"Crap" is not 5000 Americans dead, thousands of troops maimed, 100K Iraqis killed, a million Iraqis displaced. No, "crap" is "Five Deferrment Dick" Cheney counting the Halliburton millions in his offshore account, W and his handlers getting away with mass murder and torture, and the USA hanging one dictator and propping up a more ignorant dictator in his place. That's "crap". I'm already against the next war. ASHLEY JUDD (DEM-KY) 2014...Adios Mitch!

Both parties... Are you having a stroke?

Please try reading something just to understand what happened and why. There are facts out there that trump the FOX News Fairy Tale Hour.

Bombs going off to celebrate, how appropriate for a country's political system created by us using them.

Explosions and intolerance. They really have learned the American way.

You are yet to see Syria and Iran and oil price manipulations!

2016 elections are not far off for money and favor collections!

Watch Hillary in particular!

Sweeeeet! Its Their 4th of JULY!

Get Bloomberg over There! He'll Stop that SHlT!

He'll at least limit the number of dynomite sticks to under sixteen per suicide bomber.

Won't be long. The Sunni's will be right back in power. The Iraqi war was based in stupidity, brought about by a pack of gwaddamn American fools. Saddam will look good before this is done.

Somehow Bush is at fault. Obama is in MSNBC - the economy will be in such dire straits it will not matter in 2016. Might as well go out with some real journalism instead of this Tabloid crap.

The economy has been in dire straits a long time. As the CBO noted in it's revised report on the economy in the summer of 2008 whichever party won our 2009 deficit would be well over 1 trillion and exceed it until at least 2011. Funny that Bush took over an economy with 5.7 trillion in debt, 4.2% unemployment and left office with 7.9% unemployment, our financial system in collapse. 700,000 a month losing jobs, a 12.1 trillion debt and millions in foreclosure yet idiots still blame Obama for our train wreck. Just FYI Bush passed the 2009 budget with a 1.2 trillion deficit in 2008 before Obama was elected. Note the date of this article. January 7th or 13 days before Obama takes office. Why weren't you people concerned when Bush added 6.4 trillion to our debt?

$1.2 trillion deficit looms

Housing collapse and financial turmoil leads to steep rise in estimated U.S. shortfall for '09, Congressional Budget Office says

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The U.S. budget deficit in 2009 is projected to spike to a record $1.2 trillion, or 8.3% of gross domestic product, the Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday.

http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/07/news/economy/cbo_2009_budget_outlook/

So how's that "Aw Shucks"....I mean "Shock and Awe" tactic work again? Must be some kinda delayed reaction thing-a-ma-bob, huh. Is it twenty years until it gets up to speed, kinda like the last bit of bull that put Saddam in touch with real power to begin with? Did everyone forget about this?

Seeing himself as the new leader and champion of all Arabs, Saddam Hussein poured his army across the border into western Iran in September 1980, hoping to defuse a potential threat from the new Islamic revolution.

The disastrous war lasted eight years and claimed a million lives.

The US quietly backed him, ignoring Iraq's human rights record and atrocities like the killing of 148 people in the mostly Shia town of Dujail after a failed assassination attempt against him in July 1982, and the gassing of 5,000 Kurdish villagers of Halabja in March 1988.

Larry, the Republicans refuse to take blame for anything. I don't know how they can blame the wrongful invasion of Iraq on Democrats though when it was Cheney and Rumsfeld that hatched up the lie about WMD and need to eliminate Saddam. I well remember GWB's big speech on aircraft carrier in San Diego bay proclaiming victory, we know what happened then. I can't believe the Republicans still refuse to accept blame for that. Ten years later and the Shiites and Sunni's are still at war with each other.

Larry, you left out that 7 out of 8 years during George Bush's 2 terms, the unemployment rate was around 4-5 % and our annual deficits were approximately 100 billion. Idiots on your side don't take ANY responsibility for any of the reasons WHY our economy plummeted in 2008 - NONE !!! Please check your math - Bush did not add 6.4 trillion to the debt.

It's March 2013, the national debt is out of control, political unrest in the Middle East is rampant, Iran and N. Korea are closer than ever to utilizing weapons of mass destruction, illegal immigration is rampant, our health care system is in need of true reform...............................

But it's all OK as long as we can continue to blame everything on the previous administration (two terms back).

"Men never commit evil so fully and joyfully as when they do it for religious convictions." - Unknown

GOP OIL GRAB HAS COST THE US AND THE IRAQIS DEARLY

CNN-

It has been 10 years since Operation Iraqi Freedom's bombs first
landed in Baghdad. And while most of the U.S.-led coalition forces have long
since gone, Western oil companies are only getting started.

Before the 2003 invasion, Iraq's domestic oil industry was fully nationalized and closed to Western oil companies. A decade of war later, it is largely privatized and utterly dominated by foreign firms.

From ExxonMobil and Chevron to BP and Shell, the West's largest oil
companies have set up shop in Iraq. So have a slew of American oil
service companies, including Halliburton, the Texas-based firm Dick Cheney ran
before becoming George W. Bush's running mate in 2000.

The war is the one and only reason for this long
sought and newly acquired access.

Oil was not the only goal of the Iraq War, but it was certainly
the central one, as top U.S. military and political figures have attested to in
the years following the invasion.

"Of course it's about oil, we can't really deny that,"
said General John Abizaid in 2007, former head of U.S. Central Command and
Military Operations in Iraq. Former Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan
agreed, writing in his memoir: "I am saddened that it is
politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is
largely about oil." Then-Senator and now Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said
the same in 2007: "People say we're not fighting for oil. Of course we
are."

For the first time in about 30 years, Western oil companies are
exploring for and producing oil in Iraq from some of the world's largest oil
fields and reaping enormous profit. And while the U.S. has also maintained a fairly consistent level of Iraq oil
imports since the invasion, the benefits are not finding their way through
Iraq's economy or society.

These outcomes were by design, the result of a decade of U.S.
government and oil company pressure. In 1998, Kenneth Derr, then CEO of Chevron, said, "Iraq possesses
huge reserves of oil and gas-reserves I'd love Chevron to have access to."
Today it does.

In 2000, Big Oil, including Exxon, Chevron, BP, and Shell, spent
more money to get fellow oilmen George W. Bush and Dick Cheney into office than
they had spent on any previous election. Just over a week into Bush's first
term, their efforts paid off when the National Energy Policy Development Group,
chaired by Dick Cheney, was formed, bringing the administration and the oil
companies together to plot our collective energy future. In March, the task
force reviewed lists and maps outlining Iraq's entire oil productive
capacity.

Planning for a military invasion was soon underway. Bush's first
Treasury Secretary, Paul O'Neill, said in 2004:
"Already by February [2001], the talk was mostly about logistics. Not the
why [to invade Iraq], but the how and how quickly."

In its final report in May 2001, the task force argued that Middle
Eastern countries should be urged "to open up areas of their energy
sectors to foreign investment." This is precisely what has been achieved
in Iraq.

Here's how they did it.The State Department Future of Iraq
Project's Oil and Energy Working Group met from February 2002 to April 2003 and
agreed that Iraq "should be opened to international oil
companies as quickly as possible after the war."

The list of the group's members was not made public, but Ibrahim Bahr
al-Uloum -- who was appointed Iraq's oil minister by the U.S. occupation
government in September 2003 -- was part of the group, according to Greg
Muttitt, the journalist and author of "Fuel on the Fire: Oil and Politics in Occupied Iraq".
Bahr al-Uloum promptly set about trying to implement the group's objectives.

At the same time, representatives from ExxonMobil, Chevron,
ConocoPhillips, and Halliburton, among others, met with
Cheney's staff in January 2003, to discuss plans for Iraq's postwar
industry. For the next decade, former and current executives of western oil
companies acted first as administrators of Iraq's oil ministry, and then as
"advisers" to the Iraqi government.

Before the invasion, there were just two things standing in the
way of western oil companies operating in Iraq: Saddam Hussein and the nation's
legal system. The invasion dealt handily with Hussein. To address the latter
problem, some both in and outside of the Bush administration argued that it
should simply change Iraq's oil laws through the U.S.-led coalition government
of Iraq which ran the country from April 2003 to June 2004. Instead the White
House waited, choosing to pressure the newly-elected Iraqi government to pass new
oil legislation itself.

This Iraq Hydrocarbons Law, partially drafted by the western oil
industry, would lock the nation into private foreign investment under the most
corporate-friendly terms. The Bush administration pushed the Iraqi government
both publicly and privately to pass the law. And in January 2007, as the
''surge" of 20,000 additional American troops was being finalized, the president set specific benchmarks for the Iraqi government,
including the passage of new oil legislation to "promote investment,
national unity, and reconciliation."

But due to enormous public opposition and a recalcitrant
parliament, the central Iraqi government has failed to pass the Hydrocarbons
Law. Usama al-Nujeyfi, a member of the parliamentary energy committee, even quit in protest over the law, saying it would cede too much
control to global companies and "ruin the country's future."

In 2008, with the likelihood of the law's passage and the prospect
of continued foreign military occupation dimming as elections loomed in the
U.S. and Iraq, the oil companies settled on a different track.

Bypassing parliament, the firms started signing contracts that
provide all of the access and most of the favorable treatment the Hydrocarbons
Law would provide - and the Bush administration helped draft the model contracts.

Upon leaving office, Bush and Obama administration officials have
even worked for oil companies as advisers on their Iraq endeavors. For example,
former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad's company, CMX-Gryphon, "provides international oil companies and
multinationals with unparalleled access, insight and knowledge on Iraq."

The new contracts lack the security a new legal structure would
grant, and Iraqi lawmakers have argued that they run contrary to existing law,
which requires government control, operation, and ownership of Iraq's oil
sector.

But the contracts do achieve the key goal of the Cheney energy
task force: all-but-privatizing the Iraqi oil sector and opening it to private
foreign companies.

They also provide exceptionally long contract terms, high
ownership stakes, and eliminate requirements that Iraq's oil stay in Iraq, that
companies invest earnings in the local economy, or hire a majority of local
workers.

Iraq's oil production has increased by more than 40% in the last
five years to 3 million
barrels of oil a day (still below the 1979 high of 3.5 million set
by Iraq's state-owned companies), but a full 80% of this is being exported out
of the country while Iraqis struggle to meet basic energy consumption needs.
GDP per capita has increased significantly, yet remains among the lowest in the
world and well below some of Iraq's other oil-rich neighbors. Basic services
such as water and electricity remain luxuries, while 25% of the
population lives in poverty.

The promise of new energy-related jobs across the country has yet
to materialize. The oil and gas sectors today account directly for less than 2%
of total employment as foreign companies rely instead on imported labor.

In just the last few weeks, more than 1,000 people have protested at ExxonMobil and Russia Lukoil's
super-giant West Qurna oil field, demanding jobs and payment for private land
that has been lost or damaged by oil operations. The Iraqi military was called
in to respond.

Fed up with the firms, a leading coalition of Iraqi civil society
groups and trade unions, including oil workers, declared on
February 15 that international oil companies have "taken the
place of foreign troops in compromising Iraqi sovereignty" and should
"set a timetable for withdrawal."

Closer to home, at a
protest at Chevron's Houston headquarters in 2010, former U.S. Army Military
Intelligence officer Thomas Buonomo, member of Iraq Veterans Against the War,
held up a sign which read, "Dear Chevron: Thank you for dishonoring our service."

Yes, the Iraq War was a war for oil, and it was a war with losers:
the Iraqi people, and all those who spilled and lost blood so that Big Oil
could come out ahead.

The Iraq war was a horrible disaster for Iraq AND the US,and its far from finished. We mettle in the Mideast without knowing anything about the societies and history of the countries we are getting involved in. It's no wonder the blowback bites us. What unbiased scholar couldn't have seen what was going to happen if we got involved in Iraq.The mistakes we made in Iraq were countless,and even as we made them,we knew they were mistakes,but made them anyway.

Now we're listening to our "friend" Israel once again.They want us to get involved in a war with Iran. A war that would make the Iraq war look like a stroll in the park. And once again,many in our society want to follow along like trained dogs.What is it going to take for us to learn. The last unfinished war,earned us thousands of dead or horribly injured Americans,our economy almost bankrupt,and the hatred of most of the world. What's behind door number three this time. Many more dead and injured,and the finish of the US economy,or maybe a world war.The choice's are so many its hard to choose.

A MUST READ AND SHARE.

http://www.truthdig.com/dig/item/the_last_letter_20130318/

The Last Letter

A Message to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney From a Dying Veteran

To: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney
From: Tomas Young

I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq War veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of those whose wounds, physical and psychological, have destroyed their lives. I am one of those gravely wounded. I was paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care.

I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost a parent, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf
of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries. I write this letter on behalf of those veterans whose trauma and self-revulsion for what they have witnessed, endured and done in Iraq have led to suicide and on behalf of the active-duty soldiers and Marines who commit, on
average, a suicide a day. I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief.

I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr.Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power.
I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but
in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.

Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, your privilege and your power cannot mask the hollowness of your character. You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged the draft in Vietnam, and you, Mr. Bush, went AWOL from your National Guard unit. Your cowardice and selfishness were established decades ago. You were not willing to risk yourselves for our nation but you sent hundreds of thousands of young men and women to be sacrificed in a senseless war with no more thought than it takes to put out the garbage.

I joined the Army two days after the 9/11 attacks. I joined the Army because our country had been attacked. I wanted to strike back at those who had killed some 3,000 of my fellow citizens. I did not
join the Army to go to Iraq, a country that had no part in the September 2001 attacks and did not pose a threat to its neighbors, much less to the United States. I did not join the Army to “liberate” Iraqis or to shut down mythical weapons-of-mass-destruction facilities or to implant what you cynically called
“democracy” in Baghdad and the Middle East. I did not join the Army to rebuild Iraq, which at the time you told us could be paid for by Iraq’s oil revenues. Instead, this war has cost the United States over $3 trillion. I especially did not join the Army to carry out pre-emptive war. Pre-emptive war is illegal
under international law. And as a soldier in Iraq I was, I now know, abetting your idiocy and your crimes. The Iraq War is the largest strategic blunder in U.S. history. It obliterated the balance of power in the Middle East. It installed a corrupt and brutal pro-Iranian government in Baghdad, one cemented
in power through the use of torture, death squads and terror. And it has left Iran as the dominant force in the region. On every level—moral, strategic, military and economic—Iraq was a failure. And it was you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who started this war. It is you who should pay the consequences.

I would not be writing this letter if I had been wounded fighting in Afghanistan against those forces that carried out the attacks of 9/11. Had I been wounded there I would still be miserable because of my physical deterioration and imminent death, but I would at least have the comfort of knowing that my injuries were a consequence of my own decision to defend the country I love. I would not have to lie in my bed, my body filled with painkillers, my life ebbing away, and deal with the fact that hundreds of thousands of human beings, including children, including myself, were sacrificed by you for little more than the greed of oil companies, for your alliance with the oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia, and your insane visions of
empire.

I have, like many other disabled veterans, suffered from the inadequate and often inept care provided by the Veterans Administration. I have, like many other disabled veterans, come to realize that our mental and physical wounds are of no interest to you, perhaps of no interest to any politician. We were used. We were betrayed. And we have been abandoned. You, Mr. Bush, make much pretense of being a Christian. But isn’t lying a sin? Isn’t murder a sin? Aren’t theft and selfish ambition sins? I am not a Christian. But I believe in the Christian ideal. I believe that what you do to the least of your brothers you finally do to yourself, to your own soul.

My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come.
I hope you will be put on trial. But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the
American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness.

True dat Jeff. As a matter of fact, we need to just keep drilling and let other countries buy from us. There will be fighting in the middle east until they either eliminate themselves or get tired of killing one day. They all think the land was promised to them by God or Allah and anyone who says different needs to be run out of town or killed, just like Israel and Palestine.

Politicians see differently than you and I.

You see: they have to bother about oil rich Sunni rulers, oil companies, arms industry, extremist Jewish lobbys more than average US citizen.

Bush gave Iraq: mission accomplished, hope and progress and reconstruction.

"Sunni Islamist insurgents tied to al Qaeda have stepped up attacks on Shiite targets since the start of the year in a campaign to stoke sectarian tension and undermine Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government. "

Actually, this is Allah's progress after Saddam!

New chapters are coming up in Syria and Iran!

We had no business in Vietnam or Iraq. We have no business invading Iran, Syria, Libya or any other country that isn't threatening us, we aren't the worlds police. In Afghanistan we should have launched cruise missiles and taken out the dozen or so Al'Queda training camps probably catching Bin Laden. Our military should serve it's constitutional function, to defend this country. A military that costs more each year than the next 15 countries combined spend with 1000+ foreign military bases is a military designed for conquest and intervention, not defense.

Your messiah has done nothing to correct the situation in 4 + years. In fact he has only exasperated the issues in the region. When all this comes to a head...will you still blame the previous administration. Talk about hindsight.......Just tell me what this administration has done besides kick the hornets nest ?

Our chief negro has riled his people against the workers in this country and has promoted Class Warfare.... That is the number one priority in the Marxist Handbook.

Your messiah has done nothing to correct the situation in 4 + years. In fact he has only exasperated the issues in the region. When all this comes to a head...will you still blame the previous administration.

Every one with a brain will blame the one that sent the troops in not the one that pulled out what's left. I don't have a messiah but since you're obviously talking about Obama I'd point out he pulled the troops out of Iraq. In Afghanistan he followed the advice of the generals in the field in a war he didn't begin. Had he pulled out on day one you'd accuse him of treason for allowing a country that attacked us to revert back to the Taliban. Bush must be your messiah. He invades 2 countries, bankrupts us by cutting revenue 500 billion a year and neither funding his tax cuts or wars and you nitwits praise him.

I totally agree with your posts Larry-367607. Let's just hope the US doesn't start any other wars it can never win.

mission continued .....

Yeah, Its always Bushs fault..... Its you people that are the problem along with your islamist president. Muslims are just like negroes.... they kill each other off no matter what you do or how much money you feed them.

All must keep in mind... they attacked us on OUR SOIL. We should have just went over there and obliterated all of it without 1 soldier setting foot on ground.

Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, it has since been proved that there is no evidence that Saddam had anything to do with the Terrorist that attacked America on "Our Soil". That war was Bush's chance to finish what his Daddy could not and 9/11 gave him the open door to declare what he wanted to the American people to get what he and Old Dick boy wanted.

Robert, don't forget the Democrats went along with the decision to remove Saddam Hussein - in case you have amnesia.

Robert has drunk the Obama coolaid and still thinks everything is Bushs fault..... I for one, would much rather have Bush in office now than this Muslim Marxist that never takes the blame for anything.... Talk about useless, bammy and michelle are the most racist, most irritating negros I have ever seen. At least we can feel safe with Bush around, because the muslims are scared of him..... but Bammy? He is one of them..... look what he has done to this country so far..... We are broke, the entire world laughs at bammy, he supports fag marriage because he is a fag himself, and he supports his voting base of non workers, and still blames bush for his failed presidency as does his Communist State Controlled Media friends.

Bush started with a 5.7 trillion debt and ended with 12.1 trillion. Bush's last budget was the 2009 budget with a deficit of 1.2 trillion. I know you idiots like to blame Obama for that trillion plus deficit but explain from the article I'm linking how Obama is to blame for a 1.2 trillion deficit 13 days before he takes office. Don't blame democrats because the Budget Bush passed in 2008 for year 2009 had a 1.2 trillion deficit. Obama was sitting in the big chair on January 20th but he hadn't spent a dime yet and our debt was still at 12.1 trillion. Why do you nutjobs only worry about debt when a democrats president? If you'd have voted for Gore we wouldn't have a debt. Gore ran on using the Clinton Surplus to pay off our 5 trillion debt while Bush ran on giving it back. To the rich.

$1.2 trillion deficit looms

Housing collapse and financial turmoil leads to steep rise in estimated U.S. shortfall for '09, Congressional Budget Office says.

By Jeanne Sahadi, CNNMoney.com senior writer

Last Updated: January 7, 2009: 5:00 PM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The U.S. budget deficit in 2009 is projected to spike to a record $1.2 trillion, or 8.3% of gross domestic product, the Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday.

justin

Religion and wars in this region have gone hand in hand for centuries, like we could not see this coming when we wrongfully invaded Iraq!

you are crazy too

Ya voll heir comadant!!!

Be careful BlackMan...... your the next group that better ship up, or the boats are gonna take your people off back to Africa if you cant stop killing yourselves and turning cities into ghettos of freeloaders

vanjonesie you are an ignorant dumbass that has no clue as to our government or the world in which we live

Anyone with any sense you say? I guess that proves our politicians are as stupid as everyone thinks they are.

Ed, my friend, it is all about the almighty dollar and oil......nothing else.

Tru DKL money controls the government ,government controls us , in the end all we have is the illusion of freedom

It is OUR propganda machine 'at work'.........hold it, I feel a song coming on.......'God Bless America, land that I love, stand beside her and yatta, yatta, yatta'....whatever!!

Bush senior was smart enough to know taking out Saddam and his minority rule and installing a majority rule government would mean Iraq and Iran would become allies instead of offsetting powers. Now they're a bigger threat then either would have been alone. The acorn from that tree landed on juniors head.

you are crazy

oops my bad. I cant say stuff like that.

At least he kept law and order!!!

You wouldn't be so forgiving of Hussein if it was YOU that he ( or one of his psycho sins ) TORTURED OR KILLED !!

... true