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Senator Alleges White House Wrote Allawi's Speech
Jeremiah Cornelius writes "In a letter to the White House, a leading US Senate Democrat, Diane Feinstein, expressed 'profound dismay' that the White House allegedly wrote a large portion of Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's speech to Congress last week. 'His speech gave me hope that reconstruction efforts were proceeding in most of the country and that elections could be held on schedule. To learn that this was not an independent view, but one that was massaged by your campaign operatives, jaundices the speech and reduces the credibility of his remarks.'"
Is this really news to anyone? I watched only a small clip of the speech and said "Bush's speechwriters wrote that speech.
nobody writes their own speeches all the time any more. There are spin doctors and there are teams of spin doctors. Under Clinton the model was to use competing teams of writers, similar to the model used by TV show Friends I'm told, to come up with the best speech possible.
Having said that, I would have thought his own spin doctors would have written it, not White House staff, but really this idea that Iraq is somehow sovereign and no longer merely existing at the whim of the US is bollocks. The White House is the final authority in Iraq today and will be for many years to come.
Flame away...
I am a leaf on the wind
Why should we be surprised by this? The entire Iraq war has been managed more as a political event than a military action. That this administration, which is profoundly unwilling to consider any views than those expressed in its own talking points, would spoon feed self-serving rhetoric to its hand picked Iraqi puppet shouldn't come as a shock to anyone.
I suspect Senator Finestein's shock is strictly rhetorical. I certainly hope it is.
Stuff that matters?
Where are my Star Wars action figures?
Where are my Natalie Portman pics?
Where are my eye-burning lasers?
Where are my new programming languages?
I want my Slashdot back!
This kinda news, whether true or not, doesn't help Bush kill the rumors that Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi isn't some kind of a puppet. But, hey, we wrote the Japanese constitution and made the Empiror publicly declare he wasn't a god, and that all worked out.
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
(I HAVE read the article)
I am a professional speaker, and I am also a security auditor. I get paid to give people an honest opinion of what I think. Even then, I will still ask the parties with whom I am going to speak for input on what they want to get out of a meeting with their group.
It would be silly to think that the US Government didn't have input into Allawi's speech. I believe that all of what was said was true because I do not believe that Allawi would take a script and stand and lie to the congress. He is not a puppet, he is one tough sucker. I believe that ALL the major media outlets ARE NOT being fair on their coverage on how well things are actually going out there.
That being said. Allawi may not be a public speaker and he's about to give the most important speech of his life. It would be silly to think that he didn't practice the test in front of folks that could give some meaningful feedback.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
Isn't this the Bush admininstration in a nutshell? If you disagree with us, you are un-American, disloyal, unpatriotic.
That's what America is all about: blindly following our commander-in-chief, not questioning their policies, always agreeing.
Just give me my 12 hours of TV, and my low-carb 2000 calorie retired dairy cow hamburgers, and my gas-guzzling SUVs, and I WILL BE HAPPY.
Just look at Africa -- after Britain and France pulled out, everything went to straight to hell. America is doing th right thing by keeping a firm hand on Iraq. A decade from now, pulling out completely will be viable. Doing so now would create a situation so bad that the rest of the middle east would look like a picnic.
.. is how the President of any other soverign country would behave if he / she was handed a speech to be read while the invited guest of a foreign country.
Imagine the outcry if Bush or Kerry went to China to address the National People's Congress and was handed a speech and told to read it.
Iraq is not a US, EU or UN state; it is a soverign country.
A dream is good. A plan is better.
I'm glad President Bush has set upon this crusade at taking out our foes one by one, and remaking it in our image. Their dictators fall, and their citizens live in freedom, meanwhile we gain a foothold in another part of the world.
The sad thing is that America's image in the rest of the world is so bad right now, that as a foreigner, I am not entirely sure that this guy is trolling.
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Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
The point isn't that "people dont write their own speeches" the point is that a foreign government's party (the Republicans) wrote a speech for an Iraqi national AND Prime Minister (Allawi) to deliver to the US congress.
That's not "spin" or "status quo" thats outright imperialism.
I for one, am sick of the obvious bias of Slashdot editors against conservative values. This is site is suppossed to be about technology, not technology and slander of Republicans. How many articles did slashdot run about crazed liberal Dan Rather, and his attempt to undermine the US election process by coordinateing with the DNC's "[i]operation Fortunate Son[/i]" by airing forged documents provided by the Kerrry Campaign? I would think that this would have been an excellent story considering the use of self assembling netowrks of documenting authenticators over the web to disect those obvious forgeries. What we need to know, is what did Kerry know about these forgeries and when did he know it? Does this apparent collussion between CBS and the Kerry Campaign create a legal requirement for CBS to register as a Democrat 527 so unsuspecting voters won't be fooled into thinking CBS is a respectable news organization? And since Slashdot is very concerned about US politics, you can also start covering the recently uncovered, unreleased Kerry After action report of which proves conclusively that Kerry lied to get his silver star and completely vindicates the Swift Boat Veterans. Look, if slashdot is going to act as an advocate of the DNC, it should post such information in a disclaimer ontop of each such story, stating "We are supporting the Kerry Campaign". To not do so would be dishonest.
Because I distinctly saw President Bush take a drink of water while he was speaking.
That's because you weren't watching Karl Rove.
This
I just assumed it would be obvious from the fact that Allawi repeated not one, but almost every catchphrase that Bush throws into all of his speeches on the "war on terror". Anyway, read the speech for yourself and see if it sounds like chunks of it came from the same speechwriters Bush uses. Mind you, I'd expect Allawi to be thankful and congratulatory, since he needs the US's continued commitment right now, but I wouldn't expect his own speechwriters to parrot back Bush's campaign slogans word-for-word.
Anyway, this doesn't come as a surprise to me, it was just much more blatant and obvious than I would have thought possible. Another poster brought up Julius Caesar, who wrote his conquered enemies speeches for them. His long lived and immensely successful successor, Caesar Augustus, was the master of running an authoritarian regime while maintaining all the dressings of the Republic, practically the inventor of political spin and authoritarianism cloaked in democracy.
Unfortunately, the analogies don't end there. Trading freedom for security under authoritarian regimes was practically pioneered by the Romans. If our schoolchildren were forced to read some of the classics, I wonder how different things might be in America today.
> In the last week, there has been a spin war going on between the campaigns about whether Allawi is a US puppet. I'd like to know what most of you guys think: is he independent, sort of independent, or a puppet.
Are you seriously considering a possibility that one country would take on the expense and political risk of imposing a regime change on another country, and then neglect to ensure that the replacement regime was subservient?
It's called the "client state", and the idea has been around at least since the time of the Roman republic.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Bullshit, he said no such thing. The transcript is available for everyone to hear or read on multiple websites. He was asked about atrocities and he said that soldiers had told him about things they had heard. At no point did he incriminate himself or anyone else. To say it otherwise is a shameful lie.
A radio maverick jumps to internet only. The Future of Rock n Roll
Yeah, because Feinstein has such a record of being truthful and non-partisan. It's bad enough C-BS is running stories based on hoax e-mails to try and discredit the Bushitler(tm) - must Slashdot descend to partisan hearsay also?
I about laughed too, Bush said we cant treat Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi as a puppet. But Bush's white house staff treats him as a puppet on world wide TV and thier own Iraqi people.
The whole Iraq war is a puppet show, watch the war, and we won't notice how Bush is slaughtering our EPA, Forests, and corporation responsibility.
Glad we got Saddam for the 911 attack, oh wait....
Seeing how the comments so far have been moderated, it's quite clear that the moderators are either unaware, or unwilling to be aware of a serious problem in America.
-1 mod for overrated? For posting two editorials critical of the war?
This is a prime example of why America is headed for disaster.
If you're genuinely interested in knowing what's really happening in the world, I would suggest looking beyond CNN, FOX, Wall Street journal and the New York Times. All of America's big media is owned by a very small group with very strong political leanings. When you look to them, you only get one side of the story.
If you want the other side, places like www.cursor.org are a good place to start.
...allegedly wrote...
Is this the part where I get to assume it's already fact?
Ms. Feinstein, who seems to only profess profound emotional injury when non-Democrats speak or are in the news. She was deeply injured by Ahnold's "girly-man" remark. She was appalled by GWB's gayrriage ban proposal.
I am all for presenting the facts. Just because she is from CA does not mean she needs to go for the cheesy emotion crap.
To learn that this was not an independent view, but one that was massaged by your campaign operatives, jaundices the speech and reduces the credibility of his remarks
As if ANY politician these days (including Diane Feinstein) writes their own speeches, instead of having them "massaged by their campaign operatives"...
I don't come to slashdot for this kind of story. There's no techy or geek angle to this story at all. It's fine for politics./., but it doesn't belong on the front page.
Slashdot... Propaganda for news, spin that doesn't belong.
I noticed that too. Pretty funny shit. Kerry talks about how we should be concentrating on getting bin Laden, and Bush replies "Of course we're focused on Saddam Hussein, er, Bin Laden." Err, oops.
Haida Manga
True democracy comes from within. We can't impose it on a country and it keeps looking like we're trying to do that even though a simple examination of the historical evidence indicates that this is a difficult if not impossible task at beset.
It is my humble but thoughtful opinion that most of the current strength of the U.S. was actually forged during the time of the physical, bloody rejection of British governance 225 years ago. Ironically, as a result I wonder if the ideal solution to the Iraqi problem would actually be to pull out and allow the forces at work there to believe they HAD fought for their independence and won.
I look at Germany (the homeland of my parents) as a rare, good, but definitely not ideal, outcome of "nation-building". Germany to this day continues to struggle (I feel) with a definition of itself that works in this century. Why else are there these irrational resurgences in interest in Nazi ideas. It was the last time that Germany was the world leader in engineering, science, and was getting lots of attention. Now they're known as the source of oom-pah music, all kinds of wurst, that country that Mike Myers makes fun of, kinky porn, and beer. Ideally, I think the people of a country would like a better fate than that. A defining moment... Where is Iraq's defining moment??
We'll "capture" osama in about 2 weeks. I'm willing to lay 3-to-1 odds.
Then, after Bush wins in a massive landslide, the "Republicans" in power can get back to raping this nation and the world.
Have a nice day!
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
If you like the Daily Show, you should take a listeng to this FreshAir interview with John Stewart that was broadcast on NPR today.
For the first part of the interview he is trademark Stewart, mixing wise cracks with straight lines just about evenly, but about 15 minutes into the interview it really changes. The interviewer starts talking about the reputation that The Daily Show, the self-described "fake news show" has developed as one of the most perceptive analysts of the current state of American politics. Stewart is quite modest, but displays a marvelous level of understanding of the role of the media in America, and the way that its has abrogated its responsibility to be a skeptical filter and not simply an uncritical platform for the political spin-meister of the moment.
The great irony, of course, is that very few of the talking heads in the "non-fake news" business seem to have this level of understanding of the responsibility they bear.
I dunno -- I would like to think the basic qualifications for "President of the United States of America" would be slightly higher than those for "random Slashdot poster".
It is just me or is slashdot politics sounding awful similar to Democratic Underground.
The shrill nature of the allegations and insinuations are just laughable against President Bush.
My Weblog
That's ok.
paintball
Why on earth would you waste a perfectly good mod point to mod someone a troll just becuase it goes against what you believe (speaking, of course, to the person who modded you a troll)?
You are, in fact, reenforcing ACs point that if you disagree, you must be unpatriotic and a troll.
Jeezus.
"Seeing how the comments so far have been moderated, it's quite clear that the moderators are either unaware, or unwilling to be aware of a serious problem in America."
MOD PARENT UP!!!! Exactly right.
You cannot develop an accurate opinion by listening to the innuendo from media employees who would lose their jobs if they seemed to indicate a preference for one candidate over another. Remember, the media exists to make money. Unfortunately, we don't have directly supported media, only ad supported media, and advertisers, understandably, are careful not to alienate anyone.
Please don't be intimidated by someone with unspecified objections, or objections that merely try to draw attention away from the major issues. Consider everything in the light of your own experiences and your own extensive investigation.
If you have never read the books about the Bush family and Bush administration, I suggest you do so. If you read the books, you will see that the corruption is far worse than you are being told.
--
Bush: Borrowing money to try to make his administration look good.
Just re-emphasises the fact that the US thinks that it should place it's influence on everything and everybody.
Yeah, because we should be influencing other people to stand for equality, democracy, and civil liberties. Just like we influenced the Afghanis to depose the Taliban, put girls back in school, and allow women to participate in society as something more than property.
Like the way we influenced Japanese to throw away tyrannical rule by despots and adopt a democracy. Just like we convinced the Germans that having a nutjob whacko for a dictator is not a good idea. Just like we influenced the British, Indians, Chinese, and pretty much every other world out there that maybe, just maybe, freedom is a viable alternative to oh, say, injustice, hatred, violence, and tyranny.
Yeah, I think you have a great point here. So many people want to influence the world to do evil, to trade in slaves and blood, to sell out their own countries for a little profit, while the US is standing up for the individuality and freedom and humanity, at the cost of instant gratification.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
As if ANY politician these days (including Diane Feinstein) writes their own speeches, instead of having them "massaged by their campaign operatives"...
No one is complaining that Allawi didn't write his own speech. What they are complaining about is that it was written by Bush's campaign operatives.
Don't you see a difference between Allawi having his speech written by his own, independent speech writers and having it written by Bush campaign operatives? Allawi is supposed to be the leader of a sovereign nation, not a member of the Republican party giving stump speeches to promote Bush's reelection.
Sadly, he's probably not. A sizable portion of the country say such things in all seriousness.
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch.
The elction will be over soon. Then everyone will go back to not caring about politics until 2008 :)
The U.S. government is building 16 permanent bases in Iraq. This was mentioned in the debate tonight. They apparently want control over the oil. They apparently care about nothing else. A democratic country is one that has control over its own resources.
Ironic for someone old enough to remember when the Roman Empire was a bad example of governance for Americans. Telling indicator of how far, and in what direction, the country's moved in a generation.
---
Dear mum,
our flatulant, pompus general lost another battle. This is hopeless. We've lost every battle so far, and General Washington keeps retreating. Will we retreat all the way to the territories? How am I to get back to this fall's harvest if the British burn our fields?
Indeed, the times are grim, and I wonder what is to become of us. All we hear is how things are going well, but all I see is death and retreat.
-----
People on the ground rarely have any idea of what's going on.
"Same story"
Not quite the advent of the digital camera and expedent digital media conveyance made the Abu Ghraib Prison story different.
I listened to an interview of the guy who broke the Abu Ghraib prison story. He said he could have written pages and pages with all sorts of details concerning the incident and it would have never be noticed. But a single image drove the point lucidly home and made all the difference.
On another note, I'm glad we went to Iraq. I think if you aren't, you would be the sort to stand by a watch while somebody was being mugged, raped, assaulted, etc. But that's my opinion.
Pretty sad opinion, i'd say. I know i've not stood by. Will you step up for Bangladesh? Zimbabwe? Sudan? Chechnya? Burma? big hero? You get all puffed about you're big 'liberation' when in fact the situation seems more like some asshole who assaults a rape victim "I chased off that bad Saddam, he won't hurt ya - now bend over, bitch"
Duck, here comes Mighty America, looking out for us all
I want to know what each candidates position is on things that are pertinent to me... guns ... gay marriage ... abortion, illegal immigration, patents, copyrights, taxes, our economy, healthcare, and so on. Once I know that, I'll vote for the candidate I like best.
The gulf between us is that you can see nothing unfortunate with the above order of 'things' you deem important.
"Our interests are to see if we can't scale it up to something more exciting," he said.
On a related note - the CIA had plans "to put an operation in place to affect the outcome of the elections." before it was stopped by Nancy Pelosi:
1 ,1 101041004-702122,00.html
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,917
Whether or not Iran is influencing the elections, this idea is very very wrong. The biggest problem any politician elected will be credibility, to be more exact, they need to be seen to be independent of the US. Even *rumours* of CIA interference in elections will derail the reputation of anyone elected. As academic Juan Cole writes, if it is wide-spread opinion that the US rigged the elections (esp. through the CIA bogeyman), it does not mean only failure of democracy in Iraq but in the entire Middle East:
"The first is to point out that this sort of behavior by the Bush administration fatally undermines the ideal of democracy in the Middle East. If Muslims think that "democracy" is a stalking horse for CIA control of their country, then they will flee the system and prefer independent-minded strongmen that denounce the US. The constitutional monarchies established in the Middle East by the British were similarly undermined in the popular imagination by the impression they gave of being mere British puppets. This was true of the Wafd Party in Egypt in the 1940s and early 1950s, which the Free Officers overthrew in 1952 in the name of national indepencence. It was also true in Iraq, where in 1958 popular mobs dragged the corpse of the pro-British Prime Minister Nuri al-Said through the streets and finished off the British-installed monarchy."
http://www.juancole.com/
If there is a problem here it is due to engaging in political activity while serving on active duty, not for a more general "speaking out."
There are restrictions on the political activities of soldiers, which this letter clearly is. (Notice the references to the Constitution Party, and specious claims about the un-Constitutional nature of the war. I will ignore the factual "errors" which should be apparent to anyone in the position he claims to be in.) You wouldn't want soldiers agitating to disobey the President becasue the "wrong party" was in control, would you? In most places that ends up being a coup. In most countries in which the civilian government controls the military that is considered bad form.
As to "serious jail time" (5+ years), I doubt it.
Feinstein is a crock. Sadly a sham and a player and a disgrace to California. She pretty much considers herself a God among peons and for most all of her positions I cannot trust her to represent this state.
Which is a pity, really. Because it lends discredit to her statements. And as far as being a "leading US Senator", well, that opinion must come from somebody outside CA. Bush is evil, sure. But do you trust a nafarious liar such as Feinstein to point out his administrations evils? Its just hard to swallow...
- I love animals. I try to eat at least one a day.
It could be filed two years before for all its importance. Not only this report is a lot of "maybe-coulda-woulda", it is also quite silly that otherwise intelligent people are so easilly fooled by all of this Iraq WMD talk. VX is known to be possessed by just about any two-bit country on the planet, including places like Serbia. Anthrax is produced from cow dung. A few nutcases were able to make it in a bathtub in England. Etc. Etc. If Saddam was truly bent on using this (rather awkward and unreliable weapon), he would have done so looong ago. Actually he did in 1980s on the Kurds and probably like every military before him, decided the thing was useless. Did you ever wonder why during WWII noone used chemical weapons on the battlefield? All sides had them. They are just extremely useless things in combat. Additionally, Iraq had no capability to produce nuclear technology in any meaningful way for a foreseeable future due to constant oversight.
Truly frightening bio-weapons are of genetic nature and at this point in time beyond reach of the terrorists. This will unforunately change in not so remote future and because of the nature of the technology they will become the primary, cheap and widely available weapon of unspeakable terror.
Isn't this the Bush admininstration in a nutshell? If you disagree with us, you are un-American, disloyal, unpatriotic.
I'm tired of linking the following quote : People don't want War by Herman Goering . That in a few sentences covers what you have saidQuidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
I hate hitler. If I was to point out some of his crimes would you just brush them off saying I am just some "political ideologue, with an anti-hitler paranoia".
ahhh the sweet irony of you posting that.
Bush and Blair ate my sig!
what goddamm difference does it make? vote for the man based on his policies, not on his private life. as al sharpton put it - the government should be able what's happening in the kitchen, not the bedroom. that could be generalised much more broadly to all of politics.
Who, in your opinion, *does* know what's going on in Iraq? Allawi, their new leader, whose speeches are written for him by the White House who chose him for his past CIA work?
All this does is show Allawi to be an American puppet. Which is a conclusion many people, both inside and outside of Iraq, had already come to.
...but that doesn't matter. What matters is that all the propaganda mills in the Islamic countries, as well as all of the anti-American press in Europe, was given HUGE amounts of bad imagery to throw around, to which all the US can say is "oops", as various people in the chains of commands either find various directions to point their fingers, quickly discredit those at the bottom accused of actually doing the deeds, defending the policies that set up the situation in the first place, etc., instead of saying, rather plainly and forcefully (and then saying nothing else):
...and just not waver from this.
"A bad thing happened at Abu Ghraib Prison involving the United States. We acknowledge the actions, we reassert that the United States does not stand for this kind of behavior."
Instead, the typical military political ass-covering begins. Those above O-5 and GS-16 are given plenty of time to either find scapegoats, or create an inscrutable web of finger-pointing and blame-laying that nothing can really be resolved.
Instead of finding an honorable O-6 or Brigade General to step up and say, "we failed these prisoners, we failed the soldiers supervising them. It was my responsibility (duely delegated, of course), so the buck stops here."
Nope. Can't have Officers admitting of doing something wrong.
The military, of course, cannot ever seem to grasp that the reason so many whackos spin bad things out of control in the US is because they have such a long history of being ambiguous or lying directly to the press. When truth comes out later, it just adds more fuel to the fires of a cynical press. They dig their own hole.
Just like with "Blackhawk Down" (read the book). Sure, great idea to send in Rangers, Delta Force, et al. But our hubris at sending in the best soldiers for what was intended to be either a quick-and-dirty leadership decapitation just didn't end up that way.
Remember the mission, carry it out in a timely fashion, and get out.
Oh, what was the mission again?
Civil Affairs is a Reserve Component, and has been for some time.
As for the slam on a career non-comm, the typical non-comm reply to that is, "someone's got to do the work around here."
Maybe Lorentz has bashed Bush elsewhere, but that is completely irrelevant. He provides a series of well reasoned arguments, and your response is nothing but ad hominem misdirection -- typically the best that proponents of Bush's war can muster when confronted with the facts in the field instead of mindless ideological fantasies. As for the comment that Lorentz has "spent most of his career in the Reserves", well, the irony, given the military record of the current occupant of the White House who led us into this mess, is palpable.
Is he a soldier doing national service? Yes.
I understand your viewpoint, but what your saying is disingenious. He is lying by omission, not lying outright. He told no untruths.
Think nothing is impossible? Try slamming a revolving door.
Are you serious? Claiming that any American author has any standing because they have never lost a lawsuit is ridiculous because it is damn near impossible for a celebrity to sue - research the "Actual Malice" standard for libel set in N.Y vs Sullivan. Furthermore, having *lawyers* do fact checking sounds more like lawsuit insulation than fact checking.
ostiguy
What an amazing sense of compasion Ms. Feinstein has for the Bush administration: She's dismayed that there are reports of this, that, and the other! There can be no other explaination as to why she would bother to be so outspoken about such an allegation, unless there were cold hard facts about what was allegedly perertrated.
This jumping the gun on this issue is no more astute than Dan Rather and his brillant, yet revealing, ways.
... we must give them great respect, and curry their favor.
Er, unless they actually help us in Iraq (UK, Australia, etc), or are trying at great personal risk to rebuild a country and hold elections (Allawi). Then we sneer at them and call them Bush puppets.
Who's doing exactly the wrong thing for political purposes, again?
Disobeying is one thing. Speaking your mind in a letter is another. If I am a solider I still have the right to an oppinion.
http://ebgp.net/ccc/
So if Saddam was in breach of the agreements, it wasn't really that bad, yes? Especially since the genetic super Shazam! bioweapon of the future would always be unavailable to him, correct?
You gave yourself an appropriate screen name.
But heaven forfend a soldier speaks out his mind or opinion!
"Before publication, each book is vetted by several sets of lawyers; facts and sources are checked and rechecked and sources documented."
Wasn't this the author who was grilled on Hardball and eventually conceded to the fact that she could not back up any of her sources for this book. Chris Matthews ripped her a new one in this interview.
Assuming that the soldier's letter is true, I can't assume that one NCO speaks for the entire effort. Dissenting letters like these loom large, simply because the word from the other 99.99% of the field is perpendicular to it. Even a soldier with 20 years of experience can be wrong, especially since he IS, after all, an NCO and there is a different perspective available from high-ranking commanders such as Tommy Franks. Think about it in the perspective as a company employee. I've been that disgruntled employee before, and just because I'd been there for several years doesn't make me the end-all authority on whether the company is going down the toilet.
In short (unlike the parent post), ALWAYS be skeptical... ALWAYS view communications like these with a critical eye - even if they validate your own opinions.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Damn!!!! I fed the troll again!
There are 35 states with higher tax rates than Mass. Montana is one of them. When you have a bad employee (the President is our employee) you fire them. You don't look at his potential replacement and think, "What if he does a worse job than the current guy?".
Just wondering, they're the only ones I know of who are so virulently anti-psychology.
Weed out this insidious cult, Americans! The organized movements of Pscyhology which have your government in their grips are Working Against The American Public.
You've got it backwards. The manipulation of minds is just a tool to them, the people in power who seek to stay in power. Politicians have been messing with people's heads since before anyone ever heard of "psychology".
Freedom: "I won't!"
Well, you just destroyed any shred of credibility you had. This guy may be an asshole with an agenda, but I dare you to walk up to a First Sergeant and tell him the only reason he isn't a felching butterbar Lieutenant is that he's incompetent. I will gladly administer first aid afterward, you'll need it.
Hell, I know a couple of officers who would gladly hold you while the said noncom fed you your balls, if he had the optical magnification equipment to find them.
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
I hardly know where to start with this. Ideally it would be "insightful" viewpoints which are modded up as "insightful" independent of their political background. But what makes your post totally silly is that, despite the fact that people say slashdot has liberal leanings, liberals are kept on the defensive. Liberal viewpoints are modded down just for being liberal.
And the rest of what you said is totally inane- it is conservatives, not liberals, who seek to (and frequently manage to) quench "opposing viewpoints".
The republican noise machine's ability to shout louder than anyone else is great for conservative politicians, but it's hurting our country. How is a democracy supposed to adjust to circumstances when the debate is brought to the level of an elementary school playground fight?
I met an informed, reasonable republican on slashdot the other day. I praised him for his character, but in fact I was shocked because usually I only meet people like you, who gloss over reality because they came up with a witty barb to toss at the other party.
You guys are really good at that, credit where credit is due; it's only to bad that you are fucking us all over by removing the substance of the conversation.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
I found this refreshing to Bush's repetative and very non-specific "We're going to win!" over and over with no real substance as far as a clear plan and intelligent resolve. . .
Allegedly, I did not ake a shower this morning....that does not mean it is true. Let both sides talk about it before you make statements. Miss Diane Feinstein is a DEMOCRAT. She's against the war and against Bush. This alledged item could be nothing more then Bushes aide's translating Arabic to English. Nothing more then advising him what to say for the good of Iraq. I also DO believe Kerry would pul us out. Let me remind you Bill Clinton was President when alot of the Air Stations on NORAD control were reduced. During the Cold War, we had a high of 26 Air Bases with 2 fighters on 24 hour alert. That high number is now down to 7. MAJOR reductions in the miltary have happened under the Democrats. Granted, at times during the reduction, both sides had the ability to stop the bleeding but neither did anything because they thought they were doing what the people wanted. Sometimes, the people don't know what they want and you have to do the RIGHT thing for the country instead. I am not saying more air stations and the like would have prevented 9/11, but they certainly would have given the ability to vector more aircraft and possibly even quicker. If you have not read the 9/11 Commision report, I highly reccomend reading it. Just don't go into with a biased view. Read it as if you were standing in their shoes and you will realize that 9/11 and the new war on terror is something that regardless of who's in office, it WOULD have happened anyway. Under Clinton, Bush Number one or Bush number 2 and even Al Gore.
Gorkman
How does building military bases equate to to oil? I would assume military bases would be built as centers for military control, but that would be too obvious.
I guess I should be wearing my tin-foil hat so I can fit in with the rest of you loons.
...come on - what did you expect?
No, I'm not just trying to be a tinfoil-hat-carrying left-wing anti-US conspiration theorist - but seriously, have you read a paper the past few years?
How this can be "news" is beyond me. How it ever became "news for nerds" that's a whole other story...
Please, can we go back to Xeon vs. Opteron bashing?
Of course this is just a game of thought and not a 100% precise analogy (most Arabs have no particular liking for Iran, for instance), it still gives you a vague impression of the other side's mindset. (Just to anticipate likely responses: your analogy has its limits, too. Israel is in a rather good state, except for the terrorism threat that, well, they've brought upon themselves to deal with somehow. And Iran isn't exactly on the scale of the Soviet Union as a global threat. And Iran has oil, too.
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
And the last foreign language speaking leader to give a speech before a joint congress and senate was...? Tony Blair is the only other foreign leader to give a speech before a joint congress in my memory. Other visiting foreign leaders appear with the President in joint press conferences, and give other interviews to the media.
Speeches before joint sessions of congress are very rare and should be held to a very high standard. It is absolutely appropriate that Allawi had help with phrases and delivery of his speech to live up to that standard.
Allawi only received help writing and delivering his speech, and there is no evidence that he did not agree with anything in the speech. The content of the speech matches what he has said in many other interviews and press conferences. Anyone who would ignore everything Allawi has said and done in the past and in the future because he was helped with his speech, who did not attend the speech, insults Allawi, and disrespects the contributions of our allies, gives me no confidence that they are interested in bringing freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people.
What I perceived from Bush:
1) we are right, therefore we are going to win
2) it doesn't matter if we botched the job with no planning and inadequate support because, uh, we are RIGHT!
3) if we are losing it's only because the enemy is hating us more for being right
4) my administration didn't make any mistakes because I am right
5) if you criticize anything we do, I simply mention that it's a hard job and reinforce the fact that I am doing a hard job, regardless of whether it is the right job
6) if you highlight how bad a job we are doing, you are actually perversely on the terrorists side and the public should discount you because the terrorists want to hear that we are doing a bad job
7) since I don't want them (or you) to hear that, I'll just keep repeating that we are doing the right thing
8) a decisive but WRONG course is much better than any indecisive course
9) but that doesn't matter anyway because...I'm right
On the pro side, Bush did come out I think revealing that, yes, he can remember facts and names. Since the bar is so low, this makes him seem ultra smart.
As far as Kerry he's already fucked himself because his statements have been so easy to spin, he can't dispell the myths around him, and the "debate" format doesn't allow him time to. There were many non-rational things Bush said, or foolish misinterpretations (either intentional or unintentional) by Bush of what Kerry had just said, that Kerry didn't have time to rebut. For instance, Kerry said that the test of whether to go to war is a more "global test" (or "universal test" I forget), namely that you have to be able to say to a soldier's family you did everything you could to avoid it, and Bush either intentionally or unintentionally misinterpreted this and played dumbfounded that Kerry was talking about some "global tests" as if he was talking about some world-wide exam. How can you debate somebody that can't even understand what you are saying? I get the feeling if he had said "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" Bush would have started saying: "what is this guy talking about, 'playing with birds', HEY WE'RE AT WAR!"
sigh.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Involve a coalition of all nations to share in the rebuilding of Iraq in order to lighten the burden on American soldiers and economy.
The only allies that are ever going to be there are already there. Kerry saying "I'll involve France, Germany, and Russia" isn't going to make France, Germany, and Russia send combat troups. In fact, all three have stated unequivocally they will not do so, under any circumstances, anyway. If Kerry thinks a regime change in the US is going to make an globally-unpopular occupation more popular somehow, he is in for a rude awakening.
Ensure that the Iraqi forces had been adequately trained to perform necessary police actions.
We're already trying to do that already. No difference in administration policy, there. As an aside, it's my understanding that France has, in fact, sent advisors to help train police and anti-terrorism forces in Iraq. I can't find a link to verify, though, so take it as you will (IOW, I'm not staking my life on it).
And take all means necessary to foster the view that America is not an occupier, but an enabler.
WTH? What is an enabler? That's just some vague psycho-babble buzzword with no inherent meaning. How are we going to enable Iraq?
- Give them free elections? Check.
- Replenish their police force? Check.
- Restore electricity, sanitation, and medical services? Check.
- Get their oil economy going again? Check.
Is there something enablers do that I'm missing here? Seems to me like Kerry's plan for Iraq is nothing more than keeping current policies in place.
Ever heard of places like Germany or Japan you fscking retard?
Well, Germany was a democracy before World War II. Hitler was an elected official. So democracy was nothing new to them. Obviously Japan was not, but neither Germany nor Japan were tribal as fook before during or after the war. Iraq is.
Iraq is more likely to decend into a civil war like Yugoslavia did or end up like one of the African clusterfuck countries, as opposed to being a success story like postwar Japan or Germany.
Before, Saddam was killing. Now, the U.S. Gov. is killing and destabilizing, and you pay. Improvement?
You do realise that in war billions of dollars are just "lost", this whole Iraqi thing is just a money grab. This whole presidency has been nothing more than a money grab by a few at the top.
If I am a solider I still have the right to an oppinion.
Yes, but you don't necessarily have the right to express that opinion. As it is so eloquently said, "Soldier, you are here to defend democracy, not to practice it."
Ok. Following that logic, I'm sre that you agree that it's high time that America unilaterally invade:
- Sudan: to stop the Genocide in Darfur and the civil war in the South (FYI the UN Charter *mandates* military action in cases of Genocide, how come the US isn't pushing this harder?)
- North Korea: Kim Jong-Il is a nucular-armed (sic) madman who oppresses and starves his subjects while maintaining a massive military complex and threatening his neigbors
- Iran: A major sponsor of global terrorism, has its own nuclear program, and has been working covertly to undermine US efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan
- Myanmar: A brutal, bloody and tyrannical regime by any standard
- Syria: Fellow Baathists, also tyrannical, also supporters of terrorism (Hamas, hezbollah, Islamic Jihad). Somehow our friends in the War on Terror (?!). Oh yeah, they're the US torture outsourcer of choice!
- Pick any one of at least a dozen regimes in Africa that are as Brutal as the Iraqi Baathist regime. Or more so.
Y'know what I find funny? Many of the same people who are now saying that it was good for America to invade Iraq to liberate its people would have said the exact opposite a few years earlier. I remember much grouching about the 'new world order' and America's role as 'Global Cop'. I remember a presidential candidate who said he would not be a nation builder. I guess it's ok to change your philosophy ('flip-flop') once your guy's in power, though, right?
Don't get me wrong. Even though I knew, in March 2003 (it was well-knowneven then) that the rationale for going to war (WMD's *NOT* liberation) was a sack of BS and that the war had been predicided by mid '02, I thought the war was a good thing: Saddam was a monster and his kids were even worse. If the American's are even halfways competent the Iraqis would be free and it would all be worth it. But they weren't. And it wasn't. And now Iraq is a far more dangerous place than it was before 03/03.
Wanted: One witty yet thought provoking
Frankly I didn't think Kerry did all that great. The contest is not over ideas or policy or truth. It's over personality, and whom voters would most like to identify themselves with (like say Coke vs. Pepsi). I do think Kerry put up a good defense to neutralize all the smears leveled against him, but we'll have to see whether neutralization is enough. The problem, I believe, and have believed since the 2000 election, is that the perception that Bush is dumb basically make him impregnable to attacks based on facts. I.e., if you point out his crazy wrongheaded policies, in fact you turn out to be less likable yourself, in the same way that insulting a retarded person makes you no friends. "Hey, he's doing the best he can. He's 'folksy'." I'm still confused as to whether his apparent idiocy is actually intentional and deceptively planned, or earnest, which is even scarier.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Kerry voted to go to Iraqi. it can't be said it's alright for Kerry to say he was mislead and not give the president the same creedance.
I and the 9-11 commission would disagree....
I do agree that as far as ultimate goals for the Iraq war Bush and Kerry's positions are quite similar with the main impetus from Kerry being "I can do better." Consequently, I would point out the errors in judgement as found by the commission as well as current members of the administration's support of Sadam Hussein in the past (Ah Hem, Rumsfeld, chemical weapons, gassing of the Kurds and Iranian's anyone) and lack of ability to significantly cripple Osama's network in defense of this assumption.Than I would point out Bush's failure in domestic areas such as economy, human rights, benefits cuts to soldiers, tax breaks for the rich, quelching of the very principle of capitalism our country's economy is based on with no bid/uncontested contracts awarded to Haliburton, corporate welfare thinly veiled as an AID's relief package by writing in that no drugs can be generic, largest deficit ever seen in the history of the modern world, alienation of allies through failed diplomacy, worst security record of any president in our country's history allowing (you can argue that no one could have done better, but the only certaintity is that the Bush admin. didn't do good enough).
*NOTE* you can google for any one of these with any common news network like cnn, cbs, abc, etc to 'read all about it'.
Bush attacked Kerry on his multilateralism, not because of his criticism of Bush's policies. Bush made it clear that he didn't need international authority to defend US interests. That pretty much sums up the difference between the two.
What neocon simple-think. Everything is either black or white with this ideology. Just because a President would consult with allies and try to gain other countries' support for our nation's policies does NOT mean that he has forfeit the ability to defend the country.
Bush's oft-said belief that "He doesn't need to ask anyone for permission to defend America" is just self-serving spin and a distortion of the true situation. Of course he doesn't, but neither would he have needed it if he had tried to build an alliance before going to war.
This doesn't even address whether or not attacking Iraq was really defending the country. Of course the real problem Bush had with going to the UN was that he did not have any real evidence that Iraq had any WMD.