“Apologizing for Iraq,”
By on Jun 12th, 2006 at 3:19 pm
“Apologizing for Iraq,”
by the National Review’s John Derbyshire: “The lazy-minded evangelico-romanticism of George W. Bush, the bureaucratic will to power of Donald Rumsfeld, the avuncular condescension of Dick Cheney, and the reflexive military deference of Colin Powell combined to get us into a situation we never wanted to be in, a situation no self-respecting nation ought to be in, a situation we don’t know how to get out of.” (Actually, we have a pretty good idea of how to get out of it.)
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Best just to pull the troops out of Iraq as soon as possible! The Congess must inform Bush that the funds to operate the war are going to be cut off! No other way to do it now!
June 12th, 2006 at 3:27 pmWe are six months away from being able to see our way. I keep hearing these voices over and over in my mind. Who put them there and damn them whoever they are!
June 12th, 2006 at 3:32 pmIf you read the whole article, his statement, is not so much he is sorry for the war. Mostly he is sorry we didn’t level Iraq, kill Saddam and leave. He is unhappy with the situation on the ground. and the fact that it keeps dragging on. But what he really wanted, was not to avoid the war, but to avoid the rebuilding effort.
June 12th, 2006 at 3:34 pmEvery day another light bulb burns brightly in the skull of an American. Unfortunately its taken the lives of almost 2,500 American kids, the arms and legs and eyes of 10,000 more, the lives of more than 100,000 Iraqis, and a cost of $10 billion a month for this to happen. But its happening. Bring on the impeachment proceedings.
June 12th, 2006 at 3:35 pmQuick - someone do a search for all the articles this guy wrote about how we just HAD to invade …
June 12th, 2006 at 3:41 pmHe apologizies profusely for writing in support of the war in this article.
June 12th, 2006 at 3:46 pmWhy do we keep going over to the middle east for oil. We have enough off the shores of Florida, California, and up in the Alaska wildlife refuge to last us while we devolope E85 etc. Oh wait, you fools won’t let us drill there either. I guess it is back to the middle east for us.
until then…..
June 12th, 2006 at 4:22 pmJerad, in the 1970s we had enough oil in Texas to last us until we develop alternatives, and we didn’t. What profound change in human nature have you seen since then?
June 12th, 2006 at 4:35 pmOh, JOhn. Please do not stop there. There are like 180 situations you can apologize to begin with: And apologies wont restore any life you have taken. Murderers.
June 12th, 2006 at 4:43 pmNews Flash!
E85 IS developed already!
June 12th, 2006 at 4:50 pmDerbyshire’s an unreconstructed imperialist limey who wants to retire to communist China. Naturally he’s very big in conservative circles these days.
June 12th, 2006 at 4:52 pm.
If we want to use “logic”, which I understand isn’t part of most political conversation on either side of the isle, you would realize that we as humans, will use up every single drop of Oil we can find. That means that using a whole 1,000 acres up in the multi-million acre Alaska wildlife refuge WILL HAPPEN eventually whether any of us like it or not. It also means that we WILL drill off the shores of Florida and California eventually. WHY? Simple, Oil will continue to go up in price until we can’t refuse it anymore or Oil will become scare elsewhere.
Also, alternative fuels will only happen when they are profitable. Good old government regulations will never get us there, only the markets. I realize Oil isn’t forever and I also realize it is really really bad for the envirnment. I also realize that all that aside, we will us all the oil we can find. If the left can somehow restrict America from Oil, the rest of the world will still us Oil until it is gone.
With that being said, there is no question that Oil is a driving reason for us to be in the middle east. We all know that we can’t just stop using Oil tommorrow. We also know that many in America simply will not let us drill out own oil right now. What choice do we have other then to go get it abroad?
Even if we had alternative fuels ready to go today, they will not “work” until they are profitable.
So, you want out of Iraq and the Middle East? Fine, start be begging your Congressmen to allow oil Drilling in Alaska, Florida, and California ASAP. Beg even more for more refinery’s. Then go buy yourself an SUV (V8 preferably), drive it to your neighbers, tell them to buy one and so forth. What am I getting at? Alternative Fuels simply will not be profitable until Oil becomes a Luxery Item. Oil won’t be a Luxery Item until we get rid of alot more Oil.
So, buy an SUV, burn tons of Gas to speed up the whole process. The faster you get rid of the Oil, the faster the price will rise and the faster companies will start to find profit in other energy sources.
June 12th, 2006 at 4:57 pmCan you get your leaders to admit that, instead of this bullshit about spreading democracy?
June 12th, 2006 at 5:01 pmAt $3.00 dollars a gallon, oil is almost a luxury item now. Jerad, you post is filled with false logic. Brazil inacted a law requring gas stations sell e-85 at the pumps next to gasoline, and deisel. guess what happened?
American auto companies started selling flex fuel cars, the increased demand for e-85 decreased price. When a consumer pulls into the station with a flex fuel vehicle, and sees they can spend $2.00 a gallon on gasoline, and $1.00 per gallon on e-85. Guess which one they choose.
as for more refineries. I have seen several good links that suggest if we re-opened all the refineries that the oil companies closed in the 80’s it would be less of a problem
June 12th, 2006 at 5:04 pmE85 is NOT profitable. It is subsidized heavily. It is also a dumb choice as a fuel as Corn is very expensive. We need to stop with Corn and move to Wheat Straw or something else even cheaper. Hydrogen would be even better, but none of it will be profitable until Oil goes from a Commodity to a Luxery Item (won’t happen for some time as we still have untapped Oil reserves in Florida, California, and Alaska). The only reason you here about E85 right now is because your congressmen are simply trying to pad the pockets of farmers. It is sad, because it is NOT the best product for us, it is just a nice product for our congressmen to pitch to us.
June 12th, 2006 at 5:04 pm#12
Good news!!!They are already profitable!!!
June 12th, 2006 at 5:11 pmSolar stills (for small amounts of distillate 200 m³/day), solar ponds, well, in general, the sun that drives almost any energy process in Earth and you dont have to put a penny for this, BIOMASS, etc. But it depends on your definition of fuel (to power what?)and profitable. It seems to me that you are addressing only the problem of some substance that can fire on your hot rod which is an important part but not the whole picture. See? people must be educated on what other alternatives are, and of course, why do we need a house with 4 TV`s on, computers on and the shower going on for half an hour, a big car for every member of the family or lots of shimmering lights at night? Once we understand that, there would be nor need to drill Alaska, under your house or whatever.
Comment by Jerad
June 12th, 2006 at 5:18 pmPlease tell me how much has your government spent in wars to get oil? How many lives have been taken? looking it that way, no shit oil is a luxury item.
Jay Randal is correct, while the Center for American Progress’ solution, like
June 12th, 2006 at 5:45 pmCongressman John Murtha’s, is an illusion. To redeploy those troops to Kuwait or have them stationed “over the horizon”, as Murtha phrases it, or redeployed anywhere else in the region, is not hardly going to fool the Iraqi people. They know full well that given the fact that the credibility of the United States is near zero, those troops, stationed under or over, above or beyond the horizon, could be ordered back, under any pretext, into Iraq. As Anthony Arnove accurately points out in his new book, Iraq- The Logic of Withdrawal, the reasons that the United States invaded and still occupy Iraq were utterly false and misleading: No WMD, Iraq never posed any significant threat to the world’s mightest super power, and Iraq never proved to be connected to al-Qaeda and to the events of Sept. 11. Since these reasons have been proven to be utterly bogus, this then provides a strong and compelling and utterly persuasive case why the U.S. should begin, not a deceptively termed redeployment of those troops, but rather an immediate withdrawal of those troops from Iraq.
“people must be educated on what other alternatives are, and of course, why do we need a house with 4 TV`s on, computers on and the shower going on for half an hour, a big car for every member of the family or lots of shimmering lights at night? Once we understand that, there would be nor need to drill Alaska, under your house or whatever.”
This isn’t logical. We will never stop using our Toys. It may sound nice, but it won’t just happen because someone says its a nice idea. We as americans will always demand to keep what we currently have. We will continue to use Oil until someone can provide us with energy that is cheaper and equally as good. That energy will need to power all 4 TV’s, 3 Computer, 2 Showers, and every single light on in my house at once just like the old energy source.
“That” energy source will need to fetch a profit as well, or private business won’t have anything to do with it.
That is just logic though.
June 12th, 2006 at 5:46 pmThat is selfish and stupid. It has nothing to do with logic. I dont see the silogism there.
June 12th, 2006 at 5:48 pmIn 1966, a US Congressman said this about how to get out of Vietnam(could apply to Iraq today);
June 12th, 2006 at 5:59 pmIt is selfish, but also reality. I guess you could just pull out the Liberal playbook and regulate it, pass some laws to tell us normal folks how to live, and then mandate your idealogy on us.
I just prefer to have the free market system take care of it.
Or we could just go back to discussing how great it would be for all of us to right mules to work instead of SUV’s. Discussion is fun, but it won’t just happen out of magic pixy dust (It ain’t the 60’s anymore :) ).
June 12th, 2006 at 5:59 pmDerbyshire: Waaaaaaahhh! I’m sorry we didn’t turn Iraq into a sheet of glass!
June 12th, 2006 at 6:00 pm“Just declare victory and go home”. Sorry , got cut off from my previous post #24.
June 12th, 2006 at 6:02 pmAh yes, avuncular ole Dick. http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/avuncular
June 12th, 2006 at 6:18 pm“We will continue to use Oil until someone can provide us with energy that is cheaper and equally as good. Comment by Jeradâ€
No, we will continue to use oil until it gets so expensive it wrecks the economy, at which point nobody will have any spare capital to spend on R&D.
June 12th, 2006 at 6:28 pmIam rather amazed that with all the talk on this site concerning, justifiably, the dependence that the United States has on foreign oil, that no one has mentioned the story that was featured last Friday on PBS, on NOW, concerning the soon to be released documentary, “Who killed the electric car”. NOW featured an interview with the director of the film, Chris Paine, who talked about how General Motors took almost no interest in promoting the EV-1, an electric car that uses no oil, no gas, and has no replacement parts. If General Motors had stayed with the EV-1, in the 1990s, they would have been where Toyota is right now with the Prius. The government keeps touting the benefits of hydrogen cars, while ignoring its expense and the fact that it is 10 to 15 years down the road. Any possiboility that the oil industry and its government spokespeople, such as Bush, Cheney, Condoleeza Rice, could possibly have put pressure upon GM not to support this vehicle? While seeing Gore’s documentrary “An Inconvenient Truth”, the theatre presented a trailer for the documentary on the electric car. The odds are good that my wife and I will make another 100 mile journey to see this worthwhile documentary.
June 12th, 2006 at 6:41 pmInstead of any forward looking strategy to get us out of this mess both your puke senators and your puke reps are planning, together, to have a vote on the withdrawal of troops.
This of course is only to try and embarras the dems in the upcoming election. This is the pukes in our government using the war, once again, for political purposes.
They will, and they have, stooped to the lowest levels of human dung, they are bottom feeders supreme. Scum of this earth. Most of them wear womens underwear.
June 12th, 2006 at 7:38 pm#33, Please don’t insult the female gender (execpt the trannie neo-nazi whore Annie Coulter).
June 12th, 2006 at 7:48 pmwhat no mention of mass transit?
June 12th, 2006 at 10:08 pmComment by Jerad
You are but a low employee that promotes big companies for nothing. When free market system take control of everything, you wont have anything to claim of your own, as contradictory as it may sound. The whole porpuse of capitalism is to accumulate wealth…and guess what? you wont be that guy. You support a system that excludes you. You cant be that stupid.
June 12th, 2006 at 10:09 pm#23
You do not generate hydrogen out of fuels. Hydrogen is an element that must be extracted from compounds that contain it. Water, for example by electrolysis. Electricity is not a fuel, it is an energy flow in the form of moving charges through a conductor. Once, hydrogen is obtained it can be used as a fuel, because it can burn (see blimp Hindenburg), it can stored energy due to its high specific heat capacity, it can be transported through ducts underground to stations, pretty much like gasoline. So, in sum, wind, solar, tidal, wave, geothermal, biomass are renewable energy sources (RES). Hydrogen is not. (I know you did not say so, I am just summarizing) Hydrogen have to burn in order to be useful OR it can be used in fuel cells, which is the most friendly of all the applications I can think of involving hydrogen. Now, solar concentration can dissociate water molecule to obtain hydrogen, so, some RES can be used to get hydrogen, but as you say it can be really complicated and unpractical.
June 12th, 2006 at 10:22 pmI know, I am being picky and I really like everything you post. I get excited about this issue. Dont take this offensively.
why does everyone leave out that lying, incompetent, piece of crap, condi rice? she was an integral part of selling the lies, the deceptions, the phoney fear.
June 12th, 2006 at 10:50 pm.
Here’s where the logic goes out the window: “Get those Iraqis fighting to end the occupation to lay down their arms”
As long as we are in Iraq, we cannot hope that they will put down their arms. That’s a little like the Israelis standing in the occupied territories and saying, okay, put down your arms and we’ll stay only a little longer.
We have lost all credibility and the only option is an immediate withdrawal to other bases throughout the region but ONLY so that we may be on call to help with rebuilding at the request of WHATEVER government is established in Iraq by Iraqis.
Anything else is just pie in the sky.
June 13th, 2006 at 12:14 amIf we are respnsible and fair with the Iraqis, and if we REALLY help to resolve their issues, we can hope that they may be as their spiritual leader and have mercy on us though they have no reason to.
We have earned to be cut off from their oil. That was one of the dangers bush accepted when he went into Iraq under complete lies.
If he refused to talk about oil as a reason, we couldn’t get the media to discuss oil at all, so we weren’t able to have a public debate about all the possible outcomes.
June 13th, 2006 at 12:21 amErroll’s post #20, I wholeheartedly agree with it, and with everything I’ve read about Anthony Arnove’s book. I haven’t read the book and therefore can’t comment on it more than the articles I’ve read about it, but those are also by very and reliably sound people, whom I have ample respect for, so I know they’re truthful about what Arnove says.
I might possibly differ in some respects, but overall surely minor, for I agree with his main logic, that withdrawal, not only redeployment, is what is NECESSARY.
NOW, what is all the off-topic NONSENSE about Americans being market pigs, of multiple TV sets, computers, cars, and so on, what the hell does that have to do with discussing whether or not the US MUST WITHDRAW from Iraq! It has nothing to do with it, is the real answer, the really valid one, that is. Meanwhile, it does provide us with another answer, which is not an answer but, instead, an illustration of how morally devoid, hellishly selfish Americans are in too far great numbers. War cannot be justified based on your assinine selfish wants, and it can’t be justified even for needs; except the need of applying self-defence or defence when criminally aggressed.
But it’d be interesting to see or hear or read about Bush et al using that hellbent argument. They are hellbent, about as extremely as humans can get, but they’re careful in their political statements, and they have not yet used one of the above nature, which IDIOTS and indeed morally DEVOID people, or moral DEVOIDS, produced here.
And those people just made it clear that they are also WAR CRIMINALS; trying to justify war of entirely criminal and hellbent aggression based on such assinine selfish wants, which would not be wants at all, if these idiots were sane. There is such a thing as a person being both idiot and sane, like people who are a bit too simpletonian, but all while being able to discern the difference between right and WRONG, and always siding with the former, RIGHT. These idiots here are not sane though; they are WAR CRIMINALS, right in league with the rest of the leaders of this hell’s reign on earth.
I’d call them SCHMUCKS, but this might not be accepted here, so ….
Mike Corbeil
June 13th, 2006 at 1:01 amCanadian-American-Canadian
Oh, and I don’t mean to say that Bush et al are not idiots and moral DEVOIDS, for they definitely and very obviously are. Adding this note just in case idiots confused what was meant in my prior post, #41.
Mike Corbeil
June 13th, 2006 at 1:17 amCandian-American-Canadian (which makes me American three times over, given Canada can also call itself America, as can also all countries of South America)
Mostly he is sorry we didn’t level Iraq, kill Saddam and leave. He is unhappy with the situation on the ground. and the fact that it keeps dragging on.
Comment by Krazny #3
Krazny,
…we must ALL be able to see the “BIG PICTURE”…
…this TREASONOUS inbred al Cracker Bushite NOW sees…
…that Iraq is an endless loop of corruption…
…a goose laying golden eggs for Bushites and their corporate cronies…
…HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS (homey)…
…and all Bushiva has to do is…
…keep having those funky little press get-togethers and say…
…”It’s gonna be hard work, but America will not be defeated”…
…the perfect score…
…for the world’s best GRIFTERS…
…and NOW this Derbyshithead guy…
…FINALLY sees the light…
June 13th, 2006 at 8:21 amMost unusual…
Courtesy of ThinkProgress by way of neo-sometimeycon Andrew Sullivan, The National Review’s John Derbyshire engages in a little bit of “truthiness”:…
June 14th, 2006 at 9:57 am