Five years after 9/11, the worst attack on the American home
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wanttorun100
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 Posted: 09/29/06 - 11:39 Post subject: Five years after 9/11, the worst attack on the American home
land in our history, Democrats offer nothing but criticism and obstruction and endless second-guessing," President Bush - BIRMINGHAM, Ala.
Does it get much clearer than that?
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GaRebelRunner
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Posted: 09/29/06 - 12:58 Post subject:
It's the dishonesty of the administration that has brought on the criticism of Democrats. If you remember Democrats went along with Bush when he went into Afghanistan. Against their better judgment they initially went along with him on Iraq.
But as we have seen Bush sold us a bucket full of misleading if not outright lies about the necessity of invading Iraq and the War on Terror. He's milked Iraq and the War on Terror to help keep him and his party in power. Remember Colin Powell telling the UN and Americans that the reason the UN inspectors could not find any weapons of mass destruction was because they simply did not know where to look? By golly we knew where they were and would produce them if we were there.
Well, we're there. Iraq has done nothing for U.S. security except spread our troops out, incite more distrust by Arabs and other nations as to our motives, and made us vulnerable if a serious attack from North Korea or China was to actually occur.
The State of Louisiana had a difficult time getting enough of its National Guard to New Orleans after Katrina because they were off fighting in Iraq. And while we fight in Iraq we have an open border with Mexico and Canada through which any terrorist can come through if they wish. It's very porous.
And Bush hasn't come up with solid plans for domestic security when you look at how easily our Northern and Southern borders are crossed. The only thing that has protected us from more attacks is we have an ocean between us and most of the parties that wish to do us harm.
Although I did not vote for him in 2000 I had no dislike or distrust of him when he assumed office. Only with the invasion of Iraq and the subsequent less than candor justifcations from the adminisration and his partners - Cheney and Rumsfeld did I begin moving from a respectable President whether or not I agreed with his policies to a more distrusting attitude. I still respect his father and yet I didn't vote for him in office either.
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wanttorun100
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Posted: 09/29/06 - 14:19 Post subject:
[squacking parrot] Arrwk Bush lied! Arrwk Bush Lied! [/squacking parrot]
you don't really believe that mantra do you?
care for a cracker?
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Wicked Flea
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Posted: 09/29/06 - 14:50 Post subject:
| wanttorun100 wrote: | [squacking parrot] Arrwk Bush lied! Arrwk Bush Lied! [/squacking parrot]
you don't really believe that mantra do you?
care for a cracker? |
ahem......squawking parrot
clearer
I'm No Bush Hater
There's a huge difference between disliking the president and disliking his policies.
by Rosa Brooks
Are you a Bush hater, so blinded by "primal" loathing for the president that you automatically dismiss everything he says or does?
It's one of the far right's favorite weapons: If anyone criticizes the administration, brand them a Bush hater. The implication is that no sane or fair-minded person could be appalled by this administration's policies. Any criticism of Bush must be caused by what columnist Charles Krauthammer described as "contempt and disdain giving way to a hatred that is near pathological." My column last week, for instance, generated a response from one right-wing blogger that not only mischaracterized what I said but referred to me as "Bush hating," "blinded" by "virulent" anger, full of "unreconstructed rage" and typical of the "Bush-hatred of the American left."
The right's got it wrong.
I don't love George Bush, it's true. No matter how many times I urge myself to hate the sin but love the sinner, I just can't get there. But I don't hate Bush, either. I hope that he'll never personally experience any of the "alternative methods" of interrogation he's so willing to use on U.S. detainees; I hope he'll never lose a child to war; I hope he'll never experience the soul-sapping poverty to which his administration has abandoned so many Americans.
No, I don't hate George Bush.
But I sure hate what he's done to my country.
I hate the fact that Bush and the radicals in his administration play politics with patriotism, casting critics of misguided legislation on military commissions and wiretapping as "soft" on terrorism and telling us, as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld recently did, that "moral or intellectual confusion about who and what is right or wrong can weaken the ability of free societies to persevere."
In Bush's America, questioning makes us weak. In my America, we value dissent and debate because we know this is what makes us strong and free.
I hate the fact that after promising to unite us, this president has done his best to divide us. In Bush's America, there are real Americans and then there are the blue states … and the Democrats. Sometimes, as Les Gelb, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, recently put it, the White House actually seems "as interested in defeating Democrats as in defeating terrorists." In my America, we're all citizens, from Texas and South Carolina and Ohio to New York and California. And every single one of us matters.
I hate the fact that to Bush, having "values" seems to mean absolutist opposition to gay marriage and abortion and indifference to many forms of suffering. In Bush's America, preventing gay marriage is apparently more important than preventing cruel or degrading treatment of detainees, or helping the millions of Americans who struggle to make it from paycheck to paycheck. In my America, having "values" means believing that "inalienable rights" is more than just a pretty phrase, and it means pulling together to address the growing income inequality that, unchecked, will permanently distort our democracy.
I hate the fact that Bush's reckless foreign policies have led many of our closest allies to regard this nation with contempt and fear. Increasingly, people around the world see the U.S. as a threat to global stability, not as a source of stability. In Bush's America, the greatest traditions of American diplomacy seem to have been replaced by "my way or the highway." In my America, we understand that being a good neighbor is part of what keeps us safe.
I hate the fact that to Bush, the phrase "the buck stops here" is apparently as quaint as the Geneva Convention. He has yet to come clean about the degree to which he overstated the charge that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or on the lack of a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11. In Bush's America, being president means never having to say you're sorry. In my America, presidents should admit it when they make mistakes — and then work in a bipartisan way to chart a better course instead of sticking stubbornly to failed policies.
The United States is in trouble. The spread of militant Islamic extremism and WMD will pose dangers for decades to come, and global warming, disease and poverty are all serious threats. If we're going to respond to those threats, we need to pull together — and we need to stop letting the far right get away with dismissing all criticism of the Bush administration as irrational "hatred."
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GaRebelRunner
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Posted: 09/29/06 - 15:03 Post subject:
Yes, I have become a Bush hater when it concerns this President who has misled the Nation even moreso than Richard Nixon.
I did not vote for Reagan or Bush I but in both cases I respected them as President. And while I did not agree with many of their policies I never felt that I could not trust them. Even when Bush I committed U.S. troops to the Gulf War, I never lost respect for him although I did not support those actions.
But this Bush and the men he has surrounded him with - totally different story. So yes, as Sean Hannity loves to preach on his show I don't believe a word this President speaks. Nor do I respect him as the President. I've voted in every Presidential election since 1972 and never felt that way about someone who came into office whether or not I voted for them.
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wanttorun100
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Posted: 09/29/06 - 15:10 Post subject:
GA do we REALLY have to go oer the whole sodom fooled the whole world with the WMD thing AGAIN? Of course we actually have found WMD in Iraq - now the ones found could have been from an incompetant Iraqi military not know what the heck it had or didn't have but I digress
Of course you could always ask the Kurd about Sodom and his gas
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GaRebelRunner
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Posted: 09/29/06 - 17:11 Post subject:
Once again, WTR. The number of Iraqi's in the planes on 9/11 were? And OBL was hiding where in Iraq? And Saddam's government presented a threat to U.S. security when?
How many more U.S. voluneers must needlessly sacrifice themselves in Iraq for the trinity?
At least President Johnson admitted he made a mistake when he escalated Vietnam. I'm not so sure Bush is able to admit his mistakes.
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Gogirlgo
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Posted: 10/01/06 - 14:41 Post subject:
Beyond the myriad atrocious policy considerations regarding the endless War on Terror, what about all his other atrocious policies? No Child Left Behind? Katrina? Halliburton? Tax breaks for the rich while the national debt skyrocketed? Allowing Enron to screw thousands out of their pensions and jack up energy costs in California? Lying about farming out torture to other countries? Refusing to demand that Detroit make cars that have anywhere near the fuel economy they did in the late 1970s and instead fighting to open up more drilling up north? Refusing to acknowledge global warming? Walking out of Kyoto? It's so easy to look at all these policies and see that they're rubberstamped by someone who really doesn't give a damn how the poor are impacted, how illegal something is, how short-sighted a policy is, etc.
For every person like me whom you see as "blinded by hatred," I see a person like you whom I see as either willfully blind or having been duped. It's so obvious to me what Bush has done--and the things Clinton did that were wrong were obvious to me, too. Since I know you can clearly ID what Clinton's problems were, if you can't see Bush's problems, it can only be b/c you don't want to or you've been duped.
It doesn't help dissuade the "they're duped" theory that the opinions spewed by you Regressives are thought up by an inner circle of about 5 people (Hannity, Coulter, Rove, etc.) and just regurgitated again and again by millions of you. It's as if not a single person who believes in Bush is capable of an original thought. You instead have to be told by your pulpits and FOX and AM radio what to think, and once you're told what to think, you stick to it with zeal, which means you will never be able to engage in an actual discourse, and you will never be able to expand your thought-base or amend it or, god forbid, alter it.
So when you label someone a hater, or really, when you make any comment at all regarding politics, it's just more of the same. You're putting a smackdown on dissent only b/c the Inner Circle told you to, and it's hard for me to find any real merit in that.
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Gogirlgo
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Posted: 10/01/06 - 14:43 Post subject:
Beyond the myriad atrocious policy considerations regarding the endless War on Terror, what about all his other atrocious policies? No Child Left Behind? Katrina? Halliburton? Tax breaks for the rich while the national debt skyrocketed? Allowing Enron to screw thousands out of their pensions and jack up energy costs in California? Lying about farming out torture to other countries? Refusing to demand that Detroit make cars that have anywhere near the fuel economy they did in the late 1970s and instead fighting to open up more drilling up north? Refusing to acknowledge global warming? Walking out of Kyoto? It's so easy to look at all these policies and see that they're rubberstamped by someone who really doesn't give a damn how the poor are impacted, how illegal something is, how short-sighted a policy is, etc.
For every person like me whom you see as "blinded by hatred," I see a person like you whom I see as either willfully blind or having been duped. It's so obvious to me what Bush has done--and the things Clinton did that were wrong were obvious to me, too. Since I know you can clearly ID what Clinton's problems were, if you can't see Bush's problems, it can only be b/c you don't want to or you've been duped.
It doesn't help dissuade the "they're duped" theory that the opinions spewed by you Regressives are thought up by an inner circle of about 5 people (Hannity, Coulter, Rove, etc.) and just regurgitated again and again by millions of you. It's as if not a single person who believes in Bush is capable of an original thought. You instead have to be told by your pulpits and FOX and AM radio what to think, and once you're told what to think, you stick to it with zeal, which means you will never be able to engage in an actual discourse, and you will never be able to expand your thought-base or amend it or, god forbid, alter it.
So when you label someone a hater, or really, when you make any comment at all regarding politics, it's just more of the same. You're putting a smackdown on dissent only b/c the Inner Circle told you to, and it's hard for me to find any real merit in that.
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andydp
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Posted: 10/02/06 - 13:55 Post subject:
| Gogirlgo wrote: |
For every person like me whom you see as "blinded by hatred," I see a person like you whom I see as either willfully blind or having been duped. It's so obvious to me what Bush has done--and the things Clinton did that were wrong were obvious to me, too. Since I know you can clearly ID what Clinton's problems were, if you can't see Bush's problems, it can only be b/c you don't want to or you've been duped. |
The situations are VERY different and in no way equal but... back during WW II when stories of the holucast and what was going on in Russia were coming out they were dismissed as "propaganda". When more proof came out it was ignored. The phenomenon is called "the will not to believe". Despite overwhelming evidence of things not being right, people will still continue to march.
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wanttorun100
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Posted: 10/02/06 - 16:35 Post subject:
| GaRebelRunner wrote: | Once again, WTR. The number of Iraqi's in the planes on 9/11 were? And OBL was hiding where in Iraq? And Saddam's government presented a threat to U.S. security when?
How many more U.S. voluneers must needlessly sacrifice themselves in Iraq for the trinity?
At least President Johnson admitted he made a mistake when he escalated Vietnam. I'm not so sure Bush is able to admit his mistakes. |
Ok for the slower members of the class - 9/11 just woke us up to the fact that there are people who have been at war with us for quite a while like back during the first attack on the WTC, USS Cole, coupla embassy bombing
Now Sodom had been playing hide the sausage with WMD and pretty much fooled the whole world. Folks come the the President - and say "Sir!" (and mean it compared to grittting the teeth when the last bone head was in oriface but I digress) "Sir! We got this Sodom feller who's being a PITA with the WMD maybe we ought to take him out."
So the President looks around thinks humm big hole in the Pentegon, big hole in NYC, plane smeared all over a field in PA. That's with just a coupla wackjobs what could a Nation State do ...
Of course will all the Jihadi's heading to Iraq it could be said we're now hunting them over a baited field - not particulaly sporting but saves a lot of mess over by here
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GaRebelRunner
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Posted: 10/02/06 - 20:29 Post subject:
wtr - on many of your posts you at least show some logical thought process even if I think your logic is faulty. But your comments above make no sense as to the justification of our invading Iraq.
Do you not see that Bush is setting up the next administration whether Republican or Democrat to have to deal with the mess of U.S. disengagement from Iraq? That way he says to all his fellow conservatives, "I didn't lose the War in Iraq." He's leaving his mess for someone else to clean up and it isn't going to be pretty, not to mention the waste of ever how many service personnel end up being killed or wounded in Iraq.
Bush could have dropped a couple of nuclear bombs over Afghanistan and not received one word of protest from me for Afghanistan's part in allowing OBL to use their country to launch his attacks against the U.S. Iraq simply has no basis for our invasion, whether or not we liked the way Saddam was running the country.
Afghanistan was a perfectly legal war target. Iran was not and is not.
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GaRebelRunner
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Posted: 10/02/06 - 20:36 Post subject:
| GaRebelRunner wrote: | | Afghanistan was a perfectly legal war target. Iran was not and is not. |
And of course the sentence should have read "Afghanistan was a perfectly legal war target. Iraq was not and is not."
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RangerG
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Posted: 10/03/06 - 05:55 Post subject:
| GaRebelRunner wrote: | Bush could have dropped a couple of nuclear bombs over Afghanistan and not received one word of protest from me for Afghanistan's part in allowing OBL to use their country to launch his attacks against the U.S. Iraq simply has no basis for our invasion, whether or not we liked the way Saddam was running the country.
Afghanistan was a perfectly legal war target. Iran was not and is not. |
I shudder to think what the world opinon would have been had we dropped a nuke...not that I disagree. It would have saved a lot of US lives, and would have given Saddam pause for thought...along with the rest of the Middle East. Mess with the US and you end up a parking lot.
Bottom line for me...I am tired of funeral missions...
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GaRebelRunner
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Posted: 10/03/06 - 07:29 Post subject:
They may have complained for a little while but a nation is entitled to protect itself from a direct and unprovoked attack. If Afghanistan was willing to turn OBL over to us, no problem. If not, we have those nuclear weapons in our arsenal for a reason. And even though the world might have complained, you wouldn't have these insurgents emboldened as they are by our current situation. Now we've lost the momentum even in Afghanistan while we flounder in Iraq and we are distanced from the events of 9/11 the nuclear option is out. But at the time I woudn't have had a problem with it.
Had we used the nucelar option do you think Iran and North Korea would be so bold in their statements against us? I think not.
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