I don’t expect for one single moment that you will agree with this…but yes, they are!
Many people in this country supported the war at the beginning and they still support it now. They realize that war is nasty business and that things rarely go according to a preset plan. They realize that all intelligence pointed to Hussein having WMD, and that it was primarily lefties who were predisposed to hate Bush anyway who began to scream “Lies! Deliberate, evil lies!” as soon as it became apparent that no WMDs were to be found. They feel that the U.S., due mostly to the synergistic relationship that very likely either was to be found or was likely to have developed between Hussein’s Iraq and Al-Qaeda, is now a safer place. They also believe the Middle East is a safer region now and less likely to engender war on a larger scale involving some of the world’s larger and more destructive powers (i.e. Russia, China, the U.S., etc.)
Etc., etc., etc. The list goes on. But the point is you’ve drunk too much of the leftie Kool-Aid to see this. How goes the Dope (and wherever else you get your political input) is not necessarily how goes the nation.
I know it’s become popular to make this kind of statement around here.
I also know it’s only another example of the kinds of leftie hatred, refusal to acknowledge the legitimacy of any viewpoint but their own, and verbal bullying that I’ve been railing about these last few days.
Well, do your worst, but know that try as you might, Starvy ain’t intimidated.
How bravely you stand in defiance of ranks upon ranks of organized electrons.
C’mon, aren’t you a bit long in the tooth for these chest-beating and hooting displays? Surely this isn’t the first time you’ve been told that you’re full of shit?
There is still hope! So long as you don’t start stealing material from Jesse Jackson, redemption is yet possible!
How about a nice game of solitaire? Or a donkey ride to Damascus?
Nope, one is never to old to tell people they aren’t going to be intimidated by bozos who declare: Look at things and vote as I do, or YOU’RE A BAD PERSON!!!
Impassioned do-gooders! I swear, you’ll be the undoing of life and personal freedoms in this country long before government wiretapping ever will!
I really think you’re utterly missing elucidator’s point. You’re talking about replying to people on the internet as though you were fighting off a home invasion. It’s the freakin’ internet. You’re not intimidated? I should bloody well hope not. Intimidation implies fear. What, precisely, is there to be afraid of? That I’ll talk at you some more?
Say what you want. I’m not a mod; I can’t stop you. By the same token, I reserve the right to call you an idiot if I feel arsed to do so. Stand bravely up to that if you wish. Then tomorrow maybe you can work up the courage to bravely ask for extra cream in your coffee.
I understood elucidator’s point perfectly, I just chose to ignore it because it wasn’t a valid objection.
kaylasdad99 essentially warned me that he will hold anyone voting for McCain to be vile and evil and dispicable people, and by implication that if I support McCain this is how he’ll view me.
It’s a typical leftie ploy. Try to stifle dissent by making your opponents feel they are bad, evil people (i.e., racist, sexist, selfish, greedy, etc - the list goes on), and thus intimidate them into voting/thinking the way lefties want…or at the very least not voting/thinking the way they normally would.
I merely told him to stuff it, that I wasn’t going to be intimidated.
If people on the internet can feel they have the power to intimidate me with their accusations that I’m an evil person, I can and will use my own electrons to tell them to go jump in a lake.
In a constanly changing modern society, I can understand how people might support a party that wants to cling to traditions of the past - ie. the whole ethos of Conservatism - but the fact of the matter is, such parties are most likely to eventually become political dinosaurs, or worse, a living joke, like the UK Tories.
This is a lie. Period. At the very least, you know – you fucking know – that the intelligence was mixed. You cannot have been a participant on these boards for as long as you have and expect to have a statement like the above met with anything resembling respect. It is a scurrilous lie. And you know it.
This is both a lie and a character assassination. Less than six sentences further on in your post you castigate “lefties” for doing precisely the thing you do here, namely refusing “…to acknowledge the legitimacy of any viewpoint but their own.” You are both a liar and a hypocrite.
The fact that Hussein’s government was an avowed enemy of Al-Qaeda, and that the Al-Qaeda leadership encouraged the citizens of Iraq to revolt against Hussein, has no impact on your opinion. The fact that you can’t find a single serious specialist or scholar on MENA who would agree with you that such a risk exists has no impact on your opinion. The fact that investigations by Congress have concluded there was no operational relationship between Al-Qaeda and the Hussein regime has no impact on your opinion. The fact that even if there was such a “synergistic relationship” – a concept you appear to have made up out of whole cloth – was to exist, Hussein couldn’t have supplied Al-Qaeda with anything more dangerous than a kupie doll – there were no WMDs, remember? – has no impact on your opinion.
Is this something you believe? Do you have any evidence to support that belief?
I spent months – years, really – patiently and respectfully arguing with people whose viewpoints differed from my own. I might as well have been arguing with tree stumps. There’s not a single thing you’ve posted in this response that hasn’t been thoroughly repudiated a hundred times over on these boards.
You are not deserving of respect, because you show no respect in kind and are in addition a bald-faced liar.
I don’t think it’s so much about clinging to societal traditions as it is about trying to keep things from getting worse. And as of now anyway, a pretty healthy percentage of the population feels that way. With the exception of the 12 years of Carter/Clinton, we’ve elected Republican presidents since 1968, and in '94 we broke 50 years or so of Democrat dominance in Congress. In fact, as voters I would say we’re actually pretty much a constant though narrow majority.
Obviously, factors other than societal displeasure enter into the equation, but it’s certainly one of the major factors in who we elect as president.
Really? Is it a uniquely leftie ploy? Because I seem to remember a lot of nasty terms being bandied about from the other side of the isle, terms like un-American, traitor, terrorist sympathizer and so on. Terms used specifically to try to stifle dissent. But I guess I might be misremembering.
I know that in '92 Clinton said Hussein had to go. I know that virtually every major country’s intelligence services thought it likely that Hussein had WMD. And I know that Hussein himself said while in captivity that he wanted to create the impression he had WMD so as to intimidate other countries in the area. When you have the leader of a soverign nation with all the resources he had at hand deliberately trying to decieve outsiders as to whether he has WMD, it’s perfectly obvious to see why so many thought so.
Certainly not. The enemy of my enemy and all that. Hussein had plenty of reason to hate the U.S., and providing Al-Qaeda with WMD doesn’t mean he would have had to welcome them with open arms.
Curious wording, that. No ‘operational’ relationship, eh? What about a relationship that hadn’t yet become operational? If no relationship existed at all, why couch things in such an ambiguous way?
Now you’re just being silly. Prior to the invasion of Iraq, we felt that Hussein had WMD and that part of the danger this posed was the possibility of those weapons falling into Al-Qaeda hands. Then once we discovered there were no WMD, we were supposed to have retroactively realized that Iraq had no WMD to give Al-Qaeda and therefore no threat existed?
You’re really losing it here, Svin.
And besides, Hussein had shown both an ability to develop WMD and to use them against Iran plus some of his own people. There is absolutely no reason to have felt that he couldn’t just as easily developed them once the pressure was off and they could have fallen into Al-Qaeda hands at that time.
Further, I’m certain if such a thing had happened and Al-Qaeda had successfully slaughtered tens of thousands of American citizens, you and your ilk would have been screaming bloody murder that GWB should have realized the likelihood of that very synergistic relationship and taken steps to protect us from it.
It’s something I believe and I don’t have ‘evidence’ to support it, though it’s commonly accepted just about anywhere that intelligent people without a political agenda discuss such things, that the Middle East is a tinder box and all out war there will very likely bring the world’s major powers into serious conflict or all out war themselves.
Translation: They wouldn’t come around to my way of thinking.
I imagine those stumps think the same thing about you.
No, you only allege repudiation because of the way you accept the data. Any fact or statement that appears to support your view is latched onto instantly as proof, yet the board’s conservatives can and have taken issue with your so-called repudiations, and with just as much validity.
These questions and issues are extremely complex and multi-faceted with complications and repercussion that neither you nor I can possibly know and take into account in assessing the value of ‘evidence’. Evidence is just what it says it is: evidence. It is an indicator; it is not proof. And a lack of evidence does not mean a threat is not real and can’t be predicted.
So knock it off with the ‘no evidence = no validity’, okay?
Well, you know what they say: People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw parties.
Dwarfed by the powerhouse team of fear and loathing, as it has always been and, I fear, ever shall be. Fortunately for those who hold sway over your half of the electorate, there is an endless supply of foreign bogeymen to serve as red-white-and-blue herrings.
(Occasionally one needs a gentle boost-up, but that’s hardly a problem for the Masters of their Game, eh?)
Starving Artist, conservatives are not victimized here, republicans are not prosecuted or discriminated (for the most part anyway, tip of the hat to DT). Apologists are called on their bullshit, right, left, center, Martian… that’s all there is to it.
Wars of aggression, torture, incompetence, impunity, hypocrisy etc… All those things get under peoples craw, and in the case of the Bush administration they are legitimate grievances.
Personally speaking, it’s appalling to see how a man can let their dignity and morality sink while clinging desperately to their pride so as to not loose face and admit error, even if involuntarily. If your SDMB persona is a facsimile of your RL one, it seems to me that it’s eating you up.
Frankly, my real-life personna enjoys these occasional knock-down drag-outs even though they don’t accomplish much.
Over the last year or so this place has become so boring and predictable and such a one-trick pony that I’ve hardly been able to arse myself to post here, yet at the same time I read so much utter bullshit about conservatives and Republicans and Christians, etc. that after awhile I become so disgusted that I have to blow off steam and tell 'em what I really think.
Then I go on with my life, which for all my bitching around here is a pretty pleasant one with lots of interests and lots of enjoyable activity.
Much of the anger and obstinacy and combativeness I show around here is board-generated. Fortunately, I virtually never meet people in real life who behave the way people do here. If I did, I’d probably have to go into politics myself.
So don’t take my postings too seriously…or at least not as a reflection as to how I live my life.
You don’t understand, Shodan. People here wanted Bush to don his superman suit and fly over there himself with his magnifying glass. That way he could see first hand for himself all those WMDs before calling in the attack. Nevermind the conflicting testimony of many other staunch Democrats who all “knew” Saddam had WMDs. Bush *could *have been 101% sure if only he had found the WMDs himself. Is that too much to ask? Geeze! I mean why in the world should Bush rely on what various US and foreing intelligence officers were saying/doing…
Bush was so sure Iraq had WMDs that we had to keep out of the hands of terrorists because of how they could be used against us, that here’s what he had our invading army do when it came across the sites that supposedly were the most likely to contain WMDs:
Nothing. Our advance troops didn’t even leave a guard.
They just kept on driving to Baghdad.
Behind them, anyone could have grabbed the alleged WMDs.
If there had actually been such threatening weapons at those sites, they’d have been in the hands of any terrorists willing to pay a good price for them before spring turned to summer.
Conclusion: either Bush didn’t believe there were WMDs, or Bush was a traitor who should be stood up in front of a wall and shot, or Bush was simply a fuckup of greater proportions than even us lefties have previously claimed.
We’ve been over this ground many times. I’m ready to go over it again anytime.
Plus it gives you Dems alot of talking points for every election cycle for the next 50 years. You all should be happy and pissing your pants over that…
As a… weak… “liberal” Republican (fiscally conservative but pro-choice and pro-gay marriage, etc ,etc,), these are the kinds of statements that prevent me from voting Democrat. Yeah, it’s one guy on a message board, but this is the message that I personally get from the Democratic Party as a whole.
I am the Republican that the Dems could have on their side, if they really wanted me. I WANT to vote for Obama, I really do. I WANT a change. I am embarrassed by what my party has become. I even nearly gave my mother (a member of the local Democratic board) a heart attack by announcing to her that I actually intended to vote Democrat this year.
The problem, however, is the repeated “Anyone but Bush” and “Republicans, of all stripes, are evil” themes. This year’s election is more of the same. The whole “CHANGE” meme is about changing politics. Since the DNC nomination, however, it’s been all the same. Obama is not Bush, McCain is just more Bush, the “changed” policies are the same policies that the Dems have been trotting out for years and frankly they don’t do anything more for me now than they have since I started voting.
I am slowly coming to realize that Obama is NOT about change, but more that that’s his slogan, his hook. He is a Democrat, with the same Democratic slogans and ideals. It’s NOT a change. It would more benefit me… and my ideals… to change my party from within than to cross party lines for someone who is just more of the same in a different suit.