i have been, am and always will be against this war. therefore, i want to apologize to the troops and to the families that have lost loved ones for undermining the war effort. please forgive me.
It appears "Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia" is what they're calling themselves now, actually. http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/occupation/2004/1027bonanza.htm http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GC08Aa01.html http://junkyardblog.net/archives/week_2005_08_28.html (very bottom of page)
that's weak. you won't? or (more likely) you can't. those of us neutral lurkers who have been reading and watching this entire time know the truth.
I too, have been, am and always will be against this war. Therefore, I want to apologize to the troops and to the families that have lost loved ones for people like basso and texxx who are willing to send them off to die via half-truths and a perpetually evolving motive. If what basso advocates is truly "supporting the troops", I'm not sure how my "lack of support" could be any worse.
apropos stanza #3, here's an old WaPo poll, conducted on 9/13/01, two days after the attacks, and 78% of americans found it "likely" that saddam was involved. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/vault/stories/data082303.htm scroll down to see the older poll results. after two years of relentless lies from bush and his allies, linking saddam to 9/11, that number had risen to 72%, and 5 months into the iraq war, it had risen further to 69%.
It's hilarious to witness one after anther, antiwar posters volunteer to confess that they are ones that basso referred to as the al Qaeda supporter/Saddam sympathizers/troop haters. Stop feeding the troll, sillies! When you do this, terrorists win! On the other hand, I admit I am one of the two basso was talking about.
I put basso on my ignore list after the 432nd time he implied me a terrorist sympathizer. I just happened to agree with thegary's last post, but felt the need to articulate what he implied.
I have been a fairly avid reader of the Iraq threads. I haven't seen any posters who have defended Hussein, or hoped for the terrorists to win. I would think a thread about what forms of dissent and what aren't would the appropriate thread to discuss it. But it is your thread so I won't discuss it further in this thread then. I just wanted to get that issue out of the way, so we could move on and discuss actual substance rather than these charges of which I have yet to see any proof.
Basso, are you saying that there are posters who support the terrorists, or that there are posters that support policy changes that may benefit the terrorists?
I think there are posters who demonstrate by the subject matter of the prepoderance of their posts that they don't care whether the US loses, and so demonstrate an ambivalence towards providing aid and comfort to the enemy. they may protest otherwise, but they certainly have posited that there is no difference between the US and the terrorists, that there is no difference, for instance between a little naked pyramiding and a beheading or car bombing. [EDIT]to your last point, many posters support policy changes that may benefit the terrorists. while i may feel thats counter productive, it's not really what i'm talking about, in this one instance.
What do you think is the cause of this? Can people hate their political opponents so much that they would be willing to risk their own safety in order to prove a point? Don't Liberals also have a sense of self-preservation?
in one instance, yes, i think their hatred of Bush has blinded them to the reality of the position they advocate. many posters here, and democrats elsewhere skate dangerously close to this line IMO, sometimes crossing over into the realm of irresponsibility. in the other case, i think he's just an america hater at heart, so i really don't take him that seriously, or feel the need to engage.
Under a democracy it doesn't matter if the rhetoric is meant to damage the President or for other purposes. If the President's policies are ones that one doesn't agree with then yes rhetoric critical of the policies will in turn undermine the Presidency. You seem to be arguing that for the good of the war effort people shouldn't criticise the President missing the point that as the war effort is one of the reasons that people criticise it. You're asking people who don't agree with it in the first place to trust the Admin. now when part of the reason for that lack of trust was a failure to give a convincing argument for a war we are now stuck with. Again though war in a democratic system is as much, if not more, a political undertaking and it is the responsibility of the leadership to figure out how to maintain support. Its not enough to expect critics to just shut up and trust the Admin. when the Admin. themselves are failing to maintian confidence. You're asking for faith from those who never believed or at best had a very tenous belief. This isn't new and almost every war time president has had to deal with it. The criticism of Bush now is nothing compared to what Lincoln faced. So instead of spending time telling critics just to shut up and trust the leadership the Admin. and those who support them would be better served by trying to shore up the argument for why they deserve to be supported in the first place.
