Carter's Administration : the Worst in Modern American history

[Ulter]

You still haven't answered the biggest question. Republican's are using this as a political football and you seem to be buying it. If the Dems are the obstruction to this master plan to drill for oil then why didn't the Rep's implement all this when they had full control over both houses and the White House? Like I said, they could have written and passed any law they wanted. Why didn't they? Maybe it's because the oil companies make more money with less refineries. Maybe the shortage of domestic oil helps them keep the price up. Ya think? Now that the Dems are heading the committee's the Rep's are claiming they can't get more oil out of the ground. Why didn't they do it when they were in control Bro? Again, you're smoking their crack. Use your head.

[midlifecrisis]

Originally Posted by Ulter

You still haven't answered the biggest question. Republican's are using this as a political football and you seem to be buying it. If the Dems are the obstruction to this master plan to drill for oil then why didn't the Rep's implement all this when they had full control over both houses and the White House? Like I said, they could have written and passed any law they wanted. Why didn't they? Maybe it's because the oil companies make more money with less refineries. Maybe the shortage of domestic oil helps them keep the price up. Ya think? Now that the Dems are heading the committee's the Rep's are claiming they can't get more oil out of the ground. Why didn't they do it when they were in control Bro? Again, you're smoking their crack. Use your head.

I think you need to scroll up and read my words on how the Bush admin let us (the repub voters) down more than anyone. Believe me I know there is plenty they couldve done. Guys like you should be glad they didnt....

But then, oil wasnt $138 and gas $4.09 then either, was it ?

[Ulter]

I read what you wrote but if you think Bush was hasn't had the oil companies best interest at heart for the last 8 years you certainly weren't paying attention. They don't want the influx of more domestic oil at the rate the offshore would bring and they don't want more refineries. Bush didn't let them down. They got exactly what they wanted from Bush and Regan. You just don't understand what it is they want. They HAVE what they want. A built in excuse to inflate the price of their product.
BTW I didn't see Bush veto any bills to drill for oil. So if you're blaming Bush you better include the entire congress.

[Lumberjack5.0]

Originally Posted by Ulter

The economy is entirely Bush's fault.

Putting it all on the pres (bad or good) is just plain ignorant. Bush didn't go around inflating home values and writiing garbage mortages, did he?

[Ulter]

The housing market is not the reason people have to choose between food and gas. But since you brought it up, no he wasn't responsible for bad loan practices. So what has he done to bring relief to the situation? He has no problem rebuilding Iraq with borrowed money but where's the help to stop the foreclosures? He didn't cause that problem, but he didn't move to fix it either. He's a deer in the headlights just like Katrina.

[midlifecrisis]

Originally Posted by Ulter

I read what you wrote but if you think Bush was hasn't had the oil companies best interest at heart for the last 8 years you certainly weren't paying attention. They don't want the influx of more domestic oil at the rate the offshore would bring and they don't want more refineries. Bush didn't let them down. They got exactly what they wanted from Bush and Regan. You just don't understand what it is they want. They HAVE what they want. A built in excuse to inflate the price of their product.
BTW I didn't see Bush veto any bills to drill for oil. So if you're blaming Bush you better include the entire congress.

Yep, its a big conspiracy for oil profits going back to Regan. Do you hear yourself? I thought YG was gone....

[Ulter]

It's not a conspiracy, it's just business. A conspiracy implies they are doing something illegal. They had congress in their pocket (see: Tax Breaks during record profit years) and never pushed for the drilling you think they want. You're telling me that the Dems are holding it back. Why didn't the Reps do it? Just answer me that one question. And you reply it's a youngguns conspiracy theory. That doesn't even make sense. Very weak.

[2ez2brich]

Originally Posted by bluetwistedsteel

My simpleton comment was based on ANYBODY that pick one sentence in a paragraph and bases an opinion on "it" solely. I did not say that we went to Iraq because they dislike us - my opinion as to why was more broad. It does though stem from the hatred that Iraq and a large part of the Muslim population Anybody that thinks that we are not at war with radical Islamic ideologies rather than specifically Al Queda is missing it IMO. The ideology ultimately is the problem, not the individuals that planned to attack us or will plan to attavck us in the future.

As for the fed funds rate - it is the overnight rate but the 10 year tends to follow the direction and retail and commercial rates fall in line with the 10 year. Low rates lead to expansion (ultimately).

My point on the 5% was not well stated. My point is that a volatile economy presents more opportunity for investors that a steady economy. The past 6 months have been rough but it has also been a great trading market if you can get the rythym. The declining housing market sucks if you purchased 2 years ago but is very close to presenting opportunities for great gains. I don't think we're there yet but I think we're close (or at least getting close).

My bad bru....I guess I took it personal and for that I apologize. Thanks for keeping the convo civil......check the Congressional notes i had saved In response to the U.S not providing chemicals to Iraq:




Partial Transcript From Senate Armed Services Committee, September 19,
2002

Levin. Senator Byrd?
Byrd. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding these hearings.
Mr. Secretary, to your knowledge, did the United States
help Iraq to acquire the building blocks of biological
weapons during the Iran-Iraq War? Are we, in fact, now facing
the possibility of reaping what we have sown?
Rumsfeld. Certainly not to my knowledge. I have no
knowledge of United States companies or government being
involved in assisting Iraq develop chemical, biological or
nuclear weapons.
Byrd. Mr. Secretary, let me read to you from the September
23, 2002, Newsweek story. I read this, I read excerpts,
because my time is limited.
"Some Reagan officials even saw Saddam as another Anwar
Sadat, capable of making Iraq into a modern secular state,
just as Sadat had tried to lift up Egypt before his
assassination in 1981. But Saddam had to be rescued first.
The war against Iran was going badly by 1982."
"Iran's human-wave attacks threatened to overrun Saddam's
armies. Washington decided to give Iraq a helping hand. After
Rumsfeld's visit to Baghdad in 1983, U.S. intelligence began
supplying the Iraqi dictator with satellite photos showing
Iranian deployments.
"Official documents suggest that America may also have
secretly arranged for tanks and other military hardware to be
shipped to Iraq in a swap deal: American tanks to Egypt,
Egyptian tanks to Iraq.
"Over the protest of some Pentagon skeptics, the Reagan
administration began allowing the Iraqis to buy a wide
variety of, quote, `dual-use,' close quote, equipment and
materials from American suppliers.
"According to confidential Commerce Department export
control documents obtained by Newsweek, the shopping list
include a computerized database for Saddam's Interior
Ministry, presumably to help keep track of political
opponents, helicopters to help transport Iraqi officials,
television cameras for video surveillance applications,
chemical analysis equipment for the Iraq Atomic Energy
Commission, IAEC, and, most unsettling, numerous shipments of
the bacteria, fungi, protozoa to the IAEC.

[[Page S8991]]

"According to former officials the bacterial cultures
could be used to make biological weapons, including anthrax.
The State Department also approved the shipment of 1.5
million atropine injectors for use against the effects of
chemical weapons but the Pentagon blocked the sale.
"The helicopters, some American officials later surmised,
were used to spray poison gas on the Kurds. The United States
almost certainly knew from its own satellite imagery that
Saddam was using chemical weapons against Iranian troops.
"When Saddam bombed Kurdish rebels and civilians with a
lethal cocktail of mustard gas, sarin, tabun and VX in 1988,
the Reagan administration first blamed Iran before
acknowledging, under pressure from congressional Democrats,
that the culprit were Saddam's own forces. There was only
token official protest at the time. Saddam's men were
unfazed.
"An Iraqi audiotape later captured by the Kurds records
Saddam's cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as Ali Chemical,
talking to his fellow officers about gassing the Kurds.
Quote, `Who is going to say anything?' close quote, he asks,
`the international community? F-blank them!' exclamation
point, close quote."
Now can this possibly be true? We already knew that Saddam
was dangerous man at the time. I realize that you were not in
public office at the time, but you were dispatched to Iraq by
President Reagan to talk about the need to improve relations
between Iraq and the U.S.
Let me ask you again: To your knowledge did the United
States help Iraq to acquire the building blocks of biological
weapons during the Iran-Iraq war? Are we, in fact, now facing
the possibility of reaping what we have sown?
The Washington Post reported this morning that the United
is stepping away from efforts to strengthen the Biological
Weapons Convention. I'll have a question on that later.
Let me ask you again: Did the United States help Iraq to
acquire the building blocks of biological weapons during the
Iran-Iraq War? Are we, in fact, now facing the possibility of
reaping what we have sown?
Rumsfeld. I have not read the article. As you suggest, I
was, for a period in late `83 and early `84, asked by
President Reagan to serve as Middle East envoy after the
Marines--241 Marines were killed in Beirut.
As part of my responsibilities I did visit Baghdad. I did
meet with Mr. Tariq Aziz. And I did meet with Saddam Hussein
and spent some time visiting with them about the war they
were engaged in with Iran.

[2ez2brich]

More Tricky stuff:



[[Page S8988]]

Reagan administration first blamed Iran, before
acknowledging, under pressure from congressional Democrats,
that the culprits were Saddam's own forces. There was only
token official protest at the time. Saddam's men were
unfazed. An Iraqi audiotape, later captured by the Kurds,
records Saddam's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid (known as Ali
Chemical) talking to his fellow officers about gassing the
Kurds. "Who is going to say anything?" he asks. "The
international community? F----k them!"
The United States was much more concerned with protecting
Iraqi oil from attacks by Iran as it was shipped through the
Persian Gulf. In 1987, an Iraqi Exocet missile hit an
American destroyer, the USS Stark, in the Persian Gulf,
killing 37 crewmen. Incredibly, the United States excused
Iraq for making an unintentional mistake and instead used the
incident to accuse Iran of escalating the war in the gulf.
The American tilt to Iraq became more pronounced. U.S.
commandos began blowing up Iranian oil platforms and
attacking Iranian patrol boats. In 1988, an American warship
in the gulf accidentally shot down an Iranian Airbus, killing
290 civilians. Within a few weeks, Iran, exhausted and
fearing American intervention, gave up its war with Iraq.
Saddam was feeling cocky. With the support of the West, he
had defeated the Islamic revolutionaries in Iran. America
favored him as a regional pillar; European and American
corporations were vying for contracts with Iraq. He was
visited by congressional delegations led by Sens. Bob Dole of
Kansas and Alan Simpson of Wyoming, who were eager to promote
American farm and business interests. But Saddam's
megalomania was on the rise, and he overplayed his hand. In
1990, a U.S. Customs sting operation snared several Iraqi
agents who were trying to buy electronic equipment used to
make triggers for nuclear bombs. Not long after, Saddam
gained the world's attention by threatening "to burn Israel
to the ground." At the Pentagon, analysts began to warn that
Saddam was a growing menace, especially after he tried to buy
some American-made high-tech furnaces useful for making
nuclear-bomb parts. Yet other officials in Congress and in
the Bush administration continued to see him as a useful, if
distasteful, regional strongman. The State Department was
equivocating with Saddam right up to the moment he invaded
Kuwait in August 1990.

[Ulter]

That must be from one of those liberal blogs. Or is that from Moveon.org? No I know, it's Regan conspiracy writing by youngguns.

Or maybe it's the congressional record.

[2ez2brich]

So Bush was CORRECT.......Iraqi did have WMD....but I think he forgot to tell us where they came from:





American officials have known that Saddam was a psychopath
ever since he became the country's de facto ruler in the
early 1970s. One of Saddam's early acts after he took the
title of president in 1979 was to videotape--

Videotape--

a session of his party's congress, during which he personally
ordered several members executed on the spot.

The message, carefully conveyed to the Arab press, was not
that these men were executed for plotting against Saddam, but
rather for thinking about plotting against him. From the
beginning, U.S. officials worried about Saddam's taste for
nasty weaponry; indeed, at their meeting in 1983, Rumsfeld
warned that Saddam's use of chemical weapons might
"inhibit" American assistance. But top officials in the
Reagan administration saw Saddam as a useful surrogate. By
going to war with Iran, he could bleed the radical mullahs
who had seized control of Iran from the pro-American shah.
Some Reagan officials even saw Saddam as another Anwar Sadat,
capable of making Iraq into a modern secular state, just as
Sadat had tried to lift up Egypt before his assassination in
1981.
But Saddam had to be rescued first. The war against Iran
was going badly by 1982. Iran's "human wave attacks"
threatened to overrun Saddam's armies. Washington decided to
give Iraq a helping hand.
After Rumsfeld's visit to Baghdad in 1983, U.S.
intelligence began supplying the Iraqi dictator with
satellite photos showing Iranian deployments. Official
documents suggest that America may also have secretly
arranged for tanks and other military hardware to be shipped
to Iraq in a swap deal--American tanks to Egypt, Egyptian
tanks to Iraq. Over the protest of some Pentagon skeptics,
the Reagan administration began allowing the Iraqis to buy a
wide variety of "dual use" equipment and materials from
American suppliers. According to confidential Commerce
Department export-control documents obtained by NEWSWEEK, the
shopping list included a computerized database for Saddam's
Interior Ministry (presumably to help keep track of political
opponents); helicopters to transport Iraqi officials;
television cameras for "video surveillance applications";
chemical-analysis equipment for the Iraq Atomic Energy
Commission (IAEC), and, most unsettling, numerous shipments
of "bacteria/fungi/protozoa" to the IAEC. According to
former officials, the bacterial cultures could be used to
make biological weapons, including anthrax. The State
Department also approved the shipment of 1.5 million atropine
injectors, for use against the effects of chemical weapons,
but the Pentagon blocked the sale. The helicopters, some
American officials later surmised, were used to spray poison
gas on the Kurds.

The United States almost certainly knew from its own
satellite imagery that Saddam was using chemical weapons
against Iranian troops. When Saddam bombed Kurdish rebels and
civilians with a lethal cocktail of mustard gas, sarin, tabun
and VX in 1988, the Reagan administration first blamed Iran, before
acknowledging, under pressure from congressional Democrats,
that the culprits were Saddam's own forces.

[2ez2brich]

Saddam was feeling cocky. With the support of the West, he
had defeated the Islamic revolutionaries in Iran. America
favored him as a regional pillar; European and American
corporations were vying for contracts with Iraq. He was
visited by congressional delegations led by Sens. Bob Dole of
Kansas and Alan Simpson of Wyoming, who were eager to promote
American farm and business interests. But Saddam's
megalomania was on the rise, and he overplayed his hand. In
1990, a U.S. Customs sting operation snared several Iraqi
agents who were trying to buy electronic equipment used to
make triggers for nuclear bombs. Not long after, Saddam
gained the world's attention by threatening "to burn Israel
to the ground."






At the Pentagon, analysts began to warn that
Saddam was a growing menace, especially after he tried to buy
some American-made high-tech furnaces useful for making
nuclear-bomb parts. Yet other officials in Congress and in
the Bush administration continued to see him as a useful, if
distasteful, regional strongman. The State Department was
equivocating with Saddam right up to the moment he invaded
Kuwait in August 1990.

Mr. President, I referred to this Newsweek article yesterday at a
hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Specifically, during
the hearing, I asked Secretary Rumsfeld:

Mr. Secretary, to your knowledge, did the United States
help Iraq to acquire the building blocks of biological
weapons during the Iran-Iraq war? Are we in fact now facing
the possibility of reaping what we have sewn?

The Secretary quickly and flatly denied any knowledge but said he
would review Pentagon records.
I suggest that the administration speed up that review. My concerns
and the concerns of others have grown.
A letter from the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention, which I
shall submit for the Record, shows very clearly that the United States
is, in fact, preparing to reap what it has sewn. A letter written in
1995 by former CDC Director David Satcher to former Senator Donald W.
Riegle, Jr., points out that the U.S. Government provided nearly two
dozen viral and bacterial samples to Iraqi scientists in 1985--samples
that included the plague, botulism, and anthrax, among other deadly
diseases.
According to the letter from Dr. Satcher to former Senator Donald
Riegle, many of the materials were hand carried by an Iraqi scientist
to Iraq after he had spent 3 months training in the CDC laboratory.
The Armed Services Committee is requesting information from the
Departments of Commerce, State, and Defense on the history of the
United States, providing the building blocks for weapons of mass
destruction to Iraq. I recommend that the Department of Health and
Human Services also be included in that request.
The American people do not need obfuscation and denial. The American
people need the truth. The American people need to know whether the
United States is in large part responsible for the very Iraqi weapons
of mass destruction which the administration now seeks to destroy.
We may very well have created the monster that we seek to eliminate.
The Senate deserves to know the whole story. The American people
deserve answers to the whole story.

[2ez2brich]

Should we change the title of this thread ?

[J. Adams]

I seriously can't believe there are still people that believe that Iraq had WMD (That they manufactured themselves)

It seriously boggles the mind how much in denial some republicans are.

Bush will be heralded as the worst President in history. It's not even a contest to be perfectky honest.