...Well that's because you're an idiot. There are a number of papers across the globe that are well respected in the business for the quality and objectivity of their reporting. In the U.S. both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal number among those that have that respect. You know it. Everyone knows it. They are generally as unbiased in their reporting as a paper can be. Of course the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal feature opinion pages that lean in opposite directions. Editorials are by definition biased. Both papers, as all papers around the globe, have had their scandals, and they've dealt with them. It is because of their respectability that scandals involving them are almost always high profile. In other venues reporters are known to lie on an hourly basis, and no one makes a big deal about it. Not so when it's the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times. Yes, I read both fairly regularly. No, I don't watch FOX or MSNBC very often at all.

[Ben]

If you can stomach this...check it out. Fannie and Freddie. This is why we say the government should limited. Anything they touch they fuck up. Let's get in the mortgage bussiness and give everybody a chicken, a pot and a house with zero money down ! These fuckers should be in a Federal Penn. And at a time when we're borrowing 60 cents of every dollar we spend from our daddy ( China) , we're not only paying the salaries of these crooks, and paying to bail out Fannie and Freddie, we're paying thier legal bills to boot, and the meter's running ! Franklin Raines...that's the guy that at a congressional hearing on the matter , Maxine Waters assured us..."Fannie and Freddie are doing just fine under the fine leadership of Mr. Raines" She should be in a cell right next to them. So the next time you ask yourself...geeze...why are these Tea Partiers so angry....whip out this article and re-read it.



http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/24/business/24fees.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

The Tea Party do have legitimate grievances:

YouTube - Noam Chomsky on right wing Tea Party protests, " People with real grievances" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2zYaKXeyXE)

[yodajazz]

Why is it now that the deliverer of the news, is more important than facts today? People used to debate facts. But here's an imaginary scenario: Onmyknees, recieves a call late at night, when he is asleep. Sir I am a neighbor and your house is on fire. Onmyknees asks, "are you a liberal, or a conservative?" The person replies, "I am a liberal." So he hangs up, and goes back to sleep. We never hear from him again, and HA is crushed, wondering what has happened to our beloved poster.

Here's a fact. As a result of our invasion of Iraq, 100,000 people have died. For us it it entirely meaningless, because we are not sure who is responsible for delivering those facts. Yet in Iraq, people have died, and there are consequences there. Not only that, but in the rest of the Muslim world, sees a 'Christian' nation invading a Islamic nation. The Koran has many passages related to the people that were fighting against him. Its not about believers vs unbelievers, because the Koran says Christians and Jews are all believers (of one God). But Christian and Jews who sided with his enemies are castigated. So maybe it was 80,000 that have died? Maybe it was 120,000? Pretending that facts dont exist, does not waive us from the consequences of the facts.

[Odelay]

The Tea Party do have legitimate grievances:

YouTube - Noam Chomsky on right wing Tea Party protests, " People with real grievances" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2zYaKXeyXE)


Interesting Chomsky piece, Ben. Thanks for posting it. I tend to agree with you (from a post in another thread) that the voice of the Left is truly left out of the debate. Go to any of the main liberal blogs, i.e. DailyKos, Huffpost, TPM, etc., and you will not find such pieces by Chomsky. And when they do mention Ralph Nader, it's with almost universal ridicule. Unions have fallen off the table in terms of a topic worth talking about. There are several voices in the liberal blogosphere who are actively cheering the demise of the union movement. I guess the thinking goes... we have transcended the need for unions and so ignoring them or marginalizing them is a "Progressive" idea.

The new progressive movement is a center left phenomenon, plain and simple.

[onmyknees]

Why is it now that the deliverer of the news, is more important than facts today? People used to debate facts. But here's an imaginary scenario: Onmyknees, recieves a call late at night, when he is asleep. Sir I am a neighbor and your house is on fire. Onmyknees asks, "are you a liberal, or a conservative?" The person replies, "I am a liberal." So he hangs up, and goes back to sleep. We never hear from him again, and HA is crushed, wondering what has happened to our beloved poster.

Here's a fact. As a result of our invasion of Iraq, 100,000 people have died. For us it it entirely meaningless, because we are not sure who is responsible for delivering those facts. Yet in Iraq, people have died, and there are consequences there. Not only that, but in the rest of the Muslim world, sees a 'Christian' nation invading a Islamic nation. The Koran has many passages related to the people that were fighting against him. Its not about believers vs unbelievers, because the Koran says Christians and Jews are all believers (of one God). But Christian and Jews who sided with his enemies are castigated. So maybe it was 80,000 that have died? Maybe it was 120,000? Pretending that facts dont exist, does not waive us from the consequences of the facts.


Well Yoda....on the first part of your profound post....I have caller ID and don't answer if I suspect it's a liberal or progressive. They're usually tryin' to sell me some shit I ain't buyin' LMAO !
I don't dislike left wing people at all....( I just avoid them !! LOL) In the military, or in business ones politics are irrelevant. But to be honest, I'm more closer a libertarian on many issues, but staunchly fiscally conservative.


On the second paragraph...I know full well the price paid for the Iraq War. The reality is with no invasion, many people would have perished under Saddam, you just wouldn't have heard about it. As I've posted previously I'm tormented about wars in Arab countries. Not because I believe Iraqi's understand the concept of freedom and democracy and will seize the opportunity , but because one American death may be too high a price to pay. One cannot judge these interventions in the near term. We may not know the answer for decades. To suggest , as I think you are that with no intervention, there would be no hate of the west is naive, with all due respect. They'd find some other reason, that's their history. They kill infidels. In the Arab world, The only thing a Shia distrusts more than an American is a Sunni. I see those as facts.

[yodajazz]

So you have political view detection software, on your phone? You’ve been holding out on us. Lol!.

I don’t buy the “saving Iraqi lives”. Not that Saddam wasn’t brutal. I need to throw in the fact that I think, the first war was justified, before I go any further. But if I look at the removal of Saddam with a cost/benefit analysis; I see the possible costs: 1. Removing Iran’s biggest competitor. 2. Bringing further instability to the region by encouraging Kurd independence effecting our NATO ally, Turkey, (but possibly Iran also). 3. Most importantly a negative impact in the world wide “war on terror”, with the worst case scenario of Pakistan being taken over by elements hostile to US interests. Iraq was a secular Islamic nation. The possible shift, could mean Islamic clerical types of governments coming to power.

On the benefit side besides saving Iraqi lives, the biggest plus factor is greater control over oil resources. To make saving Iraqi lives, a legitimate reason to invade, people would have been in imminent danger. They were not. The gassing of those people occurred in 1988, after which the US did nothing, until he invaded Kuwait. In fact it was the US’s Becthel Corp, that had plans to build a chemical plant, in Iraq after the gassing. It was only dropped because of the first Gulf War. (per Wikipedia article). So for people in the know, the ‘saving lives’ claim rings a little hollow. The ‘war for oil’ theory is boosted after looking at the writings of the group PNAC, which called for the invasion of Iraq in 1998. They even put an a ad in the Washington Post saying so. One of their stated reasons was not ‘oil’ per se, it was called “regional dominance”. The members of PNAC went on to get key positions in the Bush administration, most notably Donald Rumsfeld. Whether you agree with this or not is less important, than whether Muslims or Arabs, looked at it that way. I recall hearing that view expressed by some of them.

The only other legitimate claim to invade Iraq was self defense. We all know how the “weapons of mass destruction” turned out. On the other hand, I understand that many people cannot face the fact, that their beloved nation would invade someone for oil. Kind of makes us all an accessory to murder. I think for myself, that being Black in America gives me/us a more cynical view of our nation, even though I love my life here, and my nation. I was accused on a discussion board of "justifying terrorism". I happen to detest that form of violence, and feel that it is ultimately very counter-productive for Islam.

I looked up ‘libertarian’ and see that there are left and right wing libertarians. I don’t disagree with the overall theme of freedom. I just tend to distrust large private economic entities, believing that it is relatively easy for them to get unfair market shares to the point where their power harms the general good. My view is that they actually ‘destroy’ the free market concept with their power, (the traditional, monopoly is bad). So while I am for individual ‘freedom’, and private property, that some libertarians like, I feel government is necessary to protect the general good.

[Ben]

Interesting Chomsky piece, Ben. Thanks for posting it. I tend to agree with you (from a post in another thread) that the voice of the Left is truly left out of the debate. Go to any of the main liberal blogs, i.e. DailyKos, Huffpost, TPM, etc., and you will not find such pieces by Chomsky. And when they do mention Ralph Nader, it's with almost universal ridicule. Unions have fallen off the table in terms of a topic worth talking about. There are several voices in the liberal blogosphere who are actively cheering the demise of the union movement. I guess the thinking goes... we have transcended the need for unions and so ignoring them or marginalizing them is a "Progressive" idea.

The new progressive movement is a center left phenomenon, plain and simple.

And Unions are: democracy in the workplace. (I remember asking a guy: why do baseball players make so much money. He was befuddled. I pointed out that it was because they're in a union.
Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman has pointed out that the erosion of the middle class comes from the dismantling of unions and the drastic decreasing of taxes on the very rich; and, of course, I'd add the offshoring of jobs.
Actually, a conservative economist, Paul Craig Roberts, has said we cannot continue to offshore jobs. Otherwise we'll never see a complete recovery.) So, without a strong middle class, well, you have a mere corporate state. You'll have a very rich and powerful segment of society. (About 0.001 percent of the population.) And everyone else will be left to fend for themselves.
Noam Chomsky, quoting Adam Smith, said that the "principal architects" of state policy, namely the merchants and manufacturers, today corporations, are going to pay particular attention to their own interests regardless of the harm on others. And, of course, we see this with the offshoring of millions and millions of jobs. Because corporations, by their institutional structure, by law, have to maximize shareholder return. They've gotta increase investor return no matter, again, how much it harms laborers and communities.
So, as Chomsky has argued, real structural changes have to come from dismantling corporate institutional structures. (Actually, Ralph Nader has talked about actual shareholders and the workers running corporations. Of course, as everyone knows, it doesn't work that way. It's top-down. Totally authoritarian. And, again, even the shareholders, the actual owners, do NOT participate in the running of a corporation. Crazy, eh?)

YouTube - NOAM CHOMSKY An attack on classical liberalism (THE CORPORATION) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIpNnUy7p-A&feature=related)

YouTube - The Corporation [Full Length] (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeCxNuUlUBk)

[onmyknees]

So you have political view detection software, on your phone? You’ve been holding out on us. Lol!.

I don’t buy the “saving Iraqi lives”. Not that Saddam wasn’t brutal. I need to throw in the fact that I think, the first war was justified, before I go any further. But if I look at the removal of Saddam with a cost/benefit analysis; I see the possible costs: 1. Removing Iran’s biggest competitor. 2. Bringing further instability to the region by encouraging Kurd independence effecting our NATO ally, Turkey, (but possibly Iran also). 3. Most importantly a negative impact in the world wide “war on terror”, with the worst case scenario of Pakistan being taken over by elements hostile to US interests. Iraq was a secular Islamic nation. The possible shift, could mean Islamic clerical types of governments coming to power.

On the benefit side besides saving Iraqi lives, the biggest plus factor is greater control over oil resources. To make saving Iraqi lives, a legitimate reason to invade, people would have been in imminent danger. They were not. The gassing of those people occurred in 1988, after which the US did nothing, until he invaded Kuwait. In fact it was the US’s Becthel Corp, that had plans to build a chemical plant, in Iraq after the gassing. It was only dropped because of the first Gulf War. (per Wikipedia article). So for people in the know, the ‘saving lives’ claim rings a little hollow. The ‘war for oil’ theory is boosted after looking at the writings of the group PNAC, which called for the invasion of Iraq in 1998. They even put an a ad in the Washington Post saying so. One of their stated reasons was not ‘oil’ per se, it was called “regional dominance”. The members of PNAC went on to get key positions in the Bush administration, most notably Donald Rumsfeld. Whether you agree with this or not is less important, than whether Muslims or Arabs, looked at it that way. I recall hearing that view expressed by some of them.

The only other legitimate claim to invade Iraq was self defense. We all know how the “weapons of mass destruction” turned out. On the other hand, I understand that many people cannot face the fact, that their beloved nation would invade someone for oil. Kind of makes us all an accessory to murder. I think for myself, that being Black in America gives me/us a more cynical view of our nation, even though I love my life here, and my nation. I was accused on a discussion board of "justifying terrorism". I happen to detest that form of violence, and feel that it is ultimately very counter-productive for Islam.

I looked up ‘libertarian’ and see that there are left and right wing libertarians. I don’t disagree with the overall theme of freedom. I just tend to distrust large private economic entities, believing that it is relatively easy for them to get unfair market shares to the point where their power harms the general good. My view is that they actually ‘destroy’ the free market concept with their power, (the traditional, monopoly is bad). So while I am for individual ‘freedom’, and private property, that some libertarians like, I feel government is necessary to protect the general good.


You're a smart guy, so it confounds me you throw in with the looney..."no blood for oil" crowd. I think that was about #6 on a list of 7 legimate reasons for the invasion. And even if I conceeed the point, which I don't it's curious that just now....nearly 7 years after the regime was toppled, oil production is slowly increasing and besides, they're a member of OPEC so the thought of the US invading Iraq to assist OPEC in fixing Arab oil production and thus oil prices and hurting the US economy is really a strech.

A good source of the libratarian point of view can be found at reason.com.

[Cuchulain]

the looney..."no blood for oil" crowd. I think that was about #6 on a list of 7 legimate reasons for the invasion.

Horseshit. It was never about oil for the US. It was about oil for Cheney's Big Oil pals and the neocon wetdream of a Capitalist Utopia -

'The honey theory of Iraqi reconstruction stems from the most cherished belief of the war's ideological architects: that greed is good. Not good just for them and their friends but good for humanity, and certainly good for Iraqis. Greed creates profit, which creates growth, which creates jobs and products and services and everything else anyone could possibly need or want. The role of good government, then, is to create the optimal conditions for corporations to pursue their bottomless greed, so that they in turn can meet the needs of the society. The problem is that governments, even neoconservative governments, rarely get the chance to prove their sacred theory right: despite their enormous ideological advances, even George Bush's Republicans are, in their own minds, perennially sabotaged by meddling Democrats, intractable unions, and alarmist environmentalists.
Iraq was going to change all that. In one place on Earth, the theory would finally be put into practice in its most perfect and uncompromised form. A country of 25 million would not be rebuilt as it was before the war; it would be erased, disappeared. In its place would spring forth a gleaming showroom for laissez-faire economics, a utopia such as the world had never seen. Every policy that liberates multinational corporations to pursue their quest for profit would be put into place: a shrunken state, a flexible workforce, open borders, minimal taxes, no tariffs, no ownership restrictions. The people of Iraq would, of course, have to endure some short-term pain: assets, previously owned by the state, would have to be given up to create new opportunities for growth and investment. Jobs would have to be lost and, as foreign products flooded across the border, local businesses and family farms would, unfortunately, be unable to compete. But to the authors of this plan, these would be small prices to pay for the economic boom that would surely explode once the proper conditions were in place, a boom so powerful the country would practically rebuild itself.
The fact that the boom never came and Iraq continues to tremble under explosions of a very different sort should never be blamed on the absence of a plan. Rather, the blame rests with the plan itself, and the extraordinarily violent ideology upon which it is based'
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2004/09/0080197

There was no legitimate reason for invading and occupying Iraq...or Vietnam. It was blood for money and a lot of people died needless deaths. Even the CONs realize this. The rest is just spin.