Wasn't that the term the President used? Is he out of the "victory caucus" also?
I always wondered what it was like in the 1970's and 1980's to be a Republican and watch with glee as the Democratic Party was split apart by fringe absolutists. Now I know. Keep up the good work Hugh! |
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Get your own blog! If you yourself are unable to be "emboldened" by the Sept 11th attacks...the Sept 11th attacks. What do you mean, what attacks? The two big missing buildings. New York. People jumping from 80 floors up to escape the fires. (No, none had underwear on their heads.) Think back, I know you can think backwards, just drop the -wards part. Just want to walk away from Irreconcilable Islam, cede the field to them? Why are you not ashamed about your cowardice? And don't switch the subject to the President. He's got guts, the soldiers have guts. The politicians don't. Where are yours? |
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Are these things like ottomans and end tables. Not really essential, but great if you have company over?
If Congress is serious about supporting the war effort and being involved in it, I think that is a good thing (provided they don't try to micromanage it). If they are just saying this for cover, I agree it is a waste of time. |
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What did Iraq have to do with September 11th? What do these resolutions and their benchmarks have to do with September 11th? Who is talking about emboldening Americans? If you didn't notice, the country was unanimously behind President Bush after 9/11 and supported the war in Afghanistan. Please stay on topic. |
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You bring up quotes from 1993 regarding Somalia, and you want to berate someone else for being off-topic?
But thanks for the aside reminding us that a short-term political argument can have disastrous results to our global strategic interests for decades to come. Please forward your quotes to the Democrat majority leaders. Oh, if you could just add the bin Laden quote where he says he was emboldened by our Somali pullout? Thanks.
laborlawyer
As I recall the Dems were fairly united, around measuring our social progress by the amount of money they taxed and spent. I could have missed the nuances of the great Mondale v. Jackson debate of 1984, but again to my limited memory, they lost because they wanted to smother the USSR with love and Reagan wanted to starve the bastards out of existence... |
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I bring up quotes to demonstrate the hypocrisy and intellectual mendacity of Professor Hewitt. Nice job of evading the issue though. Care to take a stab on how it was constitutional for Congress under a Democratic President to manage the Somalia war but it is unconstitutional and defeatist for a Congress to manage the Iraq war under a Republican President? |
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Nice rewriting of history. I on the other hand have lived it. I'm all too aware of how single-issue absolutism lost my party election after election.
But like I said, please, go to it. We'll be there to pick up the pieces.
VOR- They miss the point because they don't get the point. But then consistency has never been the Right's strong suit, has it?:) |
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VOR represents the "real enemy" comrade. We are going to have to win the war here, before we can win any war anywhere else, because the real enemy is here, not there. It's going to get real ugly here at home folks. Code Pink (VOR approved) camped out on the beasts door today demanding that she apologize for funding this war; demanding that she bring our troops home now & not later. Moveon, Dem underground; the list of power brokers controlling the Democratic Party is real; the theory that the enemy is amongst us is real. The NYT, WAPO, LAT, CNN, CBS, ABC, MSNBC; the enemy is real and it is here. Our nation has reached the crossroads; history is upon us. Conservatives are a patient & tolerant people; we are a passionate people; we are a Patriotic people... Time for us to take off the gloves if we are to save this country. This is a fist fight, this is not a boxing match. |
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When was the last time you were in Iraq? As for Abu Ghraib, it was not that bad. I bet frat parties you went to were worse. I myself never got to go to any. Was to busy working protecting your sorry butt.
If you really want to know about torture watch "remembering Saddam's reign of terror" on the national geographic channel. Hardly what I would consider a right wing channel.
They have found 158 mass graves with an estimated 300,000 bodies in them.
As for me, I am busy packing for my third trip to Iraq. I would say that I'll see you there but I doubt you have ever done anything or sacrificed for your country.
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..."benchmarks" - "Wasn't that the term the President used? Is he out of the "victory caucus" also?"
I must say that yes indeed it was specifically talked about by the President: "President Bush Discusses New Way Forward in Iraq During Address to the Nation - "A successful strategy for Iraq goes beyond military operations. Ordinary Iraqi citizens must see that military operations are accompanied by visible improvements in their neighborhoods and communities. So America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced. ... To establish its authority, the Iraqi government plans to take responsibility for security in all of Iraq's provinces by November. To give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country's economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis. To show that it is committed to delivering a better life, the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion of its own money on reconstruction and infrastructure projects that will create new jobs. To empower local leaders, Iraqis plan to hold provincial elections later this year. And to allow more Iraqis to re-enter their nation's political life, the government will reform de-Baathification laws, and establish a fair process for considering amendments to Iraq's constitution." - President George W. Bush January 10, 2007.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/iraq/
And that's why I myself wouldn't get too, too upset with a resolution that talks purely about benchmarks but also stresses the importance of Iraq. No, I don't think there should ANY resolutions coming out of that village of idiots in Washington, and yes, Hugh has again taken it a bridge too far with some of his comments. I realize that you are also commenting on the rhetorical nature of Hugh objections as well...
I just think that it's also certainly fair to again mention that Hugh has an solid point to make, since so little good can come out of these things. |
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Appreciate the honest response. |
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I appreciate your service. But perhaps you ought to be tossing that chickenhawk meme at people like Professor Hewitt who believes he is in harm's way when he broadcasts out of the Empire State Building and calling our soldiers to arms.
Saddam was an evil man and got the justice he so richly deserved. But that is not why we went to war as the world is made up of many evil people who deserve a similar fate. You and I simply disagree on whether this was the right war at the right time. We were fully aware and turned a blind eye to Saddam's atrocities at the time they were occurring. In fact, we aided his government. So please do not use those mass graves from decades ago to justify an elective war against a secular regime that served as a counterbalance to Iran. Because of this President, we have made the situation in the Middle East far worse and the process have increased our threat at home. So godspeed to you while you defend this country -- I only wish your sacrifice was made against those that really threaten us. |
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fender's quotes from the president clearly show that th ebenchmarks are being proposed by the Iraqi governemnt for the Iraqi people. It is not the senate of the US seting benchmarks for the people of Iraq.
Now what happens if the benchmarks are not made?
Withdrawal?
abandonment of the Iraqi People?
another Vietnam?
you see the left wants so badly to define Iraq as another Vietnam and if they get want they want it will become another Vietnam. They will then have 20 years of lies to spread about the republican failure. |
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What happens if the surge does not work? What if 6 months from now the situation in Iraq is no better or has deteriorated even more? All we hear from those that have had 4 years to prosecute this war is the dire consequences if we fail. Yet no one has given us any indication of what we are to do if the escalation fails. |
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you are wrong on so many levels. the right is going to get tired of you and you ilk. I think we already have.
read the sate of the union before the war in Iraq it clearly outlines the reasons for the war.
the bs about other evils and blind eye get's old.
during ww 2 there were blind eyes turned toward the USSR in order to beat the Germans. Geopolitics is obviously someting you do not understand.
Iraq was the only despot country that had UN resolutions, oil and as you know everyone and his sister thought SH had WMDs. It was ripe for the picking and it was the wrong place at the wrong time for SH. right place and right time for the US.
get over yourself |
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if it fails and I am sure they will know soon, another plan of attack will be put in place.
the US military is dynamic and can adjust to the enemy.
I have posted earlier how it may be whenall is said and done the restructuring of a machine as large as the US military takes time and it has been restructured quite quickly.
The US military had been built to fight the USSR and the enemy has changed. I suspect in the next few years the military will have built the weapons and developed the warfare techniques required to battle the enemy.
this is a long war of adjustments as necessary.
what do you suppose the plan was if D-day failed? |
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You appear to have missed the sentence where President Bush said "America will hold Iraq to the benchmarks". Is the Senate not part of America? If Iraq doesn't meet the benchmarks, say, by failing to share oil revenues with the Sunnis or by declining to take after the Shi'ite militias, America does, what exactly? Nothing? Does that mean the President lied?
Oh, and sorry you couldn't stand a civil exchange on this Board:) |
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But laborlawyer how does it fell to be a part of a discredited desiccated ideology that owes its origin to benign fascism--the welfare state fathered by Mussolini, Stalin and others. |
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For be it from me, but personally, I believe that your present post is wonderfully precise. |
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I'm sorry but what was Clinton's reason for being in Somalia--passing out bread? |
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By all means lets anounce to the enemy exactly what the finish line is so they'll know exactly what their goal is--wouldn't want to communicate specifics confidentially now would we.
I mean if we were playing chess (hello Bushwacker) we'd want to anounce the intent of every move we made-yes? |
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Iraq was and is the geopolitical perfect place to get rid of a genocidal maniac, puts on the door of Syria and Iran--a better situation I could not think of.
By the way what was that in the Iraqi newspaper headed by one of the many Hussein? The hurt arm or something or other would receive grievous harm. Oh I know metaphorical language doesn't count.
Never mind that is the spice that move the prose in the Middle East. |
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We keep trying till we get right. Yes? |
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Actually, I'm part of the most successful ideology in world history- liberalism. Fathered not by Stalin and Mussolini but by FDR and John L. Lewis and Martin Luther King. The movement that saved Capitalism from implosion due to runaway greed on the one hand, and communism on the other, and created the greatest- and most fair- economic machine ever devised by Man.
You may want to go back to th "good old days" before unions and the New Deal and the civil rights movement. Me, I don't much cotton to old people dying on the street, of child labor and company stores, of "coolies" slaving away on the railroads and blacks sitting at the back of the bus. I think limits on what corporations can do to their workers and to the environment are a good thing. Americans pretty much agree on these principles, we just debate the degrees. And boy, it must drive you nuts to be part of a discredited dessicated ideology (unfettered capitalism) that the civilized world long ago rejected. |
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So then the President was wrong to say we're going to hold the Iraqi government to those benchmarks? No matter how out of control Iraq gets, or what their government does, our troops stay there like ducks in a shooting gallery? Be consistent at least, and denounce the President as well. |
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Tisk tisk--the President is of course the Commander in Chief--not just another cook in the kitchen. And what exactly were those bench marks? |
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Oh come now--step away from your own self interest and look at it for what it was and is.
The 20s and 30s were a response to the intense industrialization of the prior decades, to which Marx spoke eloquently, but mistakenly. Lenin and others, came along and incited and road various labor disputes to power of varying degrees.
The socialist movement was a powerful intoxicant. Not just for the teaming masses, but to for the reformers both religious and non-religious who having shed the more austere aspects of Puritanism still relished in the ideal of progressing society via the mode of social crusade.
The welfare state in England, here and else ware, seemed more than a compromise, but a viable structure built from the best available ideas at the time meeting not only the demands of mass unrest (incited by various notions of utopia), but also the impulse of social crusade.
But the reality is and was state managed capitalism; the welfare state; benign fascism; the individual belongs first and foremost to the state. Or does the Democratic party have a different paradigm?
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..and after a night's sleep, I agree with VoR. Jihadist terrorism has come about because a few useless E-3's put underwear on some peoples' heads. If this is all it takes to incite them to murder, mayhem and slaughter, there can be no talking to them! Kill them all, and let God sort it out. |
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blacks are free now (except for the 5th generation welfare class), people get paid a living wage and if they don't spend it all on booze and lottery tickets they can still make it in America, women can vote (for the cutest guy who will not only have meaningless sex with them but will help them abort the issue), people are free to ruin their lives with drugs and porn, and Jihadists can wait patiently as we cave in for the first time in our history to a blatant enemy - so you Libs can stop helping now. You've done your job, thanks. Now stop.
and you've got it assbackwards: capitalists PAY for your wasteful ideas and social experiments. Or don't you remember the U.S.S.R.? You mean well so that's all that matters I guess. |
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