Now what?

HAHAHA! LOL on that one!!

 

Well, I guess things are looking up then!!

 

I should have been hanging out over here

Last day's been brutal. A couple of the boards I visit and participate in are almost 100% Republican. The hardcore Rush Limbah worshiping God, Guns, and Gay issue group. It didn't help matters when I predicted a Kerry win due to the exit poll reporting. Needless to say it's been brutal.

IMSA

 

In my opinion, most of you are still pretty young and the 18 to 25 year olds seem to lean towards democrats because they just don't know better at there age and one day they will understand that the democratic party is not all it's cracked up to be. Everyone thought that the young vote would have helped put Kerry in office but nobody showed up to vote. Shows the imaturity for that age group. How many of you voted. If you didn't, you have no right to whine. Just my opinion.

 

You said that so much nicer than I ever could, and something just like it was right on the tip of my tongue.

 

It is true that young ppl lean towards Kerry. it is shown on CNN.com. Well, i certainly do not have the right to whine coz i'm not 18 and not even a citizen of US.
But the war on Afganistan, the war on Iraq and etc showed that the US affects the rest of the world as well. so the rest of the world also want a good president for US. So although i dun have the right to whine..... WHY DID KERRY HAVE TO LOSE!!!?????

 

I think you have every right to whine. The US is the most influential country in the world. Everything we do effects the rest of the world. Its just amazing that with so much of the world against bush, and against the US, that people where too ignorant too see the right choice. It also angers me that more democrats didn't vote. Bush won because the "born again christens" all came out. The Democrats should have stormed the polling booths!

I'm also upset with the people who say that "kids" under 18 who cant vote have no right to complain. I'm 17, and i most likly know more about politics then a good chunk of the people who voted. The young people are the future. I think it is great that young ones are getting involved. We have every right to complain, since these decisions that 'Adults" make effect us as much as it effects them.

Here is an example of how Britten feels about the US.



cooked

 

Honestly - does anyone think the draft will be brought back? Just 'cause the President says so doesn't mean it will happen.

A friend of mine believes Congress won't pass the reinstitution of the draft. Do you think this is true?

 

I think it would be political suicide to bring back the draft. Of coarse when we invade more countries, and stretch our forces out even more, there is going to be a need for more troops. Where are they going to come from? If Bush wants a draft he will get a draft.



cooked

 

That's the Daily Mirror. No-one with an I.Q. bigger than his hat size takes it seriously.

 

Some ppl think that Bush is right, some think Kerry is right.
But we can all agree on one thing: the ppl are REALLY divided on this election (duh!). 55,949,407 people want Kerry to be president, 59,459,765 people want Bush to be president. And they strongly believe in their choices. That's why there r lot's of arguments going on here...

 

That's how most of Britain (not Britten ) felt about Winston Churchill, right up until the Blitzkreig. Then Churchill all of a sudden got brilliant.

You have every right to complain. And we have every right to ignore you, because you still don't know enough to complain intelligently. All you're capable of right now is parrotting things that others say, and you haven't got the experience, or the knowledge, to have an informed opinion. But don't feel too bad. The Daily Mirror has been around longer than you have, and they're not any smarter.

 

Yes i do have every right to complain, and you do have every right to ignore me. That is whats great about America.

What i say comes from the heart. I am not incapable of seeing how my family was affected by this administration. My father lost a job of 17 years 6 months after Bush was elected. Since then he was hired for a 40% pay cut, and then lost that job after 2 years. Now he is working again, 2 hours away from home for a 30% cut. I blame Bush's decisions with the economy for this. Everything was fine and dandy when Clinton was president. Now we have this fool running the country who couldn't even keep a small oil business up and running without the aid from his dad's friends, some Saudi investors.

My grandmother of 67 cannot afford the medication she needs. She was forced to move out of here apartment because of rising costs of drugs, and health coverage. Right now the government is spitting in her face. In order for her to buy food she had to open 5 credit cards. Right now there all maxed out, and she doesn't know what she is going to do.

I believe what i believe because i love my family. What i see is better for them is what i support. These ideas are not feed into my head by anyone. Maybe the problem here is that i am one of few who can actually see what is wrong in the world. Others are just to ignorant, or to afraid to admit, that we messed up bad.



cooked

 

Dude, well said! u'll really make a good president!

This could hav been a famous "i believe..." speech. (kerry starts his speech with "i believe" too, rite?)

 

Always trust the brain more than the heart. The heart is basically stupid. Some recent history. Bush's failure in the oil industry was due in no small part to the shift from domestic to foreign oil that happened right then, which clobbered ALL the oil companies. A lot of small ones went out of business, and the oil dependent cities in Texas became almost ghost towns. You could pick up a REALLY nice house dirt cheap, because all the oil money had dried up, and most of the oil people had moved elsewhere. The recession that cost your dad his job was due to the recession that started with the dot-com bust at the end of the 90s... on CLINTON's watch, but since Bush was in the White House when your dad lost his job personally, it's automatically Bush's fault. In case you haven't noticed, despite the massive damage that 9/11 did to our economy, our economy has recovered, stocks are back up, and unimployment is right back where it was through the booming 90s. 5.5% unimployment is historically considered full employment, as there are ALWAYS some getting fired, some going out of business, and some new businesses starting. In the 70s, umimployment was over 10%, and in the 1930s it reached 25%. But that's not how the Bush haters portray things, since that would hurt their hateful arguments.

And that makes it Bush's fault... how?
Please point out in the Constitution where the federal government is given any authority to pay Grandma's medical bills? And I'm not being personally selfish and greedy because I don't want to help pay your Grandma's medical bills. My folks are in their upper 70s, so I know what medical bills are. And in about 20 years, I'll be looking at retirement myself, with all the headaches and problems that your Grandma has. It's MY responsibility to provide for my retirement and my needs once I quit working, not Uncle Sugar's. Cradle-to-grave security is not a responsibility given to the federal government, although we're getting ever closer. Countries with socialized medicine have larger problems overall than we do. Very long waits for limited services, for things that even your grandma gets promptly here. And many of the socialist countries are getting buried under the cost of it, and are trying to find some way to back away from it, which is very difficult.

Your love for your family is commendable, but no, you're not the only one that can see straight. You can't see past your own family's problems, and you "feel" (not "think") that the federal government is automatically the solution to all the country's problems. It's not.

 

you people have to realize the OC is, i think 17, so if a draft is a commin he would be one of the first to go.........
and the rest of us have little to worry about...i think you are all over the age of 25 arn't you?

if we ever got up to the 25 year olds we would be very much screwed ( 20 million 18 to 25 year olds ), and don't forget that they had just voted on the subject this year ( it did not pass, yet )
women would have to serve
no deferments
if you have only 1 leg they would put you at a desk.
everyone would serve.

the reason it is being talked about( the draft ) is because congress is talking about it...

 

I'm so far over 25 that I was in the draft lottery to go to Viet Nam, which was a lot scarier place than Iraq or Afghanistan are. I remember it well. And the feelings that went along with it. That doesn't make 17-18 year olds experts on foreign policy.

Correction: 12 DEMOCRATS In Congress started a bill to reinstate the draft, NOT the Bush administration. We may eventually need to reinstate the draft, but currently the only ones pushing it are Democrats. The plan to have everybody perform mandatory service was KERRY's plan, not Bush's. Get a clue folks. Kerry & the Democrats have run a totally dishonest campaign, and you buy it without even blinking. You have no clue who's doing what.

 

Bah! We went through almost the exact-same scenario in Australia a few weeks ago.

Federal Election, everyone critical of the Prime Minister - yet he got returned with an increased majority. John Howard, who heads the Liberal Party, (which is really the "Conservative Party" over here, go figure!) is back for another three year term, controlling both Houses.

Re-election was probably more due to the total lack of substance and credibility of the Labour Party (really a 'Liberal' Party), rather than a shining performance on the part of the P.M. Not to say he didn't achieve some good, but dissent and resentment seems far more common. Perhaps anyone in the 'driver's seat' of the nation would attract similar feelings.

I think it came down to, both in the U.S and Australia, that it was better the Devil you know, than that you don't know.

Once again proving that human nature pretty much multi-national.

 

i thought i would post a few quotes to see what anyone might want to say about them................

 

My family's problems plays a major part in my decision of who, and what i support, but it is not the only thing. My future, my neighbors future, my country's future, is all at stake here. I do not want to grow up in a world where my country is hated! I don't want to be in a world where seniors have to break apart there drugs, to make them last until they can save up enough money to get them refilled. I don't want to live in a world where our young men and women are sent into harms way when it is NOT absolutely Necessary. I don't want to live in a world where our leader, makes decisions based on his personal agenda. I don't want to live in a world where it is ok to kill thousands of innocent civilians, but a women who was raped should go to hell for aborting her child. I don't want to live in a world where two people who love each other cannot be get married, because it is against one persons beliefs. I dont want to live in a world where it is ok for the government to infringe on my civilrights, and my privicy, so they can find terrorists. (Yeah just because i visited Moore's website, im marked for life as a 'threat'. I don't want to live in a world where, my education, my kids education, and everyone's education is being deprived so we can spend all our money on wars that where started for false reasons. These are just a handful of reasons that concern me down to my last nerve. I could go on, but ill be here all night.

I never said the federal government is the solution to all of our nations problems. Your just putting words in my mouth. The government is responsible for keeping the country at the point where the people can fix there own problems. If they fail at there job, then we are left hopeless. We really need a government who can relate to the common person, not just to his "cream of the crop" - quoted from George W. Bush



cooked

 

The draft is a major concern for me. I love my country, and would fight for her when it was necessary, and she was threatened. If we had all our troops in Afghanistan, hunting Bin Laden, and more where needed, I would not oppose serving. Alkida, and Bin Laden attacked us. They all need to found, and need to pay for what they did on 9/11.

I do NOT believe in this so called "war on terror" in Iraq. I will not fight in a war that is based off of Bush's love of Oil, and his own personal satisfaction or finishing what his daddy started.



cooked

 

same here

 

You both need to read this again.

 

Hopefully not for four more years...

 

Kerry said him self that our country's army needed to be restructured, and more troops needed to be added. I dont see how this is a "totally dishonest campaign"

The draft is one item on the table that i am fully against. No matter who supports it, i am against it.

If we want to talk about dishonesty, lets just take a look back at the past 4 years. We where lied to about Weapons of mass destruction, all the way to the "no child left behind act." Bush's regime is the prime example of dishonesty.



cooked

 

Speaking of draft, gosh, it's rather cold in here. I think that maybe we could actually take the air conditioner out! We tried to take it out last week and had this unbelievable heat wave. Our room gets no air flow and it was stifling. But alas, it's chilly now, and I'm afraid that I'm going to have a heck of a time getting out of bed in the morning.

 

Caught in His Own Lies



George Bush's Iraq scandal is not going away any time soon. His Administration lied six ways to Sunday to browbeat the American public into going along with the war. Now those lies have finally caught up with him, and he is hopelessly entangled in their web, even as he spins more strands.

With U.S. soldiers dying at the appalling rate of one a day in Iraq, those lies are unsustainable. They haunt surviving family members, and they indict our democratic system of checks and balances.

The lies, exaggerations, and distortions go way beyond the one in his State of the Union address about uranium from Africa, though that was a whopper.

There was the lie that the Administration believed Saddam already possessed nuclear weapons.

There was the exaggeration that Saddam had vast quantities of chemical and biological weapons. "Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard, and VX nerve agent," Bush said in his State of the Union address. Where is it all?

There was the lie that Saddam was working with Al Qaeda. When Bush was asked point-blank at his July 30 press conference about the links he had drawn between Al Qaeda and Saddam, all that Bush could say was, "It's going to take time for us to gather the evidence and analyze the mounds of evidence, literally the miles of documents that we have uncovered." That just doesn't cut it.

There was the lie that Saddam's weapons presented a direct threat to the United States. Even CIA Director George Tenet said it was highly unlikely that Saddam would use them against the United States unless Washington invaded (and still he didn't use them).

There was the lie about aluminum tubes, which Condoleezza Rice said were "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs." Actually, many intelligence experts, including the International Atomic Energy Agency, concluded that the tubes were more likely to be used for artillery rockets.

There was the lie about Saddam's unmanned aircraft. On October 7, Bush warned the nation about a growing fleet of these aircraft that could be used "for missions against the United States." Turns out these aircraft were hardly formidable. They appear to be "made of balsa wood and duct tape, with two small propellers attached to what look like the engines of a weed whacker," the AP reported in March.

And there was the lie that the Administration exhausted all means to resolve the conflict peacefully. Anyone who watched the U.N. Security Council debate knows that the United States stymied efforts to bring more weapons inspectors on board and to allow Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei time to complete their work.

At his July 30 press conference, Bush fobbed off other questions about the flimsy claims he peddled in the lead-up to the war. "In order to placate the critics and cynics about the intentions of the United States, we need to produce evidence," he said. "And I'm confident that our search will yield that which I strongly believe: that Saddam had a weapons program. I want to remind you he actually used his weapons program on his own people at one time, which is pretty tangible evidence."

Note the subtle shift to "weapons programs" and away from the weapons themselves. It's much easier for Bush to say he will find evidence of "weapons programs" than to find the weapons themselves.

Note also that while Bush and Rice before the war talked about not wanting to wait until a "smoking gun turns into a mushroom cloud"--a clear allusion to the threat of Saddam's nuclear arsenal--Bush avoided the subject of Saddam's nuclear weapons entirely at the press conference.

Vice President Dick Cheney was even more brazen. Cheney surfaces only to break ties in the Senate, raise money for Republican candidates, or speak before such cozy audiences as the American Enterprise Institute, where he appeared on July 24.

There, he repeated the lie that "every measure was taken to avoid a war," that "it was Saddam Hussein himself who made war unavoidable," and that Bush launched the war only "when all else failed." Then he recycled some of the old propaganda about Saddam's threat--"a menace to our future peace and security." One thing Cheney did not recycle, however, was his own claim, back on March 16, that "we believe he [Saddam] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." Instead, Cheney had the chutzpah to quote a National Intelligence Estimate that said, "If left unchecked, it [Iraq] probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade."

Which is it, Mr. Vice President?

Back in March, you said you believed he already had nuclear weapons. Now you're saying he was several years off?

Cheney's got a lot of nerve.

Either he doesn't think anyone remembers what he said just four months previously, or he thinks that merely to put the three words together--Saddam, nuclear, and weapons--and then rinse and repeat is all it takes to persuade Americans that Iraq was the "grave" or "gathering" or "unique" threat that Bush and Cheney falsely said it was all along.

Cheney, who didn't take questions from his cronies at the American Enterprise Institute, has not answered for his own deceit, which played a big part in pushing the United States into war.

Instead, he acts as though he--and Bush--did nothing wrong.

Even for Cheney, this was an embarrassingly cynical performance.

After using lies and deception to justify the invasion, Bush is resorting to them again to characterize the occupation. Chief among these is that the resistance to the U.S. occupation consists of a "few remaining holdouts" of the Ba'ath regime, as Bush said on July 22, or "the violent remnants of Saddam Hussein's regime, joined by terrorists and criminals," who are "making a last attempt to frighten the Iraqi people," as he put it in his news conference. Bush suggested that after U.S. forces killed Qusay and Uday Hussein, the attacks would fade. "That changes attitudes in Iraq," he said at his press conference. He also, as is his wont, said, "Saddam's sons were brought to justice"--repeating his equation of justice with liquidation.

Cheney at the American Enterprise Institute made a similar case. "There are still some holdouts of the regime, joined by terrorists from outside the country," he said.

While some of the opposition may come from people who refused to get out of the Ba'ath Party, much of it appears to flow from two other sources: Iraqi nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism.

If the Bushies think these sources will all of a sudden dry up, they're kidding themselves.

Two days before Bush eliminated Saddam's notorious sons (and a grandson, by the way, along with a bodyguard), thousands of Shiites held a demonstration denouncing the United States.

They shouted, "No to America, no to colonialism, no to tyranny, no to the devil," according to The New York Times.

Remember, these were Shiites, and the Shiites were supposed to welcome their "liberation." They weren't natural Saddam lovers. Saddam, a Sunni, had long oppressed them.

Some Shiite clerics are now telling their followers that they have a religious obligation to resist the U.S. occupation.

"The potential rise of Islamist resistance, both Sunni and Shia, ought to be worrying the Americans more than the issue of the discredited Hussein family," wrote Jonathan Steele in The Guardian on July 25.

Then there is the nationalism that swells when people see their country occupied by a foreign power, especially a foreign power that did so much to ravage their land in two wars and more than a decade of punitive sanctions.

Plus, the vaunted U.S. military has not yet been able to provide the rudiments of clean water, adequate food, and electricity to the Iraqi people. On July 3, U.S. forces were attacked in three places, which "suggested that sapping the resistance might not be as simple as capturing or killing Mr. Hussein," reported the Times. "The attacks occurred in diverse locations: a Sunni area west of Baghdad that staunchly supported the former government, a Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad that did not, and the center of the city." After the assault in central Baghdad, a crowd gathered and shouted, "God bless Muhammad," the Times wrote. One man said, "It's not because of Saddam that people are doing these things. It is because there's no government, there's no electricity, and just false promises."

On top of everything else, some U.S. troops, who have been put in a terrible situation, may have been ordered to use brutal tactics that further alienate the population.

Amnesty International issued a memorandum on July 23 that discussed "possibly unlawful killings of demonstrators" and "reports of torture or ill-treatment by Coalition Forces."

U.S. forces, in at least one incident, used a tactic that the Geneva Conventions expressly prohibit. Colonel David Hogg, commander of the Second Brigade of the Fourth Infantry Division, told The Washington Post that "his troops picked up the wife and daughter of an Iraqi lieutenant general. They left a note: 'If you want your family released, then turn yourself in.' "

U.S. forces have also not spared the innocent in the Saddam manhunt. "Obsessed with capturing Saddam Hussein, American soldiers turned a botched raid on a house in the Mansur district of Baghdad yesterday [July 27] into a bloodbath, opening fire on scores of Iraqi civilians in a crowded street and killing up to eleven, including two children, their mother, and crippled father," Robert Fisk reported for The Independent. "At least one civilian car caught fire, cremating its occupants." One doctor treating the victims told Fisk: "If an American came to my emergency room, maybe I would kill him."

The day before, in Karbala, "a thirty-year-old cafeteria worker was shot during a confrontation between soldiers and an unruly crowd," the Times reported. "During the man's funeral, mourners chanted, 'There is no God but God, and America is the enemy of God.' "

These are the factors that are contributing to what even the chief U.S. military commander in Iraq, General John P. Abizaid, admits is a "guerrilla war." This, just two weeks after Donald Rumsfeld said, "I guess the reason I don't use the phrase guerrilla war is because there isn't one."

Bush should pull U.S. troops out of Iraq. They never belonged there in the first place. They are not welcome there now. They are 146,000 sitting ducks. The obvious option is to turn the entire operation over to the United Nations, which has some experience in what Bush used to sneeringly call "nation-building." But the hardliners in the Bush Administration still don't want to deal with the United Nations.

Cheney and Wolfowitz are resisting Colin Powell's effort even to get U.N. blessing for other countries' troops to come in.

This should be a no-brainer.

Going to the United Nations would relieve tens of thousands of U.S. troops.

But for Cheney and Wolfowitz, that's not a good enough reason. They would rather sacrifice more U.S. troops than let the United Nations take a primary role.

Why?

Because they view the United Nations as an impediment to U.S. global rule. And they don't want to let any other country in on the spoils of Iraq. Giving the United Nations a larger role might jeopardize the ability of U.S. companies to get the inside track on future contracts.

"Wolfowitz said the Administration would welcome a new United Nations resolution to attract peacekeepers . . . but only if it did not restrict the authority of L. Paul Bremer III, the senior American civil administrator in Iraq," the Times reported. In testimony before Congress on July 29, Wolfowitz said, "I'd be very enthusiastic about the right kind of resolution, and very concerned about the wrong kind."

As a substitute, the Pentagon is now feverishly trying to train an Iraqi militia to do some of the work for the U.S. troops. Just as President Nixon tried his Vietnamization program to get the locals to do the fighting for us, Wolfowitz said, "We don't need more American troops. What we need most of all are Iraqis fighting with us."

But that's a tall order. Anthony Cordesman is a military specialist for the Center for Strategic and International Studies. You might have seen him on television during Gulf War I or II with his pointer. Even he warns that "the United States may end up fighting a third Gulf War," this time "against the Iraqi people."

That is nothing to look forward to, and no amount of lies or blandishments will make it so.

 

Where's that from?



cooked

 

http://www.progressive.org/sept03/comm0903.html

 

True. Ever since the war on iraq, the world hates Bush. I know this coz i wasn't here in the States yet when he attacked iraq. I had friends from various countries including one from Afganistan so i know their percpective as well. Only Tony Blair supports him (at least publicly).

 

Not quite. There are currently 28 different countries with troops there. Many of the contingents are small, but so are many of the countries. One would assume that if they're sending ANY troops, they approve of the mission.


http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iraq_orbat_coalition.htm

As far as the "Progressive" shopping list, all that crap has been debated to death already.

 

Just for easy reference, the countries are:

According to the site, some are planning to withdraw their forces from Iraq. some r reducing their troops there. (And to be fair, there are a few who want to do the exact opposite thing and increase their troops.) They dun wanna be involved in Bush's war anymore, i guess.

their country leaders support the war, but that doesn't necessarily mean the people do.

 

All true, but that's a lot more than just Tony Blair.

 

Now I think I'll follow my own advice and just keep my mouth shut, if possible. Time for other things.

 

I really wanted Kerry to win, just because I have no faith in GWB. The people have spoken, and GWB IS the president. As such, as an American, I will support him regardless of my lack of faith in him. Bitchin' and moanin' now changes nothing. Reality...we look at Bush and OOO and AHH over every little thing 'cause that is what sells newspapers and news media. Every Prez gets it. Let's get off of it and try supporting this guy...maybe he'll do a better job. We can find a million points for Bush just as easily if we look for them as earnestly as we do the bad. I've thought about this (being an old fart and all)...and it is simply time for me to hang up the "anti-Bush" attitude and look at what I can do to make it all better. If we all try, it would and will get better...just my 02.

 

I HOPE he'll do a better job than the previous 4 years.
The "bitchin and moanin'" is just the aftermath of the election. it'll wear off sooner or later..
at least i think it will..