On Federal Taxation in the United States

Aug 12, 2014 23:35:02 GMT pjohns1873 said:

The use of the passive voice ("It is my understanding...") begs the question:  What is your source for this "understanding"?

The mere fact that George W. Bush had "a reason" for having a vendetta against Saddam is far from being proof that he actually had such a vendetta--let alone that it was so strong as to render then-President Bush unable to control his emotions, and willing to allow many people (including some Americans) to die, as the predictable upshot. 

And your comment that then-President Bush "was in such a damn rush to invade Iraq" conveniently ignores the fact that Saddam had been giving UN Weapons Inspectors the runaround for years already; and that Hans Blix was not likely to do anything about it.    

My "understanding" was based upon the news media where those reporting (or expressing an opinion) were unable to provide exact quotations. In short it was one of those "reliable sources say" pieces of news that, while very probably accurate, was technically hearsay. When I can't provide an exact quotation I typically refer to it as "my understanding" of what has been said as opposed to stating it actually has been said because I don't know exactly what was said.

Former President Bush did state that his decisions were often based upon "gut feelings" (as opposed to facts). A "gut decision" is an emotional decision and Bush was a person that basically stated he often governed based upon his emotions. It would be a challenge for me to find that statement but it's out there somewhere.

If I can interject an opinion about former President Bush he wasn't the sharpest pencil in the box. That same opinion applies to many of those in our government and doesn't imply that I'm just picking on him.

There hadn't been any weapons inspections in Iraq since the mid-1990's when the US was exposed as using the previous weapon inspections as a cover for covert CIA operations. The inspections that restarted in 2002 were completely unlike the inspections that occurred at the end of the Gulf War because Iraq wasn't trying to hide anything anymore. It didn't have any WMD's in 2002 while it still had limited WMD's that it was hiding in the early 1990's after the Gulf War. Immediately after the Gulf War the inspectors had to notify Iraq of where they wanted to investigate in advance but in 2002 that condition no longer existed. The inspectors could go anywhere at any time without prior notification and inspect any location including Saddam's private residences.

This had absolutely nothing to do with Hans Blix but instead was reflective of two completely different situations in Iraq almost ten years apart.    

Aug 13, 2014 23:44:41 GMT pjohns1873 said:

You have (conveniently) skipped all the way from "the mid-1990's" to "2002," while ignoring the fact that, in between, Saddam was playing games with inspectors.  (In fact, he continued to do so, even after that.)  And it is my own understanding (based upon news reports at the time, that inspectors were not allowed access to some places, including Saddam's private residence. 

Your own understanding of another matter--i.e. of George Bush's (supposed) desire to go to war with Iraq, irrespective of the consequences--is based upon anonymous sources (which you have characterized as "reliable").  Sorry, but I just do not place a lot of stock in anonymous sources.   

I will not challenge your assertion that then-President Bush often relied upon "gut feelings" in his decision-making (although I would certainly not wish to juxtapose this with the "facts," as though the two were necessarily in conflict with each other). But I rather doubt that he would have allowed American citizens to die, as a result of those "gut feelings." In fact, I doubt that any president of either major party would allow that.  (And I say that despite the fact that I have no love for the Democratic Party.) 

To assert that then-President Bush "wasn't the sharpest pencil in the box" seems like a rather low blow. Was he a genius-level person? Well, no. But he di dmanage to graduate from Yale; so he should probably not be characterized as exceptionally dull, either. 

I would suggest you read the chronology of the Weapons Inspections in Iraq.  

www.armscontrol.org/act/2002_10/iraqspecialoct02

It covers the period up to 1999 farely well, including summaries of the efforts through 1998 but does not address the UN Weapons Inpsection reports of early 2003 in the summary.

From 1990-1998 Iraq was very obstructive of the efforts of the UN Weapons Inpsectors and that is where you apparently gain much of your information about the inspections. In 1998 the UN Weapons Inspectors withdrew from Iraq but upon re-entering Iraq in 2002, as the report states, Iraq allowed arms inspectors to return “without conditions.”   There was no obstructionism related to the inspections in late 2002 and early 2003 and I challenge you to research it and find any cases of obstructionism by Iraq related to the inspection of sites occurring in that time frame.

I did not claim that the sources stating that Bush addressed his cabinet in early 2001 about finding a reason to invade Iraq were "reliable" but instead that those in the news media that reported it claimed that the sources were reliable. I'm always the skeptic but can find a correlation between such a claim and the fact that the Bush Adminstration later directed the CIA to find anything possible that could be used to rationalize an invasion of Iraq as opposed to seeking actual intelligence on whether Iraq actually had WMD's or not. It would explain why the Bush Adminstration completely ignore the UN Weapons Inspectors reports that we know were 100% accurate today. So I don't claim that Bush literally told his cabinet he wanted to invade Iraq immediately upon taking office but it does fit with his later behavior that is known.    

As a Vietnam War combat veteran I can personally attest to the fact that American politicians do NOT hold the lives of American soldiers in high regard and are more than willing to rationalize sending them to their deaths. Remember a simple fact that not a single war the US has been involved in since WW II has been in the actual defense of our nation. Every war has been rationalized often based upon protecting the wealth of multi-millionaires and tyrants.

The Gulf War was exclusively related to protecting wealthy tyrants where former President George GW Bush used the US military as basically a mercenary force employed by the royal families of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, both wealthy tyrannical monarchies, to eject another tyrant, Saddam, from Kuwait. The President's motivation was predominately based upon the fact that both royal families were personal friends and former business associates as it had nothing to do with the US obtaining oil that it could have done by purchasing "Kuwaiti" oil from Iraq after Iraq took control of the Kuwait oil fields. There was absolutely not US national interest involved in a conflict between the tyrants of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq in 1990. Our only possible "national interest" would have been oil that we could obtain from any of them without a problem. It didn't matter which tyrant controlled which oil fields.     

American politicians rationalize wars as opposed to justifying them as a necessity in defense of our nation. That is a fact.

Graduating from Yale (and Harvard) is overwhelmingly about "wealth and privilege" as opposed to being a reflection of intelligence or knowledge. Yes, there are exceptions (e.g. Obama and Harvard) but overwhelmingly admission is based upon wealth and privilege to these two schools. We need only remember that former President George W Bush fundamentally failed at all of his private enterprises (except in cases where his father's connections overcame his personal failures) after graduating from Yale.     

As noted though I don't find former President Bush to be particularly unique in being an intellectual idiot member of our government. It would take 100 threads to address all of the stupid statements made by members of Congress alone. They might even have a high IQ but they're still idiots based upon their statements and actions.

Aug 14, 2014 17:28:52 GMT pjohns1873 said:

For openers, your link is to a site that is "dedicated to promoting public understanding of and support for effective arms control policies"; and that features an article entitled, "Sorry, Skeptics: The Iran Nuclear Deal is Working."  (Some people might just view it as a left-wing source.)

Your assertion that then-President Bush "directed the CIA to find anything possible that could be used to rationalize an invasion of Iraq" is, well, quite interesting. It would seem to suggest that you regard as hard fact any piece of dirt that is contained in a hit piece written by a former staffer. 

And your further assertion that "American politicians do NOT hold the lives of American soldiers in high regard" (caps in original) is simply astounding to me. I certainly hold President Obama in very low esteem--as I did also with then-President Clinton in the 1990s (well, up until January 2001)--but I cannot imagine supposing that they would have ever been so contemptuous of Americans' lives, or so cavalier about sending them to their deaths for no better reason than to "protect...the wealth of multi-millionaires and tyrants."

Perhaps mere "wealth and privilege" may be beneficial as regarding the matter of gaining admission to Yale.  But I rather doubt that they have any impact upon one's actually graduating from there.

As concerning our various congresscritters, some have, indeed, made questionable statements.  But I would differentiate between intelligence and common sense in this matter.  Yes, each is important in its own way.  But they are not interchangeable concepts. And having "a high IQ" and being an "idiot" are, therefore, mutually exclusive.   

I didn't check the source of the link I provided for possible political leaning but instead provided it because it provided a relatively accurate summary. As I've noted I seriously doubt that you can find any news stories from 2002 or early 2003 reporting that the UN Weapons Inspectors were being denied access to any sites that they decide to visit or that their inspections were hampered in any manner. We have the actual reports from the Weapons Inspectors that establish that the inspection of sites were not being hampered at all. While documents were not being provided based upon post war information we know it was because the documents didn't exist. For example we know that no documents were maintained related to the final destruction of a small number of WMD's in 1998 that was ordered by Saddam.

There was far more evidence than just one former member of the Bush Adminstration that indicatd Bush wasn't interested in any information that contradicted his claims of WMD's in Iraq.

As a US Army combat veteran I know for a fact that our government, and the politicians running it, have little actual regard for the American soldier. By way of example, while the VA Disability Claims Division does pay disability claims, it's purpose is to deny disability claims when filed for by a veteran. It fights tooth-and-nail in attempting to deny disability benefits as opposed to trying to factually establish if the veteran filing is actually suffering from a service related disability.

We've read about the recent VA scandal related to veterans not being able to obtain timely medical treatment and while the scandal has been directed at those that covered up the fact that the some VA hospitals have been over-whelmed we seem to miss the point which was that the VA hospitals and clinics were underfunded which is why the actual delays occurred. Yes, it was very wrong for the VA staff to cover-up the fact that the hospitals and clinics were incapable of providing timely medical treatment but the real "crime" was that the VA hospitals and clinics were so underfunded that they didn't have the resources to treat the veterans.

I would also note that Sen Murray was the head of the VA Committee in the Senate and, because she's from my state, I was on her email list. She had been trying to obtain more funding for the VA and her efforts were generally blocked by Republicans in the Senate. I'm not a fan of Sen Murray on many issues but she was one of the few in Congress actually trying to obtain the funding necessary for the VA hospitals and clinics. Earlier this year Congressional Republicans opposed providing additional benefits that our veterans need simply because it would cost money to provide these necessary benefits. For them a dollar was more important than than those that had served our country and are in dire need of medical services.  

If Congress doesn't give a damn about the veterans of our wars then it's pretty obvious that they don't give a damn about them when they fight the wars. The Bush adminstration even covered up the deaths from the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars by prohibiting photographs of the coffins the dead were being shipped home in. How much more disrespectful of the dead could the adminstation have been? He wouldn't even allow us to weep over images of  their coffins and lament the loss of their lives.

It's no harder to graduate from Yale academically than it is from any other college or university. The problem with elitist universities like Yale and Harvard is to be able to afford the tuition. Of course it's always harder for a person without a silver spoon to graduate from any college because they often have to work their way through college which takes away time from their studies.    

Perhaps I did use the term "idiot" as a reference to common sense and logical reasoning. This still doesn't dispute the fact that former President Bush did state that he often made decisions based upon emotion (gut feelings) as oppose to fact which appears to have been the case with both the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as both wars were probably avoidable and there was never any urgency to invade related to either nation. He could have engaged in diplomacy with Afghanistan and he could have waited for the UN Weapons Inspectors to complete their inspections without any negative consequences. There was no need to "rush to war" in either situation and war was his first option as opposed to the last option in both cases.  

Aug 15, 2014 23:59:45 GMT pjohns1873 said:

You supplied a link to a source which you (admittedly) "didn't check...for possible political leaning; yet you assure me that it must be "relatively acurate." Do you understand why I just might view that as a non sequitur?

You have indicated that there was "far more evidence than from just one former member of the Bush Administration" concerning the former president's (supposed) eagerness to rush to war; yet you decline to supply even a bit of this information.

It is not just veterans (sadly) who find it difficult to get Social Security Disability. I, too, was denied it on my initial attempt. I was able to secure it, however, upon appeal in 2007. (It is my understanding that Social Security is routinely denied upon the first attempt--to almost everyone. And it is probably a good idea to secure the services of an attorney, for an appeal.)

Your condemnation of "Congressional Republicans" and "[t]he Bush administration"--in contrast to your feelings as concerning your Democratic senator, Patty Murray--seems rather instructive.  (I have previously noted my Republican leanings--and the fact that I do not hold either President Obama or forner President Clinton in very high esteem--but I have also noted that I would not imagine that they hold Americans' lives in jaw-droppingly low regard.  You do, however, appear to hold Republicans in this sort of incredibly low regard.) 

Roughly 20% of those expressing opinions prior to the invasion of Iraq were pointing out that the "intellengce" being cited by the Bush administration was BS generally relating to pre-Gulf War Iraq's WMD programs of the 1980's or based upon unreliable sources that hadn't lived in post-Gulf War Iraq and had no actual knowledge of what was going on between 1990-2002. We followed the information in the news related to the inspection with great interest and it was because the inspections were unhampered that we placed so much belief in them.

Yes, you can question the summary I've provided if you can present any conflicting information from the time. The fact is that you haven't. All you've stated is "I don't believe it" and yet offered no support for why you choose to not believe it. You can't even dispute the fact that the UN Weapons Inspectors Reports were 100% accurate today because history has proven them to be 100% accurate while all of the Bush Adminstration's "intelligence" has been proven to be wrong. Not one claim by the Bush Adminstration that Iraq had WMD's proved to be accurate. Not a single one.

There is a huge difference between those seeking disability benefits under Social Security and those seeking service related disability benefits from the VA. The key difference is that service related disabilities were caused by our government. Let me provide an example. While the term PTSD (Post Tramatic Stress Disorder) is new the US military has known full well that it is common related to the trama of war going back to at least the Civil War. For over 100 years the US government refused to address this service related disability caused by war. PTSD literally destroys the lives of those that suffer from it degarding their life all to often to the point that they later commit suicide. In many ways it's far more disabling than the loss of limbs for the veteran and the VA refused to address it until it became so bad after the Afghanistan invasion that the VA could no longer ignore it. In another case the US government knew that Agent Orange caused type 2 diabetes for over a decade before it acknowledged responsibility for causing this desease that kills veterans.

My claim is that the politicans don't thinkk about the consequences to the soldier when they send them to war because they rationize the war. Let me provide an example. Our politicans have been willing to send our soldiers to war to fight terrorism but don't seem to understand that war is the ultimate form of terrorism. We waged a campaign of terrorism in both Afghanistan and Iraq while neither country was involved in international acts of terrorism. The 9//11 Commission (a bi-partisan commission) explicitly established that the government of Afghanistan had no knowledge or and was not involved in the 9/11 terrorist attack and that the planning and training for those attacks didn't even occur in Afghanistan. The government of Afghanistan and the citizens of Afghanistand were not an enemy of the American People so why did we wage a campaign of terrorism against the People of Afghanistan to remove and replace the Taliban government with a small extremist political group in N Afghanistan that didn't have the support of the People of Afghanistan? 

The politicans rationalized the war without regard to the US soldiers that were called upon to fight it or the "terror" it would inflict on the Afghanistan People. They simply didn't give a damn about the consequences to those affected by the war and rationalized the atrocities of war.

Aug 17, 2014 0:22:10 GMT pjohns1873 said:

Frankly, I am a bit surprised that no more than "[r]oughly 20%" of Americans labeled the Bush administration's intelligence mere "BS." I would have imagined that a higher percentage than that are attached to the political left.

If the only information (or propaganda--that part is open to debate) that you can provide is from an obviously biased source, I do not think that it should be incumbent upon me to provide "conflicting information."

I can understand your point as concerning the special importance of service-related disabilities.  However, it would still be a good idea to appeal any denials; and probably best to do so with the aid of an attorney.  (My own attorney charged $5,300 for the procedure--that is the legal cap in Tennessee--and it was probably the best $5,300 I have ever spent in my life.)  

Your comment that war is "the ultimate form of terrorism" is merely a political-philosophy statement--not a serious use of the word, "terrorism," which describes the desire of those who are militarily weak to inflict maximum psychological damage upon others--psychological damage that is vastly disproportionate to the actual risk involved--in order to pressure the public into forcing its leaders to change some important foreign policy (or policies). 

Oh, and the US never went to war against "the Afghanistan People."  Rather, we were--and are--at war with the Taliban; which remains ensconced in Afghanistan.    

In 2002 and early 2003 it wasn't an issue of "Left v Right" but instead it was an issue of those that simply accepted the political rhetoric/propaganda and the skeptics that scrutinized what was being offered as "evidence" by the Bush adminstration and the British. Remember that many on the Left, including Hillary Clinton, supported the invasion and believed the rhetoric/propaganda coming from the Bush adminstration.

It was the 20% that looked at the "evidence" when the Bush administration cited a British intelligence report and discovered it was based upon a 1991 Berkley post-graduate paper about Iraq's WMD program of the 1980's for example. It was the 20% that pointed out that the documents behind the Bush adminstration's claims of Iraq seeking uranium from Nigeria were forgeries. It was the 20% that identified how many "precusors to chemical weapons" the average person had in their own homes. It was the 20% that provided an arial photograph of truck in a parking lot in Dayton, Ohio with a circle drawn around it to demonstate that simply drawing a circle around a truck doesn't magically turn it into a mobile chemical weapons lab. It was the 20% that noted that the UN Weapons Inpsectors were inspecting every single location identified by the British and American intelligence sourcse and that they had found absolutely nothing indicating that Iraq had current WMD programs or WMD's.

It was the 80% that believed the propaganda without questioning anything that was said vs the 20% of critical thinkers.

Since then the "Left" that supported the invasion have tried to wiggle out of their responsibility for it. Hillary Clinton being a prime example when she said that she voted for the Iraq War Resolution but didn't support the invasion. What a two-face liar.

There are numerous articles written on what went wrong when it comes to the "intelligence" related to WMD's in Iraq but all of them point to central fact. Everyone knew that Bush and Blair wanted to invade Iraq in early 2003 and the intelligence communties were focused on providing the "evidence" to support that planned invasion. There was a commonly held belief that Iraq did have WMD's and even Hans Blix believe that Iraq had WMD's before starting the inspections.

"The myth of the super-weapons, once it gained currency, could not be dispelled. Saddam’s penchant for secrecy only made matters worse: “Every general knew he did not have the special weapons but thought his counterpart down the road did.” Even in the absence of a conspiracy, the widespread belief in Iraqi duplicity created a situation in which Saddam was unable to prove a negative: “The bar for intelligence that suggested there were no weapons was far higher than for any evidence of their existence.”

After the war, it turned out that British and U.S. spies had believed their own intelligence shaky, but thought the other’s conclusions were sufficient to bolster their analysis.

In the case of Iraq, one issue is that there was, in effect, a deadline: It was increasingly clear that Bush and Blair meant to go to war by early 2003. Thus the intelligence agencies were faced with the need to find a way to document what they believed to be true but couldn’t quite prove."

www.bloombergview.com/articles/2013-02-03/now-we-know-bush-did-not-lie-about-wmd-in-iraq

In short the British didn't think they had good evidence but believed the US did a and the US didn't believe it had good evidence but believed the British did and only someone that looked at both the British and US intelligence could see that neither one of them was providing good evidence. It was a house of cards built on a house of cards. Both the British and American intelligence agency were trying to produce "evidence" of WMD's in Iraq to support Bush and Blair's desire to invade Iraq in early 2003 even though they didn't have any actual evidence that Iraq had WMD's.

The Taliban was a political/religious group of Afghanistan citizens in control of the government in Afghanistan. When we invaded Afghanistan it was an attack on the citizens of Afghanistan. By analogy if a country invaded the US today it wouldn't be an attack on just Democrats because Obama is a Democrat but instead it would be an attack on the citizens of the United States.  That Taliban and government of Afghanistan were not involved in the planning or execution of the 9/11 attacks, that had no pre-knowledges of those attacks, that condemned those attacks, and were trying to reach a diplomatic agreement by which those responsble could be brought to justices. Why would we attack a government that was not involved in an act of terrorism, that condemned that act of terrorism, and that was attempting to bring those responsible to justice?

Anyone that doesn't believe war is the ultimate form of terrorism has never been in a war. Anyone that doesn't believe that the people of Baghdad were terrorized beyond belief when we bombed Baghdad at the beginning of the Gulf War (that CNN broadcast) is a fool. War is almost exclusively about terrorizing the enemy to the point that they will surrender so you can achieve a political objective.  

Aug 18, 2014 0:13:45 GMT pjohns1873 said:

I suppose I should not be especially surprised that you believe that 80 percent of Americans are susceptible to mere "propaganda," whereas only 20 percent are capable of "critical think[ing]." (Actually, this is slightly less elitist than your earlier dismissal of 99.9 percent of the American public.) 

I am rather astounded that you would characterize Hillary Clinton as being a part of the American left. On some policies, she does seem to veer center-left; on others, she appears to be center-right. But--like her husband, Bill Clinton--she really has no discernable political-philosophy core. Rather, she strikes me as a mere political opportunist, who will say just about anything in order to enhance her chances of political success. 

Oh, you should probably be aware that the column to which you have linked is an editorial by a left-of-center columnist--not a straight-up-and-down information piece.

And I do not belueve that the US attacked the "government" of Afghanistan (such as it is; and the Karzai government in Afghanistan--which came to power shortly after the fall 2001 American incursion there--has certainly not proven to be a loyal ally of America, to say the least). 

Your comment that war "is almost exclusively about terrorizing the enemy to the point that they will surrender so you can achieve a political objective" is somewhat reminiscent of Clausewitz's comment, in the nineteenth century, that war is "merely the continuation of policy [or politics] by other means."  But to characterize it as mere "terrorism" for one army to oppose another army is downright bewildering to me.       

I, of course, paintinge the 80% and 20% with a broad brush and a statement that on certian very specific issues 99% of the people are uninformed is not an outrageous claim. I also find it rather revealing that when I cite someone that was a member of the Bush White House as well as someone that's a part of a well recognized respectable news organization you dismiss both without actually being able to dispute what they say. Is Fox News the only source you believe?

If Hillary Clinton is nothing but a middle-of-the-road opportunist then most Republican are so far to the right in their political ideology that we should call them extremists.   

In one post you state we attacked the Taliban, that controlled the government of Afghanistan and that had nothing to do with 9/11 or international terrorism at the time, and in the next you say we didn't attack the government of the Taliban (to replace it with the Northern Alliance of Karzai that was an extremist political group engaged in atrocities). Who the hell did we attack when we went to war against Afghanistan?

I believe you should remember the statement of "Shock and Awe" in one of our recent wars, perhaps the Gulf War. What do you think "Shock and Awe" means? In case you've never thought about it the term means to terrorize the enemy into surrender. To terrorize is to commit an act of terrorism. That's what the US military does. I served in the Vietnam War and I can assure you that we did everything possible to terrorize the enemy including the slaughter of over 1 million innocent Vietnamese civilians during that war.