Army Husker

Thank you for your service Army Husker! Army, I know your pain, I've gotten jobbed many a times by AFN Yeah, they had it on the schedule, and just changed it last night. Ah well...

Damn you AFN...stupid baseball instead of the game.

Right now things such as: Sanctions on Iran (They lost much of their oil exports because of this and the value of their dollar, rial, has plunged=rise in oil prices) Washington's lack of involvement in possible Israeli attack on Iran (Same premise...would disrupt oil flowing thru the Straight of Hormuze) Unrest in the Middle East (Self explanatory) Uncertainty in the European Union's economy (Oil is tied to economy as has been proven worldwide) China possibly hitting an economic growth bubble (Large importer of world oil supply) I guess speculation? Seems every major country has a hand in the price of current oil prices. From government policy to major world banks. If you look at many of the above scenarios, Washington has/is/will have a hand in them, which will affect the price of oil in which ever decision they make on the situation.

Here's a link for AFN schedule over here...so far this year they have shown 3 games. And i've missed every one of them. http://www.afneurope.net/TVSchedules/tabid/83/Default.aspx

Couldn't disagree more, the military's budget doesn't need anymore tax payer money in it. Once the war stages down the budget shouldn't increase for anything other than inflation. Unless God forbid we enter into an unforeseen large scale war. In terms of US dollars we spend about 6 times as much as anyone else in the world on our military. The US Military is in more places worldwide than the military of any other country...you are going to need a larger budget to sustain that. As long as US interests stay overseas, and demand soldier presence in the process, the military budget is almost not even something to argue about. Almost.

Eric...never got that email. Edit: Got it...thanks!

Not sure why the article title just has Fox New's name in it when this quote is in there...

Where does everyone like to read their news from? At this point, I can't stand anything that gets aired on television...I usually stick to FP and The Hill, and even then it's biased to a point. Edit: Can't get the link to work for some reason...

http://www.nytimes.c...?pagewanted=all That's laughable...NY Times never bought into "hope and change"? Also laughable is Lilla's comment of "Conservatives need a psychological specialist". Pot calling the kettle black comes to mind.

What's your opinion Army Husker? Thanks for your service. My pleasure carlfense... As for necessity, yes, at first. And I mean the first few years only. However, that necessity was wasted here by sending soldiers to Iraq. The main effort should only have been focused in Afghanistan. By sending in a skeleton crew, we afforded the insurgents the time to move to outlying areas to train, get equipped by nearby pro-insurgent countries and recruit foreign fighters to come back and fight. Even then I doubt it would have eliminated the threat. To this day you kill a bad guy, and another replaces him within days. Kind of like I mentioned above...I think there are more issues with the social machine in Afghanistan than with anything else. Afghan soldiers don't have the same fight in them like Coalition soldiers. We will create a large vacuum here when we leave. Edit: More to follow...have to wake up early in the morning!

The war in Iraq was inevitable because Saddam was a dumb ass. If you think I'm wrong, then he had to be an idiot to invade Kuwait. He would have done something to piss off the morons at the U.N., and the blue helmets would have been sent in. Which means, we'd have been there too... Afghanistan wasn't inevitable, it was necessary... What do you feel was/is the necessity of being here (Afghanistan)? The fact that we were there to eliminate the opposition. But the thing is, I feel the folks over there haven't been able to properly do their job due to beauracratic bullsh#t.... And we continue to eliminate them every day here. I would have to say that bureaucracy has played a small part in getting hobbled time to time, but I would lean towards a larger, societal picture being the real issue of why things aren't, and will not get done here. I'm still on the fence whether or not it was necessary. Edit: And by societal issues, I mean on the part of the Afghan people.

The war in Iraq was inevitable because Saddam was a dumb ass. If you think I'm wrong, then he had to be an idiot to invade Kuwait. He would have done something to piss off the morons at the U.N., and the blue helmets would have been sent in. Which means, we'd have been there too... Afghanistan wasn't inevitable, it was necessary... What do you feel was/is the necessity of being here (Afghanistan)?

Thanks!!

That's awesome...flown over them a few times while out and about. Hope he has a safe deployment, and that December gets there sooner than later for him and his unit.

Where's he at?

Loved the X-Files...hated how David Duchovney drug it down in the end cause of money. But I guess that happens a lot to good shows. Great cast...too bad the show spiralled out of control the last season and a half!

If you only knew of the wastefullness going on here. Could you elaborate or give some examples? I have come to believe, and often argue in this forum, that any large taxpayer funded beauracracy, especially our federal government, military, etc., naturally becomes highly inefficient and wasteful in regards to how they spend our money. Do you believe it is that or is the wastefulness in Afghanistan due to something else? I occasionally bid on state and federal jobs and the specs and conditions you have to abide by are designed for no better reason than driving the cost up senselessly. As an example; I recently got a request from an elderly handicapped veteran needing a handrail installed at the front entrance to his home. It should've been a $400-$500 job (the guy lives only 2 blocks from our business and I really wanted to help him out). Then I found out he wanted to use a grant from veteran affairs and to use that the project needed to comply with federal regulations and ADA, be inspected by 2-3 different agencies, and the vendor must agree to wait 90 days to be paid. My price would've went up to $2,000 but, I simply apologized to him and told him I didn't want to do it if it had to be done that way. That was about 3 months ago and the poor guy still doesn't have a handrail. I'll give you a really quick example. Where I am at is a fairly large place. To drive around that airfield to get to work, we are provided sh**ty, beat down Toyota Hilux vehicles. They are rusted out, beat up and break down all the time. Wheels fall off, windshield wipers dont work...you get the picture. The military rents these vehicles from the local economy at $1000US a month. There are about a couple hundred of these trucks running around between us and the other countries at this post. You could buy one of these used in the same condition for about the same price.

If you only knew of the wastefullness going on here.

Adding a little color to this crappy brown and sandy country...

Somebody tell the refs they can't make up for sh**ty calls all in one play alone...

---speechless---

Block in the back, no??

Indeed...go for a soft spot

WHAT!!

OMG!!! It cannot be that loud...idiot