Which is yet another reason why the two-party system is so irrevocably flawed.
I seriously wonder if there are any real alternatives ?
The Italian government is so chocker with minority / fragment/ one issue parties that governments tend to come and go like the seasons.
Even the Israeli Kenneset finds rivals trying to form, dissolve or re-constitute electoral mandates that barely last longer than the page they were printed on.
I think it was Churchill that said something to the effect that Liberal democracy was the worst form of government, but in comparison to all other abject forms of tyranny, dictatorship etc, it was the only viable alternative.
It seems very clear that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld lied. They made very specific statements. John Dean (Reagan administration) made a list of them on his site. Things like
We know where the weapons are.
They are loading chemical shells on rockets for immediate use.
Iraq purchased uranium from Niger.
These were not judgement calls as in "we think that maybe Iraq has xyz".
These were specific, verifiable claims.
The other day Rumsfeld made the most amazing admission in testimony before congress. He said that they did not go to war with Iraq because of fresh evidence of WMDs. Talk about revising history. Does he think that no one has a VCR? My favorite quote from his testimony:
"the fact that the facts change from time to time with respect to specifics does not surprise me or shock me at all"
Since when do facts change? Judgements may change. Interpretations may change. But facts? Says a lot about his thought processes.
In a better world Bush/Cheney would be impeached. I just don't see it happening with the group in DC now.
I seriously wonder if there are any real alternatives ?
The Italian government is so chocker with minority / fragment/ one issue parties that governments tend to come and go like the seasons.
Probably the biggest problem in the Italian government isn't the number of parties, but the fact that the ballots are all secret. So, when a member of Parliment (no, not George Clinton) gets up on TV and says he's voting for X, when he goes to vote he can vote for X, Y, or Z and no one will know the difference.
There's absolutely no accountability and it destroys the system.
The other thing to keep in mind is simply that nothing *can* happen while the Republicans control all of the branches of government. The only scenario in which anything will "happen" beyond fact-finding is if Bush wins the election but the Republicans lose the Congress. If that happens, there'll be all kinds of rumblings for an impeachment.
It gives the left something to talk about. Thats about all. Despite what the left would like to think, it will have essentially no effect on the election. Don't you guys get it? Victory is all that matters. The reason does not matter as long as we have victory.
-The intel was wrong (and thus the administration lied about their proofs. That is my belief). This gives two situation,
(working my way through the thread)
If the 'intel was wrong' then that would mean that there is a good chance that he was not 'Lying' as he would have believed the intel
Unless his administration, and people involved with it (Libby via the Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon) were deliberately piping false information as I believe -(look up Col Kwiatkowski for instance) In that case you could clearly say that he was lying.
However that hasn't gotten a decent hearing yet . . . seems that the PR campaign against Kwiatkowski and the FBI translator and others shut them down fast.
Also, I would object to the idea that it doesn't matter, as Groverat said, unless Dems make it matter:
It matters for two reasons: we turned allot of good young men into killers who killed allot of innocent people
and two, what BRussel said, but with more emphasis on the defamation of US motives in the eyes of the world . . . I see this working very negatively against the US economic trade abroad as our goods will be increasingly chosen against . . . besides all of the political and security issues . .
I think as days go by and no WMD get found the chances increase that they both lied. Chirac's position however; often portrayed as somehow pious [along with Russia and Germany] lacks any credibility for me simply due to the billions those respective countries would lose in the event of war. And it doesn't stop there. They all benefited from the oil for food program too. So it was a double whammy for all those guys desperately trying to present a 'moral' position while on the one hand failing to offer an alternative and [more seriously] failing to admit to their own squalid interests.
Who was the chief in charge of the Oil For Food program? the person who had the oversite? I believe his name was Negroponte
(EDIT: not 'in charge' but in the position of screening the funding/sales etc)
I was not giving my opinion. I was answering Anders' question. The answer is it will not matter. If he lied, he will pay no price. His re election depends on if the populous perceives victory. Everything else is just bubble gum for utopians to chew on.
If Bush lied about WMD, or anything else even, very little has been done to either investigate it, or report it in the mass media.
Here is a classic case of the White House caught in a blatant lie. This one never even registered with the American people. Althought he original story (lie) was printed thoughout the media in blazing headlines, we never got to hear about the retraction two weeks later, which went virtually unreported. Now if a lie of that proportion had been perpetrated by the Clinton White House....there would have been headlines, grand juries, calls for impeachment, $millions appropriated to investigate...all quicker than you could utter the words "Kenneth Starr".
Here's the article, written on Sept 28, 2001 by Jerry White, for the World Socialist website:
Quote:
The White House has been caught in a lie about the alleged terrorist threat against Air Force One which it had cited as the reason for President Bush?s absence from Washington for most of September 11. According to reports by CBS News and the Washington Post, White House officials have stated that the Secret Service never received a phone call warning of a direct threat to the president?s airplane. The government?s reversal has gone largely unreported in the media.
In the immediate aftermath of the terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Bush?s movements became a matter of controversy within political and media circles. As the destruction in New York and Washington unfolded and unconfirmed reports emerged of a car bomb at the State Department and the danger of further hijackings, Bush, who began the day in Florida, was whisked from one military installation to another by the Secret Service.
Looking pale and shaken, he taped a brief initial message from an underground bunker at an air force base in Louisiana. Several hours later?when all non-US military aircraft in American air space had been grounded?Bush was flown to another fortified location at the Strategic Air Command headquarters in Nebraska. The president did not return to Washington until 7 p.m., nearly 10 hours after the initial attack.
Bush?s failure to quickly return to Washington sparked pointed criticism, including from within the Republican Party. Under conditions of a massive attack on US civilians, involving the destruction of a symbol of American financial power and the partial destruction of the nerve center of the American military, any appearance of indecisiveness or panic on the part of the US president was of great concern to the American political and financial elite.
New York Times columnist William Safire, a one-time Nixon aide and fixture within the Republican Party, suggested that Bush had panicked and all but abandoned his post in the first hours of the crisis. Writing in a September 12 op-ed piece, Safire said, ?Even in the first horrified moments, this was never seen as a nuclear attack by a foreign power. Bush should have insisted on coming right back to the Washington area, broadcasting?live and calm?from a secure facility not far from the White House.?
Stung by such criticisms, Bush?s chief political strategist Karl Rove and other top administration officials worked feverishly to reassure the political, corporate and military establishment, and bolster Bush?s authority among the population at large. By the afternoon of September 12, the Associated Press and Reuters were carrying stories, widely circulated throughout the media, that were intended to diffuse criticism of Bush?s actions the previous day. They quoted a White House spokesperson saying, ?There was real and credible information that the White House and Air Force One were targets of terrorist attacks and that the plane that hit the Pentagon was headed for the White House.? White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer repeated this claim at an afternoon news briefing that same day, saying the Secret Service had ?specific and credible information? that the White House and Air Force One were potential targets.
In a further column in the New York Times on September 13, entitled ?Inside the Bunker,? Safire described a conversation with an unnamed ?high White House official,? who told him, ?A threatening message received by the Secret Service was relayed to the agents with the president that ?Air Force One is next.?? Safire continued: ?According to the high official, American code words were used showing a knowledge of procedures that made the threat credible.?
Safire reported that this information was confirmed by Rove, who told him Bush had wanted to return to Washington but the Secret Service ?informed him that the threat contained language that was evidence that the terrorists had knowledge of his procedures and whereabouts.?
Two weeks after these astonishing claims, the administration has all but admitted it concocted the entire story. CBS Evening News reported September 25 that the call ?simply never happened.?
The fact that top officials, at a time of extraordinary crisis and public anxiety, lied to protect the president?s image has immense implications. If, within 24 hours of the terror attacks, the White House was giving out disinformation to deceive the American public and world opinion, then none of the claims made by the government from September 11 to the present can be taken for good coin.
If Bush lied about his activities on the day of the attacks, why should anyone assume he has not lied about the government?s investigation, the identity of the perpetrators, the motives and aims of US war preparations, and the intent and scope of expanded police powers demanded by his administration to wiretap, search and seize, and detain suspects?
This entire episode provides ample grounds for the American people to treat all claims by the government with the utmost suspicion and not accept any of its assertions without independent and verifiable information.
The duplicity of the government is all the more significant since the Bush administration has taken the position that people not only in the US, but throughout the world, must accept on faith its assertions that Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network are responsible for the attacks, and that the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban government in Afghanistan bears direct responsibility because it harbors bin Laden.
It is quite possible that bin Laden played a role in the September 11 atrocities. To date, however, Bush has offered no evidence, and, apparently, has no intention of doing so. Instead the administration insists that the American people place blind trust in the White House and give it a blank check for waging war and trampling on civil liberties.
The phony Air Force One story not only exposes the duplicitous methods of the Bush administration, it also underscores the shamelessness and complicity of the media. When the White House came out with the story of a terrorist phone threat against the president?s plane, the media uncritically repeated it, with banner headlines and chilling segments on the evening news. As it has throughout the present crisis, the media functioned unabashedly as a propaganda arm of the government.
But when the White House, two weeks later, retracted the story, most networks failed to even report the fact, as did leading newspapers such as the New York Times. The Washington Post, for its part, buried the government?s about-face on its inside pages. No media outlet made an issue of this incriminating admission, or discussed its broader implications.
Well before the official retraction, it was widely accepted in the Washington press corps that the administration had made up the Air Force One story. In her column in the September 23 New York Times, Maureen Dowd noted that Karl Rove had ?called around town, trying to sell reporters the story? now widely discredited ?that Mr. Bush didn?t immediately return to Washington on Sept. 11 because the plane that was headed for the Pentagon may have really been targeting the White House, and that Air Force One was in jeopardy, too? (emphasis added).
Dowd and her colleagues believed the government was lying, but the public had no way of knowing the story was not credible since the news media refused to openly challenge it.
There may be another reason for the silence of the press. The story handed out on September 12 by Rove, Fleischer and other White House officials raised issues even more explosive and potentially damning than Bush?s feckless behavior on September 11.
Safire pointed to one such question in his September 13 NewYork Times column. Referring to the White House claim that the terrorists had knowledge of secret information about Air Force One, Safire asked: ?How did they get the code-word information and transponder know-how that established their mala fides? That knowledge of code words and presidential whereabouts and possession of secret procedures indicates that the terrorists may have a mole in the White House?that, or informants in the Secret Service, FBI, FAA, or CIA.?
Safire?s entirely valid question as to how a supposed terrorist could have knowledge of such top-secret and sensitive information has never been taken up by the media at large, or addressed by the government.
If, indeed, such a phone call took place, it would raise an alternate theory of contact between the terrorists and one or another agency of the government at least as plausible as that suggested by Safire: Namely, that the call was not a threat, but rather a tip-off from an informant for the US who had knowledge of the plans and activities of the terrorists.
The World Socialist Web Site does not claim to have an answer to these questions. But it is legitimate and necessary to raise them, especially since they are posed by the government?s own statements.
One thing is clear: the government lied to the people of America and the world. Either it lied on September 12 when it issued the story of the threat to Air Force One, or it lied two weeks later when it retracted the story. The millions of people who are being told they must accept unbridled militarism and the gutting of their democratic rights in the name of a holy war against terrorism must draw the appropriate conclusions from this indisputable fact.
It gives the left something to talk about. Thats about all. Despite what the left would like to think, it will have essentially no effect on the election. Don't you guys get it? Victory is all that matters. The reason does not matter as long as we have victory.
This really sounds like a troll.
As far as " No effect on the election " Like I said before you'd better hold on lto something.
I was not giving my opinion. I was answering Anders' question. The answer is it will not matter. If he lied, he will pay no price. His re election depends on if the populous perceives victory. Everything else is just bubble gum for utopians to chew on.
What is the consequenses of their lying? Domestical and international? The real consequenses and what you wished they would have been?
The consequence of GWB's lies is that other nations are spending more money on their military budget. Russia is developing new missile technology. North Korea sure as hell is never going to give up its nuclear program and it will continue to use it as a deterent. Nations that don't agree with the views of the US will pursue some WMD or the other for keeping the nutcase out.
The other consequence would be the total loss of respect for the US in the international community. The foreign policy of the nation was not something to be proud of, but it has outdone itself with this war.
Other than that, all US citizens are now spied upon by their own government using terrorism as an excuse. KGB was bad back in the days. I don't see the current patriot act as being any different. People can be imprisoned if they tell someone that the government was looking for their information, etc. Shouldn't the focus be on port of entries and validation of immigrants instead?
He has also proved that any nutcase with corporate backing can become the president of the US.
I can go on and on about things like the island prison, etc. Where exactly do you want me to stop?
The consequence of GWB's lies is that other nations are spending more money on their military budget. Russia is developing new missile technology. North Korea sure as hell is never going to give up its nuclear program and it will continue to use it as a deterent. Nations that don't agree with the views of the US will pursue some WMD or the other for keeping the nutcase out.
The other consequence would be the total loss of respect for the US in the international community. The foreign policy of the nation was not something to be proud of, but it has outdone itself with this war.
Other than that, all US citizens are now spied upon by their own government using terrorism as an excuse. KGB was bad back in the days. I don't see the current patriot act as being any different. People can be imprisoned if they tell someone that the government was looking for their information, etc. Shouldn't the focus be on port of entries and validation of immigrants instead?
He has also proved that any nutcase with corporate backing can become the president of the US.
I can go on and on about things like the island prison, etc. Where exactly do you want me to stop?
This above all other reasons is why the man has to go.
Besides all the other screwups he's dangerous!
And Bush supporters talk about his detractors as " Unamerican ".
Trying to change things like this is about the biggest threat to american ideals I can think of.
Let's face it. This is a lose/lose situation. More Bush would be, well, more Bush. And Kerry coming in would bring nothing but indecision and international ass kissing and schmoozing.
Who to pick? A man with a vision that may be terminally flawed? Or a man with little vision and even less substance to back this vision up?
Let's face it. This is a lose/lose situation. More Bush would be, well, more Bush. And Kerry coming in would bring nothing but indecision and international ass kissing and schmoozing.
Who to pick? A man with a vision that may be terminally flawed? Or a man with little vision and even less substance to back this vision up?
Personally I think it's Bush that has vision problems.
More Bush in this case without the need for reelection would be alot more Bush.
Comments
Originally posted by BR
Which is yet another reason why the two-party system is so irrevocably flawed.
I seriously wonder if there are any real alternatives ?
The Italian government is so chocker with minority / fragment/ one issue parties that governments tend to come and go like the seasons.
Even the Israeli Kenneset finds rivals trying to form, dissolve or re-constitute electoral mandates that barely last longer than the page they were printed on.
I think it was Churchill that said something to the effect that Liberal democracy was the worst form of government, but in comparison to all other abject forms of tyranny, dictatorship etc, it was the only viable alternative.
We know where the weapons are.
They are loading chemical shells on rockets for immediate use.
Iraq purchased uranium from Niger.
These were not judgement calls as in "we think that maybe Iraq has xyz".
These were specific, verifiable claims.
The other day Rumsfeld made the most amazing admission in testimony before congress. He said that they did not go to war with Iraq because of fresh evidence of WMDs. Talk about revising history. Does he think that no one has a VCR? My favorite quote from his testimony:
"the fact that the facts change from time to time with respect to specifics does not surprise me or shock me at all"
Since when do facts change? Judgements may change. Interpretations may change. But facts? Says a lot about his thought processes.
In a better world Bush/Cheney would be impeached. I just don't see it happening with the group in DC now.
Originally posted by aquafire
I seriously wonder if there are any real alternatives ?
The Italian government is so chocker with minority / fragment/ one issue parties that governments tend to come and go like the seasons.
Probably the biggest problem in the Italian government isn't the number of parties, but the fact that the ballots are all secret. So, when a member of Parliment (no, not George Clinton) gets up on TV and says he's voting for X, when he goes to vote he can vote for X, Y, or Z and no one will know the difference.
There's absolutely no accountability and it destroys the system.
Originally posted by Anders
Bump
You think he was on cocaine again when he lied?
And no I don't think that 911 made it ok for a president to lie as a premise to start a war.
It's time to get back on track and stop this " 911 made it ok " nonsense.
I think the american people will expect the same kind of integrity and truthfulness they've always expected from their president.
Also the fact that many politicians lie doesn't make it ok either.
It's out there in the open now before the people and it's not going anywhere.
I saw it this past weekend and it's very interesting.
Originally posted by Anders
-The intel was wrong (and thus the administration lied about their proofs. That is my belief). This gives two situation,
(working my way through the thread)
If the 'intel was wrong' then that would mean that there is a good chance that he was not 'Lying' as he would have believed the intel
Unless his administration, and people involved with it (Libby via the Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon) were deliberately piping false information as I believe -(look up Col Kwiatkowski for instance) In that case you could clearly say that he was lying.
However that hasn't gotten a decent hearing yet . . . seems that the PR campaign against Kwiatkowski and the FBI translator and others shut them down fast.
Also, I would object to the idea that it doesn't matter, as Groverat said, unless Dems make it matter:
It matters for two reasons: we turned allot of good young men into killers who killed allot of innocent people
and two, what BRussel said, but with more emphasis on the defamation of US motives in the eyes of the world . . . I see this working very negatively against the US economic trade abroad as our goods will be increasingly chosen against . . . besides all of the political and security issues . .
Originally posted by banana
I think as days go by and no WMD get found the chances increase that they both lied. Chirac's position however; often portrayed as somehow pious [along with Russia and Germany] lacks any credibility for me simply due to the billions those respective countries would lose in the event of war. And it doesn't stop there. They all benefited from the oil for food program too. So it was a double whammy for all those guys desperately trying to present a 'moral' position while on the one hand failing to offer an alternative and [more seriously] failing to admit to their own squalid interests.
Who was the chief in charge of the Oil For Food program? the person who had the oversite? I believe his name was Negroponte
(EDIT: not 'in charge' but in the position of screening the funding/sales etc)
Here is a classic case of the White House caught in a blatant lie. This one never even registered with the American people. Althought he original story (lie) was printed thoughout the media in blazing headlines, we never got to hear about the retraction two weeks later, which went virtually unreported. Now if a lie of that proportion had been perpetrated by the Clinton White House....there would have been headlines, grand juries, calls for impeachment, $millions appropriated to investigate...all quicker than you could utter the words "Kenneth Starr".
Here's the article, written on Sept 28, 2001 by Jerry White, for the World Socialist website:
The White House has been caught in a lie about the alleged terrorist threat against Air Force One which it had cited as the reason for President Bush?s absence from Washington for most of September 11. According to reports by CBS News and the Washington Post, White House officials have stated that the Secret Service never received a phone call warning of a direct threat to the president?s airplane. The government?s reversal has gone largely unreported in the media.
In the immediate aftermath of the terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Bush?s movements became a matter of controversy within political and media circles. As the destruction in New York and Washington unfolded and unconfirmed reports emerged of a car bomb at the State Department and the danger of further hijackings, Bush, who began the day in Florida, was whisked from one military installation to another by the Secret Service.
Looking pale and shaken, he taped a brief initial message from an underground bunker at an air force base in Louisiana. Several hours later?when all non-US military aircraft in American air space had been grounded?Bush was flown to another fortified location at the Strategic Air Command headquarters in Nebraska. The president did not return to Washington until 7 p.m., nearly 10 hours after the initial attack.
Bush?s failure to quickly return to Washington sparked pointed criticism, including from within the Republican Party. Under conditions of a massive attack on US civilians, involving the destruction of a symbol of American financial power and the partial destruction of the nerve center of the American military, any appearance of indecisiveness or panic on the part of the US president was of great concern to the American political and financial elite.
New York Times columnist William Safire, a one-time Nixon aide and fixture within the Republican Party, suggested that Bush had panicked and all but abandoned his post in the first hours of the crisis. Writing in a September 12 op-ed piece, Safire said, ?Even in the first horrified moments, this was never seen as a nuclear attack by a foreign power. Bush should have insisted on coming right back to the Washington area, broadcasting?live and calm?from a secure facility not far from the White House.?
Stung by such criticisms, Bush?s chief political strategist Karl Rove and other top administration officials worked feverishly to reassure the political, corporate and military establishment, and bolster Bush?s authority among the population at large. By the afternoon of September 12, the Associated Press and Reuters were carrying stories, widely circulated throughout the media, that were intended to diffuse criticism of Bush?s actions the previous day. They quoted a White House spokesperson saying, ?There was real and credible information that the White House and Air Force One were targets of terrorist attacks and that the plane that hit the Pentagon was headed for the White House.? White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer repeated this claim at an afternoon news briefing that same day, saying the Secret Service had ?specific and credible information? that the White House and Air Force One were potential targets.
In a further column in the New York Times on September 13, entitled ?Inside the Bunker,? Safire described a conversation with an unnamed ?high White House official,? who told him, ?A threatening message received by the Secret Service was relayed to the agents with the president that ?Air Force One is next.?? Safire continued: ?According to the high official, American code words were used showing a knowledge of procedures that made the threat credible.?
Safire reported that this information was confirmed by Rove, who told him Bush had wanted to return to Washington but the Secret Service ?informed him that the threat contained language that was evidence that the terrorists had knowledge of his procedures and whereabouts.?
Two weeks after these astonishing claims, the administration has all but admitted it concocted the entire story. CBS Evening News reported September 25 that the call ?simply never happened.?
The fact that top officials, at a time of extraordinary crisis and public anxiety, lied to protect the president?s image has immense implications. If, within 24 hours of the terror attacks, the White House was giving out disinformation to deceive the American public and world opinion, then none of the claims made by the government from September 11 to the present can be taken for good coin.
If Bush lied about his activities on the day of the attacks, why should anyone assume he has not lied about the government?s investigation, the identity of the perpetrators, the motives and aims of US war preparations, and the intent and scope of expanded police powers demanded by his administration to wiretap, search and seize, and detain suspects?
This entire episode provides ample grounds for the American people to treat all claims by the government with the utmost suspicion and not accept any of its assertions without independent and verifiable information.
The duplicity of the government is all the more significant since the Bush administration has taken the position that people not only in the US, but throughout the world, must accept on faith its assertions that Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network are responsible for the attacks, and that the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban government in Afghanistan bears direct responsibility because it harbors bin Laden.
It is quite possible that bin Laden played a role in the September 11 atrocities. To date, however, Bush has offered no evidence, and, apparently, has no intention of doing so. Instead the administration insists that the American people place blind trust in the White House and give it a blank check for waging war and trampling on civil liberties.
The phony Air Force One story not only exposes the duplicitous methods of the Bush administration, it also underscores the shamelessness and complicity of the media. When the White House came out with the story of a terrorist phone threat against the president?s plane, the media uncritically repeated it, with banner headlines and chilling segments on the evening news. As it has throughout the present crisis, the media functioned unabashedly as a propaganda arm of the government.
But when the White House, two weeks later, retracted the story, most networks failed to even report the fact, as did leading newspapers such as the New York Times. The Washington Post, for its part, buried the government?s about-face on its inside pages. No media outlet made an issue of this incriminating admission, or discussed its broader implications.
Well before the official retraction, it was widely accepted in the Washington press corps that the administration had made up the Air Force One story. In her column in the September 23 New York Times, Maureen Dowd noted that Karl Rove had ?called around town, trying to sell reporters the story? now widely discredited ?that Mr. Bush didn?t immediately return to Washington on Sept. 11 because the plane that was headed for the Pentagon may have really been targeting the White House, and that Air Force One was in jeopardy, too? (emphasis added).
Dowd and her colleagues believed the government was lying, but the public had no way of knowing the story was not credible since the news media refused to openly challenge it.
There may be another reason for the silence of the press. The story handed out on September 12 by Rove, Fleischer and other White House officials raised issues even more explosive and potentially damning than Bush?s feckless behavior on September 11.
Safire pointed to one such question in his September 13 NewYork Times column. Referring to the White House claim that the terrorists had knowledge of secret information about Air Force One, Safire asked: ?How did they get the code-word information and transponder know-how that established their mala fides? That knowledge of code words and presidential whereabouts and possession of secret procedures indicates that the terrorists may have a mole in the White House?that, or informants in the Secret Service, FBI, FAA, or CIA.?
Safire?s entirely valid question as to how a supposed terrorist could have knowledge of such top-secret and sensitive information has never been taken up by the media at large, or addressed by the government.
If, indeed, such a phone call took place, it would raise an alternate theory of contact between the terrorists and one or another agency of the government at least as plausible as that suggested by Safire: Namely, that the call was not a threat, but rather a tip-off from an informant for the US who had knowledge of the plans and activities of the terrorists.
The World Socialist Web Site does not claim to have an answer to these questions. But it is legitimate and necessary to raise them, especially since they are posed by the government?s own statements.
One thing is clear: the government lied to the people of America and the world. Either it lied on September 12 when it issued the story of the threat to Air Force One, or it lied two weeks later when it retracted the story. The millions of people who are being told they must accept unbridled militarism and the gutting of their democratic rights in the name of a holy war against terrorism must draw the appropriate conclusions from this indisputable fact.
Originally posted by Common Man
It gives the left something to talk about. Thats about all. Despite what the left would like to think, it will have essentially no effect on the election. Don't you guys get it? Victory is all that matters. The reason does not matter as long as we have victory.
This really sounds like a troll.
As far as " No effect on the election " Like I said before you'd better hold on lto something.
By the way it's something BIG to talk about.
Originally posted by Common Man
I was not giving my opinion. I was answering Anders' question. The answer is it will not matter. If he lied, he will pay no price. His re election depends on if the populous perceives victory. Everything else is just bubble gum for utopians to chew on.
------------------------------------------------------------
" If he lied, he will pay no price "
------------------------------------------------------------
Tell that one to Bill Clinton ( or maybe Al Gore ).
Originally posted by Anders
What is the consequenses of their lying? Domestical and international? The real consequenses and what you wished they would have been?
The consequence of GWB's lies is that other nations are spending more money on their military budget. Russia is developing new missile technology. North Korea sure as hell is never going to give up its nuclear program and it will continue to use it as a deterent. Nations that don't agree with the views of the US will pursue some WMD or the other for keeping the nutcase out.
The other consequence would be the total loss of respect for the US in the international community. The foreign policy of the nation was not something to be proud of, but it has outdone itself with this war.
Other than that, all US citizens are now spied upon by their own government using terrorism as an excuse. KGB was bad back in the days. I don't see the current patriot act as being any different. People can be imprisoned if they tell someone that the government was looking for their information, etc. Shouldn't the focus be on port of entries and validation of immigrants instead?
He has also proved that any nutcase with corporate backing can become the president of the US.
I can go on and on about things like the island prison, etc. Where exactly do you want me to stop?
Originally posted by talksense101
The consequence of GWB's lies is that other nations are spending more money on their military budget. Russia is developing new missile technology. North Korea sure as hell is never going to give up its nuclear program and it will continue to use it as a deterent. Nations that don't agree with the views of the US will pursue some WMD or the other for keeping the nutcase out.
The other consequence would be the total loss of respect for the US in the international community. The foreign policy of the nation was not something to be proud of, but it has outdone itself with this war.
Other than that, all US citizens are now spied upon by their own government using terrorism as an excuse. KGB was bad back in the days. I don't see the current patriot act as being any different. People can be imprisoned if they tell someone that the government was looking for their information, etc. Shouldn't the focus be on port of entries and validation of immigrants instead?
He has also proved that any nutcase with corporate backing can become the president of the US.
I can go on and on about things like the island prison, etc. Where exactly do you want me to stop?
This above all other reasons is why the man has to go.
Besides all the other screwups he's dangerous!
And Bush supporters talk about his detractors as " Unamerican ".
Trying to change things like this is about the biggest threat to american ideals I can think of.
OUT THE DOOR IN 2004!
Who to pick? A man with a vision that may be terminally flawed? Or a man with little vision and even less substance to back this vision up?
Originally posted by rageous
Let's face it. This is a lose/lose situation. More Bush would be, well, more Bush. And Kerry coming in would bring nothing but indecision and international ass kissing and schmoozing.
Who to pick? A man with a vision that may be terminally flawed? Or a man with little vision and even less substance to back this vision up?
Personally I think it's Bush that has vision problems.
More Bush in this case without the need for reelection would be alot more Bush.
No thank you.
The more I hear about Kerry the more I like him.