And you are only contributing by commenting on his useless posts. PLEASE DO NOT FEED THE TROLLS. All it does is kill a thread.

No Disclosure: Presidential Candidates Defy Tradition, Refuse to Release Taxes

Former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C.,worked for a hedge fund while heading a poverty center in between his presidential campaigns. But since he isn’t telling, voters can’t know how much money he earned.

Former Gov. Mitt Romney, R-Mass., says his wife, Ann, once donated to Planned Parenthood, but that he never contributed to an abortion-rights group himself. But there’s no way for the media and the public to check that claim.

In a break with the tradition of recent presidential campaigns, most of the major presidential candidates aren’t releasing their income-tax filings.

Edwards has indicated that he will keep his tax returns private, and while Romney is still considering his options, he has never released his returns in previous runs for office.

Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., aren’t saying whether they will or not, but neither has released income tax forms filed this year.

That means voters are likely to know less about the income sources, personal wealth and charitable inclinations of the presidential candidates than in any election in the past generation.

“When you run for president, you really have to open yourself up to the American people,” said Mary Boyle, a spokeswoman for Common Cause, a government watchdog group. “If you’re asking voters of this country to elect you as president, it’s reasonable and rational that your tax returns are made public.”

http://abcnews.go.com/ Politics/ Story?id=3165953&page=1

It was always my understanding that public disclosure in this case was compelled by LAW rather than tradition?

H: An anti shark cage!

Q:
An anti shark cake eh
Ya mean you go in the cage
The cage goes in the water
You’re in the water
Shark’s is in the water
Our shark
Farwell and ado to you my fair Spanish ladies
Farewell and ado to you ladies of Spain
For we received orders to sail back to Boston
And never more shall we see you again

I dont think many people advocating withdrawl truly beleive withdrawing will solve the violence. Sure, many say they do.
Its just not politically palatable to say “we have to let them kill each other”.
(No more than its politically palatable to make the equally true statement that americans kill each other at a rate exponentially higher than foreigners do)

But thats what has to happen. We have to let them duke it out and kill eacn other. I wish it didnt have to be this way. But theres no other REALISTIC option. We sunk the ship. We can either stay on it or jump overboard. At this point, our preservation instinct as a country should kick in. Morally, the blood is on our hands, but staying in a situation where the best possible outcome is an Ismlamic Theocracy ruling a portion of a walled of and fragmented iraq isnt something worth bankrupting our country and making it suspectible to threats more real than the farcical phastasmal fear that they are going to swim over here after us. Most of them are just going to stay there and kill each other. Thats going to be the outcome wheter we leave now, in 10 years, or we stay forever. Sometimes paramedics, especially in emergency situations, will stop life saving treatment on a still living patient because they know the patient is hopeless and they need to use thier time and resources on dealing with situations that have realistic chances for positive outcomes. I have yet to hear anyone… anyone spell out a detailed, specific scenario whereby our staying could result in something good. “freedom for the iraqis”.. “a stable government” “a peaceful democracy” ,etc etc… are all wonderful catchy slogans, but when it comes to the specifics of what political parties, politicians, and factions would actually make this “victory” possible, I’ve heard about as many specifics as I have about how to build a time machine.

Akmaydjinedjads noise

…as well as your own Strategic Redeployment plan.
The latter pretends that this will be tackled by withdrawing all forces and ‘monitoring’ it from over the horizon.

Comment by Juan C — May 14, 2007 @ 12:16 am

Uh, was that deja vu, or deja SCREW, that you were referring to, Juan C?

See? They’re half right. Things are getting worse.

And so it’s reasonable to expect that when you turn the corner, you’ll come across more bodies. Plan B is to make Plan A work. So give Plan A at least another 6 months. And if it isn’t working by then, we’ll implement Plan B. And since Plan A was a surge, Plan B will be another surge.

We’ll just stop-loss the troops that are over there, extend their tour of duty another 6 months, throw in all those slackers at Walter Reed and show those in-surge-ants we are in for the long haul. We won’t leave until Iraq has a functioning, stable government that has ensured its infrastructure by signing off its oil interests to U.S. and British oil companies. But just to be sure, we’ll keep our mercenaries there for the duration of the 30 year contract. Because we want a lasting peace in the Middle East, even if we have to kill off every last one of those muther-f#cker!

/cheney

Bush’s Veto: Let’s Hold Blackwater Hostage
Sat Mar 31, 2007

Despite the dedicated efforts of journalists like Jeremy Scahill and the many diarists on this site, the MSM has not yet caught hold of this story: There are now something like 100,000 private ‘contractors’ in Iraq, essentially a mercenary army, largely on the payroll of Blackwater USA.

Blackwater’s presence in Iraq is largely funded through contracts with the Department of State. Without those contractors, Bush would not be talking about a 20,000 or 30,000 troop surge. Do the math. He would have long since demanded an escalation on the order of Vietnam, post-Tet.

Many of us object in principle to the idea of these private armies — whether on foreign or on domestic soil. The Declaration of Independence condemned George III’s use of such armies, as we have condemned George the W’s use of them in Iraq and in New Orleans….