{"id":117,"date":"2006-11-03T11:02:53","date_gmt":"2006-11-03T17:02:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/2006\/11\/03\/vote-to-save-american-lives\/"},"modified":"2006-11-03T11:03:57","modified_gmt":"2006-11-03T17:03:57","slug":"vote-to-save-american-lives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/2006\/11\/03\/vote-to-save-american-lives","title":{"rendered":"Vote Democrat to Save American Lives"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you’re still entertaining foolish thoughts of voting for Republican Party candidates next week, you might want to read this op-ed piece by economist Paul Krugman<\/a> in the NY Times. Since it requires a registration to read, I’ll take the liberty of quoting parts of it here:<\/p>\n

\nBechtel, the giant engineering company, is leaving Iraq. Its mission \u2014 to rebuild power, water and sewage plants \u2014 wasn\u2019t accomplished: Baghdad received less than six hours a day of electricity last month, and much of Iraq\u2019s population lives with untreated sewage and without clean water. But Bechtel, having received $2.3 billion of taxpayers\u2019 money and having lost the lives of 52 employees, has come to the end of its last government contract.<\/p>\n

As Bechtel goes, so goes the whole reconstruction effort. Whatever our leaders may say about their determination to stay the course\/complete the mission, when it comes to rebuilding Iraq they\u2019ve already cut and run. The $21 billion allocated for reconstruction over the last three years has been spent, much of it on security rather than its intended purpose, and there\u2019s no more money in the pipeline.<\/p>\n

The failure of reconstruction in Iraq raises three questions. First, how much did that failure contribute to the overall failure of the war? Second, how was it that America, the great can-do nation, in this case couldn\u2019t and didn\u2019t? Finally, if we\u2019ve given up on rebuilding Iraq, what are our troops dying for?\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s the beginning. You’ll have to register to read the middle (I do have a shred of respect for copyrights, after all), but here’s the end:<\/p>\n

\nBack in June, after a photo-op trip to Iraq, Mr. Bush said something I agree with. \u201cYou can measure progress in megawatts of electricity delivered,\u201d he declared. \u201cYou can measure progress in terms of oil sold on the market on behalf of the Iraqi people.\u201d But what those measures actually show is the absence of progress. By any material measure, Iraqis are worse off than they were under Saddam.<\/p>\n

And we\u2019re not planning to do anything about it: the U.S.-led reconstruction effort in Iraq is basically over. I don\u2019t know whether the administration is afraid to ask U.S. voters for more money, or simply considers the situation hopeless. Either way, the United States has accepted defeat on reconstruction.<\/p>\n

Yet Americans are still fighting and dying in Iraq. For what?\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Vote the Republicans out of office next week. Let the Democrats bring thousands of Americans home before they’re killed perpetuating a lost war that was started based on lies by Bush.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you’re still entertaining foolish thoughts of voting for Republican Party candidates next week, you might want to read this op-ed piece by economist Paul Krugman in the NY Times. Since it requires a registration to read, I’ll take the liberty of quoting parts of it here: Bechtel, the giant engineering company, is leaving Iraq.… Continue reading Vote Democrat to Save American Lives<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}