Eat the rich.
 

So, you have a lot of company stock?

Eat the rich.
 

None! And I don't work there anymore. But I think planes are cool. Especially unmanned aerial vehicles.

Eat the rich.
 

Planes are cool. And UAVs are super cool. But UAVs are cheap to make, relatively cheap to develop and don't cater to the fighter jock part of the USAF (i.e., those in charge). So that's not a good replacement for the F-22 (or whatever we're up to) from a budgetary/profit/prestige perspective.

Eat the rich.
 

Then my love for them must be unselfish.

Eat the rich.
 

my largest client is somewhere on that food chain of the newest F whatever, so STFU.

Like Ernst Stavro Blofeld, but smarter.
 

It's scary because it's true.

Eat the rich.
 

I think the message of Why We Fight has a much broader reach than the military/industrial complex. There's a real problem with the government - state and federal - becoming the biggest client of a lot of businesses. I see a lot of atrocious spending going on because business has been in a cost cutting mode for the better part of the last six years and in the place of private sector revenues, companies are eager to grab Uncle Sam or their state's business.

This creates the worst of all worlds by encouraging profligate govt spending. I think business has unfortunately learned that its much easier to service the govt than compete with it, which was the original aim of the push toward privatization. I still beleive in privatization, now more than ever, but I'm not sure business does anymore. I think its a lot happier to just be a subcontractor where we all pay for the redundancies.

I have a state contract right now and I hate it. Its wasteful. The service provided to the govt is a service necessitated because its own workers are too lazy to perform their job properly. The redundancy is awful. If the state fired the dept we provide the service for and inserted us in its place we could do it for 1/5 the cost to taxpayers.

But that will never happen because its politically unpalatable. It's fine for me. I get paid either way, but it really does fuck taxpayers and people who might benefit from the wages paid to those state workers.

Fuck it, right... That's the human condition. The useless have to do something. We can't just let them starve.

Politics before the Nation's interest
 

You reading comprehension is diminishing again. Civilian control of the military has nothing to do with Congress

Depends on the fight. If they are fighting the good fight (a fight for a policy that is the best interest of US security), and Bush can't carry the water anymore but the military picks it up then that is good for all of us.

The ridiculousness of your position is that people may assume Warner speaks for the military, but in this case they are clearly wrong because the military disagreed with him. So in this case he clearly is not speaking for the military.


If memory serves, Patreus was voted in unanimously and congress asked for a report from him in September. So Congress chose this general, now that are just upset because he is not telling them what they want to hear.

Cite (and please make it a primary source; otherwise it is not really a cite.

Again, the Senate unanimously endorsed Patreus and asked for a report in September. They chose the man in this case.

Politics before the Nation's interest
 

This ( http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/02/wa...1173d7&ei=5070 ) only covers part of Ty's point--that Bush relieved Gen. Casey of the Iraq command b/c Casey supported withdrawal of troops--and it isn't a primary source, but I will assert that it is, indeed, a cite.

If you insist on citation to actual, primary sources for defense-related decisions of the current administration, you've made your positions unchallangeable without the existence of leaked documents.

C edibility
 

Spanky,

Two questions:

(1) How are those benchmarks going?
(2) Can you identify a past prediction on Iraq by any of this administration's talking heads that panned out?

"the unanimous disagreement of the Joint Chiefs of Staff"
 

Our government has three branches, not one.

We'll just have to disagree there, because my view is that our government gets to decide what the country's foreign policy is, not our military, and it's not the military's place to argue with the government about what's in the best interests of the country.

You don't seem to have understood what I said there.

They're not happy that he's allowing himself to be the tool of the White House press office.

It's no secret that much of the military disagreed with the surge. See the article Cletus cited. Here's an article from two days ago (titled "Among Top Officials, 'Surge' Has Sparked Dissent, Infighting"):

• The polite discussion in the White House Situation Room a week ago masked a sharper clash over the U.S. venture in Iraq, one that has been building since Fallon, chief of the U.S. Central Command, which oversees Middle East operations, sent a rear admiral to Baghdad this summer to gather information. Soon afterward, officials said, Fallon began developing plans to redefine the U.S. mission and radically draw down troops.
  
  One of those plans, according to a Centcom officer, involved slashing U.S. combat forces in Iraq by three-quarters by 2010. In an interview, Fallon disputed that description but declined to offer details. Nonetheless, his efforts offended Petraeus's team, which saw them as unwelcome intrusion on their own long-term planning. The profoundly different views of the U.S. role in Iraq only exacerbated the schism between the two men.
  
  "Bad relations?" said a senior civilian official with a laugh. "That's the understatement of the century. . . . If you think Armageddon was a riot, that's one way of looking at it."

Nominally Petreaus reports to Fallon, but we know that Bush is the decider here.

On the specific assertion that I made re the Joint Chiefs, how's this for support:

• The Bush administration is split over the idea of a surge in troops to Iraq, with White House officials aggressively promoting the concept over the unanimous disagreement of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to U.S. officials familiar with the intense debate.

WaPo, 12/19/06.

C edibility
 

Question:

Do the Democrats actually want to force troop withdrawals? Or do they simply want to keep the issue alive through Nov. 2008?

C edibility
 

Some do.


Some do.

Some don't really want this, but absent the votes to force troop withdrawals, are content for this to be the result.

C edibility
 

Were those questions that hard to answer?

Yes, I think it's clear that most Democrats want troop withdrawls, though the extent of them would be debated.

Do you really think Dems would look to keep the war going through 2008 in hopes that they will inherit an even bigger mess than we have now? Remember, the longer this drags on, the more Congress' ratings decline as well as the President - there was a clear mandate to the new Congress to force a change of course on Iraq.

Hey Spanky, read George Will.