If that's the case, then why all the smokescreen about using Iraq as a
strategic base, keeping terrorists at arm's length, and of course WMDs?


NOYB wrote:
Because those things are all true...and a lot easier for the average
American to understand.


In other words, you think that a majority... perhaps 51%... of
Americans' are too stupid to understand, and that's why they voted for
Bush & Cheney?

Wolfowitz admitted as much when he said that there were several reasons we
went to war with Iraq, but the administration "chose the one area issue
everyone could agree on" (ie--WMD).


And it was a big fat lie from day 1.



We both know the reason, I'm just curious as to whether or not you can
admit it publicly.


Admit "what" publicly? That there were several reasons for going to war?

No, that Bush & Cheney lie routinely, because it's their only option to
try and hold some positive opinion among those too stupid to understand
the truth.


Was Pearl Harbor the only reason we went to war with Japan *and* Germany?

No, German subs attacked U.S. ships before we declared war on them.

Of course, that wasn't the *only* reason either. Germany & Italy & Japan
had attacked & invaded other nations we were allied with.

... it was the catalyst mixed in with a bunch of other ingredients.


So, you agree that we had solid reasons for entering WW2 (despite the
widespread Republican hatred of FDR) but that Bush & Cheney had to fall
back on a lame-ass lies to convince Americans to back the war against Iraq?

DSK

"Doug Kanter" wrote in message
...
"Jack Goff" wrote in message
om...


For the last time, where is this "demand growth" coming from?

Class is out.


Zzzzzzzzzz...........



Yep, you're sleeping in class again, Doug. You have a comprehension
problem. I give up.

Have a nice "ignorance is bliss" life.

Bill McKee wrote:

China is an oil importer! They require oil to supply the factories that
produce all that made in China stuff. Is why they bid an extremely high
price for Unocal Oil. 1% if Unocal's oil reserves are US based, the other
99% are in Asia. Now tell me why oil is increasing because of Bush and not
the old supply and demand curve? We and China have fairly strong economies.
And add India to the mix.

wrote in message
oups.com...


*JimH* wrote:

wrote in message
egroups.com...

That's:

Bad for Bush
Bad for the US
Bad for boating. :-(


I agree.

And what exactly did Bush have to do with this?

Here you go Jim:
Don't Blame OPEC; Higher Gas Prices Are Almost Entirely Bush's Fault
Dave Lindorff, ILCA Associate Member

What is making oil so expensive is not energy policy or even SUV's,
dangerous as those are for the environment. It's Bush's massive
deficits and his willful destruction of the US dollar that has gas
selling at $2.30 a gallon and rising.



There's been a lot of hand-wringing going on among economists and
politicians, and a lot of fuming at the gas pump by consumers over the
soaring price of oil over the last two years.


Increasingly, concern is being expressed by treasury officials and
economists about the negative impact soaring oil prices and related gas
prices could have on the overall economy. Politicians--especially
Republicans--are also fretting, since the thousands of extra dollars
consumers are now spending on electricity, home heating and gasoline
have, for all but the wealthiest taxpayers, more than cancelled out any
minimal benefits they saw from the president's tax cuts.


What's wrong with this picture?


The focus of all this anger and angst is oil prices. As a result,
everyone is looking at culprits in the wrong place, blaming wasteful
energy use, OPEC production quotas, monopolistic oil companies and/or
conniving oil traders.


In fact the real culprit behind these higher oil prices is the Bush
Administration, which, thanks to its massive deficits and tax
give-aways to the rich and corporations, to its war spending, and to
its failure to combat unprecedented and ever-larger trade deficits, has
been causing the dollar to plunge in value.


Oil is a commodity and it is priced in dollars. If dollars decline in
value, then the price of oil will rise in inverse proportion.


One need only look at Europe to see what this means.


Over the period from February 1, 2003, just before the start of the
Iraq War, when oil prices began to rise in earnest, to Feb. 1, 2005,
the price of a barrel of oil in dollars rose about 30 percent, from
$30.13 a barrel to $42.91 a barrel. But over that same period of time,
the Euro, Europe's new combined currency, rose 21 percent against the
U.S. dollar, from .93 Euros to the dollar in February, 2003 to just .77
to the U.S. dollar in February, 2005.


For Europeans, then, the net rise in oil prices over the two years of
the Iraq War has been just 9 percent, or less than 5 percent per
year--hardly the kind of energy inflation that would cause economic
problems.


And this situation is likely to get only worse. Some Wall Street oil
industry analysts are now predicting that oil could, before too long,
hit $100 a barrel. What they are saying really is that the dollar is
likely to fall in value by 50 percent.


Should that happen, though, the OPEC states would likely at some point
along the way decide that it is ridiculous for them to continue pricing
oil in dollars, since the piles of dollars filling their bank vaults
will be losing value faster than their oil wells are being drained.


At some point, the oil producing states, including Russia and Norway,
will inevitably switch to pricing their oil in a basket of
currencies--a basket that would prominently feature the Euro and
probably the Japanese Yen.


At that point there would be little left to prop up the dollar, and it
could end up becoming little better than a Third World currency.



And that is Bush's fault?

The policy of spreading the wealth around means Americans must
accept a lower standard of living, a sustainable one, so others can
come closer to a level that would seem equitable. No one would dare
to suggest that some country's leaders can see the worldwide
inequities and concocted a strategy to equalise them, bringing
security and peace by forcing us to accept equality in lifestyle for
the masses, if not the few super rich.

It has only been a hundred years since most people lived on farms
with no running water, don't forget. The present situation is a
runaway future shock bubble of stupendous growth in every area,
amazing improvements for a small percentage of the totality on
earth, stupor and stagnation for many.

The rich will give to the poor, but perhaps not willingly. The rich
will be taxed and the poor will be subsidised. Manipulating the
price of oil might just be one link in a chain. I have believed for
years that the oil patch guys want the price higher, but could not
decide what their reason might really be. They don't care about the
money, they are not merely a little bit rich, don't forget. It
comes down to a man's legacy. What use is it to be the richest dead
guy in the cemetary?

If only it really goes that way, instead of some rich *******s
getting richer by screwing the poorest and weakest and most
defensless again.

I thought many years ago that we rich (in relative worldwide terms)
would learn to accept a little less if the poor might have a little
less stolen from them to subsidize us.

Is the only way to coerce altruism from the selfish rich majority in
a relatively rich country a de facto clandestine conspiracy to
fleece we who do not consider ourselves rich, so as to pull us down
and the poor up a little?

How would you try to accomplish this, if you had the levers of power?

---part two------

So now oil is headed for 100/bbl? Will oil sands investment finally
get to where it should be? The sands contain 1/3 of the world's oil
reserves, and there is plenty, but has been uneconomical, they said,
until it gets to er, excuse me, but this is the truth...35/bbl. Will
then one or two surprise new oil refineries cause the prices to
crash and all that investment dissapear? Where does money like that
disappear to? Impatience?

Is that price a spot price for the best crude on a specific witchey
date governed by puts and options and hedges and quarterly balance
sheets?

What does it really cost to pull a bbl of oil up the hole? 2 bucks?
One? Does it depend on how many guards you must pay to stand near
the pipeline?

Think, dammit!

Terry K

Publish!

Doug Kanter wrote:

"Jack Goff" wrote in message
om...


For the last time, where is this "demand growth" coming from?

Class is out.


The price is not connected with the physical reality of the supply. It is
being determined by traders who bet on things that have not happened yet. Do
you understand the futures market? Do you know what it is?

Zzzzzzzzzz...........



Spot price. Future obligations. Best sweet crude. Futures, puts
and options. Hedges. Speculation. Paranoia, panic, psychosis. News
hounds. Too much coke.

Canada has 1/3 of the world's reserves, hardly scratched. Tar sand
is profitable at 35$ / bbl, but no one can be bothered to invest in
refineries or new wells, YET!

You figure it out.

Terry K

"NOYB" wrote in message
link.net...


Pentagon Auditors Flag up to $1 Billion in Overcharges by
Halliburt-HEY, LOOK IT'S THAT ARUBA GIRL!

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=584&e=1&u=/nm/20050627/pl_nm/iraq_halliburton_dc

rusty redcloud

Good article, but as in the past, nothing will change, and we all know
why.

Because there's no substance to it?



Who told you to say that?

"NOYB" wrote in message
k.net...

"Doug Kanter" wrote in message
...
"NOYB" wrote in message
hlink.net...


Cheney got the horse laugh a while back when he claimed 'the insurgency
is on it's last legs' and was immediately contradicted by the CIA,
Pentagon, State, etc etc. Since it looks like about 40% of the public
will swallow *any* lie from Bush, no matter how ridiculous, one wonders
why he's even trying.

Maybe for the slow folks in the class...like yourself. Consider this
the equivalent of being left back in class, and you're now getting a
second chance to learn the material.

So, you're saying the insurgency is NOT on its last legs, and that the
agencies whose people are in Iraq (as opposed to a golf course in
Virginia) are completely wrong?

Those people are wrong in referring to the people blowing up car bombs as
"insurgents". The "insurgency" (Saddam's Fedayeen henchmen) is certainly
in its final throes. What you're seeing now are foreign-born terrorists.

Prime Minister al-Jaafari explained it best in an interview with David
Gregory the other day:


GREGORY: Vice President Cheney said a few days ago that he thinks the
insurgency is in its final throes. Do you agree with that?

AL-JAAFARI: Indeed. It's true. We do not call them insurgents. We call
them terrorists. Because that's what they do. They carry out acts of
terrorism against innocent people, men, women and children and it is true
that with the help of friends and with the support of our friends and with
our securing our borders, we will very soon defeat terrorism.

GREGORY: Well, here's a different view. The top military commander in the
Persian Gulf actually disagrees with the vice president, saying that the
insurgency is as strong today as it was six months ago. This after
successful elections in January. This after a political process that's
moving toward a constitution in August. Why hasn't the insurgency been
brought to its heels?

AL-JAAFARI: I certainly, again, would not call this an insurgency. I would
call it a group of terrorists who are out to kill as many people as
possible. That is easy to do. Anyone can come in and blow himself up and
choose the softest targets possible and carry out acts of terror.

And all of them come from outside Iraq and they admit this freely on TV
when they are interrogated.

"Insurgents" only refers to people who have a social base and have
support. They carried out either armed uprising or peaceful uprising like
Gandhi but these are no such thing. They are terrorists.

This is the silliest thing you've said in a long time.

"NOBBY" wrote
... And all of them come from outside Iraq and they admit this freely on TV
when they are interrogated.


Funny, that's not what the Army intel and CIA guys say. I read a report
the other week that said only about 1/4 of the terrorists in Iraq were
'foreign fighters.'


"Insurgents" only refers to people who have a social base and have
support. They carried out either armed uprising or peaceful uprising like
Gandhi but these are no such thing. They are terrorists.



Doug Kanter wrote:
This is the silliest thing you've said in a long time.


Well, he's trying to re-define what "is" is, so that Bush/Cheney won't
look so ridiculous.

Another funny thing is the way they don't say a word about Halliburton
any more. Halliburton pretty much admitted to the first $125 million of
theft & fraud, maybe because it's just a drop in the bucket. Now they're
faced with the possibility of losing serious money... but hey, just lie
like a rug, pretend everything's OK, and hum a few hymns, it'll all blow
over!

Meanwhile, Iraqis have pretty much given up on getting their electricity
& water turned back on. The US contractors are spending more on security
than they are on the actual projects, and marking time.

DSK

"DSK" wrote in message
...


Meanwhile, Iraqis have pretty much given up on getting their electricity &
water turned back on. The US contractors are spending more on security
than they are on the actual projects, and marking time.

You don't need electricity or water to operate shovels and bury bodies.

"Jack Goff" wrote in message
...

"Doug Kanter" wrote in message
...
"Jack Goff" wrote in message
om...


For the last time, where is this "demand growth" coming from?

Class is out.


Zzzzzzzzzz...........



Yep, you're sleeping in class again, Doug. You have a comprehension
problem. I give up.

Have a nice "ignorance is bliss" life.



You must also believe that the value of most common stock is really
connected with what the books say. :-)

John H wrote:

Doug, why do you find name-calling necessary? Do you feel it legitimizes your
argument?

John, how come you find it okay if YOU, JimH, Fritz and NOYB call
people names, but when someone who is debating you, as opposed to being
in your circle jerk does it, it's bad?