Why America please read and share ur thoughts

As I read your reply, and that of jonb as well, that one line was better than any I could come up with myself to sum up the content of where both of you come from. Even though it was originally part of a sentence directed negatively at me, congratulations on coming up with at least PART of one statement of general use.

Ever since I'd found this site in February, and had checked out the various rooms (especially this off-shoot) it was abundantly clear that for every thousand members there were approximately 999 confirmed/voting liberals for every thousand members espousing views inside the various political/social threads. I was curious how a republican with a mix of conservative, moderate, and even once in a while liberal views would be received when the opportunity presented itself to provide some factual counter-programming to the liberal talking-points that make the rounds here as pre-ordained fact. Sadly, you guys fully met my expectations. Neither side, anymore, can stand the fact that the other side might have a positive view or two to offer on our collective problems and has a "my way or the highway" mentality...same as what gets displayed in the threads here. If I were ever to tell you that I agreed with one thing you said, I might have to become Pagan and hope for reincarnation to allow enough time to get the favor returned.

And, as far as the war in Iraq goes, I think the President shows weakness when he shifts the justifications for going to war. As none of us will ever truly know (unless we buy on ebay a highest-level security pass to US intel reports) if the best available knowledge at the end of 2002/early 2003 suggested the maniac in Baghdad had WMD, then that should have been the first and only basis for the war, given any possible outcome when the search for them began. I have three friends serving in the country, one a marine, one in the army, and one an air force officer. While I dread possibly getting a call one day telling me that one or more of them might be dead, I feel they are over there doing what needs to be done. I know, that opinion of mine is because I'm uninformed. Possibly...it's because GW and Halliburton are sharing profits with my family surreptitiously and I don't want to bite the hand that feeds me (NIN reference there...wonder how Trent would feel being used in a pro-republican paragraph??)

It would seem diversity in this room is defined as a group of people who look totally different but think entirely alike. Since it's obvious my views are so well loved around here and I'm a political pig who loves rolling around in the mud, you can guarantee I'll be a regular thorn with my particular world-view from now on :)

Got to run for now as I've finally got a free weekend and have plans, but you and jonb have a good weekend, madame.


Steve

About Iraq, let's see . . . Hans Blix, Valerie Plame, not to mention the fact that the justification for the first Iraq war was also a lie since they weren't dumping babies out of incubators.

BnD,

I actually spent a great deal of time collecting and posting some factual information, and as always when these discussions come up you completely dismissed my whole post, even though I had made every attempt to answer every one of your points. This is what I mean by regurgitated rhetoric, when the facts don't play out in your favor you dump and run. No one ever said anything about GW being in callusion with your family, I know that was a joke, but you really did me a disservice by not responding to my points at all when I had tried in earnest to do that for you.

The truth is, bush's lack of involvment in governmental affairs for the first eight months of his presidency did leave us looking weak, it's hard to deny that point. No one secures their job by not going! This is just common sense and doesn't seem to warrant argument.

I can appreciate that you may disagree with some things he does by still appreciate others, I just don't follow in the same direction. I have a great deal of disrespect for him, but I still look at his individual policies in terms of how they will affect the country and me personally. I don't just automatically dislike everything he tries to do just because I happen to dislike him. Quite the reverse, I dislike him because of the things he does and the manner in which he goes about it. The FACTS that Haliburton and the Carlyle Group are making a ton of money from the military contracts this war is continuing to generate cannot be disputed, nor can the FACTS that bush(es) and cheney are personally enjoying shares of the profits there. If this isn't clear cut conflict of interest, I sure don't know what is.

If you only go so far as to say that changing the reasons for the war makes you uncomfortable, but you still think we're doing the right thing, that confuses me. I am incensed that the original reason (or excuse) turned out not to be true, don't you get angry when you find out you've been lied to? I guess herein lies my frustration. If when someone is caught red handed with their hand in the cookie jar and they come up saying "I was only looking for my car keys" I get angry. This is what I feel this administration has been doing to us as a country and I find it unacceptable.

Hope you have a nice weekend.

With a 97 degree temp and a heat index of 104, today turned out not to be the greatest of days to get everything done, hence I'm back here for quick visit. M. Zora, I say this respectfully, but one reason I don't go into tremendous detail in countering each of your 235 (or thereabouts) reasons you cannot stand the current administration is that I am a part-timer in the forum and my ability to be here and participate on a daily basis is limited. I enjoy this forum and wish I did have more time, but I'm active in two other internet-based forums (no, neither one of them has to do with politics or "1001 things to enjoy your weiner more") as well as all the work and personal life issues that keep your typical college student hopping. I would say that you likely spend a great deal more time here on a daily or weekly basis, or else you type about 2,000 words per minute as opposed to my 30 (with a tail wind and I'm not talking farting). <my reply to dumping and running, part one>

My writing style is to take a series of my thoughts, compare them as best I can, both time and length-wise, and make a post that both establishes my point of view and tries to work in a few replies to other's posts here. IF I happen to luck into some additional free time, soonest I can see that happening is early August, I promise that you'll need to use the bathroom before taking time to digest my replies

<dumping and running, part 2> Also, why should I spend time and effort trying to convince on what to me are micro-points (companies making a higher than usual profit on a war...no, not something I'd otherwise endorse and as a taxpayer don't like to see or hear about...but a fact that has taken place over time in many different wars and this is just the latest iteration...very unfortunately it's the nature of the beast...just ask our good friends the French who have a long history of taking in money through the back door and spewing idealistic rhetoric out the front). If what I've read on the subject doesn't lead me to either believe it or feel that it is in any way impacting our efforts in the war, then why spend 3,000 words fighting with you about it? At the end of that carpal tunnel inducing episode, both of us will likely still feel the same way and have doctor bills to boot for hand therapy.

As to the war, I do hold Bush accountable for lack of planning for any version of Post-Iraq you can conjure up, either the one we currently have or the best possible one any designer could have come up with. We need more troops in the country to quell the sunni triangle and additional forces to better secure the borders with Syria and Iran. Large parts of Iraq are somewhat stable, when you take into account the middle eastern definition of the word. However, most of the reporters are in the Sunni Triangle and that is where the car bombings and killings are taking place...amazing coincidence. We should report those things, but reporting only those things distorts what the country as a whole has managed to achieve in two+ years after Saddam. And, for insurgents determined to blow their own countrymen up, there isn't much you can do about it when you get right down to it. Isreal has been fighting Palestinian homicide bombers for years and with forces breathing down the terrorists necks the Isrealis still can suffer from it. By not making the case for more forces in the Sunni Triangle or requesting NATO (if the high and mighty french and germans would provide it) assistance with the border regions, the President might possibly be committing this mission to ultimate failure.

Reasons for the war...President Clinton's administration had certified on paper that they felt Saddam had WMD when Clinton left office. The UN weapons inspection team felt he had WMD. Russian intelligence felt the same way, and on the eve of the war in 2003, Tommy Franks was warned by the Egyptians and (I believe) the Jordanians that Saddam's troops would use chemical weapons on advancing US troops once they entered the country. Clinton, during last summer's election cycle, in an interview in Time magazine, cautioned democrats about jumping Bush's case too vigorously as he said, words to the effect, that "we felt he had WMD when I left office and barring his demonstrated destruction of those weapons it is logical to say they will eventually be found".

What DID happen is that either Saddam orchestrated one of the major intelligence failings of the late 20th century and bluffed the entire world into feeling that he still possessed WMD and was willing to be deposed still carrying that belief, or US intelligence relied too strongly upon Iraqi dissidents in their pre-war planning. I'd vote for a combination of the two. Clinton himself, in one arena I admired he took the guts to make a stand, made it the policy of this country to support regime change in Baghdad and the overthrow of Saddam.

If Clinton had been able to run for a third term (something I know many here would wet themselves over), would he have pursued RC in any meaningful way? I doubt it, doing that would have required more than cruise missle capability. Also, nobody would have supported Bush going into Afghanistan on September 10, 2001, if he'd stood before Congress and laid out the reasons for war, which were the same after 9/11 except for 3,000 dead people in NYC. It always takes a disaster before we're ready, as a nation, to do anything that needs to be done. Just check thru history.

We invaded the country and two+ years hence have found no WMD. Do I feel lied to about that? No. As per my earlier paragraph, the entire world had reason to believe he had the weapons and in the aftermath of 9/11 Saddam looked a bit different than he did prior to it (threat-wise). Should Bush periodically modify his reasons for the war just to try and surf the winds of public opinion? No. WMD and the threat it potentially posed to our country and interests in the region were sound enough...it's just obvious to me that a morally corrupt UN couldn't stand with us lest they expose the cash pipelines they'd established with Baghdad.

*************

As to a few stray points jonb has thrown my way...the first gulf war...I take it in retrospect you didn't support what was done in that conflict? I thought that even if a somewhat suspect UN endorsed a course of action suggested by the US that that would be enough to elevate it to the level of "get 'er done" for liberals and quasi-liberals alike. Country A invaded Country B and in the process threatened the engergy supply of the civilized world...the civilized world gets together and eventually votes to form a coalition to throw Country A back behind its borders and succeeds and that is somehow bad? Life doesn't usually present clearer cut cases of right and wrong than that one.

And our military spending vs the rest of the world...yes we do spend more than many nations combined. If it is more than the entire world combined, who knows for sure? Russia, China, and countries like N. Korea are in that "combined" part and while they may report figures or we may estimate totals, hindsight after the cold war was over found out that the Soviet Union was spending much more on military budgets than we'd estimated in the 70's and 80's. Besides, if you're so quick in this room to jump US intelligence and their accuracy, why do you rely upon it when it comes to the forming of estimates of military budgets in potentially hostile countries?

And, we expect soooo much more of our military than the rest of the world does. If the UN ever did, God help us all, actually want to take military action to resolve a situation, what country would provide the vast majority of the ships, troops, planes, and support for said operations? When the tsunami hit last December, what one nation had the resources to reach some of the most remote, devastated regions? What one nation has, for nearly 60 years, maintained a standing army in Europe to defend against threats to their way of life? What nation has maintained an army in Korea for 50 years to protect against their neighbor to the north threatening their very existence? Point being, yes we do spend $1200 now and then on a toilet seat and I'm sure it is a very nice toilet, but we also have kept the peace (or at least deterred aggressors) around the world since WWII. Do we always make the correct decisions? Hell no. We have sometimes coddled dictators and have paid prices for that behavior. However, the former Soviets were fond of puppet regimes and specialized in those for decades so stupidity is in abundance in certain circumstances and knows no ideological borders.

Whew...my wrists are killing me now and there isn't even a Penthouse magazine open anywhere near me...least not yet. We shall have to agree to disagree I'm sure, MZ and jb, and I'm sure we'll be doing it again soon.


Steve

You know, every time I start to respond to the many points brought into play here I find myself being drawn back into a frighteningly negative place. My views have been stated before and I see no reason to dredge them up again. Most of you have been here know my political leanings are usually conservative although I have a few odd liberal tendencies such as my views on womens rights.

Anyway, I figure I am not going to get people to shift over into my way of thinking just as I am rather unlikely to shift over into their ways of thinking. We all have our beliefs and our ideas and that in the final picture is what makes life interesting. Imagine if you will the entire world all living in a mopey monotonous drudgery where we had no free thought.
Is everything perfect under Junior and his sometimes absurd leadership? Not even close; however I still prefer him over Clinton. Don't ask me to explain it further, I've outlined things in the past--Health care, Welfare Reform (which will lead to the death of millions of young children--I warned you that I have some liberal tendencies) and of course THE BIG LIE. Remember folks it was not about the sex act it was about the LIE. THAT is what caused the rancor towards Clinton by so many people. It wasn't a bunch of ninnies following the rancid chants of Formerly Sexy Rush Limbaugh or G. Gordon Liddy. Give people credit folks for having opinions and minds of their own. Don't forget that I am a gay man, (or is the correct term queer or joy-boy?) I am on a lower rung of the economic ladder, I am not a Bible thumper, I have not been to any Church in close to 20 years (excepting the services for a friend in 1996 and AA meetings which are often found in church basements). No church services or singing of hymns. And yet I have a deep and abiding belief in one political party over the other. Is it wrong? I'll find out when I'm dead.


Darn, you made me do it. You made me go off on another tirade. (If I'm going to be the villain here then I see no reason to take responsibility for it.) The final (?????) bottom line here is that there is always going to be some issue which will cause discontent and anger amongst us, my choice for right now is how I want to handle the different opinions I see here and for this moment I am choosing to let the whole darn issue drop. I just made the mistake at the start of trying to let the original poster know that there are Republicans out there who are gay and that even more importantly if he does not like what he is seeing then he should get himself involved in the political arena. He should be in contact and communicating with all his reperesentatives-- Democrat and Republican and Independent, Conservative, Liberal, Green Party, etc. It's one thing to say it's all wrong, it's yet another to then do nothing about it but still expect it to change.

Actually, the rancor existed BEFORE Monica. Monica was BECAUSE of the rancor. Ever heard of the Arkansas Project? Let's not forget about how Clinton was responsible for every death in Arkansas history, including ones which were obvious accidents. One case involved two teens hit by a train. (A train? What is this? A silent movie?)

Oh, and brainzz, you might get away with such stories if we didn't have videotape and if we weren't talking about stuff which everyone here can remember. (Waiting for Chris to nitpick.)

In some way, somehow, Bill Clinton is responsible for absolutely everything bad and in error, everywhere on the planet. All of it.

I am from Arkansas. So I watched closely all the goings on of Whitewater et all. And nothing was pinned on Clinton except denying he had sex with Monica. Hell, why should that have even been asked by anyone except Hillary? It certainly had nothing to do with the governing of the country if his dick had been in the mouth of Monica. How did that shape foreign policy or domesetic policy or any other policy? Clinton should have told them up front that that was Hillary's business and Hillary's alone and refused to answer.

It pisses of the Republicans that there were surpluses under Clinton that turned into record deficits under George quickly. Sorry. That is the breaks. Not our fault that Clinton and his adisors did a good job of running the country.

sorry, but in relative terms I have much less of a problem with clinton lying about a blowjob that cost a white house intern her job, than I have with bush lying about justifications for a war that cost thousands of lives, or lying about fictitious "security threats" that cost the entire country essential personal liberties.

politicians are scumbags and we expect them to lie - in fact we know that they only tell the truth when a lie won't serve their interests. don't pretend otherwise, because everybody with any shred of intelligence knows better. it's what they lie about and why that makes them relatively tolerable or intolerable. clinton's lie was ultimately harmless; bush's sure as hell ain't.

The Clinton lie helped to solidly divide an already fracturing country and was far from harmless. He disgraced a woman, he cost billions of dollars in investigations and hearings. The simple fact that he went on television and wagged his finger and denied what happened is much more than a minor infraction. I ask you DrRock to stop for a moment and think about this happening to you. Let's just for arguements sake say that you had a hot torrid sexual relationship with someone and then the person you were with denied it left and right and accused you of being a liar. How would you like that? How about a female family member who was placed in the awkward position which Lewinsky was placed in as Clinton continued to lie? How about being the spouse of the liar and having to deal with the fact that your partner was a disgrace? How about being the child of the liar? Clearly there was NOTHING harmless about his lie.

As for Junior, I would say you cannot and will not in all your efforts find anything which he intentionally lied about. He was clearly under the impression according to the documents given to him, that there were indeed weapons in Iraq and if you look at some of what is there, then it is easy to see that even if they did not yet have them they were obviously on the way to getting them. The storage containers were there, don't try to deny that fact.

So what do we have? Clinton an intentional liar and Bush a liar only because later facts reveal him to have been in error. An error does not a lie make. I'll stick with Junior. Maybe it has some twisted connection to that dreadful time I spent residing in Arkansas. Clinton was governor and even then he was known as Slick Willy just for the way he would extricate himself from so many situations. Clinton is the one who if he was shown on video stabbing someone a hundred times or committing any crime, he would wag his finger and tell you "I didn't do it" and get away with it. Yes, most definitely I'll stay with Junior as the man I'd most trust.

again ... it's way too easy to draw comparisons on those points, and the comparisons tend to favor clinton. let's face it, it ain't his fault that there are too many people in power who consider a blowjob to be "disgraceful."

true, but what else is new? you think you're gonna find any politician, much less any president, who HASN'T made a career outta lying through their teeth? that's the business. again, motives and consequences.

I'd think that was pretty funny. but then, I wouldn't be trying to sue them for large amounts of money :eyes:

oh, okay. since I can't be bothered getting into "the technicality of truth", I'll stop calling him a liar and just keep calling him a mass-murdering bible-bashing capitalist, since he's proved that all on his own.

still wondering where exactly US interests come into the whole "iraq has chemical weapons" scenario ... but that's a whole other argument.

If by "so many people" you mean "almost no one besides pundits", or "lots of people pretended to care just cause they didn't like Clinton," then you're correct. The media making something an issue and it actually being an issue are two different things.

Storage containers? WTF? Really...be a little more specific. I have storage containers; I call them boxes. }(

I know that technical issues are not the White House's forte; science and engineering require some heavy lifting. Moreover, technical reality may interfere with a desired policy. Like many Americans, I believe that the White House wanted only "facts and analyses" which supported their desire for a justified war. In this age of the consultant, one inside joke is "Tell me what you want to do and I will confirm that this is the most appropriate course of action for only $1,000,000...nah, better make it two."

I watched the Powell presentation to the U.N. on case for the existence of WMDs in Iraq with friends. To college students at major technical universities, it was ludicrous...technically without merit.

The two mobile labs for chemical and biological weapons production? Give me a break, the air filtration and contaminant removal systems to handle the nasty things hypothesized would have required probably two of the big trailers to house the treatment systems.

The nuclear weapons program? Well, show me the nuclear signatures of the facility flyovers. As you remember, we had been doing flyovers for a decade and would have noted suspicious activities and would have sent aerial nuclear detection equipment to investigate. From nuclear "signatures" one can deduce what is occurring.

Oh yea, the centrifuge tubes? Well, in hours after the Powell presentation, technical people began to say "I may not know what the aluminum tubes are but it is unlikely that they are centrifuge tubes." Why? Well, the size and weight of the tubes would mean a humongous centrifuge....not very efficient or likely. Within a week or so, technical people said "I think those are likely for use in a rocket propulsion system."

What was the background of the CIA analyst that provided the "technical" fiction to support White House policy? Well, he was a civil engineer by training....excellent qualifications for waste water treatment plant analysis but nuclear science and engineering or bioengineering? Anyway, because he was the senior analyst [thanks to influence from without], he was able to ignore the credible criticism of a finding of WMDs.

BTW to Machivelli, being dumb or wrong is much worse than being dishonest. So if you are not a bible thumper, are you Machivellian?

jay

Yes, the Repubicans are beginning to unwind. Opinion polls are dropping. Only those who are senior citizens remember the hate filled capital city during the last Republican occupation in the early 1950's Now that the Republicans have gained complete control, a first since the early 1959's, we see that they have not changed one damn bit. After all the pain and suffering the American public will endure in the next three years, it may be another 50 years before another group of people vote in a total Republican government.

Democrats want properity and freedom for all. Republicans want prosperity and freedom for just Republicans. That pretty much sums up the difference between the two politcal parties.