lostfan

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Apr 23, 2009 -> 03:31 PM) To a large extent, the US intervening is what got things to this point anyway... I wouldn't say that, it didn't help, but Pakistan was always a clusterf*** to some degree.

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Apr 23, 2009 -> 03:39 PM) Whoa, here we go with isolated incidents. This can go both ways you know? That's not really isolated at all, s*** like that happens all the time in Iran because their domestic policy is so ultraconservative.

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Apr 23, 2009 -> 03:38 PM) You get that from Sean Hannity or Bill O'Rielly? Republican Thread...

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Apr 23, 2009 -> 03:35 PM) You and I agreed many times that the Iraq handling was a debacle. lol, I know. I guess I keep repeating myself because I feel like a lot of Bush's big mistakes were interconnected.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Apr 23, 2009 -> 03:35 PM) Thanks for that. It pretty much proves exactly how quickly Bush was ransacked. His approval rating was under 50% on Feb 1st of his first year. That is amazing. Yeah, I'm not disagreeing with that, obviously the debacle of 2000 hurt his approval ratings pretty bad and it stayed there for a while. But he got a dramatic bump after 9-11 that stayed with him until his handling of the war dragged it down.

QUOTE (ChiSox_Sonix @ Apr 23, 2009 -> 03:34 PM) Well I'm pretty confident it wouldn't be France, haha. Just throwing in a Western country who I know has nukes off the top of my head. But pretty much every Western country supports Israel (although the US kind of goes overboard w/it sometimes).

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Apr 23, 2009 -> 03:33 PM) Yea, about 6-8 months. That's about right. The real damage didn't start until about mid-2003, that was all self-induced. Throughout most of 2002 everybody was still buying the BS, and they soured on it when we got there and didn't find anything. It was all a slow, painful fall downhill from there with a general election thrown in.

I don't know about point #1, but point #2 is pretty accurate.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Apr 23, 2009 -> 03:24 PM) Not really. I remember full well after 9-11 the "CONSPIRACY" nutjobs went crazy... and this was well before Iraq. Meh, nutjobs are nutjobs. That's about 20% on either end of the political spectrum you can factor out immediately in any kind of discussion like this.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Apr 23, 2009 -> 03:24 PM) So having a guy as a leader who believes he has to destroy the Jewish state in order to bring about the return of the last prophet doesn't factor in at all for you? Talk about a waste of time. If Iran got nukes, it would turn Israel into a glass parking lot and go celebrate. Of all of the nutjobs in the world, Iran's leader is the one I would say that would be willing to use nuclear weapons without a second thought. I don't really think so though. It's capabilities vs. intent. Do you assume that Iran wouldn't be deathly afraid of retaliation from Israel (or the US, or the UK, or France, or whomever)?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Apr 23, 2009 -> 03:21 PM) I call BS on this point. Because of the nature of the 2000 election and the aftermath of it, Bush was being stung before he even took office. Obama has had his critics, but it has been a vocal minority at best. For the most part he has generally gotten the benefit of the doubt on just about everything. Bush got a big, big reprieve from 9-11 though.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Apr 23, 2009 -> 03:21 PM) MMMMMMMMkay. The world is just soooooo Cheeeeer-i-o! The laughable part of this is you are arguing with a guy who knows more on his pinky finger about this then you do (no, not me, I'm just an ignorant average "thick skull", but I guess that doesn't matter). And I know you know lf knows what he's talking about. Heh, he wasn't really disagreeing w/me on that point, but I know he disagrees on the "Iran is a democracy" point. Him and me have gone back and forth on that a few times.

Yeah Duke, Iran barely qualifies as a democracy, you should stop citing that as if they were equivalent to Western democracies.

QUOTE (YASNY @ Apr 23, 2009 -> 03:05 PM) In all honesty, though I don't agree with the basis of caufield's arguement, I do recall Ozzie commenting on the fact that Contreras held back info that he wasn't 100%. Yeah, and if I'm not mistaken, Ozzie came just short of saying he was mad at Contreras for not saying anything sooner.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Apr 23, 2009 -> 02:59 PM) Really? You know damn well that if we were to get hit sometime in the next 3 years, it's going to be because "George W. Bush was a facist asshole who "tortured"". It's as clear as day what this whole thing is setting up for. It's just like Obama going over to Europe, in front of the adoring French and saying "I'm not George W. Bush, I am Barack Hussein Obama, so love me". So, being "stupid" or "nice" or whatever adjective you want to use, it's the same damn thing. That isn't what Balta was saying.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Apr 23, 2009 -> 02:59 PM) I'm going to go all Murphy's law here. That same logic says Adolf Eichmann was an innocent man. He didn't personally kill anyone, he followed orders, he did his job methodically, did it very well, made sure the trains ran on time, and he was judged after the administrations changed. People went back and applied a different set of moral standards to the work he did after the fact. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law Good job.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Apr 23, 2009 -> 02:54 PM) As I just said, IMO, the guidelines that were followed was not torture. It's a slippery slope, and there has to be lines, but to go back and prosecute on a straw man's argument is terrible judgement, IMO. If he doesn't want to adhere to these policies, that's his choice, and don't make it public just to scream about previous administration's "wrongs". Our country didn't used to work that way. Can we go back and prosecute FDR post-humoursly, pretty please? Come on. I don't like the idea of retroactively going back and prosecuting people for giving s***ty legal advice (can be read as "an opinion you disagree with) either. It sets a bad precedent for any time an administration changes over. I feel like Obama is trying to play both sides of the fence here and making himself look weak or indecisive.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Apr 23, 2009 -> 02:47 PM) It might be unneccessary. it might not be. You want to side on the fact that we should be nice to everyone and make it all rainbows and foo foo kissy kissy for these guys and we would/could get the same information. I want to side on the fact that we have 3,000 people dead, and I don't want it to happen again, so I don't want to take the chance that these perpetrators will know something that might save more thousands of lives. And that doesn't even take into account "what is torture", as that's a whole different argument. Let's say that hypothetically torture was legal and constitutional, and we didn't have to worry about this whole debate here for a minute. "Torture" then should just be viewed as another interrogation technique. It shouldn't be looked at as the "nuclear option" or anything because it's not guaranteed to work. It doesn't work on everyone, in fact I'd say it doesn't work on the majority of people. For every 1 prisoner you get to break and start giving you good, accurate information, you probably have 2 or 3 that would just start making s*** up, curl up into the fetal position and cry, get on their knees and hug your calf and beg for mercy, and/or start mumbling Koranic verses. There are other methods that are just as effective or better, I mean you could even get a PS3 and start playing Killzone with them if that gets them to talk. You're only limited by your imagination, and the changes in direction don't necessarily have to be "harsher" to be effective.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Apr 23, 2009 -> 02:45 PM) I think the "could" referred to 99.9% of your posts already doing that. ^^ This It's a pretty common understanding that you (kap) jumped the shark several weeks back therefore "could" is unnecessary.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Apr 23, 2009 -> 02:31 PM) I could fill up the whole damn forum with his blame game. lol, "could"

I'm pretty sure I'll be at this game. I saw Colon pitch vs. the Orioles when he was on the Red Sox last year, he looked pretty sharp.

I take that back, I remember I did send in an empty ballot with just a write-in for TCQ.

This is not something that's so easily quantifiable, you can't really just take statements from random people and take them at face value.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Apr 23, 2009 -> 12:17 PM) Which, honestly, would be kinda cool. Just a little bit.