No. What I'm saying is that you can look hard enough and catch anybody "misspeaking". Kerry spoke to supporters and got a story wrong. The president "misspeaks" an awful lot and his wrong stories got us into an unneccessary, unpopular, and unwinable foreign war. It's a matter of scale and responsibility. It doesn't matter if it was a blatant lie or a simple error. It was a misleading statement, either way.
I wasn't really offended. You know how to conduct a debate. You emphasize your valid points and gloss over your weak areas. You scoff at my valid points and hammer any poorly thought out comments I offer. Pretty much the same as me. I'm just sick of some of some posters whose only response to divergent opinions is to say "Anybody who is against the Iraq war, SUPPORTS TERRORIST and HATES AMERICA!" I don't even bother to respond to those clowns, who aren't articulate enough to explain why they feel the way they do, aren't clever enough to change anybody's mind, and aren't tolerent enough of the democratic process to understand that it is made up of many different opinions. I just don't want to see constructive political discussions turned into mindless bashing of political opponents. But you haven't done that, pardon my misplaced fears.
of course it matters. if our intelligence goes to the president and tells him all these things, even if they are wrong, wouldnt you expect him to act? or do you expect that the president should by some miracle know better than his intelligence, as well as the foreign intelligence that reports the same things? how can you ask the president to act in the way opposite of what his intelligence indicates?
In all honesty, my opinion is the whole Iraq situation is way overblown. The truth is, there are a handful of people in the country who know why we are really there, the rest of us only speculate and use that speculation to defend our candidate. Maybe there were WMD's in Iraq that were removed before the invasion, maybe there weren't and they used it to sell the American people on the war for some greater good we know nothing about. Maybe Bush is some kind of closet ego-maniac who wanted a war to serve himself. Only those at the highest level of our government know for sure. At least I hope they know. If they don't we are all in trouble for sure. I'm just going on how I feel about it. I look at the escalating tensions with Iran and tend to believe we are there to deal with them and their role in global terrorism. I just don't trust Kerry to do that. Just my opinions and speculation. Not worth very much in the grand scheme of things. Except for the power of my one vote, I guess.
I know what you mean about Iran, although our good buddy Pakistan is an Islamic power with nuclear weapons already and an unpopular government in shaky control. Osama lives there. I don't trust them one bit. But our biggest potential war is with North Korea. They definitely have a nuclear weapons program and the crazy little bastard running the place is liable to do anything. Redeploying idle troops and closing unneeded cold-war bases from Germany makes good sense to me. But removing troops from Korea may be inviting trouble.
North Korea worries me too. Only thing I can figure out about the troop withdrawal is either we are trusting the Chinese to keep them in check or we are expecting him to do something crazy with a nuke, so we are getting our troops out of harm's way. I don't think we have that much faith in the Chinese, and the second one is almost too frightening to think about, but that is the scenario I am leaning toward.
red, you will not answer my question. should bush have ignored all the intelligence from multipe sources and not act? should he assume his advisors are wrong?
red, you seem an intelligent person who is easily confused with facts. you try to buck the obvious in an effort to be right. you're very ignorant where you should be smarter. it saddens me since i kn thow you're olderan I and have all your faculties yet you only confuse yourself with statistics. I like you yet I pity you even more. Quit spewing information and try thinking the other side for once. It will help you in the long run. Keep it simple....smarty.
When faced with conflicting intelligence, and there was a lot of it, he should not have acted rashly. He should have taken the time to get the intelligence right. There was no reason to rush to war. The Taliban had been taken down in Afghanistan, Al Qaida finances were being rolled up around the world, and Saddam was hobbled by international sanctions. The military leaders advised against war with Irag, the state department advised against it, our allies advised against it, and the CIA couldn't find any evidence that Iraq was a threat to us. In this case Bush seems to have selectively ignored the intelligence that did not support his disposition to make war on Saddam. That was neither prudent nor wise. The first George Bush's decision not to invade Iraq in 1991 seemed like a mistake at the time, but present realities make it clear that he did the right thing. George HW Bush wrote in his 1997 memoir "A World Transformed": Trying to eliminate Saddam ... would have incurred incalculable human and political costs... . We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq ... there was no viable 'exit strategy'. Had we gone the invasion route, The United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land." Pity that the son lacks the wisdom and prudence of the father.
please red, don't quote some bushism or washingtonpost. its ok to answer with your own opinion. I bet you can find one if you look.
