Peace Peace Peace!!!!!!

Okay, time out.


Really, this debate is now officially dwindling on Pathetic. FSU, to offer a third point of view, I don't go to protests anymore and have never been to (nor do I support) a violent one. I do not believe world peace is possible. I was opposed to the Iraq war because I did not (and still do not) believe that Bush is capable of forming an intelligent plan to bring democracy (in fact, NO ONE can bring democracy to a country that isn't ready for it). Innocent international aid workers are now being taken hostage and beheaded because we have unleashed a monster. When Saddam was in power, there was controlled killing of innocents. Now, we have uncontrolled killing of innocents. I don't see how that's any better.

If I were president on 9/11, I would have sent as many troops as possible to AFGHANISTAN, not Iraq. The war in Afghanistan was basically only an air war, only a few thousand troops were sent (especially in comparison to the 200,000+ soldiers sent to Iraq). I firmly believe we could have captured bin Laden (the real mastermind behind 9/11) if we had more troops on the ground. I would not have gone after Saddam Hussein.

For the record, in case you care, I am a full-time college student majoring in nursing. I am registered to vote. I am in the process of getting a part-time job. I have done volunteer work in Tanzania, and plan on going to South Africa this summer. I am opposed to most wars (not just the ones the US has been involved in) because all too often, it is the women and children who have to suffer because policy makers who have never been in combat (i.e., Bush) are ruling over their destinies.

 

cant we all just gettalong... or gettabong...

 

Strawberry Fields--Well, you have gained my respect. At least your argument was rational, although I disagree with your thesis, at least you make cogent points. I will say, however, that the reason the Bush Administration did not send 200,000 or more troops to Afgan is because we learned a lesson when the Soviet Union invaded that country in 1979. We disposed of the Taliban in short order; the USSR was in Afgan for over 10 years. We did not want to repeat that mistake. Secretary Rumsfeld and General Tommy Franks (former commander of CENTCOM) believed that special operations forces were more productive rather than large Army divisons. And history has proved them correct. We did more in 1 month than the Soviet Union did in 10 years.

As for you going to school to become a nurse, I can say you have won my respect. I do no agree with your politics, but you are moving forward in your life to actually help folks in a significant way. Unlike some of the slugs here, you are actually putting your brain to use. And nursing ain't no easy task, which you very well know. I hope you go all the way, and accomplish what you set out to do. At least you have worthy goals instead of protesting everything. Congrats.

 

Wow, FSU, good points.

I never gave Strawberry the respect she does deserve as a human being.
I would like to take this time to apolligize.

Just as FSU mentioned, I don't agree with your beliefes completely, but does anyone agree with anyone completely?

Love.

 

Apology accepted. Now worship me, hooligan!!

 

Oh, of course I have always prayed to you, but I have been a bit of an ass.

 

If all kids thought that way, the world would be a better place... they are our future..

 

this is to the original message and this is incredibly lame but there was a time when everyone gathered in peace and love, it was called woodstock.........

 

The thing is you can't wander around mindlessy chanting "peace, peace, love" and flashing a peace sign. If you want something to happen, do something about it, don't sit there

 

Soulrebel--I thought you would like this, if you can understand it. It is in today's "Washington Post."

Terrorists' Candidates?

By Dr. Charles Krauthammer

Friday, October 8, 2004; Page A35

Do the bad guys -- the terrorists in their Afghan caves and Iraqi redoubts -- want George Bush defeated in this election? Bush critics, among them the editors of the New York Times, have worked themselves into a lather over the mere suggestion that this might be so. A front-page "analysis" in The Post quoted several Republican variations of this theme -- such as Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage saying that the terrorists in Iraq "are trying to influence the election against President Bush" -- then noted that "uch accusations . . . surfaced in the modern era during the McCarthy communist hunt."

Intimations of McCarthyism constitute a serious charge. But the charge is not remotely serious. Of course the terrorists want Bush defeated. How can anyone pretend otherwise?

Why are we collectively nervous about terrorism as the election approaches? Because, as everyone knows, there are terrorists out there who would dearly love to hit us before the election. Why? To affect it. What does that mean? Do they want to affect it randomly?

Of course not. We know the terrorists' intent and strategy. We saw it on display in Spain, where a spectacular terrorist attack three days before the national election set off the chain of events that brought down a government that had allied itself with the United States. The attack worked perfectly. Within weeks Spain had withdrawn its troops from Iraq.

Last month, terrorists set off a car bomb outside the Australian Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, in the middle of a neck-and-neck Australian election campaign and just three days before the only televised debate between the two candidates. The prime minister, John Howard, is a staunch U.S. ally in both Afghanistan and Iraq. His opponent, Mark Latham, has pledged to withdraw Australian troops from Iraq by Christmas.

The terrorists may be medieval primitives, but they know about cell phones and the Internet and fuel-laden commercial airliners. They also know about elections. Their obvious objective is to drive from power those governments most deeply involved in the war against them -- in Afghanistan, Iraq or anywhere else. The point is not only to radically alter an enemy nation's foreign policy -- as in Spain -- but to deter any other government contemplating similar support for the U.S.-led war on terrorism.

But Spain and Australia -- Britain, with Tony Blair up for reelection next year, will surely be next -- are merely supporting actors. The real prize is America. An electoral repudiation of President Bush would be seen by the world as a repudiation of Bush's foreign policy, specifically his aggressive, preemptive and often unilateral prosecution of the war on terrorism, most especially Iraq. It would be a correct interpretation because John Kerry has made clear that he is fighting this election on precisely those grounds.

Does this mean that the bad guys want Kerry to win? Michael Kinsley with his usual drollery ridicules the idea by conjuring up the image of Osama bin Laden, "as he sits in his cave studying materials from the League of Women Voters," deciding to cast his absentee ballot for the Democrats.

The point, of course, is that the terrorists have no particular interest in Kerry. What they care about is Bush. He could be running against a moose, and bin Laden and Abu Musab Zarqawi would be for the moose.

How to elect the moose? A second direct attack on the United States would backfire. As Sept. 11 showed, attacking the U.S. homeland would prompt a rallying around the president, whoever he is. America is not Spain. Such an attack would probably result in a Bush landslide.

It is still prudent to be on high alert at home, because it is not wise to bank on the political sophistication of the enemy. The enemy is nonetheless far more likely to understand that the way to bring down Bush is not by attack at home but by debilitating guerrilla war abroad, namely in Iraq. Hence the escalation of bloodshed by Zarqawi and Co. It is not just aimed at intimidating Iraqis and preventing the Iraqi election. It is aimed at demoralizing Americans and affecting the American election.

The Islamists and Baathists in Iraq are conducting their own Tet Offensive with the same objective as the one in 1968: to demoralize the American citizenry, convince it that the war cannot be won, and ultimately encourage it to reject the administration that brought the war upon them and that is the more unequivocal about seeing it through.

It is perfectly true, as Bush critics constantly point out, that many millions around the world -- from Jacques Chirac to the Arab street -- dislike Bush and want to see him defeated. It is ridiculous to pretend that bin Laden, Zarqawi and the other barbarians are not among them.

 

Blackie--And what is more amazing is that you can't rebutt any of the arguments. All you do is call folks names and say "big words" are being used; however, you can't rebutt the thesis of my arguments. Why? Because you're mentally lazy.

 

Blackie & Soulrebel--Please respond to this article with facts. Can you?

From Jonah Goldberg of "National Review."

We should have let sanctions work longer. We should have given inspections another try. The WMDs weren't there so we shouldn't have gone to war. It's a mistake. A grand diversion. The wrong war, the wrong place, at the wrong time.

Shame on all you people.

I don't mean those of you who opposed the war at the time and I don't mean those of you who think Bush bungled the job after the fact. I mean you and you and you „ and most especially John Kerry and John Edwards. Shame on you both.

You voted for this war but you voted against the peace you say is so important to win merely because you decided that toppling the tyranny of Howard Dean's high poll numbers was worth paying any price, bearing any burden.

But forget all that. I just watched John Kerry preen in front of the cameras about how "good diplomacy" would have prevented the mistake he voted for. "Good diplomacy" in John Kerry's world would have let French and Russian politicians continue to line their pockets in the name of keeping Saddam in power so he could rape and murder and torture until "good diplomacy" welcomed him back into the "international community" and gave him the weapons he sought. I suppose in John Kerry's world good diplomacy lets the boys in the back of the bar finish raping the girl for fear of causing a fuss.

Okay, that was unfair. It just seems everything old is new again. Bush "lied" because he believed the same intelligence John Kerry believed. Bush "lied" even though John Edwards called the threat from Iraq "imminent" „ something Bush never did. No one bothers to ask how it could be possible that Bush lied. How could he have known there were no WMDs? No one bothers to wonder why Tony Blair isn't a liar. Indeed, no one bothers to ask whether the Great Diplomat and Alliance Builder believes our oldest and truest allies Great Britain and Australia are lead by equally contemptible liars. Of course, they can't be liars „ they are merely part of the coalition of the bribed. In John Kerry's world, it's a defense to say your oldest friends aren't dishonest, they're merely whores.

Oh, one more thing no one asks. How could Bush think he could pull this thing off? I mean, knowing as he did that there were no WMDs in Iraq, how could he invade the country and think no one would notice? And if he's capable of lying to send Americans to their deaths for some nebulous petro-oedipal conspiracy no intelligent person has bothered to make even credible, why on earth didn't he just plant some WMDs on the victim after the fact? If you're willing to kill Americans for a lie, surely you'd be willing to plant some anthrax to keep your job.

And speaking of the victim, if it's in fact true that Bush offered no rationale for the war other than WMDs, why shouldn't we simply let Saddam out of his cage and put him back in office? We can even use some of the extra money from the Oil-for-Food program to compensate him for the damage to his palaces and prisons. Heck, if John Edwards weren't busy, he could represent him.

I'm serious. If this whole war was such a mistake, such a colossal blunder, based on a lie and all that, not only should John Kerry show the courage to ask once again "How do you tell the last man to die for a mistake?" but he should also promise to rectify the error. And what better, or more logically consistent, way to solve the problem Bush created? Kerry insists it was wrong to topple Saddam. Well, let's make him a Weeble instead. Bush and Saddam can walk out to the podiums and explain that his good friend merely wobbled, he didn't fall down. That would end the chaos John Kerry considers so much worse than the status quo ante. And if the murderer needs help getting back in the game, maybe the Marines can cut off a few tongues and slaughter a couple thousand Shia and Kurds until Saddam's ready for the big league again. That will calm the chaos; that will erase the crime.

Yes, yes, these are all cheap shots, low blows, unfair criticisms. I know. Good and nice liberals don't want Saddam back in power. Sweet and decent Democrats shed no tears for Uday and Qusay. These folks just care about the troops who were sent to die based on a lie. I care about the troops too. But despite John Kerry's insistence that he speaks for the American Fighting Man, some of you might consider that a sizable majority of Americans in uniform will vote for Bush, according to surveys and polls. And since the Kedwards campaign continues to tell us that men who fight and serve cannot have their judgment questioned, that should mean something. Oh, wait, I'm sorry. I forgot. Only fighting men who served for four months on the same boat with John Kerry are above reproach or recrimination. Even if you served in the next boat over, you're just a liar.

Damn, that was another cheap shot, another low blow „ one more Dick Cheneyesque distortion. We soulless warmongers sometimes forget ourselves. I realize now that you forces of truth and light are nothing like me. If only Bush had justified this war in the high-flown language of liberty and justice he uses now, then you better angels of the American nature would have supported the toppling of Saddam.

Of course, Bush did exactly that. He spoke of the lantern of liberty lighting the Middle East long before the Iraqi Statue of Tyranny fell down in that Baghdad square. But he was lying then, of course. He only said that stuff to please those bloodlusting neocons who didn't care about Bush's vendetta to avenge his father and were too rich from their access to Zionist coffers to care about the Texas oil man's plot to capture the Iraqi oil fields and earn Halliburton the worst publicity any corporation has received in American history. Of course these neocons knew Bush was lying about democracy and WMDs alike, but they too didn't care that they would be found out. After all, that's a small price to pay for Mother Israel, where Jewish-American loyalties check in but don't check out.

Damn. Once again the gravity of Bush's villainy has pulled me off the trajectory of honest debate. I'm not making any sense. I'm not consistent in my "rationales." Indeed, John Kerry said it so eloquently when he noted that George W. Bush has offered 23 rationales for the war. Heaven forbid the International Grandmaster of Nuance contemplate that there could be more than a single reason to do something so simple as go to war. Let's not even contemplate that the ticket that says this administration hasn't "leveled" with the American people should have to grasp that sometimes leveling with the public requires offering more than one dumbed-down reason to do something very difficult and important.

Ah, I know. The problem isn't that Bush has offered more than one reason, it's that he's changed his reasons. That is the complaint of those who would otherwise support the war. Alas, that's not true, he's merely changed the emphasis. After all, what is he to do when he discovers there are no WMDs? Violate the "Pottery Barn rule" and simply leave a broken Iraq to fester? But let's imagine for a moment that he has "changed the rationale." Isn't that what Lincoln did when he changed the war to preserve the Union into the war to free the slaves? Isn't that what the Cold War liberals did when they changed a value-neutral stand-off into a twilight struggle between the human bondage and the last best hope of mankind?

Ah, but in the Cold War we never fought the Soviets, we merely leveled sanctions. Couldn't we have done the same to Iraq, since Saddam was no threat to America? I'm sure all of the people asking this asked it already of Bill Clinton when we toppled Slobodan Milosevic, a man who killed fewer people, threatened America less, and violated fewer U.N. sanctions than Saddam ever did.

I'm tired now. But the sad news is I could go on.

I'm not saying there are no good arguments against the war. I am saying that many of you don't care about the war. If Bill Clinton or Al Gore had conducted this war, you would be weeping joyously about Iraqi children going to school and women registering to vote. If this war had been successful rather than hard, John Kerry would be boasting today about how he supported it „ much as he did every time it looked like the polls were moving in that direction. You may have forgotten Kerry's anti-Dean gloating when Saddam was captured, but many of us haven't. He would be saying the lack of WMDs are irrelevant and that Bush's lies were mistakes. And that's the point. I don't care if you hate George W. Bush; it's not like I love the guy. And I don't care if you opposed the war from day one. What disgusts me are those people who say toppling Saddam and fighting the terror war on their turf rather than ours is a mistake, not because these are bad ideas, but merely because your vanity cannot tolerate the notion that George W. Bush is right or that George W. Bush's rightness might cost John Kerry the election.

I get e-mails from you people every day and I see your candidate on TV every night. Shame on you all.

 

ok you have bored me, you want me to get an equally respect report about how bush is a ****, how he cheated in to govt, what the war is really about. i can, but to be honest with you i can't be fucked nor is it necisary 'cause you'll read it and then come up with some airyfairy bullshit about how it's wrong.

 

nick

 

Peppy--Yes, please find me a report where it says the President of the United States is a ****, and how he cheated to get into government. Was this report written up by OMB, or OPM? Or is this a report by Michael Moore? Please explain, genius.

 

DopesickKid--Dude, you are not a bright individual. It is a well known fact, eh? Where, my dim-witted friend, is this report? You all claim that there is a report that Bush is indeed the name you called him, but yet, you can't produce this report. DopesickKid, you are a 13 year-old kid going no where in life. Explain to me what you want to do when you turn 18. Are you even going to finish high school? Then what? Bang the bongo's, chant peace songs, and hit the hackie sack? Please explain, genius.

 

Why are we calling everyone a genius? What's the problem here?

 

DopesickKid--Yep, I'm a Republican Retard. Good one.

 

Blackie--You are ugly, and your mama dresses you funny. That's about as good as I can come up with after you showed me.