Bush speech.
twoply
Only Built 4 Manzanita Links 2,915 Posts
He acknowledged racism exists. That's nice, but like nearly everything else he said, it's already common knowledge. He also went out of his way to point out that small busniess loans made available by a proposed bill would also apply to minority owned enterprises. Thanks, we thought you might have tacked on a paragraph excluding them.
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that speech combined with the hummer commercial that used diplo made me not want to watch tv anymore for a while...
Did anyone else read Mark Danner's "Taking Stock of the Forever War" from this past Sunday NYTimes?
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/11/magazine/11OSAMA.html
Just think, now he gets to experience Vietnam, which he missed the first time around...
Speaking of Iraq, did anyone notice that 100+ Iraqi civilians lost their life on Wednesday in Baghdad?? It seems like Iraq is becoming the new Afghanistan. When I saw Bush was about to make a speech, I turned off the idiot box. Personally, I'm tired of what he has to say. It's time for some positive results from this clown. Under his tenure, America has dealt with 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Hurricane Katrina. Thousands of lives were lost and this jerk got re-elected..?
brainwashing to the max.
Things aren't so hot in Afghanistan right now either...
September 16, 2005
Voting May Be Life-and-Death Choice for Afghans
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
QALAT, Afghanistan, Sept. 14 - Who's afraid of democracy in Afghanistan?
In the southern city of Kandahar one morning last week, a candidate for Parliament opened her front gate to find one of her campaign posters scribbled with terrifying threats. "Your children salute me every morning," said one. "Soon, I will salute them back."
Here in the capital of neighboring Zabul Province, suspected Taliban fighters offered the driver for another parliamentary candidate a huge sum of money in exchange for delivering the candidate to them. The candidate said she no longer dared to campaign outside the provincial capital.
And in Shajoy, a market town two hours up the road, some men wondered aloud how many townspeople would have the courage to travel a couple of miles through Taliban redoubts to cast their votes in Sunday's election. Never mind the women; the men said they did not expect any polling places to be open for women anyway.
Nearly four years after the Taliban government was routed from Afghanistan by American-led forces, a newly emboldened insurgency has stepped up a campaign of threats and thuggery on the eve of the country's parliamentary and provincial elections, particularly here in the badlands of the country's south. Elsewhere, the presence of former warlords on the ballot has led to charges of voter intimidation.
But what is just as remarkable is the degree to which so many ordinary Afghans seem unfazed by the threats and violence, and, on occasion, are openly defiant.
Whether Afghan men and women will be able to cast their votes freely and fairly in Sunday's election remains to be tested. For now, even candidates who have been threatened have vowed to stay in the race, even as they have had to limit their campaign activities sharply.
"The day I registered as a candidate I knew about these problems," said Rona Tarin, 34, the Kandahar candidate whose campaign poster was defiled and left in front of her home.
With 68 seats reserved for women in the new 249-member Parliament, Ms. Tarin, a preschool supervisor, is one of nine candidates competing for three seats reserved for women from Kandahar Province.
"How long should I sit at home?" she said, fuming. "How long should I close my eyes? How long should I shut my ears? I have to take my people's problems to Parliament."
The price of running for office in this part of the country can be perilous. Since early June, six candidates and five election workers have been killed, most of them in the south. Last week, security forces turned up two dozen cooking pots filled with explosives behind a Kandahar school designated to serve as a polling place.
Taliban leaflets known as "night letters," left at markets and mosques in several southern provinces, have issued warnings against anyone who participates in elections.
In Khost, to the east, a bomb went off inside a mosque being used for voter registration. In the eastern city of Jalalabad, the convoy of a parliamentary candidate, Safia Sadiqi, was fired on, injuring two campaign workers.
In Helmand, to the west, gunmen ranged across villages threatening to kill anyone who dared go to the polls. Officials with the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission said they suspected local officials, rather than insurgents, were responsible.
[On Thursday, officials with the rights group said they had also received reports of candidates and local officials preventing other candidates from campaigning freely.]
In parts of central and northern Afghanistan, the reason for fear is less because of the Taliban than the powerful former mujahedeen commanders, who supposedly have been disarmed and removed from public office, but who continue to wield considerable influence in their territory, especially in the countryside.
"People are afraid that those commanders and those who governed by force of weapons, will again win seats and return to power," said Abdul Azim Azimi, a local election observer in the northern town of Mazar-i-Sharif.
About 200 people with links to militias are running for office, and election observers have accused some of intimidating voters or preventing rival candidates from campaigning. To date, 47 candidates have been disqualified by the elections commission, mostly for links to armed groups.
"How much legitimacy will the new Parliament have?" said Sam Zarifi of Human Rights Watch, which released a report this week documenting election-related intimidation. "Having warlords isn't about their past abuses. It's about their inability to move the country forward."
It is unclear whether international monitors will be able to monitor rural polls, particularly in the south, on election day.
Voter turnout Sunday will signal not only the nerve of Afghan voters, but also their confidence in the still fragile government of President Hamid Karzai and his American backers. Since presidential elections last fall, life in the south increasingly has become precarious and the exercise of politics clouded by growing insecurity, voters and candidates in Zabul and Kandahar Provinces said in interviews this week.
"Slowly, slowly, morale is going down," said Talatbek Masadykov, the chief of the southern region for the United Nations Mission in Afghanistan, based in Kandahar. One reason, he said, is, "the security is not improving," adding, "the central and provincial government cannot deliver assistance to people in very remote areas."
In Shajoy, Muhammad Aziz, a shopkeeper, predicted that only men who live in the town would vote. His relatives two miles away would be unlikely to try to travel into town unless security improved.
Abdul Zahir, a farmer, said that during last year's presidential elections, the men of his village, a couple of miles away, had come to Shajoy to vote, but those farther out of town did not. "This time," he said, "God only knows."
As part of their efforts to reinforce security in the days leading up to elections, an American Army convoy pulled in to Shajoy one morning this week to donate wheat seeds to the local government and hand out radios and clothes to the children.
But to Mr. Zahir, the additional patrols, by American and Afghan soldiers alike, made little difference. "In the daytime, this government is coming to us, and in the nighttime the Taliban are coming to us," he said. "We're stuck in the middle."
Police and election officials, eager to deflect criticism about security, noted that despite intimidation, 1.6 million additional Afghans had registered to vote since the presidential election, bringing the total to 12.6 million. About 5,800 candidates had signed up to run for seats in Parl iament and provincial assemblies, and 44 percent of the new registered voters this year are women.
"The people of Afghanistan have brave hearts," said Mullah Gul, a police commander in Kandahar whose men found the body of the last candidate killed in the campaign. "They don't care about death."
Officials with the United Nations-assisted Joint Electoral Management Body Secretariat, which is running Sunday's election, also took pains to note that there was no proof that the six candidates were killed because they were running for office.
Violence may not necessarily subside after the election. For one thing, under Afghan election law, in the event of the winner's death, the runner-up takes office, which some fear could heighten the likelihood of political assassinations.
In these elections, the stakes for women are particularly high. In a society where women customarily cover themselves from head to toe, several women have boldly displayed their faces on campaign placards. But tradition and terror have also sharply curtailed their campaigns.
Torpakai, a public health worker in Qalat running to represent Zabul Province in Parliament, said she feared that there would be no outsiders to monitor the polling places and that the election would be unfair. She said she had not been so hopeless during last year's presidential election or during the earlier constitutional assembly, in which she participated. "Not just me, all the people were optimistic about democracy, optimistic about security," she said.
One of her rivals, Zarmina Pathan, 38, said she did not expect many women in the countryside to vote. She said she approached Sunday's elections with an odd mix of gloom and determination.
"Every time they threaten me, it dashes my hopes," she said. "But I'm running for Parliament. I can't just run away from the elections."
Ruhullah Khapalwak contributed reporting from Kandahar for this article and Carlotta Gall from Mazar-i-Sharif.
And by the time the Dems get themselves back into power in the US, shit will be SO bad that everyone will blame them for it all.
All you need is spin, if you are a Republican.
"So, what did you think about the speech, do you believe him?"
"I thought it was a good speech and I believe New Orleans will be rebuilt."
"So, you actually believe that you will be able to return to your home?"
"Yes, I have faith that I will be able to go back home, it's all I know."
I felt sorry for the reporter, cause he was digging for anything controversial or even remotely skeptical coming from the people and they weren't giving him anything!
Here's what their reactions told me:
"President Bush said and made more promises than even we expected him to and we will accept the offer - but we will be in your ass about it, so don't fuck up. We're gonna be right here, watching your every step."
Power vacuum theory:
If Iraq and Afganistan slip out of control, Iran gets involved, and something silly happens in Syria, then it's looking a lot like an Islamic fundamentalist super-state stretching from China to the Med. Then Bush could say we have always been at war with Arabasia or wherever. Then it's tactical nuke time.
A terrible hurricane? I'll create a bureau of, let's say, hurricane response!
War getting you down? I'm sure there's a band-aid we can throw at the problem.
Poverty? Well we'll just nip that in the bud!
Racism? There's gotta be a fix for that... uh... how are my ratings?
Well, honestly - what other choice do many evacuees have than to have faith that the Federal Government will come thru on a promise - no matter how lofty. At this point, the thounds of people in this most unfortunate circumstance have no power at this point.
Did anybody else get the sense that Ol' Boy Georgie bit off more than he can chew last night?
Sure, but will he have to deal with any repercussions? Naw...
Wednesday Sept 14, 2005
(AP) At least 160 people were killed and 570 wounded in more than a dozen highly
coordinated bombings -- the capital's bloodiest day since the end of major combat.
Friday Sept 16 2005
(AP) Insurgents believed to be allied to Abu Musab Zarqawi's group of Al Qaeda in
Iraq kept up bombings in the capital yesterday, launching strikes that brought the
two-day death toll here to more than 190.
Tonight's lead?
Last night I saw CNN show extended footage of four or five guardsmen saving a skinny
dog in NO.
hey dogs are people too.
I think the point is that the dog wasn't 190 people.
Are they letting him wite his own speeches now? mourn those who mourn? so in other words we're all mourning? just say it then.
!!!