The War Has Started!

[Imran Siddiqui]

Then why are bombs not falling on Damascus, Tehran and dare I say, Pyongyang?

Damascus isn't threaten the US overtly. Tehran actually has a moderate as the elected Prime Minister so there is hope, and Pyongyang has two major problems associated with it: nukes and China

Because if America would buy oil in euros instead of dollars, it would lose billions of dollars, that's why.

What?! If America was to buy oil in Euros, it would first change dollars into euros, and pay. How are we losing anything?

The profit in Vietnam and Korea would have been to stop the communists. A totally different matter in a way, but it was too, in the interest of America.

When did I say this wasn't about America's interests. We have more interests than oil you know? Power, for one (actually the main interest in this case).

So "The 'War for Oil' mantra is a mindless slogan? Then what are the american soldiers doing in the Gulf? Not now in Iraq, but generally speaking? Hmm? Everything that's happening in the Gulf has to do with oil.

Are you one of those people that think buying drugs helps FARC kill people? Yes, everything in the ME can be linked to oil in SOME way. In this war, however, it would take many steps until you get there.

These people are not thinking short-term. They are thinking long term, and this war will benefit them tremendously.

Why? How would having more oil on the world market beneficial, when it would drive down prices by shifting the supply curve? And actually they don't think the long term, really. Most American companies are short term thinkers.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Tiberius
So, again: what are the americans doing in the Gulf (Kuweit, Saudi-Arabia, Iraq, etc), if not taking care that the oil supply of the US is assured?

I specifically asked people to avoid BAMs. You get two minutes in the stupid box.

[Imran Siddiqui]

DD:

[Master Zen]

What the hell is a BAM??

BTW, you people aren't precisely proving your points with cold hard facts. If you expect "our side" to prove our PoVs, you should too.

[Master Zen]

Originally posted by DinoDoc

I specifically asked people to avoid BAMs. You get two minutes in the stupid box.

I'd rather spend 2 minutes in the stupid box than a lifetime in the naive-ignorant box.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Master Zen
What the hell is a BAM??

Bald assertions.

[Master Zen]

that's the B, that's the A, what's the M?

[Master Zen]

My cold hard facts:

Top US firms vie for post-war Iraq contracts
Billions in profits seen from seizing oil fields
By Bill Vann
12 March 2003
Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the author

With war against Iraq only days away, a small group of giant American construction firms are furiously competing for a $900 million US government contract for the initial rebuilding of infrastructure that will be shattered by US bombs and missiles.

The battle for the first reconstruction contract is only a foretaste of a vast plundering of the oil-rich country by US-based multinationals. This unseemly “scramble for Iraq” even before the invasion has begun is the clearest indication that the impending war is not about “weapons of mass destruction,” terrorism or Saddam Hussein’s regime, but rather about oil, profits and US economic hegemony in the Middle East and beyond.

The US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is awarding the contract, invoked a clause in government procurement procedures allowing it to bypass the normal competitive bidding process on the grounds of “urgent circumstances”.

Requests for proposals on the huge contract were handed out to only five companies. Among them are Kellog Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton Co., where Vice President Richard Cheney was chief executive from 1995 until the 2000 election campaign. The company has already been awarded a wide array of military contracts, including reconstruction projects in Afghanistan.

Another politically connected firm allowed to bid on the deal is Bechtel Corp., where prominent Reagan administration officials, including former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and former Secretary of State George Shultz, have held top positions. The company was the fifth-largest contributor during the 2000 presidential election, giving two-thirds of its money to the Republicans. Also asked to submit bids were the Louis Berger Group, which is also involved in Afghanistan, and the Fluor Corporation and Parsons Corporation, both of California.

The restriction of the bidding to the five US corporations—USAID officials said that one prerequisite for winning the contract was a Pentagon security clearance—has sharpened already significant tensions between Washington and London, the Bush administration’s single major ally in the impending war.

The British trade union bureaucracy, among the most jealous defenders of British national interests, was the first to respond to the arrangement. “Why should Britain have to share the blood in a war but British companies not be allowed to share in the economic upturn afterwards,” Richard O’Brien, a spokesman for Amicus, the British industrial engineering union, told the Guardian newspaper.

The scope of the contract was spelled out in a 13-page USAID document entitled “Vision for Post-Conflict Iraq.” The plan, first leaked to the Wall Street Journal, calls for rebuilding 1,500 miles of “economically important roads and bridges,” the reconstruction of thousands of war-damaged ports, airports, hospitals and schools, and the delivery of 550 emergency power generators to restore electricity.

According to some estimates, the $900 million allocated will be eaten up in the space of six months, given the scope of the proposed contracts. Moreover, the actual scale of destruction in Iraq will likely render the allotted funds wholly inadequate to meet the stated goals. The Pentagon war plan calls for an aerial blitzkrieg involving some 3,000 bombs and missiles in the first 48 hours of the attack.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
This war sure has brought out the morons...

Yes

[Ben Kenobi]

Master Zen:

It's an allusion.

DinoDoc is calling you a BAM or Bald-Faced Assertion Man.

It helps him to avoid dealing with the real issues of your argument.

[Jack the Bodiless]

Jack:

Saving lives does not absolve you of the ones you killed.
How can you be sure that in killing someone, you will save more than you kill?

Nor does inaction absolve you of the ones you could have saved, but did not.

In the case of ending Saddam's regime, I think it's very likely. But you were implying that pacifism was right even if it's clear that more lives will be saved by war, and that this conclusion had something to do with the value of a human life (rather than squeamishness or religious taboo).

Suppose I use the example of James Kopp.

His argument goes like this:

Abortionists kill babies.
Killing the abortionist stops babies from being killed.
Since more babies will die if I let the abortionist live,
Killing the abortionist will save lives.

An obviously flawed analogy. Quite apart from the whole "personhood of the fetus" issue, the killing of abortion doctors does nothing to lower the demand for abortion, which is driven by the women seeking it. They'll find other doctors, or backstreet abortionists.

A better approach is to try to save both, because one life is no more valuable than another. We have no right to kill someone in the hopes that we will save others.

Then who DOES have that right? God?

If your objection is religious, then say so. That would make more sense than trying to imply that the life of one person killed by a bomb is worth more than the lives of several people garrotted in Saddam's prisons.

It's your algebra that's flawed. You don't actually have to know the value of X to know that 2X > X.

Assuming X is positive, but this will become increasingly surreal if a human life has a negative value...

[Drake Tungsten]

It helps him to avoid dealing with the real issues of your argument.

I assure you that there are no real issues in Master Zen's "arguments"...

[The Mad Monk]

We have not been in a running battle with Damascus and Tehran the way we have been with Baghdad for over a decade. That alone make it easier and more sensible to hit Baghdad first.

After this, those two will be much less secure. We can talk then.

[Master Zen]

That was pretty obvious obiwan18

resort to insults when thy arguments have been crushed...

[The Mad Monk]

The Pentagon war plan calls for an aerial blitzkrieg involving some 3,000 bombs and missiles in the first 48 hours of the attack.

So much for the reliability of this source.