Bush 'Irresponsibly' Sets a 'Date for Failure'
In May 2007, Bush declared (h/t Ryan Powers)
"I believe setting a deadline for withdrawal would demoralize the Iraqi people, would encourage killers across the broader Middle East, and send a signal that America will not keep its commitments. Setting a deadline for withdrawal is setting a date for failure -- and that would be irresponsible."
Earlier this month, Bush 'irresponsibly' set a 'date for failure' - actually two dates:
The United States army troops should withdraw from all Iraqi territory no later before 31 December 2011, and all U.S. combat forces to withdraw from the cities, villages and towns in Iraq before 30 June 2009, to be stationed in facilities which will be decided by a joint committee to coordinate military operations jmocc.
Is there wriggle room? Absolutely not.
“The total withdrawal will be completed by December 31, 2011. This is not governed by circumstances on the ground,” the [Iraqi government] spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, told Iraqi reporters, pointedly rejecting the more conditional language that the U.S. government had sought in the accord.
And the agreement allows the Iraqi government to send our troops home even sooner (h/t Badger):
The United States acknowledges the sovereign right of the government of Iraq to demand the withdrawal of the forces of the Unites States from Iraq at any time, and the government of Iraq acknowledges the sovereign right of the United States to withdraw its forces from Iraq at any time.
Today Dana Perino called the firm deadline only an "aspirational date." The only part of the agreement that's "aspirational" is Bush's "aspiration" to avoid being blamed for the biggest military disaster in American history.
p.s. As a follow-up, someone needs to ask Perino: so is your departure from the White House on January 20, 2009 only an "aspirational date"?
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Reflection of Capital ism
In an address to a concerned and passionte group that came to hear Dr. Will Tuttle, author of "The World Peace Diet," Dr. Tuttle explained the roots of capitalism. The word "Capital" comes from the Latin word, meaning "head."
It was used to measure wealth in terms of how much land and "livestock" one owned.
It appears that from the dawn of human domestication of animals, using them much the way WE are being used today, as products and commodities to serve the elite who control the military and banking system, economies have been built on suffering and exploitation. Our so called civilized modern world grew from a seed sprouted from a behavior that inflicted egregious and unspeakable suffering upon wild animals, forcing them into servitude and submission,(domestication), much like the military is doing today, where "resources" are needed to make all the crap and energy western societies have been manipulated to desire....Understanding how we built modernity, on the backs of slaves, first animals, then human, might shed some light on how everything is a circle, and why we are reaping the consequences of our actions, turning other beings into products and commodities, the very ideology the entire "stock" market was built upon....
Sadly, history constantly repeats herself as the education system has been biased to produce more producers who are never truly critical of western traditions, abuses of power, or the capitalist system proving to be just as dangerous and destructive as any so far, perhaps more....
We have made a very tangled, decietful, unnatural web, that stretches far beyone our borders , a web our consumptive habits can't be extricated from. Our foreign policies reflect the desire of westerners to have more, have bigger, have cheaper, combined with the learned behaviors that come with nurturing the "it's all about me" mentality.
If we dig deeply into every global conflict, every genocide, every displacement of indiginous people, we would surely find US multi-nationals on the scene, perhaps in the form of paid mercenaries, creating strife, using violence to take an area so raw materials can be stolen.
In other worlds, WE must sleep in the bed capitalism has made, and undrstand that much "terrorism" in my opinion, may be nothing more than desperate attempts to stop the US military from imposing its will, against the will of people all around the globe who do NOT want us around, stealing land, minerals, water, forests, and everything else our economic system requires for what we call sustained growth.
The finite earth is dying and humans are killing it. Progressive thinkers must understand that CHANGE comes first, at a personal level, just as healing from disease, from inside, out.
The "American Dream" of peace and prosperity is illusion! Peace will never come as long as humans look at the planet as a resource for only humans to use up, having no respect or reverence for the millions of other living beings in ALL shapes and sizes we totally ignore or reduce to commodities. Anyone get the gist of my comments?
www.powerfulbook.com is about a book that says it far better than I ever could, as does the book, Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn. Man against nature? Why? In a world of "competing interests," why bother teaching children to love nature and share when as they grow, that very ethic is carved away with the scalpel known as capitalism?
What a rant!
Want a peek at how civilized we really are? www.meat.org
www.butterballcruelty.com www.petatv.com
Have a look at modernity and what happens to those most incapable of defense. What Dr. Tuttle teaches is true, everything humans do and have done to animals, they do to one another....Torture? Fattening to obesity? Confined in walled warehouses(gated communities or walls at borders).
Our treatment of animals has come back to roost in every layer and fiber of human society....
Gary Hirschberg of Stonyfield Farm is NO progressive. His industry creates male calves used in the egregious "veal" industry, and the WELL funded dairy industry is the root cause of most increases in preventable degenerative disease. As his industry abducts baby calves from their mothers, and our nation abducts infant animals by the tens of BILLIONS from their mothers, so too, are human children victims of many forms of abduction and predatory violence.....
The world today is nothing but a reflection of resource wars that have been around for all time because of fighting over land and resources to feed animals destined for slaughter. Technologies may have advanced, but the global economy of war, disease, destruction, has remained unchanged.
"The world is his who can see through its pretensions. What deafness, what stone-blind custom , what overgrown error you behold, is there only by sufferance, your sufferance. See it to be a lie, and you have already dealt it a mortal blow." Emerson
Does the word "omnivorous"
Does the word "omnivorous" sound familiar to you? From the earliest beginnings of modern-day Man, we have eaten both plants and animals in order to survive.
Contrary to your diatribe, the raising and subsequent slaughter of food animals does NOT cause war, Man's inhumanity to Man, nor any of the other ridiculous claims that you make, any more than does raising corn, wheat, or cucumbers.
On the contrary, it is the lack of adequate food supplies that lead to hostility and anti-social behavior. If you, and your other "vegan" friends would spend as much time and effort attempting to feed the world's hungry, as you do spouting inane nonsense, you might just accomplish something. And, if the religious-right nuts would stay out of our sex lives, we might not have as many hungry mouths to feed around the world.
And finally, American-style Capitalism together with our Costitutional form of government, has produced the most prosperous, and caring, nation that this planet has ever seen. Now that the rabid Republican neoconservatives are no longer at the helm, we can once again have hope for our, and the world's, future.
you are right an wrong here Bill
Yes we have been eating animals since day 1 of human exisistence. prosperous yes. 500 or so people control 40% of the wealth. the top 5% control 90% of the wealth. So the prosperity is apparently for the few. As far as a vegan diet it more healthy than even a omnivores diet. way less heart disease thats for sure. Besides all the grain that you use to produce meat it takes 20 lbs of grain to make 1 lb of beef. 5 lbs of grain to make 1 lb of chicken and 2 lbs of grain to make one pound of turkey meat.
Besides the horrors of fsctory farming the mass use of antibiotics on animals because of there terrible living conditions. Which in turn has spawned alot of the antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria. I myself am not a vegan, but have respect for those who are. Don't lump vegans in with the far righter its just not right. I think you need to take a chill pill and allow some of the rest of us to have our own opinions.
Everyone is entitled to an
Everyone is entitled to an opinion, even me...;-)
Response:
1) American-style Capitalism did not create the imbalance of wealth in this nation. It was caused by Republican neoconservative de-regulation, obscene greed, and a refusal to enforce anti-monopply laws -- beginning with the Gingrich/Raygun crowd. The "middle-class" has all but disappeared.
2) I didn't "lump vegans in with the far righter [sic]..." If anything, they are far-left.
3) I do not defend "factory farming" (another result of the neocons' failure to regulate) only the very natural human trait of eating meat. The meat on my table comes from locally-owned private Hawaiian ranches and farms, whose livestock graze in natural pastures. This is not to mention the millions of people around the world who raise their own food animals.
4) Vegans, like other groups of social "reformers" tend to try and force their beliefs on others. They are free to live as they please, but on the other hand -- so am I.
Maybe you should look into an organic "chill pill..."