Scratch him and Franklin Pierce if you like, that still leaves James Buchanan, Warren G. Harding, William Henry Harrison, Rutherford Hayes maybe?
I'll go with Harrison. He died within a month of taking an office...clearly the worst President ever. You mentioned that the death toll for American soldiers in Iraq hit 2,000, why not also mention the ratification of the Iraq Constitution and the overwhelming number of voters that turned up to polls? You seem to want to dwell only on the the negative, blatantly ignoring all things positive going on.
"Remember we are fighting them over there so we dont have to fight them over here." 42% of iraqis think its ol to blow us up Looks like london and madrid disproves that theory.
I think it proves that theory. Remember, they flew planes into the WTC before the war in Iraq, they blew up the USS Cole before the war in Iraq, they blew up embassies before the war in Iraq, etc. We are fighting terrorism abroad so terrorism cant fight us. When was the last attack by a terrorist on US soil? 9/11. That is success on the war on terror.
There were the anthrax letters. But your logic makes no sense. You ask when the last one on U.S. soil was since 9/11. When was the last one on US soil before 9/11? IT was OK city bombing. Fighting in IRaq won't stop another OK City bombing. But for all the years before 9/11 we never had an attack as severe, so surely we should institute all the terrorism policies we had up until 2000 because those worked better than what happened in 2001. Basing our policy only on when the attacks occurred doesn't prove anything.
Well the anthrax letters were being sent by an American weren't they? And you could also look at the number of terrorist attacks on Americans abroad. I'm going to disregard the "terrorist attacks" on Americans in Iraq because that is a war and in Iraq's case, those attacks are acts of war, not terror (IMO). When was the last time something American (like the USS Cole, or an embassy) was attacked by a terrorist? 9/11.
They don't know for sure who sent those letters, but just because an American sent them doesn't mean they weren't terrorist attacks. Nowhere is a terrorist attack defined as exclusively being carried out by non-Americans. Like I said you don't judge the success of a policy because nothing has happened YET. By Judging success under those terms, then everything we did up until 2000 was great. We only messed up in 2001. We know that isn't the case. The criteria of success should not be the time frame in which attacks were carried out.
Not true...the embassy bombing, bombing of USS Cole etc were all before 2001. And there is no other barometer available than what hasn't happened yet. So thats what we go on. Is it not true that many Al Qaeda operatives have been found and jailed? That is progress.
I agree with you finding and jailing AQ operatives is progress. That is great. But does that have anything to with IRaq? And would the operatives found from Iraq have been a threat to us here had we not invaded? Would more operatives and in fact the AQ command structure taken more damage had we used the resources going into Iraq, to keep pressing them in Afghanistan? And even if I modify the dates on my last statement it still isn't a good method by which to judge success. We know that world wide terrorism has increased, AQ's numbers have gone up and not down, and we know that they often plan for years in order to carry out one attack. I think we should be happy that no other attacks have happened against us yet, but I can hardly credit the IRaq war with that. Can't we credit the war in Afghanistan with that? How many terrorist attacks happened since we started fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan?
Of course we can credit the war in Afghanistan for that. The war in Afghanistan is the primary reason for the success of the war on terror. In outing a brutal dictator who hated America and supported terrorism, more progress was made against terrorism. Unfortunately, we are having major issues in Iraq right now, but that does not discredit the progress we have made against terror. A free and democratic Iraq (which is what Iraq is becoming) will not harbor terror and will discourage it.
Iran is free and democratic also but is no friend to the US and supports Hezballah. There's no guarentee that given truly free elections in Iraq that a regime very unfriendly to America will come to power. On your other point that the lack of attacks on US soil show that our strategy in Iraq is successful is highly specious. Leaving aside the OK bombing the last attack on US soil by an Al Qaeda related group was the 1993 WTC bombing so there were 8 years between that and the next attack on US soil. Its only been 2.5 years since we invaded Iraq. Also its not true there haven't been terrorists attacks against US citizens and interests since we invaded Iraq. Just a few months ago there was an attempted mortar attack on US ships docked in the Jordanian port of Aqaba, there was a bombing in August 2003 of the Jakarta Marriott that was being used by the US Embassy for a conference, the Bali bombing was meant to target Americans and our Australian allies, the Madrid and London bombings were targetted at American allies, and even according to the Admin. its really a matter of time before there's another attack. Why should we buy the argument that invading Iraq has made us safer from terrorism when even the Administation that undertook the invasion still says that its practically inevitable for another attack on US soil.
I agree with the rest of your post, Sishir, the part I didn't quote, but I would not call Iran free and democratic at all. Large numbers of reform candidates, a huge number, if I remember correctly, were declared ineligible by the theocrats before the parliamentary elections. They weren't democratic at all, imo. Instead, it was rigged to insure that the hardline winners had no serious competition. I figure the second sentence was just a typo. This graph explains things rather well. From the BBC: Keep D&D Civil.
Pretty classless gesture by No Worries to include 2,000 deaths as part of his triumphant "trifecta" which he is celebrating.... and people wonder why the liberals are accused of hoping for bad news with regard to the troops... Not that I'm surprised by his lack of class.
While I agree that many liberals do this - take some kind of morbid pleasure in the mounting death tolls of troops... ....I also think Mr. Bush needs to be held accountable for it. He promised a short and quick victory...and he needs to answer for the 2,000 lives lost on an ill-conceived war. Ya know, even if Iraq works out and some sort of shaky democracy happens to form at best...I doubt the violence will ever really stop now that their isn't this powerful dictator to squash resistance. Iraq's have traded fear of oppression from a tyrant for fear of sectarian violence. Not sure which is better. Not sure if that will be worth the cost of 2000 lives and many more thousand of Iraqis. I think the Bush Administration must be held accountable for the failures of a war he declared done more then a year ago.
The liberal have been successful, at least partially, in convincing many people that 2,000 lives lost is a large number in a war. While each loss of life is to be mourned, we have suffered very few casualties in Iraq on a relative basis. If the liberals would have been practicing these "How to lose a war by Jane Fonda" tactics in WWII, D-Day would have lasted about 10 minutes and we would have quit. What they are doing is serving as employees in the terrorists' propaganda network. Their only hope is to break our nation's will to fight and the liberals are doing their best to help them.
^^why dont u go join the army and fight the war then? its easy to say all that sitting behind the computer right? one thing americans really need to fix is act like they're above everyone else.. just because we are more powerful doesnt mean we can just do whatever we want.. rules apply to us as well.. if u disregard them thats how u make enemies.. and yes the 'war' did jail X number of al queda terrorists etc etc.. it also had a good amount of the world hate us in the process.. not really progress IMO
while the conservatives have failed to convince people that said number is a small number to lose in war?
