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Bush and Kerry Supporters Have Separate Realities
corngrower writes "A report by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland correlates voters' perceptions of world attitudes and events with their choice in candidates. It's an interesting read, and shows voters supporting Kerry as being more in tune with the events and world attitudes surrounding the war in Iraq."
Seriously, after reading it, I was quite happy that someone put out some evidence for what I've observed. If I had a dollar for every time I tried to tell someone that Iraq really didnt have nukes....
Support more choices in goverment-Vote 3rd party.
According to the survey, based on the views of Bush supporters or at least what they believe Bush believes in, it seems like most of them should really be Kerry supporters.
In other news, 93% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
The notion that liberals and conservatives perceive the world differently seems fairly obvious. The rest just seems like flamebait.
Seriously, given either political viewpoint, I'm sure I can find plenty of facts and "world attitudes" that would give strong support to that position. If the President announced that the facts on Iraq agree with his points and that polls show that a worldwide majority agree with him, would you accept his word? If not, why should the reverse be true?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Sounds reasonable to me. As this nytimes piece goes in considerable detail in,
most of Bush's politics/decisions are about faith and not fact. Anybody who votes for him has
to share his worldview.
This reminded me of another report done by the same group regarding misperceptions people had based upon their source of news, most notibly Fox News:
2 _03_Press.pdf
"The polling, conducted by the Program on International Policy (PIPA) at the University of Maryland and Knowledge Networks, also reveals that the frequency of these misperceptions varies significantly according to individuals' primary source of news. Those who primarily watch Fox News are significantly more likely to have misperceptions, while those who primarily listen to NPR or watch PBS are significantly less likely."
Source: http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/100403F.shtml
The original source document (PDF):
http://www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/Iraq/Media_10_0
While these reports should not be correlated without further study, its rather indicative of how the public is misinformed by certain parts of the media; though I will admit that it does swing both ways for both liberals and conservatives, but Fox takes it to another level when it comes to TV news.
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
...in each of these alternate realities, there's a politician who's considered to be correct. =)
More in tune with facts, too. But the Kerry supporters didn't do very well, either, which is scary.
Which reality was the article written in? We can't trust the results because it could be the wrong one!
Stewart: I'm sorry, Rob, did you say the facts are biased?
Corddry: That's right Jon. From the names of our fallen soldiers to the gradual withdrawal of our allies to the growing insurgency, it's become all too clear that facts in Iraq have an anti-Bush agenda.
I find it amusing that the survey was conducted at all, as if the opinions of the "vast majority" of the people in the world are either relevant or legitimately discernable.
If we're going to assert, as does this survey by implication, that the opinions of other people matter, then anyone with a nose ring, an alternative lifestyle, or membership in a 3rd party had better straighten out - because the "vast majority" of people probably don't approve.
Better that the survey should ask whether the respondents believe that the war was legal, or supported by factual information, than whether someone in some other place likes it.
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
Yeah, I remember this one. It turns out, they were wrong on a lot of the questions and the Fox news watchers were right. I can't seem to find the questions and the "correct" answers at the moment... they seem to have cleverly hidden them.
Here's the one that sticks out like a sore thumb: "48% incorrectly believe that evidence of links between Iraq and Al Qaeda have been found, [and] 22% that weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq."
If there is no evidence of a link between Iraq and Saddam Hussein, why did a federal judge (appointed by Clinton) award $100,000,000 to plaintiffs payable by Saddam?
If there is no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, why was there an IED with sarin gas in it found, along with other warheads with various chemicals? Isn't sarin a WMD?
Anyway, it's just a liberal hit piece against conservatives, trying to pass it off as research. They label truth as "misperception".
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
If the fake neoliberals actually had the tollerance they claim to have, they'd admit that it's a possibility that Bush supporters are actually LIVING IN A DIFFERENT UNIVERSE where Iraq had WMDs and shipped them all out to Syria before the war started.
After all, we each live in our own little world where we are always correct, right?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I did a journal entry on this topic yesterday. Please see also the updated page from my sig.
This propostion was actually tested by a curious experiment conducted by the left-wing Guardian newspaper in the UK.
The Guardian selected Clark County, OH as a hotbed of undecided voters, and put together a letter-writing campaign to them. Some 14,000 letters were sent and the universal response from Clark County voters was, well, unprintable.
The sample letters I read were horribly condescending and quite frankly unpersuasive to anyone not already having anti-Bush views, but it's pretty clear that the American man on the street really doesn't want to be influenced by foreigners.
Which, come to think of it, might have doomed Kerry's multilateral candidacy from the start.
D
As another Bush supporter, I don't think we'll be "allowed" to see, by the MSM, anything good happening in Iraq until after the election. The MSM likes to cite casualties and car bombings, yet you read sites like Truth About Iraq and it's almost a bright future. Which one is correct? Probably both, they just list different factoids.
--trb
Correlation does not necessarily equal causation.
Is it any surprise that the vast majority of people are uninformed and have a view of reality based on ideology rather than fact? NO!
Does this make one bit of difference when trying to decide who to vote for? NO!
Do you vote for Bush because some ignorant guy off the street was given cigarettes to vote for Kerry? Do you vote for Kerry because some gun nut has a Bush bumper sticker? You shouldn't.
This "research" into popular ignorance is what political science has sunk to. "Ignorant Bush supporters more ignorant than ignorant Kerry supporters." What does this contribute to political discussion? NOTHING. It's the best a group of professors and grad students who don't have one original idea of their own to contribute can do.
Do you honestly believe that every single one of Kerry's supporters is voracious news hound and super-informed political junkie, or do you think it's possible that their chosen ideology happens to jive with the facts this week? If we found WMD in Iraq tomorrow, I'm sure 50% of people polled, blinded by ideology, would still get it wrong. Then we could claim that Kerry supporters are vastly more ignorant than Bush. This proves NOTHING.
This is propaganda. Read what intelligent and informed people on both sides have to say, and then make a decision. Don't fall for this crap disguised as research.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
Isn't the truth the truth?
"It's an interesting read, and shows voters supporting Kerry as being more in tune with the events and world attitudes surrounding the war in Iraq."
No, it shows that Kerry supporters are more in tune with the attitudes of the group doing the study, and with you. To what extent Iraq had a WMD program is still up for debate, it's clear he had intent, but not so clear exactly what he was acomplishing. I'm sure if I looked I could find a lot of conservative sources that would say the oposite, ie, "Bush supporters more in events and world attitudes surrounding war in Iraq." We all are seeing the same evidence, the same events, but with different world views its pretty obvious there are going to be differences in our perseptions.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now. - Ed Howd
And that's what we're talking about. You still insist that Iraq was the story, despite the complete lack of evidence.
There were other countries in the world much more deserving of our attentions. Afghanistan, for example, should have about 200,000 more troops in it than it currently does. North Korea needs invading. Iran needs invading. Saudi Arabia needs invading.
You want perpetual war? I'm right with you. You have this liberal's support, if only you pick the right targets.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Okay people, quiz time. How many of you can guess the world view of corngrower, the submitter of this article? To give you a hint, here's his a paraphrase of his submission.
"A study on the perceptual fantasy worlds that voters live in demonstrates that Kerry voters' fantasy worlds are more real than the Bush voters' fantasy worlds!"
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
In saying that lack of proof that there's no Al Queda-Iraq link, means there might be one, you're using the same crazed logic that got us into the war in the first place. Just because Saddam couldn't prove that the weapons hadn't been destoyed, didn't mean they weren't destroyed.
God told me that you can't prove a negative. Now prove he didn't.
If there is no evidence of a link between Iraq and Saddam Hussein, why did a federal judge (appointed by Clinton) award $100,000,000 to plaintiffs payable by Saddam?
Because he was wrong. Name dropping Clinton proves nothing.
If there is no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, why was there an IED with sarin gas in it found, along with other warheads with various chemicals? Isn't sarin a WMD?
Not when it's so old as to be completly non functional. Which it was.
They label truth as "misperception".
Or perhaps you label your misperceptions as truth.
So, you agree that
1- We now know that Sadam did not have WMD
2- The world does not agree with our invasion of Iraq.
Great! You are with us here in the real world.
The article merely points out that most of your fellow republicans believe that 1 and 2 are not true.
Why is that offensive to you? It is a fact.
The reality is that though 20/20 hindsight can provide a clear future direction, it cannot erase the fact that many people in both parties and around the world made many mutual and consensual decisions based on the same intelligence.
A major defining difference between the two parties is that one is standing behind its decisions while the other is trying to dismiss its responsibility in its involvement in those decisions.
Whether the original decision was right or wrong is really not the issue--everyone agreed to it, and it is in the past. The real issue is how each party plans on addressing its responsibility for the future.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
voters supporting Kerry as being more in tune with the events and world attitudes surrounding the war in Iraq.
Measuring being "in tune with the events" implies that there is an objective way to decide WHICH EVENTS are "the" events. There is not and suggesting otherwise is a bunch of crap. Give me a break. This was a study that measured people's correlation with the study makers views.
As a study in propaganda, I love the use of the term "world attitudes". I wasn't aware that planets had minds that were capable of forming attitudes. Who exactly defines what the "world attitude" is? It's awfully presumptious, to define any particular attitude as the "world attitude". There is also an implicit value judgement that the "world attitude", whatever this means, is the correct one, or is one that you should be "in tune with". The US couldn't possibly be in the right if it ignores the "world attitude" could it?
Kerry supporters love to conclude that because we know NOW that Iraq had no WMD's in hand that Bush "made incorrect judgments before the war" (quoting the study). That does not follow -- based on the information available AT THE TIME, he assessed the risk and was unwilling to gamble on the "No WMD" option. Kerry supported the authorization of force, so he too agreed the risk was unacceptable. Only Kerry now wants it both ways because we have better information. The only reason we got that better information was because we removed Saddam and put in 1500 inspectors for a year.
You cannot be intellectually honest and retroactively change your assessment of risk. Bush took the only course of action that guaranteed we would know Iraq would not provide WMD to terrorists.
If Kerry were in a situation where the risk was 50% that a rouge regime had WMD and the risk was 50% they would cooperate with Al Qaeda, what would Kerry do if France and Germany didn't agree? I'm not willing to risk giving the presidency to someone who wants for foreign powers to lead when uncertainty and risk are in play.
Isn't the truth the truth?
You must not follow politics much.
OH my FSCKING GOD!
There IS NO liberal MEDIA! Lets think back....2000 election - why would the media bash Gore for his 'compulsive lying', when they didn't even bother to attack hardly any of Bush's stances. Turn on the television, all you saw was something claiming 'Gore lies about creating the internet' or 'Gore lies about being half norwegin. He's only 45%!'. Let's apply more LOGIC to this. The reporters are 65% liberal. That means, 45% of reporters should be conservative swinging, or moderate. However, reporters don't edit the stories or choose what gets aired, or HOW it gets aired. Those are the editors, CEOs, other such higherups, and there is a DIRECT correlation with your political persuasion and your class in society. Also, considering reporters make 6 figure salaries usually, its not really liberal at all...
Now, Fox News, the Conservative Media, has an audience of 4.7 billion. And yet, the world still hates us. Let's use an analogy (we're on slashdot, of course). You're a kid on the playground. Skipping over what happens, you get every other kid to hate you, except that cute, yet not too bright girl Polandiana. How much fun is recess going to be? Not fun at all. In fact, other kids can make your life a living hell.
Oh, and Saddam had no nukes, all he had were aluminum tubes. Remember - the war was sold by saying that Iraq had WMDs, and ties to Al-Qaeda, both of which are completly untrue. Iraq's WMDs were proven to be destroyed years ago, and could not have been revitalised. If the real reason was to eliminate a brutal dictator, bring democracy, and not steal oil, why Iraq?
And Clinton gave us the best economy in US history. Bush's record tax cuts for the rich helped the depression move on. If it's the smallest recession ever, why is Bush the only president to lose jobs since the great Depression, other than HOOVER.
In the end, I support President Bush not because he's always right - of course he's not - but because he is steadfast and resolute when confronting our enemies. John Kerry is not the kind of person who will take strong and decisive action when faced with a threat, and I think that's the wrong kind of leader for us during these difficult times.
This sounds like something straight from the Republican talking points. Do you really believe it?
This is what I don't understand. First of all, "these difficult times" does that imply that terrorism is something *new*? Terrorism didn't start on 9/11. "The world" didn't change on 9/11.
9/11 happened on George Bush's watch. That means he dropped the ball (and Clinton too and everybody before to some extent). Why should I reward him with another term?
This is what freaks me out about the whole process of politics right now. Nobody seems to be questioning *actions*, just *attitude*. It doesn't matter if Bush is "steadfast and resolute" (which basically means his speeches are written a certain way). What matters is, do I feel safer today? No not really. I still fear terrorism. I know that we've attacked the middle east again, and that will make it easier to recruit new terrorists. And now I'm afraid of my own government. I'm afraid that they'll think I'm "suspicious" for one reason or another.
Don't get me wrong, I think Kerry will make a terrible president. I wish we could keep the big tax cuts, and not have a war to pay for. I can't get that with either guy because the mistake has already been made. But in my thinking Kerry's mistakes will likely be at a whole different moral level than George Bush's mistake, which is already made.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
voters who choose Bush are wackos. Voters who choose Kerry and less so.
The war in Iraq isn't perfect, but according to a lot of interviews with soldiers and stuff, it's not as bad as NBC/CBS/ABC/CNN wants you to believe.
Even though Iraq doesn't have nukes, Saddam was an insane asshole who would've tried as hard as possible to get them -- several reports show that he was using the oil-for-food program to bypass UN sanctions
You're right. It isn't perfect, and it isn't as bad as NBC says...but that is irrelevant because it shouldn't have happened the way it did. The president was so sure about Iraq from day one. He knew what he and the VP wanted to do, and listened only to the facts to get them to that conclusion.
There is no doubt that Saddam was an insane asshole. But there are a lot of dictators who are insane assholes. But why Iraq? "They posed a threat to the US!" Yes, but so do a dozen other countries who actually HAVE nukes or other WMDs. So I ask again, why Iraq? "Because saddam committed genocide!" Yes, but so do a dozen of other countries...some much worse than Iraq. So I ask again, why Iraq?
The war was against terrorists, not Iraq. The more that I hear about this the more I hate the situation Bush put us in.
I know the job market isn't that great. Hell, I'm only working part time. But I ALSO know that Bush inherited a HORRIBLE economic situation and managed to turn it into the smallest recession in US history.
HE turned it into the smallest recession? Really? He did? Greenspan had nothing to do with it? If you think his tax cut saved this country, you don't know much about economics. The majority of people who got those cuts didn't spend the money. They put it in the bank. The reason IMO and from what I've read is that the recession was so short was because our economy was so strong at the start of it (since we're assuming the president controls this) thanks to Clinton.
Now then, the recession is technically over...but the state of the union is still questionable. The stock market is way down, jobs on average pay less now than they did, less people have health-care, the price of oil is going to kill the operating income of most companies, people (in general) have less money. If this is what you classify as "isn't that great" (implying average), then I'd hate to see your definition of a bad market.
I know the world doesn't agree with us. People: THIS IS OKAY. The world looks out for the world. The US needs to look out for the US.
I agree with you here. It is okay that the world doesn't agree with us. But it is NOT OK to have the world HATE us. Have people cringe when they hear the name of the United States in other countries.
You think this helps us beat terrorism? You think this will make us safer? Alienate our allies? Piss off other nations? This is in the United States interest?
The US does need to look out for the US, but somewhere in there Bush crossed the line and his actions are no longer in sync with what the US needs.
After 9/11 almost every nation was behind the US. As long as we carried out just actions with strong reasons, we would have had support the whole way. But Bush didn't lead that way. He decided to go unilaterally. Ignore the world, act as the US alone. I've never seen the world so close to together as it was right after 9/11...and that has been squandered away.
No thank you. I won't vote to re-elect George W. Bush. He had his chance, and he blew it.
-Mark
Dovie'andi se tovya sagain.
This country got all upset because of the mass murder of 9/11. What of Americas part in the mass murder in Iraq don't you understand?
I follow too much for my own good ;-).
The "multiple realities" of today's party politics is, frankly, more frightening to me than Saddam Hussein ever was.
I really believe the support for George Bush is almost religious in nature. In his latest speech, the unquestioning cheers from the audience were almost frightening. They sounded like "amens". You're not supposed to hear that kind of blind allegiance in America, you're supposed to have support but skepticism.
And of course the same is true for Kerry, in a different way. I believe the only reason he has any support is because he's Not George Bush.
When you turn on a talk show, it's just small sound bites repeated over and over again like mantras. I wish some of the interviewers would just cut the human-tape-player off and say "We've heard these talking points before. Don't you have anything new to say?". But if they did that, there'd be no way to fill up 24 hours of cable news.
It just makes me want to shake my head and hope for the future. Where are we headed??
Did you actually read the article?
Your post isn't really fact so much as assertions. That's OK! They might really be correct assertions -- I'm not saying they're wrong, because that's a separate debate! -- but they are debatable. What do NBC/CBS/ABC/CNN "want us" to believe? How do you quantify "not as bad"? What defines a "HORRIBLE" economic situation? Where do you draw the line between "depressed" and "HORRIBLE"? They're all subjective terms.
Let me emphasize before you flame me: I'm not saying your assertions are wrong, just that they're debatable.
If you somebody disagreed with you about Bush inheriting a "horrible" economy, what would you do? You'd pull up some economic data. You know, facts to back up your assertion.
This study, in addition to asking many subjective questions, asked some questions that were about specific, well-defined, falsifiable facts that are not really debatable. For example:
They asked what the conclusions of the Duelfer report were. Now you can argue about whether that report was wrong (that's an assertion), but you can't really argue about what it said. Duelfer said that there was no major weapons program. Maybe the report was wrong, but that was indeed what it said.
They asked what sort of evidence of a Saddam-Qaeda relationship the US had found. Again, you can argue that we should read between the lines, and presume less or more of a relationship than the evidence suggests -- but it's not really debatable what evidence has been presented to the public by intelligence agencies.
It is even on the factual information that Bush supporters seemed to get it wrong. Maybe you're better informed than most! So stay better informed, and read the article.
Assuming you're accurate in your identification, "Neither" seems likely. Casual research suggests he leans to Nader. The Kerry Supporter Worldview seems likely to be closer to his than the Bush, but I wouldn't put a lot of money on it. Your quote, however, can most readily be construed to be supporting evidence for my suggestion:
"A study on the perceptual fantasy worlds that voters live in demonstrates that Kerry voters' fantasy worlds are more real than the Bush voters' fantasy worlds!"
IE, he thinks both the big name candidates of full of it, and supporters of either are deluded.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
I'm waiting for some liberal to come refute my facts
What facts? You presented a bunch of opinions and conjectures.
The world looks out for the world. The US needs to look out for the US.
Nonsense. If the world is looking out for the world, then it's looking out for the US too. Unless you'd like to claim that the US is no longer part of the world?
That go-it-alone attitude is precisely why so much of the world dislikes us. Yes, the US must look out for the interests of its citizens first, but that doesn't mean we should flip the bird to everyone else.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
Sure, I'll refute.
/rantoff
According a lot of letters from the soldiers, the Iraq war is horribly mismanaged, and not as good as Fox/NBC/CBS/ABC/CNN would have you believe.
Based off of his interrogation, Saddam was a nuerotic egomaniac, who had no intentions of getting nukes, and simply defied America because he liked the idea of standing up to the west. There have been no major chemical labs since the first gulf war, and their rocket technology can barely reach past Israel. A criminal yes, but one wonders how many need to die to punish a murderer and bring freedom to a country that wasn't actively pursuing it.
Bush has spent so much money on the useless war, which could have been fed to the economy, I wouldn't be too optimistic. Things could be great now, but they're still crap.
It is not ok to ignore the world, because cooperating with the world makes things a hell of a lot easier, and prevents economic and far worse conflicts.
The whole War on Terror thing is inane.
We're not in danger. We weren't in danger. Better airport security would have avoided the whole 9/11 thing, but now we've just proved them right by taking security and war over freedom and peace.
You will die from cancer or a car crash, not terrorists. Of course, those aren't enemies we can bomb.
Don't have a lot of time for this response, but here goes:
For example, there is the infamous alleged meeting in Prague between an Al Queda operative and Mohammed Atta.
Thorughly debunked. Atta is on video in the US at the time the meeting supposedly took place. Also, I think you mean Iraqi operative - it's pretty well established that Atta was part of Al-Queda
There is good news in Iraq, and most of it is ignored by our press. Iraq has a free press.
Right. Like al-Sadr's newspaper that Bremer shut down, igniting the madhi (sp?) army and inflaming the insurgency? True, he was preaching violence against the 'coalition', but I'd rather have someone talk about killing me than actually doing it.
It seems rather churlish for us to ignore that part of the report and simply say there were no WMDs.
Ok, so when Cheney to takes the part about Saddam's "desire" to "someday" start up his WMD programs again, and uses that cherry-picked morsel as vindication of the war, would you say he's being churlish?
But life's getting better for the man on the street, and although we have made plenty of mistakes, it's nothing like the horrors under Saddam.
Been talking to many iraqis on the street have you? I find it tragic that we're reduced to arguing that "at least we're better than Saddam".
In the end, I support President Bush not because he's always right - of course he's not - but because he is steadfast and resolute when confronting our enemies
Osama Bin Laden killed 3000 people on 9/11, and since the beginning of 2002, Bush has been steadfastly ignoring him. Depending on how much of a shitstorm the middle east becomes before we come back to our senses, this may be viewed as the worst period in American history since the Civil War. There is a kind of mass delusion going on here now, where at least half of the country is looking at the disastrous failures of the Bush administration (no WMD, failed planning, "where's Osama", etc), and is saying "Four more years of this, please."
John Kerry is not the kind of person who will take strong and decisive action when faced with a threat
There's a guy in vietnam with an RPG who would disagree with you, if he were still alive.
You have hit upon the basic principle of Americans...independence.
If somebody (especially somebody we don't know) tells us to do something, even if we wouldn't mind doing it, we say no. We like being different, and contrary...and we're damn stubborn about it. In this way America is a lot like a two year old...we can be convinced, but you have to be careful about it, because if you start sounding bossy we plug our ears and just yell, NO, NO, NO, NO!
The solution, for you fer'ners out there who would like us to listen to you a bit more, is simply don't act like you're right (even when you are). Present your opinion as an opinion, and don't imply in any way that your opinion should be ours as well. We'll listen to what you think, and then do what we want...and sometimes what you think will affect the outcome. And sometimes is better than never, which is what you get when you try to tell us what we should do.
If God had had a computer it would have taken him 7 months to create the earth...if he even bothered to do it at all.
I took the battery out of my clock. It's steadfast and resolute when telling me the current time. It has even been proven correct on occasion.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
Already, the people of Spain have allowed Islamic fascists to decide a major election in their country.
Islamic fascists will decide our election too, have you thought about that?
Fear is very powerful. Sometimes it works very subtly.
Some of the terrorists who attacked Spain have already endorsed bush
I read some of the sample letters as well. Some were quite good I thought, but I'm a Brit so my opinion has no relevance.
Regards Luke
#include witty_one_liner.h
Huh?
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
> If the world is looking out for the world, then it's looking out for the US too
Bullshit!
If a murderous rapist serial killer is banging down your front door, immediately threatening you, and you've got the gun to take care of him are you going to be very appreciative of the fact that you next door neighbors are "against such behavior".
I doubt it. You're gonna go it alone and take care of the threat to your family and yourself.
Most likely the best your neighbor could do for you is call the cops, but they most likely will not even know anything is happening because they are sitting in front of the TV watching CSI.
Same thing with the rest of the world. They aren't even looking. They are too busy scamming the oil-for-food programs to give a damn about the US.
And when they are forced to look, i.e., a bunch of dead innocent people, they see what it's gonna cost in terms of dollars and lives and they chicken out.
Just like they have chickened out in the Sudan. They are looking the other way. There are people dying in the Sudan today at the hands of Islamic facists and the world is looking the other way.
And if the US went into the Sudan to straighten things out the US would undoubtly recieve the scorn of those who choose to look the other way.
Just like they are looking the other way for North Korea and Iran, and Afghanistan.
Losers, every single one of them!
Here's a GREAT BIG BIRD TO ALL OF YOU LOOKING THE OTHER WAY!
---- Go ahead, mod me down, I'll just post it again and you lose your mod points.
There is no 'you people'. There is however different people with different stories.
My story is that George Bush gets us involved in more things than he has the capacity/willingness to do properly, and doesn't use the big guns enough.
Case in point, Fallujah. He should have told the people there that they have 24 hours to get out, and they will be paid for damages, and then carpet bombed the whole area, mosque included.
I'll second that "HUH?" and toss a "WTF are you gibbering about" on top.
no evidence of a link between Iraq and Saddam Hussein.. you know except maybe that he LIVED there in those sweet palaces and all.. lol
Is an unsupported allegation justification for going to war? Would you condemn an individual to death over an unsupported allegation? What about an entire army of humans?
There's no proof that you or I were involved in the 9/11 attacks. That doesn't mean that we were not involed, it just means that there was no proof. Blindly assuming that we have involvement without a shred of real evidence would not only be a meaningless thing to say, but it would also be a reckless assumption. If there is no proof, there is no proof and we should just accept that. If an investigation uncovers some solid evidence, sobeit...but until then, we can't justify war based on a useless suspicion based on the idea that two enemies MUST have colluded. That theory just doesn't make any sense.
Interesting that you should say this, I recently heard an interview with a Canadian journalist who was released after a long and frightening kidnapping in Iraq. He said that the American-paid Iraqi police were supporting the insurgents. (Clearly, this can't be the case with all of the Iraqi police, but these new cops don't sound like all they're cracked up to be). This is just part of the rosy picture that the Bush administration paints of our occupation. The intel that told us to go to Iraq is now telling us that the best case scenario is a status quo in the insurgency, and the worst case is a full civil war. A civil war means another Vietnam, or the possibility of pulling out and accepting an Islamic dictatorship. Stop me if I'm wrong, but isn't that why we supported Iraq and Saddam Hussein in the 70's and 80's? To stop the Islamic dictatorship in Iran? Didn't we topple the Taliban for similar reasons (Islamic Fundamentalist dictatorship sponsoring terrorism)? Is there a chance that we could have mitigated the threat that Saddam posed without a war? I'm not suggesting that they were nice guys and I'm not suggesting that there weren't any atrocities going on there, but this war is not about liberation or Saddam's atrocities against his people.
I have a few issues with this. Is steadfast and resolute a good thing when you're just wrong? The fact that this president does not seem to have the capability to analyze a situation and realize that it's not working...or come up with a plan B -- just in case (for example) his cabinet was wrong and they won't throw roses at our soldier's feet. He seems unable to plan for reality. When reality happens, he spins it into good news -- like everyhting is peachy in Iraq (except for the hard work that our soldiers have to do). Reality happened and our reasons for going into Iraq magically changed from WMD to terror. When they failed to provide a link, it changed to liberating the Iraqi people. When people disagreed with his reasons for going to war, Bush spun it into suggesting the naysayers they were pro-Saddam. His only admitted failure in Iraq was winning too fast. This does not seem like a critical thinker. This seems like a stubborn man, who people are willing to stand behind because they're afraid of not doing enough. I call this "dosomethingism". A paranoia where people want
-Turkey
This is the same line of thinking they highlight in the article. "Somebody who agrees with me can't be wrong!" I'm sure it is totally IMPOSSIBLE that a judge could award money to plaintiffs without it implying IRREFUTABLY that there was a connection! Are we too make policy decisions based on what judges do after the fact? Maybe instead of assuming we should actually, maybe, ask the judge why he did or what evidence he did it on? Policy should be based on facts, not non-causally related actions by others.
"why was there an IED with sarin gas in it found, along with other warheads with various chemicals? Isn't sarin a WMD?"
As far as the IED:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0521/p09s01-coop.
Consult the link on all the myriad details about how to tell whether it was a "dud" or not.
But the question remains...this is your evidence? One lousy old shell of questionable utility constitutes weapons of mass destruction (note that both the words "weapons" and "mass" imply plurality)? We went to war for one fucking shell?! Is this the evidence you think the liberals are trying to "spin" away? Again here goes your reasoning: because of my assumptions, the premises must be true! Could it be possible that the presence of this IED shell would not imply irrefutably that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? No, impossible...it's a scrap of evidence that could possibly indicate that, so therefore it MUST indicate that. What if they had, oh, a thimble full of sarin? Is that WMD? What if they had some mustard plants...that's obviously WMD right?
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I suspect the real figure of merit here isn't how many facts you select, in order to retain your belief.
It's rather how many facts you have to throw out, in order to retain your belief.
Best is being able to accept new facts, and change your belief, when warranted. (Oops, I guess that isn't "resolute.")
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
(Osama Bin Laden killed 3000 people on 9/11, and since the beginning of 2002, Bush has been steadfastly ignoring him. Depending on how much of a shitstorm the middle east becomes before we come back to our senses, this may be viewed as the worst period in American history since the Civil War. There is a kind of mass delusion going on here now, where at least half of the country is looking at the disastrous failures of the Bush administration (no WMD, failed planning, "where's Osama", etc), and is saying "Four more years of this, please.") Why not, we re-elected president clinton after terrorist attacks. In fact people feel pretty good about the Clinton Presidency, although I think it could be argued that more acts of terror on home soil actually took place during the Clinton years. People continue to say Bush ignored Osama for 8 months of his Presidency leading up to 9/11. It's funny how often these are the same people that love Clinton after his 8 years of ignoring bin laden. Does the body count matter or is it the fact that buildings are blowing up?
Southmc said "Especially considering the data was taken from internet polls. /me shivers."
not, " Especially considering the data was done by Knowledge Networks."
The question now is, could it have been handled better, and is it reasonable to expect that it should have been? Much to Bush's embarassment, a sizeable chunk of the population thinks so. There was no imminent threat from Iraq, the WMD situation was much less clear than the administration claimed (especially its claims about Hussein's nonexistent nuclear weapons program), and there was time to develop a broader coalition, formulate a plan that would have minimized the looting and chaos that followed Hussein's departure, and make an honest case about why Hussein needed to go.
The problem is, there are any number of "insane assholes" running countries, each of whom would love to get themselves some nukes. There was no clear evidence that Hussein was actively pursuing a nuclear weapon, but what little controversial evidence existed was latched onto by this administration and presented to Americans as a clear threat.
I'm not looking for a premature pullout from Iraq. Now that we're there, the best thing we can do is get things stabilized so that Iraq can be independent. But the judgment Bush showed in taking us into war is, in my mind, proof positive that he's not the man to finish the job.
The question isn't whether we are obligated to put the interests of the world at large ahead of our own. The question is, when most of our allies are telling us an action is foolhardy and ill-conceived, we should be willing to try and make our case. If we cannot, then there may be a chance that our plan really is foolhardy.
This is what Kerry meant by a "truth test" in the first debate. We're supposed to support and respect our allies. That's why they're called allies, not enemies. We listen to them, their opinions matter to us, and they accord us the same respect. Seriously, how many times have your friends talked you out of doing something tragically stupid?
Bush wants to live in a reality of his own creation, where America is always right and the decisions of its commander-in-chief are always the best decisions that could be made. In order to continue to live in this reality, he cut himself off from the press (his famous April 14, 2004 press conference was only the third of his administration), interacts primarily with those in his very insular clique, and refuses to accept expert opinions that disagree with him. For example, in this illuminating article, the author recounts an anecdote about an encounter between Bush and Congressman Tom Lantos during a roundtable on a peace plan for Israel:
I don't want resolve from my president. I don't want someone who will "hold to his view." I want someone who will accept the fact that he might not always be right.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Here's the one that sticks out like a sore thumb: "48% incorrectly believe that evidence of links between Iraq and Al Qaeda have been found, [and] 22% that weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq."
In fact, the study authors have their facts wrong. The 9/11 commission concluded ONLY that Iraq and Al Qaeda did not cooperate with regard to the 9/11 attacks. The commission DID CONCLUDE that there were links between Iraq and Al Qaeda in direct contradiction to the assertions of the makers of this study. Source: usa today. The primary link is so well known that it is getting rediculous to assert it doesn't exist: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Also, there were quantities of Sarin gas that were discovered in artillery shells. While this is not WMD on the scale predicted, it is enough to refute the absolutist position taken by this study that no WMD have been found in Iraq. Source: newsmax.
the fact that over 70% of Kerry voters think the US economy is worse than a year ago (wha?!) is partisan too,
Depends on what you think the economy is- the fake dog and pony show called the stock market, or the jobs market adjusted for population increase. The first is better, the second is worse- and the general trend is for the first to continue getting better, and the second to get worse until we're in a depression.
30% think that Bush said Iraq was involved in 9-11
Did you listen to the 2002 State of the Union Address? He said SEVERAL TIMES that Iraq supported al Qaida in their attack on the United States- and was ready to provide a NUKE to al Qaida and that the smoking gun proof would be a "mushroom cloud in Manhattan".
What are you Bush people smoking?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
If a murderous rapist serial killer is banging down your front door, immediately threatening you, and you've got the gun to take care of him are you going to be very appreciative of the fact that you next door neighbors are "against such behavior".
Except your example means nothing because there was no immediate threat.
Of coarse if Sadam had missiles in Cuba or Mexico pointed at us there would be no debate about the war. But he was just a failed despot in a failed state.
You provided an editorial piece by a member of Bush's administration and an article from the Republican mouthpiece Newsmax. Do you have anything that's unbiased. Maybe something that uses facts?
Has Bush banned stem cell research? No
Did Saddam Hussein receive significant amounts of weaponry from the US?
Gimme some harder ones!
I don't know appropriate google searches for the above answers. Someone please post some.
The peice is heavily biased, and if you can't see that, you're not living in this reality. It goes to lengths to be fair and scientific in gathering the facts about the beliefs of the Bush and Kerry backers, but then just "assumes" with no evidence shown that the worldview of the Kerry side is correct, and the worldview of the Bush side is incorrect. If it were that simple, it wouldn't be such a big deal. There are a lot of very intelligent people both here and abroad, who have a firm understanding of and a lot of experience with geopolitical issues, who believe that Bush is holding a more "correct" worldview than Kerry is.
11*43+456^2
Has Bush banned stem cell research? No
Did Saddam Hussein receive significant amounts of weaponry from the US? Yes
Gimme some harder ones!
I don't know appropriate google searches for the above answers. Someone please post some.
I know that in my experience, the people who favor Kerry get their facts from Fareignheit 9-11 and the liberal news media. Do some independent research people.
Seems you did some high quality independent research by lots of interviews with soldiers and stuff. Top knotch work.
Even though Iraq doesn't have nukes, Saddam was an insane asshole who would've tried as hard as possible to get them -- several reports show that he was using the oil-for-food program to bypass UN sanctions
Hmm, seems to me that the reports I read indicated that Saddam effectively ended all efforts to acquire weapons illegally and instead was seeking to gain leverage with other nations in order to get said sanctions lifted so he could get weapons legally. Using the oil for food program was one way he was attempting to gain leverage and funds with foreign nations.
I know the world doesn't agree with us. People: THIS IS OKAY. The world looks out for the world. The US needs to look out for the US.
Care to tell us WHY this is okay. You can spout all the nonsense you want about well where america we have a right blah blah blah, we have more money and bigger guns therefore what we say is law attitude but that doesn't change the fact that our interactions with other countries signifigantly affect us. Confidence in the dollar is dropping and therefore our economy hasn't recovered as much as it should have if Bush hadn't damaged our reputation. The fact that you seem to think that the World and US can be seperated shows you have no clue how closely related international economies are. Japanese market crashes, the american one does too. Same with englands or frances, or germanys.
I'd like to rant a little further by saying. The repbulican party if bush wins again will be characterised by two things: 1) Simplistic rationalizations of poor decisions and 2) Its desire to enforce christian religious principles on america.
NPR is keen to point out that it is only the federal funding of embrionic stem cell research on new lines that is banned.
I can't remember how many times I have had to tell ignorant 'liberal media' types about all of the stories on NPR.
listen to these
On the "Did Saddam Hussein recieve significant amounts of weaponry form the US?" question. I don't recall NPR ever telling me that he did, you got evidance to the contrary?
Remember not all liberals listen to NPR, and not all NPR listeners (though probably most) are liberal.
I am convinced that you can't actually listen to NPR and call it 'liberal media' unless you are such a rabid conservative that you think mentioning both sides is a liberal idea. Most people who bitch about NPR being too liberal, don't even know what is on NPR.
I will not comment on the NYT as I only occasionally read an article online...
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
Maybe it's time to bring those back:
Did Iraq have WMDs? (yes) (no)
Did the 9/11 Commission Report indicate a connection between Bin Laden and Iraq? (yes) (no)
How many US soldiers have died in Iraq? (less than 100) (100-1000) (over 1000)
Who do you want for President? (Bush) (Kerry) (Other)
like the study that claimed Fox News viewers were delusional, this one will turn out to count as "in touch with reality" people who say "Saddam had no connection with terrorism" and count people who say "WMD were the sole justification for the Iraq War" as "in touch with reality."
Get a fucking grip, folks. Republicans aren't cretins, and Democrats aren't nuts, and these sorts of studies invariably turn out to demonstrate that the person doing the study is Better, Faster, Stronger, and Prettier than the Dread Other People.
And the linked PIPA story is unbiased? Oh comeon.
The main problem with the PIPA story was that it used as "facts" things that while evidence shows PIPA correct, they could be wrong.
Personally I've always wanted to see a study of historical and political facts that can't be argued (Maybe get the DNC to submit 10 questions they think bush supporters wouldn't know, maybe things about the civil rights movement for example or policies that the democratic party support, and get the RNC to submit 10 questions on their side, and get historians to submit 10 neutral questions) Poll people to find out their knowlege and then ask them what canidates they support.
Graph this on an questions/right vs who they are going to vote for axis.
Results would be very interesting.
Surveys have shown that people who agree with me are 22.6% more intelligent than those who do not! They are also found to be more attractive and live longer.
Film at 11!
I am hardly surprised so many people cite "How many people in the world don't like the US so we need a new president" when voicing their support for Kerry. But on Slashdot, "News for Nerds"?
When did popularity and others opinions matter so much?
The truth of the matter is the world is not high school or some college Greek letter society. US popularity is only important to the insecure and those who hated the US to begin with. That will never change.
I would rather look out for the US and tell the rest of the world to mind its own business. Finally, for my fellow Americans who "hate what we have become" you are more than welcome to move elsewhere and follow the rest of the world around like a little lost dog, wagging your tail and begging to be pet.
I better clarify my response lest I be accused of "spinning": I assume when you said "link between Iraq and Saddam Hussein", you really meant "link between *Al-Quaida* and Saddam Hussein" and not some sort of mental slip there.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
It's especially infuriating if you consider that Donald Rumsfeld probably sold these WMDs to Saddam Hussein personally in the early eighties. The US were Saddams best friend when he used his WMDs (compliments of Ronnie Reagan) on his own population in the early eighties and Donald Rumsfeld and other supporters of the neocon movement were involved much more than they would like to admit right now.
Jilles
If by "the people" you mean the former government members that decided to blame ETA to increase their chances at the polls. I assure you that if Aznar had blamed the arab terrorists from the beginning, he'd have won the election. Americans might be partisan enough to vote for a liar that doesn't have the country's best interest in mind, but I assure you that Spaniards don't.
There were other countries in the world much more deserving of our attentions. Afghanistan, for example, should have about 200,000 more troops in it than it currently does. North Korea needs invading. Iran needs invading. Saudi Arabia needs invading.
You want perpetual war? I'm right with you. You have this liberal's support, if only you pick the right targets.
Cough Bullsh** Cough
That is getting to be a tiresome line, "Of course we want war! We just want some other war! We would be 100% behind you if only you picked the right war!" Oddly enough, I doubt you would be behind any war. Any war we are facing will be the "wrong war" and any other possible war will be the "right war", until we actually have to fight it, at which time it will become the "wrong war" and the "right war" will be some other war.
You are simply wrong about Afghanistan. What it needs is a functioning government and army, which are on the way now that they have held national elections. And for the record, the Soviet Army had close to 200,000 troops there for about 10 years. What do you think happened? What the US and NATO are doing in Afghanistan is working much better.
You want invasions of Iran and Saudi Arabia? What better place could there to than Iraq to launch them? (You forgot Syria.). By your logic you should be cheering the war in Iraq as a possible precursor to invading the other countries you want taken care of.
North Korea? Other than the fact that a war there will kill millions and destroy both North and South Korea, and may cause havoc in Japan, a war there is doable. Lets just finigh getting the Reserves trained up by rotating through Iraq first though. Then we will be ready.
There, see? What you want is possible, war everywhere against those bad regimes. All you have to do is have a little more patience while the US cleans up after taking down the government of a madman than killed well over a million people, was putting 30,000 of his own countrymen into mass gaves each year, provided financial assistance to terrorists, and had a few WMDs just laying around in quantities not useful for an army, but perfect for terrorists.
You should be able to sleep better at night now, unless your line was a bunch of BS.
Now I'm waiting for some liberal to come refute my facts,
Well, I'm no liberal, but can I give it a try? (One can certainly make a conservative case against this war as well - I seriously doubt that Ronald Reagan would have invaded Iraq - he would have sent over cruise missles and air strikes, but he wouldn't have been stupid enough to invade.)
* The war in Iraq isn't perfect, but according to a lot of interviews with soldiers and stuff, it's not as bad as NBC/CBS/ABC/CNN wants you to believe.
And I'm sure that you can find "soldiers and stuff" who will tell you it's worse than NBC/CBS/ABC/CNN 'wants' you to belive". It all depends on where said soldier is stationed, doesn't it? What about the soldiers who refused an order recently because they knew they were being sent into a suicide mission? I suspect if you asked them you'd get a different perspective.
Even though Iraq doesn't have nukes, Saddam was an insane asshole who would've tried as hard as possible to get them -- several reports show that he was using the oil-for-food program to bypass UN sanctions
But the fact is he didn't have nukes. Shouldn't we require more proof than that the leader of the country we plan to invade is an asshole? Otherwise we may as well start invading several other countries who we just 'know' are going to do bad stuff in the future.
I certainly hope that if Bush is re-elected that he doesn't repeat this sort of mistake and decide to go invading another country for similar flimsy reasons. If he does then how long will it be before Russia, China, Germany & France (yeah, it's a wild scenario, but world wars have started over lesser things) decide that the leader of the US is a dangerous asshole who has nukes and must be taken out.
I know the job market isn't that great. Hell, I'm only working part time. But I ALSO know that Bush inherited a HORRIBLE economic situation and managed to turn it into the smallest recession in US history.
I'm only working part-time as well, but to call this the 'smallest recession in US history' seems to go against what the experience of millions of Americans tells them. Sure from some kind of ivory tower economic formula it was a short recession, but experience tells us that in many ways the recession continues to this day for lots of folks. There are many of us who are makine much less than we were 4 years ago. It really seems as though we need some other metric for economic growth because if that was the 'smallest recession in US history' then we must not be measuring correctly anymore.
I know the world doesn't agree with us. People: THIS IS OKAY. The world looks out for the world. The US needs to look out for the US.
But the fact remains that after 9/11 world opinion was strongly with US, but now a mere 3 years later Bush has managed to squander that goodwill. We had the opportunity to leverage our the 'war on terrorism' and thus share the burden, but now we seem hellbent on doing it all on our own and bearing the cost (both in $ and blood).
I withdraw my statement.
When will the world realize that the only solution that will be tolerated by Christian facists is the death of every person of Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, atheist, and/or any other religious bent other than Christian?
Historically Islam has been a much more peaceful religion than Christianity, and much more tolerant of other religions. There are extremists on both sides, the difference is the Christian extremists are running much of the U.S. government while the islamic extremists are criminals running from country to country.
The rest of the world is, rightfully, much more afraid that the U.S. will blow them up, than that Islamic extremists will.
The best recipe for creating more terrorists and suicide bombers that I can think of is flying across the ocean, invading a country full of people of another religion, blowing up large numbers of them, including innocent civilians, taking some captive, torturing them and forcing them to perform immoral sexual acts, bleeding their economy dry with reparations (see Germany after WWII), and installing a known agent of your military as their new leader. Gee that won't make anyone mad enough to try to kill us. The more of them we kill, the more of their friends an relatives give up hope, and live only for hate and revenge. (see Vietnam).
Somebody needs to mod you up.
I heard about this on NPR today, but they (of course) did not go to this level of detail.
thank you!
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
I was incorrect. Kinda sad thought that I got modded up so quickly and highly. Kind of exposes Slashdot biases...
Well, there is no proof of intelligence in the White House either. Doesn't mean there's no intelligence, just no proof. Yoda says: Will prove a negative, you?
there is no question at all that Saddam has a long record of supporting terrorism, including Palastinian suicide bombers.
Weird typo there, instead of "including", you should have written "even if they were only". And just their families, actually. He never paid out any money to the bombers, just gave aid to their families after the Israelis bulldozed their homes. That said, I think Saddam should hang for what he did to the kurds and the world IS a better place with him gone. It's just that it would be even better with Bush gone, too.
In the end, I support President Bush not because he's always right - of course he's not - but because he is steadfast and resolute when confronting our enemies.
The main problem with that position is that the reason Bush is steadfast and resolute is because he believes he is always right. The man has never admitted a mistake and that's an incredibly dangerous attitude for a President to have. It's the wrong kind of leader for ANY kind of times. Strong and decisive is all well and good, but not when it leads the entire world on wild goose chases. There are times when it's better to think first and act later, especially when you hold millions of lives in your hands.
John Kerry is not the kind of person who will take strong and decisive action when faced with a threat
Yes, he is.
Money for nothing, pix for free
Do you think you're tougher than me? Fucking conservatives talk a pile of shit, and steal fucking defenseless signs from my yard.
What a bunch of pussies.
Truman dropped the A-bomb, and every conservative since then has talked a lot of shit. Now go suck on your bottle, little bitch.
Oh, and by the way, Iraq had nothing to do with the terrorists.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Hmmm, did you read the article?
Fact: most of the world thinks that for the US to invade Iraq was a Bad Idea.
The article then points out that most Republicans believe that this fact is wrong, while most Democrats know it to be true.
As per your comment, the whole world agrees that we have to get them before they get us. The only difference is in how to "get them". It would be great if we could just have a show of hands "raise your hands if you are a terrorist", but they seem to be smarter than that.
Of course my Republican employer, having been pointed to this report, insisted that whoever they had reading the WMD report was illiterate because it clearly shows that Iraq had WMDs and major WMD programs. With a shit-eating grin on my face, I calmly said "I think you just proved this report's conclusions."
What i find really amazing is how many people who identify themselves as Bush supporters don't know what his positions are.
The results from the survey, broken out by question.
Just in case you don't feel like rtfa, a couple examples:
53% of Bush supporters think Bush wants us to participate in the International Criminal Court. We do not participate in the ICC and Bush does not think we should.
51% of Bush supporters think Bush wants us to participate in the Kyoto agreement. We do not participate in the Kyoto agreement and Bush does not think we should.
20% of Bush supporters think that Iraq was directly involved in 9/11 and 19% of Bush supporters think that Bush is telling them that.
But hey, the Republicans aren't the only uninformed people out there: 31% of Kerry supporters (36% for Bushies) think we actually do participate in the Kyoto agreement and 34% of them think that Bush supports it.
39% of Kerry supporters (45% for Bushies) think we actually do participate in the ICC and 45% of them think that Bush supports it.
What we can learn from this: one-third to one-half of the people out there don't know what the fuck they're talking about regardless of party affiliation, but Bush supporters are wrong slightly more often.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
s/events and world attitudes/my preferred reality/;
Liberty uber alles.
Voters supporting Kerry might be "more in tune with the events and world attitudes surrounding the war in Iraq" but few recognize that Kerry is pro-war, Kerry voted to confirm Scalia, Kerry's health care plan won't cover everyone, and Kerry has not announced a plan on exactly what he'll give European countries to woo them to put more soldiers into this war. Kerry won't even call Bush a liar. The anti-war movement risks gutting its legitimacy by giving their vote to support someone who will plow billions more into this war and then asking him to please stop the war after they've given away their only bargaining chip.
This, of course, assumes that Kerry actually wants to win and isn't just playing the "good cop" to Bush's "bad cop" where both major parties are looking to drive more profits into their largely corporate campaign funders. Gore/Lieberman failed to convince on this ground after not acting to challenge those thousands of largely Black and Latino voters in Florida who were "scrubbed" from the rolls without good cause (most of whom would have voted Democrat, and most of whom still don't have their voting rights restored according to Greg Palast).
Digital Citizen
Duelfer said that there was no major weapons program.
...
You might want to actually look at what he wrote rather than a NY Times report on what he wrote.
From Charles Duelfer's testimony on his report:
The ISG has developed new information regarding Iraq's dual-use facilities and ongoing research suitable for a capability to produce biological or chemical agents on short notice. Iraq did have facilities suitable for the production of biological and chemical agents needed for weapons. It had plans to improve and expand and even build new facilities.
Likewise, in the nuclear arena, the ISG has developed information that suggests Iraqi interest in preserving and expanding the knowledge needed to design and develop nuclear weapons.
From the article:
... Likewise, in the nuclear arena, the ISG has developed information that suggests Iraqi interest in preserving and expanding the knowledge needed to design and develop nuclear weapons. ... It is this combination of topics that makes us suspect this lab was intentionally focused on research applicable for nuclear weapons development.
57% also assume, incorrectly, that Duelfer concluded Iraq had at least a major WMD program.
From the Duelfer report:
Iraq did have facilities suitable for the production of biological and chemical agents needed for weapons. It had plans to improve and expand and even build new facilities.
And you keep forgetting that EVERYONE backed Bush, including Kerry. Sure, looking back things turned out to be different, but at the time, there was no question. Maybe we should start faulting Congress (including Kerry) for being so quick to adopt a "jump-on-the-bandwagon" mentality...
Rumor is not evidence. The only reason that anyone even suspected Hussein is the conviction that if anything happened in Iraq, it was on his orders. The governemnts Saudi Arabia and Pakistan still have plausible deniability, but there is no doubt that a tremendous amount of support is flowing out of those countries, and their leaders often look the other way. Iran however, is in it up to their eyeballs, is building nuclear weapons (no doubt of that), and yet Bush went after Iraq. So whether Iraq gave support to Al Queda is a complete red herring. The Bush administration didn't really care one way or the other. Stop wasting time on this.
And if you dig deep into the Duelfer report, you will see that there is no question that Saddam was starting to suceed in getting sanctions lifted, and if they were, he was planning to restart his WMD programs.
Yes, and he had Dick Cheney's full support on this. All those nasty sanctions were cutting into Haliburton's business. Bush was planning to lift them before 9/11, but the invasion was a much better idea, once they found a way to sell it.
It has a new government with excellent support from the people. Go take a look at the Iraqi blogs out there, please. Most people in Iraq consider the current government to be a branch of the Bush administration, and they despise Bush.
Its new police and military are starting to vigourously attack the Al Queda members in the country.
I have heard reports that the Al Queda presence in Iraq is minimal, and some which say that Al Queda has metasticised into a social movement there. Which is interesting either way. If they are Al Queda, where did they come from, given that there were no Al Queda members there prior to invasion? So the invasion has actually paved the way for Al Queda to enter Iraq. If they're not Al Queda, then we are dealing with either groups of heavily armed criminals (which probably accounts for more than half of them), political extremists pouring into the country, or Iraqis who have formed a resistance. All of these are extremely long term, messy problems. Dictatorships are essentially large criminal organizations which run the country. When the big boss goes down, all the little bosses compete for a piece of his action. Look at Russia 15 years after the collapse of its dictatorship. Putin has ties to the Russian mafia. Cleaning it up may take decades. And crooks will deal with anyone who pays them. Al Queda's money is as good to them as any. So now, Al Queda has a recruiting ground, and a number of willing business partners. Lovely.
The economy is booming. With 8 hours of electricity a day, the near total collapse of the phone system, businesses bombed out, and oil production down to little more than half of full production? Please.
By a narrow majority, Iraqis support the presence of our troops until the new military gets up to speed.
By a narrow majority? Uh, oh. The polls 6 months ago had that majority at around 75%. The people in Vietnam supported the Americans too... at first.
Even in Fallujah, the natives are getting restless and opposition to the Al Queda foreigners is strong.
Opposition to Al Queda foreigners has always been stong. And opposition to the current regime, under which those foreigners have poured into the country, is getting stronger.
But life's getting better for the man on the street, and although we have made plenty of mistakes, it's nothing like the horrors under Saddam.
The man in the street is getting bombed, shot at, and had to live without power in the blazing summer heat. They now have a lot of little Saddams kidnapping and killing Iraqis and westerners (you only hear about the westerners.) And not everyone held at Abu Ghraib is a terrorist. In other words, the old terrors are still happening, and the new ones really aren't a welcome addition. I'm really glad that Saddam is gone, and so are the Iraqis, but they're starting to think it's six of one, a half dozen of
You don't understand the new definition of bias.
Anything you agree with isn't biased. Everything that disagrees with you is biased.
It's liberals who fight for REAL freedom. Republicans are nothing but a bunch of greedy businessman and gun-nuts.
If a murderous rapist serial killer is banging down your front door
Not a good analogy.
For future reference, if you want to talk about 9/11, a better analogy would be waking up to find that a mob hitman has broken into your house and shot your child before turning the gun on himself.
If you want to talk about Iraq, you might try using the idea of a known sex-offender living in your neighborhood.
Neither analogy is perfect, but analogies never are.
So what's your response to those analogies?
Well, if you're the US you go after the mafia boss who hired the suicidal hitman. You let the boss escape, catch some of his subordinates and hold them without a trial, kill a bunch of his henchmen (along with a few people who happened to live near them) and imprison (without trial) a bunch of Italians and Italian-Americans who happened to be near your house at the time of the murder. Then you go burn down the sex-offender's house after falsely claiming that he was hiding kiddie-porn and was working with the mob.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
Such a study is easy to spin based on the questions you ask and it looks like it was in this case. A bunch of misconceptions almost exclusive to the conservative side of the spectrum were used and not surprisingly the conservatives did poorly on the test. It would be just as easy to use misconceptions that might be more common on the liberal side (some questions relating to the draft or Bush "knowing" about 9/11 before hand). Even in this one-sided exercise the "right" answer may be just as much a matter of faith without real knowledge of the facts as the "wrong" answer.
I put the scare quotes there because in some cases the truth of falsity of the answer is open to interpretation. For instance from the PIPA press release "48% incorrectly believed that evidence of links between Iraq and al Qaeda have been found". It is PIPA that is mistaken here: the 9/11 commission report mentions several links but said that they do not appear to have resulted in a "collaborative relationship" An informed person aware of these findings would probably get a question about "links" wrong.
Furthermore this aspect of the 9/11 report is brief and as the Washington Post pointed out it "it did not specifically address two of the other pieces of evidence the administration has offered to link Iraq to al Qaeda: Zarqawi's Tawhid organization and the Ansar al-Islam group."
On another link the 9/11 report said there was "substantial uncertainty" about AL QUEADA'S ties to the first Trade Center which Iraq does have a pretty irrefutable link to Iraq in the person of Abdul Rahman Yasin... An informed person might find the 9/11 commissions "uncertainty" puzzling on account of the close operational and family relationship between Ramzi Yousef (the mastermind of the WTC bombing who hired Yasin to build the bomb) and Yousef's UNCLE(!) Khalid Shaikh Mohammed which the 9/11 Commission called the "principle architect of the 9/11 attack". Might a well informed person aware of the connection between Khalid Shaikh Mohammed of Al Queada -> his nephew Ramzi Yousef -> Yousef's bomb builder Yasin -> Yasin's finding shelter and a government pension in Iraq get this question "wrong"? Would a less well informed person get it "right"? I suspect the answer is yes in both cases.
What planet are you from? Where I grew up, Democrats were lucky to be called "stupid." Usually what we get were vulgar sexual epithets.
No party is without its assholes.
An example: did Kerry call terrorists a "nuisance"? Yep. Sure did. Undeniable fact. Never mind that I've taken this out of context in order to intentionally bias the question.
Did you read the questionnaire the test subjects were given? Here, I'll copy and paste an example for you:That seems fairly phrased to me, not deliberately taking a fragment out of context. What do you think the correct answer would be? Or how do you think the question is slanted?
L-O-F-L
You say people are spinning the facts, then you point to a website that was *obviously* set up *TO SPIN* the facts and hell even make them up. Inflamatory domain name. Front page, poll numbers. Prima facie stuff.
My friend, you are one of those living in a fantasy world.
This is the same faith that sees no problem with overthrowing governments, and bringing people like Saddam Hussein into power, when it's convinient.
The same faith that sees no problem with using a 500 pound "precision bomb" to take out a single person by dropping it into an apartment building. Then being surpised, but unworried when "collateral damange" happens, and 15 others are killed.
The same faith that supplies Weapons of Mass Destruction to our temporary allies. Faith that doesn't flinch when they get used.
The same faith that supports a man who lied to justify an invasion, while having no plan for the aftermath of that invasion.
The same faith in a leader who has made the world less safe, and made the US weaker.
oh... I wish I had your faith, then I'd be able to sleep at night, instead of worrying about death from a Korean or Iranian, or loose Russian nuke.
oh... to have the faith and naivety of a 4 year old again...
In their own words (editing to cut unrelated material):
Yes, the ACLU defends freedoms - but only the ones that they think are important. So does the NRA, for that matter, but I don't hear them claim otherwise.
Reproductive choice? Since when did deciding if you want to have children or not become liberal?
The word "choice", in the context of "reproduction", almost always refers to abortion. Do you think those "Right To Choose" bumper stickers refer to a woman's right to take birth control pills? Almost noone is anti-contraceptive, but "choice" rarely refers to that. Abortion rights are pretty much the sole province of liberals. Conservatives tend to be against abortion.
Planned Parenthood? Not Liberal. %98 of their work involves women's health, STD prevention and education, and reproductive education.
I suspect that 98% is a bit high. At any rate, much of the rest goes toward performing abortions or lobbying for the right to do so.
Feminism? When did sexual equality become a "liberal" agenda item. I thought it was an ammendment to the constitution.
Most conservatives (all that I personally know, anyway) believe in equality between the sexes. To many conservatives, feminism goes beyond "women are equal" and into "women are inherently superior". To them, this is as blatantly wrong as the idea that men are inherently superior. No, sexual equality is not an amendment, although an attempt to make it so failed in the late 70s / early 80s.
So... I guess your saying conservatism means giving up your rights and freedoms, losing control over your reproductive organs, and keeping females locked barefoot and pregant in the kitchen?
That is an utterly bizarre take on conservative beliefs. If many non-conservatives share your misunderstanding, then I fear we'll never be able to work together.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
You know, that's an excellent point, and I agree with you.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
...doesn't mean I don't understand.
It's not that the right leaning are unaware. It's just that they don't give a rats ass who the rest of the world think they should vote for.
Someone hates these cans.
Iran however, is in it up to their eyeballs, is building nuclear weapons (no doubt of that), and yet Bush went after Iraq.
Iran is pissed off and scared, as we would be if Saudi Arabia took over Mexico tomorrow to free them from their tyrannical leader, and decided to camp out while installing a puppet government. Iran may be building nuclear weapons, more likely, they have already purchased some nuclear weapons which they are keeping as a "just in case those American infidels invade us" contingency. Iran has been very open with U.N. inspectors, inviting them to view every step of their uranium refining process. They announced that they were going to do this eight years ago and have spent millions, probably billions, building a nuclear power reactor. Now, when they start to refine uranium necessary to make it work, Bush says it is all part of a plot to build weapons. If we didn't want them to refine uranium, maybe we should not have explicitly stated that they have the right to refine uranium in our non-proliferation treaty with them.
Thus far Iran is 100% within their rights, as far as refining uranium goes, not that that will stop war-mongers from using them as a boogey man to keep the American people scared. Not that it will stop Bush from invading them in his quest to get us all fricking killed. Bush would just love to invade because Iran would respond by launching long range missiles at our bases in Europe and we would have another world war on our hands, one we are almost certain to win, but that will keep him and his in power, kill off thousands of our soldiers, and make big profits.
.... Rome fell on a monday.
> There is good news in Iraq, and most of it is ignored by our press. Iraq has a free press.
Tell that to the newspapers and television stations that have been shut down on account of their content.
> It has a new government with excellent support from the people.
Except for the ones that are trying to blow it up...
> Its new police and military are starting to vigourously attack the Al Queda members in the country.
Except for the ones that desert or defect...
> The economy is booming.
Mostly with C4 and mortar rounds...
> In the end, I support President Bush not because he's always right - of course he's not - but because he is steadfast and resolute when confronting our enemies.
No he isn't. He's the kind who drops the ball on confronting our real enemies in order to pursue a war on someone he doesn't like.
It amazes me that anyone thinks Bush is our best bet for national security.
> John Kerry is not the kind of person who will take strong and decisive action when faced with a threat
What, if anything, do you base that claim on?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
John Kerry is not the kind of person who will take strong and decisive action when faced with a threat
So what do you base that statement on? Do you base it on the time when, as his force travelled up the Dong Chung River, "all units came under intense automatic weapons and small arms fire from an entrenched enemy force less that fifty-feet away. Unhesitatingly, Lt. Kerry ordered his boat to attack as all units opened fire and beached directly in front of the enemy ambushers. This daring and courageous tactic surprised the enemy and succeeded in routing a score of enemy soldiers."? Or shortly after than, when "the boats were again taken under fire from a heavily foliated area" and "with utter disregard for his own safety and the enemy rockets, he again ordered a charge on the enemy, beached his boat only 10 feet from the Viet Cong rocket position and personally led a landing party ashore in pursuit of the enemy."? That's from his Silver Star citation, which adds, "The extraordinary daring and personal courage of Lt. Kerry in attacking a numerically superior force in the face of intense fire were responsible for the highly successful mission." No, wait. That would totally go against your statement. Hmm.
Maybe you base the statement on the time when, after being wounded in the arm by an exploding mine, and while "receiving small arms and automatic weapons fire from the riverbanks" he realized that a man had gone overboard. In response, he turned his boat around and "returned upriver to assist. The man in the water was receiving sniper fire from both banks. Lt. Kerry directed his gunners to provide suppressing fire, while from an exposed position on the bow, his arm bleeding and in pain, and with disregard for his personal safety he pulled the man aboard. Lt. Kerry then directed his boat to return and assist the other damaged boat to safety." That's from his Bronze Star citation, which ends with "Lt. Kerry's calmness, professionalism, and great personal courage under fire were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service." Oh, crap. That also totally contradicts your statement.
What do you base your statements on, anyway? Seriously, have you ever come across evidence of this that was not in the form of an absurd claim made by the Bush campaign? Just because Bush says John Kerry is weak and indecisive doesn't make it true. As Karl Rove always says, "Attack your opponent's strength, not his weakness.". So no wonder they want to paint Kerry this way: they know the opposite is true, and that it is one of this strengths. And in succeeding in convincing the public otherwise, they have greatly hurt his chances of being elected.
And please don't cite SBVT because we all know they're full of shit. (And again, right in line with Rove's strategy. And their funding came from Rove's good buddy Bob Perry. Hrm.)
And I'm really sorry to use Vietnam war references in my argument, because I really think this race has focused way too much on things that happened 30 years ago when they should have been focusing on today's issues. But, obviously, the above quotes are the ideal counter-argument to your ridiculous claim. He's been resolute and such in the senate too, but hearing about how he boldly broke with his party to support a balanced budget just doesn't have the same effect.
There were other countries in the world much more deserving of our attentions.
That has little to do with which one should be taken down first. Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt determined that Germany was our greatest threat despite the fact that Japan actually attacked us and we prosecuted that global war by taking down Italy first. The greatest threat is not necessarily the best first target.
Clinton sent cruse missles in there to get ben laden and the plan that bush used to invade was put together during the Clinton administration.
I would say that if bush wasn't stuffed into the presidency by 5 votes Gore would have taken out Afganistan in a shorter time.
I don't see anything drop in the stock exchanges - a pretty decent indication of the state of the economy, until after Bush had the keys. See for yourself: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=%5EDJI&t=5y
What you say is true, but irrelevant. FDR did not invade Brazil. He picked Germany because it was an agressive nation, which was more dangerous to the US at the time.
Iraq on the other hand was well constrained by the sanctions, the no-fly zones, and the inspections. That's what the reports said then, and that's what they eventually found after the invasion.
By the criteria that you imply in your message, we should have taken down Saudi Arabia and Iran first. But Saudi Arabia has been resisting full cooperation with us, and Iran is more belligerent than ever. They're actively pursuing nukes!
Do you truly understand that Iraq was a contained problem? Do you know that Iraq had nothing to do with the terrorists?
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
So true. You should clearly side with the governments of the only countries to support the reelection of President Bush, Russia and Iran. They obviously have the best interests of the USA at heart.
We should indeed fault them.
but not everyone supported the war -- not in america and certainly not in the world.
look up early iraq war dissent on google.
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
also --
a lot of people here believe saddam helped plan 9/11. there has been a lot of misinformation that contributed to "everyone" backing bush.
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
Heh... you know, there have been some EXCELLENT replies to my post. It did what it was intended to do -- generate discussion. But I simply think it is UNFAIR that my post is modded "Overrated". You know what? Slashdot thinks that posts should only be modded down if they are "Offtopic", "Troll", or "Flamebait". My post was none of the above, and it really pisses me off that I'm penalized for the political views of the majority of /. readership.
Thank God I have karma to burn.
Jay | http://oldos.org
When will the world realize that the only solution that will be tolerated by Christian facists is the death of every person of Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, atheist, and/or any other religious bent other than Christian?
Where did this come from? The last time anyone proclaiming to be Christian was hell-bent on genocide to the scale you describe was the Catholics in the middle ages, when men went to "fight for Jerusalem". Hasn't happened since. Also, being a Christian myself, I can speak with great assurance that Christianity does not seek the death of anyone.
Historically Islam has been a much more peaceful religion than Christianity, and much more tolerant of other religions.
Really? Are you familiar with the history of Islam? in/around 630AD, Mohammed and his armies made quite a rush of much of North Africa and the Middle East. It took them a while, but it basically amounted to "convert or die". In the Koran itself, adherents are encouraged to kill infidels on sight. Good thing for me that they don't follow their holy book to the letter.
The best recipe for creating more terrorists and suicide bombers that I can think of is flying across the ocean, invading a country full of people of another religion, blowing up large numbers of them, including innocent civilians, taking some captive, torturing them and forcing them to perform immoral sexual acts, bleeding their economy dry with reparations (see Germany after WWII), and installing a known agent of your military as their new leader. Gee that won't make anyone mad enough to try to kill us. The more of them we kill, the more of their friends an relatives give up hope, and live only for hate and revenge. (see Vietnam).
Dude. You have issues.
You have no idea why we went to Vietnam, do you? We were asked by the South Vietnamese government to help them fight off the Communist armies of the North Vietnamese. We basically got dragged into a civil war.
You are greatly mistaken in assuming that the crimes committed in ONE PRISON were a recurrent theme across Iraq. It didn't happen, and you have no proof that it did. If it were widespread, we would have heard about it.
On top of that, you might like to be reminded that WWII was started by Germany, and that is why they were forced to carry the load for their reconstruction, just like Japan (for the same reason).
If you are going to make wild accusations and comparisons, at least prove that you paid attention in history class. (Of course, if they didn't cover this stuff in your school, I'll let it slide just this once, but that's a problem for another discussion.)
When politicians are involved, everyone loses.
It absolutely amazes me that the Kerry campaign is not using this to promote their candidate. Kerry has all but conceded major ground to Bush by not explaining that it is Bush who is the far more palatable candidate for terrorists, because it is the Bush Administration which has done more than any previous U.S. Administration to encourage and facilitate the spread of international terrorism. And the terrorists know it.
On a lighter note, here's another Bush endorsement that we might want to be concerned with.
Once again Israel denies wrongdoing, or faced with incontrovertible evidence (in this case one of the spies has reportedly cooperated with the FBI) dismisses the spying with the claim that such spying is harmless, because Israel and the United States are such good friends.
Well, let us take a closer look at that idea of "harmless espionage" by recalling Israel's most famous failed spy, Jonathan Pollard.
Jonathan Pollard is an American of Jewish descent, born in Galveston Texas, who established a career as an intelligence analyst for the US Navy. There have been many theories offered as to why Pollard decided to betray his country of birth to the Jewish state, but that Pollard did betray his country of birth to Israel is beyond all doubt. Pollard's defense was that he did not spy so much against the United States, only that he spied for Israel, sending them documents that in his opinion the US should have shared with Israel anyway.
That it was never Pollards job to decide what documents Israel should have was apparently irrelevant. Pollard arrogated that authority to himself. From his position of trust within the US Navy, Pollard delivered over 1000 classified documents to Israel for which he was well paid. Included in those documents were the names of over 150 US agents in the Mideast, who were eventually "turned" into agents for Israel.
But by far the most egregious damage done by Pollard was to steal classified documents relating to the US Nuclear Deterrent relative to the USSR and send them to Israel. According to sources in the US State Department, Israel then turned around and traded those stolen nuclear secrets to the USSR in exchange for increased emigration quotas from the USSR to Israel. Other information that found its way from the US to Israel to the USSR resulted in the loss of American agents operating inside the USSR. Casper Weinberger, in his affidavit opposing a reduced sentence for Pollard, described the damage done to the United States thus, [It is] difficult to conceive of a greater harm to national security than that caused by... Pollard's treasonous behavior.
This should end the suggestion that Israel's spies are harmless. They are not. The United States' nuclear deterrent cost an estimated five trillion taxpayer dollars during the 50s and 60s to build and maintain, and less than $100,000 for Pollard to undermine. Israel waited 13 years to admit Pollard had been spying for them, and now lobbies for his release, having granted him Israeli citizenship.
Pollard is hardly the only Israeli spy operating in the United States. He just had the misfortune to get caught. Here are just a few examples of the Israeli spy operations that have been detected.
1947. Information collected by the ADL in its spy operations on US citizens is used by the House Select Committee on Unamerican Activities. Subcommittee Chair Clare Hoffman dismisses the ADL's reports on suspected communists as "hearsay.
1950 John Davitt, former chief of the Justice Department's internal security section notes that the Israeli intelligence service is the second most active in the United States after the Soviets.
1954 A hidden microphone planted by the Israelis is discovered in the Office of the US Ambassador in Tel Aviv.
1956 Telephone taps are found connected to two telephones in the residence of the US military attaché in Tel Aviv.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
> shows voters supporting Kerry as being more in tune with the events and world attitudes surrounding the war in Iraq
Sure Kerry supporters can be in tune with the rest of world opinion. They probably are.
But, I really don't think world opinion has come to the point where the world realizes that if Islamic fascism isn't defeated then everyone will be living under a "Talibanesque" (spelling?) regime real quick.
Already, the people of Spain have allowed Islamic fascists to decide a major election in their country.
When will the world realize the pretext these fascists live by?
When will the world realize that the only solution that will be tolerated by Islamic facists is the death of every person of Jewish, Christian, Hindu, atheist, and/or any other religious bent other than islam?
This ultimately means that the world cannot see where these evil doers want to take the world's societies.
The Islamic terrorists do not hesitate to murder anyone in their way. And if they die achieving their goals then they are perfectly happy with that also.
I say that if they want to die for Islam then let them. But let them die at the end of my gun on my terms.
Rather than me being beheaded because I refuse to allow my wife to be forced to wear a head covering, or if I refuse to pray to their skewed excuse for a god, or because I refuse whatever other religious atrocity they desire to impose upon me.
It's wrong to couch supporters of Kerry in terms of what the remainder of the world thinks.
Kerry, Bush, Nader, Badnarik, name your candidate, etc., everyone must realize that if you aren't an Islamic facist then the facists have a fate you don't want waiting for you. By sticking your head in a hole and refusing to see the obvious you are failing your species badly.
---- Go ahead, mod me down, I'll just post it again and you lose your mod points.
Are you the kind of elitist that wants there to be a voting test? (yes)(no)
For extra credit: On those voting tests, which of the two parties wanted those rules? (D)(R)
I thought that party supposedly changed its tune...
Okay...I'm curious...for the Slashdot - Politics section, is there any way to have a user preference indicating there political bias?
I am interested in some idea as to how much a persons bias effects there posts. I think peoples beliefs in a specific item can add some karma or weight to a specific article. If they respond one way to a article about a candidate, then they may be saying it just because they are a Democrat or a Republican supporter. If an opposing opinon says something against the opposed, there may be less credibility because they are saying it just because they support the opposition.
Maybe you could have some issue criteria (how do you feel about death penalty, how do you feel about abortion, how do you feel about certain types of drug use, etc) which can help establish your polticial bias settings. I could see this almost like a Ok Cupid or related matching site type of meta data.
Eric B
ebresie@gmail.com
Clinton ordered Reno to stop Californians from smoking weed for medicinal purposes, even though they made it legal.
Clinton defended homosexuality by implementing a don't ask don't tell policy.
Lieberman (Democrat VP candidate of 2000) voted for the internet child protection act (to ban pornography).
Liberals got Dr. Laura's TV show banned before it was aired and tried to do the same thing with a smear campaign on Mel Gibson's "The Passion" (so much so that he had to go through a tiny distribution company with his own money). But when Eisner turned down Fahrenheit 9/11 (which the contract with Miramax allowed him to do) and offered it back to Miramax (which the contract allowed him to do and as had been done with Moore's last movie), Liberals screamed censorhip and political shenannigans.
People on both sides of the aisles fight for freedom and people on both sides of the aisles are greedy power barons. But one side is the "good guys" and the other is the "bad guys" can you tell which is which?
Or does it really matter?
Putting aside minor considerations like the insanity of anihilating ten time the number of people killed in the twins, SQUARED
OK, I was going to comment that I think there are more than 50 thousand people in the middle east. There are a few million Jews in Iran alone and they are a minority there. But still.... gotta do the math.....
50k times 50k is.... (Taking off shoes to count)
2,500,000,000
OK, thats a bit over but I suppose we shouldn't nit pick.
or it could be 5k squared times 10.....
250,000,000
I would guess that's pretty close.
It would have made more sense if you listed France. They also have tons of Muslems in the country. Come on, just between the two of us - you are itching for an excuse to nuke France. Admit it.
I'll admit it.
It would be great to nuke France.
Death to the French!
(I don't care a bout the Muslim population. I just hate the French!)
Only one problem, France has Nukes too.
That's why Iran and North Korea is desperate to get Nukes.
To protect themselves.
Not to say that I like the idea of Iran and North Korea with Nukes.
But then I don't like the idea of France having Nukes.
(Because it prevents us from wiping them off the face of the earth.)
Nobody died when Nixon lied.
I'm meeting you half way you stupid hippies!
That the "news" is they're endorsing the incumbant. That alone tells us what we all really think about Bush.
Who would you rather vote for, a person who has endorsements from ... the vast right wing conspiracy, or a candidate who has the support of the Communist(s)....
/sarcasm
Down with the eeeviil capitalists! Kerry '04!
Hey now!
Don't go dissing the communists!
I worked hard to bring about the relations between us and Communist China!
And now the vast right wing conspiracy is shipping all the jobs to Communist China!
Slave Labor under Communism is the best thing that ever happened to Capitalism!
Three cheers for Communism and what it's done for eeevil Capitalists!
Nobody died when Nixon lied.
I'm meeting you half way you stupid hippies!
It's especially infuriating if you consider that Donald Rumsfeld probably sold these WMDs to Saddam Hussein personally in the early eighties. The US were Saddams best friend when he used his WMDs (compliments of Ronnie Reagan) on his own population in the early eighties and Donald Rumsfeld and other supporters of the neocon movement were involved much more than they would like to admit right now.
I suppose a Libertarian might say that it would be a lot less expensive to just not support fascist dictators rather than to subsidise selling them lots and lots of weapons, including WMDs, and then spending Billions more to invade them because they have traces of the WMDs we gave them.
But then those people would forget how much profit we made selling them those weapons, and even more profit invading them because of it.
Not to mention that if we didn't prop up the biggest threats to our country, our citizens might pay more attention closer to home. Like what assholes most politicians are.
Nobody died when Nixon lied.
I'm meeting you half way you stupid hippies!
More importantly, George W. doesn't seem to have a good command of the facts (for instance, see that first debate), and he makes dumb-ass decisions.
Cutting taxes for the rich while increasing spending was one of his dumber moves from a financial point of view: the economy is recovering, but the slow job growth fails to impress most economists, and sooner or later we have to pay off that massive debt. Invading Iraq turns out to be a bad move, but far worse is the complete and total cock-up of the occupation- some of the larger errors being (a) failure to stop widespread looting, creating an atmosphere of anarchy and turning Iraqis against us; (b) being overly aggressive in the use of force in populated areas, again turning people against us; (c) disbanding the Army, removing the last vestige of Iraqi sovereignty and leaving disgruntled soldiers with a lot of free time, instead of keeping them busy with reconstruction and stopping insurgents; (d)not bringing in the UN to create legitimacy, or bringing in enough other nations to help take up some of the burden on our military; (e) shutting down al-Sadr's newspaper (better him hurling lies at us than grenades); (f) fucking up in Fallujah, (i) by going in against advice, and (ii) by calling off the offensive BEFORE taking the city but AFTER pissing off all the people there... yaddah yaddah yaddah.
Like I said, maybe Bush and his guys are smart, but they are ignorant fools. So sure, you can be smart and still vote for them- but it's a vote for the ignorant and foolish.
What you say is true, but irrelevant. FDR did not invade Brazil.
No, you are confused. Germany, Japan, and Italy were the axis powers of the time and most likely inspired today's "axis of evil" label. A frequent criticism today is that Bush went after the weakest member of the axis of evil. I am pointing out that there are reasons for taking out the weakest member of your enemies first and that we have a very good example of that being done by a liberal Democratic president.
Do you know that Iraq had nothing to do with the terrorists?
Are you under the illusion that the only terrorist who are a threat are al-quaeda. Al-queda was not involved in the US Embassy hostage crisis, nor the attack on the US Marine Barracks in Lebanon, nor the attack on US tourists in North Africa, etc. Sadaam supported these groups in various ways, he also provided safe havens for some of their members on the run.
Things are far more complicated than you suggest.
> If the 155-mm shell was a "dud" fired long ago
Huh? None of the shells found have been duds. Being fired from an artillery piece would have broken the membrane between the two component chemicals (which mix in-flight to become Sarin).
Even assuming some kind of miraculous soft-landing where the shell wasn't destroyed, tests have proven that what was inside the shell was the unmixed compounds (unmixed because the shell was used improperly).
By the way, I highly recommend you check out the final report of the Iraq Survey Group, or at least read their Key Findings document. (Less than 19 pages!)
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
Except that the United States never gave and WMD to Iraq. None whatsoever.
Plus, Iraq didn't use WMD on their own people in the early eighties. It was the Iranians that gassed that Kurd village (accidentally). It wasn't until the late 1980's when Saddam used WMD on his people, and by then relations with the U.S. had cooled.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
Heh, looks like you were modded "-1 Conservative".
It happens.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
That's good man. Real good. Too bad some mod can't come along and think that...
Jay | http://oldos.org
Ah, the miracle of 20/20 hindsight. But for all of Bush's mistakes during the Iraq war, John Kerry hasn't convinced me that he'd do anything other than cut and run. That just isn't acceptable.
It was "global test", and, like it or not, there are some actions that will never pass any sort of "global test".
For instance, anything even vaguely supportive of Israel (like its right to exist) would resoundingly fail in the court of international opinion. Heck, not even interventions to stop genocide (Rwanda, Sudan) can seem to pass muster at the U.N..
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
And how many Kerry supporters know that France's Chrac was building Saddam in the early 80s and stocking it with high-grade uranium so the mad tyrant could build an a-bomb? How many Kerry supporters know that quite a few officials in the UN, France, Germany and Russia were getting illegal payola from the Oil for Food program? Not many I suspect. The list could go on and on.All this study demonstrates is that you can fudge studies to prove almost anything.
All this is to elect Kerry, someone whose only significant accomplishment in a quarter century of political life was to lie and slander his "band of brothers" in Vietnam. If elected, Kerry will make Carter look capable and those who voted for him look like fools.
By the way, Newsweek, not troubled by the fact that we've not yet voted, has already annouced a book that'll describe the Kerry presidency. Amazon has it at: Election 2004
Not very little "d" democratic is it?
--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle
Sweden has been pretty well known as a neutral country. It wasn't part of either NATO or the Warsaw pact, or the EU until recently.
Both Sweden and Switzerland have small armies backed by large reserves. Sweden goes further than Switzerland in terms of preserving its neutrality by manufacturing much of its own military equipment, including fighter aircraft, missiles, and various armored vehicles. Switzerland has tended to buy foreign equipment.
Just because President Bush gives unexpected answers doesn't mean that they are wrong answers. It this case it looks like President Bush was at least as informed as you, and the author of the article. (Based on what you quoted.)
Basically it says the guy behind The Truth About Iraq is some sort of PR adviser for politicians. I'd rather have my "facts" from an independent source. Multiple sources if possible.
Gorton Moore International als does branding/webdevelopment according to this page.That should explain their own website :)
YEAH! I mean, you can like, download all the MP3's you want, like TOTALLY FOR FREE, and like, there's NO WAY the record companies can get after you! It must be fucking great to live there! I'm gonna MOVE RIGHT NOW! I mean, I suppose you could download a lot of MP3's if the POWER worked consistently.
On a serious note, how in the hell can the media report the good news, if it's not safe to leave the Green Zone to go report on aforementioned "good news"? And delivering Iraq from the terror of a megalomaniac dictator is great... but now they have to worry about kidnappings (not just Americans- Iraqis are frequently kidnapped and held for ransom), assassinations (not just government officials, but doctors, professors, anyone educated), crime, suicide bombings by the insurgents, "collateral damage" done by precision bombs and flying artillery platforms... if things are going so well, why do they all want us to get the hell out? If it's such a paradise, you move there. Meanwhile, if they can, the Iraqis are trying to get out.
What's your agenda, anyway? What kind of terrorist, communist, puppy-kicking agenda are you promoting? Why do you hate freedom so much? Maybe because you're part of that subversive "Reality Based Community" the New York Times article was talking about http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/17BUSH. html
20/20 hindsight my ass. Before the war plenty of people raised questions about the possibility of this sort insurgency. But they were called "traitors" and were accused of giving "aid and comfort to the enemy." The pro-war camp used 9/11 to stifle dissent and this is the mess we got.
And give up the "global test" bullshit. Kerry did use those words but he preceeded them by saying that he'd never cede our security to any foreign power.
Are you familiar with the history of Islam?
Yes. As far as christianity is concerned there were the crusades, the inquisitions, the subjugation of native people in the Americas, Africa, and southeast Asia as outstanding examples of it's historical violence. "Happy is he who dasheth his little ones upon the stones." Heck there was a KKK meeting not far from here just last month. Aren't you glad you travel in such distinguished company?
You have no idea why we went to Vietnam, do you? We were asked by the South Vietnamese government to help them fight off the Communist armies of the North Vietnamese. We basically got dragged into a civil war.
Actually, it was a lot closer to a pissing match between China and Russia and the U.S. Shortly after we arrived it was clear the majority of the people did not want us there, but we were too busy trying to "stop those commies" to care. After we killed a bunch of them they wanted us there much much less. We scheduled elections for Vietnam too you know. They were cancelled when MAC-V-SOG polls indicated ho-chi-mihn would likely be elected.
It didn't happen, and you have no proof that it did.
Human rights abuses, committed by soldiers in a war? Especially one where the enemy is routinely villianized by their superiors? No! I don't believe it. The abuses at Abu Gharabi do not have to be widespread, although they almost certainly were. One well known incident is plenty to give anyone with teen angst plenty of justification for hating Americans.
WWII was started by Germany, and that is why they were forced to carry the load for their reconstruction
WWII happened because the Germans had nothing to lose. After WWI they were forced to pay restitution for the damage done to such an extent that they needed a wheelbarrow full of paper currency to buy a loaf of bread. Welcome to history about to repeat itself, maybe you should have paid attention in class. I dare you to tell me with a straight face that the people who suffered under Sadaam's rule should be responsible for paying billions in restitution for his acts including over 200K to fricking Toys 'R' Us. Go ahead, say it. We have extracted over 50 billion from Iraq and divvied it up amongst companies and governments, not to mention the payola going to contrators misspending our tax dollars. Did you know Iraq just took out a loan to the tune of 500 million to keep paying? We took it all and then our puppet took out a loan on their behalf. No that won't make anyone resentful.
at least prove that you paid attention in history class.
I did, actually I often corrected my teachers since they only knew what was in our 10 year old text books (public school). Unfortunatly you seem to have a few big blanks in your book. Was it, perhaps, the reader's digest version?
The ability to recognize reality and facts does indicate "more going on in the brain-use department".
Since the article shows that Bush supporters got more of the facts wrong than Kerry supporters, his statement is correct.
Now, a very intelligent person could STILL vote for Bush, but that would still not contradict his statement.
The question is: How well would you score on that survey?
You might think you're very intelligent ("...smarter than 99.8% of Kerry supporters...") but what you think about yourself is not the question here. It's what you think about the facts under discussion.
Even someone as smart as yourself can be completely ignorant of the facts.
You don't like Kerry (but no details given).
You "despise" Edward's work as a lawyer.
You don't like Nader (but no details given).
You don't like all of Badnarik (but no details given).
You like some of Badnarik (but no details given).
You don't like all of Bush (but no details given).
You like some of Bush (but no details given).
So, the original question was:
Your answer: empty air.
Yeah! Damn liberals keep saying that there is no evidence to link Saddam Hussein and the nation he ruled over!
Fucking hilarious, man. So apparently it's not just Bush who keeps saying "Saddam Hussein" instead of "Osama bin Laden", like during the debates... it's a linguistic malfunction of Republicans in general? Madness really is contagious, I guess.
As for one gas shell, is that the best you've got after over a year of looking? Offhand, it sounds like Hussein just lost the goddamn thing- like it was sitting around in a warehouse with a bunch of other shells and nobody knew that it had sarin in it. Really. One shell? That's your reason for invading? You might as well say that the invasion and 1000 US casualties were justified because we really didn't like Saddam Hussein's moustache.
Anyway, it's just a liberal hit piece against conservatives, trying to pass it off as research.
Yeah. Keep telling yourself that. And keep telling yourself that reality is liberal propaganda against the Bush administration. Listen, I can be fairly left of center at times, but I honestly wouldn't have a problem if the Republicans would just elect someone who is (i) honest, (ii) sane, and (iii) willing to recognize that not everyone in the nation is a radical born-again nutjob, but that despite that they still deserve representation. John McCain, for instance. What the heck was so wrong with him that you guys had to go and elect a reject like George W. Bush? Shit, in the wild, if an animal like a rabbit, or a rat or a goat or something, if it gives birth to something as messed up as George W., the mother EATS THE DAMN THING for the greater good of the species.
To quote Indian Jones: "Archaeology is the search for fact. Not truth. If it's truth you're interested in, Doctor Tyree's Philosophy class is right down the hall."
Each person has his/her own "reality" (small "r") which is based upon his/her experiences, opinions and beliefs.
Two people can have the exact same experience, but view it in completely different ways based upon their past experiences and their opinions and beliefs. Example: the woman who went into a panic because she was on a plane with Syrian musicians.
Our realities generate filters which we perceive the events through. You see a plane full of people, she sees a terrorist threat.
These filters also block facts which would contradict our individual reality. This makes them pretty much self-sustaining.
It takes a MAJOR event to alter someone's reality. A good example is the mom in Michael Moore's movie who was happy to support Bush until her son was killed in the war. She could have also turned against anyone opposing the war as encouraging the enemy to kill her son.
So, no. The truth is not the truth. Each person has a "truth" that is unique to that person. They know it is the "truth" because it is consistent with reality (small "r").
Facts are facts. But not everyone will accept that a fact is a fact because their filters won't let them.
Many times, opinions, fantasies and fears get through the filters as "fact" and are incorporated into the individual's "reality".
It's a bit complicated. But each person is living in his/her own "reality". Even when you're both walking down the same street, seeing the same sights, hearing the same sounds.
Whether the original decision was right or wrong is really not the issue--everyone agreed to it, and it is in the past.
Maybe you missed the massive protests? I know I didn't. I was one of those protesting.
And please don't cite SBVT because we all know they're full of shit.
You mean the witnesses right? The people who were there and saw what actually happened? The eyewitnesses? Yeah, they're all full of shit. All 200+ of them.
Does Sarin still count as a WMD or is that off the list since it really was found in Iraq?
I think it's funny that we can capture scientists known to their fellows as "Dr. Germ" and "Chemical Ali" and somehow the "correct" story is that there not only were no WMDs in Iraq, but that they were never pursuing them to begin with.
Good luck trying to explain your being fired for being an insolent asshole on the evil Bush regime.
Clean up your own playpen before you start bitching about the other side
Couldn't agree more, my ironic friend, couldn't agree more.
By the way, I really appreciate your use of the term 'Democraps', but shouldn't it be 'Dummycraps'? If you can't argue a single point without resorting to name-calling then I would hope that you could at least be a little more clever.
Iraq did actually have WMD. Remember the missiles they destroyed? Those were classified as WMD. That anyone thinks Iraq did NOT have WMD is odd. Of course, there is no reason to think Iraq had a "major" WMD program, but they did have actual WMD.
As to support for al Qaeda from Iraq, it is true that the 9/11 Commission did not conclude there was such support, but it is also true the Commission said there was evidence of a connection.
But both sides are absolutely wrong when they say Bush said Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda. It never happened. That both sides think this shows that neither side is particularly bright.
I also like that Kull said, "they have not accepted the idea that it does not matter whether Iraq had WMD or supported al Qaeda." It is true, these things do not matter. They are at best peripherally related to the primary justification and reasons we went to war: violation of UN resolutions (which is the actual basis for the Congressional approval of the use of force, and which is not in dispute whatsoever) and the stabilization and transformation of the region in the long run.
Also, it would be interesting to see what the Kerry supporters thought about what KERRY'S views are. I presume the reason they didn't ask is because the pollsters could not agree on what Kerry's positions are.
As much as I can't stand the radical right, I'm not in favor of someone radically left. I've dealt with knee-jerk liberals- hell, I lived in San Francisco for a while- and their smug, only-read-stuff-that-already-tells-me-what-I-belie ve worldview drove me up the wall. And they were just as out of touch with reality as anyone on the right.
I think what this nation desperately needs is a radical move to the center. Not speaking-in-tongues religious, not a legalizing hemp hippy. Somehow, things have gotten so polarized, however. And I believe it's because of this president, and his black-or-white, with-us-or-against-us worldview. There are times that's useful. It was comforting in the aftermath of 9/11. But the world has all these shades of grey, and we need someone who can see them and deal with them, and realize that as much as we may try to do the right thing, sometimes even the most moral people can err. Terrorism is awful, and it needs to be fought, and assassinating terrorists needs to be done. But we also need to understand that it's not as simple as George Bush makes it out. I think that partly terrorism is driven by something you could most easily describe as evil. But partly people come to support terrorism because of frustration at generations of poverty and oppression.
I went to Africa: I saw some of the poorest people in the world. It was this brutally, oppressively poor place that makes you sad, and angry, and desperate to do something. I remember sitting with a young beggar girl on the streets in Madagascar showing her pictures from a book because I didn't know what else to give her besides some time and company. I could give her money, but it would be gone tomorrow and the only thing I'd have given her in the end was the idea that begging was the way to go through life, and I didn't want to give her that. That country broke my heart, and it broke my spirit, like nothing ever before or since ever has. There was so much potential, so much beauty, in the people... and so much of it just being wasted. All this joy, and so much pain and anger. I've never been hated like that before in my life. I've never hated being part of the human condition like that ever before. I saw things I wish I had never seen there, and learned things I couldn't unlearn, but I couldn't unsee them, and I couldn't unlearn them, and I wonder if that's how war veterans feel. Three months in Africa- I'll never get my innocence and faith in humanity back. Ever.
And if I could change Africa for the better, how far would I go? Would 3000 American lives be worth it for millions of poor people? I think it would be. Not just that- I think I'd be morally obligated. I would see 9/11 happen all over again if it meant that it would really change all the injustice there. Of course I know it won't, and that's why I'm not a terrorist.
I don't know if that's what bin Laden thinks- I suspect he's as much motivated by vanity and power as anything; and I do not respect his choice. I don't think that is the solution. But I think that maybe I can understand where people come from, who are willing to kill. The world is an awful place, the injustices so great, that sometimes desperate measures seem like the answer, the only answer. And before you say I don't know what I'm talking about: I was there. I was in New York. I remember how my throat itched from inhaling the dust, I remember and knowing what was in that dust, and I remember the huge cloud that spread out like dark wings over Manhattan... for miles. And don't misunderstand me: I love that city. So maybe I don't totally know, no. But I have some inkling of what kind of price I'm talking about. And it'd be worth it, if it brought a little justice to the world. Before you get angry, ask yourself: isn't that the rationale we use when we
This is an example of the questions asked:
Is it your perception that that experts mostly agree that just before the war Iraq had WMD:
Which had the result: Bush supporters 56%; Kerry supporters 18%.
But at the Outpost notes: "This question is simply too confusing to be useful. Is it asking whether before the war the experts believed Iraq had WMDs or is it asking whether that is what the experts are saying now."
Note that before the war, it was widely agreed that Saddam had WMD, so from that perspective Bush supporters are correct. Only afterward did the "experts" change their POV, making the common Bush answer "wrong." But even then the Bush supporters are right about the WMD facts, since some 50 such weapons have been found. Kerry supporters, with only 18% believing in WMDs, are clearly the ones out of touch with reality.
But by inserting a mention of "experts" but confusing the time, those doing the survey could decide for themselves which answer they call right and spin the results any way they want. And given the technical expertise that went into this study, we can probably safely assume that the spin was deliberate. It was intended to generate a media buzz just before the election.
Read Outpost for more details.
--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle
No, you are confused. Germany, Japan, and Italy were the axis powers of the time and most likely inspired today's "axis of evil" label.
Actually, the "Axis" of WWII was, in fact, working in concert. Bush's "Axis of Evil" is an arbitrary assignment created by Bush to rally people (like you?) behind his agenda. Do you know that Iraq and Iran were enemies? Of course you do, so stop pursuing this ridiculous analogy.
Sadaam supported these [terrorist] groups in various ways, he also provided safe havens for some of their members on the run.
That's why over 1000 Americans and 10,000 Iraqis are dead? Death is not something I take lightly. There would have to have been an imminent threat to justify something like that.
> In fact people feel pretty good about the Clinton Presidency, although I think it could be argued that more acts of terror on home soil actually took place during the Clinton years.
Clinton was certainly a lamer, but at least he didn't use terrorism as an excuse for overthrowing governments he didn't like.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
This reminded me of another report done by the same group regarding misperceptions people had based upon their source of news, most notibly Fox News:
;)
So what did they say about people whose primary news source is slashdot?
> Thus far Iran is 100% within their rights, as far as refining uranium goes, not that that will stop war-mongers from using them as a boogey man to keep the American people scared. Not that it will stop Bush from invading them in his quest to get us all fricking killed. Bush would just love to invade because Iran would respond by launching long range missiles at our bases in Europe and we would have another world war on our hands, one we are almost certain to win, but that will keep him and his in power, kill off thousands of our soldiers, and make big profits.
That pot may boil within the next six months. Numerous Israeli officials have said that they will not let the Iranian reactor go on line, period. Several have said that the belive their window of opportunity for interdiction will close early next year. If someone doesn't say Iran's mind, something is going to happen. (And after watching what happened to Iraq, I doubt that anything is going to convince Iran that they don't want a nuclear deterrent.)
The difference between now and when the Israelis busted the Iraqi reactor is that Iran has missiles that they can fire on Israel in retaliation. Also, Israel may need to violate Iraqi airspace in order to reach the Iranian targets; if they do, and if the US does not intercept them, Iran and the entire Muslim world will think the US was an accomplice.
Would Iran retaliate against the US in Iraq? Sure we could beat their asses - but not at the stingy level of effort we've invested in the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions. This could get ugly.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> But for all of Bush's mistakes during the Iraq war, John Kerry hasn't convinced me that he'd do anything other than cut and run. That just isn't acceptable.
So, are you saying that we should have stayed the course in Viet Nam?
> Heck, not even interventions to stop genocide (Rwanda, Sudan) can seem to pass muster at the U.N..
Despite all the retcon bullshit about invading Iraq for humanitarian reasons, the USA will be the last country to take an interest in intervention in Africa. Look what happened when Liberia begged us for help.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
All 200+ people that didn't serve with John Kerry are full of shit, yes. The people who actually served on his boat all support him.
Regardless of your opinions of those groups, you have to agree that no conservative foundation would ever be likely to donate money to them.
I love when people say that the ACLU is a liberal only organization. It's the American Civil Liberties Union!
Regardless of what you think about a few of their cases and clients these are the same people who defended the American Nazi Party! You don't get any more conservative than that.
We are talking about a group which defends the Constitution of the United States of America. After all we live in Constitution-based federal republic which means the rights of one trump the requests of many. Without groups like the ACLU your beliefs may have been outlawed years ago. Doesn't matter if you are Catholic, Jewish, Methodist, Atheist... Communist, Conservative, Democrat, Libertarian or none of the above.
Get your Unix fortune now!
It's like people who link to that worldvoting site... it's 75%/25% in favor of kerry in the US. That shows a bias.
Yeah worldvote or whatever is simply an online poll. Of course, it's bullshit. A much more reliable indicator would be the extensive scientific polling by the nonpartisan Pew Research's "Global Attitudes Project".
the liberal news media. Do some independent research people.
Okay. I'll do some research.
William Kristol, editor of the "Weekly Standard", and one of the most influential conservative voices in America today, said in an interview with the New Yorker in 1995, "I admit it. The whole idea of the 'liberal media' was often used as an excuse by conservatives for conservative failures.'"
Former Republican party chairman, Rich Bond, in the August 20, 1992 issue of the "Washington Post", said of conservative cries of "liberal media bias", "If you watch any great coach, what they try to do is 'work the refs.'"
By playground rules, you lose. I cite "your own guy said so".
> Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt determined that Germany was our greatest threat despite the fact that Japan actually attacked us and we prosecuted that global war by taking down Italy first. The greatest threat is not necessarily the best first target.
Huh?
Are you unaware of the "Europe first" policy? Or are you making a subtle distinction between "greatest threat" and "greatest threat"?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Kerry was working from information massaged by the administration to make their case for war. According to multiple sources, the CIA report being quashed by the administration currently actually names names and says why they baked up "proof" of Saddam's supposed weapons and squelched dissenting views. The Wall Street Journal months ago dug up a confidential Bush administration plan prepared way before 9/11, detailing invasion of Iraq. (Forgive me for not linking links here. They're in http://theregular.com/, WSJ, blogs, etc.)
media girl
> Maybe we should start faulting Congress (including Kerry) for being so quick to adopt a "jump-on-the-bandwagon" mentality...
Actually we should fault them for delegating their constitutional responsibility for making decisions to go to war to the executive branch.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The problem is the uneducated electorate, not the policy. The policy is "Western civilization depends on oil. Cut the oil, and you kill western civilization. Make the savage world over there more civilized, by introducting Western Ideals."
Terrorists had the money, the training, and the reason because of the enormous power associated with the oil in that region of the world and because of Western knowhow. Remove the oil, remove that value, and *poof*, the problem goes away. There is nothing to fight for. Don't believe for a second that its about "a way of life going away," what arrogance.
Women in afghanistan are voting given the freedom to because they prefer wearing burkas? "I want to wear a burka, they told me if I go to the polls they will kill me: better go to the polls." Maybe the crazies believe that, much the same way they look at a turtle and watch it die, flipped on its back. "Oh, it's natural." What dreck.
Try to explain that Oil gives the Santa Cruz Eco Facists the power to even have a voice, and they will go ballistic, along with the brain dead media. "Biomass, Solar Power, Corn, anything but nuclear (ironically) and evil oil". You simply can't tell the truth about the interdependency, because somehow it has become evil.
Let's see a similar poll. Kerry wants a bunch of new programs, harping in the meantime about the deficit. Until Kerry can show, really show, how all of these new government programs, including sending more troops to iraq, can be done by rolling back 89 Billin in taxes on those who make > 200K, I'm going to say this is simply partisan sniping.
Politics has become nothing more than a football game, and slashdot readers have been recruited as its fans, thinking, arrogantly, they have the slightest clue, when they are merely parrots admiring the vomit they've reguritaged on their feathers.
Ed Barbar, President and General Manager, Furnit USA
Also, John McCain says SBVT is full of shit, and I tend to think John McCain is someone that can be trusted by members of both parties.
"Stop Confusing Me With Facts!"
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uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
Iraq did actually have WMD.
/ 19/sprj.irq .bush/
9 /08/ira q.debate/
No, they did not.
Remember the missiles they destroyed? Those were classified as WMD.
No, they were not. "WMD" means nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. Those missles were "banned" because of their range. They were not "WMD's".
That anyone thinks Iraq did NOT have WMD is odd. Of course, there is no reason to think Iraq had a "major" WMD program, but they did have actual WMD.
You're channelling MoJo JoJo.
As to support for al Qaeda from Iraq, it is true that the 9/11 Commission did not conclude there was such support, but it is also true the Commission said there was evidence of a connection.
No, they did not. They said that there were reports of contacts between the two, but not connections.
As if you ask some woman for a date and she turns you down. You had contact, but no connection.
But both sides are absolutely wrong when they say Bush said Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda. It never happened. That both sides think this shows that neither side is particularly bright.
Check out what Bush actually said to Congress.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/03
Look for the bit involving the WTC attack.
They are at best peripherally related to the primary justification and reasons we went to war: violation of UN resolutions (which is the actual basis for the Congressional approval of the use of force, and which is not in dispute whatsoever) and the stabilization and transformation of the region in the long run.
No. Again, look at what they actually said.
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/0
Lots about nuclear programs and aluminum tubes and Iraqi nuclear scientists.
Now we know that it was all lies.
Also, it would be interesting to see what the Kerry supporters thought about what KERRY'S views are. I presume the reason they didn't ask is because the pollsters could not agree on what Kerry's positions are.
This isn't about views. This is about facts. Not whether Kerry thinks such and such, but whether such and such happened or did not happen.
It seems that your post supports the findings of that article.
From outside of the US, I think the scientific view is clearly dominant in most countries, and they are basically befuddled by what is going on on in America, and alarmed by the force behind the befuddlement. There are a few crazy and fanatical countries out there, but the US is clearly the strongest and most dangerous one.
I think that explains how a lot of our friends see the Iraq situation. They agree that it is a mess and that it needs to be cleaned up, and they would even be willing to help. However, on the other hand, it is keeping the suddenly belligerent US busy, and it is also clearly BushCo's own deliberate mistake. From that perspective, it's just as well to let the US keep playing with the tar baby for now, and their biggest fear is probably that BushCo might unilaterally withdraw and thereby force the rest of the world to clean it up. Fortunately (from their perspective), the oil aspect makes that unfeasible and unlikely.
The ugly facts are that Saddam was only a nuisance and not worth an entire war. Dubya believed otherwise, and to heck with those facts. What other crazy things does Dubya believe?
I believe I don't want to find out, and I hope Dubya is out of there very soon. Fortunately, fanatical birds of a feather tend to flock together in their little red states, so it increasingly looks like the swing states are going to swing the other way.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
NPR did an long piece on this same idea on the Diane Rehm Show. The guest was in complete agreement with you:
http://www.wamu.org/programs/dr/04/10/20.php
A very dangerous way to lead, IMO, when this faith overrides and quite often stifles other reasonable points of view.
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uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
Actually, I seem to recall the Bush administration specifically warning about resistance from holdouts of the old regime.
Though I don't think anyone predicted how involved foreign terrorist groups would become.
Hey pal, I'm willing to give Kerry a lot of leeway on how he wants to define a "global test". And I mean a lot. But the sad truth is international concensus is hard to come by.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
The 3rd reich was a democracy. Hitler won the leadership by popular vote. There were certainly undemocratic elements to the structure of the 3rd reich, just as there are with modern America. Reforming Germany after WWII didn't have too much to do with "introducing democracy", it was about de-nazification.
Japan is interesting in that it had a home-grown democracy movement which had been suppressed by the Japanese leadership. And guess what happened during the US occupation? The US began to get the red scare, and the fact that the Japanese home-grown democracy movement was basically socialist in orientation meant that the US cracked down on them in exactly the same way that the wartime Japanese leadership had. In fact, the US managed to reinstate many of the same wartime leaders precisely because they were strongest at suppressing their own people.
Japan has been a virtual one-party state since the US occupation. It's about as democratic now as it was before and during the war.
An example: did Kerry call terrorists a "nuisance"? Yep. Sure did. Undeniable fact.
k er ry.terror/
No he did not. His exact words were:
"We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance."
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/10/10/bush.
If you want to parse that out, in the past, terrorists were a "nuisance". Currently, they are the "focus of our lives". In the future, they will be only a "nuisance" again.
Seems like you don't know what was actually said.
Never mind that I've taken this out of context in order to intentionally bias the question.
No. You cannot take something out of context and then claim that it is an "undeniable fact" that he said that.
None of the questions in that survey were done that way. They were all very explicit and complete.
That said: I was once a registered Democrat; I'm now a registered Republican, and I doubt that I'll ever go back to the Democratic ticket. Why? While I was a Democrat, I never had a Republican call me stupid.
I've always wondered about people like you. Why do you let other people control how you will vote?
Oh, right. The proof is in the article.
I never saw conservative think tanks come out with a study showing that my political affiliation implied that I was disconnected from reality.
Search amazon for Ann Coulter. Look for a boot titled "Treason".
I wish the converse were true; but it's not. As a known conservative, particularly in this election season, I have been on the receiving end of enough hatred, bigotry, and invective directed at me to last a lifetime.
Again, amazon.com, Ann Coulter.
Most of it has come from strangers who know nothing about me other than that I'm a registered Republican, which makes me an instant candidate for their own personal two-minute hate.
WTF? Do you have a bumperstick on your ass or something? How can a stranger tell that you're a "registered Republican"?
The only "fact" that matters to them is my party affiliation, which they apparently believes gives them the right to be abusive, insulting, and treat me as if I were some sort of sub-human.
Dude, you're walking around with a bumpersticker on your ass. That doesn't qualify you for the top of the evolutionary ladder.
So... even if I were convinced that Kerry was a better candidate than Bush, I would be voting against him, purely becuase of his association with such an arrogant, hateful, spiteful, and all-around viscious politcal party.
Again, you let other people control how you'll vote and then you complain about people treating you like a sub-human?
Puppets ARE sub-human.
However, the party in general - and the leadership in particular - has gotten progressively more hateful and viscious over the last 20 years.
4 years ago. Clinton. Starr. Now who's the problem?
Their "facts", opinions, and interpretations are useless to me, becuase before I can even enter into a debate about their validity, I have to at least implicitly agree to their negative characterization of me - because unless I do, they are unwilling to consider my "ignorant" and "uninformed" point of view.
You let them control how you will vote and you don't believe you're "ignorant"?
Until the actions of the Democratic party leadership and the rank and file show me that they've lost their penchant for assuming their own inherent superiority, relying on hate speech and ad homenin attacks rather than rational argument... well, I'm going to be ignoring them.
Rush Limbaugh.
Thanks for supporting the article's findings.
Is an unsupported allegation justification for going to war? Would you condemn an individual to death over an unsupported allegation? What about an entire army of humans?
I think your rhetorical semantics are missing (or conveniently dodging) the point. In fact, I'll show you just how here in a second in the italicized portions below.
The fact of the matter is that the suspicion of an al-qaeda link is only ONE of the number of justifications for going to war:
-Iraq was in violation of the surrender agreement it signed with the United States following the first Iraq war. So, are you saying that serious and legitimate agreements between countries are not something to be respected? If so, why even bother with the notion of sovereignty if one rouge nation can do as it pleases?
-Though Iraq did not have chemical or biological stockpiles that we had expected, it DID have a number of illegal weapons such as medium range ballistic missiles. Do international resolutions mean nothing to you? Is it okay for Saddam, a madman, to have these weapons? If Saddam had used one of these illegal weapons to kill one of your loved ones, would you still not support the invasion of Iraq? Would you still if your loved ones lived in, say, Israel?
-Saddam was an evil despot. He killed countless of his own people and brutalized them with torture and extreme punishment. Are we not morally obligated to prevent pain and suffering if we are in a position to do so? Would you leave a baby to drown in a puddle if you had the chance to help it? How about a large group of babies approximately the population of Iraq? THINK OF THE CHILDREN!
-Grym
If there is no evidence of a link between Iraq and Saddam Hussein, why did a federal judge (appointed by Clinton) award $100,000,000 to plaintiffs payable by Saddam?
I'm sorry, but you just said, "no evidence of a link between Iraq and Saddam Hussein". That's the same line blurring that causes the misconceptions reported in the article in the first place. Of COURSE there is a link between Iraq and Saddam, he ran the place for decades! However, that has nothing to do with the issue being disputed, because Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden are very different guys (while yes, both of them have beards).
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
We did stay the course in Vietnam, and eventually turned a bungled war into a peaceful truce between North and South. Nixon's "Vietnamization" pretty much worked.
After the war, though, Congress voted down any monetary or equipment aid to South Vietnam. The Soviets kept supplying the North, and two years later North Vietnam invaded and conquered the South.
Result? Now all of Vietnam is a repressive communist hellhole. Kind of a shame, seeing as we spent so many lives over there, that they didn't follow it up with a little harmless monetary aid. (We seem to throw around foreign aid quite liberally nowadays.)
The humanitarian benefits of the Iraq war were always kind of a side benefit, but they were stated from the very beginning. Not quite retcon.
The reason the humanitarian argument keeps on being brought up, is because many in the anti-Iraq-war community keep trying to portray the Iraq war as anti-humanitarian.
As far as Africa is concerned, I have two things to say:
1) The United States can't help everyone, so does that mean we should help no-one?
2) You say that America is "the last country" to want to intervene in Africa. And while I will admit America is pretty reluctant, it is far from the last.
Look at the ongoing Sudan crisis, for instance. The U.S. is pushing the United Nations to declare it a genocide. The Europeans don't want to declare it a genocide quite yet. And the Arab League are dead set against any intervention. So are you sure the U.S. is dead last when it comes to Africa?
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
It amazes me that so many allegedly "educated" people have fallen so quickly and so hard for a fraudulent fabrication of such laughable proportions. The very idea that a gigantic ball of rock happens to orbit our planet, showing itself in neat, four-week cycles -- with the same side facing us all the time -- is ludicrous. Furthermore, it is an insult to common sense and a damnable affront to intellectual honesty and integrity. That people actually believe it is evidence that the liberals have wrested the last vestiges of control of our public school system from decent, God-fearing Americans (as if any further evidence was needed! Daddy's Roommate? God Almighty!)
.. the next time you're out in the backyard exercising your Second Amendment rights, the liberals will see it! These satellites are sensitive enough to tell the difference between a Colt .45 and a .38 Special! And when they detect you with a firearm, their computers cross-reference the address to figure out your name, and then an enormous database housed at Berkeley is updated with information about you.
Documentaries such as Enemy of the State have accurately portrayed the elaborate, byzantine network of surveillance satellites that the liberals have sent into space to spy on law-abiding Americans. Equipped with technology developed by Handgun Control, Inc., these satellites have the ability to detect firearms from hundreds of kilometers up. That's right, neighbors
Of course, this all works fine during the day, but what about at night? Even the liberals can't control the rotation of the Earth to prevent nightfall from setting in (only Joshua was able to ask for that particular favor!) That's where the "moon" comes in. Powered by nuclear reactors, the "moon" is nothing more than an enormous balloon, emitting trillions of candlepower of gun-revealing light. Piloted by key members of the liberal community, the "moon" is strategically moved across the country, pointing out those who dare to make use of their God-given rights at night!
Yes, I know this probably sounds paranoid and preposterous, but consider this. Despite what the revisionist historians tell you, there is no mention of the "moon" anywhere in literature or historical documents -- anywhere -- before 1950 . That is when it was initially launched. When President Josef Kennedy, at the State of the Union address, proclaimed "We choose to go to the moon", he may as well have said "We choose to go to the weather balloon." The subsequent faking of a "moon" landing on national TV was the first step in a long history of the erosion of our constitutional rights by leftists in this country. No longer can we hide from our government when the sun goes down.
The correct answer is (3) -- not (4), as you must be presuming I think it is. According to Duelfer, Iraq had the desire for WMD, and some limited activities to support them, but no actual weapons and no major program. (The report basically said that the UN inspections had basically forced Iraq to give up its program, but Saddam Hussein really wanted to restart the program once he was out from under the thumb of the UN.)
According to the study that we're discussing here, this is how Bush & Kerry supporters responded to the question above:
- Bush: 19% / Kerry: 7%
- Bush: 38% / Kerry: 16%
- Bush: 31% / Kerry: 50% (correct answer)
- Bush: 4% / Kerry: 20%
This question is consistent with the results of the study in general: (1) people are really shockingly misinformed, (2) Bush supporters are significantly more misinformed than Kerry supporters for some reason, and (3) everybody sees facts in a way that's skewed to fit their preconceptions.Rather, accourding to Title 18 of the United States Code, Part I, Chapter 113B, Section 2332 the definition is:
http://www.metrokc.gov/prepare/docs/HIVA_Terror
The sky is not blue, rather, it is lacking red and green! To most people, there's no necessary difference between the two.
You ask a woman out, she turns you down.
You ask a woman out, she says yes, you go out a few times and sleep with her.
Seems like an obvious difference to me.
What's really frightening is that our collective national intelligence may have sunk to the level that we actually deserve a leader like George Bush. Look at Utah, they keep putting Orin Hatch back in office. What does that say about them?
The lengths the right will go to win, the unflinching conviction of their own rightness in any position they're trying to justify should scare the hell out of anyone with a brain.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
JESUS H CHRIST!
My affinity for hyperbole knows no bounds
Bullshit. Retract. I've heard news (both warts and roses) about the Afganistan election from many outlets including NPR. Will you retract or will you confirm that you are one of those people for whom the position is more imprortant than the facts?
XML causes global warming.
No, if you actually *read* a site like Truth About Iraq and you don't see anything about a bright future actually existing. What you see is the opinions of people who are hard-working, full of life, and somewhat optimistic.
That's not news though, as anybody who's done any investigation into their culture will tell you.
What you find if you read the "truthaboutiraq" are only seven "myths", most of which are straw-men since they're generally not brought up by the liberal side, and of the two that aren't, they're not countered by any type of facts, but rather by opinion polls.
Guess what, opinion polls showed not too long ago that a majority of Americans felt Iraq was directly responsible for the 9/11 attacks.
Opinion != Truth.
You'll also see a site that doesn't attempt counter the largest accusations against Bush & Co: That the war was undertaken in the wrong way for America,
that Bush lied in convincing the American people to let it get done,
that it does nothing to actually reduce terrorism
that it's being used as a pretext to benefit certain oil industry insiders to the White House
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
The point here is not whether you oppose Islamo-fascism. Most of the most vehement critics of Islamo-Fascism also opposed the war in Iraq, because it played into the fascists hands. The argument is about strategy, not about the goal. And I am repeatedly astonished by the apparent incapacity of Bush supporters to distinguish between these.
This observation, shared by most of those critical of Bush and his supporters, is the reason we believe that Bush supporters have lost touch with reality. What we see is a rigid adherence to a single, poorly conceived, strategy. This strategy is like trying to perform brain surgery with a pick-axe. The major points of this strategy are:
1. Use of superpower style tactics against guerilla opponents--long range attacks, with large area of effect destructive capabilities--in other words, Shock and Awe. Shock and Awe, however, has high collateral damage, destroys infrastructure, and has very limited success against small mobile guerilla groups. In fact, this strategy is designed for fortified emplacements of mixed units, including tanks, artillery, and infantry, who are committed to holding a position. None of these conditions apply in Iraq. Ultimately, Saddam and the majority of his forces were killed or captured by ground troops, not by cluster bombs and long range strikes. This scorched earth strategy was also used in Vietnam. It didn't work there either.
2. An obsession with Iraq regardless of its connection to Political Islam. This obsession pre-dated 9/11, and 9/11 was only the pretext for for doing what elements of the Bush administration already wanted to do. In fact, Saddam Hussein, however vicious, was the one leader of an Arab country who had no ties to Political Islam, and who had always traditionally been despised by extremist Muslims. 9/11 made invasion of Iraq a lower priority, not a higher one, however much we may have despised Saddam Hussein.
3. The inability to determine between friend, foe, and neutral parties. Robert Fisk, a journalist who was in Iraq during the invasion, noted how American troops called any position not currently occupied by American troops enemy territory. This also underlies Shock and Awe, which had less effect on the Iraqi military and its political leaders than it did on Iraqi civilians. The result is that the Bush administration is firing blindly into the world, missing the target and making a lot of new enemies.
4. Poor comprehension of the enemy. There is a tendency to describe all opponents in the war as terrorists. In fact, actual terrorists of the Al Queda type may be quite rare. Instead, American troops are faced with a combination of criminal gangs, nationalist resistance, foreign agitators, and terrorists, with the majority probably being criminal gangs. The motivation and tactics of each of these groups is quite different, and strategies which work well against one type will actually give advantages to others. For example, diplomacy is best used against nationalists, who can be turned against foreign agitators, and criminals must be hit financially.
5. Predictability and rigidity. Bush is steadfast, no doubt about that--so steadfast that everyone knows what buttons to press and what he'll do when they're pressed. This provides the likes of Al Queda with the opportunity to play him, and to plan long in advance, even before the event that causes him to react. The terrorists are suicidal; they not only have no fear of retaliation, they are counting on it. Their goal is to provoke the most extreme form of retaliation possible, in the hopes that the Americans will offend enough people to gain sympathy for the terrorist cause. They have gotten exactly what they wanted. In fighting terrorism, the target must be the meme itself. Innocent casualties work to spread the meme, and must be avoided. Otherwise the terrorists will replace their numbers faster than they lose them, and the war can never be won.
Jesus told us to love our enemies. Sun Tzu said that we must know our enemies. In fact, they
And here's the finish.
:D
:D
That was put in in 2003.
I wanted to see if you'd fall for it and you did.
Thanks for helping prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Iraq had WMD, according to U.S. law. Cheers!
What was shown was that the US re-wrote its own laws in 2003 to fit Iraq's capabilities into the terms used by Bush.
By that definition, the US has killed Iraqi citizens with "WMD's". Wasn't that one of the reasons we were going to war against Saddam? Because he used "WMD's" against civilians?
That's hilarious. As a non-American that is the exact advice I'd give to Americans who would like us to join the party on something.
the true believers are sequestered from reality and know their prayers by heart. Truth does not matter. True believers do not respond to evidence.
Do you know that Iraq and Iran were enemies? Of course you do, so stop pursuing this ridiculous analogy.
You are reading far too much into this, you are seeing poltitics where there is none. Iraq and Iran's mutually hostility is irrelevant, they both hate us more. The US/UK worked with Stalin and had no illusions about him, yet they worked with and armed him to overcome the Axis. The point I am making, and the one that you are missing, is simply that when you have several enemies taking out the weakest can be a viable strategy. Those who complain that we should have gone after North Korea or Iran first are engaging in politics not military strategy. They are intellectually equivalent to the flag waving pro-war Bush supports you seem to dislike, they are merely the mirror image. The positions, analysis, and such that are being thrown around this past year are heavily tainted by election year politics, both pro and anti-war. Things are far more complicated than you suggest.
"Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt determined that Germany was our greatest threat despite the fact that Japan actually attacked us and we prosecuted that global war by taking down Italy first. The greatest threat is not necessarily the best first target."
Huh? Are you unaware of the "Europe first" policy? Or are you making a subtle distinction between "greatest threat" and "greatest threat"?
I believe I stated the policy and the first phase of its implementation. In both usages of "greatest threat" the reference is to Germany. The "first target" reference was to Italy. Italy being the first of the three Axis powers to surrender and the least threatening.
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They completely IGNORE that the elections in Afghanistan went well, and that women actually got to vote over there.
We personally consider democratic elections to be a good thing, but that doesn't mean everyone wants them. North Korea, for example, is as fiercely patriotic as America. The people would react very negatively if someone swept in and tried to set up a new system.
Except that the United States never gave and WMD to Iraq. None whatsoever...It wasn't until the late 1980's when Saddam used WMD on his people, and by then relations with the U.S. had cooled.
Uh...
Don't take this the wrong way, but you're, objectively and factually, completely wrong.
Summary: throughout the '80s, the US provided, allowed the shipment from US companies, and funnelled through other nations in the region weapons (including Howitzers, helicopters, and missile technology), chemical and biological agents (including some that may have been used against US troops in the first Gulf War), and other ``dual use'' technologies to Iraq.
This persisted through the late '80s, long after Iraq initially used chemical weapons against Iran in the early part of the war and a fair amount after it became clear that Iraq was carrying out a campaign against Kurdish militants that included widespread use of chemical weapons.
During this time, US ambassadors and politicians insisted that Iraq and the US had a strong interest in each other and would have a long and rosy future ahead, and US military intelligence provided Iraq with intelligence that would play a key part in strategic planning for campaigns against both the Iranians and the Kurdish rebels that included widespread use of chemical weapons.
Nice try, though.
No, you're confused. FDR didn't invade Brazil, a country that wasn't threatening the US, and had no capability to make war against the US.
GW did. You seem to think, for whatever incomprehensible reason, that Iraq was a threat to us. This is exactly what the article was talking about. Too many people persist in believing that Iraq was a threat, when it's been shown to have not been a threat.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
I think people dumb down Bush's effect on Middle Eastern politics too much to make a vision that suits their own political ideals. What Bush has done, if nothing else, stirred the pot. His affect (as far as the US is concerned) has really been both good and bad. The net effect of Bush has had really remains to be seen though.
The Good:
What Bush has done that is inarguably good for the US is basically destroyed all terrorist safe havens. That is not to say that there are not places where terrorist can train with relative impunity, but they no longer get government sanctioned support. You can not find any place in the world today where Al-Qaeda has a building with its name on it. That was not always true. Bush has basically declared that anyone who harbors Al-Qaeda is an enemy and directly responsible for whatever they do. No nation, no matter how autocratic and US hating, wants to be responsible for a WMD going off in the US. The policy is pretty clear that if something like that gets traced back to a sovereign nation, that nation is, in so many words or less, fucked.
Bush has done horrible damage to the financial and material backing of these terrorist organizations. The loss of Afghanistan for these groups was really a devastating blow for their ability to train, operate, and communicate. The US has made communication extremely dangerous for these organizations. They operate more autonomously now which might make them more aggressive, but because they can no longer effectively communicate and offer material support, they are far less effective in how they operate. In particular, it is damn near impossible for Al-Qaeda to operate in the US these days due to this new reality. That isn't to say that they are not trying and that they might not succeed, but you can bet for ever 10 operations they try 9 of them never get off the ground.
The Bad:
Bush has radicalized the Islamic world and made the life of moderate Islamic people rough. Before, people who pushed for a more liberal Islamic governments sited the US as the ideal to strive for. The kind of wealth and freedom that US citizens have compared to the people in many of these Islamic nations is very enviable and tempting. US operations against Islamic countries have made it extremely hard for these people to continue to site the US as an ideal nation due to the view that the US is anti-Islam. That is not to say that the plight of the moderate follower of Islam is not impossible, it is just a lot harder these days. I would say that it is misleading to blame the terrible losses that moderates it Iran suffered in the last election as having anything to do with the US. The reason for that can be squarely placed on the actions of conservatives in the country. The situation with the US might not have helped matters, but I think it is safe they would have taken terrible losses regardless if 9/11 and Bush had never happened.
Al-Qaeda today has gained a massive recruiting tool in the form of Bush. You can see the effects in Iraq when body count is more important then materials. Bush has really made Al-Qaeda poor on materials, but rich in warm bodies.
To Be Seen:
The real judgment of Bush is not going to come until after he is out of the White House. Iraq is going to be how Bush is judged. If 10 or 20 years from now Iraq is a thriving Democracy with a good relationship with the US on par with Japan or Germany after World War II, I think history will give Bush a lot of credit, much in the same way Clinton got credit for fixing Serbia. You need to remember that when the US advocated going into Serbia it met with a lot of opposition both before and during the operation. It wasn't until after Clinton was out of office that we look back at what happened as being for the best. Bush is going to be judged in much the same way. The current day opinions of him really don't matter in the final judgment of things. The question is whether or not Iraq can reach stability and form something that we recognize as a Demo
The questions are not clear, the 'right' answers are ambiguous, some 'right answers' are actually wrong, and conclusions drawn are subjective nonsense. In other words this study is nothing short of complete crapola. People posting keep sighting facts, but this study contains almost no factual information of any kind.
There is one thing that we can learn from this study though: The fact that Kerry supporters jump all over this crap and take the study at face value without thinking or questioning is evidence that Kerry supporters are a bunch of empty heads waiting to be duped by propoganda.
My affinity for hyperbole knows no bounds
Interestingly, this is one point on which Bush and Kerry supporters agree.
Unfortunately, it's not the only one. Please vote for *anybody* but these clowns and help to destroy this duopoly masquerading as a democracy. You may think that it's a "wasted vote" today, but citizens of the future will consider you a brave visionary.
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
I can certainly appreciate the extreme reluctance in allowing non-Americans to have a say in an entirely American election, regardless of the influence that position may have. But if you're going to judge a president's foreign policy for the previous 4 years, the people you most need to hear from are, quite simply, foreigners. Nobody's suggesting giving Brits voting rights for 2004. We ask them, "How do you think the various candidates would affect the US's relationship with your country", and we got answers. We can read them and decide that they do not merit sufficient cause to change one's mind, but to dismiss them with insults and condemnation and threats is just a deliberate act of willful ignorance.
Dyolf Knip
>> This is the one and only smart thing George W Bush is doing. He's playing on the 85% of Americans that 'believe', the
>> 85% which are religious. This is the insanity of religion, the lack of factural reasoning. How can one run a country on this?
s/religious/Christian or Jewish/;
I'm pretty sure I'm very religious, and Bush's actions have ensured that I'd eat a bullet before ever supporting him or his ilk.
I tend to agree with you and think WMD=NBC weapons.
But you're both flying off on a tangent here, since the resolutions were not only against WMD, but also the development capabilities, and the delivery systems. All of these where proscribed by resolutions. The missiles were banned as delivery systems for WMDs, not banned because of their conventional explosive yield.
I could maybe grant you that a fuel-air bomb destructs massively, but calling regular tank mines WMDs is super-silly.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
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I can't speak for everyone, but I didn't like Clinton, and I like Bush even less. Clinton being an incompetent fool gives no license for Bush to be one as well.
Let's keep trying until we get a decent guy in there for a change.
I wish I had some mod points for you. That's the most insightful examination of what's been bungled in the Iraq war I've ever seen. Kudos.
Bush has ... but Kerry ... but Bush ... CRAP ... is becoming more and more of an intelectual downward spiral, ooops, economy anyone
Life has become the ideology of its absence - T.W. Adorno
The solution, for you fer'ners out there who would like us to listen to you a bit more, is simply don't act like you're right (even when you are). Present your opinion as an opinion, and don't imply in any way that your opinion should be ours as well.
Right. Your comparison to a two year old seems to be fitting. The Americans don't want to be told what to do but on the other hand they seem to love to try and impose their will on the rest of the world. That's indeed kind of hypocrisy can indeed be expected from two year olds..
This is the lamest attempt at political apologetics I've ever seen. "Sweden was neutral in the last two world wars" != "Sweden doesn't have an army."
Read the article again. The congressman was suggesting that a Swedish general would be a good leader for the proposed coalition. Bush dismissed the idea because "Sweden doesn't have an army."
A couple of weeks later, Bush took the congressman aside and said, "You were right, Sweden does have an army" in an offhanded, "aw, shucks" sort of way. Too little, too late. He was sitting in a high level meeting where important decisions were being made, and refusing to accept new facts that were critical to making proper judgments.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
From the transcript of the vice presidential debate (John Edwards speaking):
The "global test" merely means that, as a country, we should be willing to listen to the counsel of others. The Bush administration seems to make it a matter of policy not to listen to anyone.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Very true. I've been watching some of the US news-channels and I'm not supprised people start to live in different realities. There is so much spinning of the facts by all sides and by the news broadcasters that it should be almost imposible for the American public to tell what is true and what isn't.
(What ever happened to independent journalism in the US? The entertainment value of the news shows seems to be more important than the facts)
In fact, the study authors have their facts wrong. The 9/11 commission concluded ONLY that Iraq and Al Qaeda did not cooperate with regard to the 9/11 attacks. The primary link is so well known that it is getting rediculous to assert it doesn't exist: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Sure, but the question in the study was that the US government possessed evidence of strong ties between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. I wouldn't say al-Zarqawi visiting Iraq occasionally represented evidence of strong links to Hussein.
Also, there were quantities of Sarin gas that were discovered in artillery shells. While this is not WMD on the scale predicted, it is enough to refute the absolutist position taken by this study that no WMD have been found in Iraq.
Check the date on the study - it was in late 2003. At that time no WMD had been foudn in Iraq. The question was: "Have WMD been found in Iraq", not "Will WMD be foudn in Iraq".
I d agree that the study had some biases, but at the same time, your refutations are either tenuous or in the case of the WMD issue, not valid.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
Except for the Indian wars. The Mexican American war. The Civil war and The Spanish American War.
Don't forget the attempted invasions of Canada!
You can't take the sky from me...
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In a nutshell, Bush supporters exist in reality and Kerry supporters exist in a world filled with fluffy marshmallows.
:)
Stay tuned for the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man's attack on NYC should Kerry get elected
"TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - The head of Iran's security council said Tuesday the re-election of President George W. Bush would be in Tehran's best interests
"We do not desire to see Democrats take over," Rowhani said when asked if Iran is supporting Democratic Senator John Kerry against Bush.
The Bush campaign said "No thanks."
"It's not an endorsement we'll be accepting anytime soon," Bush campaign spokesman Scott Stanzel said."
So yes, Iran endorsed Bush. It's not suprising that Bush didn't "accept" the endorsement, but that doesn't mean Iran wouldn't prefer to see Bush win.
BTW, your post is ironically humorous considering how unglued from reality the republican line has become.
Thank you, drive through :)
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
TEHRAN, Iran - The head of Iran's security council said Tuesday that the re-election of President Bush was in Tehran's best interests, despite the administration's axis of evil label, accusations that Iran harbors al-Qaida terrorists and threats of sanctions over the country's nuclear ambitions.
Historically, Democrats have harmed Iran more than Republicans, said Hasan Rowhani, head of the Supreme National Security Council, Iran's top security decision-making body.
"We haven't seen anything good from Democrats," Rowhani told state-run television in remarks that, for the first time in recent decades, saw Iran openly supporting one U.S. presidential candidate over another.
Though Iran generally does not publicly wade into U.S. presidential politics, it has a history of preferring Republicans over Democrats, who tend to press human rights issues.
"We do not desire to see Democrats take over," Rowhani said when asked if Iran was supporting Democratic Sen. John Kerry against Bush. [So.. they don't want Kerry.. who would you suppose they prefer? Cobb? Badnarik? Nader? Mickey Mouse?]
The Bush campaign said no thanks.
"It's not an endorsement we'll be accepting anytime soon," [If they didn't get an endorsement from Iran, what are they "not accepting here, Rayonic? -phy ] Bush campaign spokesman Scott Stanzel said. "Iran should stop its pursuit of nuclear weapons and if they continue in the direction they are going, then we will have to look at what additional action may need to be taken including looking to the U.N. Security Council."
Kerry, who says halting nuclear proliferation will be a priority if he becomes president, believes Bush should have done more diplomatically to curb Iran's alleged nuclear weapons ambitions. He says Iran should be offered nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes, but spent fuel should be taken back so it cannot be used to develop nuclear weapons.
"It is telling that this president has received the endorsement of member of the axis of evil," Kerry campaign spokeswoman Allison Dobson said. "But Americans deserve a president who will have a comprehensive strategy to address the potential threat of Iran's growing nuclear program."
The United States severed diplomatic relations with Iran after militants stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. Iranian clerics were crucial in determining the fate of the 1980 U.S. election when Republican Ronald Reagan (news - web sites) won in part because Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter was unable to secure the hostages' release.
The hostages were freed as Reagan was inaugurated. [*cough* Iran Contra *cough* - phy]
The United States supported Iraq in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, but by the late 1990s, U.S.-Iranian relations were somewhat better. They plummeted again after Bush accused Iran of being part of the "axis of evil" with North Korea and prewar Iraq.
The Bush administration also accuses Iran of pursuing nuclear weapons and sheltering operatives of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terror network. Still, Iran was happy to see Bush destroy two big regional enemies -- the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
Iranian political analyst Mohsen Mofidi said ousting the Taliban and Saddam was the "biggest service any administration could have done for Iran."
And Bush, he said, has learned from his mistakes.
"The experience of two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the responsibility Bush had, will make it a very remote possibility for him to risk attacking a much bigger and more powerful country like Iran," he said.
Mofidi added that "Democrats usually insist on human rights and they will have more excuses to pressure Iran."
Republican and Democratic presidents have issued executive
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
Koizumi retracts stated support for Bush's reelection
Saturday, October 16, 2004 at 08:17 JST
TOKYO -- A day after saying he hoped U.S. President George W Bush would be reelected, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on Friday effectively retracted his earlier remark after drawing fire from the opposition and forcing his aides onto the defensive.
"It's not good to interfere in another country's election. Japan-U.S. relations are important and Japan will firmly develop the alliance no matter who is president," Koizumi told reporters the day after saying he wants Bush to retain the presidency. (Kyodo News)
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
note to mods, someone else already posted what I posted... just fyi.. dern.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
Reagan's use of the missile shield wasn't to make americans safe from russian missiles; it was to fool americans into thinking that we were safe from russian nukes, giving him latitude in that area.
BTW, rest of the world... if you want to make a difference, you need to dissuade our allies. The conservatives in this country are zombies, they have no concept of cause and effect or reality. They parrot and believe whatever they hear from their pundits, and it's worse than ever now. It doesn't matter whether it's (faith therefore p) or (faith therefore not-p), they swallow it without question. Is $complicated_political _agenda a good or bad thing? Well, they've gotta check in with Bill O'Reilly, Hannity, Coulter, Condi Rice and the local hate militia to find out.
The most annoying part of it sometimes is that the "faith" people use the bible as a cover for *anything*, but when it comes to actually doing what Jesus taught, that's right out the window. They've got faith... and apparently that means they don't need God anymore. Their "faith" is just a code for hating non-whites (blacks, native americans/indians/whateveritistoday, arabs, persians, asians, and - when it's not an election year - hispanic people. Not to mention gays, anyone who's not christian, anyone who thinks blue-sky science is a justifiable endeavor, and worst of all ... Heretics! (non republican christians)).
I wouldn't mind conservatives so much if they didn't hold that non-theists aren't people. The right to freedom of religion isn't about which flavor of judeo-christianity one gets shoehorned into.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
Your reply: "Et al" in this case must mean "and numerous other intelligence servies around the world, and the United Nations."
Actually, no. I meant the Bush administration shills who trumpeted that "we know where the weapons are." Again, not true. The case was overstated, and no WMD have been found.
That came from Fox News, and it quotes a Republican senator during the release of the 9/11 Report. If you care to read more on how the case for war was overstated, check out Pentagon 'exaggerated' Iraq risk or Report concludes no WMD in Iraq (US Military report) or Weapons Experts: Iraq Had Not the Means to Produce WMDSure Saddam wanted WMD, but there was no way he could produce them within a decade after sanctions were lifted. I would appreciate more facts from you before taking your argument seriously.
I wrote: Bush et al said (or strongly implied repeatedly) that Iraq had significant connections to Al Qaeda
Your reply: They did have significant connections (friends in common). They just weren't working directly together. Perhaps you should look at the findings of the 9/11 Commission a little more closely yourself.
As for the "connections to Al-Qaeda" claim, the 9/11 Commission (bi-partisan), said:
Don't believe this story? Read NO SADDAM AL-QAEDA LINK: RUMSFELD or No links to Saddam, al-Qaeda pair claim.Please, explain how Iraq & Al-Qaeda worked together, and be sure to use facts from reliable sources. Rush Limbaugh and Drudge do not count.
Your sig said: Iraq war justified
I took a look, and wow, you really found text in there that does not exist. I did find nice quotes like these:
The former Regime had no formal written strategy or plan for the revival of WMD after sanctions
Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq's WMD capability- which was essentially destroyed in 1991- after sancions were removed and Iraq's economy stabilized.
Saddam aspired to develop a nuclear capability.
Please let me know how this "proves" the war was justified. It admits Saddam did not have the WMD that Bush claimed, and that sanctions had to be lifted and Iraq's economy normalized before WMD could be developed. FYI, that doesn't happen overnight.
No matter how much wild conjecture gets repeated, facts are stronger.
Frankly, there's a limit to how much someone can play the "what if" game. What if Gore had won, would we have responded the same way to Iraq? Would China, France, and Russia financed Iraq to the point that Saddam would rebuild his stockpile? Maybe, maybe not.
Bush made a huge mistake. It's one thing to pre-empt a possible terrorist attack -- as scary as the new doctrine of pre-emption is I can see how it is justified in situations -- but he played the "what if" game too and got it wrong.
"What if we go in there, and they greet us with flowers! We'll spread democracy! We'll free the people! We'll be heros!"
But he was wrong. Maybe in a few years we'll see a real democracy, a real lasting peace, and maybe we'll be seen as liberating heros -- by everyone, including would-be terrorist recruits.
But that won't happen now, and not until we've spent billions more and lost more troops.
We are, for the most part, alone. And we're hurting. It's not going well. Maybe with a little more time and a little more pressure we could've gotten more help, a better plan, and a more united America behind the invasion. But because of the desert heat coming in, we had to go in in March. Our diplomatic and social efforts were canceled because of tactical planning.
He's responsible for this mess. And that kind of blunder DOES NOT DESERVE A SECOND TERM.
That's what separates Republicans from reasonable people -- Republicans go out of their way to ruin everyone else's fun because they have too much a rod up their ass to have any fun themselves. They try to legislate morality, while simultaneously espousing a darwinian code of conduct where the strong can prey on the weak.
There will come a point in the next 4 years where Iraq is so monumentally, catastrophically, disasterously fucked up that even Fox News will have to admit it. If Bush is the president when that happens, then Bush supporters will have to face reality, and their wrath will be Biblical. Bush will be put to the question, and with luck some of his chronies may even face jail time.
To put in another way, if Kerry is elected, Bush and his chronies will get off scott-free. Some of them will even re-appear in a future Republican administration. The only way the guilty will pay for their crimes is if they are given enough rope.
Tell your friends: Vote Bush on November 2nd.
[ This is not a troll. Check my posting history! ]
fish and pipes
I agree with your post, and liked the wikipedia link although I'd like to mention a TV programme i saw last week called "The Power of Nightmares", which is shown on BBC2 on british tv, but may not make it make to the US, which was about the politics of fear beeing used to manipulate people. It was mostly concerned with the ideas of Leo Strauss as being behind neo-conservative thinking. Those ideas are extremely machiavellian and suggest that the way to prevent the moral collapse of 50's america into increasing nihlism was to focus on an external threat, and to give the American people a higher mission. The higher mission he suggested was to spread democracy and values of freedom and liberty to the evil places in the world (everywhere else), while the political elite didn't need to believe the FUD. In the 1970's Donald Rumsfeld (a student of Strauss) started to accuse the USSR of a massive arms build up, despite no evidence to support this theory, on the basis that they were evil, and therefore that is what they MUST be doing. They then set up a group called Team B to review existing CIA intelligence, with the addition of a belief that the USSR was incapable of not building up its weapons for an attack on the west. This it did, and in the absence of evidence of the new weapons they took the belief that the USSR must be doing something and decided that the new weapons must be so advanced that they simply could not be detected. In 1976 a new group called The Committee on the Present Danger published the results of that report in a alarming video to reignite the cold war at a time when relations were slowly improving. They claimed that they were simply highlighting the dangers of totalitarianism, but in reality they were spreading FUD in order to control the liberal drift of America.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, what the programme will suggest is that the threat of Al Qaeda is vastly overblown, and that it doesn't really exist as a global terrorist network in quite the way as it is often portrayed. Connections between various terrorist cells are ad-hoc most of the time and Osama bin Laden isn't really the mastermind behind attacks so much as a figurehead or spiritual leader. It all suits the power hungry elite nicely though. They can instill fear into the plebs and get support for their totalitarian crack down on civil liberties all in the name of fighting the very thing which gives them the power in the first place.
Just think, who benefits from the fear of terrorism? If Bush gets re-elected on an anti-terror platform, then he does, and so does Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Wolfowitz, all three of whom are former students of Leo Strauss.
cui bono. To whom the good?
1. the legal principle that the responsibility for a certain act is likely to lie with one who had something to gain as a result of that act.
You can't win Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
I see. So because there is no proof that aliens live among, that must mean that they do!!!
This tool of reasoning that the less evidence for something there is, the more it is really true has tremendous potential!
It also works in reverse too! There is great evidence for evolution, but because there is so much and it is so good, it MUST be evidence that it was planted by God!
I can think of another George in American history who was steadfast and resolute when confronting his enemies. General George Armstrong Custer.
You can't win Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
I still reach different conclusions-- For example, I don't believe that increasing the number of troops in Iraq is the answer.
That approach was tried, with disastrous results, in Vietnam.
Month after month, more and more troops were sent in. Month after month, more bombs rained down. Month after month, the body counts scrolled on the nightly news screen-- shouting that fifty new Americans and 1000 new VC had gone on to the 'Happy Hunting Ground'.
Still, they fought on. How was it possible when we had dropped more bombs on them than were dropped in all of World War II?
I was just growing up while all this was going on. I missed out on the draft lottery by one year. (I graduated from high school in 1975.) It made an impression.
I have a 15 year old daughter and two sons, 13 and 8. I do not want them to be going to Iraq unless it is on a tourist visa.
I will gladly give my life and even my children's lives to defend my neighbors when it is required. My neighbors did the same for me numerous times and I have enjoyed the benefits of freedom for my whole life with no personal cost.
This war is not required. This war is not helping any one. There is no end in sight. There is no light at the end of the tunnel.
This is a deep dark pit that we are marching into. Do not go gently into that dark pit. Vote for Ralph Nader and Peter Camejo.
Hastur! Hastur! Hastur! Ouch!
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
Hmm...interesting. I would like to say that I can see through the BS as the same way that you can, but unfortunately, like other Americans, I too am afraid. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I lived in NYC for September, 2001. It was a wake-up call that people want to kill me because I'm a taxpaying American.
In reality, I know that nothing really changed except for my feeling about the threat (fear and anger).
In any case, above anything else, I am afraid that there are missing nuclear warheads from the former Soviet Union...and this seems to be my country's ultimate justification for attacking Iraq. (yeah yeah, the banter about liberation...that's just rhetoric. We generally don't go to war just to liberate people, and certainly not from a Saddam Hussein.
Ultimately, however, every politician in the country will try to benefit from the "War on Terra". Kerry is doing it, Bush is doing it, Congress is doing it , local politicians are even doing it here. Some are certainly worse than others, but it's clear that no part of politics here is willing/able to transcend the FUD. I think that it's one of those things that people are worried, and if your opponent spouts off on it, you need to in order to avoid appearing weak.
Anyway...I'm just rambling at this point. The whole point that I've been trying to make is that I understand the absurdity of the situation, and really want to believe that we're not in any credible danger...but part of me does believe that there is some reason to be worried. There are some people who do not necessarily share the same system of ethics that I do and will do horrible things to destroy me (and those whom I care for) because of the actions of my country. I still try to remain objective about it...but there is only so much I can do to resist the fear culture.
-Turkey
If you're going to bitch about the cost of supporting "self-destructive" drug habits, why don't you care about the cost of the war on drugs? It costs enormous amounts of money, and puts hundreds of thousands of otherwise productive workers into prison. For many drugs, there isn't even any evidence that many they're any more harmful than alcohol or cigarettes.
Legislation should NEVER be about morality. It should only provide a minimal legal framework to protect people from hurting each other, and to encourage those things society considers valuable (like science and art, two things Republicans hate above anything else).
Wouldn't that be directly counterproductive to an open, reasoned debate? Today we can just brush off anybody and marginalize any opinion by labeling it Conservative or Liberal. Doesn't not knowing a person's bias ahead of time force us to read the actual comment and form an opinion based on the arguments, rather than on the author's "bias"?
A strain of paranoid prevention can be worse than the disease, whate'er the intention.
Just today I read an article by Pat Robertson in which he admits that Bush and the neoCons are horrible at running the nation, that the war in Iraq was possibly the worst mistake we have ever made, and that we're horribly married to some of the most corrupt big business interests in the country.
It's an endorsement for Bush. No, I'm not kidding.
Why vote for the man even when you think he's done a horrible job and you don't like the way the country is being run under him? Apparently to support the Republican party. Never mind that the party line is something you don't agree with. It might be good someday - you never know.
Yes, he does bring up some objections to Kerry. For example, he calls Kerry a traitor for protesting the Viet Nam war and claims that his health care plan with bankrupt America. Since these are fairly vague and mimic Republican talking points on Kerry, I see this as an extension of his call for Republican solidarity. Apparently Kerry is "wrong" on everything. But he isn't "wrong" in the sense that the Iraq war was "wrong." He's wrong in the moral sense. The ethical sense. The not-party-affiliated sense.
I truly, truly hope that this isn't most people's reasoning for voting Bush.
A strain of paranoid prevention can be worse than the disease, whate'er the intention.
The reality of terrorism is low tech weapons (box cutters?), not WMDs. The risks involved in handling and creating WMDs are just too great, and terrorists really don't want to be detected so they tend to keep their heads down.
In order to understand the threat of terrorists you have to examine what they are trying to achieve and how they tend to go about it. What they mostly want to do is terrorise, not kill for the sake of killing. OK sure there is killing involved, but it is a means to an end, not the end itself. The end goal of terrorism is not the defeat of America as a nation, but to strengthen islamic nations against the percieved moral vacuume that western individualism promotes. The irony is that is exactly the same goal as the Straussians have, and a very similar (if more pro-active) method for achieving it.
9/11 was by far the largest single terrorist attack in history, but lets get real here, ten times as many people die on American roads every year. In the grand scheme of things 9/11 was a little more than a bee sting, and the terrorists have about as much chance of inflicting serious damage upon a nation as a bee has of kiling you. But the parallel doesn't end there, because people do die of bee stings, but it's not the bee's sting which does the work but the body's over-reaction causing anaphylactic shock. That is exactly the kind of panic driven over-reaction that the terrorists are trying to provoke, and the politicians are far too happy to encourage. I don't exclude Kerry from this by the way; I'm sure he is playing the security card as much as Bush.
Let us consider what might have happened since 9/11 if Bush had been a real Christian leader and turned the other cheek. Support and respect for the US in the middle east and the rest of the world would be sky high. How many can rise above such an outrage and steer a true course in the face of such provocation? Only the truly great can behave that way. Our freedom and our rights would still be intact, and most importantly perhaps, we would not have fallen into the trap set for us by the terrorists, and they would have lost almost all their support. In many ways doing nothing would have been the hardest thing to do, but the hard path is often the right path.
You can't win Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
I've just realised I forgot to outline what it is about America they hate, and it's not the people or even the military power. It's not exactly your freedom, just how you choose to express it. What they can't stand is how obsessed western society is with sex, alcohol, violence and wealth. They see our decadence and know that through holywood and American TV those values are being spread to their homes. I can sympathise with that view. Islam, like Christianity, teaches against sexual immorality, but that is all they see America to embody as a consequence of its ideological promotion of individualism, which is incidently the core belief of Satanism. That is why they call you the Great Satan.
Personally I can't argue with any of their points, which can be applied almost as well against Britain, where I live, but I certainly don't agree that their methods are either justified or will work.
You can't win Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
I truly, truly hope that this isn't most people's reasoning for voting Bush.
I think it is. The Republican base in this country is very large; I'd say that about 35-40% of the country would never consider voting for a Democrat.
I think Bush himself is like that as well among the people in his own administration. I just saw a Frontline show last night on PBS that detailed the buildup to the war in Iraq. Nobody in the military wanted it, but the neocons were pushing it. When the brass and Powell cautioned against sending too small a force, Cheney and Rumsfeld just ignored them. Literally.
Bush knows that the neocons screwed it up, but he likes 'men of action'. The military brass was cautious, but the civilian leadership in the Pentagon was confident in their plans to a fault. But that confidence created a dynamic sense, that the neocons were movers and shakers, and I think that appealed (and still does) to Bush's business background. To him, doing something in a hurry with confidence and being absolutely wrong is better than pausing to consider the different sides of an issue.
"I make tough decisions all the time." - no mention of the consequences of those decisions, or whether they prove right or wrong.
"It's hard work" - again, effort over achievement.
Call it the "Entrepreneurial" administration.
There are no allegations (that I'm aware of, anyway) that you or I had any link to 9/11. There are allegations that say that Al Queda may have obtained funding and/or logistical support from Saddam. Those allegations are not proven, but they are at least worth exploring in more depth, no?
The primary reason I personally support the war, from the beginning, was that I have read extensively about Saddam's atrocities, including his invasion of Kuwait and believe his behaviour is beyond the pale. I don't like the fact that protest groups such as International ANSWER act as though Saddam and his regime were nice, peaceful folks who just wanted to be left alone. Saddam deserved to go, and as long as you agree with that proposition, the war was a moral positive.
I appreciate the idealism of neoconservatism, although I'm more a Libertarian outside of the war issue. And I don't like the multilateral defeatism of John Kerry and his pals. To me, the only right way to solve problems in the middle east is get rid of the despot regimes and replace them with something based on democratic principles. That's what Bush is doing and I salute him for it.
Every war has problems. And every defeated despot has people enriched by the regime who wish he was still around. What's going on in Iraq is that, at least for now, history is being told by those people, not by the millions of Iraqis who are now free and far better off than they were before.
I'd like to introduce you to one of them with one of the most moving and hilarious things I've ever read.
The Jimmy Carters and John Kerrys of the world have sophisticated knowledge, which appeals to slashdotters. But oddly enough the people with principles but limited knowledge seem to do a lot better as Presidents. Does Jimmy Carter have one lasting foreign policy triumph to his credit? Now look at Ronald Reagan, who believed consistently in what he said, and had a leading role in toppling an empire. And look at George W Bush: We know what he believes in and we know he's doing his level best to achieve concrete results. It's way too early to know if he's succeeded or failed, but he's slogging through and I think the odds are on his side, if he's allowed to stay the course.
I'm not even sure what John Kerry wants to do as President, but based on the Democratic convention, I'd say his campaign has been based on lies and hypocracy from the start. He truly was for the war when he thought it was politically necessary, and now he's against the war, and he has a Plan that he refuses to tell us, but we know it's a perfect plan, because that's what he says. Surely we can both agree that this is utter bosh.
If I were against the war, I probably wouldn't vote, or would vote for Nader. Kerry's lying to one or both sides of this issue. You can't trust him, he's insulted our real allies ("coalition of the bribed" etc) and that's one lousy Presidentical candidate.
Personally, I think he just wants to fly on the big plane surrounded by sycopants. He doesn't have a clue about the big picture, and that should scare all of us.
D
Of course -- but to draw a parallel to our criminal justice system, "innocent until proven guilty". Acting based on no more than a hunch in this case has proven irresponsible. How many people have to die for a hunch? Are you willing to go and fight -- and possibly sacrifice your life based on a hunch?
You can't hold Kerry to that standard if you don't hold Bush to it...remember the "Old Europe" statements? Furthermore, these people were (in essence) bribed. My friends who are veterans from this war in Iraq tell me that Polish soldiers are being paid double the American's pay. The American taxpayer foots that bill. If this isn't a coalition of the bribed, what is? This name that Kerry used was a play on Bush's Coalition of the Willing. We used political pressure and dollars to win over our coalition. You're fooling yourself if you believe otherwise. Furthermore, you calling Kerry out for criticizing his opponent is pretty stupid. If he didn't criticize Bush, then he wouldn't be a candidate...he'd be Bush in some other guy's body. If we all towed the line, there would be no dissent, and this wouldn't be America. Are you telling me that you're afraid of Kerry because he may have hurt our allies feelings? You must be joking. Bush pissed all over our real allies and you don't seem to even notice.
I am not hearing independant thought from you -- this is Bush rhetoric. Who is safer after this war? The Iraqi politicians who tried to make a positive change but were assassinated? The innocent people who are killed by suicide bombers and roadside bombs? The United States after Al Qaeda has gained sympathy all over the world? The American soldiers who are dying every day in Iraq after our "catastrophic success"? This entire war was turned against us as a rallying call for terrorists, and unfortunately there are more terrorists in Iraq than ever, and there will be more terrorists in the United States.
The fact is that Saddam Hussein could have had his power marginalized by us. There were alternatives to war -- Bush just ignored them.
Again, you are not holding Kerry to the same standard that you hold Bush to. You are making assumptions that Kerry's campaign is based on lies. What ever happened to "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."? How can you possibly assume that Kerry is lying and then conveniently ignore the constant barrage of misinformation from the Bush administration? Remember, this was all about WMD. There was no mention of Saddam Hussein's stipends to the families of Hammas terrorists leading up to the war. It was 100% about a material breach of the UN sanctions and a "smoking gun". Do you remember the 3D renderings of the mobile chemical weapons trucks that Colin Powell showed to the UN that we were so sure Iraq had? Do you remember how Bush changed his tune right away to some mystical link to Al Qaeda? Do you remember how he changed his tune again to liberating a people from the clutches of a horrible dictator?
These real "lies" (call it misleading information if you're more confortable with that) are a whole lot worse than the lies that you are accusing Kerry of because you haven't read his website. These are about as provable as Michael Moore'
-Turkey
I don't necessarily agree with this. They definitely don't hate us for our freedoms. I don't think that our culture is the entirety of their hatred either...although we are being judged by our media. They hate us for our actions. They hate that we had troops in Saudi Arabia. They hate us for our original involvement in Iraq. And they hate us for our support of Isreal (because they hate Jews and more importantly, hate Jews living in or near holy land).
You are talking to an athiest. I was more agnostic before September, 2001...but wathcing those buildings fall just made me realize that if it were Christian fundamentalists in the same position, they would do the same thing. (They're already sniping OB/GYN's who perform abortions in this country). From my position, we can't let these religous zealots run our lives, at home or abroad. I can argue against all of their points. If they want to live in a sexually oppressive nation, I say fine -- I'll stay out of your country, and you can just turn our broadcasts off.
Finally, you also need to remember that Satanism would not exist without a belief in Satan, who is a religous contrsruct. You cannot embrace Satan without believing in the tenents of the religions that created this concept. I do not believe in satan, and although my beliefs on sexuality may be considered amoral by the fundamentalists -- the fact is that I don't care what they think. I will not let religous zealots dictate what I can and can't do. I will live my life in the way that I choose and do my part to develop my community's culture in a way that I see fit. They should do the same for themselves...which is all well and good until they try to hurt me in the process.
-Turkey
The beesting is an interesting analogy. I've used it before. As I sat on a Brooklyn rooftop on September 11, 2001 next to my friend, we surveyed the damage and it appeared far worse in person than on the news. Manhattan was covered in a cloud of smoke and was burning -- it burned for 100 days. I clearly remember telling him that nothing good will come from this -- on either side. From this day on, things will get worse. I went on to tell him that someone has thrown a huge rock at the biggest hornets' nest in the world, and those hornets will attack the nearest passerby. We did just that with Iraq. As far as downplaying the attack -- you can draw parallels to road fatalities, but it is difficult to believe that you do not see a difference in attitude between accidental deaths and malicous killings of innocent people. Furthermore, we are accustomed to the clear and known risks. When we are faced with new risks, we want to mitigate those -- especially if we are unable to choose whether or not to partake in those risks. I can choose not to drive. I don't think that I can choose to stay out of the path of an incoming airliner. Finally, a poke in an achilles heel is still more than a poke. We were caught at a weak point. New York was out of commission for weeks, and this is an extremely important city for the United States and world economy. Our local economy was devistated, and in due in large part to the attacks, I lost my job and was unable to find gainful employmnt for 6 months. I was competing with all of my friends for the same crappy positions. Sure, the economy was already soft, but this was the straw that broke the camel's back. I don't want to emotionally overreact to your downplaying the September, 2001 attacks, but I do believe that you are wearing far different glasses than I am. Perhaps when you feel threatened, you will feel a bit more aggressively. With this in mind, I have made a similar argument. We have averaged 8 years between international terrorist atatcks on domestic soil (Embassies notwithstanding). They happened to the same buildings. Only around 5000 people died...but again, the promise was to step those attacks up. I can't be sure they'll try and follow through, but to not act is irresponsible. The domestic debate here is not whether or not to act, but how we should act.
I tend to agree with you on everything but the "real Christian leader" part. I hate to sound anti-Christian, but Jesus' message has been lost to the clergy. It is no longer
-Turkey
It seems a strange position to say you that don't believe in God because of the way some of the people who do claim to believe in him behave. There are many (more?) christians (and other religious people too for that matter) who are constantly selfless in doing good works for the communities they live in and the world in general. Wouldn't the be a better example of what religion triggers rather than a few nutters who get it all wrong.
There is room for all kinds of views in religion. For myself I would consider my self an evangelical Christian who support darwin, string theory for the origin of the Universe, and the fact that certain things are sinful, and not in our best interests. Having said that I would also say that in a secular nation laws should not reflect a religious view of sin. People should be free to do what they want so long as it doesn't infinge on other people too much, but at the same time it is the right of religious people to try and persuade people to choose God over hedonism. In the end what you do in life is a matter for your own concience, and is between you and your maker.
As for abortion, I mostly consider abortion murder, and the later the worse it gets, HOWEVER, it is still an issue between the woman and her maker and not really my business.
You're right, Satanism wouldn't exist without belief in Satan, who can't exist unless God exists too. The philosophy is pretty similar to that of the Marquis de Sade who was an atheist who decided that because there was no God then there is no absolute moral code and you are free to indulge any desire, limited only by the force you can exert.
You can't win Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
I hate to you to task on this but we Brits have quite a good grasp of terrorism. You might have heard of a little group called the IRA? We learnt a lot about terrorism and how to balance security and liberty. At one point in the 70's I think, we had internment, which was rather similar to what is now going on in Guantanamo bay, but without the torture. We gave up on that pretty quickly though because it was clear that a) it didn't work and b) it was counter productive.
When I was growing up terrorism was an almost weekly reality in central London, and parts of Northern Ireland were as much no go areas for soldiers or English people as parts of Iraq are for Americans.
Thankfully the Irish problem is nearly over, but not because we fought and leveled large parts of Northern Ireland, (although we did some pretty nasty, normally illegal out of a state of war, type things), but because we resolutely refused to let terrorism work. We would get angry, but in the true Blitz spirit we toughed it out out tried to carry on as normal. In the end it was that which made the terrorists realise the futility of their war and that the only route to what they wanted was to bury the bullet and use the ballot box instead. 25 years, thousand dead, lives ruined.
I don't want to downplay 9/11 in terms of its impact on people and property, but its not the kind of thing to bring down a strong nation, and despite all of Osama bin-ladens rhetoric about ever more shocking actions, nothing has yet emerged after 3 years.
I agree with you about clergy actually. It a well known phenomena, and one Jesus himself knew well because he constantly accused the clergy of his time, the pharisees, of hypocrisy. But I would like to put you right on what Christianity is really about. What it is certainly NOT about is loving your neighbor, forgiving, and basically being good to people. Those are consequences of loving God. Christianity is about knowing that we are all fundamentally bad people, selfish, greedy, petty and small minded, but that God loves us so much that he sent Jesus to be the scapegoat for all that, so we can be at one with God. The consequence of that is that we love God and Jesus, therefore we do good things because the more we love God, the more like Him we become. It's really not about following rules because no amount of following rules can make us into good people. It just means you're someone who is afraid of the consequence of not following the rules. That actually is the fundamental difference between Christianity and every other religion, especially Islam. They believe that the only way to heaven is to work really hard, which is why you end up with terrorist flying into building shouting "God is Great". They believe that their sacrifice will guarantee them a place in heaven. I'm certain they are mistaken. You know, I've just realised, forgiveness is much easier if you know that God will make sure that a price is paid.
Anyway, despite our obvious religious differences our positions do seem close. Perhaps one day people will rise to power in our countries that have similar views, and then the world will be a safer place.
You can't win Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
Oh -- nono. I must have mis-spoke. Before September, 2001, I was agnostic. I did not believe in God, but also did not see organized religion as harmful. My views on this changed fater September, 2001. However, I haven't believed in God since I was very young.
Hmm...I think that the last part of that sentence has much to do with one of the reasons why I have such a problem with organized religion. Absolute hypocracy. The belief in absolute moral code seems extremely hypocritical to me. Only taxes and death are absolute. Judeo-Christianity (which I am more famailiar with than most other religions) shows this hypocracy in application consistently. If we go through the Ten Commandments, which are supposed to be the framework for their absolute moral code, we will find that there is nothing absolute about those rules. The fist commandment was (very weakly arguably) broken by Christians by accepting Jesus as another God. The fourth commandment is broken every week by 99% of Christians, who moved the day of the sabbath to Sunday by committee. If God's word is absolute, why then, is it OK for mortal men to move the sabbath day to Sunday by committee? This seems absolutely sinful. The sixth commandment, thou shalt not kill, I have a huge problem with. If it is so absolute, why then was the first act of monotheism mass murder (I'm talking about the golden golden goat that was forged while Moses made the trek up Mt. Siani for the Ten Commandments...he returned to find the Jews warshipping the golden goat. He explained his anger and divided the Jews up into the group worshipping the goat, and those who chose to worship his God. Then, the Jews slaughtered the goat-worshippers). How many people have been killed in the name of God? How many lost their lives in the crusades? Of course, the Bible is filled with exceptions to this rule (for example stoning our disobediant children to death). The tenth commandment, another absolute, requires us not to covet our neighbor's house. But in a capitalist society (well, here anyway), this coveting is the backbone of our economy...the coveting of goods. Furthermore, I've heard some interesting arguments about how Calvinism and Capitalism are quite compatible with each other (but this is for another day).
Finally, I have a pretty huge problem with how the church is used in my country in order to discriminate against homosexuals...and ingeneral, it is applied where convenient, and ignored when it's not convenient. If God's word is so absolute that we must pick a few verses out of the Bible to justify our discrimination, how come slavery is not justifyable? The Bible says it is, as long as those slaves are from another nation, and remember, that moral code is absolute. Why can't we stone our disobedient children to death to strike fear into the hearts of the Isrealites? Again, the Bible says that we can. Becuase the only absolute about the Bible's moral code is that it's absolutely relative in it's application. If this is the case, is there really any argument for requiring organized religion for a culture to have an ethical and/or moral code? Would we benefit if we could move beyond dogmatic morals and use some practical logic, possibly accounting for modern issues?
It's this convenient application of the rules that bothers me so much. That, and the use of these conveniently applied rules to declare someone "evil". I do not necessarily beleive in good and evil in the Biblical sense, but I do have a pretty good sense of right and wrong. Can this be attributed
-Turkey
You're right -- and I did not mean to downplay the rampant terrorism in the UK over the past 30 years.
Not trrying to be argumentative, but 3 years isn't really a good metric. Here's the thing. These Islamic terrorists have a very different sense of time than we have in the west. They feel that if they do not get us, their grandchildren will. Remember, all they have to do is break our spirit and strike fear into our hearts. We can go fifteen years between major attacks and they will still have the same affect on our attitudes and spirit. It remind me of the Terry Gilliam film Brazil.
I don't believe that we're all fundamentally bad. I think that humans have fundamentally bad qualities, but I think that we're all capable of using logic and reasoning to make fair decisions. We're certianly not incapable of visualizing how our decisions will affect others. But fundamental differences in beliefs about human nature are absolutely common, and I think that this is where many differences in attitudes stem from. Anyway, I should get back to work.
-Turkey
One of the big differences between Christianity and Judaism is that we believe that Jesus effectively fulfilled all the Law so that we didn't need to follow it in order to go to heaven. When we follow it it is out of love for God, not requirement. Many things in the Old testament were signs and pointers to Gods overall plan. Now that the last piece of the plan has been revealed to us, we don't need the pointers any more. One of the interesting things about the life of Jesus is how it fulfills all the ancient prophecies of the Jewish old testament but in a way which was totally unexpected by the teachers of the law, and not understood by Jewish scholars even today.
We believe in an absolute moral code, but we are all human and fail to follow it utterly, but that is the point of Christianity, we don't need to worry about it because Jesus took the punishment for us. There's a lot of subtlety about that though so that we can't sin with impunity and just so what we want, because its a sign we've not really taken it on board.
What is interesting about homosexuality in the bible is that is almost always put in the context of orgies, infidelity, and other sexual immorality. I'm not really sure that the kind of monogamous stable homosexual realtionship that is common today was considered at the time. On the other hand God created man and woman so that we can become one, each covering the failings of the other. Any other sexual activity can be used as a wedge between us and God, because it panders to our selfish desires. I'm somewhat undecided on the issue, but in the end I believe that no sin is a death sentence because we can be forgiven.
As for the trinity, even in Genesis God often talks about himeself as an "us" or "we", and this was long before God the Son and the Holy Spirit were made known to the prophets. Given that no more than one thing can be utterly perfect, this makes sense. Jesus isn't really a seperate person from God, but a different manifestation of his character. I'm slightly woolly on that issue because I've only been a Christian for a few months and don't quite understand the reasoning. He also proved, by the way that taxes may be certain, but death is not, if you believe.
I would certainly agree that civil law should not be confused with religious law in any way. Not least because there really is no religious law any more. It is up to each of us to decide how we live because sin is only a matter for you and God, not society and we shouldn't have it forced upon people. I think God wants us to choose to follow him, not be forced into it. Otherwise he would have left undeniable evidence for us so we had no choice, but that was his greatest gift to us in many ways: the freedom to reject Him, and he will respect that choice.
You can't win Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
by bad I mean selfish, greedy and deciteful. I think that pretty much sums up everyone fundamentally. OK sure, we all try to be better, but if we slip, we slip towards being bad. The opposite is God who is fundamentally good and therefore would have to try really hard to be bad.
You can't win Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
See if you can find his article "Two Iraqs" - it gives a good example of the alternate universe that Bushites live in.
I mean, really - suicide bombings, homemade roadside bombs, a state of near-civil war, and they claim "everything is fine" in Iraq? I DON'T THINK SO!
Patrolling ftw