Good post, tomndebb, but I have to disagree with you on this point. I think the Wolfowitz plan was an excellent misreading of the events. It got virtually everything wrong. 
Notice the reversal of causality in your attempted interpretation, Sam.
“Prepare for war” = deter a war from starting.
“Fight and win war” = start a war anyway.
Call it “prevent war from happening in the first place” = newspeak.
See the difference now?
Yes, you can bash Kerry if you like. But, this being comparison shopping to those of us faced with actually making a decision, discussion of Bush and his own measure vs. the standards you set is fucking inevitable and indispensable. Deal with it.
You know that I think you are an outrageous liar. Well, now I think you are incredibly stupid as well. It is eminently clear that Kerry is not talking about “nuclear fuel.” He says that Iran claims to need nuclear reactors for energy. This is clearly nonsense, and he suggests that we call their bluff by offering them energy ourselves, if Russia won’t do it. Get it? Call their bluff=offer them energy so that they won’t have any reason to build nuclear reactors. Please find me a cite in which Kerry says he wants to give them “nuclear fuel.”
Yes. We liked it so much better when they were saying “We are going to build a nuclear weapon.” Then they kicked out the inspectors. Then we had satellite photos of them breaking the seals on the storage facilities to retrieve the nuclear material. Then we did nothing. Damn that Clinton!
Every time you post, you reveal how mendacious, and now stupid, you are. (As an olive branch, I will allow the substitution of “exceptionally gullible” or “blinded by partisanship” for “stupid”).
Oh yeah, Sam, I couldn’t help but notice that you brought up Joe Wilson again. Please feel free to return to the debate about him here. You can demonstrate how much of a “rampage” he has been on. Oh, yes, I recall that you didn’t weasel out of the thread once you had your ass handed to you, but rather “went on vacation.”
I couldn’t help but notice that you have posted about 100 times since that thread, beginning only a day after elucidator’s last post there. Care to drop the charges about Wilson or come back to refute the evidence as to why you were full of shit?
Cite?
Really. If you’ve got evidence that most Democrats believe that, feel free to put it on the table.
Given that the best way to fight the war and make the Middle East a safer place, if it were only possible, would be to rewind the clock to the winter of 2003, and then not invade Iraq, it’s pretty obvious who can be trusted to fight a war, and who is the fuckup-in-chief.
Let’s put it this way: it’s five and a half months until Kerry’s inauguration, if the fates are kind to America. See how much the situation in Iraq has changed in the past five and a half months? And the five and a half months before that? I bet it can change just as much in the next five and a half months. There’s no point in Kerry planning anything, when the situation he’s planning for will probably be completely different by the time he’s in a position to do anything about it.
http://www.pollingreport.com/wh04gen.htm
There are several polls out there.
Gallup/CNN/USAToday has four different versions all by itself - (registered v. likely voters) x (with/without Nader). Worst case is likely/with; Kerry goes from one point ahead to four behind. Best is registered/without; Kerry goes from a 4-point lead to a 3-point lead.
So far, Gallup & Co. is the outlier.
Zogby (polling during convention week) has Kerry going from a 2-point to a 5-point lead.
Newsweek (polling last Thursday and Friday) had Kerry going from a 6-point lead to an 8-point lead in the 2-way, and from a 3-point lead to a 7-point lead in the 3-way. Moreover, the splits between Thursday’s and Friday’s polling are worth a look-see: on Thursday, Kerry polled a 2-point lead in the 3-way race, and on Friday, he led by 10 points.
CBS has Kerry going from leading by 3 to leading by 5 in the 3-way polling, and going from up 5 to up 6 in the 2-way.
American Research Group has Kerry going from a 3-point lead to a 4-point lead in the 3-way, and from 4 up to 3 up in the 2-way.
ABC/WaPo slices things the same 4 ways as Gallup. Among registered voters, the 2-way takes Kerry from 1 down to 7 up; the 3-way from 2 down to 6 up. Among likelies, Kerry went from 4 down to 1 and 2 up, respectively.
In short, the polls do different things, but the consensus is that Kerry helped himself a bit last Thursday night. Nobody in their right mind should have expected a big bounce compared to historical norms (average convention bounce in the 1968-2000 period is about 6 points) because of (a) the much narrower than usual middle ground, and (b) the greatly reduced TV coverage of the convention, so you can make what you will of all that, but I think Kerry did OK.
Of course, Bush’s ability to change the subject (*Terrorists are attacking!!! * - oh wait a minute, all we know is they did recon on some buildings pre-9/11, but you should still be afraid, no we don’t play politics with terror alerts) will probably cut into the bounce, because people won’t have Kerry’s speech on their minds nearly as long. But I digress.
Ah, Sam, if you’ll recall, painful though it may be, making “peace break out all over the Middle East” (if not the world) was the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that was peddled to us as the highest, best reason *for * the Iraq war - peddled to us, that is, by persons such as the administration you reflexively defend, and, it can’t be ignored, your own self.
It’s good to see you ridiculing the naivete of that view now, though, even if it isn’t exactly proof that you eally are willing and able to learn from your brief and no doubt agonizing contacts with reality.
That’s not only offensive, it’s flat out wrong. If you are naive enough to believe that only the Republicans have morals, you’re an ignorant fool. And if your idea of morals is the lying fuck that George W. Bush is, you’ve got some twisted-ass morals indeed. But that you think you can trust this liar is simply stunning. The below article is FULL of examples of the blatant lies heaped upon us by this “moral” Republican administration, headed up by the moralest of all moral liars, GWB, and he actually got his start lying to us before he even took office…
The bastard lied to you to get elected and has lied to you every single, solitary day since then, but you trust him? Lie after lie after LIE and you want to give him 4 more years to lie to you some more? And this is moral? And Democrats, who were at the forefront of fighting for worker’s rights and women’s equality and civil rights aren’t moral people who are guided by their convictions? Out-fucking-rageous.
Jeez…do you Dems have to keep bringing up Clinton???
‘Sabotage’ how, by talking about it?
Gimme a break. We’ve given Bush everything he asked for to win the war, and the peace. Remember that $87 billion he asked for, and got, in additional aid last fall? He’s hardly spent any of it yet! That’s obviously the fault of us naysayers and gloom-and-doomers.
Remember when things first really blew up over there, last November? The Administration told us it wasn’t really as bad as the reporting showed; most of Iraq was fine, they were refurbishing schools (paint), forming representative local governments (the ‘local’ part was true, anyway), and things were really going pretty well.
You know that we were supposed to keep track of the Iraqi oil revenues that we spent on their behalf, because it was really their money, and we were acting as trustees? Well, there are holes in the now-defunct CPA’s accounting (for the period through year’s end) that you could drive a truck through. You know their excuse? Things were so bad over there late last year that just getting a bank statement from the Baghdad bank was a major endeavor. So there was no way to keep complete accounts.
So who was telling the truth last November, and who was bullshitting the American people - the gloom-and-doomers, or the sweetness-and-light folks in the Bush administration? And does lying about the situation somehow magically make it any easier to solve the very real problems over there, if you’re lying in the key of Pollyanna?
Since our military’s already so overloaded that it’s calling up the IRR (i.e. people who’ve finished their hitches in the military, but can still be called up out of the blue for several years afterwards), the answer is that we can’t do anything that involves boots on the ground. We just don’t have 'em to spare. Once you’ve used up all your bullets, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a liberal or a conservative when you try to use that gun against a foe.
Sure, we can drop bombs and fire missiles, but Iran (for instance) has apparently dispersed the elements of their nuclear program to make it difficult to bomb more than a piece here and a piece there. For a lot of military tasks, you simply need forces on the ground to finish the job, no matter how much air power you have.
Calling names ain’t an argument, bub.
You’re absolutely right about peace through strength. But our strength is tied down on this useless diversion in Iraq. Meanwhile, if we need an army somewhere else, we’re screwed. Tell me how you blame that on liberals.
Apparently, his Secret Plan is pretty much “Stay The Course But Suck MORE Cock.” Or at least that’s what he told Tom Brokaw:
It’s a stunningly transparent interview. Jack Kerry is a polished, pro-Israel/pro-Wall, on-message man, and he’s got a hard-on for Saudi Arabia. In other words, he’s the wrong choice for right now.
With a start like this, he will surely nosh some serious shoeleather along the campaign trail. By harvest time in Ohio he’ll probably be popping his head out of a tank for a photo op. 
*Footnote: Part of my own OCS curriculum included, along with a whole semester on The Art of War, a good chunk of Vegetius. As we’ve seen here, different people distill different meanings, but we were taught “if you want to make peace, you’ll need to use force.” Food for thought, I suppose.
(By the way, for Age of Empires fans out there, we owe our knowledge of the onager to Vegetius.)*
We’re all pretty much Civ III ‘round these parts, stranger. Maybe ya’ll would be more comfortable with the Microserfs over in the next county. Before sundown would be a good time to be gettin’ on over there.
Ah, that explains a lot. You all DO seem a little sketchy when it comes to a siege.
Ah, more of the usual Slime From the Right.
Wow, “peace through strength” with a C.V.
Well, I suppose somebody had to claim credit for discovering the onager. But why make an ass of oneself?
Sam, part of the basis for your OP was the Gallup Poll. Here is further information from their website which may put things into perspective:
BTW, I noticed the nonsense of Bush’s comment on fighting a war to prevent war at the time that it was made. I was taping the speech and went back to listen to see if I had misunderstood. It would have been pathetic no matter which candidate said it.. In the 1960’s liberal activists ridiculed Johnson and Nixon both for their “fight for peace” plans. So you need not say that criticizing such a stupid remark is partisan.
A strong, well-prepared nation is one thing. Attacking a country after it has attacked our country to prevent further attacks is at least understandable. Preemptively attacking a country (that you’ve already shown signs of wanting to attack) based on inaccurate information and then continuing to defend that war and saying you would have made the same decision anyway demonstrates an unhealthy “frame of reference.”
And our declaring war isn’t the only way other nations change or overthrow their dictators.
I like you, Arty. I’m gonna do my best to pretend you never said that.
But just this once.
’luci, my friend, we go back a good ways as comrades-in-arms.
So could you at least clue me in as to what my offending comment was? Because I’m having a moment of total cluelessness here.
Okay, let’s see…you lost credibility with me and I stopped listening to anything you had to say, right about…here: "And if your idea of morals is the lying fuck that George W. Bush is, you’ve got some twisted-ass morals indeed.
And if you’ll calm down and reread my post, you’ll see that I was talking about my impression of Republican politicians vs. Democrat politicians since the 1968 election, not Bush.
And you do not know, of your own personal knowledge, that Bush lied about anything. So spare me.
That onager/ass pun. Erudite, but nonetheless unspeakable.
And don’t bat the big brown puppy eyes at me and play innocent! I know a smartass when I see one, I’ve met several.
Uh, my last post was aimed at Shayna. Sorry.
Hi, luci. Gotta go right now, but thanks.
If your **Arty **post was aimed at me, that is.