Get ready to open your wallets!!!!

[FreakMonster]

President Bush, addressing the nation last night about the mounting casualties and instability in Iraq, said he will ask Congress to double the amount already being spent on the conflict and urged the United Nations to play a greater role in the rebuilding effort.

(snip)

A senior administration official said the White House calculated that it was better to take one big hit over the size of its initial miscalculation and the impact on the deficit, instead of fighting the battle again and again in the heat of the presidential race. Of the $80 BILLION being requested, $75 billion is for Iraq. The rest is for the continuing war in Afghanistan.

(snip)

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said he estimated that even if a resolution passes, only 10,000 to 15,000 additional troops might be made available from other countries. "We are not expecting this new resolution to cause a large number of additional troops to be added from the international community," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

That admission points to serious potential deployment problems for the U.S. military. A study released last week by the Congressional Budget Office found that the Army lacks sufficient active-duty forces to maintain its current level of troops in Iraq beyond next spring.

more…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39838-2003Sep7.html

 

[FreakMonster]

Was it really only six months ago that chickenhawk Richard Perle was thanking God for the death of the UN? How times change. Last week the Bush administration officially admitted that their occupation of Iraq is failing dismally and crawled on their hands and knees to the United Nations for help. How embarrasing. Unsurprisingly the UN was not particularly impressed - and who can blame them considering the rough treatment they've received at the hands of Bush & Co. Even while groveling to France and Germany the Bush administration managed to come over as belligerent and hostile, demanding that any UN support must be placed under American command. "Uh, hi there UN. Our troops are getting killed, and it's becoming politically embarrasing. Will you give us thousands of your young men for cannon-fodder instead? Oh, by the way, you can't have any say in what happens to them." France and Germany last week rejected this plan as "insufficient," and that's probably putting it mildly. I mean, what did the Bush administration expect? "Oh, sure, here you go. Never mind that we opposed the invasion in the first place, and you've done nothing but insult us and call us irrelevant ever since. We'd much rather see our soldiers shot at than yours." Honestly, does the foreign policy incompetence of this administration know no bounds?

 

[the nature boy]

the thing is, we won't have to open our wallets. it'll just go to the deficit. I wish I could spend money like our government does.

 

[rsnoble]

What a joke. How far would terroism get along if we spent 4 billion a month on Home Security,-not to mention the jobs it would create in a jobless recovery-and opted for more negotiations with these little shithole states? I mean really, were you expecting a squadron of 1930's Iraqi Prop planes to rain destruction on the US anytime soon? There was plenty of time for other options but BushCo was drooling over the oil and jumped into the fire before they had to. And what have we accomplished: Our troops are dying everyday, Saddam is still alive, Osoma just held a summit promoting more US terrorists acts, all the money that could be helping out our own country is going overseas, our civil rights are getting trampled all over,
etc.
The BushCo. are complete fucking morons with foreign policy. And oh yes, you will be opening your wallet. On our current trajectory, you won't have social security when you retire, your investments are likely to get fucked (like mine did), and it is estimated by the year 2040 that only 10% of the population will have health insurance.

We have all these problems here, and all our jackass leaders can do is make them worse by trying to control the rest of the world.

Thanks to the republicans, I just got my pension cut in half for future years of service. The republicans are blocking any bills we tried to pass to help preserve the fund. So here you go again: the republicans would rather see hundreds of thousands loose their pension, meaning they will retire on nothing all in the name of creating low paying nonunion jobs. So to sustain our livelhood, we had no choice but to scale back future benefits. And here Bush is wearing union clothing giving a speech to unionists. Fuck Bush.

You need to remember that BushCo is the long arm of big biz. Everyone bitches and bitches about Corporate America, and yet they vote for someone that will do everything in their power to make Corporate America even more powerful.

Yes, all of this from some asshole that shouldn't even be in office in the first place. That's the real bitch of it all.