iPads are much more durable than laptops or netbooks. We've been evaluating them at my company.
How long have iPads been out? How do you know how long they'll last?
You seem to think that there is no problem with a textbook being 10 years old.
Except for some superficial changes (new editions), most textbooks are more than ten years old.
Maybe a lot of small classrooms with unionized teachers aren't as needed if we can put devices into the hands of the little darlin's. Maybe fewer teachers and some baby sitters to keep them in line would do the trick. If you think an iPad is expensive, try a teacher. A lot of them make $100,000 here in Chicago plus pensions and you can't fire them. Get rid of one teacher and you've paid for aroung 300 iPads. Fewer teachers means fewer administrators and book warehouse employees, etc. One great teacher and a production studio can produce a lot of instruction that can be used all over the country. Think about that versus tens of thousands of mediocre teachers trying to cover the same material? What is the savings there? How about the potential for home schooling? It would work better if you could get more and better content to help the parent doing the schooling. What does that save when we are spending $15,000 per student per year now?
Can this one good teacher compensate for the lack of personal interaction with students?
Please, by all means, explain to me how dealing with someone with that kind of power and influence and accepting his commitment is ignorance? And sure, the vote was actually in favor of letting the US use the border and it lost only on a technicality because 18 or so members of parliament weren't there to vote. After all, the AK party controlled two third of the government which should have been enough voted to make it happen.
When 97 out of 361 members of your party bail on you, you are neither as powerful nor influential as you think. It would appear that the AK party did not control those votes.
Ok, so you end up quoting something that supports my position completely and totally refutes yours as the same as mine. I mean this was brought up because you said Rumsfield attempted to use too little troops and I countered with more was being planned to be used until Turkey backed us off. Yet you quote the article where it specifically says Rumsfield thought they could get turkey to let us use their border.
Yes, Turkey did end up permitting overflight, but Rumsfeld's plan to get more boots on the ground required overland permission as well.
First of all, when has the CIA officially made policy? And yes, you are being ideological and you are attempting to jump from one point to another in some last ditch effort or something when you find my point valid and end up proving my point in your attempts to retort. Second, since when has the government actually cared what public opinion anywhere was outside of playing it lip service to serve it's own goals?
That was Turkish public opinion, not American. While the CIA has no obligation to appease Turkish public opinion, it has a responsibility to report it to the proper authorities. And if it did report it, the Bush administration should have known what strain it was placing on the Turkish government, regardless of what Erdogan said. As for government officials caring about about public opinion, the Turkish MPs cared about it in 2003.
You mean the guy who managed to organize a party that took the elections by two thirds of the seats, managed to get a law reformed in order to allow him to run for office that he was elected to, and then voted as prime minister less then 20 days after the failed vote to let US forces use their border? I mean common, do you seriously think this guy had no political pull at all and Bush was just blowing smoke up America's ass or something? Do you seriosuly think there was never any intentions to use the Turkey border and all the positioning and staging of troops was just a distraction Rumsfield organized to take the public's mind off his original goal of going in understaffed as you alluded to?
He had some political pull, but do you believe he could have prevailed against such opposition? What he attempted would have tested Walpole, Bismarck, and FDR. It's not a matter of pull, it's a matter of realizing one's limitations.
The article also has a claim that Vice-President Cheney told the Turks that President Bush needed the authorization by Feb. 12. That would have given us more than a month to redeploy. Whether that claim is true or not, I don't know, but should the US have waited until six days before the start of hostilities for the vote? The mere fact that it took so long to get the vote might be an indication that it's not going to be a landslide.
No, not really. You see, I'm actually saying that you are discarding reality and substituting your own interpretations in order to support your own geopolitical ideology. I'm essentially asking you how often you get back to reality and pay attention to what is real.
Ok, I see why you are spouting so much BS that isn't supported now. You believe Bush's presidency is nothing but an elaborate scheme or something right? You are so deep into conspiracies, the simple truth doesn't appeal to you any more.
Here are some facts, I don't know who was behind the smear in McCain in 2000 and I don't care as McCain wasn't electable in the first place. You can claim it should have been McCain against Gore all you want, but it simply wouldn't have happened as too many other states didn't like McCain in the primaries. As for getting Nader to run, do you seriously think Bush was able to get one of the most liberal persons to every run for president in the US to run or do you think he ran for his own reasons- because the people running for office weren't representing things he and his supporters thought were important? The Swift boat campaign was actually started and ran by people independent from Bush as this is all in the open. Your attempt to connect them is little more then sore loser politicking.
Here is a hint, Not everything that goes against your guy is some massive conspiracy designed by your guy's opponent.
I never claimed that it was a conspiracy; Bush 43 couldn't conspire his way out of a paper bag. I merely tried to point out that his victory was hardly a product of his competence.
It doesn't really matter as I already stated, no one knew for sure that the WMDs were there until after we went to war. Even Hans Blix who came out in contradiction to his UN inspection reports claiming Iraq had no WMDs had claimed that Iraq was likely hiding illegal weapon's programs and illegal munitions in his inspection reports leading up to the war. And when our policy went from waiting until we have people dead because of it to proactively stopping the spread of WMDs and interactions with terrorists, Iraq's continued attempts to conceal it's true capabilities made war inevitable. But there is no reason to think Bush was incompetent or hiding anything leading up to the war, as I mentioned earlier, simply do a search for all these democrats lied too or the position of Russia and France leading into the war. No one knew Iraq had disarmed, at most they made the argument that Iraq was contained or the information concerning WMDs didn't warrant war.
No one knew that Iraq had disarmed because the Bush administration didn't give the inspectors the time.
Also, this doesn't give me confidence in Bush.
As the Christian Science Monitor observed at the time, while "Sources knowledgeable about US intelligence say there is no evidence that Hussein played a role in the Sept. 11 attacks, nor that he has been or is currently aiding Al Qaeda... the White House appears to be encouraging this false impression, as it seeks to maintain American support for a possible war against Iraq and demonstrate seriousness of purpose to Hussein's regime."
Carter wasn't really elected because of his competency. He was elected because of the disgust of the previous administrations. All you pretty much had to do to get elected in 1976 was to not be part of the inside the beltway crowed and be somewhat associated with a large party. You are Also giving President Carter too much Credit if you think it's attempts at freeing the hostages was his only failure in office. His entire administration was a complete and utter failure. And yes, I was around during it and remember how it failed most clearly. There was even an adaptation of the Oscar Myer wiener song built around Carter's administration. It went something like this:
But Bush was elected because of his competence? And I never said that the abortive attempt to rescue the hostages was his only error.
Wow, just WoW,, Are you arguing with documented history? I mean besides the fact that the turks understood the kurds would gain sufficient ground to resolve their territorial issues in the reformation of Iraq, we had troops amassed on the Turkish border waiting to go in until protests of the Turkish population forced the government of Turkey to deny our passage. This isn't anything that some secret document on wikileaks revealed either, it was full blown front page news coverage in all the US and most international media outlets. To suggest that Bush or Rumsfield knew that Turkey would yank permission to use their border after they already gave it and allowed us to invest heavy resources and time in doing so by staging violent protests within it's own population that threatened the stability of the Turkish government is absolutely absurd. It's as if you are purposely refusing to admit the facts in order to retain your ideological stances that are little more then ideological beliefs.
But you are merely pushing their ignorance. They may have had Erdogan on board, but he was only a party leader, not Prime Minister. Did they check the Turkish Parliament?
In the lead-up to the second Gulf War, Bush Administration officials appear not to have fully appreciated the extent of Turkish apprehension about American policy objectives in Iraq throughout the 1990s. For Turkish policy-makers, especially those in the military, the first Persian Gulf War was anathema to Turkish security interests. They were concerned that the war would cause great regional instability with economic and possibly military consequences for Turkey. Immediately after the war, despite Turkey's official support of U.S. policy, a strong suspicion emerged in Ankara that the United States was sympathetic towards the Iraqi Kurds and that it would support the establishment of an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq and southeastern Turkey. In the 1980s and 1990s, Turkish politics was consumed by Turkey's bloody war with Kurdish separatist guerillas, which claimed more than 30,000 lives.
In Turkey, there is no existential fear more palpable from the man on the street to the President of the Republic than that of a foreign power dividing up Turkey's territory. This fear, often referred to as the Sevre mentality, has its roots in the Treaty of Sevre imposed on the defeated Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I, which divided Ottoman territory among the allied victors. The struggle to establish a modern Turkish nation-state by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the father of the Turkish republic, was a direct response to the Sevre humiliation. For many in the Turkish political establishment, there was a concern following the first Persian Gulf War that U.S. policy towards Iraq would eventually lead to a Sevre-like outcome for Turkey, namely the establishment of an independent Kurdish state. Turkish officials fear that an independent Kurdistan in northern Iraq would inevitably make claims on large parts of southeastern Turkey where much of the population is of Kurdish origin. They also worry that it would embolden Kurdish separatists in Turkey and lead to all-out civil war that could physically pull the country apart.
The author mentions that Powell (you know, an actual general who dealt with the Turks during Desert Storm) warned that while the Turks might have permitted overflight, asking to deploy ground troops would be too much.
And
Powell ultimately lost the argument to Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Franks who insisted that a northern front was necessary and that the Turks would ultimately permit it. The Pentagon's optimistic outlook was reinforced by unofficial backchannels of communications from some of Erdogan's political advisers signaling that Turkey would ultimately come through. One of these voices belonged to Cuneyd Zapsu,
As far as Bush's competence goes, was he competent at smearing McCain in South Carolina in 2000, or designing Florida's ballot, or getting Ralph Nader to run, or getting the Swift Boat group to attack Kerry? However competent Bush was at getting elected or having Congress approve his proposals, does that say anything about how competent he was at running the war? Carter was competent enough to get elected in 1976, but his everyone-gets-a-participation-trophy approach to rescuing our diplomatic personnel in Iran was disastrous.
As for NCLB, I'll blame/credit both parties, as it had bipartisan support and the Obama administration isn't trying to repeal it. Do you belive that the Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Child_Left_Behind_Act is a reasonable treatment of the subject? I would ask if the tests can measure what their proponents claim they can measure to a sufficient degree of accuracy/precision.
As far as President Obama's approach to the Middle East, I don't know if his policy in Afghanistan is any better than Bush's.
Actually, this is common knowledge as Clinton missed several opportunities to kill or capture Bin Laden before 9/11.
Do you have citations?
Yes, the person in the car accident who is screaming in excruciating pain deserves part of the blame for the unconscious guy dieing when the paramedics tend to the person with a broken arm instead of serious head trauma. Or lets put this in a better terminology that more closely relates, the person who stopped at the red light deserves part of the blame for the accident that ended up killing someone and breaking the arm of another person because they were following the law and stopped at a red light. Or lets extend this a little further, the cops share the blame too because they were chasing the bank robbers who rear ended the car that stopped at the red light.
Bad analogy. It's more like blaming a police force for sending its entire SWAT division to take down a jaywalker.
As far as the Bush administration's being proactive against terrorism, being proactive doesn't require acting like a bull in a china shop. Indeed, its proactivity may have been an illegal war.
Also, the Bush administration didn't know that Turkey would not grant passage of our troops. Gee, the Turks might have issues with our liberating the Iraqi Kurds, as it might give the Kurds in Turkey ideas that the Turks would prefer they didn't have. Or that Iran might sneak terrorists across its border with Iraq? These should not have been unknown unknowns.
Yawn... This is pointless as you seem to be embedded in your bigotry to the point that no amount of reason or logic will mean anything to you. The point you don't understand is that because of the scandal and time consumed by it, the redirection led up to the misunderstandings and ignorance that became the 700 billion dollars and 4000 dead.
You assert that the scandal distracted President Clinton from directing the efforts against terrorism, but can you provide evidence? And even if it were the case, do the Republicans not share some of the blame for pushing the scandal to impeachment? How much time does the President need to direct anti-terrorist operations? FDR managed to stay atop WWII while engaging in numerous affairs. Even if you blame Clinton for 9/11, it is a stretch to connect that to the Iraq war, so the 4,000 lives and 700 billion dollars are still on Bush 43's tab.
What do you mean by And if 9/11 didn't happen for that reason? I never stated a reason for why 9/11 happened. I stated a policy change after it happened that Bush applied. This has nothing to do with how much time someone spend on vacation.
You seemed to be saying that 9/11 happened because Clinton was distracted by the Lewinsky scandal. Indeed, you repeated the charge in your previous post. If Clinton's loss of time was an issue, why not Bush's loss of time?
The biggest failure of the Bush administration was failing to articulate his policy beyond the cheerleaders already on board. However, simply paying attention with an open mind and not entrenching yourself into partisan politicking would have made it easy to understand for anyone.
Did Bush have a policy to articulate? And weren't the cheerleaders his own appointees? Rumsfeld screwed up by not putting enough boots on the ground in the invasion of Iraq.
As for partisan politicking, could it be that much of the opposition to Bush was a result of people's disgust with his incompetence?
I can tell that wasn't the case with you and you have made absolutely no valid attempt to understand them as you seem to attribute Rumsfield's saying to "ramblings" of "his" when they are neither. The quote was originally in a military paper authored several years before Rumsfield was on the scene and it refers to the unknown aspects of conflict and how volatile planning can actually be. It's an adaptation from a/several economics quotes that has been around for a lot longer. This is why I said if you do not understand it, you are not qualified to discuss this information. You are doing nothing but half-whit uninformed politicking at this point and our discussion deserves a little more intellectual honesty then that.
Then perhaps Rumsfeld should have erred on the side of caution, and not assumed that American troops would be greeted as liberators.
It's intellectually dishonest to claim that there was a purpose of agenda behind being ignorant. You can be well intentioned and informed and still be ignorant as the facts don't always paint the correct pictures.
Even if there were no purpose or agenda behind the mistake, that mistake cost 4,000 American lives and 700 billion dollars. That's 4,000 more lives and 700 billion more dollars than were lost while Clinton was receiving blow jobs.
And I will suggest that if you don't actually see the logic in the reasoning behind that, you shouldn't be discussing this topic as the known knowns and the unknown unknowns is what primarily guided Bush's policy in the proactive verses reactive shift after 9/11. Bush essentially said that 9/11 happened because previous administrations were too busy getting blow-jobs and protecting themselves in court then to address the real problems that allowed 9/11 to take place.
And if 9/11 didn't happen for that reason? Indeed, Clinton spent far less time fooling than Bush 43 did on vacation. And the latter's "proactive" shift is just a cover for offensive war. Also, it would be easier to see the logic in the reasoning if there were logic in the reasoning. As for Rumsfeld's ramblings, those who would declare war have the burden of proof, and the Bush 43 Administration failed badly with it.
Yes, Most of the claims about Bush lieing are unsubstantiated. There might be one of two there that has some merit and I haven't come across it but the majority are little more then the administration was incorrect about a certain belief or piece of information. Being wrong doesn't mean you have lied, it can mean you were ignorant or misled, or confused, or simply wrong.
Even if Bush was merely ignorant instead of dishonest, his ignorance abused America much more than Clinton's sexual activities/dishonesty.
You don't think that the lieing in court wasn't for personal gain?
OK, I'll agree that Clinton gained more personally than Bush did from lying about WMDs. But the original poster was discussing an abuse of America, and the latter greatly overshadoes the former in that regard.
I'm sorry that you see sexual harassment as a insignificant item of concern. I'm sorry that you think it's less important then what amounted to a drunken office aid making a comment to a reporter, I'm sorry that you have loads of unsubstantiated claims about lies that led to the second Iraq war which is little more then political fodder taken out of context. In short, I'm sorry that you can't even see your own bias in this little discussion and want to give a pass to one politician lieing while not accepting it from another.
Do you really believe that those claims about lies are unsubstantiated? As for signicance, perhaps President Clinton owed those women compensation, but was the Lewinsky affair as significant as 4,000 dead Americans (and many more Iraqis), 700 billion dollars, and the loss of respect due to Gitmo and torture?
Again, the original poster spoke of an abuse of America,
whether or not we fully understand ourselves and acknowledge that we don't know everything.
What makes you believe that we will ever fully understand ourselves? Or that such an understanding would be necessary to acknowledge that we don't know everything?
Slashdot Mirror
Aiplex Founded in 2003 provides net Vigilance services & is a leading provider of Windows-based Network Vulnerability
Doesn't Microsoft already provide that? Or did I fail to distribute over the ampersand properly?
iPads are much more durable than laptops or netbooks. We've been evaluating them at my company.
How long have iPads been out? How do you know how long they'll last?
You seem to think that there is no problem with a textbook being 10 years old.
Except for some superficial changes (new editions), most textbooks are more than ten years old.
Maybe a lot of small classrooms with unionized teachers aren't as needed if we can put devices into the hands of the little darlin's. Maybe fewer teachers and some baby sitters to keep them in line would do the trick. If you think an iPad is expensive, try a teacher. A lot of them make $100,000 here in Chicago plus pensions and you can't fire them. Get rid of one teacher and you've paid for aroung 300 iPads. Fewer teachers means fewer administrators and book warehouse employees, etc. One great teacher and a production studio can produce a lot of instruction that can be used all over the country. Think about that versus tens of thousands of mediocre teachers trying to cover the same material? What is the savings there? How about the potential for home schooling? It would work better if you could get more and better content to help the parent doing the schooling. What does that save when we are spending $15,000 per student per year now?
Can this one good teacher compensate for the lack of personal interaction with students?
By that time then the hackinng is more perfected and I have a much better chance of bricking my machine.
Don't you mean not bricking your machine?
On the other hand, copilots are harder to herd.
If you have only one copilot on a plane, why do you have to herd them? :-)
Or did you mean hire?
If a bus driver has a coronary, a passenger can step on the brake.
Also in 1911 came the development of automatic helm control for ships.
Did they use it on the Titanic?
Oh, I thought they meant the total global domination by the British food industry!
Please, by all means, explain to me how dealing with someone with that kind of power and influence and accepting his commitment is ignorance? And sure, the vote was actually in favor of letting the US use the border and it lost only on a technicality because 18 or so members of parliament weren't there to vote. After all, the AK party controlled two third of the government which should have been enough voted to make it happen.
When 97 out of 361 members of your party bail on you, you are neither as powerful nor influential as you think. It would appear that the AK party did not control those votes.
Ok, so you end up quoting something that supports my position completely and totally refutes yours as the same as mine. I mean this was brought up because you said Rumsfield attempted to use too little troops and I countered with more was being planned to be used until Turkey backed us off. Yet you quote the article where it specifically says Rumsfield thought they could get turkey to let us use their border.
Yes, Turkey did end up permitting overflight, but Rumsfeld's plan to get more boots on the ground required overland permission as well.
First of all, when has the CIA officially made policy? And yes, you are being ideological and you are attempting to jump from one point to another in some last ditch effort or something when you find my point valid and end up proving my point in your attempts to retort. Second, since when has the government actually cared what public opinion anywhere was outside of playing it lip service to serve it's own goals?
That was Turkish public opinion, not American. While the CIA has no obligation to appease Turkish public opinion, it has a responsibility to report it to the proper authorities. And if it did report it, the Bush administration should have known what strain it was placing on the Turkish government, regardless of what Erdogan said. As for government officials caring about about public opinion, the Turkish MPs cared about it in 2003.
You mean the guy who managed to organize a party that took the elections by two thirds of the seats, managed to get a law reformed in order to allow him to run for office that he was elected to, and then voted as prime minister less then 20 days after the failed vote to let US forces use their border? I mean common, do you seriously think this guy had no political pull at all and Bush was just blowing smoke up America's ass or something? Do you seriosuly think there was never any intentions to use the Turkey border and all the positioning and staging of troops was just a distraction Rumsfield organized to take the public's mind off his original goal of going in understaffed as you alluded to?
He had some political pull, but do you believe he could have prevailed against such opposition? What he attempted would have tested Walpole, Bismarck, and FDR. It's not a matter of pull, it's a matter of realizing one's limitations.
The article also has a claim that Vice-President Cheney told the Turks that President Bush needed the authorization by Feb. 12. That would have given us more than a month to redeploy. Whether that claim is true or not, I don't know, but should the US have waited until six days before the start of hostilities for the vote? The mere fact that it took so long to get the vote might be an indication that it's not going to be a landslide.
No, not really. You see, I'm actually saying that you are discarding reality and substituting your own interpretations in order to support your own geopolitical ideology. I'm essentially asking you how often you get back to reality and pay attention to what is real.
And what is my geopolitical ideology?
Ok, I see why you are spouting so much BS that isn't supported now. You believe Bush's presidency is nothing but an elaborate scheme or something right? You are so deep into conspiracies, the simple truth doesn't appeal to you any more.
Here are some facts, I don't know who was behind the smear in McCain in 2000 and I don't care as McCain wasn't electable in the first place. You can claim it should have been McCain against Gore all you want, but it simply wouldn't have happened as too many other states didn't like McCain in the primaries. As for getting Nader to run, do you seriously think Bush was able to get one of the most liberal persons to every run for president in the US to run or do you think he ran for his own reasons- because the people running for office weren't representing things he and his supporters thought were important? The Swift boat campaign was actually started and ran by people independent from Bush as this is all in the open. Your attempt to connect them is little more then sore loser politicking.
Here is a hint, Not everything that goes against your guy is some massive conspiracy designed by your guy's opponent.
I never claimed that it was a conspiracy; Bush 43 couldn't conspire his way out of a paper bag. I merely tried to point out that his victory was hardly a product of his competence.
It doesn't really matter as I already stated, no one knew for sure that the WMDs were there until after we went to war. Even Hans Blix who came out in contradiction to his UN inspection reports claiming Iraq had no WMDs had claimed that Iraq was likely hiding illegal weapon's programs and illegal munitions in his inspection reports leading up to the war. And when our policy went from waiting until we have people dead because of it to proactively stopping the spread of WMDs and interactions with terrorists, Iraq's continued attempts to conceal it's true capabilities made war inevitable. But there is no reason to think Bush was incompetent or hiding anything leading up to the war, as I mentioned earlier, simply do a search for all these democrats lied too or the position of Russia and France leading into the war. No one knew Iraq had disarmed, at most they made the argument that Iraq was contained or the information concerning WMDs didn't warrant war.
No one knew that Iraq had disarmed because the Bush administration didn't give the inspectors the time.
Also, this doesn't give me confidence in Bush.
Carter wasn't really elected because of his competency. He was elected because of the disgust of the previous administrations. All you pretty much had to do to get elected in 1976 was to not be part of the inside the beltway crowed and be somewhat associated with a large party. You are Also giving President Carter too much Credit if you think it's attempts at freeing the hostages was his only failure in office. His entire administration was a complete and utter failure. And yes, I was around during it and remember how it failed most clearly. There was even an adaptation of the Oscar Myer wiener song built around Carter's administration. It went something like this:
But Bush was elected because of his competence? And I never said that the abortive attempt to rescue the hostages was his only error.
Wow, just WoW,, Are you arguing with documented history? I mean besides the fact that the turks understood the kurds would gain sufficient ground to resolve their territorial issues in the reformation of Iraq, we had troops amassed on the Turkish border waiting to go in until protests of the Turkish population forced the government of Turkey to deny our passage. This isn't anything that some secret document on wikileaks revealed either, it was full blown front page news coverage in all the US and most international media outlets. To suggest that Bush or Rumsfield knew that Turkey would yank permission to use their border after they already gave it and allowed us to invest heavy resources and time in doing so by staging violent protests within it's own population that threatened the stability of the Turkish government is absolutely absurd. It's as if you are purposely refusing to admit the facts in order to retain your ideological stances that are little more then ideological beliefs.
But you are merely pushing their ignorance. They may have had Erdogan on board, but he was only a party leader, not Prime Minister. Did they check the Turkish Parliament?
Indeed, from http://meria.idc.ac.il/journal/2006/issue3/jv10no3a3.html
The author mentions that Powell (you know, an actual general who dealt with the Turks during Desert Storm) warned that while the Turks might have permitted overflight, asking to deploy ground troops would be too much.
And
And what would make the Russians switch?
As far as Bush's competence goes, was he competent at smearing McCain in South Carolina in 2000, or designing Florida's ballot, or getting Ralph Nader to run, or getting the Swift Boat group to attack Kerry? However competent Bush was at getting elected or having Congress approve his proposals, does that say anything about how competent he was at running the war? Carter was competent enough to get elected in 1976, but his everyone-gets-a-participation-trophy approach to rescuing our diplomatic personnel in Iran was disastrous.
As for NCLB, I'll blame/credit both parties, as it had bipartisan support and the Obama administration isn't trying to repeal it. Do you belive that the Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Child_Left_Behind_Act is a reasonable treatment of the subject? I would ask if the tests can measure what their proponents claim they can measure to a sufficient degree of accuracy/precision.
As far as President Obama's approach to the Middle East, I don't know if his policy in Afghanistan is any better than Bush's.
Actually, this is common knowledge as Clinton missed several opportunities to kill or capture Bin Laden before 9/11.
Do you have citations?
Yes, the person in the car accident who is screaming in excruciating pain deserves part of the blame for the unconscious guy dieing when the paramedics tend to the person with a broken arm instead of serious head trauma. Or lets put this in a better terminology that more closely relates, the person who stopped at the red light deserves part of the blame for the accident that ended up killing someone and breaking the arm of another person because they were following the law and stopped at a red light. Or lets extend this a little further, the cops share the blame too because they were chasing the bank robbers who rear ended the car that stopped at the red light.
Bad analogy. It's more like blaming a police force for sending its entire SWAT division to take down a jaywalker.
As far as the Bush administration's being proactive against terrorism, being proactive doesn't require acting like a bull in a china shop. Indeed, its proactivity may have been an illegal war.
Also, the Bush administration didn't know that Turkey would not grant passage of our troops. Gee, the Turks might have issues with our liberating the Iraqi Kurds, as it might give the Kurds in Turkey ideas that the Turks would prefer they didn't have. Or that Iran might sneak terrorists across its border with Iraq? These should not have been unknown unknowns.
I suspect that after drinking vodka, the Russians could easily withstand wine.
When I download software with English, I expect it to default to use words like 'centre', 'colour', 'armour', 'aluminium' et al.
And I expect them to be spelled "center", "color", "armor", and "aluminum", as the software was probably made in the US in the first place.
Born in Peekskill, NY, he moved with his family to Sydney at the age of 12.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_Gibson
Do the Macedonians claim Aristotle?
Yawn... This is pointless as you seem to be embedded in your bigotry to the point that no amount of reason or logic will mean anything to you. The point you don't understand is that because of the scandal and time consumed by it, the redirection led up to the misunderstandings and ignorance that became the 700 billion dollars and 4000 dead.
You assert that the scandal distracted President Clinton from directing the efforts against terrorism, but can you provide evidence? And even if it were the case, do the Republicans not share some of the blame for pushing the scandal to impeachment? How much time does the President need to direct anti-terrorist operations? FDR managed to stay atop WWII while engaging in numerous affairs. Even if you blame Clinton for 9/11, it is a stretch to connect that to the Iraq war, so the 4,000 lives and 700 billion dollars are still on Bush 43's tab.
What do you mean by And if 9/11 didn't happen for that reason? I never stated a reason for why 9/11 happened. I stated a policy change after it happened that Bush applied. This has nothing to do with how much time someone spend on vacation.
You seemed to be saying that 9/11 happened because Clinton was distracted by the Lewinsky scandal. Indeed, you repeated the charge in your previous post. If Clinton's loss of time was an issue, why not Bush's loss of time?
The biggest failure of the Bush administration was failing to articulate his policy beyond the cheerleaders already on board. However, simply paying attention with an open mind and not entrenching yourself into partisan politicking would have made it easy to understand for anyone.
Did Bush have a policy to articulate? And weren't the cheerleaders his own appointees? Rumsfeld screwed up by not putting enough boots on the ground in the invasion of Iraq.
As for partisan politicking, could it be that much of the opposition to Bush was a result of people's disgust with his incompetence?
I can tell that wasn't the case with you and you have made absolutely no valid attempt to understand them as you seem to attribute Rumsfield's saying to "ramblings" of "his" when they are neither. The quote was originally in a military paper authored several years before Rumsfield was on the scene and it refers to the unknown aspects of conflict and how volatile planning can actually be. It's an adaptation from a/several economics quotes that has been around for a lot longer. This is why I said if you do not understand it, you are not qualified to discuss this information. You are doing nothing but half-whit uninformed politicking at this point and our discussion deserves a little more intellectual honesty then that.
Then perhaps Rumsfeld should have erred on the side of caution, and not assumed that American troops would be greeted as liberators.
Yeah, that sounds about right.
It's intellectually dishonest to claim that there was a purpose of agenda behind being ignorant. You can be well intentioned and informed and still be ignorant as the facts don't always paint the correct pictures.
Even if there were no purpose or agenda behind the mistake, that mistake cost 4,000 American lives and 700 billion dollars. That's 4,000 more lives and 700 billion more dollars than were lost while Clinton was receiving blow jobs.
And I will suggest that if you don't actually see the logic in the reasoning behind that, you shouldn't be discussing this topic as the known knowns and the unknown unknowns is what primarily guided Bush's policy in the proactive verses reactive shift after 9/11. Bush essentially said that 9/11 happened because previous administrations were too busy getting blow-jobs and protecting themselves in court then to address the real problems that allowed 9/11 to take place.
And if 9/11 didn't happen for that reason? Indeed, Clinton spent far less time fooling than Bush 43 did on vacation. And the latter's "proactive" shift is just a cover for offensive war. Also, it would be easier to see the logic in the reasoning if there were logic in the reasoning. As for Rumsfeld's ramblings, those who would declare war have the burden of proof, and the Bush 43 Administration failed badly with it.
Then what about this:
He was burned at the stake by authorities in 1600 after the Roman Inquisition found him guilty of heresy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno
So the Inquisition didn't order his death?
Yes, Most of the claims about Bush lieing are unsubstantiated. There might be one of two there that has some merit and I haven't come across it but the majority are little more then the administration was incorrect about a certain belief or piece of information. Being wrong doesn't mean you have lied, it can mean you were ignorant or misled, or confused, or simply wrong.
Even if Bush was merely ignorant instead of dishonest, his ignorance abused America much more than Clinton's sexual activities/dishonesty.
As a former juror, I believed I was asked my name during the voir dire.
You don't think that the lieing in court wasn't for personal gain?
OK, I'll agree that Clinton gained more personally than Bush did from lying about WMDs. But the original poster was discussing an abuse of America, and the latter greatly overshadoes the former in that regard.
I'm sorry that you see sexual harassment as a insignificant item of concern. I'm sorry that you think it's less important then what amounted to a drunken office aid making a comment to a reporter, I'm sorry that you have loads of unsubstantiated claims about lies that led to the second Iraq war which is little more then political fodder taken out of context. In short, I'm sorry that you can't even see your own bias in this little discussion and want to give a pass to one politician lieing while not accepting it from another.
Do you really believe that those claims about lies are unsubstantiated? As for signicance, perhaps President Clinton owed those women compensation, but was the Lewinsky affair as significant as 4,000 dead Americans (and many more Iraqis), 700 billion dollars, and the loss of respect due to Gitmo and torture?
Again, the original poster spoke of an abuse of America,
whether or not we fully understand ourselves and acknowledge that we don't know everything.
What makes you believe that we will ever fully understand ourselves? Or that such an understanding would be necessary to acknowledge that we don't know everything?