The Official US President Election Thread

[jerseydevil]

Originally Posted by The Gaffer

I find it interesting to contrast the experiences of certain voters of a non-white persuasion who are denied a vote because of their criminal record, with those of Halliburton, who get caught with their hands in the till yet get to keep their job!

Let me explain this again to you. I know you are a foreigner - so probably don't understand this. The only thing the constitution guarantees is that 18 years and older get to vote, that the vote can not be denied by race or sex or religion. Everything else is up to the states. It is the satte who determine if criminals can vote - NOT the federal government. As for it being a race issue - it doesn't have anything to do with that. It doesn't matter if you are black or white - if you have a criminal record - most states don't allow you to vote. It's also only for SEVERE crimes too in most states.

I like you twisted that into a race issue.

Anyhoo, there are two issues here: one is the underhand way the contracts were awarded without a tender process (which is illegal in the UK, for example);

Well you might not have noticed - this isn't the UK - we fought a war NOT to be part of Britain. As for the contract process - the goal was to get the rebuilding process up as quickly as possible - which WAS actually up and running rather quickly. The insurgents have destroyed a lot of the progress that had been made on that front though.

the other is the far bigger one of who is really running the Bush administration.

Now, let's see::

- Vice President is former CEO of a company that makes money out of rebuilding war-torn countries

Whart does that have to do with anything? He doesn't own any stock in the company anymore, he doesn't work for the company anymore.

- VP is still receiving an income from said company

He's not receiving income from the company any longer. So I don't know where you got that information from.

- VP's administration starts a war on a false pretext

What false pretext? First of all - WMD was NOT the only reason Bush stated for going into Iraq, second - EVERYONE'S intelligence came out with the same conclusion - that Iraq had WMD. Kerry even says knowing what he knows today - he would still have voted for the war resolution. Bush did not go in without Congress' approval. Clinton even made a statement on tv that stated that Iraq was a danger and must be taken out. That all intelligence in his adminstration showed that Iraq had WMD.

- VP's administration hands multi billion dollar contracts to said company behind closed doors prior to the war starting

It wasn't behind closed doors and there were many companies that were being hired by Halliburton. I guess all those hoistages from other countries - don't reallky work in Iraq - do they?

I appreciate that lots of people disagree with the "false pretext" statement above, but can you not understand why, for many people, this stinks to high heaven? Personally, I can't believe that they have got away with it.

The only reason why you think it stinks to high heaven is because you forget a lot of the stuff, or else your media doesn't report everything (which is very believable from reading BBC.com) Dont' think you know EVERYTHING about what goes on here just becuase you get some news or read some things. You most likely only read the things that already support your views anyway.