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-   -   Why I Despise Bush's Presidency.....Rant... (http://archives1.twoplustwo.com/showthread.php?t=548489)

NewTeaBag 11-18-2007 01:58 AM

Re: Why I Despise Bush\'s Presidency.....Rant...
 
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g. Being to responsive to allegations of abuse. Innocent marines were falsely charged with murder based on perjury from Iraqis.

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Probably. How many U.S. serviceman have committed crimes and been exonerated because of perjury from their comrades, or because everyone just looked the other way (and thus had no need to lie overtly)? Which number do you think is greater? I honestly don't know, but if given even odds, I know where my money would be.

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Spoken like someone who has never seen any combat (outside of a "little on TV").

Keep on giving out speeding tickets at The INDY 500. Also keep assuming the worst of highly trained American Service personell whilst assuming the best of radical, suicidal, direct civilian targeting, douchebags.

DcifrThs 11-18-2007 02:30 AM

Re: Why I Despise Bush\'s Presidency.....Rant...
 
i LOOOOOVVVEEE president bush!!

are you kidding me?

how much personal enjoyment have you gotten out of his continual idiocy on the television?

how much have you enjoyed jon stuard/colbert etc. (esp. frank caliendo) making fun of the man?

what has that literally cost you in your day to day life?

Barron

VarlosZ 11-18-2007 02:35 AM

Re: Why I Despise Bush\'s Presidency.....Rant...
 
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g. Being to responsive to allegations of abuse. Innocent marines were falsely charged with murder based on perjury from Iraqis.

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Probably. How many U.S. serviceman have committed crimes and been exonerated because of perjury from their comrades, or because everyone just looked the other way (and thus had no need to lie overtly)? Which number do you think is greater? I honestly don't know, but if given even odds, I know where my money would be.

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Spoken like someone who has never seen any combat (outside of a "little on TV").

Keep on giving out speeding tickets at The INDY 500. Also keep assuming the worst of highly trained American Service personell whilst assuming the best of radical, suicidal, direct civilian targeting, douchebags.

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You've overreacted to what I actually said. And I'm not assuming the worst (or the best) about anybody. The only assumption I'm making is that soldiers will be tend to be very loyal to each other, sometimes (from an outsider's perspective) even loyal to a fault.

My point was not that soldiers are scum, nor was it that accusatory Iraqis are unusually honest. My point was that I suspect the OP is influenced by American exceptionalism; e.g., being more upset by the bad deeds of Iraqi civilians than the comparable bad deeds of U.S. soldiers.

(Incidentally, "speeding tickets at the Indy 500"? Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think you're necessarily supposed to agree with Captain Willard's point of view -- crimes by soldiers in a war zone should still be crimes, for the most part.)

AlexM 11-18-2007 02:46 AM

Re: Why I Despise Bush\'s Presidency.....Rant...
 
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what has that literally cost you in your day to day life?


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Hmm... how to measure how much money I've lost since losing Party Poker...

vulturesrow 11-18-2007 03:04 AM

Re: Why I Despise Bush\'s Presidency.....Rant...
 
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Not sure why you think Gore is incompetent other then the fact that you disagree with his politics. Also if he won the election he would have been burned at the stake by conservatives for 9/11.

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9/11 could have been prevented by an administration that didn't have it's head halfway up it's ass already planning for the Iraqi invasion. The reports were there, the anti-terrorism experts were there - they were just ignored and dismissed.

if Al Gore were prez. I doubt 9/11 would have slipped thru the cracks of shoddy leadership.

RB

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Always good for a laugh, you are.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...ool-AidMan.jpg

Felix_Nietzsche 11-18-2007 08:13 AM

Re: Why I Despise Bush\'s Presidency.....Rant...
 
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Where does this conception of human nature come from?

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Because it works...
It takes a correctly pessamistic view on human nature and you apply a correct and violent response towards those that commit transgressions against you. Such thinking led to Pax Romana....the Roman Peace. When Rome strayed from these principles, Alaric and the Goths betrayed Rome and sacked her. Which was the stake in the heart that mortally wounded the Roman Empire. Machiavelli wrote as much in his book "The Prince". Reagan pacified the Iranians after he sank half their fleet in one day. Properly applied gunboat diplomacy works while appeasement and the ignoring of transgressions leads to more violence.... If I had more time I would pull a quote from an ancient Roman statesman that said the same thing. And if you have read any history, the Romans had a pretty good run... The USA does not come even close to filling the jock-strap of the Roman Empire.... Or the Britsh Empire...

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Since the inception of nationalism, when has it ever been the case that you can bomb/shoot members of a foreign culture and they would respond by rolling over and staying submissive?

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Yes...many times throughour history.
Besides the Roman Empire, the British applied the concept of the steel fist inside the velvet glove. quite well which resulted in the empire where the sun never sets. This is seeing human nature as it really is. Not some utopian nonsense written on a poker forum...

As for the rock throwing Iraqis, you shoot a few rock throwers and they stop. This actually happened at a prison in Iraq. The prisoners learned the American guards were not allowed to use deadly force if they threw rocks at the American guards. So they threw rocks. The warden changed the policy where the guards could shoot to kill. The prisoners stopped throwing rocks. A respected threat of violence, causes violence to decrease. Gee.....funny how this keeps working. You are like the poker player that says you a winning player but you have been on a bad variance for the last 5 years. Could it be that you are ignoring the mathematical laws of poker??? Hmmmmmm.....

Just as you ignore the laws of human nature...

Felix_Nietzsche 11-18-2007 08:17 AM

Re: Why I Despise Bush\'s Presidency.....Rant...
 
I was thinking the exact same thing as you....
But I didn't think whiskey's post was worth a response. When I think of govt, I think of inefficiency and incompetancy. Algore would not have prevented 911.... it s not even close. Govt is usually a day late and a dollar short. It took a 911 to wake the federal govt up to prevent another 911.

Richard Clarke's reinvention of himself of Appollo's Cassandra is also extremely grating to me as well....

2/325Falcon 11-18-2007 12:34 PM

Re: Why I Despise Bush\'s Presidency.....Rant...
 
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h. Failure to secure Iraqi ammo depots.

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People don't seem to understand that Iraq was littered with munitions and I mean this with no hyperbole. In As Samawah you would find 60mm mortar shells cached every 100m north of the Euphrates and we pulled truckload after truckload out of the soccer stadium. In Diwaniyah, we pulled out more truckloads of ammo. In Baghdad, Iraqis told me about Iraqi soldiers driving around before the war kicking AK-47s off the back of a truck saying "Fight the Americans!" There was no way to collect all of this crap.

VarlosZ 11-18-2007 12:57 PM

Re: Why I Despise Bush\'s Presidency.....Rant...
 
Felix, you gave exactly one example that fit my criteria ("since the exception of nationalism. . ."), and it was a bad one. Iran couldn't do anything in retaliation -- they were already fighting a war and were horribly outclassed militarily -- except, say, give support to terrorists and develop nuclear weapons so it won't happen again.

Stop and think for a moment about what's on the other side of the ledger. Did Pearl Harbor shock us into letting Japan have free reign in the Pacific, or did it ensure that we'd settle for nothing short of unconditional surrender? After 9/11 did we consider even for a split second pulling out of Muslim countries and abandoning Israel as an ally, or did we conquer two Islamic countries -- whose occupations have no end in sight -- in operations which have probably resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Muslims? And how is Israel doing with it's decades-long conflict? Am I correct in my assumption that you think that they'd be safer of they killed a lot more Muslims?

There are countless more examples. You may (or may not) be able to find one or two valid counter-examples but, the vast majority of the time, "teaching them a [violent] lesson" mostly teaches them that it's time to make more bullets.

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As for the rock throwing Iraqis, you shoot a few rock throwers and they stop. This actually happened at a prison in Iraq. The prisoners learned the American guards were not allowed to use deadly force if they threw rocks at the American guards. So they threw rocks. The warden changed the policy where the guards could shoot to kill. The prisoners stopped throwing rocks. A respected threat of violence, causes violence to decrease.

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First of all (assuming your story is accurate), that's a prison, which is entirely different in this regard from pretty much anyplace else. Second, it may well be that shooting rock-throwers causes rock-throwing to decrease. OTOH, it will probably lead to more severe and longer-lasting violence of other sorts, ultimately.

qwnu 11-18-2007 03:46 PM

Re: Why I Despise Bush\'s Presidency.....Rant...
 
Congress's low approval ratings are fairly well-understood. Everybody hates them, but for different reasons. Republicans hate them because the Democrats are in power. Democrats hate them because the Democratic leadership has failed to end the war and implement any substantive policy change after a full year of being in power, and have further caved in to administration demands at every possible opportunity.

Similarly, the administration's low approval ratings are apparently driven by two separate forces. Normal reasonable people are horrified by the prospect of endless wars of aggression, torture, secret prisons, lawless indefinite detention, illegal warrantless wiretapping, politicization of various departments and agencies, corruption, deficit spending, etc., etc.

But there seems to be a growing population of right-wingers (I hesitate to call them "conservatives"), as evidenced by Felix's rant, who are angry with the administration because they are insufficiently bloodthirsty and intolerant.

In other words, in the latest right track/wrong track poll, both Felix and I might be in the "wrong track" camp, but obviously for radically different reasons. Strange bedfellows, indeed.


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