All of this hoopla...

[Aunty Em]

C'mon, this is basic grammar here. Perhaps you simply misread what I wrote.

Would, in the future, if the situation warrants it, act unilaterally.

Did, in the past, act unilaterally.

Yes, it's a declraration. About the future. Just as all past presidents have made.

Look, this is really simple. You made the suggestion that Bush acted unilaterally. Show me where he did act unilaterally.

Then the fault lies with your grammer or lack of it... if you were talking about the action rather than the statement you should have made that clear. Clearly we were not talking about the same thing.

 

[chcr]

the intention was for conflict when the first troops went over in october, the question was when and not if.

I'm not in any way convinced that the intention wasn't there from the time Bush was elected.

 

[outside looking in]

I'm sorry that there was a misunderstanding, but I did italicize would and did to make it clear. Hell, I even explicitly stated that he had made comments along those lines. Perhaps you overlooked that part, but the grammar is just fine.

And just why do you think I had a problem with you insinuating Bush had taken unilateral action? Well, because you insinuated he TOOK ACTION. Of course he's made statements to that effect. He isn't the first, and I guarantee that he won't be the last.

 

[outside looking in]

Clearly we were not talking about the same thing.

Obviously. That doesn't diminish your suggestion that Bush took unilateral action, which is what I initially took exception to. Perhaps now you understand why. Threatening and doing are not the same.

 

[Inkara1]

Difference is, this shit costs a lot of lives. The $40 Million blowjob didn't.

Remember Clinton's little "Wag the Dog" incident? I'm sure the guy who owned that pharmaceutical plant in Sudan that got blown up right as the Lewinsky scandal was raging remembers it very well.

 

[Aunty Em]

Whomever the world as a whole elected... that's democracy, something that as a nation you claim to uphold. Unilateral action isn't.

I fail to see how in this context you can read that as to mean that I "insinuated" that your government had taken unilateral action. I don't insinuate, if I had intended it to be read the way you claim I would have said so very clearly. I call a spade a spade, you're obviously not used to that. Trying to second guess what I could have meant is a clear case of paranoia.

This simply means "Unilateral action isn't democratic".

 

[Squiggy]

Remember Clinton's little "Wag the Dog" incident? I'm sure the guy who owned that pharmaceutical plant in Sudan that got blown up right as the Lewinsky scandal was raging remembers it very well.

Well that makes no sense...Are you saying that he called for the strike because he was in the middle of a blowjob?

 

[outside looking in]

I fail to see how in this context you can read that as to mean that I "insinuated" that your government had taken unilateral action. I don't insinuate, if I had intended it to be read the way you claim I would have said so very clearly. I call a spade a spade, you're obviously not used to that. Trying to second guess what I could have meant is a clear case of paranoia.

I'm not paranoid, and I have no problem with people calling a spade a spade ( ), I simply misread what you had written, as you did what I had written.

This simply means "Unilateral action isn't democratic".

That's all well and good, but I'm still somewhat mystified by that remark, seeing as how (1) we don't operate under a democracy and (2) we didn't take unilateral action. Kinda like saying "cows are not insects." Yeah, that's correct, but is neither here nor there.

 

[Raven]

Well that makes no sense...Are you saying that he called for the strike because he was in the middle of a blowjob?

No he just hit the button during the cumshot

 

[Inkara1]

No, he called for the strike while he was getting in trouble for getting a BJ and lying about it under oath.

 

[Squiggy]

Oh...OK...I guess that justifies all the deaths Bush caused...

 

[Inkara1]

I never said that; I only wished to point out that the "$40 million blowjob" wasn't as benign as you said it was.

 

[Squiggy]

Then you are suggesting that the strike was because of the blowjob...

 

[flavio]

No, he called for the strike while he was getting in trouble for getting a BJ and lying about it under oath.

If you think Clinton's airstrike was wrong then Bush misleading the country into a full on war and occupation must really get you steamed right?

 

[ris]

depends which intern he's got tickling his prostate in private - tabloid culture is what gets the public mad, jerry springer infidelity shocks and upsets people. a few foreigners getting killed far enough away so that no one can hear is ok, just as long as the serviceman's body count is kept to a bare minimum.

 

[freako104]

depends which intern he's got tickling his prostate in private - tabloid culture is what gets the public mad, jerry springer infidelity shocks and upsets people. a few foreigners getting killed far enough away so that no one can hear is ok, just as long as the serviceman's body count is kept to a bare minimum.

which is sad since thats what should be getting people riled up

 

[Elwood]

I've always held that we should've kept out of the Middle East completely. As stated before (sorry can't recall who), their culture is completely different. It appears that even in the event that they are being treated like crap, they'd rather just live that way than to have some meddlesome country step in and try to rectify the situation. In turn, I think the U.S. should've closed it's borders long ago as well. This definitely should have been our initial reaction to the 9-11 occurence. Instead of being inside looking out, we should be inside looking in (sorry OLI! ).

We can always hope that eventually someone decent will run for president.
But of course if this were to ever happen, he'd lose, because people (subconsciously?) look for qualities that they also possess in a candidate, and unfortunately it seems the majority of people in our country are morally bankrupt.

 

[Gonz]

In turn, I think the U.S. should've closed it's borders long ago as well.

Tried that pre-WW2 & look whaere it got us.

unfortunately it seems the majority of people in our country are morally bankrupt

That is way too close to the truth. Well said though.

Why Did Bush Go to War?
By Charles Krauthammer Friday, July 18, 2003; Page A19

The Niger uranium flap has achieved the status of midsummer frenzy, a molehill become a mountain in the absence of competing news stories. It was but one bit of intelligence out of dozens about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and, by any measure, hardly the most important.

Nonetheless, it was more than likely false, thus giving an opening to the Democrats, desperate for some handle to attack President Bush's huge advantage on the issue of national security. With weapons of mass destruction yet unfound, the Niger blunder opens the way to the broad implication that the president is a liar or a dissimulator who took the country to war under false pretenses.

How exactly does this line of reasoning work? The charge is that the president was looking for excuses to go to war with Hussein and that the weapons-of-mass-destruction claims were just a pretense.

Aside from the fact that Hussein's possession of weapons of mass destruction was posited not only by Bush but also by just about every intelligence service on the planet (including those of countries that opposed war as the solution), one runs up against this logical conundrum: Why then did Bush want to go to war? For fun and recreation? Because of some cowboy compulsion?

The wilder critics have attempted wag-the-dog theories: war as a distraction from general political woes (Paul Krugman quotes the Robert De Niro character advising the president: "You want to win this election, you better change the subject. You wanna change this subject, you better have a war.") or war as a distraction from a lousy economy. This is ridiculous. Apart from everything else, war is a highly dangerous political enterprise. No one had any idea that Baghdad would fall in three weeks and with so few casualties. Just as no one had any idea how costly and bloody the post-victory occupation would be.

On the contrary, the war was a huge political gamble. There was no popular pressure to go to war. There was even less foreign pressure to go to war. Bush decided to stake his presidency on it nonetheless, knowing that if things went wrong -- and indeed they might still -- his political career was finished.

It is obvious he did so because he thought that, post-9/11, it was vital to the security of the United States that Hussein be disarmed and deposed.

Under what analysis? That Iraq posed a clear and imminent danger, a claim now being discounted by the critics because of the absence thus far of weapons of mass destruction?

No. That was not the president's case. It was, on occasion, Tony Blair's, and that is why Blair is in such political trouble in Britain. But in Bush's first post-9/11 State of the Union address (January 2002), he framed Iraq as part of a larger and more enduring problem, the overriding threat of our time: the conjunction of terrorism, terrorist states and weapons of mass destruction. And unless something was done, we faced the prospect of an infinitely more catastrophic 9/11 in the future.

Later that year, in a speech to the United Nations, he spoke of the danger from Iraq not as "clear and present" but "grave and gathering," an obvious allusion to Churchill's "gathering storm," the gradually accumulating threat that preceded the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939. And then nearer the war, in his 2003 State of the Union address, Bush plainly denied that the threat was imminent. "Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent." Bush was, on the contrary, calling for action precisely when the threat was not imminent because, "if this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions . . . would come too late."

The threat had not yet even fully emerged, Bush was asserting, but nonetheless it had to be faced because it would only get worse. Hussein was not going away. The sanctions were not going to restrain him. Even his death would be no reprieve, as his half-mad sons would take over. The argument was that Hussein had to be removed eventually and that with Hussein relatively weakened, isolated and vulnerable, now would be more prudent and less costly than later.

He was right.

In fact, Bush's case was simply a more elaborate and formal restatement of Bill Clinton's argument in 1998 that, left unmolested, Hussein would "go right on and do more to rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction. And some day, some way, I guarantee you, he'll use the arsenal."

That was true when Clinton said it. It was true when Bush said it. The difference is that Bush did something about it.

By Terry M. Neal
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Thursday, July 17, 2003; 9:48 AM


Are some of the Democratic presidential candidates trying to have it both ways on Iraq?

In recent days, Democrats have escalated their criticism of the Bush administration's pre-war claims about the threat posed by Iraq. Four of the major candidates who voted for the war resolution last year are now raising serious questions about the administration's handling of the Iraq situation, while maintaining that they did the right thing by supporting the march to war.

Post

 

[Elwood]

Gonz,

The two lines you quoted me on could be said to be related, oddly enough. About closing of borders after WWII, please enlighten me about where it got us. I don't remember

Since the U.S. has been involved in the Middle East's business for so many decades, and we were attacked (and still have terrorists living among us, no doubt) in 2001, I fully support Bush in going after any regime that looks favorably upon such acts. If there was any lying/minsinformation going on about the presence of WMD in Iraq (as if another reason was needed for the U.S. to go in there), it was only to appease those in our country who enjoy whining more than any other activity, since they're actually just bitter about a Republican being in office. All I can say to those folks is, deal with it, because we had to put up with your sleazebag and her husband during the previous 8 freakin' years. It's a testament to the resiliency of our nation that it survived their administration.

I'm just glad that when "the s**t hit the fan", we didn't have some pansy liberal in office busy getting his jollies with an ugly intern and banning every inanimate object that could possibly be used to harm someone.

 

[chcr]

busy getting his jollies with an ugly intern and banning every inanimate object that could possibly be used to harm someone.

I'm going to say this once just to get it off my chest. It happened, it's over, get over it. Why do people keep bringing this up? Who the fuck cares? He was a jackass but he's not relevant anymore. Get fucking over it, it was just a blowjob. Ever have one? I've had one at work. I promise that except for the several minutes during, it did not affect my job performance in any way.

Douglas Adams once suggested that it was not the president's job to wield power, but to draw attention away from those who do. By this yardstick, I used to judge billy blowjob the most effective president of our time. Until dubya.

Just my opinion.