Just How Much is $ 87 Billion?

[Phaedrus]

Aside from such economic comparisons as the fact that President Bush's requested $ 87 billion to help fund further intervention in Iraq is greater than all of the States' budget deficits combined, or that it is more than double the annual budget of the Department of Homeland Security, consider the sheer physicality of this sum: stacked in a neat cube formation, eighty-seven billion US$ 1.00 Federal Reserve notes would form a blaock so large that you could line up two Boeing 737-200 passenger jets nose-to-nose alongside its base, with room to spare.

Fun with spatial geometry and retarded itnerventionist foreign policy is here.


Phaedrus

 

[Jointpleasure]

If you were against the war Phaedrus that's your pacifist opinion.
Think of the 87 bill as an investment that will be paid back in oil. probably with a huge interest rate. finally a country that will pay us back - good job GW. SMART INVESTMENT

 

[kayaman+]

Joint,

Thanks for that post!
It's nice to finally see one of you bush2 supporters here admitting it really was all about the oil

 

[Oren1]

yeah, good investment, tens of thousands of pints of blood for fossil fuel to keep your SUV's running, GOOD CALL W!!! yo da' man. (Satan laughing spreads his wiiiiiiiiiiiings)

 

[Phaedrus]

Joint

I'm not opposed to the Iraqi war/occupation because I'm a pacifist, a point I've made numerous times. I'm opposed to it because regime change wars are always a bad idea (see my original post on the subject over six months ago here

And the money going into Iraq might well be partially or totally recouped by oil receipts, but that would not be possible if we had not stolen those receipts -- under Executive Order 13303, signed into effect on 22 May of this year, President Bush negated over $ 120 billion in legitimately-incurred debt that was secured by the Iraqi oil reserves, most of it owed to Russia and the EU. He then proceeded to float the idea of securitising more than $ 30 billion in loans with Iraqi oil receipts over a ten-year period -- those same receipts which were already being used as collateral by someone else. (Stories linked here.)

That is, in case you missed it, called theft. Your beloved W., on top of being a moron, a draft dodger, a deserter, a womaniser, a drug addict, a failure as a businessman, a hopeless write-off as a statesman, and a traitor to the principles upon which America was founded, is also a common thief.


Phaedrus

 

[JackDee]

jointpleasure, i like your cynicism, or should i say realism here man, i am sure you feel the same about the 9/11 bombings, good investment on the part of religious muslim zealots, what's a few thousand dead for a some hundreds of millions of supporters on you side against the "evil empire", right?

That's the type of mentality, brute force, arrogance and complete disrespect for the rest of humanity and human life, that's gotten (even if indirectly) american kids shooting each other up in school yards. What goes around, comes around, you can fool some people (and yourself) sometimes, but you can't fool all the people all the time...

 

[Oceans11]

Phaedrus is right.
The Iraqi oil was already indebted.
Now its been double-indebted by GWB.

But.
The cashflow will only accumulate if they can
1 Get the oil out the ground.
2 Have a 'friendly compliant' Iraqi administration to hand that cash over for repayments.

So it is in the Iraqis best interests to stop the oil leaving, and derive its' benefits later, for themselves, once the occupation force is gone.
(And I mean totally gone)

The West isn't there to make friends.
Its there to secure a major energy asset for itself, and to use that asset in a debt servicing arrangement.

A 'have your cake, and eat it' scenario, enforced by the military.

 

[Oceans11]

Its called colonialism.

Nowadays it just needs a thicker more sophisticated smokescreen of techno-bullshit and media-propaganda to justify it to the sheeple back home.

The BBC has a mission statement along the lines of 'and nation shall speak unto nation'

But SOMETIMES a mass broadcaster (anywhere in the world) has a different mission statement.
'The more you tell them. The less they know.'