Why the whole world detest Bush?

[Doc Holliday]

Originally posted by EagerBeaver
Regarding my 2003 comments, it's true I made those comments but that was when we all believed that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Your candidate John Kerry also believed this and voted in support of the war.

I also believed that Iraq had WMDs. Most people did. That's what Bush told us in his state-of-the-union address, citing several intelligence sources. Even good ol' Colin Powell said so in his presentations at the UN. However, we didn't know that they had lied to the whole world about this.

Yes, Kerry voted to support the war. He, like us, believed Bush and Powell. He didn't know at the time that much of the intelligence was erroneous or faulty. Bush did, but he was so convinced that Iraq had WMDs that he went ahead and told a few lies anyway. Of course, much of these WMDs had been given to them by the US in the 80's, so they had to be somewhere, correct?

Kerry voted to give the President the authority to go to war if needed to. As a last resort, after being promised by Bush that war was a last resort option only. Bush never gave diplomacy a chance. He put an end to the inspectors going into Iraq to look for the weapons. He elected to go to war prematurely. Of course, he had the Saudis on his tail, impatient at the delays at Iraq being attacked by the US, as promised months earlier. Bush's Saudi prince friend (Bandhar) even stopped shaving for weeks, and swore he wouldn't shave until Iraq was finally attacked.

So, the bottom line: most of the world, including Kerry, did believe that Iraq had WMDs. The President of the US was certain about this. His CIA chief had said it was a 'slam dunk' that they had weapons. Powell also said so in his very convincing presentation at the UN. Well, no one figured Bush would jump the gun and invade Iraq before all options had been tried and failed. Because of this, thousands of people have died or been maimed, the cost of the war is a hundred billions of dollars, and Iraq is a total mess on the brink of civil war. Total chaos. Amen.

 

[Doc Holliday]

Originally posted by regnad
By the way, given the events at Abu Ghraib, does anyone else here think that Bush's comments about keeping his daughters on a leash might have been ill-advised? God, I'd like to have seen Rove's face during his puppet's ass-kicking last night.

You've read my thoughts. I wonder if Lyndie England's defense team were watching (i'm certain they were) and might consider using Bush's comments at her trial.

On another topic, it's strange that not much more is being said about the present administration's destruction of the economy, medicare, social security, education, and environmental protection laws, non-renewal of the Assault Weapons ban, etc.

JaJ

 

[Red Paul]

Originally posted by EagerBeaver
I never said it was simple. But at least I have offered a possible way to try to solve the problem. Getting rid of Bush, in my mind, is not going to help solve the problem because the situation is what it is and it will have to be dealt with no matter who is President.

Regarding my 2003 comments, it's true I made those comments but that was when we all believed that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Your candidate John Kerry also believed this and voted in support of the war.

We need to move forward, not backward. How do we do so, if not with the correct thug being put in charge of Iraq?

All right, given that I want to whack Beaver's head, I'd better start out by noting this: in a long series of controversies involving bad behavior by clients and posters, he has spoken out for basic manners and good sense. That counts for a lot.

On to politics. Beaver's post marks the first time I've heard fixing a problem described as going backward. And why should we move forward into making the exact same mistake that got us in this mess?

Anyway, let me do this point by point.

No, he never said his solution was simple. He just described a very simple solution and said it was the only one possible.

Yes, the situation in Iraq "is what it is" -- and George Bush created it. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I'm against having incompetence rewarded. I also feel less safe when the incompetent is the president.

Okay, next. A lot of people believed Iraq had some WMDs. Bush believed it had a whole lot of WMDs, enough to make invasion necessary. And there's the difference. Kerry, like Norman Schwarzkopff among others, believed Iraq had to be pressured into letting in weapons inspectors but that it should not be invaded. The pressure was applied, the inspectors went in, and they found next to nothing. At which point Bush said he didn't like that answer and announced we would invade anyway. Believe me, this stuff was on the front pages. He could have picked up on it.

Now, as to what Beaver supported when, the point is he doesn't have a good track record regarding Iraq. He tends to believe things -- like the president's case for invasion -- without looking at details. He's doing that now with his notion of trusting some thug to look after our interests in Iraq. That approach has been tried and it has failed.

And, once again, remember that invading a country in the name of self-defense and freedom, and then turning it into a satellite, is what the Soviet Union and the Third Reich used to do.

No, I don't have a solution. But after watching Bush's bright ideas, I'm going to be picky about the solutions I accept.

 

[langeweile]

QUOTE]Originally posted by regnad
Kerry, as has been made perfectly clear, did not vote to support the war. He voted to authorize the President to use his best judgement. Given who the President is, that was quite a foolish thing to do.

Are you for real????
You mean to tell me that Kerry voted for something knowing very well that the president was wrong.
You must be kiddng. If Kerry made this statement then he doesn't deserve to be president.
I will even expand this, if anyone that voted for the resolution for the same reasons as above, then i suggest you vote out your senator and your congressman.
I expect from my senator/congressman to vote based on his own judgement of the situation.
Who is the bigger idiot the one that made the wrong decision or the one that supported it?

 

[Red Paul]

Originally posted by langeweile
QUOTE] Are you for real????
You mean to tell me that Kerry voted for something knowing very well that the president was wrong.
You must be kiddng. If Kerry made this statement then he doesn't deserve to be president.
. . .
Who is the bigger idiot the one that made the wrong decision or the one that supported it?

Langeweile, you don't get what's being said here. George Bush did not ask Congress to vote for going to war. That would have meant asking for a declaration of war, the way FDR did after Pearl Harbor.

Bush asked for something else: he asked Congress to give him the power to make war if events made military action necessary. This is called a war authority vote. It gives the president the just-in-case ability to use military force if that's what the crisis eventually requires.

Bush said at the time that the vote was not a vote for war but a vote for keeping the peace. Now, it appears quite likely that president was lying and he wanted to go to war all the time. And of course he now claims that anyone who sided with him also wanted war.

But such is not the case, and only the gullible believe it.

 

[EagerBeaver]

Originally posted by Red Paul

Bush asked for something else: he asked Congress to give him the power to make war if events made military action necessary. This is called a war authority vote. .

And your man in Congress, John Kerry, gave him that authority. Empowered him or authorized him. Call it whatever you want.

Kerry should have said no. He didn't. Was he in a better position than you or I to question intelligence reports? You bet. Did he? No.

I won't deny that Kerry won the debate, or at least that he was smoother than Bush in delivering his shtick. However I am still not convinced that he, not Bush, is the lesser of the two evils. Kerry has talked about summits and this and that but no viable solutions have been put forth. So you and Kerry have that in common, neither one of you have answers for this mess.

What really scares me about Kerry is that I think he just might unilaterally withdraw from Iraq, leaving a vacuum effect and I think increasing the likelihood that a Taliban-like regime will ascend to power. Obviously, this would be even scarier than having Saddam back in power.

I am just looking to hear some answers and nobody is giving me any. Throw me a bone, please! Anything!

 

[Red Paul]

Originally posted by EagerBeaver
And your man in Congress, John Kerry, gave him that authority. Empowered him or authorized him. Call it whatever you want.

Kerry should have said no. He didn't. Was he in a better position than you or I to question intelligence reports? You bet. Did he? No.

. . . you and Kerry have that in common, neither one of you have answers for this mess.

. . .

I am just looking to hear some answers and nobody is giving me any. Throw me a bone, please! Anything!

Kerry and I have got something else in common: neither of us created the mess. One man did that, and he has to wear it around his neck.

But let's focus on the positive. You now realize John Kerry did not vote to go to war. Perhaps you grasp the corollary of this, which is that it's pointless to accuse him of being a hypocrite on the issue. He wasn't.

But now you say Kerry "should have said no" to giving Bush war authority. Why?

Back in 2002 intelligence reports indicated that an unfriendly dictator had dangerous and forbidden weapons. The reports did not indicate that he had enough to make this a pressing, top-priority menace. But they did give grounds for thinking the weapons were there.

The president decided to force the issue and turn this matter into the number one international issue of the day. He declared a showdown was necessary to make Saddam come clean. For this showdown he said he needed the power to make war, if necessary.

The United States was in the standoff whether Kerry liked it or not. Should he have voted no and undermined the president in the middle of an international confrontation? Well, maybe -- Bush is not a trustworthy man, and he was clearly playing games with the evidence, hyping it to create a crisis.

On the other hand . . . let's say the president doesn't get his war authority. His whole attempt at a showdown collapses and the world learns the U.S. will back off in a crunch. That's not too useful the next time there's a dictator who has to be dealt with.

So Kerry votes to give Bush the war authority. Bush deploys forces near Iraq. As a result Saddam lets in the weapons inspectors. The inspectors find out there are no weapons. We've won!

So then Bush invades anyway.

Somebody comes out of this looking very, very bad. And it's not John Kerry.

When it comes to peace and war, most Americans believe a president deserves the benefit of a doubt. With this president we've discovered it isn't the case. That means he has to go.

You say you want answers. Well, good luck. The only one I've got is this: we have to stop pretending. Bush's games landed us in a mess, and he's still playing games now. Look at how he trots out Allawi to say things are going great (in a speech co-written by one of Bush's campaign officials).

You can't deal with reality if you won't face it, and that's a test Bush has failed.

 

[EagerBeaver]

I am starving for a solution that is more productive than my "correct thug" scenario. All I asked was for you to throw me a bone, RP. A bone! It is very cruel of you to ignore the needs of a hungry man! I'll bet you give bones to your dog, but me, I get nothing?

What kind of way is this to treat a senior member?

 

[EagerBeaver]

Shemaleluver,

Okay, I would say that qualifies for you having thrown me a bone, with not too much meat on it, but at least my hunger is now satisfied. I was hoping to get something from Red Paul, but he cruelly left me to starve until you came along.

 

[Red Paul]

Sorry, boss. All I can tell you, from the bottom of my heart, is that this situation looks fucked. It'll take a betetr man than me to figure this out; right now all I want to do is elect him.

Maybe the French and Germans will see that having Iraq fall apart is no good for anyone. But lately they've been saying they won't send troops even if Kerry wins. So that doesn't look good.

And when you think about it, Europe might not have the troops available. Before the invasion, experts on this kind of thing were saying at least 300,000 soldiers would be needed to keep Iraq stable. Right now our side has got about half that number in Iraq, and we can't keep them deployed much longer. So the Europeans would have to come up with more than 150,000 soldiers. I don't know much about European defense matters, but I doubt they could swing that even if they wanted to.

So what's left? The atom bomb, maybe. Or else we could take the side of the Shiites and lead a jihad against the region's governments. But I like your "correct thug" idea better than either of those.

So the situation looks hopeless. But I do believe the answer is out there someplace -- America has come thru some pretty shitty problems before. We just need someone with the skill and judgment to find an answer and make it work. Or at least someone who has not conclusively demonstrated that he lacks the necessary skill and judgment.

Which brings me back to my favorite point, the one thing I am dead certain about this year: we have got to get rid of George Bush.

 

[EagerBeaver]

Does anyone know how many troops the US army had in the field during World War II in the two different theaters? I am sure it was a whole lot more than 150,000.............I know it is not a comparable situation, but it seems as though we can do better than 150,000 if we have to.

 

[Lawless]

EB
You might be pushing the enveloppe!
Luckily enough you have election coming up!
Bush will take care!
Are you going soon?

 

[EagerBeaver]

shemaleluver,

Very interesting analysis. This last post of yours was actually way more than a bone, it was very close to a full turkey dinner.

To me the key thing in the implementation of democracy will be separation of Mosque and State. The mullahs wield too much political power and they have to figure out a way to keep Islamofascism out of the government. Assuming that all the other hurdles can be cleared, this will be the biggest and last hurdle.

 

[Doc Holliday]

Originally posted by EagerBeaver
To me the key thing in the implementation of democracy will be separation of Mosque and State. The mullahs wield too much political power and they have to figure out a way to keep Islamofascism out of the government.

The only way they'll ever have something resembling a democracy is if the US keeps their troops in that hell-hole forever. As soon as they'll pull out, the religious extremists will take over. If not, it will be because some murderous thug like Saddam Hussein will have gained power. Now, this would be as worse as before the US invasion. What a disaster this has become!! Yet, Bush and his cronies refuse to admit it and take the rest of the world and their own countrymen for being stupid.

One other thing: there never has been a democracy in that country. Couldn't it be possible that they do not want to be democratic? Do they actually understand what it means to be democratic or to have elections?

And another thing: Kerry has now passed Bush in the polls, according to Newsweek. Now, if Nader would regain his senses and pull-out of the race, Kerry's very small lead would be increased.

One final thought: Michael Moore's 'Farenheit 9/11' is coming out on dvd this week. Will this have an effect on the upcoming election?

 

[langeweile]

Shemale,

You are right on.

If anyone thinks that germany/france/russia or others will be sending troops is dreaming. they can see the handwritting on the wall. Plus given their current economies, they don't have the money.....but then...(thinking).....war does create new jobs in a macabre sort of way. Maybe there is a way to revive the economy.
(tongue in cheek)

 

[Onthebottom]

Originally posted by curious
It is mostly the poor and working class that detest Bush. He has served the interests of wealthier Americans well, but has abandoned others.

I am not a Democrat or a Kerry supporter, but at this point I consider Kerry the lesser evil. I agree with Ralph Nader that they are far too much alike.

Here are the facts:

1. Unemployment is the worst it has been in over 20 years; the true unemployment rate is much higher than the official rate because people not receiving unemployment benefits don't count. Long term unemployment is very high; 43 percent of those unemployed between 2001-2003 are still unemployed. There are a million fewer jobs in the U.S. today than in 2001. Bush is the first President since Hoover to see job loss during his time in office. Despite that he favors continuing an open immigration policy as does Kerry. Wages for most workers have not kept pace with increases in the cost of housing, energy, insurance and groceries. At the same time, the rich are getting higher: 20 percent of the population makes 50 percent of the income. The ratio of CEO salary to average worker salary is astronomical.

Wrong, unemployment is a rate of those LOOKING for work that can’t find it, and the official rate is lower than when Clinton ran for re-election. You can’t really blame Bush for job losses during the Clinton recession and after 9/11. The Economist estimated that 1.5M of the jobs lost were bubble economy jobs that were unsustainable.

Find a large economy with faster growth and lower unemployment – look at your numbers for instance……

Originally posted by curious

2. Since 1998 the price of gasoline has doubled and will go higher. Bush does not seem concerned by this, probably due to his background as an oil man.

More likely because he’s a free trade man. One of the key factors is the lack of refinery capabilities in the US (and growing demand, which happens with a growing economy) for which you can thank the environmentalists.

Originally posted by curious

3. Bush came to office despite losing the popular vote. Thousands of votes for his opponent were disqualified in Florida due to a ballot problem, which probably changed the outcome of the election.

That recount has been covered, he won Florida by about 500 votes – and remember to thank those Buchanan Democrats when you see them ;-)

Originally posted by curious

4. Clinton was impeached for lying about cheating on his wife under oath, but numerous scandals involving Bush and his administration (Enron, Halliburton, Iraqi prisoner torture, outing of a CIA agent whose husband critized Bush) have not produced any meaningful investigation much less punishment. Clinton was relentlessly investigated for the Whitewater bank fiasco, but when Bush's brother Neil became involved in a similar bank scandal, very little was said or done about it.

Neil wasn’t POTUS, just like Clinton’s coke head brother who sold pardons. You can’t lie under oath in the US, especially if you are the POTUS. Getting Clinton for purgery is like getting Capone for tax evasion.

Originally posted by curious

5. 9/11 occurred on Bush's watch, not Clinton's. Prior to the attack Bush said or did little about Al Qaida. Iraq was the priority from the beginning, mostly because of the oil. An earlier Al Qaida plot to blow up the Los Angeles airport was successfully thwarted during the Clinton administration.

Those pilots were in country when Bush took office, and he had his appointments confirmed less than 6 months before the attacks.

Originally posted by curious

6. 6. Bush has referred openly to the wealthy and elite as his "power base." He has polarized the country more than any president before him. Even Clinton had a higher approval rating. .

Kerry is the big money politician in this election – he has more large contributions that Bush does not to mention the 527 orgs.

Originally posted by curious

7. Although he claimed to support the war in Vietnam, like many wealthy conservative Americans, he chose not to serve in combat, allowing others to take his place.

National Guard service is considered honorable in this country.

Originally posted by curious

8. On the issue of flip flopping, you might wish to check Regnad's comments under Bush Goofs Again.

So from the debates we learned: in 1991 when the UN and the world agreed to oust Saddam Kerry votes against, in 2003 he votes for but then changes his mind, with the Administration working with the UNSC and allies on North Korea Kerry calls for a unilateral approach – did Ms. Kerry have triplets?

Originally posted by curious

9. The reason Bush visited Mexico first is because he is courting the Hispanic vote. Bush also favors outsourcing, which is hurting workers in the U.S.

He was Governor of Texas and has dealt with Mexico before being POTUS, he’s a free trade man and we’ve imported more and better jobs than we’ve exported.

Originally posted by curious

10. The federal deficit is soaring; Bush's tax cuts heavily favor the wealthy and taxes will go up later on to pay off the debt.

The tax cuts lowered ALL tax brackets, but to get a tax cut you have to pay taxes. In the US 850 people pay about 25% of Federal Income taxes and the top 1% pay more than 30% and the top 50% pay 90%. You can’t get much of a tax cut if you don’t pay taxes. This is a classic class warfare point for those unencumbered by reason.

Originally posted by curious

This is just part of it. But the quality of life for most people in the U.S has declined since 2001 and there is no sign that it is going to improve. The 1990s are starting to look like the "good old days."

Recessions do that to you, especially after a bubble economy pops. Look at per capita GDP in the US, then compare it with other large countries – you’ll find we’re doing just fine.

OTB

 

[Onthebottom]

Originally posted by ElfGoneBad
Thanks for the analysis and the numbers Onthebottom.

You’re welcome.

Originally posted by ElfGoneBad

One more thing, thanks for the Canadian dollar going up and up and up because of: the cost of war .

CD is not going up but the USD is going down. Check the CD against the Euro, Pound or AUD if you want confirmation. Did you notice what happened to your economic growth when your currency value went up against the dollar?

Originally posted by ElfGoneBad

You folks down south keep eating those big macs to maintain your way of life. Otherwise you may actually have to walk to work and that is just a bitch!

(anyone else watched the "super size me" DVD?)

Weak, very weak.

OTB

 

[Onthebottom]

Originally posted by curious
If you are an American, here's how much you owe.

http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/


As Milton Friedman has pointed out, a tax cut without a budget cut is only a deferred tax.

All of the large economies have run deficits over the last 3 years - as an effort to spur growth after a recession. Japan runs a larger deficit (as a percentage of GDP - which is the only measure that matters) and France / Germany run a third less of a deficit than we do. Japan has an accumulated debt that is aprox. 70% of their GDP! France and Germany are struggling to grow, which makes it harder for them to pay off their deficit than we paying ours off.

OTB

 

[Doc Holliday]

Originally posted by CS Martin
What is the definition of a "true" democracy. If you are referring to a "Pure" democracy, this would be unworkable in today's society. BTW, one wonders if the pot wants to call the kettle black?

What was the old literary saying, "Tend your own garden"?

I was just going over the Patriot Act, and it got me thinking. How did this bill ever manage to pass? Yes, i must also admit that i rented Farenheit 9/11 last night and that i've been thinking about this since.

I'm also wondering how good the elections in Afghanistan are going....how many voters will get killed, etc. Ah, Democracy!

Now, i just feel like mellowing out in front of the tv, while toking on a good reefer. Heck, i can't even do this legally in my own country! Sucks !!!

 

[vmlinuz]

Bush thinks he should police the world, just like Sr. I hope he looses in this coming election.