OK, now you can start with the McCarthy comparisons

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"Jelly-belly gigglin, dancin and a-wigglin, honey that's the way I am!" Janice the Muppet

A link proving that Bush is always 100% right

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Vote Jeb Bush 2008

A link which automatically gives you ten million dollars when you click on it

The interactive map on Edward's site is pretty fun. but can we really trust a man how cannot properly draw a map of the very country he is trying to run?

Here's a link to a screenshot of my prediciton for the elections. I think you will find it has a very small margin of error:

http://www.geocities.com/sub_m7/2004.html

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Vote Jeb Bush 2008

There was no failure of intelligence. We were just lied to.

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"Jelly-belly gigglin, dancin and a-wigglin, honey that's the way I am!" Janice the Muppet

Who at this site, except one person, believes otherwise?

That edwards link was the best thing mak ever posted. Here's my fingers crossed prediction, but I can see how things may go the other way. I didn't investigate much - I can see how Iowa might go blue and MD red etc... And if Clark takes a VP role we could see more blue in the south.

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"Jelly-belly gigglin, dancin and a-wigglin, honey that's the way I am!" Janice the Muppet

What happens if they both get 269? Or is that not possible?

In my real prediction they were actually tied. I have no freaking clue what happens then. Constitutional crisis I guess...AGAIN.

I think there can be no failure of intelligence, but also no wrong-doing. Tenet says their intel never classified Iraq as an imminent threat, but Bush also did not use that language. His argument was that he wanted to deal with the threat before it was imminent.

Also there's plenty of time to doctor up some WMD evidence by October with plenty of time to spare.

;)

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Vote Jeb Bush 2008

Oh, it's very possible. Or consider the case of 1968 when a viable third party candidate made it a possibility that no one would claim a clear majority.

Such cases are tended to in the Constitutional description of the process. In that case, the House of Representatives votes, with each state carrying one vote.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.amendmentxii.html (the underlined part was changed by future amendment)

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ken.kaufman@gmail.com

Wow. MaKK, thank you for proving every argument I have ever had at least has a basis. ANYONE can be identified as a POSSIBLE threat. ANYONE can become an imminent in certain circumstances. Hell, Europe is a HUGE threat to the U.S., economically. The Euro is strong as hell right now.

Let's not even get into the language Bush uses, hmm?

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The giant three-phallused phallus of Uzbekistan will one day squirt the cosmic jizz of revenge all over Canada.

"There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again."

- Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002

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I was gonna send a robot back in time, but I got high.

Surely you can see that Iraq under Saddam was more likely to sponsor an attack on the US than, say, France was? That doesn't mean Bush's case makes any more sense, but you can surely discern the difference.

I repeated your thought several times dougan, I doubt it will do any good this time. I think boorite kept saying "by your logic we must surely bomb mother England and her people!", as if common sense is selectively applicable, and it's so obvious there is no difference between England and pre-war Iraq when arguing against Bush's policies.

Europe is technically much more capable of launching a harmful attack on the U.S., but politically it is almost out of the range of believability that most of Europe would want to do so. Iraq, while even if it was dubious if they had the technology to carry out a direct attack, had the political will to do so. That's the difference. No one is saying Europe is a "gathering threat" because it's not. Saying Iraq was a "gathering threat" before the war was very applicable, and I still would like to hear a good argument against this other than "Bush is wrong!"

I still submit that countries capable of fostering groups that can cause smaller "assymetrical" attacks should be dealt with much more harshly (as Iraq was) since a technically capable nation (such as Russia, China) just isn't going to launch a direct attack against us with their full technological capabilities. The most likely source of a foreign-national attack will be a covert operation akin to the September 11 attacks. Also I point out we are trying to reconstitute Iraq as a viable member of the international community instead of bombing its citizens back to the bronze age. WE WILL SURELY BURN IN HELL FOR THIS!

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Vote Jeb Bush 2008

Possibly, but you see my point. According to Bush himself, anyone who doesn't hop on board the U.S. Juggernaut bandwagon is just helping the terrorists.

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The giant three-phallused phallus of Uzbekistan will one day squirt the cosmic jizz of revenge all over Canada.

Makk: When I said that by your logic, Washington and London should be bombed, it had nothing to do with England's threat to us. Maybe that was the misunderstanding. No, I meant that since the US and UK had shown themselves willing and able to "attack and threaten willy nilly" (as you put it), then our likely victims would (by your logic) have every right to bomb Washington and London. A fortiori. Res ipsa loquitur. Ad fellatio, ergo sum blowme.

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What others say about boorite!

Good freaking grief. Since when did Anti-New Labour spin equate to Anti-Americanism? Also, can someone throw some holy water on that presenter? I never want to watch that channel again. That makes Zimbabwe's state news look impartial.

The sad thing about the Hutton report is that, like so many catastrophic events, a chain of small mistakes led to a larger tragedy. No one party is solely to blame, but many are responsible somehow

In particular, Campbell is sticking by his claim that he did nothing wrong, in truth I doubt he did little more than his job - to twist the truth into uncertainty to suit whoever he was working for. I'm not surprised he jumped ship early. The long term implications are not good for Blair. A shame Campbell didn't at least get portrayed as the hired liar he is.

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Please replace the handset, and try again.

Right - to get the thread back to where it was before I threw my hat in:

mAAk was playing Devil's Advocate/NeoCon and giving us all a good laugh:

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Please replace the handset, and try again.

I think that was meant to be a comment piece rather than straight reporting. But maybe I'm being naive?

quote:

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I think that was meant to be a comment piece rather than straight reporting. But maybe I'm being naive?

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I said I think we should attack countries willy-nilly. I didn't say Washington and London did, nor did I say the current Iraq war was a willy-nilly haphazard war. Sorry if painting absolute lines is so jarring, but yes, if you do want to bomb Washington and/or London, or enable a group to do so by turning a blind eye to them, you are part of "the enemy". If you would rather stall acting on such nations to debate how many angels can dance on the head of a pin you "don't matter anyway because you are ineffectual and easily distracted".

Re: the BBC

Remember, if you are a broadcaster with a British accent the words you speak come directly from the fountain of truth.

Just like the BBC..was..um....being completely factual and not influencing unsuspecting people...with...um....opinion...

I see this "argument" a lot, when people say Rush Lumbaugh or the like should be taken off the air because dumb people will have no choice but to agree with them. This seems it would only be of concern if your own political ideological base is dependent upon stupid people not being lured away by the siren calls of other brainwashers. *AHEM*

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Vote Jeb Bush 2008

Aw, go on. You'd be doing us a favour.

quote:

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Re: the BBC

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Makk's attitude is (and has been throughout the thread) pretty much normal, not just for this country, but for any power, ever, anywhere. The attitude is that our standards do not apply to ourselves as to our enemies. In fact, when it is suggested that they do, the reaction is incomprehension. There is no simpler or more basic rule of decency. Jesus goes on about it at some length in his sermons on hypocrisy. Yet very few seem able to see it when it applies to us. It's as if the question cannot even make sense. We did it, so it must be right, by definition.

Take for example the justification for bombing Afghanistan. The justification is that we were attacked. Does this generalize? Is any country who is attacked by terrorists allowed to go bomb another country in response? If so, then many countries have even stronger justifications for bombing Washington, which has been carrying out this sort of thing for many decades. According to the logic, bombing America is the good and just and right thing to do. But anyone who points this out is dismissed as insane. The principle, simple as it is, cannot be grasped.

How about our justification for attacking Iraq? We hear that they were possibly willing and able (able, only in the remotest stretch of imagination) to carry out attacks against us. So that permits us to bomb and invade. So does that principle generalize? Is any country that faces a possible, potential threat permitted to bomb, invade, overthrow? Not if the potential threat is posed by the US or UK, even if that threat is far greater and more likely to be carried out. The principle does not generalize. The very idea that it might is greeted with ridicule. It's the easiest thing to understand, but does anyone understand it? No.

It's said that we're accomplishing wonderful things through all this violence. We're overthrowing Talibans and Saddams and protecting governments from extermists in Central and South America and the Middle East and Asia. But that's exactly what every imperial power has said. German and Japanese leaders marched to the scaffold at Nuremberg saying it. It never occurs to us to ask the beneficiaries of our invasions and terror wars-- the Iraqis, the Afghans, the Colombians and Nicaraguans, the Vietnamese-- if they would like to receive the dispensation of our righteous violence, for their own good. Nor does it ever occur to us that we would not like to be bombed for our own good. We neglect to undertake the most elementary moral exercise. Indeed, anyone who does undertake it is attacked, or dismissed with contempt.

So the whole discussion of the "war on terror," as it takes place here in the States, is just a monumental hypocrisy of the most transparent sort. Transparent though it is, few manage to see through it.

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What others say about boorite!

Well, the major players in the organised democratic opposition in Iraq - the INC, the PUK - backed the invasion (with caveats). Apart from that, how exactly do you poll Iraqis on something like this?

You mean if we were living in Saddam's Iraq? I don't know how you can so easily say that you would oppose the invasion in those circumstances. Certainly many Iraqis supported it. If it's the actual bombing that you're against, rather than say a ground invasion, well I'm with you there.

What's all this "we" stuff? It sounds like you, at least, are performing this "elementary moral exercise". What you mean is "Americans other than morally responsible ones like me". But I can see how that would be cumbersome.