A first(?) thread on 2008: McCain,Giuliani & the Republicans

Yes, in 2005 a minority of the Iraq legisllature called for the US to leave Iraq. The US did not leave. Believing in majority rule, when a majority of the Iraq legislature calls for the US to leave, the US will leave.

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Since when did Bush make it "conditiional?" Even Maliki at one time told the US to leave. He's the president of Iraq.

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cicerone imposter wrote:

Advocate wrote:
georgeob1 wrote:
My point is that, with respect to your rather broad and undualified statements, the situations faced by Wilson and Roosevelt were entirrely analogous to those we face today, and that you have been levelling some sweeping criticisms that don't stand up to a little historical analysis, and which probably contradict other beliefs that you do hold. In short you are shooting from the hip and you missed.

Our war in Nam is analogous to our war with Iraq. WWII is certainly not, and was a just war. Bush lied us into the war with Iraq, which never threatened us, much less attacked us.

Advocate, Spot on!

Advocate is not spot on, obviously.
First of all, there were anti-war people prior to and during our entry into WWII, just as there are now, not much has changed, except perhaps the percentages for and against. And if you judge a just war on whether someone attacked us first, Hitler did not attack us.

Secondly, if you repeat a lie enough times, it becomes a truth, but Bush never lied us into war, no way, this has been debated thousands of times from every angle imagineable. It is 20/20 hindsight that concludes no WMD, but even Valerie Plame, a so-called WMD expert in the CIA, the same CIA that advised Bush, she was afraid for our troops when they entered Iraq, afraid that Hussein would use WMD. So, Advocate and ci, shower your wrath on the CIA, not Bush, if you believe the intelligence services are failing us and did fail us, which I happen to agree with by the way. And finally, how do we know Hussein was not behind the antrax attacks, and in fact may have been, so how can you assert that Hussein was no threat, in fact that is total hogwash. He was in fact a threat to his own people, his neighbors, and the entire world.

Now, in regard to Vietnam, a Democrat president did lie to us, via the Gulf of Tonkin incident, but be that as it may, why do we beat up ourselves over fighting the evils of communism? And ci and Advocate, have you visited Vietnam lately? I've heard the Vietnamese love us, a large number of them anyway, and perhaps we will ultimately win the war there, maybe we didn't lose after all, as it appears the government there is warming up to the ideas of more freedom and more free markets. Remember, those children that loved the GI's are now grown adults, and they don't forget all of that. The same could happen in Iraq, but it could take a while. It takes men like George Bush that have vision, that don't accept the same old tired worn out beliefs that tyranny and backward cultures of the last thousand years or so are destined to live forever. George Bush believes that cultural beliefs of hatred and tyranny can be replaced with education and opportunity in the Middle East, but this takes work and sacrifice.

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Cice, when a majority of the Iraq legislature calls for the US to leave Iraq, the US will leave Iraq.

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okie wrote:

cicerone imposter wrote:
Advocate wrote:
georgeob1 wrote:
My point is that, with respect to your rather broad and undualified statements, the situations faced by Wilson and Roosevelt were entirrely analogous to those we face today, and that you have been levelling some sweeping criticisms that don't stand up to a little historical analysis, and which probably contradict other beliefs that you do hold. In short you are shooting from the hip and you missed.

Our war in Nam is analogous to our war with Iraq. WWII is certainly not, and was a just war. Bush lied us into the war with Iraq, which never threatened us, much less attacked us.

Advocate, Spot on!

Advocate is not spot on, obviously.
Yes, he is!

First of all, there were anti-war people prior to and during our entry into WWII, just as there are now, not much has changed, except perhaps the percentages for and against. And if you judge a just war on whether someone attacked us first, Hitler did not attack us.
Yes, we're talking about the 21st century here, dude. As for Hitler, no matter how many were against it, it was the right thing to do for the US to get involved. It's not my problem you don't understand the war in Germany and the war in Iraq; they are 190 degrees variance between them.

Secondly, if you repeat a lie enough times, it becomes a truth, but Bush never lied us into war, no way, this has been debated thousands of times from every angle imagineable. It is 20/20 hindsight that concludes no WMD, but even Valerie Plame, a so-called WMD expert in the CIA, the same CIA that advised Bush, she was afraid for our troops when they entered Iraq, afraid that Hussein would use WMD. So, Advocate and ci, shower your wrath on the CIA, not Bush, if you believe the intelligence services are failing us and did fail us, which I happen to agree with by the way. And finally, how do we know Hussein was not behind the antrax attacks, and in fact may have been, so how can you assert that Hussein was no threat, in fact that is total hogwash. He was in fact a threat to his own people, his neighbors, and the entire world.
You really don't know how our government works, do you? The president starts wars, not the CIA. FYI, the CIA told Bush that the intel was shakey because it was based on one source, but Bush ignored all the warnings from the CIA.

Now, in regard to Vietnam, a Democrat president did lie to us, via the Gulf of Tonkin incident, but be that as it may, why do we beat up ourselves over fighting the evils of communism? And ci and Advocate, have you visited Vietnam lately? I've heard the Vietnamese love us, a large number of them anyway, and perhaps we will ultimately win the war there, maybe we didn't lose after all, as it appears the government there is warming up to the ideas of more freedom and more free markets. Remember, those children that loved the GI's are now grown adults, and they don't forget all of that. The same could happen in Iraq, but it could take a while. It takes men like George Bush that have vision, that don't accept the same old tired worn out beliefs that tyranny and backward cultures of the last thousand years or so are destined to live forever. George Bush believes that cultural beliefs of hatred and tyranny can be replaced with education and opportunity in the Middle East, but this takes work and sacrifice.

CLUE: Both Vietnam and the Iraq wars were based on fraud and lies perpetrated by our government. That doesn't make any one right. Yes, I've been to Vietnam. Have you? The primary reason the Vietnamese love us is because most of those that fought in that war are now gone, and the majority are now "young."

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FACT: The average age in Vietnam is 26. The war was over 40 years ago.

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Whats the average age of the people now running the government and other entities in Vietnam, ci? Probably more than 26, and also the war ended less than 40 years ago.

By the way, I have personally heard Vietnamese thank us for being there and sacrificing lives for their freedom, and with tears in their eyes, and they meant it very deeply. You will never convince me that communism is not evil.

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McCain seems to be only concerned about Islamic extremism. He has stated that economics bores him. This is what the country doesn't need.

Probing into John McCain's foreign policy
Are Dems willing to challenge on where his ideas would lead us?
E.J. DIONNE
Washington Post Writers Group
WASHINGTON -- The boilerplate in a candidate's speeches gets little attention because words used over and over never constitute "news."

But one of John McCain's favorite lines -- his declaration that "the transcendent challenge of the 21st century is radical Islamic extremists," or, as he sometimes says it, "extremism" -- could define the 2008 election.

Whether McCain is right or wrong matters to everything the United States will do in the coming years. It's incumbent upon McCain to explain what he really means by "transcendent challenge."

An alternative vision

Presumably, he's saying that Islamic extremism is more important than everything else -- the rise of China and India as global powers, growing resistance to American influence in Europe, the weakening of America's global economic position, the disorder and poverty in large parts of Africa, the alienation of significant parts of Latin America from the United States. Is it in our national interest for all these issues to take a backseat to terrorism?McCain makes his claim even stronger when he uses the phrase "21st Century." Does he mean that in the year 2100, Americans will look back and say that everything else that happened in the century paled by comparison with the war against terror?

But such a debate won't happen unless Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton challenge McCain's assertion directly and offer an alternative vision. There is reason to suspect they might be fearful of doing so. They shouldn't be.

No doubt the Democrats will say that McCain's openly and frequently confessed lack of interest in economic policy is exactly what the country does not need. For many Americans, the transcendent challenge of 2008 is righting a jittery economy and rolling back extreme inequality. That could well move into a debate about the impact of China on our economy and the structure of global commerce.

But for Democrats, that's the easy part. I worry that every political consultant worth a six-figure payment will tell the Democratic nominee that fighting the election on broad foreign policy questions would be to play to McCain's strengths.

There's nothing wrong with criticizing Bush or the war. But if McCain's "transcendent challenge" claim falls apart on close examination, the best rationale he has for his election would disappear.

Moreover, whether they like it or not, Democrats will have to explain how they would defend U.S. interests in the world. A majority of Americans are now prepared to hear (in a way they weren't in, say, 2003) an argument that allowing terrorists and terrorism to define American foreign policy is neither in our interest nor particularly useful in fighting terrorism itself.

Of course, defeating terrorism is important, and no candidate will say otherwise. But the United States has a lot of work to do in the world. If we're thinking about the next two decades, not to mention the next 90 years, it's a mistake to see terrorism as a "transcendent challenge" that makes all our other interests secondary.

For conservatives, there is something peculiar about turning Islamic extremism into a mighty ideological force with the power to overrun the world. It's odd that so many take seriously Osama bin Laden's lunatic claims that he will build a new Caliphate.

In his new book on neoconservatism, "They Knew They Were Right," Jacob Heilbrunn quotes Owen Harries, an early neoconservative whose realist bent has made him skeptical of the latest turn in the thinking of his erstwhile comrades. Harries argues that viewing terrorism as an ideological challenge akin to Nazism or Soviet communism is neither accurate nor prudent.

Underestimating enemies

"I think it's to belittle the historical experiences of World War II," Harries says, "not to speak of the Cold War, to equate the terrorists of today and the damage they're capable of with the totalitarian regimes of the previous century." Underestimating our enemies is a mistake, but so too is endowing them with more power than they have.

In this week's New Yorker, Ryan Lizza argues that McCain has gone from being a Teddy Roosevelt Republican in 2000 to a Dwight Eisenhower Republican in 2008. Eisenhower's prudent leadership certainly looks attractive as an alternative to recklessness. But the thinking underlying McCain's approach to the world looks far more like George W. Bush's than Ike's. Democrats won't lay a glove on McCain's foreign policy unless they're willing to take what he says seriously and challenge him on where his ideas would lead us.

E.J. Dionne

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Okie, are you saying that Bush was unaware that Iraq was not seeking yellow cake? Even the WH backed down from that statement in the State-of-the Union.

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okie is often confused; but he is usually consistent with his mistakes.

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McCain just lost my vote. He wants Bush to veto a measure that would bar the CIA from using torture.

McCain: Bush should veto torture bill
Republican presidential candidate John McCain said President Bush should veto a measure that would bar the CIA from using waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods on terror suspects.

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cicerone imposter wrote:

McCain just lost my vote. He wants Bush to veto a measure that would bar the CIA from using torture.

McCain: Bush should veto torture bill
Republican presidential candidate John McCain said President Bush should veto a measure that would bar the CIA from using waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods on terror suspects.

Do you have a link to the relevant news story?
What else is in the bill?

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cicerone imposter wrote:

McCain just lost my vote. He wants Bush to veto a measure that would bar the CIA from using torture.

McCain: Bush should veto torture bill
Republican presidential candidate John McCain said President Bush should veto a measure that would bar the CIA from using waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods on terror suspects.

It makes me think I might vote for McCain after all, maybe he is coming to his senses. A law outlawing torture is stupid, stupid, stupid.

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cicerone imposter wrote:

McCain just lost my vote. He wants Bush to veto a measure that would bar the CIA from using torture.

lol ... just lost your vote? I call bull****.

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Sporadically watching CNN and McCain press conference -- a talking head (didn't catch which one) opined that this would bring reluctant conservatives to McCain's side. Something about Tojo. (As in, bringing America into the second world war.)

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cicerone imposter wrote:

McCain just lost my vote. He wants Bush to veto a measure that would bar the CIA from using torture.

McCain: Bush should veto torture bill
Republican presidential candidate John McCain said President Bush should veto a measure that would bar the CIA from using waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods on terror suspects.

Why not quote the relevant parts about why he's against the bill?

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/politics/blog/2008/02/john_mccain_bush_should_veto_c.html

Now I have no idea what these "other methods" he refers to are but the point of vetoing instead of using signing statements seems to be what people have been screaming about.

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sozobe wrote:

Sporadically watching CNN and McCain press conference -- a talking head (didn't catch which one) opined that this would bring reluctant conservatives to McCain's side. Something about Tojo. (As in, bringing America into the second world war.)

The NY Times better have something more in their quiver. I really don't like the press' appetite for coverage of politicians' or activists' sexual matters (outside of the hypocrisy aspect, eg Hyde, Gingrich or Haggard etc). That's not a big part of this piece, but it is a part. And I get the relevance re conflict. But still.

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Quote:

In Ohio, Mr. McCain sharpened his attacks on Mr. Obama, accusing him of wanting to bomb Pakistan and of announcing it ahead of time to the rest of the world.

"That's naïve," Mr. McCain said at a news conference in Columbus. "The first thing that you do is you make your plans and you carry out your operations as necessary for America's national security interests. You don't broadcast that you are going to bomb a country that is a sovereign nation."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/21/us/politics/21campaign.html?ref=politics

Quote:

But two of our more principled senators, Republican John McCain and Democrat Joe Lieberman, have this month faced the Iranian Choice -- and both endorsed military action. McCain was most direct: "There is only one thing worse than the United States exercising a military option," he said on "Face the Nation." "That is a nuclear-armed Iran."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/29/AR2006012900687.html

And, uh, not to mention Iraq.

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'Twas Bill Bennett evidently. This was what I remember seeing just before "Tojo":

Quote:

Bill Bennett, the conservative talk show host and CNN commentator, made an interesting point on CNN this morning, a point you'll likely be hearing a lot more of for some time.

In reacting to the New York Times's story on Sen. John McCain and the lobbyist Vicki Iseman, Bennett said: "The New York Times has done something for John McCain he couldn't do for himself," by rallying the conservative base behind the senator from Arizona.

http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/02/mccain_could_be_helped_by_ny_t.html

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A first(?) thread on 2008: McCain,Giuliani & the Republicans

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