War in Iraq

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War sucks of course and I am not a supporter of such actions. I am however a 100% supporter of troops whos lives lead to such places when they are the most cognizant of what such action can entail. In my book of wishful thinking I often would delight in having the commander in chief and his equivlalent from the other side take point in the thick of the worst shit and see how long wars last.

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AMEN! Can I get a witness?!One good reason I tend to favor a candidate who has seen it up close, all else being equal.

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I am curious though to know if there are any local contrctors among the Iraqi people who are securing work there?

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We have quite a few as day laborers. It seems the majority of our labor is third-country nationals (TCNs) as it's hard to clear Iraqis, but we do bring plenty of them on base. I really feel for those guys - they have no security and the insurgents hate them at least as much as us, if not more. They get kidnapped and killed occasionally. They also work for the local wage, which is not much to speak of.There are some local companies that have contracts for various types of work, but I don't know a lot about them.

The war is about ideology. Bush and Co. geuninely think that what they're doing is making the world a safer place. Any information that contradicts this view is invalidated, in their eyes, simply by it contradicting the ideology.This is logical to me and this is what I will accept. I retract my question, is the war in Iraq about oil and big business?

I imagine that, behind closed doors, it may have been sold as such. But I don't think that was what Bush and Co. were thinking of when they pushed the button. I don't know that huge profits have been made, yet. Of course, that could just prove how incompetent Bush and Co. are.

Halliburton's done all right for themselves in this war. Remember them overcharging the US Government by an ungodly amount for their cleanup jobs?Plus, let's keep in mind that the profit goal isn't short term. It's about putting an America-friendly government in place that will be happy to sell us oil at a greatly reduced cost.

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"If I had to write ten jokes about potholders, I don't think I could do it. But I could write ten jokes about Catholicism in the next twenty minutes. I guess I'm drawn to religion because I can be provocative without harming something people really care about, like their cars."
-George Meyer, Simpsons writer

I don't really think that's going to happen. The government that emerges from this is going to be the one that promises to hold us the greatest arm's-length. Or so it seems to me.Of course, that says nothing about the original motive; only that Bush and Co. are so incompetent they can't even be counted on to succeed in their evil schemes.

Yeah, I'm with you on this one. I think that the biggest flaw in this war as a whole, whatever motive you want to assign, was that if you look in Bush/Rumsfeld's collective mental dictionary, the words "exit plan" are followed by a definition that just reads "Duhhhh..."

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"If I had to write ten jokes about potholders, I don't think I could do it. But I could write ten jokes about Catholicism in the next twenty minutes. I guess I'm drawn to religion because I can be provocative without harming something people really care about, like their cars."
-George Meyer, Simpsons writer

Well, remember, for this plan to work, all that needs to happen is the US-friendly government have control of the major oil fields (with American help, of course) and a route to a port.And will the new government keep the US as arm's length? Chalabi tried, and look how quickly he was put on ice. Does the new government of Afghanistan keep the US at arm's length? And that is another case in point -- the US-friendly government really has control only of Kabul. (And Karzai needs to hire mercenaries for his bodyguards.) My guess is that the new "sovereign" government of Iraq will be in a similar situation.

Rei,Did you get my email? It's a gmail address, not the one listed here. Was asking about your friend. This place is basically a (fortified) small town, so I may keep an eye out for him.