Liberal vs Conservative, democrat vs republican

"And the SUV, yeah it's very nice. I'm hoping to add this custom Bose sound system and leather chairs as well as a unneeded GPS, just for looks. But seriously, I made my money, and no one is going to tell me how I spend it, especially not after half of it is taken away after taxes."

haha, right on man, i was just on an outrage roll when i laid into that. my truck isn't exaclty a green-mobile either, and i can't say i feel as much remorse about it as my posts suggest i should. i'm not anti-money or materialism, i'm a shallow bastard and i'd be a big fucking liar if i said i don't need a certain level of material comfort to be happy.

i don't mean to paint conservatives as bad people or stupid, i just disagree. day to day i think most of us want the same things: freedom, happiness, and moderately priced fajita restaurants.

Gellybird just dosent get it. Our president LIED! Now which is more important lying about a war or lying about a blow job? President Bush is a fuckin crook no matter what you say. He is an awful man.

What about Halliburton? Nobody has explained that. Explain why VP Dick-head Cheney's former company is charging us twice as much for oil and gas while the President has given them a NO-BID contract? The answer is Crony Capatilism.

Saying that Al-Queda would still be attackin us if Gore was in office is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Even Ralph Nadar would have bombed Afghanistan.

Oh and we will get attacked again if Bush is in office, I guarantee it. Afghanistan War was not won, and the Taliban are Alive and At Large. We're wasting our troops, money, and time by staying in Iraq and not finishing Al-Queda off.

I am a Capitalist. Not because I am rich, but because I am poor. I'll let you think about that.

Even Ralph Nadar would have bombed Afghanistan

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The Green party would surrender all weapons and stop research and cut defense money, let alone not go to war. Denis Kusinich vowed that if he ever came to office, which he won't, he will never ever go to war with anyone. The democratic party is weak on defense and wouldn't have the balls to defend the nation like Bush did.

Oh and we will get attacked again if Bush is in office, I guarantee it

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It sounds as if you want us to be attacked again, so you can continue to ridicule Bush. Is the death of American soldiers and citizens work towards your goals? Everyone knows that republicans are known for supplying the military and the democrats are known for cutting them down.

If a democrat was in the white house, we would be appealing to the terrorist just like Europe did during WW2 to Hitler, and look what happend. Hitler didn't give a shit and just came after us, what makes you think terrorist wouldn't do the same? You would have us lay our weapons down and sing for peace and halt all weapon advancement back to the stone-age.

Originally posted by GellyBird
If a democrat was in the white house, we would be appealing to the terrorist just like Europe did during WW2 to Hitler, and look what happend. Hitler didn't give a shit and just came after us, what makes you think terrorist wouldn't do the same? You would have us lay our weapons down and sing for peace and halt all weapon advancement back to the stone-age.

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If you did your history homework, you would find that Hitler did not want the United States in the war. He never "came after us". Germany lost WW1 because of our involvement, why would they want to fight the US for a second time?

Also, Roosevelt(the president during WW2) was a Democrat! And you say Democrats will not go to war.

I hate to say it, but it was under the orders of a Democrat that millions of people were killed in Japan. So, think before you talk next time.

If you did your history homework, you would find that Hitler did not want the United States in the war. He never "came after us". Germany lost WW1 because of our involvement, why would they want to fight the US for a second time?

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When I said "coming after us" I really meant coming after the allies, I thought you would pick that out and should have clarified. As for a democrat president going to war, I meant nowadays, not back then.

well, it's clinton's military that we've been using, bush hasn't really altered it much, and far as i can tell it's worked alright.

clinton was harder on terrorism as well, when bush came into office they put anti-terrorism intelligence on the back burner because they didn't think it was an issue, theres plenty of documentation for that one.

i think the idea that democrats are weak militarily is another myth. where does that come from? that democrats have lower defense budgets? it's not what you spend, it's how you spend it . . . the last democrat of recent times, clinton, threw down on quite a few occasions anyways, some suggest some of his actions were too aggressive or not needed, like sudan.

i think the democratic party gets that rap because the far left side of the political spectrum has pacifiist influences, but with the exception of little dennis, all the presidental candidates from congress voted for the war. clark is a general, kerry is a vet, these guys understand the necessity and appropriate use of military force, they have spent a lifetime studying diplomacy and conflict. bush on the other hand . . . i think theres a differance between prudence and pacifism, and a lot of conservative commentators intentionally blur the line.

"If a democrat was in the white house, we would be appealing to the terrorist just like Europe did during WW2 to Hitler"

how do you figure? why do you think a democrat wouldn't have taken action? if you think about it, that's just a political impossibility. america demanded action, and al gore was fully in support of military action and any use of force to locate the terrorists. like i said before, if gore had won, he would have implimented the massive anti-terrorist agenda that the clinton administration was working out at the end of clinton's term and begged bush to adopt. bush swept it under the rug.

the original proposal by clinton's security team used to be online a few places, i don't know if it still is. it proposed huge funding increases and intelligence upgrades for terrorist watch, and established a new executive department that is pretty much homeland security but more comprehensive. if gore had been elected you had better believe that it wouldn't have just disappeared like it did under bush. i'm not saying the towers wouldn't have gone down with gore, but suggesting that he wasn't prepared or willing to fight terrorism is not founded on any real information as far as i am concerned.

Originally posted by Spektrum
I hate to say it, but it was under the orders of a Democrat that millions of people were killed in Japan.

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Civilians killed in Japan during WWII were about 400,000.

Military KIA/MIA from Japan were about 1.7 million.

This compares to the roughly 13 million Chinese civilians killed by the Japanese, and about 1.5 million Chinese soldiers KIA/MIA by Japan.

Saddam is estimated to be responsible for between 1 to 2 million deaths.

Originally posted by bobbdobbs
Civilians killed in Japan during WWII were about 400,000.

Military KIA/MIA from Japan were about 1.7 million.

This compares to the roughly 13 million Chinese civilians killed by the Japanese, and about 1.5 million Chinese soldiers KIA/MIA by Japan.

Saddam is estimated to be responsible for between 1 to 2 million deaths.

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Damn, thats crazy!

I do believe Saddam needed to be removed from power and believe the war was necassary. You'll never see me disagree with that one.

Originally posted by NeXus
Our president LIED!

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Well, so far I don't think that's been shown.

Saddam certainly had WMD, he used it on his own countrymen as well as in the Iraq/Iran war. He certainly had the resources to make it, the brainpower, etc.

He also went to great lengths after Gulf War I to keep his WMD capabilities hidden, always playing games with the UN inspectors.

So any prudent outsider would have to conclude that he still had WMD programs in operation and a stockpile of hidden WMD.

And Saddam certainly wanted that impression out there -- he would get the deterent benefit of everyone thinking he was still in a strong military position.

It increasinly looks like Saddam gambled and lost on this high stakes game of pretend hide-n-seek.

Saddam may have lied, but that doesn't mean Bush lied. Bush went with the best intelligence they had. In a closed repressive society like that under the butcher Saddam -- information is not easy to get.

Originally posted by NeXus
Saying that Al-Queda would still be attackin us if Gore was in office is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Even Ralph Nadar would have bombed Afghanistan.

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Actually, I tend to think than anyone the American public would elect, Gore for instance, or even Clinton, would have attacked Afghanistan. But I am not sure.

You recall that even in Bosnia, Europe (well, "old europe") was reluctant to intervene. Clinton and the US had to lead the way.

Europe was none to happy with our launch into Afghanistan. But after 9/11 they were a bit more resigned to the inevitability of it.

Gore (as was Clinton before him) would have been dependent on the same intelligence that Bush had -- Gore would have been faced with possible WMD in Iraq and a growing Al Queda terrorist organization.

The idea that Bush made all that stuff up just to get Halburton some contracts is the nutty fringe stuff that's hardly worth debating.

i agree with bobbdobbs here, i don't think there is some right wing war for corporate contracts conspiracy, nor do i think bush had some hellbent agenda to attack iraq. i was sold on the information at the time and i argued vigorously for the war. in retrospect, it wasn't the most awsome strategic move and may have been unecessary, and don't jump all over me and say it was necessary because saadam was brutal and a dictator. we supported him for years and nobody was crying for an invasion of iraq based on human right violations before the WMD stuff. we have a long and storied history of ignoring or being outraged by human rights abuses when it suits us.

but yeah, in some ways all this talk about right wing conspiracies and so on, i don't know, i think it just makes the left look bad in some ways. not that the right doesn't have their share of stories about clinton being a serial killer and other fun stuff, but i don't buy into the "invasion for oil" talk one bit.

All politicians are evil. They have to be. Bill Clinton was an ass hole and so is George W. Bush. It comes with the territory of being a president. I hope everyone can see through them.

As far as contract conspiracies, that kind of stuff does go on. This coming from someone who has experience with bidding on government contracts. The most recent one(halliburton) was obvious, it wasn't even like they were trying to hide it. Tell me why the amount they were paid is "confidential". Like it's important to our national defense how much these bastards were getting paid.

I don't care if you're a right winger or left winger. If you don't stand back and say something isn't right about that, you're about american as an angry afgan terrorist.

Yet nobody sees the smoking gun about the Haliburton-Bush-Cheny-Oil connection. Answer why former CEO, VP Cheney's company is ripping off the American people by over chargin us for fuel and oil from Kuwait. When they could go to Turkey for half the price.

Nobody is dispurting the fact that Saddam was a horrible dictator. But he is just one out of about two dozen dictators in the world. My interest is about national security. I say we attack the people who attacked us! Finish them off. How frickin hard is that to understand? Saddam and Al-Queda had no direct connection!

Iraq was not direct threat to the US in any way. All that talk about a mushroom cloud and nuclear and biological weapons, and one vial of a chemical weapon will kill tens of thousands. All this talk to scare the shit out of people, which it did.

Did you know that there were 29 specific allegations that the White House made in the case for war? Well guess what, not a single allegation turned out to be true. And when I say specific, I mean they had an aerial photograph of bunkers, that they said they knew that there was WMD in there. They need to own up and be responsible for their words and intel. Its no coincedence that the president hasnt muttered a word about WMD lately. All about making a "free" Iraq.

Halliburton isnt the only reason for this war. There are several, but the biggest is to privatize Iraq. If they get the Iraqi's into there target market, they will be multi-billionairs, and they dont even have to leave the US or pay US taxes.

Also its has been reported that when Cheney was CEO of Halliburton, they sold millions of dollars in equiqment to Iraq while Saddam was in power. And now we reward Halliburton with no-bid contracts and lurcretive government contracts?

Goodbutnotgreat is absolutely right about Bush putting off reports from the Clinton Admin. about Al-Queada. Bush didnt have one meeting about terrorism until after Sept.11, despite numerous reports and memos warning of a terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and he was in office for almost 9 months.

Nobody is dispurting the fact that Saddam was a horrible dictator. But he is just one out of about two dozen dictators in the world. My interest is about national security. I say we attack the people who attacked us! Finish them off. How frickin hard is that to understand? Saddam and Al-Queda had no direct connection

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Yeah they did, Saddam funded terrorism. And as for "He is just one out of about two dozen dictators" thats a pretty weak argument. Does it matter that every day American troops are finding mass graves with women and children with bullet holes in their heads? And Iraq is a threat to the US. They hated Israli democracy and therefore they hate our way of life, and achievments.

despite numerous reports and memos warning of a terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and he was in office for almost 9 months.

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Show some evidence to enlighten me of this please. Are you suggesting that Bush new we were going to be attacked and just let innoncent American lives die in the WTC?

I am so happy that you intelligent folk get so much use out of the DEEP THOUGHTS forum.

hey gellybird - i think what nexus is trying to point out is that it was not human rights violations that prompted war, nor would america have supported a war just based on outrage over saadam's behavior. in rwanda for instance, during the clinton years, there was a slaughter of about 500,00o people by paramilitary extremists, and it was most certainly genocide, and it was all over the news. america was sympathetic but many weren;t even in favour of sending in any forces, and in fact we didn't because clinton read the polls everyday and there wasn;t much support for intervention. saadam was a butcher for years, we went to war because we feared a weapons threat.

iraq, looking back, was not a threat. i thougt they were at the time, but it was rouse, part bad information, part shll game by hussein to fool the world into thinking he wasn't totally defanged. in terms of terrorism, the link between the iraqi state and terrorists is very weak. SH didn't want them around, he liked to be the sole source of terror. we have in fact found almost no solid evidence that there were even many threatening terrorists operating within the country. i forget the exact number, i think somebody put it up in the forums here once, but a gallop poll showed that like half of americans thought that iraq was somehow behind 9/11 when even the bush administration never suggested such a thing. states like iran have far more terrorist links, this is undidputed by the intelligence community.

i'll see if i can link to some reports tomorrow, but it has been written about in time, newsweek, and generally reported on heavily that clinton's security team identified al queda and osama as the #1 imminent threat and told bush about it. it is also a documented fact that they did not even place anti-terrorism on their priority list upon entering the white house, and did not address it at all until after 9/11. This isn't just conjecture, there are copious memos and interviews as well as cabinet minutes, spending records, ect. to substantiate it, just gotta get off my ass and google it. go to time.com and search the archives if you're a subscriber, they did a fairly huge piece on it a while back.

Originally posted by goodbutnotgreat
states like iran have far more terrorist links

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Look where Iran sits today -- between Afghanistan and Iraq -- now both controlled by the United States. It is also bordered by Turkey, Turkmenistan and Pakistan, all more or less US alies in the anti-terror war.

Remember that in WWII, the US was attacked by Japan and Britain was being bombed by Germany. The Allies first ground offensives were in North Africa!

Syria and Iran are now geographically isolated. They have a right to be worried.

hey bobbdobbs, not sure exactly what you meant with the post, true enough though.

it's just rhetoric, but i wouldn't say we really control afghanistan, more like we gave it over to some warlords who know that if they dick around we're gonna rattle some cages, bombing campaign style. one warlord even called the situation "B-52 peace" or something like that.

also, i argue all the time that pakistan is one dangerous state to the US. we have dialouge with their government, but they're detonated nukes, have a big military, a fundamentalist muslim regime, ect. based on a lot of things i've read and a lecture i attended by a guy who worked over there for years under the CIA and now does intelligence integration research for the defense department, they have a good deal of terrorist activity and funding within their borders. they may be our formal allies, but that place is a wildcard at best.

so far as iran, it's hard to say, but i think it's clear iran has more terrorist ties than iraq ever did. even many conservative commentators i watched before the war were hesitant to say iraq was a terrorist sponsor, we really haven't got much at all to suggest it was to any real threatening capacity, and certainly not much compared to other middle eastern states.