Posted by Mad as Hell:

“Remember: Future Presidents can pardon Bush and Cheney, as Ford did Nixon—but not from punishment by the International Court.”

Good point because if Bush got impeached and then convicted in the Senate, we’re stuck with the churlish Cheney.

Sometimes I wonder if a man’s inconsistency is the result of his confusion. Having a confused man to rule a nation yields disastrous consequences, which is exactly what we are getting now.

Second, when I read that the man talked to Kissinger alone, one wonders if the conservative christians had voted for Kissinger by proxy.
Regardless, they voted for the disastrous results in Iraq, negative world opinion and just about every negatives.

Third, the current administration loves to talk about god. One wonders if god made all the mess for them.

Dave:

“How about looking at what is good for us, good for our country, and what is not?” This rationale for U.S. foreign policy is just as amorphous and potentially dangerous as one based on ‘good vs. evil’. What is the yard stick for deciding that a particular foreign policy is in our interest, espcially if there are no moral and ethical constraints on our foreign policy. People in power may decide that a perpetual was is in our interest, as some of the neocons seem to think that.

Mostly it is the Iraqi masses who are suffering. The ones who had no means to get out of the country, and now they have the good old USA telling them that we are winning!!!! Winning what? They don’t have peace, security, water, sewage, or power. They don’t feel secure even in their homes because our military could come crashing through their door at any moment, to plunder through their belongings, and do whatever feels good at the moment.
We have earned and deserve the wrath of these people. How can they ever forget the heartbreak and tragedy we have brought upon them. They have buried more dead from the US occupation then they would have have under Saddam, and most say they were far better off under Saddam. They knew the rules of the game and had security and utilities.

It was always a lie. If Bush REALLY wanted to combat evil he would have mounted a coalition against Sudan and their despicable action in Darfur.

Saddam Hussein was contained and under control—the odds of the average Iraqi being killed in March 2003 were non-existent compared to what they are today.  The fire was under control.  Is Saddam an evil monster who deserves the hangman’s rope? Certainly.  But we didn’t need to be the ones doing it.

Jimmy Carter, having just won the Nobel Peace prize, spoke out against attacking Iraq—and was castigated and belittled for it.  Yet again, Jimmy Carter TOLD THE TRUTH, and was ignored and laughed at.  Of course, with 20/20 hindsight we see he was 100% correct—our own American Cassandra.

Meanwhile, Darfur was burning out of control like a wild fire.  The numbers dying were and still are genocidal.  But somehow, that wasn’t an evil and a dictatorship worth worrying about.

But, even with all the lies and false justifications, Mad King George and his band of Merrie Fascists might well have been able to pull it off in Iraq—had they done what they said they did—listen to the generals, rather than lying about it and ignoring them.  Had they listened to Shinseki, had they put FAR more effort into planning for the post-war (talk about a euphemism!), had they determined who spoke for Iraq and who was a self-serving shyster, had they engaged to get REAL and HARD intelligence about the people, had they engaged in honest competitive bidding, had they only picked the best and brightest rather than politically reliable, had they gone in with meat-and-potatoes/nuts-and-bolts managers rather than PNAC pipe-dreamers…it STILL may have worked.

The funny thing was, in most places we WERE welcomed by the Iraqi people—that’s forgotten because we did NOTHING to ensure that Baghdad was secure—the rampant looting that WAS PREVENTABLE was the start.  Then we learned that the Admin’s “boy” was a lying crook wanted for various crimes.  We learned that the Veep’s company got billions in no-bid contracts—and didn’t even deliver what they were supposed to.

We learned that rather than rebuilding Iraq, we turned it into a giant trough for every pig connected to MKG could feed at—from our taxpayers’ wallets to the tune of $2 BILLION a week!

We learned that our soldiers weren’t being properly equipped to fight (and Rumsfeld basically said: “So? Tough shit!”) We learned they weren’t properly trained to be police and prison guards. 

We learned that 30,000 civilians had died since the start of the war. Then we learned that was another lie—it was a holocaust—655,000 died, all because of Mad King George, the MFs and the Project for a New American Century called for us to invade and conquer Iraq, and steal her oil.

We learned and learned that EVERYTHING that has sunk the Iraq caper was TOTALLY PREVENTABLE.  Corruption, ignorance, arrogance and greed all have cost hundreds of thousands their lives, just so the buddies of George Bush and Dick Cheney could make two billion dollars a week off the American Taxpayer, his children, grand-children, and great-grand-children.

So if things are going rough for Mad King George, I hope they get far worse.  I want to see MKG and Cheney impeached, ousted and brought before the International Court of Justice at The Hague for trial as war criminals.

Remember: Future Presidents can pardon Bush and Cheney, as Ford did Nixon—but not from punishment by the International Court!

We should’ve invaded Mexico instead of Iraq.

We could kick terrorist ass there a lot easier.

Our government has been acting the way amateurs do, not knowing or understanding the impact of what it has been doing. From President Bush, who makes a joke of his ignorance, to stooges such as Rumsfeld and truly unfeeling fixed-idea men such as Cheney, we have suffered from inept and uninformed leadership. Iraq is just one example of such amateurness, with a war that had no plan for any follow-up. North Korea is another. Iran is another. The way we’ve handled Afghanistan is still another. Our ignoring the essential conflict between Israel and the Palestine peoples, just hoping it will go away. Add them up and we can now see how inept this administration has been. Then look at the current economy, changed from a positive one in which our assets were growing to one in which almost everything except oil has been declining. Asking the military, who weren’t trained to build nations and who did their job heroically in the war, to sort out what needs to be done in Iraq or Afghanistan is truly amateurish; such work was never the military’s job. Not even having a full professional cadre of those who speak the language of our enemies, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Iran to Lebanon – how could this administration even pretend to understand what forces it has unleashed?

Ye Gods, when will this stupidness ever end?  It isn’t and wasn’t the number of troops in Iraq that made any difference after the “war” against Saddam’s army was over; it was the complete lack of any understanding by Bush & Co. about the three major factions in Iraq, no strategy for nation-building, not having qualified people in position (non-military) afterwards, among many other factors.  The biggest one was the lack of understanding about what Bush & Co. were dealing with.  All you revisionaries and neocons and excuse-makers for Bush just flap your jaws and try to excuse things as “simply” inept or “mistakes”.  You invade a country, oust a dictator, without any knowledge of their history and no plan for doing anything with it.  Our armed forces only know how to wage war; that is their job; they are taught that; and they do that heroically for us; they did it in both Afghanistan and Iraq.  They are the first to admit they aren’t taught how to be policemen, nation-builders, intermediaries in civil wars, nor how to fight with insurgents and guerillas who look like the civilians and live in their homes.  When will you get that through your simplistic heads?  We can never “win” at those kind of endeavors; it is a recipe for failure for our military, and to ask them, as you are, you know, is asking them to do what is impossible right now.  We are Empire-lite; we year to conquer but we as a country do not have the intellectual strength or the stomach to do what the Romans did, invade and then occupy a foreign country, use harsh measures to bend the natives to their will, build an infrastructure that has lasted to this day (aqueducts and roads, for example).

We are Empire-lite; we yearn to conquer but we as a country do not have the intellectual strength or the stomach to do what the Romans did, invade and then occupy a foreign country, use harsh measures to bend the natives to their will, put in local governors, build an infrastructure that has lasted to this day (aqueducts and roads, for example).
The number of our troops didn’t make any difference after the “war” against Saddam’s army was over; it was the complete lack of any understanding by Bush & Co. about the three major factions in Iraq, no strategy for nation-building, not having qualified people in position. The biggest fault was the lack of understanding about what Bush & Co. were dealing with.  All of the revisionaries and neocons and excuse-makers for Bush just flap their jaws and try to excuse things as “simply” inept or “mistakes”.  Because of Bush and the neocons we invade a country, oust a dictator, without any knowledge of their history and no plan for doing anything with it.  Our armed forces only know how to wage war; that is their job; they are taught that; and they do that heroically for us; they did it in both Afghanistan and Iraq.  They are the first to admit they aren’t taught how to be policemen, nation-builders, intermediaries in civil wars, nor how to fight with insurgents and guerillas who look like the civilians and live in their homes.  When will you get that through your simplistic heads?  We can never “win” at those kind of endeavors; it is a recipe for failure for our military, and to ask them to do those things is asking them to do what is impossible right now.  The only way to avoid having our children’s children fight in these stupid wars right now is to vote Democratic and put the Democratic Party in power; they will soon turn greedy and corrupt, but for the time being we will have some sanity. So push for a Democratic majority; have your friends and others vote for them; and oust the Republicans temporarily.

Kevin (#28789):

Hard to tell who is good and who is evil? That may be. Trying to evaluate the political world around us according to what is called in philosphy “the two-horns dilemma” (that there are only two choices, on-off, black-white…) always fails because this is a very gray world.

Maybe it is more helpful, in our general discussions, to quit all this religio-lunacy of “good vs. evil think” spawned by the neocons/sociocons/religious Right? How about looking at what is good for us, good for our country, and what is not?

Maybe then we can simply look at measuring sticks offered by the country’s founders to help define who serves our country well or ill. With that in mind, I offer one such measuring stick:

“They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security.”
-Benjamin Franklin

When we all prep ourselves for November 7, I believe this is a very useful measuring stick. We just need to ensure we properly reward any who do not or have not measured up. And we all need to vote. This may be one of our last opportunities to save ourselves.

both are good and evil

I rather like what Louis Richardson who recently wrote “What Terrorists Want” said about Bush.  She said that so long as he retains this “Good vs. Evil” Manichean perspective, he’s simply the mirror image of ‘ol Osama.

“struggle between good and evil.”? Its hard to tell who is good and who is evil.