Max Sawicky is driven to the edge of lunacy by the casual mendacity of the Bush administration:
Posted by DeLong at April 26, 2003 09:28 AM | TrackBackMaxSpeak: WITH THE THOUGHTS YOU'D BE THINKIN', YOU COULD BE ANOTHER LINCOLN . . . Yesterday our leader told us that " . . . this nation has got a deficit because we have been through a war." Thus far the cost of the war is estimated at $20 billion. The deficit for Fiscal Year 2003 is projected at $246 billion. Moreover, as a matter of deliberate policy, the President proposes to further increase the deficit this year by close to $40 billion. Over ten years, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Bush Budget would reduce surpluses and increase deficits by $2,710 billion. And so it goes.
I would not be just a nuffin'
My head all full of stuffin'
My heart all full of pain.
I would dance and be merry
Life would be a ding-a-derry
If I only had a brain--Whoa!AFTERTHOUGHT: None of this such be taken to have any bearing on the President's veracity in the matter of weapons of mass destruction.
I see that the marginalized nit-pickers are getting desperate in finding stuff to complain about. Iraq was not our only focus regarding the war on terror. Our country has had to spend billions of dollars in other areas since 9/11. But let’s stay with the Iraqi situation a little longer. Is somebody smoking illegal substances? The Bush administration has just achieved a major victory in the war on terrorism. We have just liberated Saddam’s suffering masses. Don’t these people count? The Muslim and Baathist totalitarians respect only power, and our troops have humiliated them. Syria, for instance, will now probably behave itself. This results in a much safer world for all of us.
Posted by: David Thomson on April 26, 2003 10:00 AMThere's something else I should add concerning our victory in Iraq. This virtually guarantees that we will have lower oil prices for many years into the future. Has anyone bothered to factor in this indirect benefit?
Posted by: David Thomson on April 26, 2003 10:04 AMMost of the world has always been of the opinion that the decisive factor, overriding any obstacle, of the attack on Iraq was the oil.
DSW
Posted by: Antoni Jaume on April 26, 2003 11:20 AM“Most of the world has always been of the opinion that the decisive factor, overriding any obstacle, of the attack on Iraq was the oil.”
I think you meant to say that “most of the idiots of the world have
always been of the opinion that the decisive factor, overriding any obstacle, of the attack on Iraq was the oil.” Americans should be indifferent about sucking up to these morons. They will hate us regardless of what we choose to do; the United States is in a no win situation. The United states must learn to unhesitatingly tell them to go screw themselves.
Also, we should not forget that at least some of this criticism is the result of Saddam Hussein’s willingness to pay bribes. Does anyone really think that the strongly suspected George Galloway is an isolated incident? The following article on The Weekly Standard’s website should be read by all:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/002/605fgcob.asp
(off-topic post)
Brad,
Great site, but it's in need of some overhauling. Too much content on the front page means super-slow loading (for me at least, and I'm sure for others)
Regards,
J
Posted by: JM on April 26, 2003 11:51 AMI wasn't aware that the president had any credibility on the WMD issue. They've switched stories now. The WMDs were just an excuse to do their realpolitik thing and scare the rest of the arab world.
I guess the rebuilding was too.
Posted by: julia on April 26, 2003 02:21 PMPuzzling. Though the vicious Iraqi government is destroyed, are we or others safer? No chemical or biological weapons have been found. North Korea has announced it has nuclear bombs and is processiing plutonium, and so may prove far more of a problem than Iraq. Afghanistan is still a problem. Iran is still a problem. Syria is still a problem. Iraq is still far far from being stable.
This still does not seem a time for us to be crowing about success.
Posted by: arthur on April 26, 2003 02:48 PMDavid Thompson
Amazing how nasty and stupid your posts are. Anything hateful to say about the French and Germans and Mexicans and Chileans and so on?
Posted by: moen on April 26, 2003 02:57 PMDavid:
Not to be a nitpicker, but any credible analysis shows our fiscal stance is on a bankruptcy path. Even if you adjust for the tax revenue losses from this modest recession and take out the extraordinary spending for war and homeland security, the general fund would be around $300 billion per year now - and it will grow and grow as the tax cuts really kick in. The forecasts that say this assume we get back to full employment. So when Bush says we will grow out of this deficit - he knows better. Simply put- Bush is lying to us.
Posted by: Hal McClure on April 26, 2003 03:13 PMhttp://www.morganstanley.com/GEFdata/digests/latest-digest.html
April 25, 2003
Policy Blunder
Stephen Roach (New York)[Morgan Stanley]
It’s hard to argue against the logic of tax reform -- the “apple pie” of fiscal policy. Who wouldn’t want a more efficient tax system? But like all good things, such efforts have their time and place. Sadly, today’s saving-short US economy simply can’t afford to indulge in the luxury of tax reform. While a counter-cyclical fiscal stimulus may be in order in a soft economic climate, multi-year deficit spending is not. To the extent that Bush administration policy proposals lead to ever-mounting federal budget deficits, serious new risks might afflict the US economy -- namely, an exploding balance-of-payments gap, a plunging dollar, and rising interest rates. These aftershocks would swamp any hopes for a windfall of economic growth and job creation.
The macroeconomic impacts of fiscal initiatives are best seen in the context of a national saving framework -- the means by which investment, the sustenance of longer-term economic growth, is funded. The government sector plays an important role in the determination of national saving. When the federal government runs a budget surplus, it is making a positive contribution to the pool of national saving. Conversely, when the government budget goes into deficit, the public sector is then “dissaving” -- in essence, offsetting the private saving generated by households and businesses. If the private sector has an ample reservoir of saving, the economy can afford large government budget deficits. However, if private saving rates are low, fiscal profligacy becomes unaffordable....
Regarding Bush's veracity on WMD:
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/nightline/US/globalshow_030425.html
Posted by: richard on April 26, 2003 06:24 PMIraq was not our only focus regarding the war on terror. Our country has had to spend billions of dollars in other areas since 9/11.
This is, I would assume, the hard-core fact around which you wrapped the gossamer of your rant. So, I'd guess that you'd have some figures, there, for our operations in Afghanistan, and homeland security, and that sort of thing, to add to the $20 billion or so that we've actually spent on the war, so far. Regarding the oil, no one who has run the numbers thinks that Iraqi oil revenues will actually pay for the reconstruction of Iraq, particularly now that we've permitted the looting and general destruction (by not initially deploying enough troops to do the job of occupation as well as invasion) of agencies and other public property. Lower oil costs will help our economy, but lower costs might also rob Iraq of money that it needs to rebuild, which we'll have to supply, I suppose, to shorten our occupation. Which itself will have costs of a billion or so dollars a month. Iraqi oil infrastructure is pretty bad, too, and those repair costs have got to be recovered.
Posted by: Brian C.B. on April 26, 2003 06:45 PMBush saying one thing and doing another is nothing new as far as politicians go. What is new is that the media are not calling him on it and have given Bush a free pass.
Posted by: bakho on April 26, 2003 07:20 PMIraq's government was vicious beyond compare, and all are better served by the end. Whether we could have ended the Iraqi government by fully supporting the Kruds, and by selective bombing and inspections, I do not know but I am happy the government is no more. We must find a way to help Iraq build anew without draining ourselves. We must also find a way of building anew a coalition to help with further problems in the Middle East and North Korea. We must build international support for our policies and not wantonly alienate those who should support us.
Posted by: anne on April 27, 2003 09:53 AMhttp://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/27/opinion/27FRIE.html?pagewanted=print&position=
April 27, 2003
The Meaning of a Skull
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN - NYTimes
Friday's Times carried a front-page picture of a skull, with a group of Iraqis gathered around it. The skull was of a political prisoner from Saddam Hussein's regime, and the grieving Iraqis were relatives who had exhumed it from a graveyard filled with other victims of Saddam's torture. Just under the picture was an article about President Bush vowing that weapons of mass destruction will be found in Iraq, as he promised.
As far as I'm concerned, we do not need to find any weapons of mass destruction to justify this war. That skull, and the thousands more that will be unearthed, are enough for me. Mr. Bush doesn't owe the world any explanation for missing chemical weapons (even if it turns out that the White House hyped this issue). It is clear that in ending Saddam's tyranny, a huge human engine for mass destruction has been broken. The thing about Saddam's reign is that when you look at that skull, you don't even know what period it came from — his suppression of the Kurds or the Shiites, his insane wars with Iran and Kuwait, or just his daily brutality.
Whether you were for or against this war, whether you preferred that the war be done with the U.N.'s approval or without it, you have to feel good that right has triumphed over wrong. America did the right thing here. It toppled one of the most evil regimes on the face of the earth, and I don't think we know even a fraction of how deep that evil went. Fair-minded people have to acknowledge that. Who cares if we now find some buried barrels of poison? Do they carry more moral weight than those buried skulls? No way....
Posted by: jd on April 27, 2003 10:47 AM>> Mr. Bush doesn't owe the world any explanation for missing chemical weapons (even if it turns out that the White House hyped this issue). It is clear that in ending Saddam's tyranny, a huge human engine for mass destruction has been broken.
Now that's a piece of creative parsing amidst a wash of purple prose. And rather too easily open to being thrown back in your face. But I'm sure you're happy to bask in the moral clarity as Bush plays footsie with the Saudis.
(Remember who supported Iraq in the 1980s? That'll be the coalition of the willing.)
Posted by: nick sweeney on April 27, 2003 12:17 PMUSENET not this is...
Posted by: Yoda on April 27, 2003 05:15 PM"We must build international support for our policies and not wantonly alienate those who should support us."
America has not "watonly" alienated its allies. On the contrary, many of these so-called allies like France are morally corrupt. This news article should help you acquire a better understanding (I must thank Instapundit for the link):
"French helped Iraq to stifle dissent
By Alex Spillius and Andrew Sparrow
(Filed: 28/04/2003)
France colluded with the Iraqi secret service to undermine a Paris conference held by the prominent human rights group Indict, according to documents found in the foreign ministry in Baghdad.
Various documents state that the Iraqis believed the French were doing their utmost to prevent the meeting from going ahead.
Jacques Chirac: supported campaign against sanctions
Ann Clwyd, the Labour MP who chairs Indict, said last night that she would be demanding an apology from the French government for its behaviour, which she described as "atrocious".
The files, retrieved from the looted and burned foreign ministry by The Telegraph last week, detail the warmth and strength of Iraqi-French ties.
They include a six-page letter dated February 1998 from Saddam Hussein to Jacques Chirac, welcoming the French president's support in the campaign against sanctions and assuring him that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction.
The documents regarding Indict show that pro-Saddam elements, "Iraqi and Arab brothers", gained access to the conference, which opened on April 14, 2000, at the Hotel La Concorde Lafayette.
Indict's attempt to mount a protest outside the Iraqi ambassador's residence was foiled by the authorities.
A month after the meeting, a letter headed "Role of Southern France" (sic) from Saddam's office authorised the finance ministry to pay $383,439 to undisclosed beneficiaries.
Perhaps the most damning document is from the Iraqi intelligence service, Iris. The service, known as the Mukhabarat in Iraq, operated as the domestic secret police and as an external intelligence agency.
Its role abroad was to collect intelligence, murder opponents and maintain relations with friendly groups. The document, dated March 28, 2000, is from the head of Iris to Saddam's office.
At the time the organisation was run by Tahir Jalil al-Habbush, number 14 on America's wanted list. The letter appears to be written by a different hand from one revealed last week purporting to record that George Galloway benefited from contracts under the oil for food programme. But it carries the same signature.
It states that "one of our sources" met the "deputy spokesman" of the French foreign ministry, "with whom he has good relations".
It claims that the spokesman from the justice and interior ministries had sought to find a legal way of preventing the Indict meeting.
The paper said it had been agreed that no Iraqi opposition leaders would be granted visas for France to attend the conference. It is not clear if Iraqis living outside the country were granted visas.
Although the conference went ahead, the Iraqis regarded moves to undermine it as a striking success.
A memo dated April 18, 2000, was sent to Saddam's office by the then foreign minister, Mohammad Said al-Sahaf, who later became the information minister nicknamed "Comical Ali". It is headed "The Failed Enemy Conference in Paris" and says that the French media ignored the event.
Miss Clwyd, MP for Cynon Valley, recalled various attempts at disruption.
Saddam supporters staged a protest outside before it started, she said, and at one point a bomb scare led to the hall having to be evacuated.
Victims of Saddam's regime gave evidence at the conference and filming was strictly forbidden because they feared being identified.
But someone smuggled in a camera and started filming, Miss Clwyd said.
"The police were called. But they could not take the film from the man because he was an Iraqi accredited to the Moroccan embassy."
The French foreign ministry denied collusion.
A Quai d'Orsay source said it should not come as a surprise that French officials met Iraqi intelligence officers in Baghdad. But he denied accusations of specific collaboration to disrupt the conference."
We are finally rid of the most vicious possible government. Iraq will no longer be a model of dictatorship for the Middle East, and will no longer be a threat to other countries. The Iraqi people are free, though Iraq will not be settled for a while. Only America would have ended the Iraqi thuggery, and with the help of Britain and Australia and others we did just that. I am elated about all this.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/27/international/middleeast/27LIFE.html
April 27, 2003
Glimpses of Lives in a Changed Iraq
By JOHN F. BURNS - NYTimes
BAGHDAD, Iraq -— Not yet three weeks after American troops seized the heart of Baghdad and toppled the government of Saddam Hussein, Iraq is a country poised agonizingly between its past and its future.
There is widespread gratitude to the United States for ending the brutal dictatorship of Mr. Hussein, though it is not always easy to hear it through the cacophony of voices. For the moment, the stage is held mainly by militant Shiite clerics demanding an Islamic republic; by ambitious carpetbaggers returning from long exile abroad to seek an instant ride to power; by supporters of the old government hoping to align themselves with the new power brokers; and most persuasively, by ordinary Iraqis whose daily lives were upended when the old system collapsed.
Many of these Iraqis have no wider ambitions for the moment than to get back, at least, to some semblance of the order they had under Mr. Hussein. They want to return to their jobs. They want their neighborhood schools and banks and groceries and cafes reopened. They want hospitals and clinics to operate normally again. They want effective police patrols back on their streets, and gunmen disarmed or behind bars. They want electrical power running to their wall plugs again, and water flowing from their taps.
Ask them their priorities, and the answer is invariably: order, order, order.
There are people, especially at moments of frustration and anger, who say that things were better under Mr. Hussein, that his straitjacket of fear was better than the chaos that followed the arrival of American troops. But catch the same people at less stressful moments, in the quiet of their homes, and they will say that they waited long years for the end of the old dictatorship, that only America had the power to bring that about, and that what they want now is what they expected from America: a civil society based on Western-style freedoms, but also Western-style security for the individual and the family....
Posted by: jd on April 28, 2003 11:51 AMDidn't Bush promise that the last tax cut would end the recession? Did it? Where are the jobs that were promised?
Posted by: algernon on April 29, 2003 03:13 PMDidn't Bush promise that the last tax cut would end the recession? Did it? Where are the jobs that were promised?
Posted by: algernon on April 29, 2003 03:15 PM