A Vice Presidental candidate thread.

Consider how she was chosen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-QevraCQUc&eurl=http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/09/lisanova.htm


And then consider how qualified she is

Unfortunately, that cover misses some of the more pressing issues of Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, North Korea, Iran, and Pakistan. This is the woman who believes god gave our country the task to attack Iraq, and she'll have her fingers on the nuke button. Conservatives don't seem to have any worries; makes you wonder where their heads are implanted.

Freeduck,
Palin supports the war but that's irrelevant...if we want to start keeping count of who's right and wrong on the war, I'm for it. Let's start with the questionable premise that the war was wrong....then include the generally accepted, even by Obama, fact that the surge is correct.

McCain...wrong on war, right on surge
Obama....right on war, wrong on surge
Biden...wrong on war, wrong on surge
Palin...wrong on war, right on surge

Sounds like the Repubs were more correct overall then the Dems.

slapshock, You can't start with a wrong premise, then compare them as apple against apple. "Obama...right on war, wrong on surge." If the war was wrong to begin with, and there was no war - the correct decision, than a "surge" would not be necessary for anything. You can't assume a right after the first decision was wrong; especially when it comes to a preemptive war against a sovereign country. Mix and match all you want; the war was wrong. This wrong decision has cost the Iraqi people over 100,000 innocent lives, and terrorism grew in their country. How does the "surge" correct that?

I expect this is about as truthful as the Michelle Obama "whitey" comment...

That's right ... and in this case, the wrong premise is that the war was wrong.

That's easy for a person with no sense of morality to say.

Ticomaya, I think the premise that the war was wrong only applies to Democrats when we are losing. Of course, they have now thought for so long that we were losing, that it is now very difficult for them to change . But if we had never seemed to be losing, I don't think the "war is wrong" mantra would have ever been advertised so strongly, and we would still have Democrats bragging about their support of the war. Hillary for example was still advertising her support when we captured Saddam Hussein.

Absolutely incorrect!

Plenty of people, including me, and Obama, thought this war was wrong before we ever invaded Iraq. It was wrong because it was morally unjustified. We did not have sufficient evidence of WMD, proof that the immediate security of the United States was being threatened, to justify a pre-emptive attack, invasion, and occupation of another country.

We did not invade Iraq to "liberate" that country and bring it democracy--that was not the alleged intention or justification for the war. That rationalization came later, after things were underway, when Bush shifted gears and redefined our objective in terms of bringing democracy to Iraq. But that was not Bush's argument about invading Iraq in the first place. He claimed, falsely, that WMD in Iraq imminently threatened the security of our country. There were many skeptical members of Congress who were very hesitant about authorizing the Iraqi war, but extreme pressure was placed on them because dissenters were made to seem unpatriotic or soft on terrorism if they did not support the president.

Do not confuse current support for our troops with real support for the war. Lots of people have not really supported the idea of this war--at any time--and it is not solely a partisan issue--but they do support our troops. But, once the mess in Iraqi was created, Congress had to keep funding it. That doesn't mean they all really support the war, it means they were painted into a corner where the only option was to continue funding it. Whether the surge was or was not successful matters only in terms of whether it helps us get out of there sooner rather than later. Obama was right, we should not have gone in there in the first place--that's more significant than what he thinks about the surge.

Nothing will ever convince me that the Iraqi war was right even if we "win" it--because I'm not even sure what "winning it" means at this point. If the basis for the war was wrong, what will we win? Is the United States more secure now than we were before? I think not.

And I am sick of the Republicans again using the "terrorist card" to scare people into voting for them. It was rather obscene of them to replay the video of the 9/11 WTC attack at the RNC, and to, again, exploit the deaths of the about 3,000 people who died that day, for their own political objectives. This is basically the same tactic that was used to get us into the war in Iraq, and that war, Bush's War, has killed over 4,000 in our military, and wounded over 30,000 of our troops. But they don't want to let the public see videos of all those returning coffins do they? Why not? Out of alleged respect for the families of those in the military? Well, where is their respect for the feelings of all the families who lost loved ones on 9/11 when they replay the video of the WTC attack, which actually shows their loved ones being murdered, as part of an attempt to get votes for themselves?

And then, out on the stage at the RNC comes Palin, who seems to know or understand little about the war, other than it being some sort of mission from God , and she makes a sarcastic crack about Obama wanting to read terrorists their rights (again, trying to label dissenters, or the more rational, as unpatriotic or soft on terrorism). Well, someone should tell Governor Palin that, under our system of law, terrorists do have legal rights. We are also bound by the Geneva Conventions, something Bush (and probably Palin) seem to regard as a darn nuisance rather than as something we are bound to uphold. The rule of law, a foundation of our own democracy, is not something a candidate for VP should be mocking in order to get a cheap laugh.

It is Palin, even more than McCain, who reflects the mentality of Bush. She is Bush in drag. The difference between Sarah Palin and George Bush is lipstick. And putting her a heartbeat away from the presidency is a truly frightening prospect since we have seen what that mentality has already done to our country.

Nonsense. Many Democrats and certainly most of the liberals and leftists in your country and abroad opposed the war from the start. Sure there have been plenty of turncoats like Hillary as well, but many of us have been like Obama, opposing the war right from when the drumbeat of war was first sounded.

That also includes a majority of Democrats in Congress who voted against the joint resolution authorization the use of military force in 2002.

CI,
What you are talking about is speculation. I am talking about judgement calls at the time a decision was needed. The fact of the matter is that back in 2003, the leaders of this nation overwhelmingly agreed to go to war. At that time, Obama opposed it....all very fine and well. But then we went to war, and it was going poorly. So another decision was needed...to surge or not to surge. This time Obama was wrong....as even he "almost" concedes.

You are the one starting with the wrong premise....

Do you understand anything about logic? If you start with the wrong decision that's already done much harm, any subsequent decision doesn't make the first wrong decision right. If we had no war, the surge would not have been necessary.

Logic is very simple when you understand it.

The overwhelming agreement to go to war was regarding Afghanistan. Iraq was quite a different matter. There was considerable opposition and skeptism regarding the invasion of Iraq. The Iraq war was wrong from the start, and it was based on lies and false information. It also caused us to curtail our mission in Afghanistan, which was the place we really needed to be at the time, and to neglect dealing with Pakistan, which is really the place Al- Qaeda lives and flourishes.

The previous surge in Iraq, in 2005, did not work--in fact it increased the violence. So, opposing another surge, or feeling it was not a good strategy, was not that far out a position for Obama to take. In fact, the most recent surge may not be totally responsible for the eventual reduction in violence we have seen. Factors, other than an increase in troop strength, or "the surge", may also have contributed to reducing the violence. For one thing, the U.S. paid off it's enemies to get them to stop attacking U.S. troops. For another, there was now greater separation of the two warring ethnic factions in Iraq than there was in 2005. And still another factor was a shift in our counterinsurgency strategy from a major reliance on firepower to a use of more ideological approaches. So, it may not have been only the surge, or latest troop increase, that decreased the violence level. In any event, it does not mean we are now "winning the war"--whatever that means--because the violence will start up again. That's why we have to get out of there as soon as we can and let the Iraqis run their own country. But, with McCain/Palin we may be mired in war in that part of the world indefinitely.

The premises of the Iraqi war were wrong, and the way the war was conducted was wrong. Now the best we can do is try to minimize the damage and get out. And I fail to see what we have accomplished by any of it that justifies the loss of over 4,000 American lives, or the loss of innocent Iraqi lives. There were no WMD. Iraq was not a threat to us. The threat to us is still out there, and I feel we have encouraged it's growth by what we have done in Iraq.

You must have overlooked this post of Joe's just now:

Conservatives are good are rewriting history. LOL

I didn't know that leftists abroad could vote for American congressmen, nimh? Last I checked, Congress approved going to war in Iraq. As a representative government here, that is how we make decisions, we don't call all the liberals here or in Europe to find out what should be done. I agree not all Democrats voted for the war, but enough did, and Congress did, lest that fact be forgotten. And some of the same people that voted for it later tried to construct a case against Bush, that he lied about the whole thing, never mind the fact that some of those same people were saying Hussein had WMD and was extremely dangerous, and needed to be taken out of power even before Bush moved to Washington.

That was wholly based on the misinformation provided by the Bush gang and his administration. There are so many resources out there as to the time-line on the Bush lies, the congress' approval, and subsequent findings on WMDs and Saddam's connection to al Qaeda, that even the most uninformed knows the truth and facts now. You're still locked into the Bush lies.

I know, thats what it boils down to, ci, you are entitled to agree with your fellow Bush hating koolaid drinkers, but I don't.

First of all, we still don't know with 100% certainty what was in Iraq and what may have been transported out.

Secondly, even Hillary admitted she went and talked to all the experts herself, independent of what the administration believed, and she came to the same conclusion, that Hussein probably had WMD.

Another point that I repeat here, proof that Bush did not make this up, the CIA's own Valerie Plame, supposedly an expert on WMD, feared that Hussein might use WMD on our troops when they entered Iraq. She wrote that in her book.

The Bush haters have spent the last few years cherrypicking this little factoid, and that little factoid, and they have constructed an elaborate case that Bush made the whole thing up. It is one big despicable case of the Democrat Party being so mad about losing the election that they set about to destroy Bush before he had even moved into the Whitehouse. It is one of the most pathetic cases of political backstabbing that I have ever seen, ci, and this after Congress supported the war. One pathetic bunch of politicians in Congress is about all there is to it. And their approval ratings show it. As it appears we may have a chance to win in Iraq, all the credit goes to George W. Bush and the military, and Congress deserves nothing. They are miserable failures, at more than a few things. Bush is a saint compared to Congress. Nancy and Harry should pack it up and go home, and spare themselves and the country any more embarrassment.

Okaay. If your point was that if things had gone better in Iraq, we would still have some "Democrats bragging about their support of the war", then sure, granted. There would always have been a few. You sure made it sound like you were saying that most Democrats would still be bragging about their support for the war though. Since most Dems never supported it in the first place, that's obviously nonsense. So I dont see how it says much about the nature of the Dem opposition to the war in general.