Obama!!!

It was enjoyable in the same way as the prophecies of Nostradamus was enjoyable.

Lincoln was obviously both right and wrong. 9/11 (as well as Pearl Harbor) proved that it is possible to carry out attacks on America on American soil. At the same time, what seems to threaten Americans' way of life the most is other Americans' different take on what American way of life is supposed to be like.

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The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, "seeing that his work was good".

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They had temporarily escaped the factories, the warehouses, the slaughterhouses, the car washes - they'd be back in captivity the next day but now they were out - they were wild with freedom. They weren't thinking about the slavery of poverty. Or the slavery of welfare and food stamps. The rest of us would be all right until the poor learned how to make atom bombs in their basements.

I can, you may not like it. Many do not like it, but here it is:

I was there for Desert Storm, remember that War? I saw firsthand the atrocities that occurred because of Saddam. No need to go into a list of these things is there? So:

A - Saddam is gone - that seems good to me.

B - The pissed-on cease fire agreement that so many have dismissed as "forgotten" is actually enforced.

C - Future invasions of other countries by this once fanatic regime is nil.

What did it have to do with 9/11?

Don't F'ing mess with the U.S. - that's what it had to do with it. Yeah that is redneck statement I know, but I honestly cannot see a direct link between Iraq and 9/11 - but indirect??? Hell there is so much indirect association that it boggles.

If you're going to ask me, they elected Obama to insult non-white races. They think that everyone will laugh their ass out for having an american "colored" president. Black people don't represents all the non-whites.

Just like Chinese don't represents the Asians.

Oh please! Okay then...if the justification for Iraq was that cryptic and tangled 'link'. Why did we choose Iraq and not Iran? Pakistan? Saudi?
****ing link is far less tangled there!

And I don't need a lesson of how bad Saddam was (Muslims around the world did not care then though, strangely) but if THAT is the rational too..why not invade a dozen other brutal dictatorships?

And thanks for bringing up the first Gulf war. Because now I can drag both Father and Son though the mud.

If Daddy Bush had actually finished the job back then, none of this would have happened and all those people now dead would be alive.
Even the Iraqi resistance rose up against Saddam during that war, because they thought Bush sr. was going to finish the regime off.
Instead Bush turned around, left Saddam there, and let those resistance fighters be brutally executed!

The first Gulf war was not only sanctioned but generally popular and supported as well. Plus any invasion of Iraq would be directly linked TO that sanctioned and supported war.
All this bollox could have ended there and then!
But no...A BUSH ****ed up as usual.

And if you say that the U.S had no actual mandate to go INTO Iraq, you are correct. But so what??
You had no sanctioned mandate to do anything at all during the second war. Nor did you have any popular global support.
But strangely none of that mattered suddenly when Bush Jr decided to go into Iraq again

So instead of Daddy Bush destroying Saddam when he had much global (and indeed IRAQI) support while to a linked conflict already sanctioned, he did nothing.
Which left his idiot Son free to use 9/11 as an utterly false reason (as I have already explained above in other posts) to go all the way back into Iraq (only now with NO global support, NO Iraqi support,and NO legal sanction) to waste all those lives, all that money and all those resources to simply settle Daddy's mistake...while the actual global terrorist threats were left completely alone to shriek hate at America and The West and gather much support for their sly calls of 'victimhood'.

And then, even after Saddam was pointlessly got rid of, Bush Jr utterly failed in every single way to control the mess he had created in Iraq!
Thus, oh the pitiful irony, making Iraq far more of a terrorist playground than it EVER WAS under Saddam!

What a farce! What a disgusting farce!
And all, with all those lives lost as well, because of two guy's named Bush.

Indeed.
But actually Bush showed you could f*ck with the U.S. and after it would actually do nothing much but go after the wrong people and leave all the others that would LOVE to f*ck the U.S. free to try and do so again!

You think when we elected Obama that we're still somehow trying to be racially-prejudiced and separate the various races? What do you want, every country to have a multi-racial candidate somehow developed though something resembling genetic engineering?

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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page

Cryptic? Heh okay - you win.

You might want to define the word "justification" and play a few rounds of Sudoku, cause I am a redneck and to me that means: a good reason, but I digress to my trailer and pop open another Bud -- OH HELLS BELLS!!! that ain't even American anymore, I mean I pop open another Berliner weisse.

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100 Favourites From The Future: REWIRED

You know what? I won a $100 because of this.

My neighbor told me the big news "Hey they elected the first non-white President!"

"I said to him, i'll bet a $100 he's BLACK!"

Your neighb' was confused? I mean they did know who was running for prez yeah? Oh yeah t hey bet you the new prez was Mexican and lost. Hey, good bet man, good bet.

Actually you owe them $100 because he's not black, he's mixed race.

You're a complete idiot and you're a racist.

Okay, I'll have a go... a short one as I'm due for a date with the covers.

To end the first gulf war the US signed a cease fire agreement that basically stated that Iraq had to follow certain guidelines in order to qualify for said cease fire. An official end to the war was never agreed upon and under this treaty the US had full authority to go back into Iraq if the conditions were not being upheld.

Saddam bought shell casings from Russia and appeared to be looking for a way to enrich uranium. This is when inspectors asked for an audit and Saddam refused.

For a variety of reasons the US intelligence in Iraq was at an all time low so concrete answers could not be ascertained.

Bush goes to congress, congress (including nearly all of the liberals who now decry it) decided that in the light of the evidence available at the time going back into Iraq was advisable. Not Bush nor any US President can act alone. He had full support of congress so any disdain for Bush must necessarily be passed to them as well.

Now, all of that said, I think your points with regard to Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran et al are all valid ones.

I'm personally not wise enough to say whether Iraq in the end is or isn't justified because the whole story isn't available to any of us.

It's a shame that any of it is necessary, that much I'm sure of.

As you point out well, nothing was known for certain. I'll grant the possibility that perhaps the argument for the war was based on the possibility that harm could result otherwise. All that in place, Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, and Powell went before the American public claiming absolutes based on hypotheticals; "Mushroom cloud," being one of the scenarios given. No matter the reasons, that was at least an exaggeration. Now, in 1998, the argument that the Republicans used against Clinton was that he wasn't truthful about his personal affairs, while being questioned. I think in either case a lie is a lie. Anytime you present possibilities as absolutes you are committing a non-truth.

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...uh the post is up there...

they told me that he is grey.
black color + white color = grey.

And (All relevant, smoking gun starting at 3:21).

&NR=1

What, suddenly they didn't have ties any more?

He doesn't sound unconvinced...

I can go on all day with this stuff but it would belabor the point. The left is being hypocritical in its attutudes toward the war when they themselves were also behind sanctioning it.





Okay one more, this is too much fun. Check out . man some people have short memories. Bush speaks truth at the end.

Dude, quit with the race stuff. Seriously.

In other news, Scientologists have re-ordered their religion. No longer convinced they are under siege by an ancient alien named Xenu, they now believe Southeast Asians once ruled the galaxy from their throne in, you guessed it, Southeast Asia. This started to make sense once the entire population of Earth realized all subjects MUST lead back to Southeast Asia, The Happiest Place On Earth (Copyright, Disney Southeast Asia).

CARROTS! Carrots, I tell you.

But wait, what do carrots have to do with Southeast Asia?

Nothing...not a damn thing, just like the rest of the conversations on MoFo! They have nothing to do with Southeast Asia!

Until now...

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Well, you can "consider" it a personal attack if I sneeze, too, but that doesn't make it so. Saying that you're speculating isn't even remotely a personal attack. It also happens to be true; when you start delving into Dubya's psyche, you are absolutely speculating. This doesn't mean absolutely everything you're saying is speculation, however.

I also didn't say you were never to be taken seriously; you chopped the quote up and removed the qualifier. Here's the whole thing:

"Nobody's going to take what you say seriously when your idea of political discourse is to type "HICK IDIOT!" Nor should they."

As you can see, my focus is on what you said, not who you are as a person. This is by design.

I don't think pointing out that some of your conclusions are speculative is a "smear" at all. Especially when, at least in one instance, it's completely true.

That said, I'm not really sure what you're getting at with this whole "my own eyes, ears, and brain" stuff. You didn't see Bush's reasons with your own eyes, or hear them with your own ears. And other people also using their eyes, ears, and brain have come to different conclusions, so it's not as if this stuff is readily evident to anyone who can see or hear.

What do you mean I can "go on about Iraq" all I want? I went on about it to respond to what you said. You keep saying it had "nothing at all to do with anything," and I've shown you, pretty clearly, how this simply isn't true. I don't know what you hope to accomplish by repeating things I've already answered.

Well, first of all, I didn't "excuse" Bush for invading Iraq at all. I have extremely mixed feelings about the war there and even those of us who support the idea in the abstract have issues with the execution. What I've been doing is shooting down the idea that it was some sort of emotional decision devoid of purpose or meaning. That just isn't so.

As for all the other countries you listed; well, I don't know if you read my last post, but I gave you some reasons why invading Saudi Arabia isn't the same thing as invading Iraq. If you want me to start researching why the situations with each of those countries is patently different in some way, I suppose I could, but I think we both know that each case is unique.

But I should probably point (for the second time) that I've never suggested Iraq was the single biggest part of the War on Terror, or the single biggest threat to us, or anything else of the sort. I'm not the one saying extreme things like that, nor do I believe them, so I don't know why I'm being asked to defend them.

Well, of course it's an opinion. It may be correct -- I really don't know. These things are pretty complicated. But none of this really has to do with Iraq.

You're making a different case now, though. Before you said that Iraq had nothing to do with anything. Now you're making the case that other countries were a greater threat. That's a different thing entirely, and I don't necessarily disagree.

That's understandable. It's important stuff and I don't begrudge anyone being passionate about it. Let's take it down a notch. I mean all of us, not just you. Believe me when I say I'm not trying to attack you on a personal level. I just don't think the way you first approached this is constructive. Your first post was, I think you'll agree, basically a rant. Ranting's allowed, so I'm not telling you you can't do it, but I don't think it adds to the discussion much, and I think the world is a lot more complicated than that first post of yours makes it out to be. And I think that, when we open the door to speculation, we start painting the pictures we're predisposed to want to be true, which always gets in the way of what actually is true.

Oh, I don't think it's farfetched at all. Iraq directly funded terrorism by offering cash to suicide bombers. And by making this funding publicly known, they not only funded it, but actively encouraged it. I can go down the list of all of Iraq's geopolitical transgressions on top of this, but I'm guessing they're pretty well known.

Regarding how we define terrorism: obviously that's a big question that neither of us can totally answer. But paying suicide bombers definitely qualifies, wouldn't you agree? Also, while I'm not going to defend everything the United States has done during the War on Terror, I still think we're talking apples and oranges. I'm not going to play down any mistakes that were made, but let's have some perspective here: denying someone due process during a time of war is not on the same plane of transgression as deliberately targeting civilians. We can question methods, but trying to draw some sort of equivocation is definitely beyond the pale.

And whether or not the U.S. has violated due process and the like, or should be able to during times of war, is a rather separate question from whether or not Iraq harbored and encouraged terrorists. They absolutely did. This doesn't stop being true when we detain someone at Guantanamo. You seem to be making an argument against the U.S. policies in general, but not an argument against Iraq being a logical part of the War on Terror. Whether or not someone agrees with the scope and execution of this war is unrelated to whether or not including Iraq in it is internally consistent.

Fair enough...Don't agree...Said all I can say...Never should have come back...But all water under the bridge.