Back to Iraq
I know a lot of you guys left something in Iraq and you need to go back to get it. Well, our Nobel Prize winning President is going to give you that opportunity. After meeting with Iraqi president Maliki on Friday, Obama pledged US military support for the Iraqi government, according to the Stars & Stripes;
Administration officials say that while they are not ready to send soldiers to Iraq, they will push for Congress to give Iraq the Apache helicopters, missiles and other equipment it is seeking, and will step up intelligence support so that they can help find and destroy the al-Qaida bases.
Yeah, well, when you send equipment, you have to send people to train the Iraqi pilots, artillerymen, whatever. If we send trainers, we have to send people to protect them.
From the LA Times;
The new U.S. plan represents a remarkable shift for Obama, whose administration trumpeted the 2011 withdrawal of the last U.S. troops from Iraq as a major achievement and has since shifted its attention to other regional challenges, such as Syria, Egypt and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Following a White House meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, Obama said he shared Maliki’s fears about militants’ growing foothold in Iraq’s western region and would join the Iraqi leader’s effort to crack down. Administration officials said this would include growing intelligence support and new weaponry.
There wouldn’t be a need for a “crack down” if these two had done their jobs years ago. I’m pretty sure that I predicted we’d be back in Iraq when everyone else was celebrating the last troops to withdraw – just like I predicted in 1991 that we’d be back. There’s only one path to peace in that region and it’s called “total victory”, but the US seems unable to form those words on our collective lips.
Category: Terror War
In re VWP’s comments – it seems whenever hippies or other liberal thinkers discuss the middle-east, they always gravitate to the arguement “It’s about the oil.” Really? Do they really believe the U.S’ goal is to take over the oil?
If that’s the case, then why aren’t we spending .78 cents a gallon at the pump like they do in Kuwait?
@53
Exactly.
78 cents a gallon would upset mobilexxon! And Operation Iraqi Liberation spells O.I.L. get it! thats why they changed it to freedom. The freedom for haliburton to make a lot of money!
Jesus, VWP, if stupidity were painful you’d need a morphine drip.
So explain to me how Halliburton made a profit of about $200 million in six years in Iraq. At the same time, Michael Moore makes a slanted movie questioning that profit and made a profit of almost $250 million, but nobody says a fucking word…
@56 VWP doesn’t understand economics, if we were stealing the oil 78 cents a gallon would be almost all profit, that wouldn’t upset the oil companies at all….but we like to dream our little dreams and pretend our little fantasies are reality even when they’re not…200 million seems like a lot of money until you understand that gross volume was considerably higher and in the billions then suddenly you are looking at a whopping 5% profit…that’s only slightly better than the grocery or commercial printing businesses these days….
There are so many f#cktards that find economy of scale a concept that escapes their limited public education experience….more’s the pity.
You have it exactly backward, vwp, you ignorant clown. $.78 per gallon at the pump would bring in massive profits to ExxonMobil.
Drop the price of gas at the pump to the 1970s and the Nixon/Ford era, with no explanation, and the storage tanks will empty out in the blink of an eye. I’ve seen that happen twice in the last 12 months when some enterprising gas station owners went against the grain and charged 1970s prices for gas. They did a land office business. And, no, they did not go out of business.
@55 – Quit making shit up to support your failed arguement. Nobody here is interested.
Oh yeah, and by the way… go fuck yourself.
Don’t expect anything like simple math to work in that brain, NHS! If it did, it would already know that 4% of all our oil is not as significant as something over 5% of our citizens discovering that they must look for alternate insurance because of Obamacare. You know, those policies that they were promised that they could keep.
But 4% is supposed to make us quake in our boots, but we are supposed to ignore the millions who are at least inconvenienced, if not finding their very lives threatened. It must be nice to live in such a delusional world that such comparisons actually make sense.
vietnam war protestor: People in Kuwait are paying $0.78 per gallon for gas because their government is massively subsidizing the cost of that gasoline by providing the oil used in making it gratis or “selling” it at a huge discount. They’re also likely also charging no taxes on the gasoline.
Currently, here’s the price breakdown of the cost of gasoline in the US (average; taxes and dist/marketing obviously varies somewhat by locality):
Taxes: 13%
Distribution and Marketing: 8%
Refining: 14%
Crude: 65%
Assume gas is $3.00/gal (not that far off reality today). If you neglect taxes and crude costs (which the Kuwaiti government controls for Kuwaiti crude used domestically), that means you’re looking at an estimated cost of $0.24/gallon for distribution and marketing and $0.42/gallon for refining. That’s $0.66/gallon. Add a small amount for the cost of actually pumping the oil out of the ground – even if it’s free oil, it costs to pump it to the surface – say $0.12 per gallon.
Guess what? You now have $0.78/gallon.
Unfortunately, unlike Kuwait we don’t have Uncle Sam giving oil companies free oil and the Federal/state governments zeroing out gas taxes. So we’re paying around $3.00/gallon for gas.
The above is a sample calculation/ballpark estimate based on US numbers. But I’m guessing it’s pretty close to the mark, even if some of the specific amounts (like the 8% for distribution and marketing) are different in Kuwait.
Source: http://auto.howstuffworks.com/fuel-efficiency/fuel-consumption/gas-price1.htm
VWP, anyone that complains about halliburton has clearly never been to iraq or afganistan. the only reason i ever got to eat a real meal, make a phone call home, access a computer, have a gym, electricity, and a countless number of other things you take for granted on a daily basis was halliburton. Halliburton is the greatest company on the planet for deployed soldiers.
also dumb ass, do you remember the UN’s oil for food program? we had all the iraqi oil for pennies on the dollar, and we, the US, decided to give it to thm so we could pay near 4$ a gallon today. After sadam was taken out, the UN wanted to keep the oil for food program in place because they didnt want to have to pay for the oil, but the US said to allow the iraqis to sell their oil at their will, how does that add up to going to iraq for oil? we lost the oil by going there! dumb ass
Gas to the north of me has dropped to between $3.099 and $2.999/gallon for regular. I expect to see prices fall further in short order.
And it’s not the switch to the so-called cold weather blend. That was done in September when the temps dropped into the 30s at night.
@56 moore did not make his money off of the death of americans. Moore tried to stop their deaths! By the way like vietnam what did they die in iraq for multi-national oil companies?
@64 Can you find a way to communicate in English?
You are so incredibly stupid, you don’t even know you’re alive.
Easiest way to get a headache is to actually attempt to make some sense of it. But that is not a new phenomena. Conservatives have variously tried ignoring libbies/progs/commies for generations and figuring out what it is that they want, and giving it to them. Neither approach works well. I am finally giving up and spending my time pointing and laughing at them. Apparently that is what they want because they continue to make fools of themselves publicly, and come back for more. Or Moore. (That bit about his not making big $$ on the deaths of others was the best goofy statement of the day!)
Yes, apparently, vwp never heard of ‘Bowling for Columbine’.
Moore didn’t try to stop anything. And even if someone were to generously suggest that that was his intention, what does that make him? Oh ya, a big fat failure because he didn’t succeed in doing anything but getting MORE Americans killed. So yes, Moore made money off American deaths, way more than any oil companies.
I don’t mind having to point out to you, AGAIN, that claiming our actions in Iraq are directly in support of oil corporations interests is pure uneducated bullshit. Any basic understanding of economics should have revealed to you that it would have been farrrr cheaper overall to strike a deal with Saddam’s regime and buy the oil.
You’re a tool dude, go pedal your out of date and burnt out worldview somewhere else.
@68 Do you work for oil company or have oil company stock? Michael Moore a great american! This is the greatest country on earth thanks to liberals like Michael Moore and inspite of conservatives like you.
According to the late Ray Bradbury – who actually was a great American writer – Michael Moore är en korkad skitstövel (look it up – it’s in Swedish). IMO that applies to you as well, vietnam war protestor.
Then again, the latter is obvious.
Parasites generally aren’t considered smart. They can, however, become quite rich.
OWB: or, in Moore’s case – gorged. (smile)
WVP–ask Al Gore if he’s sold his family stock in Occidental Petroleum.
@70 Hondo, Du är alldeles för artig.
@ 69
Nope, I’m not an oil company employee, and I don’t own stock of any kind, let alone oil company stock.
I’m a middle aged, lower middle class municipal worker, and retired Veteran, raising a family of 5 on slightly more than poverty level wages. And I still don’t buy into your leftist crap.
Moore is a useless gas bag that even the American Left has mostly abandoned.
VWP, I would suspect that you respect the likes of Christopher Hitchens who was a well-established socialist author. May I suggest you read up on the late Hitchens’ opinion of Moore? Ya, the real leftists couldn’t, and can’t, stand the quivering mound of corpulent flesh. You know why? Because in reality Moore’s nothing but an opportunistic phony in a socialist skin (or 3 or 4 socialists skins), who’s idiotic ramblings were so easy to refute that it made a laughing stock of your movements positions.
Again dude, you should leave the thinking to those who still have a couple of brain cells left to rub together, you’re nothing but a tool, and a dull one at that.
Ex-PH2: Kanske. Men jag vill inte få modereras eller förbjudna. (leende)
If I remember correctly Operation Iraqi Liberation was a Jay Leno joke.