BLITZER: How much longer will U.S. taxpayers have to shell out $2 billion a week or $3 billion a week as some now are suggesting the cost is going to endure? The loss in blood, the Americans who are killed every month, how much longer do you think this commitment, this military commitment is going to require?
BOEHNER: I think General Petraeus outlined it pretty clearly. We’re making success. We need to firm up those successes. We need to continue our effort here because, Wolf, long term, the investment that we’re making today will be a small price if we’re able to stop al Qaeda here, if we’re able to stabilize the Middle East, it’s not only going to be a small price for the near future, but think about the future for our kids and their kids.
He did mean it. He was not saying the sacrifice of our soldiers is a small price. He was saying that the cost of the war in dollars is a small price for a more secure future. He believes as I do that to cut and run in Iraq without first leaving a stable Iraq would be far more dangerous to America and our interests.
about “if you don't learn you get stuck in Iraq” which was clearly aimed at Bush was turned into an ant-troops attack by the GOP.
So let's all cut a Republican Congressional leader slack for being misunderstood. Even if he is willing to continue to let Americans die as a small price.
Right, that’s why he said it was … what were his words? Oh right — “a small price.”
<
p>
You’re quite wrong that he limited his answer to the dollars being spent. Blitzer was as clear as he could be that he was talking about the money and the blood. Boehner didn’t even pay lip service to the deaths of American soldiers. He just said the whole shebang is “a small price” for the fabulous product that will no doubt emerge in a Friedman or two.
<
p>
But you’re right about one thing — he did mean it. And that’s horrifying.
Who's trying to get mileage over Deval's statement that 9/11 resulted from “a failure of human understanding”. In his savage desire to yell at Democrats, he decides that means Americans' misunderstanding, not that of the terrorists.
That's right — the person who twists words to make terrorists look good for political points thinks it's ok to call the deepening stain of American blood in Iraqi soil “a small price to pay”.
He couldn’t answer John Warner’s question about the Iraq occupation making the US safer. The War is not making us safer and Patreaus knows it. You know it and I know it.
<
p>
He is a general of the United States Army and deserves more respect than being called someone's boy.
I will take EaBo’s remark about “respect” seriously as soon as he purges RMG of those who do not treat a certain sitting Senator of the United States with the respect befitting that high office.
Does eabo respect Lieutenant John Kerry the same way he repsect Colonel Ogonoski?
<
p>
What about Republican Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, Powell’s former chief of staff, who says the pre-war Iraq intelligence was a Hoax? Or the many generals, officers and enlisted men who are loudly criticizing the US’s fraudulent motives for enetering Iraq?
<
p>
I think Eabo picks and chooses who are respectable veterans based upon who lines up with his view point.
No response to my request that Senators be treated with respect on your blog? Could that odor wafting over from RMG be … hypocrisy?
I’m also waiting to hear the explanation of Patreaus’s feeling that the Iraq war isn’t keeping us safe.
It’s earned.
<
p>
No one deserves automatic respect. Read about power structures and abuse, and you’ll find that automatic respect is often exploited and the reason many people allow themselves to be manipulated and abused.
<
p>
Irrespective of whose boy David Patreaus is, the man (and he’s just a man, not a God) doesn’t think the war in Iraq is making us safer. That must make the troops feel awesome about their mission.
…in which he states that he supposedly “doesn’t know” if the war in Iraq is making the US safer, and no one on the right has any response.
<
p>
Interesting.
…and I don’t hear eabo talk about that too often.
<
p>
Also, I wonder if people who deify military personal hold this young man’s opinion in the same regards as they do of all the Generals who support staying the course in Iraq? (I mean, the generals that haven’t gotten fired for disagreeing with Bush who told us he would listen to the commanders on the ground.)
<
p>
He believes as I do that to cut and run in Iraq without first leaving a stable Iraq…
<
p>
…you are not going to have a stable Iraq until the Iraqis have organized it along the lines that they want, not along the lines that the western powers wanted.
<
p>
And
<
p>
…would be far more dangerous to America and our interests
<
p>
As far as is known, the Iraqis have not been dangerous to America, or to American interests. Other than, perhaps, American interest in hegemony in the middle east.
<
p>
BTW, you might be well advised to stop using the childish phrases like “cut and run.” “Cut your losses” would be much more appropriate. Iraqis are going to do what they want to do, regardless of the US’s Battle of the Bulge.
feel free to close an obviously unclosed HTML tag.
…David, feel free to do a “close” HTML tag on any post that I fail to do so. I’d get upset if you actually edit my comments (except for spell check–the Pavarotti entry aside, of course), but just feel free to close an unclosed HTML tag.
<
p>
Your point taken: I should be more careful to close the tags. I shall try to do so in the future, but I am moderating among four languages.
I can’t go into comments and edit them (not even my own). That’s why I have to do a new comment to try to close the html tags.
…When I try to close a tag, I say so in the title line. “end italics,” “end bold” and so forth.
<
p>
“…” is, to me at least, an indication of dismissal of a comment.
no intention of having “…” mean anything. The software requires something in the “subject” line before it will let you post, and an ellipsis seemed about as noncommittal as I could get.
Interesting, isn't it, how if you omit the words ” if we're able to stop al Qaeda here” it transforms what any reasonable person would understand as a comparison with the price we will pay if we do not stop al Qaeda here, into what could be peddled as a heartless statement.
It’s not like al Qaeda is based in Iraq in any case, so how will stopping the guys who call themselves “al Qaeda in Iraq” help us against the real international terrorists? Where did the 9/11 terrorists come from? Where did the London bombers come from? It wasn’t Iraq.
<
p>
His statement was indeed heartless.
you should take that up with Boehner’s press person. I’m not the one who suggested he use the “small price” line.
..but I won't.
But then, maybe I'm too effing grown up to take someones words out of context, and then to not-so-cleverly rearrange them in a headline to make them appear sinister.
It's your sandbox David. If you want to hawk an outright lie here, have at it.
Boehner’s the one who said that the dollars and the soldiers were a “small price.” I didn’t. If he didn’t want people thinking that that’s what he thinks, he shouldn’t have said it on CNN. I’m repeating his own words, in exactly the context he used them. That’s what Boehner thinks, because that’s what he said. The “outright lie” is yours, friend, not mine.
But it appears that you have a comprehension problem when reading and lisening to the differently winged.
(emphasis mine)
No, David, you are most certainly NOT repeating his words in context.
You have lifted the term “small price to pay”, REMOVED the words “long term” and ADDED the word “soldiers” to give it an entirely different meaning.
You can take cover behind quotation marks, but your headline employs a shabby technique that I have come to expect from others. However, it surprises me to see you using it.
It’s analogous to me forming a softball team and naming it “The Red Sox in Dorchester”.
<
p>
Also, there is only 1,000 – 5,000 “al-Qaeda in Iraq” combatants out of 27M people in Iraq. The insurgency is 73% Shia. We are not fighting al-Qaeda during this occupation. Saying that we’re paying a small price (regardless of the dispute over Boehner’s meaning of “price”) to stop al-Qaeda in Iraq is total disinformation on the part of anyone who propagates such a myth.
<
p>
So if were not fighting al-Qaeda, for what reason are these Americans dying?
I suppose the reason the GOP pursued Kerry's joke is that it fit into their narrative about Kerry, viz., that he is an out of touch elitist.
Boehner conveniently helps out our narrative about them, viz., they regard Iraq as a game and they don't place much value on the lives thrown into the meat grinder as a result. How much brain trauma and post-traumatic stress and amputated limbs is an occupation worth that might or might not bring stability to Iraq?
To Boehner, the yellow elephants, and those striking such very brave poses, these costs are small.
…I have to agree with EaBo in the first comment on this thread. Boehner was obviously speaking exptemporaneously, and he probably misspoke. He was–to me at least–obviously referring to the money, not to the dead or maimed American soldiers.
<
p>
Virtually nobody in the US cares about the approx. 650K dead Iraqis (Johns Hopkins, Oct 2006), so that isn’t even worth bringing up on a US web site.
<
p>
It really does nothing good to parse every extemporaneous comment for “gotchas.”
Having not head the original, I went to the post above and listened to the question and the answer. The question is about both blood and money. If I heard Blitzer’s question, it’s certainly what I would think I was responding to.
There’s no qualification on the answer, and the “small price” point is repeated in the answer. Personally, I think Boehner meant exactly what he said. The investment in blood and money now in Iraq is a small price relative to the investment in blood and money down the road if we leave now.
<
p>
Whether he’s right about this conclusion is a different issue, but I would interpret his “small price” comment as applying to both money and the dead and wounded.
<
p>
My two cents (now that is a small price).
Review the Video
<
p>
with our ancient computer here in our hovel outside of Munich. It’s on a slow dial-up connection, and having experienced dial-ups, it would take too long to watch, what with the usual interruptions.
<
p>
That’s why I read text. What I read of der Herr Boehners response was that he was pretty much incoherent, but I don’t read that he was likening the trillions of dollars of thrown away (OK, I’ll use American English, instead of hinausgeschmissenes Gelt) of US tax money with the deaths and maimings of US soldiers and their accompanying mercenaries–oops, “contractors”.