Mainly because we were trying to exterminate termites with machine guns. Just as in Iraq now.
Regarding which, Michael Lind, in Vietnam: The Necessary War, suggests we might have had better success if strategy had been led by generals of the Marine Corps, who had a lot of experience fighting insurgencies in Central America, rather than the Army, who thought in terms of conventional army-vs.-army warfare.
So, according to Bush, China and Vietnam’s political systems are “open and transparent” and “respond to the will of the people.”
We’ve got a doofus for a President, which is old news, I guess.
What bothers me is the inevitable disconnect between those rare occasions when I watch a Bush presser, and when I see the media coverage of it. It’s as if they refuse to notice that he barely seems to have a clue as to what he’s talking about, and that his answers, when they’re on point at all, are in catchphrases or superficial explanations that don’t touch the reality of whatever he’s talking about.
Because he cut taxes. Duh.
Anything can be forgiven as long as he does that.
-Joe
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2000/05/26/politics/main199995.shtml
This was when Bush said Texas had never executed an innocent man. A truly stupid statement when the Gov. of Illinois has just stopped executions when he found out how many they had killed.
Type in Bush on executions and you will find many sites showing his statements. When he made the statement on tv ,I could not image how he could say such a thing with such surety.Human life was second to political gain. That has not changed.
They’d probably arrest her for doing outside the free speech zones.
Actually, I thought this was a zombie thread. I even looked at the date and somehow still registered it as a mouldy oldie.
As I often do with zombie threads, (assuming I’d read it the first time around,) I worked backwards to try to find the resurrecting post. Today… today… today… yesterday… yesterday… yesterday… ah! 7/7/06! Waitaminute… that was the day before yesterday! Keep going, then… 7/7/06… 7/7/06… 7/7/06… Oh, damn, there’s a first page… where’s that “page one” button? Uhhh… Waitaminute… this is the first page.
But… I know I read the OP verbatim two or three years ago… or at least thought it.
Très étrange.
Have you taken a look at what sits in the anchor chairs of the news shows these days?
'Nuf said.
I read the transcript yesterday, before the link was posted here. I actually thought the thing was just full of typos.
Yeah, but they’re so purrty.
I hear ya, but I would say that things have gotten worse. Sometimes a phrase said over and over gets worse in import as time goes by, inasmuch as the context has changed–or failed to change.
Another thing about our Dear Leader: He never seems to have heard about Harry Truman and “The buck stops here.”
Re the NWMDs (non-existent weapons of mass destruction): Whine Ever’body else saw the same intelligence that I did! They all agreed there was bad stuff there! Whimper
But the executive branch, which you head, is responsible for intelligence, Mr. President.
Also, Bush always talks as though the Iraq War was something that’s just going on “out there”; he was not in particular the cause of it. No siree!
In an OPED piece in the Los Angeles Times John Yoo, the defender of torture, wrote that the Supreme Court decision that the military tribunals were kaput was a “power grab.” He started it off by saying that things must be viewed differently in light of the fact that a war has “happened.”
Happened? Happened?? Yoo, you weaseling bastard, the war didn’t just “happen.”
The Constitution states that the President is Commander-in-Chief of the “army” and the “navy,” not of everything and everyone. Bush, Cheney, et al don’t want to abide by that.
Right, we’re in a “state of war,” etc. Not, “We’re in a war that I started and continue to maintain.”
Were it just Afganistan, such spin would work much better. But not Iraq. Further, Bush calls it “the war on terror,” supposedly an unending conflict, and thus, presumably, the executive now has carte blanche to do whatever he wants for aye.
Cool!
Squink, thanks! That is the exact quote I was thinking of. I forgot and left the Tivo going after the speech and didn’t save that part after all.
If that were really true, as an American citizen in the year 2006, I would be very envious of the Chinese and Vietnamese peoples.
I keep going back to my analogy of a ratchet. Every little increase in government power in cases of emergency becomes a precedent and thus becomes a floor upon which the next expansion of governmental power is built.
The job of governmental officials becomes much easier if they can snoop and pry into people’s lives at will. If they don’t have to have messy things like “probable cause” and those accused have the right to representation in court and the ability to confron witnesses. The authorities get easy confessions to crimes if they can beat them out of suspects.
Everyone likes to have his or her job made easier.
Like this:
Bag searches become routine on NYC subway
Here’s last years thread: Random searches on the New York Subway, in which Bricker assured us (post #50) that probable cause remained the gold standard.
What I found depressing about that thread was the number of people who accept the searches as the price of safety even though random searches are will not accomplish the intended purpose, i.e. finding the occasional bomb in the backpack. There appears to be an acceptance of whatever crackpot procedure is instituted by the aurthorities is OK as long as it “makes us safer.”
For example, you have to take your shoes off at the airport while in various tests of the security system all sorts of things are smuggled in.
Please allow me to rewrite that, only in English this time:
What I found depressing about that thread was the number of people who accept the searches as the price of safety even though random searches will not accomplish the intended purpose, i.e. finding the occasional bomb in the backpack. There appears to be an acceptance of whatever crackpot procedure is instituted by the aurthorities as long as it “makes us safer.”
For example, you have to take your shoes off at the airport while in various tests of the security system all sorts of things are smuggled in.
I think it was my Government teacher way back in high school who said almost the same thing. He said that when the country was formed the Founding Fathers were well-educated and articulate, and had a genuine desire to be of service to the country and the people. (Notwithstanding that the Revolution was fomented by a bunch of richies opposed to paying taxes.) He opined that over time intellectuals who actually had the ability to govern logically looked at the political system and decided they wanted no part of it. Thus we are left with people who just wanted to be in power to further their own agendas. That’s painting with a fairly broad brush. He didn’t offer to name the ubiquitous They who have chosen to wash their hands of the whole mess. But his opinion has stuck with me over the last 20+ years, and it certainly seems applicable in a broad sense.
And I agree with the sixth-grader-presenting-an-oral-report assessment.
What depresses me is reading something like this and thinking that we could’ve had an intelligent, articulate, and deep-thinking President instead of the embarassing joke that is GWB.
But then, that was pretty much my views in the 2000 elections – “Choose between a smart-but-boring guy, or a folksy-but-vapid airhead? It’s a no-brainer; pick the guy with the brain.”