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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: rrufff who wrote (26629)	10/2/2004 10:30:36 AM
From: redfish	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 173976

Politicians are beholden to their constituencies ... Gore's constituency would not have supported the occupation of Iraq, too many peaceniks in the party.

To: rrufff who wrote (26629)	10/2/2004 10:37:31 AM
From: jttmab	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 173976

Yes - I am a firm believer in governmental incompetence, as the most ingrained pervasive glue, having witnessed it in real life, studied it in real life, etc. Having worked on both sides [government and private sector], I've witnessed incompetence on both sides. Incompetence isn't unique to the government. But incompetence is predictable only in the sense that there will be incompetence. The specific act of incompetence is not predictable. The DoD accepted the validity of Chalabi and his cronies, while the State Dept and CIA did not. Pick three random replacements for SECDEF, SEC State, and Director of the CIA....you can't possibly expect that the specific error of incompetence will be exactly repeated. Pretty easy to sit back and say "coulda woulda shoulda.".. I agree with that to a limited extent. I would agree, for example, that at one point in time [based on the intelligence available] that each one would believe that Saddam had stockpiles of WMD. However, I would not agree that after the weapons inspectors were given intelligence that was repeatedly shown to be wrong, that every possible "President" would continue to have high confidence that the intelligence was still correct. Within the margin of error, I do believe we would be pretty much where we are today It depends on what your strategy is. Suppose I flip a coin 1,000 times. Roughly, 500 times it will come up heads. If I flip the coin another 1,000 times it will, roughly, 1/2 of the time come up heads. Within the margin of error, things are pretty much the same. Now add betting strategy and money management to the game. In one strategy, I'll place my entire betting fund on the first flip of the coin [for heads] and continue to bet that and all winnings on subsequent bets. It's likely that by the second or third bet I'll be out of the game, broke. Pick a different betting strategy and you'll at a minimum stay much longer in the game. Clinton was prohibited by the Republican Congress from using US military in Iraq. After 9/11 can you guarantee that nearly the same Republican Congress would have allowed Clinton to use US military in Iraq? Cabinet/shnabinet - Colin Powell. Great thinker, no shrinking violet. - It seems apparent that Bush didn't think that Powell was a great thinker. Though if you were President, you would say that you would reject Powell's thoughts just the same. jttmab