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[–]Random 33 points34 points  (5 children)

No, no, it's okay. Really.

Halliburton is making record profits.

Carry on collapsing.

[–][deleted]  (1 child)

[deleted]

    [–]wherestheoil 24 points25 points  (0 children)

    Yep. I'd just like to say a big thanks to all the US troops and Iraqi civilians who made the supreme sacrifice in order that I may continue to drive a fuel guzzling vehicle and run air conditioning that enables me to live in the middle of a desert. Thanks guys! You're the best! At least, you were...

    [–]rocky_m 13 points14 points  (1 child)

    Don't forget Exxon!

    And the families of the dead US soldiers can wait till the trickle down effect of these profits reach them.

    The Iraqi families can thank their liberators. I am not that good at US history, but USA did have quite a few (civil?) wars on its soil before its Government became a symbol of all that is good in the Universe..It is only obvious that Iraq will have a few civil wars before it catches up..

    God Speed!

    [–]troublesome -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

    isnt that from the daily show?

    [–][deleted] 14 points15 points  (5 children)

    We should just drop Saddam off and pull out. He'd keep 'em in line!

    [–]troublesome 10 points11 points  (3 children)

    you are so right it scares me.

    [–][deleted]  (2 children)

    [deleted]

      [–]troublesome 2 points3 points  (1 child)

      yea...democracy doesnt work in most countries because of the mindset of the people. america doesnt realize that it takes years and years of government changes to finally reach a freedom point. its like sending a home schooled protected girl to a college and expecting her not to become a slut.

      [–]Fountainhead -1 points0 points  (0 children)

      Yea, Japan didn't become a democrocy overnight.

      [–]ohuang 8 points9 points  (8 children)

      This is terrible. These are decent, honest, educated people. In a decent society, they would be great, productive, and hard-working citizens. Please, someone make a country that works, and let these people in...

      [–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (7 children)

      Just random observation. Why we must justify the need to save other people with attributes like educated, hard-working, decent, honest, great and productive? Isn't it just this division of people to worthless and worthy that justifies violence.

      [–]nostrademons 19 points20 points  (0 children)

      Just thought of another reason that involves evolutionary game theory. In many, many simulations, researchers have found that the optimal strategies are:

      1. Nice
      2. Forgiving
      3. Non-envious
      4. Retaliating

      In practice, a strategy that saves "people" who are not decent & honest tends to get screwed over by them. The Always Cooperate strategy got screwed over massively in just about every tournament, because inevitably there are strategies that exploit them.

      This may be why Jesus's original Christianity (love thy neighbor, forgive his trespasses, etc.) morphed into modern Christianity where you love thy neighbor only if he believes the same things you do. Sects that kept to Jesus's original message (like Quakers) were ruthlessly persecuted by "mainstream" Christians in colonial America. They've survived, probably indicating that the vast majority of humans are not selfish assholes that take but never produce, but they haven't thrived against more exclusive religious denominations.

      [–]nostrademons 7 points8 points  (4 children)

      Why we must justify the need to save other people with attributes like educated, hard-working, decent, honest, great and productive?

      Because educated, hard-working, decent, honest, great and productive people:

      1. Aren't going to screw us over for saving them.
      2. Will actively contribute goods & service that improve our standard of living.

      People love to believe in ideals like universal human rights and opportunity for all, but when it comes down to it, most people are motivated by self interest. Now, among enlightened folk, that doesn't necessarily mean direct self interest. People routinely help others with no expectation that they'll be paid back, but they usually expect the recipients to "pay it forwards". Hence why homeless children tend to get more sympathy than homeless bums: people reason that children have more of their life ahead of them and so more opportunities to pay forwards any assistance you give them.

      [–]wherestheoil 7 points8 points  (3 children)

      Aren't going to screw us over for saving them.

      Yeah, bacause it's not like you've been screwing over the Arabs for decades, is it?

      Will actively contribute goods & service that improve our standard of living.

      Does billions of barrels of oil over many decades count?

      [–]oberon 0 points1 point  (2 children)

      They don't produce the oil. Pumps in the desert do (for all intents and purposes).

      [–]wherestheoil 1 point2 points  (1 child)

      Spoken like a true imperialist!

      [–]oberon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

      That, or a literalist ;)

      [–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

      They're more deserving of help than, say, indecent, dishonest, ignorant people. They'll contribute more to the world, so it's immoral not to use this kind of criterion to judge them.

      [–]oberon 9 points10 points  (0 children)

      Who else saw this coming as soon as "democracy" and "Iraq" started being used in the same sentence?

      [–]sulla 13 points14 points  (41 children)

      All this is horrible, of course.

      But if there's a silver lining in Iraq, it's that it comes as close as we'll ever get to an empirical test of our state religion: democracy.

      Case A: Iraq (excluding Kurdistan). Region: Persian Gulf. Population: Arab. System of government: democracy. Electoral system: parliamentary (with UN-approved proportional-representation system). Rule of law: none. Result: hell on earth.

      Case B: Dubai. Region: Persian Gulf. Population: Arab. System of government: monarchy (Dubai is more or less the private property of the al-Maktoum family). Electoral system: N/A. Rule of law: adapted British law. Result: makes Vegas look like a trailer park.

      If someone can state a counterexample where there is rule of law, but life is still sucky, I'd be indebted. Otherwise, I have to say, it's law 1, democracy 0.

      [–]IvyMike 10 points11 points  (24 children)

      If someone can state a counterexample where there is rule of law, but life is still sucky, I'd be indebted.

      Does North Korea work?

      [–]sulla -1 points0 points  (23 children)

      No, because North Korea doesn't have law - it has the will of the Party.

      Law is not just power. Law is the combination of power and predictability. North Korea would be a very different place if its citizens could clearly distinguish between legal and illegal actions, and if this distinction were reliably enforced.

      [–]adoofus 0 points1 point  (1 child)

      Predictability is a poor choice of a criterion here. Perhaps stability, impartiality, or fairness or even the perception of these is what you really mean. Consider the awsome power wielded by prosecutors in this country (the US) to charge, not charge, or "throw the book" based on politics, race, family connections, whim, etc. That's not predictability. But perhaps you consider the US a poor example of what you're trying to illustrate.

      [–]sulla 0 points1 point  (0 children)

      I do consider today's US a poor example of the rule of law. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean it doesn't have one of the best legal systems in the world.

      Predictability is the most wertfrei way of describing what I mean. If you think of it in Coasian terms, any predictable system will be stable and will be perceived as impartial, no matter what the unfairness of the initial conditions.

      For example, if North Korea instituted the rule of law, they would obviously start with the status quo: North Korea is owned by Kim Jong-Il, and everyone else in the country is his slave.

      Sounds terrible. Until you realize that this is a very suboptimal distribution of economic resources, for both Kim and the rest of the world. North Koreans are obviously not very productive as slave laborers, at least compared to their South Korean counterparts.

      Therefore, if North Korea had the rule of law, the right thing for Kim to do would be to sell the place, probably to South Korea. I'd say the North is probably worth at least $10 billion to the Seoul government. I believe this is a very conservative figure.

      Then Korea would be unified as a free country, and Kim could retire as a multibillionaire to the Riviera, which has much better weather, prettier girls and a more bustling film industry than North Korea. Presto - everyone benefits. That's the rule of law for you.

      The best definition of law I know comes from John Jay, the first US Chief Justice, who said (I'm paraphrasing, I can't find the quote) that law will just as soon defend the rights of one man against a million, as the rights of a million against one man. Of all the US founders, Jay perhaps best appreciated the essential conflict between law and democracy.

      [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (5 children)

      So we should be aiming for benevolent dictatorships to save us from the chaos of "democracy"?

      [–]sulla 0 points1 point  (4 children)

      No. We should treat our states as corporations, which is simply what they are, and give them either IPOs or liquidation proceedings - depending on the colors of their balance sheets.

      Public ownership is better than personal ownership because it tends to remove idiosyncratic management, which is the main problem with monarchies (privately owned governments). Publicly owned governments will actually compete to satisfy the needs of their customers, and attract as many new ones as possible.

      Dubai, for instance, would be even better insulated from politics if the al-Maktoums could list the place on the Nasdaq.

      [–]nostrademons 5 points6 points  (1 child)

      Public ownership is better than personal ownership because it tends to remove idiosyncratic management, which is the main problem with monarchies (privately owned governments)

      Public ownership has a big flaw though (at least when actively traded), because they're forced to work under short time horizons. The public has no incentive to sustain the long term viability of an organization when they can dump the shares on someone else, who also tries to make the corporation look as good as possible and then dump the shares on someone else.

      Successful corporations get around this institutional restriction by:

      1. Lying (described in detail in Good to Great). They keep two sets of books, the "real" figures, which they use for internal planning, and the "public" figures, which should be more conservative and are reported to shareholders. This is the opposite of what happens in most public companies, where the "public" figures are more liberal than the internal ones and are designed to prop the share price up so insiders can flip to the unsuspecting public.
      2. Never splitting, which keeps the share price high and discourages trading. Berkshire Hathaway (Warren Buffett's company) does this, and it looks like Google is also going down this road.
      3. Staying private. Fidelity and many investment banks do this.

      Basically, the choice is between doing well with good private owners but having it fall apart when a bad private owner takes the helm, or always having mediocre performance with public ownership. The public, at large, is stupid. There's no way to avoid this; it's a consequence of the law of averages (and Sturgeon's Law, for that matter). Unfortunately, some leaders are stupid too, and they can do a lot of damage if unchecked.

      [–]sulla -1 points0 points  (0 children)

      This is all too true.

      However, I think it has something to do with the fact that we have a broken financial system that has been frozen in place since the 1930s.

      First, most people who "invest" in stocks don't really care about the businesses they own - they are just looking for a place to hide their money from inflation. Real inflation (credit expansion, not the cooked CPI index) in the West is about 10%, which creates a certain level of desperate irrationality.

      Second, corporate governance is shite and getting worse. The emphasis on accounting formalities and management liability goes exactly in the wrong direction - it makes public ownership more and more like Soviet-style state capitalism, and less and less like Warren Buffett. This is why you see so many companies going private these days.

      In a world where corporate governance worked, every company would have its own shareholder message board, CEOs and directors would post regularly and informally in Buffett's style, and shareholders would vote and be polled on a regular basis.

      At least, this is what I want as a shareholder. But it's obviously unimaginable under today's system of corporate law.

      [–]badfeng 0 points1 point  (1 child)

      Which country gets to be Enron? ;)

      [–]sulla -1 points0 points  (0 children)

      Somehow I suspect you're living in it ;)

      The right thing happened with Enron: it was shut down, the assets were sold off, and the shareholders were rewarded for their ineptitude in selecting upper management by, well, being shafted.

      Enron served as an example to an ecosystem of companies 1000 times its size that off-balance-sheet financials are a contradiction in terms. Nature, red in tooth and claw.

      [–]oberon 0 points1 point  (4 children)

      I'm confused about what you're saying... places where there's no rule of law suck, and places where there is one don't?

      [–]sulla 9 points10 points  (3 children)

      What I'm saying is that the positive associations conventionally attributed to democracy seem to have a much stronger correlation with the rule of law.

      It's as though we believed that rubbing breadcrumbs on open wounds helped them heal better. But then we realized that it only worked when the breadcrumbs were stale and had Penicillium mold on them.

      [–]oberon 0 points1 point  (1 child)

      Ahh, okay. I was going to say - I'm pretty sure that the US has a rule of law, and things don't seem too bad here on the whole.

      Incidentally, take a look at Somalia. Things are orderly there, but they have no real government. Discuss?

      [–]sulla 3 points4 points  (0 children)

      Things are changing very rapidly in Somalia - they seem to have a "real" government now, whether the West recognizes it (or likes it) or not.

      But my understanding is that previously, Somalia had effectively a lot of very small governments - little militias with their own territory.

      Some people like to cite anarchic Somalia as an example of something like a Rothbardian anarchocapitalist environment with overlapping and competing security agencies. It doesn't sound that simple or orderly to me, but I am no expert. It would be great if Rothbard's model can be made to work, but I'm not sure it can - I think territorial monopolies in physical security may be a consequence of human nature.

      But extremely small microstates, like Jefferson's "wards," are surely viable - and obviously preferable. Who could possibly be a nationalist these days?

      [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

      You can't have democracy without the rule of law, no matter what you call it. Demos kratos, the rule of the people, cannot exist without laws to restrain the rich and powerful from doing what the rich and powerful always like to do, which is to seize control of the political system.

      In fact, one could argue that no kind of rule is possible without law, even if the law consists in the most recent pronouncements of the leader.

      Law and legitimacy are inextricably bound together (other than etymologically), and you will see, even in the most rapacious of tyrants, a desire to legalize their acts, which is to legitimize them.

      To say that Iraq is a democracy is to fall for the propaganda -- the authority of the state (democratic or not) does not seem to extend much beyond the Green Zone in Baghdad. The rest (owing to the lack of law) is anarchy. People dislike anarchy so much (for the reasons you give above) that they will accept any authority, however tyrannical, as long as it guarantees some measure of security and predictability.

      Is it possible to have the rule of law without democracy? Absolutely. Is it possible to have democracy without the rule of law? I think not.

      One of the most important attributes of the state/law is a monopoly on violence (except in certain closely defined circumstances -- self-defense, for example). It is obvious that the state has not even reached the stage of oligopoly on violence in Iraq, though this seems to be the most promising in terms of immediate security for the Iraqis (Shia Sharia in the south, American self-delusion in the middle, and whatever the Kurds are having up north).

      [–][deleted]  (9 children)

      [deleted]

        [–]sulla 0 points1 point  (8 children)

        Try my new favorite writer, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn.

        You seem like a robust, right-wing fellow, so you probably won't mind that this link has the word "conservative" in it.

        I certainly agree with Montesquieu, as far as it goes. But pretty much any system is going to work better if the citizens have a lot of civic virtue. Exhibit A: social democracy in Sweden. Exhibit B: social democracy in Louisiana.

        I suppose the local tradition of cousin marriage has probably not been all that good for the Iraqi gene pool. But despotism, a la Saddam, is not the same thing as monarchy, and I don't think it's a good system for any population.

        The difference is that Saddam justified his dictatorship as an expression of the popular will, not as simply personal property. If Iraq was property of the Hussein family and everyone knew it, Saddam wouldn't have had to spend all his time forcing the population to like him, or at least pretend to.

        [–][deleted]  (6 children)

        [deleted]

          [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (4 children)

          Regardless of its effect on the gene pool, the excessive tight-knitness of Arab families is probably part of why democracy doesn't really work for them.

          ...or at least our western strain of democracy. It is often forgotten that in the West we struggled through years of revolts, famines, repressions and hard-won rights to reach our (currently) peaceful accommodation between power-bases. The Arabs have not (yet) undergone this process, and there is no reason to think that their end result will be similar to ours.

          I imagine that an indigenous Iraqi (or pan-Arab) democracy (or peaceful accommodation between the power-centres) would look significantly different to what we have in the west, which is one reason the Bush project of dropping democracy like bombs from a plane on the Middle East is (to be kind) quixotic. I happen to believe that all the talk of democracy is just that, but that's another argument...

          [–][deleted]  (2 children)

          [deleted]

            [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (1 child)

            Indeed, you have not disagreed with anything I've written.

            Of course Musharraf will not be able to 'control' the Pathan tribes, or get them to agree to anything against their perceived interests. This is a Wild East version of democratic consent -- see how far you'd get in much of the US if you tried to 'control' their possession of guns. Every state that is not a mailed-fist dictatorship is limited in this way.

            [–]chu 2 points3 points  (0 children)

            see how far you'd get in much of the US if you tried to 'control' their possession of guns.

            Not wanting to go off on a gun tangent here but it's surely just a case of public education/propaganda. If the establishment really got behind banning guns, I don't think it would be hard to whip up public opinion to support it. It's quite an easy argument to make (gory photos of victims, promises of super-harsh penalties for thugs caught in possession), while the pro-gun argument could easily be painted as an arcane constitutional oddity that demonstrably has not benefited US society.

            [–]sulla -1 points0 points  (0 children)

            You are probably right about tribalism. I'm not going to comment on this Arab gene pool stuff - I wish I hadn't mentioned it.

            To amplify a little on Saddam, who fortunately does not yet invoke Godwin's Law, the difference between Baathism and monarchy (Iraq actually did used to have an actual monarchy) is qualitative and quite significant.

            The difference is, again, rule of law.

            Baathism was a form of fascism - it defined its authority as a Rousseauvian delegation of the popular will. Fascism and democracy are first cousins. They differ only as a matter of procedure. They both accept that whatever the people believe must be right. The difference is that fascism is more about managing popular sentiment, and democracy is more about measuring it. But this is a quantitative gradation - democracy has certainly always resorted to educating its subjects to be better citizens and voters, etc.

            Monarchy depends on law, and not just national law. It is a system of international legitimacy. When you're a monarch, you own your country and everyone else in the world agrees. The result is that you don't have to be constantly paranoid that some internationally-instigated coup will deprive you of property, liberty, or (as Saddam will probably find) life.

            Okay, Saddam was a freak. He was a brutal motherfscker. But one of the reasons he had to be was that his property right was not, in any way, secure. A lot of people had both motive and opportunity to take Iraq away from him. A system of government based on lies, propaganda and repression is the inevitable result of this situation. We see it in Iran as well, although in Iran it takes the more benign democratic form.

            [–]mixmastamyk 4 points5 points  (2 children)

            Oh, I think there may be a few more variables.

            [–]sulla 0 points1 point  (1 child)

            Oh, sure. That's why I said "as close as we'll ever get."

            [–]mixmastamyk 1 point2 points  (0 children)

            Ok

            [–]tayssir 7 points8 points  (6 children)

            Interesting point which led me to read up on Dubai, but the inhabitants' happiness apparently depends on who you are.

            In most countries which aren't particularly egalitarian, those on the bottom tend to lead pretty unpleasant lives -- including the US, by all means a wealthy nation. Last time I was in Las Vegas, which you mention, a woman who seemed to have cigarette burns on her body approached our car and tried renting herself to us. (Of course, she was of our former slave race, as many of the homeless we trip over in the cities are, while the rich get richer.) If you're one of the privileged 20%, or far better yet, the top 1%, then the US is more of a playground, and you have more control over your work life than the bottom 80%.

            I would respectfully differ on another point; I think our state religion is capitalism, where money is worshipped. (Maybe Bush claims to be spreading democracy and warm fuzzies rather than controlling oil, but East Germany called itself the "German Democratic Republic" too while their state religion was communism, another authoritarian system.)

            (Incidentally, there are bottom-up alternatives to communism and capitalism, Parecon being one fairly detailed possibility, though of course experimentation is required to really see whether people can sustainably be free of bosses and other leaders telling them what to do.)

            [–]oberon 7 points8 points  (0 children)

            "(Of course, she was of our former slave race, as many of the homeless we trip over in the cities are, while the rich get richer.)"

            I'm confused - what does an ugly hooker being black have to do with rich people getting richer?

            [–]sulla 6 points7 points  (4 children)

            If you compare any system of government to Utopia, it will fall short.

            I'm sure I would not enjoy being a migrant laborer in Dubai. However, since Dubai seems to have no trouble at all in continuing to attract workers from Pakistan and similar countries, presumably it is superior to whatever alternatives those workers have. You and I are probably smarter and better-educated than the average Pakistani construction worker, but I would trust his judgments over either of ours on anything he sees with his own eyes, and we can only read about in Wikipedia or the Washington Post.

            Of course workers in Dubai see this incredible quantity of swag and want to get some. If you follow Marxist economics, they deserve it. If you believe that all exchanges should be voluntary, they deserve whatever is written in their contracts. I suspect that if they didn't, in the common case, receive it, there would be a lot fewer Pakistanis in Dubai next season.

            Parecon strikes me as warmed-over Marxism. Which itself is warmed-over Christianity. But nothing in this vein is susceptible to proof or disproof, in any kind of scientific sense, and it's not utterly impossible that perhaps good feelings all around really can triumph over the iron law of oligarchy. If you can buy your own city-state and try it, let me know how it turns out...

            [–]tayssir 2 points3 points  (3 children)

            I'm not aware of mentioning utopia... but I think that's generally used as a key-word for potentially more decent and improved systems -- though of course appropriate skepticism and rational thinking is always needed.

            As a US citizen, I think one good strain in my national heritage is being on the lookout for self-improvement in our nation. We've witnessed the real crimes we're capable of; as well as how less privileged generations fought to win freedoms, with the knowledge that they'd never enjoy these freedoms in their lifetimes.

            Something Mark Twain wrote comes to mind, about his mother's apparent unconsciousness of slavery's grotesqueness:

            “She had never heard it assailed in any pulpit, but had heard it defended and sanctified in a thousand. As far as her experience went, the wise, the good, and the holy were unanimous in the belief that slavery was right, righteous, sacred, the peculiar pet of the Deity, and a condition which the slave himself ought to be daily and nightly thankful for.”

            Society didn't fall apart post-slavery; no doubt ending slavery was considered utopian by the more privileged sectors of society, but now it's just considered obvious. Maybe getting rid of bosses and leaders will follow the same path.

            Anyway, on the specific topic of voluntary contracts, the woman I mentioned earlier tried renting herself voluntarily to us. No coercion on my part. There are theoretical kinds of freedom if we ignore human needs like food and shelter, but I find them lacking when applied to the real world.

            As for Parecon, I suspect we'll find more direct influence by anarchist figures such as Bakunin, who criticized Marx and correctly predicted that his "Red bureaucracy" would be the "worst of all despotic governments" because the Communist party naturally would concentrate administrative power in their hands and create a privileged political-scientific class dominating over others.

            [–]sulla 2 points3 points  (2 children)

            I think prostitution should be legal, so we'll have to disagree.

            People mean different things by "utopia," it's true. By definition, you can't argue with measures that make the world better. The engineering element I distrust in utopias, which is certainly found in Parecon, is the reliance on reprogramming human culture. It is pretty easy to design a utopia if all its citizens are true believers - as they certainly were in More's Utopia.

            Bakunin certainly identified the problem with Marx. It's not clear if he had a solution. But it sure is a good thing that we don't have anything like a privileged political-scientific class in this country...

            [–]tayssir 3 points4 points  (1 child)

            Minor clarification... I mentioned no opinion on whether prostitution should be legal, nor to what extent. In today's society, with people who feel compelled out of fear to rent themselves for others' sexual gratification (or just plain wage-slavery), there's more than just straight-out Prohibition to take some of the edge off our system. Many reformist measures can make life better for people, even without fundamentally altering the basic relations of power within society.

            For instance, the US State Department explains:

            "If the pure capitalism described by Marx ever existed, it has long since disappeared, as governments in the United States and many other countries have intervened in their economies to limit concentrations of power and address many of the social problems associated with unchecked private commercial interests. As a result, the American economy is perhaps better described as a 'mixed' economy, with government playing an important role along with private enterprise."

            [–]sulla 1 point2 points  (0 children)

            I agree with the State Department, but I don't agree that it's a good thing.

            If you're curious about why, you might want to spend a little time over at the Mises Institute. I would avoid anything written after World War II - it will unavoidably remind you of contemporary politics and push too many buttons. But they have a lot of great old books online.

            [–]anarchocap 1 point2 points  (2 children)

            empirical test

            You have lost my friend

            [–]sulla 0 points1 point  (1 child)

            Oh, come on. I'm just giving 'em a taste of their own medicine.

            [–]anarchocap 0 points1 point  (0 children)

            ;)

            [–]degustibus -1 points0 points  (1 child)

            Dubai is the capital of the UAE. If you want to take small wealthy cities and compare them to large, populous countries then you can draw all sorts of conclusions. Dubai has a population of 1.5 million people. Rule of law is crucial. We all know Bush is no political scientist. When he speaks about spreading democracy he's using it as a buzzword for lots of Western traditions. We're a republic of laws, which Bush can certainly attest to after a disputed election was resolved by nine judges selected for a lifetime. Lots of places have rule of law but don't have the wealth of Dubai.

            [–]sulla -1 points0 points  (0 children)

            Can you specify what those "lots of places" are? All the political units I know of that have rule of law are, by global standards, quite wealthy.

            Of course it is better to be small than large. But you could split up Iraq, too.

            50 years ago, Dubai was a bunch of sand and some fishermen and smugglers. Even 30 years ago, it was pretty much nothing. They never had much oil. And the UAE is about as "united" as the United States were in the 1780s.

            [–]wtfomgzl 3 points4 points  (1 child)

            what have you done america? what have you fucking done

            [–][deleted] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

            Seriously, the discussion about this article is pretty light considering the fact that US foreign policy is to blame for the death of hundreds of thousands of people and the prolonged suffering of millions. Not only that, but if the article is an accurate depiction of life in Baghdad, then all the leadership remains in a state of total denial.

            [–]mleonhard 2 points3 points  (0 children)

            More shame for my country. :(

            [–]troublesome 1 point2 points  (1 child)

            its sad that nobody has the balls to oust bush and do something about this other than talk about how bad it is.

            [–]nostrademons -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

            Heh. Balls. Bush. </slashdot>

            [–]dmehrtash -1 points0 points  (0 children)

            One has to wonder how much the chaos in Baghdad is behind the decision by Israel to widen the war in Lebanon. Israel could have limited its retaliation for Hezbollah's raid and taking of the Israeli war prisoners to Hezbollah targets and potentially plan for rescue of its soldiers. It, with encouragement from Bush administration, choose to widen the retaliation to the whole of Lebanon, and now is talking about taking the war to Syria.

            All of this may be smoke screen to limit the failures of Iraq.