if al sadr really wanted the usa out of iraq all he has to do is stop killing and tell his people to stop killing both sides in 6 months we would be out of there give or take

How true this is. The sad part is that there are enough people out there who DO KNOW that this happens yet they do nothing about it. Not that there is much you can do I guess... but it would be nice to see the average, middle class (soon to be lower class) person stand up for once, in a big way. I would say the first steps would be for the middle class people to start their own lobby. But this would never work. First, and mainly, it seems that of all the groups of people in the world, only the average white American male cannot join together for a common good, one that would only benefit him and his kind, not hurt or hinder it. Blacks can rally around a common cause, even if they are opposing gang members, Hispanics, same thing. Seems to me, every 'minority' in this country is willing to band together to get something done for themselves, why can't we? And a topic like the Jewish lobby should be of concern to all American citizens, regardless of color, yet it isn't.
Second, our lobby wouldn't work because we couldn't devote the time and attention that would be required. It would take a tremendous amount of effort to even begin to make a very minute difference, an effort that most of us just can't muster up after struggling all week in the wage slavery department trying to pay the bills and put food on the table. I just 'read' that last sentence there... it should be the other way around, shouldn't it? Putting food on the table should take precedence to paying bills... or at least a rational person would think so. Wow, see what I mean. Bills and working to pay them seems to be the only guarantee we have in life!

we and isreal are giving aid to the palistinians also in the area of about 4 billion dollars or at least we were until they elected hamas in to control

About the Great Depression: This was due to the disparity in wealth between rich and poor, I believe my textbook (and if you have trouble with this, take it up with Glencoe) stated 90% of our nation's wealth was in the hands of 10% of the population. This, coupled with several series of loan defaults and bank collapses (unpaid loans were also the reason for the most recent dip in the stock market) lead to severe unemployment as farmers and factory owners couldn't pay what they needed to pay, and I'm sure you know were it goes from there (If not, you're either from another country that wasn't hit too hard by the Great Depression, or you simply can't give a flying *BLEEP* about the U.S).

Current Info on the (U.S) Economy: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0223-09.htm

About Iraq: The War in Iraq is simply a series of incompetent idiots playing around with nostalgic political veterans. The reason for Iraq was...
1. Make up to the Iraqis for letting Sadaam slaughter the Kurds when they rebelled, in which Bush Sr. had his little "Bay of Camels."
2. Wolfowitz especially wanted to rectify this.
3. Making the fat cats fatter. Think, Cheney is the former CEO of Halliburton, and once the reconstruction kicks off he hands out contracts to them and Kellogg, many of which go uncompleted which further fuled Iraqi impatience with American forces. They also gave security contracts to Blackwater U.S.A, a campaign doner. Rather then giving the reconstruction contracts to U.S.A corporations, they could have handed it to the Iraqis.

Many mistakes were made, De-Ba'athification was one of them.
Why? You were taking many of the political veterans of the nation and telling them, "Leave or die." This puts many disenfranchised leaders out on the streets (I believe the unemployment rate in Iraq was at around 25% from about '04-'05). Then the coalition (and I'll get to how "Coalition of the Willing" is a ver far-fetched term) disbanded the Iraqi army (Including the Republican Guard, which was at one point representing Iraq as the 4th strongest army in the world; before Bush sr and then Bush jr completely smashed them). This left thousands of disgruntled SOLDIERS out on the streets, with weapons in hand.
Second, we have our herculean "knock-knock" tactics. The Iraqi matter of honor and respect is no joke. In the U.S, some guy busts in to your house with a Carbine, full combat gear, and a squad of buddies dressed the same way, your going to want to get them to pay for the door. In many cases, in hopes of capturing former high-ranking Ba'athist and terrorist leaders, they would take the men of the house-hold at gunpoint and utterly *bleep*smack him/them in front of his/their wife/family. This rounded up many people who were simply at the wrong place at the wrong time, and trials were slow to start up. The Generals and commanders feared to let go of ANY prisoners, innocent or guilty, in fears of letting out a terrorist or Ba'athist.
Third, our misunderstanding of Iraqi culture and past...involvements...Clinton can recieve some flack for this, especially with the sanctions that killed 5,000 Iraqi children, but it goes as far back as Reagan and the Iran-Iraq war in which you have pictures of Rumsfeld speaking with Sadaam (We put him in power to curve Communist/Socialist influence; if you believe the U.S would never do this, search out Pinochet or most nations in Central America.) Our failure to uphold our bargain with the Kurds and earlier providement of many of his chemical weapons (Which are NOT WMDs) helped foster stigma towards the U.S. As for Iraqi culture, tell me, what can you recall of Iraqi history or their heritage? (Looting of Baghdad museums and in general was a huge problem in the first year of the war.)
Fourth, Chalabi. He was anti-Sadaam *bleep*holes looking out for their own interests. We trained some Iraqi exiles who were in direct connection to Chalabi, I think they were stationed in Basra, were they did little but loot and add to the general tension. He is currently under investigation for some crime-or-another.
Fifth, No general distinction of who was in charge. You have a civillian and military command, Paul Bremer was the civillian guy, Zinni, Frank, ect. were the various military heads and commanders that were switched around. Rarely did these guys work well with each other, and Bremer said he was only answerable to Rumsfeld (and what a character he was) often ignoring Wolfowitz.
There's more, but this, above all, is the most important one...
Sixth, it's the Iraqi's country. They want us out.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/jan-june07/protests_04-09.html
We failed to prevent Zaraqauwi (remember him? Yah, the dead fat guy) from bombing a key religous sight and spark sectarian violence. In Vietnam, Kennedy said that we would lose the conflict unless we procured the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese. We won the war in Iraq, we smashed Sadaam, but we could not get our gear together and mount a succesful occupation. The U.N confirmed no WMDs, no transference of WMDs, ect. ect. but Zinni was forced to step down when he said we needed more than half-a-million troops to secure borders, cities, and such, while Rumsfeld went with Frank's 150,000. Zinni has since become one of the most vocal critics of the war...

*Sigh...* If you can't understand my ramblings, here's Zinni...

The war planners "misjudged the success of containment" - the existing policy of trade sanctions and maintaining troops in the area.

The "strategy was flawed" - the strategy being that invading, occupying, and setting up a new government in Iraq would help solve the broader conflicts in the Middle East. Zinni said "couldn't believe what I was hearing about the benefits of this strategic move."

The Bush administration "had to create a false rationale for going in to get public support." Zinni said that "the books were cooked, in my mind. The intelligence (that supported the claims made to support the need for war) was not there."

The war planners failed "to internationalize the effort," by gaining the support of allies or unambiguously gaining UN endorsement of an invasion.

The "fifth mistake was that we underestimated the task." Zinni clarified this in his speech to mean the broader task of creating a free, democratic, and functional Iraq.
The sixth mistake was "propping up and trusting the exiles." The exiles Zinni refers to are groups like the Iraqi National Congress and its controversial leader Ahmed Chalabi.

Zinni criticized the "lack of planning" for the post-war stablization and reconstruction of Iraq.

"The eighth problem was the insufficiency of military forces on the ground." Zinni, in his former position, had devised a battle plan for conquering and occupying Iraq in the 1990s, which featured far more troops, as did alternative plans presented to Donald Rumsfeld before the war. The extra troops were needed to "freeze the security situation because we knew the chaos that would result once we uprooted an authoritarian regime like Saddam's."

"The ninth problem has been the ad hoc organization we threw in there." Zinni criticises what he views as the lack of staff, skills, experience, and clear structure in the Coalition Provisional Authority.

According to Zinni, "that ad hoc organization has failed", "leading to the tenth mistake, and that's a series of bad decisions on the ground". These bad decisions include the excessive zeal in "de-Baathification," removing people only peripherally involved in the Baath Party who were Baathists purely to be permitted to conduct their profession or business, the decision to disband the Iraqi army

As I see it. there are only two possible outcomes in Iraq.

After the Civil war. the Sheites will win and set up a fundamentalist Moslum State. similar to Iran and probably allied to Iran.

Or. During the fighting, a strong military leader will emerge, similar to Sadam and he will set up a military dictatorship, similar to Sadam and probably backed by America.

The reason the killing does not stop in order to get the army of occupation to leave, is because it is easier to kill Americans in Iraq than it is in America.
It also raises the hostility level to America, by blaming the killings on their prescence.

By the way. Jews in America are called Jews. Only if they live in Israel are they called Israelies.
To an outsider, it seem that it is the jews in America that are funding Bush and the war against the Arabs.

Actually, it's the other way around. Every Jew in America is automatically considered to have Israeli dual-citizenship. Many of whom could really care less.

"Much anger and hate in the force i since in this one"
Yoda

Absolutely, we were attacked first never forget that---we don't oppress people over here like they do in many countries in the middle east----maybe it should be required reading of the Dr. Suess book about the sneetches

I'm such an American...
Seriously, though, you're parent/husband/boyfriend/friend/ect. got blown up in the crossfire of a U.S Convoy and an ambush by militants at a checkpoint, you could be PO'd at one or the other, but it doesn't help the U.S or England.

And what does it matter if I'm a Dem, Liberal, Conservative, Commie?
Nixon got us out of Vietnam, and then tried to level Hanoi. You look at the Tet offensive, nobody kicks more *bleep* than the U.S, but our "Boiling Pot" culture makes us think any culture will simply adapt and beg us to share a piece of the American pie, which PNAC was a big believer in.

But what sickens me...

Whether or not it's a Marine's, GI's, or Militaman's fault for the death of an Iraqi, 600,000 deaths have been directly attributed to the conflict (A John Hopkins Bloomburg School study.) Now, we just poured our guts over 32 dead students (not to criticize or insult them, I'm going after the general American public) when over 100 Iraqis were killed in a recent series of car bombs (after McCain had the *bleep*ing guts to go over there with over 100 marines and 6 UH-60 attack 'copters as his escorts) and yet we don't ring our church bells that many times for them. I believe this point is best brought to light (or satirized, which ever way you look at it) by John Stewert in his book America, in which you have blonde girl killed by a sniper equal to several exponential numbers of minorities in terms of media coverage worth.

Media coverage of Iraq is difficult to obtain because of the historic "Final Destination" ways journalists meet their fate. Once an M1A1 litterally fired on a hotel were journalists were staying and panicked U.S troops fired on an Italian journalist and her escort.

Then, we have a bombing inside the "secure" greenzone. The list goes on.

Now, to blame Israel for Iraq is idiotic. The Israelie lobby has a lot of influence, no doubt, but they don't need the U.S doing their *bleep* work. Their military is just as powerful, though I disagree with their Nixon style handling of Lebanon (bombing key infrastructure to the ground, in which Hezbollah used it to walk around giving out $25,000 to every victim).

Iran is also our fault, we didn't like there to be an autonomous government which wouldn't bend over to our ever extending Pax Americana *bleep* so with the CIA we ousted their democratic government and help set in a series of unfortunate events that would lead to Ahma-somthing or other, and this *bleep* waving over Nuclear Reactors (which we are simply powerless to do anything but blow it to smithereens with our F-16s).

Our dependency on oil doesn't help, and Bush kissing the Saudi princes' hands doesn't either. Nor does the "decider" help at all by calling the Dems and people who oppose the war "Unsupporting of the troops" when he has failed, and cut back, the VA and has failed to "decide" correctly on were budgeting should be. As a result, the Pentagon simply rights off soldiers with mental disorders and blown-off limbs as, "Not disabled enough to recieve our money." The Bush Administration's constant assertion that they support the troops (and President Bush's quick and shameful photo-op) seriously *bleep* me off.

Of course, several events had to cause such unemployment.
It's not: Oh Jesus! 50% of America is umemployed, now we are in Depression!
No, it's: *Bleep*! The Great Depression, now we have 50% unemployment!

And lack of workers? Buddy, India (pop: 1+ Bil) is offering 'em cheap, which is another problem.

Personally i hope this destroys the UK government, gives us Welsh nationalists a chance to free ourselves from a regime that really does have wmd's

unemployment went up like that becouse all those solders at the end of world war 1 came home and took their old jobs back. meaning that the people who were doing those jobs were now unemployed. and it took 12 years before the great depression hit.

this time unemployment dropped at least at point below 3%

just so you understand when unemployment is below 5% it means that for the most part the only ones not working are the ones looking for better jobs.

as for the gulf between the rich and poor getting bigger that is true and it is powered by taxing the rich.

why you will ask is it powered by taxing the rich becouse the rich own the businesses that we use and taxes are just a business expense. what do you do with a business expense you pass it on to your customers. and who are the customers why the poor. that would be most of us on this forum. one exception would be frogboy since he owns stardock. or at least runs it

Is that first part sarcasm? seriously is it? No international incidents? Lets see; TWO embassies bombed (act of war, no response from the US), The USS Cole attacked and damaged with loss of life (act of war, no response from the US), An embarassment in somalia. Its really no wonder to me that terrorists feel they could openly do what they want. I say could because now they no they can't get away with it, we finally put a stop to it. Yea i know the media and the democrats keep telling us how unsafe we are now, and how a BIG attack is just around the corner, been hearing that for years now.

If you want to talk prosperity lets look at the lowest unemployment rate, well ok i dont know the history of unemplyment, but its been a long time. uner 55 is considered "full employemnt" we're now at 3%. The Dow Jones is about to break 13,000. Even if you dont onw staock, it still good news because it shows the country as a whole is strong. I was even able to get the Gold Edition of CG2.