Mistakes this big - should Bush even stand for re-election

Iraq Forum

Bush says re-elect him because he's doing such a great job on fighting terrorism. So why are all these people - many who worked in US security - saying just the opposite. Here's yet another person speaking out about the appauling way Bush is handling terrorism, and how Al Qaeda "has been able to reconstitute leadership cells in the Afghan-Pakistan border region and, it would seem, in Iran" because Bush was busy using 9/11 as an exuse to invade Iraq.

And regarding terrorism, can anyone name the plus sides that have come from Bush starting a war in Iraq?

Greetings H@ts,

The people who work in these fields, such as counter terrorism, have big egos and are super opinionated.

The President has many different advisor's and gets a lot of different opinion from various "experts". He has to take all this in and make a decision.

When the "expert" on terrorism does not get his advice listened to and the President decides to go with someone else's idea, they are only human. It pisses them off.

Plus sides to war in Iraq:

Saddam captured. He won't be helping any terrorists in the future.

Iraq on way to free society, democracy's less likely to support terrorism.

A lot of terrorists from other country's joined the fight in Iraq. We got to kill them. Less terrorists in the world.

Other nations in the middle east saw what happened to Iraq and Afghanistan and some of the smarter ones are going to tow the line from now on. That means if they do support terrorism, it's going to be off the record and not out in the open. That makes them weaker.

The WMD/Iraq problem is gone. Saddam giving a terrorist a WMD was not such a far fetched idea.
Whether he had them and moved them to Syria, or if he was still in the design stage, it was a problem for us and now it is not. (at least from Iraq, terrorists can still get them from other sources.)

I don't have to watch the news every night and see the U.N. is pissed off at Iraq again and that they have issued another ultimatum. What a joke! That has nothing to do with terrorism, but I put it in anyway.

Whidden,

You don't have to explain on behalf of the President to anti-U.S. Euro-propagandists like h@ts. Their rhetoric and accusations warrant no legitimacy.

whidden
That's because different terrorist experts gave him different advice. And being the A-1 President he is, he made some tough decisions. Some of the one's who got shot down are cry babies about it.

Bush only listened to the "terrorists experts" who's information made the case for war in Iraq even though it turns out that all this information was "flawed" and now Al Qaeda has been able to reconstitute leadership cells in the Afghan-Pakistan border region and, it would seem, in Iran. If we had the right people on the ground in the spring and summer of 2002, I think we might have caught these people.

This is an enourmous blunder.

You can't tell me that a country like Afganistan that had boot camps and training grounds for terroists and supported it is better than a country that at least on the surface is against terrorism. Even if a country like SA is funding terrorism, if we find out about it, we can put pressure on them to shut it down.

Read the original post again: In March 2002, six months after President Bush announced the war on terror, an unusual military decision was made: the military's specialists hunting for Osama bin Laden were reassigned: Iraq

We took the people out who could have caught them. But even if we get bin Laden or Zawahiri now, it is two years too late. Al Qaeda is a very different organization now. It has had time to adapt. The administration should have finished this job."

Bush has given Al Qaeda the time to adapt because there were those in or close to the administration, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush and Lewis Libby who were carrying out a plan drawn up well before 9/11. And yet Bush has the nerve to campaign on how he has handled the terrorist threat.

Whidden, glad to see you in the Iraq forum! Keep up the good work!

As there are good ones ... who are the bad Americans ?

Guys, don't you think it's time to leave the black and white simplistic schemes and have a closer look to the facts spread over here ? Unbelievable.

We elected Bush, so we are fine with his ego. More power to ya George!!!!

More American invaders (soldiers) were killed in Iraq by third-rate fighters (shi'ites and defenders of a belief system that hardly anybody in the US understands).

Looks like Vietnam part 2 for all those dunderheads who believe in a man (Bush) who, not only has never fought in a war, but who cannot even spell the word war.

History will judge Bush immeasurably cruelly. He will be immortalised as the most embarrassing US leader in history, claiming pole position in front of both Nixon and Reagan, those other two syphilitic dolts.

Bush is a cancer cell in the body of democracy; rust on the golden machinary of reason, his mind a womb for simplicity and proto-biblical superstition, his words itching-powder in the bed of multinationalism. In total, the greatest mistake America has ever produced and one which it's history books will refer to as simply "the anti-Christ"

Preston the truly brilliant.

Such hate an discontent! I feel sorry for you.

Funny how you mistook hate for pure brilliant commentary from a master.

My advice, buster, is reserve your sorrows for all those pro-Bushites out there who will hide in the shadows of embarrassment one day when history will be as judgemental against Bush as Bush was against history.

Love and peace

Preston the beautiful

You've just won yourself the dreariest friend on the site, USA 1, his name is Curley Joe.

He is my little toy, who I like to bounce around occassionally. He is, no doubt, a brilliant example of cleverness and wit. You'll have hours of fun dialoguing with him - not!

Must go and sharpen the pencil of my thoughts.

Preston the effusive.

Curley,

I don't know if Fantasyland exists somewhere - but if I had to locate it on a map I would choose this very place in California where you reside. Buddy it perhaps yet time to unplug this cable connected right in your brain, give up your addictment to the heavy load of crap distilled by this biased right wing propaganda.
"Euro-propagandist US-haters", uh ? What a joke.
The day you wake up, careful with the day's light - it hurts when one is not used to.

Thanks for posting that link GDOG .

It make you wonder what they are smoking in Oxford these days, that they think Ronald Reagan was an unpopular president. Man alive!

If Bush goes down in History with the same credibiltity that Reagan has, then he is on the right path.


Hey Preston!!!!
http://www.mixedup.com/reagan-ears_jp60.jpg

"Ronald Reagan is polled as the most favoured American president. Followed by JFK, and Lincoln." GDOG

I've not stopped vigourously tittering to myself all day long having first pinned my clever eyes upon this inane remark.

Seeing how Reagan suffered with Alzheimers from day one of his presidency, it sort of sums up the hilarious state of certain Republican thinkers (thinking perhaps is too good a word to adopt for such dreary types).

Some Germans still think Hitler was the best leader Germany ever had, certain Russian consider Stalin as thier number one political geezer. But simpletons often back unspeakable fools (I don't think Reagan ever strung a single sentence together in front of the cameras, did he?. History tells us that it was Thatcher who wound Reagan around her finger).

It's about time Republicans got over their childish infatuation with cowboyism (Reagan, Bush etc). If only you could see yourselves from the perspective of the real world (the world outside of small town America). I think you'd choke on your Coke and Big Macs if you were privy to this honourable and lofty viewpoint.

TYFrench was close to the truth when he stressed that Curley Joke fears the light of reason. Of course there are many pitiful indoctrinated Republicans who are just like Joke, who dwell in the cave of nationalism and ingnorance. Of course we (the intelligent sceptics) must always try to help the likes of Curley Joe and aim to liberate them from excusable stupidity for he and his like are merely products of an unutterable parochial system of education, whose patriotic brainwashing is equal to that of any communist state.

Preston the breath of fresh air

You keep saying the same thing over and over again preston. You just find cute and clever new ways to articulate your sentances. If you were forced to break down everything you say you would most likely elect silense rather than arbitrarily tapping all the same keys over--and--over again. But hey, if it feels good do it, right? You're stroking your own ego and that's all that seems to count in your little world.

My dear Sayzak,

I only EVER repeat a notion to those who do not listen. Brilliance should always be uttered twice.

Let’s explore the Gag Rule, which is now being adopted by the Bush regime, a rule that was conceived by the proto-Christian Reagan administration.

Last year the Bush regime pledged $15 billion in aid to Africa. This looked like a fantastic gift on the surface of things, however, it came with a massive proviso: in order for those African nations to have been eligible for aid they had to abandon their contraception centres forthwith. Why? Because Bush was using what is called the “Gag Rule”, which, as I’ve just stated for those who were not reading this properly, was conceived by that Alzheimic clown, Reagan back in 1984, a rule which basically ties the hands of a nation that would like to receive aid from the US (you will find no such rule in the conditions set by the UK in its foreign aid to Africa nor the European Union).

The Gag Rule is important to Bush because it was a pay back to all those evangelical Christians who voted him into power. It is those very same reckless Christians who pushed Bush’s regime into the Gag Rule corner. And the way in which Bush applied the Gag Rule is so typical of how the US has operated so often in the past (so often believing that it’s doing good but is just making matters worse). Let me elaborate on this hot potato.

You see, by applying the Gag Rule, the US government will now be assisting the spread of aids as opposed to stemming it. Why? Because the Bush regime has asked all those countries that received US money to close down its contraception centres, which are a life line of so many countries. Instead, the do-gooders on the Right have asked the Africans to practise abstinence instead of using condoms. Well try selling abstinence to a prostitute in Kigali who needs to sell her body for 1 euro a day in order to survive. You see it’s okay for well-fed and well-watered moralisers on the Right in the USA to preach to people in countries where poverty is at tragic levels. But really it’s an arrogant and clouded approach to worldly philanthropic duties. It's a careless lack of reason and practical solutions for an everyday problem.

Of course, Clinton sensibly binned the Gag Rule on day one of his coming to power. Bush, sadly, brought it back at the behest of his Christian sponsors the day he acceded the presidential throne.

Do some research on the Gag Rule. It is decidedly interesting.

Preston the Sherlock Holmes of InRieview.

Why would Bush ask Africa to obandon contraception? And since when is practicing LESS sex, rather than SAFE sex, a bad thing? People need to start being held responsible for their actions. If everyone fallowed the lazy doctrine of doing what feels good when the impulse hits them, without ever thinking about their actions... The world wouldn't last very long.

Sayzak,

I've obviously just proved why I need to repeat myself because you obviously didn't pay one iota of attention to my previous e-mail. Now, you're either playing the classic idiot, or you're for real.

If you'd read my e-mail properly, you'd have picked up on an obvious clue why safe sex is better than less sex. I mentioned, as an example Kigali, which is the capital of Rwanda (that's in Africa, Africa is a large continent). You see, in Rwanda, which has the lowest GDP on earth, some woman have to turn to prostitution in order to stay alive because there is absolutely no other means of earning a living. Prostitution requires the use of condoms. If this woman followed your empy moral less-sex path, she would not earn her 1 euro a day in which she survives on. QED! Of course, you would not know poverty that exists in places like Rwanda; if you did, you would think before you said such inept remarks such as: "people need to start being responsible for their actions".

And seeing how aids in Africa is invariably spread through prostitution, hasn't it dawned on you what would happen if all the contraception centres closed in Africa, which many Christian Bushians desire? Has the penny dropped yet? Do I need to spell it out in Latin or Japanese or whatever other language you are trafficking in?

Above all, I would adore seeing all the moralisers in this world placed in a situation where they had to earn a living doing the most base things. They'd soon stick their morals where the sun doesn't shine, and learn that immediate survival (a la Rwanda) is not based on "taking responsibilty for one's actions" but on looking for any means of staying alive as humanly possible, which flies in the face of silly morality.

"Why would Bush ask Africa to abandon, contraception?" you asked.
The Christian lobby that supports Bush believes contraception to be a sin, and this insane lobby, which both sponsored and supported Bush in his last election, demand a pay back for supporting Bush, a pay back which comprises shutting down contraception centres in places that receive aid from America. It's that simple. Look up the Gag Rule for yourself. It's sinister Christian behaviour, which Africa has had a gutful over the last four centuries.

I don't know how old you are, old bean, but I get the impression you're about fourteen, a fourteen year old who has not yet grown out of the moralising mode of existence. Life needs material solutions to material problems, not umbrella-brained, Christian superstition.

Please don't waste my precious time. There are more intelligent people out there who I care to dialogue with.


Preston the hands' on machine.

OK smart guy.

Have we told you how great America is today?

OH.....sorry, I guess we did. My bad.

We worry you'll forget.

Why do you like to rub it in? You obviously care what people think or this post would have finished long ago.

Well, now that you mention it, I do care what others think. I have a lot of Liberal friends and I enjoy hearing what they say.

I don't believe most of it, but I like passionaite fired up people.

I even kind of like you a little H@ts. (But if I could pick a beer buddy for a Saturday night dicussing politics, I would go with someone like Devil Dog.)

I know a lot of Liberals who love this country as much as I do, they don't normally show it in the same way a conservative does with the flag waving and the apple pie.

They are into free speech and movements though just the same.

I like to be patriotic because that's how I am gonna be regardless of what you self righteous corective *******'s think in other countries.

I love other countries. My personal favs are England, Australia, Isreal and Japan.

But I will never tone down my love of the States just because someone else from another country doesn't think it works in the new global world order.

Maybe I like to rub it in because it lets you know that you can't tame our spirit. And we do got some spirit mister!!!

I am proud to be a native of the greatest country that EVER existed. We Americans are free to pursue the path of our choice. We can argue about anything and don't have to be afraid the "Gestapo" will lock us up in a dank dungeon. We have had and will have good and poor leadership, but no one has the national pride of their country more than Americans.

http://www.inreview.com/showthread....674&forumid=371

Ahoy Sayzak, ol bean,

You asked:
"If the only people having sex are the ones who NEED to in order to survive (which is a load of crap, there has to be SOMETHING else they could do)"

I never said that the ONLY people having sex are the ones who NEED to in order to survive. I would never make such a shallow generalisation. If there was something else the prostitutes could do, don’t you think that some of them would? Have you ever been to Rwanda? It’s possibly the poorest country on the planet. Check it’s GDP (it has the lowest GDP in the world). Until you’ve been or have learned more about Rwanda, don’t make daft American remarks eg “there has to be SOMETHING else they could do”. Rwanda isn’t Beverly Hills or Chicago. God, get a grip, my friend.

You asked:
"HOW do you explain the fact that aids is indeed a problem in Africa?"

One of the reasons why aids is indeed a problem in Africa is because it is one of the poorest continents on the planet, if not the poorest. And, in many instances, poverty is coupled with an ill-equpped education system, an education system that has yet to inculcate in people’s minds the NEED to use condoms in order to protect themselves from aids. Teaching abstinense is only useful if you’re addessing the sort of people who have a low sex-drive, asexual types or Catholic priests. Sex is the third most primordial instinct in humans following the desire for food and water. Trying to force abstinence upon most humans is both misguided, unrealistic and damned right harmful. It’s like trying to train bees to collect litter. Sex should be celebrated as a wonderful thing both before and after wedlock, so long as it is done in a safe way between consenting parties.

You said:
"Americans are the hardest working people. Where there's a will there's a way, and there's a lot of free will here."

Don’t know what this quote has to do with the Reagan Gag Rule, but one man’s sense of hard working is another man’s sense of slavery. Americans, on the whole are the unhappiest people on the planet hence the reason why there are so many disgustingly obese North Americans - the clever result of your Calvinistic/Protestant work ethic. Shame you haven’t heard of the word relaxation. You’ll be dead before you know it, buster.

You said:
"there's a lot of free will here."

On the subject of free will, according to the German philosopher,Schopenhauer, no human action can occur without a motive or pay off. That human actions are inherently part of the Newtonian universal cause and effect theory. Ergo, there is no such thing as a selfless/free act because every one of your actions is triggered by a motive that will reward you with two possible outcomes - either the avoidance of pain or the experiencing of pleasure, thus safeguarding your chances of survival. To say that we have a free will means that our actions do not belong to the universal causal chain.

The term pay off is interesting because it means that whenever we are faced with a so-called 'choice' of actions, we ALWAYS opt for the action that will be most beneficial to us in terms of avoiding pain and experiencing pleasure, so do we really have the freedom to choose our actions when our psyche is cogitating the outcome at a primordial level of thinking ie. safeguarding your chances of survival. For instance, when I give money to a tramp I either do it to avoid feeling guilty (pain) or to make myself feel better (pleasure). The latter is always the more positive way because you are including another person in your selfish act (positive selfishness - this is my expression). People who believe in a free will say that you can give money altruistically, but of course you cannot. You cannot be bereft of one of the two examples I have just given when you give money. There has to be a pay off. Altruism means we do not experience a pay off in any form (either avoiding pain or accruing pleasure), which is simply a bit simplistic.

To say that a person is solely responsible for their actions is equally ludicrous when you begin to realise that each and every one of us is comprised of an aggregate of people (parents, teachers, peers, immediate family) all of whom downloaded their prejudices, beliefs, moral codes in our brains during the formal years of 0-4 years, when the foundations of our personality was being constructed (according to Piaget and Freud). And how this aggregate of family audience in our minds cannot be turned off, forever influencing our actions (cause and effect) without being consciously aware of it most of the time. I can say that there is such a thing as a collective responsibility perhaps but not an individual one when every human being is nothing other than a multi-headed hydra.

So don’t try to simplify matters when it comes down to the bare bones of survival. If your survival depended upon every hour that passes before you, you would abandon your morals at the drop of a hat. But how would you know? You have never had to survive like an animal as many people in Rwanda have to every day of their lives.

You said:
"Wait a second... How can Bush "shut down" those centers? Are they America's centres or Africas? Who's funding them?"

The centres are funded by aid money, hence the reason why the Bush regime can close them down any moment. He who pays the piper calls the tune. The deal is, if certain African countries want to receive more aid money (part of the $15 billion deal that the US offered Africa) they've got to close down their contraception centre because the Christian lobby that supports the Bush regime don’t like contraception).

You said:
"By the way, I'm not Christan. I'm athiest. Can you generalize me now?"

I never generalise on anything. I couldn’t care less if you were an alien. I just don’t like moralisers on the whole. They’re trouble and, most often, live with their heads in some thick dark cloud, which ignores the survival drives and needs of the human species, forgetting that we’re merely animals, with animal desires.

You said:
"I don't think life needs material crap to answer material anything. That is unless we're thinknig of two different meanings"

Just substitute the word material for practical. QED.

Preston, the knight in shining amber...

I don't feel like going through the entire thing right now, so I'll just quote this and give you my reply:

Ahoy Sayzak,

You said:
"I would NOT, under ANY circumstance, SELL MY BODY in order to survive. Would I eat bugs and build clothes out of leaves? Most definitely. I think I would respond accordingly if an animalistic lifestyle were required in order to survive."

I accept this response as to how you THINK or HOPE you would behave under conditions where your immediate survival was absolutely upmost to you. In addition to your response, without detracting from your statement, it is quite conceivable that you WOULD sell your body IF you had no other means of survival. You see, your state of mind would behave differently if it was not receiving certain vitamins. Your psychology would be affected too. Neurologically speaking, you would undergo deep physiological and physiological tectonic shifts, resulting in a re-evaluation of values and drives. Your subconscious instinct would warrant that you do things that, under "normal" conditions you would not do (Freud and countless others said that the subconscious rules supreme over the conscious mind) There would be nothing shameful in doing things you would, under "normal" circumstances, consider "immoral" or wrong. Very few people would rather kill themselves than take up prostitution or other unsavoury habits that would benefit our individual survival.

The most important thing I can say is that very few of us who live in the rich west, where we are well fed and well watered, do not know ourselves well enough to know what we would be capable of doing under the duress of having to survive like an animal from hour to hour, and that is why it is reckless for rich westerners to lecture the very poor

The idea of having to prostitute my body gives me indigestion, however, if this was my only means of earning a regular income, I would owe it to my body to do so just as innumerable Rwandans are doing at this juncture in time.
The first law of nature is to survive.

Preston Likely.

Preston,

You have made quite solid points hereabove. For sure, this reflects maturity. Indeed, our daily life is guided by those survivance principles (the triangle of Maslov's ones - thus explaining why we can spend some time on this board puting down intellectual thoughts, corresponding to some upper needs of our intellect, since our basic needs (the first layers of the triangle) are satisfied.
I am always amazed when people come with theories about how the world should be reshaped - the right wing neocons think tank deliriums in Washington are very representative of this - while others emancipate too easily human motives from what we are - the product of millions of years of evolution.

I think the question isn't "Should Bush even stand for re-election", it's "Should Bush keep cleaning up Clinton's mess?" Good grief, Clinton just threw a few missiles here and there. Bush is the sleeping giant that got awoken. Kerry? He's a terrorist's dream!!!