[Pendergast]

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

... and accurate from the rhetoric I'm seeing.

Sure.

No, but it does suggest that no matter what the situation; someone can claim there's profiteering on the backs of poor Americans and helpless nations.

I'm sure not to be outdone by your disconcerting claim of Rumsfeld being eeevilll. I wonder what disconcerting ethical standard you'll be using to define evil. You and only the most fringe leftists believe Rumsfeld is evil. What was funny about your "partisan shilling" again?

Well, if you had read my previous post in this thread, you'd see you're still wrong.

Extremely weak militarily? Was this the same feeble "elite guard" that was going to wipe us clean according to you and your ilk just three years ago?

As far as I can remember, I was amongst those who believed Iraq to be pretty much emasculated. Your ilk was all up the walls about the danger that Iraq represented.

Absolutely Iraq! I can't personally think of a better country to invade specifically because of its wealth of resources, its relation to Iran and several other noteworthy players geographically and because of the actions of its dictator in repeat noncompliance with an International body.

The really funny thing is; Russia understands how important Iraq is. China understands how important Iraq is. Cuba and Venezuela understand how important Iraq is. N. Korea and Syria understand how important Iraq is. The US understands how important Iraq is.

It seems the only people who don't understand how important Iraq is are the ever-lonely Pendergast and a few other fringe leftists. Again, just based on the rhetoric I'm seeing.

Excuse me? I always recognized what Iraq represented; I always referred to Iraq as the prom queen of oil and geopolitical dispute. But your ilk denied it and was all about democracy "and stuff". You were amongts the nay-sayers as well.

[Pendergast]

Originally Posted by ShortcutToMoncton 

Your perspective is incorrect.

OK. Prove me wrong: show me a text of a Canadian policy, a speech from a Defense minister, anything from an official source that this is the case.

If you tell me this is part of the "unsaid agreements", I think it is a weak argument.

[ShortcutToMoncton]

Originally Posted by Pendergast 

OK. Prove me wrong: show me a text of a Canadian policy, a speech from a Defense minister, anything from an official source that this is the case.

If you tell me this is part of the "unsaid agreements", I think it is a weak argument.

Huh? Do you think a Canadian policy or Defense Minister is going to stand up and say "Canadian peoples who like believing they are fiercely independent from the ginormous United States next door: we in fact don't put much spending into the military or national defence, because if anyone tries to attack us America will just take them out anyway. Have a good day."

Try reading a Canadian history book, or taking a course on Canada in the 20th century. Canada had far fewer total and relative casualties in World War II precisely because Mackenzie King did his absolute best to ensure Canadian troops were involved in the least-dangerous fighting; at the same time, he made damn sure Canada was far more involved economically than militarily. Unlike the other former colonies, he never asked to be part of the British-US-Russia war decision-making (and in fact did his best not to be involved in military decisions); however, he leveraged all the power he could to be the only non-US and -British country on the economic Boards.

Go study it. Seriously. Look at our historic contributions to national security. Look at things like NORAD, and other defense systems. Look at how whenever there are these military or security matters, it is always the US who comes to Canada and says "hey, help us out here so we're not doing all the work." Look at how much value we put on our military: whenever there are budget cuts, the military is always at the forefront, no matter how underfunded it already is.

I don't know what "unsaid agreements" you're referring to, but I don't see how my argument is weak. It is fact.

greg

[Shaddim]

Originally Posted by tie 

No, I give him no credit.

You give him no credit for this situation because of what happened in Iraq? These are two seperate situations, yet you're too biased and blind to see through your own party's bullsh*t.

Further, you do realize that most of this loss happened under Clinton's watch, right? But, you don't see me throwing a fit at Billy boy.

idiots...

[Dakar²]

Originally Posted by Railroader 

He didn't "admit" it. He brought it out in the open. And since he had only been in office a short time it's not like he was the one responsible.

I see. The thread title completely misrepresented the case (to me)

[Shaddim]

The story thus far:

SWI (Star Wars Imbecile): "Look what teh US did, they lose 2.3 trazillion dollars!"

Dems: "Rummy bad!"

Reps: "Actually, Rumsfeld was just reporting this, which is his job. This was in motion before this administration took office."

Dems: "Yeah... but what about teh WAR?"


Seriously folks, both US and Canadian Libs, you need to teach that pony another trick.


Edit:

I stand by my assessment and will accept my 10pt infraction.

[Shaddim]

Originally Posted by Railroader 

SWG is being intentionally ignorant about this. As he usually is when he posts some CNN news story about America.

No, he really IS that dense. There's no playacting involved.

[Railroader]

Originally Posted by Dakar² 

I see. The thread title completely misrepresented the case (to me)

Well, it was a SWG attempt in bashing the USA thread after all. He usually doesn't understand the context of the news articles he is posting when he makes his attempts.

Originally Posted by MacNStein 

The story thus far:

SWI (Star Wars Imbecile): "Look what teh US did, they lose 2.3 trazillion dollars!"

Dems: "Rummy bad!"

Reps: "Actually, Rumsfeld was just reporting this, which is his job. This was in motion before this administration took office."

Dems: "Yeah... but what about teh WAR?"


Seriously folks, both US and Canadian Libs, you need to teach that pony another trick.


Edit:

I stand by my assessment and will accept my 10pt infraction.

VERY well said!

Originally Posted by MacNStein 

No, he really IS that dense. There's no playacting involved.

OUCH! You might be right.

[Pendergast]

Originally Posted by ShortcutToMoncton 

Huh? Do you think a Canadian policy or Defense Minister is going to stand up and say "Canadian peoples who like believing they are fiercely independent from the ginormous United States next door: we in fact don't put much spending into the military or national defence, because if anyone tries to attack us America will just take them out anyway. Have a good day."

Try reading a Canadian history book, or taking a course on Canada in the 20th century. Canada had far fewer total and relative casualties in World War II precisely because Mackenzie King did his absolute best to ensure Canadian troops were involved in the least-dangerous fighting; at the same time, he made damn sure Canada was far more involved economically than militarily. Unlike the other former colonies, he never asked to be part of the British-US-Russia war decision-making (and in fact did his best not to be involved in military decisions); however, he leveraged all the power he could to be the only non-US and -British country on the economic Boards.

Go study it. Seriously. Look at our historic contributions to national security. Look at things like NORAD, and other defense systems. Look at how whenever there are these military or security matters, it is always the US who comes to Canada and says "hey, help us out here so we're not doing all the work." Look at how much value we put on our military: whenever there are budget cuts, the military is always at the forefront, no matter how underfunded it already is.

I don't know what "unsaid agreements" you're referring to, but I don't see how my argument is weak. It is fact.

greg

And I think some of these are interpretations on your part.

We have a Defense. Ans as a country, we choose not to spend that much money on our defense because we do not have that much money.

In fact, most of our defense budget is spent to ensure a presence at our claimed frontiers. And that budget is so weak that we are barely able to sustain a force that would be strong enough in case of war.

In politics, having a strong defense is not always a question of means, but also of polictical will. Our nation has simply never spent that much because we do not have the means of a huge defense.

Besides reading books, you could read a few speaches from former Defense ministers. At the time of the purchase of the Hornets, we were going forward with a big expense that got much smaller (especially with the maintenance contracts). The story of the AWACS, the ORIONs and lately, the used British subs show that our nation is interested in its own defense, but does not have the means to make it happen.

Now, I do not believe you are not wrong when you say that we rely on the US for our Defense. But that was my point. Just as it was for Europe, had the former USSR moved on an attack to the US, both the Europe and Canada would have been turned into battlefields.

Understanding the Defense philosophy of America since WWII, which is about projected power, and I think you will agree that the airplane carriers, satellittes represent such a projection (and up to a point, the pre-emptive attacks are also an extension of this projection of forces)...

So it is not so much Canada that is asking the US to protect it, as the US is using us to project it's defense...

Why do you think there are so many US military bases outside the US? Because they project the defense to their interests!

So that huge amount of money is most likely representative of the budget for a Defense that is projected.

Look at all the US bases in Canada in the last 65 years. That was not for our defense. That was for the US's defense. The DEW line is a clear example of that. And so is NORAD. And since you don't want to hurt the feelings of the nice neighbour (and you want to ensure their government looks good to their population, right? because it makes everything so much easier!) well, you make sure it looks like a strong partnership and Canada has big balls of brass.

If we go back to the creation of the Blue Helmets, that was when, I think, we started to bifurcate from a total alignment policy with the US. We were still unable to have a big defense, but we had guts to work towards a different type of conflict resolution: preserving the peace through staus quo with more or less an effect.

Anyway, you seem to know a lot about our history, and I am not going to tell you you are totally wrong, but I do believe my points have values.

Cheers.

[ebuddy]

Originally Posted by Pendergast 

Well, if you had read my previous post in this thread, you'd see you're still wrong.

Okay, fair enough. This is what you've said so far in this thread;

Originally Posted by Pendergast

In terms of bashing America, seems to me that Rummy did a pretty good job about it.

Originally Posted by Pendergast

In reply to ghporter, I am cerain Congress controls a lot of that money. I am also certain veterans are not compensated enough for their past tours of duties.

However, we also know hom this military operation in Iraq appears to have been improvised, so notwithstanding the precommitted funds, 2.3 trillion dollars probably covers a lot of machinery breaking because of the dust, maintenance of the equipment, food for the soldiers, and "aid", and construction, re-construction and re-reconstructions costs.

So... based on the facts you presented above, we can definitely determine that Rumsfeld is eevill because;

- You called him "Rummy" and accused him of "bashing America".
- Congress controls a lot of money and veterans of past tours aren't paid enough
- money covers a lot of things like re-re-reconstruction.

What's your point, that Rumsfeld is evil? I think based on the evidence you've provided the more obvious conclusion is that this is more of your "partisan shilling" as indicated by another poster.

As far as I can remember, I was amongst those who believed Iraq to be pretty much emasculated. Your ilk was all up the walls about the danger that Iraq represented.

I'm glad your memory serves you. The concern of course was not the Republican guard, it was WMDs and WMD programs, both of which David Kay himself testified in 2004 were real threats, claiming; "if we did avoid it with our action, we barely avoided it."

Excuse me? I always recognized what Iraq represented; I always referred to Iraq as the prom queen of oil and geopolitical dispute.

Because that's the fanciful way partisan simpletons wrap their minds around why they simply must oppose a thing initiated by a (R). You can't debate the real issues at hand because they are varied, vast, and complex so you throw around meaningless dribble for a little attention. You've not solved a danged thing, but it doesn't matter. You sleep well at night as long as you feel you've shown the evil neo-cons the little guy who reads Star Magazine is on to them. A host of mind-numbed monkeys crash their hand-cymbals in agreement, careful not to get that pesky gum from the bumpersticker on their hands.

But your ilk denied it and was all about democracy "and stuff". You were amongts the nay-sayers as well.

I know I know. Who wants to talk about silly little things like democracy, peace for the Middle East, protecting interests, competing interests, hostile alliances, fortifying posture in an increasingly volatile globe, etc... It's much more easy and fun to just call Rummy and Bushie oily, evil people and go on to bed. After all, you don't want to miss the animated special on social injustices by Dr. Seuss tomorrow morning.

[Spliffdaddy]

Canada spends 1.1% of their GDP on defense - and over 10% of their GDP on "free" healthcare.


Don't try to feed us some BS about how "Canada can't afford more military spending".

Hell, I've got enough firepower in my nightstand drawer to take over Canada.

[Atomic Rooster]

Originally Posted by Spliffdaddy 

Canada spends 1.1% of their GDP on defense - and over 10% of their GDP on "free" healthcare.


Don't try to feed us some BS about how "Canada can't afford more military spending".

Hell, I've got enough firepower in my nightstand drawer to take over Canada.

Why not take a vacation to peaceful Iraq.

[Pendergast]

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

I know I know. Who wants to talk about silly little things like democracy, peace for the Middle East, protecting interests, competing interests, hostile alliances, fortifying posture in an increasingly volatile globe, etc... It's much more easy and fun to just call Rummy and Bushie oily, evil people and go on to bed. After all, you don't want to miss the animated special on social injustices by Dr. Seuss tomorrow morning.

I reiterate what I said before: Kevin said the libs are bashing America. I think that the foriegn policies of Bush and Rumsfeld did more in terms of "bashing". Sorry I was not clearer.

As for freedom, I do believe in it; I don't believe it can be given, and so far, I am proven right. So who's kidding whom here? America is stuck with an unresolvable situation in Iraq. Even after disarming everyone over there, you will still see more acts of terrorism.

You can be proud of your principles, but I would not hold my breath on the results you are expecting, 'cause they will never happen.

[Pendergast]

Originally Posted by Spliffdaddy 

Canada spends 1.1% of their GDP on defense - and over 10% of their GDP on "free" healthcare.


Don't try to feed us some BS about how "Canada can't afford more military spending".

Hell, I've got enough firepower in my nightstand drawer to take over Canada.

Good for you. why not spend some vacation in Canada and take over? We have a right-wing nut in power and some pro-weefer would do a nice job!

[ShortcutToMoncton]

Well Pendergast, yes, your point about the US projecting their defense is perfectly true. and it is part of my argument. However, it is certainly not true that Canada cannot afford to invest in our military and national security. AFAIK our military expenditures compared to the country's size and economy have been relatively low compared to other first-world countries. (It's interesting to note that our current Finance Minister is more interested in paying off our $470-billion debt in only 20 years than investing in our pathetically underfunded military.) What I am saying is that Canada has historically chosen not to invest in these areas because we are protected by being so close to the United States.

Again, Canada's history from at least WWII on seem to bear this out, although Pearson in the late 50s/60s was more of a humanitarian. Trudeau et al. often had specific policies that focused on international foreign affairs only when Canada could be economically benefited, and worked to slash the military whenever possible.

greg

[Pendergast]

I guess we'll agree on our disagrement.

Cheers!