I might even buy tickets for you and your friend Scott to go to Iraq if they
are only for one way.
"Jeff Strickland" <crwlr@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:pLWdnXgoMdFvY9rYnZ2dnUVZ_oednZ2d@ez2.net...[color=blue]
> The point, Art, is that things in Iraq are not much different than in
> California.
>
> It pains me to explain such simple stuff ...
>
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> "Art" <begunaNOSPAMPLEASE@mindspring.com> wrote in message
> news:GIS1h.460$ig4.402@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net...[color=green]
>> Scott, you are welcome to vacation in Iraq this year as far as I am
>> concerned. Take the rest of the right wingers with you.
>>
>>
>> "Scott in Florida" <askifyouwant@mindspring.net> wrote in message
>> news:r8pfk2lj9nd4p53i602jd3cvrvur5f4j1f@4ax.com...[color=darkred]
>>> Iraq vs. California
>>>
>>> The following has a very interesting perspective.
>>>
>>> Victor Davis Hanson is a professor at Fresno State August 3, 2006 Eye
>>> of the Beholder by Victor Davis Hanson The American Enterprise Online
>>>
>>> War-torn Iraq has about 26 million residents, a peaceful California
>>> perhaps now 35 million. The former is a violent and impoverished
>>> landscape, the latter said to be paradise on Earth. But how you
>>> envision either place to some degree depends on the eye of the
>>> beholder and is predicated on what the daily media appear to make of
>>> each.
>>>
>>> As a fifth-generation Californian, I deeply love this state, but still
>>> imagine what the reaction would be if the world awoke each morning to
>>> be told that once again there were six more murders, 27 rapes, 38
>>> arsons, 180 robberies, and 360 instances of assault in California -
>>> yesterday, today, tomorrow, and every day. I wonder if the headlines
>>> would scream about "Nearly 200 poor Californians butchered again this
>>> month!"
>>>
>>> How about a monthly media dose of "600 women raped in February alone!"
>>> Or try, "Over 600 violent robberies and assaults in March, with no end
>>> in sight!" Those do not even make up all of the state's yearly
>>> 200,000 violent acts that law enforcement knows about.
>>>
>>> Iraq's judicial system seems a mess. On the eve of the war, Saddam let
>>> out 100,000 inmates from his vast prison archipelago. He himself still
>>> sits in the dock months after his trial began. But imagine an Iraq
>>> with a penal system like California's with 170,000 criminals - an
>>> inmate population larger than those of Germany, France, the
>>> Netherlands, and Singapore combined.
>>>
>>> Just to house such a shadow population costs our state nearly $7
>>> billion a year - or about the same price of keeping 40,000 Army
>>> personnel per year in Iraq. What would be the image of our Golden
>>> State if we were reminded each morning, "Another $20 million spent
>>> today on housing our criminals"?
>>>
>>> Some of California 's most recent prison scandals would be easy to
>>> sensationalize: "Guards watch as inmates are raped!" Or "Correction
>>> officer accused of having sex with under-aged detainee!" And apropos
>>> of Saddam's sluggish trial, remember that our home state multiple
>>> murderer, Tookie Williams, was finally executed in December 2005 - 26
>>> years after he was originally sentenced.
>>>
>>> Much is made of the inability to patrol Iraq's borders with Iran,
>>> Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Turkey. But California has
>>> only a single border with a foreign nation, not six. Yet over 3
>>> million foreigners who sneaked in illegally now live in our state.
>>> Worse, there are about 15,000 convicted alien felons incarcerated in
>>> our penal system, costing about $500 million a year. Imagine the
>>> potential tabloid headlines: "Illegal aliens in state comprise
>>> population larger than San Francisco!" or "Drugs, criminals, and
>>> smugglers given free pass into California!"
>>>
>>> Every year, over 4,000 Californians die in car crashes - nearly twice
>>> the number of Americans lost so far in three years of combat
>>> operations in Iraq. In some sense, then, our badly maintained roads,
>>> and often poorly trained and sometimes intoxicated drivers, are even
>>> more lethal than Improvised Explosive Devices. Perhaps tomorrow's
>>> headline might scream out at us: "300 Californians to perish this
>>> month on state highways! Hundreds more will be maimed and crippled!"
>>>
>>> In 2001, California had 32 days of power outages, despite paying
>>> nearly the highest rates for electricity in the United States. Before
>>> complaining about the smoke in Baghdad rising from private generators,
>>> think back to the run on generators in California when they were
>>> contemplated as a future part of every household's line of defense.
>>>
>>> We're told that Iraq's finances are a mess. Yet until recently, so
>>> were California's. Two years ago, Governor Schwarzenegger inherited a
>>> $38 billion annual budget shortfall. That could have made for strong
>>> morning newscast teasers: "Another $100 million borrowed today - $3
>>> billion more in red ink to pile up by month's end!"
>>>
>>> So is California comparable to Iraq? Hardly. Yet it could easily be
>>> sketched by a reporter intent on doing so as a bankrupt, crime-ridden
>>> den with murderous highways, tens of thousands of inmates, with
>>> wide-open borders.
>>>
>>> I myself recently returned home to California, without incident, from
>>> a visit to Iraq's notorious Sunni Triangle. While I was gone, a
>>> drug-addicted criminal with a long list of convictions broke into our
>>> kitchen at 4 a.m., was surprised by my wife and daughter, and fled
>>> with our credit cards, cash, keys, and cell phones.
>>>
>>> Sometimes I wonder who really was safer that week.
>>>
>>> ©2006 Victor Davis Hanson Victor Davis Hanson
>>>
>>> Victor Davis Hanson is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution,
>>> Stanford University , a Professor Emeritus at California University,
>>> Fresno , and a nationally syndicated columnist for Tribune Media
>>> Services.
>>>
>>> He was a full-time farmer before joining California State University,
>>> Fresno, in 1984 to initiate a classics program. In
>>> 1991, he was awarded an American Philological Association Excellence
>>> in Teaching Award, which is given yearly to the country's top
>>> undergraduate teachers of Greek and Latin.
>>>
>>> Hanson was a National Endowment for the Humanities fellow at the
>>> Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford,
>>> California
>>> (1992-93), a visiting professor of classics at Stanford University
>>> (1991-92), a recipient of the Eric Breindel Award for opinion
>>> journalism (2002), and an Alexander Onassis Fellow (2001) and was
>>> named alumnus of the year of the University of California, Santa Cruz
>>> (2002). He was also the visiting Shifrin Chair of Military History at
>>> the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis , Maryland (2002-3).
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> Scott in Florida
>>>[/color]
>>
>>[/color]
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