LowerCaseRepublican

Stop the presses! MrEye and I actually agree on something.

As SF420 told me, you're only getting your media from the ultra left (despite the fact right wingers like Pat Buchanan and Congressman Ron Paul are coming out against the war and Libertarians now are even coming out against the Iraq war) and that the sources you'd cite to have evidence that Iraq and AQ did not work together are "unproven sources" (yet somehow all the media that lauded the rush to war was somehow credible and above reproach?)

It was a guess because I knew it was 3000 or so.

The Cato Institute is a far right Libertarian think tank which is one of many sources that I read...including the far right Libertarian page www.antiwar.com So calling them far left is an insult to their ideology and just makes you look more inaccurate How do I ignore threads with valid points in them? And how exactly are my sources "far left"? More examples with no proof...real convincing.

Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

It seems you're seeing one side of the story (i.e. that the Iraq war was justified etc.) and have no real basis for the position. Most people like Richard Clarke, William Blum and others have seen both sides sitting on policy boards for the Pentagon and in Presidential administrations and have found it hard to swallow the pill the administration (Bush and LBJ/Nixon respectively for Clarke and Blum) was feeding the public. Just because they, or anybody, has an opinion on a topic does not mean that they haven't seen all sides of the issue.

9/11 death count: Approx. 3025

More citations doesn't always mean more credible, but when you back it up with testimonials from people involved, ownership reports, history and other documentation then proof is pretty damn clear.

From D-Day: "And when he gets to Heaven / To St. Peter he will tell / One more soldier reporting, sir / I've served my time in Hell"

Actually the information I post comes from a wide variety of well respected groups like the Cato Institute, experts in policy fields and other respected academics and journalists that have proven themselves conclusively with their evidence. Reading the PoV from a respected source, taking the evidence they cite to make the claim and then finding out it's conclusive is really all it takes to show that they have facts. That's where my assertions come from.

As King of the Hill said: "Guns don't kill people. The government does." If legislators worried more about how to educate people regarding gun safety and that going to a gun to solve a problem when pissed is not the best decision than they did about banning more 'domesticated' weapons like handguns and shotguns, then I believe that gun violence would go way down. [keeping assault rifles and machine guns out of the public's hands is smart. As Wesley Clark stated: "If you want an assault rifle, join the military. We have a lot of them."] It's more the ideology that people go to guns to solve problems that needs to be addressed rather than simply removing guns. Prohibition of alcohol did not work, the war on drugs did not work and simply removing guns because they are a threat when used improperly (improper in this sense being not law abiding) will follow the same trend.

Saudi Arabia is our "ally". Plus Iraq is a tactical pivot (this is according to a Pentagon Policy Board presentation in May 2003 when it was reported), Saudi Arabia is a strategic pivot and Egypt is the prize. As Libertarian author Justin Raimondo states, "The calculated instability provoked by U.S. military intervention in Iraq plays right into the Murawiec-Perle scenario. As Al Qaeda garners growing popular support in Saudi Arabia, and the country descends into civil war, one or another wing of the House of Saud asks for U.S. intervention to avert anarchy – and the "strategic pivot" is ours." Iraq has a few trillion bucks worth of oil which is good for the growing merger of the military and industry (an unfortunate state of affairs in the growing military industrial complex, something that Eisenhower warned the American public about) plus it is a strategic pivot for further military action in the Mid-East. The oil was only part of the puzzle, a very lucrative piece of the puzzle since Iraq is, I believe, the #2 oil reserve. As for Venezuela, as long as Chavez is in power, the Bush administration is going to have very tense relations. Coups have been trying to oust him from power (mostly the economic elites in the area) As investigative reporter for the BBC, Guardian and other newspapers Greg Palast states: "Whatever else you hear about Venezuela, this is the story in a single frame. Like apartheid-riven South Africa, the whites, 20% of the population, have the nation's wealth under lock and key. The Rich Fifth have command of the oil wealth, the best jobs, the English-language lessons, the imported clothes, the vacations in Miami, the plantations. That is, until Hugo Chavez came along. Now the brown people, like community activist Lara -- and President Chavez himself-- have a piece of the action. "Negro e indio," Chavez calls himself. Black and Indian. And the blondes don't like it." The White House once said that Chavez' winning a crushing majority of the vote in his 2000 election did not confer "legitimacy" on Chavez' presidency.

If it's bulls***, then prove it with a little thing called evidence and fact. Calling it bulls*** means nothing unless you can debunk it. The rationales for the Iraq war have been debunked and I personally don't like it when Americans are lied to and it causes people to die and tactically we are tied up for a very long time in Iraq.

Afghanistan was the actual threat where actual terrorists are. I was dismayed that the US put $0 in the 2003 budget to rebuild Afghanistan (my favorite Rummy quote: "We lowballed it." Can't get much lower than zero can we?) The difference is that Afghanistan and the Taliban regime were harboring bin Laden whereas Iraq did not pose a threat to the US and did not attack the US. The neo-conservatives in high policy making areas of Congress (see Perle, Feith, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Cheney and other members of PNAC) and the Administration seized on the opportunity to invade Iraq, something PNAC had been calling for since 1997 in order to gain control of the natural resource oil supplies that Iraq is full of.

I think Bush would win a duel. After all, he's got the tutelage of Zell Miller (if you saw a recent ep. of Hardball, Zell actually said he wished he could challenge Chris Matthews to a duel ) Video: http://politicalhumor.about.com/od/multime...lmillerduel.htm And we all know that Kerry looks like Lurch (or Ash in Army of Darkness when he comes through the Necronomicon portal and has the huge chin) but is anybody with me that Zell sorta looks like Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars? As for guns, if guns are taken away then only criminals will have guns. People will be clamoring for them and getting them if they want to. Complete prohibition of a problem never solved anything. Education to get people not to be dumbasses with something be it drugs, guns or whatnot needs to be stressed rather than kneejerk reactions removing the problem from the country...and as we know kneejerk reactions usually fail horribly.

Would the reasons for the invasion be the WMD that have yet to be found yet we were told we knew where they were at (Donald Rumsfeld: "We know where they are at. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat".) or the Powell speech that was plagiarized from 1991 grad school work or the testimony of Hussein Kamal, the weapons program director for Iraq (which oddly said that they ended all programs by 1993-1995 in compliance with UN regulations...but of course that never came out) or would it be the discredited Africa/nukes or Bush's citation of a non-existant UN Atomic Energy Agency report saying Iraq was getting nuclear capabilities or the non-existant connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda (there was a relationship in the early 1990s but juxtaposing that years later is laughable...the same argument could be made for our interaction with bin Laden in the 1980s when he was with the Moujhadeen terrorist organization fighting the Russians) or the absolute zero evidence to show that AQ aided Iraq in bomb making/bio weapons manufacturing (the area Powell said they were using in Northern Iraq was outside Iraq's control and under the control of the US/UK bombing campaigns) or the chemical agents that even the US believes, even IF they did have them, are well past their useful date and useless as weapon fodder or how about the weather ballon labs sold to Iraq by the British government that the US/UK claimed were biological weapons labs (that claim re: the weapons labs was debunked pre-war)? Here's a link to a site with plenty of news articles for evidence of claims I made:. http://www.dougbasham.com/iraqwarlies.html or you can just google Iraq war lies. I value the military much too much to have them go fight a purely elective war, when the evidence is so damn flimsy that it falls apart so easily. I value what they are asked to do and would rather not abuse that by sending them into a very poor foreign policy decision. (This goes back to the Clinton war crimes of indiscriminate bombings in Kosovo/Yugoslavia. I'm of the mind that Clinton and Albright should be brought before a War Crimes Tribunal as well for crimes against humanity :;see Nuremburg Tribunal precedent for the legalese: As for corporate America, we run on money but we do not have to accept corporations being allowed off-shore tax havens, increasing the tax load on Americans while these same corporations get benefits and corporate welfare from our government (taxpayer subsidized) nor do we have to accept corporations abusing work forces in 3rd world countries using sweatshops like Gap, Old Navy, Nike and a host of other companies that use cheap labor to make their products to increase their profits. Companies need to maximize profits but at the same time be socially responsible. Blind allegiance to globalization is insane.

420, actually I did discuss that. The GOP takes a higher moral ground with the cop beating asserting that they would not stoop to that level. This video shows that they all do it and false moral indignation (much like they did on both parties with the Clinton impeachment over getting a BJ campaign) is absolute bulls***.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/n...m/odd_bush_dc_2 "We've got an issue in America. Too many good docs are getting out of business. Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country."

Wow...resorting to personal insults. Denial is a b****? Because I'd rather have my nation give actual reasons for war that causes 900+ Americans to die along with 13,000-37,000+ Iraqi civilians (body counts vary since there are no official counts), believe that my government is in the pocket of corporate interests rather than being held accountable to the American public, Americans losing jobs to corporate outsourcing that pay 3rd world wages and violate labor laws etc. etc. This nation is great but the growing descent into the revokation of Posse Comitatus, the loss of liberty in the name of "security" (the government is using the PATRIOT Act against random criminals and not "terrorists" so it's becoming a slippery slope for the abuse of our liberties) is disheartening. It's especially disheartening when people spew this sort of slime like 420 did.

As Kap says, they all do it. They had plenty of indignation that some delegates had water spit/thrown on them and in return, they get in a melee and a guy kicks a protester while the protester is down. That's all I was trying to show.

In the words of HL Mencken: The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naive and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.

Note: I edited the S out of the title as per Goldmember's correction. Thanks, Goldmember...your soberness is much appreciated.

Whoops...I actually didn't notice that S in there on Protesters. I'll fix that up. Staying up til 6 am after night after night after night of heavy drinking tends to wear on a person.

420, it's called a joke. Bush says the reason we were attacked is because the terrorists hate freedom. I played on that saying that if the terrorists really hated freedom then the Netherlands would be f***ing dust.

From Wikipidia, the free online encyclopedia. King's tox screens after being arrested showed alcohol and Mary Jane...no PCP but nice try there CK. The cops' defense team tried arguing the PCP point but they had no evidence to back it up. The police kicked King and struck him 56 times with night sticks, first to knock him on the ground, then to keep him there as he attempted to lift his head while he lay on the ground. In addition to the three officers personally involved in delivering blows, 24 other law enforcement officers watched the beating, then assisted in holding King down by placing their feet on his back. Two other African-American passengers who were in the car with King cooperated with police and were not harmed. Holding a man down on the ground so he is immobilized and then continually beating the s*** out him with night sticks...and you're defending this? Maybe next you can defend the NYPD sodomizing a person they were interrogating with a plunger handle like they got busted for.