October 4, 2004

[Originally posted by terminalrecluse]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/03/i...ner=rssuserland

They lie all the time, and sh!t happens this time it was preemptive war....

Update: New report http://comcast.net/News/DOMESTIC//X...93a0dc7293.html

No evidence of WMD.

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October 5, 2004

I don't know what you guys are complaining about... I just find Donald Rumsfeld a very honest guy... 

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October 5, 2004

IMHO, I think Colin Powell is a good guy. I arrive at this opinion from three books (here, here and here).

I think he is a brave person and one who has a lot of integrity and sense of honor. So much so that he thinks that his honor and integrity will be questioned or damaged if he were to fail to support his president and commander-in-chief.

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October 7, 2004

There is something very sad and very pathetic about the responses of Messrs Bush and Blair to the report of the ISG...

For me the whole deal has been a little like:
Bush: "There's something out there..."
Blair: "Yeah, let's go find them!"
Everyone else: "What's there?"
Bush: "I'm telling you: there's something there!"
Blair: "I know he knows there's something there, let's go find them!"
Everyone else: "We ain't going nowhere."

Now:
ISG: "There's nothing there. However, if you put these funky goggles on, you'll see something there!"
Bush: "I'm telling you: there's something there!"
Blair: "Look, there's something there, we intended there to have something there."
Everyone else: "Yeah, right! Whatever..."

Look, let's not kid ourselves: Iraq is a complete mess! It's turned into a complete paradox: The more insurgence there is, the more the Coalition (read: US) wants to go in there with the big guns to clean house, but the harder the Coalition hit the insurgence, the more the people of Iraq dislike the Coalition. On the other hand, to do nothing about the insurgence, the more blatant they become...

What's the solution? Get out and get out fast! The Iraqi insurgence just want the infidels out so that they can run the show. So, let them.

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October 10, 2004

I may be complete wrong about this, but I think the intelligence has been right or nearly right all along. The problem was that the intelligence communities allowed the politics to enter their judgments and allow politicians to 'influence' their work. For me, the whole episode has the feeling that some politicians were hell bent on doing something and the intelligence communities just went along with them. So intelligence was used abusively.

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October 14, 2004

quote:
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The thing is, the money being given to that "old fogey" is money the state took from him while he was working. So he's actually just getting his money back. The issue is where the state gets it.
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Never underestimate the power of the IRS (or equivalent agencies in other countries). It is with a good reason that there is a saying that "there are two things in life that are unavoidable: death and taxes".

I don't know about the regime in the US. However, in the UK (and I figure in other countries also) by the time you receive your private pension, you've been taxed three times!! This is how the 'triple dip' works:

1) The money you put away comes out of the pay check and is already taxed... (income tax)

2) Any capital gains your pension fund achieved are taxed... (capital gains tax)

3) When the pension payment is made to you, you're taxed again... (another income tax)

Now, the government only does a double dip when it comes to state pension. However the state pension is petty grim (~GBP75 per week - not much to live on), so you're not losing that much.

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