Pelosi pandering to illegals

[HenryReardon]

That more oil didn't end up flowing from Iraq after the invasion (indeed less did) is just another example of the miscalculations by Bush & Co. and the fact that the Iraqi's were interested in opening their fields to bids not limited to american concerns indicates they had their own plans which didn't exactly parallel with ours. (and Bush's insistence that this was all about bringing democracy to the Middle East meant that we got zero return on our investment)

The record high oil prices were partially a result of the instability we introduced into the Persian Gulf area by invading Iraq.

Little about the war went as Bush & Co. planned but that hardly proves it was never a major part of the plan. Its cute how you boys use failure as evidence that no plan ever existed.

There is no proof that oil was ever part of the plan.
That little quirk exists only in the febrile imaginations of far left ideologues.

Bush organized a small coalition to remove Saddam as authorized by a series of UN resolutions. No need to go thru that crap again.

 

[naked gent]

There is no proof that oil was ever part of the plan.
That little quirk exists only in the febrile imaginations of far left ideologues.

Please Henry the idea that nations go to war for tangible booty and no other is more right wing than left no matter how much you might wish it was the other way around.

Fighting for "human rights" used to be encouraged by the left and ridiculed by the right. Bush has got you so confused you can't remember who historically stands for what.

 

[HenryReardon]

Fighting for "human rights" used to be encouraged by the left and ridiculed by the right. Bush has got you so confused you can't remember who historically stands for what.

Now you're getting into the theater of the absurd, for sure.
In point of fact I didn't like Bush. Am on record as saying he only did two good things - and fucked both of them up thoroughly.

Deposing Saddam was a good thing. It needed to be done. He had the authority to do it. Didn't handle the war very well. Tax cuts for the people who actually pay taxes were a good thing - they got the economy rolling again. Too bad he couldn't have made them permanent.

He pretty much mangled everything else.

 

[Glafna]

Hmmm...and yet we had record oil prices during that time. The oil was put on the market, as I recall, and not sent here carte blanch. So no, I don't believe we went there for oil, though stability in the region to protect oil was part of it.

I have news for you. Every president has a plan for what to do in the middle east should it destabilize. If you don't think we're going back should the entire region go to hell you're naive.

And yet there were no signs of the WMD's that the US joint-task force went in to retrieve and destroy.......


And was Iraq destabilized??? Hussein was a despot, yes, but technically a lawfully elected leader, which the US forced out of power, forcing chaos on the region. More are dying now then they were when Hussein was in power.

I didn't say that... except quite alot of it is, and the US is there in 2 countries as the invading army, as an unfriendly political body to at least 2, and funded heavily by Saudi Arabia.

 

[Glafna]

There is no proof that oil was ever part of the plan.
That little quirk exists only in the febrile imaginations of far left ideologues.

Bush organized a small coalition to remove Saddam as authorized by a series of UN resolutions. No need to go thru that crap again.

Last I remembered... the invasion of Iraq was NOT UN sanctioned.

And I could have sworn I had heard something about there being WMD's that were one of the main reasons..... Which was openly declared as a lie, I believe in 2008.

You brought it up Henry , so deal with the consequences.

 

[Glafna]

Deposing Saddam was a good thing. It needed to be done. He had the authority to do it. Didn't handle the war very well. Tax cuts for the people who actually pay taxes were a good thing - they got the economy rolling again. Too bad he couldn't have made them permanent.

Well, first off I'm glad to see your not a Bushite like some right-wingers on here.


NO IT DIDN'T!!!! And the US had absolutely no authority to go to another country and remove a leader from power, didn't back in the time of JFK and the Bay of Pigs, didn't back when they stupidly invaded Iraq, boosting the amount of anti-American sentiment in the Islamic middle east by quite a large percentage.



Now lets get back on topic, we've strayed pretty far.(Thanks Henry )

 

[HenryReardon]

Last I remembered... the invasion of Iraq was NOT UN sanctioned.


.

Your memory is faulty, and we've been through this. There were a series of UN resolutions, each one incorporating by specific reference the others - which in sum gave Saddam X time to disarm and comply, failing which any member state or group of member states was authorized to act.

 

[Kulindahr]

Here, we disagree. I'd still round them up and send them back. Allow them to come back, perhaps, through some sort of legal process, but a point needs to be made.

Think of the economic benefit.

Deport12 million illegals.
Free up millions of jobs. The argument that nobody wants those jobs is bullshit.
Americans that are hungry will take the jobs.
People that are offering the jobs might have to pay a tad more. So what.

In one fell swoop a huge multi-billion dollar burden has been lifted from local, state, and federal government.
If Americans take the jobs, the money earned stays in the country (by most estimates, illegals wire-transfer anywhere from $20 billion to $35 billion annually back S of the border).

It's worth a shot.

The argument that nobody wants these jobs is true: dairy farmers can't even get their own kids to do farming jobs; once they're eighteen, and sometimes sooner, they're off for something better. Those aren't the only ones, either; we can tell when a new wave of illegals has shown up in the area because the listing of available grunt jobs in the paper plummets to a handful. I've seen numerous 'Anglos' sit staring at a television, dependent on food stamps and housing subsidies and child aid and other forms of welfare, who flat out say they'd rather scrape by on what the government gives them than shovel shit, clean ditches, cut brush, or any other dirty, sweaty labor.

Sometimes I almost agree with one of my dad's friends -- the guy who voted for Obama because he'd seen blacks do "a man's job" in the military, but would never have voted for Hillary, because 'women don't belong in politics' -- that we should ship those lazy-asses out of the country and replace them with some of these illegals who know how to do a good day's work.


As for a "point" being made, that's what the $5k per person (except children, which I define as under 14, in line with numerous organizations) penalty is for. If you don't think that's enough, give 'em a day in solitary in a detention center for each month they've been here.


Where I am, if all the illegals vanished, there wouldn't be an "economic benefit", there'd be chaos. Small businessmen, from farmers to loggers, who employ people with very good forged papers, would find themselves without crew, and in short order would go bankrupt. That would put others out of work, and the specialty shops that serve those vocations would suffer; some would close, fueling the effect. I'd guess that if magically you could make all the illegals in this county disappear overnight, within a month our unemployment rate would rise by 4 or 5 points.

 

[Kulindahr]

Well guess what, Bush and Co weren't trying to fix other countries problems, but trying to abuse them for whatever they could. They went FOR THE OIL!!!!! NOT to find WMD's, nor to remove Suddam from power, but to GET THE OIL!!!!!!

Don't tell me that your denying that......

"Get the oil"?
Rubbish. A simple look at the economics makes that plain: for most of the time the U.S. has been playing games in Iraq, less oil has been coming from there than before.

To alter a country so the oil supply might be dependable... perhaps. But the history of Anglo-American interventionism in the region makes any meddling suspect, and any result unstable.

 

[TX-Beau]

Where I am, if all the illegals vanished, there wouldn't be an "economic benefit", there'd be chaos. Small businessmen, from farmers to loggers, who employ people with very good forged papers, would find themselves without crew, and in short order would go bankrupt. That would put others out of work, and the specialty shops that serve those vocations would suffer; some would close, fueling the effect. I'd guess that if magically you could make all the illegals in this county disappear overnight, within a month our unemployment rate would rise by 4 or 5 points.

You forgot price hikes in the cost of produce, and similar increases in other businesses that employ illegally.

 

[Kulindahr]

Your memory is faulty, and we've been through this. There were a series of UN resolutions, each one incorporating by specific reference the others - which in sum gave Saddam X time to disarm and comply, failing which any member state or group of member states was authorized to act.

Henry's right on this one.
The authorization was not direct; there was no resolution saying, "The U.S. and friends can now take action", but there were the prior resolutions with the demands, worded such that even the lowest graduating law student fresh with his degree could hammer them together to make the case that the action was authorized. However much it may have been a case of bluster, with people saying, "Well, we didn't really mean that!", the words were there.

As for why we went, oil is an accusation by the left, trying to pin a profit motive on the right; removing Saddam is a feel-good justification for those who like to think of the U.S. as some sort of hero in shining body armor; establishing democracy is a pipe-dream piece of fairy-tale land spun out to make the democracy-worshipers bow down and sing Kum-Ba-Yah....

But the real reason is what Bush was insisting on so stubbornly through his last months in office: bases. Rumsfeld let it slip more than once, as well. It's part of the whole "New American Century" gig, a vision of a world run by the U.S., with all the nations which have resources our glorious leaders solemnly declare we need being held to the traces by the presence of high-tech American boys (and girls) on the ground, their hearts aimed always toward that beacon of freedom and hope.... blah, blah, blah.

Papa Bush got bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Baby Bush was supposed to get bases in Iraq. Israel may as well be a U.S. military base, so with a few more touches, Mighty America would have had a sword held over the Middle East, either to "protect" it for our interests, or deny it to others. It was imperialist doctrine at its worst, as bad as when the British Empire bribed one sultan to make war on another, so they could send in troops to provide "security" for a third, and get trade concessions from a fourth.



And to tie this back to the topic, it always puzzled me that Bush never, in those crisis days when America was whimpering and slobbering to Do Something, sought to have illegal immigrants offered citizenship through a term in the infantry. Colin Powell told Bush we couldn't put the needed numbers on the ground, however much Rumsfeld blathered about our technology and the capabilities of the U.S. soldier, so why didn't Bush put these two issues together?

 

[Kulindahr]

You forgot price hikes in the cost of produce, and similar increases in other businesses that employ illegally.

Not a significant element here. With the margins these guys, like the timber operators and dairy farmers, run on, it would just be companies folding. Legal crew might go to other operators or farms, but the demand for machinery and tools would still be down, and shops would close. The impact would be too fast for any of the other adjustments to be significant.
Long term, of course, they would, and the result there would be bigger corporations buying out the little guys, and our communities would find themselves once more losing control of their lives to people in shiny cubicles and offices half a continent away.

Now that I pause to think on that, I suspect that if we could magically deport all the illegals with the wave of a law, the winners would be those already rich and powerful -- corporations and unions.

 

[naked gent]

"Get the oil"?
Rubbish. A simple look at the economics makes that plain: for most of the time the U.S. has been playing games in Iraq, less oil has been coming from there than before.

Kul you have two choices here either you believe that what Bush & Co. said before the invasion that we would be greeted as liberators with flowers thrown in our path or you can believe they were lying.

To believe in the former but still maintain that it was expected that less oil would flow from Iraq is absurd. Almost everything that happened after the invasion was not according to plan why should the price of oil be any different?

To alter a country so the oil supply might be dependable... perhaps.

I wasn't aware that the supply pre-invasion was undependable.

 

[Glafna]

Heh, at least I got one right...

Honestly... anything that the Bush spawn touched turned to crap, including politics in countries they "intervened" in, so it's probably for the best that they didn't institute that policy.

Hey Kul, maybe you should send a letter suggesting that?

 

[Kulindahr]

Kul you have two choices here either you believe that what Bush & Co. said before the invasion that we would be greeted as liberators with flowers thrown in our path or you can believe they were lying.

To believe in the former but still maintain that it was expected that less oil would flow from Iraq is absurd. Almost everything that happened after the invasion was not according to plan why should the price of oil be any different?



I wasn't aware that the supply pre-invasion was undependable.

Your thinking is usually clearer than this.

The situation with the 'information' about the 'war' is more complex than "they were lying" or "they were telling the truth". There was truth, there was spin on data, there were misrepresentations, there were lies -- a mess made of information from the solid to the ephemeral, to achieve a result in the mind of the president, so he would make the choice that was desired.

In fact U.S. troops were greeted as liberators; that was said beforehand, and it happened. In some parts of Iraq, they are still looked to as liberators (we see email from troops there, who talk with people who see them so), though in many parts they are not -- again, it's a mixed bag.

N one "expected" that less oil would flow; Rumsfeld was too lost in his fantasies about the invincibility of the U.S. soldier, too blind in his refusal to look at what would happen after his little "victory", to have seen that -- though when it was gamed out fully, reduction in production always occurred... because there was always civil conflict, and always insurgency.

Nor was the pre-invasion supply undependable -- no one said it was.

And in general, for those who masterminded this scenario, oil was a secondary factor: what they wanted was bases, U.S. forces on the ground in the region, U.S. power projected so we could manipulate things. Yes, that was concerned with the flow of oil, but is was primarily concerned with a rabid vision that the U.S. (as sole superpower) could dominate the world by sheer will, an imperialist vision beyond what that empire on which the sun never set ever had.

 

[Kulindahr]

Heh, at least I got one right...

Honestly... anything that the Bush spawn touched turned to crap, including politics in countries they "intervened" in, so it's probably for the best that they didn't institute that policy.

Hey Kul, maybe you should send a letter suggesting that?

Suggesting which -- illegal immigrants given the option of serving in the army?

 

[HappySmiles]

I believe that most illegal immigrants just want a better life. Most go to the Us undocumented for the fact that the immigration laws are so corrupted. I believe Ive heard that it could take up to ten years for someone to get proper documentation. Most leave their countries (not just Mexico) because they are in bad shape. I don't agree with them coming in the masses but the US should fix their immigration laws. Its not right to keep millions of people in the shadows while the rest of us have normal lives. Its not like they can all be deported because that wouldn't be the right thing. As someone stated, most have created their lives here ,and separating them from their families wouldn't be correct. At the end of the day, creating a path for citizenship for the ones already in the US and making them pay a fee would sorta help. Of course, closing their borders and just making their immigration laws more acceptable would also help a lot of people.

 

[naked gent]

And in general, for those who masterminded this scenario, oil was a secondary factor: what they wanted was bases, U.S. forces on the ground in the region, U.S. power projected so we could manipulate things. Yes, that was concerned with the flow of oil, but is was primarily concerned with a rabid vision that the U.S. (as sole superpower) could dominate the world by sheer will, an imperialist vision beyond what that empire on which the sun never set ever had.

Given what you write here just answer one question if there were no oil in Iraq or the persian gulf area would we want bases badly enough there to invade a country.

If you answer no then dress it up any way you like but you do think it was about oil.

BTW by the same reasoning Bush's father would not have invaded Panama had the canal not been there. Countries go to war for reasons less ethereal than many seem to think.

 

[Glafna]

Yes, they are our problem, and the problem can be solved by sending them back from whence they came.

No it won't, because unless the problem is solved in their home country, then they may come back(if not killed by the Coyotes or w/e for not being able to pay) with others.

 

[Glafna]

Suggesting which -- illegal immigrants given the option of serving in the army?

Well, yes, if that is what you meant in your post.

As much as I hate to say it, it will give the US troops that they badly need, so they can stop ordering Stoploss(correct term??) on their troops coming back.(as far as I know, it's still going on)