do you think the economy is in the shitter, because of the war?

[G_j]

I do, at the least, the cost of the Iraq war has drained the country possibly to the point of no return.
The corporations/military industrial complex own the day, as for the American people?

& for me, it is still, "the war, stupid"

[L0oniX]

1. Yes.

Look at how much fuel is used for the war and of course how much money is being spent and the distraction of the war when there are many more important internal problems to be focused on. The biggest problem for the last almost 8 years is Bush and Cheney.

[newfie11]

2. of course!!

[NotThisTime]

3. yup, no doubt /nt

[marmar]

4. An even greater reason, and the reason for the war itself:

Corporatism. The United States has become a corporate state, in which corporations write policies and laws in their own interest, to the detriment of the people. The Iraq War, like most wars, is a corporate war.

[YOY]

5. Even pig headed Republicans can read the "bottom line"

If the human, reputational, and over all moral cost of the war isn't enough the monetary is.

[lligrd]

6. The War Is A Big Part Of It

but this has always been part of their plan to eliminate social programs including Social Security by saying we could no longer afford them. Another Repug term and they might just get their way.

[Rockholm]

7. Yes.

[judy]

8. Yes, no doubt about it...

The war is designed to benefit the few, and fleece the many.
We are paying for it, and it benefits the private contractors -and their shareholders, and I won't mention any names- and the oil companies, and I guess banks in the Cayman Islands.
Nice scam!

[kentuck]

9. Obama needs to start tying the war to the economy...

Who knows how much oil the military uses each day in Iraq and surrounding bases? Surely enough to impact the supply, would be my estimate. Not only that, but the surrounding countries are obviously not friendly to the US efforts in Iraq, as witnessed by the Saudi slap-down of Bush just a couple of weeks ago. They seem to have finally figured out a way to get America out of Iraq. Drive up the price of oil to the point where they collapse the American economy. It seems to be working quite well.

[Mz Pip]

10. The war

No energy policy.

No economic policy beyond tax cuts.

A combination of ingredients but the war is certainly a big part of it.

[dawgman]

11. I think the econlomy is in the shitter because

over the long term unchecked, free market capitalism growth is unsustainable. Consumers buy products. Consumers must make a decent wage to be consumers. In order to make goods more affordable in a competitive marketplace, producers must pay labor less. Consumers are labor. When labor is paid less or no longer employed they cease to be consumers on the same scale. Therefore fewer goods are consumed. Therefore the economy sucks.

Add to that increasing cost of production, unsustainable consumption of raw materials and the continuing outsourcing of production jobs and the economy REALLY sucks.

That being said all we need is more free trade.... :sarcasm:

[Beausoleil]

12. Really, it's the culmination of corporatist policies

over the last three decades. Trickle down has been nothing but pissing on us and telling us it's raining.

The war represents the final, crashing blow to the middle-class. From emptying out the treasury, saddling us and our grandchildren with overwhelming debt to exacerbating our addiction to a dwindling resource upon which our whole society is based, the final blow could be fatal. Without the middle-class, there is no American economy as we know it; there is no America as we know it. The corporatists and their fascist elite sponsers will have won it all.

[shanti]

13. of course

we've been hemhorraging money since the occupation started.

[cloudythescribbler]

14. To paraphrase an old joke: a trillion here, a trillion there, it adds up!

[CanonRay]

15. I think it's 75%

The rest is just bad economic policy by the Fed and Shrub, and bad tax policy letting good paying jobs go overseas and not protecting our industries.

[B Calm]

16. The economy is in the shitter because of un-checked PREDATORY CAPITALISM!

[leftofthedial]

17. the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq is the centerpiece

of a massive theft by the corporatocracy and their oligarch masters

[wildbilln864]

18. Well duh!

Yes!

[Winterblues]

19. It started heading for the shitter on Jan 21st 2001

and has remained there ever since. What "war" are you talking about? "War on Drugs", "War on Poverty", "War on Terra"? None are really wars you know...

[Javaman]

20. I'd like to think of it more as the perfect shit storm...

war, housing bubble, credit crush, peak oil, high gas prices, etc.