Yup, "under oath" did him in. These others lied without being "under oath" so that makes it ok? Agnew lied "under oath" I believe...but he is conveniently forgotten by the Republicans...yeah, Agnew, forgot to mention him as a laugh riot! Clinton may have been amoral. Nixon was immoral. Clinton may have been a disgrace as a human being. I won't argue that. But he did not disgrace the country or our system. Just himself. Nixon tried to and did disgrace his entire administration, his party and virtually his entire cabinet. Or was he a victim of Mitchell and Halderman and Ehrlichman? If he was a victim of these guys, then he was incompetent to lead. Any way you cut it, he was a far greater disgrace than Clinton could have been if he tried. Nixon didn't lie "under oath" only because he resigned before he could be put under oath. He just lied as an everyday routine. Pathetic that he was elected twice. And got the nod three times. Peace, Rs7 PS: sorry my post is somewhat redundant of Optionals prior post. I guess he typed faster. I liked the "farts" analogy Good one! (No coincidence that Agnew popped into both our heads at the same time. Too easy!)
true. if you associate truth or morality with the politicians of either accepted party, you haven't thought about it enough.
Antiwar protests are happening all over the country and the world, but the mainstream media are hardly paying attention By Jennifer Barrett NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE The antiwar rally in Washington last fall was the largest antiwar demonstration in the nationâs capital since the 1970s protest against the Vietnam War. Why has the media itself been so reluctant to question the policy when many regular Americans seem willing to do so? ... Lance Bennett: There has been much less public debate about the prudence of this war and there has been less coverage of social protest and a general command from the White House of media content. Why do you think that is? The administration has used this issue to effectively support the presidentâs popularity and the Democrats are in an extremely weak position at the moment and they are unwilling to challenge that popularity even if they donât feel the war is a good idea. If there is no official challenge to this policy, the media tend not to open the news gates to social voices that would.. http://www.msnbc.com/news/860481.asp?0cv=CA01&cp1=1#BODY Interesting Q/A's Josh
I think there are many legitimate questions about our responses to Iraq, N. Korea and other trouble spots, some of which were set out in the Ron Paul quote above. The problem I have with the current demonstrations, particularly the deeply thoughtful Cheryl Crowe types, is that they have no rational alternative. "Give peace a chance" makes a nice bumper sticker but it's hardly a response to the possibility of a nuclear 9/11. We face a world where malevolent regimes either have or will soon have nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them from long range. The situation is totally different than the mutually assured destruction scenario we faced with the old Soviet Union. They may have been evil, but they functioned on the same plane of rationality that we did. The Taliban do not. Perversely, we were safer when our opponent was atheistic as opposed to an opponent who thinks their religion will reward mass killing of infidels. There are three foreseeable future scenarios. One, we have to live in a world with numerous dangerous small countries like N. Korea that will use nuclear weapons for blackmail and aggression and which will arm terrorists that are likely to strike us anonymously with these same weapons. Two, we face an even bleaker world with major regional nuclear wars, think India/Pakistan, N. Korea/Japan, China/Taiwan, Israel/Iraq/Syria/Iran, etc. Three, somehow we are able to forestall or prevent the above two scenarios through aggressive, preemptive action to defang potential aggressors and proliferators. If you object to scenario 3, it is incumbent on you to demonstrate how we avoid scenarios 1 or 2.
Whoa, wait a minute... Clinton wasn't the worst, that honor goes to Jimmy Carter. Nixon ended a terrible mess that was tearing this country apart, Vietnam, which, by the way, was a Democrat fiasco.
Good post. Tough questions. Wish I had real workable answers. But right now, no one can say they do with real certainty. Only opinions now. If there were answers, the questions would be irrelevant. First scenario......hard to imagine a "small country" with nuclear capability supplying terrorists with nukes. What is the upside for these countries in such a deal? Certainly not financial gain. Clearly we could be blackmailed....and we could pay a lot more than any terrorist group. Blackmail wouldn't even be necessary. In all likelihood, we will eventually just buy our way out of the N. Korea mess anyway. Just as we essentially have with Russia and China. So I think it unlikely that this part of scenario #1 (arming terrorists) is of real concern. Makes for good movies and book plots though. Second scenario....these types of conflicts hopefully will be avoided by the very thinking that prevented the US and USSR from engaging in a nuclear war. Mutually assured destruction. Of course, this may prevent an India vs. Pakistan war. Or a China/ Taiwan, or Korea/Japan. Or even Israel/Syria (or take your pick on an arab state). But when you mentioned in scenario #2, Israel/Iraq, then the line blurs between #2 and #3. For certainly we cannot expect a healthy fear and a healthy survival instinct to come into play with Saddam. Here, we have no choice but to "defang" this potential aggressor. While it is clear that a preemptive "war" is not only an unpopular concept (for most....I know Dubya is chomping at the bit), there is certainly justification for considering such action. But I, like most who object to a war right now with Iraq, feel Iraq right now does not yet pose a clear and present danger. As is required by our own constitution to justify war. But certainly, as we have seen since 9/11, we need to play by different rules. We need to be more ruthless in our defense of our way of life. The protection of our freedoms. So we need to find that middle ground. We need to "preemptively" eliminate the threat that will surely come to pass if we do nothing about Saddam. But a ground war right now seems morally and legally wrong. No doubt, to do things the way I think they should be done would require breaking some of our "laws" as they exist right now. But laws can be changed. And quickly in times of national crisis, as we have seen. Even without changing laws, since our administration seems willing to break constitutional law, they should have little problem just breaking lesser laws. Just like they used to. (not this administration necessarily...I mean historically). The CIA had it's successes and it's failures in the "elimination" of unfriendly leaders. We (the public) don't know who, when and what they did. But we do know a little. We know they pulled off a coup in Vietnam, they attempted to assassinate Castro, and they were behind the Bay of Pigs debacle. And likely behind the killing of Lumumba, and other communist leaders and revolutionaries in Africa and South America. (Who killed Che?) Seems with a little help from Mossad (for intelligence) and all our sophisticated weaponry and observational equipment, getting Saddam, while not an easy task, should certainly not be impossible. Why endanger 100k American troops, and millions of Iraqi citizens to get one guy? Daniel_M will do the job if given the chance. Even peace loving old me would give it a shot if they gave me the training and the opportunity. To me, this is like getting a shot at Hitler before he implemented his master plan. We need to do it. I believe it can be done with brains and not overwhelming force. It is 2003. What have we spent so much of our defense budget on if we can't get this one guy? (Of course this brings up the Bin Laden question). Gotta admit, there is something very wrong with what we are being told. But nonetheless, there has to be a way to depose this maniac Saddam before he gets his 9/11 event. It will be far worse than what Al Qaeda did. Iraq is a country. Not an organization of lunatics living in caves and learning to fly at little private flight schools and with Microsoft Flight Simulator. They have an army, an air force and an arsenal. Some of it obtained from us. (At least we know how to deal with our own weapons when turned on us). And the French and Russian equipment they have is also well known to us. But still, 100% kill rates are not realistic. We do have to preempt whatever is in store for us. I am against a war with Iraq. I am for eliminating Saddam. But I will say I am getting pretty sick of the protesters (and in a way, I guess I am a protester...thus far) saying it is about OIL. That is a crock. If we wanted to "steal Iraq's oil" why did we not do it last time? The oil issue makes for an easy anti war argument, but it just isn't what it is about. Peace (after we accomplish what we must), rs7
Usually breaking a promise is forgivien because of mitigating circumstances, your case however was a blatant and open refusal to easily carry out what you said you would do. So how did you get drunk and patch it up and then post in 4 hours?
I've stated this exact request throughout Candle's thread and have yet to receive a reply that doesn't come down to "If-the-US-would-just-leave-its-grubby-fingers-out-of-world-affairs-everything-would-be-fine." Good luck getting an answer that doesn't devolve into an international melee about various countries' past historical transgressions. I'm going to quote you on this thread http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=13018 in the hopes it will generate responses that do not throw discussions about the KKK, Nazis, and the Palestinians into the mix.
So in your mind, if I understand what you are saying, Clinton's "lies" weren't worse than Nixon's? I will leave the comparison of Presidents and their effectiveness to the Presidential historians who are without either Republican or Democratic bias, which clearly you suffer from. I though we were discussing whether or not Republican Presidents were as accomplished liars as their Democrat counterparts. Carter, though ineffectual, was known to be a fairly honest man.