Harland Harrison Evades Iraq Arguments

Harland Harrison wrote:

HH) "Vicious" is the best description for the attack on Iraq. (HH

Thanks for sharing your perspective -- 10 time zones removed from Baghdad.  As I said, about 61% of the Iraqi people disagreed.  But hey, what could they possibly know about the situation? :-)

HH) it is laughable to cite "success America had in deposing the Taliban" as a reason to expect a good outcome. (HH

It was a reason to expect that the Iraqi regime could be deposed at much less cost in blood and treasure than many had so loudly feared.  And that expectation was realized.  I repeat: One should distinguish between the 2003 effort to topple/capture Saddam, and the later Sunni-Shia civil war that boiled over in 2006.

HH) the Bush administration intended to destroy any semblance of the existing government, perhaps irrationally (HH

How irrational, to dismantle the army and Baathist party that waged war against its own people and its sovereign neighbors, using chemical weapons in both kinds of endeavor that even Hitler didn't order up from inside his bunker.  http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Monday+morning+quarterbacking

HH) Bush apparently equated Hussein with Gog and Magog in the Book of Revelations! (HH

Well, that's certainly a good reason to give Hussein a lifetime get-out-of-the-gallows-free pass. :-)

Bottom line: unless you can cite a prediction that deposing Saddam would spark a civil war, AND you have evidence that said civil war wasn't inevitable, then you're not engaging my argument.

HH) Social Security was not designed to go broke, and that is still not the intention.  Nobody intended a Ponzi scheme. (HH

Ida May Fuller's ROI was 44,000%.  Nah, that's not a Ponzi scheme, that's just savvy investing. :-)

HH)Taxpayers will have to pay about $3 trillion to the government's suppliers and employees.  Don't you call that "income transfer"? (HH

If everything is an "income transfer", then nothing is.  This term has a specific meaning -- at least for those who are serious about policy analysis. 

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfer_payment:  "In economics, a transfer payment (or government transfer or simply transfer) is a redistribution of income in the market system. These payments are considered to be nonexhaustive because they do not directly absorb resources or create output."

From http://glossary.econguru.com/economic-term/transfer+payments: "Payments made without any corresponding production or expectations of production."

From http://www.answers.com/topic/transfer-payment: "A noncompensatory government payment to individuals, as for welfare or social security benefits."