Stars & Stripes letters: (very) Painful questions about Iraq

[lebkuchen]

There's also an excellent letter in response to a RWnut re: bankruptcy. I've excerpted both.

Painful questions about Iraq

It’s now more than four years since we invaded Iraq. It’s time the American people ask themselves some painful questions. Namely, are we a nation of hypocrites? Consider the following:

* Pre-emptive warfare: The world agrees it was wrong when Napoleon, Mussolini, Hitler and even Saddam Hussein did it; why then is it somehow permissible for America to pre-emptively invade other sovereign nations? Wasn’t Pearl Harbor also pre-emptive warfare?

* Iraq war: Why did the U.S. ultimately spit in the face of the United Nations to invade Iraq for apparently spitting in the face of the U.N.? Why did we also use “dangerous nuclear weapons” in the form of depleted uranium as we invaded Iraq looking for supposed “dangerous nuclear weapons programs”?

* WMDs: Why are we — the only country in the world to actually use nuclear weapons on another country (twice!) — the ones reserving the right to determine who can have this technology?

More painful questions at URL below...

Not sold on bankruptcy logic

...Further, there’s the “millionaire’s loophole.” That allows corporations to pay millions to insiders while they cancel employee health benefits and wipe out retirement plans. In the former Republican-led Senate, they defeated amendments that would have closed the millionaire’s loophole and prevented corporations from making huge payouts to executives before filing for bankruptcy; and put a national limit on the homestead exemption, which lets executives buy expensive homes to shelter their assets.

Finally, if the letter writer is living in a converted boxcar (as he describes), he should be livid at the unfairness of his beloved Republican-led tax breaks over the last six years, which shift the tax burden from the top 2 percent of income earners to the middle class. The New York Times did an analysis of IRS data in 2003 and, according to the study, Americans with annual incomes of $1 million or more reaped 43 percent of all the savings on investment taxes in 2003. This analysis showed that more than 70 percent of the tax savings on investment income went to the top 2 percent. Now who really benefited from those tax cuts?

http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=125&article=45425

[Hissyspit]

1. Very well-reasoned letter, although...

the time to ask those questions was actually four years ago.

[lebkuchen]

3. W/the information wars going on, especially on army bases overseas

the time to stop asking these questions isn't now, when we have multiple extended deployments going on.

[Hissyspit]

4. I didn't mean to imply that we should stop asking the questions, lebkuchen.

I did the best I could with my Bragg students to get them to ask the questions over the past four years - I agree that the propaganda was amazingly difficult to counteract.

[lebkuchen]

5. the propaganda continues to be hard to combat

the information war continues...as you know, and as I know. The obvious to us is "news" to 17 - 18 y.o recruits. It's a never ending effing effort, I guess.

[B Calm]

2. Wow, Dylan was right! The TIMES ARE A CHANGIN'