I see these numbers are through 2003...sm
Posted By: Democrat on 2006-08-15
In Reply to: The rest of the numbers. TI - Kfir
Had the conflict calmed down from 2003 - 2006?
Also, mind you, the death and injury toll I posted above is from this latest one month conflict alone.
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That's start of the war in *2003* nm
It chronicles the first few months of 2003...
because the director of the movie is of the opinion that there were some bad decisions made at the get-go and the rest was a domino effect, and had those first few bad decisions not been made it might be a different story in Iraq. The director of this film was actually for going into Iraq...he just blames the bad decisions he illustrates for what is happening now. I saw him interviewed; I can't remember the show. But there are several articles on the net where he was interviewed and explains his position. At any rate...that is why only a few months are chronicled.
Umm...2003...isn't that the PAST, piglet....
I thought you were interested in NOW. :-)
This link went to a 2003 article....
5 years ago....not sure what you want to talk about?
2003 Rockefeller Memo
The 2003 Rockefeller Memo:
Politicize the war, run down the country, sink Bush
The state of Iraq in the mid-90's was a different story than 2003...sm
**In the *mid-1990s* President Clinton himself was talking about the very real POSSIBILITY of having to invade Iraq to take Saddam out.**
Clinton also ordered various air strikes, including suspected WMD sites, that weakened Saddam's army. We marched into Bagdad within two weeks with very few casualties. You can thank Clinton for that!
**To say we prematurely went into this war is naive at best and a downright untruth at worst.**
The war in Iraq may have been long overdue, as in should have been fought in the 80's and early 90's when the Kurds and other opposers were being slaughtered chemically, BUT in 2003 the debate over whether Iraq was the target to retaliate for the 9-11 attacks because of a) link to Al Quada, or b) WMD. This has all proved to be feeble, nonexistent, mistakes or lies. The genocide argument doesn't wash on why we are in Iraq because it only came up conveniently after the reason congress approved this war was MIA.
The other **loving** statement Barbara Bush made in 2003
Ignorant fool that she is.
Why should we hear about body bags and deaths, Barbara Bush said on ABC's Good Morning America on March 18, 2003. Oh, I mean, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?
Iraq reconstruction plans in 2003: A flat tax and a no smoking campaign. ((( s/m
Correction to This Article
A Sept. 17 article incorrectly said that one person who helped manage Iraq's budget had no background in accounting. The woman, described as the daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator, has a background in accounting but lacked experience managing the finances of a large organization. Ties to GOP Trumped Know-How Among Staff Sent to Rebuild Iraq
Early U.S. Missteps in the Green Zone
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 17, 2006; A01
Adapted from "Imperial Life in the Emerald City," by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, copyright Knopf 2006
After the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in April 2003, the opportunity to participate in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq attracted all manner of Americans -- restless professionals, Arabic-speaking academics, development specialists and war-zone adventurers. But before they could go to Baghdad, they had to get past Jim O'Beirne's office in the Pentagon.
To pass muster with O'Beirne, a political appointee who screens prospective political appointees for Defense Department posts, applicants didn't need to be experts in the Middle East or in post-conflict reconstruction. What seemed most important was loyalty to the Bush administration.
O'Beirne's staff posed blunt questions to some candidates about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade .
Many of those chosen by O'Beirne's office to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq's government from April 2003 to June 2004, lacked vital skills and experience. A 24-year-old who had never worked in finance -- but had applied for a White House job -- was sent to reopen Baghdad's stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq's $13 billion budget, even though they didn't have a background in accounting.
The decision to send the loyal and the willing instead of the best and the brightest is now regarded by many people involved in the 3 1/2 -year effort to stabilize and rebuild Iraq as one of the Bush administration's gravest errors. Many of those selected because of their political fidelity spent their time trying to impose a conservative agenda on the postwar occupation, which sidetracked more important reconstruction efforts and squandered goodwill among the Iraqi people, according to many people who participated in the reconstruction effort.
The CPA had the power to enact laws, print currency, collect taxes, deploy police and spend Iraq's oil revenue. It had more than 1,500 employees in Baghdad at its height, working under America's viceroy in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, but never released a public roster of its entire staff.
Interviews with scores of former CPA personnel over the past two years depict an organization that was dominated -- and ultimately hobbled -- by administration ideologues.
"We didn't tap -- and it should have started from the White House on down -- just didn't tap the right people to do this job," said Frederick Smith, who served as the deputy director of the CPA's Washington office. "It was a tough, tough job. Instead we got people who went out there because of their political leanings."
Endowed with $18 billion in U.S. reconstruction funds and a comparatively quiescent environment in the immediate aftermath of the U.S. invasion, the CPA was the U.S. government's first and best hope to resuscitate Iraq -- to establish order, promote rebuilding and assemble a viable government, all of which, experts believe, would have constricted the insurgency and mitigated the chances of civil war. Many of the basic tasks Americans struggle to accomplish today in Iraq -- training the army, vetting the police, increasing electricity generation -- could have been performed far more effectively in 2003 by the CPA.
But many CPA staff members were more interested in other things: in instituting a flat tax, in selling off government assets, in ending food rations and otherwise fashioning a new nation that looked a lot like the United States. Many of them spent their days cloistered in the Green Zone, a walled-off enclave in central Baghdad with towering palms, posh villas, well-stocked bars and resort-size swimming pools.
By the time Bremer departed in June 2004, Iraq was in a precarious state. The Iraqi army, which had been dissolved and refashioned by the CPA, was one-third the size he had pledged it would be. Seventy percent of police officers had not been screened or trained. Electricity generation was far below what Bremer had promised to achieve. And Iraq's interim government had been selected not by elections but by Americans. Divisive issues were to be resolved later on, increasing the chances that tension over those matters would fuel civil strife.
To recruit the people he wanted, O'Beirne sought résumés from the offices of Republican congressmen, conservative think tanks and GOP activists. He discarded applications from those his staff deemed ideologically suspect, even if the applicants possessed Arabic language skills or postwar rebuilding experience.
Smith said O'Beirne once pointed to a young man's résumé and pronounced him "an ideal candidate." His chief qualification was that he had worked for the Republican Party in Florida during the presidential election recount in 2000.
O'Beirne, a former Army officer who is married to prominent conservative commentator Kate O'Beirne, did not respond to requests for comment.
He and his staff used an obscure provision in federal law to hire many CPA staffers as temporary political appointees, which exempted the interviewers from employment regulations that prohibit questions about personal political beliefs.
There were a few Democrats who wound up getting jobs with the CPA, but almost all of them were active-duty soldiers or State Department Foreign Service officers. Because they were career government employees, not temporary hires, O'Beirne's office could not query them directly about their political leanings.
One former CPA employee who had an office near O'Beirne's wrote an e-mail to a friend describing the recruitment process: "I watched résumés of immensely talented individuals who had sought out CPA to help the country thrown in the trash because their adherence to 'the President's vision for Iraq' (a frequently heard phrase at CPA) was 'uncertain.' I saw senior civil servants from agencies like Treasury, Energy . . . and Commerce denied advisory positions in Baghdad that were instead handed to prominent RNC (Republican National Committee) contributors."
As more and more of O'Beirne's hires arrived in the Green Zone, the CPA's headquarters in Hussein's marble-walled former Republican Palace felt like a campaign war room. Bumper stickers and mouse pads praising President Bush were standard desk decorations. In addition to military uniforms and "Operation Iraqi Freedom" garb, "Bush-Cheney 2004" T-shirts were among the most common pieces of clothing.
"I'm not here for the Iraqis," one staffer noted to a reporter over lunch. "I'm here for George Bush."
When Gordon Robison, who worked in the Strategic Communications office, opened a care package from his mother to find a book by Paul Krugman, a liberal New York Times columnist, people around him stared. "It was like I had just unwrapped a radioactive brick," he recalled. Finance Background Not Required
Twenty-four-year-old Jay Hallen was restless. He had graduated from Yale two years earlier, and he didn't much like his job at a commercial real-estate firm. His passion was the Middle East, and although he had never been there, he was intrigued enough to take Arabic classes and read histories of the region in his spare time.
He had mixed feelings about the war in Iraq, but he viewed the American occupation as a ripe opportunity. In the summer of 2003, he sent an e-mail to Reuben Jeffrey III, whom he had met when applying for a White House job a year earlier. Hallen had a simple query for Jeffrey, who was working as an adviser to Bremer: Might there be any job openings in Baghdad?
"Be careful what you wish for," Jeffrey wrote in response. Then he forwarded Hallen's resume to O'Beirne's office.
Three weeks later, Hallen got a call from the Pentagon. The CPA wanted him in Baghdad. Pronto. Could he be ready in three to four weeks?
The day he arrived in Baghdad, he met with Thomas C. Foley, the CPA official in charge of privatizing state-owned enterprises. (Foley, a major Republican Party donor, went to Harvard Business School with President Bush.) Hallen was shocked to learn that Foley wanted him to take charge of reopening the stock exchange.
"Are you sure?" Hallen said to Foley. "I don't have a finance background."
It's fine, Foley replied. He told Hallen that he was to be the project manager. He would rely on other people to get things done. He would be "the main point of contact."
Before the war, Baghdad's stock exchange looked nothing like its counterparts elsewhere in the world. There were no computers, electronic displays or men in colorful coats scurrying around on the trading floor. Trades were scrawled on pieces of paper and noted on large blackboards. If you wanted to buy or sell, you came to the exchange yourself and shouted your order to one of the traders. There was no air-conditioning. It was loud and boisterous. But it worked. Private firms raised hundreds of thousands of dollars by selling stock, and ordinary people learned about free enterprise.
The exchange was gutted by looters after the war. The first wave of American economic reconstruction specialists from the Treasury Department ignored it. They had bigger issues to worry about: paying salaries, reopening the banks, stabilizing the currency. But the brokers wanted to get back to work and investors wanted their money, so the CPA made the reopening a priority.
Quickly absorbing the CPA's ambition during the optimistic days before the insurgency flared, Hallen decided that he didn't just want to reopen the exchange, he wanted to make it the best, most modern stock market in the Arab world. He wanted to promulgate a new securities law that would make the exchange independent of the Finance Ministry, with its own bylaws and board of directors. He wanted to set up a securities and exchange commission to oversee the market. He wanted brokers to be licensed and listed companies to provide financial disclosures. He wanted to install a computerized trading and settlement system.
Iraqis cringed at Hallen's plan. Their top priority was reopening the exchange, not setting up computers or enacting a new securities law. "People are broke and bewildered," broker Talib Tabatabai told Hallen. "Why do you want to create enemies? Let us open the way we were."
Tabatabai, who held a doctorate in political science from Florida State University, believed Hallen's plan was unrealistic. "It was something so fancy, so great, that it couldn't be accomplished," he said.
But Hallen was convinced that major changes had to be enacted. "Their laws and regulations were completely out of step with the modern world," he said. "There was just no transparency in anything. It was more of a place for Saddam and his friends to buy up private companies that they otherwise didn't have a stake in."
Opening the stock exchange without legal and structural changes, Hallen maintained, "would have been irresponsible and short-sighted."
To help rewrite the securities law, train brokers and purchase the necessary computers, Hallen recruited a team of American volunteers. In the spring of 2004, Bremer approved the new law and simultaneously appointed the nine Iraqis selected by Hallen to become the exchange's board of governors.
The exchange's board selected Tabatabai as its chairman. The new securities law that Hallen had nursed into life gave the board control over the exchange's operations, but it didn't say a thing about the role of the CPA adviser. Hallen assumed that he'd have a part in decision-making until the handover of sovereignty. Tabatabai and the board, however, saw themselves in charge.
Tabatabai and the other governors decided to open the market as soon as possible. They didn't want to wait several more months for the computerized trading system to be up and running. They ordered dozens of dry-erase boards to be installed on the trading floor. They used such boards to keep track of buying and selling prices before the war, and that's how they'd do it again.
The exchange opened two days after Hallen's tour in Iraq ended. Brokers barked orders to floor traders, who used their trusty white boards. Transactions were recorded not with computers but with small chits written in ink. CPA staffers stayed away, afraid that their presence would make the stock market a target for insurgents.
When Tabatabai was asked what would have happened if Hallen hadn't been assigned to reopen the exchange, he smiled. "We would have opened months earlier. He had grand ideas, but those ideas did not materialize," Tabatabai said of Hallen. "Those CPA people reminded me of Lawrence of Arabia." 'Loyalist' Replaces Public Health Expert
The hiring of Bremer's most senior advisers was settled upon at the highest levels of the White House and the Pentagon. Some, like Foley, were personally recruited by Bush. Others got their jobs because an influential Republican made a call on behalf of a friend or trusted colleague.
That's what happened with James K. Haveman Jr., who was selected to oversee the rehabilitation of Iraq's health care system.
Haveman, a 60-year-old social worker, was largely unknown among international health experts, but he had connections. He had been the community health director for the former Republican governor of Michigan, John Engler, who recommended him to Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense.
Haveman was well-traveled, but most of his overseas trips were in his capacity as a director of International Aid, a faith-based relief organization that provided health care while promoting Christianity in the developing world. Before his stint in government, Haveman ran a large Christian adoption agency in Michigan that urged pregnant women not to have abortions.
Haveman replaced Frederick M. Burkle Jr., a physician with a master's degree in public health and postgraduate degrees from Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth and the University of California at Berkeley. Burkle taught at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, where he specialized in disaster-response issues, and he was a deputy assistant administrator at the U.S. Agency for International Development, which sent him to Baghdad immediately after the war.
He had worked in Kosovo and Somalia and in northern Iraq after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. A USAID colleague called him the "single most talented and experienced post-conflict health specialist working for the United States government."
But a week after Baghdad's liberation, Burkle was informed he was being replaced. A senior official at USAID sent Burkle an e-mail saying the White House wanted a "loyalist" in the job. Burkle had a wall of degrees, but he didn't have a picture with the president.
Haveman arrived in Iraq with his own priorities. He liked to talk about the number of hospitals that had reopened since the war and the pay raises that had been given to doctors instead of the still-decrepit conditions inside the hospitals or the fact that many physicians were leaving for safer, better paying jobs outside Iraq. He approached problems the way a health care administrator in America would: He focused on preventive measures to reduce the need for hospital treatment.
He urged the Health Ministry to mount an anti-smoking campaign, and he assigned an American from the CPA team -- who turned out to be a closet smoker himself -- to lead the public education effort. Several members of Haveman's staff noted wryly that Iraqis faced far greater dangers in their daily lives than tobacco. The CPA's limited resources, they argued, would be better used raising awareness about how to prevent childhood diarrhea and other fatal maladies.
Haveman didn't like the idea that medical care in Iraq was free. He figured Iraqis should pay a small fee every time they saw a doctor. He also decided to allocate almost all of the Health Ministry's $793 million share of U.S. reconstruction funds to renovating maternity hospitals and building new community medical clinics. His intention, he said, was "to shift the mind-set of the Iraqis that you don't get health care unless you go to a hospital."
But his decision meant there were no reconstruction funds set aside to rehabilitate the emergency rooms and operating theaters at Iraqi hospitals, even though injuries from insurgent attacks were the country's single largest public health challenge.
Haveman also wanted to apply American medicine to other parts of the Health Ministry. Instead of trying to restructure the dysfunctional state-owned firm that imported and distributed drugs and medical supplies to hospitals, he decided to try to sell it to a private company.
To prepare it for a sale, he wanted to attempt something he had done in Michigan. When he was the state's director of community health, he sought to slash the huge amount of money Michigan spent on prescription drugs for the poor by limiting the medications doctors could prescribe for Medicaid patients. Unless they received an exemption, physicians could only prescribe drugs that were on an approved list, known as a formulary.
Haveman figured the same strategy could bring down the cost of medicine in Iraq. The country had 4,500 items on its drug formulary. Haveman deemed it too large. If private firms were going to bid for the job of supplying drugs to government hospitals, they needed a smaller, more manageable list. A new formulary would also outline new requirements about where approved drugs could be manufactured, forcing Iraq to stop buying medicines from Syria, Iran and Russia, and start buying from the United States.
He asked the people who had drawn up the formulary in Michigan whether they wanted to come to Baghdad. They declined. So he beseeched the Pentagon for help. His request made its way to the Defense Department's Pharmacoeconomic Center in San Antonio.
A few weeks later, three formulary experts were on their way to Iraq.
The group was led by Theodore Briski, a balding, middle-aged pharmacist who held the rank of lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy. Haveman's order, as Briski remembered it, was: "Build us a formulary in two weeks and then go home." By his second day in Iraq, Briski came to three conclusions. First, the existing formulary "really wasn't that bad." Second, his mission was really about "redesigning the entire Iraqi pharmaceutical procurement and delivery system, and that was a complete change of scope -- on a grand scale." Third, Haveman and his advisers "really didn't know what they were doing."
Haveman "viewed Iraq as Michigan after a huge attack," said George Guszcza, an Army captain who worked on the CPA's health team. "Somehow if you went into the ghettos and projects of Michigan and just extended it out for the entire state -- that's what he was coming to save."
Haveman's critics, including more than a dozen people who worked for him in Baghdad, contend that rewriting the formulary was a distraction. Instead, they said, the CPA should have focused on restructuring, but not privatizing, the drug-delivery system and on ordering more emergency shipments of medicine to address shortages of essential medicines. The first emergency procurement did not occur until early 2004, after the Americans had been in Iraq for more than eight months.
Haveman insisted that revising the formulary was a crucial first step in improving the distribution of medicines. "It was unwieldy to order 4,500 different drugs, and to test and distribute them," he said.
When Haveman left Iraq, Baghdad's hospitals were as decrepit as the day the Americans arrived. At Yarmouk Hospital, the city's largest, rooms lacked the most basic equipment to monitor a patient's blood pressure and heart rate, operating theaters were without modern surgical tools and sterile implements, and the pharmacy's shelves were bare.
Nationwide, the Health Ministry reported that 40 percent of the 900 drugs it deemed essential were out of stock in hospitals. Of the 32 medicines used in public clinics for the management of chronic diseases, 26 were unavailable.
The new health minister, Aladin Alwan, beseeched the United Nations for help, and he asked neighboring nations to share what they could. He sought to increase production at a state-run manufacturing plant in the city of Samarra. And he put the creation of a new formulary on hold. To him, it was a fool's errand.
"We didn't need a new formulary. We needed drugs," he said. "But the Americans did not understand that." A 9/11 Hero's Public Relations Blitz
In May 2003, a team of law enforcement experts from the Justice Department concluded that more than 6,600 foreign advisers were needed to help rehabilitate Iraq's police forces.
The White House dispatched just one: Bernie Kerik.
Bernard Kerik had more star power than Bremer and everyone else in the CPA combined. Soldiers stopped him in the halls of the Republican Palace to ask for his autograph or, if they had a camera, a picture. Reporters were more interested in interviewing him than they were the viceroy.
Kerik had been New York City's police commissioner when terrorists attacked the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. His courage (he shouted evacuation orders from a block away as the south tower collapsed), his stamina (he worked around the clock and catnapped in his office for weeks), and his charisma (he was a master of the television interview) turned him into a national hero. When White House officials were casting about for a prominent individual to take charge of Iraq's Interior Ministry and assume the challenge of rebuilding the Iraqi police, Kerik's name came up. Bush pronounced it an excellent idea.
Kerik had worked in the Middle East before, as the security director for a government hospital in Saudi Arabia, but he was expelled from the country amid a government investigation into his surveillance of the medical staff. He lacked postwar policing experience, but the White House viewed that as an asset.
Veteran Middle East hands were regarded as insufficiently committed to the goal of democratizing the region. Post-conflict experts, many of whom worked for the State Department, the United Nations or nongovernmental organizations, were deemed too liberal. Men such as Kerik -- committed Republicans with an accomplished career in business or government -- were ideal. They were loyal, and they shared the Bush administration's goal of rebuilding Iraq in an American image. With Kerik, there were bonuses: The media loved him, and the American public trusted him.
Robert Gifford, a State Department expert in international law enforcement, was one of the first CPA staff members to meet Kerik when he arrived in Baghdad. Gifford was the senior adviser to the Interior Ministry, which oversaw the police. Kerik was to take over Gifford's job.
"I understand you are going to be the man, and we are here to support you," Gifford told Kerik.
"I'm here to bring more media attention to the good work on police because the situation is probably not as bad as people think it is," Kerik replied.
As they entered the Interior Ministry office in the palace, Gifford offered to brief Kerik. "It was during that period I realized he wasn't with me," Gifford recalled. "He didn't listen to anything. He hadn't read anything except his e-mails. I don't think he read a single one of our proposals."
Kerik wasn't a details guy. He was content to let Gifford figure out how to train Iraqi officers to work in a democratic society. Kerik would take care of briefing the viceroy and the media. And he'd be going out for a few missions himself.
Kerik's first order of business, less than a week after he arrived, was to give a slew of interviews saying the situation was improving. He told the Associated Press that security in Baghdad "is not as bad as I thought. Are bad things going on? Yes. But is it out of control? No. Is it getting better? Yes." He went on NBC's "Today" show to pronounce the situation "better than I expected." To Time magazine, he said that "people are starting to feel more confident. They're coming back out. Markets and shops that I saw closed one week ago have opened."
When it came to his own safety, Kerik took no chances. He hired a team of South African bodyguards, and he packed a 9mm handgun under his safari vest.
The first months after liberation were a critical period for Iraq's police. Officers needed to be called back to work and screened for Baath Party connections. They'd have to learn about due process, how to interrogate without torture, how to walk the beat. They required new weapons. New chiefs had to be selected. Tens of thousands more officers would have to be hired to put the genie of anarchy back in the bottle.
Kerik held only two staff meetings while in Iraq, one when he arrived and the other when he was being shadowed by a New York Times reporter, according to Gerald Burke, a former Massachusetts State Police commander who participated in the initial Justice Department assessment mission. Despite his White House connections, Kerik did not secure funding for the desperately needed police advisers. With no help on the way, the task of organizing and training Iraqi officers fell to U.S. military police soldiers, many of whom had no experience in civilian law enforcement.
"He was the wrong guy at the wrong time," Burke said later. "Bernie didn't have the skills. What we needed was a chief executive-level person. . . . Bernie came in with a street-cop mentality."
Kerik authorized the formation of a hundred-man Iraqi police paramilitary unit to pursue criminal syndicates that had formed since the war, and he often joined the group on nighttime raids, departing the Green Zone at midnight and returning at dawn, in time to attend Bremer's senior staff meeting, where he would crack a few jokes, describe the night's adventures and read off the latest crime statistics prepared by an aide. The unit did bust a few kidnapping gangs and car-theft rings, generating a stream of positive news stories that Kerik basked in and Bremer applauded. But the all-nighters meant Kerik wasn't around to supervise the Interior Ministry during the day. He was sleeping.
Several members of the CPA's Interior Ministry team wanted to blow the whistle on Kerik, but they concluded any complaints would be brushed off. "Bremer's staff thought he was the silver bullet," a member of the Justice Department assessment mission said. "Nobody wanted to question the [man who was] police chief during 9/11."
Kerik contended that he did his best in what was, ultimately, an untenable situation. He said he wasn't given sufficient funding to hire foreign police advisers or establish large-scale training programs.
Three months after he arrived, Kerik attended a meeting of local police chiefs in Baghdad's Convention Center. When it was his turn to address the group, he stood and bid everyone farewell. Although he had informed Bremer of his decision a few days earlier, Kerik hadn't told most of the people who worked for him. He flew out of Iraq a few hours later.
"I was in my own world," he said later. "I did my own thing."
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
The numbers
If there's one thing that surprises me about the ratio, it's that I truly believe it's a much higher number of soldiers that suffers from PTSD. I believe this is a disease that doesn't show itself immediately, so my bet would be that these numbers will rise dramatically, assuming the entire truth is shared with us by the government, once this is all said and done.
ISP numbers
The administrator of this site has her pets (some of the Conservatives on the Politics board, for example), no doubt about that, and has done some bizarre things with people's posts and ISP numbers. Just check page 3 on the Company board under the thread dated 8/18 transcend job - looking for work and see the administrator's defense of this company. I thought it was bizarre, and she was even questioned as to her connection with this particular company, which she didn't answer, and instead responded indicating that she had tracked ISP numbers of some posters and made some sort of accusation that I didn't understand, but I think it had to do with one poster using more than one moniker. I can't find where she has jumped to the defense of any other company. It did seem to stop people from posting about the company, though, which I assume was her intent. I mean, who can feel free to post anything about a company, especially if they are still employed there, if they are afraid their ISP will be tracked if the administrator doesn't agree with the person's opinion of the company?
Just be careful what you post on these boards. Big Sister is definitely watching and is taking down numbers.
Having said that, wouldn't surprise me if my ISP is tracked and compared now. Probably just time to leave this site altogether and find one I can trust. It's just not worth it any more.
Nine numbers.
1. 1,841 soldiers killed in Iraq as of August 12, 2005.
2. $300 billion spent on the Iraq war as of August 12, 2005.
3. 0 - number of WMD found in Iraq.
4. 4 - the multiple by which North Korea has increased its nuclear weapons arsenal while George Bush led us into Iraq.
5. $236 billion - the surplus Bill Clinton left George Bush.
6. $333 billion - the current deficit under G.B.
7. 1 in 5 - the number of American children below the poverty line - an increase of 13% since Bush took office.
8. 5 million - the number of people who have lost their health insurance since Bush took office.
9. 0 - the number of mistakes Bush admits to making during his first term.
And the scandals...Supreme Court right off the bat, corporation scandals, Enron et. al. , Iraq lies and stupidity, hurricane scandal, Michael Brown, Chertoff, Delay, Frist, Scooter, homeland security debacle...it just goes on and on and on. I really think that finally the jig is up for Bush et al. Some pretty well respected tenured people in his own party have had about enough and are becoming vocal about it...Thank God.
Numbers do not mean a whole lot...
when you consider that SIX of them took out THREE THOUSAND of our people. And it would only take a handful of them with dirty suitcase bombs to do unmeasured damage to this country. Not to mention a handful with bombs strapped on them in malls across this country. Teddy, friend, you better WAKE up. And don't think for a minute that the so-called peace-loving Muslims in the world won't jump on the bandwagon when the tide turns in their direction. If they are so peace loving, why are they not standing on rooftops and denouncing what is being done in the name of their peace-loving religion? Put their money where their mouth is so to speak. Curiously silent are they. That should speak volumes to you. Look at Iran...there are a lot of people there who might want a different life, but they are not willing to buck those in power to get it. And neither are any of the other millions of peace loving Muslims around the world, or they would be taking care of this problem in their ranks THEMSELVES. How do you rationalize that??
The numbers in the name actually
Refer to numerology, not the number of letters in the name. This works as follows.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
a b c d e f g h I
j k l m n o p q r
s t u v w x y z
So Barack Hussein Obama would be 2+1+9+1+3+2+8+3+1+1+5+9+5+6+2+1+4+1
This comes to 64. When you have a 2 digit number, you add those together. So Obama, a 64, reduces to 10, which reduces to a 1. That's the name.
You have a different # for the date of birth, which is the life path. You add the day, month and year (all digits) and reduce the same as above. The numbers you don't reduce are 11 and 22. Those are master numbers and stand alone.
You can also do this for every day of the week, month, year, etc.
Now these are numbers you don't hear about.
Nearly 28,000 soldiers who served in Iraq and were discharged have already sought care at a VA facility. Of the nearly 245,000 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan already discharged from service, 12,422 have been in VA counseling centers for readjustment problems and symptoms associated with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Not emails. ISP numbers.
Last week on the company board, someone asked about a certain company. I worked for this company. I responded to the post as honestly as I could.
My post was responded to by the administrator who defended the company and suggested that all the problems were caused by my sound card and not the terrible platform that this company has. (It's a company-wide issue, and this problem is experienced by most employees.)
Someone else responded, confirming what I said to be true and wondering what the administrator's connection to this company was. This was never answered by the administrator.
The administrator instead responded to her OWN post (subsequently disputed by another poster) as I have copied and pasted below.
This made me wonder what motivated this administrator to go through the trouble of tracking ISP numbers of posters. She must have some sort of personal connection to it, so other posters posting about other companies MIGHT be safe, but who knows? Obviously, if someone is unhappy at this particular company and posts her experiences on the board, only to have the administrator track her ISP number, that causes concern as to whether the administrator is sharing these ISP numbers with this company. For that reason, I don't trust this site or the administrator any more, and I'm searching for another, more ethical site to frequent. It's one thing to come to a political board and express your opinion. It's quite another to do it on the company board where people's jobs could be in jeopardy for speaking the truth.
Ok, what I see are the same IP ranges for some of these posts where sound quality is
[Post a Reply] [View Follow Ups] [Company Board]
Posted By: Administrator (sm) on 2005-08-19
In Reply to: Are you sure the sound quality was the platform and not your sound card? Also, I don't know of ma - Administrator nm
concerned. The same poster claimed that the services VR was released too soon, yet another poster says they are making good money. Someone isn't being fair and it's the person posting the same thing more than once.
The rest of the numbers. TI
This is reality in Israel: From 29 September 2000 through 11 January 2003:
5,041 injured, 717 killed, 15,992 attacks
IDF Spokesperson 12 January 2003
Injured: 3,585 Civilians + 1,456 Security Forces = 5,041 Total Israeli Injured
Killed: 503 Civilians + 214 Security Forces = 717 Total Israeli Killed
Total Attacks*: 7,139 West Bank + 8,203 Gaza Strip + 650 Home Front =15,992 Total
* Does not include attacks with rocks or fire bombs.
This is a death toll greater (in proportion) than America suffered on 9/11 and the American people would never tolerate this! So why should Israel have to endure this year after year while the world does nothing? The same people that hate Israel are the same people that hate America!
Whose numbers? Limbaugh's
Proof please. He's still #1 on the talk radio circuit. If he loses a few thousands here and there it's hardly a drop in the bucket. Liberal shows can hardly keep their power on. There's really not an argument there. The proof is in black and white.
Exactly - verifiable numbers
are presented. I can get past whether SP is her friend or her mortal enemy. Give me the meat, I'll go from there.
Maybe she should give someone else the numbers
xyz
Unemployment numbers
The unemployment numbers came out at over 6%, but the number of people working part-time who would prefer full-time would actually be 1 in 10, leading to around 11%. 10 million people are unemployed right now in US. That is a lot of people needing help and it looks like a lot more are going to need help.
Except for your numbers don't account for everything
Do you have any idea how many people, especially minorities in Georgia work "under the table"?
And obviously if an African American is employed and a white is not, then the African American makes more.
Don't even get me started on welfare and how minorities get first dibs on that too.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: It was never about equality, it was about payback. Minorities have more opportunities than ever and more help than ever, while lower and middle class white people are just SOL. They can't get food stamps, they can't get scholarships, they can't get any kind of help the way minorities can.
These numbers are taken out of context and distorted
Don't believe everything you read, especially from anti-American organizations like this that you cite.
I don't think you will get it...Re-read the numbers I posted...nm
Those numbers are GROSSLY exaggerated. sm
By most counts, even CNN, maybe 100,000. Funny, but two weeks ago, there was a prolife march in Washington with over 100,000. I never saw anything about that on the news. Tell me again they are not liberal.
Some grossly minimized the numbers sm
I think the DC Big Brother cams in Washington counted 125,000. Count inside the Mall was 300,000. I do not what figure is accurate, but from pictures I saw the Mall was filled. There was a lot of people there.
The media are corporate and work for the state, not the people. The American people are seriously uninformed and misinformed because of it. This is why we are called The Sleeping Giant in other countries.
I think you're numbers are wrong. The top 5% of
the U.S. makes millions and billions. $200,000 is NOT the 'top 5%' of the country. It's definitely more than a single, head-of-household MT makes, but depending on where you live, it won't put you in that mansion on the hill, either.
When he talks about raising taxes on the top 5%, he's not talking about YOU. He's talking about people like Bill Gates. He's talking about huge corporations (like the oil industry, tobacco industry, HMO & insurance industries, etc.) that rake it in, and then have a jillion and a half loopholes and secret cubbyholes to stash it in.
Then give me the numbers and let me compare them....
simple enough request.
You only seem to understand numbers on paper,
live in the real world? Don't you see, hear and read about this and other issues every single day?
What would be the point in producing a numbers, especially to you? Numbers can be tweeked and skewed to produce whatever result you want them to. (Not unlike the words in the Bible, or the Quran, for that matter).
You know EXACTLY what I and others on this board are talking about when we present our views on the issues, and your constant response, 'Show me the numbers', has gotten a little too repetitive to have much in the way of value.
Denial won't turn those numbers around.
I wouldn't expect too much out of the debate tomorrow either, especially McC caves and makes good on his threat to talk about Ayers. Can you say plunging numbers?
If your not hung up on numbers then don't post about it.
I'm not defending Bush, I'm just getting tired of the Bush bashing. I addressed that below too.
I didn't say you thought Bush was cute or funny, I said you think your comments are cute and funny (they are not).
Bush IS an embarrassment. I will be glad he is not the president anymore. I'm just tired of the Bush bashing and comments made about his IQ (which you did). We get it already, you don't like him. Not sure many do, but enough is enough.
Yes, it's been a hard 8 years. The fact is its been a hard 16 years. Clinton was no better with his gomer pyle attitude and shucks and golly gee. He disgraced the office way long before GW ever took over. The blame for disgracing the office begins with him.
I do hope to see some trials come up. He and the rest of the crew should be held accountable for what they did, but the Bush bashing is getting real old and when you make statements like "A triple digit IQ will be a welcome change for the country" when you know that Bush has a triple digit (that is if you read any websites) your comments are just as offensive as all the other lies put out. I'd find it equally repugnant if people put down and lied about Obama and said he had just a double digit IQ. These lies are getting old.
I'll be glad that Bush is leaving, but there is no reason to celebrate yet. The country is in a world of hurt and we don't know what kind of person Obama is yet. I don't have high hopes as I see people losing their jobs, homes, health care, retirements, etc. That is nothing to be celebrating. If Obama does good and the economy picks up heck yeah, I'm going to be celebrating but not until then. I will celebrate on the anniversary of him being in office, or depending on what happens I will be looking forward to the next election.
You keep trying to defend yourself against what you said, but I find nothing but offense to your original post.
No matter what each of their IQ scores were Obama graduated from Columbia and Harvard, and Bush graduated from Yale and Harvard. You have to be smart to get into those schools. Both of them are. Bush's actions he has displayed - not so great in my books, but neither is Obama's past and what he had done, and especially who he is picking for his cabinet. Definitely not anything to celebrate. I celebrated when they left office along with The Impeached Clinton. Now those nincompoops are back??? Definitely nothing to be celebrating there!
Just please, enough with Bush bashing and calling him names. It's getting real old real fast.
Hte to break this to you, but the rating numbers
say NOTHING about where millions and millions and millions of Americans really go for their news. The internet has given us access to global media. MSNBC is still mainstream and, as a leftie, I can tell you that I find their coverage almost as frustrating as CNN and Fixed News. I need the much broader perspective found on local, national and international English-speaking radio talk shows and news accounts from outside the homeland borders found on the net.
I suspect I'm not the only one, considering the numbers reflected in these ratings are so puny when compared to the actual number of adult US citizens who have soundly rejected US monovision mainstream media outlets all together. Then there is the other side of the coin, those Americans who do not listen to the news at all because mainstream is SUCH a turn-off.
Unemployment numbers. What is 12.5 Million?
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,506405,00.html
What I do not get is it states 4.4 million jobs have been lost since the recession began, but now at 12.5 million. So, about 8 million have been unemployed during, well, basically this year and last year? I guess I am in SHOCK a it is hard for me to want to believe it.
*************************
Unemployment by the Numbers: How Bad Is It Hurting?
Friday, March 06, 2009
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More people are unemployed in America than live in Ohio or go to church in Texas.
Unemployment statistics don't usually leap off the page, but the latest report from the Department of Labor offers some astounding figures. More than 651,000 jobs were cut in February, continuing a steep drop that has raised the unemployment rate to 8.1 percent, its highest level since 1983.
Matched up against some of the latest stats made available by the Census Bureau, those numbers really do begin to add up.
• 651,000 jobs were axed in February, a number larger than the populations of:
- Baltimore
- Seattle
- Denver
- El Paso
- Washington, D.C.
• 12.5 million people are unemployed in the U.S., which is more than the number of:
- people watching ABC's "Lost" this season
- women attending college
- male scientists and engineers
- Americans who grow herbs
- people who played tackle football in the past year.
• 12.5 million people is also a number larger than the populations of 45 states, including
- Ohio
- Pennsylvania
- Michigan
- Virginia
• 4.4 million jobs have been lost since the recession began in December 2007, which is larger than the population of the entire San Francisco Bay Area.
• 2.6 million jobs have been lost in the past four months, which is like every Presbyterian in America getting the ax in one winter, or about the number of senior citizens in Florida.
• 8.6 million people have been forced to work part-time for economic reasons, which is more than the population of New York City, or more than the number of people who try to quit smoking every year.
The roll continues, and it is a stark one: construction companies eliminated 104,000 jobs in February, factories cut 168,000 jobs, retailers sliced nearly 40,000, professional and business services got rid of 180,000, financial companies reduced payrolls by 44,000, and leisure and hospitality firms chopped 33,000 positions.
Despite all the doom and gloom in the Labor Department's numbers, at least one sector had a pretty rosy February: the government boosted its number of employees last month.
Click here to see the Labor Department report.
Numbers aren't looking good for
Only 38% of Americans now think the country is headed in the right direction.
Only 42% favor universal healthcare, and when those who favor it are told that they will probably lower their level of coverage and increase their waiting times, fewer than 20% support it.
59% oppose legalizing marijuana and taxing it. And, when the amount of taxes this would actually raise is given as a percent of the national budget (less than 0.003%) and the potential costs to society are explained, the number who oppose the idea rises to nearly 80%.
Obama's approval index remains low at only +6 (% who strongly approve minus % who strongly disapprove of him). He started at around +30.
A generic Democrat and generic Republican continue to run neck-and-neck in a hypothetical race proposed to voters - +1 to -2 points either way. Not long ago, the generic Democrat was beating the Republican by a substantial margin but this is no longer the case.
The American voter is waking up - and Democrats attending the wake for the Republican party will look up from their drunken revelry to find that the deceased has jumped out of the coffin and is now vigorously engaged in kicking them in their sorry arses. It seems he was never dead in the first place. Consternation reigns.
If this is your philosophy, why are you throwing Bush's numbers around...sm
as if you are proud that he is spending more on social programs than Clinton. Just trying to understand your thinking?
I noticed that Druge and AOL had wayyy different numbers
so there
no numbers, ideas, detail or plan......
DailyKosTV has great video from the big announcement of the GOP budget today. The big news is that there really is no GOP budget. No numbers, no ideas, no details, no plan. They are the party of "NO" -- No future:
Correction. Latest numbers show a 6.5 lead.
how many seats in Congress adn the Senate the democrats gained? The message seems pretty clera to me. How do you keep that hatred from eating you up from the inside out? Obama won because desptie GOP's best efforts, they trust their future more to him than McCain. No amount of negativity can change the feeling of uplift, hope, excitement and enthusiasm for our President-elect. I feel sorry for you that you seem so determined to keep yourself down in the mud pit. Election's over. Your party needs your attention. Your country needs your help. Go figure.
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