I dont know, dude almost flunked out of college and didnt get into law school, I have a hard time thinking he is brilliant. Unless of course being a poor student, a idiot frat boy and a failure at busniess was all part of the plan he concieved when he was 18..then fuck we are in trouble
Hey, Truman was a failed haberdasher back in MO - as for Bush, no need to excel really right if your trust fund is guaranteed - what's the point in tryin' if the safety net is all encompassing... So instead of givin' his all, it's all half-assed at best 'cause utter failure isn't in the cards... As for the present...
Its very easy to bash Bush... he is VERY[/b] bright, he makes statements and has enacted policies that if enacted by any Democrat or outside party would have gotten them most likely impeached.
I don't think that thick down home/good ole boy persona of his 100 % genuine - it's easier for your enemies (real + perceived) to show their true colors if you act dumb - pretty sure someone schooled him in Tzu's 'Art of War'...
I dont know, dude almost flunked out of college and didnt get into law school, I have a hard time thinking he is brilliant. Unless of course being a poor student, a idiot frat boy and a failure at busniess was all part of the plan he concieved when he was 18..then fuck we are in trouble
could be... but then its also alot easier to run things behind the scenes when you have a slightly dimwitted,or not so bright front man that does what you tell him... I mean the Republicans are kings of impelmenting puppet regimes elsewhere right? How hard could it be for them to do the same thing here?
Yes but we never propped up Mugabe, indeed he is in power because his insurgency against the last vestiges of colonialism succeeded. And as for Mubarak, we never implored the Egyptian people to rise up against him only to allow him to use his helicopters in a counterattack as we sat on our hands; and Mubarak never invaded two of his neighbors, used chemical weapons, defied 14 un security council resolutions; ethncially cleansed his people; instituted rape and mutilation as legal penalties for petty crimes; or deliberately starved his people while syphoning oil wealth for more palaces. So it's not quite the same.
Check out the numbers of jailed dissidents in Egypt - 'democracy' isn't part of the vocabulary yet his government is pretty much propped up right now... He's in power as a satellite governor in the region... That's it... As for Mugabe, if you're gonna get into territory w/ American fingerprints - Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Nicaragua, and El Salvador are all good places to start in plowin' $$$ in w/o any conditional restrictions - say the U.S. urges the WTO to admit Vietnam come next year w/o fail... And some of those arm sales to Zimbabwe have American companies on their packaging and invoices...
My reason as I've stated numerous times here is because we owed it to the people of Iraq to topple the man we put in place to torment them.
The clinical diagnosis for this foreign policy idea is nothing short of schizophrenia.
What say do the people of Iraq really have in this process? They have been completely manipulated and fucked with. Is there any wonder they don't trust us?
Does anybody else remember Saddam firing S.T.A.'s at US plans enforcing the no-fly zone all through out the 90's? The dude should have been toppled for these incidents alone.
Its very easy to bash Bush... he is VERY[/b] bright, he makes statements and has enacted policies that if enacted by any Democrat or outside party would have gotten them most likely impeached.
I don't think that thick down home/good ole boy persona of his 100 % genuine
Oh, the persona is total bullshit--it's a put-on to make people think, "Aw shucks, he's just a regular ol' guy like me." And obviously it has worked--people buy the image hook, line, and sinker. Remember the election polarization? Bush = average American joe lunchbox down-home kinda guy; Kerry = rich, ivory tower-dwelling, cultural elite snob. Also remember that politics is Hollywood for ugly people.
The truth, of course, is that Bush is about as blue-blooded as one can possibly be in America. He comes from old, old, old[/b] Greenwich, Connecticut money, and the Bushes are one of the last American aristocratic families. He's certainly not the swiftest in the mental Olympics (though he is surrounded by some very smart people), but the spin is, "He's not dim, he's just an everyday dude!" Because everyday dudes have more money than they can dream of, right?
But if you must know, a large reason why I voted for Bush is because I couldn't get down with any party that shirked America's responsibility for propping up the pornographically evil Saddam and then blame it on a group of policy intellectuals. That's where the Dems went in 2004 and it's where they still are, in large part because they are pandering to the likes of 16corners.
Why not blame the policy intellectuals? Someone should be held accountable.
I REPEAT: WE WERE NEVER ATTACKED BY IRAQ. VITAMIN YOU NEVER ACKNOWLEDGE THIS GLARING FACT.
1) The reasons for the war were overdetermined. My reason as I've stated numerous times here is because we owed it to the people of Iraq to topple the man we put in place to torment them.
2) Neocons were among many intellectual tribes in Washington persuaded that Saddam had WMD. Read Ken Pollack's Book the Threatening Storm. He was a Clinton NSC official. Or check Sandy Berger's speech at the end of the administration saying eventually we would have to use force to contain the sanctions regime.
3) Saddam went out of his way NOT to comply with the UN Security Council for his final opportunity. A fact proven by Hans Blix's last report to the UN before the war which stated there were 12 remaining disamrment tasks.
4) Leaders of both parties (which have access to intelligence well beyond the project for a new american century) voted to authorize force and appropriate funds for the war.
5) No one should be held accountable as you say until we lose. And we have not lost yet. But we most certainly will lose if the anti-war side gets its way and we abandon a representative government in Baghdad to the alliance of al-Qaeda and Baathism.
Wha???
overdetermined[/b] Wha???
intellectual tribes [/b] Whaaaaa???
A fact proven by Hans Blix's last report to the UN [/b] NOTE: Interesting, duplicitious "use" of Hans Blix from the kind of Neo-con that shit all over him in the past...
Leaders of both parties (which have access to intelligence well beyond the project for a new american century) voted to authorize force and appropriate funds for the war.[/b] Translated into English: A bunch of crazed Hawks, abetted by a bunch of frightened beaurocrats who were unable/unwilling to risk their political lives in the jaws of an administration that had the country scared shitless, know more than we do. However, unwilling to share this info they chose instead to fabricate evidence and lie.
No one should be held accountable as you say until we lose. And we have not lost yet.[/b] Unless of course you count human lives, arms, legs etc as losses...
1) When nations enter into cease fire agreements with other nations, it is incumbant upon the nation disarming to prove it has disarmed. Thus confidence building measures are built into these agreements so that the rest of the world can be assured that the offending country had indeed disarmed. Saddam's Iraq flaunted those confidence building measures.
2) Overdetermined means there are numerous reasons to go war.
3) I muster evidence that leaders of both parties and the CIA believed the point in question. Do you refute it.
L*rry, you are going to end up being nothing but frustrated if you carry this discussion on. Just know that there are many people that agree with you, and just cause you can't get this one guy to see your side doesn't mean you need to break your back to make it happen.
I suggest getting pizza, enjoying summer, kissing your wife and playing with your kids over trying to get a dude who won't see past his own short-sighted views to try to listen
L*rry, you are going to end up being nothing but frustrated if you carry this discussion on. Just know that there are many people that agree with you, and just cause you can't get this one guy to see your side doesn't mean you need to break your back to make it happen.
I suggest getting pizza, enjoying summer, kissing your wife and playing with your kids over trying to get a dude who won't see past his own short-sighted views to try to listen
You all have been trotting out the same tired nonsense about the war for two years and have (with the exception of motown) brought up no new facts to muster your point. In the process you have argued through invective against me. You and your cothinkers are arguing that the demonstrable dismantling of a former American client is a massive neocon hoodwinking. You sound like the Lindbergh conspiracists.
L*rry, you are going to end up being nothing but frustrated if you carry this discussion on. Just know that there are many people that agree with you, and just cause you can't get this one guy to see your side doesn't mean you need to break your back to make it happen.
I suggest getting pizza, enjoying summer, kissing your wife and playing with your kids over trying to get a dude who won't see past his own short-sighted views to try to listen
You all have been trotting out the same tired nonsense about the war for two years and have (with the exception of motown) brought up no new facts to muster your point. In the process you have argued through invective against me. You and your cothinkers are arguing that the demonstrable dismantling of a former American client is a massive neocon hoodwinking. You sound like the Lindbergh conspiracists.
You are a MONUMENTAL ASSHOLE who stands behind one of the most deceptive administrations this country has ever seen.
L*rry, you are going to end up being nothing but frustrated if you carry this discussion on. Just know that there are many people that agree with you, and just cause you can't get this one guy to see your side doesn't mean you need to break your back to make it happen.
I suggest getting pizza, enjoying summer, kissing your wife and playing with your kids over trying to get a dude who won't see past his own short-sighted views to try to listen
You all have been trotting out the same tired nonsense about the war for two years and have (with the exception of motown) brought up no new facts to muster your point. In the process you have argued through invective against me. You and your cothinkers are arguing that the demonstrable dismantling of a former American client is a massive neocon hoodwinking. You sound like the Lindbergh conspiracists.
Dude, it's like this: the Bush administration breezed through several justifications for war - the Al Qaeda connection was found false so they moved to WMDs, which were found false so they moved to human rights, which they've stuck with. This, to everyone on this board except for you, is evidence that they just wanted to go to war, but didn't care about the reason (see also: Downing Street memo). I realize that you're happy for the human rights "justification" but can't you see that it's just a label? They'd have moved on to another excuse if the human rights didn't stick with the public. So, yes, it is a hoodwinking.
1) When nations enter into cease fire agreements with other nations, it is incumbant upon the nation disarming to prove it has disarmed. Thus confidence building measures are built into these agreements so that the rest of the world can be assured that the offending country had indeed disarmed. Saddam's Iraq flaunted those confidence building measures.
It kind of goes against the spirit of a cease-fire agreement to pre-emptively invade a country, if you ask me. Personally, I was happy to keep sending in UN inspectors into Iraq so Saddam had to spend his time playing shellgames with his (supposed) WMDs instead of using them. If a stalemate was all we had with Iraq, so what? At least thousands of Iraqis & Americans would still be alive, and we wouldn't have a crippling (and mounting) war expenditure on our budget.
And I think you meant to say "flout." BUSH was the one *flaunting* those measures.
You and your cothinkers are arguing that the demonstrable dismantling of a former American client is a massive neocon hoodwinking. You sound like the Lindbergh conspiracists.
You also are a fool. Earlier you asked whether the Iraqis got a say in whether or not they wanted to live under Saddam. You can't possibly mean this. This is why it is hard for me to take you seriously. You gobble up the third rate propaganda of the antiwar movement and repeat it as if this counts as independent thinking. You also operate under the illusion that the coordinated murder of innocents in Iraq is somehow a popular expression of the will of the people there. It's Vietnam, isn't it Larry? You uneducable idiots. Your misplaced and misinformed outrage is not democracy in action. You are hindering its spread in the rest of the world with your willy nilly activism. Go make a puppet and protest third world development.
You and your cothinkers are arguing that the demonstrable dismantling of a former American client will protect America and its about human rights, not oil. You sound like Corporate PR Departments.
Had no idea you were around for this. Please tell us more about the 1930s, and why more of our nation's elderly don't frequent internet message boards.
Yeah, have to say that Funky16 is the most consistently insightful and witty in a non-jumping shark king of way.
Vitamin, you are a nobody. If you posted your pseudo-realpolitik over at freerepublic, you wouldn't get noticed amongst all the non-truths and reactionism on there. 2 x Ronnie and 3 x Bush and the lefties are STILL the ones giving "aid and comfort to the enemy"??? (aka treason I believe). Twat, your problem is illustrated below:
You also are a fool. Earlier you asked whether the Iraqis got a say in whether or not they wanted to live under Saddam. You can't possibly mean this. This is why it is hard for me to take you seriously. You gobble up the third rate propaganda of the antiwar movement and repeat it as if this counts as independent thinking. You also operate under the illusion that the coordinated murder of innocents in Iraq is somehow a popular expression of the will of the people there. It's Vietnam, isn't it Larry? You uneducable idiots. Your misplaced and misinformed outrage is not democracy in action. You are hindering its spread in the rest of the world with your willy nilly activism. Go make a puppet and protest third world development.
Hindering Democracy or Corporate exploitation? How come when the people of a country elect a socialist or non-democratic government, or any government that is not interested in positive relations with the US our Leaders feel the need to overthrow it? Sorry our track record over the last 100 years of meddling in areas of the world where our presence is not asked for, wanted, requested, and certainly not needed has proceeded this current situation, so expect me to be skeptical...
And I do believe this country was founded on people disagreeing with their government and its actions... So for us not to be critical of our government is probably the most un democratic action we could take.
your a patsy and easily satisfied with the most basic of answers... Try looking at the situation from a nonwhite non-upper-middle class American/or non-american and the situation may change... if you are able to do that.
You also are a fool. Earlier you asked whether the Iraqis got a say in whether or not they wanted to live under Saddam. You can't possibly mean this. This is why it is hard for me to take you seriously. You gobble up the third rate propaganda of the antiwar movement and repeat it as if this counts as independent thinking. You also operate under the illusion that the coordinated murder of innocents in Iraq is somehow a popular expression of the will of the people there. It's Vietnam, isn't it Larry? You uneducable idiots. Your misplaced and misinformed outrage is not democracy in action. You are hindering its spread in the rest of the world with your willy nilly activism. Go make a puppet and protest third world development.
FLIP-FLOP as they used to say in 2004...
>>> Proclamation 4908 -- Afghanistan Day March 10, 1982
By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation
Source: University of Texas
In December 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan without provocation and with overwhelming force. Since that time, the Soviet Union has sought through every available means, to assert its control over Afghanistan.
The Afghan people have defied the Soviet Union and have resisted with a vigor that has few parallels in modern history. The Afghan people have paid a terrible price in their fight for freedom. Their villages and homes have been destroyed; they have been murdered by bullets, bombs and chemical weapons. One-fifth of the Afghan people have been driven into exile. Yet their fight goes on. The international community, with the United States joining governments around the world, has condemned the invasion of Afghanistan as a violation of every standard of decency and international law and has called for a withdrawal of the Soviet troops from Afghanistan. Every country and every people has a stake in the Afghan resistance, for the freedom fighters of Afghanistan are defending principles of independence and freedom that form the basis of global security and stability.
It is therefore altogether fitting that the European Parliament, the Congress of the United States and parliaments elsewhere in the world have designated March 21, 1982, as Afghanistan Day, to commemorate the valor of the Afghan people and to condemn the continuing Soviet invasion of their country. Afghanistan Day will serve to recall not only these events, but also the principles involved when a people struggles for the freedom to determine its own future, the right to be free of foreign interference and the right to practice religion according to the dictates of conscience.
Now, Therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America, do hereby designate March 21, 1982, as Afghanistan Day.
In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this tenth day of March, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-two, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and sixth.
Ronald Reagan
[Filed with the Office of the Federal Register, 3:54 p.m., March 10, 1982]
Comments
Hey, Truman was a failed haberdasher back in MO - as for Bush, no need to excel really right if your trust fund is guaranteed - what's the point in tryin' if the safety net is all encompassing... So instead of givin' his all, it's all half-assed at best 'cause utter failure isn't in the cards... As for the present...
Noting the negative correlation between hawkish rhetoric and actual time spent in military combat.
could be... but then its also alot easier to run things behind the scenes when you have a slightly dimwitted,or not so bright front man that does what you tell him... I mean the Republicans are kings of impelmenting puppet regimes elsewhere right? How hard could it be for them to do the same thing here?
Check out the numbers of jailed dissidents in Egypt - 'democracy' isn't part of the vocabulary yet his government is pretty much propped up right now... He's in power as a satellite governor in the region... That's it... As for Mugabe, if you're gonna get into territory w/ American fingerprints - Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Nicaragua, and El Salvador are all good places to start in plowin' $$$ in w/o any conditional restrictions - say the U.S. urges the WTO to admit Vietnam come next year w/o fail... And some of those arm sales to Zimbabwe have American companies on their packaging and invoices...
The clinical diagnosis for this foreign policy idea is nothing short of schizophrenia.
What say do the people of Iraq really have in this process? They have been completely manipulated and fucked with. Is there any wonder they don't trust us?
Does anybody else remember Saddam firing S.T.A.'s at US plans enforcing the no-fly zone all through out the 90's? The dude should have been toppled for these incidents alone.
Very disturbing.
Oh, the persona is total bullshit--it's a put-on to make people think, "Aw shucks, he's just a regular ol' guy like me." And obviously it has worked--people buy the image hook, line, and sinker. Remember the election polarization? Bush = average American joe lunchbox down-home kinda guy; Kerry = rich, ivory tower-dwelling, cultural elite snob. Also remember that politics is Hollywood for ugly people.
The truth, of course, is that Bush is about as blue-blooded as one can possibly be in America. He comes from old, old, old[/b] Greenwich, Connecticut money, and the Bushes are one of the last American aristocratic families. He's certainly not the swiftest in the mental Olympics (though he is surrounded by some very smart people), but the spin is, "He's not dim, he's just an everyday dude!" Because everyday dudes have more money than they can dream of, right?
Wha???
overdetermined[/b] Wha???
intellectual tribes [/b] Whaaaaa???
A fact proven by Hans Blix's last report to the UN [/b] NOTE: Interesting, duplicitious "use" of Hans Blix from the kind of Neo-con that shit all over him in the past...
Leaders of both parties (which have access to intelligence well beyond the project for a new american century) voted to authorize force and appropriate funds for the war.[/b] Translated into English: A bunch of crazed Hawks, abetted by a bunch of frightened beaurocrats who were unable/unwilling to risk their political lives in the jaws of an administration that had the country scared shitless, know more than we do. However, unwilling to share this info they chose instead to fabricate evidence and lie.
No one should be held accountable as you say until we lose. And we have not lost yet.[/b] Unless of course you count human lives, arms, legs etc as losses...
Corners,
1) When nations enter into cease fire agreements with other nations, it is incumbant upon the nation disarming to prove it has disarmed. Thus confidence building measures are built into these agreements so that the rest of the world can be assured that the offending country had indeed disarmed. Saddam's Iraq flaunted those confidence building measures.
2) Overdetermined means there are numerous reasons to go war.
3) I muster evidence that leaders of both parties and the CIA believed the point in question. Do you refute it.
It's tough when you don't know what you're talking about.
You oughta know there Sparky...
I suggest getting pizza, enjoying summer, kissing your wife and playing with your kids over trying to get a dude who won't see past his own short-sighted views to try to listen
You all have been trotting out the same tired nonsense about the war for two years and have (with the exception of motown) brought up no new facts to muster your point. In the process you have argued through invective against me. You and your cothinkers are arguing that the demonstrable dismantling of a former American client is a massive neocon hoodwinking. You sound like the Lindbergh conspiracists.
You are a MONUMENTAL ASSHOLE who stands behind one of the most deceptive administrations this country has ever seen.
Dude, it's like this: the Bush administration breezed through several justifications for war - the Al Qaeda connection was found false so they moved to WMDs, which were found false so they moved to human rights, which they've stuck with. This, to everyone on this board except for you, is evidence that they just wanted to go to war, but didn't care about the reason (see also: Downing Street memo). I realize that you're happy for the human rights "justification" but can't you see that it's just a label? They'd have moved on to another excuse if the human rights didn't stick with the public. So, yes, it is a hoodwinking.
It kind of goes against the spirit of a cease-fire agreement to pre-emptively invade a country, if you ask me. Personally, I was happy to keep sending in UN inspectors into Iraq so Saddam had to spend his time playing shellgames with his (supposed) WMDs instead of using them. If a stalemate was all we had with Iraq, so what? At least thousands of Iraqis & Americans would still be alive, and we wouldn't have a crippling (and mounting) war expenditure on our budget.
And I think you meant to say "flout." BUSH was the one *flaunting* those measures.
And you sound like this guy
don't act like you think all by yourself
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You and your cothinkers are arguing that the demonstrable dismantling of a former American client will protect America and its about human rights, not oil. You sound like Corporate PR Departments.
Had no idea you were around for this. Please tell us more about the 1930s, and why more of our nation's elderly don't frequent internet message boards.
Vitamin, you are a nobody. If you posted your pseudo-realpolitik over at freerepublic, you wouldn't get noticed amongst all the non-truths and reactionism on there. 2 x Ronnie and 3 x Bush and the lefties are STILL the ones giving "aid and comfort to the enemy"??? (aka treason I believe). Twat, your problem is illustrated below:
Hindering Democracy or Corporate exploitation? How come when the people of a country elect a socialist or non-democratic government, or any government that is not interested in positive relations with the US our Leaders feel the need to overthrow it? Sorry our track record over the last 100 years of meddling in areas of the world where our presence is not asked for, wanted, requested, and certainly not needed has proceeded this current situation, so expect me to be skeptical...
And I do believe this country was founded on people disagreeing with their government and its actions... So for us not to be critical of our government is probably the most un democratic action we could take.
your a patsy and easily satisfied with the most basic of answers... Try looking at the situation from a nonwhite non-upper-middle class American/or non-american and the situation may change... if you are able to do that.
FLIP-FLOP as they used to say in 2004...
>>>
Proclamation 4908 -- Afghanistan Day
March 10, 1982
By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation
Source: University of Texas
In December 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan without provocation and with overwhelming force. Since that time, the Soviet Union has sought through every available means, to assert its control over Afghanistan.
The Afghan people have defied the Soviet Union and have resisted with a vigor that has few parallels in modern history. The Afghan people have paid a terrible price in their fight for freedom. Their villages and homes have been destroyed; they have been murdered by bullets, bombs and chemical weapons. One-fifth of the Afghan people have been driven into exile. Yet their fight goes on. The international community, with the United States joining governments around the world, has condemned the invasion of Afghanistan as a violation of every standard of decency and international law and has called for a withdrawal of the Soviet troops from Afghanistan. Every country and every people has a stake in the Afghan resistance, for the freedom fighters of Afghanistan are defending principles of independence and freedom that form the basis of global security and stability.
It is therefore altogether fitting that the European Parliament, the Congress of the United States and parliaments elsewhere in the world have designated March 21, 1982, as Afghanistan Day, to commemorate the valor of the Afghan people and to condemn the continuing Soviet invasion of their country. Afghanistan Day will serve to recall not only these events, but also the principles involved when a people struggles for the freedom to determine its own future, the right to be free of foreign interference and the right to practice religion according to the dictates of conscience.
Now, Therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America, do hereby designate March 21, 1982, as Afghanistan Day.
In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this tenth day of March, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-two, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and sixth.
Ronald Reagan
[Filed with the Office of the Federal Register, 3:54 p.m., March 10, 1982]