Bush speech tonight. Not as cocky, no uniform but same ol same ol.

Yes, there is sign of improvement. Most of all, they aren't living in a dictatorship. There are 150 newspapers and magazines being published there. Political parties operate freely. It's not going to be easy, but it's already an improvement. We don't have to worry about anybody invading a nearby country either.

Actually it is helping us. What kind of message do you think it sends to nearby countries? If you are an enemy of the US, would you feel better or worse that they are occupying Iraq? Strategically, it gives us a better chance to win the war on terror.

Typical fear mongering. The economy is showing signs of improvement thanks in part to the tax cuts, and the corporate scandals had nothing to do with Bush. Maybe you should look at countries that don't have any corporations and see how well they are doing.

 

That's just despicable. Bush has run this country in such an incompetent manner that leaves him no choice than to become an annoying panhandler on an international street corner. Nice going Dubya.

 

LOL

Amen, brother!

 

a middle-aged Lawyer quoting Rage lyrics

i think ive seen it all now





Weapons not food, not homes, not shoes
Not need, just feed the war cannibal animal
I walk tha corner to tha rubble that used to be a library
Line up to tha mind cemetary now
What we don't know keeps tha contracts alive an movin'
They don't gotta burn tha books they just remove 'em
While arms warehouses fill as quick as tha cells
Rally round tha family, pockets full of shells

 

I have sons who are about the age of some of you guys, and they have friends, so I've been listening to RAGE, and METALLICA, and OBIE TRICE, and EMINEM, and DR. DRE, and Snoop, and everybody worth a damn for the past 10 years.

Of course, I had to edumacate them with Neil Diamond, Steve Miller, Moody Blues, the Beatles, Elvis, Doobie Brothers, Billie Joel, Styx, and Gordon Lightfoot, among others. Me and my boys listen to all of it except country, and we listen to some of that, but not much. How can you not like Faith Hill?

RAGE was great. One of my boys played a CD for me with the new group that is Rage without the lead singer and the former lead singer from Soundgarten. He told me the name, but I forget it. The vocals were identifiable as the same voice as the Soundgarten front man, but the songs didn't sizzle.

I loved RAGE's attitude and political bent. Further out there than me, but someone has to say it, so why not them?

 

i didn't see or hear the speech at all.

 

Their name is Audioslave

you dont like?

I saw em at Lallapalooza, they rocked live I thought..

 

We have decided a new tactic...ignoring.

Forgot to send the memo to you and Max about it.

 

Thanks, I'll make a note of it. I hope it works!

 

truly...i find participation in the bush critique threads to be tiresome. my day today was tough enough already...

 

I thought you were undecided about the war?

 

Well, I am, sorta of. I can understand why some people felt we should have not gone to war, but I feel that since we did go that we should support the troops and the country.

I guess I am not a glynch or No Worries when it comes to protest; maybe I am a blind follower, but I don't see what good is accomplished by protesting against a war.

As for Bush's speech, I didn't watch it, either.

Granted, I wasn't hear 4 years ago, but I am sure there was a thread here in the Hangout about the latest Clinton speech and conservatives were scrutinizing every detail about it just like now.

However, it does give you guys something to talk about, I guess.

 

I can't think of anything more symbolically appropriate than "ignoring" when talking about the admin's ill conceived Iraq policy.

 

You didn't watch the speech? It was on several times, if you have cable. It's not like the guy gives them all the time. Like I mentioned earlier, I can't remember a President who has spoken so little to the Nation during a war, through speeches like last night's or press conferences, than Bush. It's really quite astonishing, at least to me.

 

Well, let's see I spent last night working on my classes, playing with my dog, Jake and reading this BBS

As a result, I just never had the time to tune in, I guess. Besides, I knew I could count on you guys to recap for me anyway.

 

OK! Gotcha, Manny.

 

You need to stop being astonished Decky. This new generation of conservatives in charge, no so much the prez, but his handlers and the various inmates like DeLay, Rovey, Cheney, Rummy, Ashcroft, et al running the asylum, doesn't give a crap about the old rules or traditions. Whether it be re-districting, press conferences, tax plans that don't add up, going to war, whatever, they've changed the rules of the game.

If anybody calls them on it, they just scream "liberal media" , a shaming tactic that has worked through repetition. It's sort of like a Maoist struggle session in a way. Add on a little flag waving and invocation of the W.O.T. and everythings cool

So a few years from now when they tell you that we are now at war with Eastasia and not Eurasia, who has always been our ally, don't be astonished. SamFisher of the clutch bbs told you so....

 

Great post, dude.

By the way, we're at war with the evil Eurasia. Eastasia is our ally and always has been.

 

When I first read that book 36 years ago, I couldn't imagine such a world. I couldn't imagine a movie scene where survivors in a life boat were machine gunned, and the audience cheered. I couldn't imagine the government being able to monitor what we do in our homes. But time passes and danged if we aren't getting there.

hello, John Ashcroft. please save us from that nasty Bill of Rights

 

Here is an excellent article by one our own:

http://slate.msn.com/id/2088043/

Mission Creep
Bush's perversion of the "war on terror."
By William Saletan

For more than a year, President Bush has framed Iraq as part of the "war on terror." And for more than a year, he has produced no evidence for that claim. No evidence of a link between Iraq and 9/11. No evidence of an affinity between Saddam Hussein's secular tyranny and the fundamentalists of al-Qaida. No evidence of a terrorist presence in Iraq greater than in other Arab or Muslim countries. No evidence that Iraq offered weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.

In his address to the nation Sunday night, Bush offered two new arguments for declaring Iraq "the central front" in the war on terror. If you buy those arguments, he's right. But before you buy them, stop and think about how far afield they would take us from the war we embarked on two years ago.

Bush wants us to support his postwar Iraq policy as reflexively as we supported the war on al-Qaida in Afghanistan. That's why he delivered this speech just before the anniversary of 9/11. "Nearly two years ago, following deadly attacks on our country, we began a systematic campaign against terrorism," he recalled in his opening remarks. "America and a broad coalition acted first in Afghanistan … and we acted in Iraq."

How was our action in Iraq part of the campaign against terrorism? The old argument, which Bush repeated Sunday, was that Saddam "sponsored terrorism." But again, Bush offered no evidence that Saddam had done so in a way different from Iran, Syria, or even Saudi Arabia. Instead, Bush argued that regardless of whether terrorists in Iraq were at war with us two years ago, they are today. As Bush put it,

Five months after we liberated Iraq, a collection of killers is desperately trying to undermine Iraq's progress and throw the country into chaos. … Some of the attackers are foreign terrorists, who have come to Iraq to pursue their war on America and other free nations. … The terrorists have a strategic goal. They want us to leave Iraq before our work is done. They want to shake the will of the civilized world. In the past, the terrorists have cited the examples of Beirut and Somalia, claiming that if you inflict harm on Americans, we will run from a challenge. In this, they are mistaken. ... We will do what is necessary, we will spend what is necessary, to achieve this essential victory in the war on terror.

Second, Bush argued that ousting Arab tyrants is inherently necessary to the war on terror:

The Middle East will either become a place of progress and peace, or it will be an exporter of violence and terror that takes more lives in America and in other free nations. The triumph of democracy and tolerance in Iraq, in Afghanistan and beyond would be a grave setback for international terrorism. The terrorists thrive on the support of tyrants and the resentments of oppressed peoples. When tyrants fall and resentment gives way to hope, men and women in every culture reject the ideologies of terror and turn to the pursuits of peace.

Think for a minute about what these two arguments entail. The first justifies any war in which, as a result of our actions, terrorists attack our troops. Imagine an invasion of Cuba, whose dictator has long rankled Bush and would be easier to topple than Saddam was. No doubt al-Qaida and other terrorist groups would send agents to try to kill the occupying troops. Bush could then defend the occupation as part of the "war on terror."

The second argument is equally fraught with implications. Yes, tyranny breeds terrorism. But if the "war on terror" requires us to overthrow tyrants just because they're tyrants, we'll be at war for the rest of your life.

If you opposed the Iraq war because you saw no connection to 9/11 or because you didn't trust Bush, his creepy redefinition of the "war on terror" vindicates your suspicions. But if, like me, you supported the Iraq war for other reasons, Bush's linguistic revisionism still matters. I supported the Iraq war because Saddam repeatedly violated the disarmament and inspection agreements that constituted his probation after the Persian Gulf War, and because the U.N. Security Council showed no willingness, even at the brink of a U.S. invasion, to embrace a serious timetable for enforcing those agreements. We did what had to be done. But it didn't have to be done to protect the United States from an imminent threat. It had to be done to preserve the credibility of international law enforcement, such as it is.

An invasion undertaken for that reason entails a postwar policy very different from the one Bush has pursued. Having done the part of the job others refused to do—ousting Saddam—we should return the rest of the job to the Security Council. That means surrendering authority as well as responsibility, which Bush has refused to do. Instead, he drags his heels on relinquishing to our allies the influence they demand in exchange for sending troops and other resources. In their absence, the burden falls to us, in the form of more dead soldiers and Bush's request for another $87 billion in deficit spending.

To justify this burden, Bush tells us it's still about 9/11. He tells us terrorists are trying to "inflict harm on Americans" to make us "run from a challenge" in Iraq. He tells us we must be "resolute in our own defense." He tells us we must "spend what is necessary to achieve this essential victory in the war on terror." He conflates enemies. He spins circular logic. He appeals to our pride. He continues to misrepresent the terrorist connections on the basis of which he justified the Iraq invasion, and he expands the definition of the "war on terror" so that Iraq can be crammed into it anyway, along with dozens of other countries. Two years after 9/11, he has so thoroughly twisted the meaning of what happened that day that, in effect, he has forgotten what it was.