Another liberal distortion on Iraq

www.myheritage.org...

Though this is a release from 2/2008, I have not found this referred to in other ATS posts.

Radical left-wing advocacy groups including MoveOn.org are uniting this week to launch a multi-million-dollar lobbying campaign. They spuriously claim that the softening economy can be cured by cutting and running from Iraq, a key front in the war on terror, and redirecting war spending to big-government social programs.

“As long as we keep pouring that money down the drain in Iraq, we’ll never solve our economic woes,” claims MoveOn.org. “We won’t have the money to take care of people hurt by the economic downturn, or to invest in making our economy more competitive.”

This is completely wrong. In fact, according to a debunking prepared by Heritage experts, it is not spending on social programs but military spending that has the short end of the stick.

Domestic spending has actually grown faster than defense spending. Since 1990, federal outlays on domestic programs have increased 62 percent, nearly twice the 33 percent rise in defense and homeland security spending. The latter rose under President Bush, not only to respond to global terrorism, but also to make up for Clinton-era budget cuts that had left America’s military in danger of becoming a “hollow force.”
Defense spending is well below historical levels. At 4.0 percent of GDP, up from 3.0 percent when President Bush took office, current defense spending remains well below the 40-year average of 5.6 percent of GDP.
Health care and anti-poverty spending are already at record highs. Since 2001, antipoverty spending has increased 29 percent despite record-high employment.
In the last seven years, domestic discretionary spending increased 6.6 percent per year, on average. Had domestic spending increases been limited to “only” 38 percent during that time—5.5 percent annually—the budget would already be in balance. Proposals to pile on even more domestic spending in the name of “stimulus” will only put a balanced budget further out of reach.

Hopefully this is incendiary enough to provoke some sort of learned response.

Flail away.

reply to post by kerontehe


This sounds like conservative propaganda if you ask me. It uses all of the good conservative talking points:

Radical left-wing

cutting and running from Iraq

redirecting war spending to big-government social programs

Clinton-era budget cuts that had left America’s military in danger of becoming a “hollow force.

Liberals and conservatives spend so much time blaming each other that nothing will ever get accomplished. Then again, I think that is the purpose of the two party system.

reply to post by Karlhungis

I wholeheartedly concur on the basis of a 2 party system.

The source is most definitely a conservative organization.

I long for a truly "libertarian" party; that is: one that is primarily developing to preserve individual liberty instead of promoting business as usual with only the names changed to protect the humbuggers.

I submit that as long as there is a delagate system to elect the USA leaders, there will not be a democratic process that advances the original doctrine of a representative constitutional republic.

Much as I may personally disagree with a great many of my constituants opinions and ideas, I feel they still deserve to get more of what we all pay for.

It's a democracy isn't it, why shouldn't they be allowed to launch a campaign.

"Extreme left" - The Iraq war isn't very popular with the American people at all, does that mean most of you are communist?




* No Osama bin Laden in Iraq: fail

* No Weapons of Mass Destruction, except for what the 'states sold Saddam: fail

* No stabilization of the country: fail

* No exit plan: fail

The Iraq war by any measure has been a failure. And I won't drone on about it, or I'll be labeled an enemy combatant.

Anywho. The war has generated a lot of business interest for American companies, and even though the occasional employee is taken hostage and beheaded, I guess it's still good for economy.




Snip - and oh, why are Americans supposedly happy to spend vast amounts of money on killing people in another country, when 'big social programs' like health are labelled a commie ideal? I really don't get it.

[edit on 21-7-2008 by mattguy404]

You make some valid points.

Please also consider that all the profits of "war" do not wind up in the coffers of just one country.

My own modest portfolio has a few shares of multinational conglomerates that are not headquartered in the USA.

Last I spoke to old Aussie friends, they were still pointing out to me after all these years the similarities between our two countries.

Exit plans are as nebulous as tactics; and just as suceptible to political back seat driving. I wonder how many coalition countries have concrete plans for extracting their downey cheeked lads from harms way.

WMD's are as difficult to find as they are to define and positively attribute to origins. The USA was not the only foreign entity meddling in the Middle East since the late 1940s.

Stabilization is certainly in the eye of the beholder and who gets to define the final objective paramaters of success.