It's Iraq Lite, a sequel to the wildly unpopular part 1?

I couldn't believe my eyes. I thought Obama wanted us out, clean and not feeding the fighting in Iraq. Silly me.....

BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq is open to greater American military cooperation as U.S. commanders explore ways to boost security assistance to the country, a top Iraqi official said Thursday.

The Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, has recommended that military American commanders look for ways to help improve the military capabilities of Iraq and Lebanon, which both face the risk of spillover from the civil war in neighboring Syria.

Dempsey is who Obama just re-appointed to his post for another tour. So apparently the two don't disagree on much these days. If we aren't there in person, I guess defense contractors are insuring we're there in action anyway.

Ali al-Moussawi, the media adviser for Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, told The Associated Press that Baghdad would welcome increased arms sales and faster weapons deliveries along with U.S. training teams to help it confront rising regional instability and terrorist threats.

Source

They have billions, largely from US and the corruption within both sides that spread the money across the land like pixie dust or something. How about they buy elsewhere for a change? It just seems a little odd that we'd leave Iraq in a bum's rush ...but find ourselves so quickly looking for little ways to worm back in, beyond simply the largest Embassy on Earth located in Baghdad of course.

The story also mentions the US is dragging it's feet on 36 F-16 fighters. Well, thank God for small favors just once in awhile. At least they don't have a state of the art Air Force while still embroiled in a civil war that is costing additional thousands of civilians on a regular basis.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000

"Business. It's all it ever is, business"

-the Kingpin

"War is a Racket"

- by Major General Smedley Butler

"All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred,
comes invariably from people who are not fighting."

"War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it."


"The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. Hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. This new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia, but to keep the very structure of society intact."

-George Orwell

We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.

-George Orwell

Forgive me for not addressing the content of your post directly. This article just reminds me how foolish I had been in the early days of this administration, buying into all of the "change" rhetoric. Shame on me. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Once you see how the world really works, you can't unsee it. My fiancee refers to Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" in that I dragged her outside to stare into the truth. At first she found having the blinders off to be refreshing...now she wants nothing more than to go back inside and forget everything she's seen. People don't want to believe that politicians lie, that our government doesn't always have our best interests in mind, that large banks and corporations behave irresponsibly. I suppose being ignorant makes it easier to deal with all the bull# and likely why things aren't going to change any time soon.

reply to post by TheMagus


I'll see your quotes and raise you a video.



I always say I prefer hearing it right from the source. Who better to deliver the warning in such stark words as he did, than him? After all, he was a 5-Star Wartime Commanding General as well as a U.S. President. He knew what World War II produced in it's aftermath as well or better than anyone in the world. He'd literally commanded large parts of it, after all.

The inmates didn't just take over to run the Asylum. They expanded to include the whole nation.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000

just got up, and must see to my morning ablutions and toilette
[more later]

The System has a fatal flaw:

it requires the Sanction and Consent of the victim

removing Consent requires one to stop paying into the system [I.E. taxes]
removing ones Sanction requires one to stop participating in it
I.E. draft dodging

but for too many:

"The Spirit is willing, but the Flesh is weak"

-forgotten 1st cent. judean prophet

Do you know what guerrillas often say? They claim that their rebellions are invulnerable to economic warfare because they have no economy, that they are parasitic on those they would overthrow. The fools merely fail to assess the coin in which they must inevitably pay. The pattern is inexorable in its degenerative failures. You see it repeated in the systems of slavery, of welfare states, of caste-ridden religions, of socializing bureaucracies in any system which creates and maintains dependencies. Too long a parasite and you cannot exist without a host.

-The Stolen Journals, "God Emperor of Dune" by Frank Herbert
[more later]

reply to post by TheMagus


You know, there is a major flaw to any tax protest idea. While it may work for business owners and the self employed? What do the vast majority do? April 15 isn't tax payment day for most of America. It's simply settling up what withholding underestimated through the year or more often here with numerous credits, a way to actually be paid by the Treasury.

You can't protest by keeping something you never even see and that's the case for anyone with a paycheck. It's taken out before you ever get to have a say in things, every week/pay period.

Bah, as long as they aren't trying to go away from the petro-dollar, everything is cool. It is why we executed Saddam (and Kaddafi) in the first place, after all.

I'm sure the ultimate goal was to "draw down" and put up a facade to the American people via the MSM that our "war" with Iraq is over and there is nothing to worry about. Wait a couple years, feed the American people more BS through the MSM to distract them, send more troops and military assets back over to Iraq for whatever purpose...