Forgot to answer this, you seem to be the troll here. Me saying "I'm switching back to voting for Nader" isn't "threatening" you. Geez, like I said, you give Kerry supporters a bad name.
As for the Jewish issue dont try to tag me as a Jew hater:
- I hate the current Sharon government because it is an abusive extremist government with a penchant for killing innocent Palastinians, in the process of killing some not so innocent ones. American should be disavowing support for much of what Sharon has done in the last few years, not giving him a blank check to do it more wand worse
- I hate the current government of Israel for building walled ghettos for the Palastinians and grab big chunks of land that are not theres in the process. Creating ghetto in complete economic collapse for the Palastinians is going to breed more suicide bombers not fewer.
- I hate the fact a politician can't run for office in the U.S. unless he is rabidly pro Israel.
- I hate the level of influence the Friends of Israel lobby has over the U.S. government and policy. It is influence that dwarfs their representation in the American population and it causes massive trouble for the U.S. in the world, especially the Arab and Muslim world.
- I hate the fact Howard Dean had the guts to suggest the U.S. should treat Israel and Palastine with balance and he was run out of the race soon there after.
In the last Presidential debate Bush said:
"A free Iraq will help secure Israel."
Well I don't want to see the U.S. spending hundreds of billions of dollars and getting thousands of American's killed and permanently wounded to secure Israel. If Israel has a security problem let them deal with it.
Kerry said on Iraq:
"I'm going to get it right for those soldiers, because it's important to Israel, it's important to America, it's important to the world, it's important to the fight on terror."
Notice Kerry's priorities, he puts Israel ahead of America and the world. I want a President who puts America's interests way ahead of Israel's and neither Bush or Kerry seem to.
When the U.S. is engaged in multiple wars with the Muslim world, and the Muslim world already views the U.S. as massively biased towards Israel and Judaism, its a key reason they are developing such a deep hatred towards the U.S., having a President who is part Jewish does in fact factor in to the race, its just going to reinforce the perception of a massive pro Israel bias in the Arab and Muslim world.
And the thing I dislike most is the obvious fact Kerry is doing his best to brush his heritage under the rug. If he were proud of it, and not doing his best to keep it secret I would have less of a problem with it, than what he does most of the time which is trying to sucker everyone in to thinking he is Irish Catholic..... like Kennedy.
"I've seen Democratic ads almost every day about the problems with the Patriot Act."
You've seen DNC ads, and 527 ads, and ACLU ads on it. I'm skeptical you are seeing Kerry ads on the subject, though ads vary with region so I couldn't say for sure.
"John Kerry didn't write the book, Douglas Brinkley did. Attributing those thoughts to John Kerry himself is a misrepresentation worthy of Bush himself....It's a book written by someone with an agenda, you might have as well linked the Swift boat vets for truth site."
I never made any such representation, dude. Brinkley is a Kerry supporter and the book is extremely pro Kerry. I'm surprised you haven't got a copy as much as you worship Kerry. The fact you are trying to put it on the same level as the Swift Boat Vets indicates you don't know what the hell you are talking about. Brinkley's "agenda" was to paint Kerry as a war hero turned peace hero. The Slate article happens to quote it extensively online, especially on the Kerry fetish, its the best I could do short of mailing you a copy. YOU ASKED FOR A BLOODY REFERENCE, I SENT YOU ONE, A PRO KERRY BIOGRAPHY AND YOU JUST LEAP IN TO DENIAL ON THE SUBJECT.
Unfortunately its NO secret Kerry has a massive Kennedy fetish. It isn't suprising since he's a wealthy Bostonian, grew up when Kennedy was king, and I think met him on some number of occasions in the yachting circles.
Me I just find it a little creepy the extent to which Kerry has patterned his entire life after him and it conveys phony.
Unfortunately your blinders are just as bad as the ones the people in the Bush/Cheney camp wear which is why I don't have any use for rabid partisans on either side or their candidates. You are in a constant state of denial about anything that doesn't make you feel good about your chosen candidate, and I'm never gonna hear facts or straight answers from you, just hero worship.
Later dude. Waste o' time arguing with you, your gonna argue Kerry's shit dont stink even when it does. About all I can say in summary is, at least from where I sit, you aren't doing Kerry any favors campaigning for him. After listening to your denial I'm pretty much back to voting for Nader. Nader wont win but at least he is a straight shooter and not a phony like the two major candidates.
The book review from Amazon:
"Covering more than four decades, Tour of Duty is the definitive account of John Kerry's journey from war to peace. Written by acclaimed historian Douglas Brinkley, this is the first full-scale, intimate account of Kerry's naval career. In writing this riveting narrative, Brinkley has drawn on extensive interviews with virtually everyone who knew Kerry well in Vietnam, including all the men still living who served under him. Kerry also entrusted to Brinkley his letters home from Vietnam and his voluminous "War Notes" -- journals, notebooks, and personal reminiscences written during and shortly after the war. This material was provided without restriction, to be used at Brinkley's discretion, and has never before been published.
John Kerry enlisted in the Navy in February 1966, months before he graduated from Yale. In December 1967 Ensign Kerry was assigned to the frigate U.S.S. Gridley; after five months of service in the Pacific, with a brief stop in Vietnam, he returned to the United States and underwent training to command a Swift boat, a small craft deployed in Vietnam's rivers. In June 1968 Kerry was promoted to lieutenant (junior grade), and by the end of that year he was back in Vietnam, where he commanded, over time, two Swift boats. Throughout Tour of Duty Brinkley deftly deals with such explosive issues as U.S. atrocities in Vietnam and the bombing of Cambodia. In a series of unforgettable combat-action sequences, he recounts how Kerry won the Purple Heart three times for wounds suffered in action and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Navy's Silver Star for gallantry in action.
When Kerry returned from Southeast Asia, he joined the Vietnam Vete
"Flip Flop is a term used by 'Conservative' talk show hosts"
Its a term everybody is using about Kerry, except devotees like yourself, because it fits. If it didn't resonate and fit it wouldn't have caught on. Kerry set himself up for being tagged with it. Sorry, I know you all are sensitive about the word to a distraction. The solution is Kerry should have established positions when he started the campaign and stuck to them, and only changed them when there was an obvious necessity to do so, instead of changing positions everytime he thought it was politically convenient.
"Yea, I agree, you do have a mind full of political BS."
Nice ad hominem attack. You seem to think I'm some kind of sucker for Bush campaign propaganda don't you. Maybe you should read my signature and some of my old posts. I trash him every opportunity I get, at lost worse than I've been trashing Kerry here. The difference between you and me is I dont fall in line with you are either a Democrat or a Republican. I think they are both bad and I'm not going to kid myself into thinking either of them is great, which is what you are doing, because neither of them is great.
"For example Dick Cheney, who has a strongly held belief that the states need to handle the marriage question, is willing to 'support' Bush's constitutional amendment."
Not sure I really follow your point. Cheney is the VP he has to follow Bush's policy line because he is on the bottom of the ticket and he serves at Bush's discretion, it has nothing to do with the platform. If he didn't support Bush's position he'd run the risk of Bush dumping him. Bush doesn't like people crossing him.
Bush isn't even remotely obligated to follow the party platform. His people wrote most of it so it is his position, so he does mostly follow it, but its ridiculous to think the party is going to dictate to the President a position he doesn't like. You might argue he has to follow it when he doesn't want to because he will lose votes from the party faithful if he doesn't. That is obviously ludicrous because who are the faithful gonna vote for instead, Kerry or Nader?
"May I suggest CSPAN, and the Internet"
I'm watching CSPAN right now, Duelfer's testimony, I watch it everytime I can find something interesting on it. They have great stuff, they also have some truly boring crap.
I'm a news junky, seek out all the unspun news I can find. This snide little shot didn't help your case. Maybe you should try reading counterpunch.org. There is some left wing garbage on it but they often some writers that really open your eyes, especially about the travesty that is America's two party system. I like one of there tag lines, "there isn't a dime's worth of difference" between Bush and Kerry when you really get down to stuff that matters.
My point again, which you didn't answer but rather lept into the ad hominem, is when was the last time Kerry said anything major against the Patriotic Act like he did in nearly every speech during the primaries when he was stealing Dean's thunder on the subject?
Maybe he has railed against it and I just missed it, but I wager he's not said anything major against the Patriot Act lately because he is deathly afraid of looking "Weak on Terror". Whether you like it or not he's done a 180 on the subject(do you like 180 better than flip flop) from what he was doing during the primaries.
"From a section called "Guard Liberty at Home" on the Homeland Security page"
I think you proved my point about the Patriot Act more than yours. Its a footnote buried in a huge set of documents. It would have taken me forever to find it from the front page. There doesn't appear to be a policy document on it and they have a LOT of policy documents. If he wasn't burying the whole issue the words "Patriot Act" would be on the front page. If I recall the rhetoric during the primaries he was railing against it just like Dean was, when he realized most Democrats hate it and want it gone, tha
Is that you Twirp, sure sounds like you, sure talks like you, sure has the same brand of well though out, well reasoned arguments we've all come to expect from you.
You still seem to be cowering behind anonymity when you reply to my posts I see. Come on Twirp, pull your tail out from between your legs, stop being a pussy and lets go toe to toe with some good old fashioned debate.
"Where is your link, your quote, your facts, well all I see is complete and total Bush sponsored FUD."
OK, here is one, Slate reviewing Brinkley's book "Tour of Duty", Brinkley being pro Kerry and not a Bush fan boy.
Kerry was a Kennedy family camp follower, dated Jackie's half sister. Kerry's initials are John F. Kerry, and he flaunted "JFK" around Yale where it was obvious to everyone he was aspiring to do a rerun of JFK's life, and spent way to much time yammering to his friends about Kennedy. He did, war service in patrol boats(so did JFK), for which he volunteered, chest full of medals(so had JFK), prosecutor in Massachusetts(so was JFK though in New York), Senator from Massachusetts(so was JFK), and now he is hoping to be President(so was JFK).
I wasn't aware that he tried to get a deferment, if its true, I hate to point this out to you but its just one more case where he hasn't been straight with people, because he tells everyone he eagerly volunteered for Vietnam in order to serve his country. Flip-flop.
"Again you seem to get most of your political knowledge from 527 ads."
Well no actually I watched him in the primaries when he reinvented himself to beat Howard Dean. Early on he had no message, didn't criticize the President, Iraq or the Patriot Act, Dean did, it resonated with Democractic voters, Kerry was an also ran. Then Kerry reinvented himself, as is his way, and was a crusader against Iraq and the Patriot Act, a champion of the little men and women in the Democratic party, he overnight turned in to Howard Dean. As soon as he had the nomination he nailed he turned back in to himself, a wishy washy centrist trying to offend no one, which is what the pundits told him to do to win the general election, he was neither for or against Iraq, nor for or against the Patriot Act, and his first policy initiative was a tax cut for big business. Unlike many people in America, it seems, I have a pretty good memory for political BS.
He meandered through months with no message and now in just the last couple of weeks he's found a new one that sort of works, that Iraq was a diversion from the real war on Terrorism, but it is not a message he's had for most of the last year. I don't recall him saying anything about the Patriot act, maybe he has I just missed it.
His message also seems to change, dramatically, every time there is a change in his campaign staff which suggests these are not his messages but those of the people pulling his strings.
George flip flops on some things like the 9/11 commission and Homeland security, and he sure as hell reversed himself on many major issues he campaigned on in 2000 like being anti nation building, a uniter not a divider, and a compassionate conservative, but otherwise he has settled in to a position on most major issues, especially tax cuts and Iraq, and he sticks to them, unfortunately most of his positions are wrong and bad but at least he is consistent and you know where he stands, and I'll admit Cheney is right(on this one thing), consistent is not a word that ever comes to mind about Kerry.
I kind of empathize with your drift but I'm afraid you really missed the mark in a lot of areas due apparently to some partisan bias.
"a bunch of various single-issue voters"
Well no that is obviously not at all what today's Republican party is. There are a couple big blocks in it, particularly religious fundamentalists and wealthy, greedy, fat cats. Despite those blocks it is a remarkably cohesive, very dangerous, very unified party of people, mostly WASP's, who seem to have a remarkable oneness of thought. They seem to be one to the point they think the way they do even though it flies in the face of reality and fact, they are cognitive dissonance to the extreme. A poll on CNN today showed 60+ percent of Republicans still think Saddam had something to do with 9/11 though there has never been ANY evidence to support that, a tribute to the ability of the Republican leadership to brainwash their legion. Independents and Democrats both showed 60+ percent who thought Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11.
"as a strong leader, who really cares about the people of America and America's place in the world."
You really need to provide some kind of support for that. Kerry's record in the Senate which is where he has been most of his life as been remarkably unnoteworthy. I have never seen even a hint of "strong leader". He went to Vietnam with the apparent desire to get on a PT boat(Swift boat) and rack up some medals to further his political career and follow in JFK's footsteps. When he realized being a hero in Vietnam was bad he did a 180 and jumped on the antiwar bandwagon.
He simply doesn't show any of the qualities of a strong leader. You can blame the Republican's for defaming him but the fact is he HAS been all over the map on most issues and especially Iraq and the Patriot Act.
A strong leader does form some conviction on issues. Kerry does in fact adopt the position he thinks will be most politically advantageous at each point in time and has NO reservation about completely reversing himself, often multiple times, all the while kidding himself that no one notices.
At this point I will vote for him because anything is better than the crony network of the Bush administration. I am totally cool with poltical leaders with religious beliefs but I am vehemently against political leaders who can't restrain themselves from injecting their religious extremism in to government. That is truly un-American.
But puuuulllllease don't try to paint him as some towering pillar of strength who will be a towering pillar of a President. He is just the least bad of the two bad options the two bankrupt major parties threw on the ballot like they usually do.
"Once again it is okay to be OFF TOPIC if the moderators agree with you."
I think the topic is Kerry endorsements so it pretty much is on topic.
Maybe it is just chapping your ass that a staunch Republican has turned against the insanity that is today's Republican party and did it with a particular and concise elegance.
Well there is a big difference big difference between a 2nd trimester fetus and a 5-8 day old fetus which is where embryonic stem cells come from. There aren't any brain cells in a fetus until at least 40 days in and then they are barely functioning. Until there is a functioning nervous system there is no consciousness. I know the big religions will argue life begins at conception but I'll contend life is most definitely not sacred until it has consciousness.
Embryonic germ cells, on the other hand, are harvested at 5-8 weeks and are in somewhat more of an ethical gray area.
By the way here is a great resource on stem cells.
I think there is a key thing to point out about most organized religions when it comes to their positions on abortion and birth control. They have a conflict of interest. There is an overwhelming tendency among most religions to try and maximize the growth of their flock. It is their survival mechanism. They want to maximize the number of people who subscribe to their doctrine, support it (especially financially) and spread their faith.
It is consistently in their interest and doctrine to try and eradicate people who either subscribe to no faith or an opposing faith. By eradication I mean either converting or killing them. Muslims do it, Christian do it, Jews have mostly had it done to them though they are doing it to Muslims now. The crusaders did it, the conquistadores did it. Native americans faced massive pressure to either become Christians or be eradicated, starting with Chris Columbus.
This is also a basic underpinning for why so many wars are fought for religious reasons, one faith is trying to eradicate an opposing faith.
It doesn't register with most people but the Popes oppose all forms of birth control and abortion, not because of a great spiritual enlightenment, but mostly because they are trying to maximize the number of Catholics in the world because thats how you win the religion game, you win by maximizing your numbers and minimizing the numbers following other religions.
Maximizing your numbers might have been a tolerable goal when the world was relatively empty. But, now that the world is becoming severely overcrowded and we are running out of resources it is unforgivable.
Birth control and abortion of unwanted pregnancies are rapidly becoming a necessity if we want to survive long term as a species. Religious zealots (the pope and the Republican party) who are, at every turn, trying to knock the legs out from under population control are doing the world grievous harm.
Which of these two is more humane and Christian:
A. Practicing birth control and aborting unwanted first trimester pregnancies
B. An exploding population leading to billions of starving, miserable, suffering, conscious beings who die painful and premature deaths anyway.
Aborting a life at 1 and 2 years AFTER BIRTH via weeks or months of agonizing starvation and disease is way more cruel than an aborting a first trimester fetus.
You see religious zealots really just dont get the big picture and are in fact just being selfish in trying to propagate their belief system at the expense of the whole species.
You need to forgive Twirp, he is a flaming pedant and bad at it. From Wikipedia, I know how much you like Wikipedia, Twirp:
"A blastocyst is an embryo at a stage where it consists of 30-150 cells. It is covered in a layer of trophoblasts, cells which will eventually form the placenta. The inner cells of the blastocyst are undifferentiated, and a source of embryonic stem cells."
I think stem cells are by definition undifferentiated until they differentiate themselves in to something else, thats why they are stem cells.
The only differentiation you find in a blastocyst is between the stem cells and the trophoblast.
Again from Wikipedia:
"Stem cells are cells which are not terminally differentiated and are therefore able to produce cells of other types. Medical researchers hope they can be used to repair specific tissues or to grow organs from scratch. There are three types of stem cells: totipotent, pluripotent, and multipotent. A single totipotent stem cell can grow into an entire organism. Pluripotent stem cells cannot grow into a whole organism, but they can become any other type of cell in the body. Multipotent (also called unipotent) stem cells can only become particular types of cells: e.g. blood cells, or bone cells."
You really are slipping lately, Twirp. You feeling OK?
"As for the airlines, what would you have done? Let the industry collapse in the wake of 9/11?"
Let the industry collapse no, let United, American, Delta and U.S. Air collapse yes. They are dinosaurs running dinosaur business models and they deserve to fail in a free market system and they probably are still going to fail and take all our tax dollar subsidies with them. Southwest, JetBlue and their ilk are clearly the winners in the industry and they should win without the government meddling in it and picking winning and losers.
As much as you rant in praise of Capitalism I'm dumbfounded when you defend the anticapitalist tendencies of the current Republican party.
They are in fact using our tax dollars and their stranglehold on power to reward their friends and punish their enemies. You don't have to look any further than the Medicare "Reform" bill which was a gigantic giveaway of our tax dollars to the health care and drug industry, and is offering very little benefit to seniors. Sure they get a drug discount but the drug industry was given a blank check to raise prices so they can erase the benefit of the dicount in a heartbeat. As a reminder the Medicare administration is fordbidden by that law from negotiating fair, quantity pricing which is why drugs are reasonably priced every place but the U.S. It is a mechanism for transfering our tax dollars in to the pockets of the drug and health megacorps with no real benefit to seniors and at a staggering price tag.
"Conservatives believe in equality of opportunity"
Well then the current administration is not conservative. Reference above Medicare reform, and reference all the no bid contracts in Iraq the Bush administration is handing to its cronies. If there were equality of opportunity any company could have bid for those contracts and the best bid would of won. Instead the companies that are winning are tapping the crony network to get an inside track on no bid contracts.
Cronyism is not "equality of opprtunity" it is their friends win and those who are not their friends don't even get a seat at the table.
"Conservatives believe in strong foreign policy and in not compromising national sovereignty."
Real conservatives abhor nation building and becoming entangled in foreign situations that are not integral to American security. The war in Afghanistan passed the "coservative test" since it directly affected American security. The war in Iraq DID NOT.
As you recall in 2000 Bush ran on a classic conservative platform that rejected nation building. In practice the Bush administration is nation building all over the globe, albeit they are doing a spectacularly bad job of it in Afghanistan, Haiti and Iraq in particular.
"Conservatives believe that small business is key to a healthy economy"
Yes they do but, the Bush administration by contrast is, in practice, overwhelmingly favoring policies that are destroying small business in America. The most obvious example being outsourcing of jobs to China which is devastating small business in America. Big corporations have no problem outsourcing, its a major challenge for small business to do it or compete against big business doing it. Walmart is single handedly devastating small business across the nation, both small retailers who can't compete on price and suppliers who Walmart is overtly pressuring to either offshore to China to match those prices or go out of business.
Another obvious example of anti business practice is the Bush administration gave Microsoft a free pass, a get out of jail free card, to a convicted monopolist. You don't favor small business by giving predatory monopolies a license to kill small businesses with innovative ideas.
Republicans can shovel shit about how they favor small business but their policies are obviously massively favoring big business, and especially big business relocating to China.
"We subsidize farmers because we like cheap food."
"Dramatic, but exactly wrong. Israel is walling itself _in_ to keep out the non-Israeli Arabs that keep trying to sneak into Israel to kill them."
I'm sorry but you don't know what you are talking about. The Israeli's control all traffic through the wall and through Israel's borders around Gaza and the West Bank. Much of the time, especially lately there are two ways for Palastinians to enter or leave these areas, through Israeli checkpoints where they are rigorously searched, screened and often humiliated or through tunnels from places like Gaza to Egypt. If things were the way you say they are Palastinians could travel to and from Jordan or Egypt freely which they simply can not. You can't sustain a viable economy if Israel is cutting people off from getting to work and have a strangehold on commerce with the rest of the world.
I'd be overjoyed if Israel did what you are claiming and built a giant wall along its internationally recognized borders and shut itself off from the world, because they can't interact with the world as a responsible nation. But they have to let the Palastinian's go so they can try to salvage their lives on the West Bank and Gaza without having to ever see an Israeli soldier, tank or border crossing again.
I'm afraid you lost all your credibility when started saying how great Palastinians have it in Israel. I'm pretty sure the South Africans must have said the same things about blacks under apartheid. I really hope for your sake you haven't conned yourself in to thinking this BS is true.
From the CIA, and this doesn't really even address the worsening situation thanks to the new wall:
"Economic output in the Gaza Strip - under the responsibility of the Palestinian Authority since the Cairo Agreement of May 1994 - declined by about one-third between 1992 and 1996. The downturn was largely the result of Israeli closure policies - the imposition of generalized border closures in response to security incidents in Israel - which disrupted previously established labor and commodity market relationships between Israel and the WBGS (West Bank and Gaza Strip). The most serious negative social effect of this downturn was the emergence of high unemployment; unemployment in the WBGS during the 1980s was generally under 5%; by 1995 it had risen to over 20%. Israel's use of comprehensive closures decreased during the next few years and, in 1998, Israel implemented new policies to reduce the impact of closures and other security procedures on the movement of Palestinian goods and labor. These changes fueled an almost three-year-long economic recovery in the West Bank and Gaza Strip; real GDP grew by 5% in 1998 and 6% in 1999. Recovery was upended in the last quarter of 2000 with the outbreak of violence, triggering tight Israeli closures of Palestinian self-rule areas and a severe disruption of trade and labor movements. In 2001, and even more severely in 2002, Israeli military measures in Palestinian Authority areas resulted in the destruction of capital plant and administrative structure, widespread business closures, and a sharp drop in GDP. Including West Bank, the UN estimates that more than 100,000 Palestinians out of the 125,000 who used to work in Israel, in Israeli settlements, or in joint industrial zones have lost their jobs. In addition, about 80,000 Palestinian workers inside the Territories are losing their jobs. International aid of $2 billion in 2001-02 to the West Bank and Gaza Strip prevented the complete collapse of the economy and allowed Finance Minister Salam FAYYAD to implement several financial and economic reforms. Budgetary support, however, was not as forthcoming in 2003."
Uh, if he was one the board of a company and was unaware they signed a huge deal to put nuclear reactors in a controversial place like North Korea then he is an incompetent executive which I'm willing to believe haveing watched him lead the DOD and testify before Congress.
You should probably admit it, your friends in the White House, will deal with anyone if they think its to their benefit. Cheney was negotiating with the Taliban to get a gas pipeline when he was in the private sector and his former company used fronts to do oil deal in Libya and Iran while they were under sanctions. Rumsfeld had some famous photo ops shaking hands with Saddam a few years back.
About all I ask is you get off your high horse and acting like Republican's always strong, good and Democrats always weak, bad. They both have their heads up their asses much of the time.
The obvious flaw in your arguement is all but one of those things happened before or during the first gulf war. If he deserved to be taken down for them he should have been taken down for them during the first gulf war, something I would have supported, versus the ten years of misery Iraq went through instead (for example George H.W. Bush encouraging the Kurds and Shias to revolt and then turning his back on them while Saddam slaughtered them).
As you recall George's dad and Dick Cheney wouldn't think of taking Saddam then because they didn't want to get in a quagmire of an occupation. Cheney in particular is a flaming hypocrite.
Its irrational to come back more than 10 years later and decide this ancient history is suddenly an urgent justification for an aggressive, preemptive war. It simply wasn't.
- Can you point us to the article you wrote based on your interview? I'd hate to think you are blowing smoke
- You think the people you claim to have interviewed had been trained on the tunnel complexes in Vietnam and how extraordinarily hard they were to defeat. If they had been I'm doubting they would have made statements that pompous about a very well developed cave/tunnel complex.
Al Qaeda has been fighting in those mountains since the Russian invasion around 1980, I'm pretty sure they've fought from and escaped out of cave and tunnel complexes and I'm sure many of them know how to do it. There is a near certainty a major cave complex like that has a couple very well concealed and very long escape tunnels they can use to get outside of a perimeter around it and to get well away from air cover over it. When the Pakistani's tried to raid a stronghold in the tribal areas they found tunnels just like that the people inside were using to slip in and out of their huge perimeter.
The apparent arrogance of the people you claimed to have interviewed makes it seem more likely, rather than less likely they didn't know what they were doing at Tora Bora or how skilled in guerilla warfare their adversary might be. It sounds like they underestimated them the same way the U.S. underestimated the Vietnamese.
- As others have already said the U.S. was making extensive use of local irregulars with dubious skills, training and loyalties there. For all you know half of them could have been on Al Qaeda's payroll, taking bribes to look the other way or they just didn't care all that much for sticking there necks out for their American masters.
All in all I think you are once again full of shit trying to make a case Bin Laden is dead. I don't think you will find anyone in the Bush administration that will back you on it.
But, nice try to rationalize away one of the bigger embarrassments of the Bush administrations failed "War on Terror"(...echo...echo) in time for the election, though.
My god Twirp you posted URL's. You NEVER post URL's Twirp, are you feeling OK? Now I'm really worried about you, I'm so used to you shoveling B.S. without any support I'm not sure I can adjust to this.
Unfortunately this is kind of a hopeless mishmash of URL's. Next time try writing out your assertion and then attach a URL to it supporting your point, then people will understand the point you are making and real the URL to see if it supports your point. Its really to correlate this mess with the points you are trying to make.
The few of these I'd did bother to look at were:
A. from around the time the media and Congress were still drinking the Bush administration's Koolaid on WMD's and Saddam's link to 9/11. Most everyone is awake now and not falling for it anymore..... excepting of course you. All the principals in the Bush administration and UNSCOM have pretty much admitted they were wrong, maybe you should too.
B. Yes Saddam supported various Palastinian causes, so do most Arabs and Arab governments either openly or under the table. You still don't have a shred of evidence he had anything to do with 9/11 which is the Bush administration claim. The one little known pocket of Al Qaida in Iraq was in a part of Iraq Saddam didn't control which is a fact you propagandists conveniently leave out. The fact there are terrorists in a country doesn't make it a sponsor of those terrorists. If that were the case the U.S. was a state sponsor of terrorism by knowingly training the 9/11 hijackers in its flight schools.
"It's estimated that the total of all the illegal oil voucher trading will come to nearly a billion dollars when it's all said and done. That's a billion dollars that went, primarily, into the pockets of corrupt bureaucrats at the UN."
So what. News Flash....there are greedy people in a big bureaucracy lining their own pockets. Breaking News. So now, after a 1000 dead Americans and a couple hundred billion dollars spent, the money is going in to the pockets of greedy corrupt people at Halliburton, Bechtel and a hundred other companies who used political influence to land juicy contracts in Iraq. This whole issue isn't even remotely a part of making a case for a war.
"Our military didn't break at Pearl, it didn't break at the Argonne, it didn't break at Inchon."
Nice flag waiving troll Twirp. The U.S. military did break in Vietnam which is the last time it was bogged down in a quagmire, fighting an insurgent army, propping up a corrupt puppet government, in a a war based on a web of lies. It has great potential to be broken again facing the same thing in Iraq. Its noteworthy that in Vietnam serving in the Guard was how you avoided combat duty. Today its being used as part of a back door draft, so weekend warriors with families and careers are seeing their life destroyed by one combat tour after another because the regular army is hopelessly to small for multiple long term occupations.
"one of the world's last remaining rogue states"
And of course the last rogue state in the eyes of most of the world is the United States of America under the control of right wing fanatics, who launch aggressive, preemptive wars based on fabrication. That's what Hitler did. That is how we define rogue states isn't, they invade and occupy other nations without provocation.
Not sure I want to waste the time going around with you on this same BS you shovel everytime this subject comes up but here are a few high spots.
"His UAV and drone programs are thoroughly documented."
UAV's and drones are NOT WMD's unless you put WMD's in them, get off it, everyone has them these days. You can accomplish the same thing with a crop duster, or a Cessna, you gonna start an international convention to ban crop dusters and Cessna's?
You sound like Fox News right before the war echoing the DOD propaganda that the U.S. was in imminent danger of Saddam spraying our cities with Sarin and Anthrax for UAV's. It was just really rabid propaganda designed to whip up a war frenzy against Iraq. Please wake up and smell the coffee. I'm sitting here wondering if either:
A. You are so gullible you actually fell for it and have no clue it was propaganda
B. You are intentionally trying to foist this propganga on the gullible on Slashdot. If so shame on you and at least get some fresh propaganda, this batch is stale.
"Folks, it took a teaspoon of weaponized anthrax to shut down the Capitol and halt mail service nationwide."
And of course that Anthrax came out of a U.S. labratory and not a weapons lab in Iraq. By your reasoning the U.S. is a danger to itself and a preemptive strike is in order. There is a 50/50 chance some right wing nut case in the Bush administration or the military launched that Anthrax attack just to whip up the American people against WMD's and Iraq. It worked so well for that you almost have to figure it was intentional fear mongering.
There is a beauty to using WMD's and tenuous links to terrorism as a basis for preemptive warfare. You can gin up the charges against anybody you feel like. When you don't find any WMD's you just say they could be hidden anywhere or they were spirited to another country like Iran and Syria so you need to take them down next. Unfortunately most of the technology for biological and chemical is dual use and everyone has it. If the U.S. wants to maintain any credibility in the world it needs to give up on the non stop WMD accusations as far as chemical and biological weapons go. That genie is out of the bottle and the U.S. isn't going to put it back in. The U.S. need to make it clear that anyone that uses them against the U.S. is going to be dealt with swiftly and harshly, it is problem for Mutual Assured Destruction, and push international efforts at proliferation control. It isn't something you are going to fix by invading everyone you think, I repeat you think, might, I repeat might, have them.
As an example of how not to deal with terrorist attacks, when the U.S. was attacked on 9/11 it should have leveled Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Instead it used a proxy army, fought the war it should have fought on the cheap and succeeded in scattering Al Qaeda and the Taliban, not punishing it or eliminating it.
As for your list of "Terrorists" Saddam was supporting, none of them reach the bar that the Bush administration claimed. None of them played a part in 9/11 as the Bush administration insinuated against Iraq. The Palastinian groups you keep sawing on receive widespread support from most Arabs and Arab countries, Hamas is both insurgent army and the major social safety net for Palastinians who are living in grinding poverty. If you are going to take down Arab governments for supporting the Palastinians you are going to have to take down most of the Arab governments in the Middle East, Israel would love you for it but no one else will.
Unless and until evidence is found that proves Saddam played a role in 9/11, Cheney and company are bald faced liars, and their lies are getting people, including American soldiers killed, every day.
"Saddam was a fucking terrorist who was building weapons that could devastate an entire city."
At this point, Twirp, you are just losing it like you usually do on this subject. Most American's are waking up to the f
Well it would be even better if he actually answered the question but its a huge improvement over the U.S. that he has to stand up among the peasants and face some stinging criticism. Can't say I have any use for Blair after watching him be Bush's lap dog for a couple years but at least he keeps his debate skills honed and stands up under criticism with reasonable cool.
Bush's debating skills by contrast seem to be rapidly deteriorating thanks to the fact he seldom faces the press and when he does the press does an abysmal job challenging him, and he otherwise only interacts with people and crowds which are carefully screened to worship at his feet.
Bush seems to have turned in to a "bubble boy" who can't cope with the real world anymore.
There is a beauty to this line of reasoning. You accuse any country you don't like of developing WMD's, fabricate evidence, launch a preemptive war to take them down, and then when you don't find any you say "he may have moved many of weapons out of the country". If I was the Bush administration I think I would have had the CIA or DOD plant some WMD's in Iraq, it would have worked better than the current B.S.
This is pure artistry to give your self a blank check to conquer the world. The only flaw is most of the rest of the world didn't buy it the first time around and even the myopic American people are getting a little skeptical now after they see Iraq didn't have them and North Korea does.
I'd say the Bush administration has put themselves on pretty shaky ground when they try to build the same case for invading Iran next year.
While you are handing out kudos for it why don't you give some to Donald Rumsfeld. From a random Google search on the subject:
"in 2000, while Rumsfeld was still on the ABB board, the company won a $200 million contract with Pyongyang to deliver equipment and services for two nuclear power plants. The reactors are part of deal that was struck between the United States and North Korea in 1994 in an effort to end Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program."
"The first part I can't argue much with, but there IS justification. Namely that the wall between Israel and Gaza has worked quite well, and the parts of the wall between Israel and West Bank thus far completed have cut down on attacks."
Yes creating walled ghettos for your enemies does work quite well on the security front. Thats why the Nazis put Jews in walled ghettos in Poland and elsewhere. If you want to take it to the next level, concentration camps work even better to keep your enemies under control and keeping yourself safe. What degree of brutality are you willing to justify to insure your security.
Walled ghettos are what we are talking about here aren't we? Israel is building walled and ever shrinking ghettos in to which they are shoving all the Arab's in their borders where they will do their best to starve them in to oblivion, Gaza being the biggest and worst. Israel wants to build a walled Ghetto in Gaza and then pretend like they are giving the miserable people in it their "freedom" in exchange for stealing more "living room" on the West Bank.
A key point here is Jews can't allow Arabs to grow in to a majority at the ballot box, because then the Jewish government would fall peacefully or they will have to institute apartheid which is practically what they are doing. Arabs in Israel are breeding at a far higher rate than Jews so a loss at the ballot box is inevitable unless the Jews take extreme measures which is what they are doing.
How exactly are the people in these ghettos supposed to make a living and feed themselves with Israeli guards shutting them off from the rest of the world and each other at their whim.
If you want to insure a never ending supply of suicide bombers put millions of people into ghettos with 50%+ unemployment, grinding poverty and no hope. Yeah its a real winner of a strategy. Its been the strategy for most of Israel's history and it hasn't worked. They act like they don't understand why Palastinians, born in slums, raised in slums and who will die in slums, want to kill them. Its either stupid or disingenuous for Israelis to pretend like they don't understand why Palastinian's are fighting back and trying to kill them.
After the brutality Jews suffered in the Third Reich's ghettos you'd think they'd be a little more sensitive to doing many of the same things, albeit not to the same extreme level, to their racial enemies.
Bottomline all I could hope for from Israel is they tap their collective memory and refrain from employing the same tactics the Nazis employed against them, tactics which they still constantly wave in the world's face as justification for getting special consideration from the world... forever.
OK to put it another way you should blame the American people, and the Republican party in particular, for electing someone who was clearly not qualified for the job. What you get is a President who is being pulled first one way and then another by the powerful people in his administration, especially Cheney, Card, Rove, Rumsfeld and Rice and who is intellectually incapable of sorting out the complex issues, making the right call, and reining in his people who are getting out of control. Cheney and the Necons in the DOD are clearly running amuck and George doesn't have the internal fortitude necessary to stop them, after all they are way smarting than him, almost everyone in his administration is smarter than him. You end up with chaos and chaos best described the mess in Iraq in particular.
Why yes it, all of the stuttering, the continuous and obvious irritation. He was in a very public place, if there wasn't something wrong in his head he would have controlled himself better and stayed on an even keel. He certainly looked far worse than he did four years ago when he held his own in the debates. The pressure must be getting to him.
If its not a mental health problem another possibility is he is turning in to a "bubble boy" which is my new favorite term of endearment for him. Its not conducive to mental health to live in a bubble, being shielded from everyone who doesn't agree with you, shielded from every criticism and always operating under the assumption you are always right, and being told you are always right. That is how dictators live and its why they trend towards psychotic.
"The Emperor's New Clothes" looks to be ever closer to nailing the Bush administration on the head.
Having a bubble boy for President runs counter to everything the American Constitution and government is supposed to be about.
I like this quote from Ann Richards', former Governor of Texas, on George W.
"He was born on third base and he thinks he hit a triple"
jsebrech nailed it on his head. George W. flat out flunked the pilot's aptitude test to get in to the Guard, he was down around the 25 percentile. There were nearly 500 people who took it, scored better on the test, and were better qualified for the few available openings and they were ALL passed over because the Bush family had connections. That is the story of George's whole life. Everytime he failed at business there were "friends of the family" who bailed him out and filled his pockets with money, one of the most notable was the Bin Laden family, that's right Osama Bin Laden's family, who helped bail him out of his failed oil company, Arbusto, or as most pronounce it Are-Bust-O.
"Americans seem apathetic enough to ignore most of the charges levelled against politicians as spin or unreliable smears."
I don't think you can make that kind of generalization. The right wing is far more effective at making a mountain out of molehills like whether Clinton inhaled and the fact he had a consensual affair with a consenting adult.
The right wing, especially the Bush family and its operatives haven proven to be very adept at brushing all the dirt from George's youth, and his current administration, under the rug, his extensive history with cocaine and alcohol, and especially his refusal to take his Guard flight physical because they'd just instituted drug testing and he would have been busted, the felony outing of a CIA agent from within the White House, and the massive deception of the case for the war in Iraq.
George W. has a teflon coating that is unprecedented in recent history and it needs to be penetrated before America makes another big mistake in November.
Slashdot Mirror
"Don't threaten me"
..... like Kennedy.
Forgot to answer this, you seem to be the troll here. Me saying "I'm switching back to voting for Nader" isn't "threatening" you. Geez, like I said, you give Kerry supporters a bad name.
As for the Jewish issue dont try to tag me as a Jew hater:
- I hate the current Sharon government because it is an abusive extremist government with a penchant for killing innocent Palastinians, in the process of killing some not so innocent ones. American should be disavowing support for much of what Sharon has done in the last few years, not giving him a blank check to do it more wand worse
- I hate the current government of Israel for building walled ghettos for the Palastinians and grab big chunks of land that are not theres in the process. Creating ghetto in complete economic collapse for the Palastinians is going to breed more suicide bombers not fewer.
- I hate the fact a politician can't run for office in the U.S. unless he is rabidly pro Israel.
- I hate the level of influence the Friends of Israel lobby has over the U.S. government and policy. It is influence that dwarfs their representation in the American population and it causes massive trouble for the U.S. in the world, especially the Arab and Muslim world.
- I hate the fact Howard Dean had the guts to suggest the U.S. should treat Israel and Palastine with balance and he was run out of the race soon there after.
In the last Presidential debate Bush said:
"A free Iraq will help secure Israel."
Well I don't want to see the U.S. spending hundreds of billions of dollars and getting thousands of American's killed and permanently wounded to secure Israel. If Israel has a security problem let them deal with it.
Kerry said on Iraq:
"I'm going to get it right for those soldiers, because it's important to Israel, it's important to America, it's important to the world, it's important to the fight on terror."
Notice Kerry's priorities, he puts Israel ahead of America and the world. I want a President who puts America's interests way ahead of Israel's and neither Bush or Kerry seem to.
When the U.S. is engaged in multiple wars with the Muslim world, and the Muslim world already views the U.S. as massively biased towards Israel and Judaism, its a key reason they are developing such a deep hatred towards the U.S., having a President who is part Jewish does in fact factor in to the race, its just going to reinforce the perception of a massive pro Israel bias in the Arab and Muslim world.
And the thing I dislike most is the obvious fact Kerry is doing his best to brush his heritage under the rug. If he were proud of it, and not doing his best to keep it secret I would have less of a problem with it, than what he does most of the time which is trying to sucker everyone in to thinking he is Irish Catholic
"I've seen Democratic ads almost every day about the problems with the Patriot Act."
You've seen DNC ads, and 527 ads, and ACLU ads on it. I'm skeptical you are seeing Kerry ads on the subject, though ads vary with region so I couldn't say for sure.
"John Kerry didn't write the book, Douglas Brinkley did. Attributing those thoughts to John Kerry himself is a misrepresentation worthy of Bush himself....It's a book written by someone with an agenda, you might have as well linked the Swift boat vets for truth site."
I never made any such representation, dude. Brinkley is a Kerry supporter and the book is extremely pro Kerry. I'm surprised you haven't got a copy as much as you worship Kerry. The fact you are trying to put it on the same level as the Swift Boat Vets indicates you don't know what the hell you are talking about. Brinkley's "agenda" was to paint Kerry as a war hero turned peace hero. The Slate article happens to quote it extensively online, especially on the Kerry fetish, its the best I could do short of mailing you a copy. YOU ASKED FOR A BLOODY REFERENCE, I SENT YOU ONE, A PRO KERRY BIOGRAPHY AND YOU JUST LEAP IN TO DENIAL ON THE SUBJECT.
Unfortunately its NO secret Kerry has a massive Kennedy fetish. It isn't suprising since he's a wealthy Bostonian, grew up when Kennedy was king, and I think met him on some number of occasions in the yachting circles.
Me I just find it a little creepy the extent to which Kerry has patterned his entire life after him and it conveys phony.
Unfortunately your blinders are just as bad as the ones the people in the Bush/Cheney camp wear which is why I don't have any use for rabid partisans on either side or their candidates. You are in a constant state of denial about anything that doesn't make you feel good about your chosen candidate, and I'm never gonna hear facts or straight answers from you, just hero worship.
Later dude. Waste o' time arguing with you, your gonna argue Kerry's shit dont stink even when it does. About all I can say in summary is, at least from where I sit, you aren't doing Kerry any favors campaigning for him. After listening to your denial I'm pretty much back to voting for Nader. Nader wont win but at least he is a straight shooter and not a phony like the two major candidates.
The book review from Amazon:
"Covering more than four decades, Tour of Duty is the definitive account of John Kerry's journey from war to peace. Written by acclaimed historian Douglas Brinkley, this is the first full-scale, intimate account of Kerry's naval career. In writing this riveting narrative, Brinkley has drawn on extensive interviews with virtually everyone who knew Kerry well in Vietnam, including all the men still living who served under him. Kerry also entrusted to Brinkley his letters home from Vietnam and his voluminous "War Notes" -- journals, notebooks, and personal reminiscences written during and shortly after the war. This material was provided without restriction, to be used at Brinkley's discretion, and has never before been published.
John Kerry enlisted in the Navy in February 1966, months before he graduated from Yale. In December 1967 Ensign Kerry was assigned to the frigate U.S.S. Gridley; after five months of service in the Pacific, with a brief stop in Vietnam, he returned to the United States and underwent training to command a Swift boat, a small craft deployed in Vietnam's rivers. In June 1968 Kerry was promoted to lieutenant (junior grade), and by the end of that year he was back in Vietnam, where he commanded, over time, two Swift boats. Throughout Tour of Duty Brinkley deftly deals with such explosive issues as U.S. atrocities in Vietnam and the bombing of Cambodia. In a series of unforgettable combat-action sequences, he recounts how Kerry won the Purple Heart three times for wounds suffered in action and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Navy's Silver Star for gallantry in action.
When Kerry returned from Southeast Asia, he joined the Vietnam Vete
"Flip Flop is a term used by 'Conservative' talk show hosts"
Its a term everybody is using about Kerry, except devotees like yourself, because it fits. If it didn't resonate and fit it wouldn't have caught on. Kerry set himself up for being tagged with it. Sorry, I know you all are sensitive about the word to a distraction. The solution is Kerry should have established positions when he started the campaign and stuck to them, and only changed them when there was an obvious necessity to do so, instead of changing positions everytime he thought it was politically convenient.
"Yea, I agree, you do have a mind full of political BS."
Nice ad hominem attack. You seem to think I'm some kind of sucker for Bush campaign propaganda don't you. Maybe you should read my signature and some of my old posts. I trash him every opportunity I get, at lost worse than I've been trashing Kerry here. The difference between you and me is I dont fall in line with you are either a Democrat or a Republican. I think they are both bad and I'm not going to kid myself into thinking either of them is great, which is what you are doing, because neither of them is great.
"For example Dick Cheney, who has a strongly held belief that the states need to handle the marriage question, is willing to 'support' Bush's constitutional amendment."
Not sure I really follow your point. Cheney is the VP he has to follow Bush's policy line because he is on the bottom of the ticket and he serves at Bush's discretion, it has nothing to do with the platform. If he didn't support Bush's position he'd run the risk of Bush dumping him. Bush doesn't like people crossing him.
Bush isn't even remotely obligated to follow the party platform. His people wrote most of it so it is his position, so he does mostly follow it, but its ridiculous to think the party is going to dictate to the President a position he doesn't like. You might argue he has to follow it when he doesn't want to because he will lose votes from the party faithful if he doesn't. That is obviously ludicrous because who are the faithful gonna vote for instead, Kerry or Nader?
"May I suggest CSPAN, and the Internet"
I'm watching CSPAN right now, Duelfer's testimony, I watch it everytime I can find something interesting on it. They have great stuff, they also have some truly boring crap.
I'm a news junky, seek out all the unspun news I can find. This snide little shot didn't help your case. Maybe you should try reading counterpunch.org. There is some left wing garbage on it but they often some writers that really open your eyes, especially about the travesty that is America's two party system. I like one of there tag lines, "there isn't a dime's worth of difference" between Bush and Kerry when you really get down to stuff that matters.
My point again, which you didn't answer but rather lept into the ad hominem, is when was the last time Kerry said anything major against the Patriotic Act like he did in nearly every speech during the primaries when he was stealing Dean's thunder on the subject?
Maybe he has railed against it and I just missed it, but I wager he's not said anything major against the Patriot Act lately because he is deathly afraid of looking "Weak on Terror". Whether you like it or not he's done a 180 on the subject(do you like 180 better than flip flop) from what he was doing during the primaries.
"From a section called "Guard Liberty at Home" on the Homeland Security page"
I think you proved my point about the Patriot Act more than yours. Its a footnote buried in a huge set of documents. It would have taken me forever to find it from the front page. There doesn't appear to be a policy document on it and they have a LOT of policy documents. If he wasn't burying the whole issue the words "Patriot Act" would be on the front page. If I recall the rhetoric during the primaries he was railing against it just like Dean was, when he realized most Democrats hate it and want it gone, tha
Is that you Twirp, sure sounds like you, sure talks like you, sure has the same brand of well though out, well reasoned arguments we've all come to expect from you.
You still seem to be cowering behind anonymity when you reply to my posts I see. Come on Twirp, pull your tail out from between your legs, stop being a pussy and lets go toe to toe with some good old fashioned debate.
"Where is your link, your quote, your facts, well all I see is complete and total Bush sponsored FUD."
OK, here is one, Slate reviewing Brinkley's book "Tour of Duty", Brinkley being pro Kerry and not a Bush fan boy.
Kerry was a Kennedy family camp follower, dated Jackie's half sister. Kerry's initials are John F. Kerry, and he flaunted "JFK" around Yale where it was obvious to everyone he was aspiring to do a rerun of JFK's life, and spent way to much time yammering to his friends about Kennedy. He did, war service in patrol boats(so did JFK), for which he volunteered, chest full of medals(so had JFK), prosecutor in Massachusetts(so was JFK though in New York), Senator from Massachusetts(so was JFK), and now he is hoping to be President(so was JFK).
I wasn't aware that he tried to get a deferment, if its true, I hate to point this out to you but its just one more case where he hasn't been straight with people, because he tells everyone he eagerly volunteered for Vietnam in order to serve his country. Flip-flop.
"Again you seem to get most of your political knowledge from 527 ads."
Well no actually I watched him in the primaries when he reinvented himself to beat Howard Dean. Early on he had no message, didn't criticize the President, Iraq or the Patriot Act, Dean did, it resonated with Democractic voters, Kerry was an also ran. Then Kerry reinvented himself, as is his way, and was a crusader against Iraq and the Patriot Act, a champion of the little men and women in the Democratic party, he overnight turned in to Howard Dean. As soon as he had the nomination he nailed he turned back in to himself, a wishy washy centrist trying to offend no one, which is what the pundits told him to do to win the general election, he was neither for or against Iraq, nor for or against the Patriot Act, and his first policy initiative was a tax cut for big business. Unlike many people in America, it seems, I have a pretty good memory for political BS.
He meandered through months with no message and now in just the last couple of weeks he's found a new one that sort of works, that Iraq was a diversion from the real war on Terrorism, but it is not a message he's had for most of the last year. I don't recall him saying anything about the Patriot act, maybe he has I just missed it.
His message also seems to change, dramatically, every time there is a change in his campaign staff which suggests these are not his messages but those of the people pulling his strings.
George flip flops on some things like the 9/11 commission and Homeland security, and he sure as hell reversed himself on many major issues he campaigned on in 2000 like being anti nation building, a uniter not a divider, and a compassionate conservative, but otherwise he has settled in to a position on most major issues, especially tax cuts and Iraq, and he sticks to them, unfortunately most of his positions are wrong and bad but at least he is consistent and you know where he stands, and I'll admit Cheney is right(on this one thing), consistent is not a word that ever comes to mind about Kerry.
I kind of empathize with your drift but I'm afraid you really missed the mark in a lot of areas due apparently to some partisan bias.
"a bunch of various single-issue voters"
Well no that is obviously not at all what today's Republican party is. There are a couple big blocks in it, particularly religious fundamentalists and wealthy, greedy, fat cats. Despite those blocks it is a remarkably cohesive, very dangerous, very unified party of people, mostly WASP's, who seem to have a remarkable oneness of thought. They seem to be one to the point they think the way they do even though it flies in the face of reality and fact, they are cognitive dissonance to the extreme. A poll on CNN today showed 60+ percent of Republicans still think Saddam had something to do with 9/11 though there has never been ANY evidence to support that, a tribute to the ability of the Republican leadership to brainwash their legion. Independents and Democrats both showed 60+ percent who thought Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11.
"as a strong leader, who really cares about the people of America and America's place in the world."
You really need to provide some kind of support for that. Kerry's record in the Senate which is where he has been most of his life as been remarkably unnoteworthy. I have never seen even a hint of "strong leader". He went to Vietnam with the apparent desire to get on a PT boat(Swift boat) and rack up some medals to further his political career and follow in JFK's footsteps. When he realized being a hero in Vietnam was bad he did a 180 and jumped on the antiwar bandwagon.
He simply doesn't show any of the qualities of a strong leader. You can blame the Republican's for defaming him but the fact is he HAS been all over the map on most issues and especially Iraq and the Patriot Act.
A strong leader does form some conviction on issues. Kerry does in fact adopt the position he thinks will be most politically advantageous at each point in time and has NO reservation about completely reversing himself, often multiple times, all the while kidding himself that no one notices.
At this point I will vote for him because anything is better than the crony network of the Bush administration. I am totally cool with poltical leaders with religious beliefs but I am vehemently against political leaders who can't restrain themselves from injecting their religious extremism in to government. That is truly un-American.
But puuuulllllease don't try to paint him as some towering pillar of strength who will be a towering pillar of a President. He is just the least bad of the two bad options the two bankrupt major parties threw on the ballot like they usually do.
"Once again it is okay to be OFF TOPIC if the moderators agree with you."
I think the topic is Kerry endorsements so it pretty much is on topic.
Maybe it is just chapping your ass that a staunch Republican has turned against the insanity that is today's Republican party and did it with a particular and concise elegance.
"Why?"
Well there is a big difference big difference between a 2nd trimester fetus and a 5-8 day old fetus which is where embryonic stem cells come from. There aren't any brain cells in a fetus until at least 40 days in and then they are barely functioning. Until there is a functioning nervous system there is no consciousness. I know the big religions will argue life begins at conception but I'll contend life is most definitely not sacred until it has consciousness.
Embryonic germ cells, on the other hand, are harvested at 5-8 weeks and are in somewhat more of an ethical gray area.
By the way here is a great resource on stem cells.
I think there is a key thing to point out about most organized religions when it comes to their positions on abortion and birth control. They have a conflict of interest. There is an overwhelming tendency among most religions to try and maximize the growth of their flock. It is their survival mechanism. They want to maximize the number of people who subscribe to their doctrine, support it (especially financially) and spread their faith.
It is consistently in their interest and doctrine to try and eradicate people who either subscribe to no faith or an opposing faith. By eradication I mean either converting or killing them. Muslims do it, Christian do it, Jews have mostly had it done to them though they are doing it to Muslims now. The crusaders did it, the conquistadores did it. Native americans faced massive pressure to either become Christians or be eradicated, starting with Chris Columbus.
This is also a basic underpinning for why so many wars are fought for religious reasons, one faith is trying to eradicate an opposing faith.
It doesn't register with most people but the Popes oppose all forms of birth control and abortion, not because of a great spiritual enlightenment, but mostly because they are trying to maximize the number of Catholics in the world because thats how you win the religion game, you win by maximizing your numbers and minimizing the numbers following other religions.
Maximizing your numbers might have been a tolerable goal when the world was relatively empty. But, now that the world is becoming severely overcrowded and we are running out of resources it is unforgivable.
Birth control and abortion of unwanted pregnancies are rapidly becoming a necessity if we want to survive long term as a species. Religious zealots (the pope and the Republican party) who are, at every turn, trying to knock the legs out from under population control are doing the world grievous harm.
Which of these two is more humane and Christian:
A. Practicing birth control and aborting unwanted first trimester pregnancies
B. An exploding population leading to billions of starving, miserable, suffering, conscious beings who die painful and premature deaths anyway.
Aborting a life at 1 and 2 years AFTER BIRTH via weeks or months of agonizing starvation and disease is way more cruel than an aborting a first trimester fetus.
You see religious zealots really just dont get the big picture and are in fact just being selfish in trying to propagate their belief system at the expense of the whole species.
You need to forgive Twirp, he is a flaming pedant and bad at it. From Wikipedia, I know how much you like Wikipedia, Twirp:
"A blastocyst is an embryo at a stage where it consists of 30-150 cells. It is covered in a layer of trophoblasts, cells which will eventually form the placenta. The inner cells of the blastocyst are undifferentiated, and a source of embryonic stem cells."
I think stem cells are by definition undifferentiated until they differentiate themselves in to something else, thats why they are stem cells.
The only differentiation you find in a blastocyst is between the stem cells and the trophoblast.
Again from Wikipedia:
"Stem cells are cells which are not terminally differentiated and are therefore able to produce cells of other types. Medical researchers hope they can be used to repair specific tissues or to grow organs from scratch. There are three types of stem cells: totipotent, pluripotent, and multipotent. A single totipotent stem cell can grow into an entire organism. Pluripotent stem cells cannot grow into a whole organism, but they can become any other type of cell in the body. Multipotent (also called unipotent) stem cells can only become particular types of cells: e.g. blood cells, or bone cells."
You really are slipping lately, Twirp. You feeling OK?
"As for the airlines, what would you have done? Let the industry collapse in the wake of 9/11?"
Let the industry collapse no, let United, American, Delta and U.S. Air collapse yes. They are dinosaurs running dinosaur business models and they deserve to fail in a free market system and they probably are still going to fail and take all our tax dollar subsidies with them. Southwest, JetBlue and their ilk are clearly the winners in the industry and they should win without the government meddling in it and picking winning and losers.
As much as you rant in praise of Capitalism I'm dumbfounded when you defend the anticapitalist tendencies of the current Republican party.
They are in fact using our tax dollars and their stranglehold on power to reward their friends and punish their enemies. You don't have to look any further than the Medicare "Reform" bill which was a gigantic giveaway of our tax dollars to the health care and drug industry, and is offering very little benefit to seniors. Sure they get a drug discount but the drug industry was given a blank check to raise prices so they can erase the benefit of the dicount in a heartbeat. As a reminder the Medicare administration is fordbidden by that law from negotiating fair, quantity pricing which is why drugs are reasonably priced every place but the U.S. It is a mechanism for transfering our tax dollars in to the pockets of the drug and health megacorps with no real benefit to seniors and at a staggering price tag.
"Conservatives believe in equality of opportunity"
Well then the current administration is not conservative. Reference above Medicare reform, and reference all the no bid contracts in Iraq the Bush administration is handing to its cronies. If there were equality of opportunity any company could have bid for those contracts and the best bid would of won. Instead the companies that are winning are tapping the crony network to get an inside track on no bid contracts.
Cronyism is not "equality of opprtunity" it is their friends win and those who are not their friends don't even get a seat at the table.
"Conservatives believe in strong foreign policy and in not compromising national sovereignty."
Real conservatives abhor nation building and becoming entangled in foreign situations that are not integral to American security. The war in Afghanistan passed the "coservative test" since it directly affected American security. The war in Iraq DID NOT.
As you recall in 2000 Bush ran on a classic conservative platform that rejected nation building. In practice the Bush administration is nation building all over the globe, albeit they are doing a spectacularly bad job of it in Afghanistan, Haiti and Iraq in particular.
"Conservatives believe that small business is key to a healthy economy"
Yes they do but, the Bush administration by contrast is, in practice, overwhelmingly favoring policies that are destroying small business in America. The most obvious example being outsourcing of jobs to China which is devastating small business in America. Big corporations have no problem outsourcing, its a major challenge for small business to do it or compete against big business doing it. Walmart is single handedly devastating small business across the nation, both small retailers who can't compete on price and suppliers who Walmart is overtly pressuring to either offshore to China to match those prices or go out of business.
Another obvious example of anti business practice is the Bush administration gave Microsoft a free pass, a get out of jail free card, to a convicted monopolist. You don't favor small business by giving predatory monopolies a license to kill small businesses with innovative ideas.
Republicans can shovel shit about how they favor small business but their policies are obviously massively favoring big business, and especially big business relocating to China.
"We subsidize farmers because we like cheap food."
We subsidize farmers becaus
"Dramatic, but exactly wrong. Israel is walling itself _in_ to keep out the non-Israeli Arabs that keep trying to sneak into Israel to kill them."
I'm sorry but you don't know what you are talking about. The Israeli's control all traffic through the wall and through Israel's borders around Gaza and the West Bank. Much of the time, especially lately there are two ways for Palastinians to enter or leave these areas, through Israeli checkpoints where they are rigorously searched, screened and often humiliated or through tunnels from places like Gaza to Egypt. If things were the way you say they are Palastinians could travel to and from Jordan or Egypt freely which they simply can not. You can't sustain a viable economy if Israel is cutting people off from getting to work and have a strangehold on commerce with the rest of the world.
I'd be overjoyed if Israel did what you are claiming and built a giant wall along its internationally recognized borders and shut itself off from the world, because they can't interact with the world as a responsible nation. But they have to let the Palastinian's go so they can try to salvage their lives on the West Bank and Gaza without having to ever see an Israeli soldier, tank or border crossing again.
I'm afraid you lost all your credibility when started saying how great Palastinians have it in Israel. I'm pretty sure the South Africans must have said the same things about blacks under apartheid. I really hope for your sake you haven't conned yourself in to thinking this BS is true.
From the CIA, and this doesn't really even address the worsening situation thanks to the new wall:
"Economic output in the Gaza Strip - under the responsibility of the Palestinian Authority since the Cairo Agreement of May 1994 - declined by about one-third between 1992 and 1996. The downturn was largely the result of Israeli closure policies - the imposition of generalized border closures in response to security incidents in Israel - which disrupted previously established labor and commodity market relationships between Israel and the WBGS (West Bank and Gaza Strip). The most serious negative social effect of this downturn was the emergence of high unemployment; unemployment in the WBGS during the 1980s was generally under 5%; by 1995 it had risen to over 20%. Israel's use of comprehensive closures decreased during the next few years and, in 1998, Israel implemented new policies to reduce the impact of closures and other security procedures on the movement of Palestinian goods and labor. These changes fueled an almost three-year-long economic recovery in the West Bank and Gaza Strip; real GDP grew by 5% in 1998 and 6% in 1999. Recovery was upended in the last quarter of 2000 with the outbreak of violence, triggering tight Israeli closures of Palestinian self-rule areas and a severe disruption of trade and labor movements. In 2001, and even more severely in 2002, Israeli military measures in Palestinian Authority areas resulted in the destruction of capital plant and administrative structure, widespread business closures, and a sharp drop in GDP. Including West Bank, the UN estimates that more than 100,000 Palestinians out of the 125,000 who used to work in Israel, in Israeli settlements, or in joint industrial zones have lost their jobs. In addition, about 80,000 Palestinian workers inside the Territories are losing their jobs. International aid of $2 billion in 2001-02 to the West Bank and Gaza Strip prevented the complete collapse of the economy and allowed Finance Minister Salam FAYYAD to implement several financial and economic reforms. Budgetary support, however, was not as forthcoming in 2003."
Uh, if he was one the board of a company and was unaware they signed a huge deal to put nuclear reactors in a controversial place like North Korea then he is an incompetent executive which I'm willing to believe haveing watched him lead the DOD and testify before Congress.
You should probably admit it, your friends in the White House, will deal with anyone if they think its to their benefit. Cheney was negotiating with the Taliban to get a gas pipeline when he was in the private sector and his former company used fronts to do oil deal in Libya and Iran while they were under sanctions. Rumsfeld had some famous photo ops shaking hands with Saddam a few years back.
About all I ask is you get off your high horse and acting like Republican's always strong, good and Democrats always weak, bad. They both have their heads up their asses much of the time.
The obvious flaw in your arguement is all but one of those things happened before or during the first gulf war. If he deserved to be taken down for them he should have been taken down for them during the first gulf war, something I would have supported, versus the ten years of misery Iraq went through instead (for example George H.W. Bush encouraging the Kurds and Shias to revolt and then turning his back on them while Saddam slaughtered them).
As you recall George's dad and Dick Cheney wouldn't think of taking Saddam then because they didn't want to get in a quagmire of an occupation. Cheney in particular is a flaming hypocrite.
Its irrational to come back more than 10 years later and decide this ancient history is suddenly an urgent justification for an aggressive, preemptive war. It simply wasn't.
A few questions, observations.
- Can you point us to the article you wrote based on your interview? I'd hate to think you are blowing smoke
- You think the people you claim to have interviewed had been trained on the tunnel complexes in Vietnam and how extraordinarily hard they were to defeat. If they had been I'm doubting they would have made statements that pompous about a very well developed cave/tunnel complex.
Al Qaeda has been fighting in those mountains since the Russian invasion around 1980, I'm pretty sure they've fought from and escaped out of cave and tunnel complexes and I'm sure many of them know how to do it. There is a near certainty a major cave complex like that has a couple very well concealed and very long escape tunnels they can use to get outside of a perimeter around it and to get well away from air cover over it. When the Pakistani's tried to raid a stronghold in the tribal areas they found tunnels just like that the people inside were using to slip in and out of their huge perimeter.
The apparent arrogance of the people you claimed to have interviewed makes it seem more likely, rather than less likely they didn't know what they were doing at Tora Bora or how skilled in guerilla warfare their adversary might be. It sounds like they underestimated them the same way the U.S. underestimated the Vietnamese.
- As others have already said the U.S. was making extensive use of local irregulars with dubious skills, training and loyalties there. For all you know half of them could have been on Al Qaeda's payroll, taking bribes to look the other way or they just didn't care all that much for sticking there necks out for their American masters.
All in all I think you are once again full of shit trying to make a case Bin Laden is dead. I don't think you will find anyone in the Bush administration that will back you on it.
But, nice try to rationalize away one of the bigger embarrassments of the Bush administrations failed "War on Terror"(...echo...echo) in time for the election, though.
My god Twirp you posted URL's. You NEVER post URL's Twirp, are you feeling OK? Now I'm really worried about you, I'm so used to you shoveling B.S. without any support I'm not sure I can adjust to this.
..... excepting of course you. All the principals in the Bush administration and UNSCOM have pretty much admitted they were wrong, maybe you should too.
Unfortunately this is kind of a hopeless mishmash of URL's. Next time try writing out your assertion and then attach a URL to it supporting your point, then people will understand the point you are making and real the URL to see if it supports your point. Its really to correlate this mess with the points you are trying to make.
The few of these I'd did bother to look at were:
A. from around the time the media and Congress were still drinking the Bush administration's Koolaid on WMD's and Saddam's link to 9/11. Most everyone is awake now and not falling for it anymore
B. Yes Saddam supported various Palastinian causes, so do most Arabs and Arab governments either openly or under the table. You still don't have a shred of evidence he had anything to do with 9/11 which is the Bush administration claim. The one little known pocket of Al Qaida in Iraq was in a part of Iraq Saddam didn't control which is a fact you propagandists conveniently leave out. The fact there are terrorists in a country doesn't make it a sponsor of those terrorists. If that were the case the U.S. was a state sponsor of terrorism by knowingly training the 9/11 hijackers in its flight schools.
"It's estimated that the total of all the illegal oil voucher trading will come to nearly a billion dollars when it's all said and done. That's a billion dollars that went, primarily, into the pockets of corrupt bureaucrats at the UN."
So what. News Flash....there are greedy people in a big bureaucracy lining their own pockets. Breaking News. So now, after a 1000 dead Americans and a couple hundred billion dollars spent, the money is going in to the pockets of greedy corrupt people at Halliburton, Bechtel and a hundred other companies who used political influence to land juicy contracts in Iraq. This whole issue isn't even remotely a part of making a case for a war.
"Our military didn't break at Pearl, it didn't break at the Argonne, it didn't break at Inchon."
Nice flag waiving troll Twirp. The U.S. military did break in Vietnam which is the last time it was bogged down in a quagmire, fighting an insurgent army, propping up a corrupt puppet government, in a a war based on a web of lies. It has great potential to be broken again facing the same thing in Iraq. Its noteworthy that in Vietnam serving in the Guard was how you avoided combat duty. Today its being used as part of a back door draft, so weekend warriors with families and careers are seeing their life destroyed by one combat tour after another because the regular army is hopelessly to small for multiple long term occupations.
"one of the world's last remaining rogue states"
And of course the last rogue state in the eyes of most of the world is the United States of America under the control of right wing fanatics, who launch aggressive, preemptive wars based on fabrication. That's what Hitler did. That is how we define rogue states isn't, they invade and occupy other nations without provocation.
Not sure I want to waste the time going around with you on this same BS you shovel everytime this subject comes up but here are a few high spots.
"His UAV and drone programs are thoroughly documented."
UAV's and drones are NOT WMD's unless you put WMD's in them, get off it, everyone has them these days. You can accomplish the same thing with a crop duster, or a Cessna, you gonna start an international convention to ban crop dusters and Cessna's?
You sound like Fox News right before the war echoing the DOD propaganda that the U.S. was in imminent danger of Saddam spraying our cities with Sarin and Anthrax for UAV's. It was just really rabid propaganda designed to whip up a war frenzy against Iraq. Please wake up and smell the coffee. I'm sitting here wondering if either:
A. You are so gullible you actually fell for it and have no clue it was propaganda
B. You are intentionally trying to foist this propganga on the gullible on Slashdot. If so shame on you and at least get some fresh propaganda, this batch is stale.
"Folks, it took a teaspoon of weaponized anthrax to shut down the Capitol and halt mail service nationwide."
And of course that Anthrax came out of a U.S. labratory and not a weapons lab in Iraq. By your reasoning the U.S. is a danger to itself and a preemptive strike is in order. There is a 50/50 chance some right wing nut case in the Bush administration or the military launched that Anthrax attack just to whip up the American people against WMD's and Iraq. It worked so well for that you almost have to figure it was intentional fear mongering.
There is a beauty to using WMD's and tenuous links to terrorism as a basis for preemptive warfare. You can gin up the charges against anybody you feel like. When you don't find any WMD's you just say they could be hidden anywhere or they were spirited to another country like Iran and Syria so you need to take them down next. Unfortunately most of the technology for biological and chemical is dual use and everyone has it. If the U.S. wants to maintain any credibility in the world it needs to give up on the non stop WMD accusations as far as chemical and biological weapons go. That genie is out of the bottle and the U.S. isn't going to put it back in. The U.S. need to make it clear that anyone that uses them against the U.S. is going to be dealt with swiftly and harshly, it is problem for Mutual Assured Destruction, and push international efforts at proliferation control. It isn't something you are going to fix by invading everyone you think, I repeat you think, might, I repeat might, have them.
As an example of how not to deal with terrorist attacks, when the U.S. was attacked on 9/11 it should have leveled Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Instead it used a proxy army, fought the war it should have fought on the cheap and succeeded in scattering Al Qaeda and the Taliban, not punishing it or eliminating it.
As for your list of "Terrorists" Saddam was supporting, none of them reach the bar that the Bush administration claimed. None of them played a part in 9/11 as the Bush administration insinuated against Iraq. The Palastinian groups you keep sawing on receive widespread support from most Arabs and Arab countries, Hamas is both insurgent army and the major social safety net for Palastinians who are living in grinding poverty. If you are going to take down Arab governments for supporting the Palastinians you are going to have to take down most of the Arab governments in the Middle East, Israel would love you for it but no one else will.
Unless and until evidence is found that proves Saddam played a role in 9/11, Cheney and company are bald faced liars, and their lies are getting people, including American soldiers killed, every day.
"Saddam was a fucking terrorist who was building weapons that could devastate an entire city."
At this point, Twirp, you are just losing it like you usually do on this subject. Most American's are waking up to the f
Well it would be even better if he actually answered the question but its a huge improvement over the U.S. that he has to stand up among the peasants and face some stinging criticism. Can't say I have any use for Blair after watching him be Bush's lap dog for a couple years but at least he keeps his debate skills honed and stands up under criticism with reasonable cool.
Bush's debating skills by contrast seem to be rapidly deteriorating thanks to the fact he seldom faces the press and when he does the press does an abysmal job challenging him, and he otherwise only interacts with people and crowds which are carefully screened to worship at his feet.
Bush seems to have turned in to a "bubble boy" who can't cope with the real world anymore.
There is a beauty to this line of reasoning. You accuse any country you don't like of developing WMD's, fabricate evidence, launch a preemptive war to take them down, and then when you don't find any you say "he may have moved many of weapons out of the country". If I was the Bush administration I think I would have had the CIA or DOD plant some WMD's in Iraq, it would have worked better than the current B.S.
This is pure artistry to give your self a blank check to conquer the world. The only flaw is most of the rest of the world didn't buy it the first time around and even the myopic American people are getting a little skeptical now after they see Iraq didn't have them and North Korea does.
I'd say the Bush administration has put themselves on pretty shaky ground when they try to build the same case for invading Iran next year.
"thanks Bill and Madeline.
While you are handing out kudos for it why don't you give some to Donald Rumsfeld. From a random Google search on the subject:
"in 2000, while Rumsfeld was still on the ABB board, the company won a $200 million contract with Pyongyang to deliver equipment and services for two nuclear power plants. The reactors are part of deal that was struck between the United States and North Korea in 1994 in an effort to end Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program."
ABB is a giant Swiss engineering company.
"The first part I can't argue much with, but there IS justification. Namely that the wall between Israel and Gaza has worked quite well, and the parts of the wall between Israel and West Bank thus far completed have cut down on attacks."
... forever.
Yes creating walled ghettos for your enemies does work quite well on the security front. Thats why the Nazis put Jews in walled ghettos in Poland and elsewhere. If you want to take it to the next level, concentration camps work even better to keep your enemies under control and keeping yourself safe. What degree of brutality are you willing to justify to insure your security.
Walled ghettos are what we are talking about here aren't we? Israel is building walled and ever shrinking ghettos in to which they are shoving all the Arab's in their borders where they will do their best to starve them in to oblivion, Gaza being the biggest and worst. Israel wants to build a walled Ghetto in Gaza and then pretend like they are giving the miserable people in it their "freedom" in exchange for stealing more "living room" on the West Bank.
A key point here is Jews can't allow Arabs to grow in to a majority at the ballot box, because then the Jewish government would fall peacefully or they will have to institute apartheid which is practically what they are doing. Arabs in Israel are breeding at a far higher rate than Jews so a loss at the ballot box is inevitable unless the Jews take extreme measures which is what they are doing.
How exactly are the people in these ghettos supposed to make a living and feed themselves with Israeli guards shutting them off from the rest of the world and each other at their whim.
If you want to insure a never ending supply of suicide bombers put millions of people into ghettos with 50%+ unemployment, grinding poverty and no hope. Yeah its a real winner of a strategy. Its been the strategy for most of Israel's history and it hasn't worked. They act like they don't understand why Palastinians, born in slums, raised in slums and who will die in slums, want to kill them. Its either stupid or disingenuous for Israelis to pretend like they don't understand why Palastinian's are fighting back and trying to kill them.
After the brutality Jews suffered in the Third Reich's ghettos you'd think they'd be a little more sensitive to doing many of the same things, albeit not to the same extreme level, to their racial enemies.
Bottomline all I could hope for from Israel is they tap their collective memory and refrain from employing the same tactics the Nazis employed against them, tactics which they still constantly wave in the world's face as justification for getting special consideration from the world
OK to put it another way you should blame the American people, and the Republican party in particular, for electing someone who was clearly not qualified for the job. What you get is a President who is being pulled first one way and then another by the powerful people in his administration, especially Cheney, Card, Rove, Rumsfeld and Rice and who is intellectually incapable of sorting out the complex issues, making the right call, and reining in his people who are getting out of control. Cheney and the Necons in the DOD are clearly running amuck and George doesn't have the internal fortitude necessary to stop them, after all they are way smarting than him, almost everyone in his administration is smarter than him. You end up with chaos and chaos best described the mess in Iraq in particular.
Why yes it, all of the stuttering, the continuous and obvious irritation. He was in a very public place, if there wasn't something wrong in his head he would have controlled himself better and stayed on an even keel. He certainly looked far worse than he did four years ago when he held his own in the debates. The pressure must be getting to him.
If its not a mental health problem another possibility is he is turning in to a "bubble boy" which is my new favorite term of endearment for him. Its not conducive to mental health to live in a bubble, being shielded from everyone who doesn't agree with you, shielded from every criticism and always operating under the assumption you are always right, and being told you are always right. That is how dictators live and its why they trend towards psychotic.
"The Emperor's New Clothes" looks to be ever closer to nailing the Bush administration on the head.
Having a bubble boy for President runs counter to everything the American Constitution and government is supposed to be about.
I like this quote from Ann Richards', former Governor of Texas, on George W.
"He was born on third base and he thinks he hit a triple"
jsebrech nailed it on his head. George W. flat out flunked the pilot's aptitude test to get in to the Guard, he was down around the 25 percentile. There were nearly 500 people who took it, scored better on the test, and were better qualified for the few available openings and they were ALL passed over because the Bush family had connections. That is the story of George's whole life. Everytime he failed at business there were "friends of the family" who bailed him out and filled his pockets with money, one of the most notable was the Bin Laden family, that's right Osama Bin Laden's family, who helped bail him out of his failed oil company, Arbusto, or as most pronounce it Are-Bust-O.
"Americans seem apathetic enough to ignore most of the charges levelled against politicians as spin or unreliable smears."
I don't think you can make that kind of generalization. The right wing is far more effective at making a mountain out of molehills like whether Clinton inhaled and the fact he had a consensual affair with a consenting adult.
The right wing, especially the Bush family and its operatives haven proven to be very adept at brushing all the dirt from George's youth, and his current administration, under the rug, his extensive history with cocaine and alcohol, and especially his refusal to take his Guard flight physical because they'd just instituted drug testing and he would have been busted, the felony outing of a CIA agent from within the White House, and the massive deception of the case for the war in Iraq.
George W. has a teflon coating that is unprecedented in recent history and it needs to be penetrated before America makes another big mistake in November.