Re: "In the meantime, maybe you should consider the fact that your apparent partisan zeal places you in an untenable position."
LOL!!!
Re: "On the one hand you cannot stop yourself from ridiculing the absolute idiocy of a long series of immature decisions in Iraq which have cost, and will continue to cost, this country tremendously."
I agree that the Iraq war was an immature decision, but I also contend that it was quite popular. In fact, it has only been quite recent that support for the comment "invading Iraq was a mistake" has exceeded 50%. I don't claim that the majority of the public is mature.
Re: "In your view and in mine, this was not a "close call;" only dogmatic, privileged and protected people swollen with their own power or scared stupid would embark on such a course, much less maintain it."
More than 50% of the public supported this thing. Are you calling 120 million people "dogmatic, privileged and protected"? And like I said before, I didn't see you talking guerilla war before the war started.
Re: "You can justify your position by falling back onto "left wing," or "far left" bunkers, but the fact is that Kerry's cabinet was rumored to be slated to look a lot like Clinton's cabinet."
First, I was never a supporter of Clinton or his cabinet, so why are you bringing this up. Second, this sort of rumor is essentially useless. Third, by replying to my post in this way, you are tacitly admitting that Kerry did, in fact, come from one of the most liberal states in the union, and was, in fact, one of the most liberal members of the Senate. Here, let me give you some links to facts, not rumors:
...
On a scale that ranges from 0 to 100, Mr. Kerry compiled a composite liberal score for 2003 of 96.5, the highest in the Senate.
...
washingtontimes.com
That number was artificially inflated due to Kerry's absence from the Senate while running for the nomination. But if you back up to the year before, in 2002, Kerry's rating was 87, right up there with Kenedy's 89:
vote-smart.org
This link gives the lifetime scores and shows that Kerry was a member of the leftmost third of the Democratic party. Of the 48 senators, he was number 11. That is, from the various Democratic senators, there were only 10 worse choices than Kerry, while there were 37 better:
blog.johnkerry.com
Re: "But hey, many people meet criticism with criticism when they're stuck in a box of their own making. You, of all people, should be familiar with that emotional impulse since I've seen it employed against you many times."
What you're doing here is making ad hominem attacks instead of sticking to the issue. Like I said before, you haven't shown any links that would (a) indicate that the administration should have known that there was going to be a serious guerilla war before the election (in the sense of a widespread expectation of one), or (b) that Kerry was not a far left member of the left wing party.
Hey, if it were the case that the Democrats were standing up and predicting that there was still going to be a bloody guerilla war two years after the invasion, I could see your point. But that is simply not the case. The guerilla war was, for the vast majority of the people, quite unexpected.
On the other hand, what we WERE warned about was that the oil fields would be set on fire -- didn't happen, at least right away, that massive WMDs would be used against US soldiers or against Iraqi civilians -- didn't happen, and that our massive pumping of Iraqi oil would drop the price. Remember that?
By the way, the war was far less supported in Britain than here, but Blair is still their leader. As in the US, domestic concerns generally outweigh international concerns.
-- Carl |
