We have a lot of conservatives here... is it time for Bush/Cheney to resign?

[Dave M]

Ron Paul is an isolationist. We saw how well that worked in the 1930s.

Here is a video of Ron Paul saying we shouldn't isolate ourselves. He advocates talking to, and trading with, Iran and other regimes.

http://www.thepresidentialcandidates...r-carlson.html

[MDMike]

scales

Cheney protects the environment and energy resources like he shoots duck.

As for removing scales from one's eyes, that kind of glib remark is typical of conservative bias. At least liberals listen to the other side when vital national interest are at stake. Conservatives cut off their noses to spite their face in reaction to semen on a blue dress, or 'amnesty' to make our country safer. Or call within-parameter punishment for Scooter harsh. Or Viet Nam abandoned would cause a domino effect. Or responsible, careful staged withdrawal from Iraq, Cut n Run. Or if we leave, our already dead troops will have died in vain...

Sometimes I wish we moderates did not have to play by the rules to control conservative excesses, and could resort to character assassination also. Or appoint our toady to the Supreme Court, then tell her not to testify. Or dredge up bitter whores and 'Nam vets to hide the issues. Or lie about a non-crime when he did not even have to, when he should have been doing his job, and then sancrimoniously think he is defending the USA from the liberal enemy within...

American troops have indeed deliberately killed innocent Iraqis. Nothing new there, or in warfare itself. Some are on trial at Pendleton right now.

[Jeff_in_Atl]

Here is a video of Ron Paul saying we shouldn't isolate ourselves. He advocates talking to, and trading with, Iran and other regimes.

http://www.thepresidentialcandidates...r-carlson.html

According to their website http://www.lp.org/issues/current.shtml They want to withdraw from Iraq.

I don't have time to go find it right now but Ron Paul also says we should pull out of Afghanistan and all other countries, build the border fence and not medal in the affairs of other countries. That means he wants to be an isolationist.

[Jeff_in_Atl]

Cheney protects the environment and energy resources like he shoots duck.

As for removing scales from one's eyes, that kind of glib remark is typical of conservative bias. At least liberals listen to the other side when vital national interest are at stake. Conservatives cut off their noses to spite their face in reaction to semen on a blue dress, or 'amnesty' to make our country safer. Or call within-parameter punishment for Scooter harsh. Or Viet Nam abandoned would cause a domino effect. Or responsible, careful staged withdrawal from Iraq, Cut n Run. Or if we leave, our already dead troops will have died in vain...

Sometimes I wish we moderates did not have to play by the rules to control conservative excesses, and could resort to character assassination also. Or appoint our toady to the Supreme Court, then tell her not to testify. Or dredge up bitter whores and 'Nam vets to hide the issues. Or lie about a non-crime when he did not even have to, when he should have been doing his job, and then sancrimoniously think he is defending the USA from the liberal enemy within...

American troops have indeed deliberately killed innocent Iraqis. Nothing new there, or in warfare itself. Some are on trial at Pendleton right now.

With a few small changes I could easily write this.

"Cheney protects the environment and energy resources like he shoots duck."

As for removing scales from one's eyes, that kind of glib remark is typical of Liberal bias. At least conservitives listen to the other side when vital national interest are at stake. Liberals cut off their noses in spite of their face in reaction to anything Bush does, or 'amnesty' to make our country worse. Or call within-parameter punishment for Clinton harsh. Or Iraq abandoned would cause no ill effects. Or "cut and run" a responsible, careful staged withdrawal from Iraq. Or if we stay, our troops will die in vain...

Sometimes I wish we moderates (ha ha ha) did not have to play by the rules to control liberal excesses, and could resort to character assassination also. …

All of this is spewing partisan hatred with no facts or no purpose other than the criticize the other side with no real ideas on how to do anything any better.

[Roger in Kensington]

Okay Roger, here ya go: my response to the 23 reasons we went to Iraq:

Number 1 seems more like a statement than a reason. It says we went in 1990 so we're going again, even though there is a huge difference in the declared intentions of each war.

Number 2 says they agreed in 1991 to end all WMD programs. Here is where the intelligence somes into play. If there was indeed intelligence that said they hadn't done this, they I could support this reason. I don't know if that's the case because I'm not priy to the intelligence. However, even if the intelligence was there, I think the president could have given the diplomatic approach more time. And dozens of countries are actively searching for or have a WMD program.

Number 3 says they had more WMD capability than we first thought. If that's indeed true than I can support number 3, given the diplomatic approach had time to work.

Number 4: Iraq attempted to thwart inspections. Same response as 3.

Number 5: I'm not sure how Iraq could be considered much of a threat to international peace and stability when it was covered in no-fly zones and was surrounded by US military. Possession of WMD does not mean inent to use them (and yes I'm aware that Hussein had used them in the past, but so have we).

Number 6: The intelligence thing again. What did it really say? I don't know. Did the Bush administration cherry-pick the intelligence they showed to Congress? I don't know.

Number 7: Could be said about a number of countries in the world.

Number 8: Could be said about the U.S.

Number 9: The '93 attack on Bush was responded to at the time. The shots at our planes could be dealt with at the time they happen by destroying the missle sites.

Number 10: This one's hairy. Reports have shown this not to be the case. But even if they believed in good faith for it o be true, al qaeda has members in dozens of countries. When do the wars start?

Number 11: Could be said about dozens of countries.

Number 12: 9/11/01 had nothing to do with WMD. There were no WMDs involved on 9/11. WMDs have always been a threat.

Number 13: All for it, but again this could be said about a lot of countries. Why not live up to the pledge to go after them all?

Most of the rest seem to say that because we are authorized to use force, we should. Just because you can does not mean you should. Remember Roger, I never said Bush lied. I was not privy to the intelligence that he had; although other sources (British among them) seem to indicate that the intelligence was not nearly as convincing as we had been led to believe. One thing's for sure though, he made his father look like a genius for not going to Baghdad in '91.

What a great pity that the president, the Congress, the various intelligence services -- not to mention the governments and intelligence services of several foreign governments -- did not have the benefit of your knowledge, expertise, keen insights and analytical skills in 2002 when this was all being considered.

You may have missed your calling.

[Roger in Kensington]

The 9/11 report said over and over that there is no link between Al queda and Saddam, AT ALL.

As much as I hate to disagree you are wrong. What the 9/11 Commission report actually said -- after citing numerous contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda -- was that Iraq had no "collaborative operational relationship" with the September 11 attacks.

But don't believe me. Here's the quote:

Similar meetings between Iraqi officials and Bin Ladin or his aides may have occurred in 1999 during a period of some reported strains with the Taliban. According to the reporting, Iraqi officials offered Bin Ladin a safe haven in Iraq. Bin Ladin declined, apparently judging that his circumstances in Afghanistan remained more favorable than the Iraqi alternative. The reports describe friendly contacts and indicate some common themes in both sides' hatred of the United States. But to date we have seen no evidence that these or the earlier contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship. Nor have we seen evidence indicating that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States.

Click here to read it for yourself.

But wait! There's more! In this article we learn some of the details of Iraq's contacts with al Qaeda, including -- among many others -- the following:

* Abdul Rahman Yasin was the only member of the al Qaeda cell that detonated the 1993 World Trade Center bomb to remain at large in the Clinton years. He fled to Iraq. U.S. forces recently discovered a cache of documents in Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, that show that Iraq gave Mr. Yasin both a house and monthly salary.

. . . and this:

* Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi oversaw an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan, Mr. Powell told the United Nations. His specialty was poisons. Wounded in fighting with U.S. forces, he sought medical treatment in Baghdad in May 2002. When Zarqawi recovered, he restarted a training camp in northern Iraq. Zarqawi's Iraq cell was later tied to the October 2002 murder of Lawrence Foley, an official of the U.S. Agency for International Development, in Amman, Jordan. The captured assassin confessed that he received orders and funds from Zarqawi's cell in Iraq, Mr. Powell said. His accomplice escaped to Iraq.

As somone once observed, you're entitled to your own opinions, but not to your own facts. The facts are that the 9/11 Commission cited numerous pre-9/11 contacts and mutual support between al Qaeda and Iraq.

[Roger in Kensington]

Look at what we're doing now that we can't use force aginst other nations. We're in talks with North Korea and have successfully gotten them to shut down their reactor and abandon their nuclear program.

It wasn't talk that got them to shut down their reactor. That nasty, dirty, low-down, secretive, intrusive, civil-rights destroying Bush administration . . . finally shut down North Korea's finances.

You can read about it in the June 25, 2007, issue of National Review, but here's the guts of it:

The North Korean regime is organized much like a mafia family; and like the mafia since Al Capone’s time, its greatest vulnerability was finances. It was Sarate, currently a deputy national security adviser, who first came to grasp that an obscure provision of the Patriot Act — Section 311 — could be used to target North Korea’s criminal network at its weakest points, and at the same time unleash a potentially devastating cascade of problems for North Korea around the world.

Section 311 amended the Bank Secrecy Act by empowering the Treasury Department to designate suspect foreign banks as “institutions of primary money laundering concern.” It could then require domestic U.S. banks to impose “special measures” in their dealings with those institutions, such as closure of “correspondent accounts.” These fine surgical instruments, the deadliness of which is obscured by the impenetrable technical jargon used to describe them, are designed to cut the suspect institution off from the U.S. banking system.

The Treasury focused on a small Macau bank, Banco Delta Asia (BDA), as a hub of illicit North Korean finances. On September 15, 2005, it issued an initial finding that designated BDA an institution of “primary money laundering concern” and launched a formal proceeding. The Treasury announcement was timed to increase pressure on North Korea in the six-party talks, which were then deadlocked as usual. A few days later, the North Koreans agreed to fully denuclearize the Korean peninsula in exchange for economic aid and normalization of relations.

I believe the Iraq war was rushed into. Faulty intelligence or not.

Joint War Resolution to start of Iraq War: 5+ months

September 11, 2001 to start of Iraq War: 18 months

Armistice of Gulf War I to start of Iraq War: 12 years

Yeah. That was a real rush to war alright.

[Roger in Kensington]

Oh, and lookie here:

"Plame lawsuit dismissed in CIA leak case"

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070719/...a_leak_lawsuit

(The above is obviously an example of glib conservative bias. Me? A glib conservative? I rather like that. Thanks.)


_________________

No, it's not time for Bush/Cheney to resign.

[Joshu]

Ok, hypothetical situation.

Your child is severely mentally retarded. Which means (according to the DSM IV) his/her IQ is less than or equal to 75. Average operating IQ for any age is 100. Should your severely mentally handicapped child be expected to perform at the same academic level as a normal child?


Situation 2:

Your family runs on a tight yearly budget. You know that you will need to have the roof fixed because water is seeping in. You know that you will have to pay for this, but you decide to leave it out of your family budget and buy a new Cobalt( woo!). A decision is made to take out a loan to pay back the cost of fixing the roof. You are now in deep debt. Looking back, what was the problem and why did you not include it in the budget in the first place even though you know you needed the money?


Situation 3:

You are a manager at a restaurant. One of your servers keeps screwing up by dropping food and not pleasing your guests. The server says he will try to do better but it costs you money and guests are not returning. Your confidence dwindles as he says he is getting better, but in the big picture it isn't. Do you fire him and why?

[Joshu]

What a great pity that the president, the Congress, the various intelligence services -- not to mention the governments and intelligence services of several foreign governments -- did not have the benefit of your knowledge, expertise, keen insights and analytical skills in 2002 when this was all being considered.

You may have missed your calling.

I don't know what to say to that. When you are going to kill people you should have all your ducks in line. So they should have looked harder before we played war with Iraq.

War? YEEEEEEEEEEEE HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAW! Let me nit pick little details and make them seem like massive threats so we can get this killin' machine on the road!

[Jeff_in_Atl]

I don't know what to say to that. When you are going to kill people you should have all your ducks in line. So they should have looked harder before we played war with Iraq.

War? YEEEEEEEEEEEE HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAW! Let me nit pick little details and make them seem like massive threats so we can get this killin' machine on the road!

It's easy to pick out things about anybody but without an alternate time line there is no way to know what would have happened if we didn't act. But if you have a ton of surveillance that says the enemy is going to attack and you do nothing you would be derelict in your duty and you would be the first one to scream how could you let this happen you fool. Look at all of the evidence in front of you and you did nothing. Everyone can be a Monday morning quarterback.

[Jeff_in_Atl]

Reading assignments,
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/pri...q_part_ii.html

[MDMike]

"Plame lawsuit dismissed in CIA leak case"
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070719/...a_leak_lawsuit
(The above is obviously an example of glib conservative bias. Me? A glib conservative? I rather like that. Thanks.)

Well, it certainly shows.
_________________

No, it's not time for Bush/Cheney to resign.

Why? Don't like who is next in line? Am I correct that it would be the Speaker?

[Jeff_in_Atl]

Why? Don't like who is next in line? Am I correct that it would be the Speaker?

Don't even say that. I just ate lunch. I don't want it coming back up.

[Roger in Kensington]

Why? Don't like who is next in line? Am I correct that it would be the Speaker?

Well, it's funny you should mention that. According to the Twenty-fifth Amendment:

Section 1. In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.

Section 2. Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.

So, if there were a vacancy in the presidency, VP Cheney would become president. (Sleep tight tonight, liberals. Under the above Amendment, Cheney will become Acting President tomorrow while the president undergoes medical tests.) He would have to nominate a new VP who would have to be confirmed by majority vote of both Houses of Congress.

Like to play "what if" games? Here's one for you: What if Cheney were to nominate Sen. Lieberman to be his VP? If Lieberman became the new VP, there would be a vacancy in the Senate which would have to be filled by the governor of the state. Connecticut's governor is a Republican. We could easily then have a 50-50 split in the Senate with Lieberman casting the deciding vote in the event of a tie.

Be careful what you wish for.

What about in the unlikely event of a vacancy in both the presidency and VP? The Presidential Succession Law of 1947 addressed the simultaneous disability of both the president and vice president. Under this law, here are the offices and current office holders who would become president should both the president and vice president be disabled. Remember, to assume the presidency, a person must also meet all the legal requirements to serve as president

1. Vice President of the United States
2. Speaker of the House
3. President pro Tempore of the Senate

You can fantasize all you want about a double resignation, but it ain't gonna happen. A double impeachment? Another pipe dream. Even if both the president and VP were both impeached (pray tell, on what grounds?), they still could not be removed from office without a trial in the Senate (with Chief Justice Roberts presiding) and then only upon being convicted of the charges.

So dream on.

Ah, President Cheney (if only for a few hours). I'm lovin' it. Now that's a sweet dream.