Presidential Debate thread

[SirBruce]

The War on Terror is not just about AQ.  Democrats want to make it that, because that way they think they can just kill UBL and declare victory and bring all the troops home.  This demonstrates their fundamental inability to understand the nature of the terrorist threat the entire world faces.

Bruce

Oh please, don't tell me you actually buy into all this fear-mongering. Terrorism is nothing new. It's been going on since the dawn of time, just like crime, and is not a threat capable of growing very large. The only reason we have a hair up our collective butts about it right now is because one group of terrorists got lucky and were remarkably successful in their stunt (911).

Your point is flawed because you assume that because it is "nothing new", that our response therefor should be nothing new as well.  That's where you're wrong about the War on Terror.  The war is a strategic, proactive effort to combat these organized activities in an organized fashion.  9-11 provided the catalyst, but the war has a much broader scope than AQ.  I don't know why you call this "fear-mongering" as it has nothing at all to do with being afraid of it; it's about making a choice to proactively go after it.

Now in 2004 terrorism is just a buzz word being used by Bush as a personal strong-point to play to in his bid to retain power and continue to serve the corporate interests who support him as a politician.

When people like you talk about "global terror threat" you are perpetuating this diversion and contributing to the propaganda that diverts us away from the real issues, like putting America back in the hands of its people and moving forward to a global society that achieves great things rather than blowing each other up.
[/quote]

You sound like you support the Green Party.  Good for you; that way I won't have to worry about your vote influencing the election process.

Now, as to the flaw in your argument, one could see the situation as analogous to our response to Communism in the 1980s.  Communism had been around for decades, and the West had developed a policy of Detente with the USSR.  Third World countries were relegated to battlegrounds for the competing ideologies, sometimes overtly, often covertly.

Reagan implemented a new policy of confrontation with USSR, though not as dramatically as the War on Terror has been.  Many people claimed this was a diversion away from real problems in the world.  To some extent, they were right, as we neglected the growing threat of terrorism.  But confronting the USSR was still the right course of action; the alternative would be to continue the policies of MAD and Detente and come today millions would probably still be under the yoke of Communism.  (Of course, the other side now says that Communism would have died anyway.)  In any case, the new policy of the West led directly to the ending of the Cold War.

Anyway, my point here is not to debate Reagan's or Bush's policies per se.  But rather to draw the analogy between them; that they represent new policies for dealing with "old problems" and simply because the problems are old doesn't mean they don't deserve new solutions.  You can disagree with the solution, surely, but don't ignore the problem.  Bush wants to confront the issue of terror globally on many fronts; Kerry just wants to take out AQ without ruffling anyone else's feathers.

Bruce

[Margalis]

The US is not interested in fighting global terror. We are interested in fighting anti-US terror. That's the reality. (And I won't say that thats a bad thing either)

That is obvious. There are hundreds of examples that prove that point.

Only an idiot could honestly argue the US is actively attempting to fight all terror on a global scale.
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I will say terrorism is a rising threat in the world, because the world is changing. You can travel quicker, and get your hands on more destructive things and the knowledge to use them. People in the world are more mobile, more informed, and have more technology at their disposal.

200 years ago there was a pretty low limit on what sort of havok 19 people could wreak.

Edit: Bush is doing nothing about global terrorism. What did we do after the recent attacks in Russia? Or in Israel? (Or Palestine?) Or Spain? Oh, that's right, nothing.

And honestly, I don't think that's a terrible thing. The old cliche is true to some extent, about terrorists and freedom fighters. If you want to get involved in Russia vs. Chechnya knock yourself out, but it's not quite as simple as dead kids = bad guys...

And Bush has no interest in Darfur, which he acknowledges as genocide. I guess genocide isn't what it used to be...it seems to me that dead people are dead people, what term you give it is pretty irrelevant. If I call that terrorism instead of genocide can we invade next week? No...but the rainy season is ending, so we can send more aid! Yay, 50,000 dead people could use some bandaids desperately!

How about we send some people looking for Ugie Urbina's mom...oh wait, South America doesn't count as part of the globe. Or Africa. Or Russia. Or Spain. Or Ireland...I guess if you define "gloabl" as "US" it would be safe to say we are working hard to eliminate global terrorism.

The idea that we are interested in fighting global terrorism is just a convenient justification for the Iraq war.

[SirBruce]

The idea that we are interested in fighting global terrorism is just a convenient justification for the Iraq war.

To me you're making a distinction that has no practical difference for me in how I vote.

Let's be clear.  I support the ideal of fighting global terrorism.  To me, the things Bush has done in that war have all been good things to do, although not always properly executed.  I also believe it was right to take out Hussein, both on its own merits and as part of the anti-terror strategy.

If indeed your theory is correct, and Bush is simply doing these things motivated by other means in order to accomplish other ends, it does not matter to me.  Because I believe they are still accomplishing the things that are also part of my ideal.

The alternative is what... vote for Kerry?  And then he would do even LESS of the things I think need to be done.

I'm not saying motives don't matter... they do, and I disagree with your assessment of motives.  But even if your assessment of motives is correct, then I have to decide whether I want a guy who I think is doing the right things motivated for the wrong reasons, or the guy who I think is doing the wrong things motivated by other, perhaps better, reasons.

Bruce

[Alkiera]

But even if your assessment of motives is correct, then I have to decide whether I want a guy who I think is doing the right things motivated for the wrong reasons, or the guy who I think is doing the wrong things motivated by other, perhaps better, reasons.

I agree.  Whatever their motivations for doing things, if you add up 'things they've done/want to do that I like' and subtract 'things they've done/want to do that I dislike' for each candidate, the results strongly indicate that I should vote for one candidate over the other.  That candidate is not John Kerry.

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Alkiera

[Margalis]

What is it Alkeira (I don't care about Bruce honestly) that Bush has done or will do that you are in favor of? Serious question.

[Alkiera]

Seriously?

I am in favor of tax cuts.  On anyone, really.  I agree that taxcuts for those paying the most taxes frees up their money to invest in business, which helps the economy.  Tax cuts on the lower end, however, have little real effect, epsecially when the news will then report about how little real money they see from it.

In the same vein, I'm in favor of Tax Reform, which Bush seems to be looking at for his next term.

I'm in favor of the War, both in Afganistan and Iraq.  I am irritated by the way politics is negatively affecting our ability to fight it effectively, but I am in favor of it.  Yes, it turns Iraq into a magnet for terrorists...  But we have a standing military force there to deal with them.  If we attract the majority there, and kill them, there are less terrorists in the world.

Bush has given funding to stem cell research, but limited the supply of stem cells to those aleady being reproduced...  Not allowing more strains to be taken from aborted babies.

I'm against abortion as a surgery of convenience.  When the health of the mother is threatened is one thing, I disagree that the inconvenience of the mother should carry the same weight.  Contraception is cheap, and effective.  I personally am for a plan to disable reproduction in people until they've proved they are smarter than a jar of mayonaise, but the operation isn't sufficiently routinely reversible yet.

I'm against marriage for homosexuals.  Marriage is a religious ceremony, and should not be supported by the government.  They should allow, on the other hand, couples of any gender combination to form a civil union that has the same legal effect that a marriage license does at current.  That atheists have allowed this element of Judeo-Christian faith in the government so long is baffling.

I'm for the use of allies to help deter Kim Jung Ill.  Getting the aid of China and Japan to help with the talks in North Korea is a good thing.  They are much closer, and can more easily put pressure on Kim to play nice, or become the leader of a large parking lot.

I'm for the placement of less liberal judges in the courts, and for someone to put some checks on them... they should only be able to throw laws out(unconstitutional ones) not make new ones.  They've also overturned the will of the people several times recently, especially in regard to Californian propositions dealing with illegal aliens.

I'm for a school voucher system, allowing even poor families the ability to opt out of the public edu-day-care system, and into one that will teach them something.  NYState spends more money per student to put kids thru high school than I paid per year to attend a good private university.  And yet, we're having big argument of the standardized testing systems because kids can't read well enough to pass the things.

I'm for reform to social security.  The current system is broken.  It's always been broken.  I'd much rather place my money in an actual acount earmarked for my retirement than tossing it into the general spending pool of the government, and hope they have money to pay me with when I retire.

Frankly, I find the idea that the only thing of importance that happened in the last 4 years is the war in Iraq ludicrous.  Yet both candidates seem to want to push it as the only issue.  *sigh*

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Alkiera

[SirBruce]

Indeed, it's really sad how the Democrats have managed to spin the Stem Cell Research debate.  Here's the fact:  GEORGE W. BUSH MADE FEDERAL FUNDING FOR STEM CELL RESEARCH LEGAL.  That's right.  Before Bush, under the *Democrat* Clinton, federal funding for it was ILLEGAL.  It was Bush who managed to find a compromise that allowed the legal funding of research along SOME stem cell lines.  And of course, privately funded research is perfectly fine.

But the way the media tells it, you'd think everything was fine and then Bush came along and made all stem cell research illegal except for a few useless stem cell lines.

Bruce

[HaemishM]

The War on Terror will be about as effective, in the long run, as the "War on Drugs." You know, that great big military-style effort Bush 1 started to cut down the drug epidemic in this country? What did that accmplish?

Well, we still have inner cities riddled with drugs and drug-related crime, and Colombia is still a great place to get cocaine. But in the end, all it did was ensure that law enforcement got a new source of funding, politicians got a new catchphrase to rally around and our prisons got filled with petty drug users catching mandatory sentences on minor possession beefs. But we're winning the war on drugs!!21!!@#!

The War on Terror is a convenient catchphrase to say "kill brown people in oil-rich areas" while completely ignoring the fact that fighting a war against an irrational emotion is like trying to ice skate uphill.

[SirBruce]

The War on Terror will be about as effective, in the long run, as the "War on Drugs." You know, that great big military-style effort Bush 1 started to cut down the drug epidemic in this country? What did that accmplish?

The War on Drugs was started by Nixon, not by Bush 41.

It was continued and supported strongly by all Democrat Presidents and Presidential candidates.

I oppose it.  Put up a Democrat for President who will end it and maybe we'll talk.

Bruce

[schild]

The War on Terror will be about as effective, in the long run, as the "War on Drugs." You know, that great big military-style effort Bush 1 started to cut down the drug epidemic in this country? What did that accmplish?

The War on Drugs was started by Nixon, not by Bush 41.

The war on drugs got real big in the 80s. That's why Haemish brings it up. It's also why all those movies in the 80s got made about the "War On Drugs." It was also one of Bush's big platform points. Yes, it's about as stupid as a war on terror. Unfortunately rednecks out in the boondocks eat that shit up and go vote. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if Kerry started a "War on the Right Wing" if he gets elected.

This won't end well.

[HaemishM]

Look here, I'd vote for Green Party of Libertarian if they could actually put up a candidate that didn't sound like a goddamned whackjob. Their candidates are not grounded in any sort of reality. They are smoking the same shit that got Ralph Nader kicked to a no-party status.

Of course Democrats support the War on Drugs. That's the whole political beauty of such a war. If you say you don't support it, all of a sudden you are "soft on crime" or worse yet, "sympathetic to drugs that are destroying our moral fiber." That would be akin to a politician calling a press conference wherein he immediately disrobes, brings out an nude Osama Bin Laden blow up doll and starts sucking said doll's bulbous, simu-Arabic member. It'd be political suicide, because the war's aren't about tangible goals, it's about controlling a meme. It's about encapsulating a large number of ideas into one quick and easy soundbite.

And if I were any politician, I don't think I'd grab wholeheartedly to anything started by Nixon. That man was clearly not only criminally insane, but deviously fucking evil. He hired more thugs and jackbooted criminals than Bush 2 even knows. And that's a lot.

[schild]

God, I love Nixon for sooooooo many reasons. None of which have to do with what he might have done 'right' as president.

[Roac]

Wrong. If you actually READ the 9/11 report, the links between AQ and Iraq are well-documented. No evidence of an operational collaborative relationship at the time of the war, to be sure, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The evidence we do have tells us that the two were interested in working together, and there were numerous contacts and links between them. Plus, terrorism is more than just AQ; Iraq has been assisting and harboring non-AQ terrorists for years.

Iraq has never done anything of consequence to support AQ.  They may have talked at a couple points.  Big fucking deal.  We do know that Bin Ladin offered the Saudis to lead an assault against Saddam in the first Gulf War, which didn't make Saddam happy.  We also know that Saddam has agreed to "talk" with people he was pissed off at before, and that those people ended up dead.  We also know that Saddam is no fan of Islamic fundamentalists; he does have some support into anti-Israel movements, but you won't find many Arabs who don't.

Not to mention that the US is the group who trained and funded AQ leadership to start with, which is far more concrete collaboration than we've ever found from Iraq.  Where are we on the axis of evil?

[SirBruce]

God, I love Nixon for sooooooo many reasons. None of which have to do with what he might have done 'right' as president.

Bruce

[SirBruce]

Iraq has never done anything of consequence to support AQ.  They may have talked at a couple points.  Big fucking deal.

Obviously it's a big enough deal to people like HaemishM and the loony left-wing, who deny that there were any connections between Iraq and AQ.

Not to mention that the US is the group who trained and funded AQ leadership to start with, which is far more concrete collaboration than we've ever found from Iraq.  Where are we on the axis of evil?

More like the Axis of the Stupid.  The difference is we didn't train and fund them to go blow up innocent civillians; we trained and funded them to blow up a Communist army invading their country.  And then left them high and dry when the USSR ran home.  Stupid, yes, but hardly evil.

Bruce

[HaemishM]

The lack of connections between Iraq and AQ would be no big deal had that talking point not been hammered home repeatedly by our president as one of the reasons we had to pre-emptively invade a country that was no threat to us. And then repeatedly hammered home even after it was shown that such a connection was about as close as two random Arabs passing each other on a very wide street and waving.

Also, we taught them how to blow shit up. We didn't teach them that they should only use these tools to blow particular shit up. While you can build a gun to shoot many things, you can't control who or what said gun fires at.

[Margalis]

 GEORGE W. BUSH MADE FEDERAL FUNDING FOR STEM CELL RESEARCH LEGAL.  That's right.  Before Bush, under the *Democrat* Clinton, federal funding for it was ILLEGAL.  

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Clinton isn't running for office is he? Should I put that in all caps. Fact: CLINTON IS NOT IN FACT RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT.

[SirBruce]

The lack of connections between Iraq and AQ would be no big deal had that talking point not been hammered home repeatedly by our president as one of the reasons we had to pre-emptively invade a country that was no threat to us.

More liberal rewriting of history.  The President did not hammer home repeatedly that Iraq and AQ were working together to do anything.  He did mention the connections, which I've already documented above as existing, and not a "lack of" as you say.  Iraq was attacking us almost every day, tried to assassinate Bush 41, and was trying to get WMD to threaten us even more.  I'd call that "a threat", even if they never actually got ahold of them.  It's like the psycho who lives down the street who tried to kill you once before and who is now threatening to kill you again.  Eventually the police knock down his door and arrest him.  They find he didn't have a gun or anything... yet.  That doesn't mean he wasn't threatening you.

And then repeatedly hammered home even after it was shown that such a connection was about as close as two random Arabs passing each other on a very wide street and waving.

Way to insult the entire Arab world, by claiming any random Arab would willingly harbor UBL and try to work with him to attack the United States, as Iraq would have.

Also, we taught them how to blow shit up. We didn't teach them that they should only use these tools to blow particular shit up. While you can build a gun to shoot many things, you can't control who or what said gun fires at.

And here you see typical liberal thinking again as it applies to gun control.  People aren't bad; it's the guns that are bad.  Don't give people guns and you don't have to worry about where they might shoot it!

Bruce

[SirBruce]

 GEORGE W. BUSH MADE FEDERAL FUNDING FOR STEM CELL RESEARCH LEGAL.  That's right.  Before Bush, under the *Democrat* Clinton, federal funding for it was ILLEGAL.  

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Clinton isn't running for office is he? Should I put that in all caps. Fact: CLINTON IS NOT IN FACT RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT.

CLINTON WAS THE MOST RECENT PRESIDENT OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY.

How often did the Democrats attack Clinton for not making federal funding of stem cell research legal?

Bruce

[gimpyone]

I wasn't aware stem cell research was advanced as it is now, back in 1992 and 1996.  

I'm just curious how in Bruce's mind, that no connections between Iraq and AQ means that in fact, they had connections.

Don't forget Poland

[HaemishM]

More liberal rewriting of history.  The President did not hammer home repeatedly that Iraq and AQ were working together to do anything.  

Yes he did. State of the Union. EVERY SINGLE ADMINISTRATION PRESS CONFERENCE AFTER THAT. He even mentioned it in the fucking debates. He's still trying to claim they are connected.

And then repeatedly hammered home even after it was shown that such a connection was about as close as two random Arabs passing each other on a very wide street and waving.

Way to insult the entire Arab world, by claiming any random Arab would willingly harbor UBL and try to work with him to attack the United States, as Iraq would have.

Wow, way to not even read what I wrote, or understand analogy. Would it make any difference if I said the closeness of the connection was the same as two random black men or two random Puerto Ricans instead of Arabs. Ass.

Also, we taught them how to blow shit up. We didn't teach them that they should only use these tools to blow particular shit up. While you can build a gun to shoot many things, you can't control who or what said gun fires at.

And here you see typical liberal thinking again as it applies to gun control.  People aren't bad; it's the guns that are bad.  Don't give people guns and you don't have to worry about where they might shoot it!

Strangely enough, if people aren't given guns, you really don't have to worry about them shooting each other with guns. They might pick up a knife and stab each other. I realize that the fine art of metaphor is lost on a retarded troll such as yourself, but surely you can see that training a group of Islamic fundamentalists who put their religion above even their own lives and then expecting to be able to exert control over their targets is folly. These people were slavering, drooling fanatics with an itch to kill whatever moved if they thought Allah said it should die, and not only did we give them guns, we trained them in the most effective covert tactics we could. The rabid dog who we trained to bite genitals off is now trying to bite our genitals off. How strange.

Had they been left to deal with the Russian attack in their own manner, perhaps they'd have been less successful. Perhaps not. Perhaps they wouldn't have seen our abandonment of their doctrine as us being exactly what we were, chessmasters using pawns for our own ends. I'm in no way saying that the terrorists are justified; just that we are reaping what we have sown.

Unfortunately, the real bastards behind all this aren't reaping; just the little innocent people who like to work in skyrise office buildings for the American Dream.

[Margalis]

Bush said, in the debates, that we attacked Iraq because "they" attacked us. Then he said he knew we were attacked by Bin-Laden, but stood by his statement. The Bush people just don't draw a distinction.

[gimpyone]

   THIS STORY HAS BEEN FORMATTED FOR EASY PRINTING
The Boston Globe
Cheney link of Iraq, 9/11 challenged

By Anne E. Kornblut and Bryan Bender , Globe Staff and Globe Correspondent, 9/16/2003

WASHINGTON -- Vice President Dick Cheney, anxious to defend the White House foreign policy amid ongoing violence in Iraq, stunned intelligence analysts and even members of his own administration this week by failing to dismiss a widely discredited claim: that Saddam Hussein might have played a role in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Evidence of a connection, if any exists, has never been made public. Details that Cheney cited to make the case that the Iraqi dictator had ties to Al Qaeda have been dismissed by the CIA as having no basis, according to analysts and officials. Even before the war in Iraq, most Bush officials did not explicitly state that Iraq had a part in the attack on the United States two years ago.

But Cheney left that possibility wide open in a nationally televised interview two days ago, claiming that the administration is learning "more and more" about connections between Al Qaeda and Iraq before the Sept. 11 attacks. The statement surprised some analysts and officials who have reviewed intelligence reports from Iraq.

Democrats sharply attacked him for exaggerating the threat Iraq posed before the war.

"There is no credible evidence that Saddam Hussein had anything to do with 9/11," Senator Bob Graham, a Democrat running for president, said in an interview last night. "There was no such relationship."

A senior foreign policy adviser to Howard Dean, the Democratic front-runner, said it is "totally inappropriate for the vice president to continue making these allegations without bringing forward" any proof.

Cheney and his representatives declined to comment on the vice president's statements. But the comments also surprised some in the intelligence community who are already simmering over the way the administration utilized intelligence reports to strengthen the case for the war last winter.

Vincent Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism specialist, said that Cheney's "willingness to use speculation and conjecture as facts in public presentations is appalling. It's astounding."

In particular, current intelligence officials reiterated yesterday that a reported Prague visit in April 2001 between Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi agent had been discounted by the CIA, which sent former agency Director James R. Woolsey to investigate the claim. Woolsey did not find any evidence to confirm the report, officials said, and President Bush did not include it in the case for war in his State of the Union address last January.

But Cheney, on NBC's "Meet the Press," cited the report of the meeting as possible evidence of an Iraq-Al Qaeda link and said it was neither confirmed nor discredited, saying

: "We've never been able to develop any more of that yet, either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it. We just don't know."

Multiple intelligence officials said that the Prague meeting, purported to be between Atta and senior Iraqi intelligence officer Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, was dismissed almost immediately after it was reported by Czech officials in the aftermath of Sept. 11 and has since been discredited further.

The CIA reported to Congress last year that it could not substantiate the claim, while American records indicate Atta was in Virginia Beach, Va., at the time, the officials said yesterday. Indeed, two intelligence officials said yesterday that Ani himself, now in US custody, has also refuted the report. The Czech government has also distanced itself from its original claim.

A senior defense official with access to high-level intelligence reports expressed confusion yesterday over the vice president's decision to reair charges that have been dropped by almost everyone else. "There isn't any new intelligence that would precipitate anything like this," the official said, speaking on condition he not be named.

Nonetheless, 69 percent of Americans believe that Hussein probably had a part in attacking the United States, according to a recent Washington Post poll. And Democratic senators have charged that the White House is fanning the misperception by mentioning Hussein and the Sept. 11 attacks in ways that suggest a link.

Bush administration officials insisted yesterday that they are learning more about various Iraqi connections with Al Qaeda. They said there is evidence suggesting a meeting took place between the head of Iraqi intelligence and Osama bin Laden in Sudan in the mid-1990s; another purported meeting was said to take place in Afghanistan, and during it Iraqi officials offered to provide chemical and biological weapons training, according to officials who have read transcripts of interrogations with Al Qaeda detainees.

But there is no evidence proving the Iraqi regime knew about or took part in the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush officials said.

Former senator Max Cleland, who is a member of the national commission investigating the attacks, said yesterday that classified documents he has reviewed on the subject weaken, rather than strengthen, administration assertions that Hussein's regime may have been allied with Al Qaeda.

"The vice president trying to justify some connection is ludicrous," he said.

Nonetheless, Cheney, in the "Meet the Press" interview Sunday, insisted that the United States is learning more about the links between Al Qaeda and Hussein.

"We learn more and more that there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the '90s," Cheney said, "that it involved training, for example, on [biological and chemical weapons], that Al Qaeda sent personnel to Baghdad to get trained on the systems."

The claims are based on a prewar allegation by a "senior terrorist operative," who said he overheard an Al Qaeda agent speak of a mission to seek biological or chemical weapons training in Iraq, according to Secretary of State Colin Powell's statement to the United Nations in February.

But intelligence specialists told the Globe last August that they have never confirmed that the training took place, or identified where it could have taken place. "The general public just doesn't have any independent way of weighing what is said," Cannistraro, the former CIA counterterrorism specialist, said. "If you repeat it enough times . . . then people become convinced it's the truth."
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.
© Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
census

[SirBruce]

Bush said, in the debates, that we attacked Iraq because "they" attacked us. Then he said he knew we were attacked by Bin-Laden, but stood by his statement. The Bush people just don't draw a distinction.

Wrong.  Here's the ACTUAL CONTEXT of what was said:

LEHRER: Mr. President, new question. Two minutes. Does the Iraq experience make it more likely or less likely that you would take the United States into another preemptive military action?

BUSH: I would hope I never have to. I understand how hard it is to commit troops. Never wanted to commit troops. When I was running -- when we had the debate in 2000, never dreamt I’d be doing that.

But the enemy attacked us, Jim, and I have a solemn duty to protect the American people, to do everything I can to protect us.

I think that by speaking clearly and doing what we say and not sending mixed messages, it is less likely we’ll ever have to use troops.

But a president must always be willing to use troops. It must -- as a last resort.

I was hopeful diplomacy would work in Iraq. It was falling apart. There was no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was hoping that the world would turn a blind eye.

And if he had been in power, in other words, if we would have said, "Let the inspectors work, or let’s, you know, hope to talk him out. Maybe an 18th resolution would work," he would have been stronger and tougher, and the world would have been a lot worse off. There’s just no doubt in my mind we would rue the day, had Saddam Hussein been in power.

So we use diplomacy every chance we get, believe me. And I would hope to never have to use force.

But by speaking clearly and sending messages that we mean what we say, we’ve affected the world in a positive way.

Look at Libya. Libya was a threat. Libya is now peacefully dismantling its weapons programs.

Libya understood that America and others will enforce doctrine and that the world is better for it.

So to answer your question, I would hope we never have to. I think by acting firmly and decisively, it will mean it is less likely we have to use force.

He never says Iraq attacked the US... although technically Iraq WAS attacking the US almost every day, shooting or attempting to shoot at planes in the no-fly zones.

He says, in the context of the fact that he was reluctant to use troops when he talked about it in the 2000 debates, that "the enemy" attacked us after that, meaning AQ specifically and terrorism in general, which is why he may appear more willing to use troops now.  He talks specifically about only invading Iraq after diplomatic actions have been tried repeatedly without success.

Bruce

[SirBruce]

I wasn't aware stem cell research was advanced as it is now, back in 1992 and 1996.

What does that have to do with it?  The whole point of funding is to advance it further.  How advanced was AIDS research, before there was federal funding for it?

I'm just curious how in Bruce's mind, that no connections between Iraq and AQ means that in fact, they had connections.

Because in my mind, and in the minds of the 9/11 comission, THEY IN FACT HAD CONNECTIONS.

Bruce

[gimpyone]

You forgot all the pauses and stumbles in the speech.

[WayAbvPar]

Tenuous connections or not- I still have yet to see a concrete reason why Bush/Cheney/Rummy decided to abandon Afghanistan (and the fight against the Al Qaeda strongholds and Bin Laden) in favor of attacking another nation altogether.

I think Chappelle was right- "N***a tried to kill my father, man!".

[SirBruce]

More liberal rewriting of history.  The President did not hammer home repeatedly that Iraq and AQ were working together to do anything.  

Yes he did. State of the Union. EVERY SINGLE ADMINISTRATION PRESS CONFERENCE AFTER THAT. He even mentioned it in the fucking debates. He's still trying to claim they are connected.

Nice way to change the debate again.  HE SAID THEY ARE CONNECTED.  I SAID THEY ARE CONNECTED.  THE 9/11 COMISSION SAID THEY WERE CONNECTED.  You're the only one claiming there was no connection.  Furthermore you're implying that Bush OVERSTATED the connection, saying all the time that they were working together, which he did not.

And then repeatedly hammered home even after it was shown that such a connection was about as close as two random Arabs passing each other on a very wide street and waving.

Way to insult the entire Arab world, by claiming any random Arab would willingly harbor UBL and try to work with him to attack the United States, as Iraq would have.

Wow, way to not even read what I wrote, or understand analogy. Would it make any difference if I said the closeness of the connection was the same as two random black men or two random Puerto Ricans instead of Arabs. Ass.

Wow, way to make a bad analogy and then blame it on me for simply demonstrating its flaws.  If you had said that it was the same as two random black men then you would be guilty of insulting the entire "black" race by claiming any of them would harbor UBL or attempt to work with him to attack the United States.  "OH NOES THAT'S NOT WHAT MY ANALOGY INTENDED AT ALLZ!1111!!!"  Then get a better analogy, dumbass.

Also, we taught them how to blow shit up. We didn't teach them that they should only use these tools to blow particular shit up. While you can build a gun to shoot many things, you can't control who or what said gun fires at.

And here you see typical liberal thinking again as it applies to gun control.  People aren't bad; it's the guns that are bad.  Don't give people guns and you don't have to worry about where they might shoot it!

Strangely enough, if people aren't given guns, you really don't have to worry about them shooting each other with guns.

And if we don't give them a free press, we won't have to worry about people finding out stuff we don't want them to know.  BRILLIANT!

They might pick up a knife and stab each other. I realize that the fine art of metaphor is lost on a retarded troll such as yourself, but surely you can see that training a group of Islamic fundamentalists who put their religion above even their own lives and then expecting to be able to exert control over their targets is folly.

I already called it stupid.  I simply said it didn't qualify as evil.  And certainly not the same level as evil as those who then turn around and actually target and civillians.

These people were slavering, drooling fanatics with an itch to kill whatever moved if they thought Allah said it should die, and not only did we give them guns, we trained them in the most effective covert tactics we could. The rabid dog who we trained to bite genitals off is now trying to bite our genitals off. How strange.

So we trained people to do our bidding, and after we were done with them they turned on us, and now we are going to kill them before they kill us.  What's so strange about that?  No point in hang-wringing about the fact we trained them, nor simply "accepting" our fate as just desserts for mistakes of the past.  What matters is what our motives our now, and what we are doing now, to make up for the past and make things better for the future.

Had they been left to deal with the Russian attack in their own manner, perhaps they'd have been less successful. Perhaps not. Perhaps they wouldn't have seen our abandonment of their doctrine as us being exactly what we were, chessmasters using pawns for our own ends. I'm in no way saying that the terrorists are justified; just that we are reaping what we have sown.

See?

Unfortunately, the real bastards behind all this aren't reaping; just the little innocent people who like to work in skyrise office buildings for the American Dream.

You're right.  Let's string up Jimmy Carter for not starting a nuclear war when the USSR invaded Afghanistan.  Or should we desecrate the grave of FDR and Harry S. Truman for not embracing Communism in the world?

Bruce

[SirBruce]

Tenuous connections or not- I still have yet to see a concrete reason why Bush/Cheney/Rummy decided to abandon Afghanistan (and the fight against the Al Qaeda strongholds and Bin Laden) in favor of attacking another nation altogether.

They didn't.  The USA is quite capable of multitasking.  You might just as well ask why we didn't re-institute the draft and pour 2 million men into Afghanistan until Bin Laden was caught.  Obviously they applied what they felt was the most appropriate level of forces at the right times and places according to the risk vs. reward, etc.
 
Bruce

[Rasix]

You're in rare form today.

[WayAbvPar]

Tenuous connections or not- I still have yet to see a concrete reason why Bush/Cheney/Rummy decided to abandon Afghanistan (and the fight against the Al Qaeda strongholds and Bin Laden) in favor of attacking another nation altogether.

They didn't.  The USA is quite capable of multitasking.  You might just as well ask why we didn't re-institute the draft and pour 2 million men into Afghanistan until Bin Laden was caught.  Obviously they applied what they felt was the most appropriate level of forces at the right times and places according to the risk vs. reward, etc.
 
Bruce

Wow...that was really impressive. Did you go to the Bush Administration "Vomit Forth the Talking Points Without Saying Anything" symposium, or was it a correspondence course?

I am asking why they took 90% of the troops out of Afghanistan before A) the country was secure and not locked into pockets of civil way and B) before Bin Laden and his cronies were killed or captured. Instead, they went into another country (burning any global goodwill left over from 9/11 in the process) only to throw it into pockets of civil war, with Bin Laden and his cronies still unpunished.

Why fight a 2 front war when you don't have to? Why leave Afghanistan before "Mission Accomplished"? Why all the focus on Saddam and Iraq instead of on bin Laden and Al Qaeda? Why did the reason for going into Iraq change from "he has WMDs and is ready to use them!' to "He had a conversation with bin Laden at some point in the past 15 years!"?

[SirBruce]

I am asking why they took 90% of the troops out of Afghanistan before A) the country was secure and not locked into pockets of civil way and B) before Bin Laden and his cronies were killed or captured.

The answer is pretty obvious: because they felt that the country was secure enough, and his cronies were killed or captured enough, that only a 10% force was appropriate.  The risk-reward ratio may figure into it too; i.e. we could have used more troops in Afghanistan but at the time it seemed like those troops are better deployed stopping Saddam's WMD before terrorists get ahold of them.

It's entirely fair to ask "Is that enough?"  But the same question could be asked when there were 10 times the number: "Is that enough?"  The point is that question has very little to do with the how many troops were sent to Iraq.  The question of "Why send troops to Iraq instead of Afghanistan" presupposes within the question that we should have more troops in Afghanistan.  Indeed, why not ask, "Why do we have troops in Germany and South Korea when we could have them in Afghanistan and Iraq?"  Yet when the Bush administration contemplates such a realignment of troops, Liberals complain!  Shocking!

Why fight a 2 front war when you don't have to?

It's called "strategery".  You might as well ask why FDR fought a 2 front war when he didn't "have" to.  And the answer is because it seemed like the best course of action at the time.  It takes a mindset that is predisposed against such wars to conclude that minimizing the number is therefore always the correct choice.

Why leave Afghanistan before "Mission Accomplished"? Why all the focus on Saddam and Iraq instead of on bin Laden and Al Qaeda? Why did the reason for going into Iraq change from "he has WMDs and is ready to use them!' to "He had a conversation with bin Laden at some point in the past 15 years!"?

We didn't leave Afghanistan, we're still focused on both targets, and the reasons for going into Iraq have always been multiple and have never changed.

Bruce

[gimpyone]

Even Rummy doubts a link.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3715396.stm

[SirBruce]

Rummy doesn't doubt a link.  The article specifically says there are links.  What is in dispute is the STRENGTH of those links.  Hence the 9/11 report saying there was no "operational" connection.  But Liberals don't even want to admit ANY connections, because then they lose the argument, because the conservatives never claimed certainty as to the strength of those connections, only that such connections existed.

Bruce

[Gromski]

Bush looked like what he is, a trained monkey who's out of his depth in any situation where he isn't reciting a stump speech or reading from an autocue.