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Ear to the Ground

Debate Puts Clinton on the Defensive

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Posted on Sep 27, 2007

The otherwise uneventful two-hour Democratic presidential debate highlighted some key differences among the candidates and more significantly Sen. Clinton’s vulnerabilities (see: failed healthcare reform and the Iraq war).

Washington Post:
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton found herself on the defensive here Wednesday night in a debate in which the Democratic presidential candidates clashed over withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq, the financial future of Social Security and Iran’s nuclear threat.

The two-hour debate features clear differences but few fireworks. Clinton (N.Y.), the front-runner for the nomination, drew steady criticism, but her seven rivals couched their disagreements with respect rather than scorn or sharp words.

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By Louise, September 28, 2007 at 7:47 am Link to this comment

Solutions:

The war in Iraq:
Stop calling it a failure, the product of bad management, and a political issue! The war in Iraq is, was and always will be ILLEGAL! Now how do we go back and un-break the law we broke? We cant, but we can STOP right now!

Bring our troops out. What happens happens. After the dust settles we can figure out a way, with the co-operation of the UN and the neighboring countries how to pay the Iraqi people back for the damage we have done. We can not replace the lives lost, so they will hate us until several generations have passed. But leaving now is the first step to the healing process.

Silence the voices that say we have to stay, by educating them. Leaving will not send the country into violence and chaos. Our presence has already done that! Our continued presence will only make it worse!

The Iran issue:
This is a non-issue. Iran does not have “nukes” any more than Iraq did! Iran may very well be our best hope of rebuilding some sort of sanity into the insanity we brought to that region. Iran does not want another war with Iraq. Iran does not want another war with anyone. Working with the UN, Russia, China and Iraq’s other neighbors, Iran can probably help what’s left of Iraq rebuild and stabilize.

Silence the voices that say we cant let that happen by reminding them WE are the interlopers. WE are the strangers in that part of the world. WE are the ones who traveled half the world to stick our nose in their business. Now WE must learn a hard lesson. How to butt out and let those who truly know and understand the region take over. In short, it’s time the conceit of America got a lesson in humility!

Social Security:
Stop stealing the money!
Let the reserves rebuild and keep those blinking politicians hands out of that piggy bank!

Silence the voices that say the system is broke and we need to privatize it by pointing out, it is the only saving program in the history of our nation that has worked. While at the same time we have seen Banks fail. Investment firms fail. Retirement accounts fail. Mortgage companies fail. Saving and Loan companies fail. Credit accounts fail, and a multitude of other “private” money industries fail on a predictable ten year cycle!

Health care:
Turn the medical industry back over to the medical practitioners and get “private” Insurance corporations and drug manufacturers OUT of the medical schools and OUT of the hospitals and OUT of the doctors private office! Provide full medical school and nursing training for all those who are qualified, free! With the condition that they go into areas where health care is most badly needed and commit to a ten year contract.

Silence the critics by pointing out, no one knows medicine and the needs of a patient MORE than the doctors and nurses who treat them. They should be running things! And no-one knows better than the doctors and nurses how expensive their degree is. And no-one knows better the need to inflate costs to recapture that huge expenditure! And that can ALL be brought under control by removing those who DO NOT practice medicine from the equation!

So how’s that for some common sense solutions?
Of course none of that is possible, because the ONE factor missing from our politicos, media and chicken hawks is ...
COMMON SENSE!

One other thought. If we pulled out of Iraq, how much OIL would our war machine stop consuming?

Maybe that’s the real answer, as horrible as it is. Maybe we just need to keep fighting and dieing and building bigger and better gas guzzling war stuff.
Until the day we hear ...
The war is over because everybody ran out of gas!

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By Jim Goodson, September 28, 2007 at 7:20 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

A continuation of this war without withdrawing our troops is just a couninuation of a failed Bush policy. The Democrats who support this war might as well break camp and go back home. The American people have spoken. What part of no, does the Democrats not understand? The Republicans do not want to address the poor, the black , the economy of the middle class, or anything else except corporate tax write-offs, and how to exploit the entire Nation and our needy children for their own greed. Politicians you are soon going to be unemployed. Clinton scares me. She needs, to represent the American people and stand on her own and to get away from the Bush agenda.

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By Conservative Yankee, September 28, 2007 at 5:48 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

Respectful discussion is nice for afternoon tea, BUT here in New England we have a habit of asking the tough questions and pointing out the on-the-job failures.

Hill-the-business-shill needs to explain her support for the war in detail.
She needs to tell US workers how her membership in the India Caucus, and her advocacy for unlimited H-1b visas helps them.
She needs to clear up her relationship with Walmart, and explain if she has lobbied for trade benefits in return for financial backing.
In short she must convince workers she is the Senator from New York, not the Lobbyist from Bombay, Guadalajara, or Beijing.

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By Varda, September 27, 2007 at 3:44 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

.A war with Iran would make the current conflict in Iraq pale by comparison, and would detrimentally impact the whole of America, not just certain demographics.  This is what Hilary voted for.

By Scott Ritter
Truthot.com
Thursday 27 September 2007
fact-based assessment. In the days and weeks that have since passed, two things have become clear: Neither Congress nor the American people (including the antiwar movement) have a plan or the gumption to confront President Bush in anything more than cosmetic fashion over the war in Iraq. The administration continues its march toward conflict with Iran unimpeded.
The bottom line is that the troop levels in Iraq keep expanding, as does the infrastructure of perpetual occupation. The Democrats in Congress are focused on winning the White House in 2008, not stopping a failed war, and as such they not only refuse to decisively confront the president on Iraq Here’s the danger: While the antiwar movement focuses its limited resources on trying to leverage real congressional opposition to the war in Iraq, which simply will not happen before the 2008 election, the Bush administration and its Democratic opponents will outflank the antiwar movement on the issue of Iran, pushing forward an aggressive agenda in the face of light or nonexistent opposition.
Of the two problems (the reality of Iraq, the potential of Iran), Iran is by far the more important. The war in Iraq isn’t going to expand tenfold overnight.  The United States continues to hold the Iranians prisoner, Their release any time soon is unlikely, given the impact a de facto admission that the Bush administration got it wrong would have on the overall case against Iran it is trying to build. The fate of Farhadi is likewise up in the air. None other than Kurdish President Jalal Talabani, a staunch pro-American, condemned the detention of Farhadi by U.S. military forces, noting that the Iranian was a well-known businessman who was in Iraq as part of an official trade delegation. Talabani heads. Such is the reality of modern Iraq.
But this reality is nowhere to be found in the White House. The president himself has led the charge, This attack, in which insurgents dressed in U.S. military uniforms, drove vehicles similar to those used by the U.S. military and sported U.S. identification documents and weapons, has been linked to Iran by many in the U.S., citing nothing more than the level of sophistication involved as proof.
From speculation to speculation, the case against the Quds Force by the Bush administration continues to lack anything in the way of substance. And yet the mythological Daqduq has become a launching platform for even graver speculation, fed by the media themselves, that the highest levels of leadership in Iran were aware of the activities of Daqduq and the Quds Force, and are thus somehow complicit in the violence. Not one shred of evidence was produced to sustain such serious accusations, and yet national media outlets such as The New York Times and The Washington Post both ran stories repeating these accusations. Politicians are formulating policy based upon such baseless accusations, and the American public continues to be manipulated into a predisposition for war with Iran largely because of such speculation. No one seems to pay attention to the fact that the U.S. military itself has subsequently contradicted its own briefings, noting in July 2007 that no persons had been captured by the United States that can provide a direct link between insurgents in Iraq and Iran. Again, in August of 2007, the U.S. military stated that it had yet to catch anyone smuggling weapons into Iraq from Iran.
A war with Iran would make the current conflict in Iraq pale by comparison, and would detrimentally impact the whole of America, not just certain demographics

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