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Projection Is...
...a real feature of everyday life. I think it's pretty clear that you need to examine your own thoughts before you start spewing on about mine. Everything you have said about me has more to do with you and your thoughts than me and mine.
I don't really hate Bush; I detest his behavior. I detest the cynical manner that his administration has manipulated alot of sincere and well-meaning people to swallow a whopper of a lie. Several of them, in fact.
Terrorists are criminals. Whether they are sponsored by a State, or not. Criminals get arrested, tried and, if found guilty, are convicted and sent away. If a State harbors a terror suspect and will not detain and try them, the State violated has every right, in my mind, to attempt to extract the suspect and bring them to justice.
People fighting to defend their country from an illegal invading force are soldiers. None of this semantic sleight of hand has anything to do with the reality you are in full flight from.
Criminals commit crime. No State should alter any of its fundamental operating principles in order to deal with crime. Only a despot would throw out one of the most progressive governing documents ever written by a group of honorable and distinguished gentlemen in recorded history because a crime, which the despot aided and abetted, was commited by a troupe of little brown people (alleged).
Your values and your thinking are completely addled. Perhaps that is because you already know that the entire Bush Administration is about to be removed from office. You are correct, removing only the President does not solve the problems in the current US government. People need to be removed from power and detained while they await trial. To include at least one member of the Supreme Court.
posted by
Volaar
on June 11, 2005 at 10:34 PM
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First off: You have the right to your opinion.
You have every right to be wrong on any and every point. You have every right to be consumed with hatred, resentment, bitterness, rage and every other negative emotion, regardless of their harmful consequences to your psychological well-being.
Second: You’re so upset about people dying in the Iraq war. Were you this upset about September 11th? Were you this upset about hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dying under Saddam? How about his looting of Kuwait and torching their oilfields? Or the millions dead and injured in his prolonged war with Iran? My hunch is that you are so consumed by your hatred of President Bush that nothing else matters to you. Prove me wrong.
Third: You evidently have absolutely no concept of how war is fought in the aviation age. Of course you bomb in advance of a troop movement!
Fourth: What is worse: A United Nations that generates sanctions with no intention whatsoever of backing them up, or enforcing those sanctions? Look again at the sanctions: They promised severe consequences for Saddam for not disarming. If he was complying with the sanctions, then why did he play a years-long shell game with monitors and inspectors, allowing the world to believe he still had WMDs? I would guess that you are one of those people who blew a gasket that our military fed false information about planned operations to the press rather than endanger both our troops and the success of the operations by announcing our actual intentions to the world
Fifth: Ah, that supreme expert Woodward. Never misses a controversy he can make money from.
Sixth, re the 2000 and 2004 elections: I add that you are so focused on the past that you have no life or meaning in the present or the future. Face the facts: Impeachment will change absolutely nothing. What you are so ardently favoring is as futile as crying into your beer or whatever you cry into over past elections. If you want to make a difference, quit wasting your time on useless crusades fueled by those unhealthy emotions and get involved in helping candidates of your choice get elected in 2006 and 2008. This is especially important; do you honestly think a Republican congress will impeach a Republican president?
Seventh: Read the Geneva Accords for yourself. Here, I'll make it easy for you: http://www.globalissuesgroup.com/geneva/history.html. Read especially the section "International Rules about Soliders." The Accords do not apply to mercenaries. If you think the terrorists and “insurgents” are legitimate soldiers, you are truly ignorant of both the Geneva Accords and all things military. And what, pray tell, do you have to say about the terrorists violating the Accords with abandon with their suicide bombings, use of ambulances as weapons of war, beheadings of captives, etc.? Probably nothing; again, prove me wrong.
Eighth: You have a highly fractured worldview. To read your rantings, you believe terrorism is limited solely to Afghanistan. You cannot stomach the idea that Saddam, who evidently is a perfect little saint to you, would bankroll, arm, train and give safe haven to terrorists, simply because the Bush administration, our military and every other reputable authority on the matter says he did. Since you cite Hitler, let’s apply your thinking to the late 1930s. The annexation of the Sudentenland was clearly an isolated incident. The invasion of Poland was clearly an isolated incident. And on it goes, until the eventual capture of all of Europe by the Nazis would have been only an isolated incident while we dealt solely with Japan.
Ninth: If plans for invading Iraq were being made as early as you claim, SO THE *** WHAT? Even Clinton saw the connection between Iraq and terrorism; even he accepted as fact the WMD intelligence. Did you demand his impeachment for bombing Iraq? The intelligence you dispute was in place before Bush was even elected. You’d be faulting him just as loudly and foolishly no matter what he did because you hate him and you cannot stand the fact that he won legitimately – both times.
Tenth – blup-blup-blup . . . the black helicopters are coming to take you away, you conspiracy fanatic . . . .
posted by
WriterofLight
on June 11, 2005 at 9:15 PM
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Wait A Minute: A Moment For Semantics And Nomenclature
It's NOT the Downing Street Memo, King. I may have used this term because I'd heard it used as such, but it is, actually, the Downing Street Minutes. Minutes are legal and actionable documents detailing the results and decisions made during meetings. And when I say, "legal," I don't mean contractual, but if the words used in the minutes trigger off a cascade of spending and death, who needs the formality?
The DSM came out in July. First indications that intelligence was to be fixed around the policy occurred in March, 2002, when Wolfowitz sat down with a British state official and discussed Saddam's presence in Iraq.
Two points make a line, three make a plane. The policy is clearly there and clearly stated. There's no wiggle room here. People DIED because of this horsecrap -- and that's all it has been -- pure horse manure. And that's fine when we're talking about productive and constructive actions that a Nation, as a whole, decides to take on. But when a de facto dictator DECIDES to unilaterally make a nation-defining policy as potent as the decision for war, that dictator is itching to be shot and hung upside down in a public place. Impeachment may be a far less kind ending.
Two other points on this plane of my discontent. Point one: we began stepping up the bombing campaigns in Iraq prior to actually landing troops on the ground in hopes of goading Saddam into war. Poppy Bush did something along these lines prior to the Gulf conflict to great effect. Saddam wasn't going to fall for that technique again. But bombing a country in order to create a war is, in fact, an act of war outside of a declaration of war. So the pre-emptive bombing of Iraq was actually highly illegal.
Point two: Bob Woodward makes his point very clearly in his book, _Bush at War_. 700 million dollars that Congress had earmarked for spending in Afghanistan was instead allocated to the Iraq theatre in advance of the actual war. This is also highly illegal and an impeachable offense by itself, but taken in conjunction with the other point and the presence of the DSM, we have grounds for impeachment and conviction by the Senate. Period.
The DSM records the point very clearly: the United States of America had decided to establish a policy of pre-emptive war against Iraq -- a policy that has been illegal since the Senate ratified the Nuremburg Treaty after WWII -- and any intelligence that was to be gathered was to be fixed around this policy.
This is not a memo of minutes recorded in some brainstorming session conducted between cabinet members within the borders of the US. These were the minutes of a meeting conducted with the officials of a foreign government. By definition, that is not a brainstorming session but a statement of an established POLICY. There is a difference between bantering back and forth amongst ourselves on issues of State, but once we drag in a foreign government's policy officials and start handing out marching orders, it is impossible to successfully argue that a decision had not been made, apriori, at the highest levels within the Bush Administration.
We have the stolen elections of 2000 and 2004, and the probable tampering with the election results in 2002 through the use of electronic voting machines. We have the completely false story of the unfolding of the 9/11 atrocities and the use by the Bush Administration of those atrocities as a justification for a shift towards using an illegal policy (preemptive war) that had not been attempted since Adolph Hitler used it to invade Poland. We have the curtailing of civil liberties at home. We have the widespread use of torture against innocents and the use of torture against combatants -- both against the Geneva Accords. Again, the Geneva Accords resulted in a treaty ratified by the US Senate. And then we have the outright lying to Congress and the American people as to the nature of the GWOT and the proper methodology for fighting a battle against a stateless enemy. All of these are impeachable offenses several orders of magnitude more severe than anything that landed Bill Clinton in the hot seat. At this point, the entire Republican Party and anyone in government who claims that moniker, should be removed from office. These people are not patriots, they're despots. If they can not see where impeaching Bush helps their cause, then I'm all for allowing them to hang themselves one at a time and as a group.
I am an American. I resent like hell the implication (made outside these blogs, but sometimes here, too) that because I am squarely against the present Administration and all that it stands for, that I am undeserving of my citizenship, or that I should remove myself from further political participation. F*k anyone who thinks like that. If you are ignorant enough to allow yourself to be polarized against your own fellow citizens to the point where you are willing to risk starting a Civil War over this stuff, then who's the offender here? Me? Because I demand to be heard and accounted for, or YOU, who supports the marginalization of minority opinions -- which, according to the Republicans, is anyone who doesn't agree with the other 50% of the country. That is total insanity and insane people need to be removed from public service, regardless of their political affiliation.
posted by
Volaar
on June 11, 2005 at 12:27 PM
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Volaar, My take on the Downing St. Memo is that, even though he thought he
knew what he wanted to do, there was "no firm plan". This is like "it depends on what the meaning of 'is' is". Maybe less disingenuous. Now, I have told Yuri (hispanic interpretor) that next August we need to pick upthis Spelling Unit right where we left off, because it has been so successful in 1) teaching our little kids how to study, 2) increasing their vocabulary, 3) introducing dictionary skills. She agrees with me. Yet, when August rolls around, I may realize that the reason it was so successful this year was because the students enjoyed 6 months of readers' and writers' workshop first. In that case, I might change my mind and waituntil spring. This is whathappened,or might have happened, vis-a-vis the Downing St. Memo.
posted by
kingmi
on June 11, 2005 at 12:53 AM
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