The Official US President Election Thread

[Cirdan]

Originally Posted by jerseydevil

yeah he did - but the comparison with Al Qaeda is apples and oranges - which you seem to want to ignore.

Yes. Terrorist apples and terrorist oranges.

See - I told someone that people were starting to think that Bin ladin really was just a "man in a cave" again - they didn't believe me. Thanks for confirming it for me. let's see - that's what the world was telling Clinton when he started going after him, he backed down, we then suffered 9/11. Lucky most of the people weren't in work at the time, lucky that the NY/NJ Port Authority was quick thinking enough to move the trains out from underneath the buildings - 3,000 would have been a SMALL number. That man with "dad's pocket change and a gang of frustrated muslim virgins" killed 3,000 people and destroyed two buildings whihc contained more office space than all of San Diego.

LOL. It's just that he is always pictured in a cave. It's rather amusing really. 9/11 was really bad, but compared to large scale wars, world wars, the continual terrorism in periods in Israel and elsewhere, it was just one bad day. Many Sudanese would have sawed off thier own arm to have their misery limited to one bad day. The loss of office space is horrifying indeed.

Are we becoming a nation of delicate flowers were we remain tramatized for years after such an event? So many nations have been through so much worse. Our own civil war was so much more horrific than anything OBL has come up with. We paid a terrible price for letting our guard down for the sake of convenience to the point where such a pathetic plan actually could succeed. We need to get off the permenent orange alert, stop the fear mongering, and just go about the business of addressing the security problems along with the other problems facing us. And, yes I do think the defencive measures are the higher priority than pre-emptive wars. The steps the president and the government have gone a long way toward preventing similar attacks but are too focused on a repeat event and not proactive towards other posibilities. Kerry is right about securing the ports. Bush, instead of just agreeing and adding to his goals, ignored the issue. To partiasn to see a good point.

My neighbor is an FBI agent and he agrees that before 9/11 we, as a nation, were more concerned about car jackings than hijackings. We all bear the resposibility for ignoring the embassy bombings. If I remember the goverment was busy spending millions of dollars finding out where the president's winky had been. The "Wag the Dog" slam dismissed the real threat as a political manuevre.

Isn't that the big question? How would you suggest finding him in mountains which are more hostile than the Rocky Mountains, in an area which is inhabited by tribes who take him in and support him?

I bet they would stop taking him in if we napalmed a few. But seriously, we need to stop trying to put a face on these terrorist groups. It only serves as a recuitment poster for them. It would be better to only identify operatives, finances, and weapons flow and stop making it a personal. I understand what Bush tried to say in the oft quoted "I don't think about him (OBL) very much". I hope he meant that there is a larger terror problem than just OBL.

Unfortunately while we have the Pakistani leader on our side he is in too precarious a position to do everything needed to clear out his country of Al Qaeda. It would be impossible to track down every terrorist in the world. Like the "War on Drugs" we may eventually realiz it is unwinnable in any final sense and that the best thing to do is address the causes and ameliorate the effects, and recognize that more force often leads to "unexpected consequences".

Believe me - I seem to have my eyes opened and mind opened a lot further than you do... it's like your a mouth piece for them at all

You are so funny sometimes.

You don't analys cause and affect, you don't look at the way the world is - as is the case with all liberals you look at the world in terms of the way you wish it was. Well it's not that way.

I thought the "liberal" characature was the hand-wringing pessimist. Is it possible to see the vision of the way the world could be improved? This is the dumbest thing you have ever written. You know nothing of whether I analyze cause and effect. You may as well be telling that my favorite color is red. Are you so bigoted you see the world in black and white? 100% liberal or 100% conservative. The cuurent administration is NOT conservative BTW. They are very radical. Jumping into wars, busting the budget, trying to change to change the constitution for religious agendas. I like the old school conservatives like TR and Ike. They were truely cautious regarding change.

I remember you used to claim to be an independent or sometimes a libertarian. At last the sheep's clothing comes off and reveals the radical neo-con hawk underneath. I'll be you consider RNC flyers to be reference material. Now could we not resort to personalizing political discussions, unless you *want* to just desend into name calling and character asassination.

Kerry is saying "Wrong war, wrong time, wrong place" - so tell me - how does that fit in with him voting for war?

It was a war powers act not a vot to go to war without completeing the weapons inspections.

All intelligence - all the world's intelligence said that Hussein had WMD - so the "bush lied" statement can't be used.

NO. The NRC told him the aluminum tubes were not usable for uranium refinement. He choose to ignore this opinion. Time after time he used the intel that fit his agenda. He jumped the gun because he knew that they would not find anything significant and his excuse would be gone. The only thing the intel confirmed was that not all the pre-1991 WMD materials were accounted for. A big leap to "mushroom clouds" over US cities.

As for lack of international cooperation - sometimes we have to take things on ourselves - if the world isn't going to come along. I'm not going to put our national security into the hands of the likes of the UN or France.

Another Bush Lie. Kerry states explicitly stated he would never do this. They justed grabbed the sound bite of "global test" which really meant does it pass muster in the larger context of the situation (ie Saddam was going nowhere) so a closer look at the WMD situation was needed).

I have never heard Bush say anythjing about Kerry on the Homeland Security Bill

In the 3rd debate.