State of the Union

And if we were given the facts in the first place by the administration, our conclusions would be more complete. The thing that has worried me from day one of George's invasion of Iraq is that he IS doing the best thing for this country. We just don't know what the real reason is.

 

Right dude. Whatever. You asked and I gave you an axample. Then you whine about it and say that I'm spiining opinion into fact. A complete load of bullshit. And yes, the Germans weren't convinced. They were in Afghanistan and guess what, they committed troops.

And public perception is HUGE. No, it shouldn't and obviously doesn't affect our foreign policy.

Without interpretation and analysis FACTs are completely worthless, Squid. Case in point:

FACT: Japan released all Chinese POWs at the end of WW2.

To that my response is: Yes, they released all 56 of them.

You obviously have a bias when arguing with your precisous, bloody facts so drop the holier than thou attitude. It's very tedious.

Where in this thread have I not been balanced? I pointed out Afghanistan as being a situation where convincing arguments were made. At no point did the Iraq situation generate that level of conscensus. "Old Europe" disagreed with us. "New Europe" has been more cooperative. There was much more division and bickering over the Iraq issue. That's what I pointed out. Don't cry about it because you didn't get the answer that you wanted.

:angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry:

 

Its funny how many of today's lead attackers also were quoted at one-time or another about Iraq having wmd's. Clinton, gore, kerry, the list goes on and on, all of whom using the best available intelligence, decided it was very likely that Saddam had wmd's at his disposal.

I support Bush as our president but as I stated earlier am not fond of many of his policies, but to try and hang him out to dry for acting on intelligence that at one point in time was widely agreed upon, that is not right.

 

Probably a factor in the Chinese decision to not rush in to buy toyota's.

Maybe the prisoners just got lost.

Some of you continue to go on and on about 'brutality' at abu garib? Prisoners were humilited in some relativley 'isolated' incidents, doesn't look like quite such a big deal in light of tripps earlier statement.

 

I think you don't understand the argument about Bush's intelligence about Iraq. It doesn't matter what intelligence was widely agreed upon at the time... the accusation is of cherry picking of WMD information inside the administration and sweeping under the rug information that denied WMD... they'd already decided to go to war either subconsciously or consciously, according to that argument.

The President, being at the top of the executive branch, has access to much more information than the Senate or the House. Moreover, the administration is very much responsible for how it postured this information.

I agree it's somewhat pointless to talk about this as it won't change a thing one way or another... and that we should focus on the present and the future, but the whole intelligence debacle has contributed to a souring of the Bush administration's reputation in my mind... they are far to secretive about how they make these decisions, and i'd be less likely to trust them from this point forward.

 

Excluding attempting to fix the problem within the Gov itself, this is what I propose for average Joe's, people like all of us here:

Off the top of my head...

Create a centralized forum that consists of nothing but agreed upon credible data sources.
Drop prejudices and political correctness.
Assemble theories arguments, etc, and put them to a vote, if necessary.
Translate this concept into voting power....

Of course, I am well aware that's easier said then done, but it's a start...

 

Most of them got lost alright. They lost their heads or were the victims of "medical" research.

There's no question that what's going on in Iraq is benign compared to other events in history. No question. However, that doesn't make them right either.

But now we digress. Oh wait, we did that a long time ago.

 

Great idea, but i think this may be our first point of contention.

 

Bah. This is another example of you trying to place some kind of value on our outrage.

You know what your statement looks like malorn? It looks like you're saying "we shouldn't make a fuss about any torture going on until it exceeds the gruesomeness and evil of all torture in history."

THAT is bullshit... i'm sorry. We have the right to be outraged about things like abu graib because it is against the idea that this nation and its people have made huge strides in tolerance... just because it's smaller than all of the suffering in human history doesn't justify you trying to minimize it.

This would be the same as you saying "number of soldiers killed in Iraq shouldn't be even acknowledged because MILLIONS died in WWII."

Times change, my friend... and you must keep it all in context... the times!

 

How many Chinese POW's were 'tested', etc by the imperial army?

 

"Clinton, gore, kerry, the list goes on and on,"

Yeah, but how many of THEM went to war, caused thousands of American soldiers to die, killed tens of thousands of Iraqis, and spend hundreds of billions of dollars based on this information?

(insert sound of crickets)

What a wimp of a President to blame "bad intelligence" on others. HE made the decision. HE is Commander in Chief. HE doesn't get to blame others for HIS mistakes. Instead he whines to mommy that he got bad information. How embarassing. Is that why he dresses up and poses on aircraft carriers, to compensate?

 

I disagree with your initial position about Iraq, but I do respect it none-the-less. You have outlined solid positions and ideas besides, 'Bush is a liar' and 'Bush is an idiot' so all of the administrations policies must be wrong.

 

Don't have the numbers in front of me. I can tell you that probably hundreds of thousands if not millions were beheaded.

Probably a couple of times more than the 250,000 Phillipinos we killed from 1898 - 1902 after we liberated the phillipines from the brutality of their spanish overlords.

 

I agree with you, bush was the only one of that group with the intestinal fortitude to do what he believes was the right thing. No polls, no focus groups, just a tough decision. Bugs you doesn't it.

 

While you see intestinal fortitude or "balls".... I see recklessness and hubris.

 

Actually, the polls were in his favor.

 

I did mention within another post that you, in fact, did answer the question, but interjected your own "caveat", as I called it.

Look at this statement you made:

It's clearly geared towards the concept of more non-support than either France or Germany. C'mon tripp, that's a statement PRAVDA would make so you could see it in the right light...

 

i guess we see the world through glasses of a different shade and that is ok. YOu are civil about it and have good arguements. Maggieddd on the other hand....