When have I ever said it was horrible? When do I whine and whine and whine about whats contained in here? I may not like a couple of posters, disagree with more, but some of you complain about all the liberal viewpoints on this board all the time. If I felt the way about this board as a whole like some do, I wouldn't come back.
Daniel Schorr manages to tie Colin Powell and the National Guard imbroglio together and Powell looks like yes man again. http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0220/p09s03-cods.html Commentary > Daniel Schorr from the February 20, 2004 edition The privilege of a 'war president' By Daniel Schorr WASHINGTON – The issue is not how many of his assigned duties George Bush actually performed in the Air National Guard. Nor is the issue why Bush refused his periodic physical examination and stopped flying in 1972 shortly after drug testing was introduced - a coincidence, the White House says. Related stories: The real issue, painful in a society that prides itself on being egalitarian, is privilege - who got to serve in the Guard's "champagne unit" as his unit was called, and who went to Vietnam, perhaps to die. It was all inside and cozy back in Texas then. Lloyd Bentsen III, son of a future senator, got a coveted slot in the Houston-based guard unit. John Connally III, son of the former governor, got another. And in 1968, George Bush, son of Houston's congressman, made it after Ben Barnes, Speaker of the Texas House, talked to the head of the National Guard on the young man's behalf. Bush's first solo flight made headlines in the Houston papers. No one expresses himself more passionately about this kind of favoritism than Colin Powell, who came up from the streets of the Bronx and is now President Bush's secretary of State. In his 1995 memoir, "My American Journey," General Powell wrote: "I particularly condemn the way our political leaders supplied the manpower for that war [The Vietnam War]. The policies determining who would be drafted and who would be deferred, who would serve and who would escape, who would die and who would live, were an anti-democratic disgrace.... I am angry that so many sons of the powerful and well-placed ... managed to wangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units. Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to our country." Powell couldn't have realized in 1995, as Joint Chiefs chairman, that he'd be talking about, among others, his future commander in chief, who was one of the privileged and well-placed. There is some irony in the fact that the Bush National Guard controversy has come bubbling to the surface just as the president announces that he is "a war president." • Daniel Schorr is a senior news analyst at National Public Radio
Woofer, you beat me to it. I was just typing in my new signature. I really admire Colin Powell, and I simply don't partake in the attacks on him. He has done the best with a very difficult hand for the last three years. So, T_J, is Powell another "whining" (ironic SIC) liberal? Don't answer that: your intentional distortions and hyperbole do great injustice, by association, to people like Powell.
I've always respected people who are loyal to their bosses. I don't respect people who flip flop. And I respect even less people who come out and bad mouth their bosses. That has nothing to do whether I like the bosses or not. When you get into a job like a high cabinet post, you better know what you are getting into. Once you get into it, and find that you don't like it, there are only three choices left. 1) Remain loyal and do what the boss says; 2) remain loyal and try to make changes from within; or 3) resign. Whichever choice you make, you shut up. I don't see why you people b**** about Powell being a yes man. The only reason you complain is because you don't like his boss. I think that is very unfair to the man who's trying to do his job.
Daniel Schorr is the most extreme liberal "reporter" in the country. i actually kind of liked him back in his CBS days, but it seems he was too far left even for dan rather. or maybe he just wasn't telegenic enough for commercial television.
He simply had the audacity to write about it. What a bad, bad man. How dare you do such a thing, Mr. Schorr??
Maybe Powell had a liberal ghostwriter. That would explain the conspiracy, so that in the future, when Powell was working for a chicken hawk, they could bring this back to make him look like a hypocrite.
Sure, but by whom? In BS's Hanna Barbara world it was a demonic gang of freedom hating Arab boogeymen armed with Stanley knives who in everyday lives were idiots and losers who could barely ride a bike much less fly a plane, yet somehow they gained the ability to wheel giant jumbo jets through the air with breathtaking skill for 30-45 minutes while NORAD sat around doing not much of anything. This all makes perfect sense to BS, but many people outside of BS's am radio fantasy world don't buy it, and lots of us see the 'War on Terror' for the fraud that it really is. See, I for one have a muted reaction to the argument that given an assortment of factors such as peak oil, OPEC's possible conversion to a Euro standard, the EU's emerging economic might, China's emerging economic might, etc., given these things the US, in order to maintain economic and political supremacy, needs to assert itself militarily in the region to gain maximum leverage over the production and distribution of the area's primary asset. What do I know? Maybe it's true. I would think that there are other less expensive and less dangerous ways to achieve the same goal, but that's a conversation I'd like to have. But the premise that the US is fighting a 'war on terror' is every bit as fraudulent as the idea that the US is there to unseat a cruel dictator, secure the weapons of mass deception, whatever else. And the myth that underlies this whole exercise is so patently ludicrous that only a society of corpulent, complacent, semi-literate hyperconsumers like ours could be duped into believing it.
Well there is video of Osama sitting around talking about the planning and carrying out of the operation. There are records that certain hijackers had taken courses on how to fly so it would make sense that they could wheel the giant jumbo jet. And if it was all a ploy like you say, why didn't they frame it on Iraq in the first place instead of a group headquartered in Afghanistan?
Thank you, NYROCKET. Someone else who actually reads. NORAD was "down" on 9-11 (nice coincidence), terrorists piloted aircraft with pinpoint accuracy into buildings (the jet that hit the Pentagon had actually flown past but then made a 270 degree turn while diving at a steep angle and flying so low over the ground that he clipped the telephone poles across the street from the building....and yet we must believe he learned these skills at a backwater puddle-jumping school?) Thing is, I don't know how much Colin Powell knew about this "President`s" plans, but I'm sure he felt betrayed. At the same time, although biting the hand that feeds you is bad form, I can't respect the "good soldier" bit when it involves policy based on pretext for war. Colin Powell was the respectable one, and he let himself get used in front of the world. If there's a 2nd Bush term (God forbid, but with other states trying to step up to purge voter rolls like they did in Florida in 2000, sigh), Colin Powell will not be in it.
What color is the sky in your world? Just wondering. That is about the most ridiculous thing I've read here. This war is about destroying global Islamic fundamentalism and its terrorist minions, not about exercising American hegemony, which we already have anyhow. Besides, what's wrong with that? There will always be a king of the hill and would you rather it be the Chicoms or the Europeans? I should hope not, because unlike ourselves, we are a moral people guided by the ideas of liberty, limited govt and economic freedom. Our rights derive from the Creator, not from the state as in Communist China. We might not have always done the right thing, but our minor transgressions are nothing compared to the evils of totalitarian states, which have butchered millions, be it in China, Cambodia, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, etc.
