Quote:If we're going to spend money we don't have I don't see why we can't spend smartly by partnering with the UNHCR more that we already do and help more people with less money.
If that article is accurate, I'd be all on board with this idea.
Quote:I read an article somewhere yesterday that said it would cost X amount of dollars to resettle refugees here while it would cost a fraction of that in refugee camps through the UNHCR. I can't find the story now.
I understand what it's like to live in fear of your neighbors/neighborhood. To constantly be afraid of drive-by shootings, possible armed burglary, rape, etc. It's not the same as a war zone, but in context it was as bad for me in those conditions as it is for the true refugees in their situations. But there are refugee camps over there that, if funded properly, would meet the needs of these folks until they could be resettled in their own or nearby countries. They would not be forced to stay in their homes/towns/villages, they would be sheltered and fed. But apparently we have to bring a butt ton of folks here. To a country that is trillions of dollars in debt and can't even (or are unwilling) to help the people in need here (and I don't mean the cling-ons). That's not mentioning all of them going to Europe.
If we're going to spend money we don't have I don't see why we can't spend smartly by partnering with the UNHCR more that we already do and help more people with less money. I am so tired of politicians making decisions for the People that don't impact them at all. The infrastructure of the states to support all of these people is going to implode. But the politicians don't care because it doesn't affect them.
I second this, we are in the same predicament over here in the UK.
Quote:If that article is accurate, I'd be all on board with this idea.
I'm going to try and find it. I think I remember where I saw it. I'll post the link.
Can we all agree that it was a mistake to depose Saddam Hussein and it is also a mistake to try to depose Assad? Wouldn't we be a whole lot better off with both those guys in power? At least those guys were reasonable. They could be bought. What we have now is far worse that what we would have if we had not embarked on this failed attempt to democratize the middle east.
It's like we can't resist stirring the pot, thinking we'll "improve" things in another country, and we get burned.
Our policy in the middle east for the last 15 years has been a disaster. It started under Bush, and it's continued under Obama. It's a bipartisan failure.
Wrong wrong and abhorently wrong.
Iraq was so stable post surge that obama ran around the country taking credot for it. Had he left a residual force in countrt we we ould hVe had the intell and real time assets on the ground to deztroy isis in its infancy.
Quote:Wrong wrong and abhorently wrong.
Iraq was so stable post surge that obama ran around the country taking credot for it. Had he left a residual force in countrt we we ould hVe had the intell and real time assets on the ground to deztroy isis in its infancy.
Bush agreed to the withdrawal deadline and agreed not to leave behind a residual force.
Quote:Wrong wrong and abhorently wrong.
Iraq was so stable post surge that obama ran around the country taking credot for it. Had he left a residual force in countrt we we ould hVe had the intell and real time assets on the ground to deztroy isis in its infancy.
Iraq could not possibly have been stable. We deposed a Sunni minority and installed a Shia majority who refused to allow any Sunni participation in the government. That is why we have ISIS. ISIS is being run by a remnant of Saddam Hussein's army.
The whole idea that the Iraqi's would welcome us with open arms, and become a democracy was just stupid. Those people don't care about having a democracy. They care about settling scores with their enemies. They care about whether they are Sunni or Shia. What we did was take a relatively stable situation and create a Muslim civil war. And then we took sides in it!
Quote:Link it up
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.g...204-6.html
Negotiated by the Bush presidency, went into effect on Dec. 4, 2008. Before Obama was President. Important few lines about halfway down the page, in the third section:
<p style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial, verdana, 'san-serif';font-size:12px;background-color:rgb(213,229,235);">
As we further transition security responsibilities to the Iraqi Security Forces, military commanders will continue to move U.S. combat forces out of major populated areas so that they are all out by June 30, 2009.
- The Security Agreement also sets a date of December 31, 2011, for all U.S. forces to withdraw from Iraq.
Your premise itself is flawed. The person who puts suni vs. Shia ahead of logic or a political process will also put suni or shia vs. Infadel ahead of logic or due process.
A war for political recognition does not include bombing and decapitating religious sects tgat have nothing to do with your political revognition. It has to do with radicalfundamentalism in that part of the world.
The precipitator and instigator was sadaam hussein. He did not comply with the will of the international community and left the world with no choice. It was his contempt and commitment to preserving the ability to pursue wmd that precipitated the invasion.
Its Assads abuses and use of wmd against hos own people prompting the events in syria. I am tired of this masochistic need by the left to offload responsibility from evil dictators just to blame america.
Quote:Iraq could not possibly have been stable. We deposed a Sunni minority and installed a Shia majority who refused to allow any Sunni participation in the government. That is why we have ISIS. ISIS is being run by a remnant of Saddam Hussein's army.
I enjoy the different origin stories for ISIS. One is that they're remnants of Hussein's army. Another is that they're disenchanted Sunnis who seek revenge on the west for eliminating their position of power. Their actual origins lie in the late 1990's, when they formed as a terror group independent of Al Qaeda or the Taliban before swearing allegiance to Osama Bin Laden and becoming the natural successors to AQ when it was effectively reduced to a shell of its former self.
Quote:The precipitator and instigator was sadaam hussein. He did not comply with the will of the international community and left the world with no choice. It was his contempt and commitment to preserving the ability to pursue wmd that precipitated the invasion.
Funny how it went from, "We have irrefutable proof that there are WMDs in Iraq, and that's why we're invading," to, "We have reason to believe that Saddam Hussein was pursuing the ability to acquire WMDs, and that made it worth the time, money and American and coalition lives to invade, even though what we're left with now is a far bigger mess than we would have been in with Saddam."
Just admit it already; Iraq was an oil war.
Quote:That couldn't be further from the truth.
Why, because you haven't heard about it? Why do you think the United States all of a sudden decided and announced that Assad "has to go"? He was next in line after Saddam, Mubarak, Gaddafi, etc. Strong leadership of non-sectarian nations cannot continue. Christians, Jews & Muslims all living in peace under these regimes will not be tolerated. We are giving arms to any wackos who promise they'll use them against Assad. The whole Benghazi operation was to ship Gaddafi's stores of weapons to Turkey and then to "moderates" in Syria. The attack on the "compound" (it certainly wasn't an Embassy) happened because the local Libyan wackos wanted the weapons for themselves.
What? How was it an oil war? We didnt take oil.
Quote:What? How was it an oil war? We didnt take oil.
We wrestled control of the oil out of the hands of a despot who was threatening to use it as an economic weapon. We did not need to take it, we just needed to insure we had access to it.
Quote:Funny how it went from, "We have irrefutable proof that there are WMDs in Iraq, and that's why we're invading," to, "We have reason to believe that Saddam Hussein was pursuing the ability to acquire WMDs, and that made it worth the time, money and American and coalition lives to invade, even though what we're left with now is a far bigger mess than we would have been in with Saddam."
Just admit it already; Iraq was an oil war.
No, Iraq was a war of revenge. We had turned the situation in Afghanistan by providing air support to the Northern Alliance, and we were feeling our oats, thinking we were so powerful we could do just about anything we want, and Bush 43 decided it was time to get revenge on Hussein for his attempt to assassinate Bush 41.
Then the military industrial complex saw that if we used up part of our stockpile of bombs and missiles, they would get some contracts for more bombs and missiles, so they piled in and fed the whole effort, with the assistance of Cheney and Rumsfeld.
For Bush 41, it was a war of revenge. For the people around him, it was a chance to throw our weight around in the Middle East, blow up some bombs and missiles, and get some contracts for the military industrial complex.
And several trillion dollars later, we have this disaster on our hands. We depose the Sunnis in favor of the Shias, the Shias don't want to share power with the Sunnis, and therefore the Sunnis go join ISIS. Chaos and widespread bloodletting ensue.
The invasion of Iraq was the worst US foreign policy mistake of all time.
Im buying stock in tin foil hats baby!
Quote:Im buying stock in tin foil hats baby!
I tried to get into the futures market there a while back. Not worth it. Eric and this guy named "Shackleford" in Texas have a duopoly on it, and they've driven prices so high that a new investor could never hope to see a worthwhile ROI, if they see one at all.
All wars are bankers wars. Saddam threatened to sell oil for Euros instead of dollars, kicking away the only prop for the U.S. Federal Reserve Note, the OPEC agreement that oil was to be sold only for "dollars". Saddam had to go.
Gaddafi was actually a fantastic leader for Libya, providing wealth, stability, and opportunity for his people. How many here know about the extensive underground river project he built, to supply the aquifer to the surrounding desert and turn it into farms? The American and British engineers he hired said it couldn't be done; he did it anyway.
Gaddafi's terminal mistake was his proposal for an African monetary system based on a gold Dinar. Any nation proposing a gold-backed system will be immediately wiped out by the peddlers of what we call "money".