The U.S. Embassy in Iraq is distancing itself from statements made by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher that led to a government spokesman saying the congressman and his delegation are not welcome in the country…
Dana Rohrabacher, the chairman of the Oversight and Investigation Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee…told reporters during a news conference at the embassy in Baghdad that he suggested Iraq repay some of the cost of the war.
“Once Iraq becomes a very rich and prosperous country … we would hope that some consideration be given to repaying the United States some of the mega-dollars that we have spent here in the last eight years,” said Rohrabacher, according to the Agence France-Presse news agency…
Traveling with Rohrabacher were Democratic Rep. Russ Carnahan of Missouri; Rep. Ted Poe of Texas, a Republican member of Rohrabacher’s subcommittee; Republican Rep. Jeff Duncan of South Carolina; Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas; and Democratic Rep. Jim Costa of California.
Telephone calls to the district and Washington offices of all five congressmen were either not answered or not immediately returned.
Will this be part of the Republican platform in 2012?
Its hard to get more stupid than Roarflacker, but his buddies are trying.
I wonder how “lined up” all the Pukes are to follow McCain and invade Syria? I guess they are “for” it now because they assume watching Obama not go into Libya, they are pretty sure he won’t go into Syria===but what ya bet if he did invade?
Pukes. Not worth a bucket full of it.
Gee, I’m starting to feel a bit Alfie all over. Let me bend over and scratch that one spot.
Freedom isn’t free.
“Dana Rohrabacher, the chairman of the Oversight and Investigation Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee…told reporters during a news conference at the embassy in Baghdad that he suggested Iraq repay some of the cost of the war.”
Dana should just find a car and take a short drive out of the embassy to find out how the Iraqis would like to give him payment.
Has Vietnam payed us back yet? What about Korea or Germany and Italy? And what about Britain for liberating their colonies?
Like having to live next door to a family of alcoholics, you have to pay them to move away.
It’s stupid to expect them to “repay” us for rebuilding their country after destroying it.
But it’s not that unreasonable to stop paying foreign aid to them once we’ve left and they are getting oil revenue.
Saddam Hussein took the oil revenue and squandered it – either on himself or the military. Once the U.S. military has completely withdrawn, do we really need to continue to pay them to build up their own military, which will inevitably become a tool of radical Islamic terrorism?
BTW – I take the same position on foreign aid to Israel (and Egypt and the Palestinians) — if they can’t get by without it, then they aren’t really a country.
Doesn’t it seem a little strange to borrow money from China, then give it to countries which only want to destroy us?
I thought that US companies made a fortune in Iraq anyway ?
Hell, we (britain) didn’t finish repaying the US for WWII until 2006.
And we were on THEIR side lol
chuck–if you don’t have moral, religious, or cultural influence with regards to another country, your only option is to try and buy it. Money works on a hit and miss basis. Could do so much more with student exchanges, schlorship programs and what not but then THEY INFLUENCE US—and we can’t have that.
Like that rippling puddle in Jurassic Park–you can just feel the big terrible monster coming==and then chaos, planned or not.
Can we switch to crying about what Tracy Morgan said? This topic is boring.
Thank you Team USA for invading sovereign countries that opposes your corrupt way of governance! You are truly a leading star! I hope Joe Plumber is proud about how his tax payer money (renewable resource) is spent!!!!
War is one thing but keeping standing armies in foreign places should not be free. Troops from around the World should be brought back home (and if war is to be waged, present to Congress specific goals and how they make sense as Constitutional duty to protect this country) OR if local Government (like EU, Japan, Korea,… IRAQ,…) demands our help beyond achieved war goals – make them pay more, much more than the service costs us for US troops standing there defending local interests.
I think it would be more appropriate to force the following individuals to pay for the Iraq invasion and its aftermath:
* G.W. Bush – For using his influence as President of the United States to “persuade” congress to vote to approve the invasion.
* All 77 U.S. Senators and 296 members of the house that voted for the Iraq War Resolution on Oct 11, 2002.
* Every beer swilling, wife-beater shirt wearing yahoo that appeared on television supporting this miserable endeavor. Who could forget such quotable moments such as “Fuck Yea! We will put a boot up that asses of those a-rabs! Yeah!”
#3, Chris, re: “Freedom isn’t free”.
Aside from being a play on words, that statement is profound as “everything has a cost”, or “nothing is free”.
I don’t know of anyone who has ever experienced “freedom”, by it’s literal and philosophical meaning: “The power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint.” When Chris posted “Freedom isn’t free.”, my first thought was that freedom doesn’t exist. If it is not imposed by a dictator, it is imposed by oneself in under the umbrella of society. Complete freedom would be as terrible as complete immobility. You start at either extreme and and come to a general agreement somewhere in between.
It’s how we decide where those “in between” spots are that becomes a problem. Is 51% a ‘win’ when 49% are unhappy with the outcome?
As far as charging for your invasion of Iraq, I see it this way. You can’t expect repayment for a service it if wasn’t asked for in the first place, there was no agreement for compensation in place beforehand, and the service you rendered was not legitimate. I would say “strike three”.
oddly enough, the more I think about that headline, the more I am OK with it. We did take money from Germany and Japan. Had we won decisively any of the other engagements I think we would have there as well. I have no problem in this case. now since they didnt actually attack America in this instance I dont think it would be ethical to leave them with nothing. But sticking with the original plan to get in there and take their oil is pretty good payment.
The US won the cold war to become the world’s remaining superpower, only to blow the wad on this mess?
Oh right, the US won WW2 only to blow the wad on Korea and Vietnam. Never mind. Carry on. It all makes total sense now.
And Bush and Cheney should stand trial for WAR CRIMES !!!
#14–Skeptic==you say: “Complete freedom would be as terrible as complete immobility. You start at either extreme and and come to a general agreement somewhere in between.” /// Times does not allow right now, but surely this is all definitional. You are thinking of a set of givens and circumstances, conflate and confuse a miss-match of issues and think of immobility. I take a different approach: Trying to stay within your terms: I feel nothing but joy in the 49% I have knowing it allows me the benefits of the 51% I have. Most people accept the conditions in life they have. Just add a little kindness here and there and the experience can be a sense of wonderment.
Some may be too greedy and self centered to appreciate such a simple reality.
I sure hope Iraq doesn’t bring up the 6.6 Billion we stole from them in cash (collected from frozen asset seizures and “Oil for food” programs).
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-missing-billions-20110613,0,4414060.story
that would be most rude of them to ask for their own money back.
Bobbo, re: “I feel nothing but joy in the 49% I have knowing it allows me the benefits of the 51% “// “You are thinking of a set of givens and circumstances…”
— You assume that you are on the short end of benefits. What if the 49% didn’t want to wage war?
— To what “givens and circumstances” are you referring? I don’t believe I gave any examples.
I couldn’t decide on a suitable antonym for “freedom” in it’s broadest definition. Immobility doesn’t cut it either. Have you got a better one?
Wasn’t there a bill to this effect passed during the initial invasion? This was when conservatives were promising that the war would pay for itself.
If I remember correctly, Iraq was going to pay for half of the privilege of being invaded by America. (I don’t have the time to do the search but that’s my memory.)
The Christians shouldn’t. We pretty much got them massacred. Surprise, being an atheist Saddam did not tolerate sectarian violence.
The only thing the Bast party and Saddam followers owe us would be two to the head.
Maybe some of the others do owe us a favor but then we pretty much bleeped things up by not having enough troops in the country to maintain the peace after knocking out the government.
I’d be happy to settle for getting out of the place.
We should have been sucking the oil out at cost (or less) as a means to pay for the war. Our fault if we didn’t follow through with that.
The problem is that we try to wage war by phoning it in.
You can’t even have a good police action from across an ocean away.
That’s no way to conquer. Read The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli. Its all in there, in black and white and blood red.
You have to move your seat of government into the territory you’re occupying for a couple of generations to show you’re serious and to break the will of your opponents.
Eventually old enmities turn into grudging acceptance, turn into leery relations turn old rivalry, turn into close friendship. (e.g. England and France. Look at France and everybody else and you can see what happens when you screw it up… [They were in Vietnam until the people kicked their asses in Dien Bien Fu, Algeria until they realized that they just weren’t sufficiently evil anymore, inherited possessions from Napoleon all over the South Pacific and South Atlantic that they are only to happy to neglect.)
WW II was the last war of conquest the ‘States waged. (Though I can make an argument for South Korea, it was a United Nations war.)
We started phoning it in with Johnson and have fucked up every conflict, and screwed every ally, since.
The United States no longer has the balls to be a conquering nation. You’re all too fat, too lazy, too self-absorbed and too namby-pamby to really go to war, not even over your own survival.
#14
“Freedom isn’t Free” isn’t my thought, but an ad campaign for the local Republican free paper. Different pictures with that slogan. The one that caught my eye was with a middle eastern family huddled next to a wall with US mil boots and rifle barrel in foreground.
It is also cross marketed to other right-wing groups. They’ve got t-shirts and biker patches… stuff like that.
The one of the other ads in the series is of the Lincoln memorial. Why Lincoln? Not because of the Civil War, which is still a sore spot for many in the South to this day, but because of Lincoln’s willingness to suspend civil liberties to achieve his goals.
Effectively this is the GOP asking that Lincoln’s era and Bush II’s era be compared apples-to-apples. That the danger level was the same 10 out of 10. Yeah right.
The Civil War had BATTLES with more people than our current WARS. That was also against a much smaller population. And the action wasn’t in another land: everything destroyed would be a loss to an American.
I don’t want to understate the dangers faced by America, just to point out that others systematically overstate those dangers to cover up their own mistakes.
The logical thing to do is tax those US states whose elected politician voted in favor of an invasion.
That, or seize all the GOP assets and turn over Cheney and Bush to Interpol to face the world court.
Somebody besides me should pay for it, that’s all I know.
#25, Chris, thanks for the explanation… interesting. I guess if I were American, I might have caught your nod to their current significance. 🙂
QUOTE from a former president..
” The OIL from Iraq will pay for the war”
When i heard this I laughed, then tried to figure out HOW…
Guess what..WE ARE PAYING FOR IT.. You wont get a higher price then the USA..
#20–Skeptic==sorry my schedule took me away. Lets parse:
Hmmm—but before parsing, having re read our posts, I am again unable to understand what I think you must be trying to say. The statement is too self referential, too general, too broad==too undefined. And as I tried to respond in the same framework, I find the same complaint/confusion in my own response.
1. – You assume that you are on the short end of benefits. What if the 49% didn’t want to wage war? /// What I said was: ““I feel nothing but joy in the 49% I have knowing it allows me the benefits of the 51% “–which is an acceptance of the 49/51 split but negates the characterization of a “short end” as I take joy in the 49% WHILE HAVING BENEFITS in the 51%. This actually does capture what I was trying to say: that its all good. But I see the ambiguity–mostly coming from your set up I think. “What if the 49% didn’t want to wage war?”===========and I think I have it. You take society as a whole and then identify a conflict as if the society were an individual with the same conflict. You switch ponies mid metaphor.
At #14 you say: “I don’t know of anyone who has ever experienced “freedom”, by it’s literal and philosophical meaning: “The power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint.” /// And that is one definition/interpretation/reality/expression/context. I have a few points to make: 1==it is well understood that we have many freedoms that necessarily come into conflict and all therefore must be compromised to maximize them all. My freedom to swing my fist must be compromised by your freedom to have your nose within my reach. Is my freedom “really” so restricted then that I cannot punch you if we disagree? I don’t think so. The direct answer to your question is that I am a freeman such as you search for, and I believe you, and most of us here are as well.
2. There is a very famous expression of another appreciation of freedom by JP Sartre: “We were never more free than during the German Occupation.” This expression of Sartrean Existentialism actually confronts directly the definition you use, but plays on the balance I give at point one. What is freedom but accepting the consequences of our actions, and yet choosing none the less? What, you think freedom is experienced in an environment free of consequences and reflections/predictions/balance? Hoomans live in society, not an isolated island. Ideas based on the latter have no credence in the former.
2– To what “givens and circumstances” are you referring? I don’t believe I gave any examples. /// Every idea springs from givens and circumstances whether they are stated or not. Your failure to give examples is what makes your statement ambiguous–it could be right or wrong but its impossible to say as it is “ungrounded” or unexampled. YES–I agree. So (maybe) I am not a free person because there is war that I don’t agree with? Well, “I” am not at war, how does a war affect me except by far extension thru inability to travel to the area without risk of harm or having my taxes taken to pay for it, or really, my dollar devalued to pay for it? Well–I don’t want to travel to war zones==is the denial of something I don’t want an invasion of my freedom? Deficit spending is too extenuated to affect the heart of freedom which is the ability and actuality of THINKING for one’s self.
3–I couldn’t decide on a suitable antonym for “freedom” in it’s broadest definition. Immobility doesn’t cut it either. Have you got a better one? /// Good one. I’m thinking: Afreedom, anti-freedom. Non-freedom. Slavery. Dogma. The False hope of lowered Expectations?===now let me check the thread for a considered response……..”Complete freedom would be as terrible as complete immobility.”//// So, complete freedom as you use it strikes me as anarchy? and maybe the opposite of that is some distopian vision of little office cubicles? Regimented? Hmmm. A little directed thought makes “immobility” a pretty good word as extreme as it is, it matches the extreme of “complete freedom.” Neither exist. Is the exercise somewhat irrelevant by its own framing/context? I think so.
Big words, big ideas, cannot be thrown around so lightly. That only evidences the shame of rhetoric as unhelpful analysis. Truly, the devil, the answer, is in the minute details, the smallest examples. That is what our brains are designed to handle. We are all more about our feet on the ground than we are about our head in the stars.
Its the truth that sets us free–but then bounds us by its consequences. Sublime.