It is NOT Israel's job. It is ours. I'm fretting for the first time about a possible chink in GWB's resolve not to leave office with a Nuke danger in Tehran. Bolton, in his Hugh interview, said that he's "heartsick" about what he may be seeing from the president's(up till now)tough determination. What always bucks me up with 'W' is his track record of NOT doing what the SOPs say he'll do or not do. I'm also not ready to buy that Condi is as aboard State Dept. SOP thinking in that area as it's appearing. I like the way the Sec'y pays all the lip service to niceties and intentions(as with Palestinian matters)so that she can say later on, 'Hey, we tried.'
Paddy, I share your concern about the Iranian man-on-the-street reaction. Very Much. But, the facts are that Bush can't leave office with the Mullahs building Nukes. And, as MaryS says, it must not be Istael that does the job. |
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Hi, dear PaddyO, They asked the late Shah`s son the same question, he believed the change should come from within.
But the mullahs are hammering the opposition. I personally, think precision bombing taking some of the installations, maybe, then the people will get the courage to raise against the establishment. The young generation are very pro-western. But the attack should be only on the nuke facilities. And we must do the job, not Israel? That will fuel unrest.
Even though Israel did a magnificant job in Syria!
Thanks for asking. |
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This raises an unpleasant subject, but it is in line with what I have been saying: In Iran, the leadership is against us, but the people are not, and in fact, they are more like us than we may have imagined.
With that in mind, is a regime change possible with our help, but short of bombing to rid them of their nukes? Will the people back us up, or will they fold like the Iraqis?
What would be the consequences if we do bomb? ....if Israel bombs?
Marystella, what do you think should be our course of action with regard to the Iranian leadership? |
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The pleasure is all mine. I love America, this is a great noble nation. We grew up loving American culure. I used to be in awe of President Reagan. I miss him so much. The greatness of this nation has no boundary and so so does its people.
We have to constantly defend and show how conservatism is more charitable to the society.
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-ed Miracle Grow on one of the Fecal Carrying Kosmidgets by mistake. Or, perhaps better, a Paulite Putz. He seems to think I referred to him when I meant, as stated, the Kostwerps. Oh well, same krowd, different labels. Hopefully he'll leave and resume his search for Israelite Jeeeeeeewsss under his mattress.
Marystella: You're a PLEASURE here. I have a close friend in Chicago who is an Iranian Christian. Came here with her parents in 1981 in flight from The Mullahs. Goes back now and then and tells me the regular people hold our President in very high regard. Imagine! You're all class, MStella. Pay NO attention to the Turdkluster here. Me, Paddy, 'Hawk and many others value your contributions highly. |
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Liberals cannot and are not able to discuss and debate the issues honestly, and intellingently.
Name calling, and childlike tantrums does not change the facts.
My beloved Rush Limbaugh, wisely says never argue with a fool.
Special thanks, gratitude, appreciation to
PADDYO, SEEHAWK, and neoconscum. Nice job pleasantly getting on the nerves of some Kos libs. My liberal friends, please regard us as your co-equals, then we can compassionately discuss issues. I have travelled, and been raised in middle east, their way of thinking, the Arabs, the Iranians, both muslim nation, very different from the western world.
i.e. Sadr in Iraq should have been killed day one. I am Roman Catholic, but believe, in war, you study your enemy and deal accordingly. Yes,
I am pro-life, but death penalty is a just law.
Still believe we should let Musharaf do what is best for Pakistan`s stability. His country is full of religious extrimist fueling the jihadist, terrorist, and talebans.
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But you have now inflamed the temper of the "Lincoln Worshipers" that have imbeded themselves like a tumor inside conservatism. |
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Morbidly fascinating how quickly they can soil the floor of a thread? Kos must have issued orders for Klustering Swarms of the little fecal carrying bugs to hit HH's site. A suckers' game, doing the response thing with them. I say Starve the roaches by inattention. H.Wallace, my arse. |
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Do a little more research and you will find that Henry Wallace was a visionary whose predictions came true..
"Following his term as Secretary of Commerce, Wallace became the editor of The New Republic magazine, using his position to criticize vociferously Truman's hawkish foreign policy. On the declaration of the Truman Doctrine in 1947, he predicted it would mark the beginning of "a century of fear." He left his editorship position in 1948 to make an unsuccessful run as a Progressive Party candidate in the 1948 U.S. presidential election. His platform advocated an end to segregation, full voting rights for blacks, and universal government health insurance. His campaign was unusual for his time in that it included African American candidates campaigning alongside white candidates in the American South, and during the campaign he refused to appear before segregated audiences or eat or stay in segregated establishments."
I assume you approve of our current vice president (or should I say president) who puts the fascist into fascism and has done so much damage to America's image and credibility that it will take a generation to repair it!
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Good heavens man, he was an Iowa socialist who FDR and Truman tried to kick out of the Party. He was a whackjob. Many thought , in the Dem Party, that he was a fellow traveler with the Hiss party of the day. Henry Wallace? You really are a pacifist socialist if you quote him. Whose next? Alger?? |
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The vacant minded is much closer to the truth.. What the republican party has become.. A cesspool of cheerleaders for fascism and corruption. Bushworlders who are so brainwashed they have lost the ability to recognize the difference between reality and propaganda!!
As Vice President Henry Wallace noted in 1944:
"The American fascist's method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power." |
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I echo Seehawks's sentiments. We pray that one day soon your country is restored to you. In the meantime, have a good life in the U.S.
Perhaps you are here to show the Americans that Iranian women are not what they thought.
As I have seen, they are among the world's prettiest and most intelligent women, but not many people know that.
God bless..... |
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The right minded pray that what you say (Carter's mistakes) will not be repeated! God bless you. |
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Inaction will be the best. Let Musharaf do whatever necessary to control the country, hopefully, get rid of some the looney wacko extremist, along the way, without our meddling, Please.
I hope our media will black out the event as well as they did with Chavez.
Pres. Musharaf is an ally and has to stay in power, at any cost, Carter`s mistake should not be repeated. I suffer, losing my country, Iran to the mullah extrimist, do not look to the middle east with the prism of westerm culture.
If we lose Pakistan, Afghanestan will follow, so will India, Saudi, and the rest of the Middle East. It will be worst nightmare! |
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Scumsucking little twaddletale girly-toad. And the climate here has been so sweet smelling without him-her-it. Couldn't last. But, Lads, let's not refer to him-her-it by name. It tends to be like Miracle Grow on his-her-its EGO. |
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Yep....I think we all know who the worst of the worst is..... |
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Do you all smell a really bad smell in here? |
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Dick Cheney is an American hero and patriot.
Roll up a five-spot and snort that! |
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Does Osama drive a car in his batcave?Is that while he's hooked to dialysis or right after his bi-weekly cleansing? Do tell, us more..and one more factoid, our Founders hated democracies, that's why they established "a Republic, if we can keep it!" Ben Franklin. |
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yes, bomb the main ally, helping you fight AQ,so the 280 million moderate Muslims there, that like the U.S.(but are deathly afraid of saying so) will have reason to hate us.
It's postively Clintonesque! Where is Madeline Albright when you NEED her? |
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attacking the only nuclear-powered Muslim nation without a declaration of war, without trying sanctions, and without the support of the UN General Assembly?
Gee... I guess it's because they're an ally...
Don't you realize how utterly asinine that proposition is? |
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"..important NOT to play pile on." |
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Doing, seemingly, very little except taking a breath is a good idea for now. This is a vastly important ally--worts & all--and it's important to play pile-on. As stated, Mrs.Bhutto doesn't seem to be in the mood to shreik. So, why should GWB?
...And, 'Hawk: Alaways fun watching you slap the snot outta the delicate kossite, Buggs. |
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OK, so the Pakistani military used the Islamic extremists they essentially back as an excuse to round up the democratic opposition.
The reason you won't hear the West object too much about this, (especially the US) is that they think we are getting what we want in Pakistan; a strong dictator to suppress Islamic militants.
This is an illusion, but it is an illusion Bush has bought into and why the US is now giving only vapid banal lip service to oppose the crack down. This is out of the Cold War play book, when we supported brutal dictators all over the planet because they were anticommunist.
Musharraf is a cover for Islamic militants. While Musharraf continues a servile act to the West, the Pakistani military continues to train, equip, and fund militant fundamentalist Islamic insurgent armies. This military coup assures that nothing will change in Pakistan.
Meanwhile Bin Ladin continues to thumb his nose at our windshield cowboy of a president.
From the inane shallow comments on this topic from a lot of the previous posters I can only surmise that all of you in REALITY think like President Cheney!
A shameless miserable excuse for a human being who pulls the strings on his sock puppet " decider" who in fact HATES DEMOCRACY..
Its just so much easier to govern being a dictator! Can't you feel his pain? |
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litter Busgy just gets her morning talking points from Kos Kindygarten. They could be classmates?
Can you imagine if President Bush followed her and Obama's advice and bombed Warzirstan/Pakistan?It would be postively Clintonian!!! (Belgrade and all) |
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They sound like they might just be the same lonely pizza delivery guy... |
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Well, from where I stand, it looks like the State Department was hoping we'd lose in Iraq, but since that's changed, I guess they went to Plan B. |
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Pak. is a nuclear ally. The real problem is not that; it is what will the General do with emergent Al Queda militants, other jihadists who are pressuring his govt. and Pak. security. When Hugh brings up the past, it is a marker that happened with a hugely bureacratic State Dept. filled with diplomat-pols. who always have an agenda of their own that does not match the Administration du jour. That is just history which many forum members just don't remember. Perhaps they weren't alive then. Dean Aches. always complained that State was filled with ideologues and that is still true. And it is not the ideology of so called neo-cons, it is filled with 1930-50's type baggy striped pants liberals. To Bush is not only caught with an ally who does not play by democratic rules or the rules of liberalsim or the rules of Bush himself. He is also caught with the Turks dealing with the rebel Kurds who hate our allies, regular Kurds . It is a balancing act that must be played out because the real winners if both Turkey and Pak. become discombobulated will be the jihadists. Even Bush knows that. |
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Well, to begin with Musharraf was originally convinced to help the USA after 9-11 by the Bush Administration.
To compare this with a Shah or Diem is entirely overstating the issue Mr. Hewitt.
* athingortwo states it quite well...
It is concerning, but there is simply so much we don't know... |
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Has Mitt Romeny written a "serious" letter about Pakistan like he did on Iran? Then, there you have it - its not a serious situation yet. Pakistan still has time - you know once Mitt puts pen to paper, its over for Pakistan. |
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Mech-eye - GWB is not flip flopping. He is not applauding Musharraf's actions, to the contrary, he is urging Musharraf to release the people he arrested and continue with the elections as scheduled ... he has not suddenly flipped to so-called "realism".
Despite GWB's urgings for moderation, he is not going to pull a stupid Jimma Cahtah self-flagellating act either ... Musharraf may not be a "good guy", but he isn't feeding people into plastic shredders, he isn't operating childrens' prisons or official governmment rape rooms, nor is he helping out the Taliban and Al Queda either - to the contrary, they are his sworn enemies.
Bush is handling this just about as well as anyone ever could. We can only hope that Musharraf makes the right moves from here on because the world cannot afford a catastrophe in Pakistan.
And Briggsy - "any reason why we don't go into Waziristan right now?"
How about reasons such as, 1) to do so would be an act of war against one of our most important allies in the war with the Jihadists ... and 2) the fact that the area there is a deathtrap for invading forces (which is why the Taliban is holed up there, and not out on the open coastal plains of Pakistan). GWB is not going to do something stupid, no matter how stupid your expectations might be. |
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You now know what Hugh actually mulls over in his own mind? How very all knowing of you!Did you hook up with UFO's for that?
You advocate that we invade Pakistan without any Congressional approval or UN mandate, how Billy Clintonesque,(when he bombed Yugoslavia) you are. |
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Shortly after W took office a coup took place in Venezuela. Hugo Chavez was arrested by the military. Bush and Colin Powell immediately demanded that the military officers who had conducted the coup release Chavez and 'restore democratic rule'. The sappy left-wing idiocy which restricts the US and our allies to strict legality and allows our enemies to run amok without any consequences has borne its evil fruit in Venezuela. Handing Pakistan and its nukes over to the IslamoFascists should be the last thing US foreign policy should facilitate. Those crazies will start a nuclear war and kill hundreds of millions of people. Surely preventing that is more important than backing Benezir Bhutto's political ambitions. |
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Pakistanis need to accept dictatorship forever under Musharraf or face civil war and possible take over of the nukes by Jiahdis with a death wish.
The first choice is probably better in the short term, but this is really not good. You can only bottle up dissent so long and just like the Shah's brutality ended up putting the Mullahs in charge (who were demonstrably worse) so is the risk for Pakistan. |
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beating his wife? I'd like to get to the bottom of this question one day.
As for Pakistan, the usually neo-conservative Decider decided to take a realism-based tack with Musharaff and support a secular dictator, to the chagrin of democracy advocates within Pakistan. This makes sense for an America pursuing Islamic fundamentalists, but it came with the trade-off of supporting a military dictatorship, albeit one that tolerated Pakistan's modest, liberal middle class.
This came with a cost: it bolstered the fundamentalist/radical position that the United States cares more about imposing its will on weaker nations than pursuing "democracy." This wasn't cost-free, and we're witnessing the fruits of this today.
If there's a silver lining to any of this, its that horrible, wicked, repulsive "MSM" institutions like NPR and the BBC(you know, which employs actual reporters who have backgrounds in the nations they cover?) are reporting that most of the anger in Pakistan isn't toward the U.S. so much as Musharaff personally, who is widely believed to be acting in his own self-interest, as opposed to acting merely as a U.S. agent.
http://www.themechanicaleye.com
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question to pose ... George W. Bush is like Jimmy Carter or John-boy Kennedy in what ways?
I guess the pundits just like to read their own smarty-pants emanations and penumbras and other verbose BS online ... no matter how ridiculous their point, as long as it sorta maybe sounds clever or insightful to their own ears.
BTW - Condi Rice and the State Department are NOT the President of the United States of America ... GWB is, and that makes him the "decider", and he will not jump off a cliff just to make some moralistic point about the purity of democratic institutions in the middle of a civil war.
Musharraf had to act - the lawyers and the Supreme Court guys, along with the jihadists, backed him into a corner, and either he did what he did, or they would have won ... and Pakistan and the free world would have lost.
Mush may or may not successfully navigate the rocks and shoals of Pakistan's current situation, but he's the best bet we have, and the only alternative to immediate catastrophe.
And GWB knows it.
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Sometimes its best not to do anything, just as moving a pawn or checking a bet is the smartest course of action.
That is all Rice is doing. Even Benazir Bhutto isn't acting immediately. Once again, the Brit MSM has much better coverage of international events than any US outlet because they don't have to worry about acting like they need a quote to support what they already know. http://www.guardian.co.uk/pakistan/Story/0,,2205613,00.htm l
What if the plan is to return Bhutto into a power-shared spot with Musharraf, with Musharraf retaining control of the military and Bhutto taking control of all other government offices, but under a scaled back "state of emergency" that delays new elections until power can be solidified by both parties. That would check both the jihadists and the Khomaniests from winning a Hamas-style democratic victory if (as expected) Bhutto and Musharraf's parties would split the votes.
Meantime Sec. Rice would be a fool to not say the military aid is under review. She, Pres. Bush and Colin Powell are the ones who reinstituted aid in 2001 in exchange for Musharraf's cooperation in the GWOT.
There may be a reason to bash on Rice and Foggy Bottom yet, but for now we have to see how events unfold before we commit to a course that will have unintended consequences. |
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