Was Saddam really a threat to our National Security

[Pabst]

Evidence that George W. Bush is not a tyrant:

The fact that Paul Krugman isn't lying dead with his balls cut off.


Earlier in the week ART took off on Maverick for posting an article by ..gasp.. a JOHN BIRCHER!! Yet ART thinks that Mortie Zuckerman and Paul Krugman are middle of the road political observants. ROFL!!!! Rogue, if you want to sway me, use some theological arguments rooted in morality. These ex-Zionist/agnostic elitist socialists have the moral terpitude of Marx.

 

[spect8or]

Quote from ARogueTrader:



he war's more idealistic supporters do, I think, feel queasy about all this. That's why they lay so much stress on their hopes for democracy in Iraq. They're not just looking for a happy ending; they're looking for moral redemption for a war fought on false pretenses.

As a practical matter, I suspect that they'll be disappointed: the only leaders in Iraq with genuine popular followings seem to be Shiite clerics. I also wonder how much real commitment to democracy lies behind the administration's stirring rhetoric. Does anyone remember that Dick Cheney voted against a resolution calling for Nelson Mandela's release from prison? As recently as 2000 he defended that vote, saying that the African National Congress "was then perceived as a terrorist organization."

Which brings me to this week's other famous prisoner. While the world celebrated the capture of Saddam, a federal appeals court ruled that Jose Padilla must be released from military custody. Mr. Padilla is a U.S. citizen, arrested on American soil, who has been held for 18 months without charges as an "enemy combatant." The ruling was a stark reminder that the Bush administration, which talks so much about promoting democracy abroad, doesn't seem very concerned about following democratic rules at home.

(1) There is a war going on. Fundamentally, people either understand that or they don't. Some people just keeping whistling away gaily, one hand in their pocket oblivious to this simple fact. You may not like it but you'd better face up to it.

Given that it's a war, which freakin pollyanna moron would ever expect a war to go perfectly? The glee with which liberals seize at any tidbits that suggest things may not be perfect is simply disgusting. Sometimes I think they'd like to see us lose this war.

(2) 'Democracy in Iraq'. I'll let you in on a devilish little secret. I couldn't give a rats ass about democracy in Iraq. Neither would anyon with any brains. Democracy is a good system when it's got good people running it. But going ahead full blaze with no strings attached democracy in Iraq is sheer lunacy. Why the hell would we want to hand over the reigns of power to those Shiite madmen?

The most important thing to do is install a US friendly regime, that has appearance of being a democracy. It doesn't have to be anything totalitarian, just whatever prevents Iraq becoming another Iran c1980.

(3) 'Jose Padilla'. Look, I'd rather see a couple of people have their balls busted a bit more than normal as long as it prevents another 911. I gather liberals would prefer to see another 911 as long as it prevents a couple of people getting their balls busted a bit more than normal.

 

[ARogueTrader]

Attack, attack, attack....Hannityism, Hannityism, Hannityism....I expect a bit more from you Pabst. You might try to counter Krugman's opinions.

For those who have a mind that actually works, i.e. open, Krugman is a respected economist, not some wacko fringe element society member.

The Professor Takes the Gloves Off

By Terrence McNally, AlterNet
November 12, 2003

Accustomed in economic circles to calling a stupid argument a stupid argument, and isolated (in Princeton, New Jersey) from the Washington dinner-party circuit, Paul Krugman has become the most prominent voice in the mainstream U.S. media to openly and repeatedly accuse George Bush of lying to the American people to sell budget-busting tax cuts and a pre-emptive and nearly unilateral war.

Krugman cannot be dismissed by opponents as some dyed-in-the-wool lefty. He's a moderate academic economist who's been radicalized by the Bush White House and the right wing it represents. Krugman joined The New York Times in 1999 as a columnist on the op-ed Page and continues as professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University. His new book, "The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way In The New Century" (#9 on the New York Times best-seller list and a top seller on Amazon) is a collection of his op-ed pieces from January 2000-January 2003.

And from Newsweek 1994:


Paul Krugman
The Great Debunker
A Nobel-Bound Economist Punctures the C[onventional] W[isdom]--and Not a Few Big-Name Washington Egos

by Michael Hirsh

from Newsweek, March 4, 1996, pp. 40-41. Copyright Newsweek 1996



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Paul Krugman leans back in his chair, arms behind his head, relishing his notoriety. He is reciting, like verse, his favorite hate mail. "Your article made me want to throw up." says one letter. "Stanford should fire you." says another. "You snide elitist." writes a third fan. Vicious epithets are everyday fare in the voluminous correspondence of America's most controversial economist. "'Arrogant ass---e' is the best phrase I've heard lately." Krugman chuckles, a little nervously. The anonymous missives can occasionally be scary, he admits, like the one that warned him to stay out of Washington--adding, for good measure, "Jew boy."

Who is Paul Krugman and why do people say such nasty things about him? And why is a mere economist drawing the kind of fire usually reserved for real celebrities--say, Rush Limbaugh? Simple. The Stanford University scholar has been puncturing the reputations of policy wonks all over Washington. In a prodigious spate of essays and books--the latest, Pop Internationalism (221 pages. MIT Press), hits the stores next week--Krugman has launched a one-man crusade to shatter the era's most cherished economic myths. Among the most pernicious: the very C[onventional] W[isdom] idea that in our dog-eat-dog, post-cold-war world, America must viciously compete for jobs and markets against other nations.

But more on that in a moment. What most riles the wonks is that Krugman is impossible to ignore. Born on New York's Long Island, educated at MIT, he's one of the world's most eminent trade theorists--a future Nobel Prize winner, in the view of his peers. He's not just some ivory-tower type, either; he writes eloquently and simply for the public. "A lot of dumb stuff passes for sophistication out there," says the frenetic, gnomishly handsome Krugman, his brown eyes darting to and fro as a cascade of ideas tumbles from his mouth. "What amazes me is that people will have a vast thesis of the world economy and what it's doing to us--and not check their facts."

Since his popular 1994 book, Peddling Prosperity, Krugman has been asserting "the facts" as he sees them. Along the way, he's debunked the conventional wideom on nearly every hot-button issue dear to Washington--not to mention the Pat Buchanan parade. There is a Krugman take on the trade deficit with Japan. (Unimportant. An infinitesimal impact on GDP.) On jobs and wages lost to cheap Third World labor. (Hugely overstated; far less damaging than lagging productivity and new technology.) On the notion that economic war has replaced the cold war. (Gibberish; unlike war, trade is not a zero-sum game.) On the idea that nations compete with each other. (They don't, because unlike corporations, they can't go bankrupt and their "employees"--the citizens--mainly buy and sell among themselves.)

You could think of Krugman as a sort of highbrow version of James (The Amazing) Randi, the magician who goes around telling the real story of how rivals bend spoons using the power of their minds, and such stuff. For he delights in skewering the fallacies and errors of math made by what he calls Washington's ever-growing legions of "policy entrepreneurs." Nor is he shy about naming names, some of them very prominent Washingtonians indeed. Labor Secretary Reich, a much-quoted proponent of national competitiveness, is an "offensive figure, a brilliant coiner of one-liners but not a serious thinker." Trade maven Clyde Prestowitz, a hard-liner on Japan, is little more than an intellectual snake-oil salesman, by Krugman's lights. Lester Thurow, the MIT economist and author of the best-selling Head to Head: The Coming Battle Among America, Japan, and Europe, is a "silly" writer who doesn't do his homework.

Say this for Krugman: though an unabashed liberal (he plans to vote for Bill Clinton), he's ideologically colorblind. He savages the supply-siders of the Reagan-Bush era with the same glee as he does the "strategic traders" of the Clinton administration. "Paul's great strength," says Fareed Zakari, managing editor of Foreign Affairs, which publishes some of his most inflammatory stuff, "is that he's not intimidated by authority--either intellectual or political." In a recent New York Times op-ed piece, Krugman accused flat-taxer Steve Forbes of dwelling in economic "never-never land." He blames Buchanan's rise partly on the Clintonians--for feeding an atmosphere of xenophobia (aobut Japan, in particular) that played to the new front runner's primitive populism. "Buchanan wouldn't be able to get away with this," he says, "if policy entrepreneurs hand't created an intellectual rationale for it."

Buchanan is an easy target for any Econ 101 graduate. He's a protectionist Visigoth rattling at the hallowed gates of free trade. But there's probably no one better qualified to challenge the Republian candidate on these issues than Krugman. Among his Nobel-caliber work, he has shown that trade barriers not only boost prices at home and give consumers less choice, the usual opposing arguments. They also "fragment" markets globally--and in doing so make everyone poorer.

Krugman doesn't short-sell America's economic problems. He is alarmed at the country's widening income gap, for one thing. He was also among the first to warn of the blue- and white-collar backlash against corporate layoffs--which Buchanan is effectiveley exploiting. "I'm terrified of what's happening to our society," says Krugman. But the remedies he would propose "mostly involve improving and strengthening what we're tearing apart--health care for our children, a decent education for poor kids, things like the earned income tax credit." What he's after, he says, is a sense of proportion." If this administration would put a tenth as much of its attention into trying to prevent a million kids from being thorwn into poverty as it did into extracting a few more exports from Japan, "we'd all be better off."



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Sharp-tongued maverick:

Krugman's critics see him as a spiteful self-promoter. "It's gratuitous spleen," says sometimes Krugman target James Fallows, a journalist whose economic writing has reportedly influenced Buchanan. "He behaves like someone with a massive chip on his sholder," adds former commerce secretary Jeffrey Garten. Was Krugman peeved because Laura D'Andrea Tyson, and not he, was originally chosen as Clinton's chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers--as many of his detractors suggest? Not at all, he says. "I'm temperamentally unsuited for that kind of role. You have to be very good at people skills, biting your tongue when people say silly things."

Krugman's outspokenness, Newsweek has learned, is the main reason the Clinton administration didn't offer him a job. Yet the White House may regret the snub. If anything, Krugman has probably had more impact as an outsider than he would have had as just another brilliant insider-economist. For instance, there's already been noticeably less talk of national "competitiveness" among the policymakers Krugman has targeted for attack. That's all to the good, thinks the sharp-tongued maverick. Curing bad economics and catching false "facts," he says, is a bit like flushing cockroaches down the toilet: "They always come back." To the dismay of his victims, Krugman will no doubt be there to yank the chain.



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Quote from Pabst:

Evidence that George W. Bush is not a tyrant:

The fact that Paul Krugman isn't lying dead with his balls cut off.


Earlier in the week ART took off on Maverick for posting an article by ..gasp.. a JOHN BIRCHER!! Yet ART thinks that Mortie Zuckerman and Paul Krugman are middle of the road political observants. ROFL!!!! Rogue, if you want to sway me, use some theological arguments rooted in morality. These ex-Zionist/agnostic elitist socialists have the moral terpitude of Marx.

 

[ARogueTrader]

Quote from spect8or:

(1) There is a war going on. Fundamentally, people either understand that or they don't. Some people just keeping whistling away gaily, one hand in their pocket oblivious to this simple fact. You may not like it but you'd better face up to it.

There is an elective war going on in Iraq. Fundamentally, people either understand the war may well have been waged on false pretenses or they don't. Some people just keep whistling away gaily as they wave the flag, ignoring the methods used to wage this war, one hand in their pocket oblivious to this simple fact. They may not like people pointing this out, but they had better face up to it.

Given that it's a war, which freakin pollyanna moron would ever expect a war to go perfectly? The glee with which liberals seize at any tidbits that suggest things may not be perfect is simply disgusting. Sometimes I think they'd like to see us lose this war.

The problem comes down to issues actually more important than this particular war. This is not the first, nor the lat war we will fight. However, if we allow wars to become the personal project of an administration, if we don't hold ourselves to standards above reproach for the engagement of war, we weaken our integrity as a nation. When an "end justifies the means" mentality is dominant, then the very foundation of rules of law and system of government is challenged.


(2) 'Democracy in Iraq'. I'll let you in on a devilish little secret. I couldn't give a rats ass about democracy in Iraq. Neither would anyon with any brains. Democracy is a good system when it's got good people running it. But going ahead full blaze with no strings attached democracy in Iraq is sheer lunacy. Why the hell would we want to hand over the reigns of power to those Shiite madmen?

Not surprised you don't care about democracy in Iraq.

The most important thing to do is install a US friendly regime, that has appearance of being a democracy. It doesn't have to be anything totalitarian, just whatever prevents Iraq becoming another Iran c1980.

We were very please with the puppet of Iran, err, Shah of Iran as he served our interests...which is what the Iraq situation is really about, serving our interests.

(3) 'Jose Padilla'. Look, I'd rather see a couple of people have their balls busted a bit more than normal as long as it prevents another 911. I gather liberals would prefer to see another 911 as long as it prevents a couple of people getting their balls busted a bit more than normal.

No, I believe liberals would prefer to see the rules of law and civil liberties, which are the backbone of our society upheld.

We can uphold law and our civil liberties and fight terrorism at the same time.

What a concept.

 

[Nolan-Vinny-Sam]

ahahaha hapaboy! Sooooo predictable as expected. blah blah blah yer meant to say this, whah whah you didn't say that.

What's hilarious creepy AND pathetic, is you twisting your own words to prove your invalid point, all the while in a futile effort to defend this fraud for war. Phhhhhh but I digress

I'll be nice for ya, in the Xmas spirit, I'll give you a 50% discount on my post that started this and remove 1 (yours) of the 2 handles. So there:



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Quote from TriPack:

With regards to the ones blowing up Israeli citizens, the money list is incompletely known but Saddam is known to have paid 30 million to terrorists and the families of suicide bombers. Cutting off that flow of money should help the situation in Israel, but Iraq was only one source.

The other sources of funds are some in the ruling family in Saudi Arabia, and the European Union (about 150 million last year) by way of Arafat to the Palestinians. There are no doubt other nameless fundamentalists or sympathizers with money like Bin Laden who fund terrorists. All should be treated like terrorists.

For some reason every administration for the last 20 years has tiptoed around Saudi Arabia, which is probably the biggest source of funds though I have no hard #s on that.
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ahahahaha
TriPack! yer shoulda named your spilt personality, dumb & dumber
yer mean to tell me WE WENT TO WAR FOR ISRAEL now???
better check with your drug dealer, the batch you got was spoiled :eek:
from 9-11 (you are the morons who believed saddam did it) to non existent WMD's, to a fraud for imminent threat, and now ISRAEL? LSD is no good for ya and it shows I go help brother Mavman "move" for a week, can't leave you alone anymore. Yer spewing crap all over the place


BTW, thank you for praising my spelling, I do work hard at it for all to see.

 

[ARogueTrader]

Posted on Sun, Dec. 21, 2003

A model of rectitude -- that's us
By Molly Ivins
Creators Syndicate

Well! I am certainly glad to see that we are telling off the French, Germans and Russians.

I couldn't agree more with the Bush administration that those treacherous, undependable countries should be punished for their past cooperation with Saddam Hussein by being shut out of the $18.6 billion in Iraqi reconstruction contracts. No contracts for quislings!

Someone's got to uphold standards of morality and purity, and who better than us? As the president so often reminds us, this is a fight between good and evil.

I was particularly pleased when Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz took that sharp little dig at all three countries when he said that a prime consideration for who gets the contracts was "protection of the essential security interests of the United States."

And was there ever anything more inimical to our security than all those tons and tons of weapons of mass destruction we have found in Iraq? That'll teach those vodka-swilling Rooskies to think our security is not their affair. Way to go, Wolfie.

Of course, it was a little awkward that Wolfowitz gave the three Saddam-dealing nations that body slam just as former Secretary of State James Baker was setting out to ask them for money.

The beauty of our position is its moral clarity.

I was especially entranced to read about the moral case for stiffing these nations on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times in an article by Claudia Rosett, senior fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. It says on its Web site that the foundation is against terrorism, thus distinguishing it from all the foundations in favor of terrorism.

Rosett calls the three delinquent countries "the Axis of Avarice." Isn't that cute?

In all fairness, the senior fellow reminds us: "Remember, plenty of money flowed through Saddam Hussein's Iraq. … many countries took part in that frenzy of lending, including Japan as the No. 1 sovereign lender. Then came Russia, France and Germany and, yes, the United States as No. 5."

But surely you see the immense moral difference between being No. 5, as opposed to being 2, 3 or 4? All the difference in the world.

Rosett continues: "But in the 1990s, as the Iraqi dictator's depravities became increasingly evident to the rest of the world, that list narrowed." (Actually, his depravities had been evident to many of us as far back as the days when the Reagan administration was sending Saddam arms.)

The senior fellow continues: "Under the U.N.'s oil-for-food program, the despot got to tap his preferred business partners. … What began as a relief program for Iraqis suffering under sanctions turned into a multibillion dollar contracting business flowing through the shrouded books of the United Nations. By the end, the Russians were selling the Baathist elite luxury cars, the French were providing broadcasting equipment for the Information Ministry, and the Germans and Chinese worked on the phone system. … Old Europe's indignation over the [U.S.] list is a marvel of hypocrisy."

Speaking of marvels of hypocrisy, the U.N. books on who dealt with Iraq are not all that shrouded.

For example, one of the disgusting companies actually making profits from dealing with the despicable dictator in the 1990s -- long after his depravities had become evident to even the less-attentive sectors of the world -- was … well, golly, look at this … Halliburton.

Between 1997 and 2000, while Vice President Dick Cheney was CEO of Halliburton, the company sold $73 million worth of oilfield equipment and services to Saddam.

At least Halliburton was not selling luxury cars to the Baathist elite. The oilfield equipment company merely kept Saddam's oilfields pumping, the only thing that allowed the slimeball to stay in power.

Halliburton cleverly ran its business with Saddam through two of its subsidiaries, Dresser-Rand and Ingersoll-Dresser, to avoid the sanctions.

Unlike the Germans, the French and the Russians, Halliburton was not punished by the Bush administration for dealing with the dictator. Instead, it got the largest reconstruction contract given by this administration, with an estimated value between $5 billion and $15 billion. And the company got the contract without competitive bidding.

Halliburton has amply repaid the administration's faith. The Pentagon is now investigating the company on potentially $120 million in overcharges.

I think the French will particularly enjoy being lectured on their hypocrisy, preferably by Cheney himself. It's the kind of thing that sophisticated people especially appreciate.

 

[spect8or]

Quote from ARogueTrader:
Fundamentally, people either understand the war may well have been waged on false pretenses or they don't. Some people just keep whistling away gaily as they wave the flag, ignoring the methods used to wage this war, one hand in their pocket oblivious to this simple fact. They may not like people pointing this out, but they had better face up to it.

Fundamentally, I understand that whatever the deadhead public may have been told is of little consequance to me, as I can see the very, very good reasons for waging this war. Reasons which, if the public were told, the war would probably have never gone ahead. (Because, as I've said, there are simply far too many liberal cry babies that simply cannot understand the ways of the world.) So, to you, these become 'false pretenses', but to me they're just the way government works.
I mean, do you honestly think that matters of international relations, national security and world order are best left to mindless schleps -- ie, the general public -- that don't know the first thing about them? That's absurd. Pacifism draws a powerful emotional reaction from people, so it's far too easy for the pollyanna peacenik crowd to use such influence to prevent the administration from taking very necessary actions, but emotionally hard to swallow actions. That's why the government has to use its propaganda machine. Nothing new, it's always been that way. Understandably, for those that disagree with government actions, it's difficult to take. Welcome to the real world, mac.

Yeah, I can imagine your comeback's gonna have something about how all that undermines some precious principles that you liberals (actually, and a lot of conservatives) like to believe that America was 'founded on' and became great by. Unfortunately for you, that's just feel-good history. To even pretend that America's rise to the top was built on anything but military success and self-serving opportunism is to delude oneself. Personally, I don't have any problem with that.

 

[hapaboy]

Quote from Nolan-Vinny-Sam:

ahahaha hapaboy! Sooooo predictable as expected. blah blah blah yer meant to say this, whah whah you didn't say that.

What's hilarious creepy AND pathetic, is you twisting your own words to prove your invalid point, all the while in a futile effort to defend this fraud for war.

I'll be nice for ya, in the Xmas spirit, I'll give you a 50% discount on my post that started this and remove 1 (yours) of the 2 handles. So there:

BTW, thank you for praising my spelling, I do work hard at it for all to see.

This pathetic response is the best you can muster?

I explained your dishonesty and revealed you (further) as the lying moron you are.

You lose.

Happy Holidays.

 

[candletrader]

Saddam is evil and as long as he is alive, there is always the possibility that he can escape and rule Iraq again... it is our moral obligation to the oppressed peoples of Iraq that we shoot Saddam through the head and televize the execution...

 

[ElCubano]

Quote from candletrader:

Saddam is evil and as long as he is alive, there is always the possibility that he can escape and rule Iraq again... it is our moral obligation to the oppressed peoples of Iraq that we shoot Saddam through the head and televize the execution...

PAY PER VIEW......I would actually pay for this.....