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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (458277)	9/13/2003 10:26:47 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 769670

Zeev comments on 'blaming the French' investorshub.com <<...blaming the French You said, "After that French threat, the war was inevitable". As though the the French veto threat occurred in a vacuum. It didn't. Let's not kid ourselves. This dispute, like so much else concerning our current "values" in this country was dictated by MONEY. Had the U.S. been willing to negotiate with the French and share in the post-war "booty", had the U.S. assured the French we wouldn't negate their economic interests in Iraq in favor of our own, they NEVER would have threatened veto. Had Bush not surrounded himself with people so fundamentally arrogant, and so uninhibitedly greedy (yes, it is possible to be "greedy" about getting one's way 100%, greedy about not sharing power, as well as money -- although the inextricably linked network that installed young George really was looking at the $$). Gordon Gecko was wrong. Greed is not good. It is destructive. Destructive of lives, but also souls. It is now obvious that the neo-cons exercised the most crass form of ends-justifies-the-means rationalizing of everything about the Iraq invasion -- from lying to the American public about the basis, to inventing the "facts" upon which the invasion was allegedly driven. Had there been a little less greed and a lot more integrity among this morally and intellectually corrupt people, they would have diligently pursued the facts, and in so doing, would have discovered Saddam's deadly bluff for what it was -- a pure bluff. No immediate threat of WMDs, no immediate threat to anyone or anything. There was time to construct a proper alliance -- and yes, all it would have taken was coallescing around the morally justifiable equation you pointed out in your post, that there was an inhumane butcher running that country, together with a reasonable plan to SHARE control over a region whose natural resources affect the national and economic security of all in Europe as well as here. Do you think the French didn't have a price? I respect you greatly, but you are being deluded by nonsensical after-the-fact rationalizations if you think the French didn't have a price. Bush is an amateur in an adult's game, unable to see the blatant idiocies of a guy named Wolfowitz who has been so embarrassingly wrong for so long, every other President has known better than to take any of it at face value. Replay the statements made by Wolfowitz pre-war, re-read the garbage in his ivory tower delusional reports and you will see how completely, delusionally out of touch the guy is. Had Bush lived even a tiny fraction of his life in the real world, ever had to earn anything on his own, rather than having had it all handed to him, he would have learned the importance of compromise and working with others. He is fundamentally lacking in the skill sets necessary to deal in the adult world of international relations. Blame the French? The French would have made a deal. You don't think Chirac wanted a way out? You don't think Chirac was SHOCKED not to have been offered a deal? Anyone with any experience in politics or international relations could see the dance. Why blame the French rather than the party that was holding all the cards and in the position to offer the deal? We created the game, and then we set the rules -- and literally made the rules to ensure the French couldn't possibly be with us. And that is their fault?...>>

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (458277)	9/13/2003 11:01:34 AM
From: Hope Praytochange	Respond to of 769670

No Quagmire Here! by Ann Coulter Posted Sep 6, 2003 Another president began a war promising a "chance to test our weapons, to try our energy and ideas and imagination for the many battles yet to come." He said that as conditions change, "we will be prepared to modify our strategy." The heralded modifications never came, nor did an end to the war. President Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty turned out to be a bigger quagmire than Vietnam. Would that the Democrats would give the war in Iraq as much time to succeed as they are willing to give the "War on Poverty," now entering its 40th year. Instead of poor people with hope and possibility, we now have a permanent underclass of aspiring criminals knifing one another between having illegitimate children and collecting welfare checks. It is an ironclad law of economics that if you want more of something, subsidize it; if you want less of something, tax it. But liberals were shocked and bewildered to discover that when they subsidized illegitimacy, they got more of it. The War on Poverty took a crisis-level illegitimacy rate among blacks in the mid-1960s (22 percent) and tripled it to 69 percent. It transformed a negligible illegitimacy rate among whites (2 percent) to emergency proportions (22.5 percent) – higher than the black illegitimacy rate when Daniel Patrick Moynihan heralded the War on Poverty with his alarmist report on black families, "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action." (Demonstrating the sort of on-the job-training that has so impressed Hollywood elites, the state with the second highest rate of white illegitimacy is Howard Dean's Vermont.) Overall, the illegitimacy rate has skyrocketed from about 8 percent to 33.8 percent. If George Bush's war on terrorism were to go as well as the Democrats' war on poverty, in a few decades we could have four times as many angry Muslims worldwide plotting terrorist violence against Americans. Or how about an "exit strategy" for New York City's war on high rents? Rent control was introduced as a temporary wartime measure during World War II. Sixty years later, the Germans have been subdued – but government bureaucrats in New York are still setting rents, leading to the surplus of affordable housing for which the city is duly famous. The anointed live in lush five-bedroom apartments in marquee buildings for $350 a month while newcomers are forced to bid up the few units in what's left of the housing market, paying thousands of dollars per month to live in rat-infested tenements. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor recently upheld a 25-year failed experiment in race discrimination for college admissions. She breezily announced a pull-out date of 2028. Liberals admired O'Connor's Solomon-like resolution of a festering national problem and did not concern themselves with the absence of an "exit strategy." But George Bush – with the widespread support of the American people and the U.S. Congress – acts to take out a lunatic supporting Islamic terrorism, and within six months, all the Democratic presidential candidates are clamoring for an "exit strategy." Bush should promise the Democrats that there will be peace and democracy in Iraq long before the Democrats conceive of an exit strategy to the war on poverty, the war on high rents, and the war on white kids applying to Michigan Law School. The party of diversity is in lockstep in supporting all those idiotic programs. They're working just great. But our servicemen come under attack while clearing out a swamp of murderous fanatics who seek the death of all Americans and the Democrats have had enough. To be fair, encouraging Democrats to come up with new ideas is fraught with danger. One Democrat who has recently demonstrated her out-of-the-box thinking is Mattie Hunter, a Democratic state senator in Illinois. (You knew she was a Democrat when the New York Times neglected to provide a party affiliation.) After a fired employee returned to the auto supply warehouse in Hunter's district to gun down six of his former colleagues, she demanded an investigation into ... the circumstances of the gunman's firing. "How did they do it?" she said. "Did they just say, 'We're going to fire you'? Was it done professionally? In today's day, everyone is under a lot of pressure. When someone loses their job, it's a shock and tragedy in itself." Perhaps Hunter could propose a War on Firing Employees. In 50 years, 69 percent of all employees will be shooting up their workplaces, but the Democrats will urge patience in working out the bugs. humaneventsonline.com