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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stockman_scott who wrote (146915)	10/3/2004 1:31:38 PM
From: Win Smith	Respond to of 281500

That was quite a column from Friedman, who used to be be a semi-favorite of the war cheerleaders pre-war. Funny, that. One particular point, among many: For all of President Bush's vaunted talk about being consistent and resolute, the fact is he never established U.S. authority in Iraq. Never. This has been the source of all our troubles. We have never controlled all the borders, we have never even consistently controlled the road from Baghdad airport into town, because we never had enough troops to do it. Not to engage in bogus analogistics or anything, but if Saigon was ever as "secure" as Baghdad apparently is now, during the US presence in Vietnam, I wonder what the reaction would have been? Near as I can tell, Iraq never got secure enough to even fly in troops regularly, I think they still do overland convoys from Kuwait. What a mess. It's all somebody else's fault, though. Under the one true Republican form of "personal responsibility", it would be heinous to even think that W has anything to do with what's gone wrong.

To: stockman_scott who wrote (146915)	10/4/2004 8:49:34 AM
From: michael97123	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 281500

On Friday in support of bush i said that when a ceo is fired he is replaced from a pool of hundreds of candidates of the highest quality. When we replace a President, we have only one other choice and if he is not materially better i would not suppport changing horses in midstream. I thought about that this weekend and then tried to project a kerry presidency over the four year term. I went back to my old criteria that politics is a game and that i would not vote based on what a candidate said he would do when speaking to his base. Then i thought about a second term for bush. I concluded that a second bush admin would only occur if the evangelical vote grew enough to offset the large numbers of folks registering (particularly young folks) who are registering to dump bush. I decided that the danger that the new ceo presented was less than a divisive second Bush term. I warned folks on Lindy Bills thread this spring that these rovian tactics would backfire. I think its starting now. The gang that couldnt fire rummy or the gang that couldnt replace darth vader with rudy or mccain or the gang who cant admit mistakes, any mistakes is not worthy of a second term. So i have to hope for gridlock so kerrys extreme liberal agenda on tax and spend will lead to a grand compromise to fund the goverment and the war going forward. So i have to hope for an excellent team of advisors--no halfbrights and many wholebrooks and bidens and rubins. Having said all of this, bush still has 30 days to change my mind. Personally i think that would have to happen at the friday debate. And of course kerry has the same 30 days to scare the hell out of me with some of the stupid things he says. But as of now i will vote for kerry today. Mike PS I was at a wedding this weekend and folks were mocking bush. Republicans and independents like myself had no ammunition. Some of the stuff was so funny--how many times can one guy say you know where i stand and kerry is a flipflopper. Doesnt rove know that the last thing you want to do is put the emperor out there with no clothes.