Gore did NOT claim to have invented the internet. God bless snopes.
Is that your best shot?
If Gore didn’t invent the internet, how come Apple Computer put him on their Board of Directors? It would be a god joke if an urban legend fooled Apple into granting him 30,000 stock options. 
Ya think I’m making up things being worried about Republican connivery? the history of Karl Rove alone is enough to make any reasonable man suspicious. There’s nothing paranoid about regarding the party of Watergate, Iran-contra, Richard Mellon Scaife and his little elves, the 2000 election and Karl Rove with deep misgivings. I can understand why Republicans and conservatives are unwiling to face up to the moral turpitude of their leadership, but really, why would any sane person feel compelled to go along with them just because someone said “get over it”?
You gotta do better than that and muttering “black helicopters” guys. Your heros get caught red-handed trying to circumbent the law ALL THE TIME. Compared to what Repubs get up to, a simple blowjob is a mark of virtue.
skankweirdall – ditto. Welcome to the SDMB, And congratulations a logical and well-expressed 4th post.
Thanks MLS.
Evil Captor, I gave you more than get over it. Unfortunately I can’t cite references for you but the local liberal newspapers and news shows around here all reported the outcome. Although it wasn’t hyped and was just a short blurb it was reported none the less. I’m sure that if the outcome would have been in Gores favor it would have been headline news, shouted from the mountain tops.
Mom! december’s making “god jokes” again!
There’s no misunderstanding, except on the part of people who think this is a virtuous crusade to help the Iraqi people, which is what Bush is (or was recently) selling. This is the culmination of an extreme right-wing plan for Iraq dating back to 1998 or earlier. It has been couched in various disguises to help sell it to the public: disarming Iraq, stopping Saddam from helping Al Queda, punishing Saddam for causing 9/11, “regime change,” liberating the oppressed Iraqis. None of these reasons are entirely honest and some, like the Al Queda “link” are blatant fabrications.
Is it in our national interest to invade Iraq? (Let’s not kid ourselves with “liberation” anymore–Saddam is evil and cruel but that does not mean the Iraqis want to be invaded and bombed, and they’ve made that perfectly clear.) Possibly. It’s certainly in the interest of our big construction and oil companies, and it could conceivably be a good strategic move to secure a source of oil not controlled by the Saudis.
But you have to balance that with the absolute contempt that has been shown for the world community and the rule of law, and the staggeringly bad effect this, and virtually all of Bush’s policies have had. Institutions which, while certainly not faultless, have kept the world from slipping into another continent-spanning war for the past half century, such as NATO and the UN, are irrevocably damaged. The goodwill and sympathy of the world is now so wantonly squandered that our relationship with our closest and longest standing historical ally (France) is now at its worst level in history.
Against the will of most of the world’s population, against the expressed wishes of three of the five permanent security council member states, and against the (diminished in recent years but now destroyed) U.S. tradition of not engaging in preemptive attacks.
Politically, you will be hard pressed to find anyone who is actually aware of world politics beyond “France Sucks” who doesn’t think this is an utter disaster for the U.S. and Britain.
Which is more likely:
An administration composed mainly of former oil company executives, some of whom (such as Dick Cheney) still receive money from those companies and virtually all of whom were, in one way or another, involved in the plan to attack Iraq formulated by the Project for a New American Century, and virtually all of whom, including the President, have deep ties with some of the most unscrupulous and greedy corporations ever to fleece America (such as Enron), is, nevertheless, completely objective, moral, and thoughtful in it’s consideration of Iraq, and is only awarding contracts to those companies in advance because there’s no other choice.
or
They are exactly what I’ve described above, except that they behave in a manner we’ve all become accustomed to in big business in the last few years.
I’m not going to debate that. I personally think it was the electoral college system that failed, and the Republicans and SCOTUS did many questionable things, but the election is valid.
I don’t think he’s an idiot, I think he’s an inexperienced, ignorant fool with no ability whatsoever to convey anything except contempt for the world community and the population of the United States in everything he does: the Kyoto treaty, the U.N., the War on Terror, etc. He is also surrounded by quite possibly the most frightening contingent of self-serving, big-business, right-wing nationalist advisors I could possibly imagine (Unless, maybe, he replaced Colin Powell with Oliver North).
That’s true, if you are honest about what is happening: We are using force, against the will of the international community, to destroy the ruling regime of a sovereign nation and install a government friendly to us. Plain and simple.
No, he’s an ignorant and arrogant man with no compunctions about violating international law and his own campaign promises (remember “no nation building?”) I’m sure, that if this war didn’t benefit him or his narrow vision of American interests, he wouldn’t have allowed 9/11 to be used as an excuse to invade multiple sovereign nations.
Well, we certainly couln’t have lost as much of the world’s respect as we already have. Are you totally in denial about how much this has stained the U.S.'s reputation? Do you think we’ll come out of this with the world seeing us as a heroic nation fighting for the underdog? Or do you not care?
Don’t you think that, with measured and reasonable political persuasion, rather than “you’re with us or you’re against us” and blatant political arm-twisting, we might have gotten our allies to agree that Saddam needed to go?
How what would have gone down? If Bush didn’t start rattling his sabre all of a sudden, there wouldn’t BE a war.
(I won’t address the old “internet” saw, as that has been debunked so frequently that anyone who mentions it damages their own credibility.)
What exactly prompted our attack on Iraq? Saddam refusing to obey UN resolutions? Do you remember when this all started to get rolling? Right in the middle of big business imploding and threatening to implicate the administration and its appointees, suddenly “Saddam Hussein is in violation of the UN!” Please. The blinders with which most of my fellow Americans have been fitted are amazingly effective.
No one can say what Gore would have done, had he been elected, but I am reasonably certain that, whatever actions he took in the wake of 9/11, he wouldn’t have pissed away our relationship with the entire world just to further some arcane nationalist agenda. I rather doubt he would have had the gall to lie repeatedly to the world without presenting a shred of evidence to back up anything he said.
Bush & Co. are already preparing to expand the conflict. Syria and Iran are suddenly getting warned about “interfering” with our war. And, yet again, no evidence is forthcoming.
Editorials in Taiwan are calling for China, Russia, Germany, and France to offer military aid to Iran if the U.S. attempts to invade. Taiwan siding with China against the U.S.!
Bush refuses to rule out exercising the “nuclear option” in any conflict in the Middle East.
What will it take for you to question Fearless Leader?
Why exactly do you think that the warnings to Syria and Iran aren’t just that…warnings to Syria and Iran not to get involved in the war? It seems that the administration is clever enough to realize that they are in a very difficult operation right now, and drawing Syria and Iran into the war would be a disaster. The warnings are not an attempt to widen the war, they are an attempt to limit the war. The Bush administration chose to attack Iraq because they percieved it to be a low hanging fruit…an odious dictatorship, with no allies, that routinely violates UN resolutions, that we had beaten before. They chose a military option in Iraq because–to them–it seemed much less risky than military options elsewhere in the world. Invading Iran is a whole different planet than invading Iraq. Syria is not so tough…they don’t have Iraq or Iran’s oil wealth. But even so, Syria would be much harder to sell politically.
The bottom line is, I can’t understand why you might think the Bushistas are eager for Iran and Syria to get involved in the war.
And as for refusing to rule out a “nuclear option”, of course the US has always reserved the right to respond with nuclear weapons if we are attacked with nuclear weapons. I don’t understand why that would be so shocking to you.
…or maybe not. :::raises hand::: I don’t think that at all.
I didn’t vote for GWB because as someone pointed out earlier he’s not much of a true conservative, he’s more a Christian Coalition sort of Republican…and wouldn’t vote for next time around either, except in the case of an opponent claiming to be apologetic or more “palatable” to the international community. I would sooner vote the UN of New York than him out of DC, I’m not alone there and this is most assuredly not Bush country. (And as a foreign-born American I’m not much of a “patriot” either.)
A tip, for the furture: down the road when arguing about how the Fearless Leader has screwed up foreign matters beyond repair…you may be looking at a restored Afghanistan, a dead Saddam, a transition government in Iraq, a framework in place for a peaceful Israel/Palestine solution, the beginning of the end of Mugabe and maybe, just maybe a neutralized North Korea. Have a better argument in place than “W is an idiot”, please, which will make the election process for us non-partisan-entrenched types something besides a waste of airtime. Thank you.
Furture?
for the future I meant.
Tee: “Have a better argument in place than “W is an idiot”, please, which will make the election process for us non-partisan-entrenched types something besides a waste of airtime. Thank you.”
Tee, Scupper’s long and often eloquent post was hardly reducible to “W is an idiot.” (And Scupper, thanks very much for writing such a thoughtful post).
I do agree though that his/her stipulation of Bush’s arrogance and ignorance is an insufficient account of the Bush agenda. I happen to agree that Bush–and the group of hawks with whom he has surrounded himself–are ignorant of many things. And I don’t see how anyone can deny their arrogance. But I also think that there’s a visionary radical agenda to re-make the world by dint of American military power that is motivating their conduct (hence, as Scupper notes, the 1990s vintage of some of these ideas).
There are a lot of different ways to think about this. But, in the interests of preserving time, let me just post one of the most thought-provoking articles I’ve read in this vein. It was originally posted by Ace of Swords in another thread. I think posters on both sides of this debate would find this worth the read:
Absolutely. I have no problem with eating my words if they turn out to be wrong and no one hopes more than I do that this is all going to work out in the best possible way.
I just happen to believe that it won’t. Afghanistan, which is the only nonfiction example above, is already crumbling from our neglect.
I’m just curious: What would qualify as a disaster for the U.S. and Britain (politically), if not the alienation of our allies and the enraging of the entire Moslem world? Are you saying that that hasn’t happened? That would be (good) news to me.
Perhaps you’re confusing my post with another?
I don’t think I expressed that as well as I might have. I fear it as an (admittedly unlikely) possibility. However, I have the security of being a U.S. citizen, thousands of miles from the area in question. I can assure you that this possibility does not seem nearly as remote to people who are much closer to harm’s way, particularly with the suddenness and arrogance the U.S. has shown in the past eight months.
That doesn’t even take into account the powder keg instability in countries all over the middle east. Do you think that if Syria or Iran started attacking us we wouldn’t attack back? This is the reward we can expect to reap from trying to use fear as a motivator against countries that have a huge, fanatical pool of potential warriors who see little to lose in opposing the U.S.
In May, Bush signed National Security Presidential Directive 17, officially confirming the doctrine of preemptively thwarting any potential use of weapons of mass destruction.
Are you seriously suggesting I shouldn’t be shocked by the possibility of a preemptive nuclear strike? Human considerations aside, this would blacken the U.S.'s reputation beyond even the remotest possibility of redemption.
One particularly interesting note from Mandelstam’s link:
Am I allowed to be alarmed yet?
Would you be happier if the article said,
- “after defeating Iraq, the United States will fail to deal with Iran, Syria, and North Korea”*?
december:
:smack: You know, I thought the same thing after I posted it. You could read it either way, and my distrust keeps making it sound like a mafia innuendo when I read it.
Still, laundry lists of countries we intend to “deal with” disturb me, mainly because I really don’t see much to indicate the solution dealt by the Administration will be a political one. They also don’t instill a lot of confidence in non-Americans. Members of the Russian parliament have also wondered who the U.S. will choose to “deal with” next, citing Belorus instead of North Korea and wondering exactly where the U.S. will stop.
After all, Russia has terrorists within its borders, too.
Allowing Saddam Hussein to remain in power, thus demonstrating that there is no one in the world with both the power and the will to enforce the cease-fire and the expressed will of the world that Saddam disarm and prove that he has disarmed.
The Muslim world already hates us for our support of Israel. They have for fifty years. BFD.
The attack of 9/11 happened because of our actions in the first Gulf War. Are you suggesting that we shouldn’t have done that?
No, I don’t.
Perhaps you could describe some of the steps that should have been taken, and why it would have persuaded the world to stand behind UNSC Resolution 1441 and the cease-fire.
Or perhaps more productively, you could describe what a wise statesman would do to involve the world in disarming North Korea.
Regards,
Shodan
I had a reply typed out, but between actually having to work and try to post at the same time I’m having great difficulty in doing this in a timely manner. By the time I get done, I’ve been logged out, have to start over then you guys have already said what I wanted to say anyway. Geez. I’ll get the hang of it sooner or later. By the way I’m glad I found this board. OK I didn’t find it, someone showed it to me from another board. I’m glad either way.
If all anyone is seeing is the alienation of allies’ then of course there’s nothing I can say to change that notion. I’m satisfied with Japan’s stance taken, ok with Canada’s (officially “No, we’re not sending troops” but troops are already there) I was happy to see the Eastern Europe block talking up as it did…in other words there are some elements there to see besides complete doom and gloom. That has a lot to do with what you see as the principle of the matter - is it Saddam? Then you might be ok with what’s going on. Is it “Another US military action in the ME?” Then you’re probably not. I see this reflected in the stated positions of various contries.
The ‘enraging of the entire Muslim world’ is not something I care to see our foreign policy most concerned with for the remainder of my natural life. I’m not taking care to avoid angering the Christians in this country - mind you, I am one - so it would be a rather hypocritical stance for me to begin with…should I be more concerned because they are likely to blow people up? That’s a terribly stereotypical policy. I will say this: delivered to our doorsteps by probably very well-meaning publications are accounts like this: One family, contrasting views. This is probably designed to warn about growing animosity in the Muslim world, but the practical effect of it has the average person shrinking in horror and thinking many Muslims are nuts. It’s not good to have what is by most accounts a ‘liberal’ paper fueling the fire like this, essentially ‘enraging Americans’.
And otherwise I stand corrected, I was talking more to the Dems at large I guess with the “W is an idiot” quote and and should not have included your post as respresentative of it. Sorry.
Shodan: " No, I don’t."
Well, Shodan, that’s very arbitrary position to take when, as we launched into war, there was a French compromise on the table: a timetable for disarmament to be followed up, if necessary, by the use of force in 30-60 days. Not worth a few months’ delay to have the UN’s support and that of all our NATO allies? Maybe even access to Turkey along with that?
That seems pretty shortsighted to me.