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December 19, 2005
Cheney's Surprise Visit to Iraq
Vice President Dick Cheney recently made a surprise visit to Iraq, arriving in Baghdad yesterday "amid great secrecy... [and] under intense security for nine hours, leaving 12 hours before President Bush's televised national address from the Oval Office on the war and what comes next," reported SFGate.com.
Cheney reportedly appeared to show support for the US's decision to occupy Iraq, "transmitting the [Bush's] administration's confidence that it is beginning to get Iraq under control" (SFGate.com).
Depending on your view of the US's stay in Iraq, that Iraq's prime minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari told Cheney he was "very happy for [him] to see the fruits of [his] labor" (qtd. in SF Chronicle) may sound sincere or rather ironic.
What do you think? With several attacks during the Iraqi election, and the continuing violence as the US pushes Western democracy onto the country, do you think al-Jaafari's comment proves the Right is right, or do you snicker because the only fruits of labor you see in Iraq is continuing violence?
Posted by Tuck at December 19, 2005 11:02 AM
Comments
i think Jafari was taking the p**s. basically you messed this country up, now im glad you've seen some of it for yourselves.
Posted by: ee at December 24, 2005 06:07 PM
I think Tuck works for the NY Times. "...the US pushes Western democracy onto the country..." I guess those Iraqis don't deserve freedom from oppression, eh?
And can anyone understand what "ee" is saying?
Posted by: Brenda at December 29, 2005 08:36 PM
Mr. Cheney should have made a surprise visit 30 years ago to Nam. The hypocrisy is maddening. I'm concerned about our future and sad about the direction of our country. This is not the USA I grew up in.
Posted by: Bob at January 1, 2006 10:13 PM
Bob,
Perhaps Canada is the USA you grew up in, why don't you go visit?
Posted by: Wayne at January 3, 2006 08:02 AM
Bob, you're not alone. Many people much older than I am have been concerned about the direction this country took since the media began controlling information back in the 60's. Actually it has been starting to turn around in the last few years now that we have access to more information and can now find out the truth much better.
Have faith, the US is getting better. I talk to a lot of people and they're much more informed on the truth these days. 90% of americans don't believe anything that comes from the "old grey lady", the New York Times, which has controlled the propaganda in this country for the past 40 years. Now that's a good sign. Their biases are destroying them. NYTimes is losing money because they lie, and the same with Newsweek. I'm just happy we're able to see past their lies and are able to find out the truth for a change. Remember, it takes time to correct the problems created by a biased media, but I'm confident we can.
Just be glad you're coming out of the liberal fog this country has been in for so long.
Posted by: Brenda at January 3, 2006 10:02 AM
I think the NY Times is a very good newspaper I just throw all the editorials in the garbage.
Posted by: Henry at January 3, 2006 06:49 PM
The USA is definitely now a different place from when I was young. I’m not talking about the biasness of the media I’m talking about how America is being run. Mr. Bush is turning out to be one of the worst and most incompetent presidents in American history, even more so than Slick Willy. He showed exemplary leadership 4 years ago after the 9/11 attacks but after all the mistakes he made in Iraq and in the Hurricane Katrina crisis, that is now ancient history.
The State of the Union was full of the same old BS: no more dependence on Mideast oil, cheaper health insurance, more investments in education, yada yada yada. It’s a no-brainer why Mr. Bush’s poll numbers are low: the failure to find Osama bin Laden, the failure to stop the insurgency in Iraq, the failure to lower gas prices as a former oil businessman, the overextension and stop-loss policy in our military, and the bankruptcy of our country with massive deficits. He did not even interrupt his vacation at Crawford while thousands of people at New Orleans were suffering from Katrina, reminding us of his dad’s equally incompetent response to Hurricane Andrew in ’92. None of those neoconservatives (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, etc.) who took us into this mess in Iraq ever served in the military they all got deferments.
Political lobbyist Jack Abramoff also donated money illegally to a lot more republicans than democrats. Okay people let’s show this republican Congress in November that we’re tired of all this corruption by voting them out. This country seriously needs a change of direction and we can do that through the ballot box this year.
Nuff said.
Posted by: Bob at February 2, 2006 10:56 PM
Yeah, we've been misled for about 40 years and a lot of damage has made it very difficult to recover, but our secret weapon is the American people. Sure, we're taxed to the hilt, but look at how prosperous we are. The tax cuts alone brought in more revenue than expected.
As proven over the years, tax cuts always help boost the economy, but it takes more than that. The economic numbers just came out and they're the best they've been since before 9/11. In fact, most indicators show the economy better than it's been in about 20 years. Unemployment is at an all time low.
There's a lot more we can do, but we're heading in the right direction. Knowing about the control and bias of the media is a start, but we can do so much more to make this country continue to be the best ever. Throwing out the IRS is a start.
As for the New Orleans thing, that was a tragedy that was compounded by pervasive corruption and incompetance at the local level, and that's already been proven and admitted to. FEMA is supposed to be a last resort, but it didn't take much for the biased media to unfairly put all the blame on the federal government.
I'm glad we've got a president who doesn't look to "polls" to make important decisions. The last guy did that and look at the damage he did. Being popular is good for high school elections, but not for getting real problems solved.
I feel sad for Bush sometimes with the constant barrage of lies spewing from the looney leftwing nuts, but he's such a great leader he takes it in stride.
And we've always been concerned with corruption in government. I think a real cleaning up is in order on both sides. Corruption today is almost as bad as it was in the last administration, but we'll correct it all in the elections coming up. Since most people are totally disgusted with the constant bellowing and lying by Democrats, I think we'll see some good changes in the next elections.
Posted by: Eve at February 8, 2006 06:19 PM
If the tax cuts brought so much revenue then why did the federal government just propose to cut 141 domestic programs in the next fiscal budget? It's a sure bet Congress won't approve all those cuts especially in an election year.
Posted by: Henry at February 10, 2006 01:39 AM
A cut doesn't mean a lowering of funding for any particular social program. It means that the proposed increase is lower than what they wanted to increase it by.
And increasing spending by a smaller percentage is a good thing, even if we don't actually ever decrease spending.
I really wish we could revamp it all and just plain throw out all this wasteful spending, but maybe if we can cut the increases a little it might help.
I know it's hard to understand that a "cut" is not really a cut, but they give it that term to make it confusing on purpose.
As far as I can tell, there have never been any cuts in spending in our history. If anyone can find where the budget one year was actually less than the year before, please publish the data.
Posted by: Eve at February 15, 2006 10:11 AM
The problem is that most Americans, with the exception of staunch conservatives and Republicans, dislike Bush and are convinced that he is not doing his job right. The fact is that his administration bungled the Katrina response and the president himself took full responsibility for that response. The local authorities in New Orleans also share some of the blame.
Do you think that Americans would approve of his decision to give away six of our ports to an Arab country where some of the 9/11 hijackers came from?
Posted by: Henry at February 21, 2006 08:40 PM
We've already established that it was mostly the local government that "bungled" the Katrina situation. Funny how none of the real swindlers in that deal took any responsibility: Nagel and his escape with no regard for the people, and Jefferson for making the response teams go to his house so he could get his freezer full of embezzled money first, leaving the poor to drown. And how they embezzled the money for the levees. These guys should be put in prison, but they're liberal Democrats, so it's ok for them to rip off the poor.
Proof again that the liberal ideals always end up in total disaster. When will we learn that liberalism destroys lives??
As for the ports, you should check the facts out more, Henry. No one gave away any ports and it's not the president's job to get involved in business deals. My understanding is that it's a company in the Arab Emerates, which is an ally of ours. Also the security remains the same, just the operations are changing ownership. You sound like the liberals have been using their fear tactics on you. Wake up, dude!! Don't let the liberal attempts at fearmongering get to you.
It's not like when Jimmy Carter gave away the Panama Canal or when Clinton gave away nuclear secrets to the Chinese for campaign donations, or when they both gave away billions of our tax money so the North Koreans could build nuclear bombs. Or even when Clinton and JFK conducted wiretapping on innocent citizens. Seems like no one is ever concerned when liberals stab us in the back and now we're supposed to be worried about this little business deal?
And now that we have proof that the WMD's were transported out of Iraq by the Russians, I wonder what the liberal spin machine will do now.
Posted by: Fred at February 23, 2006 05:34 PM
I guess you have a point there Fred. Speaking of Jimmy Carter, he's one of the very few Bush critics who actually SUPPORT the port deal along with the LA Times.
Posted by: Henry at February 24, 2006 06:58 PM
That's pretty funny. Having Carter support this transaction does make one rething the issue. (I guess the unions forgot to tell Jimmy his talking points.) He's senile anyway, so his opinion means nothing to me.
We could debate on this issue for a while. I don't think there's a topic on this forum for this issue, but there should be.
My first reaction was dubious. It concerns me that countries that support us now may later turn on us and having them operate ports is then a concern, but if that's the case we have a lot more worries ahead.
For example, it seems that our nuclear power technology in Westinghouse (owned by England) is being sold to Toshiba (owned by Japan) who will be outfitting power plants for China. Is that cause for alarm?
Also, the UAE own most of Daimler/Chrysler, who have tracking devices in all their new cars. Should we be concerned?
I'm sick of the press always trying to create fear out of nothing.
I guess we should always be concerned about foreign companies owning things in this country, but since it's been going on for so long it's hard to argue against the issue.
For example, I remember 10 or 15 years ago when the Japanese bought most of the buildings in New York City. There was some panic on the news that they were taking over our country, but so far we're still here. So who knows...?
Bottom line, I'm not sure if this is an issue or not, or whether we should be troubled or not. There are definitely more important things to worry about.
As an aside; Don Knotts, Darren McGavin & Dennis Weaver just died recently. Those were some top notch people and we'll all miss them.
Posted by: Ted at February 27, 2006 01:44 PM
