posted on September 23, 2004 11:23:18 AM new
I keep hearing this but I haven't seen any pictures or heard news of anything being built yet. Does anyone have links to pictures of the new buildings or construction?
posted on September 23, 2004 12:45:29 PM new
KD - In the past I've posted links that show what we've been doing over there. They are always boo-hooed. No point...the left doesn't want to see what it doesn't want to see. That's not going to change.
posted on September 23, 2004 01:17:48 PM new
Linda, I hope you don't feel the weight is all on your shoulders to prove things. Other righties are capable of coming up with pictures to show the progress being talked about.
All I'm hearing on the news, is what a mess and failure the Iraqi war is, yet I'm also hearing that things are moving forward in Iraq with reconstruction under way. Like Crow said, people are sick of seeing bombed out places. Let's see the reconstruction pictures so we can all feel more hopeful (and trustful) of the moving forward part.
posted on September 23, 2004 01:53:29 PM new
I would like to see some rebuilding. You would think we'd get a shot of a crane doing some construction work over there every now and then, but nothing...
First off, the United States are occupying Iraq. Most of the money spent to "re-build" Iraq so far has gone to security for American contractors. These contractors have done nothing but swill money from taxpayers. Ironically, those conservatives on here always cry and moan about tax increases, but why aren't they crying over the abuse of no-bid contracts, why aren't they crying over the fact that for the first time ever in the history of a U.S. war, our troops are being used to protect independent corporations, most from the United States, in order for those U.S. corporations to make record profits.
Second, I would think that "re-building" Iraq would also include rebuilding their own economy. Last figures I heard, there was close to 70% Unemployment in Iraq and that isn't because Iraqi's are lazy. It is because the Bush Administration isn't allowing the Iraqi people to rebuild their own country, instead, they have hired American corporations who are wasting American money while rebuilding jack, thus stealing jobs right from under Iraq.
Imagine if America was occupied by another country and they didn't hire American workers to do the job. There would be outcry by conservatives, liberals, radicals, etc. I am surprised there isn't an all out revolution in Iraq right now. I am astonished as to how the Bush Administration thinks the Middle East should embrace Democracy (or in our case, a Republic) with open arms, when the Bush Administration has proven how corrupt our own government is.
posted on September 23, 2004 02:13:56 PM new
KD - I do it because I think so many are very misguided and only want to focus on the negative of this war. And yes, in any war there's negative...doesn't mean the good should be discounted. Doesn't mean more shouldn't be happy that a state in the ME now has a chance at changing that part of the world.
posted on September 23, 2004 02:24:46 PM newI would like to see some rebuilding. You would think we'd get a shot of a crane doing some construction work over there every now and then, but nothing...
Mostly the fault of our oh-so-left-leaning media. Check out the DoD military links....read what the soldiers have said they've been working on. There's plenty of good things that have happened over there for anyone TRULY interested in hearing it.
Most of the money spent to "re-build" Iraq so far has gone to security for American contractors.
What a silly statement....our military is there....they are protect all from the terrorists....including contractors and allies who are there helping Iraq.
Ironically, those conservatives on here always cry and moan about tax increases, but why aren't they crying over the abuse of no-bid contracts
Probably because clinton did exactly the same thing using Halliburton. Also...because it was necessary.
why aren't they crying over the fact that for the first time ever in the history of a U.S. war, our troops are being used to protect independent corporations,
Nope...not true again. They were sent there to remove saddam from power....to get a regime change going...just like clinton said needed to happen.
Second, I would think that "re-building" Iraq would also include rebuilding their own economy. Last figures I heard, there was close to 70% Unemployment in Iraq and that isn't because Iraqi's are lazy[/i].
Guess what? Good news on that front too. Now it's down to 50%. It's getting better....
Imagine if America was occupied by another country and they didn't hire American workers to do the job. There would be outcry by conservatives, liberals, radicals, etc.
American wouldn't ever be occupied by another country. We'd all die fighting. The only senario I could see that would ever allow say AQ to occupy our country is if a democratic weaking like kerry was elected. He'd sell this country out in a NY minute....just like he did to the communists.
I am surprised there isn't an all out revolution in Iraq right now.
Well...that could be exactly why the Iraqi leaders says it's a small group of terrorists that are working to prevent them setting up their election.
I am astonished as to how the Bush Administration thinks the Middle East should embrace Democracy (or in our case, a Republic) with open arms, when the Bush Administration has proven how corrupt our own government is.
There were nay-sayers in WWII also. They were proven wrong. The results show our actions there worked and they will here to IF the naysayers don't ruin it.
Bush is painting a rosy picture that does not reflect reality. Iraqis are angry because their country remains occupied, reconstruction has stalled and there is no security for an election. A muslim cleric who was upset today about destruction of Mosques said, "Either the Americans are totally ignorant and do not know anything about state management, or they want to burn the whole area from north to south."
posted on September 23, 2004 02:30:57 PM new
No link provided so we don't know if it's one of the Muslim clerics helen would use as a source for her facts...and defend him over our country even if he is the one who's fighting our soldiers - OR if it's one who really wants to let their own people vote on what type of government THEY want to have.
I'll place my bet whose side this one's on - only because helen's used him as her source.
posted on September 23, 2004 02:39:43 PM newGuess what? Good news on that front too. Now it's down to 50%. It's getting better....
Unemployment was reported at 70% in August. In just a month or so it's dropped to 50%? Wow, things are getting better very quickly and that is good news.
posted on September 23, 2004 04:06:38 PM new
Kiara, it's 70%.....linda would think 50% is just wonderful but then she's not the one without a job.
Shag, I KNEW this was coming,"Probably because clinton did exactly the same thing using Halliburton. Also...because it was necessary."
linda's as predictable as goose #*[email protected] gets confused and can't decide if because Clinton did it it's bad but now the Republicans are doing it so it's good ...but then she usually is a little fuzzy.
linda do you know how absolutely stupid this statement of yours is???.....
"American wouldn't ever be occupied by another country. (((((We'd all die fighting. ))))))The only senario I could see that would ever allow say AQ to occupy our country is if a democratic weaking like kerry was elected. He'd sell this country out in a NY minute....just like he did to the communists."
OH GAWD, you're over the edge! Kerry will SELL the US?? And how, oh wise one will that happen....you are stretching so far !
And DUH, stupid, if we all did die America COULD BE occupied.
linda you are truly have gone 'round the bend in your hatred and loneliness.....good , I hope they commit you.
posted on September 23, 2004 04:11:13 PM new
Don't laugh, Kraft, straw bale houses are a new thing here in America....my nephew and several others are looking into straw bale houses which are cheap, energy efficient(thick walls cheap) and don't need to look like a hat stack. Some you can't tell what they're made of.
Ha! I guess if they blow down you just restack!
posted on September 23, 2004 04:17:17 PM new
Crowfarm, I did look for the 50% link and couldn't find it. I thought I would ask linda_k to provide a link but then I thought she may get angry and at me.
If it is 50% and has dropped 20% in just over a month and things are getting this much better during such chaos with faster improvements on the horizon I would predict that there should be almost zero unemployment by the time they hold their elections.
posted on September 23, 2004 05:39:48 PM new
cf - Once again you don't know what you're talking about when you speak for me. Try to control your inability to stop speaking for others. You only embarass yourself.
I have stated often I agreed with what clinton did in regards to Iraq. BUT I felt he didn't do enough when our country's interests had been attacked by terrorist.
You so stupid you can't comprehend that statement....or is it that you just like posting others views when you have absolutely no clue what you're talking about - or you're just continuing your disgusting statements, posting MORE lies about what people have or haven't said.
The later is my guess. Anything for attention that works for you is all you need to continue with your lies.
"Those who doubted whether Iraq or the world would be better off without Saddam Hussein, and those who believe today that we are not safer with his capture, don´t have the judgment to be president or the credibility to be elected president." - john kerry
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"These dizzying contradictions -- so glaring, so public, so frequent -- have gone beyond undermining anything Kerry can now say on Iraq. They have been transmuted into a character issue."
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"What kind of man, aspiring to the presidency, does not know his own mind about the most serious issue of our time?" - Charles Krauthammer
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posted on September 23, 2004 05:56:19 PM new
Well maybe you naysayers could trying searching the Brookings Inst. report on Iraq. Their Sept. report put the Iraqi unemployment rate at 30 - 40%. So the source I used stated it was higher...and of course, the unknown source you use and quote from gives the highest rate. Comes as no surprise to me. Make it look as bad as you can...discourage more from supporting our troops.
Must be a real liberal maybe even ultra-liberal source you read. Maybe your figures are taken from See-BS.
Unemployment appears to remain in the 30%-40% range."
posted on September 23, 2004 06:26:49 PM new
Oh My Gawd, linda, all your feverish searching FINALLY proved you're right about something !!!!!!!!!!!!
My hats off to you in your first success at being correct ...it IS 30-40% !
Somebody mark this event on the calendar...such an important point should not go undocumented!
Oh, by the way,linda, now that Brookings has got your attention do you like the following?
posted on September 21, 2004 07:18:58 AM edit
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The large tax cuts passed by Congress in 2001, 2002 and 2003 were signature items in President Bush's fiscal policy. All provisions of those tax cuts, however, expire by the end of 2010 and some expire earlier. A prominent feature of the president's campaign is to make almost all the tax cuts permanent.
We have analyzed that proposal and reached the following conclusions:
• Making the tax cuts permanent would generate large, backloaded revenue losses over the next 10 years. Combined with a minimal but necessary fix to the government's Alternative Minimum Tax, making the tax cuts permanent would reduce federal revenues by almost $1.8 trillion over 10 years -- and that's in addition to the $1.7 trillion of revenue losses already locked into law. By 2014, the annual revenue loss would amount to $400 billion, or 2 percent of gross domestic product -- almost the size of this year's federal budget deficit.
• Paying for the tax cuts would require monumental reductions in spending or increases in other taxes. To offset the revenue losses in 2014 would require, for example, a 48 percent reduction in Social Security benefits, a 57 percent cut in Medicare benefits, or a 117 percent increase in corporate taxes.
• Over the long run, making the tax cuts permanent would cost as much as repairing the shortfalls in the Social Security and Medicare Hospital Insurance trust funds. Thus, to the extent that Social Security and Medicare are considered major long-term fiscal problems, making the tax cuts permanent should be seen as creating a fiscal problem of equivalent magnitude.
• Making the tax cuts permanent would be regressive; that is, it would confer by far the biggest benefits on high-income taxpayers. After-tax income would increase by more than 6 percent for households in the top 1 percent of the nation's income distribution, 2 percent for households in the middle 60 percent, and only 0.3 percent for households in the bottom 20 percent. The share of the tax cut accruing to high-income taxpayers would exceed their share of federal tax payments today, so their share of the federal tax burden would decline.
The tax cuts will ultimately have to be financed with other tax increases or spending cuts. Once plausible methods of financing the tax cuts are taken into account, more than three-quarters of households are likely to end up worse off than they would have been if the tax cuts had never taken effect.
• Making the tax cuts permanent is likely to reduce long-term economic growth, not increase it. Studies by the Federal Reserve, the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation, as well as our own research, indicate that making the tax cuts permanent would increase the size of the economy slightly and temporarily but would reduce growth in the long term, in part because higher federal deficits will have a negative effect on long-term saving, investment and capital accumulation.
It has often been argued that Congress needs to make the tax cuts permanent to reduce uncertainty for taxpayers. Indeed, the 2001 tax cut represented an explosive increase in the use of temporary and expiring tax provisions, chiefly because the administration gambled that Congress would pass larger annual tax cuts if they were initially temporary and then made permanent at a future date.
But making the tax cuts permanent now would actually increase economic uncertainty. It would increase the nation's underlying fiscal gap -- the difference between projected revenues and spending -- and hence raise uncertainty about how the government will eventually close the gap.
So far we have not discussed another thorny problem facing the president and Congress. This is the Alternative Minimum Tax, a parallel set of tax rules designed to make sure that higher-income taxpayers do not make excessive use of tax breaks. Under the administration's budget, which does not address the long-term AMT problem, 30 million households will face the AMT by 2009, up from 3 million today. Fixing the AMT is necessary to avoid further complexity in the tax code, but it would also raise the cost of making the administration's tax cuts permanent by hundreds of billions of additional dollars.
The 2001 tax cut was a centerpiece of President Bush's electoral campaign in 2000, and much of the 2003 tax cut was a partial acceleration of the 2001 tax cut. Now the administration proposes making these tax cuts permanent.
It is astonishing that, more than four years after the proposal was first made public, the administration has still not released an analysis of the plan's long-term economic effects, or even a statement of how it intends to pay for the tax cuts. Even supporters of the tax cut would presumably like to know the answers to those questions.
William Gale and Peter Orszag are economists at the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan Washington, D.C., think tank, and codirectors of the Brookings-Urban Institute Tax Policy Center.
posted on September 23, 2004 06:43:38 PM new
I just checked the Brookings Institute figures and it says the following:
NOTE ON NATIONWIDE UNEMPLOYMENT TABLE: The numbers referred to in the table is a very rough approximation of the employment situation in Iraq. As noted by Director of Employment, Fatin Al-Saeda, Iraqi Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs on October 22, 2003 “There are no employment statistics for Iraq.”
Estimates made by economists, however, generally range between 50-70%. There is an inherent difficulty in measuring the Iraqi rate of unemployment over time. Because recent estimates are likely to be more accurate than older ones, but also higher, this means that despite an improvement in the economic situation nationwide, the numbers give the impression that it is getting worse. Considering the increase in entrepreneurial activity after the end of the war, we have for the purposes of this database assumed that there has been an improvement in unemployment levels, and hence weighted information supporting such a conclusion heavier than contradictory data reports. Another factor contributing to a somewhat improved employment situation in Iraq is that some 435,000 jobs have been directly created by the CoalitionProvisional Authority as of May 25, 2004. “Draft Working Papers: Iraq Status”, Department of Defense, May 25, 2004.
***************************************
Ahhhh........ I see....... the 70% figure I saw was from a study by the college of economics at Baghdad University. I should have checked closer as I now realize that they were probably wrong...... Baghdad being in Iraq and all....... what the heck would they know, right... must have been total BS. So sorry.
Thanks for the link, twelvepole. The pics look like plans for a market from about a year ago but I'll go back later and check it out to see what it looks like now that it's completed.
posted on September 23, 2004 07:10:57 PM new
Using your mind set, kiara....we shouldn't believe what the Iraqi leaders themselves are saying about what's happening in their own country....we should believe some women who sits behind her monitor in Canada.
Brookings Inst...says your 50-60% uenemployment numbers are from August 2003.
And here I thought the Brookings Inst. was a source the lefties here were believe....as it's usually slants to the left.
But no....there's a woman in Canada who knows so much more than the Iraqi people do.
posted on September 23, 2004 07:25:03 PM new
linda_k........ it was a bit of sarcasm about Iraq, I really do believe some of the reports by the Iraqi people........ I don't hate them all like you do.
Brookings Inst...says your 50-60% uenemployment numbers are from August 2003.
You must have me mixed up with someone else. I didn't quote 50-60% figures.
BTW, why do you think I'm in Canada tonite? I can just as easily be posting from the US side which I do at times. First you insisted you knew what was in my mind and now you even see my locale? Interesting..........
posted on September 23, 2004 07:41:27 PM new
Oh, since linda read bush's great tax problems NOW she thinks the Brookings leans to the left.
Well, linda , your run of being right only lasted one time. Now, you don't like what the Institute says about bush's taxes so they lean to the left.
Sorry, they are non-partisan and have a clean reputation, know much more than even YOU do and are a reputable source of information.....unlike our present administration.
posted on September 23, 2004 07:46:34 PM new
linda have the guts to say how stupid this post is:
"American wouldn't ever be occupied by another country. (((((We'd all die fighting. ))))))The only senario I could see that would ever allow say AQ to occupy our country is if a democratic weaking like kerry was elected. He'd sell this country out in a NY minute....just like he did to the communists."
First, if we're all dead anyone can occupy this country. Do you now see how stupid that remark was?
And the rich wouldn't die, they'd buy their way out and you'd grovel like a baby for your life.
And it's "scenario".
posted on September 24, 2004 01:43:09 PM new
Gee linda's so busy calling me a liar in another thread she may have missed this "LIE" I told about bush and cheney being to un-patriotic and chicken-ship to fight!
Just like she claims the liberals will do.....hard to back up that statement isn't it linda?
posted on September 24, 2004 02:14:57 PM new
Don't any of you think it's weird that nobody's been able to come up with one picture of the reconstruction going on in Iraq? Twelve's link showed an area that looked like a gravel parking lot that will be the future home of a market. That's close, but I'd like to see the reconstruction progress that's being talked about. Anyone?
posted on September 24, 2004 02:25:40 PM new
Heard on the radio today there may be a huge outbreak of disease because their water and sewage systems have major problems.
posted on September 25, 2004 10:38:42 AM newWhat a silly statement....our military is there....they are protect all from the terrorists....including contractors and allies who are there helping Iraq.
Obviously the military is not doing a good job of protecting all from the terrorists. How many people contractors and civilians have been kidnapped?
DICK CHENEY SUPPORTS MY RELATIONSHIP: People ought to be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to
Let's have a BBQ, Texas style, ROAST BUSH
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YOU CAN'T HAVE BULLSH** WITH OUT BUSH.
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posted on September 25, 2004 10:41:03 AM newwhy aren't they crying over the fact that for the first time ever in the history of a U.S. war, our troops are being used to protect independent corporations,
Nope...not true again. They were sent there to remove saddam from power....to get a regime change going...just like clinton said needed to happen.
Yep another lie from Bush. The troops were originally sent to Iraq because Bush claimed they had weapons of mass destruction. Then when they did not find any the mission was to help the Iraqi people.
DICK CHENEY SUPPORTS MY RELATIONSHIP: People ought to be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to
Let's have a BBQ, Texas style, ROAST BUSH
------------------------------
YOU CAN'T HAVE BULLSH** WITH OUT BUSH.
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posted on September 25, 2004 10:44:40 AM newGuess what? Good news on that front too. Now it's down to 50%. It's getting better....
How can we have the latest September Iraqi unemployment numbers when September is not even over yet?
If they can get the unemployment rate to drop 20% in less than 3 weeks, perhaps the Iraqi government leaders should talk to Bush more so they can work on improving unemployment rate here in the U.S.
DICK CHENEY SUPPORTS MY RELATIONSHIP: People ought to be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to
Let's have a BBQ, Texas style, ROAST BUSH
------------------------------
YOU CAN'T HAVE BULLSH** WITH OUT BUSH.
------------------------------
Other righties are capable of coming up with pictures to show the progress being talked about.
