McCain's comments on Iraq

Okay, I admit it.  I don't understand that slang.  I'm a little bit out of it.  Is that like saying "I wouldn't tap that"?  But that's something sexual.  (I wouldn't tap McCain either.  Jessica Alba yes, McCain no.) 

So is Barca Boy saying he doesn't want to sleep with John McCain?  I'm confused. 

I said yesterday I was following the American Election more than the Irish one but to be honest Im really only watching the battle between Obama and Hillary. I havent got any idea what McCain is about.

The utterly assholeish thing about that quote is genocides are always instituted by governments on unarmed people. McCain's just trying to take the moral highground saying that leaving Iraq is bad, "think about the children". All we need to do to prevent genocide in Iraq is to give everybody guns. Then they will have a peaceful, polite society.

Many of you will laugh at that, but it is historically supported. The Iraqi police are urging the US to give them more weapons.

I wouldnt laugh at that, I would completely and utterly deny it, and I would expose all of your historical support for such a  claim to be riddled with numerous other social, political, economic and cultural factors that are not taken into the account when such claims are made.  Your historical support is meaningless, as it isolates two things (guns and lack of violent crime) out of many and then claims that those two are not affected by the many, many others.  It is a distortion of facts to serve an ideological end.  But this conversation has been had by us before, hasnt it?  Let's not have it again.  We could just copy and paste our comments in the VOTE OBAMA thread and be done with it.

Does anyone just not feel like spending $5000 per second on the war?  I'm just really cheesed off about that.  Hey, if the Republicans want to have the war, I think that's fine...but could they pay for it please?  I think that's pretty reasonable. 

I read a New York Times article that said,

The war in Iraq will ultimately cost U.S. taxpayers not hundreds of billions of dollars, but an astonishing $2 trillion, and perhaps more.

Another Times article says the war is costing us $5000 per second. 

When the war was just a low 1.2 trillion, there was an article in the Times that had this to say,

$1.2 trillion would pay for an unprecedented public health campaign — a doubling of cancer research funding, treatment for every American whose diabetes or heart disease is now going unmanaged and a global immunization campaign to save millions of children’s lives.

Combined, the cost of running those programs for a decade wouldn’t use up even half our money pot. So we could then turn to poverty and education, starting with universal preschool for every 3- and 4-year-old child across the country. The city of New Orleans could also receive a huge increase in reconstruction funds.

The final big chunk of the money could go to national security. The recommendations of the 9/11 Commission that have not been put in place — better baggage and cargo screening, stronger measures against nuclear proliferation — could be enacted. Financing for the war in Afghanistan could be increased to beat back the Taliban’s recent gains, and a peacekeeping force could put a stop to the genocide in Darfur.

All that would be one way to spend $1.2 trillion. Here would be another:

The war in Iraq.

Have you ever seen The Dead Zone?

I'm not laughing, I don't find anything remotely funny about mental illness.

Iraqis have guns.  What they don't have is a society, really.  We're not talking about a group of people who could be placated by giving them all guns.  We're talking about several groups of people who'd like their own societies, and also to kill of the other societies.  And us, if possible.

That said, I do feel sorry for the Kurds.  They're kinda our only staunch supporter in the region, and we're leaving them to the mercy of the Sunnies, the Shia, and the Turks.  Whee! 

John McCain would fight his own shadow if it provoked him. He is a hot head and will most certainly do whatever he can to not only stay in Iraq, but explore whatever options he sees necessary to extend our reach in the Middle East, namely into Iran. Bible thumpers love him because he would be saving us from the "evil doers." Soccer moms and their impotent husbands feel sorry for him because he was a prisoner of war. This man is dangerous and he is waiting...Anybody of draft age should want to see this guy soundly defeated.

Does somebody write your lines, or do you invent that crap on the fly ?

It sounded like it came out of your butt, as usual with your politics.

That opinion formulated many moons ago when I read the article about the police urging the US to give them guns because they were outgunned. I can't find it now though. Either way, history says guns may = peace, but no guns = no peace. Of course, as Walter Sobchek and Ronald Reagan would both explain, and the CIA, you can't expect logic out of Middle Eastern politics, the people are not interested in helping themselves, they often chose to do whatever they feel will better the cause of the Allah, even if its bad, like killing people.

Okay, okay, okay.  I'm no gun-control advocate.  Hell, I'm straight-up against it.  But not because guns are a make-society-better-in-one-easy-step magic button.

The problem with Iraq, and the whole mideast, for that matter, is so deep-seated that to suggest that dumping nines into people's hands is going to make it better is ludicrous.  The price of guns is going up?  Yeah, that's because everybody want to cap the infidel down the road.  We have roving bands of semi-government-sponsored militia (oh fuck, I should know better than to use that phrase...) roaming the streets.  Yes, they are both roving and roaming.  Wait...fuck...train of thought....

Okay.  Point is, guns don't make society better.  To suggest that they do, to me, is the equivilant of the gun-control scare-mongering of "but guns KILL people."  I don't like the phrase "guns don't kill people, people kill people," but I agree with it.  If you're gonna support that statement, it's hard to disagree with my companion phrase:  guns don't help people.  People help people.

Yeah, I think that's about it for now.

We have the moral responsibility to give people of a sovereign country, one in which we invaded under false pretenses and lies, their country back. I consider the betrayal the initial invading, and then paying and arming the sides in which were once fighting against us. The country is in civil war, we're just giving them more ammunition to kill eachother with. Chaos is going to go on there regardless of our presence, at least if we left it would keep our men out of harms way, give some initiative to get things going in a better direction by their doing, and let those fighting for their country back have it.

I think Mccain is a douche.

I'm fine with a country arming themselves, which would include citizens, but I don't like paying our once enemies for a cease fire and training their police/military or whatever. We're bribing them not to fight, what's going to happen when we have to stop?