JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia (AFP) — Former Pakistani premier Nawaz Sharif arrived in the Saudi Arabian Red Sea city of Jeddah on Monday following his expulsion from Pakistan, a Saudi official told AFP.
Sharif "landed at Jeddah airport," the official said, requesting anonymity.
Sharif was deported from Pakistan just hours after returning from exile hoping to ignite a popular campaign to oust military ruler President Pervez Musharraf.
As I've said before: the less Pakistan makes headlines the better I sleep at night.
MESEBERG, Germany (AFP) — French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel made a joint call here on Monday for greater regulation of international financial markets.
"We cannot allow a few speculators to bring down the whole international system, borrowing under any conditions they like and buying at any price they want and without knowing who is lending," Sarkozy said at a press conference after talks with Merkel at a castle outside Berlin.
"We are in favour of transparency and regulation (of financial markets) and for a capitalism that benefits businessmen and not speculators," Sarkozy said.
I would like to see a study that does something similar with a black and white vs gray (or rather simplistic absolutes vs complex relativism) completed. How to do that? I don't know.
But I bet the results would be similar to the above study.
Despite the rampant disinformation coming from the whitehouse and the various journalists who echo WH talking points, AQI are nobodies. In the entirety of the Iraq cluster&^%$ they compromise maybe 2% of the fighters. Kevin Drum:
THE MYTH OF AQI....REVISITED....In our October issue, Andrew Tilghman argues that al-Qaeda in Iraq is much smaller than popularly believed, accounting for only "2 percent to 5 percent of the Sunni insurgency." Earlier this week, Gen. James Jones testified before Congress that even this is a high end estimate:
BAYH: Our intelligence services and other experts have indicated publicly that in their opinion about...two percent or fewer of the adversaries that we're facing in Iraq and that the Iraqis are facing in Iraq are foreign jihadis or AQI affiliates, [and] 98 percent or more are Iraqis fighting amongst Iraqis for the future of Iraq. Is that consistent with your understanding?
JONES: I think we would agree with that. Yes.
AQI is a dangerous organization, but it's time to stop pretending that they're the main driver of violence in Iraq. They aren't. They're a small and unpopular group of fanatics who will almost certainly be wiped out whether we withdraw or not. AQI simply isn't a good reason to stay in Iraq, no matter how many times President Bush manages to say their name in a single speech.
AQI is frankly trivial, any decision predictaed upon their existence is a mistake. They should be rightly ignored as inconsequential, but they won't be because conflating them with AQ and pretending they are a real threat is the most direct way for bush to continue to tie Iraq to 9/11.
The top American commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, has recommended that decisions on the contentious issue of reducing the main body of the American troops in Iraq be put off for six months, American officials said Sunday.
members to keep the numbers up beyond next spring. What about maybe formulating a plan B? I mean, if we absolutely have to pull people in the spring, if the bad guys know, won't they just hold off till we pull them then?
When will be a good time to get out of the way of Iraqi's killing each other?
And actually the same argument that the righties have been making about setting a "date certain." Certainly the sequelae of setting a date certain by choice are no different from those of a date certain set by circumstance.
Maybe Democratic representative Charlie Rangel will get his way, and the Democrats will bring back their draft. I still have my two cards!
Seems that nost people here and on other boards have no need for his testimony to decide anything about Iraq. Its only use to most is to judge the mn.
It works like this:
IF the general's testimony agrees with your view and tends to confirm your wants, then he is a great general, honest, and insightful.
IF, on the other hand, his testimony disagrees with your view, then the general is weak, dishonest, and co-opted by political forces.
Some of pour most dishonest political brpokers have decided oin advance that his testimony won't meet their won political needs. The idiots over at MoveOn have taken out the now famous "General BetrayUs" ad to express their jaundiced view. At least they have given their own lighthouse beacon to warn of the devil depths of American politics.
Look up the word 'prejudice.' You won't look so foolish.
To be clear, the definition I had in mind when I used the term is this:
"an irrational attitude of hostility against an individual, a group, a race, or their supposed characteristics."
You are aware, absent cretinism, that the context of the thread was racial prejudice and prejudice based on sexual orientation. You sophistic attempt to use the fallacy of equivocation for reasons of personal animus here are petty and childish.
Once again, fifth request, please stay off of my stuff.
where you use your armed forces to attack, kill and occupy a nation that has in no way harmed nor threatened you.
What do you think of those devil depths of American Politics. That is the war we're talking about and disagree with. You don't hear them complaining about Afganistan. It's Iraq/Iran you hear liberals screaming bloody murder about.
My mother told me early that one doesn't justify one's sins by saying that Jack does it, too.
MoveOn hedre is not screaming bloody murder about the war, but rather making a personal attack on the integrity of a man before even hearing what he has to say. In their words, a sort of cruel play on his name in the manner of taunting schoolyard bullies, they even imply that this general may be a traitor.
When those who opposed this war were called traitors or treasonous, I expressed my opinion that this was reprehensible, unAmerican. I express the same opinion here for the same reason.
MoveOn is simply predictable oin this regard. They are sort of the Ann Coulter of the left.
Seems everyone on the committee is going to give their own two bits about the testimony before the general gets to testify. Seems my comment above about the testimony not being of any use for one's thoughts on the subject matter extends to the committee itself.
How sad that we have gotten to a government by religion, where the facts and honest testimony are accepted and rejected on the basis of its congruence with one's dogmatic political position.
Where it is more important to "get with the program" than it is to think for oneself!
What of the Iraqi troop readiness report that John Warner requested and which showed little to no progress in Iraqi troop readiness levels along with a recommendation of disbanding the Iraqi police forces and starting from scratch because they are so rife with sectarian militias?
What about the GAO report that says that the Pentagon's odd rules of counting civilian casualties, rules instituted since the start of the surge, underreport civilian casualties?
Is being skeptical of what the General reports not a feasible or defensible position given the jiggering with the numbers done by the Pentagon, according to other, independent reports?
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Some of us could be laughing that certain people are gullible enough to believe the dog and pony show today has something to do with "facts and honest testimony."
There's a reason many of us have our minds made up: we know what he's going to say. It's no secret since the message has been leaked ahead of time. MS objection is irrational since it predicated on the false idea that Petreaus testimony has been kept secret.
We've had weeks to hear what he will say and to research the validity of those claims.
Yes, we could guess from what Patraeus himself was saying what he would write.
And yes, it is obvious that you disagree with that general drift, so you cannot see it as "facts and honest testimony."
And yes, we could do research of people's opinions.
And yes, you are free to pick and choose just those whose opinions you generally agree with, fxing your facts around your ideology.
What we couldn't know is what new facts and figures would be presented. Only the very dishonest wpould make up their mind in advance in that case.
Sad, sad, sad.
You are suggesting that a lecture entitled "Professor Einstein presents his evidence for the theory of relativity" could not be honest and factual because you9 know in advance that he is going to support the theory of relativity. But he just might present a few experiments, say, the pressession of Mercury's orbit, that you weren't aware of, not having access to the experimental equipment or the scientific reports.
But I am very interested in your observations from your trip to iraq last week. Please fill me in.
What we couldn't know is what new facts and figures would be presented. Only the very dishonest wpould make up their mind in advance in that case.
So does repeating your false argument make you feel good or something? Because it remains false. There are no "new facts and figures" to be reported because the report has already been leaked to the press. I can't believe you are not able to understand this rather important detail.
See, "new" means something that, well, you didn't have before. Since the reports already leaked we had it before. Temporal relationships are pretty key to constructing logical arguments. It's why your argument here is nonsense.
You are suggesting that a lecture entitled "Professor Einstein presents his evidence for the theory of relativity" could not be honest and factual because you9 know in advance that he is going to support the theory of relativity.
I'm going to have to recommend GoRight gives you reading comprehension classes. If you wanted to be correct you'd say "What you are suggesting is that a paper entitled "Professor Einstein presents his evidence for the theory of relativity" could not be honest simply because you had already read the paper and discovered a multitude of fabrications in it."
Well yeah, I feel quite comfortable pointing out such things as falsities. See for example my various responses to you.
There's been a couple stories every week for the last several months.
here's one of the most recent:
A leaked congress document has resurfaced in advance of a report by the US commander in Iraq investigating the status of US forces there and the efficiency of the "surge strategy" adopted by George Bush, the US president.
...
The latest leak to resurface suggests that Petraeus and Crocker will tell US congress that any changes to Bush's troop surge strategy may jeopardise the situation in Iraq.
Leaked reports show that the US general will argue that major changes in US strategy in Iraq can only hinder the scant security and political progress that has been made.
Crocker is also expected to discuss the challenges of corruption, reconciliation, and de-Baathification.
Petreaus will say the strategy of 30,000 addition troops is working better than any previous effort to stem internal fighting - securing the streets for ordinary Iraqis.
These reports have been everywhere, and undoubtedly many were leaked diretly by the whitehouse in order to set expectations ahead of time. The same way that they publish the President's SOTU address and other major announcements before he gives them.
First, I know there have been other reports, and of course we don't neglect them either. We consider them all. We don't say, for instance, "Patreaus says this, so we can ignore those." Nor do we say, "those say this, so we can ignore Patreaus." To do so, one would have to chose not on the merits, but on ideology.
Second, I realize there were "leaks" of the Patreaus and Crocdker material, for instance, one saying that it would be written by White House staff. And this false leak was glommed onto by the usual ideological practitioners ofrf mental sloth (in this case, of the lefty variety, species religious antiBushites). There have leaks about what Patreaus' conclusions will be. I'm not so much interested in his conclusions, but in his data. Only a low grade idiot would say that the leaks EQUAL what Patreaus is going to say, data wise.
Your quote above confirms what I suspected with you. It wouldn't matter to you what data Patreaus had if he came to a conclusion that doesn't fit with your ideology.
Bottom line, some but not all of what he was going to say was guessed at in news stories, but that was mostly about what he was going to say in conclusion, which is, after all, the least important things he had to say.
My point, again: his report was worth listening to, but most people, on either side, have made up their mind about what he said without hearing it [for your sake, on the basis of leaks to the press, since they are always 100% accuirate, and] on the baqsis of their ideology, judging what he says by the dictates of their ideology, not the facts.
You know, Tlaloc, it doesn't really matter if you judge his presentation on ideology on the basis of an advanced copy, even, or the actual speech. The problem is letting one's ideology replace point by point thinking.
I think you showed your hand with the "dog and pony show" comment. No analysis there.
You made a false argument, I corrected it, now you blather about a bunch of stuff that alternates between incorrect and immaterial.
My analysis of his report is based on knowledge of it. What the report says is put in juxtaposition with a number of credible sources. The Petraeus report is found to be lacking in comparison. Consequently it is disregarded.
Just because you fall for the dog and pony show doesn't mean you should get pissy at those of us who are smarter. By all means listen to it if you like. Take your time to evaluate it point by point. I guess the rest of us can wait for you to catch up.
That's the difference. Personal insults especially the persistent harassing that you are demonstrating here is explicitly against the rules. Please stop.
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
I'm obviously not the biggest fan of MS since I've largely stopped responding to him, but I do have to ask what you're trying to accomplish here, CLC. If you're trying to point out inconsistency/hypocrisy, it's a fair point, but do you think you might be starting to cross from "pointing out" to "harassing"?
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
The point has been made. That said, discussing points of view surfaced in other comments are what this place is all about. So being asked not to comment on something placed out there for discussion is ludicrous.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
a new start since his 'second-coming', but I've had similar comments about his supposed (and humanly impossible) neutrality and objectivism in the past.
I've never claimed any super-human neutrality nor certainly objectivism. I do have more objectivity than I usually find on political sites because I have no political ideology, although I have opinions on specific topics individually.
What CLC is referring to is my comments concerning prejudice in the context of a discussion of gays and the civil rights movement.
Let's put it this way: objectivity and elimination of ideology are my constant goals. That is, they are perfectives. I am making no claim to perfection, and it is unfair to put those words in my mouth.
I don't think those are the goals of political ideologues.
ON another board, a writer was quoted as saying that the difference between the judgment of the worth of a proposition is different for those writing political opinion and journalists. Journalists, the writer said, are committed to finding the truth, and this is the bases of their judgment of a poposition.
Political writers, on the other hand, judge a proposition by its usefulness in advancing their political agenda.
In making this distinction, I don't think the writer was claiming that either were perfect in their judgments.
The observation herte is that on this board or any political board, slanted toward an ideology or not, you can find example after example of the ideology entraining facts. This topic here is a good example, made possible because the facts are few and hard to get. Those who want to leave grasp at anything they hear that is negative, and those who want to stay grasp at anything that seems positive, all with regard to the situation in Iraq.
Petraeus begins now to speak, and says that this is his testimony, written by himself, unshared with any superior, nor with anyone in the government. Yet the judgment of his testimony will come from what those of us here who have never been close to iraq during the times he describes want to believe about what he describes.
I did not mean to suggest your intent. I do think you are very mistaken about a few things so I will list those now:
Petraeus begins now to speak, and says that this is his testimony, written by himself, unshared with any superior, nor with anyone in the government.
While his testimony may be his alone, the report is not. As a matter of fact, the administration wrote the report (page 2 of the article):
Despite Bush's repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, administration officials said it would actually be written by the White House, with inputs from officials throughout the government.
Politics is a partisan game in which those in power (and those not) will state what they want to further their own agenda (I think we are agreed here). It is difficult to find true objective and unbiased reports at any level of government (at least the analysis of 'facts'--see below). Facts are not facts, but fodder for interpretation as has always been.
Which gets to my next point:
Let's put it this way: objectivity and elimination of ideology are my constant goals.
Unless you are a calculator (you are not a calculator, I assume), then I argue that this goal is an impossibility. As much as I would like to commend you for your effort, I not only think it is an impossibility but a gesture in bad faith too.
Perhaps we are using a different definition of 'political' here (GoRight, put away the dictionary, please). I tend to see almost everything as political (from architecture, to recreation, to words, to spirituality/religion, etc.). If politics is basically power or control (institutionalized or not is unimportant), then we can view it in almost any aspect of life.
If you are saying that you wish to avoid a certain organized school of thought (ideology), then that is fine, but I still doubt that you are able to do away with the lenses from which you view the world. Here are five questions to get at some of your ideologies/political perspectives:
1. What is your favored system of economy?
2. Which form of government do you find benefits a society?
3. Do you value freedom?
4. Do you value health (or safety)?
5. What is your 'moral system' (used loosely)?
All of the above are political questions (but as stated further above, these are the tip of the iceberg). If you have an opinion about any of the above, you have prejudices. There are no facts that can lead to 'correct' answers here solely by themselves (without going into other political values. For example, you may think from a certain set of data that humans live longer in capitalistic societies. That is fine, but you are still valuing health over other attributes in which this 'value' is not a 'fact' but a personal interpretation of what you find most important i.e. health).*
For the most part, politics is not even about the interpretation of objective facts. For example, how does the issue of gay marriage deal with 'facts', and how would one use those facts to answer the question of whether gays should have the right to marry? There are no relevant facts here, only interpretation of various moral systems.
I could go on for much longer, but I think you get the point. Aristotle said humans are political animals. Facts are neutral and do not lend themselves to conclusions without interpretation and prioritizing of values. No 'is' implies an 'ought' as Hume said. In other words, no description (the facts) suggests a prescription (what we should do with said facts).
Your goal is an impossibility. You are unobjective and will never be anything but. Accept and cherish it.
*(edit): Some people create categories for the above values. These we call 'ideologies', and the attempt to institutionalize these values we call political parties.
I agree that objectivity is a goal that one can't obtain. That is why i used the term 'perfective." I do not accept that because perfection is impossible, one ought to give up the goal. too convenient.
You assume:
you may think from a certain set of data that humans live longer in capitalistic societies. That is fine, but you are still valuing health over other attributes in which this 'value' is not a 'fact' but a personal interpretation of what you find most important i.e. health).*
But what if i argued that that fact alone means we should give up capitalism?
You know, Specter, I know you find this hard to believe, but I just don't have what Nietzsche (since you are name-dropping) called a "Will to a system." I have ideas, opinions, and didn't say that i didn't. the careful reader would call some of my opinions libertarian, some Marxist, some conservtive, and so on. My method is to see politics as the effort to provide practical answers to practical questions. For instance, if the goal is to cut down on infant moratility in the US, the answers would have to do with medical practice, how we access it, how that interfaces with other aspects of society, and so on. "Socialized medicine" of some form or another may be offered as an answer, but i will want to hear about the proposal in facts and figures. As soon as we get moralistic answers, (all infants should get the best care possible, in itself an impossibility), i know we are out of politics, and into morality as political ideology. In fact, whether all infants get care, or even whether reducing infant morality given all the practicalities, is the political question, decided on, in our system, by the people. What i am saying here is that ideologists tend to see things narrowly, to put things in absolute terms. Infant mortality should be (that moral wording again) the goal of society no matter what the cost. I think that the costs are always important no matter what the issue.
So, do i think that the health of babies is a valuable goal? yes. Should it be the goal of the federal government? maybe. Depends on, as you might say, the politics. All of it.
Now, take gay marriage. You are right that there are probably no facts that are relevant to this discussion. And you are right that it has become a moral issue. To my mind, it should NOT be a moral issue. It should be a political issue. But, unfortunately, we are not far in time from a place where people who think that morality should be involved in politics made laws against sodomy. The question here should be political: are gays treated equally in a constitutional sense? If not, what must be done to bring this about?
For me, morality is a set, systematic or not, of values which governs one's own behaviour, most often as ideals not fully realized. Morality is not to be used to control other people's behaviour. But in our country, the temptation to use political power to force people to behave according to one's morality has led to bad law and ppor policies by politicians of all stripes.
Aristotle said, btw, that all men by nature desire to know. Ideology is like faith: it is anti-knowledge. It provides a constant answer to which one can refer, like a bible, to respond to questions or situations in the world. it saves having to think about life as it happens.
For me, life is like jazz, you make it up as you go along, using the tools you have at the time. I have known musicians who found some happy solo that they played the rest of their lives on a certain tune. I hated working with these people. Their music wasn't alive. Since i am never the same person, never feel and know exactly the same thngs, never have the same perspective on things, why should i ever play anything the same way twice?
Likewise, why should i ever answer the same political question the same way twice? Of course, this too is an ideal. Sometimes my ideas change more slowly than I would like, because time is limited, and I can't reconsider everything every time.
Thus, for me, interesting thinkers don't repeat the same ready doctrines over and over again, like so many chanting altar boys. They think, and, I always hope, write aneww each time.
As Emerson famously said, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." When i hear that "Kerry is a flip-flopper," my ears perk up. It means that he can change his ideas with circumstances, and not just come up with an idea 20 years ago, and then go brain dead. See? That's why i don't really care what a politician thought about something, or what he voted for 15 years ago. Consistency is not a decent goal, it is to be feared.
I have opinions, but lots of time, I don't draw conclusions. Like when somethng is not clear to me. This is where people rely on ideology or faith to bail them out. I have an immense tolerance for ambiguity. In fact, I was a grown person before i realized that some people had little tolerance for ambiguity, and had to have answers.
Note here that I didn't say I have no values. But i have not here in general argued that the (federal) government should put my values into law, and force others to adopt them, even though i could argue that we would all be better off adopting some of them. Heck, I could make an argument that we might even have a drop in infant mortality.
Remember, there is no virtue without freedom. To force others to behave morally, according to someone's idea of morality, will not only decrease freedom, but will decrease virtue, that is, will actually decrease moral behaviour.
On objectivity, I can say this: the old saying is that the only tragedy in science is a great theory not supported by the facts. Early in my life, I thought the theory that the moon was pulled out of the pacific basin (this is pre-Wegener) was a fantastic theory, and I loved it for the possibilities, the romance. but my dad taught my very young self that this was not the way theories work. You pick them on the data available at the time. Objectively.
If you want to go to the NAS and tell them they are unobjective, fine with me. But the scientists i've worked with have all made objectivity their goal.
As for being a calculator, I have at times actually been accused of being as cold as a calculator, treating everything as an intellectual problem with no sense of humanness. It's actually just the autism. I really have over the years developed a sense of humanness. But i still have the ability to absolutely wall it off. To almost go back to a time when only symbols mattered.
I do have some absolute values, that is, values that I don't think will change. Of course, some of what i thought were absolute values have changed in the past. as have my ideas. This is one reason I don't think my present ideas are properly presented as God-given truth. Here's a couple of values:
1) Data is sacred. One shall not manipulate or change it, nor ignore it.
2) Thou shalt not commit the second sin against science, that is, thou shalt not seek data with one's hypothesis in hand. (This one is hard to keep with google.)
3) Honesty and self-expression always; never play to the crowd, and be careful when playing what the crowd seems to like: it is easy to play for the audience instead of playing your own truth.
4) never play the same solo that you have played before. Let your music be as different as you are every time.
5) (From Thich Nhat Hanh).
[In times of injustice, conflict, or war], try to see that every person involved in the conflict is a victim. See that no person, including all those in the warring parties or in what appear to be opposing sides, desires the suffering to continue. See that it is not only one or a few persons who are to blame for the situation. See that the situation is possible because of the clinging to ideologies and to an unjust world economic system which is upheld by every person through ignorance or through lack of resolve to change it. See that two sides in a conflict are not really opposing, but two aspects of the same reality.
The Master is hard. One "try", and an insistence that we see the rest, no excuses!
6) [A method to allow one to work with the worst of criminals.] See that even the worst of actions have an underlying noble motive.
......
One's reach should always extend beyonds his grasp.
2) Any form of government can benefit people. I don't like to use the term 'society,' which is best defined as "everyone bu me." As in, "you have to sacrifice for society." the Marxist ontology, which reifies society over individuals is the source of much muddy think and human misery. Society is a convenient collective noun, not something which can think, feel, or have benefits given to it.
3) Freedom is the ultimate value if one believes that one owns his own lives, as does everyone else own their own lives. Freedom is not, however, a value that is absolute.
4) Sure, I place a value on health and safety. I don't walk blindfolded down the freeway while eating salted pork rinds.
5) Moral system? none. I have some moral precepts today that i follow. May be different tomorrow, but I grow old. I try to see the Buddha in everyone. I try to present my moral views as personal preferences, rather than rules others should follow.
I'm probably pretty conventional for an old hippy.
You know, specter, this is something that i say in many more words here a lot. So often, the fight on political boards is about facts because people think that admitting a fact will lead to the opposing political view.
We often hear that such and such a fact can't be true, because it would just lead to some policy that the writer does not agree with.
As sort of an example, while the fact that the world is warming noiw cannot be denied, the argument is about whether the warming is anthropogenic.
but the fact is, there is no need to answer that question at all. If we perceive a problem, we might set ourselves to find solutions to the problem.
But for some reason, those who don't like certain solutions seek to argue whether the warming is anthropogenic. Why? And why do those who favour these measures zargue that the warming is anthropogenic?
It's a bit like insisting that because a certain diseasese has been shown to be genetic, we should cure it by removing all genetic material from the person so afflicted. That would certainly work, but we may want to give serious thought to side effects.
The lack of the latter almost led us into the idiocy of the Kyoto agreement, instead of something that actually had some thought and purpose, and may have actually helped.
patreaus said directly that he wrote the report, etc. Now, this is the place for you to directly call him a liar based on leaks prior to his delivering his report.
Since you think he would lie about that, i can see why you would simply dismiss anything he said.
Me, I'm a bit of a skeptic. years ago, before a live presidential speech, the leaks said that the president was going to talk about his plans for his run for the presidency and what plans he had to end the war. Instead, the president announced that he would not run at all. Even his staff were surprised.
So, Patreaus said that he wrote the report. You calling him a liar?
The term 'jerk' was obviously applied to the jerk's behaviour. Had he shouted "keep the troops in iraq forever" and disrupted the start of the proceedings, he would be a jerk, right wing style.
See how easy it is?
Now, sixth time, please stay off of my stuff. I will stay off of yours, as i have.
were thrown out. I didn't hear what one shouted, nor could i read the sign referred to by the chairman, so I coan't report whether the jerks were winged or not.
I understand the point. It is a matter of judging when civil disobedience is called for, and when civility is called for.
here, I am judging that civility is clled for, partly because civil disobedience will serve no purpose, and certainly no purpose that any honest protestor, or even anyone in favor of the war, would have.
These people could express their freedom of speech outside the committee room. In fact, someone could actually hear their message in that case. You can be sure that the Clinton News Network would cover it.
These political movements always have their self-indulgent, spotlight-seeking members.
btw, they just announced that Cindy Sheehan was among those previously thrown out.
And I have to say that among protestors of Vietnam, but even more today, there are those who don't realize that being arrested is the purpose. (Those not arrested and charged are said to suffer "subpoenas envy.)
Somehow, we have grown a crop of protestors who think that there should be no penalty for civil disobedience. This is a dishonour to the fine American tradition of civil disobedience.
Somehow, we have grown a crop of protestors who think that there should be no penalty for civil disobedience.
maybe they shouldn't have read the constitution.
Getting arrested is not the point. The point is to exercise free specch and assembly rights so as to express a point of view. Getting arrested is what happens when the government over reacts and engages in unconstitutional actions.
They absolutely should be able to expect no penalties for exercising their rights. That they can't is a clear and direct indictment of a government refusing to follow it's charter.
means just that. It means disobeying a law. One doesn't get arrested for exercising their rights. One gets arrested for disobeying some law or civil rule.
When the war protestor sits in the streets to block traffic, he is certainly exercising his right to express his opinion, and, if he is with others, to assemble. But he will be arrested for bocking traffic, which is against the law.
Now, Tlaloc, why do you think we chose to sit in the streets and block traffic to exercise our rights, rather than, say, getting a permit for a demonstration and gathering in the park right next to the street?
Thoureau, the standard of American civil disobedience, sets the bar high: in cases of injustice, he suggests that we disobey the laws of the government at any cost. In fact, it is the commitment to the cost that makes it effective. Gandhi, in his hunger strikes, imposed even more of a cost.
Note that Sen. McCarthy had Thoreau's book on civil disobedience removed from school libraries.
So, I disagree. if the object were merely to exercise one's right to free speech and assembly, this could be done without breaking the law. Purposely breaking the law to call attention to your cause IS the point. As the term "civil disobedience" implies.
It is hard for me to see simply enforcing the law or civil rules as "unconstitutional actions."
And i can tell you that if the police chief had told us in advance that he would take no action if we sat on Oak Avenue to block traffic, we would have immediately abandoned those plans, and, perhaps moved the protest sit-in to Broad Street, where he could not ignore us.
The idea is to effective express one's ideas, show one's commitment and seriousness, not to whine.
Civil Disobedience
means just that. It means disobeying a law.
You're wrong. It means disobeying authority. There is no requirement that it be illegal.
One doesn't get arrested for exercising their rights. One gets arrested for disobeying some law or civil rule.
Ideally you'd be correct, in the real world though you are still wrong. Very often protestors get arrested for exercising their rights. Vague and subjective laws, such as disturbing the peace, are used to give a veneer of propriety to the arrest.
The word “civil” has several definitions (see: Wiktionary: “civil”). The one that is intended in this case is “relating to citizens and their interrelations with one another or with the state,” and so “civil disobedience” means “disobedience to the state.” Sometimes people assume that “civil” in this case means “observing accepted social forms; polite” which would make “civil disobedience” something like “polite, orderly disobedience.” Although this is an acceptable dictionary definition of the word “civil,” it is not what is intended here.
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
Instead of going to the thoreau article look at the main article on Civil Disobedience.
First sentence:
Civil disobedience is the active refusal to obey certain laws, demands and commands of a government or of an occupying power without resorting to physical violence.
in the sense that I couldn't be civilly disobedient in a social or personal situation: the term's exclusively used for disobedience aimed at government authority. It may be that the term is punned to mean both, but you can't be civilly disobedient without, to use the exact line you quoted, "a government or of an occupying power".
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
Where did I say otherwise? Brendan asked me why it was called "civil" disobedience. The word civil in this usage (not uncommonsly) means non-violent. That's all it means. But the term "civil disobedience" as a whole, yes, is used to talk about (non-violent) resistance against a state or occupying power.
I think you're right that it's inherently non-violent, but I think it comes from the word "disobedient", which is passive by nature. The "civil" part just refers to the arena where it's playing out.
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
I think you skipped rather quickly over refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government, no?
Surely you can concede that "civil" does not refer to "non-violent" but rather to "civil society": The American author Henry David Thoreau pioneered the modern theory behind this practice in his 1849 essay Civil Disobedience, originally titled "Resistance to Civil Government".
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
But it really isn't relevant here. The term has had 150 years to season.
I think you skipped rather quickly over refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government, no?
No I didn't. What have I said that conflicts with that? I've said that CD need not be illegal, I have not said that it cannot be. I have said it is about denying an authority.
Surely you can concede that "civil" does not refer to "non-violent" but rather to "civil society"
I don't concede that. I just gave you a direct link to wikipedia saying the same thing i am.
But it really isn't relevant here. The term has had 150 years to season.
Wow! Quite the slipperiness! I admit that i haven't had any late-night discussions of civil disobedience in the last couple of years, but when i did, it always was based on Thoreau.
Even at that, the issue isn't civil, really, but disobedience, that is, disobedience to something that a government would promulgate, you know, a loaw or some other rule or regulation.
Above, you make the point about political application of laws and such, whereby the law is not applied as it usually is. Once, long ago in a city far, far away, several war protestors were arrested for jaywalking when they crossed the street to buy something to drink from the grocery store on the other side. Turns out that this was the most convenient place to cross, but no walk lines were painted there. The attorney got the charges dropped when he showed that no one had been arrested or charged with jaywalking at this much used spot except for three cases of "vagrants" the cops wanted to pick up just to get off the streets.
So, the question in this case is whther removing people screaming and making a fuss is a normal part of these committee hearings, or whether this is one of just a few targetted examples. In other words, are only iraq war protestors making noise and refusing to quiet down when asked removed, or are all removed in this circumstance.
Note also that in my example above, the "jaywalking" wasn't an act of civil disobedience in itself because no one expected to be arrested for an act that they all had committed along with the normal city dweller many times before without problem, sometimes walking across the street with a policeman in conversation.
Because of this, we fought this arrest, whereas we would welcome an arrest where we were deliberately disobeying a law.
I have to stick up for those of us who practiced it. We did not think that reading a paper objecting to some practice of the government on the college quad was civil disobedience.
Taking over a building, shutting down classes, and making demands was civil disobedience, sometimes characterized in the press as "uncivil civil disobedience." ("Most look like they haven't bathed in a week....")
.. your posts. Ignore them if you don't like them.
I am responding to something you wrote. If you don;t want to engage, don't. But if you put them up on this board, they are open for discussion. That's the nature of this place.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
I don't think you can judge their intent/purpose--an outcome or consequence is different than an intent or purpose. Perhaps they thought they would be arrested and perhaps not. Perhaps their intent was to bring attention to the fact that there is disagreement to the way the war is being handled. We should probably ask them before elaborating on our conjectures.
and i wasn't really making a statement about their intent. I was discussing the fine art of civil disobedience. You might have noticed somewhere that I specifically denigrated those who want to do the protest part, but don't want to do what Thoreau would call the "at any cost" part. So, yes, it is very possible that all or some of those there today were phony, or, perhaps more kindly, wimps.
The point is that you want to bring attention to the perceived injustice by disobeying some law or other government regulation.
Getting arrested is icing on the cake.
As for free speech zones, those are for people who think that they ought ot be merely expressing their opinions and making a stand. The rest of us would go elsewhere.
But behind it shold always be the quetion of effectiveness.
I'm not a fan of sitting in the middle of a huge, busy main thoroughfare blocking traffic to make one's point. Such tactics, imo, just serve to make people more angry, and cause unnecessary and dangerous delays.
Maybe some of the people who insist on sitting in t he middle of a huge, busy main thoroughfare and blocking traffic to make their point(s), should stop and consider the following: Suppose an ambulance is trying to transfer a heart attack or stroke victim to the hospital? Every second of every minute counts there! Time really is is of the essence here! When police have to take the time to get the crowd(s) to move out of the way, it can cause unnecessary and dangerous delays. Suppose a neighbor, friend or loved one were on that ambulance? Think about that for a moment.
To people who insist on
sitting in the middle of a huge, busy main thoroughfare blocking traffic: Have you ever thought of maybe doing some community service to help pay the funeral, burial, and/or crematorial expenses for the family of a heart attack or stroke victim who failed to reach the hospital in time because you people were so insistent on sitting in the middle of the street blocking traffic to make your point(s)? Think about that for a bit.
Turns out that our group had a couple of physicians in itk, a few nurses, and two carpenters. Whenever we sat in on a busy thoroughfare, our carpenters quickly built two rooms, one for emergencies, the other an operation room, for use in just that contingency. If an ambulance came along, we took care of it. (I carried bedpans at the time.)
Answer 2:
The city often had parades on that route, and a summer market. They knew how to go around an obstruction. they would call the driver to tell them there was a blockage on Columbus, and they should take Tremont.
Real answer. These were smallish gatherings, and we actually, believe it or not, let emergency vehicles through.
I agree that this kind of protest makes people mad. I am not sure if that is ever useful. B ut the theory was that we had to wake people out of their "amnesty." Like leftists today, we thought that as soon as a person could see what we were talking about, they'd join.
As things progressed, and it became clear that some didn't, even though taught by our exalted selves, some of us began to look down on those who continued to, say, support the war, calling the stupid, or worse, evil.
And thus an idealistic young man rather quickly changed from a member of the university's crew, to a radical whose terrorist actions killed someone.
Speaking of the 9/11 anniversary, keep your eyes peeled for the symposium at Progressive Historians, which should be posted tomorrow. Some seriously excellent submissions, taking different approaches to talk about how to view and review the past six years. I have a humble submission over there, as well.
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
or in what I wish were completely non-political news, I'm happy to announce that I got engaged this past weekend. No idea what that actually means, since we live (at least for another year or so) in a state with a constitutional ban, but there ya go. You're all invited to share a virtual champagne glass. :) *clink
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
the couple next to us in the restaurant immediately broke up and stormed out of the place. We're leaving a path strewn with broken marriages wherever we go.
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
pico. It means what it means for your commitment to each other. At least you can share that with friends.
I'm sorry that you can't have it recognized in the usual way, or that the usual union is not yet in the offing, but try to dwell (live in) on the happiness it brings the two of you, and enjoy.
I'll have some sparkling apple juice and think of you, and when I talk to my brother this week, you will be in our thoughts.
I'm (sorta) on it now, so I have no idea where I'll be this time next year - although, as a not-quite-finished ph.d., odds are I'll still be here, trying to beef up my resume a bit. We'll probably just end up doing something 'symbolic' at first, then legal down the road as it becomes available. And party, of course!
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
After Iran, only Syria left on the checklist! I don't think they have time to do it all before the next election. But one must admire their grit and determination.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
stupid enough to fall for just what bin laden had in mind. If he could have, ALL the hijackers would have been Saudi. Perhaps his highest goal is to overthrow the Saudi royalty.
Oddly, the king's power is based on the Bayah of several tribes on the peninsula, all of which are Salafi. Despite this being a very conservative form of Islam, and despite considerable support fo bin Laden among them, bin Laden himself is opposed to them as not fundamental enough!
These tribes, despite their bayah, can threaten and have threatened the king's authority, since the original bayah with the House of Saud demanded the preeminence of Salafi Islam. There has been much criticism of the House of Saud in the country due to its liberal policies, in the eyes of the Salafi, including selling oil to kaffir countries, introduction of modern technology, and accepting kaffirs in the country.
The bayah guarantees that clerics in the country will weild great power, and they do. In a real sense, power in Saudi Arabia actually devolves to the Salafi clerics.
Getting rid of the House of saud would no doubt lead to a less tolerant regime. And the Salafi tribes are reputed to be unconguerable. In fact, much of the population of southwest and western Iraq are Salafis who migrated from Saudi Arabia about a century ago.
You and bin Laden should be careful what you wish for.
that it would be his great pleasure and ambition to bring America disgrace and to it's knees. His reasons for why varied. But he said he would do this by the same means they used in Afghanistan to break the Soviet Union. he wanted to turn the government of America on it's own, thus incurring divisiveness from within, but more importantly, we would bankrupt the US.
Osama has been shown to have been much more correct than anyone in the bush43 executive branch has been. I resent my countries leaders being such morons as to take the bait of a fundamentalist in some far off corner of the world, and hold my country hostage because of him.
I've often made the point that bin Laden wanted the "war on Terror" because he thought, on the basis of Lebanon, Somalia, Vietnam, and the mujahadeen experience in Afghanistan that he could defeat the US in it. Bush and America decided that we needed to fight the war on terrorism. And both bin laden and Bush agreed that iraq would be the main stage. In fact, one could say that they agreed on the battle ground.
I usually have taken it from both sides for that.
It is true that bin laden said that as soon as the USSR fell in Afghanistan, he immediately "knew" that America would fall in a similar manner.
I resent my countries leaders being such morons as to take the bait of a fundamentalist in some far off corner of the world, and hold my country hostage because of him.
Yeah, we should have just left him alone, applying good, old fashioned police work to blunt his capacity for mischief. In fact, I've often wondered if it would be better or worse to capture or kill bin laden. If you think the war in iraq was a recruiting tool, his capture or death would be many times as effective.
Oddly, some people of the religious antiBushites are so blinded by hatred that they miss this point just so they can heap vitriol on bush for not capturing bin Laden. In fact, that may turn out to be the smartest thing he could have done, even if it was inadvertent.
Interestingly, a couple of nights ago I was visiting some iraqi blogs, where one antiAmerican blogger took bin Laden's thinking to its logical conclusion. Now this blogger is a student of Middle Eastern history, and blindly applies it to the US. Taking his cue from bin Laden's tape, he argues that the US is already a defeated country, and that once defeated, a country cannot recover. (McCain made the same point this weekend, arguing that we must not be defeated in iraq, even though we must get out. Specific to the army, he said that the military was defeated in Vietnam, defeated by the politicians, and it tool a decade for the army to recover.)
McCain notes that a defeated military becomes disfuntional, with dissension in the ranks, fragging, drug abuse, disobeying of orders, abuse of civilian populations, and so on. Likewise, the blogger notes that a defeated country loses its ability to provide for itself, maintain discipline in its own lands. But he went further, predicting that by 2010, the US was likely to break up into its constituent states like the USSR did when it was defeated.
Got me to thinking. Interesting to contemplate what the division would be.
... that we should be grateful to Bush and Cheney for not going after bin Laden because killing him would have been an even better recruitment tool than an almost four-year-old war.
Wow, that's a new one. Even Bush and Cheney haven't been audacious enough to make that argument.
Still doesn't justify an invasion of Iraq, of course, which has proven to be a major distraction and a monumental waste of blood and treasure.
One has to buy the "flypaper theory" to make that argument credible. And the al Qaeda-linked attacks in many other parts of world dispel the notion that al Qaeda can only fight a one-front war.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
If you think the war in iraq was a recruiting tool, his capture or death would be many times as effective.
How so? I understand that would-be terrorists who already had some sympathy for OBL might be emboldened by his "martyrdom," but the war in Iraq is an ongoing PR nightmare for the US. I would think a vast majority of Middle Easterners are much more pissed about the US invading an entire country then they would be about the death or capture of one man. He's not that popular.
We are the environment. There is no distinction. What we do to the earth we do to ourselves. —David Suzuki
an advantage to have martyrs for a cause. Remember the Nazis kjilling one of their own and hanging wi=th a sighn that said "a good nazi?"
bin Laden, martyred by either killing or captured, would bring huge numbers to his cause, especially those on the fringe, who see him as a spokesman for Islam but are a bit worried by his methods. On a Muslim board years ago, there as a discussion of =whether bin laden shouldn't actually put himself in the positian to be killed because, they thought, hiding in Paqkistan made him less effective than he would be dead. (And, of course, the person who wrote this was a chief pusher of the "CIA created the tape" theory of tape shoing bin Laden discussing 911. So I asked him about the possible contradiction, and he says that as long as most Muslims think he did it, he's better for the cause of Khalifah dead, as a martyr, and a rallying point.
Oh, just so you know, according to this man, the Jews did 911, after having plastic surgery to look like specific Arabs!
You know, after i stopped posting on Muslim boards, spent some times on unaligned international boards (something like this one), I went to a left wing board. I felt right at home, as if I was back on a Muslim board. Not all the antiAmerican stuff was there, but most of it.
And oddly, I was there before Bush, and the same things were said about Clinton. They didn't even miss a beat when Bush came in, and sometimes confused them!
I found his stated past a little fishy when he claimed both to be an old hippy and to have a grandfather in WW2. Not completely outside the realm of possibility but suspicious.
My grandfather was born before 1900. My father was in WWII.
I don't hate leftists, as your partner says. In fact, These people still invoke a fondness in me. I just figured out that they (and I) were wrong. Still, if you want a leftist, these are the real thing, not lukewarm half-hearted milquetoasts.
Today's headlines: "Today's congressional hearings to set stage for continued war in iraq"
I have been saying for years that I think this country may actually be heading into a civil war some time in the (relatively) near future. I haven't ever put a time frame to it but I wouldn't be surprised if it occurred in my son's lifetime.
...
The people on the right are willing to fight for their rights, if need be, as these examples show. As the tyranny and the oppression sought by the left touches ever more portions of the right we will see more Ruby Ridges and Wacos since the left is willing to fight for their beliefs as well, and as these same examples show.
Your comments are far more radical than McCain's. So this statement from you in regards to McCain's comment...
Terrorist pipe dreams, nothing more. Never gonna happen.
... must mark you as a terrorist, eh?
You're predicting a civil war and you want to claim that McCain's ideas are "terrorist pipe dreams?"
Funny, that...
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
I think you're the closet leftist. You are the one predicting a civil war. That is radical, far more radical than McCain's comments that MS outlines, above.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
... interest group areas (a silly thought), you are predicting a civil war. Really.
Like I note upthread, you prefer to talk about killing other Americans over getting your cowardly ass to Iraq to back up your phony tough guy rhetoric on the "Islamofascist threat."
Typical. All mouth, no balls.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
I have been saying for years that I think this country may actually be heading into a civil war some time in the (relatively) near future. I haven't ever put a time frame to it but I wouldn't be surprised if it occurred in my son's lifetime.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Note of course, that I am not advocating for a Civil War, merely highlighting that conservatives will not allow socialists such as yourself to impose your views on us. And like our first Civil War, the purpose will be to preserve the Union and to protect it from the likes of you.
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed! -4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4
Reluctantly realistic. If you feel the time for a 2nd American Civil War is now, then feel free to take to the streets and begin your insurrection. If you are right the people will follow you!
Go on, see what happens!
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed! -4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4
I think the notion is absurd and is the product of a fevered, paranoid mind.
Read the thread. You're the one ready to do battle against the dirty socialists.
Well, "do battle" from behind your keyboard, of course! The same way a "true patriot" fights the Islamofascist threat!
I hear General Petraeus calling! Listen!
"Please! True patriots! Take up your keyboards! Cheer us on to victory in Iraq! Hey, by the way... I need more troops if we want to sustain the surge, and I know you true patriots believe in our cause. Any chance any of you able-bodied true patriots want to enlist and fight radical Islam and the Islamofascists face-to-face here in Baghdad?"
Note that predicting is NOT advocating (i.e. being enthusiastic).
And I think it is fevered and paranoid minds like yours that will precipitate such a war. I note that it is you who are maintaining the aggressive posture.
Are you over compensating for something? Did the feminists at dkos emasculate you to the point where you need to wonder aimlessly about trying to pick fights with people to make you feel like you matter?
CLC to Self: I am relevant ... right?
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed! -4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4
The threat of radical Islam is greatest threat to our generation, according to you, and you are able-bodied and young enough to do something about it, but you want to bail and claim that you being tucked safely behind your keyboard is the best way for you to contribute. "Eternal vigilance" and all that.
And then you also want to claim that your prediction of a civil war in the United States -- which I think is as loony an idea as the typical loony 9-11 conspiracy theorists who post here from time to time -- will come true because of people like me.
So you ARE predicting a civil war, even though you constantly deny it, when, in fact, you wrote a diary outlining the rationale for your confident prediction.
I see.
I'm not trying to "pick fights." I'm trying to understand how someone like you who claims to be part of a culture of self-proclaimed "true patriots" while labeling me and others as "socialists" and "blame America first" promoters can:
1. Be such a personal coward by not enlisting in the military to fight for a cause you so obviously and fervently believe and feel is the defining struggle of our time, and
2. Offer up such a truly crackpot prediction of a U.S> civil war... with such confidence.
That's all.
Are you able-bodied?
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Luckily what you say isn't particularly relevant to me or anyone else. You are simply sad and pathetic in your attempt to grasp at relevance.
So you ARE predicting a civil war, even though you constantly deny it, when, in fact, you wrote a diary outlining the rationale for your confident prediction.
I think that your delusional tendencies are getting away from you here. Where, exactly, did I ever claim to not be predicting a civil war? In this very thread I openly admitted as such ... actually is was right in the parent post to your post here. Man, you better get that short term memory looked at.
The basic point of that diary was that as the leftists such as yourself continue to push yourselves onto the rest of society that there is a possibility that things will progress to the point of a New Civil War. Here, reread the title that you included above:
I have no idea why you think that this is something controversial or something that I am in the slightest way ashamed of. It isn't. Really, it isn't.
But if you want to keep rehashing it and giving it bandwidth more power to you because the analysis there is spot on accurate.
I'm not trying to "pick fights."
Yes you are. And not just with me. You have been following people around since you came back just making inane and irrelevant comments whose only purpose was to try and provoke a reaction. They have no particular substance, you just want to pick a fight so that you can in some weird and perverted way try to fix your obviously broken ego. Your self-esteem is so low this is the only way you think that you can get people to interact with you. It is very obvious.
Be such a personal coward by not enlisting in the military to fight for a cause you so obviously and fervently believe and feel is the defining struggle of our time
I am not a coward nor do I need your approval to validate my own self-esteem. But since you want so fervently to to discuss True Patriots and Cowardice why, exactly (if you feel the way you obviously do) have you not signed up to help out?
I mean given your characterization of the situation shouldn't you be signing up? What's your rationale for not doing so? Too cowardly or not enough of a True Patriot?
Come on, by your own account your country needs you. Does it matter that you aren't a supporter of the war? Oh, that's right. It kind of does matter that you don't.
Even if I want to accept your proposition that not signing up makes people cowards (which I don't, but you DO), that seems to be something that we share. The difference between us, of course, is that like a True Patriot I continue to support the troops and the war effort.
You, on the other hand, seek to undermine both by continuing to be a useful idiot for the likes of Osama Bin Laden. Go ahead and push to defund the war and leave the troops in harms way. Go ahead and keep repeating the terrorist talking points. It only demonstrates exactly what you are, a coward (by your own reasoning) AND a traitor (by mine).
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed! -4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4
I think the war should be over. So do most Americans. You claim you're "supporting the troops" by continuing to send them into the meat grinder that is Iraq. That is the antithesis of "supporting the troops," particularly when you are too cowardly to be one of them while claiming their mission is the critical challenge facing us today.
Not so critical that you;d get off your dead ass and join up. Got it. Like I said, you're a coward.
As for who has helped Osama bin Laden more -- the people who want us out of Iraq (the majority of Americans - bin Laden supporters, all) or the idiots who got us bogged down in a protracted quagmire, I'd say you're looking out of the wrong end the telescope, my friend.
George Bush and Dick Cheney and many Republicans including most of the `08 Republican presidential field, are the best friends Osama has ever had. Haven't you read that a number of the Republican frontrunners said after the recent bin Laden video that he "wasn't important?"
Just like Osama's best friend, George Bush, who gave up pursuing him in favor of attacking a country that had nothing to do with 9-11. and getting us stuck in the process.
Great stuff all the way around.
You are the very opposite of a "true patriot." You're a phony coward. Plain as day.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
"I hear you calling me, but I ain't a going. Nope I'm a coward just like all those nutcase neocons. But hey, you should really listen to this Osama Bin Laden tape. It's startin' to make a lot of sense to me.
America IS the problem. We caused it all. We should just bend over a let them a**fu** us good and hard because that's the ay I like it. Good and hard."
CLC you are nothing but a worthless piece of dog sh** that came in one someone's shoe.
And supporting the troops? Yea, let's cut the funding for medical supplies. Let's cut the funding for the body armor and humvee armor that the Democrats have already pointed out is in short supply. Reinforcements? We aren't sending any reinforcements, in fact we're going to stretch you all even thinner.
Yea, that's support alright. That's called aiding and abetting in my book. Typical cowardly traitorous BS from a know nothing socialist.
You are sedititious traitor, plain as day.
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed! -4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4
By the way, no, America is not the problem. Invading Iraq when we should have been pursuing al Qaeda in Afghansitan and around the globe is the problem.
And then continuing to promote that waste of lives and resources in Iraq is a problem because it makes us more vulnerable and unable to respond to other threats.
I don't mean to interrupt your reverie. Go back to your al Qaeda rape fantasy. That as kooky as your prediction that there will be a civil war in America.
Both hands on the keyboard, mister.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
I find the Osama Bin Laden-style rhetoric of "terrorist wannbe" silly too.
But this worthless POS doesn't have any idea what a "true patriot" is.
He IS a socialist by anyone's definition, which isn't even funny.
(S)he wears a burqa to work, no doubt, to keep the people there from puking. Probably prefers a dress too, since (s)he is an obvious cross dresser (check out his color bar). Figures when Osama shows up it'll make it easier for him to bend over and pay his proper homage.
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed! -4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4
One would wish you'd reserve that anger and energy for the gravest threat of our generation.
My job in all this is to make sure that a**wipe idiots like yourself don't screw things up from within. It is obvious enough that you are trying which is exactly why we need True Patriots to keep you in your place.
You're the beyatch here, "pal".
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed! -4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4
If there's one thing that I enjoy more than watching your supposedly invincible American military spin its wheels in Iraq, it's to watch you Americans call each other cowards and traitors. Meanwhile, I still draw breath here in... well, I'm not going to tell you that!
I must say that I have enjoyed the recent discussions on Swords Crossed, where you American pigs turn against each other-- Praise be to Allah for that!
One small objection-- there's no option for "radical jihadist".
I didn't mean to Bi*** Slap your cross dressing sex toy. You analysis is incorrect, though, we can't have turned against each other because we were never on the same side. There is the side of the True Patriots, and there is the side of your cross dressing beyatch.
As you know, I am not the latter.
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed! -4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4
_Said the country would be safer by only "a small percentage" and would see "a very insignificant increase in safety" if al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was caught because another terrorist would rise to power. "It's not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person," Romney said. Instead, he said he supports a broader strategy to defeat the Islamic jihad movement.
I don't mind arms length topics, but I try to stay away from intimate discussions because they just end up frustrating me.
If he wants to make the case that any american liberals have the same objectives as a fundamentalist islamist, more power to him. I think it'd be a stretch to sell to anyone who wasn't a Phaux News hound though.
work on finishing some writing projects. The last four weeks my kids will be here, so I'll get to spend more time with them this visit than I usually do.
I hate vacations where you rush around all over the place and end up exhausted by the time you are supposed to go back to work.
Lots of references here to various supposed incarnations of this report. Since what is actually meant by report is not at all as clear as one might think (or prefer), I humbly suggest people be as specific as possible as to what they mean when they discuss the "report."
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
The news that there would be no written report came out last week.
I'm getting this twilight zone feeling like I'm the only one whose read the 11 bazillion articles about Petreaus testimony that have come out in the last two months.
And you people call yourselves political junkies! :P
Petraeus' report, i.e. the testimony he gave today to congress, was leaked ahead of time. That there is no plan to create a dead tree formal version of same is immaterial. The data of the report is what matters, not the format.
That 75% drop in violence That CLC mentions directly from the petraeus testimony below? Well back on Sept 1st there was a KOS diary about it.
That diary was based on a news article from Aug 30.
I don;t know why you don't want to believe me but the evidence is right there on google.
EDIT- whoops actually even the article CLC cites is announcing ahead of time the 75% figure. Which makes it even more invconcievable to me why you are treating this with such resistance.
If a Shia shot another Shia, that isn't considered terrorist violence. If a Sunni shot another Sunni, that isn't considered terrorist violence.
The most awful one was if they found a body and it had been shot in the front of the head, that wasn't terrorist violence. If the body showed signs it was shot in the back of the head, then it was terrorist violence.
Talk about making your numbers show what you want to convey..
but the issue that I was debating first with MS and then Brendan was whether this was available ahead of time. Whether it is accurate is a separate question.
In other words-
I didn't need to watch Petraeus report beause I'd already gotten what it was going to say ahead of time
I didn't give him any credence because, after analyzing what he was going to present, I determined his report was basically all BS.
I want a link to his testimony that was leaked "weeks" ago =)
That Petraeus previously discussed aspects of how he views the situation in Iraq with the press (note that this wasn't a leak of anything) is hardly surprising. I certainly grant there is some overlap between that and his remarks today, but that's not quite the original argument.
I'm all in favor of demanding transparency in how the statistics are determined.
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
I give up. For some reason no matter how many links to the stuff I give you you just don't accept it. I have no idea why but I'm past caring at this point.
I'm a little behind in my news reading. Too much personla and professional stuff going on.
From Brendan's link, there are going to be no 'objective statistics' to base our conclusions on, but just the testimony.
Why change the terms of the assessment, and (with all due respect) are we supposed to just take Petraeus at his word with no validation or verification of what he is basing this assessment on?
(edit): Well, I see there are some pdfs and such, but I wish the terms were defined and the methodology explained a bit more clearly.
Also, CNN has the opening statements and charts (PDFs about halfway down page) for those of us who haven't been watching. I call BS on slide 9 and slide 13 is not encouraging.
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 6, 2007; A16
The U.S. military's claim that violence has decreased sharply in Iraq in recent months has come under scrutiny from many experts within and outside the government, who contend that some of the underlying statistics are questionable and selectively ignore negative trends.
Reductions in violence form the centerpiece of the Bush administration's claim that its war strategy is working. In congressional testimony Monday, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, is expected to cite a 75 percent decrease in sectarian attacks. According to senior U.S. military officials in Baghdad, overall attacks in Iraq were down to 960 a week in August, compared with 1,700 a week in June, and civilian casualties had fallen 17 percent between December 2006 and last month. Unofficial Iraqi figures show a similar decrease.
Others who have looked at the full range of U.S. government statistics on violence, however, accuse the military of cherry-picking positive indicators and caution that the numbers -- most of which are classified -- are often confusing and contradictory. "Let's just say that there are several different sources within the administration on violence, and those sources do not agree," Comptroller General David Walker told Congress on Tuesday in releasing a new Government Accountability Office report on Iraq.
...
The intelligence community has its own problems with military calculations. Intelligence analysts computing aggregate levels of violence against civilians for the NIE puzzled over how the military designated attacks as combat, sectarian or criminal, according to one senior intelligence official in Washington. "If a bullet went through the back of the head, it's sectarian," the official said. "If it went through the front, it's criminal."
"Depending on which numbers you pick," he said, "you get a different outcome." Analysts found "trend lines . . . going in different directions" compared with previous years, when numbers in different categories varied widely but trended in the same direction. "It began to look like spaghetti."
Among the most worrisome trends cited by the NIE was escalating warfare between rival Shiite militias in southern Iraq that has consumed the port city of Basra and resulted last month in the assassination of two southern provincial governors. According to a spokesman for the Baghdad headquarters of the Multi-National Force-Iraq (MNF-I), those attacks are not included in the military's statistics. "Given a lack of capability to accurately track Shiite-on-Shiite and Sunni-on-Sunni violence, except in certain instances," the spokesman said, "we do not track this data to any significant degree."
See? Those dead people don't count! Oh, but those aren't the only dead people who don't count...
Attacks by U.S.-allied Sunni tribesmen -- recruited to battle Iraqis allied with al-Qaeda -- are also excluded from the U.S. military's calculation of violence levels.
So facts are facts. Unless they're not.
Challenges to how military and intelligence statistics are tallied and used have been a staple of the Iraq war. In its December 2006 report, the bipartisan Iraq Study Group identified "significant underreporting of violence," noting that "a murder of an Iraqi is not necessarily counted as an attack. If we cannot determine the sources of a sectarian attack, that assault does not make it into the data base." The report concluded that "good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes its discrepancy with policy goals."
Make the numbers fir the policy. Shades of Vietnam and the reporting of Vietcong killed. But there is no reason to question the numbers Petraeus presented, right?
Recent estimates by the media, outside groups and some government agencies have called the military's findings into question. The Associated Press last week counted 1,809 civilian deaths in August, making it the highest monthly total this year, with 27,564 civilians killed overall since the AP began collecting data in April 2005.
The GAO report found that "average number of daily attacks against civilians have remained unchanged from February to July 2007," a conclusion that the military said was skewed because it did not include dramatic, up-to-date information from August.
Petraeus made his presentation and those in attendance certainly were correct to ask him how he got his numbers, given the myriad of other sources that called his numbers into question.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
...brought up in this piece of wishful thinking By Karen DeYoung. probably a good idea to wait until the general actually reports before reporting on said report...huh?
Of course I don't expect an anti-military type such as yourself to believe the General unless he came back and said we need to get the hell out ASAP!
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
Petraeus, in fact, did not refute all the points. Instead, he offered his own justifications for the odd way in which the Pentagon has been counting statistics since the surge began.
And the points were not the product of the reporter, as you speciously claim, but, rather the results of a study commissioned by John Warner (don't tell me, Steve... ANOTHER anti-military type!) and by the GAO which is non-partisan.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
...didn't watch the entire hearing nor the Hume interview but as always your welcome to your opinions, interpretations, and to whom you take at their word.
Since you obviously view Gen. Petraeus as some sort of mouthpiece for the Bush administration and don't believe him to be telling the truth.
I can count on you publicly admonishing all Senators of the Democrat persuasion for their unanimous confirmation, support, and vote of confidence in the General?
I'll be looking forward to that post and will even put it on the front page of TMR.
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
I am pointing out that are reports from Iraq from multiple sources that don't match what he had to say. In particular, the way the Pentagon decided to count dead civilians during the surge period was odd. For example, shot in the back of the head - sectarian killing; shot in the forehead - murder (and, thus, not added to the total).
Stuff like that.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
...you didn't but what else should be drawn from the number of posts questioning his credibility?
Is it the General you distrust or the fact that he's subordinate to this administration?
And this:
shot in the back of the head - sectarian killing; shot in the forehead - murder (and, thus, not added to the total).
the General today stated was not true.
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
...doesn't mean "speak for" so again if it’s the General you distrust:
I can count on you publicly admonishing all Senators of the Democrat persuasion for their unanimous confirmation, support, and vote of confidence in the General?
Right?
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
As for anyone who voted to confirm him, who knew he would be such a bust, given his credentials?
Look at Al Gonzales. He was confirmed with vote of many Dems and he resigned in disgrace. Companies pick CEOs who turn out to be duds. Sometimes, you just can't tell.
I have hired people I thought were going to be tremendous employees only to find that they weren't. That's the nature of dealing with human beings.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Again only your opinion... I believe the American people will judge his performance better than you have.
Only in the fact that, judging him by his own words and the performance indicators he laid out for a successful counterinsurgency operation he has, so far, failed in his mission.
As for anyone who voted to confirm him, who knew he would be such a bust, given his credentials?
Sounds like once again those Senators were lied to... I suppose that’s lefts new defense for everything.
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
According to the General, successful counterinsurgency efforts are "80% political." His words, not mine.
The political situation in Iraq is, in fact, worse than before the surge started. Several groups have withdrawn from the government, the police force is nothing more than sectarian militia groups and the recommendation is to disband it and start over, and the military has not made the progress the general claimed it had three years go (back when he was in charge of training the Iraqis) in an op-ed he penned for The Washington Post.
I know, I know... Anbar province. Anbar was in shape before the surge was started. The stated purpose of the surge was to ameliorate violence in and around Baghdad so that the government could "get its legs under it."
And that has been a monumental failure.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
...to call a mission a failure when it's less than half complete furthermore the Generals report is just that he's not here trumpeting success and looking for accolades.
Since his report contained an accurate telling of the lack of political progress as well as an accurate account of successful military progress your contention is disingenuous.
Btw - the GAO is constantly being accused of bias from all sides of many issues - parties in and out of power as well as special interest groups because the GAO's job is to make sure that government money isn't being wasted, no matter which party is in control of the Executive or Legislative branch of the government.
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
That should take away the claim by many on the right that the agency's report was biased.
Also, he was the one who said he would have a good indication of the mission's success or failure "by the end of the summer."
Given that he wrote in the field manual that counterinsurgency efforts should be 80% political -- and today he admitted that there has been a noted lack of political progress -- the mission is a failure if one considers that a grade of 20% or even 30% success in any context denotes failure.
Unless you went to a school or have a job where doing something at a 20% success rate is considered "progress."
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
GAO reports have notoriously had credibility problems!
There you go:
Also, he was the one who said he would have a good indication of the mission's success or failure "by the end of the summer."
And his indication was one of continuing toward success.
You keep harping on the lack of political progress like it was all supposed to happen overnight or that somehow the political success should come first in order to further your failure meme... I have a hard time believing you can't see the the natural progression of security and military success first leading to political success! unless you're deliberately trying not to???
None of this really matters anyway most Democrats in Congress have made up their minds weeks ago that a surge success is not an option. It will never be good enough for the left, there will always be a nit to pick!
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
First, please offer proof on the history of GAO reports.
Second, it's not just Democrats who want out of Iraq (and not all of the Democrats in Congress want out), it's the American people. Somewhere between 60 and 70 percent (depending on the poll) want out. That means that guys like you who refuse to face reality and accept the continual "another six months" are the ones who are out of touch.
People have been suckered long enough on this fiasco and they are wising up. Losing 80-120 troops a month and watching half a trillion dollars flow down the toilet without measurable results has a way of doing that to people.
"Another six months..."
Americans won't have it, Steve. George Bush may, indeed do it, but Americans won't have it. They will exact their revenge one way or another.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
GAO reports have notoriously had credibility problems!
David Walker is just about the most credible person in the entire executive branch, and the GAO has been notorious for shining light on the truth while the White House has been notorious for spin and whitewashing.
It's not that people lie, necessarily. It's just that they sometimes turn out to be less competent than you expected.
It happens.
That said, in this case, I think the surge was doomed to failure. Petraeus went against his own recommendations in the field manual and undermanned the operation from the get go.
Of course, that's because this was an operation he did not design. It was designed by know-nothing neocon, Fred Kagan, from the American Enterprise Institute and handed to Petraeus.
As I noted yesterday, he reminds me of Colin Powell going to the UN with a bunch of made up intelligence ("mobile weapons labs..."). Good guys used for the wrong purposes.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
...but this post assumes I'm operating under the same contention of failure you seem to have arrived at.
I'm not!
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
There is no possibility of failure because there is no definition of success.
What 'success' is has changed every year.
So here's are my questions
1) What defines success (something approaching S.M.A.R.T. goals please)
2) Do you think success or failure in Iraq will be more determined by factors under our control or by factors under the control of others (the Iraq 'leadership' for example)
3) If the latter, have they shown a willingness to do what is necessary to move towards what you defined as success?
...How can we possibly succeed in Iraq given liberal democrats pushing a failure agenda though their leadership and their propaganda arm in the MSM?
As for your question - I'm not interested in going into hypothetical goals - either specific, measurable, attainable, realistic or timely with you. First of all liberals are rarely realistic about anything (most opt for the way they envision reality to be) and timely in this instance (in war) is unrealistic. So I will refrain.
I view success in Iraq the same way I view the broader GWOT and I'll quote a friend as he put into words the way I feel about what victory looks like.
Leverkuhn wrote:
Victory in the War on Terror will come when there is a fundamental change in the political and social fabric of the Middle East that eliminates wahhabism and other radical ideologies, and when no state anywhere in the region are sponsors of terrorism.
What exactly will that future look like? Well, I can't see into the future, but I have an idea. Let's put it this way: When you can go to a synagogue in downtown Bagdad and watch your Jewish best friend marry his Muslim girlfriend, and both sides of the family are there taking pictures, and nobody talks about an "honor killing," and then you drive to a nearby hotel for the reception dinner without having to worry about a car bomb along the way ... that's when you know we've won.
Btw - it's disingenuous to accuse the General of moving the goal posts before the mission is complete and has accurately presented his assessment of both goals reached and goals not yet reached.
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
That's rich, Steve. Name a bigger "failure agenda" than damn near everything the Bush administration has done in Iraq. That is the biggest, costliest "failure agenda" in American history, by a mile.
Now, you can try and blame everyone but the people responsible for this "failure agenda," but it won't fly anymore. Because, again, Steve, it's not "liberal Democrats" who want us out of Iraq, it's the vast majority of the American people who have been told by this administration, over and over, that whatever new "strategy" is being rolled out "needs another six months."
You can only play people for suckers for so long. The American people have had it with this mess, Steve, and the only ones still clinging to the charade of "progress" are the dead-enders like you.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Name a bigger "failure agenda" than damn near everything the Bush administration has done in Iraq. That is the biggest, costliest "failure agenda" in American history, by a mile.
The Democrat Agenda to end the war in Iraq seems to be pretty much a failure on ALL counts. Of course, that is normal operating procedure for all of their agendas.
The Democrats are the party of failure, of quitting, of giving up and letting the enemy take the day. That has always been their course since WWII.
Hell even you are ashamed to be associated with them, that's why you want to cloak yourself in Red here at SC.
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed! -4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4
WASHINGTON (AP) — The public sees the Iraq war as a failure and thinks the U.S. troop buildup there has not worked, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll suggesting the tough sell President Bush faces in asking Congress and voters for more time.
The pessimism expressed by most people — including significant minorities of Republicans — contrasted with the brighter picture offered by Gen. David Petraeus. The chief U.S. commander in Iraq told Congress on Monday that the added 30,000 troops have largely achieved their military goals and could probably leave by next summer, though he conceded there has been scant political progress.
By 59 percent to 34 percent, more people said they believe history will judge the Iraq war a complete or partial failure than a success. Those calling it a failure included eight in 10 Democrats, three in 10 Republicans and about six in 10 independents, the poll showed — ominous numbers for a president who hopes to use a nationally televised address later this week to keep GOP lawmakers from joining Democratic calls for a withdrawal.
But I already know your reason for believing so, because good ol' Steve pulled it out of his rear end upthread:
The damn liberal Democrats and their cohorts in crime, the liberal media, are conspiring to dupe a population that is unable to think for itself.
Whenever things aren't going your way politically in this country, that's the excuse you guys extract from the recesses of your backside.
Here's the deal, GoRight: Bush and company have called for "six more months" for four years. People have caught onto the game. The ones still hanging on are the dead-enders like you and Steve.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
This is your response to this post of mine (repeated in its entirety for your benefit):
Yes, GR, the vast majority of Americans are disillusioned with Bush's fiasco.
But I already know your reason for believing so, because good ol' Steve pulled it out of his rear end upthread:
The damn liberal Democrats and their cohorts in crime, the liberal media, are conspiring to dupe a population that is unable to think for itself.
Whenever things aren't going your way politically in this country, that's the excuse you guys extract from the recesses of your backside.
Here's the deal, GoRight: Bush and company have called for "six more months" for four years. People have caught onto the game. The ones still hanging on are the dead-enders like you and Steve.
And the best comeback you have is this:
You remind me of the bum on the street who just drank a bottle of mouthwash. Your lips move and words come out but in the end it is all gibberish.
That's it?
I think you're having trouble defending the indefensible, GoRight. But that's okay. If it's the best you can do, it's the best you can do.
No one ever said you were a genius.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Boy, I wish I could get funding with that type of plan.
"I'm sorry Mr President, I can't give you any measurable goals, but when I get done, boy you're gonna like what you see! Now can I have 10 million dollars of R&D money?"
Of course, since you've started with the belief that America is completely incapable of victory in Iraq (blaming everyone but the people executing it for the past 4 years) I'm sure you'll be all for a major change of course. Since you can't possibly fix the MSM or those darn liberal Democrats (who can stop your success even as a tiny minority) shouldn't we stop going after what you say is an unattainable dream?
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
As far as I can tell, you seem to agree (for very different reasons that I do) that the people who have the ability to reach your (ridiculous IMO) vision have neither the intention nor desire to do so. In other words, WE WILL NOT SUCCEED.
Yet you still want to spend hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of American lives on faling to reach those 'goals'
If you actually think that having a timely GOAL in war is unrealistic then frankly no rebuttal of such insanity is necessary.
Actually, this is rather humorous; I asked you a question, you went on to refuse to answer it and then get all snippy when I fail to rebut your lack of an answer.
GREENVILLE, S.C. - Republican presidential contender Fred Thompson said Monday that while Osama bin Laden needs to be caught and killed, the terrorist mastermind would get the due process of law.
Some may recall that when Howard Dean said this same thing back in 2004, he was pilloried by Republicans and several of his Democratic primary opponents.
I assume that Republicans will slam Thompson for being a terrorist-sympathizing traitor.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
is seeing Fox News doing their best to tear down Thompson. I wouldn't be surprised if they did exactly what you're snarking about here, considering how much antipathy they have for him.
Newsweek's cover story on Thompson ("Lazy Like a Fox") had me laughing out loud at the bookstore. I'd be surprised if he lasts through much of the primary season.
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
Some may recall that when Howard Dean said this same thing back in 2004, he was pilloried by Republicans and several of his Democratic primary opponents.
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed! -4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4
Thanks, skymutt, you made me realize that CLC is a simpleton and a baffoon with no personal moral compass by which to determine his own affiliations. So let him flounder aimlessly amongst the ideological spectrum. That is befitting his inane and incoherent ramblings which appear reminiscent of a villiage idiot.
I, on the other hand, am clear in my ideological beliefs and so should not allow an ideological cross-dresser to affect my own self-expression to the world.
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed! -4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4
"Everyone believes in the atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own side, without ever bothering to examine the evidence." - George Orwell
...but during strong economies aren't mortgage brokers generally making money through brokering mortgages, instead of, say, turning their home into a brothel?
VERACRUZ, Mexico (AP) — Mexican gas and oil pipelines were attacked in six places before dawn Monday, causing explosions, fires and gas leaks that forced the evacuation of thousands of people.
The blasts reverberated for miles. No direct injuries were reported, although civil defense agencies said two women in their 70s who lived nearby died of heart attacks shortly afterward.
A small, shadowy leftist group linked to similar attacks in July left a note claiming responsibility, a police official in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz told The Associated Press.
From the best source for this kind of information:
.....The tone for Monday’s hearing was set by Rep. Ike Skelton, the Democratic chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, who announced at the outset that there would be “no disturbances” and that spectators who sought to demonstrate their opposition to the war would be “immediately escorted out.”
“Out they go!” he said. “No disturbances will be tolerated, and we mean that.”
Among those in the audience were members of the “Code Pink” protest group and other antiwar activists. As soon as they spoke up, Skelton ordered that they be removed by the Capitol police. He included in his ban “those who are displaying a sign.”
After four people had been dragged out of the chamber, including the nationally known antiwar campaigner Cindy Sheehan, Skelton announced that they would be prosecuted.
None of the dozens of congressmen and congresswomen on the platform raised any objection to the quashing of free speech. The scene gave a stark picture of the chasm separating the entire political establishment and the broad mass of the American people, who by a wide majority oppose the war, and who sought to express that opposition by voting the Democrats into power in the congressional elections ten months ago.
In their opening remarks, Skelton and the Democratic chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Tom Lantos, left no doubt that Democratic congressional criticism of the administration’s Iraq policy has nothing in common with a principled opposition to an illegal and murderous war of aggression, launched on the basis of lies.
Following the obligatory praise for the “valiant and heroic” efforts of the US troops and testimonials to the integrity of Petraeus and Crocker, Skelton questioned the open-ended commitment of large numbers of troops in Iraq because it meant troops were not available to “go into Afghanistan and get bin Laden” six years after 9/11, and there were “not enough troops to go after other threats.”
“We need troops prepared for a full spectrum of combat,” he added. To emphasize his militaristic point, he continued, “Some called for more troops immediately after the invasion. Gen. Petraeus is the right man for the job, three years too late and 200,000 troops short.”
He then indulged in what has become a staple of Democratic criticism of Bush’s war policy, shifting the blame for the catastrophe inflicted on Iraq by the US onto the Iraqis themselves. “The Iraqis have not stepped up to the challenge,” he declared.
Lantos began by declaring, “Every single one of us wants you to succeed in your efforts to the maximum possible.”
Later, in the course of questioning Petraeus, Lantos suggested that there was an intermediate course between the administration’s policy and a “precipitous” withdrawal, i.e., “a more rapid, but responsible withdrawal of American forces.” He then echoed the warnings made by Skelton, saying “global security requirements were not being taken into account, in Afghanistan and elsewhere.”
Petraeus’s testimony fleshed out the meaning of the references by Skelton and Lantos to “other threats” that might require a military response. He made several pointed allusions to alleged Iranian “interference” in Iraq, noting that his forces had captured “leaders of Iranian-supported groups and Hezbollah agents.” He added, “It is increasingly apparent to both coalition and Iraqi leaders that Iran, through the use of the Quds force, seeks to turn the Iraqi special groups into a Hezbollah-like force to serve its interests and fight a proxy war against the Iraqi state and coalition forces in Iraq.”
The gathering threat of a US military attack on Iran was the subtext of the hearing. It was underscored by a report Monday in the Wall Street Journal that the US is planning to build its first military base near Iraq’s border with Iran, slated to be operative by November of this year, as well as fortified checkpoints on major roads leading to Baghdad from Iran.
Crocker, in his testimony, said the administration would “seek additional ways to reduce regional interference”—a thinly veiled reference to Iran and Syria.
There is little doubt that accelerated planning for a military attack on Iran is a major factor in Petraeus’s plan to withdraw one Army brigade—about 4,000 troops—from Iraq in December of this year, and allow the troop level to drop to the pre-surge level by next August. Another is the simple fact that the current troop strength in Iraq is unsustainable without a further lengthening of tours of duty beyond 15 months—something the military brass believes is not feasible. . . .
Did you get it from them, or did they get it from you, or did you both get it from some third source? Or is it just a case of great minds thinking alike?
how do you feel about Karl Rove walking around free and leaving the White House of his own free will and on his own terms?
Wasn't there some sort of an agenda to try and discredit him and get him charged with outing Plame (not that she could be outed, given that she wasn't covert or anything under the law)? How'd that all work out for ya?
Seems like another example of a failed Democrat agenda.
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed! -4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4
that would be 100% Democrats and 20% Republicans with small minds.
Sure, our lower quintile on intelligence might actually fall for the Democrat talking points, we're bound to have some dunder heads in the party. They're typically called "moderates or mavericks". :)
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed! -4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4
Comments :
Well *that* didn't last long
As I've said before: the less Pakistan makes headlines the better I sleep at night.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Undoubtedly this will irritate some
story
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Damn socialists!
Oh, wait... They're conservatives!
Go figure...
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Another article on neurological differences
between liberals and conservatives.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Great article
Thanks.
I would like to see a study that does something similar with a black and white vs gray (or rather simplistic absolutes vs complex relativism) completed. How to do that? I don't know.
But I bet the results would be similar to the above study.
We are all mediators, translators. - Derrida
AQI who?
Despite the rampant disinformation coming from the whitehouse and the various journalists who echo WH talking points, AQI are nobodies. In the entirety of the Iraq cluster&^%$ they compromise maybe 2% of the fighters. Kevin Drum:
post here (including the links I'm too lazy to embed)
AQI is frankly trivial, any decision predictaed upon their existence is a mistake. They should be rightly ignored as inconsequential, but they won't be because conflating them with AQ and pretending they are a real threat is the most direct way for bush to continue to tie Iraq to 9/11.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
And General Patreus's report?
Well if the BBC is to be believed, 70% of Iraqi's think security has deteriorated during "the surge"
. That breaks down to 93% among Sunni Muslims compared to 50% for Shia.
Well, in that event, throw another Freidman Unit on the Barbie! We'll see what the Iraqi people really think in another 6 months.
Whaddo those Iraqis know?
They haven't seen Petraeus' PowerPoint presentation! They have no idea how good they have it!
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Petraeus will urge delay
Link
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
I've read that the Army and the Marines don't have enough
members to keep the numbers up beyond next spring. What about maybe formulating a plan B? I mean, if we absolutely have to pull people in the spring, if the bad guys know, won't they just hold off till we pull them then?
When will be a good time to get out of the way of Iraqi's killing each other?
I ask this question in good faith as a majority of Iraqi's now think it's a good thing to attack US GI's
.
I'd imagine
that Petraeus actually is much better aware of whether Army and Marines have enough troops to be there through spring or/and beyond.
That said I don't have answers on when it's a good time.
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
Maybe Bush is going to reinstitute the draft!
Heh-heh...
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Good point, kindness
And actually the same argument that the righties have been making about setting a "date certain." Certainly the sequelae of setting a date certain by choice are no different from those of a date certain set by circumstance.
Maybe Democratic representative Charlie Rangel will get his way, and the Democrats will bring back their draft. I still have my two cards!
As Rangel has made clear, the fastest way to end the war...
... is to reintroduce the draft.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Eighth request
Please stay off of my stuff, as i have stayed off of yours.
Again, you have no right to demand that I not comment on posts
...you put up. It is your choice to respond, but if you put a comment up, it is open for discussion. That's how this place works.
You commented on Rangel and the draft and I added a comment. If you have a problem with that, it's your problem, not mine.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
The Petraeus testimony
Seems that nost people here and on other boards have no need for his testimony to decide anything about Iraq. Its only use to most is to judge the mn.
It works like this:
IF the general's testimony agrees with your view and tends to confirm your wants, then he is a great general, honest, and insightful.
IF, on the other hand, his testimony disagrees with your view, then the general is weak, dishonest, and co-opted by political forces.
Some of pour most dishonest political brpokers have decided oin advance that his testimony won't meet their won political needs. The idiots over at MoveOn have taken out the now famous "General BetrayUs" ad to express their jaundiced view. At least they have given their own lighthouse beacon to warn of the devil depths of American politics.
"... idiots at MoveOn..."
This from the guy who claimed just a couple of days ago that he didn't "have a prejudiced bone in my body" and you con;t know how you are so blessed.
Hypocrite.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Fifth nice request
Please stay off my stuff.
Look up the word 'prejudice.' You won't look so foolish.
To be clear, the definition I had in mind when I used the term is this:
"an irrational attitude of hostility against an individual, a group, a race, or their supposed characteristics."
You are aware, absent cretinism, that the context of the thread was racial prejudice and prejudice based on sexual orientation. You sophistic attempt to use the fallacy of equivocation for reasons of personal animus here are petty and childish.
Once again, fifth request, please stay off of my stuff.
"irrational attitude of hostility..."
Fits your words here this morning perfectly.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
As opposed to the bush43/Cheney metric
where you use your armed forces to attack, kill and occupy a nation that has in no way harmed nor threatened you.
What do you think of those devil depths of American Politics. That is the war we're talking about and disagree with. You don't hear them complaining about Afganistan. It's Iraq/Iran you hear liberals screaming bloody murder about.
Get with the program MS.
kindness
My mother told me early that one doesn't justify one's sins by saying that Jack does it, too.
MoveOn hedre is not screaming bloody murder about the war, but rather making a personal attack on the integrity of a man before even hearing what he has to say. In their words, a sort of cruel play on his name in the manner of taunting schoolyard bullies, they even imply that this general may be a traitor.
When those who opposed this war were called traitors or treasonous, I expressed my opinion that this was reprehensible, unAmerican. I express the same opinion here for the same reason.
MoveOn is simply predictable oin this regard. They are sort of the Ann Coulter of the left.
Proud?
The testimony begins....
Took a mere 30 seconds for the first jerk expressing the far left view to be tossed from the hearing room!!!!
I wish I could watch it
but being at work I actually gotta do some work... Sucks. Hope someone on dkos at least live blogs it. Thanks for a nice highlight.
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
Well, Ender
Seems everyone on the committee is going to give their own two bits about the testimony before the general gets to testify. Seems my comment above about the testimony not being of any use for one's thoughts on the subject matter extends to the committee itself.
How sad that we have gotten to a government by religion, where the facts and honest testimony are accepted and rejected on the basis of its congruence with one's dogmatic political position.
Where it is more important to "get with the program" than it is to think for oneself!
indeed
Why are all congressmen even there if they already made up their minds?
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
His report is not the only report.
What of the Iraqi troop readiness report that John Warner requested and which showed little to no progress in Iraqi troop readiness levels along with a recommendation of disbanding the Iraqi police forces and starting from scratch because they are so rife with sectarian militias?
What about the GAO report that says that the Pentagon's odd rules of counting civilian casualties, rules instituted since the start of the surge, underreport civilian casualties?
Is being skeptical of what the General reports not a feasible or defensible position given the jiggering with the numbers done by the Pentagon, according to other, independent reports?
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Maddy,
your thoughtful words will just howl in the wind...neglected for not being fun and emotionally satisfying.
But I appreciate it nonetheless. I actually chuckled because I was thinking the same thing as my eyes perused over the dialog.
Yeah, or...
Some of us could be laughing that certain people are gullible enough to believe the dog and pony show today has something to do with "facts and honest testimony."
There's a reason many of us have our minds made up: we know what he's going to say. It's no secret since the message has been leaked ahead of time. MS objection is irrational since it predicated on the false idea that Petreaus testimony has been kept secret.
We've had weeks to hear what he will say and to research the validity of those claims.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Thank you, Tlaloc
for proving my point.
Yes, we could guess from what Patraeus himself was saying what he would write.
And yes, it is obvious that you disagree with that general drift, so you cannot see it as "facts and honest testimony."
And yes, we could do research of people's opinions.
And yes, you are free to pick and choose just those whose opinions you generally agree with, fxing your facts around your ideology.
What we couldn't know is what new facts and figures would be presented. Only the very dishonest wpould make up their mind in advance in that case.
Sad, sad, sad.
You are suggesting that a lecture entitled "Professor Einstein presents his evidence for the theory of relativity" could not be honest and factual because you9 know in advance that he is going to support the theory of relativity. But he just might present a few experiments, say, the pressession of Mercury's orbit, that you weren't aware of, not having access to the experimental equipment or the scientific reports.
But I am very interested in your observations from your trip to iraq last week. Please fill me in.
Delusional as ever.
So does repeating your false argument make you feel good or something? Because it remains false. There are no "new facts and figures" to be reported because the report has already been leaked to the press. I can't believe you are not able to understand this rather important detail.
See, "new" means something that, well, you didn't have before. Since the reports already leaked we had it before. Temporal relationships are pretty key to constructing logical arguments. It's why your argument here is nonsense.
I'm going to have to recommend GoRight gives you reading comprehension classes. If you wanted to be correct you'd say "What you are suggesting is that a paper entitled "Professor Einstein presents his evidence for the theory of relativity" could not be honest simply because you had already read the paper and discovered a multitude of fabrications in it."
Well yeah, I feel quite comfortable pointing out such things as falsities. See for example my various responses to you.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Never mind the fact that other, independent reports
... have already come out which paint a different picture than Petraeus' testimony.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Link please (nt)
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
Are you joking?
There's been a couple stories every week for the last several months.
here's one of the most recent:
story
These reports have been everywhere, and undoubtedly many were leaked diretly by the whitehouse in order to set expectations ahead of time. The same way that they publish the President's SOTU address and other major announcements before he gives them.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
OK, Tlaloc
I ignored your fogging above, you will notice.
First, I know there have been other reports, and of course we don't neglect them either. We consider them all. We don't say, for instance, "Patreaus says this, so we can ignore those." Nor do we say, "those say this, so we can ignore Patreaus." To do so, one would have to chose not on the merits, but on ideology.
Second, I realize there were "leaks" of the Patreaus and Crocdker material, for instance, one saying that it would be written by White House staff. And this false leak was glommed onto by the usual ideological practitioners ofrf mental sloth (in this case, of the lefty variety, species religious antiBushites). There have leaks about what Patreaus' conclusions will be. I'm not so much interested in his conclusions, but in his data. Only a low grade idiot would say that the leaks EQUAL what Patreaus is going to say, data wise.
Your quote above confirms what I suspected with you. It wouldn't matter to you what data Patreaus had if he came to a conclusion that doesn't fit with your ideology.
Bottom line, some but not all of what he was going to say was guessed at in news stories, but that was mostly about what he was going to say in conclusion, which is, after all, the least important things he had to say.
My point, again: his report was worth listening to, but most people, on either side, have made up their mind about what he said without hearing it [for your sake, on the basis of leaks to the press, since they are always 100% accuirate, and] on the baqsis of their ideology, judging what he says by the dictates of their ideology, not the facts.
You know, Tlaloc, it doesn't really matter if you judge his presentation on ideology on the basis of an advanced copy, even, or the actual speech. The problem is letting one's ideology replace point by point thinking.
I think you showed your hand with the "dog and pony show" comment. No analysis there.
Typical blathering
You made a false argument, I corrected it, now you blather about a bunch of stuff that alternates between incorrect and immaterial.
My analysis of his report is based on knowledge of it. What the report says is put in juxtaposition with a number of credible sources. The Petraeus report is found to be lacking in comparison. Consequently it is disregarded.
Just because you fall for the dog and pony show doesn't mean you should get pissy at those of us who are smarter. By all means listen to it if you like. Take your time to evaluate it point by point. I guess the rest of us can wait for you to catch up.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Belated thanks, John
Nice to hear something positive amongst the din.
Oh, look! There he goes again!
"Not a prejudiced bone in my body..."
You phony. You are so full of hate, it's oozing from your pores and probably soiling your desk chair.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
dude
stop attacking him already... Not just the rightwingers dislike the morons from MoveOn and Code Pink! You are getting too personal here.
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
Hey, just trying to hold him to his own words, Ender.
Is that too much to ask?
He claimed just a few short days ago that he was above all of this kind of talk. Yet, here he is, name-calling.
What a f***in' phony...
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
he is not calling *you* names
That's the difference. Personal insults especially the persistent harassing that you are demonstrating here is explicitly against the rules. Please stop.
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
Hey, when someone claims to be something they're not
... over and over, they open themselves up to this criticism.
Period.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
it's not the criticism that's not ok
it's the way you make it personal.
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
It is personal.
It's about a person.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
You know,
I'm obviously not the biggest fan of MS since I've largely stopped responding to him, but I do have to ask what you're trying to accomplish here, CLC. If you're trying to point out inconsistency/hypocrisy, it's a fair point, but do you think you might be starting to cross from "pointing out" to "harassing"?
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
Oh, no.
My last two posts commenting on relevant issues in a thread were met with the posters' request that I not comment.
Please show me where either one of these was "harassing."
If this is a place for discussion, then let's discuss.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Overheated.
If the other person's not responding, and consistently not responding, then maybe a breather's in order?
By all means question consistency, but at least today is it getting you anywhere?
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
I am no longer questioning his consistency.
The point has been made. That said, discussing points of view surfaced in other comments are what this place is all about. So being asked not to comment on something placed out there for discussion is ludicrous.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
I'm attempting
a new start since his 'second-coming', but I've had similar comments about his supposed (and humanly impossible) neutrality and objectivism in the past.
We are all mediators, translators. - Derrida
Specter
I've never claimed any super-human neutrality nor certainly objectivism. I do have more objectivity than I usually find on political sites because I have no political ideology, although I have opinions on specific topics individually.
What CLC is referring to is my comments concerning prejudice in the context of a discussion of gays and the civil rights movement.
Let's put it this way: objectivity and elimination of ideology are my constant goals. That is, they are perfectives. I am making no claim to perfection, and it is unfair to put those words in my mouth.
I don't think those are the goals of political ideologues.
ON another board, a writer was quoted as saying that the difference between the judgment of the worth of a proposition is different for those writing political opinion and journalists. Journalists, the writer said, are committed to finding the truth, and this is the bases of their judgment of a poposition.
Political writers, on the other hand, judge a proposition by its usefulness in advancing their political agenda.
In making this distinction, I don't think the writer was claiming that either were perfect in their judgments.
The observation herte is that on this board or any political board, slanted toward an ideology or not, you can find example after example of the ideology entraining facts. This topic here is a good example, made possible because the facts are few and hard to get. Those who want to leave grasp at anything they hear that is negative, and those who want to stay grasp at anything that seems positive, all with regard to the situation in Iraq.
Petraeus begins now to speak, and says that this is his testimony, written by himself, unshared with any superior, nor with anyone in the government. Yet the judgment of his testimony will come from what those of us here who have never been close to iraq during the times he describes want to believe about what he describes.
That's my point.
It is rather obvious.
Madscientist
I did not mean to suggest your intent. I do think you are very mistaken about a few things so I will list those now:
While his testimony may be his alone, the report is not. As a matter of fact, the administration wrote the report
(page 2 of the article):
Politics is a partisan game in which those in power (and those not) will state what they want to further their own agenda (I think we are agreed here). It is difficult to find true objective and unbiased reports at any level of government (at least the analysis of 'facts'--see below). Facts are not facts, but fodder for interpretation as has always been.
Which gets to my next point:
Unless you are a calculator (you are not a calculator, I assume), then I argue that this goal is an impossibility. As much as I would like to commend you for your effort, I not only think it is an impossibility but a gesture in bad faith too.
Perhaps we are using a different definition of 'political' here (GoRight, put away the dictionary, please). I tend to see almost everything as political (from architecture, to recreation, to words, to spirituality/religion, etc.). If politics is basically power or control (institutionalized or not is unimportant), then we can view it in almost any aspect of life.
If you are saying that you wish to avoid a certain organized school of thought (ideology), then that is fine, but I still doubt that you are able to do away with the lenses from which you view the world. Here are five questions to get at some of your ideologies/political perspectives:
1. What is your favored system of economy?
2. Which form of government do you find benefits a society?
3. Do you value freedom?
4. Do you value health (or safety)?
5. What is your 'moral system' (used loosely)?
All of the above are political questions (but as stated further above, these are the tip of the iceberg). If you have an opinion about any of the above, you have prejudices. There are no facts that can lead to 'correct' answers here solely by themselves (without going into other political values. For example, you may think from a certain set of data that humans live longer in capitalistic societies. That is fine, but you are still valuing health over other attributes in which this 'value' is not a 'fact' but a personal interpretation of what you find most important i.e. health).*
For the most part, politics is not even about the interpretation of objective facts. For example, how does the issue of gay marriage deal with 'facts', and how would one use those facts to answer the question of whether gays should have the right to marry? There are no relevant facts here, only interpretation of various moral systems.
I could go on for much longer, but I think you get the point. Aristotle said humans are political animals. Facts are neutral and do not lend themselves to conclusions without interpretation and prioritizing of values. No 'is' implies an 'ought'
as Hume said. In other words, no description (the facts) suggests a prescription (what we should do with said facts).
Your goal is an impossibility. You are unobjective and will never be anything but. Accept and cherish it.
*(edit): Some people create categories for the above values. These we call 'ideologies', and the attempt to institutionalize these values we call political parties.
We are all mediators, translators. - Derrida
Heard it before
I agree that objectivity is a goal that one can't obtain. That is why i used the term 'perfective." I do not accept that because perfection is impossible, one ought to give up the goal. too convenient.
You assume:
But what if i argued that that fact alone means we should give up capitalism?
You know, Specter, I know you find this hard to believe, but I just don't have what Nietzsche (since you are name-dropping) called a "Will to a system." I have ideas, opinions, and didn't say that i didn't. the careful reader would call some of my opinions libertarian, some Marxist, some conservtive, and so on. My method is to see politics as the effort to provide practical answers to practical questions. For instance, if the goal is to cut down on infant moratility in the US, the answers would have to do with medical practice, how we access it, how that interfaces with other aspects of society, and so on. "Socialized medicine" of some form or another may be offered as an answer, but i will want to hear about the proposal in facts and figures. As soon as we get moralistic answers, (all infants should get the best care possible, in itself an impossibility), i know we are out of politics, and into morality as political ideology. In fact, whether all infants get care, or even whether reducing infant morality given all the practicalities, is the political question, decided on, in our system, by the people. What i am saying here is that ideologists tend to see things narrowly, to put things in absolute terms. Infant mortality should be (that moral wording again) the goal of society no matter what the cost. I think that the costs are always important no matter what the issue.
So, do i think that the health of babies is a valuable goal? yes. Should it be the goal of the federal government? maybe. Depends on, as you might say, the politics. All of it.
Now, take gay marriage. You are right that there are probably no facts that are relevant to this discussion. And you are right that it has become a moral issue. To my mind, it should NOT be a moral issue. It should be a political issue. But, unfortunately, we are not far in time from a place where people who think that morality should be involved in politics made laws against sodomy. The question here should be political: are gays treated equally in a constitutional sense? If not, what must be done to bring this about?
For me, morality is a set, systematic or not, of values which governs one's own behaviour, most often as ideals not fully realized. Morality is not to be used to control other people's behaviour. But in our country, the temptation to use political power to force people to behave according to one's morality has led to bad law and ppor policies by politicians of all stripes.
Aristotle said, btw, that all men by nature desire to know. Ideology is like faith: it is anti-knowledge. It provides a constant answer to which one can refer, like a bible, to respond to questions or situations in the world. it saves having to think about life as it happens.
For me, life is like jazz, you make it up as you go along, using the tools you have at the time. I have known musicians who found some happy solo that they played the rest of their lives on a certain tune. I hated working with these people. Their music wasn't alive. Since i am never the same person, never feel and know exactly the same thngs, never have the same perspective on things, why should i ever play anything the same way twice?
Likewise, why should i ever answer the same political question the same way twice? Of course, this too is an ideal. Sometimes my ideas change more slowly than I would like, because time is limited, and I can't reconsider everything every time.
Thus, for me, interesting thinkers don't repeat the same ready doctrines over and over again, like so many chanting altar boys. They think, and, I always hope, write aneww each time.
As Emerson famously said, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." When i hear that "Kerry is a flip-flopper," my ears perk up. It means that he can change his ideas with circumstances, and not just come up with an idea 20 years ago, and then go brain dead. See? That's why i don't really care what a politician thought about something, or what he voted for 15 years ago. Consistency is not a decent goal, it is to be feared.
I have opinions, but lots of time, I don't draw conclusions. Like when somethng is not clear to me. This is where people rely on ideology or faith to bail them out. I have an immense tolerance for ambiguity. In fact, I was a grown person before i realized that some people had little tolerance for ambiguity, and had to have answers.
Note here that I didn't say I have no values. But i have not here in general argued that the (federal) government should put my values into law, and force others to adopt them, even though i could argue that we would all be better off adopting some of them. Heck, I could make an argument that we might even have a drop in infant mortality.
Remember, there is no virtue without freedom. To force others to behave morally, according to someone's idea of morality, will not only decrease freedom, but will decrease virtue, that is, will actually decrease moral behaviour.
On objectivity, I can say this: the old saying is that the only tragedy in science is a great theory not supported by the facts. Early in my life, I thought the theory that the moon was pulled out of the pacific basin (this is pre-Wegener) was a fantastic theory, and I loved it for the possibilities, the romance. but my dad taught my very young self that this was not the way theories work. You pick them on the data available at the time. Objectively.
If you want to go to the NAS and tell them they are unobjective, fine with me. But the scientists i've worked with have all made objectivity their goal.
As for being a calculator, I have at times actually been accused of being as cold as a calculator, treating everything as an intellectual problem with no sense of humanness. It's actually just the autism. I really have over the years developed a sense of humanness. But i still have the ability to absolutely wall it off. To almost go back to a time when only symbols mattered.
I do have some absolute values, that is, values that I don't think will change. Of course, some of what i thought were absolute values have changed in the past. as have my ideas. This is one reason I don't think my present ideas are properly presented as God-given truth. Here's a couple of values:
1) Data is sacred. One shall not manipulate or change it, nor ignore it.
2) Thou shalt not commit the second sin against science, that is, thou shalt not seek data with one's hypothesis in hand. (This one is hard to keep with google.)
3) Honesty and self-expression always; never play to the crowd, and be careful when playing what the crowd seems to like: it is easy to play for the audience instead of playing your own truth.
4) never play the same solo that you have played before. Let your music be as different as you are every time.
5) (From Thich Nhat Hanh).
The Master is hard. One "try", and an insistence that we see the rest, no excuses!
6) [A method to allow one to work with the worst of criminals.] See that even the worst of actions have an underlying noble motive.
......
One's reach should always extend beyonds his grasp.
I guess that makes me a Progressive.
I'll try to anhswser the questions.
1) I don't believe in systems of economy.
2) Any form of government can benefit people. I don't like to use the term 'society,' which is best defined as "everyone bu me." As in, "you have to sacrifice for society." the Marxist ontology, which reifies society over individuals is the source of much muddy think and human misery. Society is a convenient collective noun, not something which can think, feel, or have benefits given to it.
3) Freedom is the ultimate value if one believes that one owns his own lives, as does everyone else own their own lives. Freedom is not, however, a value that is absolute.
4) Sure, I place a value on health and safety. I don't walk blindfolded down the freeway while eating salted pork rinds.
5) Moral system? none. I have some moral precepts today that i follow. May be different tomorrow, but I grow old. I try to see the Buddha in everyone. I try to present my moral views as personal preferences, rather than rules others should follow.
I'm probably pretty conventional for an old hippy.
And the Hume
No 'is' implies an ought.
You know, specter, this is something that i say in many more words here a lot. So often, the fight on political boards is about facts because people think that admitting a fact will lead to the opposing political view.
We often hear that such and such a fact can't be true, because it would just lead to some policy that the writer does not agree with.
As sort of an example, while the fact that the world is warming noiw cannot be denied, the argument is about whether the warming is anthropogenic.
but the fact is, there is no need to answer that question at all. If we perceive a problem, we might set ourselves to find solutions to the problem.
But for some reason, those who don't like certain solutions seek to argue whether the warming is anthropogenic. Why? And why do those who favour these measures zargue that the warming is anthropogenic?
It's a bit like insisting that because a certain diseasese has been shown to be genetic, we should cure it by removing all genetic material from the person so afflicted. That would certainly work, but we may want to give serious thought to side effects.
The lack of the latter almost led us into the idiocy of the Kyoto agreement, instead of something that actually had some thought and purpose, and may have actually helped.
btw, specter
patreaus said directly that he wrote the report, etc. Now, this is the place for you to directly call him a liar based on leaks prior to his delivering his report.
Since you think he would lie about that, i can see why you would simply dismiss anything he said.
Me, I'm a bit of a skeptic. years ago, before a live presidential speech, the leaks said that the president was going to talk about his plans for his run for the presidency and what plans he had to end the war. Instead, the president announced that he would not run at all. Even his staff were surprised.
So, Patreaus said that he wrote the report. You calling him a liar?
Obvious explanation and sixth request
The term 'jerk' was obviously applied to the jerk's behaviour. Had he shouted "keep the troops in iraq forever" and disrupted the start of the proceedings, he would be a jerk, right wing style.
See how easy it is?
Now, sixth time, please stay off of my stuff. I will stay off of yours, as i have.
Another "Friedman Unit" named in honor of Thomas Friedman
... Iraq war cheerleader and constant back-pedaler who has been saying for years, "The next six months are critical..."
He should be honored that General Petraeus has adopted the "Friedman Unit" as his own.
It's all about the "Friedman Units" until January of `09 when Bush can dump this mess in the lap of the next president.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
More jerks
were thrown out. I didn't hear what one shouted, nor could i read the sign referred to by the chairman, so I coan't report whether the jerks were winged or not.
were they hippyesque?
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
Chastising those he once was.
Humorous, that.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
I was a hippy? :)
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
Heh-heh.
That'll be the day.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
hippyesque
one had longish hair, but not nearly so long as mine!
Another group just got tossed, but i didn't see them nor hear exactly what they said.
Were they
trying to voice their freedom of speech in a political forum to state their disagreement with government policy?*
*Not that I advocate disrupting government functions, but there is something to say for civil disobedience (hippies or not is irrelevent).
We are all mediators, translators. - Derrida
Specter
I understand the point. It is a matter of judging when civil disobedience is called for, and when civility is called for.
here, I am judging that civility is clled for, partly because civil disobedience will serve no purpose, and certainly no purpose that any honest protestor, or even anyone in favor of the war, would have.
These people could express their freedom of speech outside the committee room. In fact, someone could actually hear their message in that case. You can be sure that the Clinton News Network would cover it.
These political movements always have their self-indulgent, spotlight-seeking members.
btw, they just announced that Cindy Sheehan was among those previously thrown out.
And I have to say that among protestors of Vietnam, but even more today, there are those who don't realize that being arrested is the purpose. (Those not arrested and charged are said to suffer "subpoenas envy.)
Somehow, we have grown a crop of protestors who think that there should be no penalty for civil disobedience. This is a dishonour to the fine American tradition of civil disobedience.
Gee
maybe they shouldn't have read the constitution.
Getting arrested is not the point. The point is to exercise free specch and assembly rights so as to express a point of view. Getting arrested is what happens when the government over reacts and engages in unconstitutional actions.
They absolutely should be able to expect no penalties for exercising their rights. That they can't is a clear and direct indictment of a government refusing to follow it's charter.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Civil Disobedience
means just that. It means disobeying a law. One doesn't get arrested for exercising their rights. One gets arrested for disobeying some law or civil rule.
When the war protestor sits in the streets to block traffic, he is certainly exercising his right to express his opinion, and, if he is with others, to assemble. But he will be arrested for bocking traffic, which is against the law.
Now, Tlaloc, why do you think we chose to sit in the streets and block traffic to exercise our rights, rather than, say, getting a permit for a demonstration and gathering in the park right next to the street?
Thoureau, the standard of American civil disobedience, sets the bar high: in cases of injustice, he suggests that we disobey the laws of the government at any cost. In fact, it is the commitment to the cost that makes it effective. Gandhi, in his hunger strikes, imposed even more of a cost.
Note that Sen. McCarthy had Thoreau's book on civil disobedience removed from school libraries.
So, I disagree. if the object were merely to exercise one's right to free speech and assembly, this could be done without breaking the law. Purposely breaking the law to call attention to your cause IS the point. As the term "civil disobedience" implies.
It is hard for me to see simply enforcing the law or civil rules as "unconstitutional actions."
And i can tell you that if the police chief had told us in advance that he would take no action if we sat on Oak Avenue to block traffic, we would have immediately abandoned those plans, and, perhaps moved the protest sit-in to Broad Street, where he could not ignore us.
The idea is to effective express one's ideas, show one's commitment and seriousness, not to whine.
No it doesn't
You're wrong. It means disobeying authority. There is no requirement that it be illegal.
Ideally you'd be correct, in the real world though you are still wrong. Very often protestors get arrested for exercising their rights. Vague and subjective laws, such as disturbing the peace, are used to give a veneer of propriety to the arrest.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Why is it called *civil* disobedience? (nt)
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
Because it is civil
as opposed to violent disobedience.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
That is not the commonly accepted meaning
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Disobedience_(Thoreau)
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
No, actually it is.
Instead of going to the thoreau article look at the main article on Civil Disobedience.
First sentence:
wikipedia
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
I think Brendan's right,
in the sense that I couldn't be civilly disobedient in a social or personal situation: the term's exclusively used for disobedience aimed at government authority. It may be that the term is punned to mean both, but you can't be civilly disobedient without, to use the exact line you quoted, "a government or of an occupying power".
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
huh?
Where did I say otherwise? Brendan asked me why it was called "civil" disobedience. The word civil in this usage (not uncommonsly) means non-violent. That's all it means. But the term "civil disobedience" as a whole, yes, is used to talk about (non-violent) resistance against a state or occupying power.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Oh come on...
The correct answer to why it is called "civil" disobedience has nothing to do with non-violence.
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
"Correct answer"? -nt
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Crossed-wires:
I think you're right that it's inherently non-violent, but I think it comes from the word "disobedient", which is passive by nature. The "civil" part just refers to the arena where it's playing out.
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
Where do you suppose
the term came from?
I think you skipped rather quickly over refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government, no?
Surely you can concede that "civil" does not refer to "non-violent" but rather to "civil society": The American author Henry David Thoreau pioneered the modern theory behind this practice in his 1849 essay Civil Disobedience, originally titled "Resistance to Civil Government".
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
I know Thoreau's essay
But it really isn't relevant here. The term has had 150 years to season.
No I didn't. What have I said that conflicts with that? I've said that CD need not be illegal, I have not said that it cannot be. I have said it is about denying an authority.
I don't concede that. I just gave you a direct link to wikipedia saying the same thing i am.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Alright, well, that's more than enough for me for today
I have to get some work done. Clearly this is not a useful exchange.
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
Your tail is in sight!
Keep chasing! You'll catch it sooner than later!
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
You have the oddest behaviors
when it comes to MS.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Tlaloc
Wow! Quite the slipperiness! I admit that i haven't had any late-night discussions of civil disobedience in the last couple of years, but when i did, it always was based on Thoreau.
Even at that, the issue isn't civil, really, but disobedience, that is, disobedience to something that a government would promulgate, you know, a loaw or some other rule or regulation.
Above, you make the point about political application of laws and such, whereby the law is not applied as it usually is. Once, long ago in a city far, far away, several war protestors were arrested for jaywalking when they crossed the street to buy something to drink from the grocery store on the other side. Turns out that this was the most convenient place to cross, but no walk lines were painted there. The attorney got the charges dropped when he showed that no one had been arrested or charged with jaywalking at this much used spot except for three cases of "vagrants" the cops wanted to pick up just to get off the streets.
So, the question in this case is whther removing people screaming and making a fuss is a normal part of these committee hearings, or whether this is one of just a few targetted examples. In other words, are only iraq war protestors making noise and refusing to quiet down when asked removed, or are all removed in this circumstance.
Note also that in my example above, the "jaywalking" wasn't an act of civil disobedience in itself because no one expected to be arrested for an act that they all had committed along with the normal city dweller many times before without problem, sometimes walking across the street with a policeman in conversation.
Because of this, we fought this arrest, whereas we would welcome an arrest where we were deliberately disobeying a law.
Because the intent isn't Criminal.
It's a Civil Statement made by the individual objecting to one thing or another.
No, kindness
I have to stick up for those of us who practiced it. We did not think that reading a paper objecting to some practice of the government on the college quad was civil disobedience.
Taking over a building, shutting down classes, and making demands was civil disobedience, sometimes characterized in the press as "uncivil civil disobedience." ("Most look like they haven't bathed in a week....")
So it "serves no purpose" because you say so?
Says who?
And who also is making the claim that they shouldn't be arrested? The whole point, I suspect, is to be arrested.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
seventh request
Please stay off of my stuff.
You have no right to demand that I not comment on
.. your posts. Ignore them if you don't like them.
I am responding to something you wrote. If you don;t want to engage, don't. But if you put them up on this board, they are open for discussion. That's the nature of this place.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Read, CLC
I have made no demands.
I have made eight requests. here is the ninth: please stay off my stuff, and I will stay off yours, as I have been doing.
I will comment where I see fit.
Them's the breaks.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
By the way, I think we should have a party...
... when you get to your thousandth request.
The first round's on me!
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Madscientist
I'll attempt to keep this one short.
I don't think you can judge their intent/purpose--an outcome or consequence is different than an intent or purpose. Perhaps they thought they would be arrested and perhaps not. Perhaps their intent was to bring attention to the fact that there is disagreement to the way the war is being handled. We should probably ask them before elaborating on our conjectures.
I am not a fan of free-speech 'zones' either.
We are all mediators, translators. - Derrida
I agree, shortly, specter
and i wasn't really making a statement about their intent. I was discussing the fine art of civil disobedience. You might have noticed somewhere that I specifically denigrated those who want to do the protest part, but don't want to do what Thoreau would call the "at any cost" part. So, yes, it is very possible that all or some of those there today were phony, or, perhaps more kindly, wimps.
The point is that you want to bring attention to the perceived injustice by disobeying some law or other government regulation.
Getting arrested is icing on the cake.
As for free speech zones, those are for people who think that they ought ot be merely expressing their opinions and making a stand. The rest of us would go elsewhere.
But behind it shold always be the quetion of effectiveness.
Quite frankly,
I'm not a fan of sitting in the middle of a huge, busy main thoroughfare blocking traffic to make one's point. Such tactics, imo, just serve to make people more angry, and cause unnecessary and dangerous delays.
Maybe some of the people who insist on sitting in t he middle of a huge, busy main thoroughfare and blocking traffic to make their point(s), should stop and consider the following: Suppose an ambulance is trying to transfer a heart attack or stroke victim to the hospital? Every second of every minute counts there! Time really is is of the essence here! When police have to take the time to get the crowd(s) to move out of the way, it can cause unnecessary and dangerous delays. Suppose a neighbor, friend or loved one were on that ambulance? Think about that for a moment.
To people who insist on
sitting in the middle of a huge, busy main thoroughfare blocking traffic: Have you ever thought of maybe doing some community service to help pay the funeral, burial, and/or crematorial expenses for the family of a heart attack or stroke victim who failed to reach the hospital in time because you people were so insistent on sitting in the middle of the street blocking traffic to make your point(s)? Think about that for a bit.
Never happened
Answer 1:
Turns out that our group had a couple of physicians in itk, a few nurses, and two carpenters. Whenever we sat in on a busy thoroughfare, our carpenters quickly built two rooms, one for emergencies, the other an operation room, for use in just that contingency. If an ambulance came along, we took care of it. (I carried bedpans at the time.)
Answer 2:
The city often had parades on that route, and a summer market. They knew how to go around an obstruction. they would call the driver to tell them there was a blockage on Columbus, and they should take Tremont.
Real answer. These were smallish gatherings, and we actually, believe it or not, let emergency vehicles through.
I agree that this kind of protest makes people mad. I am not sure if that is ever useful. B ut the theory was that we had to wake people out of their "amnesty." Like leftists today, we thought that as soon as a person could see what we were talking about, they'd join.
As things progressed, and it became clear that some didn't, even though taught by our exalted selves, some of us began to look down on those who continued to, say, support the war, calling the stupid, or worse, evil.
And thus an idealistic young man rather quickly changed from a member of the university's crew, to a radical whose terrorist actions killed someone.
I still remember, Leo. I hope you are well.
SL Swords Crossed Meeting: Tuesday
I've changed this week's Second Life meeting to tomorrow night, Tuesday 09/11, from 5:30pm to 7:30pm SL Time (Pacific Time).
Drop in if you can.
SL September 11 Memorial
Very well done, actually.
That is quite beautiful.
Speaking of the 9/11 anniversary, keep your eyes peeled for the symposium at Progressive Historians, which should be posted tomorrow. Some seriously excellent submissions, taking different approaches to talk about how to view and review the past six years. I have a humble submission over there, as well.
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
In completely non-political news,
or in what I wish were completely non-political news, I'm happy to announce that I got engaged this past weekend. No idea what that actually means, since we live (at least for another year or so) in a state with a constitutional ban, but there ya go. You're all invited to share a virtual champagne glass. :) *clink
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
It's people like you who are a threat to my marriage.
Somehow.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
In fact, the moment we decided,
the couple next to us in the restaurant immediately broke up and stormed out of the place. We're leaving a path strewn with broken marriages wherever we go.
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
As my friend's father said when my wife asked him...
"Do you think (Catholic) priests should be allowed to get married?"
His response: "I think priests should be FORCED to get married."
I feel the same way about gays.
Good luck!
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Heh, marriage by force
sounds like torture under Geneva Conventions guidelines.
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
We should all get to enjoy it, pico.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Congratulations. -nt.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Congrats!
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
Congratulations!
I highly recommend marriage. I'm sorry the state won't let you make it official yet. But to me it's an attitude, not a piece of paper anyway.
Here's to hoping you find a happy path through the maze that is marriage [clinks champagne glass].
congratulations bro
Wish you two a long and happy life together!
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
Who would have thought that pico would get engaged...
... before you would!
Maybe you should turn gay. Might improve your chances!
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Now that IS harrassment :
of me. What makes you think the gay community wants another Republican?
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
you forget that I am no longer Republican!
But it's not like I would ask youse permissions :)
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
Ah, this is true -
and since you've been banned at dkos you have mad leftie street cred.
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
that I do :) n/t
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
Do you have a wide stance?
Just checking...
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
The ranks of the Log Cabins have thinned considerably...
... with the rise of the religious right inside the GOP.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
thanks for the suggestion
but I am pretty happy where I am :)
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
Best wishes
pico. It means what it means for your commitment to each other. At least you can share that with friends.
I'm sorry that you can't have it recognized in the usual way, or that the usual union is not yet in the offing, but try to dwell (live in) on the happiness it brings the two of you, and enjoy.
I'll have some sparkling apple juice and think of you, and when I talk to my brother this week, you will be in our thoughts.
Thank you. I appreciate that. n/t
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
clink:
and big congrats!
happiness is ...... :+)
I'm only half stupid
Good for you two
I think the gay and lesbian community should have to suffer in marriage also (just kidding, I am happily married).
Seriously, congratulations!
Do you have any plans to attempt a marriage by the law (i.e. go to another state or even country)?
We are all mediators, translators. - Derrida
Depends on how the job hunt goes.
I'm (sorta) on it now, so I have no idea where I'll be this time next year - although, as a not-quite-finished ph.d., odds are I'll still be here, trying to beef up my resume a bit. We'll probably just end up doing something 'symbolic' at first, then legal down the road as it becomes available. And party, of course!
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
Congratulations from me too, pico!!
All the best of luck to ya!!
Congrats pico, and good luck!
skymutt: accept no substitutes!
According to this news report, the US military is planning on
building a military base near the Iran-Iraq border, according to the Wall Street Journal.
(Although this report isn't the WSJ's)
"The base will be located about four miles from the Iranian border and will be used for at least two years."
It's mind boggling. They want to do everything they can to get us into a war with Iran.
The neocon dream...
After Iran, only Syria left on the checklist! I don't think they have time to do it all before the next election. But one must admire their grit and determination.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
At what point will they go after the home nation of 15 of the 19
9/11 hijackers?
After the dynasty of Saud dies out
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
More likely, after the oil runs out. (n/t)
Then they have no reason to bother. -nt.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
When they become
stupid enough to fall for just what bin laden had in mind. If he could have, ALL the hijackers would have been Saudi. Perhaps his highest goal is to overthrow the Saudi royalty.
Oddly, the king's power is based on the Bayah of several tribes on the peninsula, all of which are Salafi. Despite this being a very conservative form of Islam, and despite considerable support fo bin Laden among them, bin Laden himself is opposed to them as not fundamental enough!
These tribes, despite their bayah, can threaten and have threatened the king's authority, since the original bayah with the House of Saud demanded the preeminence of Salafi Islam. There has been much criticism of the House of Saud in the country due to its liberal policies, in the eyes of the Salafi, including selling oil to kaffir countries, introduction of modern technology, and accepting kaffirs in the country.
The bayah guarantees that clerics in the country will weild great power, and they do. In a real sense, power in Saudi Arabia actually devolves to the Salafi clerics.
Getting rid of the House of saud would no doubt lead to a less tolerant regime. And the Salafi tribes are reputed to be unconguerable. In fact, much of the population of southwest and western Iraq are Salafis who migrated from Saudi Arabia about a century ago.
You and bin Laden should be careful what you wish for.
I thought Bush and Cheney and their neocon brethren were
... all for "spreading democracy" in the Middle East?
But you're saying, not in the case of Saudi Arabia.
I get it. They're all for democracy except where they're not.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
By the way, look how analagous this is to Iraq:
In 1992, Dick Cheney predicted
that getting rid of Saddam would be a disaster of epic proportions.
Kind of like your prediction on getting rid of the House of Saud.
Someone should have said to Bush and Cheney:
Because ol' Osama got exactly what he wished for when the 2002 Dick Cheney ignored the prescient views of the 1992 Dick Cheney.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Prior to 9/11, bin Laden was quoted as having said
that it would be his great pleasure and ambition to bring America disgrace and to it's knees. His reasons for why varied. But he said he would do this by the same means they used in Afghanistan to break the Soviet Union. he wanted to turn the government of America on it's own, thus incurring divisiveness from within, but more importantly, we would bankrupt the US.
Osama has been shown to have been much more correct than anyone in the bush43 executive branch has been. I resent my countries leaders being such morons as to take the bait of a fundamentalist in some far off corner of the world, and hold my country hostage because of him.
You're right
I've often made the point that bin Laden wanted the "war on Terror" because he thought, on the basis of Lebanon, Somalia, Vietnam, and the mujahadeen experience in Afghanistan that he could defeat the US in it. Bush and America decided that we needed to fight the war on terrorism. And both bin laden and Bush agreed that iraq would be the main stage. In fact, one could say that they agreed on the battle ground.
I usually have taken it from both sides for that.
It is true that bin laden said that as soon as the USSR fell in Afghanistan, he immediately "knew" that America would fall in a similar manner.
Yeah, we should have just left him alone, applying good, old fashioned police work to blunt his capacity for mischief. In fact, I've often wondered if it would be better or worse to capture or kill bin laden. If you think the war in iraq was a recruiting tool, his capture or death would be many times as effective.
Oddly, some people of the religious antiBushites are so blinded by hatred that they miss this point just so they can heap vitriol on bush for not capturing bin Laden. In fact, that may turn out to be the smartest thing he could have done, even if it was inadvertent.
Interestingly, a couple of nights ago I was visiting some iraqi blogs, where one antiAmerican blogger took bin Laden's thinking to its logical conclusion. Now this blogger is a student of Middle Eastern history, and blindly applies it to the US. Taking his cue from bin Laden's tape, he argues that the US is already a defeated country, and that once defeated, a country cannot recover. (McCain made the same point this weekend, arguing that we must not be defeated in iraq, even though we must get out. Specific to the army, he said that the military was defeated in Vietnam, defeated by the politicians, and it tool a decade for the army to recover.)
McCain notes that a defeated military becomes disfuntional, with dissension in the ranks, fragging, drug abuse, disobeying of orders, abuse of civilian populations, and so on. Likewise, the blogger notes that a defeated country loses its ability to provide for itself, maintain discipline in its own lands. But he went further, predicting that by 2010, the US was likely to break up into its constituent states like the USSR did when it was defeated.
Got me to thinking. Interesting to contemplate what the division would be.
what do you think?
So the argument is...
... that we should be grateful to Bush and Cheney for not going after bin Laden because killing him would have been an even better recruitment tool than an almost four-year-old war.
Wow, that's a new one. Even Bush and Cheney haven't been audacious enough to make that argument.
Still doesn't justify an invasion of Iraq, of course, which has proven to be a major distraction and a monumental waste of blood and treasure.
One has to buy the "flypaper theory" to make that argument credible. And the al Qaeda-linked attacks in many other parts of world dispel the notion that al Qaeda can only fight a one-front war.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
keep on killing, we'll make more
If you think the war in iraq was a recruiting tool, his capture or death would be many times as effective.
How so? I understand that would-be terrorists who already had some sympathy for OBL might be emboldened by his "martyrdom," but the war in Iraq is an ongoing PR nightmare for the US. I would think a vast majority of Middle Easterners are much more pissed about the US invading an entire country then they would be about the death or capture of one man. He's not that popular.
We are the environment. There is no distinction. What we do to the earth we do to ourselves. —David Suzuki
It is always
an advantage to have martyrs for a cause. Remember the Nazis kjilling one of their own and hanging wi=th a sighn that said "a good nazi?"
bin Laden, martyred by either killing or captured, would bring huge numbers to his cause, especially those on the fringe, who see him as a spokesman for Islam but are a bit worried by his methods. On a Muslim board years ago, there as a discussion of =whether bin laden shouldn't actually put himself in the positian to be killed because, they thought, hiding in Paqkistan made him less effective than he would be dead. (And, of course, the person who wrote this was a chief pusher of the "CIA created the tape" theory of tape shoing bin Laden discussing 911. So I asked him about the possible contradiction, and he says that as long as most Muslims think he did it, he's better for the cause of Khalifah dead, as a martyr, and a rallying point.
Oh, just so you know, according to this man, the Jews did 911, after having plastic surgery to look like specific Arabs!
You know, after i stopped posting on Muslim boards, spent some times on unaligned international boards (something like this one), I went to a left wing board. I felt right at home, as if I was back on a Muslim board. Not all the antiAmerican stuff was there, but most of it.
And oddly, I was there before Bush, and the same things were said about Clinton. They didn't even miss a beat when Bush came in, and sometimes confused them!
Why do you despise the left so?
You remind me of an addict, who, once clean, despises all that he was.
Dp you ever go to rightwing blogs? Spend anytime at RedState? LittleGreenFootballs?
Your apparently deep-seated hatred of anything left leaves one to wonder about your revealed past.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Personally
I found his stated past a little fishy when he claimed both to be an old hippy and to have a grandfather in WW2. Not completely outside the realm of possibility but suspicious.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Never know.
Also claims to be from Appalachia.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Sorry Tlaloc
My grandfather was born before 1900. My father was in WWII.
I don't hate leftists, as your partner says. In fact, These people
still invoke a fondness in me. I just figured out that they (and I) were wrong. Still, if you want a leftist, these are the real thing, not lukewarm half-hearted milquetoasts.
Today's headlines: "Today's congressional hearings to set stage for continued war in iraq"
Any problem with that?
Oh, so the people you don't like are not left enough.
I get it.
I agree with you on this point, though: You and your socialist friends were/are wrong.
Nice that we can find agreement.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Terrorist pipe dreams, nothing more. Never gonna happen.
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed!
-4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4Hey, GoRight, who wrote the following?
Your comments are far more radical than McCain's. So this statement from you in regards to McCain's comment...
... must mark you as a terrorist, eh?
You're predicting a civil war and you want to claim that McCain's ideas are "terrorist pipe dreams?"
Funny, that...
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Well McCain IS a leftist by my standards ...
that does, therefore, seem to move him closer to the terrorist camp after all.
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed!
-4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4Your comments are far more radical than his.
I think you're the closet leftist. You are the one predicting a civil war. That is radical, far more radical than McCain's comments that MS outlines, above.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Pfft. Radically to the right of him maybe.
Begone simpleton. The rational people of the world have things to discuss.
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed!
-4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4Yes, unlike McCain who predicted the U.S. may break up into
... interest group areas (a silly thought), you are predicting a civil war. Really.
Like I note upthread, you prefer to talk about killing other Americans over getting your cowardly ass to Iraq to back up your phony tough guy rhetoric on the "Islamofascist threat."
Typical. All mouth, no balls.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
More babbling from the village idiot ...
The US isn't going to break up into anything, and anyone who thinks that it is is deranged.
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed!
-4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4I agree.
Therefore you must be "deranged"
.
I mean, these are your own words, GoRight!
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Yep, and they're still true.
Note of course, that I am not advocating for a Civil War, merely highlighting that conservatives will not allow socialists such as yourself to impose your views on us. And like our first Civil War, the purpose will be to preserve the Union and to protect it from the likes of you.
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed!
-4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4So you aren't advocating a civil war, just saying there will be
... one.
Got it.
And you'll be at the front lines of that one, too, just like you are at the front lines against the Islamofascist threat.
Oh, wait...
In the coming civil war, will you be doing your part from the keyboard like you are now with the Islamofascist threat?
Heh-heh. I can see it now...
"You guys go get those dirty socialists! I'll be here posting support on the Internets!""
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
If the time ever comes ...
you'll know which I meant. I'm ready, are you?
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed!
-4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4The time is now!
Aren't we in the fight of our lives against the Islamofascists? And all you can do is be a keyboard commando?
Sounds like you are far more enthusiastic about killing fellow Americans than you are about taking on the great threat of radical Islam.
Talk about anti-American! You are walking example of an unpatriotic, anti-American American.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Nope, not enthusiastic.
Reluctantly realistic. If you feel the time for a 2nd American Civil War is now, then feel free to take to the streets and begin your insurrection. If you are right the people will follow you!
Go on, see what happens!
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed!
-4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4Um, you're the one predicting a new civil war, GoRight.
I think the notion is absurd and is the product of a fevered, paranoid mind.
Read the thread. You're the one ready to do battle against the dirty socialists.
Well, "do battle" from behind your keyboard, of course! The same way a "true patriot" fights the Islamofascist threat!
I hear General Petraeus calling! Listen!
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Meh.
Note that predicting is NOT advocating (i.e. being enthusiastic).
And I think it is fevered and paranoid minds like yours that will precipitate such a war. I note that it is you who are maintaining the aggressive posture.
Are you over compensating for something? Did the feminists at dkos emasculate you to the point where you need to wonder aimlessly about trying to pick fights with people to make you feel like you matter?
CLC to Self: I am relevant ... right?
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed!
-4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4So what you're saying is that you don't have the courage of your
... convictions.
The threat of radical Islam is greatest threat to our generation, according to you, and you are able-bodied and young enough to do something about it, but you want to bail and claim that you being tucked safely behind your keyboard is the best way for you to contribute. "Eternal vigilance" and all that.
And then you also want to claim that your prediction of a civil war in the United States -- which I think is as loony an idea as the typical loony 9-11 conspiracy theorists who post here from time to time -- will come true because of people like me.
So you ARE predicting a civil war, even though you constantly deny it, when, in fact, you wrote a diary outlining the rationale for your confident prediction.
I see.
I'm not trying to "pick fights." I'm trying to understand how someone like you who claims to be part of a culture of self-proclaimed "true patriots" while labeling me and others as "socialists" and "blame America first" promoters can:
1. Be such a personal coward by not enlisting in the military to fight for a cause you so obviously and fervently believe and feel is the defining struggle of our time, and
2. Offer up such a truly crackpot prediction of a U.S> civil war... with such confidence.
That's all.
Are you able-bodied?
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
No, that's what you are saying.
Luckily what you say isn't particularly relevant to me or anyone else. You are simply sad and pathetic in your attempt to grasp at relevance.
I think that your delusional tendencies are getting away from you here. Where, exactly, did I ever claim to not be predicting a civil war? In this very thread I openly admitted as such ... actually is was right in the parent post to your post here. Man, you better get that short term memory looked at.
The basic point of that diary was that as the leftists such as yourself continue to push yourselves onto the rest of society that there is a possibility that things will progress to the point of a New Civil War. Here, reread the title that you included above:
Thoughts on the Possibility of a New American Civil War
I have no idea why you think that this is something controversial or something that I am in the slightest way ashamed of. It isn't. Really, it isn't.
But if you want to keep rehashing it and giving it bandwidth more power to you because the analysis there is spot on accurate.
Yes you are. And not just with me. You have been following people around since you came back just making inane and irrelevant comments whose only purpose was to try and provoke a reaction. They have no particular substance, you just want to pick a fight so that you can in some weird and perverted way try to fix your obviously broken ego. Your self-esteem is so low this is the only way you think that you can get people to interact with you. It is very obvious.
I am not a coward nor do I need your approval to validate my own self-esteem. But since you want so fervently to to discuss True Patriots and Cowardice why, exactly (if you feel the way you obviously do) have you not signed up to help out?
I mean given your characterization of the situation shouldn't you be signing up? What's your rationale for not doing so? Too cowardly or not enough of a True Patriot?
Come on, by your own account your country needs you. Does it matter that you aren't a supporter of the war? Oh, that's right. It kind of does matter that you don't.
Even if I want to accept your proposition that not signing up makes people cowards (which I don't, but you DO), that seems to be something that we share. The difference between us, of course, is that like a True Patriot I continue to support the troops and the war effort.
You, on the other hand, seek to undermine both by continuing to be a useful idiot for the likes of Osama Bin Laden. Go ahead and push to defund the war and leave the troops in harms way. Go ahead and keep repeating the terrorist talking points. It only demonstrates exactly what you are, a coward (by your own reasoning) AND a traitor (by mine).
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed!
-4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4Au contraire...
I think the war should be over. So do most Americans. You claim you're "supporting the troops" by continuing to send them into the meat grinder that is Iraq. That is the antithesis of "supporting the troops," particularly when you are too cowardly to be one of them while claiming their mission is the critical challenge facing us today.
Not so critical that you;d get off your dead ass and join up. Got it. Like I said, you're a coward.
As for who has helped Osama bin Laden more -- the people who want us out of Iraq (the majority of Americans - bin Laden supporters, all) or the idiots who got us bogged down in a protracted quagmire, I'd say you're looking out of the wrong end the telescope, my friend.
George Bush and Dick Cheney and many Republicans including most of the `08 Republican presidential field, are the best friends Osama has ever had. Haven't you read that a number of the Republican frontrunners said after the recent bin Laden video that he "wasn't important?"
Just like Osama's best friend, George Bush, who gave up pursuing him in favor of attacking a country that had nothing to do with 9-11. and getting us stuck in the process.
Great stuff all the way around.
You are the very opposite of a "true patriot." You're a phony coward. Plain as day.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
CLC to the Country:
"I hear you calling me, but I ain't a going. Nope I'm a coward just like all those nutcase neocons. But hey, you should really listen to this Osama Bin Laden tape. It's startin' to make a lot of sense to me.
America IS the problem. We caused it all. We should just bend over a let them a**fu** us good and hard because that's the ay I like it. Good and hard."
CLC you are nothing but a worthless piece of dog sh** that came in one someone's shoe.
And supporting the troops? Yea, let's cut the funding for medical supplies. Let's cut the funding for the body armor and humvee armor that the Democrats have already pointed out is in short supply. Reinforcements? We aren't sending any reinforcements, in fact we're going to stretch you all even thinner.
Yea, that's support alright. That's called aiding and abetting in my book. Typical cowardly traitorous BS from a know nothing socialist.
You are sedititious traitor, plain as day.
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed!
-4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4Stop
Both of you.
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
You're fantasizing about being raped by al Qaeda operatives.
Have you been in prison?
By the way, no, America is not the problem. Invading Iraq when we should have been pursuing al Qaeda in Afghansitan and around the globe is the problem.
And then continuing to promote that waste of lives and resources in Iraq is a problem because it makes us more vulnerable and unable to respond to other threats.
I don't mean to interrupt your reverie. Go back to your al Qaeda rape fantasy. That as kooky as your prediction that there will be a civil war in America.
Both hands on the keyboard, mister.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Actually that's more your department.
I mean as a useful idiot cross dresser.
No, why don't you tell us all how they turned you into the beyatch.
Oh yea, that's right. I forgot, it's a "secret". [ Wink, Wink ]
Lives are only being wasted if you are too short on vision to see the long term implications and benefits. Apparently those elude you feeble neurons.
Both hands on the keyboard? Ha. Both hands around your ankles so your "pal" Osama doesn't have to work so hard.
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed!
-4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4More sexual fantasies from you.
Wait a minute... Are you really Larry Craig?
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
No, but you might be.
Given that you are trying to deflect the accusations.
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed!
-4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4Alright guys
let's give the coward/traitor stuff a rest.
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
Whatever.
I find the Bill O'Reilly-style rhetoric of "true patriot" silly.
But our pal insists that he is the "true patriot."
And I am a "socialist" by his loony definition. Makes me laugh.
He wears camo underwear to work, no doubt, so that he can do his part for the cause from his cube.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Yea, whatever.
I find the Osama Bin Laden-style rhetoric of "terrorist wannbe" silly too.
But this worthless POS doesn't have any idea what a "true patriot" is.
He IS a socialist by anyone's definition, which isn't even funny.
(S)he wears a burqa to work, no doubt, to keep the people there from puking. Probably prefers a dress too, since (s)he is an obvious cross dresser (check out his color bar). Figures when Osama shows up it'll make it easier for him to bend over and pay his proper homage.
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed!
-4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4Wow, you have really careened over the edge and revealed your
... true colors.
One would wish you'd reserve that anger and energy for the gravest threat of our generation.
You know, the one you're battling from there in your cube. With you sexual fantasies, apparently, judging by your last two posts.
Kinky stuff, GoRight.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Oh, I not angry. More like amused at your pathetic self.
My job in all this is to make sure that a**wipe idiots like yourself don't screw things up from within. It is obvious enough that you are trying which is exactly why we need True Patriots to keep you in your place.
You're the beyatch here, "pal".
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed!
-4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4Lurker here with a middle eastern perspective--
If there's one thing that I enjoy more than watching your supposedly invincible American military spin its wheels in Iraq, it's to watch you Americans call each other cowards and traitors. Meanwhile, I still draw breath here in... well, I'm not going to tell you that!
I must say that I have enjoyed the recent discussions on Swords Crossed, where you American pigs turn against each other-- Praise be to Allah for that!
One small objection-- there's no option for "radical jihadist".
Back to lurking!
Sorry, Osama.
I didn't mean to Bi*** Slap your cross dressing sex toy. You analysis is incorrect, though, we can't have turned against each other because we were never on the same side. There is the side of the True Patriots, and there is the side of your cross dressing beyatch.
As you know, I am not the latter.
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed!
-4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4You're a dead man, bin Laden!
Or maybe not...
Mitt Romney:
Fred Thompson:
Top Bush aide calls Bin Laden 'impotent'
Not important, says the administration.
Looks like you have nothing to worry about from many of the Republicans, Osama. Besides, were busy brining democracy to Iraq! Carry on!
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Oh, and P.S.
Call me some time, big boy!
Signed,
CLC
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed!
-4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4Now we know why that "comedy news" program on FOX
... failed so badly.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Hear that, kindness?
You and bin Laden have the same wishes, according to MS!
Cute, huh?
Up next, "You're no patriot!"
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
I've had my run rounds with him.
I don't mind arms length topics, but I try to stay away from intimate discussions because they just end up frustrating me.
If he wants to make the case that any american liberals have the same objectives as a fundamentalist islamist, more power to him. I think it'd be a stretch to sell to anyone who wasn't a Phaux News hound though.
I took his post to be more historical though.
A local Bill O'Reilly.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
??!?
Now.....that, imho, is somewhat farfetched there.
Kidding.
But our friend pulled a classic "O'Reilly." To wit:
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Should be obvious
and probably was to you and anyone else that isn't just interested in harassment that it referenced one particular point only.
We don't have to like each other here.
We just have to tolerate others here.
Wonkette on ex-Sen Craig's legal strategy
"If I didn't get dick, you must acquit."
Awesome.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Was he wearing a special "glove?"
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
24 days until sabbatical.
Not that I'm counting or anything.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Plans? n/t
We are all mediators, translators. - Derrida
Sit around the house
work on finishing some writing projects. The last four weeks my kids will be here, so I'll get to spend more time with them this visit than I usually do.
I hate vacations where you rush around all over the place and end up exhausted by the time you are supposed to go back to work.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
"The Petraeus Report"
Lots of references here to various supposed incarnations of this report. Since what is actually meant by report
is not at all as clear as one might think (or prefer), I humbly suggest people be as specific as possible as to what they mean when they discuss the "report."
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
Thanks Brendan
I was not aware of this more recent development.
We are all mediators, translators. - Derrida
Not that recent
The news that there would be no written report came out last week.
I'm getting this twilight zone feeling like I'm the only one whose read the 11 bazillion articles about Petreaus testimony that have come out in the last two months.
And you people call yourselves political junkies! :P
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
No dude
that's why I asked you for a link when you said "the report" had been leaked to the press and made an analogy to a science paper.
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
I'm not following you, Brendan
Petraeus' report, i.e. the testimony he gave today to congress, was leaked ahead of time. That there is no plan to create a dead tree formal version of same is immaterial. The data of the report is what matters, not the format.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
The conclusions were announced
I guess I missed the actual statement and figures being released "weeks" ago.
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
Want an example?
That 75% drop in violence That CLC mentions directly from the petraeus testimony below? Well back on Sept 1st there was a KOS diary about it.
That diary was based on a news article from Aug 30.
I don;t know why you don't want to believe me but the evidence is right there on google.
EDIT- whoops actually even the article CLC cites is announcing ahead of time the 75% figure. Which makes it even more invconcievable to me why you are treating this with such resistance.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Not only that, but look at how they collected the data.
If a Shia shot another Shia, that isn't considered terrorist violence. If a Sunni shot another Sunni, that isn't considered terrorist violence.
The most awful one was if they found a body and it had been shot in the front of the head, that wasn't terrorist violence. If the body showed signs it was shot in the back of the head, then it was terrorist violence.
Talk about making your numbers show what you want to convey..
Late update - TPM is saying that General Patreus is denying this factoid.
I don;t disagree
but the issue that I was debating first with MS and then Brendan was whether this was available ahead of time. Whether it is accurate is a separate question.
In other words-
I didn't need to watch Petraeus report beause I'd already gotten what it was going to say ahead of time
I didn't give him any credence because, after analyzing what he was going to present, I determined his report was basically all BS.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
No, I don't want an example
I want a link to his testimony that was leaked "weeks" ago =)
That Petraeus previously discussed aspects of how he views the situation in Iraq with the press (note that this wasn't a leak of anything) is hardly surprising. I certainly grant there is some overlap between that and his remarks today, but that's not quite the original argument.
I'm all in favor of demanding transparency in how the statistics are determined.
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
Alright
I give up. For some reason no matter how many links to the stuff I give you you just don't accept it. I have no idea why but I'm past caring at this point.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
To tell you the truth
I'm a little behind in my news reading. Too much personla and professional stuff going on.
From Brendan's link, there are going to be no 'objective statistics' to base our conclusions on, but just the testimony.
Why change the terms of the assessment, and (with all due respect) are we supposed to just take Petraeus at his word with no validation or verification of what he is basing this assessment on?
(edit): Well, I see there are some pdfs and such, but I wish the terms were defined and the methodology explained a bit more clearly.
We are all mediators, translators. - Derrida
Anytime =)
Also, CNN has the opening statements
and charts (PDFs about halfway down page) for those of us who haven't been watching. I call BS on slide 9 and slide 13 is not encouraging.
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
Petraeus' PowerPoint riddled with fabricated numbers
See? Those dead people don't count! Oh, but those aren't the only dead people who don't count...
So facts are facts. Unless they're not.
Make the numbers fir the policy. Shades of Vietnam and the reporting of Vietcong killed. But there is no reason to question the numbers Petraeus presented, right?
Petraeus made his presentation and those in attendance certainly were correct to ask him how he got his numbers, given the myriad of other sources that called his numbers into question.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Petraeus himself countered all the points...
...brought up in this piece of wishful thinking By Karen DeYoung. probably a good idea to wait until the general actually reports before reporting on said report...huh?
Of course I don't expect an anti-military type such as yourself to believe the General unless he came back and said we need to get the hell out ASAP!
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
You and your silly generalizations...
Petraeus, in fact, did not refute all the points. Instead, he offered his own justifications for the odd way in which the Pentagon has been counting statistics since the surge began.
And the points were not the product of the reporter, as you speciously claim, but, rather the results of a study commissioned by John Warner (don't tell me, Steve... ANOTHER anti-military type!) and by the GAO which is non-partisan.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
You obviously...
...didn't watch the entire hearing nor the Hume interview but as always your welcome to your opinions, interpretations, and to whom you take at their word.
Since you obviously view Gen. Petraeus as some sort of mouthpiece for the Bush administration and don't believe him to be telling the truth.
I can count on you publicly admonishing all Senators of the Democrat persuasion for their unanimous confirmation, support, and vote of confidence in the General?
I'll be looking forward to that post and will even put it on the front page of TMR.
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
Did I say he was a "mouthpiece for the Bush administration?"
Where do you come up with this stuff?
I am pointing out that are reports from Iraq from multiple sources that don't match what he had to say. In particular, the way the Pentagon decided to count dead civilians during the surge period was odd. For example, shot in the back of the head - sectarian killing; shot in the forehead - murder (and, thus, not added to the total).
Stuff like that.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
No...
...you didn't but what else should be drawn from the number of posts questioning his credibility?
Is it the General you distrust or the fact that he's subordinate to this administration?
And this:
the General today stated was not true.
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
You tell me... Is he subordinate to the President?
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Every man and women in uniform is n/t
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
Okay, you're the one who claimed that I think...
... he's a "mouthpiece for the Bush administration."
And I don't. But he is subordinate to the Commander-in-Chief.
We agree!
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Subordinate...
...doesn't mean "speak for" so again if it’s the General you distrust:
I can count on you publicly admonishing all Senators of the Democrat persuasion for their unanimous confirmation, support, and vote of confidence in the General?
Right?
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
Do I distrust the General?
Only in the fact that, judging him by his own words and the performance indicators he laid out for a successful counterinsurgency operation
he has, so far, failed in his mission.
As for anyone who voted to confirm him, who knew he would be such a bust, given his credentials?
Look at Al Gonzales. He was confirmed with vote of many Dems and he resigned in disgrace. Companies pick CEOs who turn out to be duds. Sometimes, you just can't tell.
I have hired people I thought were going to be tremendous employees only to find that they weren't. That's the nature of dealing with human beings.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
"who knew he would be such a bust"
Again only your opinion... I believe the American people will judge his performance better than you have.
Sounds like once again those Senators were lied to... I suppose that’s lefts new defense for everything.
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
Um, have you read his counterinsurgency field manual?
According to the General, successful counterinsurgency efforts are "80% political." His words, not mine.
The political situation in Iraq is, in fact, worse than before the surge started. Several groups have withdrawn from the government, the police force is nothing more than sectarian militia groups and the recommendation is to disband it and start over, and the military has not made the progress the general claimed it had three years go (back when he was in charge of training the Iraqis) in an op-ed he penned for The Washington Post.
I know, I know... Anbar province. Anbar was in shape before the surge was started. The stated purpose of the surge was to ameliorate violence in and around Baghdad so that the government could "get its legs under it."
And that has been a monumental failure.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
It is intellectually dishonest...
...to call a mission a failure when it's less than half complete furthermore the Generals report is just that he's not here trumpeting success and looking for accolades.
Since his report contained an accurate telling of the lack of political progress as well as an accurate account of successful military progress your contention is disingenuous.
Btw - the GAO is constantly being accused of bias from all sides of many issues - parties in and out of power as well as special interest groups because the GAO's job is to make sure that government money isn't being wasted, no matter which party is in control of the Executive or Legislative branch of the government.
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
First, thank you for confirming that the GAO is non-partisan.
That should take away the claim by many on the right that the agency's report was biased.
Also, he was the one who said he would have a good indication of the mission's success or failure "by the end of the summer."
Given that he wrote in the field manual that counterinsurgency efforts should be 80% political -- and today he admitted that there has been a noted lack of political progress -- the mission is a failure if one considers that a grade of 20% or even 30% success in any context denotes failure.
Unless you went to a school or have a job where doing something at a 20% success rate is considered "progress."
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
non-partisan dosen't = no-biased
GAO reports have notoriously had credibility problems!
There you go:
And his indication was one of continuing toward success.
You keep harping on the lack of political progress like it was all supposed to happen overnight or that somehow the political success should come first in order to further your failure meme... I have a hard time believing you can't see the the natural progression of security and military success first leading to political success! unless you're deliberately trying not to???
None of this really matters anyway most Democrats in Congress have made up their minds weeks ago that a surge success is not an option. It will never be good enough for the left, there will always be a nit to pick!
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
You're wrong here, Steve, in so many ways.
First, please offer proof on the history of GAO reports.
Second, it's not just Democrats who want out of Iraq (and not all of the Democrats in Congress want out), it's the American people. Somewhere between 60 and 70 percent (depending on the poll) want out. That means that guys like you who refuse to face reality and accept the continual "another six months" are the ones who are out of touch.
People have been suckered long enough on this fiasco and they are wising up. Losing 80-120 troops a month and watching half a trillion dollars flow down the toilet without measurable results has a way of doing that to people.
"Another six months..."
Americans won't have it, Steve. George Bush may, indeed do it, but Americans won't have it. They will exact their revenge one way or another.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Bah-- GAO is about the best thing we have in gov't
David Walker is just about the most credible person in the entire executive branch, and the GAO has been notorious for shining light on the truth while the White House has been notorious for spin and whitewashing.
skymutt: accept no substitutes!
Have you ever had to hire people?
It's not that people lie, necessarily. It's just that they sometimes turn out to be less competent than you expected.
It happens.
That said, in this case, I think the surge was doomed to failure. Petraeus went against his own recommendations in the field manual and undermanned the operation from the get go.
Of course, that's because this was an operation he did not design. It was designed by know-nothing neocon, Fred Kagan, from the American Enterprise Institute and handed to Petraeus.
As I noted yesterday, he reminds me of Colin Powell going to the UN with a bunch of made up intelligence ("mobile weapons labs..."). Good guys used for the wrong purposes.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Yes I have...
...but this post assumes I'm operating under the same contention of failure you seem to have arrived at.
I'm not!
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
How can we possibly fail in Iraq?
There is no possibility of failure because there is no definition of success.
What 'success' is has changed every year.
So here's are my questions
1) What defines success (something approaching S.M.A.R.T. goals please)
2) Do you think success or failure in Iraq will be more determined by factors under our control or by factors under the control of others (the Iraq 'leadership' for example)
3) If the latter, have they shown a willingness to do what is necessary to move towards what you defined as success?
Can you imagine trying to be a placekicker...
... among this crowd of goal post movers?
What a thankless task!
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Are you kidding? I'd love to be their placekicker
As long as you are on their team, no matter where you kick it, SUCCESS!!!
(That damn ref who say otherwise CLEARLY has a bias)
A better question might be...
...How can we possibly succeed in Iraq given liberal democrats pushing a failure agenda though their leadership and their propaganda arm in the MSM?
As for your question - I'm not interested in going into hypothetical goals - either specific, measurable, attainable, realistic or timely with you. First of all liberals are rarely realistic about anything (most opt for the way they envision reality to be) and timely in this instance (in war) is unrealistic. So I will refrain.
I view success in Iraq the same way I view the broader GWOT and I'll quote a friend as he put into words the way I feel about what victory looks like.
Leverkuhn wrote:
Btw - it's disingenuous to accuse the General of moving the goal posts before the mission is complete and has accurately presented his assessment of both goals reached and goals not yet reached.
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
"Failure agenda"
That's rich, Steve. Name a bigger "failure agenda" than damn near everything the Bush administration has done in Iraq. That is the biggest, costliest "failure agenda" in American history, by a mile.
Now, you can try and blame everyone but the people responsible for this "failure agenda," but it won't fly anymore. Because, again, Steve, it's not "liberal Democrats" who want us out of Iraq, it's the vast majority of the American people who have been told by this administration, over and over, that whatever new "strategy" is being rolled out "needs another six months."
You can only play people for suckers for so long. The American people have had it with this mess, Steve, and the only ones still clinging to the charade of "progress" are the dead-enders like you.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
The Democrat Congress Ending the War in Iraq!
The Democrat Agenda to end the war in Iraq seems to be pretty much a failure on ALL counts. Of course, that is normal operating procedure for all of their agendas.
The Democrats are the party of failure, of quitting, of giving up and letting the enemy take the day. That has always been their course since WWII.
Hell even you are ashamed to be associated with them, that's why you want to cloak yourself in Red here at SC.
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed!
-4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4Okay, GoRight, if you say so.
Damn Democrats.
Oh, wait, the American people must be Democrats, eh?
I guess the American people are increasingly Democratic. No wonder Republicans in Congress are starting to jump ship on Bush-Cheney's epic misadventure.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
No, not increasingly Democratic.
Just increasingly disillusioned. That can and will correct itself.
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed!
-4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4Yes, GR, the vast majority of Americans are disillusioned...
... with Bush's fiasco.
But I already know your reason for believing so, because good ol' Steve pulled it out of his rear end upthread:
The damn liberal Democrats and their cohorts in crime, the liberal media, are conspiring to dupe a population that is unable to think for itself.
Whenever things aren't going your way politically in this country, that's the excuse you guys extract from the recesses of your backside.
Here's the deal, GoRight: Bush and company have called for "six more months" for four years. People have caught onto the game. The ones still hanging on are the dead-enders like you and Steve.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
You know, CLC, you seem different somehow.
Angry. Confused. Disoriented.
You remind me of the bum on the street who just drank a bottle of mouthwash. Your lips move and words come out but in the end it is all gibberish.
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed!
-4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4That's all you've got, Go Right?
This is your response to this post of mine (repeated in its entirety for your benefit):
And the best comeback you have is this:
That's it?
I think you're having trouble defending the indefensible, GoRight. But that's okay. If it's the best you can do, it's the best you can do.
No one ever said you were a genius.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
That's all it deserved. Nothing has changed.
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed!
-4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4So Steve, you got hypothetical and unattainable goals
Boy, I wish I could get funding with that type of plan.
"I'm sorry Mr President, I can't give you any measurable goals, but when I get done, boy you're gonna like what you see! Now can I have 10 million dollars of R&D money?"
Of course, since you've started with the belief that America is completely incapable of victory in Iraq (blaming everyone but the people executing it for the past 4 years) I'm sure you'll be all for a major change of course. Since you can't possibly fix the MSM or those darn liberal Democrats (who can stop your success even as a tiny minority) shouldn't we stop going after what you say is an unattainable dream?
Word and sentance manipulation is all you got?
No rebuttal just more blah blah blah
Boy you got me there...
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
Rebuttal to what?
As far as I can tell, you seem to agree (for very different reasons that I do) that the people who have the ability to reach your (ridiculous IMO) vision have neither the intention nor desire to do so. In other words, WE WILL NOT SUCCEED.
Yet you still want to spend hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of American lives on faling to reach those 'goals'
If you actually think that having a timely GOAL in war is unrealistic then frankly no rebuttal of such insanity is necessary.
Actually, this is rather humorous; I asked you a question, you went on to refuse to answer it and then get all snippy when I fail to rebut your lack of an answer.
Fred Thompson echoes Howard Dean
This is hilarious, and ought make ol' Freddie real popular with the foaming-at-the-mouth crowd who watch Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity:
Some may recall that when Howard Dean said this same thing back in 2004, he was pilloried by Republicans and several of his Democratic primary opponents.
I assume that Republicans will slam Thompson for being a terrorist-sympathizing traitor.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
What's really funny
is seeing Fox News doing their best to tear down Thompson. I wouldn't be surprised if they did exactly what you're snarking about here, considering how much antipathy they have for him.
Newsweek's cover story on Thompson ("Lazy Like a Fox") had me laughing out loud at the bookstore. I'd be surprised if he lasts through much of the primary season.
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
You have to wonder...
Who are the people that are giving him money?
Are they banking on a long shot and playing it safe?
Really? Who?
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed!
-4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4You're right. They were probably staying out of Dem primary
... politics. My mistake. I thought I recalled Cheney commenting.
Do you think Osama deserves due process?
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Of course ... in a military tribunal.
Assuming that he is captured alive! ;-)
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed!
-4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4What's up with the blue man?
I thought that switching color bars meant was evidence of some moral or intellectual confusion ;-)
skymutt: accept no substitutes!
We're balancing each other out.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
I was forced out by CLC.
He is correct that I switched because of his disingenuous tresspassing.
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed!
-4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4There, I switched back.
Thanks, skymutt, you made me realize that CLC is a simpleton and a baffoon with no personal moral compass by which to determine his own affiliations. So let him flounder aimlessly amongst the ideological spectrum. That is befitting his inane and incoherent ramblings which appear reminiscent of a villiage idiot.
I, on the other hand, am clear in my ideological beliefs and so should not allow an ideological cross-dresser to affect my own self-expression to the world.
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed!
-4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4I like it when you misspell "buffoon."
It makes me laugh.
Thanks.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Meh.
You're not even worth the time to hit the spell check button.
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed!
-4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4Even the cartoons knew, man!
It's spooky...
:)
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Addicted to lost causes
Apparently the war on brown people, the war on crime, the war on drugs, and the war on science just weren't enough lost causes.
Time for another round of the war on porn!
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Ugh.
How many wars on liberty do we need?
We need to get these people some bathroom stalls.
"Everyone believes in the atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own side, without ever bothering to examine the evidence." - George Orwell
You can always have one more...
...apparently.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
At least it's comforting to see
that most of the commenters there seem equally unimpressed.
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
LOL
oh god...
Wonkette has an item refering to today as "Expecto Petraeus". Damn, I should have thought of that.
The mental images are priceless.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Now correct me if I'm wrong...
...but during strong economies aren't mortgage brokers generally making money through brokering mortgages, instead of, say, turning their home into a brothel?
I'm just askin'.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Mexican Natural gas and oil pipes bombed
story
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Leftist group?
Naw. it was Bush, of course.
it sure will be n/t
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
Because i love you guys so much
From the best source for this kind of information:
Did you get it from them, or did they get it from you, or did you both get it from some third source? Or is it just a case of great minds thinking alike?
Hey CLC, speaking of failed agendas ...
how do you feel about Karl Rove walking around free and leaving the White House of his own free will and on his own terms?
Wasn't there some sort of an agenda to try and discredit him and get him charged with outing Plame (not that she could be outed, given that she wasn't covert or anything under the law)? How'd that all work out for ya?
Seems like another example of a failed Democrat agenda.
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed!
-4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4Karl Rove?
Who's he?
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Ah, OK. Thought you were following that failed Democrat effort.
My bad.
Still, it IS yet another prominent example of Democrat failure. Add it to the list anyway. :)
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed!
-4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4No, I don't care about Karl Rove.
Still... let's see...
I'm with ya' on this one, GoRight.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Iraq is only a failure to people with small minds
and no vision for the future. Seems to describe you pretty well.
Even so, you forgot the first one I pointed out:
An arguably worse fiasco if you actually believe that the Iraq War is a "fisaco not worth the price".
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed!
-4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4I love it. You're calling 60% of Americans
... "people with small minds."
Love it.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Given that ALMOST half of Americans are Democrat ...
that would be 100% Democrats and 20% Republicans with small minds.
Sure, our lower quintile on intelligence might actually fall for the Democrat talking points, we're bound to have some dunder heads in the party. They're typically called "moderates or mavericks". :)
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed!
-4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4