[Rugrat]

Bush: We can't jeopardize gains in Iraq
WASHINGTON - Five years after launching the invasion of Iraq, President Bush strongly signaled Wednesday that he won't order troop withdrawals beyond those already planned because he refuses to "jeopardize the hard-fought gains" of the past year.

As anti-war activists demonstrated around downtown Washington, the president spoke at the Pentagon to mark the anniversary of a war that has cost nearly 4,000 U.S. lives and roughly $500 billion. The president's address was part of a series of events the White House planned around the anniversary and next month's report from the top U.S. figures in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. That report will be the basis for Bush's first troop-level decision in seven months.

"The battle in Iraq has been longer and harder and more costly than we anticipated," Bush said.

But, he added, before an audience of Pentagon brass, soldiers and diplomats: "The battle in Iraq is noble, it is necessary, and it is just. And with your courage, the battle in Iraq will end in victory."

I would just like to make a few comments about this....

1. No kidding the war has been longer and harder and more costly than you anticipated; You failled to even plan for it! You just sent in the troops and seriously expected the Iraqi people to throw us a party as liberators and the next day start up a fully functioning government.

2. Just what exactly are we defining as Victory in Iraq? A secure Iraq? That's not going to happen as you will still have Turkey invading to the North chasing Kurd rebels, Iran fueling Shia resistance in the South, and the Sunni's in the Center trying to re-establish their power. A unified Iraq led by an elected Government? That's not going to happen as te Kurdish PM has already stated he will not rejoin centeralized Iraqi rule and I don't believe the Shia and Sunnis will ever get their crap together.

3. Was the 500 Billion dollars spent, the 4,000 US soldiers killed, and the hundred of thousands of Iraqis lives lost truely been "necessary" just to rid the world of 1 dictator who had been under an embargo for close to 10 years? I think Not.

[SynTek]

Originally Posted by Rugrat

I would just like to make a few comments about this....

1. No kidding the war has been longer and harder and more costly than you anticipated; You failled to even plan for it! You just sent in the troops and seriously expected the Iraqi people to throw us a party as liberators and the next day start up a fully functioning government.

2. Just what exactly are we defining as Victory in Iraq? A secure Iraq? That's not going to happen as you will still have Turkey invading to the North chasing Kurd rebels, Iran fueling Shia resistance in the South, and the Sunni's in the Center trying to re-establish their power. A unified Iraq led by an elected Government? That's not going to happen as te Kurdish PM has already stated he will not rejoin centeralized Iraqi rule and I don't believe the Shia and Sunnis will ever get their crap together.

3. Was the 500 Billion dollars spent, the 4,000 US soldiers killed, and the hundred of thousands of Iraqis lives lost truely been "necessary" just to rid the world of 1 dictator who had been under an embargo for close to 10 years? I think Not.

Iraq, like Vietnam, has suffered from a key problem - We don't know why we're there. We "won" the war in a month, and within the first year we had almost everyone on our HVT list marked as captured or killed. We somehow couldn't leave it at that since we didn't find those "WMD's" and found that entirely new governments don't get built overnight. Thus we began our long road to rebuild Iraqi Security - a task that's entirely too vague to ever be a success. If we reduce the number of attacks to 1 a month we still won't have achieved victory under those circumstances.

Do I think the war is worth it? Perhaps the costs of the first few months were worth the gains but now we're just fighting for the sake of fighting. We are ineviably going to leave without accomplishing our impossible goals and it will be seen as a loss just as Vietnam was.

[PDXMark]

Originally Posted by Rugrat

I would just like to make a few comments about this....

1. No kidding the war has been longer and harder and more costly than you anticipated;

DuH!

Originally Posted by Rugrat

2. Just what exactly are we defining as Victory in Iraq? A secure Iraq? That's not going to happen as you will still have Turkey invading to the North chasing Kurd rebels, Iran fueling Shia resistance in the South, and the Sunni's in the Center trying to re-establish their power. A unified Iraq led by an elected Government? That's not going to happen as te Kurdish PM has already stated he will not rejoin centeralized Iraqi rule and I don't believe the Shia and Sunnis will ever get their crap together.

Securing a valuble resource from those who don't believe in democracy!

Originally Posted by Rugrat

3. Was the 500 Billion dollars spent, the 4,000 US soldiers killed, and the hundred of thousands of Iraqis lives lost truely been "necessary" just to rid the world of 1 dictator who had been under an embargo for close to 10 years? I think Not.

Around 1/3 of this $500bn defense fund went to contracts held by KBR, Halliburton and corporate security contractors like Blackwater.

Not to worry, with a failing dollar our country will not be able to host such parties for a while. The ****ed up part, "I see the clean-up being as costly on our souls and spirit"!

[Murph1329]

damn please stop bring up the cost of what was we put into defense spending PLZ

While we're putting the most money every into defense spending than we ever have in the past you need to remember that the US GDP is also higher than it's ever been in the past.
With that said we are currently spending about 4% of the GDP on defense spending. When Clinton was President that percentage was around 4.7 and that was during a time of peace. And when we fought in WW2 it was around 38%.
Only dedicating 4% of the GDP to defense spending during a time of war is next to nothing and you really shouldn't ***** about it.

[paintballpimp092]

Originally Posted by Murph1329

damn please stop bring up the cost of what was we put into defense spending PLZ

While we're putting the most money every into defense spending than we ever have in the past you need to remember that the US GDP is also higher than it's ever been in the past.
With that said we are currently spending about 4% of the GDP on defense spending. When Clinton was President that percentage was around 4.7 and that was during a time of peace. And when we fought in WW2 it was around 38%.
Only dedicating 4% of the GDP to defense spending during a time of war is next to nothing and you really shouldn't ***** about it.

And we're how many trillions of dollars in debt to the Chinese?

[berserker19]

Someone has to pay for those 24,000 orders of shrimp lo mein and 6,000 crab rangoon that were delivered to the white house between 2003 and 2007. Not to mention the surcharge for all those extra soy sauce packets and almond cookies.

[Rugrat]

Originally Posted by Murph1329

damn please stop bring up the cost of what was we put into defense spending PLZ

While we're putting the most money every into defense spending than we ever have in the past you need to remember that the US GDP is also higher than it's ever been in the past.
With that said we are currently spending about 4% of the GDP on defense spending. When Clinton was President that percentage was around 4.7 and that was during a time of peace. And when we fought in WW2 it was around 38%.
Only dedicating 4% of the GDP to defense spending during a time of war is next to nothing and you really shouldn't ***** about it.

[sarcasm]Which explains why we are able to fund the war in Iraq and still have our budget be in the black....[/sarcasm]

Seriously how stupid is your logic? We may have a higher GDP but we are still spending more money than the Federal Government is collecting thanks to this war which driving our counrty further in to debt. So yes I should be *****ing about it because I don't care if we are going further in to debt very quickly or very slowly all because of Bush's folly in Iraq.

[paintballpimp092]

Originally Posted by berserker19

Someone has to pay for those 24,000 orders of shrimp lo mein and 6,000 crab rangoon that were delivered to the white house between 2003 and 2007. Not to mention the surcharge for all those extra soy sauce packets and almond cookies.

I love crab rangoons...

[Murph1329]

Originally Posted by paintballpimp092

And we're how many trillions of dollars in debt to the Chinese?

omg do you really think 4% of the GDP on defense spending is too much?

comparing nominal dollar values of military spending over the course of decades fails to account for the impact of inflationary forces, for which military spending as a percentage of GDP does account

please don't act like your ignorant

4% IS NOTHING DURING A TIME OF WAR
during the Vietnam War it was close to 10%

while this is only 2005 you should defenitly take a look at it:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publicat.../2034rank.html

[timmyt]

Originally Posted by Murph1329

omg do you really think 4% of the GDP on defense spending is too much?

comparing nominal dollar values of military spending over the course of decades fails to account for the impact of inflationary forces, for which military spending as a percentage of GDP does account

please don't act like your ignorant

4% IS NOTHING DURING A TIME OF WAR
during the Vietnam War it was close to 10%

while this is only 2005 you should defenitly take a look at it:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publicat.../2034rank.html

Yah guys, we've figured out how to destroy on the cheap! And it's working!

[Craigers]

If everyone is so worried about the cost of the war on our economy and debt, why don't we look at the $1.5 trillion a year we spend on social problems...

[timmyt]

Originally Posted by Craigers

If everyone is so worried about the cost of the war on our economy and debt, why don't we look at the $1.5 trillion a year we spend on social problems...

I think the majority of people would rather spend money on social issues rather than war, but I could be mistaken.

[cash pasos]

He's just being stubborn against the demonstrators, he's showing power and showing he will not withdrawl because of the people protesting in this speech.

[berserker19]

Originally Posted by Murph1329

omg do you really think 4% of the GDP on defense spending is too much?

4% IS NOTHING DURING A TIME OF WAR
during the Vietnam War it was close to 10%

This is a cheap way of disguising the fact that it is an insane amount of money that is essentially being wasted for no benefit to the American taxpayer.

Originally Posted by Craigers

If everyone is so worried about the cost of the war on our economy and debt, why don't we look at the $1.5 trillion a year we spend on social problems...

I know, jeez, wtf are we thinking of trying to help American citizens when we could just blow the money on ungrateful arabs...

[JcKa]

Originally Posted by Craigers

If everyone is so worried about the cost of the war on our economy and debt, why don't we look at the $1.5 trillion a year we spend on social problems...

These "social problems" are the backbone of domestic spending.

I've got '06 numbers:

21% of the budget went to defense.
21% of the budget went to SS.
19% of the budget went to Medicare/Medicaid/SCHIP (3/5 going to Medicare).
9% of the budget went to debt interest.
9% of the budget went to "social safety nets" (your actual social problems).
21% of the budget went to everything else (infrastructure, etc).

[as quoted from here, I've yet to look into the source]
http://www.cbpp.org/4-10-07tax2.htm

[jshaft37]

Originally Posted by Murph1329

damn please stop bring up the cost of what was we put into defense spending PLZ

While we're putting the most money every into defense spending than we ever have in the past you need to remember that the US GDP is also higher than it's ever been in the past.
With that said we are currently spending about 4% of the GDP on defense spending. When Clinton was President that percentage was around 4.7 and that was during a time of peace. And when we fought in WW2 it was around 38%.
Only dedicating 4% of the GDP to defense spending during a time of war is next to nothing and you really shouldn't ***** about it.

"defense" was 19% of our budget in 2007 with 548.8 billion spent. the total requested military budget was 699 billion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_...budget%2C_2007

[Murph1329]

Originally Posted by timmyt

Yah guys, we've figured out how to destroy on the cheap! And it's working!

OHHHH ok so right now we're putting just enough into defense spending to put a minimal amount of pressure on terrorist. So, now we need to slowly decrease the amount until we're totally ineffective.

y'all think this would be a good idea?

[timmyt]

Originally Posted by Murph1329

OHHHH ok so right now we're putting just enough into defense spending to put a minimal amount of pressure on terrorist. So, now we need to slowly decrease the amount until we're totally ineffective.

y'all think this would be a good idea?

Well, I'm an all or nothing type of guy. In my view, we should have sent 500,000 troops into Iraq, or simply none.

But I'm no war planner. I'm just a guy who plays paintball on the weekends and the rest of the time sit in front of a computer.

[Murph1329]

Originally Posted by jshaft37

"defense" was 19% of our budget in 2007 with 548.8 billion spent. the total requested military budget was 699 billion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_...budget%2C_2007

WRONG
For 2007 it was US$439.3 billion spent in defense spending
In 2006 the GDP was 13487.2 (billions of dollars). No idea what it was in 2007 but i know it's higher.

439.3/13487.2=3.3%
or with your number...
548.8/13487.2=4.1%

not even close to your 19% please show me your incorrect sources

[graysonp]

Originally Posted by Murph1329

WRONG
For 2007 it was US$439.3 billion spent in defense spending
In 2006 the GDP was 13487.2 (billions of dollars). No idea what it was in 2007 but i know it's higher.

439.3/13487.2=3.3%
or with your number...
548.8/13487.2=4.1%

not even close to your 19% please show me your incorrect sources

You're both talking about 2 different things. He's saying that defense was 19% of the Federal governments total budget. You're saying that defense is only about 3-4% of the GDP. Both are accurate numbers.

[timmyt]

WRONG!

JK