Victory!
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That's where I feel misunderstood. My opinion is borne out of LOVE for these people (both our soldiers and innocent Iraqi's) and a hope that their efforts WON'T be in vain.
Just because my opinion and position is different from another is no indication that I'm a 'liberal, unpatriotic snob'. My life experiences have taught me different things than the experiences of others. I generally believe violence breeds more violence (there are exceptions of course).
I could just as easily say that those promoting war in Iraq are unpatriotic to waste our lives and resources on a country who's population doesn't want to change. Sounds to me like the epitome of anti-patriotism to me.
I recognize the issue is not as simple as I illustrated, but it makes my point.
oops…bad grammar again. Mike, you got me fired up over that one…my mistake for taking you too seriously.
babs,
Puleese! You use the term 'The Left' as a pejoritive term all of the time and now this one time I'm supposed to inject MY definition into what you say?
Sorry. No will do.
But it does go to show why you are so confused about everything you think is perfectly clear, you expect the reader to differentiate between voices in your head.
Just like I'm supposed to discern between which blue underlined thingy has "facts" and which one has opinions.
Dude,
The guy is scroll fodder, he's not worth having a discussion with because he thinks the whole exercise of discussion is about the disrepresentation of what is said.
I don't even read his posts. I don't know why he bothers to cite me in them.
Mr. A
[quote=babbling looney][quote=mranonymous2u]
"The Military has been gradually reduced and marginalized for decades. "
Who did that? You want to know? He was Secretary of Defense under President Bush I. His name was DICK CHENEY! Look it up!
So what? Again ...looking at the past and pointing fingers instead of trying to look ahead and fix the mistakes that have been made by decades of both Democrats and Repbulicans. Do you dispute that the military has been reduced and marginalized . That they have, among other things, been ejected from recruiting in institutions of higher learning.....now there is an oxymoron.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1730016/posts
Opinions in a debate as opinions is a qualified tactic as long as you support those opinions with FACTS and not just more opinions. "
Point out the facts that you have presented please.
Sure I did. Those little blue underline thingies are links to listings of historical events upon which I draw my conclusions. I see that you have conveniently deleted them.
[/quote] [/quote]
Which opinion did the little blue underline thingy provide facts for?
Mr. A
[quote=mikebutler222]
And then there's Cindy Sheehan. A right wing lightning rod. <?:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
If you like, I can give you dozens of cites from the MSM and liberal/left writers about how "Peace Mom" was the catalyist for the "peace movemnent". It's rather strange to see that twisting into "right wing lightening rod"
It is the right that has made her the poster girl for everything anti-Bush.
Personally, I find her to a very mild antiwar protester, as antiwar protesters go. By <?:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Vietnam era standards she wouldn't even register on the national scene.
I donno, she blamed the president for the death of her volunteer, re-enlisted son and that the terrorists who actually killed him were innocent. Saying Bush is the world’s biggest terrorist. Posing with Chavez. What does she have to do, appear in a video with some guys about to cut the head off an “infidel”?
Exactly the right wing diatribe I speak of. She's a mother who lost her son. She's gonna say and do a lot of things no doubt some not so smart. I don't think any of her actions paint her as anything more than what she is, a person in pain who wants the killing to stop. You want the killing to stop too, don't you? It's the right that elevates her to something more than a mother who is against the war.
But the right wing handlers decided to campaign her as the anti-Bush.
I have to assume that’s a typo. It sure wasn’t the “right wing” to made “Peace Mom” what she is.
It's the right that has marginalized her anti war stance in an attempt to paint desent, ops make that dissent, as unpatriotic. The right has latched on to such garbage as Sheehan is helping the enemy. As if they need any help defeating this President.
Bush is on record as having an Iraq agenda 911 was excuse to execute it.
I don’t even know what that means. If you’re saying Bush said POST-9/11 we can’t let Saddam shake off sanctions having never submitted fully to WMD inspections, I agree. If you’re saying Bush linked Saddam to 9/11, well, no.
Prior to 9/11 Bush had made "Dealing with Iraq" a priority of his admin. Dealing with can correctly be read as militarily. It was just a matter of when and how. Shortly after 9/11 Cheney or maybe it was Rummy ordered Richard Clark to find an Iraq connection to the terrorist attacks. Problem was there was none and they were told so. Yet instead of that news flash stopping the admin from moving forward with the invade Iraq plan they merely changed the reasoning for invasion to WMD. This even though there was no hard evidence that Iraq wasn't in compliance with UN sanctions. We made a strong case that it was our belief that they weren't, however, right up to the day of the invasion military intell officers charged with finding WMDs worried about the complete lack of actual targets. It looked like they had WMDs but we'd not seen any prior to the war starting. Yet it is why we went to war. Like I said, Bush used 9/11 as an excuse to execute his Iraq plan. This is outlined in Woodward's newest book "State of Denial." Woodward is noone's schill. Read and then render judgement.
At the time the terrorist were consentrated in Afganistan.
AQ members and other terrorists had been living the fat life in Saddam’s Iraq long before we went to Afghanistan.
As well as Saudi Arabia, Yeman, and a host of other middle eastern and North/Central Africian countries, not to mention Malaysia. Why not invade them too?
It took a lawsuit and a court order to get FEMA to reinstate housing, which was taken away, to Katrina victims.
Let me guess, FEMA was following regs about how long they were to provide housing before state and local agencies were supposed to take over the job. FEMA can’t win. They made it easy to get funds and help to people and there was outrage a short time later when it turned out money flowed too quickly to be well accounted for. Now they get banged for not being lenient enough. I have news for you, I went through a hurricane and the resulting FEMA process, it’s never neat and tidy, it’s catch as catch can in a disaster area.
FEMA made it easy? Now that's a typo right? Actually the way FEMA handed out the money to the republican faithful was easy and probably criminal. After completely bungling the clean up, not helping many if not most of those in need, you're right, the big hand struck 12 and FEMA threw all those people it should have helped out on their butts. They followed that up with letters that identified only in code how, & why those in need had been denied. The court ordered an apology for that insult. So the story is inept agency fails in its mandate, and then uses the rule book to deny benefits, pack up and go home.
[/quote]You folks have been having way too much fun with this thread. It took me a while to get caught up.
So now the subject has changed from victory in Iraq to victory in Louisiana? You'd better start reading the code of Napoleon.
No agency could possibly have been adequately funded and prepared for disaster on the scale of Katrina and Rita. Programs like FEMA are always standing toward the rear of the soup line.
The aftermath of these tragedies was predictible confusion. What was shameless was the media and the left using it as another vehicle with which to bash the administration.
This has been a generalized theme of the opposition since GW was elected. To latch on to anything negative that happens and blame the president, irregardless of true culpability.
Exactly! Irregardless of the true culprit!
Irregardless of the favortism and cronyism that was exposed in this administration.
Irregardless of the fact that the administration was not in the least bit prepared for another terrorist strike on this nation! They couldn't even handle a threat they KNEW was on it's way! That was the reason that Katrina was the beginning of the end for Bush et al. Because we found out just how competant his team was, and it's scarry!
We let this team spend billions of dollars, thinking they were making a cracker-jack response team. Then we saw what our billions bought us!
We thought, "Hey, at least we know that if there's another 911, Homeland Security will be ready to pick up the shattered pieces. If there's a biological terror hit, they'll be able to bring it under control right away!" We were irregadrless of the facts, before Katrina.
Once we regarded them, we knew what they were and who was culpable.
Mr. A
[quote=dude]irregardless? Are you sure?[/quote]
He meant regardless but then again I get totally get it with the misuse and misspelling of words.
[quote=Pandale]
You folks have been having way too much fun with this thread. It took me a while to get caught up.
So now the subject has changed from victory in Iraq to victory in Louisiana? You'd better start reading the code of Napoleon.
No agency could possibly have been adequately funded and prepared for disaster on the scale of Katrina and Rita. Programs like FEMA are always standing toward the rear of the soup line.
The aftermath of these tragedies was predictible confusion. What was shameless was the media and the left using it as another vehicle with which to bash the administration.
This has been a generalized theme of the opposition since GW was elected. To latch on to anything negative that happens and blame the president, irregardless of true culpability.
[/quote]
Let me ask you something. Have you seen the video of Bush at some event or press conference telling us that the reason that the response was so badly botched was that he had no idea about the magnitude of the storm? If you haven't, it's must watch TV. REGARDLESS of whether you've seen it, those pesky left leaning journalist have matched it up with another video. In this one, a briefing to Bush by the head of the Natl Hurricane Center in Miami. Anyone watching and listening can clearly hear the briefer tell Bush that it's a cat 4 storm that may go to cat 5 and WILL hit New Orleans or close enough and will be a federal disaster. To which Bush responds that he understands.
That briefing took place a day before landfall clearly contradicts the president's claim that he didn't know how bad it was going to be and thus didn't push to get the response rolling. He is, in impolite terms, caught in a lie on the video. Then there's Chertoff telling reporters he didn't know people were trapped at the Superdome while at the same time CNN was showing those trapped people. And yet it is we, who demand accountablity, who are wrong?
The admin has no place to hide on this so they've spun their well documented Katrina response failure into a left wing political attack. What's really unbelievable is that there are people who have bought into the spin. Pandale, you come to mind here.
Iraq and Katrina are linked by the same inept and non forthright leadership.
Sorry, regardless.
You can't blame the president for everything that goes wrong, yet that has been the tactic. I'll admit it has been a successfull strategy, but is gaining political ground in this manner worth the consequences. Does it, in fact assist our adversaries?
What people forget about Iraq is that we are not dealing with enemies that are a bunch of idiots. They are quite intelligent and well versed in methods to influence events through military tactics as well as our own political processes and media.
Not every failure in Iraq is the fault of the administration. All wars have failures. All wars have failures and all have cost. The behavior of our media and opposition have undermined the ability of this country to wage an effective war.
Example: Abu Graib. Excuse me, torture? That kind of torture reminded me of the comfy chair skit in Monty Python! The media had a feeding frenzy with it.
[quote=BondGuy][quote=mikebutler222]
And then there's Cindy Sheehan. A right wing lightning rod. <?:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
If you like, I can give you dozens of cites from the MSM and liberal/left writers about how "Peace Mom" was the catalyist for the "peace movemnent". It's rather strange to see that twisting into "right wing lightening rod"
It is the right that has made her the poster girl for everything anti-Bush.
The right didn't create her, it's awfully weird to have you blame the right for her high profile.
Personally, I find her to a very mild antiwar protester, as antiwar protesters go. By <?:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Vietnam era standards she wouldn't even register on the national scene.
I donno, she blamed the president for the death of her volunteer, re-enlisted son and that the terrorists who actually killed him were innocent. Saying Bush is the world’s biggest terrorist. Posing with Chavez. What does she have to do, appear in a video with some guys about to cut the head off an “infidel”?
Exactly the right wing diatribe I speak of.
Since when is quoting the woman, her own words a "right wing diatribe"?
I don't think any of her actions paint her as anything more than what she is, a person in pain who wants the killing to stop. You want the killing to stop too, don't you? It's the right that elevates her to something more than a mother who is against the war.
You really need to stop blaming the right for this darling/creation of the left. While I understand her pain, trying to paint her as someone who simply wants to stop the killing is, well, disingenious at best.
But the right wing handlers decided to campaign her as the anti-Bush.
I have to assume that’s a typo. It sure wasn’t the “right wing” to made “Peace Mom” what she is.
It's the right that has marginalized her anti war stance in an attempt to paint desent, ops make that dissent, as unpatriotic.
I never said anything about being "unpatriotic", but it's astounding how quickly the left raises that as a defense. Again, I simply quoted the woman.
The right has latched on to such garbage as Sheehan is helping the enemy. As if they need any help defeating this President.
When did I say anything about her helping the enemy? Another false charge.
OTOH, just as Giap in Vietnam knew he had to win the PR battle here since he couldn't win the military battle there, her words do, in fact, aid the enemy. HOWEVER, I wouldn't silence her just because of that side effect and I NEVER suggested we should.
Bush is on record as having an Iraq agenda 911 was excuse to execute it.
I don’t even know what that means. If you’re saying Bush said POST-9/11 we can’t let Saddam shake off sanctions having never submitted fully to WMD inspections, I agree. If you’re saying Bush linked Saddam to 9/11, well, no.
Prior to 9/11 Bush had made "Dealing with Iraq" a priority of his admin. Dealing with can correctly be read as militarily.
Pure, unadulterated nonsense. "Dealing" in no way shape or form is purely military AND dealing with him, in one form or another was obviously what we were going to have to do, given his history with us and the UN on inspections.
Shortly after 9/11 Cheney or maybe it was Rummy ordered Richard Clark to find an Iraq connection to the terrorist attacks.
So says Clarke, others there said otherwise.
Yet instead of that news flash stopping the admin from moving forward with the invade Iraq plan they merely changed the reasoning for invasion to WMD.
Rubbish. There was no "move forward to invade" prior to 9/11, there was an acknowledgement of the history that Clinton commented on in the post I provided. The "changed the reasoning" is pure conspiracy gibberish. Clinton as far back as 1998 had talked about the danger Saddam posed.
This even though there was no hard evidence that Iraq wasn't in compliance with UN sanctions.
Be serious, every intel agency in the world thought he was involved in WMDs, his refusal to allow full, unimpeded inspections provided even more evidence.
Like I said, Bush used 9/11 as an excuse to execute his Iraq plan.
Lunacy....Bush said repeatedly that there was no evidence to link Saddam and 9/11.
This weaving of conspiracies, even in the face of the comments of every Democrat going back to 1998 saying the very same thing about Saddam and WMDs leaves many on the left looking like they should be wearing the tinfoil hats we hear about so often.
At the time the terrorist were consentrated in Afganistan.
AQ members and other terrorists had been living the fat life in Saddam’s Iraq long before we went to Afghanistan.
As well as Saudi Arabia, Yeman, and a host of other middle eastern and North/Central Africian countries, not to mention Malaysia. Why not invade them too?
High profile AQ members, no some local affliates, and the point is your "in Afghanistan" comment over-simplified reality.
The fact is not one of the countries you mentioned not only had AQ members and other terrorists who had killed Americans in the past living large and openly, none of the ALSO were in violation of 12 years of inspections that came in an agreement that ended a war between that country and ours. Not one of those countries not only had the terrorist links, but had had WMD programs (and fears that they continued) had shot down US planes on patrol and was the subject of a law making regime change official US policy.
IOW, apples and oranges.
It took a lawsuit and a court order to get FEMA to reinstate housing, which was taken away, to Katrina victims.
Let me guess, FEMA was following regs about how long they were to provide housing before state and local agencies were supposed to take over the job. FEMA can’t win. They made it easy to get funds and help to people and there was outrage a short time later when it turned out money flowed too quickly to be well accounted for. Now they get banged for not being lenient enough. I have news for you, I went through a hurricane and the resulting FEMA process, it’s never neat and tidy, it’s catch as catch can in a disaster area.
FEMA made it easy? Now that's a typo right?
Not at all. Right after FEMA finally made it to town they issued debit cards, remember? FEMA got in hot water when they didn't control them well enough and they ended up being used in strip clubs and the like. A GAO investigation months later said that ALL accounting controls were too loose and money was lost in a variety of ways, and it happened because they wanted to "cut the red tape" to assist.
Actually the way FEMA handed out the money to the republican faithful was easy and probably criminal.
Huh? Sounds like you forgot already what party the state and local governments in LA were made from...you're back in Lala land on this one.
After completely bungling the clean up, not helping ....
Sorry, but given how you twisted the facts above that I'm very familiar with, I'm not much interested in your take on FEMA in the Gulf.
FEMA was 24-48 hours late in getting to downtown N.O., beyond that I see nothing that happened there that didn't happen in the post-hurricane environment I saw up-close and personally. The fact that FEMA regs called for them to hand off, after a certain amount of time the housing issue to state and local gov'ts doesn't sound like ineptitude, other than on the part of the locals, it sounds like the rules Congress wrote for them.
[/quote] [/quote][quote=BondGuy]
Let me ask you something. Have you seen the video of Bush at some event or press conference telling us that the reason that the response was so badly botched was that he had no idea about the magnitude of the storm? [/quote]
Of course that's not what he said. Everyone knew what Cat strom is was. What he said was we didn't know the levees had collapsed. That's what caused the REAL problem in N.O..
Perhaps you saw the video of LA's Gov saying the VERY SAME THING hours after it became known that it had happened. IOW, believe it or not, there isn't perfect info in a disaster.
[quote=BondGuy]Then there's Chertoff telling reporters he didn't know people were trapped at the Superdome while at the same time CNN was showing those trapped people. And yet it is we, who demand accountablity, who are wrong? [/quote]
My guess in next time FEM will have TVs on and won't be taking info from lacal authorities.
If what you wanted was accountability you'd have beheaded Blanco and the the Mayor of N.O., the folks that were feeding info to Chertoff. The people who wouldn't mobilize the LA National Guard when Bush asked, the people who left school buses to sink instead of evactuating people.
FEMA was 24-48 hr behind where they should have been, but you're pinging the Feds with things the locals were to be in control of until the Feds arrived.
[quote=BondGuy]
Iraq and Katrina are linked by the same inept and non forthright leadership.
[/quote]
Thank you for the repeat of the talking points....
[quote=Pandale]
So now the subject has changed from victory in Iraq to victory in Louisiana?
[/quote]
See above "wack-a-mole debate tactics". No doubt if we continue we'll hear how Bush gave North Korea nukes, didn't pass Kyoto and caused herpes to spread in rural Arkansas.
Watch closely, because even they know none of their talking points can withstand close examination, so you'll see a misquote here, a twist of facts there and bit of baseless conspiracy-mongering thrown in for good measure.
[quote=Pandale]
You can't blame the president for everything that goes wrong, ...[/quote]
Sure you can and it's even easier if you're still simmering that he was "appointed not elected".....