AstroProdigy

Ace stopped posting when I made him look like an idiot after he started arguing with me that the West didn't create the borders of Africa and I proved he was just arguing for the sake of arguing with no knowledge of Africa by feeding him an old map with different colonial borders that had been changed later on before colonialism ended and letting him use it as proof that the borders weren't shaped by Europe. It was a pre WWI map actually. Anyway reasonable doubt is that the actions of the US military have run counter intuitive to negotiation with Sadr especially in that they've been essentially to attack the Mahdi Army. The US may have been supporting Maliki in his attack on Sadr City, but the bombardment and walling off of pieces of Sadr City was all us.

What about the people who don't have the time to get education? If you're 25 and alone with 2 or 3 kids when do you suppose you'll have that time? If your manager screws you because they happen to not like you then what? Quit and hope you can get another job or otherwise you can't support your kids? Just because you personally experienced seeing people abuse welfare doesn't mean that's a universal rule or even the majority or a large minority. Considering unemployment is only a little over 5% and poverty and near poverty rates are much higher what about all of those people? I agree giving them an education is better than giving them a check, but what about neither as this administration does? Also, when you cut taxes for the rich without balancing the budget that forces the Fed to print more money, boosting inflation, and the poor end up paying for the tax cuts with the lower value of their income. The Republican Party utterly fails in this respect which is sad because at least in the pre Reagan era they stood for a balanced budget, which is a good idea.

So again being it is impossible to deductively prove it a logical truth and noting the fact I've never tried to prove it a logical truth, what the !@#$%^&* else are you looking for? Also what the !@#$%^&* are you getting on about with this whole appeal to ignorance? Ignorance applies an unwilling lack of knowledge on the subject. There is no such thing. You have a full opportunity to show flaws in Ace's inductive argument, yet all you do is rant about him not being able to prove his conclusion deductively. The few times you do try to show flaws you do it with speculation. When you leave a giant, gaping unproven hole in it your argument means nothing.

Well you said France has been moving away from socialism for 25 years and I pointed out that before that France had higher growth rates which were attributable to reconstruction and not necessarily more socialist leaning principles. I didn't even argue that you're wrong there so I don't see why you're asking me to prove it. If you want proof you can get it yourself I'm not looking for sources of the Marshall Plan and post WWII era reconstruction for you.

You are again using an appeal to ignorance. You're saying that because there isn't proof of Bush contradicting Petraeus therefore he must agree. In fact one of your premises; proves that just because Bush never publicly announced that he is unwilling to negotiate with Sadr doesn't mean that isn't the policy. Again I ask you: Bush supports Petraeus' !@#$%^&*ertion that we are willing to negotiate with Sadr. (unproven) Prove it. You are again using an appeal to ignorance. You're saying that because there isn't proof of Bush contradicting Petraeus therefore he must agree. In fact one of your premises proves that just because Bush never publicly announced that he is unwilling to negotiate with Sadr doesn't mean that isn't the policy. Again I ask you: Bush supports Petraeus' !@#$%^&*ertion that we are willing to negotiate with Sadr. (unproven) Prove it.

Both the top 2 countries are strong welfare states. If we came under the same conditions as those other countries I'd agree. Otherwise you're completely ignoring everything else to create an overly simplistic comparison. We did better than Nigeria? WELL GOSH THAT MEANS SUCCESS! France has been relatively stagnant in recent years actually which is blamed on the inflexible work conditions. I never said we should have pure socialist economies. All I said was the US needs more aspects of socialism in its system. Under a more socialist system France had high growth rates, but that's related to reconstruction after WWII and I won't try to use something I know doesn't prove my argument to make an argument the way you do. China is massively corrupt and it's current model for growth will only get them up to a certain point. I gave you an example of a country with a large population and even higher population density. When did I say to move into true communism? True communism is likely impossible to achieve.

Bush supports Petraeus' !@#$%^&*ertion that we should negotiate with Sadr. (unproven) Prove it.

I never said pure socialism works, but a turn towards more socialist principles would work as shown by those other countries. You cite a whole slew of dysfunctional countries that have had dictators and massive corruption in the past and present or have had such high population densities and have only recently come out of colonialism. In fact many of these countries are so poor because of a system that favors the rich. Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nigeria all have a history of dictatorships and unregulated capitalism and little to no history of socialism. China and India have huge population densities and very turbulent histories with little natural resources per capita. Russia relatively recently came out of a total economic collapse followed by another collapse caused by unregulated, US promoted capitalism. The reason you list only the countries with the biggest populations as the only possible example that could disprove you is that most of these countries are so poor they can't possibly disprove you for decades no matter what they do. The closest is Russia, but I can guarantee you that you'd only argue that Russia only did it because of all its resources and thus we have to wait for Brazil China to beat us by which point the US would have fallen very far behind with its current system. The reason I cited France was that is has a large population and a higher population density than the US yet with all the bad policies they have that make their labor force inflexible they still beat us in human development despite a much lower GDP and higher unemployment because they at least invest in their own citizens.

How about France? Even with overly damaging regulations on the freedom of companies to operate, a GDP considerably lower than ours, high unemployment (resulting from the very strict work regulations), and a large population of poor Arabs that easily rivals the intransigent poverty of African Americans they still managed to recently p!@#$%^&* us in the Human Development Index and that's only with the 2007 estimates. I'm sure the 2008 ones will show a nice big drop for the US relative to other countries with the recession. The fact is that not providing services like child care and health care as well as decent infrastructure and education HURTS our compe!@#$%^&*iveness because for the first two force companies to pay for them in the long term while the latter two reduce productivity and skill. All this does is make us more compe!@#$%^&*ive with third world countries in the realm of what makes them appealing which, in case you hadn't noticed, is a !@#$%^&*ty goal because it means we have to have a large underclass like them and our quality of life can't go up until all of theirs is higher.

I heard about both of them on the news many times yet this is the first time I heard they were doing it for a cause.

That is such utter bullcrap. The actions of the Bush administration have only made negotiation harder with Sadr. You're the one who is making the claim that Bush and Petraeus are in agreement that they should negotiate with Sadr because that is the only way the argument that "Petraeus is willing to negotiate and therefore the US is willing to negotiate" will work. Otherwise you have absolutely nothing because your entire argument is based on that statement.

Aileron when there's giant holes in a theory that the guy who created it completely ignored we call that bad theory. You don't test any bull!@#$%^&* when it's a logical fallacy. It's like saying let's test having everyone jump off a bridge because until we test it we'll never know if its the magic economic bullet. Using a flat tax is well tested and in tiny countries and in relatively smaller countries for short periods of time under the right conditions it can work for a while, but then it fails to be sustainable. Estonia has this system in place as a response to the years of communist domination and it's working great for the foreseeable future, but eventually it will fail when Estonia gets to a certain level and the country will have to switch to the good old Scandinavian system (under Finnish pressure I bet) that has lasted very nicely for decades and shows no signs of being unsustainable today. Sustainable is having a strong government system that invests heavily in infrastructure and education and in things like health care and childcare so people actually have a chance of living comfortably simply by working hard. Overall the US is pretty badly screwed. Our debt is high and will only go higher for the foreseeable future. Growth comes entirely among the rich with the rest of the population being able to afford less on average when adjusted to inflation. While there are certain situations to take a turn to the right the only thing that could possibly save our economy today is a turn to the left and in many ways.

You keep saying we only support Maliki and the Badr Organization because they're our allies, but you've consistently failed to even let the issue of the US supports them be discussed. As long as you go back to the "we support them because they're our allies only" argument then "why are they are allies?" is going to always be a legitimate question to that argument. He's protesting the country that's constantly attacking him and his militia. That means he doesn't want to negotiate? That proves absolutely nothing. The fact is you haven't provided any proof for any of your arguments so all you've tried to do the whole time is try to make the debate hazy. If someone who's in line with Bush's own opinions on Iraq like Cheney, Lieberman, or McCain, but as long as all you've got is someone who clearly is not in line with Bush on this issue then you have nothing more than a distraction.

Anyone who takes a little time to figure out any flaws in this theory would find gaping holes in this "theory". First of all the suggestion that taxing the rich less as a percentage of their earnings produces the same revenue as a percentage of GDP is absolutely WRONG if you don't take into account parallel developments. One way it could stay stable with the reduction in revenue is if the percentage earned by the rich as a percentage of total GDP (including the middle and lower classes) has fallen in the same way. In fact the opposite is true, however. Also, if the rich are earning more and more each year then taxing them less and less naturally produces around the same revenue. However lowering taxes on the rich simply because you can since you'd get the same percentage of revenues compared to GDP thereby robs the country of an opportunity to balance the budget and save our crumbling infrastructure when the opportunity presents itself. Another explanation is that parallel to the lowering of taxes as a percentage of tax revenue for the rich there could be a raising of taxes for the middle and lower classes. Seeing as I'm lazy and have been having trouble finding the amount of taxes paid by the non rich as a percentage of total revenues I'll let someone else do that or otherwise we can all be lazy. This graph may be pretty, but it's also overly simplistic. The real facts are that cutting taxes for the rich make the rich even richer and this allows them to use that extra money to drive up inflation as a result, which will make the middle and lower classes poorer. Sure that sentence ignores the trickle down economics theories, but it's pretty well proven that at a certain point in a large economy the negative effects of lower taxes for the rich outweighs the benefits of investment. You could do it in a way that provides more benefits than consequences, but that requires regulation and a reduction in government spending to do so. Otherwise bubbles occur waiting to pop and hit the lower classes the hardest and less revenue for government spending necessitates the increased printing of money, thereby boosting inflation, respectively. Sure the rich are more able to send there money somewhere else if they're taxed more, but the middle class is more likely to fall under the cracks if they're taxed more thus making for a society increasingly composed of super rich who can't stand to see their money taxed parallel to a large class that can't even get by. That's one of the stages described by Marx people! If you secretly want communism to take hold then go ahead and keep promoting the same neo liberal policies that fail consistently in hopes that it will spark a revolution. Otherwise let's be fair here. The rich make their money mostly on the backs of the middle and lower classes anyway so I still don't see how people can find it morally adverse to tax that money and use it to make life affordable for the lower classes so that they have a chance to join the rich on their own merits too. If you want to figure out ways to increase GDP in the long term that requires having good infrastructure and a well trained workforce because the low skill manufacturing work is NOT coming back unless you're willing to heavily impoverish the majority of Americans so they'll be economically compe!@#$%^&*ive again.

Well there's another way to stop an insurgency or at least slowly whittle it down which is to improve the situation of the people economically so they'll have something to lose in aiding insurgents; that's clearly not happening. Sadr has publicly stated he is not willing to negotiate? Proof? I've provided PROOF that all we've been doing with regard to Sadr is try to chip away at his influence. All you've provided is playing constant devil's advocate and affirming a statement that was NOT made by the person in charge of policy in Iraq. Petraeus also said that Iran has a positive role that it could play in Iraq do you think that means Bush wants to negotiate with Iran? Oh wait I'm sure you'll take that as proof we are too. Why are the Badr Organization and the Dawa Party that form the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police our allies? BECAUSE WE CHOOSE THEM TO BE OUR ALLIES! There's no special legitimacy that they hold they're just on our good side! I've been trying to help you understand this point over and over yet you still ignore it and act like we're helping the Iraqi military because they're our allies when in reality they're only our allies because we choose them to be so and the reason we help them is because we've decided we want them to be in charge.

When did I say insurgents are black and white? I've been trying to show you the whole time that insurgents like Sadr aren't evil the way you think they are and that all the players in Iraq are just glorified militia leaders. Sadr, Maliki, Barzani, Talabani, Hakim, all the Awakening Council leaders, and every other leader in Iraq are all just tribal and militia leaders. W hat makes Maliki the legitimate prime minister while Sadr is the all encomp!@#$%^&*ing evil of Iraq in the western media? We picked Maliki because he was willing to serve our interests while Sadr was more of a nationalist. Why can't we negotiate with Sadr? Because we don't want to. He has gained his support as a nationalist fighting against the raping of his country and the rapist is going to have a lot of trouble negotiating with him without giving some serious concessions. He also has his influence without US help and wouldn't immediately lose all his power without the US propping him up the way we prop up Maliki (although Iran is also props him so maybe he'd survive politically) and that gives him a stronger hand. Why are people in his militia angry at us? Well we've been attacking them and funding those attacking them for years consistently and our corporate media have been painting him the same way for so long (he's been referred to as RADICAL clerical Muqtadar al-Sadr every time his name is first mentioned in just about every New York Times article among other things) it doesn't take a genius to figure out we're only convincing the US population to oppose ever negotiating with him and recognizing he's just as legitimate as any of the other militia leaders. The Mahdi Army is anti OCCUPATION, but how is that not a legitimate viewpoint? They're supported by most Shiites and if we really allowed democracy to take hold they'd at the very least take over several provinces including Basra with its oil and then resist the formerly unrestricted raping of their country by the US. We don't want real democracy there. We want democracy within the confines of supporters of the US. Remember what happened when democracy was allowed to happen in the West Bank and Gaza? The west immediately invalidated it and the western media followed lock step. Let's not kid ourselves at what the occupation actually is because it has nothing to do with helping Iraqis or bringing them freedom or any of that bull!@#$%^&* and I can't understand how anyone can honestly believe that without seriously deluding themselves. The people are worse off than even under Saddam after the sanctions with already more being killed after Saddam's reign than during, women's rights and religious freedom are worse than they were under Saddam in any part of his reign, and the only "democratic" choice you have is whoever will serve US interests and most of the time whoever is already in charge in your area.

I see a serious conflict of interest for the US here. While we ally with Ethiopia in the "war on terror" we're also allied with Egypt so a war with them on opposite sides would be a serious problem for us. Should we support an old ally that we can't afford to lose or a promising new one that could serve our interests in a way that only a Christian dominated, landlocked country surrounded by Muslim and/or hostile countries can?

If we wanted to destroy the Mahdi Army, we'd have to destroy a large part of the population that supports them. That would only create for more recruitment to the Mahdi Army. Now do you see how insurgencies work? Public opinion is what propaganda targets. When you see the media hailing Maliki sending troops into Sadr City as a great and shockingly oh so independent move without US troops then it looks like the government of Iraq is finally "standing on its own feet" and thus the occupation was good. When the truth is that there was a prior agreement to no resistance in return for only making patrols and without American troops involved you have to come to the conclusion that what happened in Basra would happen in Sadr City too (without American help which would prove my point). Therefore, if its not a victory, but instead an acknowledgment of failure, but is presented as a victory all over the American news then all it could be is propaganda. I'm not saying the US media is controlled by the US government. That would be misleading and give too much credence to a mass unproven conspiracy. It's just that the US media is mostly owned by a handful of businesses and these businesses want sensational stories that make them a profit. The Bush administration, as we can all agree, is a master at propaganda and would be looking for anything that would make the occupation look better. I mean look at the "surge". That was a huge propaganda move to convince Americans that we have a real plan. In hindsight the surge by itself only increased the attacks on US soldiers and only the ceasefire with Sunni insurgents and the Mahdi Army reduced violence, but just about everyone was convinced the surge was working. All the media and all the politicians were in agreement that the surge was working yet the people who looked beyond the propaganda move (liberals mostly) could clearly see back then exactly what it was and what it would lead to. Bush wants to hand the Iraq War to the next president and he's doing a great job with it. Don't kid yourself that the moves Maliki is making is independent. Even the attack on Basra was being planned with the US. They didn't want Sadrists to win in the upcoming provincial elections and take over Basra and some other southern provinces. The only way to stop them was to remove them physically. It was all being planned out, but Maliki was impatient and made the move sooner than he was supposed to and that's what was a surprise to Bush.

Well we did first start out with a massive air assault on Sadr City and the cutting up of 2 big pieces of it with walls. Then we shared intelligence with them and helped plan out the attack. Sounds like the US is trying to destroy the Mahdi Army to me. We dictate what Iraq can and can't do all the time, but hey if it's something Bush wants them to do anyway then "we're supposed to be !@#$%^&*isting the Iraqi advancement into a stable military, not dictating what Iraq can and can't do". I actually found out that the only reason Maliki and the Badr Organization's militias (the Iraqi Army) could go into Sadr City without massive American military intervention and not get annihilated was because of another ceasefire between Maliki and Sadr in which Sadr agreed to let Iraqi troops into Sadr City to do patrols as long as US troops weren't with them. Therefore, the Iraqi Army accomplished an assault on Sadr City without American military help with little trouble only because that was the deal. If we had sent American troops in that would have led to an actual conflict. Here's the link. I'm not sure why Maliki decided to send so many troops all at one, but chances are it was to score a propaganda victory for the still gullible Americans that the Iraqi Army defeated Sadr in a battle. Considering that all the news reports were talking about how the Iraqi Army "did it all by themselves!" whereas the truce also stipulated not attacking Mahdi Army militia members and the heavy weapons that are supposed to be removed from Mahdi control have already been removed and hidden (as with the IED's that surprisingly disappeared before Iraqi troops moved in) there's no other way to see this, but as a propaganda move.

Oooo I'm glad you fell into the trap of not reading through the whole article and making exactly the point I hoped you make. "But the Americans shared intelligence, coached the Iraqis during the planning and provided overhead reconnaissance throughout the operation." Sure the article is trying very hard to push the propaganda that the "Iraqi Army" is competent, but it did admit that the US was heavily involved and knew full well everything that was going on. Thanks for ignoring that part.

When did I say Petraeus is a puppet? Here's your proof for the US being willing to negotiate with Sadr. Click here Negotiation at its finest eh?

It's not that Bush disagrees with one of his generals. It's that he would be disagreeing publicly with the general that he himself has built up through propaganda and now disagreeing with the man that people !@#$%^&*ociate with Bush becoming more competent would make him look indecisive. The point, however, is that this argument simply rules out the possibility of Bush publicly disagreeing with Petraeus, but in no way relates to the evidence of actions taken by Bush against negotiation with Sadr. Even if you could prove the former to not be necessarily true then you still have to prove his actions aren't done in a way that shows opposition to negotiation with Sadr.

I was making a well known claim that's been well proven. You wanted to argue anything I said. I proved you don't even know what you're talking about so there you go. Anyone who has a decent knowledge of Africa and thus can debate intelligently would have known the map was outdated instead of picking all the pieces as if simply looking at the map will give you all the information you need.

Honestly, I'm used to you debating me without knowing much of anything of what you're actually debating. You extend the debate endlessly because that's the nature of debates because you don't want to admit you can be wrong and I knew you'd do exactly the same thing here even though you clearly have no idea what you're talking about. You made the claim that the West didn't set up the borders of Africa. Rather than endlessly debate you on yet another thread and accomplish nothing I tricked you into flat out proving you're just pushing your own opinions without knowing the facts. I think it's a reasonable move, if mean.