Friday, June 09, 2006

Windspike's Scary Questions For An Otherwise Sedate Weekend

7:23 PM Update: Just heard on the news (NPR) this evening, that we won't be paying out the 25 Million reward on Zarqawi's head. Alas, that makes these questions below moot. On my behalf, at the time I wrote this post it was unclear as to who would be awarded the cash, and they administration was not talking. Such is the danger of posting in advance of more information - no harm done, unlike the W, Rove and Co starting the Iraqi Conflagration based on false intelligence...but I don't wish to digress here.

So, I'll pose another question should you choose to respond to either, be my guest. But, I stand by my original questions, however rhetorical they may be, as good ones to consider...perhaps for the time when some one tries to collect on the OBL offer.

With out further ado, here's a substitute question for the weekend:
  • Is the Rerturn on Investment - the killing of Zarqawi - worth the outlay (Count KIA GIs, Dead Civilians, bribes paid out, whatever you like...), given that the end result is unknown (bear in mind that it may be the unknown unknows that eventually kill us)?
Earlier post is below for your reference:

After blogging a bit myself and reviewing some of the writing on the killing of Zarqawi, it occurred to me it would be interesting to hear what others might think of a couple of related scary questions. So, I thought I would pose them to the blogisphere over the weekend so y'all could have at it. Let's call this....drum roll, please:

Windspike's Scary Questions for an Otherwise Sedate Weekend
  1. What will the W, Rove and Co. do when the person who wins the 25 million dollar reward for going Benedict Arnold on Zarqawi starts using that cash to build better IEDs to aim at our troops, or us on American soil for that matter?
  2. Where did that cash reward come from in the first place, and how much will it ultimately cost the American Taxpayer?
  3. Was this reward some kind of grand ploy to seed more insurgents to keep the "war on terror" going...ramping up to just before the November elections?

3 comments:

Mr. Anthrope said...

You know, it's stupid posts like these that make people think we liberals are a bunch of idiots.
1. If you had read and done a little bit more studying, you'd know that the guy who gave the info isn't eligible for the money. But even if he was eligible, why would someone committed to the insurgency cause give up the leader?
2. The reward came from the US Treasury. However, if you consider (which you obviously didn't) the amount of money we were spending trying to hunt this guy down, you'd know that having him dead would justify a much larger reward than a piddly $25M.
3. More dead American soldiers does not equal higher approval ratings for Republicans, idiot.

Unknown said...

Gee, Ant,
You sound angry. How do you know I am a liberal? I don't know if I would classify myself in your league. My posts stand for themselves.

Additionally, the burden is upon you to provide links to prove your theories. Luckily for you, the reports I have heard substantiate your claim - indeed, we keep the 25 mill. BTW, I was reading the whitehouse web location for my info...so, who is doing the misleading here?

Sounds to me like you have left out a substantial amount of "cost" out of your accounting as to how much this one head cost us...I'll redirect you to my secondary question, typed and updated in the post above this evening.

I'm having a difficult time figuring out who the idiot is - you, me or the W, Rove and Co. Which one would be better suited to your anathema?

Blog on my friend. Blog on. Any one else care to chime in...by all means. It's part of our first amendment rights.

Jeremy said...

Well this perfect. A fellow "liberal" acting like a fucking asshole on someone's blog toward another liberal (not trying to stereotype you windspike) regardless of the fact that you two probably agree on 90% of everything. I had this happen on my site too, and I'm getting pretty sick of it.

Mr. Anthrope - to respond to your first fucking ridiculous point - those committed to the insurgency are actually fighting among themselves just as much as they're fighting us. In fact, it's probably more internal than a cohesive external effort. Zarqawi wasn't exactly the quintessential Al Qaeda "leader" and in fact had a lot of internal conflict with bin Laden and al Zawahiri. So to say that someone giving up Zarqawi means they're the antithesis of the insurgency, is quite a loaded statement.

Secondly, the money we're spending in Iraq was hardly geared toward hunting down Zarqawi - Al Qaeda is a very small portion of the violence we see in Iraq, despite what the MSM would have us believe. We're burning money in a lot of other buckets that aren't related to him at all.

Finally, dead American soldiers does in fact catalyze rage toward the insurgency, and Iraqis in general from the greater American public, whether or not they're Republican. While this war has grown unpopular for many reasons, the mounting death toll is the least of what causes Republicans to defect. They're more concerned about spending and the forecast in terms of "winning" the war than anything else.

If you have so much contempt for other liberal sites, perhaps you ought to focus your energy toward conservatives who keep this war going, rather than those who agree with you more times than not. Let the assholes from the conservative agenda run their mouths - we have enough of them to deal with. Christ.