Self-comforting bullshit, just like “*everyone * thought there were WMD’s”. Doesn’t fool anyone but the person saying it.
Does that mean that you, a self-described “intelligent person”, think there won’t be? Why?
Also has admitted that he is a war criminal on “Meet the Press”.
As long as we are dealing with “known facts”, perhaps we could remind ourselves who was President when the USS Cole was attacked? Let me give you a little hint - he was not known for his outstanding military record.
Regards,
Shodan
Oh, for fuck’s sake…
Can the Right please release their Clinton hard-ons for a while? Clinton isn’t running, either one of them. Why is he constantly dragged into these threads about George W. Bush, who never ran against the man?
Yes, please explain how Clinton’s failures are relevant. You do know he’s not running against GWB, don’t you?
We already have a strong national defense. We have a very strong defense. Looks at how the United States compares with every other country
We spend almost 5 times more than our nearest competitor, China.
We spend nearly as much as our top ten nearest competitors combined.
Even if the Democrats took the radical step of slashing our military budget in half, we’d still be able to defend ourselves quite well.
I think Mr Moto means the go-and-invade-other-countries-not-bothering-us sort of “defense.”
Since the C-word has already been mentioned, I’ll just bring up the fact that the Clinton administration (and, indeed, the first Bush administration) did an enormous amount to diminish the threat of North Korea, much of which work the current administration has subsequently undone.
Through years of negotiations (started under Bush Sr, and painstaking continued throughout the Clinton years), North Korea was on the verge of signing up to an Agreed Framework under which NK would freeze and eventually dismantle its nuclear weapons program, remain a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and allow IAEA inspections of sites not covered by the freeze. That Clinton fell at the last hurdle (he was to go to Pyongyang in person in October 2000 for final talks and to sign the agreements personally, but didn’t due to Israeli-Palestinian flareups and political reasons around the election) is more than unfortunate – Clinton has more than once publically taken responsibility for not finishing the process.
But NK was willing to continue the agreement with the incoming administration. Unfortunately, the hardliners held sway and refused to countenance any appearance of appeasement regardless of the benefits to be gained. Bush’s Axis of Evil speech in January 2002 hardly helped matters, but NK were still open to a revised Agreed Framework, which Powell proposed in June 2002. Unfortunately Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Rice felt that we could not trust the North Koreans, and scuppered all support for Powell’s plans.
Left with no face-saving options and a hostile US government, North Korea restarted a nuclear reactor it had shut down in 1994 as part of the original Agreed Framework, a plant which had been judged capable of producing enough fissile material to make one nuclear weapon per year, and began preparations for starting up larger plants capable of processing weapons-grade plutonium.
In essence the Bush administration is dominated by those who continue to advocate Cold War strategies in a post-Cold War world, and by doing so have (presumably inadvertently) increased a threat that could have been neutralized.
But hey – Kin Jong-Il is a ruthless dictator, right? We shouldn’t talk to people like that, right? Okay, then what the hell are we doing in Uzbekistan, our new best friends in Central Asia? Yes, I know that’s a progressive site, but it’s a good synopsis; it also has a link to the State Department’s report on the country:
Or is this our current dictator friend-du-jour, to be invaded (c.v. Noriega, Hussain) when Jeb gets elected?
[Shit – I’ve just wasted a perfectly good GD post in the Pit.]
Ahem.
A President of the United States of America was not going to North Korea.
Also, you conveniently ignore that Bush will now have to deal with weapons that North Korea developed under the Clinton administration. Not that I blame Clinton for that, but the NK weapons program did not begin with the inauguration of GWB.
No, you didn’t waste a ‘perfectly good GD post’.
It’s no surprise that you wouldn’t have heard it from them:
Lessee, that’s 2.6 years, minimum, already planned. Will you insist on waiting until late 2006 to recognize the totally fucking obvious, Mr. “Intelligent Person”? Shall we set a date of, say, Thanksgiving?
You disappoint me greatly, John. But you no longer surprise me, sadly.
Like a US President was never going to go to PR China?
Clinton would not go until everything was agreed, but Madeleine Albright went in 2000 to hammer out the final terms, and the North Koreans were certainly under the impression Clinton would sign the agreement in person.
Which he would not have had to do, had he been willing to negotiate with the North Koreans. Which was my point.
Obviously it didn’t; otherwise the previous two administrations wouldn’t have bothered with all the negotiations.
Look - North Korea is an isolated, resource-poor and paranoid little state. Nuclear weapons and materials are pretty much the only cards it has to play, and it will not give them up without receiving certain guarantees and other resources in return. We can’t threaten or bluster them into giving them up; having just seen what happened in Iraq you can be damn sure they’re not about to let go of the one thing they know will keep them from getting invaded.
Phew. That’s a relief.
I voted for him. I don’t agree with everything that he has done / not done, and overall I’d rate his Presidency as a B to a B-.
But compared to the 8 years of solid Fs from Clinton, Bush is doing a great job. And in looking at what’s going to run against him in November…if Bush were to drop out of the race, I’d sooner vote for a one-legged leper than vote for Kerry.
MY $0.02 worth, anyway…
And I’m sure you would have been soooooooooooooo supportive if he had done that…
<alternate universe SDMB>
Shodan: “That Clinton is such an asshole! Now he wants us to start a war with Afghanistan because he thinks the terrorists who attacked the USS Cole were from there! Even the CIA and the FBI admit they can’t conclusively prove anything yet, but Blowjob Billy wants to go in like a crazed cowboy! Besides, he’s just doing this to piss on Bush’s presidency, starting a fight and then running out the door, leaving George holding the bag!”
</alternate universe SDMB>
I for one find it heartening that Clinton did not respond to the bombing of the USS Cole because Shodan might have disapproved. It shows strength of character!
Over at ol’ Josh Marshalls Talking Points Memo there is an interesting conjecture: its a Kerryist plot.
Boiled down, its this: Kerry doesn’t have the money that GeeDubya does. Money is a major advantage, and there is no plausible way to neutralze that. So Kerry decides to take his lumps early, take a quietist approach as the scandals break, and save his ammo for the home stretch.
Now, according to uncitable rumors I am too lazy to track down, the Bushiviks spent about 50 megabucks countering the recent scandals. And it worked, Bush is marginally ahead in the polls. But to accomplish this, they spent almost a quarter of thier ready cash. Now, advertising works, no getting around it. The Bushiviks have managed to plant the “waffling” image in the public mind based pretty much on nothing. But keep in mind, the Pubbies had the same money advantage the last time out and still managed to lose the popular vote.
As well, there is the “other shoe” effect. Just about everything the Bushiviks could throw at Kerry has been thrown (a few of which, like the recent slurs on his war record, were downright embarrassing). If that’s the best they got, they ain’t got much when it comes to negative campaigning. And I suspect that they’ve got as much mileage out the “firm, decisive leader” Bushwah as they’re likely to. So the “other shoe” factor isn’t there for Kerry.
But for Bush? Well, only if the last few weeks have brought out every possible embarassing fact about GeeDubya’s bold and decisive leadership style. The Kerryists are betting otherwise. Good bet?
I find it extremely disheartening that Bush has any support at all. Never mind the unprovoked war he got us into under false pretenses, never mind that our military might was shifted from the pursuit of honest to God terrorists to invade Iraq. What gets me is that he so blatantly pitches his campaign to the cross-burning crowd: from campaigning at Bob Jones University in 2000 (a school with a campus building named after a Grand Dragon of the KKK, and that forbade interracial dating at the time) to his support for the Musgrave amendment, Bush has actively courted the support of the kind of bigots that reasonable conservatives insist they are not.
I think it’s time that Republicans consider that the best thing that could happen for the party is to have Bush lose, big time. That may be the first step in reclaiming the party of Lincoln from the folks who have turned it into the party of David Duke.
The GOP is now the party of the Klan? Who will let Senator Byrd know?
Byrd is a disgusting piece of shit, IMHO… but he is not the defacto leader of his party, nor does he actively campaign on a platform of hate.
The sane Republicans, McCain for example, need to take back the party.
You are so precious.
McCain is just one of those names that you throw out there in a childish attempt at making yourself look ‘non-partisan’. Of course, the fact that you throw McCains name out there shows that you don’t know shit about him. You talk about the need for McCain to ‘take back the party’. Not that I would mind a President McCain, but if President GW Bush is making your type shit bricks, a President McCain would give you an anuerism.
Your silly tu quoque argument is meaningless, seeing as Byrd is not a presidential candidate. What is disgusting to me is that the candidate for president who has pitched his campaign squarely at the worst kind of bigot still has the support of hard-line Republicans. Y’all know better than that.
I love the ignorance of blind partisans who think they know all about someone based on one post. :rolleyes:
Registered Libertarian here, Barry Goldwater is my political idol. Bush is simply a tool of the far right “Christian” bigots who currently control the Republican party, he is no conservative of any stripe.