President George W. Bush

I've been kind of missing the good old fashioned "republicans are stupid and evil" line of intelligent reasoning that level-headed citizens like Chris, Mary Jo, et al. used to grace us with, but I see her/their/its spirit lives on. Not quite the same level of spunk, but humorous nonetheless.

 

Wow. We've got a constitutional scholar on our hands, ladies and gentlemen! Thanks for enlightening me about...what did you call them..."checks and balances?" Thanks. I had never heard of those ().

I find it interesting that you chose to attack my (admittedly exaggerated) statement rather than defend what GWB would do if he had the power to change the constitution on his own. Maybe a constitutional amendment won't be necessary, after all, though. With a Republican President, a solidly Republican Congress, and a Supreme Court that looks to get even more conservative over the next four years, GWB could probably introduce discriminatory legislation, get it passed, and then have it blessed by the Supremes.

What would you think of that??? Do you endorse GWB's efforts to codify discrimination into our constitution?

 

The democrats would have been blown out if not for the voters in the big cities...New York, Philadelphia, DC, San Francisco, Denver, Atlanta, Chicago, LA. It's their own fault they can't appeal to the other 95% of the country that can't identify with big city issues. That's what Mayors are for, not Presidents.

 

For starters, had enough basic decency to keep his pants on while on the phone ordering troops into battle; freed millions of people from oppression (I thought the idea of liberty was kind of our thing); decided to seek out and destroy terrorists before they kill us; never bowed to the pressures of a bunch of corrupt foreign governments (I'm thinking oil-for-food scam here) who have no interest whatsoever in their own people's security, let alone ours, etc.


Oh, and just a guess, but I think he has enough of a basic understanding of what America's devotion to freedom means so that he would likely never send government thugs to raid the home of an innocent family at gunpoint (on Easter weekend) to kidnap a 6-year old boy and send him back to the communist prison he had just miraculously escaped from. (I'll take John Ashcroft over Janet Reno any day).

But that's just a short list.

 

"Attack"? I called you on what you describe as an "(admittedly exaggerated) statement" and you interpret that as an attack. Wow, you must have a very thin skin.

As far as your other questions - it will be an interesting four years, though not as bleak as you seem to paint. Republicans have a majority in the Senate, but not the super majority required confirm Justices. I expect a long drawn-out process as the Democrats exert their influence.

I don't see how my personal views on gay marriage matter to this discussion - I'll just say that the issue had very little influence on how I voted.

 

By the way, did Lockhart's extreme optimism late last night remind anyone of the Iraqi information minister when Baghdad was being overrun?

 

Good observation. But my favorite "whistling past the graveyard" moment had to be Susan Estrich trying to explain the accuracy of the exit polls. That was downright entertaining.

 

For once, I agree with my wife !!



Neil Z.
Resident since 1999

 

Gammonbabe - I agree with you. Well said.

Denise

 

Hmmm, ok, here we go. Kept his pants on, but attacked a country to defend his Daddys name, because GHB didn't finish the job. Freed millions of people from oppression, hmmm, I thought we went to Iraq because there were WOMD, and a link to Al Queda, oh I guess it was to free people from oppression. Seek out and destroy terrorists?? Where's Osama? The terrorists are now flooding into Iraq and killing US soldiers everyday, if we weren't there, they couldn't kill us. And you shouldn't mention GWB and oil in the same breath, funny how the oil fields in Iraq were protected and the tons of weapons are gone, in the hands of the terrorists. I thought we were fighting terrorism there??

Maybe we should just invade Cuba and release them from their oppression too, what do you think? Still no reasons in my book to vote for him.

 

How was liberating Iraq from one of the most brutal dictators of the past 3 centuries not the right thing? This country (and a slect few allies with courage and integrity) have accepted the hard job of defeating the murderous thugs whose single purpose is to destroy the freedom that our nations enjoy and hold dear. Part and parcel of the campaign to eliminate those who practice terrorism is the destruction of the nation states that both harbor and materially support terrorists. The destruction of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the removal of Saddam Hussein and his regime from Iraq were vital to securing the future of the free world.

Exactly who did we kill for no reason? The Taliban, the Republican Guard, the Fedayeen, al-qaeda members, the terrorist thugs killing our soldiers who are trying to stabilize and rebuild Iraq.

Restore our status in the world? As what? The world hates us because we do not bow to the will of the UN. France hates us because we screwed up their sweetheart deals with Iraq for oil and arms. Germany opposed the invasion for the same reasons. Who else in the world is it that we need to "regain status" with? Last time I looked the UK, Israel, Italy, Poland, Russia, Turkey, Pakistan, India, Austrailia, Japan, Uzbekistan, and several other east european nations are with us in how we are prosecuting the war on terrorist and their host nations. I could care less that France, Germany, China, Syria, Egypt, et al. are unhappy with our policies. The President of the United States takes an oath to defend America first and foremost, that does no include taking an opinion poll to determine whether the world community supports our actions. I thank God that the American people understand that protecting the nation we have fought and sacrificed to build sometimes will result in us being unpopular in the halls of the UN or the capitals around the world and there is nothing wrong with that.

 

vweisenburg,

Well Said!

 

Can you seperate yourself from the Kerry talking points for one second? September 11th changed the way America has to respond to potential and realized threats to the security of America. President Bush gets criticized for not figuring out the plot to attack us and preventing it. Let's say that the CIA walked into the Oval office 30 days before 9/11 and told Bush that they were fairly certain that Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan were planning a large scale attack on the US in the near future. So Bush launches an invasion of Afghanistan to destroy the Taliban and capture/kill Osama and his thugs.
How would you have reacted to that? At that point the Taliban had never attacked us. Using your logic, the US can only respond when we have been attacked. Fast forward to today. You may be comfortable with the US waiting until there is 100% verifiable proof that a nation state/group is going to atttack us before we attack them. Unfortunatley, to get to the 100% threshhold the attaack will have to have already occured. As far as I am concerned, I would prefer my President to attack and destroy any person/group/country for which any portion of intelligence shows that they are a immediate or potential threat.

Your comments on the protection of the oil field vs. securing the weapons are baseless. Exaclty how many soldiers have you spoken to that confirm they were told to secure the oil fields and abandon the weapon depots? If you talked to the soldiers both in Iraq today as well as those who have rotated back, like I do, you would know just how ridiculous those accusations are and they are percieved by the troops as criticizing how they performed during and after the invasion.

By the way, if the BS about the 380 tons of explosives (MDX, HTX) being looted from the ammo dump was true, they would be useless to the terrorists who are attacking our troops. These explosives were stored in granular form and are useless unless combined with several other compounds. MDX and HTX are not like C5 (which is being used by the terrorists to build their bombs).

 

The US killed more than 100K in 18 months, however, it is disingeuous and disgusting to compare the death tolls of Saddam to the US. The vast majority of Saddam's victims (and they were well more than 300K of his own people he murdered and tortured, since that number does not reflect the innocent Kuwaitis, Iranians, Kurds, and Turks he killed in his various wars) were innocent civilians. Contrast that to the breakdown of casualties caused by the US since the first day of the invasion

Civlians - 17K (this number includes the terrorist thugs called "insurgents" that have been killed by the coalition forces as well as the Iraqis killed in attacks by insurgents)

Iraqi Soldiers - 45K to 140K (estimates vary)

Does it suck that even a few innocent civlilians are killed? Absolutely, but unfortunately this is a war. If you read your history books, we killed hundreds of thousands of innocent German citizens during the firebombing of Dresden toward the end of WWII. Today's military conducts operations designed to minimize the possibility of collateral damage and civilian casualties, usually at the cost of the lives of American soldiers.

 

vweisenburg, I take you think the invasion of Iraq has nothing to do with GHB. Exactly how was Saddam a threat to the US? I understand he was a brutal dictator to the people under him, just why was he suddenly a threat to our National security? Our intelligence told us he had WMD. Why not let the inspectors finish their jobs? Why the rush? Saddam wasn't going anywhere. We had control of the skies over Iraq at the time. I just think we're now in a bad position made by bad decisions made by a bad President. Your comment "attack and destroy any person/group/country for which any portion of intelligence shows that they are a immediate or potential threat." paints pretty broad strokes. I'm all for weeding out of terrorism where it grows. But taking over large countries with no exit strategy is going too far. Bush thought the Iraq people were going to welcome us with open arms and we'd just say, "your welcome" and leave. Guess it hasn't worked out that way. Why aren't we going after Osama with the same gusto?

US soldiers did not secure oil fields? I didn't accuse anyone of abandoning weapon depots. Are you saying there are not missing explosives? If so, what happened to them?

And I'm certainly not criticizing US soldiers. They're the best. They do what they're ordered to do and do it well. Orders come from the top.

 

Let the inspectors finish what jobs? The same ones he lied to over the past 10+ years? Yes I do not believe it had anything to do with Bush 41. There was no one prior to the invasion who believed that Iraq did not have WMD's and Saddam had not fufilled the commitments he agreed to in either the cease fire he signed after the first gulf war nor was he in compliance with the 13 previous UN resolutions. So given the intelligence we had at the time (which included British intelligence suggesting that Iraq was rebuilding their nuclear weapons program), just how long should we have waited? Until he had nukes like North Korea? America can no longer wait and err on the side of caution when it comes to adressing potential threats to our security.

Iraq is also part of a larger strategy to eliminate the roots of fanatical terrorism, the opressive regimes thoughtout the world. Free societies do not breed entire generations of hate. Establishing an example of democratic freedom in the middle east will help in the destabilization of the regimes in Iran, Syria, and others, allowing the moderate factions of those populations to grow and thrive.

The problems with the rebuilding and stabilization of Iraq post-combat have very little to do with the planning by the White House. What happened is that the military did not expect the Iraqi Army and especially the Republican Guard to disband and blend into the population almost immediately. It was assumed the march to Baghdad would take longer and we would kill many more of the Saddam loyalists before the end of major combat operations. Instead, they fled into the cities and unfortunately are now a large portion of the so called insurgency.

Yes, I do paint with a broad brush. I mean to. In my opinion, we need to finish the job in the mideast by invading Syria, destroying the nuclear capabilites of Iran and North Korea, helping Israel destroy Hezbollah, and pressuring Pakistan into allowing us to deploy sufficent troops in the nothern provinces where Osama is more than likely hiding.

According to the soldiers I have spoken too, we secured every possible ammo dump, museum, government building, port, and yes oil field (since Iraq's only exportable product is oil, ensuring that they could resume production as quickly as possible was key to the rebuilding process). I don't know if the explosives were destroyed, stolen, or moved before the war. What I do know is that we have destroyed over 400K tons of weapons since the start of the war, so if all the UN can find missing is 380 tons of explosives that are useless to terrorists I am not that concerned about it.

 

Clichés are especially prone to scrambling because they become meaningless through overuse. In this case an expression which originally meant “it would be impossible for me to care less than I do because I do not care at all” is rendered senseless by being transformed into the now-common “I could care less.” Think about it: if you could care less, that means you care some. The original already drips sarcasm, so it’s pointless to argue that the newer version is “ironic.” People who misuse this phrase are just being careless.

jaeris

 

Are you serious? What I meant to say was "I couldn't care less" as in "I don't give a rats A** what France, Germany, etc.. think". But hey thanks for the lesson in proper usage of cliches. I shudder to think about how many more times I would've carelessly used the language if you hadn't corrected me.

 

And who's sons and daughters are you going to be sending to do all this ?

Somehow I don't think every possible dump was secured, we have GI's being blown up daily by these secured weapons. And its not the UN saying that the 380 tons are missing, its the UN Atomic Regulatory Commission, the one is that charged with insuring that atomic weapons are not proliferating. Big difference between this explosive, which can be used to trigger nuclear weapons, and a 20 inch arty shell. Yes the RDX is in granular form, so was the 2 tons of aluminum nitrate that was used to blow up the Federal building in Oklahoma City. BTW ... its C4 that is the explosive, C-5 is an aircraft !!

Goverment buildings secured ?, the oil ministry maybe, while others were looted daily by Iraqis. Sure the soldiers you talked too did what they could, when they could, but they could only do so much with the amount of troops available, which was secure the Green Zone which was Saddam's govenment center, walled off from the rest of Baghdad.

When Gen Shinseki said to Congress that he thought it would take a few hundred thousand troops to occupy Iraq, he was publically dressed down by his civilian superiors. A heck of a good way to insure that you'll only get the answers you want to hear. And sure enough, they did.

There are alot of great GI's serving in Iraq, I know of one young man who's served two tours there already. In his first tour, he was in the original group of Marines who fought through Iraq. In his second, he was with the group that was supposed to head into Fallujah in April. His attitude is great, I'll go where I'm sent. However, that attitude is more that he wants to go to protect other Marines, than 'liberate' Iraqis. Based on what he told me, its as bad as it was in the late 60's in Vietnam. You have no idea who is friend or foe on the street.

We had 500,000+ troops in Vietnam at the height of the war, along with some South Vietnamese army. Many of the SVA officers and men collaborated with the NVA and VietCong. You never knew who was friend or foe.

Today it sounds much the same, except in this case, the country is much bigger, and we have less troops.

But things are getting better!!

I have no problem with us going into Iraq, however, I have alot of problems with the fact that no one in this administration admits to this day, they should have done things differently, and that they made mistakes in judgement.




Neil Z.
Resident since 1999

 

Neil Z.
Resident since 1999