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 Thu Jun 12, 2008 22:39 pm Obama v. McCain: Setting the Tone |
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And what do you think about both candidates?
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Torsten
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| Thu Jun 12, 2008 23:17 pm Obama v. McCain: Setting the Tone |
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Obama would raise our taxes and expand the welfare base, while McCain would keep us in the Middle East.
This is a left-wing Democrat vs. a moderate Republican. I think McCain will win on the strength of the moderate vote. |
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prezbucky
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| Fri Jun 13, 2008 0:22 am Obama v. McCain: Setting the Tone |
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I agree with the statement one respected political expert made on the radio in the middle of the primaries: "Obama is the youngest candidate with the oldest ideas. His ideas about domestic policy are from the 1960s, and his ideas about foreign policy are from the 1930s." He is also clearly more of an elitist than McCain is, and elitists generally do a lot of damage. His opinions are similar to those of Jimmy Carter, whose policies resulted in one of the most catastrophic presidencies in history, and therefore, of course, won him great respect in Europe.
McCain would keep us in the Middle East for a while, but more in the sense that we have never left Japan and Europe, not in an endless bloody war that goes nowhere. He is extremely strict about pork barrel spending, and he understands that low taxes make for a stronger economy. On the negative side, he appears to believe in some phony eco scares, like "global warming". |
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Jamie (K)
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| Fri Jun 13, 2008 15:11 pm Obama v. McCain: Setting the Tone |
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| Are you saying that you wouldn't sign the Kyoto thing? |
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prezbucky
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Location: Nashville, TN (USA)
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| Fri Jun 13, 2008 15:18 pm Obama v. McCain: Setting the Tone |
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| prezbucky wrote: | | Are you saying that you wouldn't sign the Kyoto thing? |
Well, according to reports, signing or not signing the Kyoto accord has no relationship to a given country's compliance with it. Many European countries signed it but increased their emissions.
Besides, the agreement exempted the world's heaviest polluting countries.
It's just a joke. |
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Jamie (K)
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| Fri Jun 13, 2008 15:33 pm Obama v. McCain: Setting the Tone |
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| hehe |
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prezbucky
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| Wed Jul 09, 2008 21:15 pm Obama v. McCain: Setting the Tone |
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McSame has some old policies that will NEVER work.. he has barrowed some of Carter's and Bush's policies  |
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Justice
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| Wed Jul 09, 2008 21:26 pm Obama v. McCain: Setting the Tone |
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| Justice wrote: | | McSame has some old policies that will NEVER work.. he has barrowed some of Carter's and Bush's policies |
Obama's policies are a mixture of those of Neville Chamberlain, George McGovern and Jimmy Carter, with a little bit of Lenin mixed in. During the primaries he was called "the youngest candidate with the oldest agenda", because his foreign policy ideas dated back to the 1930s and his economic ideas went back to the 1960s. All of them are ideas that have been tried for 50 to 80 years and been proven not to work.
There is little similarity between McCain's policies and those of Jimmy Carter. In fact, he's quite the opposite of Jimmy Carter. |
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Jamie (K)
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Location: Detroit, Michigan, USA
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Justice
I'm new here and I like it ;-)
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| Thu Jul 10, 2008 15:22 pm Obama v. McCain: Setting the Tone |
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We got Saddam
We recovered from 9/11
We're trying to help Iraq and Afghanistan
We're paying lower taxes than we did under Clinton -- people are free to spend, invest or waste (lottery tickets) their money as they see fit.
Things that have gone at least partly wrong:
- Iraq (sort of) -- It hasn't gone ideally, but we're still trying. At least we haven't cut and run. The US president is commander in chief, but he can hardly be blamed for poor military planning. I imagine he does a lot of nodding (off) when he's being briefed about military things.
- Afghanistan (Sort of) -- We removed the Taliban, but they're still popping up over there... probably due to our fighting on two fronts at once.
- Housing crash -- People buying homes they can't afford, combined with some sleazy lending practices, can hardly be controlled. This is a free country, remember -- the president doesn't tell people what they can and can't do with their money. The people who made bad borrowing decisions are paying for them, and the offending lenders will be taken to court. (hopefully)
- Trade deficit -- We've had one for time immemorial, so nothing has changed there. We can't crank out toys as cheaply as China can, thanks to our labor unions.
- Budget deficit -- ditto. When is the last time our government balanced a budget?
- Katrina -- He picked the head of FEMA, so since the head of FEMA did a crappy job I suppose a little bit of that blame can go on the president. The governor of Louisiana and the mayor of Nawlins also deserve blame. |
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prezbucky
I'm a Communicator ;-)
Joined: 07 Nov 2006
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Location: Nashville, TN (USA)
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| Thu Jul 10, 2008 20:10 pm Obama v. McCain: Setting the Tone |
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preszbucky, nice to see you reply.. It was fair unlike Jamie's rants.
There was no need to get Saddam. Bush invaded Iraq under the name of "weapons of mass destruction" but he didn't show us that Iraq actually had. He had some political score to settle and it was his in personal interest to attack Iraq.
US's trying to help Iraq and Afganistan? Is Bush so stupid? Americans are paying $4 a gallon and the economy is on recession.. all because of his war on Iraq. He could have helped his OWN people before he tried to help others. His war on Afganistan is well justified but he didn't achieve what was intended to but shift his focuse to Iraq because it was pre-planned even before he became the president. Has he caught Bin Laden? NO.
What's his problem with Iran? Had they done anything in America? They seem to be addicted to nuclear like US is to oil. Bush is fooling everyone by saying Iran is dangerous. It is not more dangerous than Bush is to the world. If US attacks Iran before Iran attacks US, it will prove the fact again that Bush is a warmonger. If you're portraying Iran is a "dangerous" country then you should try to negate their effect by diplomacy and if not, it will mean US is dangerous because they attack a nation because they feel like they need to. If he is agains Iran president, who was elected by the people, why's Bush, a preacher of democracy, not against Mushraf? It comes down to attack who we don't agree with, friend who we agree with.
Those things have not goen partly wrong, but completely. I wish you added the "treatment of war prisoners." |
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Justice
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| Thu Jul 10, 2008 22:59 pm Obama v. McCain: Setting the Tone |
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Saddam had to go -- very, very bad man who gassed his own people (Iraqi Kurds) and tortured others (Shi'a mostly).
There's no way we've searched the entire country (right?) -- to do that would take decedes, wouldn't it? Iraq is the size of California. If there truly aren't any WOMD in Iraq, Saddam must have shipped them somewhere else... doubtless ready to take them back if the UN got off his back.
We're paying $4 a gallon because of rising global demand, which has led to a surge in oil prices.
Bush doesn't catch Bin Laden, troops do. We're looking for him. (most likely CIA/special ops)
The economy isn't in recession. Our economy is actually growing (looking at exports, and unemployment is still fairly decent). We've been hit by high oil prices, something WE CAN'T CONTROL. We also can't control our left-biased media, who love to tell people that their Republican president's economy is bad.
In the US, it is up to people to help themselves -- one of the main problems with some here is their dependence on the government. This is not, nor should it be, a socialist state. With personal freedom comes personal responsibility -- while we all like the freedom, not all grasp the responsibilities that go with it.
Treatment of war prisoners? Are you kidding? Fine, the pics shouldn't have been taken... but we're nowhere close to what other regimes have done (and do) to their prisoners. We don't shoot prisoners, for instance, nor do we use acid to torture them We torture them by reading them bedtime stories non-stop (which truly is a form of torture, I must admit 
hehe |
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prezbucky
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Location: Nashville, TN (USA)
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| Thu Jul 10, 2008 23:02 pm Obama v. McCain: Setting the Tone |
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Have you seen the movie "Team America - World Police"?
If not, check it out -- it's hilarious. |
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prezbucky
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Location: Nashville, TN (USA)
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| Fri Jul 11, 2008 0:35 am Obama v. McCain: Setting the Tone |
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This can't normally be accessed without subscription, so I'll place it here as a quote. It's clear from this information that the decision for US troops to enter Iraq was far more complex than the gossip and slogans that our friend "Justice" chooses to believe. This is all old stuff to people who were listening to the pundits on the US news channels before the war began, although it's understandable that "Justice" wouldn't have heard them, seeing as Canada has a censored press and had forbidden cable broadcast of one of the main channels at the time.
| Quote: | Why America Went to War in Iraq
By DOUGLAS J. FEITH
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL EUROPE
July 4, 2008
A lot of poor commentary has framed the Iraq war as a conflict of "choice" rather than of "necessity." In fact, President George W. Bush chose to remove Saddam Hussein from power because he concluded that doing so was necessary.
President Bush inherited a worrisome Iraq problem from Bill Clinton and from his own father. Saddam had systematically undermined the measures the U.N. Security Council put in place after the Gulf War to contain his regime. In the first months of the Bush presidency, officials debated what to do next.
As a participant in the confidential, top-level administration meetings about Iraq, it was clear to me at the time that, had there been a realistic alternative to war to counter the threat from Saddam, Mr. Bush would have chosen it.
In the months before the 9/11 attack, Secretary of State Colin Powell advocated diluting the multinational economic sanctions, in the hope that a weaker set of sanctions could win stronger and more sustained international support. Central Intelligence Agency officials floated the possibility of a coup, though the 1990s showed that Saddam was far better at undoing coup plots than the CIA was at engineering them. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz asked if the U.S. might create an autonomous area in southern Iraq similar to the autonomous Kurdish region in the north, with the goal of making Saddam little more than the "mayor of Baghdad." U.S. officials also discussed whether a popular uprising in Iraq should be encouraged, and how America could best work with free Iraqi groups that opposed the Saddam regime.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld worried particularly about the U.S. and British pilots enforcing the no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq. Iraqi forces were shooting at the U.S. and British aircraft virtually every day; if a plane went down, the pilot would likely be killed or captured. What then? Mr. Rumsfeld asked. Were the missions worth the risk? How might U.S. and British responses be intensified to deter Saddam from shooting at these planes? Would the intensification trigger a war? What would be the consequences of cutting back on the missions, or ending them?
On July 27, 2001, Mr. Rumsfeld sent a memo to Mr. Powell, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney that reviewed U.S. options:
"The U.S. can roll up its tents and end the no-fly zones before someone is killed or captured....We can publicly acknowledge that sanctions don't work over extended periods and stop the pretense of having a policy that is keeping Saddam 'in the box,' when we know he has crawled a good distance out of the box and is currently doing the things that will ultimately be harmful to his neighbors in the region and to U.S. interests -- namely developing WMD and the means to deliver them and increasing his strength at home and in the region month-by-month. Within a few years the U.S. will undoubtedly have to confront a Saddam armed with nuclear weapons.
"A second option would be to go to our moderate Arab friends, have a reappraisal, and see whether they are willing to engage in a more robust policy....
"A third possibility perhaps is to take a crack at initiating contact with Saddam Hussein. He has his own interests. It may be that, for whatever reason, at his stage in life he might prefer to not have the hostility of the United States and the West and might be willing to make some accommodation."
The Iraq policy debate remained unresolved when the September 11 attacks occurred. Like all major national security issues, Iraq policy was re-examined in light of America's post-9/11 sense of vulnerability and the heightened worries about terrorism and, especially, about the danger that terrorists might obtain WMD from a nation state.
When the president ultimately decided that the Iraqi regime must be ousted by force, he was influenced by five key factors:
1) Saddam was a threat to U.S. interests before 9/11. The Iraqi dictator had started wars against Iran and Kuwait, and had fired missiles at Saudi Arabia and Israel. Unrepentant about the rape of Kuwait, he remained intensely hostile to the U.S. He provided training, funds, safe haven and political support to various types of terrorists. He had developed WMD and used chemical weapons fatally against Iran and Iraqi Kurds. Iraq's official press issued statements praising the 9/11 attacks on the U.S.
2) The threat of renewed aggression by Saddam was more troubling and urgent after 9/11. Though Saddam's regime was not implicated in the 9/11 operation, it was an important state supporter of terrorism. And President Bush's strategy was not simply retaliation against the group responsible for 9/11. Rather it was to prevent the next major attack. This focused U.S. officials not just on al Qaeda, but on all the terrorist groups and state supporters of terrorism who might be inspired by 9/11 -- especially on those with the potential to use weapons of mass destruction.
3) To contain the threat from Saddam, all reasonable means short of war had been tried unsuccessfully for a dozen years. The U.S. did not rush to war. Working mainly through the U.N., it tried a series of measures to contain the Iraqi threat: formal diplomatic censure, weapons inspections, economic sanctions, no-fly zones, no-drive zones and limited military strikes. A defiant Saddam, however, dismantled the containment strategy and the U.N. Security Council had no stomach to sustain its own resolutions, let alone compel Saddam's compliance.
4) While there were large risks involved in a war, the risks of leaving Saddam in power were even larger. The U.S. and British pilots patrolling the no-fly zones were routinely under enemy fire, and a larger confrontation -- over Kuwait again or some other issue -- appeared virtually certain to arise once Saddam succeeded in getting out from under the U.N.'s crumbling economic sanctions.
Mr. Bush decided it was unacceptable to wait while Saddam advanced his biological weapons program or possibly developed a nuclear weapon. The CIA was mistaken, we all now know, in its assessment that the U.S. would find chemical and biological weapons stockpiles in Iraq. But after the fall of the regime, intelligence officials did find chemical and biological weapons programs structured so that Iraq could produce stockpiles in three to five weeks. They also found that Saddam was intent on having a nuclear weapon. The CIA was wrong in saying just before the war that his nuclear program was active; but Iraq appears to have been in a position to make a nuclear weapon in less than a year if it purchased fissile material from a supplier such as North Korea.
5) America after 9/11 had a lower tolerance for such dangers. It was reasonable -- one might say obligatory -- for the president to worry about a renewed confrontation with Saddam. Like many others, he feared Saddam might then use weapons of mass destruction again, perhaps deployed against Americans through a proxy such as one of the many terrorist groups Iraq supported.
Thoughtful, patriotic Americans differed then and now on whether the risk of leaving Saddam in power outweighed the risk of war. But Mr. Bush concluded that it did, and that war therefore was necessary. In Congress, many Democrats as well as Republicans supported that conclusion. Debates will continue over whether the president should have balanced the risks differently. But characterizing the Iraq war as "a war of choice" sheds no light on the issue.
Mr. Feith, U.S. undersecretary of defense for policy from 2001 to 2005, is author of "War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism" (HarperCollins, 2008), the author's proceeds of which are being donated to charities for veterans and their families. |
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Jamie (K)
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