good points and post Waldo, but i think that a little debate can be good, to have the oppurtunity to get peoples views. i am sure that both anti-war and pro-war people agree that SH is a bastard, and also that we in this way keep ourselfs informed and from diffrent diffrent sources, i have learned a great deal from this debate, even thou it at times have feelt pointless when one get attaced with that "you hate Usa", " You envy us" because that is not the case, i hold an opinon that even many US citizen have, that this war could have been avoided and the inspectors could have gone on because Iraq under inspections was controlled and isolated, but if you go to war, dont rush, make sure you have good planing and use the best rescources availible so it will be a fast war, not prolonged by poor planing that leads to suffering for both armed forces and civillians. I doubt that wmd would have been used by iraq on Israel or anyone, SH lobbed a couple of scuds into Israel in Gulf 1 but those where convetional and at that time he had plenty of WMD, agreed, I think all these leaders are so in love with their own power that they dont whant to commit WMDsuicide. But in this situation who knows if it will be used.
I also think it will be difficult to replace secular Dictatorship with secular Democracy in Iraq, probably it will be some kind of fundamentlist Democracy, Iraq is infact three zones, the shiites in south, sunni in central and kurds in the North, alot of that explanes the way te Socialist Baath party have ruled this nation, I read someman in an article that was opposed to Saddam he said " to rule Iraq you will have to be rutless , if you are not the next day you are dead". I am not writing this in anyway to defend SH rule of terror just point out the difficultys ahead. but as you said time will tell.
I dont really 100% understand what you mean by "incentive to better yourself" if you meen that Swedes are lazy you are wrong, just take a look at the products and the Quality of those products that come from this small nation and you will see.
The gov. here is social democratic not socialist. it is the same party as Blairs, i have never voted for them, and i agree we could use tax cuts
for a person making $33.500 a year you pay County tax, avg 31.1% , that vary from county to county, from 32% to 27%. You also pay 1.2% to the Church but if you leave the Church you dont have to pay that.
on everything that you make above $33.500 you will have to pay county and 20% Countrytax. and above $50.000 even 5% more.
Your retierment fee is 7% of your annual income but never more then $3000 a mounth.
Capital income tax if you make money on intrest or stocks , you pay 30% tax on that income of the sales the following year.
luxury tax, bonds,stocks boats, cars and realestate for a value of more then $220.000 is 1.5% tax a year.
WWII, it is true that we exported to Germany and let troops on leave pass thru our nation, the king was German friendly and the Social dem. gov wanted to avoid occupation, i think we payed some fees to US for that after the war, im not 100% sure, but i can look that up.
We also arrested Communists during WWII and put them behind bars because of fear of Soviet spies.
I honestly think that the gov. export and ties to Germany was more a fear of Soviet then approval of German gov, the Swedish volonteers in Div. Nordland and Wiking that fought on the eastern front, where not many and later annihilated by Russians in the Battle of Berlin, in these Div there where also Danes, Dutch, Estonians, Norwegian, Finns, French, Swiss. Most where driven by a anti-communism. Most of them where veterans from the Finnish Winter war and helped Finland against the Soviet agression, some of them whent on to sign up in Waffen-SS.
The Swedish volunteer Corps in Finland was 12.000, 9000 swedes then a mix of Danes, Norwegian, American-Finns, Brits, American-Swedes. Compared to the volonteers in Waffen-SS of only about 300 .
Good Site in english on the Winter War
Site of Swedish voluteer Corps also have American that makes reenact trips to finland
I am not here to offend anyone, and i think Americans and Swedes have more in common then the opposite. now when the war has begun lets hope it will be over soon and a safe return of the troops.
