Anyone who as ever used the term "neocon" as if it meant a particularly evil sort of conservative ought to read the liberal Michael Totten's latest slam against paleocon Pat Buchanan.

Totten knows what the terms mean, and knows how silly it is for certain liberals to adopt Pat Buchanan's language and use the term "neocon" in the clueless way they often do. "Neocon" means simply "new conservatism", and properly refers to a conservative school which borrowed much from 20th century liberalism.

It's the paleos that are closer to "brownshirts", IMHO (although not that close at all, really - no major American political school deserves that epithet.)

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68

Nonsense. They have extensive, albeit indirect, state backing. Afghanistan and Iraq were among the states who backed the overall network, and many of the 'charities' and other cash sources that al Queda and the rest of the network draw upon operate through various state connections.

If you really believe that that backing is not tacitly encouraged and aided by states or factions within state apparats, I've got some ocean front land in Nevada to sell you.

The CIA never claimed that al Qaeda was backed by Iraq. Read Woodward's book about how Cheney pushed hard for evidence of a link between al Qaeda and Iraq. They looked, they didn't find the evidence.

How do you know? Woodward is a partisan, what he says is insufficient to count as evidence. Ditto Clarke.

But even if the CIA never claimed it, the burden of proof lies is showing the lack of a connection. There is a larger network, and any and all parts of it are the enemy, not just al Queda, which is itself a loosely articulated network of separate groups.

The proof in the pudding is in the outcome. If Iraq was really an important backer of al Qaeda, then the fall of the Iraqi regime in April 2003 would have serious degraded al Qaeda operations.

No, that isn't necessary to show a connection. Iraq was one of many such sources of support. Frankly, much of the benefit we were on our way to obtaining in Iraq was undone by the loud screaming of liberals and the media at home, showing the there was no need to fear us after all.

Afghanistan provided a territorial base to al Qaeda; in exchange, al Qaeda provided financial ssupport and troops to aid the Taliban. Afghanistan was not a state sponsor of al Qaeda; rather al Qaeda was a private sponsor of the Afghani state.

Don't grasp at pointless and irrelevant straws.

They were part and parcel of the same thing, and therefore it was correct to attack them. Invasion was, in fact, the only practical option in that case.

Bin Laden and senior al Qaeda leadership are now believed to be in Pakistan. Do you believe that the Pakistan is now a state sponsor of al Qaeda, simply because al Qaeda is now located in their country?

To a point, of course. Pakistan is not a friend, particularly, of the USA. The only question is which is the most practical option, military action or working with the local strongman. Many Pakistanis are indeed sympathetic with and working with the enemy.

Much of al Qaeda's funding comes from Saudi citizens, and 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis. Is Saudi Arabia a state sponsor of al Qaeda?

Absolutely, in part. Saudi Arabia in many ways is at the very center of the larger network, or at least is a major focal point. The royal family there has made it specific policy, for many years, to play the West against their home-grown fanatics, deriving their power from the balance.
Today, Arabia finds itself both target and source of strength for the same phenomenon of terrorism.

Again, it's a question of the best tactics. Invading Arabia would do much more harm than good. Invading Iraq so far has done more good than harm, and would have done more good yet if it hadn't been intentionallly undermined domestically.

This is a world-wide, almost borderless war. Many governments (being groups of people) are on both sides at once. By its vary nature, it's going to be complicated, messy, and uncertain from beginning to end.

If we invade Saudi Arabia, unless the war went VERY smoothly, the worldwide flow of oil would have been severely disrupted, causing economic collapse and, ultimately, millions of deaths in the Third World.

Unfortunately, invading Saudi Arabia might ultimately prove neccessary, but let's hope not.

Originally Posted by Kiff 1961

Conservatives:

Also describable as well-meaning, basically realistic, self-disciplined (at least in theory), adult, in touch with reality.

Adult? Are you saying that people automatically become more conservative as they get older? I don't think that's true for everyone and for every issue.

In this context, it merely means adult in the sense of being 'grown up', facing reality as-is rather than as-it-ought-to-be. Unfortunately, that tendency is all too rare, in practice, in all political persuasions.

Originally Posted by Kiff 1961

Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68

What do I associate with the word 'liberal' - well-meaing, naive, dreamy, authoritarian, out of touch with reality, driven by profound misconceptions.

Authoritarian....

Are you familiar with the four-quadrant "political compass" model? They describe "left libertarians." Many liberals who post on this site identify themselves as such. I'm one of them.

Pretty much all players in the modern cultural and political wars are authoritarians in practice, whatever their theoretical views.

If you hope to see the SCOTUS establish gay marriage as a legal institution, for ex, you are an authoritarian. If you want to see abortion made illegal, that's authoritarian, too. When the chips are down, everyone believes in imposing their own morality on the external world and society, they merely choose different means to do so depending on their resources and circumstances.

Society, in the final analysis, is built on various types of authoity, social, religious, governmental, economic, etc. Maintaining a free society is not about eliminating authority, but limiting it to its proper spheres of action and levels of influence.

Originally Posted by Terminator X

Well Kerry is still doing pretty well against our incumbent. And the conservative news media is getting shaky. They're mad at everybody these days, especially The New York Times. They have some weird idea that The New York Times is to blame for souring public opinion.

Actually, I'm doubting more by the day how much public opinion has really soured. As for the NYT, we're only mad at them to the degree they show no sense of responsibility for the harm their doing to America and the troops on the ground.

Originally Posted by jadams

Though I am curious about this "fight a war for a change." How would American Progressive, of your kind, fight a war for a change?

Well DA, I'm not sure I am an american progressive. I am hitching my wagon to their star because they are as enraged as I am. But I am a hawk. 911 was a wake up call for me. I realized we were in deep trouble because of our dependency on Saudi Arabia.

I was in favor of a more "proactive" foreign policy vis a vis the oil producing states. But not alone, I think it is in the world's best interest to work together to stabilize the region if possible. (NOT STEAL their oil, just keep their instability from destabilizing our markets.) But not without taxes, I know you have to pay for what you get. And not without soldiers! I certainly didn't want to send the national guard to stabilize Iraq (!!!!???), they had trouble stabilizing Miami.

Not too long after 911 I knew we needed to have a national initiative like the Manhattan Project to develop a clean, cheap, powerful, renewable alternative to oil. That costs money, and it will take time.

It wouldn't help. In the short term, oil has no realistic competitors for transportation fuel. The other sources are all more expensive, more dangerous, just as hard to get, or otherwise limited, or various combinations thereof, and we simply don't know where to look for a better choice right now.

Thus a 'Manhattan Project' style approach would almost surely fail. We'll have to keep making slow, incremental progress in the various alternatives, until eventually one or more reaches technical and market viability. That day is coming.

In the meantime, for the near and medium term future, independence from Middle Eastern oil means, in practical terms, finding other sources of oil. It might mean pushing for increased domestic production, it might mean increasing effort to find alternative non-Middle Eastern foreign sources, it probably means both.

As for non-transportation fuel, we already have more than sufficient coal and uranium to completely do without imported fuel. Other considerations are involved in those, but we've already got the power-fuel alternatives, if we want to use them.

Originally Posted by Ash

Anyone who as ever used the term "neocon" as if it meant a particularly evil sort of conservative ought to read the liberal Michael Totten's latest slam against paleocon Pat Buchanan.

Totten knows what the terms mean, and knows how silly it is for certain liberals to adopt Pat Buchanan's language and use the term "neocon" in the clueless way they often do. "Neocon" means simply "new conservatism", and properly refers to a conservative school which borrowed much from 20th century liberalism.

It's the paleos that are closer to "brownshirts", IMHO (although not that close at all, really - no major American political school deserves that epithet.)

What? Are you nuts? Nobody's allowed to post at this website saying that kind of stuff! The antiNeos, Saari and his little seadog, are saints among the benighted liberals here. They are afforded great unquestioned admiration and respect every time they violate Godwin's law.

I would suggest the poster called "Ash" quietly remove himself from these sacred threads, wherein only antiNeos are permitted (or those Neocon "Progressives" like me who are also nuts).

Gore is not a patriot. That speech is not compatible with patriotism. As one highly decorated vetaran in Congress said, it bordered on traitorous.

Funny, I think the Republicans are traitors to have spent 60 million taxpayer dollars to hunt down a duly elected president for 8 years seeking desperately to pin something, anything, on him until they finally wired up a republican apparatchik to entrap little Monica when they couldn't turn up anything else.

I think the Republicans were traitors when they stole the 2000 election (remember I am a Floridian ... tho I do always check my chads!).

I think that Bush committed treason when he unilaterally bleeped the Geneva Conventions treatment of prisoners and then tried to pin the abuse on "a few bad apple" enlisted personnel, and now is trying to pin it on the military brass who he has put on leave or quietly retired. I think Gore is being generous when he suggests pinning the abuses on Rummy, Wolfie and the rest of the gang when the order came straight from the Buffoons in chief, Bush and Chaney.

You say po-tay-toe, I say po-tahh-toe.

Remarks by Al GoreMay 26, 2004

"George W. Bush promised us a foreign policy with humility. Instead, he has brought us humiliation in the eyes of the world.

He promised to "restore honor and integrity to the White House." Instead, he has brought deep dishonor to our country and built a durable reputation as the most dishonest President since Richard Nixon.

Honor? He decided not to honor the Geneva Convention. Just as he would not honor the United Nations, international treaties, the opinions of our allies, the role of Congress and the courts, or what Jefferson described as "a decent respect for the opinion of mankind." He did not honor the advice, experience and judgment of our military leaders in designing his invasion of Iraq. And now he will not honor our fallen dead by attending any funerals or even by permitting photos of their flag-draped coffins.

How did we get from September 12th , 2001, when a leading French newspaper ran a giant headline with the words "We Are All Americans Now" and when we had the good will and empathy of all the world -- to the horror that we all felt in witnessing the pictures of torture in Abu Ghraib.

To begin with, from its earliest days in power, this administration sought to radically destroy the foreign policy consensus that had guided America since the end of World War II. The long successful strategy of containment was abandoned in favor of the new strategy of "preemption." And what they meant by preemption was not the inherent right of any nation to act preemptively against an imminent threat to its national security, but rather an exotic new approach that asserted a unique and unilateral U.S. right to ignore international law wherever it wished to do so and take military action against any nation, even in circumstances where there was no imminent threat. All that is required, in the view of Bush's team is the mere assertion of a possible, future threat - and the assertion need be made by only one person, the President.

More disturbing still was their frequent use of the word "dominance" to describe their strategic goal, because an American policy of dominance is as repugnant to the rest of the world as the ugly dominance of the helpless, naked Iraqi prisoners has been to the American people. Dominance is as dominance does.

Dominance is not really a strategic policy or political philosophy at all. It is a seductive illusion that tempts the powerful to satiate their hunger for more power still by striking a Faustian bargain. And as always happens - sooner or later - to those who shake hands with the devil, they find out too late that what they have given up in the bargain is their soul.

One of the clearest indications of the impending loss of intimacy with one's soul is the failure to recognize the existence of a soul in those over whom power is exercised, especially if the helpless come to be treated as animals, and degraded. We also know - and not just from De Sade and Freud - the psychological proximity between sexual depravity and other people's pain. It has been especially shocking and awful to see these paired evils perpetrated so crudely and cruelly in the name of America.

Those pictures of torture and sexual abuse came to us embedded in a wave of news about escalating casualties and growing chaos enveloping our entire policy in Iraq. But in order understand the failure of our overall policy, it is important to focus specifically on what happened in the Abu Ghraib prison, and ask whether or not those actions were representative of who we are as Americans? Obviously the quick answer is no, but unfortunately it's more complicated than that.

There is good and evil in every person. And what makes the United States special in the history of nations is our commitment to the rule of law and our carefully constructed system of checks and balances. Our natural distrust of concentrated power and our devotion to openness and democracy are what have lead us as a people to consistently choose good over evil in our collective aspirations more than the people any other nation.

Our founders were insightful students of human nature. They feared the abuse of power because they understood that every human being has not only "better angels" in his nature, but also an innate vulnerability to temptation - especially the temptation to abuse power over others.

Our founders understood full well that a system of checks and balances is needed in our constitution because every human being lives with an internal system of checks and balances that cannot be relied upon to produce virtue if they are allowed to attain an unhealthy degree of power over their fellow citizens.

Listen then to the balance of internal impulses described by specialist Charles Graner when confronted by one of his colleagues, Specialist Joseph M. Darby, who later became a courageous whistleblower. When Darby asked him to explain his actions documented in the photos, Graner replied: "The Christian in me says it's wrong, but the Corrections Officer says, 'I love to make a groan man piss on himself."

What happened at the prison, it is now clear, was not the result of random acts by "a few bad apples," it was the natural consequence of the Bush Administration policy that has dismantled those wise constraints and has made war on America's checks and balances.

The abuse of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib flowed directly from the abuse of the truth that characterized the Administration's march to war and the abuse of the trust that had been placed in President Bush by the American people in the aftermath of September 11th.

There was then, there is now and there would have been regardless of what Bush did, a threat of terrorism that we would have to deal with. But instead of making it better, he has made it infinitely worse. We are less safe because of his policies. He has created more anger and righteous indignation against us as Americans than any leader of our country in the 228 years of our existence as a nation -- because of his attitude of contempt for any person, institution or nation who disagrees with him.

He has exposed Americans abroad and Americans in every U.S. town and city to a greater danger of attack by terrorists because of his arrogance, willfulness, and bungling at stirring up hornet's nests that pose no threat whatsoever to us. And by then insulting the religion and culture and tradition of people in other countries. And by pursuing policies that have resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent men, women and children, all of it done in our name.

President Bush said in his speech Monday night that the war in Iraq is "the central front in the war on terror." It's not the central front in the war on terror, but it has unfortunately become the central recruiting office for terrorists. [Dick Cheney said, "This war may last the rest of our lives.] The unpleasant truth is that President Bush's utter incompetence has made the world a far more dangerous place and dramatically increased the threat of terrorism against the United States. Just yesterday, the International Institute of Strategic Studies reported that the Iraq conflict " has arguable focused the energies and resources of Al Qaeda and its followers while diluting those of the global counterterrorism coalition." The ISS said that in the wake of the war in Iraq Al Qaeda now has more than 18,000 potential terrorists scattered around the world and the war in Iraq is swelling its ranks.

The war plan was incompetent in its rejection of the advice from military professionals and the analysis of the intelligence was incompetent in its conclusion that our soldiers would be welcomed with garlands of flowers and cheering crowds. Thus we would not need to respect the so-called Powell doctrine of overwhelming force.

There was also in Rumsfeld's planning a failure to provide security for nuclear materials, and to prevent widespread lawlessness and looting.

Luckily, there was a high level of competence on the part of our soldiers even though they were denied the tools and the numbers they needed for their mission. What a disgrace that their families have to hold bake sales to buy discarded Kevlar vests to stuff into the floorboards of the Humvees! Bake sales for body armor.

And the worst still lies ahead. General Joseph Hoar, the former head of the Marine Corps, said "I believe we are absolutely on the brink of failure. We are looking into the abyss."

When a senior, respected military leader like Joe Hoar uses the word "abyss", then the rest of us damn well better listen. Here is what he means: more American soldiers dying, Iraq slipping into worse chaos and violence, no end in sight, with our influence and moral authority seriously damaged.

Retired Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni, who headed Central Command before becoming President Bush's personal emissary to the Middle East, said recently that our nation's current course is "headed over Niagara Falls."

The Commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, Army Major General Charles H. Swannack, Jr., asked by the Washington Post whether he believes the United States is losing the war in Iraq, replied, "I think strategically, we are." Army Colonel Paul Hughes, who directed strategic planning for the US occupation authority in Baghdad, compared what he sees in Iraq to the Vietnam War, in which he lost his brother: "I promised myself when I came on active duty that I would do everything in my power to prevent that ... from happening again. " Noting that Vietnam featured a pattern of winning battles while losing the war, Hughes added "unless we ensure that we have coherence in our policy, we will lose strategically."

The White House spokesman, Dan Bartlett was asked on live television about these scathing condemnations by Generals involved in the highest levels of Pentagon planning and he replied, "Well they're retired, and we take our advice from active duty officers."

But amazingly, even active duty military officers are speaking out against President Bush. For example, the Washington Post quoted an unnamed senior General at the Pentagon as saying, " the current OSD (Office of the Secretary of Defense) refused to listen or adhere to military advice." Rarely if ever in American history have uniformed commanders felt compelled to challenge their commander in chief in public.

The Post also quoted an unnamed general as saying, "Like a lot of senior Army guys I'm quite angry" with Rumsfeld and the rest of the Bush Administration. He listed two reasons. "I think they are going to break the Army," he said, adding that what really incites him is "I don't think they care."

In his upcoming book, Zinni blames the current catastrophe on the Bush team's incompetence early on. "In the lead-up to the Iraq war, and its later conduct," he writes, "I saw at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility, at worst, lying, incompetence and corruption."

Zinni's book will join a growing library of volumes by former advisors to Bush -- including his principal advisor on terrorism, Richard Clarke; his principal economic policy advisor, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, who was honored by Bush's father for his service in Iraq, and his former Domestic Adviser on faith-based organizations, John Dilulio, who said, "There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus. What you've got is everything, and I mean everything, run by the political arm. It's the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis."

Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki told Congress in February that the occupation could require "several hundred thousand troops." But because Rumsfeld and Bush did not want to hear disagreement with their view that Iraq could be invaded at a much lower cost, Shinseki was hushed and then forced out.

And as a direct result of this incompetent plan and inadequate troop strength, young soldiers were put in an untenable position. For example, young reservists assigned to the Iraqi prisons were called up without training or adequate supervision, and were instructed by their superiors to "break down" prisoners in order to prepare them for interrogation.

To make matters worse, they were placed in a confusing situation where the chain of command was criss-crossed between intelligence gathering and prison administration, and further confused by an unprecedented mixing of military and civilian contractor authority.

The soldiers who are accused of committing these atrocities are, of course, responsible for their own actions and if found guilty, must be severely and appropriately punished. But they are not the ones primarily responsible for the disgrace that has been brought upon the United States of America.

Private Lynndie England did not make the decision that the United States would not observe the Geneva Convention. Specialist Charles Graner was not the one who approved a policy of establishing an American Gulag of dark rooms with naked prisoners to be "stressed" and even - we must use the word - tortured - to force them to say things that legal procedures might not induce them to say.

These policies were designed and insisted upon by the Bush White House. Indeed, the President's own legal counsel advised him specifically on the subject. His secretary of defense and his assistants pushed these cruel departures from historic American standards over the objections of the uniformed military, just as the Judge Advocates General within the Defense Department were so upset and opposed that they took the unprecedented step of seeking help from a private lawyer in this city who specializes in human rights and said to him, "There is a calculated effort to create an atmosphere of legal ambiguity" where the mistreatment of prisoners is concerned."

Indeed, the secrecy of the program indicates an understanding that the regular military culture and mores would not support these activities and neither would the American public or the world community. Another implicit acknowledgement of violations of accepted standards of behavior is the process of farming out prisoners to countries less averse to torture and giving assignments to private contractors

President Bush set the tone for our attitude for suspects in his State of the Union address. He noted that more than 3,000 "suspected terrorists" had been arrested in many countries and then he added, "and many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way: they are no longer a problem to the United States and our allies."

George Bush promised to change the tone in Washington. And indeed he did. As many as 37 prisoners may have been murdered while in captivity, though the numbers are difficult to rely upon because in many cases involving violent death, there were no autopsies.

How dare they blame their misdeeds on enlisted personnel from a Reserve unit in upstate New York. President Bush owes more than one apology. On the list of those he let down are the young soldiers who are themselves apparently culpable, but who were clearly put into a moral cesspool. The perpetrators as well as the victims were both placed in their relationship to one another by the policies of George W. Bush.

How dare the incompetent and willful members of this Bush/Cheney Administration humiliate our nation and our people in the eyes of the world and in the conscience of our own people. How dare they subject us to such dishonor and disgrace. How dare they drag the good name of the United States of America through the mud of Saddam Hussein's torture prison.

David Kay concluded his search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq with the famous verdict: "we were all wrong." And for many Americans, Kay's statement seemed to symbolize the awful collision between Reality and all of the false and fading impressions President Bush had fostered in building support for his policy of going to war.

Now the White House has informed the American people that they were also "all wrong" about their decision to place their faith in Ahmed Chalabi, even though they have paid him 340,000 dollars per month. 33 million dollars (CHECK) and placed him adjacent to Laura Bush at the State of the Union address. Chalabi had been convicted of fraud and embezzling 70 million dollars in public funds from a Jordanian bank, and escaped prison by fleeing the country. But in spite of that record, he had become one of key advisors to the Bush Administration on planning and promoting the War against Iraq.

And they repeatedly cited him as an authority, perhaps even a future president of Iraq. Incredibly, they even ferried him and his private army into Baghdad in advance of anyone else, and allowed him to seize control over Saddam's secret papers.

Now they are telling the American people that he is a spy for Iran who has been duping the President of the United States for all these years.

One of the Generals in charge of this war policy went on a speaking tour in his spare time to declare before evangelical groups that the US is in a holy war as "Christian Nation battling Satan." This same General Boykin was the person who ordered the officer who was in charge of the detainees in Guantanamo Bay to extend his methods to Iraq detainees, prisoners. ... The testimony from the prisoners is that they were forced to curse their religion Bush used the word "crusade" early on in the war against Iraq, and then commentators pointed out that it was singularly inappropriate because of the history and sensitivity of the Muslim world and then a few weeks later he used it again.

"We are now being viewed as the modern Crusaders, as the modern colonial power in this part of the world," Zinni said.

What a terrible irony that our country, which was founded by refugees seeking religious freedom - coming to America to escape domineering leaders who tried to get them to renounce their religion - would now be responsible for this kind of abuse..

Ameen Saeed al-Sheikh told the Washington Post that he was tortured and ordered to denounce Islam and after his leg was broken one of his torturers started hitting it while ordering him to curse Islam and then, " they ordered me to thank Jesus that I'm alive." Others reported that they were forced to eat pork and drink alcohol.

In my religious tradition, I have been taught that "ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so, every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit... Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them."

The President convinced a majority of the country that Saddam Hussein was responsible for attacking us on September 11th. But in truth he had nothing whatsoever to do with it. The President convinced the country with a mixture of forged documents and blatantly false assertions that Saddam was in league with Al Qaeda, and that he was "indistinguishable" from Osama bin Laden.

He asked the nation , in his State of the Union address, to "imagine" how terrified we should be that Saddam was about to give nuclear weapons to terrorists and stated repeatedly that Iraq posed a grave and gathering threat to our nation. He planted the seeds of war, and harvested a whirlwind. And now, the "corrupt tree" of a war waged on false premises has brought us the "evil fruit" of Americans torturing and humiliating prisoners.

In my opinion, John Kerry is dealing with this unfolding tragedy in an impressive and extremely responsible way. Our nation's best interest lies in having a new president who can turn a new page, sweep clean with a new broom, and take office on January 20th of next year with the ability to make a fresh assessment of exactly what our nation's strategic position is as of the time the reigns of power are finally wrested from the group of incompetents that created this catastrophe.

Kerry should not tie his own hands by offering overly specific, detailed proposals concerning a situation that is rapidly changing and unfortunately, rapidly deteriorating, but should rather preserve his, and our country's, options, to retrieve our national honor as soon as this long national nightmare is over.

Eisenhower did not propose a five-point plan for changing America's approach to the Korean War when he was running for president in 1952.

When a business enterprise finds itself in deep trouble that is linked to the failed policies of the current CEO the board of directors and stockholders usually say to the failed CEO, "Thank you very much, but we're going to replace you now with a new CEO -- one less vested in a stubborn insistence on staying the course, even if that course is, in the words of General Zinni, "Headed over Niagara Falls."

One of the strengths of democracy is the ability of the people to regularly demand changes in leadership and to fire a failing leader and hire a new one with the promise of hopeful change. That is the real solution to America's quagmire in Iraq. But, I am keenly aware that we have seven months and twenty five days remaining in this president's current term of office and that represents a time of dangerous vulnerability for our country because of the demonstrated incompetence and recklessness of the current administration.

It is therefore essential that even as we focus on the fateful choice, the voters must make this November that we simultaneously search for ways to sharply reduce the extraordinary danger that we face with the current leadership team in place. It is for that reason that I am calling today for Republicans as well as Democrats to join me in asking for the immediate resignations of those immediately below George Bush and Dick Cheney who are most responsible for creating the catastrophe that we are facing in Iraq.

We desperately need a national security team with at least minimal competence because the current team is making things worse with each passing day. They are endangering the lives of our soldiers, and sharply increasing the danger faced by American citizens everywhere in the world, including here at home. They are enraging hundreds of millions of people and embittering an entire generation of anti-Americans whose rage is already near the boiling point.

We simply cannot afford to further increase the risk to our country with more blunders by this team. Donald Rumsfeld, as the chief architect of the war plan, should resign today. His deputies Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and his intelligence chief Stephen Cambone should also resign. The nation is especially at risk every single day that Rumsfeld remains as Secretary of Defense.

Condoleeza Rice, who has badly mishandled the coordination of national security policy, should also resign immediately.

George Tenet should also resign. I want to offer a special word about George Tenet, because he is a personal friend and I know him to be a good and decent man. It is especially painful to call for his resignation, but I have regretfully concluded that it is extremely important that our country have new leadership at the CIA immediately.

As a nation, our greatest export has always been hope: hope that through the rule of law people can be free to pursue their dreams, that democracy can supplant repression and that justice, not power, will be the guiding force in society. Our moral authority in the world derived from the hope anchored in the rule of law. With this blatant failure of the rule of law from the very agents of our government, we face a great challenge in restoring our moral authority in the world and demonstrating our commitment to bringing a better life to our global neighbors.

During Ronald Reagan's Presidency, Secretary of Labor Ray Donovan was accused of corruption, but eventually, after a lot of publicity, the indictment was thrown out by the Judge. Donovan asked the question, "Where do I go to get my reputation back?" President Bush has now placed the United States of America in the same situation. Where do we go to get our good name back?

The answer is, we go where we always go when a dramatic change is needed. We go to the ballot box, and we make it clear to the rest of the world that what's been happening in America for the last four years, and what America has been doing in Iraq for the last two years, really is not who we are. We, as a people, at least the overwhelming majority of us, do not endorse the decision to dishonor the Geneva Convention and the Bill of Rights....

Make no mistake, the damage done at Abu Ghraib is not only to America's reputation and America's strategic interests, but also to America's spirit. It is also crucial for our nation to recognize - and to recognize quickly - that the damage our nation has suffered in the world is far, far more serious than President Bush's belated and tepid response would lead people to believe. Remember how shocked each of us, individually, was when we first saw those hideous images. The natural tendency was to first recoil from the images, and then to assume that they represented a strange and rare aberration that resulted from a few twisted minds or, as the Pentagon assured us, "a few bad apples."

But as today's shocking news reaffirms yet again, this was not rare. It was not an aberration. Today's New York Times reports that an Army survey of prisoner deaths and mistreatment in Iraq and Afghanisatan "show a widespread pattern of abuse involving more military units than previously known.'

Nor did these abuses spring from a few twisted minds at the lowest ranks of our military enlisted personnel. No, it came from twisted values and atrocious policies at the highest levels of our government. This was done in our name, by our leaders.

These horrors were the predictable consequence of policy choices that flowed directly from this administration's contempt for the rule of law. And the dominance they have been seeking is truly not simply unworthy of America - it is also an illusory goal in its own right.

Our world is unconquerable because the human spirit is unconquerable, and any national strategy based on pursuing the goal of domination is doomed to fail because it generates its own opposition, and in the process, creates enemies for the would-be dominator.

A policy based on domination of the rest of the world not only creates enemies for the United States and creates recruits for Al Qaeda, it also undermines the international cooperation that is essential to defeating the efforts of terrorists who wish harm and intimidate Americans.

Unilateralism, as we have painfully seen in Iraq, is its own reward. Going it alone may satisfy a political instinct but it is dangerous to our military, even without their Commander in Chief taunting terrorists to "bring it on."

Our troops are stretched thin and exhausted not only because Secretary Rumsfeld contemptuously dismissed the advice of military leaders on the size of the needed force - but also because President Bush's contempt for traditional allies and international opinion left us without a real coalition to share the military and financial burden of the war and the occupation. Our future is dependent upon increasing cooperation and interdependence in a world tied ever more closely together by technologies of communications and travel. The emergence of a truly global civilization has been accompanied by the recognition of truly global challenges that require global responses that, as often as not, can only be led by the United States - and only if the United States restores and maintains its moral authority to lead.

Make no mistake, it is precisely our moral authority that is our greatest source of strength, and it is precisely our moral authority that has been recklessly put at risk by the cheap calculations and mean compromises of conscience wagered with history by this willful president.

Listen to the way Israel's highest court dealt with a similar question when, in 1999, it was asked to balance due process rights against dire threats to the security of its people:

"This is the destiny of democracy, as not all means are acceptable to it, and not all practices employed by its enemies are open before it. Although a democracy must often fight with one hand tied behind its back, it nonetheless has the upper hand. Preserving the Rule of Law and recognition of an individual's liberty constitutes an important component in its understanding of security. At the end of the day they (add to) its strength."

The last and best description of America's meaning in the world is still the definitive formulation of Lincoln's annual message to Congress on December 1, 1862:

"The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise - with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history...the fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation...We shall nobly save, or meanly lose the last best hope of earth...The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just - a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless."

It is now clear that their obscene abuses of the truth and their unforgivable abuse of the trust placed in them after 9/11 by the American people led directly to the abuses of the prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison and, we are now learning, in many other similar facilities constructed as part of Bush's Gulag, in which, according to the Red Cross, 70 to 90 percent of the victims are totally innocent of any wrongdoing.

The same dark spirit of domination has led them to - for the first time in American history - imprison American citizens with no charges, no right to see a lawyer, no right to notify their family, no right to know of what they are accused, and no right to gain access to any court to present an appeal of any sort. The Bush Admistration has even acquired the power to compel librarians to tell them what any American is reading, and to compel them to keep silent about the request - or else the librarians themselves can also be imprisoned.

They have launched an unprecedented assault on civil liberties, on the right of the courts to review their actions, on the right of the Congress to have information to how they are spending the public's money and the right of the news media to have information about the policies they are pursuing.

The same pattern characterizes virtually all of their policies. They resent any constraint as an insult to their will to dominate and exercise power. Their appetite for power is astonishing. It has led them to introduce a new level of viciousness in partisan politics. It is that viciousness that led them to attack as unpatriotic, Senator Max Cleland, who lost three limbs in combat during the Vietnam War.

The president episodically poses as a healer and "uniter". If he president really has any desire to play that role, then I call upon him to condemn Rush Limbaugh - perhaps his strongest political supporter - who said that the torture in Abu Ghraib was a "brilliant maneuver" and that the photos were "good old American pornography," and that the actions portrayed were simply those of "people having a good time and needing to blow off steam."

This new political viciousness by the President and his supporters is found not only on the campaign trail, but in the daily operations of our democracy. They have insisted that the leaders of their party in the Congress deny Democrats any meaningful role whatsoever in shaping legislation, debating the choices before us as a people, or even to attend the all-important conference committees that reconcile the differences between actions by the Senate and House of Representatives.

The same meanness of spirit shows up in domestic policies as well. Under the Patriot Act, Muslims, innocent of any crime, were picked up, often physically abused, and held incommunicado indefinitely. What happened in Abu Ghraib was difference not of kind, but of degree.

Differences of degree are important when the subject is torture. The apologists for what has happened do have points that should be heard and clearly understood. It is a fact that every culture and every politics sometimes expresses itself in cruelty. It is also undeniably true that other countries have and do torture more routinely, and far more brutally, than ours has. George Orwell once characterized life in Stalin's Russia as "a boot stamping on a human face forever." That was the ultimate culture of cruelty, so ingrained, so organic, so systematic that everyone in it lived in terror, even the terrorizers. And that was the nature and degree of state cruelty in Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

We all know these things, and we need not reassure ourselves and should not congratulate ourselves that our society is less cruel than some others, although it is worth noting that there are many that are less cruel than ours. And this searing revelation at Abu Ghraib should lead us to examine more thoroughly the routine horrors in our domestic prison system.

But what we do now, in reaction to Abu Ghraib will determine a great deal about who we are at the beginning of the 21st century. It is important to note that just as the abuses of the prisoners flowed directly from the policies of the Bush White House, those policies flowed not only from the instincts of the president and his advisors, but found support in shifting attitudes on the part of some in our country in response to the outrage and fear generated by the attack of September 11th.

The president exploited and fanned those fears, but some otherwise sensible and levelheaded Americans fed them as well. I remember reading genteel-sounding essays asking publicly whether or not the prohibitions against torture were any longer relevant or desirable. The same grotesque misunderstanding of what is really involved was responsible for the tone in the memo from the president's legal advisor, Alberto Gonzalez, who wrote on January 25, 2002, that 9/11 "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."

We have seen the pictures. We have learned the news. We cannot unlearn it; it is part of us. The important question now is, what will we do now about torture. Stop it? Yes, of course. But that means demanding all of the facts, not covering them up, as some now charge the administration is now doing. One of the whistleblowers at Abu Ghraib, Sergeant Samuel Provance, told ABC News a few days ago that he was being intimidated and punished for telling the truth. "There is definitely a coverup," Provance said. "I feel like I am being punished for being honest."

The abhorrent acts in the prison were a direct consequence of the culture of impunity encouraged, authorized and instituted by Bush and Rumsfeld in their statements that the Geneva Conventions did not apply. The apparent war crimes that took place were the logical, inevitable outcome of policies and statements from the administration.

To me, as glaring as the evidence of this in the pictures themselves was the revelation that it was established practice for prisoners to be moved around during ICRC visits so that they would not be available for visits. That, no one can claim, was the act of individuals. That was policy set from above with the direct intention to violate US values it was to be upholding. It was the kind of policy we see - and criticize in places like China and Cuba.

Moreover, the administration has also set up the men and women of our own armed forces for payback the next time they are held as prisoners. And for that, this administration should pay a very high price. One of the most tragic consequences of these official crimes is that it will be very hard for any of us as Americans - at least for a very long time - to effectively stand up for human rights elsewhere and criticize other governments, when our policies have resulted in our soldiers behaving so monstrously. This administration has shamed America and deeply damaged the cause of freedom and human rights everywhere, thus undermining the core message of America to the world.

President Bush offered a brief and half-hearted apology to the Arab world - but he should apologize to the American people for abandoning the Geneva Conventions. He also owes an apology to the U.S. Army for cavalierly sending them into harm's way while ignoring the best advice of their commanders. Perhaps most importantly of all, he should apologize to all those men and women throughout our world who have held the ideal of the United States of America as a shining goal, to inspire their hopeful efforts to bring about justice under a rule of law in their own lands. Of course, the problem with all these legitimate requests is that a sincere apology requires an admission of error, a willingness to accept responsibility and to hold people accountable. And President Bush is not only unwilling to acknowledge error. He has thus far been unwilling to hold anyone in his administration accountable for the worst strategic and military miscalculations and mistakes in the history of the United States of America.

He is willing only to apologize for the alleged erratic behavior of a few low-ranking enlisted people, who he is scapegoating for his policy fiasco.

In December of 2000, even though I strongly disagreed with the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to order a halt to the counting of legally cast ballots, I saw it as my duty to reaffirm my own strong belief that we are a nation of laws and not only accept the decision, but do what I could to prevent efforts to delegitimize George Bush as he took the oath of office as president.

I did not at that moment imagine that Bush would, in the presidency that ensued, demonstrate utter contempt for the rule of law and work at every turn to frustrate accountability...

So today, I want to speak on behalf of those Americans who feel that President Bush has betrayed our nation's trust, those who are horrified at what has been done in our name, and all those who want the rest of the world to know that we Americans see the abuses that occurred in the prisons of Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and secret locations as yet undisclosed as completely out of keeping with the character and basic nature of the American people and at odds with the principles on which America stands.

I believe we have a duty to hold President Bush accountable - and I believe we will. As Lincoln said at our time of greatest trial, "We - even we here - hold the power, and bear the responsibility."

Originally Posted by HC

Gore is not a patriot. That speech is not compatible with patriotism. As one highly decorated vetaran in Congress said, it bordered on traitorous.

my attention span is still getting the better of me. HC, care to point out the borderline "traitorous" part(s)?


TK

Originally Posted by TrollKing

Originally Posted by HC

Gore is not a patriot. That speech is not compatible with patriotism. As one highly decorated vetaran in Congress said, it bordered on traitorous.

my attention span is still getting the better of me. HC, care to point out the borderline "traitorous" part(s)?


TK

Poor Hopeful, the Cynic in him can't see the forest for the trees!

Originally Posted by jadams

I think the Republicans were traitors when they stole the 2000 election (remember I am a Floridian ... tho I do always check my chads!).

Alas, you're are not a "Progressive" at all. You are just a "Democrat" in disguise. :wink:

Originally Posted by Devil's Advocate

Originally Posted by TrollKing

Originally Posted by HC

Gore is not a patriot. That speech is not compatible with patriotism. As one highly decorated vetaran in Congress said, it bordered on traitorous.

my attention span is still getting the better of me. HC, care to point out the borderline "traitorous" part(s)?

Poor Hopeful, the Cynic in him can't see the forest for the trees!

well, i'm stumped. i have no idea what you meant by that.

then again, i only really tried for about 20 seconds. attention span thing, again.

what's up with that? i can't be bothered to focus very closely on internet crap these days.

ah, well.


TK

Originally Posted by Virgil K. Saari

Originally Posted by my dear Mr. Lamb

But now, wrt Iraq, on the other hand, we have a media that rarely if ever roots for the home team.

A year ago in my local papers, on NBC, ABC, and CBS the Not-War in Iraq was shown with the Red, White and Blue on the set and in the Headlines? The media questioning is about a year too late. It may be that the fantasy of the "election year" divides drives the anger today... but is not Mr. Kerry saying he will not "bug out" and is not Mr. Bush now on bended knee with regard to the U.N.'s Algerian servant? The cousins of Buonaparte are not that far apart.

The story had an enormous impact, one amplified when national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state Colin Powell and vice-president Dick Cheney all did appearances on the Sunday-morning talk shows, citing the first-rate journalism of the liberal NYT. No single story did more to advance the neoconservative cause.


Duranty Does D.C. -- as Ms. Miller channels the old Timesman with the help of Mr. Chalabi, et al.

Alas, you're are not a "Progressive" at all. You are just a "Democrat" in disguise.

But I love to flirt.

Originally Posted by jadams

Gore is not a patriot. That speech is not compatible with patriotism. As one highly decorated vetaran in Congress said, it bordered on traitorous.

Funny, I think the Republicans are traitors to have spent 60 million taxpayer dollars to hunt down a duly elected president for 8 years seeking desperately to pin something, anything, on him until they finally wired up a republican apparatchik to entrap little Monica when they couldn't turn up anything else.

Before you make a bigger fool of yourself than you did with that single statement, you would be well advised to learn the facts about what actually happened with Clinton.

Bottom line, he was guilty. The only reason he remained in office was that the Senate refused to do their Constitutional duty.

As for 'pursuing him', the GOP tried hard to weasel out of dealing with the Monica mess at all. Orrin Hatch, on national TV, practically begged Clinton not to lie to the grand jury, since they couldn't make it go away if he did.

He did, just as he tried to frame Monica as a stalker, tried to frame Billy Dale for embezzlement he didn't do, and just as he broke election law 15 ways before breakfast in 1996.

The only person Clinton was a victim of was Clinton.

I think the Republicans were traitors when they stole the 2000 election (remember I am a Floridian ... tho I do always check my chads!).

:lol:

No matter how much you might hate it, the cold fact is that it was Gore who tried to steal the election in 2000. He tried to get recounts done in a handful of districts, cherry-picked in the hope of maximum Democratic vote, making a joke of his 'count every vote'.

Then, even as he whined about votes not being counted, they tried to get military absentee votes tossed on a technicality.

Additionally, they twice tried to arrange for the Florida State Supreme Court to bend Florida election law into a pretzel, and to intervene in matters over which they had no jurisdiction. The second attempt was so blatant that even some of the Democrats on that court balked.

Now, to be fair, I have no doubt that Gore and Co. really, honestly believed that they had won the Florida popular vote. I think they believed for months afterward. But recount after recount after recount, performed by news organizations eager for the controversy and sympathetic to Gore, simply could not find the votes. They just weren't there.

I think that Bush committed treason when he unilaterally bleeped the Geneva Conventions treatment of prisoners and then tried to pin the abuse on "a few bad apple" enlisted personnel, and now is trying to pin it on the military brass who he has put on leave or quietly retired. I think Gore is being generous when he suggests pinning the abuses on Rummy, Wolfie and the rest of the gang when the order came straight from the Buffoons in chief, Bush and Chaney.

I assume you have some proof for this assertion. (Well, actually I know perfectly well you don't have any proof. But I'm asking anyway.)

Originally Posted by Al Gore

Honor? He decided not to honor the Geneva Convention. Just as he would not honor the United Nations,

OK, lie #1 (and Gore knows perfectly well that it's a lie).

Bush gave the UN several chances to deal with the matter before it, and they blew it. In deference to that worse-than-useless forum, we gave Hussein six months to prepare and hide the evidence, and make arrangements for the aftermath, and to try to lie his way out the hole.

Further, the UN is currently mired in a growing scandal over their collusion with Hussein in dodging the sanctins regime that supposedly kept him 'contained'. It's not yet clear how far it goes, but it's looking as if much of the Secretariat and several high-level officials in various national governments were involved.

Of course, the liberal branch of the media are trying hard to either ignore the story, or spin it away (i.e. Newsweek a month or so ago).

international treaties, the opinions of our allies

France, Germany, etc, are not our allies anymore in any meaningful sense. The Atlantic Alliance died with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Our 'allies' are going to do what they perceive to be in their own self-interest.

, the role of Congress and the courts

Wrong again, Al.

Bush went to Congress, more than once, and they authorized his actions by significant majorities. Democrats are trying to whine now that 'he deceived us'. No he didn't. They had access to the same intelligence data he did, over the course of several years (going back through the 90s), and the data looked threatening.

, or what Jefferson described as "a decent respect for the opinion of mankind."

This is about the first thing in Gore's rant that contains a small grain of truth. Bush could indeed have done a better job of explaining the whys of the situation.

But it would have made no difference in practice, since Western Europe (esp. France) were against us no matter what, for self-interested reasons.

He did not honor the advice, experience and judgment of our military leaders in designing his invasion of Iraq.

Dead wrong, though perhaps he misspoke.

The invasion of Iraq went off almost without a hitch, one of the best-planned and best executed military operations in history, even though the New York Times and CNN were presenting it as a botch even as the troops were finishing up. But don't hold your breath waiting for the Times to apologize for that screw-up. :lol:

And now he will not honor our fallen dead by attending any funerals or even by permitting photos of their flag-draped coffins.

OK, now we're reached the level of 'contemptible lie'. Whether Bush attends a funeral or not is irrelevant to whether he respects the soldiers and the price they paid.

As for the photo ban, it predates Bush and the Iraq War by years, and actually originated with the Pentagon. That fact that the Democrats are denied their desire to use such photos to elicit emotional reactions for political purposes does not constitute a failure of leadership on Bush's part. :twisted:

Originally Posted by Al Gore

How did we get from September 12th , 2001, when a leading French newspaper ran a giant headline with the words "We Are All Americans Now" and when we had the good will and empathy of all the world --

On the off chance that you really don't understand how that happened, Al, I'll explain it.

The world-wide support after 911 was just as illusory as the domestic unity. The personal sympathy, for the dead, the wounded, and the surviving loved ones, was real enough.

But international relations operate on ice-cold self-interest. The support from the governments in Europe and elsewhere was predicated, to a large extent, on America doing nothing. Even the public sympathy was badly strained merely by the Afghan actions, especially in Western Europe where there tends to be a visceral assumption that the use of force can never be justified.

We were never going to be able to keep that support, and also act against our enemies, it was either-or, and sympathy or not, the decisions of the other governments were always going to be made based primarily on self-interest. Europe is very comfortable with the status quo, and they aren't going to look kindly on anything that makes too many waves.

To begin with, from its earliest days in power, this administration sought to radically destroy the foreign policy consensus that had guided America since the end of World War II.

Wrong again, Al. The former foreign-policy 'consensus' (there hasn't really been all that much consensus for decades anyway), was dead and finished before GWB got anywhere near the White House. The Atlantic Alliance died in 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down, and Europe was further aggravated and worried by the power differential they saw displayed in the Kosovo action.

Again, it all comes down to self-interest, Al. That's what makes and breaks alliances.

The long successful strategy of containment was abandoned in favor of the new strategy of "preemption."




More disturbing still was their frequent use of the word "dominance" to describe their strategic goal,

Gore lies again. He knows (yet again) that the word 'dominance' in this context doesn't mean what he implies it means.

What happened at the prison, it is now clear, was not the result of random acts by "a few bad apples," it was the natural consequence of the Bush Administration policy that has dismantled those wise constraints and has made war on America's checks and balances.

Sorry, Al, you got it wrong again.

It's true that power brings out the worst in people, but unless you can show a system-wide problem, trying to hang this on the President for political gain is beneath contempt.

He has exposed Americans abroad and Americans in every U.S. town and city to a greater danger of attack by terrorists because of his arrogance, willfulness, and bungling at stirring up hornet's nests that pose no threat whatsoever to us.

In September of 2002, Al Gore said, ""Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power."

He also noted: ""We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country."

Note that Al said 'we KNOW', not we suspect, not 'we think'. But that was then, this is now.

Back to more of Al Gore now...

[Dick Cheney said, "This war may last the rest of our lives.]

Interesting quote, Al. Mind elaborating on the context of it?

The war plan was incompetent in its rejection of the advice from military professionals and the analysis of the intelligence was incompetent in its conclusion that our soldiers would be welcomed with garlands of flowers and cheering crowds. Thus we would not need to respect the so-called Powell doctrine of overwhelming force.

On the contrary, we applied overwhelming force in accordance with the Powell doctrine, during the invasion. Keep them straight, Al. It's true that the neocons assumed that there would be more welcome than there was, but the Pentagon did not make the same error, and the invasion went off without a serious hitch.

The occupation is where a failure of planning occurred, though not as bad a one as Gore implies. What he fails to note is that by making speeches like this, he helps contribute to the problems of the occupation effort.

There was also in Rumsfeld's planning a failure to provide security for nuclear materials, and to prevent widespread lawlessness and looting.

To a point. OTOH, much of the looting and lawlessness that the liberal media so breathlessly and eagerly trumpeted turned out to be greatly exaggerated. Remember how we heard so much about 'Iraq's cultural heritage being lost'. :lol:

Turned out to be tad overstated. Even now, most of Iraq is fairly quiet, and would probably be quieter if Gore and his ilk would shut up and quit intentionally encouraging the enemy.

(I don't want to hear any nonsense about how Gore is not encouraging the enemy with speeches like this. If you believe that, you're liiving in a pretend world. It's perfectly possible to criticize government policy without doing it in such a way that you intentionally make the efforts of our own forces harder.)

Luckily, there was a high level of competence on the part of our soldiers

Ah yes, the throwaway line about his how much he respects the troops. It's become a standard piece of empty rhetoric in these kinds of attack speeches.

even though they were denied the tools and the numbers they needed for their mission. What a disgrace that their families have to hold bake sales to buy discarded Kevlar vests to stuff into the floorboards of the Humvees! Bake sales for body armor.

Oh, you're right that it's a disgrace, Al. But don't try to pretend you and your party and your Administration didn't cut defense spending repeatedly and recklessly. YOU share in the blame for this particular shortfall.

The Commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, Army Major General Charles H. Swannack, Jr., asked by the Washington Post whether he believes the United States is losing the war in Iraq, replied, "I think strategically, we are." Army Colonel Paul Hughes, who directed strategic planning for the US occupation authority in Baghdad, compared what he sees in Iraq to the Vietnam War, in which he lost his brother: "I promised myself when I came on active duty that I would do everything in my power to prevent that ... from happening again. " Noting that Vietnam featured a pattern of winning battles while losing the war, Hughes added "unless we ensure that we have coherence in our policy, we will lose strategically."

Ah, yes, here we have the inevitable reference to Vietnam. Every war is Vietnam to Gore and his ilk.

What Gore leaves out of his quotes here are the contexts. He's picking and choosing the lines for best effect to give an impression of hopeless failure, which is what he wants to give. The fact that to do so makes America's position in the world weaker apparently doesn't trouble him.

But amazingly, even active duty military officers are speaking out against President Bush. For example, the Washington Post quoted an unnamed senior General at the Pentagon as saying, " the current OSD (Office of the Secretary of Defense) refused to listen or adhere to military advice." Rarely if ever in American history have uniformed commanders felt compelled to challenge their commander in chief in public.

Sorry, Al. Without a name, the quote is useless. It could be a serious, dedicated officer who means what the quote says, it could be a serious dedicated officer quoted out of context, or it could be a malcontent the paper cherry picked for a quote.

The Post also quoted an unnamed general as saying, "Like a lot of senior Army guys I'm quite angry" with Rumsfeld and the rest of the Bush Administration. He listed two reasons. "I think they are going to break the Army," he said, adding that what really incites him is "I don't think they care."

No names, no value.

In his upcoming book, Zinni blames the current catastrophe on the Bush team's incompetence early on. "In the lead-up to the Iraq war, and its later conduct," he writes, "I saw at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility, at worst, lying, incompetence and corruption."

Of course he did. Zinni has a book to sell! He also worked high up in the Clinton Administration, which makes his credibility shaky. Like yours, Al.

To make matters worse, they were placed in a confusing situation where the chain of command was criss-crossed between intelligence gathering and prison administration, and further confused by an unprecedented mixing of military and civilian contractor authority.

That's true, Al. When can we expect an apology for YOUR administration and party's very large role in that?

The soldiers who are accused of committing these atrocities are, of course, responsible for their own actions and if found guilty, must be severely and appropriately punished. But they are not the ones primarily responsible for the disgrace that has been brought upon the United States of America.

Yes, Al, they ARE primarily responsible, and nothing you say can alter that.

Private Lynndie England did not make the decision that the United States would not observe the Geneva Convention.

Nor is the Geneva Convention relevant to the matter.

Specialist Charles Graner was not the one who approved a policy of establishing an American Gulag of dark rooms with naked prisoners to be "stressed" and even - we must use the word - tortured - to force them to say things that legal procedures might not induce them to say.

No, because there was no such policy. There were orders to 'soften up' prisoners, and if you think that's unique to this war, or that it's going to stop happening, you're a fool. But there were no orders for systematic torture. If there were, it would have come out by now.

President Bush set the tone for our attitude for suspects in his State of the Union address. He noted that more than 3,000 "suspected terrorists" had been arrested in many countries and then he added, "and many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way: they are no longer a problem to the United States and our allies."

You say that as if it were a bad thing, Al. :lol:

How dare they blame their misdeeds on enlisted personnel from a Reserve unit in upstate New York. President Bush owes more than one apology.

No, Al. It's YOU who owes your country an apology for making this speech under these circumstances, and revealing yourself for what you are.

How dare the incompetent and willful members of this Bush/Cheney Administration humiliate our nation and our people in the eyes of the world and in the conscience of our own people.

No, Al, that's YOU again.

How dare they subject us to such dishonor and disgrace. How dare they drag the good name of the United States of America through the mud of Saddam Hussein's torture prison.

Al, if you think that any comparison exists between Hussein's systematic, murderous, and brutal torture, to the scale of hundreds of thousands of people, and what happened at Abu Ghraib, even including what the idiots did, then you're either very confused or ignorant.

David Kay concluded his search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq with the famous verdict: "we were all wrong."

David Kay doesn't know whether we were wrong or not. He's revealed himself as a partisan, and he's in the same boat as Hans Blix now, desperately hoping he guessed right.

But even if he's right, it has no bearing on the morality of the war. It was up to Hussein to show his innocence, which he did not do.

And for many Americans, Kay's statement seemed to symbolize the awful collision between Reality and all of the false and fading impressions President Bush had fostered in building support for his policy of going to war.

Sorry, Al, you're on record, as is your President and your party:

"One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line."
President Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998

"Iraq is a long way from [here], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face."
Madeline Albright, Feb 18, 1998.

"Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process."
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998.

"Hussein has ... chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies."
Madeline Albright, Clinton Secretary of State, Nov. 10, 1999.

and as another reminder of your own duplicity

"We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country."
Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002.

"Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power."
Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002.

"We are now being viewed as the modern Crusaders, as the modern colonial power in this part of the world," Zinni said.

The Middle East views the entire West that way. I frankly doubt they really expect us to stay that long, more likely they'll try to keep us there when we do reach the point of pulling out.

The President convinced a majority of the country that Saddam Hussein was responsible for attacking us on September 11th.

No Al, that's not what he said. As you well know.

But in truth he had nothing whatsoever to do with it.

Evidence, Al? HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT?

He asked the nation , in his State of the Union address, to "imagine" how terrified we should be that Saddam was about to give nuclear weapons to terrorists and stated repeatedly that Iraq posed a grave and gathering threat to our nation.

Which he did. Sorry, Al.

He planted the seeds of war, and harvested a whirlwind. And now, the "corrupt tree" of a war waged on false premises has brought us the "evil fruit" of Americans torturing and humiliating prisoners.

No, Al. This speech is what is based on false premises.

In my opinion, John Kerry is dealing with this unfolding tragedy in an impressive and extremely responsible way.

"[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs."
Letter to President Clinton, signed by Sens. Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, and others Oct. 9, 1998

Our nation's best interest lies in having a new president who can turn a new page, sweep clean with a new broom, and take office on January 20th of next year with the ability to make a fresh assessment of exactly what our nation's strategic position is as of the time the reigns of power are finally wrested from the group of incompetents that created this catastrophe.

Kerry, if elected, will have two and only two choices, follow more-or-less the same general approach Bush has, or give up the fight (even if he makes impressive-sounding noises at the UN). Kerry knows that, too. That's why he sends Gore, Kennedy, etc, out to throw red meat to the base, while he tacks to the center in case he wins the election.

Kerry should not tie his own hands by offering overly specific, detailed proposals concerning a situation that is rapidly changing and unfortunately, rapidly deteriorating, but should rather preserve his, and our country's, options, to retrieve our national honor as soon as this long national nightmare is over.

In short, Kerry has no real alternative plan, and never has had one.

Eisenhower did not propose a five-point plan for changing America's approach to the Korean War when he was running for president in 1952.

Dwight Eisenhower didn't go out and make speeches that were either calculated to encourage North Korea, or indifferent to the possibility of doing so, either, Al. You might want to take a lesson from that.

One of the strengths of democracy is the ability of the people to regularly demand changes in leadership and to fire a failing leader and hire a new one with the promise of hopeful change. That is the real solution to America's quagmire in Iraq.

Ah, we had the 'V word', now it's time for the 'Q word'. At least you're reassuringly predictable, Al. :lol:

It is therefore essential that even as we focus on the fateful choice, the voters must make this November that we simultaneously search for ways to sharply reduce the extraordinary danger that we face with the current leadership team in place. It is for that reason that I am calling today for Republicans as well as Democrats to join me in asking for the immediate resignations of those immediately below George Bush and Dick Cheney who are most responsible for creating the catastrophe that we are facing in Iraq.

OK, He's not stupid, Gore knows that his sort of thing is inherently over the line in wartime, with combat troops engaged. Yet he does it anyway.

We desperately need a national security team with at least minimal competence because the current team is making things worse with each passing day. They are endangering the lives of our soldiers,

No, Al, that's YOU again, with this reckless, immoral, and irresponsible act of political self-indulgence.

Condoleeza Rice, who has badly mishandled the coordination of national security policy, should also resign immediately.

No, Al, what's our national security calls for is you to apologize for this speech, to apologize to your countrymen for increasing the danger to our national security and the lives of our uniformed personnel.

George Tenet should also resign. I want to offer a special word about George Tenet, because he is a personal friend and I know him to be a good and decent man. It is especially painful to call for his resignation, but I have regretfully concluded that it is extremely important that our country have new leadership at the CIA immediately.

Translation, I'll say and do whatever it takes to achieve my ends, without regard for who I hurt.

During Ronald Reagan's Presidency, Secretary of Labor Ray Donovan was accused of corruption, but eventually, after a lot of publicity, the indictment was thrown out by the Judge. Donovan asked the question, "Where do I go to get my reputation back?"

Where does America go to undo the damage YOU are doing, Al?

Make no mistake, the damage done at Abu Ghraib is not only to America's reputation and America's strategic interests, but also to America's spirit. It is also crucial for our nation to recognize - and to recognize quickly - that the damage our nation has suffered in the world is far, far more serious than President Bush's belated and tepid response would lead people to believe. Remember how shocked each of us, individually, was when we first saw those hideous images. The natural tendency was to first recoil from the images, and then to assume that they represented a strange and rare aberration that resulted from a few twisted minds or, as the Pentagon assured us, "a few bad apples."

And guess what, Al? That's what it turned out to be! How about that?

But as today's shocking news reaffirms yet again, this was not rare. It was not an aberration. Today's New York Times reports that an Army survey of prisoner deaths and mistreatment in Iraq and Afghanisatan "show a widespread pattern of abuse involving more military units than previously known.'

Would that be the same New York Times that reported the failure of the Iraq Invasion, just before it ended in American victory? The same NYT that argues that just because a story turned out to be fake, doesn't mean the Pulitzer should be given back? :lol: :twisted:

Our world is unconquerable because the human spirit is unconquerable, and any national strategy based on pursuing the goal of domination is doomed to fail because it generates its own opposition, and in the process, creates enemies for the would-be dominator.

Hmm...what's that got to do with America's effort in Iraq? America is not trying to dominate the world, Al.

A policy based on domination of the rest of the world not only creates enemies for the United States and creates recruits for Al Qaeda, it also undermines the international cooperation that is essential to defeating the efforts of terrorists who wish harm and intimidate Americans.

That would be true. I guess that's one more reason it's a good thing America is not trying to dominate the world. :lol:

Unilateralism, as we have painfully seen in Iraq, is its own reward.

Unilaterism is the only game in town, Al. The rest of the world has no desire to help us, because they don't see it as being in their self-interest. If Kerry gets elected, he'll face the choice of deferring to the wishes of our one-time allies, or acting unilaterally, the way Bush has had to do, and for that matter the way your former boss Bill Clinton did in Kosovo. Or have your forgotten that little incident? :twisted:

Our troops are stretched thin and exhausted not only because Secretary Rumsfeld contemptuously dismissed the advice of military leaders on the size of the needed force - but also because President Bush's contempt for traditional allies and international opinion left us without a real coalition to share the military and financial burden of the war and the occupation.

Al, if you're going lie, at least use a plausible lie!

Bush tried to use the traditional alliance system, Al. He discovered that it was dead.

Our future is dependent upon increasing cooperation and interdependence in a world tied ever more closely together by technologies of communications and travel.

True. Which is why living in the past, trying to revive the dead Atlantic Alliance and trying to breathe life into the stillborn UN peacekeeping system is counterproductive.

The emergence of a truly global civilization has been accompanied

Sorry Al, but you've got your facts wrong again. There is no global civilization, because there is no global unified culture or common values. What we have is a collection of civilizations, jammed against each other in too small a space. It isn't the same thing.

Make no mistake, it is precisely our moral authority that is our greatest source of strength,

Al, the world never followed us because of moral authority, they followed us because they perceived it to be in their pragmatic self-interest to do so. If we want the world to follow us again, we have to figure out a way to make our interests and theirs coincide again.

They have launched an unprecedented assault on civil liberties,

What is the count? Is this lie #9 or lie #99? :lol:

No, Al, what they've done is not unprecedented, it's not even as bad as what your former boss Bill Clinton did. They're wrong to do it, but they've affected only a handful of people, most of whom probably are guilty. It's a bad precedent, and a mistake.

It's not a mass assault on freedom, and the lie that it is makes it harder to correct it.

The same pattern characterizes virtually all of their policies. They resent any constraint as an insult to their will to dominate and exercise power. Their appetite for power is astonishing. It has led them to introduce a new level of viciousness in partisan politics. It is that viciousness that led them to attack as unpatriotic, Senator Max Cleland, who lost three limbs in combat during the Vietnam War.

No, Al, they attacked him for supporting Hillary and the national Democratic leadership, which he DID. It's not their fault that the voters in his State perceive that as being a bad thing to do. Cleland lost an election, and that's life.

The president episodically poses as a healer and "uniter". If he president really has any desire to play that role, then I call upon him to condemn Rush Limbaugh - perhaps his strongest political supporter - who said that the torture in Abu Ghraib was a "brilliant maneuver" and that the photos were "good old American pornography," and that the actions portrayed were simply those of "people having a good time and needing to blow off steam."

Actually, Al, you've got the context wrong. Again.

This new political viciousness by the President and his supporters is found not only on the campaign trail, but in the daily operations of our democracy. They have insisted that the leaders of their party in the Congress deny Democrats any meaningful role whatsoever in shaping legislation, debating the choices before us as a people, or even to attend the all-important conference committees that reconcile the differences between actions by the Senate and House of Representatives.

Hmmm...looks like they learned by watching Democrats, back in the days when you guys held both Houses of Congress, and routinely denied the GOP any significiant access to the levers of power. What goes around comes around, Al.

But what we do now, in reaction to Abu Ghraib will determine a great deal about who we are at the beginning of the 21st century. It is important to note that just as the abuses of the prisoners flowed directly from the policies of the Bush White House, those policies flowed not only from the instincts of the president and his advisors, but found support in shifting attitudes on the part of some in our country in response to the outrage and fear generated by the attack of September 11th.

Al, you've repeated this several times. That doesn't make it true.

The president exploited and fanned those fears, but some otherwise sensible and levelheaded Americans fed them as well. I remember reading genteel-sounding essays asking publicly whether or not the prohibitions against torture were any longer relevant or desirable. The same grotesque misunderstanding of what is really involved was responsible for the tone in the memo from the president's legal advisor, Alberto Gonzalez, who wrote on January 25, 2002, that 9/11 "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."

Translation: "It's been long enough since 911 that we think we can try to restore the pre-911 political status quo, since memories may have faded sufficiently, or so we hope."

We have seen the pictures. We have learned the news. We cannot unlearn it; it is part of us.

Translation: "We have seen the pictures, and heard the hysterical insinuations of the media, and we Democrats hope your emotions have overridden your judgement long enough for us to get out power back."

[quote]
The important question now is, what will we do now about torture. Stop it?
[/quote

It's already stopped, Al. The military stopped it, after the military detected it, publicized it, and prosecuted and dealt with the offenders. The meat of the matter was over before the pictures even reached the TV screens.

Yes, of course. But that means demanding all of the facts, not covering them up, as some now charge the administration is now doing. One of the whistleblowers at Abu Ghraib, Sergeant Samuel Provance, told ABC News a few days ago that he was being intimidated and punished for telling the truth. "There is definitely a coverup," Provance said. "I feel like I am being punished for being honest."

How do we know we can believe him, Al? What is his evidence?

Moreover, the administration has also set up the men and women of our own armed forces for payback the next time they are held as prisoners.

No, Al, the perpetrators did that. Not that they would be treated well anyway, by any enemy we're likely to be engaged against in the foreseeable future. Does the name 'Nick Berg' ring a bell, Al? How about 'Dan Perl'?

In December of 2000, even though I strongly disagreed with the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to order a halt to the counting of legally cast ballots, I saw it as my duty to reaffirm my own strong belief that we are a nation of laws and not only accept the decision, but do what I could to prevent efforts to delegitimize George Bush as he took the oath of office as president.

Translation: "In December of 2000, my every effort to steal the election having failed, and realizing that I was hurting my chances of any future political influence by continuing the effort, and recognizing that I had no realistic chance of either 'turning' any votes in the Electoral College or mounting a Congressional challenge given GOP control, I chose to make the best of it and do a gracious surrender."

So today, I want to speak on behalf of those Americans who feel that President Bush has betrayed our nation's trust, those who are horrified at what has been done in our name, and all those who want the rest of the world to know that we Americans see the abuses that occurred in the prisons of Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and secret locations as yet undisclosed

Al, what locations, what abuses, and why are they secret? If you know about them, after the rest of this speech, you might as well go all the way!What locations, who is doing the abusing, who are the victims?

Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68

Originally Posted by Terminator X

Originally Posted by Devil's Advocate

Are the terrorists the ones who really "enrage" you, or are you merely filled with rage toward your own currently elected leaders here at home? Is America really the guilty party in this conflict? Or those we are fighting against? If Bush wins a big victory in November, who will be the real patriots, then: the American voters or the Terrorists?

If Bush wins a big victory in November, the real losers will be the American public. The real victors will be the energy lobby and the terrorists.
Bush, who was a lame duck president from January to September 2001, has nothing else to run on than appearing strong in the face of terror. He needs war to remain in office. The terrorists obviously love this. Both are driven by fantasies of imminent catastrophe and holy war.
If the terrorists use terror prior to the election, it will be used to keep Bush in office, a sort of Madrid logic, except backwards.

The terrorists want Kerry, or any President who will turn American decison-making power over to an international forum. They have nothing whatever to gain by Bush winning.

No way. The terrorists want Bush because he divides us from what could be more helpful allies, is a great poster boy for remorselessly killing Americans, and, like the terrorists, profits by waging more war.

Originally Posted by Witchiepoo

Originally Posted by Terminator X

Originally Posted by Witchiepoo

Originally Posted by Devil's Advocate

Originally Posted by jadams

For those of you who have not seen Gore's speech last night, go to CSpan.org and it is right at the top of most watched. It was a magnificent example of how an American patriot responds in a time of great peril.

At Moveon.org you can also find his speech on fear, which was also great. He puts Howard Dean in the shade.

Do you think Kerry will take a que from Gore's "magnificent example of how an American patriot responds,", and begin to sound more like him? Do you think this would be a good idea on Kerry's part (ie., is this what most Americans want to hear?)?

Kerry will just keep on droning, because he is an idiot.

You mean acting presidential???

I don't get what "acting presidential" is supposed to mean. If we go by the example of our current president, it means avoiding direct questions by the press at all costs, and wearing costumes that make a strong impression during photo ops. That's about it. Oh, maybe I should include trash-talking "evil-doers" in speeches as well.

When people talk about Kerry "acting presidential," they seem to mean letting others do the dirty work, making horribly boring and mundane speeches, and avoiding controversy at all costs.
If Kerry continues to "act" presidential in this sense, he might win an Oscar, but he won't win the election.

You mentioned droning and idiocy. It remided me of our current CIC.

Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68

"We are now being viewed as the modern Crusaders, as the modern colonial power in this part of the world," Zinni said.

The Middle East views the entire West that way. I frankly doubt they really expect us to stay that long, more likely they'll try to keep us there when we do reach the point of pulling out.

The President convinced a majority of the country that Saddam Hussein was responsible for attacking us on September 11th.

No Al, that's not what he said. As you well know.

But in truth he had nothing whatsoever to do with it.

Evidence, Al? HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT?

He asked the nation , in his State of the Union address, to "imagine" how terrified we should be that Saddam was about to give nuclear weapons to terrorists and stated repeatedly that Iraq posed a grave and gathering threat to our nation.

Which he did. Sorry, Al.

He planted the seeds of war, and harvested a whirlwind. And now, the "corrupt tree" of a war waged on false premises has brought us the "evil fruit" of Americans torturing and humiliating prisoners.

No, Al. This speech is what is based on false premises.

In my opinion, John Kerry is dealing with this unfolding tragedy in an impressive and extremely responsible way.

"[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs."
Letter to President Clinton, signed by Sens. Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, and others Oct. 9, 1998

Our nation's best interest lies in having a new president who can turn a new page, sweep clean with a new broom, and take office on January 20th of next year with the ability to make a fresh assessment of exactly what our nation's strategic position is as of the time the reigns of power are finally wrested from the group of incompetents that created this catastrophe.

Kerry, if elected, will have two and only two choices, follow more-or-less the same general approach Bush has, or give up the fight (even if he makes impressive-sounding noises at the UN). Kerry knows that, too. That's why he sends Gore, Kennedy, etc, out to throw red meat to the base, while he tacks to the center in case he wins the election.

Kerry should not tie his own hands by offering overly specific, detailed proposals concerning a situation that is rapidly changing and unfortunately, rapidly deteriorating, but should rather preserve his, and our country's, options, to retrieve our national honor as soon as this long national nightmare is over.

In short, Kerry has no real alternative plan, and never has had one.

Eisenhower did not propose a five-point plan for changing America's approach to the Korean War when he was running for president in 1952.

Dwight Eisenhower didn't go out and make speeches that were either calculated to encourage North Korea, or indifferent to the possibility of doing so, either, Al. You might want to take a lesson from that.

One of the strengths of democracy is the ability of the people to regularly demand changes in leadership and to fire a failing leader and hire a new one with the promise of hopeful change. That is the real solution to America's quagmire in Iraq.

Ah, we had the 'V word', now it's time for the 'Q word'. At least you're reassuringly predictable, Al. :lol:

It is therefore essential that even as we focus on the fateful choice, the voters must make this November that we simultaneously search for ways to sharply reduce the extraordinary danger that we face with the current leadership team in place. It is for that reason that I am calling today for Republicans as well as Democrats to join me in asking for the immediate resignations of those immediately below George Bush and Dick Cheney who are most responsible for creating the catastrophe that we are facing in Iraq.

OK, He's not stupid, Gore knows that his sort of thing is inherently over the line in wartime, with combat troops engaged. Yet he does it anyway.

We desperately need a national security team with at least minimal competence because the current team is making things worse with each passing day. They are endangering the lives of our soldiers,

No, Al, that's YOU again, with this reckless, immoral, and irresponsible act of political self-indulgence.

Condoleeza Rice, who has badly mishandled the coordination of national security policy, should also resign immediately.

No, Al, what's our national security calls for is you to apologize for this speech, to apologize to your countrymen for increasing the danger to our national security and the lives of our uniformed personnel.

George Tenet should also resign. I want to offer a special word about George Tenet, because he is a personal friend and I know him to be a good and decent man. It is especially painful to call for his resignation, but I have regretfully concluded that it is extremely important that our country have new leadership at the CIA immediately.

Translation, I'll say and do whatever it takes to achieve my ends, without regard for who I hurt.

During Ronald Reagan's Presidency, Secretary of Labor Ray Donovan was accused of corruption, but eventually, after a lot of publicity, the indictment was thrown out by the Judge. Donovan asked the question, "Where do I go to get my reputation back?"

Where does America go to undo the damage YOU are doing, Al?

Make no mistake, the damage done at Abu Ghraib is not only to America's reputation and America's strategic interests, but also to America's spirit. It is also crucial for our nation to recognize - and to recognize quickly - that the damage our nation has suffered in the world is far, far more serious than President Bush's belated and tepid response would lead people to believe. Remember how shocked each of us, individually, was when we first saw those hideous images. The natural tendency was to first recoil from the images, and then to assume that they represented a strange and rare aberration that resulted from a few twisted minds or, as the Pentagon assured us, "a few bad apples."

And guess what, Al? That's what it turned out to be! How about that?

But as today's shocking news reaffirms yet again, this was not rare. It was not an aberration. Today's New York Times reports that an Army survey of prisoner deaths and mistreatment in Iraq and Afghanisatan "show a widespread pattern of abuse involving more military units than previously known.'

Would that be the same New York Times that reported the failure of the Iraq Invasion, just before it ended in American victory? The same NYT that argues that just because a story turned out to be fake, doesn't mean the Pulitzer should be given back? :lol: :twisted:

Our world is unconquerable because the human spirit is unconquerable, and any national strategy based on pursuing the goal of domination is doomed to fail because it generates its own opposition, and in the process, creates enemies for the would-be dominator.

Hmm...what's that got to do with America's effort in Iraq? America is not trying to dominate the world, Al.

A policy based on domination of the rest of the world not only creates enemies for the United States and creates recruits for Al Qaeda, it also undermines the international cooperation that is essential to defeating the efforts of terrorists who wish harm and intimidate Americans.

That would be true. I guess that's one more reason it's a good thing America is not trying to dominate the world. :lol:

Unilateralism, as we have painfully seen in Iraq, is its own reward.

Unilaterism is the only game in town, Al. The rest of the world has no desire to help us, because they don't see it as being in their self-interest. If Kerry gets elected, he'll face the choice of deferring to the wishes of our one-time allies, or acting unilaterally, the way Bush has had to do, and for that matter the way your former boss Bill Clinton did in Kosovo. Or have your forgotten that little incident? :twisted:

Our troops are stretched thin and exhausted not only because Secretary Rumsfeld contemptuously dismissed the advice of military leaders on the size of the needed force - but also because President Bush's contempt for traditional allies and international opinion left us without a real coalition to share the military and financial burden of the war and the occupation.

Al, if you're going lie, at least use a plausible lie!

Bush tried to use the traditional alliance system, Al. He discovered that it was dead.

Our future is dependent upon increasing cooperation and interdependence in a world tied ever more closely together by technologies of communications and travel.

True. Which is why living in the past, trying to revive the dead Atlantic Alliance and trying to breathe life into the stillborn UN peacekeeping system is counterproductive.

The emergence of a truly global civilization has been accompanied

Sorry Al, but you've got your facts wrong again. There is no global civilization, because there is no global unified culture or common values. What we have is a collection of civilizations, jammed against each other in too small a space. It isn't the same thing.

Make no mistake, it is precisely our moral authority that is our greatest source of strength,

Al, the world never followed us because of moral authority, they followed us because they perceived it to be in their pragmatic self-interest to do so. If we want the world to follow us again, we have to figure out a way to make our interests and theirs coincide again.

They have launched an unprecedented assault on civil liberties,

What is the count? Is this lie #9 or lie #99? :lol:

No, Al, what they've done is not unprecedented, it's not even as bad as what your former boss Bill Clinton did. They're wrong to do it, but they've affected only a handful of people, most of whom probably are guilty. It's a bad precedent, and a mistake.

It's not a mass assault on freedom, and the lie that it is makes it harder to correct it.

The same pattern characterizes virtually all of their policies. They resent any constraint as an insult to their will to dominate and exercise power. Their appetite for power is astonishing. It has led them to introduce a new level of viciousness in partisan politics. It is that viciousness that led them to attack as unpatriotic, Senator Max Cleland, who lost three limbs in combat during the Vietnam War.

No, Al, they attacked him for supporting Hillary and the national Democratic leadership, which he DID. It's not their fault that the voters in his State perceive that as being a bad thing to do. Cleland lost an election, and that's life.

The president episodically poses as a healer and "uniter". If he president really has any desire to play that role, then I call upon him to condemn Rush Limbaugh - perhaps his strongest political supporter - who said that the torture in Abu Ghraib was a "brilliant maneuver" and that the photos were "good old American pornography," and that the actions portrayed were simply those of "people having a good time and needing to blow off steam."

Actually, Al, you've got the context wrong. Again.

This new political viciousness by the President and his supporters is found not only on the campaign trail, but in the daily operations of our democracy. They have insisted that the leaders of their party in the Congress deny Democrats any meaningful role whatsoever in shaping legislation, debating the choices before us as a people, or even to attend the all-important conference committees that reconcile the differences between actions by the Senate and House of Representatives.

Hmmm...looks like they learned by watching Democrats, back in the days when you guys held both Houses of Congress, and routinely denied the GOP any significiant access to the levers of power. What goes around comes around, Al.

But what we do now, in reaction to Abu Ghraib will determine a great deal about who we are at the beginning of the 21st century. It is important to note that just as the abuses of the prisoners flowed directly from the policies of the Bush White House, those policies flowed not only from the instincts of the president and his advisors, but found support in shifting attitudes on the part of some in our country in response to the outrage and fear generated by the attack of September 11th.

Al, you've repeated this several times. That doesn't make it true.

The president exploited and fanned those fears, but some otherwise sensible and levelheaded Americans fed them as well. I remember reading genteel-sounding essays asking publicly whether or not the prohibitions against torture were any longer relevant or desirable. The same grotesque misunderstanding of what is really involved was responsible for the tone in the memo from the president's legal advisor, Alberto Gonzalez, who wrote on January 25, 2002, that 9/11 "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."

Translation: "It's been long enough since 911 that we think we can try to restore the pre-911 political status quo, since memories may have faded sufficiently, or so we hope."

We have seen the pictures. We have learned the news. We cannot unlearn it; it is part of us.

Translation: "We have seen the pictures, and heard the hysterical insinuations of the media, and we Democrats hope your emotions have overridden your judgement long enough for us to get out power back."

The important question now is, what will we do now about torture. Stop it?
[/quote

It's already stopped, Al. The military stopped it, after the military detected it, publicized it, and prosecuted and dealt with the offenders. The meat of the matter was over before the pictures even reached the TV screens.

Yes, of course. But that means demanding all of the facts, not covering them up, as some now charge the administration is now doing. One of the whistleblowers at Abu Ghraib, Sergeant Samuel Provance, told ABC News a few days ago that he was being intimidated and punished for telling the truth. "There is definitely a coverup," Provance said. "I feel like I am being punished for being honest."

How do we know we can believe him, Al? What is his evidence?

Moreover, the administration has also set up the men and women of our own armed forces for payback the next time they are held as prisoners.

No, Al, the perpetrators did that. Not that they would be treated well anyway, by any enemy we're likely to be engaged against in the foreseeable future. Does the name 'Nick Berg' ring a bell, Al? How about 'Dan Perl'?

In December of 2000, even though I strongly disagreed with the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to order a halt to the counting of legally cast ballots, I saw it as my duty to reaffirm my own strong belief that we are a nation of laws and not only accept the decision, but do what I could to prevent efforts to delegitimize George Bush as he took the oath of office as president.

Translation: "In December of 2000, my every effort to steal the election having failed, and realizing that I was hurting my chances of any future political influence by continuing the effort, and recognizing that I had no realistic chance of either 'turning' any votes in the Electoral College or mounting a Congressional challenge given GOP control, I chose to make the best of it and do a gracious surrender."

So today, I want to speak on behalf of those Americans who feel that President Bush has betrayed our nation's trust, those who are horrified at what has been done in our name, and all those who want the rest of the world to know that we Americans see the abuses that occurred in the prisons of Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and secret locations as yet undisclosed

Al, what locations, what abuses, and why are they secret? If you know about them, after the rest of this speech, you might as well go all the way!What locations, who is doing the abusing, who are the victims?

It saddens me to see a man so full of life debating text on a public forum for the benefit of his own sanity.
My chief criticism of this poster is his (I assume it is a male) reliance on certain "realities" to support his arguments. He throws plenty of blame around for alternate realities, to Democrats, and liberals, and The New York Times but doesn't accept that if enough people believe them, then they must constutute some sort of reality.
Take one reality that you've brought up several times - the killing of Nic Berg.
Why was he dressed in a standard issue US detainee jumpsuit? Why did his beheading coincide with the Abu Ghraib scandal? Did it actually coincide with it? Who said that the voice belonged to Al-Zaraqi (spelling?) doesn't he have a false leg and a tattoo on his hand?
This is just conspiracy paranoia circulated via Internet - but it's real enough that it creates a smidgeon of doubt about what exactly these realities are. And that doubt is part of our greater reality. Scott McLellan gets to tailor reality. But we must admit that reality is, like all things, a concept in flux.

The further Bush sinks in the polls, the more defensive and irrational his defenders become. I suppose that's to be expected.

I think I'll probably avoid political discussions until a few months after the election, when the Bushbots may have returned to a disappointed sanity.

HC, while i certainly appreciate the effort, i'm dealing with an attention span problem here. dissecting gore's speech line-for-line doesn't help all that much.

but i did read some of it (which seemed to take an eternity), and it seems the basic gist of why you call it borderline traitorous is that gore obviously strongly disagrees with the path the bush administration has chosen, and for some reason, calling the bush admin. out on it borders on treason.

pardon me for saying so, but that's crap. (how's that for short and sweet?)


TK

p.s.-- just a reminder, i say that as someone who was a lukewarm supporter of the invasion.

(deleted)

(deleted)