Rumsfeld Lied.
 

Get ready for the Republi-nazi spin on this...

No spin in the article, Chief. BTW, thanks for the label.

I'm not only ready for it, I'm looking forward to it for the entertainment value.

I'm not a Republican, but it's morons like you that make liberals look REALLY bad.

Where's all of our republican fanboys now? I was holding off on posting in hopes of setting a record for being quoted for the most consectutive posts...

The New Yorker isn't quite the NY Times

You're right, they are the National Enquirer in disguise :rolleyes:

Nice. So, we get a biased article from a biased publication that doesn't mention a single name to back its "evidence", posted by a poster that is only more outclassed in bias by No Myths, and then before anyone can even bother to respond, we get some other liberal dolt label the other side Nazis. Great, yeah, I am rushing out to vote for Kerry, you guys on the left are the answer for everything!

CR

Well played Chief....

If Scott Horton will testify before Congress, I am afraid not.

you're right, we should be more focused on whether the President got a hummer in the oval office last night...

oh wait, now I see your point was "anything anti-Bush is biased and wrong" much like anything anti-Bush TO Bush is "anti-American".

So, when Bush says "We're going to get the guys that did this." he's only referring to people that do inhumane things AGAINST us and not FOR us right?

For a former moderator, you sure troll a lot. And it's sloppy, unintelligent trolling at that.

I guess your definition of troll is anything you disagree with.

Hmmm...did you see any mention by me about Clinton, hummers or really anything about this? Reading comprehension isn't your strong suit, is it?

I never said anything anti-Bush is wrong. I just pointed out the blatant biases associated with the above posts, specifically yours and WussGawd. If you can't even acknowledge to yourself what an extreme liberal you are, you're clueless and helpless, man, just completely lost from rationality.

Bush can claim is "anti-American" what he wants to. Doesn't mean you or I have to agree with it. Of course, I never talked about any of this at all, so I'm not sure what the point is in bringing it up to a quote from me. I'm no Bush fanboy--I'm not sure I agree with even half the things he and his administration does anymore.

You will have to take up your crusade against Rumsfeld with someone else, I am afraid. You will also have to learn the difference between someone pointing out a simple reality (the blatant bias of the article, the New Yorker, Wussgawd, yourself, and the lack of any attributed name to back up the article's claims), and someone giving tacit approval to the acts done in the Abu Ghraib prison. I am doing the former, not the latter.

But, what do I know? I'm just a Nazi, right? Cue PA announcement: "Paging Mr. Chubby, your objectivity is lost. You may claim it at the lost and found. If you care, which we doubt."

CR

Well that's what happens when there's like 3 political threads going at once what can I say :)

So if the New Yorker is liberal (which I guess it is but I don't read it regularly) then that automatically disqualifies it from ever reporting accurtate news? But what do I know, I'm just another liberal dolt :rolleyes:

Good, then, take it up with those folks. Until I do it, leave me out of it.

Automatically? No. Any source has to be judged on the evidence it presents and the way in which it is presented, both in specific instances and across the history of its publication on related issues. It is my understanding that The New Yorker has established itself as a very left-wing publication. This is further backed by the fact they seem comfortable in spinning together the above article, which doesn't include one single attributable name to support their claims, hiding behind anonymity.

The New Yorker article would be taken a lot more seriously, if the evidence it presents could actually be judged for objectivity. As a former journalist, I can tell you from experience that no mid-stream paper would have run that article without attribution (or let it run amok with its conspiracy-theorist spin). From a journalistic and evidence-based perspective, it's a horribly-written article, and that aspect necessarily leads one to question the veracity of the information it contains.

And, yes, you are a liberal dolt. You're not going to deny you're a liberal are you? And I reserve the right to call anyone a dolt who labels an entire group of people who don't agree with him as "Nazis".

CR

Huh? I don't have an opinion on this topic, since I didn't even read the article. My definition of a troll is someone who continuously instigates people, which you seem to do at every opportunity you can since you came back to FOFC.

Regardless, I don't give a shit about what you do, I just didn't want you to think people don't realize what you are.

uh huh. :rolleyes:

beautiful....

Btw, the guy who wrote this article is the one who exposed the My Lai massacre. So, basically, he's a respected journalist, and Rumsfeld is fucked.

It's funny to me that it seems more and more common that moderate or conservative people label liberals as "biased," and seem to use that term to mean that they are simply wrong and/or not worth listening to. I don't know if anyone else saw the Al Franken vs. Bill O'Reilly CSPAN book show battle, but O'Reilly kept saying that Franken was biased and implying that what he said had no merit, which seemed hilarious to me considering that so far no one has found a significant factual error in any of Franken's books, and the content of his books is essentially pointing out all the lies that people like Bill O'Reilly and Rush spew.
It's faulty logic, though. I mean, everyone who has a political opinion is biased to some extent. I just don't see why being liberal completely discredits what someone has to say, whether it be a well-known journalist being published in a well-known national magazine or some guy on a messageboard. It's a total bullshit debating tactic. Also Rumsfeld is so so fucked.

I'm sure that if and when this story grows more, that will bear itself out. Still, from a journalistic perspective, he didn't do himself any favors by not attributing his sources. There's a reason why anonymous sources are looked down upon in the media community--they quite often prove to be faulty or to have their own purposes for revealing the information (purposes which often impact on the validity and veracity of the information itself).


It's funny to me when someone takes specific instances and believes it is only one side doing it. Like when liberals complain about the dishonesty of the Bush administration and seem to think that if Kerry were elected, he would suddenly be some honest guy in the office.

Fact is, timmy, that both sides are subject to bias, and I see both sides accuse the other of it. So I wouldn't just accuse conservatives or moderates of this approach with liberals, but everybody with everybody.

The logic is not faulty. Bias is a very real issue. Consider the recently posted views of the same story on the three major cable new networks, CNN, MSNBC and Fox. The differences in perspective are just immense, and yet, it's the same story.

Does that mean someone or some information is automatically wrong because it comes from a potentially biased source? Not at all. It just means that that is an aspect of that information you have to consider--that parts of the story may have been left out or downplayed for political/personal purposes, or that someone may feel so strongly about certain views that the resulting coloring of the information they are privy to may affect the message, the truth inherent in the information itself. Bias is distortion, and is a very real presence in the media.

It's not faulty in logic at all to consider the veracity of the information before considering the information itself, and the possible biases of the source are very important to that.

CR

P.S. If the article is true, yes, Rumsfeld is so fucked, which as a Republican, I wouldn't mind--I think he's a bad influence on W. ;)

I too wouldn't mind if Rumsfeld went down. I guess my take on the New Yorker story is that I will wait and see if the story has legs.

Just thought you would all like to know that Seymour Hersh has won a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting and the prestigious George Polk Award (arguably the most coveted prize by journalists). You don't get these things for lying and shoddy journalism.

Do I believe it all? Not yet. But I am not discounting it out of hand it either, as some liberal nonsense. One thing I do know is that it wasn't 7 or 8 grunt soldiers getting out of hand. It was controlled and coordinated interrogation. My guess is we will all learn it soon enough, thanks to reporters like Mr. Hersh.

I agree with you entirely in terms of bias being a legitimate element to consider when evaluating an article or what someone says, and surely bias exists on both sides. It just seems to me that someone being liberal or having a liberal bias is used to dismiss the person or what they have to say right off the bat more often than a conservative bias is. This is just based on my experiences and things I've observed.

I think that the word liberal has really become kind of a bad word because of things like this, so much so that people like John Kerry try to seperate themselves from the term. It's also exactly the reason that the RNC tried to make Kerry known as a liberal right away when he became the Democratic candidate. If you're a liberal anything you have to say can be dismissed immediately.

This is what I was trying to say earlier. To simply dismiss something or someone because they are a liberal and that makes them biased is faulty logic. I mean, maybe this article in the New Yorker is all wrong and full of lies, but considering the New Yorker is a pretty respectable magazine, to dismiss the article just because it's a liberal magazine is poop. Dismiss it because it's full of lies, etc.

Well, not only is Rummy fucked... but if Bush doesn't come down hard and show that he's totally outraged, he could be fucked as well.

Yeah, I see where you're coming from, timmy.

For the record, my opposition to that article at the moment is not so based on liberal bias (the noted facts about Hersh's record in journalism are very compelling, not to mention I wouldn't mind seeing Rumsfeld out on his keister anyway, so long as it doesn't put Kerry in office), as it is on the glaring omission of attributed sources. As a former journalist myself, that really stands out.

Pulitzer Prize or not, that is shoddy work. His information might be good (I guess we'll find out), but the way Hersh went about it here is all wrong, especially considering he then used it as the basis for a lengthy piece that reads like someone desperate to put together a massive conspiracy theory and pulling little bits and facts from anywhere to fit his view.

Without the quotes/information supplied by the unknown Pentagon informant and former intelligence officer, his entire article falls apart like a house of cards. The fact he can't attribute those sources for some reason and that is the basis for the entire article lends me more than a little doubt in my mind to how accurate his take on the situation is.

CR

Didn't Woodward and Berstein use unattributed sources to bring down Nixon? ;)

Bush lied so thousands died

Heh, true enough, but the few sterling examples amongst a sea of false reports in the history of media doesn't mean we can't give some consideration to the veracity of any sources that are unattributed.

CR

Catchy. You should write music.

CR

I only wish I created the phrase :p

He could be a hip-hop supa-star!

I know how Kerry can ensure victory. He should try out for American Idol. They'll let him on for the ratings, and if he sucks, he can become the next William Hung.

If against all odds, he's good, he can truly be a hip hop supa-star. :)

CR

If he's the next William Hung, he'll win in a landslide in November. That's just how it is, people :D.

Why did we go into Iraq anyways?

Was it because of WMDs?
Can't be that because there are none

Was it because of a connection to Osama?
Bush said himself there never was one

Was it so the average Iraqi citizen wouldn't be tortured?
Nada on that as well

And why is this war costing the US more now than it did during Shock and Awe?

hxxp://msnbc.msn.com/id/4988252/

Washington Post joining the fray; although not going as high as Rumsfeld, yet. The smoke may be turning into fire shortly.

Note: even Republicans believe it goes higher than the low level MPs.

That's right, because everybody knows nobody on this planet would be mean to other people without the written consent of their CEO...

There have always been WMD in Iraq. Clinton and foreign intelligence has said the same (UNSCOM even inventoried and documented most of it with the assistance of the Iraqi military back in 94).

If you think there aren't any terrorists in Iraq that are trying to kill Americans, I think CNN can fill in the blanks for you on that one. And yes, they are Al Qaeda.

If you are suggesting that the US Military is the same as the Saddam Regime, you have no idea what you are talking about.

Is money all that greedy neo-socialists care about these days? That's not in line at all with what you folks were screaming about prior to liberating Iraq...

Well put.

Dutch, you've gone off the deep end on this one.

1. Yes, we knew there were WMD's 10 years ago. But were they still there 1 year ago when we started the war? Perhaps the UN got most or all of them. Perhaps Saddam sold them for cash. Perhaps he destroyed them and kept quiet so he could continue to appear strong to his neighbors and dissident forces inside Iraq.

Whatever it is, we have found ZERO WMDs in over a year. Right now, all evidence supports that there aren't any. At this juncture, if any popped up, it would look more like we "planted" them than there were really there.

2. Terrorists? Or patriots fighting a insurgent war aginst an occupying force? There's not much of a difference many times. I refuse to call them terrorists at this point. To me, they're insurgents. Terrorists attack us on our turf. They're defending their turf. Also, were those insurgents there BEFORE we attacked Iraq? Or have we made the civilians there into insurgents? Probaby some of both.

Yes, now Al Queda has people on the ground in Iraq. But there is very little evidence to show that Iraq supported Al Queda in any material way or that there were major Al Queda forces in Iraq. Not nearly like they exist in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi and Egypt at the very least. Most evidence supports that Al Queda has become much more of a force since we removed Saddam. So it appears that using "terrorists" as a cause to invade Iraq really isn't accurate. We either created or, at the very least, compounded the problem of terrorism in Iraq.

3. We are a step up from Saddam, no doubt. At least in a global sense. But to the average Iraqi, I'm not sure we're much of an improvement right now. At least they knew the rules and what to watch out for under Saddam. Now, there's so many different factions and agendas in Iraq that it would be very easy to get caught on the "wrong side" with some bad folks. The folks in the middle are being forced to choose up for fear of being caught in the crossfire. And many of those folks aren't choosing our side.

I'll wait and see if Scott Horton denies the quotes attributed to his name before I hide behind the typical "this reporter and magazine are out to get me" schtick.

1 more for the wignore list.

I think if you bothered to read over the things I've posted here, you'd find that most of them were not only reasonable, but more significantly are being proven more and more true as time goes on.

I will concede that yes, it'd be better if somebody went on the record, but consider who the story is about. This is in effect an article that totally discredits the second in command of the most powerful military in the world.

The facts are that people are going to speak a lot more freely about such a powerful figure if they know they aren't going to face repercussions. And let's face it, the Bush administration record is well established on how they punish whistleblowers (consider the fate of Joseph Wilson's wife, for starters, continue to the actuary who wanted to inform Congress that the Bushies were lying about the cost of this Medicare boondoggle). Members of the Bush administration have shown they are not afraid to go so far as to commit treason to get back at detractors.

If it wasn't for anonymous sources, Watergate would have never been exposed. Ultimately, the use of anonymous sources comes down to the credibility of the reporter. Now if you're a dirtbag like Jayson Blair, that credibility is nil. On the other hand, if you are Seymour Hersh, veteran reporter, and winner of numerous awards for journalism including the holy grail of journalism prizes, a Pulitzer, that credibility is a lot greater. In fact, it's a pretty safe bet that a journalist like Hersh wouldn't risk that credibility unless the story was at least broadly true.

Now I will agree with those that say it'll be interesting to see what comes out of it, but I sincerely believe this is a stake in the heart of Rumsfeld. There will probably even be calls for his resignation from moderate Republicans if this story has any legs at all.

wasnt it the new yorker that first publicized the Abu Garaib photoe and broke that story? I could be wrong here but...I think it was that publication that did, no? Just wondering.

HFP didn't say anything too salacious to warrant that :)

(and I just thought I needed to post in this thread so people don't forget about me and so people can call me a crazy liberal.)

He didn't say they were false, just incredibly biased.

And I was pointing out that, despite the left-leaning bias he's criticizing, I have been very credible.

indeed

Actually Chief, this is the same formula that he used to expose My Lai. Quotes from various internal sources and statements from a civilian outside. If Scott Horton A) accountable for those quotes and B) is telling the truth, then if the powers that be want to investigate this, he will have to give the names of the 2 JAGs he had a meeting with which I am sure will be accompanied with documentation of that meeting. And from there the cards will start falling.

This is an classic example of an outline without premature compromising. He has been around the block I think it is safe to say.

Yes, IIRC.

I will not accept a wignore.

Not you, man!

I know I just wanted to say that. :)

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. But all signs pointed to the fact that he had them, including signs created by Clinton, foreign intelligence, CIA, and the UN. After 9/11, we had an obligation to act because of Saddam's entanglement with so many different terror organizations and groups, many linked to Al Qaeda. Failure to act would have been irresponsable after the realization of Al Qaeda's new "global reach" capabilities.


We didn't find Saddam Hussein immediately because he was hidden, we continue to dig up aircraft that they buried in the desert floor that we didn't know were there. Sure, I doubt we will find a big bunker filled with chemical warheaded SCUD missles. But we have found a bunch of components to make these things disassembled and the chemicals needed can be easily buried and remain undetected.

Anyway, what happened to it all? That's not our problem that they hid it or sold it, that was squarely the responsability of Saddam Hussein. He paid the price, all is fair.


These people are either Sunni Muslims from the Saddam Triangle or Foreign Fighters. The Shia fighters under Al Sadr are the only ones I consider insurgents. The vast majority of the killings have taken place from the terrorists, not Al Sadr's group.


Or Syria? How does an Al Qaeda operative travel from Egypt to Pakistan. The easiest way is through Syria, into Iraq's northern territory, and then through Iran. Again, if Saddam Hussein was unable to comply with UN resolutions and the 1991 cease-fire to allow himself to control his borders from terror groups and his territory from terror camps, that's not our problem. That was Saddam's responability to not harbor terrorists and he failed to understand that responsability.


You are wrong. A VAST MAJORITY of Iraqi's have chosen "our side". Somewhere in the neighborhood of 95% have chose to either work with us or remain neutral. We have rebuilt their infrastructure to levels not seen in Iraq in decades. The US Army has built over 500 schools for their children, they have built modern hospitals, put unemployment at it's lowest levels in modern iraqi history, already returned Iraq to pre-war levels of Oil productions and opened a pipeline to Turkey (which was shut down for 15 years).

Iraq is a rich country and their citizens know it. They know that the USA offers them a vastly superior deal than the foreign terrorists or the Sunni Triangle Thugs ever did. Whether or not our media, Al Jazeera, or the Euro media wish to harp on these "Boring" details is besides the fact. The fact is that Iraq is a better place and getting better, and the Iraqi's know it.

If Rumsfeld specifically gave approval to interrogation methods that violated the Geneva Convention, he should resign. Plain and simple. But I continue to find it odd that the media ignored this story when the Pentagon first reported the abuse back in January, and waited until there were sensational pictures to publish before they began covering Abu Ghraib. I myself think that Rumsfeld didn't order or authorize anything illegal, and this will blow over. Heck, even after all this the vast majority of polled Americans don't think Rumsfeld should step down.

Also, just an FYI, there's been a really interesting piece on Iraq and WMD in the conservatively biased Front Page Magazine. I won't link to the piece, and I'll point out the bias in the publication now, but if anybody's still objective enough to read something that doesn't fit their particular view of Iraq, politics, Dubya, etc. you might find it worthwhile.

And BTW, Chubby, you are a troll... plain and simple. NoMyths, JohnGalt, albionmoonlight are all people I can disagree with and still have a rational discussion. You rely far too much on repeated catchphrases and empty rhetoric, adding nothing to the debate but bile and venom.

I would contend that it does not matter what a poll says. I didn't think it mattered when Clinton was the President, and I don't think it matters now. We should not govern by 'polls.'

would the majority of Americans want Rumsfeld to stay if the report in the opening article is true that a directive was ordered from those high up in the administration? I think that changes the circumstances.

That being said, I don't like the man, but as the facts currently stand, I don't think he should have to go... at least until Bush's term runs out next March :)

Good idea. I'm a crazy liberal too!

Where exactly do you get this information. Please provide a link or something (and don't provide any thing related to Fox News).

Bush has all but given up looking for WMDs. His intelligence on them was spotty at best and he knew it. Ditto for the Saddam-Osama connection. Bush has admitted there was never any evidence of a connection.

What did the Iraq war have to do with the war on terrorism? Absolutely nothing. Its just been a HUGE diversion of resources. We could've been fixing Afghanistan.

The facts are biased

Now come on Cam. When any administration admits a bit of wrongdoing openly, it's almost always a smokescreen. As you should know, it takes time to gather sources and go through red tape.

This is Rumsfeld's 3rd go around. If you honestly believe he doesn't know every nook and cranny of his own department, then I don't know what to say. It's like saying J. Edgar Hoover had no idea what was going on in the FBI. Ironically this sounds exactly like how people defended McNamara.

Rumsfeld spoke a grain of truth in his testimony to Congress. "I am responsible."

Rumsfeld says he's responsible but he's not taking any responsibility

Well if true and since perjury to Congress doesn't seem to matter anymore, he probably will get his medals and carry on.

If Rumsfeld gave approval, a resignation does not go far enough, IMO. I think he should be prosecuted for war crimes if this is true.

You don't believe any of this is true?


Is it because you choose not to know? Or do you really don't want to believe any of this can be going on? In other words, you just want to hear only the bad parts and none of the good parts. I would then assume that no amount of facts can ever be presented if you only want to hear or know the bad parts.

Before or after prosecuting Saddam for killing thousands? By the way, have you heard any apologies from Baathists or Sunnis or others yet?

Thats like comparing apples to a retarded chimp. No one is saying Saddam shouldn't be tried. Why does it have to be black and white for some people "oh, they have to try Saddam, but that somehow means they can't try RUmsfeld."

He asked for a link. Is that so hard?

Terrorist - For all the crap this administration is trying to drum up, there's been remarkable little evidence to say that Saddam encouraged terrorism to any larger extent than pretty much any Middle Eastern country. In fact, there's much evidence to the contrary.

WMDs - None found. Period, end of story. There may be pink elephants out there too, but we haven't found those either.

Links between Iraq and 9/11 - None. Period, end of story.

Rumsfield - Should the story be proven true, he has broken the Geneva Convention and is a War Criminal - and should be prosecuted as such in Geneva.

I'm out of this thread. It's the same old BS discussion.

And they are US citizens? And they are members of the Executive branch of our Federal Government? You don't have to answer quickly. You can take some time to consider those differences.

The question of whether Saddam is a war criminal (and he should and will be tried) is not even remotely related to the question of whether Rumsfeld is a war criminal. And we should not be justifying our own misdeeds on the basis that others have done worse things. I don't expect to hear Baathists to apologize. I do expect our troops to not do the things we supposedly invaded Iraq to stop the Baathists from doing.

Did I miss the article where our troops were committing mass genocide against a minority group of people?

This thread is about the mistreatment of prisoners.

So the New Yorker broke one story that turned out to be true and now the REP's say the next breaking story is automatically a lie? Interesting. I would think after the first Truism they would get a little credit whether or not the story is true....Wouldnt after the first true story you say, "interesting. Perhaps this story is true as well. I'd like to wait to see how it plays out before I pass judgement, but it is interesting." Immediately, Dems say its true and Reps say the publication is crap. Partisan garbage at its finest. Ive learned, somepeople will go to death for Bush and some will not (im the latter) but you should be able to "flip flop". Learn from your mistakes and change your judgment....ITs called "Learning".

My semi-neutral (but generally right-wing leaning) view on this: I want to see some better evidence before I believe the story, but if (big if) this turns out to be accurate you're probably looking at the end of Rumsfield's career and probably Bush's presidency as well. And rightly so.

After only a week, Bush's "you're doing a great job" sound bite is already looking like it will surpass "MIssion Accomplished" and "bring it on" on his greatest hits list.

I doubt it. Politics aside, Donald Rumsfeld, as the Secretary of Defense, has done his job superbly. He has done everything asked of him with great success. I'm not sure how it can be interpreted any other way.

It's an election year. There is no "politics aside".

Right. Whether he ordered it or not (and I find it hard to believe that something this critical didn't reach as high as Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld), it happened on his watch.

The Republicans are all about "personal responsibility" (or so they claim). It's high time that Rumsfeld fell on his sword. Whether he ordered it or not, he is in charge, he is responsible. Time to go, Rummy.

I disagree strongly with this statement. He sent in a force too small and too lightly armed and armored to win the peace. He conveniently winked at systemic violations of the Geneva convention. He managed to do an admirable job in a few months of helping to undermine a system of alliances that 50+ years worth of Presidents, Republican and Democrat alike, worked to build up, and oh, btw, things have only become worse.

Rumsfeld has bollocksed up just about everything he's touched, and frankly, he should go, the abuse scandals notwithstanding.

From the accounts I have read, and I admit I have been a bit too busy to follow this story as well I would like, I would hope he would be prosecuted for war crimes with a small "c". What I mean by that; is that stripping, blindfolding, and forcing prisoners into a "dog pile" is a far cry from rape, interrogation through torture, genocide, or outright murder for that matter. This is by no means an excuse. No one should have decided to trade the honor of this nation for some short term gain. IF it was a policy to humiliate these prisoners as a tactic to loosen their tongues, and IF Rumsfeld signed off on it, then he should be held responsible for it.

The punishment should fit the crime though. When you brandish the phrase War Crimes, you summon up images far worse than the pictures released.

So it wasn't his idea to GO GO GO now, rather than wait for the divsion that was supposed to deploy through Turkey? It wasn't his plan that had our troops bypassing and isolating hotspots thereby exposing our unprotected support troops to enemy attacks? It wasn't his responsibility to have a game plan in place for what to do when the Saddam's regime was defeated? I think his performance has been a mixed bag.

I agree with this in one sense. The "shock and awe" tactical bombing was brilliant, though some of the credit goes to Franks for assertation of targets and the technology at our disposal. He also kept Isreal completely out of both with the assistance of Powell and for that I am thankful.

However this particular issue is not a political issue, this is about the human rights of prisoners of war something which we went over there blaring our trumpets that we were going to fix over in Iraq. It's pretty obvious to me anyways that Joe Average in Iraq is thankful for what we have done but for the rest of the world, the trumpets of morality we were blaring in Iraq sound pretty off key now. It puts a sour taste to the democracy and freedom this administration promised.

For all this stuff I am reading and hearing on the news why would anyone want to vote for Bush? My goodness I am quite sure the youth will not vote for him because if i could he doesnt have my vote period. I dont want to be drafted to fight for someones personal beef against another country. I don't for all the wars we have had in the past 100 years people still don't learn. Bush most not be re-elected but John Kerry isn't the best choice out there so the lesser of the two evils...

That's BS. I showed you an article by your "highly respected" LA Times Editor that printed faked anti-war photos from his field journalists. You don't believe for a second that the LA Times Editor should be fired for the corruption of his employees, just like I don't believe a very valuable member of the Bush Administration should step down because of what some twisted minded soldiers did to prisoners when they were alone with them.

Yes, the system tells you that only Bush or Kerry can win. So you must limit your choices to those two as you've been programmed, Good Citizen.

Don't believe the "war is always bad" brigade. Many countries, yours included, have fought very noble and necessary wars in the past century.

Time will tell whether this current war is seen in that category. It doesn't look good now.

I got the impression from the article (or maybe a different one) that Rumsfeld signed off on a policy of humiliation for high-level Al-Qaida prisoners to be performed by highly trained CIA people. Then he signed off on an expanded program sometime during the Iraq war, and that this spun out of control because it wasn't being done by the specialists. I'm guessing there is some element of truth in this, and it'll come down to Rumsfeld signing off on something less than what happened at Abu Ghraib, but instead of trying to figure out nuance and what exactly he did approve/condone versus what we should approve/condone, both sides will turn it into a partisan, black and white, Rumsfeld approved torture/no he didn't argument.

The force-size was perfect. We finished major combat operations in less than a month, removed the Baath Party from power and had historically minimal loss of life to both American, enemy, and civilian personnel. Hell, they didn't even get a chance to detonate their oil fields that were all rigged for self-sabotage. The decision to send in special forces to secure those oil fields in one of the main reasons that Iraq is back up to pre-war levels already is on the fast track to it's normal production levels. Once that money starts flowing in, things will only get better. It's not flowing in to Saddam's pocket, but the infrastructure of their economy.

The rest of your argument is pure political fluff. 50+ years of alliances gone? We all know that the French and Germans and Russians had too much at stake financially with Saddam Hussein for anybody to believe that the USA didn't try and try again with regards to the UN. Unless they are force fed anti-American bi-polarism by the news media....

The Turks voted in Parliament whether or not to allow us passage. The vote failed by 19 votes. While it passed with a majority, it required 66% to pass.

The ironic part of that is that the "Western Friendly, EU hopeful" party voted almost completely against the passage of US troops (to gain favor with the EU who of course, talked a great talk to Turkey about joining the EU prior to the vote and then snubbed them completely after the vote).

The pro-Islamic party that took office just months before the vote voted almost unanimously on the passage of American troops.

But once the vote was passed, what exactly was our Secretary of State supposed to do? When a democratically elected parliament speaks, it speaks. It's say is final. Or did you have something else in mind, like, invading Turkey to gain that foothold?

If we had the same concerns for the Kurds that we said we did, we might have thought about doing such a thing. We forgive Turkey for killing Kurds though, just not Saddam.

This is partly true, but the level of oppression is very different. Also, Kurdistan covers parts of Syria and Iran too, so include them along with Turkey.

The Turks lost 35,000, mostly civilians to terror strikes from the Kurds PKK terror organization (which is not defunct because the Turks destroyed it and put it's leader in prison). Excuse me.

An I suppose your a free mind not bound to the same rules as everyone else? Sorry bro this is not the matrix with sentials and agents.... nope your not the one, two or three your just like everyone else.

Well for what it's worth the 140ish articles of the Geneva Convention regarding prisoners of war are pretty specific in what you cannot do. If Rumsfeld did sign off on anything that breaches any of them he is guilty of war crimes. There is little left to interpretation or grey area in this instance.

Editors have resigned over less. One at the Daily Mirror just did.

The force size was right for a blitzkrieg invasion. It wasn't anywhere close to enough to provide security, which might have nipped much of this "insurgency" in the bud.

Any way you slice it, our folks in the field are paying the price for Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz's errors.

Terrorist groups operating in Iraq were also based in the Kurdish areas. Go figure.

I certainly don't buy into the mass-marketed idea that I only have two choices for President, if that is what you are asking. Of course, most people believe what they are told and won't consider anything outside of those two. Media is ran by big business. Big business greases up both parties. There is a lot of money and power banked on keeping us limited to a "two-party system." Refusing to believe you have any other choice means their plan is working.

The way I see it if I vote for a third party I am in essence wasting a vote.