Which post did I miss? If I did not respond to it you probably had valid points.

 

.... we gave him just as much. Perhaps they hate us for a reason, and if we had learned why they hated us, we could prevent it without sending our troops overseas to an unjust war and cost more American taxpayers dollars.

me and DVP love each other here. Dont we sweetie? :kiss:

 

:smooches:

 

The two essays towards the bottom of page 1.

Odd how you only find it necessary to respond when contradicting someone.

 

I read your posts Mike, and while some of your points may be valid the most noteworthy being North Korea, what I disagreed with I have already posted my opinions on. I am sorry if you feel I disregarded your thoughts.

About North Korea, you are right. I think they are scared shitless right now. Why? Because we actually have a President with balls that is willing to do what is right for the US no matter what world opinion may be. Bush labeled Iraq, Iran, and NK as an Axis of Evil...and rightly so. Then he goes into Iraq and removes the ruling party in a matter of weeks (this is not to say the war is over and things are fine now in Iraq). Of course they are scared...they are affraid they are next. And I think that is a good thing. Because it sends a clear message to them that there are consequences to not shaping up.

I think the press overblew the whole memo from Rumsfeld. So he sent a memo to his senior staff and generals? Wouldn't you do the same thing prior to acknowledging the fact to the public? I would. I think he has been pretty honest with the American people...Iraq is not as bad as the media would like it to be. Chris Matthews, a Democrat BTW, had great shows last week dedicated to the real story in Iraq with Bob Arnott. Funny how we never really heard anything about what Arnott was reporting in the traditional media outlets.

As for Iraq being a threat to the US I think the NY Posts article this past Saturday on the links and connections between Saddam and Osama speak for themselves. Going into Iraq was the right thing to do. It is that plain and simple.

Onto the Patriot Act. While I admit it is flawed, and gives law enforcement too broad powers, the basic underlying principle of it is for the good of the US and a complete repeal would be worse for the US than its current form now. And I like how it could only be a right opportunists that allowed the Patriot Act to have such vast sweeping powers. And I disagree with providing people doing suspicous, and possibly terrorist activities having the same level of privacy protection as someone else. If you give lawenforcement a reason to investigate you then lawenforcement should, unhindred. If they are wrong then they are wrong and you should be issued an appology. But in today's world I would much rather be wrong about investigating the wrong person than not investigating the right person.

 

Our intelligence agencies meet with rebel groups who support our cause (free trade, not democracy) all the time. That does not reflect on the level of non-advisory support those groups recieve.

 

Oh so that's what Iraq and Al Quaida were doing...free trade agreements. And all this time I thought it was to coordinate, fund, and train terrorist activities. Silly me.

 

My point about NK was that Bush's actions in launching a preemptive strike nullifies one of the major bargaining points that we have always had with other countries. In the past nobody would have worried about getting the US to sign a non aggression pact, because it was clear US policy to not attack without being attacked first. North Korea wants to be assured that they will not be attacked and Bush can say "we won't attack you" as much as he wants but the fact remains that he labeled both Iraq and North Korea as essentially heretical states and everyone knows what he did to Iraq. I am not saying that we need to promise anything to North Korea. I am saying however that these talks would not be stalled in the position they are at if North Korea wasn't absolutely convinced that they need a non aggression pact with the US to protect their interests.

How has the Bush administration not lied about or at the very least exaggerated every aspect of our involvement in Iraq? First we are told that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and that was why we were going in. All the talk of liberating the Iraqi people and possible al Qaeda ties came about after the conflict started. Then we "ended major combat" and were given the impression that we'd be out of there soon enough. But now six months later we're still fighting and have had more deaths of servicemen since the supposed end of the fighting than during it. Supposedly we're rooting out the insurgents and dealing with them to make Iraq safe. But how many car bombs and grenades and rockets go off in Baghdad every single day, killing American soldiers or Iraqi civilians? How many Iraqi government officials have been assasinated by who knows what random militant group? The fact is that casualties from this conflict are mounting and our government has been insisting that we're doing a great job and that we'll be out soon while the facts (which had already been acknowledged internally) paint a vastly different picture. Maybe the news outlets here focus too much on the violence but that doesn't change what's going on.

Just because the basic principle of the Patriot Act is supposedly good does not excuse it from being over broad and giving too much investigative power to law enforcement. Our government is about checks and balances which prevent any one part of government from being too powerful over the other parts of government or the people. Privacy legislation is there specifically to ensure that law enforcement is kept in check, and the Patriot Act nullifies mass quantities of privacy legislation. It is not excusable to subject an individual to thourough scrutiny, possibly detain or incarcerate them, then discover ex post facto that oops they're not you're guy and then issue some form letter apology. That person would sue the pants right off every agency that had anything to do with the investigation, and win.

 

the possible al queda ties with iraq have been discussed repeatedly, ever since al queda claimed responsibility for the 9/11/01 attacks. the major reason we went into iraq was not that we thought iraq had WMD, the major reason was that iraq was corroberating with al queda. end of story. the reason that wasn't released to the public until after the fact is simple. you don't show your cards until everyone has made their bet. it's just common sense.

 

Step 1) Pull head out of ass.

Step 2) Re-read post using general rules of English language.


If you would like I could create some sort of pictorial diagram to help you better understand my sentence.