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

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (733554)	3/22/2006 8:45:25 AM
From: PROLIFE	Respond to of 769670

For Leftists, Junk Science R Us Written by Michael Bates Wednesday, March 22, 2006 Blogosphere liberals were chuckling to themselves this week. I don’t begrudge them that. It’s a refreshing change of pace from talking to themselves. The source of their amusement was Sunday’s article in the Toronto Star titled, “How to Spot a Baby Conservative.” The story centered on a study conducted by University of California at Berkeley professor Jack Block that tracked 95 people from their days as nursery school students to adulthood. According to the article, “The whiny kids tended to grow up conservative, and turned into rigid young adults who hewed closely to traditional gender roles and were uncomfortable with ambiguity.” By contrast, “The confident kids turned out liberal and were still hanging loose, turning into bright, non-conforming adults with wide interests.” For those unfamiliar with lib-speak, “rigid” and “uncomfortable with ambiguity” are code for having a sense of right and wrong. “Hewing closely to traditional gender roles” means heterosexual, believing in conventional marriage and accepting that men and women are different. Block’s study appears in the Journal of Research Into Personality. I’m not acquainted with that obviously scintillating publication, but would hope that its other offerings are more persuasively substantive than this one. I don’t know that much can reliably be extrapolated from examining fewer than a hundred people. What objective criteria were used to establish which kids were “whiny” and which ones were “confident?” Were these the only determinants of an individual’s politics or were other factors measured and taken into account? How representative of the general population were kids enrolled in a nursery school in Berkeley, California, decades ago? Could the fact they weren’t still cared for at home by their mothers have affected the outcome? Professor Block gained some notoriety in 1990 with another study, one related to teen drug use. His research, concerning a group of only 101, found that those who had experimented with illegal drugs tended to be healthier and better adjusted than either drug abusers or people who had never tried dope. Compared to the experimenters, the young people who abstained were “not warm and responsive, not curious and open to new experience, not active, not vital, and not cheerful.” Sounds like another way of calling them rigid young adults who hewed closely to traditional gender roles and were uncomfortable with ambiguity. Jack Block’s curriculum vitae, thoughtfully posted on the Internet, reflects several grants from different government agencies over the years. Federal Election Commission records show the admiration is mutual; he’s made many financial contributions to big government liberals. Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich, Ralph Nader, Russell Feingold, and Barack Obama are but a few who’ve enjoyed Block’s jack. So have lefty outfits such as Moveon.org, the Council for a Livable World and America Coming Together. It may be tempting to think that the professor’s findings are colored by his own political views. It’s an enticement I’ll avoid since I don’t want to make the same mistake he seemingly does, of drawing conclusions based on inadequate data. I’ll have to remember this quality the next time I update my own curriculum vitae. Liberals have been trying to portray non-liberals as psychologically or mentally or morally unfit for a long time. More than half a century ago psychologist Harry Overstreet warned the public about individuals who resisted programs such as public housing and foreign aid. Such people, he asserted, “may appear ‘normal’ in the sense that they are able to hold a job and otherwise maintain their status as members of society; but they are, we now recognize, well along the road to mental illness.” That’s ironic when you consider reality. After all, it’s liberals who have developed an unhealthful addiction to the state. They demand that government make all sorts of decisions--from retirement plans to the size of their toilets--for responsible adults. Who it it that sees conspiracies everywhere but in abortion clinics? Who still fixates on the 2000 presidential election and just can’t, if you’ll pardon the expression, move on? Who are so emotionally fragile that Kerry’s loss sent them scurrying to mental health professionals in an effort to assuage their trauma and depression? At least one man was so distressed over the 2004 election that he blew his brains out with a shotgun. No doubt some study would have identified him as one of those active, vital, cheerful folks open to new experiences. So, OK, let liberals feel better about themselves by imagining that conservatives are complainers when they’re small children. The rest of us know with certitude which adults have a monopoly on whining. chronwatch.com

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (733554)	3/22/2006 8:47:29 AM
From: GROUND ZERO™	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

You're wrong again... it's not on the minds of most Americans, it's only on the mindless lips of those who deny the facts... are we to rehash the same thing all over again? sadam insane violated all the 1991 UN Accords, we had to go in and remove him... and if he didn't have any WMD, then why didn't he just let the inspectors do their jobs? We did what we had to do, it's that simple... there was no trick, there was no lie, there was just a President who carried out his word... only demented and senile people like helen blinded by their intense hate would ask such a question, and framed in a way to try to embarrass the President... it didn't work... every demohack attempt to disgrace the President has always backfired, they never work, when will you ever get it? Probably never... and as for helen, she's shown herself to be a desperate political whore... GZ

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (733554)	3/22/2006 9:13:06 AM
From: PROLIFE	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

In 2003, WMD threat was clear The passage of time normally brings historical events into perspective. For the cynic, hindsight is 20/20. For the historian, distance provides clarity. As the campaign that overthrew Saddam Hussein's brutal regime marks its third anniversary, the passage of time has confirmed that military force is still a blunt instrument, even in the age of stealth technology and precision munitions. It is far easier to destroy than it is to build, and the destruction — no matter how carefully planned and executed — will always carry with it tragic, unintended consequences. Building a democratic society in Iraq has proven far more difficult and far costlier than optimistic expectations. Saddam's dictatorship brutally enforced a system of ethnic apartheid. Removing that dictatorship uncorked the pent-up grievances and passions from decades of atrocities. And a ruthless and lethal guerrilla insurgency that was poorly anticipated has replaced the conventional forces U.S. and allied troops crushed in a matter of weeks. If time has clarified these traits of post-invasion Iraq, then it has also illuminated the reasons why President Bush made the difficult decision to go to war in the first place. The media and the public are only now gaining access to a trove of official U.S. and Iraqi documents and tapes, much of it seized during the early days of the invasion. These sources make clear the reasons most major intelligence services came to the conclusion that Saddam continued to possess proscribed weapons of mass destruction and why U.N. weapons inspectors would never be able to locate them. They should finally put to rest the hysterical distortion that Bush lied to push the United States into war. The U.S. military's Joint Forces Command engaged in a two-year project to analyze hundreds of thousands of documents and the transcripts of interviews with dozens of Iraq's political and military leaders. The USJFC partially declassified its study last month. Researchers Kevin Woods, James Lacey and Williamson Murray provide the first in-depth analysis of the USJFC findings in an article for the May/June issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, now available online. "Saddam's Delusions: The View from the Inside" makes abundantly clear why the Bush administration believed Saddam had WMD and could use them again — because Saddam's own regime believed it had WMD and could use them again. Up high, the researchers draw the following conclusion: "When it came to weapons of mass destruction, Saddam attempted to convince one audience that they were gone while simultaneously convincing another that Iraq still had them. Coming clean about WMD and using full compliance with inspections to escape from sanctions would have been his best course of action for the long run. Saddam, however, found it impossible to abandon the illusion of having WMD." Fearful of the consequences of delivering bad news to Saddam, Baathist leaders gave false assessments to their dictator and to one another about weapons programs. A footnote to "Saddam's Delusions" suggests that in the months following the fall of Baghdad, senior Iraqi officials in coalition custody continued to believe that Iraq still possessed a WMD capability. While these dissonant messages confused Iraqi leaders, they confirmed to intelligence analysts the continuation of a decade of deception. In 2002, U.S. intelligence intercepted an order to remove the words "nerve agents" from "the wireless instructions." Another revealed instructions to "search the area surrounding the headquarters camp and for any chemical agents, make sure the area is free of chemical containers." Three years ago, these orders were reasonably interpreted as evidence of Saddam's shell game with weapons inspectors. The consensus belief now is that they were intended to remove any residue left over from WMD programs abandoned years earlier. Bush did not lie. American intelligence was mistaken, with good reason. And it's even more clear today than it was three years ago that the blame for the tragedy in Iraq falls on a single person: the homicidal dictator who used WMD in the past and wanted the world to believe that he could do so again. mysanantonio.com