Lothar5150, you're stretching pretty far comparing Saddam's regime with the Nazi's. We went to war against Germany because they were trying to take over the world.... quite a bit different I'd say.

If we did go into Iraq to "free the people", then why didn't Bush say that from the beginning? Why did he wait till his excuses turned out to be BS, before presenting the whole "free Iraq" idea?

And unregistered, no, it isn't the responsibility of the leadership to do what they personally feel is necessary and correct. It's called a democracy, not communism. If anyone was misinformed when making the decision and excuses for going into Iraq, it was Bush, not the populace. Either that, or you have to admit he was pulling the wool over everyone's head, for his own agenda.

Actually, Bill's point is that sometimes a leader has to make a decision that goes against the general will of the people, because it's in their interest, wether they like it or not. It's not a popular move, but it happens.

What gets to me is what I perceive as a lack of interest of the American people, on the issues that concern them. It's like they're all playing "follow the leader". Is this culture so lacking in wisdom that people can't think for themselves?!?

Well, that's still against the spirit of democracy. We elect a leader because we feel that he will properly represent us. When it comes to something as serious as deciding to go to war, a leader shouldn't be making a decision to do something against the general will of the people. Why do we assume that GWB or his administration is smarter than the populace, and know's what's best for us better than we do? He's made so many damn mistakes since being elected to office, that I for one wouldn't trust him to tie my shoes, much less decide whether it's best for me if our country goes to war.

It all comes down to the leader thinking it's in our best interest, whether it actually is or not. He's doing what he wants to do, all of us that think it's wrong be damned. Maybe there's a reason it's not a popular move....

And yeah, a lot of people like Lothar are playing follow the leader, because they believe the BS that the administration spews. I for one think War, unless absolutely necessary (see Nazi Germany) is an absolute waste of time, money, life and resources in general. If we're playing world police, why aren't we fixing Africa or a country in similiar shape to the way Iraq was? Why aren't be barging into North Korea? It's because the real reason we're in Iraq isn't to "free the misfortunate people", it's somethign else the administration knows the public won't accept. GWB knows that if he came out with the real reason we went to Iraq, he'd be impeached and out of office over a year ago.

I think there's a difference between having an interesting discussion and deconstructing someone's obviously important core beliefs, so I will not carry on too much (also it becomes really hard to keep following up those non-sequitor responses to my arguments), but aside from that the Americans did stay out of WWII until they got zapped in Pearl Harbour and the whole thing sort of became a personal concern to them, I do not think you can keep responding to my arguments just by drawing some spurious comparison with totally unrelated scenarios.

Like the US soldiers in WWII, I respect what you personally are trying to do, and your personal motives and beliefs for doing so. But do not think that our governments have such noble motives, and do not think that in effect we are not doing anything more than cleaning up a mess we were partly responsible for making. There are US and UK chemicals in the dead bones in those mass graves.

I'll leave the rest to Torin and superart.

Your right leadership is truly about making the difficult and unpopular calls.

What is great about the 'anti' crowd is that they usually a passionate dissenters but generally offer no other reasonable or thought out alternate course of action.

Yeah, because your brainwashed sheep-like following of Bush into Iraq is really reasonable or thought out. That's what is so great about the pro-war crowd, they relish in not thinking for themselves, especially with an administration like this in charge.

I'll give you an alternate course of action, not going into Iraq in the first place, especially for completely false reasons.

Hummm I often think that all the party hacks on both sides are much like that scene in the Life of Brian....Brian, "Your all individuals".....Crowd, "Were all individuals"...one voice says, "I'm not" :D

so given that the past cannot be undone, what is your proposed 'correct' course of action now ?

Torin, you would set the country's course by the barking of dogs ?
loudest rules?
are you familiar with the concept of "the tyranny of the majority" ?
very truly we get just what we deserve
but it is a government, why should we expect more ?

sorry L5, when everyone has an equal voice this is just what happens
I am no better than Torin ?, piss on that system

The BA'ATH party was modeled on the Nazi Party. Totalitarian, militant, secular aggressive toward their neighbors. Hell their officers even carried daggers. They killed almost a million Iraqis. Ok you got me...they didn't have blond hair and blue eyes.

As far as a leader making tuff calls that are not popular...read the Federalist Papers then lets talk further...there is a reason the founding fathers selected a representative government instead of a direct democracy....one word-Athens

I agree, sometimes this is necessary(such as WWII), but such an action requires a strong and qualified leader. I can't see how you can compare FDR to bush. FDR did what he did because he knew what he was doing. Theres a reason he was elected into office four times. Bush wasn't even elected once.

Also, it's not fair to compare WWII to Iraq. In WWII, we had allies and world support. Also, at the time Germany posed an immediate threat to our national security. The Iraq situation has none of that. I agree that Saddam being out of power is good, but first we should have taken care of the terrorism problem. Instead we gave the terrorists ammunition to recruit more followers.

"Before we went into Iraq, there were no terrorists there. Now it's got all of them"
-- John Stewart

When we joined WW2 we had only the British and their Commonwealth...everyone else who held out for peace where learning to speak German.

Sorry I forgot about the Russians..but over half of them were living under occupation

If we are only cleaning up the mess that "we" created, then at least we can agree that there is a mess that needs cleaning. Honestly, I am less concerned with fixing the blame and more concerned with fixing the problem.

To be analogous I am less concerned with bends in the river and more concerned where the river ultimately ends. As a student of history and warfare, I have seen many wars the start off with one pretext and end with a new meaning. Our civil war is a prime example. Starts off about secession and ends being about slavery. Afghanistan is another example. It started being about payback for 9/11 and is ending in liberation and democracy for the Afghan people. The river took many twists but it ended in the right place.

Gee, then I guess it's lucky the other half took out most of the Germans and won the war.

And pHaestus, I hope you're wrong about neither of these bozos having the courage of an FDR, since to cut the deficit significantly is going to make a lot of people unhappy. And take some real diplomacy.

The weather and arrogance killed the Germans in Russia, Just as it did to Napoleon over a century before.

Ike, Patton, and Montgomery must be rolling over in their graves with that part of your post.

Some of you Need to go back and read a few transcripts , WMD's was not the one and only reason we went into Iraq :/

The Civil War was never about slavery, that's just Yankee propaganda. The Emancipation Proclamation was not meant to free slaves, but to disrupt the South's economy, thus making it much much harder for them to fight a war. Thats why it only freed the slaves in the states that were part of the confederacy.


Also, as you said, in WWII we were allied with Russia and England, which were 2 huge world powers. Also, they were a sovereign nation, being invaded and asking for our help. That is not the case today. It is more similar to the Gulf War where Kuwait asked for our help and we lead a true alliance to help them. Today, we may be in a "coalition" with England, but the US is doing the vast majority of the work. That is not a true alliance.


Like I said before, I believe it is good that we deposed an autocratic dictator and think we should do it all over the world, but I am just sad that we went about it in the wrong way.

Well... from a certain point of view the US should be in Iraq and Afghanistan changing regimes. After all, that part of the world looks the way it does at least in part to the foreign policy decisions we made in the Cold War. We are no longer bound by "big picture us vs. Soviet" diplomacy constraints, it's been long enough since Vietnam that the US populace can stand military action on the other side of the war, and those regimes certainly hadn't been running their countries in a way designed to garner world support.

Bob have you seen the estimates on the cost of dealing with our "nuclear legacy" in the ground at Hanford and Savannah River and Oak Ridge? They were building an $18B vitrification center at Hanford for the low level waste; the high level stuff they don't even have the tech to fully deal with regardless of price at this time.

Dealing with Ba'athists in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan as well as staggering problems at the waste repositories are really just the long term cost of making hard choices. How will we fund these choices (however correct or incorrect they may be?) I'll get to that in a moment...

In retrospect I personally believe the decisions Reagan made re: running a deficit, lowering the USD, and switching the arms race from bigass bombs to silicon chips, microelectronics, and supercomputers at a critical time have made the world a much better place. The way we live our lives with PCs and the Internet are undoubtedly related to the defense spending in those areas, the way that eastern Europe and the former Soviet states have embraced democracy and become part of the rest of the world is of course a larger side effect of those choices. Sure there were growing pains and missteps along that path and work still to be done but I think most of the world is pleased with the outcome.

So let's look at the current military actions in the same frame of mind. Is the framework being lain for these islamic extremists to eventually find themselves in a war they cannot win with little public support? I dunno honestly; the news is so filtered that it's hard to say.

But if I were to look at the future and the mounting deficit with concern, it would be because of non-defense policies that the GOP has made. My firm belief is that (a) nanotech, (b) genetics and (c) molecular biology are the next huge revolutions that will change the world. That's a pretty safe bet actually. The US benefitted greatly from the exodus of scientists during WW2 at the time physics and chemistry were king. The US managed to be at the forefront of the computer revolution, and that pulled us out of the deficit caused by Reagan's decisions. But today the US is making it a less than ideal place to do molecular biology and genetics research. Stem cell research is going to be hugely profitable to SOMEONE; that work is not being supported by the US govt. Genetics work is getting iffy because of the possibility to use it for WMD; it's not so easy for researchers to find post docs (who drive academic research) because people from "sensitive countries" arent given the visas/clearance. I don't see outsourcing of routine jobs as a bad thing; it's merely a sign of an industry's maturity. But I see the exodus of US competitive advantage in genetics/molecular biology research as a BIG DEAL.

I hear southerners say that it had nothing to do with slavery and I must laugh. Slavery was a key issue in the Lincoln Douglas debates. Often this is glossed over as states rights issues. Nevertheless, it was over states rights to continue to own blacks as cattle. Look this issue was settled by a war. The south lost, the slaves were set free...done deal. Before you get all defensive this is coming from a guy whose Great Great Granddad was a hero Reb Cavalrymen....BillA should find that somewhat amusing. Kinda like the bay res ;)

Here is food for thought. The British and the Russians did ask for our help. However, the French government surrenders and then supported the Germans. Did we liberate or occupy France?

I agree we should set down a firm policy that it is open season dictators.

L5, knowing you, I'm not surprised;
genes count equally with parental programming, having both is a significant advantage
- the luck of the draw where parents are concerned

then you won't mind if others set down an open season policy on democracies, eh?

I think the rest of the world's stance/record on actually doing anything besides consulting the wishes of tiny third world countries makes democracies pretty safe

BUSH!!

I love President Bush.

He's starving the beast with low taxes. By next year even demorats will vote to slash welfare/social spending which make up, 67% of the federal budget!!! All it's done is breed an entilement mentality among Americans who are lazy, lawless and disrepectful.



Needless to say I think any public program should be eliminated from education to SS. All we need is national defense then just get that cash off excise... smokers, drinkers and such, and elminate all other taxes, especially capital gains since they already pay taxes by employing people. Basically America Circa 1850.

It's real simple want more socialism, people stealing from the fruits of your labor and redistribution of wealth, vote KERRY. Want to keep what you make, like economic and business freedom, Vote for President BUSH.

This will be my first election and I'm very excited:)

That's the problem with democrats, they don't know how to count or how president gets elected. Does this mean anything to them?

http://www.electoral-vote.com/

RE IRAQ war, terror and debt.

The "war on terror" is costly. Would you have preferred we threw up our hands like Clinton did and said "Oh those Middle Eastern rascals! What could we have done differently so that they wouldn't slaughter our people like sheep?!" BS! Hunt them down and KILL the Muslim extremists who want us dead for our lifestyle and support of Israel. Screw'em. I think they found out what happens to people who slaughter American citizens. Whether or not you buy that terrorists were being trained/funded in Iraq or not, Hussein has been in violation of his UN agreement for YEARS, and a cancer in the region. I think Iraq and Afganistan are better places now, and that a line has been drawn that illustrates pretty clearly to any penny ante dictator that wants to take potshots at us that their country will be forfeit should they do so.

Once again Bush is da man...

And the quote is: "In a tv documentary about the liberation of Europe, they said that nearly 80% of the german military casualties occurred on the Eastern Front. (That would be around 2.800.000 deads."

And somehow the Russians overcame the weather well enough to make it to Berlin about the same time the allies did. Yeah, the Germans were arrogant and stupid, but if that were enough to kill 2.8 million the US would have a lot fewer politicians.

pH: BIG bucks. There's a scheme for doing isotope separation using a spin off of tokomak technology using ICH to ionize the waste. http://www.archimedestechnology.com/index.asp

Don't you think "they" already have.

Yes it means that nether has enough electoral votes to be elected, 270 is required. I ran a projection the other night for fun. A few scenarios end up in a complete draw with nether having enough votes.

Moreover, don't start the Democrat/Republican crap with me...party hacks I can hear the IIII VOOOTTTTEEE PARRRTTTYYSSS
http://www.sentex.net/~lamont/sheep-4.jpg

Teehee ya my dads same way, in fact he's voting for Michael Badnarik but Im college rep so it comes all too easy...anyway I told him that's fine, just whatever you do don't vote kerry;)

If you have read my post, you know I'm not a big fan of Kerry. Not that it matters my states 55 electoral votes will go to Kerry regardless...but you never know ;)

"The party system will be the death of the union"
-- George Washington