Re: Eliot Spitzer, antismoking leader, self-destructs

On Wed, 19 Mar 2008 13:22:39 -0500, "Judson McClendon"
<judmc@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

>"SkippyPB" <swiegand@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> "Judson McClendon" <judmc@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>>"Howard Brazee" <howard@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>>> "Judson McClendon" <judmc@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>As you say, I'm all for killing the terrorists, when they can be
found.
>>>>>But part of the "education" process is to provide a social
environment
>>>>>in which that can take place. As Bush pointed out, democracies are
not
>>>>>prone to starting wars with innocent neighbors. I do not think it is
>>>>>the population of Iraq that is so opposed to democracy; the problem
is
>>>>>being im****ted from other countries, like Iran.
>>>>
>>>> When democracies (and other states) start wars, they define the enemy
>>>> as guilty.   And every state is guilty of stuff.    If we don't find
>>>> weapons of mass destruction, we change our excuse.
>>>
>>>Anyone who thinks Sadam Hussein wasn't interested in WMD is ignorant
>>>of recent history and clueless about human nature. If we did not find
>>>them, it was because he had moved them elsewhere, and/or not yet
>>>developed what he wanted. What would have been better, to have waged
>>>WWII in Europe, or taken Hitler out when he first started violating
>>>the Armistice agreement? The latter would have saved some 50 million
>>>lives and the devastation of Europe. Sadam Hussein, like Joseph Stalin,
>>>is one of the few men in history who have fair claim to being more evil
>>>than Hitler. Even Hitler had friends and people he cared about, but
>>>Saddam Hussein, like Stalin, had no such human emotion and was more
>>>like a reptile than a human. Hussein was a serious danger to anyone on
>>>the planet, and I for one will gladly pay my share of taxes to take him
>>>out. But people clueless about human nature, like Neville Chamberlain,
>>>never understand true evil until it bites their heads off, and then it
>>>is too late, unfortunately, usually for many others.
>>
>> But that's not the point.  Bush SAID before the UN and the American
>> people one of the reason's for invading Iraq was because Sadam HAD
>> WMD's.  The fact is, and there is almost no doubt that Bush knew this,
>> he hadn't had any for nearly 10 years having disposed of them after
>> the Gulf War.  Bush also said before the UN and the American people
>> that Sadam was linked to Al Qaeda.  Again, something he knew not to be
>> true, but was used as another reason to invade Iraq. And how about the
>> way he humiliated Colen Powell with the neuclear Milk Factory or
>> nuclear train to nowhere or the attempt (untrue) to buy radioactive
>> material from Niger?  Lies, upon lies, upon lies.
>>
>> Just because Sadam was "interested" in WMDs is no reason to invade.
>> Fidel Castro has been "interested" in WMDs for over 30 years and Bush
>> didn't invade him.  Hell, Hugo Chavez is probably interested in WMDs
>> and we're not invading him.
>
>Ahem. Saddam actually *used* WMD on the Kurds, people in his
>own country. I think that demonstrates far more than mere *interest*.
>

That was during the Gulf War (like I said). During the time that Bush
was firing up everyone about Sadam, he no longer had WMD's.  


>> You compare Sadam to Stalin (not even close) as what?  A reason to
>> assuage your guilt for sup****ting Bush and his invasion of Iraq?  If
>> being inhuman to your people is the criteria, then why haven't we
>> bombed China for their treatment of Tibet?  Why haven't we invaded
>> Burma for their suppression of democracy in that country?  Or invaded
>> North Korea whose people are slowly starving and have a demigod for a
>> ruler? Why haven't we put a substantial force in Darfur to help end
>> the genocide there?  Bottom line is, your sup****t for Bush and his
>> Iraq invasion is illogical.
>
>I'm not saying Saddam Hussein was equal to Hitler or Stalin in the
>amount of damage he did, but in the evil of nature. Given the same
>op****tunities, Saddam would have been just as evil and ruthless as
>either of them.
>

No kidding.  Yet his evilness was of no threat to the US.  He was
being contained by the British and US Air Forces with the enforcement
of the no fly zones.  Again I point out that there were and still are
rulers in the world at least as evil as Saddam and the US is not
invading those countries.

>Saddam was in a position to capture the oil fields of Saudi Arabia.
>You think 9/11 was damaging to the U.S.? That would be *nothing*
>compared to the damage caused to all industrialized countries if he
>had done so. Look what he did in Kuwait. I would prefer to have troops
>stationed in Iraq to prevent that from happening, than to have troops
>stationed in Saudi Arabia *after* it happened. Iraq would certainly
>have been nuked in such an eventuality. Jimmy Carter made that
>official U.S. policy. Anyone think that would have been better than
>this?
>

No way Saddam invades Saudi Arabia.  First, the US has had bases there
since WW2.  Secondly, the Saudi Arabian Air Force is and was better
equipped and talented and would have wiped out the Iraq's in short
order.  Saddam tried lobbing some missals at Saudi Arabia during the
Gulf War.  That didn't get him very far.  Your grasping at straws with
that argument.


>I don't know how honest or dishonest George Bush was about Iraq. But
>I know with certainty that I am very glad Saddam Hussein is gone, and
>I think we are better off today than we would have been had we not
>invaded Iraq, whatever his reasons were. I also know that it's easy
>to criticize in hindsight, and much harder to know what's the best
>strategy beforehand. It's also easy to *say* worse things would not
>have happened, when it isn't your neck on the line having to make the
>decisions. George Bush's primary responsibility is to protect American
>lives and property, and that applies to *probable* threats as well as
>formally proven and do***ented threats. Intelligence is a complex and
>difficult business; you almost *never* know anything with certainty.
>

Probably threats yes, not implausible ones as Iraq was.


>Your objections remind me of the people harping that Y2K turned out
>not to be so bad. Well, only idiots expected their cars and microwaves
>to explode. But the reason why Y2K wasn't bad was because millions of
>programmers worked their brains out fixing the problems in time. I was
>one of them, and damaged my health in the process. It's easy to harp
>and complain, after the problem has been fixed. Terrorism isn't fixed,
>but Saddam Hussein is fixed, permanently, and terrorism has been held
>back, at least to a degree. As George Bush said from the beginning, we
>may not live to see the end of this war with terrorism. Our children,
>and maybe even our grandchildren, may be fighting it. Some problems
>are just not easily or quickly solved; that's life.
>

And taking out Saddam is no cure for terrorism either.  Even capturing
Bin Laden won't fix that.  And thanks to George Bush, terrorism is
going to last a lot longer than it would have had he actually put into
effects policies to combat the reasons for terrorists rather than
taking the easy way and invading an alleged terrorist country.

Osama bin Laden's purpose for the 9/11 attack was (and is) to provoke
massive retaliation from the US against Islam. He hoped that our
retaliation would finally unite Islam against the US as a common
enemy, and that his vision for a fundamentalist pan-Islamic state
would sweep away all the more moderate governments in the region, as
well as movements toward a pluralistic culture.

The invasion of Iraq is not only a distraction from more im****tant
goals, but a provocation that is making Osama bin Laden's dream come
true.

The purpose of the original attack was to provoke our retaliation,
which would affect primarily the ordinary Islamic people, destroying
what trust they had for the US, and making them more willing to give
aid and comfort to the terrorists among them. To a surprising extent,
we have fallen right into Osama bin Laden's trap. The future of the
world depends on finding our way out. 

It's tempting to think that a war against terrorism can be won by
killing all the terrorists. In the real world, this naive plan doesn't
work. A serious attempt to find and kill all the terrorists also
sweeps up many ordinary people, and some of them and their relatives
become new terrorists, creating more terrorists than were destroyed.
The harder the authorities pursue this strategy, the more it looks
like genocide, and the more effectively they recruit new terrorists.

But unfortunately this isn't the way George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald
Rumsfeld and many, many others think.  

>Just hope and pray that the liberals don't get their way and pull the
>U.S. out of Iraq too soon. I can think of nothing that would encourage
>and embolden the terrorists more. Regardless of whether or not the Iraq
>war was a good idea, pulling out too early would be a disaster, and the
>stupidest thing we could possibly do, at this point.

Our leaving Iraq would not embolden the terrorists.  They gain more by
our being their where they can easily irritate us and make us do
things, like we've been doing, to feed their propaganda machine. What
should and will be done when the Democrats gain control will be to
divert the troops from Iraq to Afghanistan to finish what GWB didn't.
The real war aginst terrorism lies in that country, not Iraq.

Regards,
          ////
         (o o)
-oOO--(_)--OOo-

"I wan' all dem kids to do what I do, to look up to me. I wan' all the
kids to
copulate me."
--  ex-Chicago Cubs outfielder Andre Dawson on being a role model
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Remove nospam to email me.

Steve