Brandon777 wrote:You have a lot of time on your hands. That is a lot of typing you did.
It took less time than you might think. I type pretty quickly, and most of this stuff is right on the tip of my tongue (or, in this case, the tips of my fingers).
I respect you man. You have your beliefs and your very knowledgable about your party.
Thank you. I respect you as well.
I respectfully disagree with everything you typed. I believe the polar opposite of your points.
That's fair enough. After all, that's what makes things interesting!
I don't know, but I take it that you are majoring in Political Science.
Correct.
I majored in Business.
My girlfriend is a business marketing and economics major. Very cool. I have nothing against business majors, obviously. Thankfully, however, not all think alike.
Were you raised a Democrat or are you rebelling against your right-wing parents?
I wasn't raised anything. Everything I know I taught myself or learned in school. My parents did not have political discussions with me at all, influence me in any way politically, or have virtually any effect on my opinions. My father doesn't speak about politics at all (I caught him once speaking to my mother about it, once in as much as I can remember of my lifetime). My mother is a twisted sort: she's a hardcore Catholic Christian but doesn't go to church and hasn't for years. Everything is the doing and work of God, and apparently there is no such thing as the individual. So, no, neither of my parents affected my politics at all outside me being thoroughly disgusted by closed-mindedness and fundamentalist religion.
I believe Bush is an honorable man.
I don't have any real reason to believe that. I think he's beyond me giving him the benefit of the doubt at this point.
He has stated numerous times that turning Iraq into a democracy isn't going to be easy.
Yet at the same time, he has his people send out trial balloons for an invasion of Syria almost immediately after the initial stage of the Iraq invasion was complete. Now they're spreading information about Iran having a relationship with al-Qaeda. While Bush says one thing, Cheney is out saying something completely different. Bush admits the same thing that the 9/11 Commission and all sensible and informed Americans have been saying from day one: there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and the events that occurred on September 11, 2001. Nevertheless, Vice President Cheney continues to assert that there was a connection, even as Bush himself is admitting there wasn't. This kind of two-faced garbage is the reason why many Americans are confused and unsure, and they do not know the facts.
There is going to be casualties in war.
Absolutely. The Bush administration is the group of people who made it sound like it was going to be a piece of cake and the greatest tactical invasion ever. Remember when General Franks rolled through Iraq with virtually no resistance and the right-wing media outlets were cheering that it was the greatest military maneuver in the history of war? Yeah, well, it was that kind of grandiose behavior that makes the casualties we're dealing with now unacceptable. The Bush administration and its supporters told us that American soldiers would be greeted with flowers, smiles, and tears of joy. Instead, they were greeted with deep reservations which eventually turned into full-on guerrilla warfare and terrorism.
We've lost 1,000 heros in this war.
Serving one's country is a very commendable thing, but it does not automatically make a man or a woman a hero. I think that word is over-used and, as a result, true and genuine heroes are sometimes overlooked.
If you look at other wars, like WWII and Vietnam, we have lost thousands upon thousands of soldiers.
If you ask Republican revisionists, Vietnam was not a war. It was a conflict and an international police action to prevent communism from spreading through Southeast Asia. On top of that, it was concluded that the conflict (or war, whatever you want to call it) in Vietnam was misguided and wrong. The men and women who went and served in Vietnam on behalf of the United States died unnecessarily and for an ultiamtely unwinnable cause. From 1974 to 1991, this country was unsure of getting directly involved in a military conflict in a foreign country because of the trauma which the Vietnam conflict inflicted on the American psyche. Today, it seems far too many have forgotten the important lessons that should have been learned from Vietnam.
Considering we overthrew a dictators regime, I feel that we minimized causualties. You can't fight a war without any loses.
That's true, you can't fight a war without any losses. No one expected no losses, but the Bush administration and the Republicans did suggest that it would be a piece of cake, yet again, and that the Iraqi people would greet American soldiers with, as I said, flowers, smiles, and tears of joy. It didn't happen. The American people were not only misled as to the reasons for going to war in Iraq, but they were also misled as to what would happen once American forces arrived there. The Bush administration acted as if it were a done deal, and it was far from it.
By the way, the United States has a long history of supporting brutal dictators, including Saddam Hussein from the late 1970s through the first Gulf War. There are many dictators in the world who are equally brutal or more brutal than Saddam Hussein, but I don't see the Bush administration and other Republicans suggesting that they be invaded and removed from power. Some of them are friends. The fact of the matter is that this war was not ultimately about the removal of a brutal dictator. That's just a silly argument that many Republicans use.
D: "I don't think we should have gone into Iraq when we did."
R: "So you think the world would be better off with Saddam Hussein in power?"
I don't know how that progression of thought, debate, and discussion works, but it's awful fuzzy and awful faulty. The world would be better off without a lot of individuals in power, but just because an individual does not support invading his or her state, removing him or her from power, and installing a new government does not mean he or she believes the world is better off with that person in power. It's pure fallacy, and it's becoming the base rhetoric of the right-wing.
Again I state that 9-11, along with inherriting a weakening economy, was bad luck for Bush.
Bad luck is not an excuse for failure.
"Lucky me. I hit the trifecta," - George W. Bush, shortly after 9/11, to former Budget Director and current Indiana GOP gubernatorial candidate Mitch Daniels.
Does that seem like the words of someone who is particularly distraught about the unfortunate situation in which his nation currently exists?
It appears, in fact, that he believes 9/11 and the poor economy were good luck for him. It should be an example: what's good for George Bush is often bad for America.
The ecomomy has been steadily improving. This month, the job growth graph has dipped, but you have to look at the overall trend of the last several months.
I am looking at the trends, and the trends still do not dispute the fact that George W. Bush is the only president besides Herbert Hoover to create no new net jobs in this country. Hoover had the Great Depression. Do you want to liken the post-9/11 economy to that of the Great Depression? I certainly hope not. That would be irresponsible and incorrect.
If 9-11 never happened, and job growth was in the negative, I would agree that Bush did a lousy job on the economy.
If 9/11 never happened, George W. Bush's approval rating would be below 40% and challenging historical lows for sitting presidents. I'm merely following the trends pre-9/11 and presuming that they would have continued.
Consider 9-11 DID happen, I feel Bush has done well.
I saw a cartoon one time of George W. Bush at an ATM slamming the numbers "9 1 1," as in 9/11, into the pads. He was howling about the fact that the ATM wouldn't give him free money for invoking it. Bush doesn't get a free pass on this. At the very best, he should be slapped on the wrist for negligence, voted out of office, and allowed to live out the rest of his days trimming brush on his ranch in Texas. At the very worst, he should be charged with gross negligence for going on vacation for a month before 9/11 instead of being in Washington on the job. Maybe if he had been there, he might have seen memos and been better informed about the potential of these terrorist attacks. While it is said that no one in the government knew 9/11 was going to happen when it did, there were certainly memoranda, and they are available from the 9/11 Commission report, that warned the President and others that such an attack was being planned and would be executed. If the plant burns down while the manager is on vacation, he doesn't get a free pass because he says he was still working from his vacation spot. The President should be no different. The manager would be held responsible, and so would Bush. Maybe people feel bad for him.
One of the main things I learned in economics is that wall street hates instability.
Good thing Bush is calling for 25-year wars and invading countries on false pretenses then. I'm sure that's terrific for stability. In fact, it's probably as terrific as the up-and-down numbers on the economy itself. But, apparently, we're supposed to believe that fluctuation is economic improvement. That doesn't sound like stability either.
When 9-11 happened, wall street got kicked in the balls. This is a plan that Bin Laden executed. He said America can be destroyed by attacking they're economy. He knows that more attacks on U.S. soil will be devastating to our economy.
So why aren't we going after bin Laden with 100,000 soldiers instead of having them set up a new government that's being blown up from the inside out in Iraq? Because Saddam Hussein was that bad? Give me a break.
I feel, and according to most polls, most Americans feel Bush will handle the war on terror better than Kerry by an overwhelming majority.
It is because of Bush that we have to fight this war in the first place. He is the one who was on duty when 9/11 happened, and he does not get a free pass for that. I'm sorry, but I can't forgive him for that.
I personally feel Kerry and Edwards will be abysmal at fighting the war on terror.
And I am equally sure that you have absolutely zero good, valid, truthful reasons as to why that would be the case.
I still think Chirac is a prick. He bends over backwards to vote against us at the UN. Voting against the war is one thing, but voting against training Iraqis for security, thats inexcusable.
Chirac doesn't vote against us at the United Nations. If you recall, as well, UN Security Council Resolution 1441 was approved unanimously. That includes France.
In case you haven't noticed, many of those Iraqi security forces are either throwing down their arms and running the other way or joining up with the terrorists. I don't think a French vote in favor of the plan would have changed that.
Besides, why should the French play along now when the Bush administration and many ignorant Americans have insulted them deeply and unfairly?
Quit trying to defend Saddam.
I have never tried to defend Saddam Hussein. If the facts counteract your accepted notions about Saddam Hussein, his regime, and his behavior, then that is your problem. It does not mean I am defending him.
The man is evil.
Yes, and we funded his evil for about ten years under Ronald Reagan and the beginning of George H.W. Bush's administration.
The 9-11 commission never ruled out that there was an Al-Qaeda presense in Iraq. They said they didn't see any concrete evidence of Saddam and Al-Qaeda working together on terrorist attacks.
Well boss, concrete evidence is what you need. If you don't have it, it's time to move on.
There is something I want to ask you about Kerry, but I'll ask you that later because I'm going to bed.
Okay. I'll be more than happy to answer your question.
ey-Aid of the Redskins.
you and skinsfan55 would be a perfect couple.
i'm not calling either one gay or anything, just a perfect pair, partners in crime if you will. if he wants to check out the 55 thing, all he'd have to do is a search, and i'm sure over half of 55's posts would be on politics. 
