Sorry i should have explained it a little better. When i said "military decisions" i was speaking more a long the lines of "strategic decisions". When to pull out, how many troops to pull out, etc. shouldn't be decided on political whims and politicians trying to get elected. They should be strategic decisions to best maximize our success. My dad always taught me growing up that if you do your job right the first time, you won't have to do it over again. *** I am in no way bashing our troops for the job that they did. I support our troops and have the utmost respect for all who serve our country. Just wanted to say that before someone took what i said out of context.
I clearly don't understand politics. After 911 I would have erased that country off the map. There wouldn't even have been bacteria over there when I was done. Also why go we stick our nose in everyone else's business. I don't care if another country wants to kill their people. That's not my business. "Live Life at Full Draw"
I'm right there with you pat. That's the way it should be, but we live in a democracy and the military does what the civilians want which is what the politicians want.
Chicago is doing a pretty good job of that already. The USA is sitting on more oil reserves than Saudi Arabia... Yet we are allowed to do practically nothing to exploit those reserves. This administration is completely content to not only let us self destruct; but happy to provide the dynamite and matches.
and the other 6 million often forgotten elderly homosexuals homeless people. This actually pales in comparison to the millions more stalin and mao killed though that we didn't Intervene in on = )
When I see, "the US is sitting on more oil" line I just laughed. It shows how most of us do not understand how oil is sold around the world. Oil is a commodity, meaning it's sold at the best price around the world. We could drill for more oil here, but that does not mean it's sold and used here, it does not mean prices go down. We cannot drill our way to lower prices, it's not going to happen. The higher the prices, the faster we come up with a solution for energy needs.
You are partially correct, I believe, in that producing more crude oil right in this country will not serve to directly lower energy prices here. But since increased production here, entering a world-wide market, would lower prices world-wide, it would also lower prices right here. So we can drill our way to lower prices. It's just that the effect would be indirect. I also don't agree with your suggestion that we should artificially push up prices of fossil fuels in order to encourage the development of alternative energy sources. As fossil fuel sources become scarcer, that will happen in the natural course of business. I don't trust governments to efficiently determine how we use energy. And we already have alternative sources. We just need to squelch the unreasonable prejudices people have. The French get 70-80% of their electrical power from nuclear power plants. Instead of building new natural gas fired plants here, we could, and should, be building nuclear plants. We just have to start ignoring the ninnies who are afraid they will start glowing in the dark if a nuclear power plant is built in their county. What about the Fukushima disaster? The Japanese happen to live on islands without any fossil fuels subject to earthquakes and tsunamis. They have to live with that. We don't have those problems here. I would also like to see some realistic information on solar and wind energy, but all I see are dreamy projections. Are these really feasible alternatives? How much would it cost to develop? How many windmills or solar panels would it take to supply Los Angeles, Chicago, or St. Louis with power? I know you could supply Chicago with electricity from a nuclear power plant. Can you do it with wind/solar plants? I would like to see some numbers.
And you sir, apparently do not understand the law of supply and demand. Even in a world market, the more of and increased access to a commodity, with alternative sources of supply (that's called competition) lowers the price of said commodity. Where did you get your Econ degree, the Ohio State University? Sheesh. That being said, soooo many other factors go into the price of oil and how that correlates into prices at the pump, so I will leave it at this: not being allowed to have ready access to a vital resource literally under our feet forces us as a nation to do business with nasty people who want to enslave and do us harm. Energy independence (and that's an all of the above platform, not just oil) is literally a national security issue. If I had my druthers, I would grant drilling permits on federal land only to companies under contract and agreed that a large percentage (say 70%) of the domestically drilled AND/OR (this is key) refined oil is to only be sold in the US. (Same applies for natural gas, coal, etc.)
Whew, boy... History 101- Stalin and Mao had the bomb. Stalin and Mao have/had armed forces that were at least as big (pretty sure much larger) as ours. While we could not fight them directly, we did "intervene" with both countries' desires to spread the filthy tide of Communism world-wide. 80-some thousand dead Americans in the jungles of Southeast Asia and the mountains of Korea are proof of our "intervention." We fought proxy wars against Communist-led genocide there, the Middle East, Africa, and in South and Central America. We froze them into abject poverty and near revolution during the Cold War. So while there may have never been large-scale "boots on the ground" or carpet bombing sorties over Beijing or Moscow, I'd say that we did a fair amount of dying all over the world trying to stop really bad people from killing and/or enslaving billions.
Hmm good point didn't think about that. But I'm pretty sure China did not have nuclear weapons during that timeframe. I'm also not quite sure china's military during that time was anywhere near comparable to ours in numbers or technology as out of ww2 it was us and ussr who came out as the 2 superpowers. I think China was pretty weak with all of their revolutions.
not really. With that deduction, many other countries are signed up for war against us. ??? you realize there are many other exterminations going on in this world right? Not quite sure why you responded with that either, I was simply stating there were an additional 6 million Hitler killed who are often forgotten. He killed over 12 million, not just 6 million.
We do intervene a lot of times, Somalia, Bosnia, Hati, Grenada, and probably lots of other places that slip under the media attention. We may not do big largr scale operations but a lot of things that go on around the world troops get sent. If nothing more than to sit on a boat of the coast to be a QRF if it gets really goin.
Sanctions and Resolutions aren't the same thing, the UN resolutions carry more weight than simple sanctions. Actually, unless you can list specifics that slip my mind at the moment, Iraq was more unique than any others based on the fact that Saddam had invaded Kuwait and used biological weapons in the past and there was quite a bit of evidence he was actively seeking development of a nuclear arsenal. With dozens of UN resolutions being ignored and the fact we were at war with terrorism, it's very arguable that Iraq was a justifiable cause for action. He still had SCUD missles which were illegal for him to have, he shot a couple off in the last war and he was violating more judgements against him than any country I know of. After this administration continuing to bankrupt the nation, there's not much, if anything, we could do to current infractions even if we wanted to.
Can you explain the difference and the penalties between violating either one? I cant seem to find a definitive answer. Also, North Korea fits this model, but you don't see us going in there aside from CIA/SF. Pretty sure Burma/Myanmar also fits too.
As I understand both, UN sanctions are only actions like trade embargos or other means that are meant to be irritants to a government/country through economical or supply disruption or something similar. Anything that could be considered a "strong encouragement causation of compliance" to whatever the demand is. A UN resolution is a judgment by UN council and an order to comply with the demands of a majority of nations opinions that particular actions or lack of are unacceptable and if not changed will be forced by other means through UN or similar means. There are really no penalties for a country under sanctions violating those sanctions other than broadening them to make more pressure. I imagine it's expected they will actively try to go around sanctions, it's really up to other nations to abide by the UN sanctions and wishes for sanctions to work at all. Sanctions may be applied to another country that violates trade type sanctions.
I understand supply and demand, the demand is not going down and we cannot drill fast enough to match it.
Wrong, and wrong. I did the math, adjusted for population growth. These stats are from the US Census Bureau and the US DOE: 1980 6,132,000 bbls of oil consumed / 227.23 million population = .027 bbls of oil per person per year 2011 7,281,385 bbls of oil consumed / 311.59 million population = .023 bbls of oil per person per year Drilling technology has advanced so quickly in the past decade... and as I just proved, the rate of US demand has actually fallen in the past 30 years, while efficiency advancements in source detection, drilling, and transport have exploded exponentially. We have the supply. We just need to unharness the domestic production and keep the majority of the market domestic as well. Drill baby drill, refine that crude, keep it home, and the Bull will run, run, run.
