Who is smarter?

nota bene said:

So why did you create this poll?

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Iraq war costs U.S. more than $2 trillion: study

The U.S. war in Iraq has cost $1.7 trillion with an additional $490 billion in benefits owed to war veterans, expenses that could grow to more than $6 trillion over the next four decades counting interest, a study released on Thursday said.

The war has killed at least 134,000 Iraqi civilians and may have contributed to the deaths of as many as four times that number, according to the Costs of War Project by the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University.

When security forces, insurgents, journalists and humanitarian workers were included, the war's death toll rose to an estimated 176,000 to 189,000, the study said.

The report, the work of about 30 academics and experts, was published in advance of the 10th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003.

It was also an update of a 2011 report the Watson Institute produced ahead of the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks that assessed the cost in dollars and lives from the resulting wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq.

The 2011 study said the combined cost of the wars was at least $3.7 trillion, based on actual expenditures from the U.S. Treasury and future commitments, such as the medical and disability claims of U.S. war veterans.

That estimate climbed to nearly $4 trillion in the update.

The estimated death toll from the three wars, previously at 224,000 to 258,000, increased to a range of 272,000 to 329,000 two years later.

Excluded were indirect deaths caused by the mass exodus of doctors and a devastated infrastructure, for example, while the costs left out trillions of dollars in interest the United States could pay over the next 40 years.

The interest on expenses for the Iraq war could amount to about $4 trillion during that period, the report said.

The report also examined the burden on U.S. veterans and their families, showing a deep social cost as well as an increase in spending on veterans. The 2011 study found U.S. medical and disability claims for veterans after a decade of war totaled $33 billion. Two years later, that number had risen to $134.7 billion.

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MildSteel said:

Master of the art of basket weaving? :lamo

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nota bene said:

So why did you create this poll?

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TurtleDude said:

I guess we shouldn't have expected your posts to make a rational argument on this thread based on the earlier posts.

CDS appears to be the main instigator of your comments

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MildSteel said:

OK, here's a rational argument for you. Let's see if you can comprehend it.

Obama is smarter than Cheney because Obama has sense enough not to get the U.S. involved in wars that cost it trillions of dollars. Get it?
Cheney just isn't that intelligent. It is as simple as that.

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TurtleDude said:

How do you know Cheney was the one who got us into that war?

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MildSteel said:

Did not think you could. That is why its useless to discuss with you.

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MildSteel said:

Oh, I could think up a real good topic right now, but I would get banned.

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Apocalypse said:

All the more reason you should go ahead.

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TurtleDude said:

Your posts clearly demonstrate that your evaluation of "intelligence" is based on your political agenda and has no relation to reality.

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MildSteel said:

No, it's a simple IQ test question:

Who is smarter, Cheney or Obama?

Answer - Obama

Why?

Because Obama does not start war that cost the U.S. TRILLIONS of dollars and thousands of young American lives.

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TurtleDude said:

that's a BS argument

try again.

did you serve in Iraq? do you believe everyone who voted for the war is a moron? Obama has hardly ended the war and escalated the war in Afghanistan.

so your argument has no merit and is really really stupid

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TurtleDude said:

How do you know Cheney was the one who got us into that war?

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Retired Col. Lawrence Wilkerson was Colin Powell’s chief of staff at the State Department, and close friend and adviser for 16 years. Two weeks ago he spoke to a Washington Public Policy Institute.

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON (Ret.): What I saw was a cabal between the Vice President of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.

RAY SUAREZ: In an interview this week, Wilkerson repeated his charge that an alternate decision-making process had evolved run by the vice president and his allies at the Defense Department in the first Bush term.

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON (Ret.): This is the first time that so much power has been concentrated in the office of the vice president.

While the formal process was engaged — that is to say, everyone debating and dissenting and so forth and so on — the informal process was making the decisions.

There was a labyrinth out there of people who sopped up information, manipulated information, handed information, and built information, I think in some cases, that supplemented, augmented, helped this alternative decision-making process to realize its decisions rather than those that might have been flummoxed or stopped or halted or still in debate in the formal process.

RAY SUAREZ: How did this work in practice?

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON (Ret.): Well, with regard to Iraq, it was centered in Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith’s office. Other people were sprinkled throughout the government.

RAY SUAREZ: Wilkerson says that a faction of the Central Intelligence Agency was aligned with the vice president’s office. At times, this group was in conflict with CIA Director George Tenet, the DCI.

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON (Ret.): And so, you would get one part of the agency, the official part, if you will, with the DCI as the mouthpiece of that official part, saying, “Wait a minute. I don’t think that ought to go in the president’s state of the union address; that’s not right. We don’t have firm evidence that Iraq is seeking uranium from the country of Niger, so it shouldn’t go in there.”

Then you would have this dissenting body in the agency report up the chain to the vice president’s office and back in it would go, into the state of the union address.

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Father torches van after news of son's death

After being informed that his 20-year-old son was killed while serving in Iraq, a Florida man doused a U.S. government van with gasoline and set it on fire while sitting inside.

Carlos Arredondo, 44, was severely burned and rushed to Hollywood Regional Hospital in Florida after learning that Pfc. Alexander Arredondo had died, police said.

"He suffered serious burns," said Detective Carlos Negron.

Negron said the young man was killed in Iraq Tuesday.

Melida Arredondo told CNN-affiliate WFOR, "My husband did not take the news well."

The events started around 2:15 p.m. when three Marine casualty officers arrived at the home to inform the Arredondo family of the death.

Arredondo went to his garage and came out carrying a propane tank, a gallon of gasoline and a welder's torch, police spokesman Tony Rode said.

The Marines tried to calm him, Rode said, but Arredondo smashed the window of their van, got inside and doused it with the gasoline.

Then he set it on fire.

"Unfortunately, the man was caught in the fire," a police statement said.

Video showed the van engulfed in flames.

The three Marines pulled the father from the burning van and had him "drop and roll," police said.

Arredondo was taken to a hospital and then to a burn center in Miami, Florida, with serious burns over much of his body.

"A bad situation turned ugly is what happened," Rode said.

"He's actually inside and, at one point, comes out of the vehicle pretty much on fire," Rode said. "He was burning on his arms, legs and hands."

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MildSteel said:

There is some truth to that.



That is a bunch of bullcorn.

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Henrin said:

Not really. A good leader empowers his followers and makes them think they can do anything.

Oh, and a good leader doesn't need to be seen as the smartest guy in the room or need recognition.

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The highest type of ruler is one of whose existence the people are barely aware.

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"The most controversial paragraph is a report of a recent visit to Washington by head of the Secret Intelligence Service Sir Richard Dearlove (known in official terminology as 'C'):

C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record.
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The Foreign Secretary said he would discuss this with Colin Powell this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran.

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TeleKat said:

Well, this thread is going absolutely nowhere.

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MildSteel said:

Although I agree with you on both points and I would go further and say he doesn't have to be the smartest guy in the room, this is simply not correct



Unless what you mean by that is what you put forward.

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Henrin said:

What is the key elements of leadership to you? To me a good leader emphasizes the importance of love, elegance, caring, and inclusivity. To you what does a good leader emphasize? Chaney emphasized power, dominance, and fear, while Obama emphasizes power, dominance, and mockery. Both of them are hated by far more people than those that admire them, and both of them are seen as assholes by many people. A bad leader is interested in his own ego and his own power, while a good leader is interested in making people better persons and to possibly raise them to be leaders themselves. The fact is, and I think we both agree on this, is that both Obama and Cheney are the worst kind of leaders. They divide their people, make them hate each other, feel powerless, and fear them and the government. The worst of it all is that Obama and Cheney are exactly the kind of leader the people want.

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MildSteel said:

As usual, you have made good points. My point is this, you have this warmongering crowd of people like Cheney that have never seen a war that they do not like. Obama at least is smart enough to understand that **** is foolishness, is a waste of money, and is a waste of young American lives. You have that idiot from Israel that just gave a speech to Congress who is trying to bamboozle the American people like Cheney did. Obama at least is intelligent enough to try stop it. That is the point.

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Henrin said:

And that is another thing. Many people in this country actually want their government around the world pushing our interests on other countries and their leaders. They fail to realize that a good leader does not put his people in unneeded danger even if he might feel that another countries cause is just and their enemies are wrong. Personally, I have no idea who is right or wrong in the Israel struggle, but I know this, taking peoples land with a war treaty and giving that land to someone else is wrong. It might be true that the land was once stolen, but the men, women and children that live on that land today are not responsible for the actions of those that came before them and should not have their land taken from them because of the deeds of those that came before them. On that note however, it is also wrong to say that the men and women and children that live their today are responsible for the actions of those involved in the treaty. It is best to leave things as they lie and forget about the deeds of those that have long pasted. Moving forward sometimes means that deeds like the US stealing the land of the natives or the stealing the land of Israel is forgotten, and while that is wrong in it's own way, it is far more wrong to take peoples homes from them for deeds they themselves did not commit.

Just my two cents.

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MildSteel said:

Good post. The underlined was especially to the point.

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