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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LakesideTrader who wrote (69676)	11/10/2005 10:39:32 PM
From: Skywatcher	Respond to of 81568

Not really...most reside in the GWBUSH is the greatest president on earth group..... so it's fine by me he's GOING DOWN with the rest of the CRIMINAL CABAL

To: LakesideTrader who wrote (69676)	11/10/2005 10:40:20 PM
From: Skywatcher	Respond to of 81568

guess I'm not the only one McCain urges changes in Bush's Iraq strategy By Vicki Allen2 hours, 19 minutes ago Republican Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record), a major backer of the Iraq war, said on Thursday the Bush administration must make broad changes in its strategy to confront the insurgency in Iraq, and commit more troops and resources to the effort. McCain, the Arizona maverick who challenged George W. Bush for the presidential nomination in 2000 and is considered likely to make another run, repudiated calls from many Democrats for a plan to start withdrawing troops from Iraq. In his speech to the American Enterprise Institute, he also praised the resolve of Bush, whose poll ratings have plummeted partly on discontent over the Iraq war. McCain stood firm in his dispute with the White House over legislation he has proposed outlawing torture or cruel and inhumane treatment of U.S. prisoners. Vice President Dick Cheney is working in Congress to exempt the CIA from such a formal ban. "We're either going to have a blanketed uniform standard or we're not," McCain said in answer to a question. He said torturing to get information was immoral, was not effective and encouraged potential enemies to do the same to Americans. A senior member of the Armed Services Committee, McCain said the administration must take a new approach in Iraq that he said would require more U.S. troops and would "take time, probably years, and mean more American casualties." The United States has 150,000 troops in Iraq. More than 2,050 U.S. military personnel have been killed there. Instead of trying to shift forces around the country to secure all of Iraq from insurgents, McCain said the Pentagon should concentrate on securing and then holding insurgent strongholds. "Our forces cannot hold the ground indefinitely, and when they move on to fight other battles, the insurgent ranks replenish and strongholds fill again," McCain said. "Our troops must then re-enter the same area and refight the same battle." Instead of focusing on killing and capturing insurgents, he said the Pentagon should protect local populations to create "secure areas where insurgents find it difficult to operate" and areas where "civil society can emerge" through reconstruction and political progress. McCain criticized the Pentagon for rotating generals in and out of Iraq instead of benefiting from their knowledge and experience. He also said the Iraq effort had been too concentrated in the Pentagon, and should be shared among other key agencies. To build Iraqi forces to eventually replace U.S. forces, McCain said the United States should insist units be diversified among ethnic groups to help unite the country, even though that would be more difficult and time-consuming. He said the administration must redouble efforts to rebuild support for the war domestically, and more accurately portray events on the ground "even if they are negative."

To: LakesideTrader who wrote (69676)	11/11/2005 8:27:58 AM
From: ChinuSFO	Respond to of 81568

People could choose to ignore someone when their philosophy does not agree with the person they decide to ignore. Anyway, there is good news coming out of Jordan in that the Jordanians have taken to the street against the terrorists. I am confident that these people will achieve their goal of winning against the terrorists and make a mockery of Bush's efforts. Bush decided to go it alone in the war against terrorism. He unilaterally decided to send troops into Iraq and keep them there to kill innocent civilians. The people of Jordan on the other hand decided to make matters in their own hands. They do not needs US military to cleanse their country of terrorists. This is not a Hate America and some right wing extremists would tend to label it as. It is to point out to the greatest idiot to occupy the WH that there is a better way to fight a war against terrorism than his way. That there is better way instead of madly rushing at them with fire power like he did. Instead you have to identify the hidden enemy with the rest of the world, then surround the enemy and kill and choke it to death. We all need to support the people of Jordan in their fight. Send them all the money, send them the high tech gear to monitor movement on people in public such as cameras etc. etc.

To: LakesideTrader who wrote (69676)	11/11/2005 11:40:46 AM
From: Skywatcher	Respond to of 81568

TORTURE And why it should never be one (the answer) By Larry C. Johnson, LARRY C. JOHNSON, a former CIA officer, was a deputy director of the State Department Office of Counterterrorism from 1989 to 1993. I THINK Dick Cheney has been watching too many Hollywood flicks that glorify torture. He needs to get out of his undisclosed location and talk to the people on the ground. I'm a former CIA officer and a former counterterrorism official. During the last few months, I have spoken with three good friends who are CIA operations officers, all of whom have worked on terrorism at the highest levels. They all agree that torturing detainees will not help us. In fact, they believe that it will hurt us in many ways. These are the very people the vice president wants to empower to torture — and they don't want to do it. I have some experience of my own with "duress interrogation." Back when I was undergoing paramilitary training at a CIA facility in 1986, my colleagues and I were interrogated to prepare us in case we were taken hostage. At one point we were "captured" by faux terrorists. After being stripped naked and given baggy military uniforms, we entered a CIA version of Gitmo. We were deprived of sleep for 36 hours, given limited rice and water and forced to stand in place. Our interrogators — all U.S. military personnel — coaxed and harangued us by turns. Those of us who declined to cooperate were stuffed into punishment boxes — miniature coffins that induced claustrophobia. After 30 hours, one of my classmates gave me up in exchange for a grape soda and a ham sandwich. The lesson of this training was that everyone has a breaking point. But our instructors were not recommending breaking detainees through torture. Instead, they emphasized the need to build rapport and trust with people who had information we wanted. Two of my friends, one a classmate from hostage school, served in Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Some Americans believe that the suicide attack on the World Trade Center justifies using all techniques to get information from terrorist suspects. But my friends recognize correctly that their mission is to gather intelligence, not to create new enemies. If you inflict enough pain on someone, they will give you information, but what they tell you may not be true. You will have to corroborate it, which will take time. And, unless you kill every suspect you brutalize, you will make enemies of them, their families, maybe their entire villages. What real CIA field officers know firsthand is that it is better to build a relationship of trust — even with a terrorist, even if it's time-consuming — than to extract quick confessions through tactics such as those used by the Nazis and the Soviets, who believed that national security always trumped human rights. And that's the point. We should never use our fear of being attacked as justification for dehumanizing ourselves or others. Before the CIA gets all the blame for promoting the torture mentality, we ought to note that Hollywood's hands are dirty as well. In last year's "Man on Fire," we saw Denzel Washington give a corrupt Mexican cop a plastic explosive enema. He also taped the hands of another errant cop to the steering wheel and began to snip off digits in an effort to find out the whereabouts of a kidnapped child. I am not advocating that terrorists be given room service at the Four Seasons. Some sleep deprivation — of the sort mothers of newborns all endure — and spartan living conditions are appropriate. What we must not do is use physical pain or the threat of drowning, as in "waterboarding," to gain information. Tough, relentless questioning is OK. Torture is not. Thankfully, several Republican senators, including John McCain and Lindsey Graham, are defying Cheney's campaign for a torture loophole. Cheney's plea to permit CIA officers unrestricted interrogation methods would be the death of the CIA as a professional intelligence service and another stain on the reputation of the U.S.