Poirot, if any person is stupid enough to spend his entire bank account and then max out his credit card, he or she can maintain a lavish lifestyle until the bill comes in. But when the bill does come in, then you have to pay all that money back before you can build up your bank balance again. You have a personnel budget and you know you can't spend forever. Yet you seem to think that governments can. One reason why I stopped being a trendy lefty was because of Margaret Thatcher. Because of Labour Party socialist mismanagement Britain was called "the poor man of Europe" and the Labour PM (Callahan) resigned because he was hamstrung in everything he did by people who think like you.

Along came Margaret. Here is a woman worthy of your admiration. A greengrocers daughter who first attained a science degree and then a law degree. Her most famous quote (other than "on yer bike") was that "Socialism always fails because sooner or later, the socialists run out of other people's money to spend." Truer words have rarely been spoken. Much to the amazement of the world, Margaret Thatcher got Britain working again. But I am sure that the bankrupt Greeks, Spanish and Cypriots think just like you do.

Now we get down to the liberation of Iraq. Saddam Hussein started a war with Iran in which a milion people died. He then invaded Kuwait, who is not just a UN member but a founding member of the League of Nations. Of course the Americans saw advantage to themselves from liberating Kuwait, why do you think that this is insidious? That left the USA with a moral problem when Saddam began mass murdering people who looked towards the USA for protection. His claim that he was working on a bomb was the final straw. The bloke was just too dangerous and the yanks finally got rid of him. How that sits with the Iraqis depends on which tribe, religion or ethnicity they are.

LEGO,

The US backed Saddam until they didn't back him.

Full stop.

http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/

"The U.S., having decided that an Iranian victory would not serve its interests, began supporting Iraq: measures already underway to upgrade U.S.-Iraq relations were accelerated, high-level officials exchanged visits, and in February 1982 the State Department removed Iraq from its list of states supporting international terrorism. (It had been included several years earlier because of ties with several Palestinian nationalist groups, not Islamicists sharing the worldview of al-Qaeda. Activism by Iraq's main Shiite Islamicist opposition group, al-Dawa, was a major factor precipitating the war -- stirred by Iran's Islamic revolution, its endeavors included the attempted assassination of Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz.)

Prolonging the war was phenomenally expensive. Iraq received massive external financial support from the Gulf states, and assistance through loan programs from the U.S. The White House and State Department pressured the Export-Import Bank to provide Iraq with financing, to enhance its credit standing and enable it to obtain loans from other international financial institutions. The U.S. Agriculture Department provided taxpayer-guaranteed loans for purchases of American commodities, to the satisfaction of U.S. grain exporters.

The U.S. restored formal relations with Iraq in November 1984, but the U.S. had begun, several years earlier, to provide it with intelligence and military support (in secret and contrary to this country's official neutrality) in accordance with policy directives from President Ronald Reagan...."

"The U.S., which followed developments in the Iran-Iraq war with extraordinary intensity, had intelligence confirming Iran's accusations, and describing Iraq's "almost daily" use of chemical weapons, concurrent with its policy review and decision to support Iraq in the war [Document 24]. The intelligence indicated that Iraq used chemical weapons against Iranian forces, and, according to a November 1983 memo, against "Kurdish insurgents" as well.

What was the Reagan administration's response? A State Department account indicates that the administration had decided to limit its "efforts against the Iraqi CW program to close monitoring..."

"....The directive reflects the administration's priorities: it calls for heightened regional military cooperation to defend oil facilities..."

(Nice pic of Rumsfeld and Saddam in link)

LEGO,

Instead of raining Thatcher platitudes upon me, perhaps you'd care to inform yourself of Australia's position in regard to the GFC.

http://www.treasury.gov.au/About-Treasury/OurDepartment/News/response-to-prof-makin

(There's a nifty graph at the bottom - and one of the lines appears to climb above the others...and it's missing a great big drop around 2009)

How could that be?

To Poirot.

Re your cut and paste post on Saddam and the USA. It was all pretty much true. And your point is.....?

Re your post on the Australian economy. If you think that being $400 million dollars in debt with an interest payment of $1 billion a month displays responsible economic leadership, then I am dealing with the Flat Earth Society.

Lego please inform the OLO writers whether the four hundred million dollars has increased or decreased under the Abbott Government, I am interested with your reply. We are all born to spend rather than save, even Abbott.

To Onjab, it must have increased.

Prior to the last election, the Liberal party warned the worried Australian electorate that even when they Liberals got into power, the $400 billion debt would blow out to somewhere between $500 and $600 billion before the Libs could turn the corner. This was because of forward estimates by treasury on unfunded Labor schemes such as the catastrophic "National Disability Scheme" and the self importation of economic migrants who knew how to milk Australia's horrendously expensive social security system.

Faced with a government which had lost control of our borders, and who's financial policy it was to spend money faster than it could think up new taxes to fund it's spending, and with the examples of Greece, Spain and Cyprus showing the way to socialist insolvency, the Gillard/Rudd Labor government was hurled from office.