Some food for thought
 

Here we go again.

Surprising
 

I would like to see the data on that.

Some food for thought
 

Last week, the Iraqi intelligence minister announced that number. I'll try to find a cite for you.

Some food for thought
 

That's the Iraqi Interior Minister's current estimate of participants in the insurgency, with 40,000 "active" participants. Don't know the distinction -- bomb planters vs. bomb makers?

The estimates have grown enormously over time. Is that because the insurgency is growing, or because the initial estimates were so fucked? (Or were all the insurgents hiding behind the WMD?)

Surprising
 

I would like you to see the data on that too.

Before you go spouting about the beauty of supply-side economics, you should read about just how of the deficit is due to tax cuts.

Some food for thought
 

Some food for thought
 

And here

Surprising
 

You were right on the data, I was right that supply-side theory does not go as far as to say that the cuts pay for themselves.

• Fable 1: The Reagan Administration Relied on "Pie-in-the-Sky" Predictions That Tax Rate Cuts Would Pay for Themselves
  
  Supply-siders predicted their tax cuts would pay for themselves. This was nonsense from day one, because the credible evidence overwhelmingly indicates that revenue feedbacks from tax cuts is 35 cents per dollar, at most. Are we really gullible enough to accept a free dinner while still suffering the indigestion from our "free" lunch? [23]
  
  This is one of the great enduring myths of Reaganomics: that the White House relied on wild supply-side assumptions regarding the revenue impact of the tax cuts. The Reagan administration never assumed that the tax cuts would pay for themselves. In fact, "America's New Beginning: A Program for Economic Recovery," the White House budget plan released on February 18, 1981, included a table entitled "Direct Revenue Effects of Proposed Tax Reductions." [24] That table predicted a huge $700 billion revenue loss from the tax cuts through 1986, as shown in Table 4.
  
  Table 4
  Reagan Administration's Scoring of the 1981 Tax Cut--Revenue Impact, in Billions of Dollars
  1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1981-86
  -8.8 -53.9 -100.0 -148.1 -185.7 -221.7 -718.2

http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-261.html

Some food for thought
 

I am going off what I've read from military experts. Apparently there is a specific military meaning to the term insurgency. It is based on things like the number of members, goals, ability to supplant the current government with a substitute government, and other factors. I'm not sure what the precise number is, but surely we can agree that 10 members of a group in Iraq does not an insurgency make. The percentage of the population you cited earlier seems to be more along the lines of that magnitude.

Some food for thought
 

I think you'll find different approaches in the military to defining insurgency, and that it is often a catch-all with a variety of sub categories, including terrorism (which can be done by that cell of 10) and revolution (requiring a very broad basis of support). I've also seen military reports focusing on less than the entire country in deterimining whether their defined term (civil war, insurgency, revolution, uprising, etc.) has been met, so someone might argue that ifyou have 20% of the population of Kosovo tacitly allied with a guerilla force you've got a civil war even if that translates to 2% of the population of the Serbian/Yugoslav state ostensibly ruling Kosovo.

I'd bet all these numbers are very tough to pin down, and any number is inaccurate. But if there is a force under arms that is able to replenish itself from the population, you have a very different problem than if there is an isolated and discrete element within the population that has taken up arms. It's the difference between Ho Chi Minh and the Black Panthers. Given the fact that the insurgents have held entire cities against conventional forces, and that there are individual leaders who seem to have significant followings in established institutions like the Mosques, I'd say you have a force under arms replenishing itself.

Surprising
 

Next time you do google-fu, consider going past the first link. Especially if it's from the Cato Institute.

The second link -- not necessarily any less biased -- has a precisely contrary account:

• When President Reagan took office in 1981, he quickly succeeded in passing substantial "supply-side" cuts in both individual and corporate income taxes. He predicted that the 1981 tax cuts would “pay for themselves” through higher investment and faster growth in productivity and incomes. Once enacted, the 1981 tax cuts opened up wide budget deficits (6% of gross domestic product, the largest peacetime deficit in history), leading Congress and the president to agree to substantially increase taxes on corporations in 1982 and on payrolls in 1983. Although those measures helped to narrow the budget deficit, large deficits persisted and further major tax hikes were adopted in 1990 and 1993.

http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm/we...shots_06162004


eta: The Bush Admin went a lot further. According to Cheney, tax cuts not only pay for themselves, but increase revenues to government.

“Eliminating the deficit is an important goal and the president’s plan to expand the economy ultimately will reduce the deficit. … The president’s growth package will reduce the tax burden on the American people by $98 billion this year, $670 billion over the next 10 years. But the actual impact on the deficit will be considerably smaller than the static projections, because the president’s package will generate new growth, it will expand the tax base and thus increase tax revenue to the federal government ultimately [emphasis added].” Transcript of Cheney speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, January 10, 2003.


To get to that you need to look at the fifth or sixth google result, and even read some footnotes.

Surprising
 

Sorry, this goes against the assumptiosn stated in the 1981 Reagan budget and contains no cite. Have to stick with my source.

You're right on this, it is over the top.

New Yorker article
 

Don't know if anyone had already posted it, but there's a very interesting article here about the ways the Army is learning its lessons from Iraq. It's a little long, but I recommend it highly.

It will be interesting to see where the Army as an institution goes from here, both at the highest levels and at the company and platoon commander levels. The folks I know are the latter and I totally agree with the article's description of their skillful innovation despite the traditionalist military training.

Surprising
 

This is the stupidest non-adder post on PB ever. Congrats.

New Yorker article
 

I'm suspicious, because I think the history of training is pretty history-lite. My father was at Command and General Staff in the 70s, and the training was very good. And reading my grandfather's letters during WWII, his training went well beyond the "mailing list" they were talking about. He had training in tactical maneuvers over different terrain, and could write technically about deploying forces in complex maneuvers.

Also, stuff like suggesting the junior officers are internet saavy while the seniors aren't is kind of silly. Most of the people I know are mid-level officers, colonels and majors, and they are as internet saavy as the people who post here. I do think the army today is ready to give officers in the field some higher levels of indepence that the Pentagon might like, but I think that's because the civies in the Pentagon are idiots, and the senior officers have more faith in their officers in the field than in Wolfies' boys. And because they do understand that the training tactics they are using are being battle-tested for the first time in many cases.