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Subject: 
Re: Help me with the math
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.off-topic.debate
Date: 
Thu, 9 Sep 2004 21:51:37 GMT
Viewed: 
988 times
  
In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Bruce Schlickbernd wrote:
   In lugnet.off-topic.debate, John Neal wrote:
   In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Bruce Schlickbernd wrote:
   In lugnet.off-topic.debate, John Neal wrote:
   In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Bruce Schlickbernd wrote:
   In lugnet.off-topic.debate, John Neal wrote:



  
  
  
  
   How outrageous! Bush’s intervention in Iraq was all about deposing SH’s cruel and dangerous regime-- nothing more!



  
  
  
   You keep piping up with tha line. Bush’s invasion was about stopping Saddam from immenent use of “WoMD” - nothing more. It was not about deposing Saddam because he was cruel - that’s a retroactive argument used because the real argument for war turned out to be a load of hooey.

  
  
   Please. SH was always a threat to stability in that region-- the first Gulf War was ample proof of that.

That has absolutely nothing to do with the point. Bush sold the war on the basis of “WoMD” (Weapons of Mass Destruction for anyone wandering by) and when Bush couldn’t find any, he came up with the “bad man” excuse. Bait and switch.

I don’t agree. He sold the war on the premise that SH was a bad man who possessed WMDs and wouldn’t think twice about making those weapons available to our enemies. I never bought the direct threat idea-- just the aid and abett idea. After all, there are many nations who possess WMDs. We don’t worry about them because we trust that they won’t use them or give them to those who would use them against us. We had no such assurance from SH, especially knowing that the bastard actually used them on his own people.

Look up the quote chain and you’ll see I established “immenent use of WoMD”. Basically, you are agreeing with me. All you did is weasel in the words “bad man”.

I believe that the Bush administration believed he had them and could at any time make them available to al-Qaeda. That was the source of the immediacy, not that some attack was imminent.
  
  
  
   Again, intelligence was bad WRT WMD but frankly, in a scenario like that it is in our best interests to err on the side of caution.

That is really easy to answer: where is the head of Osama bin Laden?

He could actually be dead. If he weren’t, why remain so silent? If he were, why acknowledge that your great leader was killed? Who knows.

You accept that lame explanation? You are satisfied with that? A shrug of the shoulders and the thousands of dead rest easier and you can salve your conscience about supporting Bush?

Do you have a better explanation of the disappearance of OBL because I’m all eyes.
  
  
   Where has our international respect and standing gone?

What international respect and standing? From the UK? From France? From Russia? From Germany? From Poland?

I’ll take that as you agree with my point.

Then you’d be wrong.

Respect scale: Have it = Yes, Have not = No, Didn’t have it before, doesn’t have it now = NO
  • UK yes
  • France no NO
  • Russia yes
  • Germany no
  • Poland yes
When you say “international standing”, about which countries are you speaking?

  
  
   How about this: Clinton is the anti-christ! He’s evil incarnate!

I KNEW IT!! Hmmm, but then what does that make Hillary??? :-)

Mia Farrow.

Er, wouldn’t that make Chelsea the anti-Christ? :-)
  
  
   So what? What does that have to do with Bush’s performance in office?

Retracted already. Have a sip of Earl Gray; shaken, not stirred...
  
  
  
Why are we still meeting
   resistance in Iraq? All we want to do is help the Iraqis set up a government that insures freedom for her people and leave! What is wrong with that????

One, that may not be all Bush and Cheney are attempting to do.

And it may be. Your hatred of Bush won’t let you consider this possibility.

I said “may”. That carries with it the implication that it may not. You have assumed incorrectly. I am not convinced that they are up to something, but I certainly won’t exonerate them. I can see reason for people to be suspicious of their motivations.

Well then why mention it? It’s idle speculation.

Think it through: What you are saying is if anything is not 100% certain, it shouldn’t be mentioned. I wouldn’t call it “idle” in any case.

Okay, but you are only relying on your deep-seated hatred of Bush for your theory-- not a very rational basis...

  
  
   The overwhelming majority of Iraqi’s want us out at this point, too. And you are failing to realize that I realize that the overwhelming majority of Iraqis are happy that Saddam is gone.

Even though you realize that I may not have realized that you realize that the overwhelming majority of Iraqis are happy SH is gone, you have failed to realize that, given the choice of us leaving and thereby creating a power vacuum, or us staying until they can fill the vacuum, the overwhelming majority of Iraqis would prefer the latter.

On what basis do you claim that?

HO! Called out on that one, eh? Well, to be honest, I have only heard of individual Iraqis expressing this sentiment, but I think it would be the rational attitude to take were I an Iraqi myself. I will poke around for further justification.
  
  
  
  
  
   We attacked to remove SH’s regime-- that regime is history! So why is there still fighting? Because of Islamic Fascists who don’t want Freedom! They want pukes like SH in power around the world who are sympathetic to their cause who will assist them in their fight against the West.

Saddam stepped on them in Iraq - he didn’t want rival power structures, and that’s exactly what the fundamentalists were. Removing Saddam removed their natural predator.

We will suppress them until a free Iraq is able to defend herself on her own.

I take it by that response that you are abandoning your claim about Saddam and Islamic extremists are working hand in hand.

Not “hand in hand”. More like “you scrub my hairy back and I’ll comb your moustache.” Certainly he didn’t tolerate power grabs from within his populace. He made unholy alliances with OBL types who furthered his own pet causes-- terror against Jews (thus gaining him status in the Muslim world) and attacks against the hated US.

9/11 Commision report found no connection between hairy back and combed moustache. No Al Qaeda connection.

No organized connection, but there were associations. These were not completely disconnected groups.
  
  
   Supressing them carries a large variety of its own risks and you’ll note Bush tippy-toeing around this “suppression”.


  
  
  
Bush is brilliant for taking this fight to Islamo-Fascists now before the stakes got too high. Why must we wait for a nuclear bomb to be denotated on our soil before everyone gets the message??? The only way to stop these wackjobs is for all nations to unite to purge them from their respective soils. Some need assistance to do so, but it is imperative that these scumbags find no place to hide and organize! Then we can go about the business of hunting them down one by one and exterminating them like the vermin they are.

Brilliant for sitting on his hands while the terrorists blew up the World Trade Center?

Are we talking about Clinton or Bush here? ;-)

Shall I repeat the question or are you going to dodge it again?

I only dodged because I’m not sure what you’re getting at. Is this some reference to MM’s F911? You are assuming of course that he somehow knew who even perpetrated the attacks initially. My brother-in-law lived 2 blocks from the WTC and watched the second plane fly into tower 2-- his initial reaction was that something had gone haywire with the transponders atop the Trade Towers and that planes were being drawn into them. Crazy maybe, but it illustrates that, at the time, nobody knew what the hell was going on. Why suppose that the attack was limited to NY and DC alone?

Read the 9/11 commision’s report. Bush did squat. Nothing. Nada. Despite numerous warnings, he took no proactive measures. I keep talking about proactive measures and you keep talking about reactive things. Basically, Bush sat around doing nothing, ignoring increasing signs of what was coming. How can you say Bush is brilliant by any standard of the word when he was completely unprepared in the face of his own subordinates’ warnings?

Sure, when you read that report you think “D’uh”, of course that would happen. The report even acknowledges the 20/20 hindsight of its findings. But to say that Bush should have picked up on all of the warning signs and only 8 months into his presidency-- that is totally unfair.
  
  
Even with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight-- what brilliant action would suggest he to have done?

Read the 9/11 commisions findings.

Well, Bruce, it took many men many months and many million $$$ to gather that information-- how unfair to expect a new administration to be on top of that. Why wasn’t that information assembled by Clinton? I think it is more than fair to hold the officeholder for the previous 8 years a little more accountable than Bush!
  
  
  
  
   He didn’t have an ounce of forethought on that,

Not sure what you mean here. I thought everyone agreed that swift intervention in Afganistan was precisely the correct and immediate response.

FOREthought - as in preventing the tragedy from happening. You are talking about a reactive response.

And you are talking crazy. Do you honestly believe that he could have done something to prevent 9-11?

Read the 9/11 commision’s report. Yes. We could have.

Dodge. We are talking about Bush personally, not our country.

  
   Remember, the whole thing was planned long before he even came to office.... Seems to me that Clinton should have pursued the matter more vigorously after the first attack on the WTC!

Clinton is not running for re-election. Clinton was not on watch when the World trade Center was destroyed.

How convenient!

   Clinton is not responsible for allowing bin Laden to go unpunished for three years.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME????? Clinton was offered OBL’s head on a platter and he refused it!!!! I’d like to hear your spin on that one!

   Bush ignored all the warning signs regardless of what Clinton did or did not do. Using Clinton as the universal excuse is about the lamest defense there is.

I agree that blaming former adminstrations is generally a bogus play, but in this instance, laying this whole debacle at the feet of Bush is just insane. If Gore had been elected, he’d being going after Clinton! :-)
  
  
  
  
   just like he didn’t have an ounce of forethought about how to handle Iraq once Saddam was booted.

Please cite for me one article where someone predicted the outcome of SH’s deposition.

I take it you don’t realize you just made my point for me?

I wouldn’t know because I have no idea what your point is!

  
   That George W Bush can’t predict the future???? What kind of a silly indictment is that???

Funny, I figured it out.

In what way. No stop. Tell me now what will happen next and what should be done about it:-)

   Why the heck couldn’t Bush? Because he didn’t think!

Silly indictment? That’s about the worse indictment I can make of a president.

  
  
  
   Brilliant for not hunting down the one scumbag he had a world mandate to hunt down?

Please. Are you implying that every possible effort isn’t still being made to find and capture OBL?

I thought I was saying point blank that Bush has wasted resources, time, and energy into a wild goose chase instead on concentrating on the task at hand.

Why in the world would you think that the 2 would be mutually exclusive?

Why in the world would you think that we have unlimited resources?

Where in the world did you get that idea?

   Haven’t you noticed they have resorted to refusing enlistment endings? Do we have an endless pocketbook? Do we endless trained personnel? Do we have unlimited equipment?

No (increase incentives). No. No. No.
  
  
   Imply? Please. Do you see the head of Osama bin Laden three years later? I sure don’t.

What I do see is no follow-up attack has ocurred on US soil three years later. Do you suppose that was in OBL’s little playbook? I sure don’t.

How many years did you say that the WTC attack took? Disrupting the attacks and ending the attacks are two different things.

So are you implying that OBL is safe somewhere plotting his next attack on his own terms?
  
  
  
   Don’t be so sure. Wait until the Islamo-fascists start attacking them (Beslan???). And watch out. Don’t be surprised if Russia starts shaking things up in

Maybe that wouldn’t have happened if Bush had captured bin Laden instead of futzing about in Iraq.

Again, we have a big army. I think that they can walk and chew gum at the same time. I can’t believe that you believe that Bush isn’t doing every single thing he can to capture OBL. Look at it from a re-election POV-- finding OBL would virtually ensure victory in November!

You do realize that you are agreeing that Bush is an idiot with that statement? :-)

The argument relating the US intelligence failures to locate OBL and President Bush’s mental acuity is specious.
  
  
  
   Pakistan!

   Brilliant? Hardly - he’s an idiot.

I believe that that kind of knee-jerk epithet is beneath you, -->Bruce<--!

I think I backed up my statements fairly well.

What he did wasn’t stupid. You may disagree with what he did, but he has protected US soil from terrorism for 3 years and has acted to insure the flow of oil to protect our economy and our way of life. I’d say that’s what a President should do. He defended our country.

Ahhhh, oil. Allow me to cut and paste from way up there at the top of this message:

JOHN: Why are we still meeting resistance in Iraq? All we want to do is help the Iraqis set up a government that insures freedom for her people and leave! What is wrong with that????

Green-Eyed Devil’s Advocate: that may not be all Bush and Cheney are attempting to do.

Thank you for supporting my point.

Thank you for providing my daily dosage of innuendo laced with conspiracy theory:-d

   And he sat on his thumbs while 3000 people were murdered, and only then did he get off his butt and do something, and even that was misdirected. I’m not impressed.

  
   Certainly better than your claims of him being brilliant.

Taking the war to the terrorists was bold. I’d rather fight them “there” with our military than here with our civilians.

That decision wasn’t exactly rocket science.

Ha, Clinton (the Rhode scholar) didn’t figure that one out. Gore wouldn’t have had the kahonas to do it, either.

JOHN



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: Help me with the math
 
(...) That would be included in what I said. However, there are no WoMD and no Al Qaeda connections. Bush can believe what he wants, but I am saying he should be held accountable for his mistakes. (...) He just released a new claim that America is (...) (20 years ago, 10-Sep-04, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Help me with the math
 
(...) Look up the quote chain and you'll see I established "immenent use of WoMD". Basically, you are agreeing with me. All you did is weasel in the words "bad man". (...) You accept that lame explanation? You are satisfied with that? A shrug of the (...) (20 years ago, 9-Sep-04, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)

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