You just keep repeating this bullshit. "How were we to know? Everybody else said the same thing?" Bullshit. Fucking bullshit. Read the goddamn news once in a while, instead of blindly, religiously trusting the Republicans to tell you the truth. Blix said the WMD evidence was unraveling. Mohamed El Baradei said he was pretty sure Saddam had not resumed its nuclear weapons programs (again, RTFA cited above). The evidence is there if you wanted it- Bush didn't want facts, unless they supported his reality.
Let's get down to business, though. WHERE THE FUCK IS BIN LADEN? HUH? WHAT THE FUCK DID GW BUSH DO BEFORE 9/11 TO MAKE THOSE PEOPLE SAFER?
"Et al" in this case must mean "and numerous other intelligence servies around the world, and the United Nations."
Actually, Hans Blix said that he was pretty sure they didn't have weapons. How did he arrive at this miraculous insight? Well, turns out the intelligence services gave him a lot of places to look for weapons. He went there, didn't find any weapons, and drew the oracular conclusion that Saddam didn't have any real programs. The inspection was working.
The other thing- sure, Saddam may have had connections. Does that justify anything? Bin Laden and most of the hijackers were Saudi, so if "connectedness" is your metric, then the US should bomb Saudi Arabia. For that matter, the United States had dealings with Saddam... who had dealings with people who had dealings with terrorists! In the name of freedom, let's bomb the United States and set up a democracy! Freedom is Winning!
Omar Sharif went to school with the brothers of- get ready for it: Osama bin Laden. Kevin Bacon, if you're out there: the Stealth bombers are on their way. Your days of making mediocre movies are over. Freedom is winning!
The media says NOTHING about the good news that's happening in Iraq.
YEAH! I mean, you can like, download all the MP3's you want, like TOTALLY FOR FREE, and like, there's NO WAY the record companies can get after you! It must be fucking great to live there! I'm gonna MOVE RIGHT NOW! I mean, I suppose you could download a lot of MP3's if the POWER worked consistently.
On a serious note, how in the hell can the media report the good news, if it's not safe to leave the Green Zone to go report on aforementioned "good news"? And delivering Iraq from the terror of a megalomaniac dictator is great... but now they have to worry about kidnappings (not just Americans- Iraqis are frequently kidnapped and held for ransom), assassinations (not just government officials, but doctors, professors, anyone educated), crime, suicide bombings by the insurgents, "collateral damage" done by precision bombs and flying artillery platforms... if things are going so well, why do they all want us to get the hell out? If it's such a paradise, you move there. Meanwhile, if they can, the Iraqis are trying to get out.
To be fair, it's possible that North Korea originally assembled nuclear (aka "nukular" weapons) during the Clinton era- it's hard to know exactly when this happened. However, according to an unclassified CIA assessment, "We assess that North Korea embarked on the effort to develop a centrifuge-based uranium enrichment program about two years ago." In other words, 'round about the time Bush took office. As for the original weapons, the CIA reported that "the North has one or possibly two weapons using plutonium it produced prior to 1992." Under Clinton, things were hardly perfect- but things were at least in control. It's a fucked up world we live in, we can hardly expect to civilize the whole thing, Clinton had a chaotic foreign policy that rushed to put out fires as they started up. But for all Bush's lofty rhetoric, things have clearly gotten worse, not better.
Whenever North Korea got weapons- which is hard to know, them being a paranoid, secretive communist state and all- the point stands: nuclear proliferation has been worse under the Bush administration, which has sought to disarm those countries which don't have nuclear weapons (Iraq) while letting those that do promote proliferation (Iran, North Korea, and especially Pakistan) continue on their path.
The point isn't stupidity: it's ignorance and poor judgment. I can be smart but not have all the facts, and I can be smart and have the facts, but not be able to make good judgments based on them. George Bush may or may not be smart. His public appearances make you think otherwise- but maybe he does this because he's smart enough to know that most Americans grew up stuffing smart people into gym lockers.
More importantly, George W. doesn't seem to have a good command of the facts (for instance, see that first debate), and he makes dumb-ass decisions.
Cutting taxes for the rich while increasing spending was one of his dumber moves from a financial point of view: the economy is recovering, but the slow job growth fails to impress most economists, and sooner or later we have to pay off that massive debt. Invading Iraq turns out to be a bad move, but far worse is the complete and total cock-up of the occupation- some of the larger errors being (a) failure to stop widespread looting, creating an atmosphere of anarchy and turning Iraqis against us; (b) being overly aggressive in the use of force in populated areas, again turning people against us; (c) disbanding the Army, removing the last vestige of Iraqi sovereignty and leaving disgruntled soldiers with a lot of free time, instead of keeping them busy with reconstruction and stopping insurgents; (d)not bringing in the UN to create legitimacy, or bringing in enough other nations to help take up some of the burden on our military; (e) shutting down al-Sadr's newspaper (better him hurling lies at us than grenades); (f) fucking up in Fallujah, (i) by going in against advice, and (ii) by calling off the offensive BEFORE taking the city but AFTER pissing off all the people there... yaddah yaddah yaddah.
Like I said, maybe Bush and his guys are smart, but they are ignorant fools. So sure, you can be smart and still vote for them- but it's a vote for the ignorant and foolish.
The notion that he might have them is not wholly unfounded...
To put this in more direct language, you're saying that the notion that Saddam might have had significant WMD (or programs to produce them) was "mostly unfounded" or "poorly founded".
Yeah, or debating this shit on Slashdot... It gets tiring, with all the alternate reality trolls cheering for Bush with their make-believe facts and home-made arguments.
I am SO TIRED of people saying that we Bush supporters have no connection with reality! It is very insensitive; I would have you know that I have a very good handle on the facts. Why, just the other day I was complemented on my strong grasp of reality by the tribe of small elves who live in my cell's air ducts.
They are strongly in favor of George W. Bush too, by the way. As for the trolls, I haven't spoken to them lately.
Bush says he will take down Iran if he has too, period, and they know he means it.
Please. Him and what army? Literally: which military is he going to use? The US is busy with Afghanistan and has its hands full in Iraq. It's hard for us to do anything, and they know it: this is why Iran has announced a new foreign policy doctrine called "Screw you guys, we'll develop nukes if we want to". Of course, if we had more ALLIES, we might be able to spare some people. Even so, you've got to look at the logistics.
Going to war is like a camping trip (some people might argue that it's different because on a camping trip you don't use guns or kill things, but that depends on who you go with): you gotta get equipment, check it out and make sure it works, pack it; then you've got to plan your routes and figure out how everyone's going to get to where you're going camping, who rides in what vehicle, and how they're getting back, and when all this can happen. After you're done, you've gotta reinspect equipment, repair/replace it, and get it set up to go camping again... same deal with deploying tanks and soforth, only moreso. After a war like Iraq, it takes a lot of time to get ready for the next war. It will probably be another few years before the United States is ready for a major offensive. There's an excellent discussion of this at http://slate.msn.com/id/2099408, with the pithy quote: "Amateurs study tactics-professionals study logistics".
Of course, George W. seems to study neither tactics nor logistics.
There's still one more problem: are the citizens of the US prepared for another war? In the face of mounting costs and casualties, alongside declining belief in the war's rationale, support for Iraq is drying up. America isn't ready for another war now- and may not be for a long time. Now, Bush and his supporters may not pay attention to this type of stuff (it's part of that whole annoying "reality" thing, after all), but you can bet your ass that Iranian intelligence does.
This is another way Bush screwed up: it may be that when we actually do need to go to war, next time we may not be ready.
Compare what happened in North Korea, during the Clinton administration to what has happend there during the Bush administration for perfect evidence of that.
Yeah! Wait, what happened again? Oh yeah, the UN weapons inspectors installed under the Clinton administration were thrown out, and North Korea acquired nuclear weapons under the bush administration- which Bush has done absolutely nothing about.
Just one more piece of evidence showing that Bush supporters have a strained relationship with facts and the real world...
Yes- as Bush supporter I am truly glad that he has the support of a man widely known as a true champion of freedom: Vladimir Putin!
On a serious note, the rest of the world is able to separate America as a nation and it's leaders: their feelings towards the US are complicated (but often positive) but Bush is loathed abroad. I didn't see much anti-Americanism in Europe when I travelled through right before Iraq, but pictures of Bush from ads for the Economist were usually defaced or marked with anti-Bush graffiti.
I suspect the rest of the world is holding its breath and praying for John Kerry. They won't say so openly because (a) it would create a backlash to be seen as meddling in US politics, and (b) they need a good working relationship with the president. If you endorse Kerry and Bush gets re-elected, you may have trouble dealing with him.
Anyhow, that's my take on it as part. But what do I know? I'm part of the Reality Based Community.
This just in... Iran discovers new mind trick to fool stupid people.. However I doubt they really want someone that calls them the evil-doers in the White House. Please don't tell me you actually fell for this.
He talks a good talk ("axis of evil") but when you get down to how he's reshaped the Middle East politics, I think you could argue that Bush is a wet dream for the mullahs (or as he calls them, "moolahs").
First, in the wake of the Iraq invasion, the pro-democracy movement in Iran has completely stalled. Probably partly because anything American now has a real bad stain on it, partly because the world is too distracted by Iraq to put pressure on Iran, and maybe partly because people may be realizing the risks of destabilizing a government.
Second, George Bush has completely taken out one of their major rivals in the Middle East (Iraq) and there is a very strong possibility it will be replaced with a strongly pro-Shia, pro-Iranian government. Maybe that won't happen, but you've got to admit the odds are better than for having it replaced by an pro-American Western democracy.
Second, Bush has strongly limited the influence of another threat in the Middle East: the United States of America. Between keeping forces in North Korea, in Afghanistan, and being overextended in Iraq, the USA cannot take military action against Iran. Why do you think Iran suddenly developed a new foreign policy called "Screw you guys, we'll develop nukes if we want to"? They know we can't do anything. True, we could possibly send stealth aircraft in and take out their nuclear capability. But they would then agitate the hell out of the Shias, or infiltrate a bunch of guys into Iraq to make our life hell in Iraq. Well, okay, even more hell than it already is.
There's a hilarious Mad Magazine spoof of the Bush campaign and how it might treat Jesus Christ.
http://www.dailykos.com/images/user/3/jesusbush.jp g
However, it does a good job of raising a serious issue, though: Bush talks like a Christian, but he doesn't act according to Christian values. Humility? Charity? Turning the other cheek? Compassion? Love of your fellow man? Hardly.
It's a bit ridiculous to imply that the AR-15 is some sort of target-shooting weapon. Sure it's a target shooting rifle- in the same way that the Beltway Sniper was a target shooter. The reason it's accurate at long distances is because it's the civilian version of the M-16 assault rifle. And the Beltway snipers used one, incidentally. It's designed to kill people accurately, at long distances, and in rapid succession.
In 2053 B.C., speaking through a demented albino high priest who was about to be sacrificed atop the ziggurat of Ubbo-Saatha, Cthulhu said that the world would end after being drowned in the ever-flowing blood of the seven-headed Black Goat.
Yet in 1153, Cthulhu possessed the monk Hiram of Eichstatt and (before Hiram drowned himself in the moat to stop the voices) caused him to write down a prophecy in which it was claimed that at the end of the world, the Mountains of Madness would split open and release the spawn of the Great Old Ones to feast upon all men.
So, please tell us, Cthulhu: which is it? Drowning in the blood of the Black Goat- or the spawn of the Old Ones? Do we want this kind of flip-flopping? America can't afford this kind of vacillating indecision.
This message paid for by Bush/Cheney for President.
A great number of people, including myself, believe that George W. Bush (whether you like him or not--I don't) is doing a good job with regard to the war on terror, and consider it the main issue of the day.
That's a pretty good example of uninformed. What Bush's policies do not seem to get is that there are not a finite number of terrorists. Bombing a weapons cache in Iraq kills insurgents, but if you kill women, children, and innocents in the process, you can create as many insurgents as you kill. Furthermore, you'll turn the population against you. Mao said, the guerilla is a fish and the people are the sea: a successful guerilla war depends on popular support for the rebels; and that's what the tactics we are using so far are creating. Besides turning Iraq against us, the war has made the United States extremely unpopular throughout the Middle East. That's going to (a) encourage more people to join al Qaeda and related groups, (b) increase sympathy for these causes, creating the supportive population they need, and (c) make the United States so politically radioactive that no Islamic country can possibly cooperate with us against terror. Not to mention that we need to cooperate with other nations in Europe and elsewhere to prosecute the war on these terrorist organizations, however we've alienated our allies.
How else has he screwed up? Okay, first, 9/11. The outgoing Clinton administration practically screamed at the Bush administration to pay attention to al Qaeda. What did the Bush administration do? They pursued the fantasy of National Missile Defense, a.k.a. Star Wars. Bush did nothing on terror when it would have counted: before 9/11. The Afghanistan invasion is (pretty much everyone will agree) a good move, but we've screwed things up quite a bit since and the warlords control most of the country, and bin Laden is still out there (remember him? Guy who blew up the World Trade Center?). Well, then Iraq. Brilliant invasion. Problem is, it was totally unjustified. So the U.S. has pretty much zero credibility these days. The other problem- no strategy to win the postwar environment. The first major screwup was not putting in enough troops- we needed about 300,000 and they put in 100,000. The second was not stopping the looting (except of the oil ministry). That made the Iraqis extremely distrustful of our motives (and it should). Another major mistake was disbanding the military. Yeah, it was corrupt and criminal, but there were thousands of people trained to use weapons who we could have had shooting insurgents, instead of becoming insurgents. Other screwups? Well, shutting down Sadr's newspaper was dumb. Having him print nasty stuff about us was bad, but preferable to having his army shoot at us with rocket propelled grenades. And of course, Fallujah. The US was provoked into a response, against the advice of the officers on the ground. Once the assault got underway, the Bush administration got cold feet and flip-flopped because of the civilian casualties: again, against the advice of the officers who were there. So that just made the situation worse. Damn, there are so many it's hard to remember them all. Oh yeah, torturing people in Abu Ghraib. That's like an al Qaeda recruiter's wet dream. You couldn't invent propaganda that effective.
It's simple: the world is more dangerous under Bush. Arguably, he's a heck of a lot more dangerous than Osama bin Laden.
50,000,000 million Muslims that We have liberated in the past three years
Afhganistan is still largely under the control of warlords; Karzai has little influence outside Kabul. And Iraq is... well, not really under the control of anyone. The Americans, Sunnis, Shiites, Al Qaeda, and organized criminals just take turns shooting it up/blowing it up. So they don't have to worry about Saddam anymore. That's great, but now they have to worry about being kidnapped, shot, incinerated by a car bomb, beheaded, blown away by a AC-130 Spectre flying artillery platform, or imprisoned and interrogated by Americans at Abu Ghraib. Those people who can are fleeing the country. If you honestly believe that's the land of the free, you go live there. 'Cause that's not freedom. And it's not freedom when you're occupied by a foreign army, no matter how much that army talks about freedom.
I saw some Bush signs pretty severely trashed this summer in rural Washington state. It put a smile on my face and a warm feeling in my heart.
I think there are a couple of reasons this is happening. One is that people feel denied their right to dissent. This is what happens when you create "free speech zones" miles out of the way, suppress dissenting opinions and information as unpatriotic, and kick people out of Presidential events for wearing T-shirts you don't agree with. Another is that George W. Bush has polarized the nation to a degree that has rarely been seen before. He claims to do God's work, but it seems to me that all he's managed to do is spread hate: the Democrats hate the Republicans, the Republicans hate the Democrats, the Sunnis, Shiites, and Al Qaeda members in Iraq hate the American occupiers, America hates France, the whole world hates America... listen, I'm not religious in the least, but if I understand things right, Jesus and God are supposed to be about love. All this fear and hatred that Bush incites- if he's getting his directions from somebody, it ain't the guy upstairs, that's for sure. There's a line in the Bible that sums this up pretty well: "and ye shall know them by the fruit they bear". Seems to me Bush has given us a bitter harvest.
The stakes are too high for another pro-war president--vote Nader in the swing states!
This seems to imply there's some non-zero chance that Nader could win. While a fascinating concept for a Philip K. Dick alternate-universe novel, talking about the implications of a Nader presidency is about as grounded in reality as, say, debating the economic policy of Imperial Senator Jar-Jar Binks.
Reality is: we're in Iraq, and we can't pack up and leave. This has to do with Colin Powell's Pottery Barn Doctrine: you break it, you own it. You can't just walk in, push over a government, let the country be overrun by criminals, religious extremists and nationalist insurgents, and then say "Oops, sorry, we screwed up. Bye, we'll leave you guys to fix things." We fucked it up, we gotta fix it up. Staying any longer than we already have is going to inflame stuff, yeah. But pulling out now means we're going to have another Yugoslavia, probably with genocides and all as Shiites fight the Sunnis, and then the Kurds will probably say "fuck this, we're getting our own country", which would cause the Turks to invade, to prevent secession of their own Kurdish population.
There is no good way out of this. With the Iraq war, we face a serious of unpleasant options. But the only way we can minimize the damage is to be realistic and choose the best of a bad lot. Maybe you feel the same about the presidential candidates. Personally, I like John Kerry. But it's just not productive to choose an unrealistic option (Nader) because you don't like the realistic options (George W. and John Kerry).
How one can seriously advocate voting for Nader in the swing states is just beyond me. I swear, I just cannot fathom it. It's about as responsible as passing out free crack to first graders.
The polls are showing bush up anywhere from 4 to 9 points.
Bullshit. Check out "Election Scorecard" at www.slate.com. Most polls show Kerry within 2-3 points of Bush- within the margin of error (Zogby, NYT/CBS, Washington Post, Time, even Fox, if you can call them a credible news organization) and a couple of polls show Kerry up (AP, a recent Newsweek poll). Of course it depends on who you ask: Democracy Corps gives Kerry a nice lead (couldn't have anything to do with the fact that this organization was founded by James Carville and Bob Shrum, now could it?)
It's particularly striking that (a) most polls show that people say the country is headed in the wrong direction, and (b) according to the polls, most people say that Bush doesn't deserve re-election.
The nation has already decided it's against Bush, so the election is pretty much Kerry's to win or lose.
If Ralph had a dollar for every time someone said, "I support what he stands for, but I'd really like to punch him in the face for helping to elect George W. in 2000" he would have the largest campaign chest of any candidate.
How about this? Nader can have a big rally where we get to pay 1$ to punch him in the face, as hard as we want. Is punching him in the head worth $1?
I'll bet he gets even MORE contributions from us democrats this way!
And... besides... Bush will easily receive 50% of the popular vote this time, whether I like it or not.
Bush couldn't even get 50% last time- back when his claims of being a "compassionate conservative" and a "uniter, not a divider" were somewhat credible. Plus he didn't have an unpopular war going on with 1000 war dead and no end in sight. Not to mention, last time he won the debates last time around, whereas this time he struck out three for three. Finally, there's only so far he can spin his track record before it starts to catch up with him. With about half the country saying we're heading on the wrong track, most people have already decided they don't like the status quo (to put that in perspective, about 16% of the nation said we were headed in the wrong direction post-9/11). The question therefore becomes whether the risk of change is outweighed by the possibility that Kerry has something better to offer. Kerry may not be perfect- he's a bit of a politician- but he strikes me as a moral person and the debates confirmed that (by any objective standard) he is clearly the more qualified to lead the country. Yes, George W. Bush may be "decisive" but so are mules. That doesn't mean we want one in the oval office. Although I concede it would be a significant step up from the current administration.
This is another fine example of how Ralph Nader and his supports live in a magical alternate universe of political "what ifs"
Speaking of magical fantasy lands, Zogby has an interesting poll question:
'You live in the Land of Oz, and the candidates are either Tin Man, with all brains and no heart, or the Scarecrow, who is all heart and no brains.'
Now apparently, in the last election, the Scarecrow and the Tin Man were dead even at 46.2% and 46.2%. Gore of course only barely beat Bush in the popular vote, and Bush's win in Florida was within the margin of error for the system: that is a tie. Now, it turns out that the Tin Man is ahead this year by nine points. Draw what conclusion you want... but apparently Zogby is betting on Kerry.
It's also funny how Clinton didn't get U.N. approval (as I understand it) to go to Kosovo, but no one criticizes him for it. Maybe because it wasn't expensive enough in money and lives.
The difference is that Clinton had NATO on his side. Hell, even Canada sent troops. The "Coalition of the Willing" that Bush threw together... well, it included such superpowers as Mongolia (OK, not much to look at today, but eight centuries ago their horsemen were kicking some major ass!) and Micronesia (maybe the people of Yap can contribute some of that big stone money and we can drop it on the insurgents?). And don't forget Poland! Only they are starting to pull their troops out now...
Slashdot Mirror
You just keep repeating this bullshit. "How were we to know? Everybody else said the same thing?" Bullshit. Fucking bullshit. Read the goddamn news once in a while, instead of blindly, religiously trusting the Republicans to tell you the truth. Blix said the WMD evidence was unraveling. Mohamed El Baradei said he was pretty sure Saddam had not resumed its nuclear weapons programs (again, RTFA cited above). The evidence is there if you wanted it- Bush didn't want facts, unless they supported his reality.
Let's get down to business, though. WHERE THE FUCK IS BIN LADEN? HUH? WHAT THE FUCK DID GW BUSH DO BEFORE 9/11 TO MAKE THOSE PEOPLE SAFER?
Actually, Hans Blix said that he was pretty sure they didn't have weapons. How did he arrive at this miraculous insight? Well, turns out the intelligence services gave him a lot of places to look for weapons. He went there, didn't find any weapons, and drew the oracular conclusion that Saddam didn't have any real programs. The inspection was working.
The other thing- sure, Saddam may have had connections. Does that justify anything? Bin Laden and most of the hijackers were Saudi, so if "connectedness" is your metric, then the US should bomb Saudi Arabia. For that matter, the United States had dealings with Saddam... who had dealings with people who had dealings with terrorists! In the name of freedom, let's bomb the United States and set up a democracy! Freedom is Winning!
-a proud member of the Reality Based Community-
If you check out http://oracleofbacon.org/ you'll see that: Kevin Bacon->Eli Wallach->Omar Sharif.
Omar Sharif went to school with the brothers of- get ready for it: Osama bin Laden. Kevin Bacon, if you're out there: the Stealth bombers are on their way. Your days of making mediocre movies are over. Freedom is winning!
-A proud member of the Reality Based Community-
YEAH! I mean, you can like, download all the MP3's you want, like TOTALLY FOR FREE, and like, there's NO WAY the record companies can get after you! It must be fucking great to live there! I'm gonna MOVE RIGHT NOW! I mean, I suppose you could download a lot of MP3's if the POWER worked consistently.
On a serious note, how in the hell can the media report the good news, if it's not safe to leave the Green Zone to go report on aforementioned "good news"? And delivering Iraq from the terror of a megalomaniac dictator is great... but now they have to worry about kidnappings (not just Americans- Iraqis are frequently kidnapped and held for ransom), assassinations (not just government officials, but doctors, professors, anyone educated), crime, suicide bombings by the insurgents, "collateral damage" done by precision bombs and flying artillery platforms... if things are going so well, why do they all want us to get the hell out? If it's such a paradise, you move there. Meanwhile, if they can, the Iraqis are trying to get out.
Whenever North Korea got weapons- which is hard to know, them being a paranoid, secretive communist state and all- the point stands: nuclear proliferation has been worse under the Bush administration, which has sought to disarm those countries which don't have nuclear weapons (Iraq) while letting those that do promote proliferation (Iran, North Korea, and especially Pakistan) continue on their path.
More importantly, George W. doesn't seem to have a good command of the facts (for instance, see that first debate), and he makes dumb-ass decisions.
Cutting taxes for the rich while increasing spending was one of his dumber moves from a financial point of view: the economy is recovering, but the slow job growth fails to impress most economists, and sooner or later we have to pay off that massive debt. Invading Iraq turns out to be a bad move, but far worse is the complete and total cock-up of the occupation- some of the larger errors being (a) failure to stop widespread looting, creating an atmosphere of anarchy and turning Iraqis against us; (b) being overly aggressive in the use of force in populated areas, again turning people against us; (c) disbanding the Army, removing the last vestige of Iraqi sovereignty and leaving disgruntled soldiers with a lot of free time, instead of keeping them busy with reconstruction and stopping insurgents; (d)not bringing in the UN to create legitimacy, or bringing in enough other nations to help take up some of the burden on our military; (e) shutting down al-Sadr's newspaper (better him hurling lies at us than grenades); (f) fucking up in Fallujah, (i) by going in against advice, and (ii) by calling off the offensive BEFORE taking the city but AFTER pissing off all the people there... yaddah yaddah yaddah.
Like I said, maybe Bush and his guys are smart, but they are ignorant fools. So sure, you can be smart and still vote for them- but it's a vote for the ignorant and foolish.
To put this in more direct language, you're saying that the notion that Saddam might have had significant WMD (or programs to produce them) was "mostly unfounded" or "poorly founded".
George Orwell discusses this kind of bullshit language in "Politics and the English Language" http://www.george-orwell.org/Politics_and_the_Engl ish_Language/0.html
-a must-read if you're interested in either politics or writing.
I am SO TIRED of people saying that we Bush supporters have no connection with reality! It is very insensitive; I would have you know that I have a very good handle on the facts. Why, just the other day I was complemented on my strong grasp of reality by the tribe of small elves who live in my cell's air ducts.
They are strongly in favor of George W. Bush too, by the way. As for the trolls, I haven't spoken to them lately.
Please. Him and what army? Literally: which military is he going to use? The US is busy with Afghanistan and has its hands full in Iraq. It's hard for us to do anything, and they know it: this is why Iran has announced a new foreign policy doctrine called "Screw you guys, we'll develop nukes if we want to". Of course, if we had more ALLIES, we might be able to spare some people. Even so, you've got to look at the logistics.
Going to war is like a camping trip (some people might argue that it's different because on a camping trip you don't use guns or kill things, but that depends on who you go with): you gotta get equipment, check it out and make sure it works, pack it; then you've got to plan your routes and figure out how everyone's going to get to where you're going camping, who rides in what vehicle, and how they're getting back, and when all this can happen. After you're done, you've gotta reinspect equipment, repair/replace it, and get it set up to go camping again... same deal with deploying tanks and soforth, only moreso. After a war like Iraq, it takes a lot of time to get ready for the next war. It will probably be another few years before the United States is ready for a major offensive. There's an excellent discussion of this at http://slate.msn.com/id/2099408, with the pithy quote: "Amateurs study tactics-professionals study logistics". Of course, George W. seems to study neither tactics nor logistics.
There's still one more problem: are the citizens of the US prepared for another war? In the face of mounting costs and casualties, alongside declining belief in the war's rationale, support for Iraq is drying up. America isn't ready for another war now- and may not be for a long time. Now, Bush and his supporters may not pay attention to this type of stuff (it's part of that whole annoying "reality" thing, after all), but you can bet your ass that Iranian intelligence does.
This is another way Bush screwed up: it may be that when we actually do need to go to war, next time we may not be ready.
-Proud member of the Reality Based Community-
Yeah! Wait, what happened again? Oh yeah, the UN weapons inspectors installed under the Clinton administration were thrown out, and North Korea acquired nuclear weapons under the bush administration- which Bush has done absolutely nothing about.
Just one more piece of evidence showing that Bush supporters have a strained relationship with facts and the real world...
Proud member of the Reality Based Community
I suspect the rest of the world is holding its breath and praying for John Kerry. They won't say so openly because (a) it would create a backlash to be seen as meddling in US politics, and (b) they need a good working relationship with the president. If you endorse Kerry and Bush gets re-elected, you may have trouble dealing with him.
Anyhow, that's my take on it as part. But what do I know? I'm part of the Reality Based Community.
He talks a good talk ("axis of evil") but when you get down to how he's reshaped the Middle East politics, I think you could argue that Bush is a wet dream for the mullahs (or as he calls them, "moolahs").
First, in the wake of the Iraq invasion, the pro-democracy movement in Iran has completely stalled. Probably partly because anything American now has a real bad stain on it, partly because the world is too distracted by Iraq to put pressure on Iran, and maybe partly because people may be realizing the risks of destabilizing a government.
Second, George Bush has completely taken out one of their major rivals in the Middle East (Iraq) and there is a very strong possibility it will be replaced with a strongly pro-Shia, pro-Iranian government. Maybe that won't happen, but you've got to admit the odds are better than for having it replaced by an pro-American Western democracy.
Second, Bush has strongly limited the influence of another threat in the Middle East: the United States of America. Between keeping forces in North Korea, in Afghanistan, and being overextended in Iraq, the USA cannot take military action against Iran. Why do you think Iran suddenly developed a new foreign policy called "Screw you guys, we'll develop nukes if we want to"? They know we can't do anything. True, we could possibly send stealth aircraft in and take out their nuclear capability. But they would then agitate the hell out of the Shias, or infiltrate a bunch of guys into Iraq to make our life hell in Iraq. Well, okay, even more hell than it already is.
There's a hilarious Mad Magazine spoof of the Bush campaign and how it might treat Jesus Christ. http://www.dailykos.com/images/user/3/jesusbush.jp g
However, it does a good job of raising a serious issue, though: Bush talks like a Christian, but he doesn't act according to Christian values. Humility? Charity? Turning the other cheek? Compassion? Love of your fellow man? Hardly.
It's a bit ridiculous to imply that the AR-15 is some sort of target-shooting weapon. Sure it's a target shooting rifle- in the same way that the Beltway Sniper was a target shooter. The reason it's accurate at long distances is because it's the civilian version of the M-16 assault rifle. And the Beltway snipers used one, incidentally. It's designed to kill people accurately, at long distances, and in rapid succession.
Yet in 1153, Cthulhu possessed the monk Hiram of Eichstatt and (before Hiram drowned himself in the moat to stop the voices) caused him to write down a prophecy in which it was claimed that at the end of the world, the Mountains of Madness would split open and release the spawn of the Great Old Ones to feast upon all men.
So, please tell us, Cthulhu: which is it? Drowning in the blood of the Black Goat- or the spawn of the Old Ones? Do we want this kind of flip-flopping? America can't afford this kind of vacillating indecision.
This message paid for by Bush/Cheney for President.
That's a pretty good example of uninformed. What Bush's policies do not seem to get is that there are not a finite number of terrorists. Bombing a weapons cache in Iraq kills insurgents, but if you kill women, children, and innocents in the process, you can create as many insurgents as you kill. Furthermore, you'll turn the population against you. Mao said, the guerilla is a fish and the people are the sea: a successful guerilla war depends on popular support for the rebels; and that's what the tactics we are using so far are creating. Besides turning Iraq against us, the war has made the United States extremely unpopular throughout the Middle East. That's going to (a) encourage more people to join al Qaeda and related groups, (b) increase sympathy for these causes, creating the supportive population they need, and (c) make the United States so politically radioactive that no Islamic country can possibly cooperate with us against terror. Not to mention that we need to cooperate with other nations in Europe and elsewhere to prosecute the war on these terrorist organizations, however we've alienated our allies.
How else has he screwed up? Okay, first, 9/11. The outgoing Clinton administration practically screamed at the Bush administration to pay attention to al Qaeda. What did the Bush administration do? They pursued the fantasy of National Missile Defense, a.k.a. Star Wars. Bush did nothing on terror when it would have counted: before 9/11. The Afghanistan invasion is (pretty much everyone will agree) a good move, but we've screwed things up quite a bit since and the warlords control most of the country, and bin Laden is still out there (remember him? Guy who blew up the World Trade Center?). Well, then Iraq. Brilliant invasion. Problem is, it was totally unjustified. So the U.S. has pretty much zero credibility these days. The other problem- no strategy to win the postwar environment. The first major screwup was not putting in enough troops- we needed about 300,000 and they put in 100,000. The second was not stopping the looting (except of the oil ministry). That made the Iraqis extremely distrustful of our motives (and it should). Another major mistake was disbanding the military. Yeah, it was corrupt and criminal, but there were thousands of people trained to use weapons who we could have had shooting insurgents, instead of becoming insurgents. Other screwups? Well, shutting down Sadr's newspaper was dumb. Having him print nasty stuff about us was bad, but preferable to having his army shoot at us with rocket propelled grenades. And of course, Fallujah. The US was provoked into a response, against the advice of the officers on the ground. Once the assault got underway, the Bush administration got cold feet and flip-flopped because of the civilian casualties: again, against the advice of the officers who were there. So that just made the situation worse. Damn, there are so many it's hard to remember them all. Oh yeah, torturing people in Abu Ghraib. That's like an al Qaeda recruiter's wet dream. You couldn't invent propaganda that effective.
It's simple: the world is more dangerous under Bush. Arguably, he's a heck of a lot more dangerous than Osama bin Laden.
Afhganistan is still largely under the control of warlords; Karzai has little influence outside Kabul. And Iraq is... well, not really under the control of anyone. The Americans, Sunnis, Shiites, Al Qaeda, and organized criminals just take turns shooting it up/blowing it up. So they don't have to worry about Saddam anymore. That's great, but now they have to worry about being kidnapped, shot, incinerated by a car bomb, beheaded, blown away by a AC-130 Spectre flying artillery platform, or imprisoned and interrogated by Americans at Abu Ghraib. Those people who can are fleeing the country. If you honestly believe that's the land of the free, you go live there. 'Cause that's not freedom. And it's not freedom when you're occupied by a foreign army, no matter how much that army talks about freedom.
I think there are a couple of reasons this is happening. One is that people feel denied their right to dissent. This is what happens when you create "free speech zones" miles out of the way, suppress dissenting opinions and information as unpatriotic, and kick people out of Presidential events for wearing T-shirts you don't agree with. Another is that George W. Bush has polarized the nation to a degree that has rarely been seen before. He claims to do God's work, but it seems to me that all he's managed to do is spread hate: the Democrats hate the Republicans, the Republicans hate the Democrats, the Sunnis, Shiites, and Al Qaeda members in Iraq hate the American occupiers, America hates France, the whole world hates America... listen, I'm not religious in the least, but if I understand things right, Jesus and God are supposed to be about love. All this fear and hatred that Bush incites- if he's getting his directions from somebody, it ain't the guy upstairs, that's for sure. There's a line in the Bible that sums this up pretty well: "and ye shall know them by the fruit they bear". Seems to me Bush has given us a bitter harvest.
This seems to imply there's some non-zero chance that Nader could win. While a fascinating concept for a Philip K. Dick alternate-universe novel, talking about the implications of a Nader presidency is about as grounded in reality as, say, debating the economic policy of Imperial Senator Jar-Jar Binks.
Reality is: we're in Iraq, and we can't pack up and leave. This has to do with Colin Powell's Pottery Barn Doctrine: you break it, you own it. You can't just walk in, push over a government, let the country be overrun by criminals, religious extremists and nationalist insurgents, and then say "Oops, sorry, we screwed up. Bye, we'll leave you guys to fix things." We fucked it up, we gotta fix it up. Staying any longer than we already have is going to inflame stuff, yeah. But pulling out now means we're going to have another Yugoslavia, probably with genocides and all as Shiites fight the Sunnis, and then the Kurds will probably say "fuck this, we're getting our own country", which would cause the Turks to invade, to prevent secession of their own Kurdish population.
There is no good way out of this. With the Iraq war, we face a serious of unpleasant options. But the only way we can minimize the damage is to be realistic and choose the best of a bad lot. Maybe you feel the same about the presidential candidates. Personally, I like John Kerry. But it's just not productive to choose an unrealistic option (Nader) because you don't like the realistic options (George W. and John Kerry).
How one can seriously advocate voting for Nader in the swing states is just beyond me. I swear, I just cannot fathom it. It's about as responsible as passing out free crack to first graders.
Bullshit. Check out "Election Scorecard" at www.slate.com. Most polls show Kerry within 2-3 points of Bush- within the margin of error (Zogby, NYT/CBS, Washington Post, Time, even Fox, if you can call them a credible news organization) and a couple of polls show Kerry up (AP, a recent Newsweek poll). Of course it depends on who you ask: Democracy Corps gives Kerry a nice lead (couldn't have anything to do with the fact that this organization was founded by James Carville and Bob Shrum, now could it?)
It's particularly striking that (a) most polls show that people say the country is headed in the wrong direction, and (b) according to the polls, most people say that Bush doesn't deserve re-election.
The nation has already decided it's against Bush, so the election is pretty much Kerry's to win or lose.
How about this? Nader can have a big rally where we get to pay 1$ to punch him in the face, as hard as we want. Is punching him in the head worth $1?
I'll bet he gets even MORE contributions from us democrats this way!
Bush couldn't even get 50% last time- back when his claims of being a "compassionate conservative" and a "uniter, not a divider" were somewhat credible. Plus he didn't have an unpopular war going on with 1000 war dead and no end in sight. Not to mention, last time he won the debates last time around, whereas this time he struck out three for three. Finally, there's only so far he can spin his track record before it starts to catch up with him. With about half the country saying we're heading on the wrong track, most people have already decided they don't like the status quo (to put that in perspective, about 16% of the nation said we were headed in the wrong direction post-9/11). The question therefore becomes whether the risk of change is outweighed by the possibility that Kerry has something better to offer. Kerry may not be perfect- he's a bit of a politician- but he strikes me as a moral person and the debates confirmed that (by any objective standard) he is clearly the more qualified to lead the country. Yes, George W. Bush may be "decisive" but so are mules. That doesn't mean we want one in the oval office. Although I concede it would be a significant step up from the current administration.
"Et Al", of course, is what Weird Al started calling himself during a weird experimental phase where he did parody albums entirely in Latin.
Speaking of magical fantasy lands, Zogby has an interesting poll question: 'You live in the Land of Oz, and the candidates are either Tin Man, with all brains and no heart, or the Scarecrow, who is all heart and no brains.'
Now apparently, in the last election, the Scarecrow and the Tin Man were dead even at 46.2% and 46.2%. Gore of course only barely beat Bush in the popular vote, and Bush's win in Florida was within the margin of error for the system: that is a tie. Now, it turns out that the Tin Man is ahead this year by nine points. Draw what conclusion you want... but apparently Zogby is betting on Kerry.
The difference is that Clinton had NATO on his side. Hell, even Canada sent troops. The "Coalition of the Willing" that Bush threw together... well, it included such superpowers as Mongolia (OK, not much to look at today, but eight centuries ago their horsemen were kicking some major ass!) and Micronesia (maybe the people of Yap can contribute some of that big stone money and we can drop it on the insurgents?). And don't forget Poland! Only they are starting to pull their troops out now...