[OT] Another heated discussion about the Iraq siutation, war and politics.

[Alpha Kodiak]

Originally posted by dogscoff:
Just to remind anyone who hasn't looked at it in a while or who has never seen it: The blog from Baghdad. It's been infrequent lately, but really interesting.

I really enjoy it. The most interesting thing to me is the understandable dichotomy in what he says between his frustration in the way things are/aren't being done by the Americans and the fact that Saddam's regime is gone.

I liked one quote of his:

It is difficult, a two sided coin. On one side they are the US Army, invader/liberator – choose what you like, big guns, strange sounds coming out of their mouths. The other side has a person on it that in many cases is younger than I am in a country he wouldn’t put on his choice of destinations. But he has this uniform on, the big gun and those darkdark sunglasses which make it impossible to see his eyes. Difficult.

That puts a spin on things that is sometimes easy to forget. All of the people involved are just that, people. People who are going through a broad range of emotions. Iraqi civilians who are happy that Saddam is gone, but want their old lives back. American soldiers who are glad that they succeeded in their mission, but who really want to go home, tired of being away from friends and family for so long. Lots of other people with different agendas all trying to put their mark on the future, for good or ill, or just trying to survive. It is going to be a long time before we really begin to understand the ramifications of what has happened over the Last few months.

[Loser]

I like this one.

I specially like the Pentagon Show, him with the distracting facial expressions and her with her loud costumes.

That's a fresh perspective.

[Erax]

Originally posted by dogscoff:
Hopefully though, the liberals will be so new to government that for a while they'll actually think they're there to represent and work for the electorate rather than line their own pockets with our money.

Heh, heh. That's sort of what's happening in Brazil right now.

I have some advice for the Americans here (take it from someone who has already been there) : if you must choose between two candidates and you hate both of them, you must still choose one. You should choose between a terrible candidate and a worse one, in the hope that next time around you can choose between a terrible candidate and one who is merely bad, and so on until somewhere down the road there will be someone you can vote for and not feel ashamed.

Aloofi : I don't recall Bush's comment on blacks. I do remember Reagan's comment, as soon as he got off the plane that brought him to Brazil : "It's nice to be here in Bolivia."

[jimbob]

Suicide Junkie said:

Hey, self-fulfilling prophesy... If both the main choices are crap, why shouldn't you vote for someone else?

You really need to get your country out of that "two party system" mindset.

Hehe, you mean that maybe they should switch over to a "one party system" like we have here in Canada? I've ceased referencing our political system as a democracy, more of a dictocracy in my opinion (that is to say, we elect our absolut dictator every 4 years).

[Alpha Kodiak]

Originally posted by Aloofi:
Bush Quotes:

"Do you have blacks too?" - Bush ignorantly asked Brazil's President Fernando Henrique Cardoso. Reported by the reputable German publication Der Spiegel. Rumor has it, Condoleza Rice interupted the president and explained in brief the African history in Brazil.
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"{waves hello}"- G.W. Bush waves to the blind musician, Stevie Wonder, as reported by the Washington Post, March 6th, 2002
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"Natural gas is hemispheric. I like to call it hemispheric in nature because it is a product that we can find in our neighborhoods." -George W Bush
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"There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, it's probably in Tennessee --that says, fool me once, shame on ... shame on you. Fool me ... You can't get fooled again." - G.W. Bush quoted by the Baltimore Sun - Oct 6, 2000


Are these quotes real?

It is very easy to take an out of context quote and make anyone sound stupid. At least Bush doesn't claim to have created the Internet....

[teal]

Originally posted by geoschmo:
What Gore said: (click the quote to read the entire interview with Blitzer)
"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."

The whole paragraph is...

But it will emerge from my dialogue with the American people. I've traveled to every part of this country during the Last six years. During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.

So its clear from context (i.e. the next senctence where he continues to use the word initiative but now you can see that he means initiative in the sense of introducing legislation) that he means that he took the initiave in introducing *legislation* and *funding* for helping to build (i.e. another sense of the word *create*) the internet and did not claim to have invented the internet single handedly which is what the quote taken out of context implies. Admittedly I do not know if he did introduce such legislation and/or take an important roll in moving it forward, but I am willing to bet that he did.

Thanks for including the reference to the whole quote. Its quite easy to discuss these things that way. The "story" of the 2000 elections was that Gore was a liar and a bore and Bush was stupid. Niether are true. I actually think that Gore being a bore cost him more votes than the liar thing and anyone can tell you that stupidity is not a factor in American politics so I don't think that cost Bush any votes at all.

Cheers!

Teal

[geoschmo]

You have the party line down pretty straight as well Teal. It's just as obvious you do like Gore and so don't hesitate to excuse or attempt to explain away his inconsistancies. Personally I don't care enough about him to continue this topic. I was merely trying to provide some facts to the discussion since very few on either side of the issue when it came up every even heard or read what he actually said. They were merely parroting one or the other camps spin, as you have pretty faithfully done here.

[Aloofi]

I didn't vote in 2000, but if I had, my vote would have been for Al Gore.
I don't think Al Gore would have given that priority to the interests of the Oil Oligarchy in his agenda.......
And I would have done ANYTHING to have Dick Cheney out of the WhiteHouse.

[geoschmo]

Although I do need to say one thing about your analogy. I am someone who has been more than a little responsible for encouraging the popularity of Space Empires IV, the "Space Empires Phenomenon" as you so eloquenly put it, through my work with PBW. I believe I have a right to feel some pride in my accomplishments. However if I were to sit down with a reporter and state unequivically "During my service with PBW, I took the initiative in creating Space Empires." people would have every right to take me to task for it.

Geoschmo

[teal]

Originally posted by geoschmo:
You have the party line down pretty straight as well Teal. It's just as obvious you do like Gore and so don't hesitate to excuse or attempt to explain away his inconsistancies. Personally I don't care enough about him to continue this topic. I was merely trying to provide some facts to the discussion since very few on either side of the issue when it came up every even heard or read what he actually said. They were merely parroting one or the other camps spin, as you have pretty faithfully done here.

Point of fact I don't like Gore much at all (think he is much preferable to Bush yes, like him no). I am just willing to provide him the benefit of the doubt just as I am willing to provide Bush the benefit of the doubt when his numerous so called verbal gaffes get circled around the office. In those cases I am much less willing to do hard work to try and defend him true, but there are others who will do that. I content myself with not joining on the bandwagon.

Calling my point of view "the party line" I find somewhat offensive. It should be everyone's "party line" that until given overwhelming evidence to the contrary (of the "I hold in my hand the names of X communists at the state department" or "I have not had sexual relations with that woman" variety) that a willfull deception has indeed occured it is always the default position that someone was being smeared for political gain by their enemies. To rephrase that somewhat awkward sentence: the burden of proof that a politician is lying lays squarely at the feet of the accuser and it should be a "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard of proof otherwise one should believe the person being accused. The case against Gore wouldn't even be admitted to court, much less achieve the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard. To be fair the case that Bush is stupid is equally dumb.