| Author | Message | ||
     S.L.K. 2.0 Citizen Username: Scrotisloknows Post Number: 1957 Registered: 10-2005  |
Dave- Again, stick with one thing (moderating). It is apparent by your posts on this board you are not familiar with the concept of "multi-tasking." -SLK BTW, did MBJ just get banned? For what? | ||
| tom Citizen Username: Tom Post Number: 5691 Registered: 5-2001 |
Then how do you explain this? | ||
| notehead Supporter Username: Notehead Post Number: 3788 Registered: 5-2001  |
What makes you think MBJ has been banned? Hey Hoops, I think "appeasers" was the previous codeword. Looks like the new one -- utilized by Rumsfeld and others -- is "fascism." That is the suggestion from AP, anyway. | ||
| Costanza Supporter Username: Vandalay Post Number: 1780 Registered: 8-2004  |
Tom, That must be one of those good leaks. That unit had ten years to get him and couldn't do it. Task Force 121 and the Pakistani Army are on the case. | ||
| Hoops Citizen Username: Hoops Post Number: 2018 Registered: 10-2004  |
What they should do is call Dana Carvey for a little Church lady speechifying.  http://www.danacarvey.net/satan2.wav | ||
| Hoops Citizen Username: Hoops Post Number: 2019 Registered: 10-2004 |
What all the neocons are waiting for | ||
| tom Citizen Username: Tom Post Number: 5693 Registered: 5-2001 |
Saying the Pakistani Army is on the case only reinforces our point. | ||
| Innisowen Citizen Username: Innisowen Post Number: 2348 Registered: 3-2004 |
Hoops: It's the neocon Christian Recon pilot project for Armageddon. If the pilot works, they'll implement the full-blown (there's a pun in there somewhere) solution. | ||
| argon_smythe Citizen Username: Argon_smythe Post Number: 922 Registered: 5-2001 |
As usual, I seem to ask this a lot when these guys give speeches, I would like to know which specific individuals, whether they be political leaders, spiritual leaders, whatever, have actually advocated "appeasement" of terrorists. Furthermore, I'd like to know how not appeasing terrorists, and invading Iraq, are specifically connected to one another. As opposed to, say, diverting most of your armed forces out of Pakistan and into Iraq in the first place. Why is it that Rumsfeld, Bush, etc never quote any of the people whose positions they paraphrase? If these people are so insidious, and their platform so damaging to the country, why not name names? | ||
| Innisowen Citizen Username: Innisowen Post Number: 2351 Registered: 3-2004 |
Tom, But the Pakistani Army has great, colorful uniforms and several top-notch marching bands! I think Costanza means that they're on the MUSIC INSTRUMENT case. | ||
| Dave Supporter Username: Dave  Post Number: 10651 Registered: 4-1997  |
Actually, I said Bush has given up. Then I quoted Bush saying as much. It's on the White House press office's web site. Imagine how cool it could have been if instead of wasting lives and hundreds of billions of dollars in Iraq (which not only had no al qaida or wmd, but was also a great counterbalance to Iran), we went full bore after Bin Laden and the taliban and wiped the Earth clean of them? | ||
| Southerner Citizen Username: Southerner Post Number: 1481 Registered: 2-2004 |
I love this. And not a thing a lib can do about it. | ||
| Dave Supporter Username: Dave Post Number: 10652 Registered: 4-1997 |
You love that Bin Laden is free. That's nice. | ||
| Innisowen Citizen Username: Innisowen Post Number: 2353 Registered: 3-2004 |
Yup, Bin Laden is free, and not a thing that the current administration has been capable of doing about it. | ||
| Factvsfiction Citizen Username: Factvsfiction Post Number: 1539 Registered: 4-2006 |
I think it is a tremendous mistake for some of you to apply the emotional politics of the extreme left/progressive bunch in this country to a more weighty and life and death problem like the conflict between ourselves and radical islam. There is more emotion than intellectual discernment on parts of this board. As I have stated here before I voted for Al Gore,but frankly I am glad Gore was not President at 9-11. We would have probably had massive airstrikes on Afghanistan but no invasion ( following the Clinton m.o.) and excessive talking and resolution-gathering at the United Nations, and too much intellectualizing and policy paralysis, while OBL was still able to use Afghanistan as an operational headquarters that allowed him and Al Queda to be able to execute and plan further terrorist strikes here and in Europe. Gore was in Vietnam as a journalist and was also tied in to the Vietnam syndrome that affects many of his generation, and those here on MOL too, no doubt. Sometimes it just pays to have a "simpleton" in office who sees things in basic black and white so things can actually get done. While I don't like much of Bush's personality and his Andover faux Texan affectations, the man probably has done a better job on a new type of war that no one has fought before than a democrat in office would have. Sorry fact, but probably true. What some of you are not seeing is that because of the global war on terror things can be solved on a police level. The fact that Al Queda was dispossessed of a firm operation and planning base and is now constantly on the run has opened up the global terror business to the second-stringers and small-timers that are far easier to discover by the police action that John Kerry was going to apply in toto. Again, you are not fighting a war against the Swiss. You are applying your 21st century society's ideas, your politics, and sense of what is moral ( and equivalent) to one that finds you completely alien and unacceptable. Do you really expect to force your perceptions on them so as to resolve this conflict peaceably? What if your laudable, heartfelt, and rational means of resolving this conflict is simply seen by them as proof of your weakness, ( as it is)? You need to face the brutal truths and bring some honesty to the table. Our left and progressives need a new paradigm on this.Think World War II. | ||
| Dave Supporter Username: Dave Post Number: 10653 Registered: 4-1997 |
The more you write, the less I think you are a college graduate. | ||
| tom Citizen Username: Tom Post Number: 5694 Registered: 5-2001 |
I disagree with your assessment of Gore; knocking down two of the tallest buildings in America and killing thousands, not to mention physically attacking the Pentagon, was of a severity several orders of magnitude more than anything that happened on Clinton's watch. You have no way of extrapolating what Clinton or Gore's response would have been to 9/11. That said, for argument's sake let's accept the rest of your post as true; tell me why that argues for going to war in Iraq rather than, say, wiping out the Taliban and al Qaeda once and for all. | ||
| Charlton Citizen Username: Charlton Post Number: 6 Registered: 8-2006 |
Back in Feb during the budget hearings Rumpot was }including Iraq in the global war on terror. If Bush had appointed someone from the military for the DoD instead of a civilian. I think proper analysis would have been conducted before invading. Instead of the crap plan Rummy, Wolfy, et al put together -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Quote: "The campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan and other theaters in the Global War on Terror have added new impetus and urgency to transformation efforts that were already underway in the Department of Defense before September 11 th " http://www.defenselink.mil/home/dodupdate/documents/20060608e.html | ||
| Innisowen Citizen Username: Innisowen Post Number: 2355 Registered: 3-2004 |
Fiction writes: "Sometimes it just pays to have a 'simpleton' in office who sees things in basic black and white so things can actually get done." It would be nice to know which things have in fact been done by the administration's simpleton-in-chief." It seems that the poster is straining so hard with his lame, overbearing justifications of the 43 shambles that he is farting higher than his arse on this post, even more so than on many others. | ||
| Tom Reingold Supporter Username: Noglider Post Number: 15499 Registered: 1-2003  |
Costanza and factvsfiction, do you know what a strawman argument is and why it is flawed? | ||
| tom Citizen Username: Tom Post Number: 5698 Registered: 5-2001 |
My guess is that they know what a strawman argument is and why it is useful. | ||
| Southerner Citizen Username: Southerner Post Number: 1483 Registered: 2-2004 |
Reingold loves to talk about strawmen. It must be his coping device. | ||
| Costanza Supporter Username: Vandalay Post Number: 1781 Registered: 8-2004 |
From Eric Ruff,Pentagon press secretary "Facts are facts. As the secretary said in his speech, America and the free world face a gathering threat of challenges from a vicious enemy that is serious, lethal and relentless. There are important lessons from history that we ought to be mindful of as we talk about how we are going to meet the challenges extremist terror organizations present." Rummy needs to keep making these speeches. | ||
| Innisowen Citizen Username: Innisowen Post Number: 2359 Registered: 3-2004 |
He can do that from the Senior Citizens Center. He has long since outlived his usefulness, his talents as an executive, and even his rah-rah appearances at friendly, cherry-picked venues. Did one notice the lack of hearty applause at key points in his speech before the American Legion? Next venue will be a speech in front of 43's cabinet, where Rummy is guaranteed both an audience that doesn't go out to pee all the time and one which will applaud him in the style which is orchestrated beforehand. | ||
| tom Citizen Username: Tom Post Number: 5699 Registered: 5-2001 |
That's kind of a "well, duh" statement, isn't it? There are important lessons from history that we ought to be mindful of as we talk about how we are going to meet the challenges xxxxxxxxxxxxx present. Fill in the blank. But anyway would Viet Nam be one of those lessons? | ||
| cjc Citizen Username: Cjc Post Number: 5842 Registered: 8-2003 |
Why go to Iraq after 9/11? "Remember — please remember — ‘Boogie to Baghdad’ I have to admit that I have failed miserably in my small effort to make the words “Boogie to Baghdad” part of the national conversation on ties between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. In case you don’t remember, “Boogie to Baghdad” is the phrase that Richard Clarke, when he was the top White House counterterrorism official during the Clinton administration, used to express his fear that if American forces pushed Osama bin Laden too hard at his hideout in Afghanistan, bin Laden might move to Iraq, where he could stay in the protection of Saddam Hussein. Clarke’s opinion was based on intelligence indicating a number of contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq, including word that Saddam had offered bin Laden safe haven. It’s all laid out in the Sept. 11 commission report. “Boogie to Baghdad” is on Page 134...." http://www.hillnews.com/thehill/export/TheHill/Comment/ByronYork/111705.html Myself, I give that intelligence credence, but I also believe in changing the dynamics of the Middle East. Silly me...I believe Arabs can handle democracy. Hey -- Obama thinks Kenyans can come to grips with the cultural stereotype of corrupt African government, but maybe we're both just dreamers when it comes to people with darker complexions. | ||
| Factvsfiction Citizen Username: Factvsfiction Post Number: 1542 Registered: 4-2006 |
Dave- Thank you for proving my point about emotionalism replacing intelligent discourse among the left. If you can't adequately address the substance of a post you then personally attack the maker? tom- You raised a good point that warrants being addressed, at the moment though I am turned off to posting further here. Later. | ||
| anon Supporter Username: Anon Post Number: 3019 Registered: 6-2002 |
If Al Gore had been President on 9/11, millions of people would have had the following reaction: "Gee, I never really liked Gore, but now I'm glad he won. That other guy was OK, but he didn't have any foreign policy experience." | ||
| Nohero Supporter Username: Nohero Post Number: 5777 Registered: 10-1999  |
"If Al Gore had been President on 9/11 ..." Heck, as long as we're speculating - I suppose the efforts that the Clinton Administration had wanted the Bush Administration to continue, would in fact have continued in the new administration. We would not have had an Attorney General who was cutting the back on counter-terrorism (as John Ashcroft was doing right up to his September 10, 2001 budget proposal). The President might have paid more attention to a memo that said "Bin Laden determined to attack U.S." Who knows what else might have happened? | ||
| Foj Citizen Username: Foger Post Number: 1786 Registered: 9-2004 |
"If Al Gore had been President on 9/11 ..." HAHAHAHA LOL LOL We would have caught them in August after Gore read the PDB. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6757267008400743688 Hell , these jerks, if they had done nothing... Norad would have sent planes up to intercept. But these jerks ordered a stand down. And waited for 2 hours ...doing nothing. | ||
| Twokitties Citizen Username: Twokitties Post Number: 505 Registered: 8-2004 |
Rumsfeld's speech is only the beginning. Look for more of the same from Administration and party officals over the coming days and weeks. They will lie, obfuscate and slander because it's all they have left. It should work in exciting the cowardly and intellectually lazy, but I question whether it will really do much more than that. | ||
| Innisowen Citizen Username: Innisowen Post Number: 2360 Registered: 3-2004 |
It reminds of the lies and misrepresentations of the Communist Party in 50s and 60s in the Soviet Union and in the DDR. The party faithful were instructed to follow the party line, and those who did not follow the party line were characterized as traitors, imperialists and appeasers of the West. The words of this administration may be somewhat different, but the intent and the tactic remind of totalitarians of the second half of the last century. Rumsfeld and Cheney have become our Walter Ulbricht and Eric Honecker. How ironic. | ||
| Robert Livingston Citizen Username: Rob_livingston Post Number: 2050 Registered: 7-2004  |
Keith Olbermann: The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack. Donald H. Rumsfeld is not a prophet. Mr. Rumsfeld’s remarkable speech to the American Legion yesterday demands the deep analysis—and the sober contemplation—of every American. For it did not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence -- indeed, the loyalty -- of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land. Worse, still, it credits those same transient occupants -- our employees -- with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration’s track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve. Dissent and disagreement with government is the life’s blood of human freedom; and not merely because it is the first roadblock against the kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as “his” troops still fight, this very evening, in Iraq. It is also essential. Because just every once in awhile it is right and the power to which it speaks, is wrong. In a small irony, however, Mr. Rumsfeld’s speechwriter was adroit in invoking the memory of the appeasement of the Nazis. For in their time, there was another government faced with true peril—with a growing evil—powerful and remorseless. That government, like Mr. Rumsfeld’s, had a monopoly on all the facts. It, too, had the “secret information.” It alone had the true picture of the threat. It too dismissed and insulted its critics in terms like Mr. Rumsfeld’s -- questioning their intellect and their morality. That government was England’s, in the 1930’s. It knew Hitler posed no true threat to Europe, let alone England. It knew Germany was not re-arming, in violation of all treaties and accords. It knew that the hard evidence it received, which contradicted its own policies, its own conclusions — its own omniscience -- needed to be dismissed. The English government of Neville Chamberlain already knew the truth. Most relevant of all — it “knew” that its staunchest critics needed to be marginalized and isolated. In fact, it portrayed the foremost of them as a blood-thirsty war-monger who was, if not truly senile, at best morally or intellectually confused. That critic’s name was Winston Churchill. Sadly, we have no Winston Churchills evident among us this evening. We have only Donald Rumsfelds, demonizing disagreement, the way Neville Chamberlain demonized Winston Churchill. History — and 163 million pounds of Luftwaffe bombs over England — have taught us that all Mr. Chamberlain had was his certainty — and his own confusion. A confusion that suggested that the office can not only make the man, but that the office can also make the facts. Thus, did Mr. Rumsfeld make an apt historical analogy. Excepting the fact, that he has the battery plugged in backwards. His government, absolute -- and exclusive -- in its knowledge, is not the modern version of the one which stood up to the Nazis. It is the modern version of the government of Neville Chamberlain. But back to today’s Omniscient ones. That, about which Mr. Rumsfeld is confused is simply this: This is a Democracy. Still. Sometimes just barely. And, as such, all voices count -- not just his. Had he or his president perhaps proven any of their prior claims of omniscience — about Osama Bin Laden’s plans five years ago, about Saddam Hussein’s weapons four years ago, about Hurricane Katrina’s impact one year ago — we all might be able to swallow hard, and accept their “omniscience” as a bearable, even useful recipe, of fact, plus ego. But, to date, this government has proved little besides its own arrogance, and its own hubris. Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or intellectually, about his own standing in this matter. From Iraq to Katrina, to the entire “Fog of Fear” which continues to envelop this nation, he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies have — inadvertently or intentionally — profited and benefited, both personally, and politically. And yet he can stand up, in public, and question the morality and the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the Emporer’s New Clothes? In what country was Mr. Rumsfeld raised? As a child, of whose heroism did he read? On what side of the battle for freedom did he dream one day to fight? With what country has he confused the United States of America? The confusion we -- as its citizens— must now address, is stark and forbidding. But variations of it have faced our forefathers, when men like Nixon and McCarthy and Curtis LeMay have darkened our skies and obscured our flag. Note -- with hope in your heart — that those earlier Americans always found their way to the light, and we can, too. The confusion is about whether this Secretary of Defense, and this administration, are in fact now accomplishing what they claim the terrorists seek: The destruction of our freedoms, the very ones for which the same veterans Mr. Rumsfeld addressed yesterday in Salt Lake City, so valiantly fought. And about Mr. Rumsfeld’s other main assertion, that this country faces a “new type of fascism.” As he was correct to remind us how a government that knew everything could get everything wrong, so too was he right when he said that -- though probably not in the way he thought he meant it. This country faces a new type of fascism - indeed. Although I presumptuously use his sign-off each night, in feeble tribute, I have utterly no claim to the words of the exemplary journalist Edward R. Murrow. But never in the trial of a thousand years of writing could I come close to matching how he phrased a warning to an earlier generation of us, at a time when other politicians thought they (and they alone) knew everything, and branded those who disagreed: “confused” or “immoral.” Thus, forgive me, for reading Murrow, in full: “We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty,” he said, in 1954. “We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. “We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular.” | ||
| Tom Reingold Supporter Username: Noglider Post Number: 15506 Registered: 1-2003 |
Reingold loves to talk about strawmen. It must be his coping device. Sorry, Southerner, I forgot that integrity and rationality don't matter. Winning is all that matters, and the merit of one's reasons for winning don't matter, nor does it matter what you do once you win. Do I have that right? | ||
| Costanza Supporter Username: Vandalay Post Number: 1782 Registered: 8-2004 |
Boo freakin Hoo. Rummy said Libs are appeasers. It's a great speech when you piss off your opponents. The best advantage that Republicans have is that the Dems hate Bush so much that a simple speech like this gets them all riled up and throws them off their game. Rummy points out some historical comparisons and comes off sounding great to the average guy. Libs respond by sounding like whiners. Keep it up guys. No matter how much events go against this Admin we can count on Dems to save us. Just ask James Carville . | ||
| Robert Livingston Citizen Username: Rob_livingston Post Number: 2051 Registered: 7-2004 |
Olbermann annihilates Rumsfeld YouTube link (if you don't feel like reading...) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0isbNpCLodQ Costanza: You sound desperate. Face it, it's over for the repubs. | ||
| Hoops Citizen Username: Hoops Post Number: 2025 Registered: 10-2004 |
I guess your right, it is a great speech when you piss off your opponents. Of course it helps if you are correct. Seems to me that if you are wrong then it becomes a moronic speech and should be rejected by the very people who are listening to it, including you. Answer the questions - What is an appeaser and do you think liberals advocate appeasement. | ||
| Costanza Supporter Username: Vandalay Post Number: 1783 Registered: 8-2004 |
I said Libs are whiners not appeasers, but if the shoe fits. | ||
| tom Citizen Username: Tom Post Number: 5703 Registered: 5-2001 |
At the risk of killing this thread (I'll try to avoid that by not naming names), Costanza's last post, and Rummy's comparison to the runup to WWII, remind me of another world leader who gave killer speeches, speeches which pissed off his opponents, were full of historical comparisons, and sounded so great to the average guy that they came out to huge stadiums by the tens of thousands to hear him. I'm not talking about Churchill. Republicans need to grow some values and principles. Other than having your side win, that is. After years of hearing about the ills of moral relativism and declining morals, the only principle that really seems to matter is spelled "principal," the kind that goes with "interest." How about some principles that have to do with the actual world we live in and the kind of country and world we're going to live in. | ||
| Twokitties Citizen Username: Twokitties Post Number: 506 Registered: 8-2004 |
I love this from Costanza, "No matter how much events go against this Admin" ... Suggesting that George and Company are merely innocent bystanders with a bad string of luck. |
