Still Hating America.

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Ooh, burn.

I sort of had trusted him. At least a little. That fucker.

[SlaveNoMore]

Gattigap
That's all fine and good, Slave, but know that some honest to shit military folks like West Point Deans met with them too.

link

But the General didn't say what Spanky attributed to him, nor does that article make any mention of the Keith Untermann show - although that is quire irrelevant.

Sounds like someone is morphing the two stories to give gravitas to the producer's comments.

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
But the General didn't say what Spanky attributed to him, nor does that article make any mention of the Keith Untermann show - although that is quire irrelevant.

Sounds like someone is morphing the two stories to give gravitas to the producer's comments.

Um, OK. I didn't see Spanky provide any quote, so I don't really follow what you're talking about, but whatever.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by ltl/fb
I sort of had trusted him.

Mistake #1.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
But the General didn't say what Spanky attributed to him, nor does that article make any mention of the Keith Untermann show - although that is quire irrelevant.

Sounds like someone is morphing the two stories to give gravitas to the producer's comments.

Hmmm. Once again, Spanky takes license with the truth. Am I the only one trend-spotting here?

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
It's slow bleed of the President's misconceived, misexecuted war. No troops will be slowly bled, except to the extent that they already have been denied things like body armor and armor for their Humvees by a Rumsfeld-led Pentagon that apparently had other priorities.

The war went like clock work. So did the Afghanistan operation. It was the Iraqi occupation that has not gone according to plan. So to improve the situation he asking for more troops. And the morons in Congress that authorized the war, are now trying to pretend they did something they didn't.

The occupation has not gone as well as hoped, so the answer is to fix it. Not throw in the towel.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
And his actions never lived up to his rhetoric.

What action did he not take that you think he should have.

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Why do you say this? Is the President prepared to advocate tax increases to pay for big increases in military spending? If not, then his war isn't as important to his as cutting taxes for his supporters.

But we all know this.

How about the spending cuts to pay for the war. We were in a recession when the tax cuts were implemented. Those tax cuts led to growth that is now reducing the deficit every year. If the growth continues we can balance the budget without raising taxes.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
The occupation has not gone as well as hoped, so the answer is to fix it. Not throw in the towel.

Three years ago, that sort of thinking might -- might -- have made a difference. I tend to doubt it, but we'll never know.

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Gattigap
None yet, but I'm smiling at your publication's declaration that these 17 GOPers have decided to end their career today. Howard Coble? Walter Jones? Good luck. Those guys are so embedded in NC politics you won't get them out with a crowbar.

And Wayne Gilchrist is safe. if he ever loses, it won't be for that vote. I'm sure he took the temperature of his District -- and failing to support a plan that almost all Dems and 1/2 of Republicans think is a loser won't hurt him in MD.

S_A_M

[Spanky]

Originally posted by ltl/fb
I will check it out when I get home, but are they doing this in real terms (i.e., compensating for the fact that our GDP is bigger in real terms than it was then)? Shouldn't things (everything being equal) be cheaper, as a percentage of GDP, when GDP grows?

OK, I just looked it up before going home. Motherfucker, Spanky, nice leaving out of the beginning of the paragraph you quoted:

"Mr Bush's latest request (to which must be added a supplementary $100 billion for the current fiscal year) would bring the total cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to $661 billion since 2001. That would make them a greater swallower of American treasure than the Vietnam war (in real dollars), though nowhere near as costly to America in terms of blood (3,100 deaths so far, versus 58,000)."

Helpful of you to leave in the "though," though.

It is the percentage of GDP that matters you idiot. The Vietnam was fought thirty five to forty years ago. That is like comparing the war of 1812 to the civil war, or WWII to the Spanish American war, in real dollar terms. The economy is growing all the time so something that is expensive in 1950 isn't so expensive now. In real dollar terms the Vietnam war was probably almost half as expensive as WWII but that doesn't mean Vietnam was half as expensive to the US government as WWII. To realize how much was sacrificed to win WWII, if you just looked at real dollar terms compared today’s budget, it wouldn't seem like that much. But when you understand how little money we had then, you realize what a sacrifice that war was. The Vietnam war was only nine percent of GDP where WWII was fifty seven percent. So to the American taxpayer, the Vietnam war was a hell of lot cheaper than WWII because Americans (And the government) had a lot more money. To the American taxpayer, and the US government, the Iraq war is a lot cheaper than Vietnam because we have a lot more money now.

Originally posted by ltl/fb
"It is not the money that worries Americans so much as the fear that the cause is hopeless. The average number of daily attacks by insurgents and militias in Iraq leapt from 75 at the beginning of last year to 185 in November. Two-fifths of the Iraqi professional class have fled the country. Even America's successes give little relief. Late last month, American and Iraqi troops smashed a Shia cult called the “Soldiers of Heaven”. A victory is a victory, but what struck viewers in Iowa was that Iraq has heavily-armed apocalyptic factions they have never even heard of."

EATA and all of this is from the Feb. 8th issue, not the most recent issue. What is up with you? Or is it that I normally don't read your posts b/c they are too long, and so miss all this misstatement stuff?

I found some stats that showed that the war, in terms of GDP, is less than half what Vietnam was and incredibly less expensive than other wars. Why is that not relevant? Why should I post anything else?

I didn't make any misstatements. I made a direct quote of relevant facts. Sometimes you posts are so stupid it hurts to read them.

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by Spanky
ISometimes you posts are so stupid it hurts to read them.

Negative self-talk is bad, Spanky. You shouldn't say things like this to yourself.

Why would the absolute cost of a war by definition go up? If GDP is increasing, and the absolute cost of a war is staying even, the cost of a war as a percentage of GDP falls, and this seems like it should be true. The cost of WWII (which was a global, multi-front war pursued by large numbers of entire nations) doesn't seem to me to be particularly relevant to the cost of the war against terrorism or the wars in Iraq/Iran; Vietnam (a geographically limited war) seems more apropos.

I don't even think the Economist is saying what you seemed to be saying it was saying, which is why I quoted the rest of the partial paragraph you quoted and the paragraph after it. To put your quote in, like, context.

Literally.

[SlaveNoMore]

Tyrone Slothrop
...but we'll never know.

...because its the Democrats intention to "slowly bleed" our troops and generally undermine of our President's foreign policy.

True Patriots, all of them.

[SlaveNoMore]

Spanky
It is the percentage of GDP that matters you idiot. The Vietnam was fought thirty five to forty years ago. That is like comparing the war of 1812 to the civil war, or WWII to the Spanish American war, in real dollar terms. The economy is growing all the time so something that is expensive in 1950 isn't so expensive now. In real dollar terms the Vietnam war was probably almost half as expensive as WWII but that doesn't mean Vietnam was half as expensive to the US government as WWII. To realize how much was sacrificed to win WWII, if you just looked at real dollar terms compared today’s budget, it wouldn't seem like that much. But when you understand how little money we had then, you realize what a sacrifice that war was. The Vietnam war was only nine percent of GDP where WWII was fifty seven percent. So to the American taxpayer, the Vietnam war was a hell of lot cheaper than WWII because Americans (And the government) had a lot more money. To the American taxpayer, and the US government, the Iraq war is a lot cheaper than Vietnam because we have a lot more money now.

In sum: as wars go, this one - in terms of both blood and treasure - has been a drop in the bucket.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by taxwonk
Hmmm. Once again, Spanky takes license with the truth. Am I the only one trend-spotting here?

Fringey was referring to a brief post in which I simply posted a direct quote from the Economist. And all the facts in that quote were accurate. She did not allege that I misquoted the article or that the facts in the article were inaccurate, and yet because I did not quote the entire article, she accused me of making a misstatement of fact. Clearly she is not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

In an earlier post I stated that I heard Keith Olberman say that the head of West Point talked to one of the producers of 24 and asked him to change the torture scenes. I then asked in that same post if anyone knew that allegation was true. Did I allege the story was true? No. In fact I asked if anyone knew it was true. Is anyone questioning the fact that Mr. Olberman made that comment on TV? No. But now you are insinuating that in that post I was not being truthful (obviously an absurd allegation) and combining that with Fringey’s allegation of misstatement of fact (which was patently ridiculous) that I have developed a pattern of untruthfulness.

When I think you cannot make a post more bereft of basic intelligence and rudimentary logic, you somehow always top yourself.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by ltl/fb
Negative self-talk is bad, Spanky. You shouldn't say things like this to yourself.

Why would the absolute cost of a war by definition go up? If GDP is increasing, and the absolute cost of a war is staying even, the cost of a war as a percentage of GDP falls, and this seems like it should be true. The cost of WWII (which was a global, multi-front war pursued by large numbers of entire nations) doesn't seem to me to be particularly relevant to the cost of the war against terrorism or the wars in Iraq/Iran; Vietnam (a geographically limited war) seems more apropos.

I don't even think the Economist is saying what you seemed to be saying it was saying, which is why I quoted the rest of the partial paragraph you quoted and the paragraph after it. To put your quote in, like, context.

Literally.

1) First, I just directly quoted that Economist article. I didn't add any verbiage at all. It was all from the Economist. How could it not be saying what I said it was saying. It spoke for itself. Can you really be this stupid?

2) The first part of the paragraph implied that someone might think the Iraq war was expensive if you just look at real dollar terms compared to the Vietnam war, but when you look at the percentage of the GDP compared to the Vietnam war you realize it is half as expensive. Only including the first part of the paragraph would be misleading as to the intent of the article, but the last part of the paragraph contained the main point of the paragraph.

3) Look. This is really not that complicated. Try and wrap your simple mind around it. In real dollar terms, by todays standards Vietnam was not that expensive. If you look at our current three trillion dollar budget, Vietnam, doesn't look like it cost so much. But actually, if you understand that our government had much less income then, and the American people had much less income, the expense of the war was much harder for the American people to bear, than if you just look at it in real dollar terms today.

When discussing how much you spend on stuff in the federal budget, and comparing costs over an entire generation, real dollar terms is not helpful at all to see what sort of priortiy a certain item got. You have to look at in terms of percentage of GDP to see how much of a priority, or how expensive it really was to the government and American people.

In real dollar terms the expense of the Revolutoinary War today would seem like peanuts. Probably less than the cost of builing one of our thirteen carriers. But if you look at the cost of the war in terms of American GDP, then you can truely understand what a financial burden the revolutionary war was on the colonies.