Lcyberlina

Well, I am not going to bother responding to the venom being spilled from both sides here... See, there are more important things in life than "winning", just like Garrison said in his piece. The following link is to a story by a Southern Christian Republican VOTING FOR KERRY. It is not so much that he is voting for him but WHY... Check this out, you might learn something: http://www.sierratimes.com/04/10/20/carlworden.htm 599940[/snapback] *sigh*. Please cut it out and read. 599944[/snapback] Excerpt: "You don't get much more conservative and constitutionally-minded than I am, and that is why I just cast my Oregon vote-by-mail ballot for Democrat John Kerry as the next president of the United States. So did my wife -- and she's a very independent thinker. I know there are thousands of lifelong Republican/Independent conservatives who are going to do the same thing on November 2nd, because they've written and told me so."

Had to do it sorry NCMarlin! :thumbup

Well, I am not going to bother responding to the venom being spilled from both sides here... See, there are more important things in life than "winning", just like Garrison said in his piece. The following link is to a story by a Southern Christian Republican VOTING FOR KERRY. It is not so much that he is voting for him but WHY... Check this out, you might learn something: http://www.sierratimes.com/04/10/20/carlworden.htm 599940[/snapback] *sigh*. Please cut it out and read.

Well, I am not going to bother responding to the venom being spilled from both sides here... See, there are more important things in life than "winning", just like Garrison said in his piece. The following link is to a story by a Southern Christian Republican VOTING FOR KERRY. It is not so much that he is voting for him but WHY... Check this out, you might learn something: http://www.sierratimes.com/04/10/20/carlworden.htm

Excuse me... Any comments on the brilliant piece by Garrison? Or are we going to keep on beating the dead horse here. We already know we are divided in this country as we are on this board... Now let's please discuss the issue here. Do you think that the Neocons stand for the original Republican principles? Or do you agree with Garrison that they have bastardized their party??? Unless you have been living under a rock there is clearly a rift in the Republican party (the Democratic party is also divided but that is subject of another thread). Let's please drop the infantile attacks and talk once and for all, let's DISCUSS, DISCERN AND HAVE A REAL CONVERSATION HERE... Can we?

We?re Not in Lake Wobegon Anymore How did the Party of Lincoln and Liberty transmogrify into the party of Newt Gingrich?s evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk? By Garrison Keillor LINK Something has gone seriously haywire with the Republican Party. Once, it was the party of pragmatic Main Street businessmen in steel-rimmed spectacles who decried profligacy and waste, were devoted to their communities and supported the sort of prosperity that raises all ships. They were good-hearted people who vanquished the gnarlier elements of their party, the paranoid Roosevelt-haters, the flat Earthers and Prohibitionists, the antipapist antiforeigner element. The genial Eisenhower was their man, a genuine American hero of D-Day, who made it OK for reasonable people to vote Republican. He brought the Korean War to a stalemate, produced the Interstate Highway System, declined to rescue the French colonial army in Vietnam, and gave us a period of peace and prosperity, in which (oddly) American arts and letters flourished and higher education burgeoned-and there was a degree of plain decency in the country. Fifties Republicans were giants compared to today's. Richard Nixon was the last Republican leader to feel a Christian obligation toward the poor. In the years between Nixon and Newt Gingrich, the party migrated southward down the Twisting Trail of Rhetoric and sneered at the idea of public service and became the Scourge of Liberalism, the Great Crusade Against the Sixties, the Death Star of Government, a gang of pirates that diverted and fascinated the media by their sheer chutzpah, such as the misty-eyed flag-waving of Ronald Reagan who, while George McGovern flew bombers in World War II, took a pass and made training films in Long Beach. The Nixon moderate vanished like the passenger pigeon, purged by a legion of angry white men who rose to power on pure punk politics. "Bipartisanship is another term of date rape," says Grover Norquist, the Sid Vicious of the GOP. "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." The boy has Oedipal problems and government is his daddy. The party of Lincoln and Liberty was transmogrified into the party of hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists, fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience, freelance racists, misanthropic frat boys, shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax cheats, nihilists in golf pants, brownshirts in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons, hacks, fakirs, aggressive dorks, Lamborghini libertarians, people who believe Neil Armstrong's moonwalk was filmed in Roswell, New Mexico, little honkers out to diminish the rest of us, Newt's evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man suspicious of the free flow of information and of secular institutions, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk. Republicans: The No.1 reason the rest of the world thinks we're deaf, dumb and dangerous. Rich ironies abound! Lies pop up like toadstools in the forest! Wild swine crowd round the public trough! Outrageous gerrymandering! Pocket lining on a massive scale! Paid lobbyists sit in committee rooms and write legislation to alleviate the suffering of billionaires! Hypocrisies shine like cat turds in the moonlight! O Mark Twain, where art thou at this hour? Arise and behold the Gilded Age reincarnated gaudier than ever, upholding great wealth as the sure sign of Divine Grace. Here in 2004, George W. Bush is running for reelection on a platform of tragedy-the single greatest failure of national defense in our history, the attacks of 9/11 in which 19 men with box cutters put this nation into a tailspin, a failure the details of which the White House fought to keep secret even as it ran the country into hock up to the hubcaps, thanks to generous tax cuts for the well-fixed, hoping to lead us into a box canyon of debt that will render government impotent, even as we engage in a war against a small country that was undertaken for the president's personal satisfaction but sold to the American public on the basis of brazen misinformation, a war whose purpose is to distract us from an enormous transfer of wealth taking place in this country, flowing upward, and the deception is working beautifully. The concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few is the death knell of democracy. No republic in the history of humanity has survived this. The election of 2004 will say something about what happens to ours. The omens are not good. Our beloved land has been fogged with fear-fear, the greatest political strategy ever. An ominous silence, distant sirens, a drumbeat of whispered warnings and alarms to keep the public uneasy and silence the opposition. And in a time of vague fear, you can appoint bullet-brained judges, strip the bark off the Constitution, eviscerate federal regulatory agencies, bring public education to a standstill, stupefy the press, lavish gorgeous tax breaks on the rich. There is a stink drifting through this election year. It isn't the Florida recount or the Supreme Court decision. No, it's 9/11 that we keep coming back to. It wasn't the "end of innocence," or a turning point in our history, or a cosmic occurrence, it was an event, a lapse of security. And patriotism shouldn't prevent people from asking hard questions of the man who was purportedly in charge of national security at the time. Whenever I think of those New Yorkers hurrying along Park Place or getting off the No.1 Broadway local, hustling toward their office on the 90th floor, the morning paper under their arms, I think of that non-reader George W. Bush and how he hopes to exploit those people with a little economic uptick, maybe the capture of Osama, cruise to victory in November and proceed to get some serious nation-changing done in his second term. This year, as in the past, Republicans will portray us Democrats as embittered academics, desiccated Unitarians, whacked-out hippies and communards, people who talk to telephone poles, the party of the Deadheads. They will wave enormous flags and wow over and over the footage of firemen in the wreckage of the World Trade Center and bodies being carried out and they will lie about their economic policies with astonishing enthusiasm. The Union is what needs defending this year. Government of Enron and by Halliburton and for the Southern Baptists is not the same as what Lincoln spoke of. This gang of Pithecanthropus Republicanii has humbugged us to death on terrorism and tax cuts for the comfy and school prayer and flag burning and claimed the right to know what books we read and to dump their sewage upstream from the town and clear-cut the forests and gut the IRS and mark up the constitution on behalf of intolerance and promote the corporate takeover of the public airwaves and to hell with anybody who opposes them. This is a great country, and it wasn't made so by angry people. We have a sacred duty to bequeath it to our grandchildren in better shape than however we found it. We have a long way to go and we're not getting any younger. Dante said that the hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who in time of crisis remain neutral, so I have spoken my piece, and thank you, dear reader. It's a beautiful world, rain or shine, and there is more to life than winning.

http://www.wolfpacksfortruth.org/index.html

Rumor has it that the strange object Kerry took out of his pocket :shifty was actually a device to interfere with Bush's transmission... :shifty

The vote was proposed by democrats in congress and when voted on only 2 people voted for it and they were both democrats. It was a scare tactic proposal with political spin all over it. In fact even the gentlemen that proposed it didnt vote for it, it was two others. So the dems plan of making it look like bush wanted to reinstate the draft was ludicrous at best 586332[/snapback] It was protest bill. However, the "draft" talk is not about this bill, is about things the administration is doing under the radar. I can't prove it, but it seems to me that the democrats in congress and the house know what they are talking about.

Tim Ryan (D-OH) Lays the smack down to Bush on the House floor 586243[/snapback] :mischief2 But I thought the draft was not being brought back... How are the dems going to vote for it? :mischief2

Tim Ryan (D-OH) Lays the smack down to Bush on the House floor

I don't hear anyone asking Bush how the hell does he plan to get out of Iraq and HE is the President dude. The challenger (John Kerry) has said all along what he plans to do and if the things he has proposed are done by the President now it is possible we can start withdrawing troops from Iraq, but Bush is so arrogant and stubborn that he won't admit that he needs to change his strategy... "Stay the course" is his mantra, it doesn't matter if the course is taking us to our death. So when exactly has Kerry outlined his full plan for Iraq? All I hear him say is building the Iraqi security, getting free elections, and getting more coalition help (which is what Bush is doing). Until Kerry gives us a timetable for some of this stuff to happen, he's just as clueless and planless. 586220[/snapback] Pay attention.

1) I'm not bashing france. It's what Chirac said during a PC last week. If citing quotes? from a head of state is bashing then so be it. Besides, I didn't offer my opinion on his thoughts either way. No, it was a swiping statement for a lot of people who think France is the devil. 2) Are you trying to say that we should vote for Kerry because he's gonna try real hard to convince other nations to help him out? Even nations such as France that have consistently said no, and have declared that they will continue to say no, regardless of whether it's Kerry, Bush or the Tin Man in office? I am not trying to say vote for anybody. I don't want you to think that my goal is to coerce you to vote for anyone. I am just telling you my opinion in regards to Kerry's better chances of building a better coalition. You may think differently. I honestly don't know if they are going to help Kerry or not, but the truth is that they definitely won't help Bush after the way he treated them and that is my point. 3) Look at the numbers of your "grand coalition" back in 91. You shouldn't be criticizing the contributions of Poland and other smaller countries for this war and then cite a "grand coalition" that was staffed over 90 percent by American Forces. Ahy please. That line is so played out by the RNC. I expected better from you Fillet. I am not criticizing the "contributions" of any country, I am criticizing the futility of Bush's efforts to bring more people in. He is the one to blame for having 90% of the burden. BTW Poland is leaving next year. 4) Yeah, I'll tell you Bush's exit strategy. It's to stay the course and maintain a significant presence until some modicum of social control is implemented in Iraq. The funny thing is that this strategy is the same damn thing that Kerry has said he'd do as well. So before you go spouting about Bush and his exit strategy take a look in the mirror. 584405[/snapback] In other words, more of the same. I don't hear anyone asking Bush how the hell does he plan to get out of Iraq and HE is the President dude. The challenger (John Kerry) has said all along what he plans to do and if the things he has proposed are done by the President now it is possible we can start withdrawing troops from Iraq, but Bush is so arrogant and stubborn that he won't admit that he needs to change his strategy... "Stay the course" is his mantra, it doesn't matter if the course is taking us to our death.

i was convinced too, but that's still not a reason to turn the decision to the president. it is a decision that the congress and senate should make, not the president. 585415[/snapback] Dude, you just said it yourself "I was convinced" too. Now tell me, Honestly, with the information shown to us back then, the track record of Saddam and the assertions from the administration that Saddam was in cahoots with Al-Qaeda, wouldn't you have voted for that resolution too? Now be real. I would have voted Yes myself. How do you think I felt when the months went by and we never found the weapons. I practically lost friends defending the war and President Bush back then. When it was pretty clear that there were no weapons, that Saddam was never in cahoots with Al-Qaeda, I got pretty angry. Some people change their minds when they see that evidence proves they were wrong... I am what some people call a "flip flopper"

You guys crack me up... I rest my case.

Bush administration had several opportunities to bomb Zarqawi's camp well before the war But you've been claiming there were no terrorists in Iraq before the war. Now we're being told there was training camps we could have bombed. You can't have it both ways. Either they were there (obviously with Saddam's permission), or they weren't. Which will it be? 585365[/snapback] The camp was there. Where were Osama and his people?

I can't believe you have the nerve to say "some Unfortunate things going on"... Thousands have been killed by our troops. They are called "collateral damage" remember? Not even counting the fact that these people no longer have the infrastructure needed for daily survival. No garbage collection, no sewage, no water, no electricity, no LIFE. 585326[/snapback] If your ignorance wasn't so willfully malevolent, it might be comical. UN Office for coordination of humanitarian affairs "We are producing right now around 4,200 megawatts," the minister of electricity, Aihman al-Sammarae, told IRIN in Baghdad. "We have broadly reached pre-war levels." Prior to the war, power generation was roughly 4,500 megawatts. ... Saddam Hussein's regime siphoned off electricity for Baghdad, leaving much of the south and north without 24-hour supplies. Al-Sammarae stressed that electricity distribution in the pre-war period was inequitable. "Under Saddam all provinces in Iraq suffered," al-Sammarae said. "If there was 4,000 megawatts of generation, Baghdad would receive 3,500 megawatts. We are responsible for providing electricity to all provinces," he maintained. AFP article on NEW sewer construction "Until now, each house had a septic tank, which cost around 35,000 dinars (20 dollars) to empty each month," says Ahmed Hassan, a contractor working on the 40-million-dollar sewage project. A skeptical old Iraqi man approaches a trench dug out in front of his house and asks the workers if the sewage system will run at 70 percent when it is completed. The contractor laughs and says when the project is done, sewage will never flood the streets like it did before and the system will run "at 100 percent for the next 50 years". Dosa and the Iraqi contractors hope the projects make Iraqis see the gains from the US presence. "The people are committed to the projects which will make their lives easier and they can see the foolishness in sabotaging the infrastructure," says Luai Abdelani, a contractor whose 200 employees have strung up no less than 190 kilometres (115 miles) of power cables since June. The cable project, valued at 10 million dollars, will add 1,450 homes to a power grid and they will no longer have to tap electricity illegally. Dosa is already seeing results in the district that was once a bastion of Shiite rebel cleric Moqtada Sadr. "The people here supported Sadr ... There were posters on the walls," Dosa says. But now the pictures of the chubby bearded black-turbaned cleric have disappeared. Dosa makes a point of visiting all the work sites and talking with local residents who offer his men chilled soft drinks. Just one thing is lacking -- security. "The people in this neighborhood, neglected for 30 years, understand that we are here to deliver them services," says Hassan, a translator for Dosa. "We have accomplished many things ... but a return to normalcy would be a miracle." 585359[/snapback] Might want to check with reality and go to Iraq yourself. Go see for yourself how they're "living conditions" have improved if you are so convinced we've done so much good.

then they shouldn't blame the president now. they went with it. 585336[/snapback] Wrong... This is what John Kerry and John Edwards voted for: "In giving the President this authority, I expect him to fulfill the commitments he has made to the American people in recent days--to work with the United Nations Security Council to adopt a new resolution setting out tough and immediate inspection requirements, and to act with our allies at our side if we have to disarm Saddam Hussein by force. If he fails to do so, I will be among the first to speak out." TEXT FROM THE SPEECH JOHN KERRY MADE ON THE SENATE FLOOR October 9, 2002 Does this sound like he gave permission to Bush to invade Iraq just Because? 585339[/snapback] and that was his mistake. he should have said: "I exort the president to work with the United Nations Security Council to adopt a new resolution setting out tough and inmediate inspection requirements, and to act with our allies at our side. Until all diplomatic resources have been used the senate will not give the president authorization to go to war." but it was easier to not take responsability. 585357[/snapback] Whatever dude. That is your opinion. At that time, even I was convinced Saddam Hussein was a menace and that he had weapons. The point is that with that resolution the President had the leverage to go and force Saddam to let inspectors in Iraq. The mistake was made by President Bush, who didn't wait for the inspections to finish and conclude that Saddam had no weapons.

You Call That a Major Policy Address? In a week of devastating revelations about his Iraq policies, Bush has nothing new to say. By Fred Kaplan Posted Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2004, at 1:57 PM PT LINK Did CNN and MSNBC get hoodwinked this morning? Yesterday, the White House announced that President Bush would be delivering a "major policy address" on terrorism today. The cable news networks broadcast it live and in full. Yet the "address" turned out to be a standard campaign stump speech before a Pennsylvania crowd that seemed pumped on peyote, cheering, screaming, or whooping at every sentence. The president announced no new policy, uttered not one new word about terrorism, foreign policy, or anything else. He did all the things he wanted to do in last Thursday's debate?accuse his opponent of weakness, bad judgment, vacillation, and other forms of flip-floppery?though this time without a moderator to hush the audience, much less an opponent to bite back. And Bush loved it, smiling, smirking, raising his eyebrows, as if to say, "How 'bout that zinger?" In short, the cable networks were lured into airing an hourlong free campaign ad for George W. Bush. (CNN's spokeswoman did not return my calls inquiring if the producers felt used. The secretary to MSNBC President Rick Kaplan?no relation?connected me to a "viewer relations" line, where I could leave a message if I wished. I called again to clarify that I had a press question, not a consumer complaint. She connected me to the same line again. When I tried a third, fourth, and fifth time, she didn't even pick up the phone; no doubt seeing my number pop up on the Caller ID screen, she routed my call to the prerecorded announcement.) It's hard to blame either network for taking the White House's bait. Most presidents would want to deliver, right about now, a major address on the war against terror and the war in Iraq. In the last few days, one blow after another has struck the very foundations of Bush's policies. The fact that, under the circumstances, Bush didn't deliver a major policy address after all, despite his advance word, should embarrass not only CNN and MSNBC but, still more, President Bush. The week's most stunning development may have been the revelation in L. Paul Bremer's remarks, before a group of insurance agents at DePauw University, that we never had enough troops in Iraq, either to secure the country's borders or to provide the stability needed for reconstruction. "The single most important change, the one thing that would have improved the situation," Bremer said, "would have been having more troops in Iraq at the beginning and throughout." Bremer, of course, was the Bush-appointed head of the U.S.-led occupation authority, so his words on such matters carry weight. Bush, Vice President d*** Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (and Rummy's neocon secretariat) have all insisted?before, during, and after the battlefield phase of the war?that they sent enough troops to accomplish the mission. It is worth recalling that when Gen. Eric Shinseki, then the Army chief of staff, told Congress that successful occupation would require a few hundred thousand troops, he was pushed into early retirement. Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz called his estimate "wildly off the mark." Now we learn that Bremer agreed with Shinseki?and that he said as much to the White House and Pentagon chiefs at the time (a claim corroborated, to the Washington Post, by administration officials). But Bremer's disclosure slams himself no less than Team Bush. Bremer, after all, was the man who ordered the disbanding of the old Iraqi army. This decision is commonly seen in retrospect as the administration's first?and perhaps most?disastrous move after the fall of Baghdad. If Bremer thought there weren't enough U.S. troops on the ground, why did he call for the demobilization of Iraqi troops (many of whom had not been loyal to Saddam?they didn't, after all, fight for him)? This is one of the war's great remaining mysteries. (Another is why we went to war in the first place, but that's another story.) Bremer almost certainly didn't make this decision himself; it had to come from higher up. But from where? My guess is that, ultimately, Ahmad Chalabi was a big influence. He was still counting on taking the reins of power in the new Iraq (he had the support of the White House and the Pentagon at the time), and he hoped to install his own militia, the Free Iraqi Forces, as the new Iraqi army. The old, Baathist-dominated army would have been in the way; it had to go. Whatever the actual story, if Bremer truly thought at the time that there weren't enough troops, he should have resigned rather than carry out the order. The second blow to the war's legitimacy came Monday, when Rumsfeld?increasingly a loose cannon?appeared before the Council on Foreign Relations and, during the question-and-answer period, acknowledged that he had seen no evidence showing a connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden. The Pentagon later released a statement, claiming that Rumsfeld had been "misunderstood." He did not mean to deny the existence of "ties" between the two. However, as has been discussed in this space before, "ties" is a term that is so broad as to be (deliberately) meaningless. Then came news reports of a CIA analysis?ordered by Cheney?showing that Rumsfeld hadn't been misunderstood at all. The analysis concluded that there probably was no working relationship between Saddam's regime and al-Qaida lieutenant Abu Musab Zarqawi. This is significant in two ways. First, in the lead up to the war last year, the only physical evidence of a Saddam-al-Qaida tie was the presence of Zarqawi's training camp in northern Iraq. The camp was in Kurdish-controlled territory?an awkward caveat, but Bush officials at the time issued other, though looser, material suggesting a possible connection to Saddam himself. Had the CIA's recent conclusion been reached two years ago, either within the administration or by Congress, the case for going to war would have been greatly weakened. In fact, as NBC News reported last March (and as almost nobody has picked up since), the Bush administration had several opportunities to bomb Zarqawi's camp well before the war. On at least two occasions the U.S. military drew up plans for an attack. But the White House rejected the proposals?mainly because shutting down Zarqawi's operation would have removed a key rationale for invading Iraq. This was a jaw-dropping bit of cynicism: Bush sold, and continues to sell, the war in Iraq as a major campaign in the global war on terrorism, yet he repeatedly passed up the chance to neutralize or kill one of the most dangerous terrorists (Zarqawi has spent much of his time lately chopping off the heads of foreign contractors) for fear of weakening the case for war. Today comes the long-awaited 900-plus-page report by Charles Duelfer, the CIA's chief weapons inspector, which concludes pretty much what his predecessor, David Kay, figured out?that on the eve of the war Saddam Hussein had neither weapons of mass destruction nor a viable program for producing such weapons; that his capabilities were deteriorating; that his military might was diminishing, not gathering; that, in short, he posed no real threat. Duelfer did find that Saddam intended to reconstitute his programs once sanctions were dropped. Another way of stating this point: The sanctions were working; they were keeping Saddam Hussein in his box. Finally, on the matter of the Bush administration's efforts to revive Iraq's economy, a report this week by the Center for Strategic and International Studies?a conservative Washington-based think tank?finds that for every dollar spent on aid to Iraq, only 27 cents filters down to projects benefiting Iraqis. The rest pays for administrative and management costs. (This is what happens when 85 percent of contracts are awarded to big U.S. or British firms, while just 2 percent go to Iraqi companies.) Add to this the fact that Bush has spent only a small fraction of the $18.5 billion that Congress appropriated for reconstruction, and the verdict can only be that we're doing just slightly more than squat. The evidence is seen in the continued electrical blackouts and the grave shortfall of basic services. The result is that Iraqis who might otherwise have been compliant citizens join the insurgency?or at least let the insurgents pass without turning them in. (For an excellent analysis on the insurgency's composition, click here.) So, President Bush may well need to deliver a major policy address on all this sometime soon. Today, though, he just told the cheering throngs that he's strong and resolute while his opponent's a flip-flopper.

then they shouldn't blame the president now. they went with it. 585336[/snapback] Wrong... This is what John Kerry and John Edwards voted for: "In giving the President this authority, I expect him to fulfill the commitments he has made to the American people in recent days--to work with the United Nations Security Council to adopt a new resolution setting out tough and immediate inspection requirements, and to act with our allies at our side if we have to disarm Saddam Hussein by force. If he fails to do so, I will be among the first to speak out." TEXT FROM THE SPEECH JOHN KERRY MADE ON THE SENATE FLOOR October 9, 2002 Does this sound like he gave permission to Bush to invade Iraq just Because?

because 1, the president is inept, 2 the senators (including kerry and edwards) and congressmen are even worst. 585328[/snapback] So you are saying we are in Iraq because of Kerry and Edwards?

While the situation in Iraq is far from optimal from a US perspective, let's not overstate the situation if the Iraqi people. Yeah, there are some unfortunate things going on, but even as the situation stands right now the Iraqis are far better off then they were. No more despotic regime murdering tens of thousands of civilians and billions of dollars coming into a country that wouldn't of got d*** otherwise. 585286[/snapback] I can't believe you have the nerve to say "some Unfortunate things going on"... Thousands have been killed by our troops. They are called "collateral damage" remember? Not even counting the fact that these people no longer have the infrastructure needed for daily survival. No garbage collection, no sewage, no water, no electricity, no LIFE. And please, do not even compare the ill conceived war in Iraq with the cold war... That is just outrageous.

The UN's former chief weapons inspector Hans Blix told BBC2's Newsnight sanctions had successfully "contained" Saddam. "They did destroy all the biological and chemical weapons and the nuclear weapons sector was also all cleared up. "Had we had a few months more we would have been able to tell the CIA and others that there were no weapons of mass destruction." But US President George Bush had been "desperate" to be able to say there were WMD, Dr Blix added. Former foreign secretary Robin Cook said the report showed the war was a "tragic mistake" "There were no stockpiles. There were also no programmes. The report is quite frank about that. :mad : "There were no chemical precursors, there were no biological agents, there were no plants to make them, there were no delivery vehicles to fire them. There was no programme, no capability, no weapons. "We could have found all that out if we had let Hans Blix finish the job which he wanted to do without fighting a war in which 10,000 people were killed." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/3722290.stm Now, would someone please tell me why? :mad :

Shamrock was at the "Slacker Tour" wasn't he? Perhaps he can tell us what really happened and what is it the pack of underwear. :lol

As evidenced by the results of Gore/Bush 2000 and Bush/Kerry last week the polls just don't matter in the current electoral climate. Now is about the time when the GOP cuts off it's nose despite it's face and blathers on about how crucial a VP debate victory these polls indicate, when last week the fact that Kerry won his debate hands-down didn't really amount to a hill of beans. Ahhhh, the sweet bliss of trying to have it both ways. 584546[/snapback] I was talking about the online polls. And you are right, real polls don't mean s*** either. Anything can swing this election at the end of the stretch. Undecided voters are retarded... What is so difficult to decide? :banghead