The functional alcoholic currently domiciled at the White House now makes Ronald Regan seem like a positively refined statesman. Of course that old Borax huckster could easily mask his tabula rasa with glossy recitations from his bygone days with the Hollywood dialogue coaches. However, this once-AWOL Texas Air National Guard pilot seems to simply be improvising from a half-wit’s script, like a man with mismatched dentures.
How did an intellectual pygmy end up in the White House?
Nobody is as divisive as G. W. Bush. His intellect is certainly lacking, some argue that his sincerity more than compensates. But does sincere zealotry suffices in place of intellect?
Mark Wallace of Gulf Reporter seems to agree:
Terrorism, now there’s a problem. Islamist terrorism presents just the kind of threat the president is talking about, perhaps a worse one. Bush would do better to focus more clearly on that threat, and less on the kind of ideology and grandstanding that is only sure to make the problem worse.
Comments
The power of intellect with mismatched dentures!
… His intellect is certainly lacking, some argue that his sincerity more than compensates. …
Intellect does not require the loquacious verbal diarrhea that some equate with intelligence.
Unfortunately, being in the end-run of the political season at the same time there are foreign policy objectives to be obtained makes for difficult choices in the public dialog.
The power of intellect with mismatched dentures!
Needless to say, I disagree.
To take on some of the dubious propositions in this letter:
1) It is more correct to say that Bush is a former functional alcholic, having given up his beer a couple decades ago. It would be more accurate to call him an ex-alcoholic.
2) Bush was never AWOL from the military. It’s been conclusively proven by pay records, medical records, and multiple eyewitnesses that he served all the terms of his enlistment in the Guard. Not only that, you can not be charged AWOL in a Guard unit unless it was activated. His unit never was. It is an impossible accusation. The charge is unfounded, a slander by his political foes.
As a Harvard MBA and a graduate of Air Force pilot and fighter training, his intellect seems to have been proven to me. Those are tough schools. He’s far superior to Gore who flunked out of two grad schools.
George is exactly what America needs now when faced with real threats. You don’t have to wonder what he means. It’s absolutely clear. You know that when he sets his mind to something, it will get done. He will have a list of goals and will have his subordinates reporting every day on their progress toward them. He will not relent. That’s exactly what our enemies need to know.
The bottom line is that he has taken the fight to the Muslim extremists who threaten America, instead of waiting around for the next attack. That’s good. It’s far better to fight them in their homes than in ours.
He’ll be getting my vote come November.
Steve
The power of intellect with mismatched dentures!
” But does sincere zealotry suffices in place of intellect?” Seems to work pretty well in KSA. Sorry, I am really cranky today; it’s ALL this rain.
I’m with Steve. I just can’t vote for Kerry. Too many bad memories of his crap from the Vietnam days, and frankly, he has had years to help solve this countries problems.
The power of intellect with mismatched dentures!
Oh God! Even Mahmood’s blog has been invaded by America! Is there any sanctuary left?
The power of intellect with mismatched dentures!
I wonder how Gulf finds his way, lookibg through those rose-tinted glasses. OK, we may not be at the 1942 stage, but we are somewhat beyond the Beer Hall Putsch. The governments do not present a threat? Never heard of North Korea, huh? Or China’s repeated threat to invade Taiwan if it keeps insisting it does not belong to China – shades of Tibet. Never heard of the way Saudi is intertwined with its Wahabbi sect or what said sect is doing, either: using money more effectively than guns, but the aim is domination. And for all the protests of “we just want to be left alone” coming from the Iranian government, it refuses light-water nuclear electric plants in favor of heavy-water plutonium producers. And a number support in various ways groups like Hamas, which even that old terrorist Arafat calls terroristic.
As to “Letter” – well, it’s still all about OIL because Saddam was no threat to anyone. Has he tried saying that in Iran, Kuwait, or Saudi Arabia, the countries he actually invaded? Does he forget that Saddam never said he would not invade them again, given a free hand? And ‘Why be shocked that a Pentagon email has allegedly surfaced indicating that the VP’s office “coordinated” a major no-bid “Restore Iraqi Oil” contract that went to Cheney’s former company Halliburton on the eve of the invasion of Iraq.’ Sheesh, has he been paying no attention at all? The “Restore Iraqi Oil” was a command to refurbish oil fields, pipelines, refineries, harbors – for Iraq, not the US. And Halliburton and the others got the Pentagon contracts as an extension of contracts they have had with the Pentagon since the Seventies, and saved months if not years because those prior contracts required them to be ready to fix war-torn (or just plain neglected) infrastructure on very short notice. For all of which they get the munificent profit of three percent – I used to work for a restaurant that felt it was dying if a year’s profit was under ten percent. Later contracts, via CPA or IGC, were handled quite differently: it is not Ma Bell building a new telephone system in Baghdad, it is an Iraqi subsidiary of an Egyptian company.
—
John Anderson
The power of intellect with mismatched dentures!
Unfortunately there are those among us who seem to be convinced that anyone who does not view geopolitics as they do must, perforce, be an intellectual pygmy. What collosal arrogance! Moreover, there are those (especially among the American “mainstream” media) who would sell their souls to see Bush lose in November. Dream on, folks.
The fact of the matter is that George W. Bush is a highly intelligent individual with enough self-confidence to pursue his own vision. See, for example, his first foreign policy address delivered in Warsaw long before 9/11. Or his seminal speech about Mid East policy delivered at Whitehall in London.
I, for one, believe that he is entirely right. The US has for much too long supported existing dictatorial regimes in the region in the mistaken notion that by protecting the status quo we were maintaining stability. In the process, we have sold out the hopes and dreams of the people — and turned a blind eye to sometimes hideous oppression — without having gained anything in the way of stability in return. I think that Bush is right. The only road to long term stability is the advent of free societies in the region. And that’s the only goal that, from a moral standpoint, deserves our support.
The power of intellect with mismatched dentures!
Steve, John, and Gail… agreed on all points.
Further, people who have met George W. Bush in person for the first time tend to come away surprised that he is NOT as stupid as portrayed by the news media and his political enemies. In fact, a member of a political group in Britain that solidly opposed the war met President Bush for the first time when he visited the UK earlier this year and told the Telegraph that Bush’s foes were making a grave error in selling him short.
We’ve known that for quite a while here in the US as we’ve watched Mr. Bush rope-a-dope the supposedly “intellectual” Democrats time and time again over the last 3 years. He allows them to rant and rave for months on end, then whacks them like whack-a-moles :D.
Glib? No, he isn’t a glib speaker. But after 8 years of Bill Clinton, I’ve had it up to my ears with “glib”!
MamaSW
[Modified by: MamaSW (mamasw) on June 02, 2004 09:25 PM]
The power of intellect with mismatched dentures!
The only thing consistent about Bush’s foreign policy is that its relentlessly pro-Likud.
Is it any surprise that one drafter feels most comfortable surrounded by other draft dodgers in the form of the neocons? Have any of these neocons ever seen military action, or like their president had they all better things to do than to serve their country in Vietnam?
I’ve always had the greatest respect for America’s soldiers, but even more so now that retired generals such as General Anthony Zinni are nailing this bastard.
The power of intellect with mismatched dentures!
In business, the true measure of a leader is the abilities of the subordinates he surrounds himself with. In executive management, the leader cannot know all things at all times. He has to have competent managers below him to oversea the details.
That is actually the true measure of GWB’s worth as a Leader. Colin Powell is not in the limelight very often. He quietly goes about his duties working towards the goals of the administration. Most of what he does gets little attention by the media, but is obvious by the coordination of anti-terror efforts in other countries, discussions with North Korea through China (of all countries), Japan, et al, just to name a few. The only thing he could not get over from his military days, is that he used to be the direct decision maker and now, some of the policies or negotiations that he would like to see, are not always those of the administration. And, to his detriment, these disagreements have become public. However, he is, all in all, a good “soldier” and knows his duty is to support the policies of the president and he makes strong efforts to accomplish this.
Don Rumsfield is the epitome of “good operations management”. That was originally why he was selected for the job. The Pentagon and military were in desparate need of overhaul with inefficient reporting structures and funds not being spent on direct impact projects. He has overseen a ton of cleaning, purging and policy and procedure re-writes since he has been in office. He is not a “business as usual” person and that was what was needed. I don’t think anyone expected that he would have to oversee 2 wars and major security overhauls internally while he was re-organizing the Pentagon. But he proved the best choice because he continues to do the job he was hired for while taking on the extra load.
Condi Rice is probably one of the most intelligent and adaptable “managers” he has on staff. I believe that she was hired mainly to deal with the North Korea/China/Taiwan issues as these are left over situations from the cold war and, after all, that was her specialty. I don’t believe that she was expected to deal with global terrorism as her main focus. But, again, she stepped up to the plate and has quickly educated herself on the aspects of unstable nations and the effect on global terrorism. She is also a very good spokes person for the administration as she, above all others, is well spoken and has some appeal to the “intellectual elitists” who see the ability to string $2 dollar words together as the measure of a leader.
Paul Wolfwitz is a true radical. When people are screaming terms like “neo-conservative” it almost makes me laugh. The reality is, this guy is about as conservative as Al Sharpton! Conservative action on his part would have been to develop policies, particularly in the mid-east region, that fit within the existing structures of politcal, diplomatic and economic “reasoning” that has been applied for the last 30 years in attempting to shape our relations in the region. People, this man is no conservative. His dream policy of spreading democracy and prosperity to the region by putting extreme pressure, if not down right force, on tyrranical dictatorships to change their policies is down right “Progressive” as the Democrats like to refer to themselves.
If anyone wants “conservative” actions, please see Sen. Kerry. He wants to go back to “business as usual” diplomacy, which I see as failed policy.
Let me add here, just to keep the record straight, that I voted Democrat in the last 3 elections, including the one in which GWB was elected. I am newly converted to the RNC for the simple reason of “no more business as usual”.
Kathleen
Re: The power of intellect with mismatched dentures!
I hate to point out the obvious but Bush served in the Texas Air National Guard. While it is true that if you enlist in the military, you can not be drafted, the whole point of draft-dodging is to avoid serving in the military. Many Democrats are confused about this.
Most US military people who served during Vietnam did not serve in Vietnam. Most military people who served in Vietnam did not serve in combat. However, if you are trying to avoid combat, the cockpit of a fighter jet is one of the worse places to hide. Any tactical aircraft can be deployed to a war zone on a few day’s notice as the need arises.
Steve
The power of intellect with mismatched dentures!
I dont know that intelligence is the most important characteristic required in a Leader. I think that there are some other important traits – such as the ability to inspire, to be committed, to be wise.
Also, I dont think that one can talk about Dubya separate from his administration. I think that to fully appreciate Dubya’s policies, one needs to understand how Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rummy, Condi et al play into the decision making process.
If I could cast a vote, it would be for Bush. Not because I like him or respect him or think the world of his administration. (For the record, I have never before seen such arrogance displayed by an adminstration that claims to hold the moral highground and refuses to acknowledge the power politics behind decisions). But, I would vote for him because of the premium I am placing on the need for consistency in foreign policy.
Too much is happeneing. In Iraq, in Israel-Palestine, in Saudi Arabia. We need some consistency so that we know how to rearrange our lives and thoughts and minds.
Having said this, my rhetorical vote should NOT be read as an endorsement of His wisdom or judgement.
And Steve, there aren’t any ‘ex’ alcoholics. An alcoholic is always an alcoholic even if he hadst touched a drink in years. Its a daily battle.
Re: The power of intellect with mismatched dentures!
[quote]If I could cast a vote, it would be for Bush. [/quote]
OK, then I will cast it for you, then. However, you may still be able to vote. Some people have registered their goldfish and canaries to vote. And of course, many people long dead and buried in Chicago have been regularly voting in all the elections.
[quote]Too much is happeneing. In Iraq, in Israel-Palestine, in Saudi Arabia. We need some consistency so that we know how to rearrange our lives and thoughts and minds.[/quote]
Once when I was assigned to the Philippines and was living off base I found a gekko in my bedroom, a beautiful green chameleon-like lizard. I wanted to catch it to look at it. I chased it around the room until it hid under the half opened door. I crouched down, ready to scoop it up, and yanked back the door. The uneven floor and rough wood on the door tore the skin off the gekko. To my horror, it was writhing in pain on the floor.
I often thought that there was an analogy there for the US when it travels to much of the world where we carry so much more weight than the natives, though unconsciously. If you’re unaware, you can whipsaw people’s lives about on your whims or offhand remarks. Even with the most benign intentions, you can wreak havoc.
[quote]And Steve, there aren’t any ‘ex’ alcoholics. An alcoholic is always an alcoholic even if he hadst touched a drink in years. Its a daily battle. [/quote]
OK, that’s true. Ya got me.
Steve
Re: The power of intellect with mismatched dentures!
I’m afraid not. We’re everywhere. Like cockroaches.
Next thing you know we’ll be declaring Mahmood’s Den our 51st state.
Steve
Re(1): The power of intellect with mismatched dentures!
HEY! I can be bought, but it’s gonna cost you!! 😆
Bush’s syncophants
Easy on the verbage lady – your description of your leaders makes you sound like the sort of windy syncophant more commonly associated with state run TV in the Arab world. Cutting through the exhausted, meaningless rhetoric that was the last post, here’s who you’re run by:
President Bush – aggressive and manipulated, ignorant of his own policies and their consequences, negligent;
Secretary of state Powell – proud, instinctively subordinate, constantly in retreat;
Vice-president Cheney – as Richelieu, conniving, at the head of a neoconservative cabal, the power behind the throne;
National Security Secretary Rice – seemingly open, even vulnerable, posing as the honest broker, but deceitful and derelict, an underhanded lightweight.
Bush’s syncophants .. revisited
You forgot Rummy!!!
Re(2): The power of intellect with mismatched dentures!
Mahmood ..
Israel is the 51st state. They used to say Saudi was the 52nd. I think ‘Mahmood’s dom’ has to clock in at 53’d and above ..
A brave man, unjustly slandered as a coward
How brave of him defending Texas’s airspace – especially while tens of thousands of Americans who didn’t have politically influential fathers were dying in Vietnam.
Re: A brave man, unjustly slandered as a coward
You see .. God had chosen Him. And the Promised Land was Texas …
Re(1): The power of intellect with mismatched dentures!
Steve, I hate to point out the obvious but Texas is a long way from Vietnam.
Re(2): The power of intellect with mismatched dentures!
It’s not so far in a fighter jet. A fighter squadron could be deployed and operational from Texas to Vietnam in less than a week. My squadron in the US was ready to deploy to Europe, load its weapons, and begin flying combat missions in 48 hours.
Bush’s squadron deployed as a unit to every war but Vietnam. Detachments from Bush’s squadron were deployed to Vietnam. Had the Russians introduced bombers to North Vietnam, his F-102 squadron would have been deployed in a heartbeat. That’s how it works. Unpredictable.
You can not predict what units will be activated in a war. If you want to hide from combat in the military, I recommend you enlist as a cook or a journalist. Like Gore, for example. It’s foolish to think a fighter cockpit is a good place to hide from a war.
I might also point out that flying a fighter in peace time is not exactly safe. I lost one friend in flying accidents per year, including my room mate from the Academy. Bush’s squadron lost pilots, too.
Steve
Re: A brave man, unjustly slandered as a coward
Actually, he was defending America’s airspace against a quite real threat from Cuba.
Your argument is a bit twisted. If Bush was trying to keep him away from the war, shouldn’t he have used his influence to keep his son out of the military? If Bush wanted to make sure he never went to Vietnam, shouldn’t he have opted for a career other than fighter pilot, where he could be dispatched there on a moment’s notice?
Bush joined the Guard in 1968. It took him two years to train. It would have taken him another two or three years of full time flying to accumulate the minimum 1000 hours of flying time required for his unit to consider assigning him to combat duties. That places him in 1972 to 1973, when the war was winding down and the Air Force was giving thousands of pilots their walking papers. Of course, nobody knew the war would end for America in 1973. Bush had no chance to go to Vietnam, though he could have not known that.
Steve
Re(3): The power of intellect with mismatched dentures!
Israel is too much trouble to be a state. Besides we already have one theocratic state, Utah, run by the Mormons. It’s annoying enough. We don’t need more.
Whoever thinks Saudi Arabia was the 52nd state must have been smoking that mujahideen dope straight from Afghanistan.
However, Mahmood’s Den is fairly inviting. Much, much better than the previous two options. From his photo, Mahmood looks like he is sitting on a pretty comfortable couch. So that’s good.
But before we start doing the paperwork for statehood, does Mahmood have any oil on his property? We could use a state with some bountiful oil resources. We’ll also need room to put in a strip mall with a fast food court. And a Walmart.
Steve
Re: Bush’s syncophants .. revisited
Well, if you persist in believing evil of all men, please explain your own capabilities of managing the Unites States? Do you have plan? If you have a plan, I’d be happy to hear it. Sen. Kerry wouldn’t mind hearing it, too since his plan is to steal everybody else’s plan and say it was his plan in the first place.
My new favorite is his plan to create a single person in charge of all of the intelligence agencies and coordinating their efforts. DUH! I think Sen. Kerry has been asleep for awhile, because that post already exists and is the secretary of homeland security. Maybe you can run over and wake him up?
Re: The power of intellect with mismatched dentures!
what.. you need consistency in wars and bad events? You don’t want change, even though it’s to the better? Why not I guess, consistency, even in horrible events, is better than change, even to the better!
That’s some warped logic!
Re: Bush “not as stupid as portrayed”
I must have missed something in all this Bush “not as stupid as portrayed” debate. Maybe I’ve not understood the deeper meaning of what he’s been saying, in which case I’d be grateful if Bush’s fans could explain to me what he’s going on about:
“I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.” 2000
“He has certainly earned a reputation as a fantastic mayor, because the results speak for themselves. I mean, New York’s a safer place for him to be.”â€â€ÂOn Rudy Giuliani, 2000
“You might want to comment on that, Honorable.”–To New Jersey’s secretary of state, the Hon. DeForest Soaries Jr, 2000
“But the true strength of America is found in the hearts and souls of people like Travis, people who are willing to love their neighbor, just like they would like to love themselves.”â€â€ÂSpringfield, 2004
“I also made it clear to [Putin] that it’s important to think beyond the old days of when we had the concept that if we blew each other up, the world would be safe.”
Please, all I ask for is some insight.
Re: Re: Bush
I’d be happy to explain it to you. If you are constantly speaking in public, you misspeak from time to time. The liberal media publish such gaffes when misspoken by Bush while ignoring similar gaffes uttered by politicians of the Left whom they favor. It’s part of their inclination to editorialize in straight news to promote their political agenda. In this way, the Left pushes its crude propaganda themes to portray those who disagree with them as stupid. It’s much easier for the Left to make such fallacious ad hominem attacks than to address the issues with facts and logic.
Does that clear it up for you?
You’re Welcome,
Steve
Re(5): The power of intellect with mismatched dentures!
You’re quite correct that the Taliban did better at controlling the Afghan poppy production than America. Of course, the Taliban relied on profits from Afghan illegal narcotic sales while America does not.
The US did not go to Afghanistan to stop opium production, however laudable that goal is, but rather to clean out the base from which the Sep 11 attacks were launched. We can’t fix the world, it’s too broken in too many places. It would be foolish to let the scope of our mission creep by adding new tasks.
Opium production is an intractable problem in Afghanistan. You’re not going to yank out every poppy with only a couple divisions of soldiers, whose more important mission is to deny Afghanistan to Islamic extremists and hunt Bin Laden and his crew.
It’s possible that free trade might bring Afghans more prosperity from trades other than drugs. That would be a good thing. Isn’t it curious that drug trade flourished under an Islamic theocracy who did not find its profits objectionable at all.
Steve
Re(6): The power of intellect with mismatched dentures!
As far as I know, the Taliban cracked down on opium production. It was illegal ..
JJ
Re(4): The power of intellect with mismatched dentures!
Steve,
One thing that the Taliban did better than the new Afghani/American ‘government’ is control drug production in Afghanistan. So, if you think that I am smoking the mujahideen dope – I have to thank the US for allowing the flourishing of a free production economy pos Taliban, and reducing all barriers to trade with all the neighbouring geographic states.
As for negotiating the takeover of Mahmood’s den – I think you should be talking to the lawyers that represent the virtual world. Didn’t Al Gore invent the internet? Maybe you should be talkng to him. Aaah – what would we do America … from drugs to the internet … capitalism rules… 😉
Jasra Jedi
Re(9): The power of intellect with mismatched dentures!
And we enjoy it! Keep it up, both of you, amongst the laughs, gems do drop from time to time!
Another one bites the dust
Been driving round Bahrain with Queen’s “Another one bites the dust” booming out of my car stereo – no its not a reference to Bush’s latest poll rating but to another draft dodger, Ronald Reagan (Not having an influential daddy this one couldn’t get a job defending Texas’s coastline while the rest of America was battling across the Pacific, so got out of WW2 by claiming “poor eyesight”) . What is it about dodging the draft and being a conservative idol?
This one’s gift to posterity has been a legacy of terror training camps across Pakistan and Afghanistan. Certainly Osama Bin Laden could have been a little more grateful for the gipper’s support than using them to train the 11 September hijackers.
And it wasn’t just OBL that had a lot to thank Reagan for – Iran’s clerics certainly could show some respect for what he did, as could your mate Saddam Hussein. What’s that? You want that link again to the photo of Reagan’s special envoy to Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld, shaking hands with Saddam Hussein?
OK, you asked for it: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/
Man and fish
The man and fish quote was “taken out of context”? Lol – absolutely risible excuse. Almost as bad as that Saudi cleric claiming his fatwa stating the earth is flat was also taken “out of context”.
I don’t buy the conspiracy theory approach either – similarly barrel scrappingly pathetic: where are the equally hillarious statements by other Republican presidents?
Face it boys, this comatose but still standing toupee head is completely deadbeat.
Re(1): Re: Bush
You’ll need to put the human & fish quote in context for its meaning to be clear.
The Democrat presidents, Kenedy Carter and Clinton, were much better public speakers than Bush; they had ‘Nuance’.
Clinton’s response to terrorist actions against American and allies was, however, weak no matter how great his intellect.
Bush the bumbling speaker just gets on with the job of taking the terrorist’s war to their home bases. That is kind of action we need now.
Re(1): A brave man, unjustly slandered as a coward
Vietnam: a war started and waged by democrats (Kenedy, Johnson).
Did Clinton fight in Vietnam? Did he inhale?
No and yes, it’s all Bush’s fault.
Re(3): The power of intellect with mismatched dentures!
Well now, when you join the armed forces you don’t get to select which tour you would like to go on.
You get out of bed one morning and you think “Hmmm today I think I will go to Vietnam and defend the free world. I’ll join up right away and be there tomorrow”. No it doesn’t quite work like that.
Re: Bush’s syncophants .. revisited
Those “neoconservative cabal”s, you have to watch them.
Re(7): The power of intellect with mismatched dentures!
They didn’t, at least according to “The House of Bush and The House of Saud” by Unger. Apparently they continued to sell narcotics as usual to continue to finance their regime. They used the very same routes that the US used to get weapons to the muhahideen to smuggle their opium and heroin out.
You should read that book, quite an eye opener. I’ll loan you my copy when I’m done with it if you wish… email me!
Re(10): The power of intellect with mismatched dentures!
I see it as a tennis game. I’m just batting the ball back.
And to keep things straight, the US did not smuggle the arms into Afghanistan. Pakistan’s ISI took care of that. The CIA did not put any American nationals in Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion for fear the Russians might capture them. We wrote the checks in Peshawar and wished the arms smugglers well. And you know, it was still the right thing to do in hindsight.
Steve
Re(2): Re: Bush
I would agree that Kennedy, Carter, and Clinton were better public speakers than the current George Bush, but they were all mediocre or bad presidents. Being a good, even great public speaker does not make you a good or great leader. Hitler is proof of that.
Kennedy’s weakness nearly pitched us into a nuclear war. Carter was too busy micromanaging the government, down to scheduling the White House tennis court, to lead effectively. And Clinton, who could believe a word that liar said? After he bombed the aspirin factory in Sudan to distract from his Monica problems, he claimed falsely it was making chemical weapons. The dictator of Sudan defended himself by saying how can you believe somebody who lies to his wife? Ouch! It’s pretty bad when a thug dictator is more believable than your own president.
Bush is doing just fine by me. It’s true he’s no smooth talker. If he ever gets in trouble, he certainly won’t be able to talk his way out of it like Clinton. But he is committed to attacking the terrorists and he is relentless. That’s good enough for me.
Steve
Re: Man and fish
That’s false. The liberals played this same quoting game with the elder Bush and Reagan. There were endless stories about the elder Bush’s malapropisms. I also recall many stories quoting Reagan’s misspoken comments. And Nixon! The liberals leaped on any quote. The Watergate tapes were a gold mine for them. Each conservative president had a book of such misquotes printed featured in bookstores everywhere. The press played the same game to a smaller extent with Eisenhower, who gave rambling, unquotable answers to questions he did not want to answer.
Despite assertions to those comatose of liberal history, it is still a fallacious line of reasoning to build a straw man of misspoken quotes and knock it down rather than to engage Bush’s true positions with reason and facts. Liberals don’t do that because it’s not a fight they can win.
Steve
Re: Another one bites the dust
You have a lot of your facts scrambled.
Reagan joined the Army reserve in Des Moines back in the 1930s when he was working as a radio announcer. He served regularly as a cavalry officer, drilling at Fort Des Moines. That’s long before America entered WWII. During WWII, he was medically disqualified for combat but served in a movie unit in Hollywood that made training films and classified projects, such as a detailed model of the Japanese coastline for bombing runs.
So, like Bush, it is true that Reagan was never drafted because he was already serving in the military. Again, while it is true that enlisting in the military eliminates the possibility of being drafted into the military, the whole point of draft-dodging is to avoid going into the military at all.
What is it about liberals that they don’t understand that enlisting in the military is not draft-dodging? My speculation is that they are so unfamilar with military service themselves that they can’t understand these simple distinctions.
To clear up the rest of the confusion, Reagan nor the US ever supported Bin Laden nor Al Qaeda, who got their money from Saudi Arabia. Two billion bucks worth. American money went to Pakistan’s ISI, which funnelled the money to the Taliban. Bin Laden and Pakistan had separate agendas for Pakistan, which only coincided as to the expulsion of the Soviets. It is simply false that America supported Al Qaeda.
The Wahhabi terror camps were funded by Saudi money and staffed from madrassas staffed by Saudi-trained clerics, who acted as talent-spotters and recruiters. None of this was created by America. We didn’t even have any spies in there.
It’s a feeble argument that a photo of a US official shaking hands with a dictator demonstrates an alliance. We deal with a lot of nasty countries. It’s good sense to maintain diplomatic relations with even your worst enemies. We did business with Stalin during WWII, even though he was the most murderous tyrant of all time. We deal with the evil Saudi regime. We deal even with manifestly hostile regimes like Myanmar, which holds guns to the heads of our diplomats to intimidate them during negotiations.
Why do you need to skew the facts to make your argument? If your point was valid, why couldn’t you build your case on unassailable facts?
My recommendation is that you stop listening to all that Queen crap. It’s obviously rotting your brain. Get some Al Green, Sade, Motown Old School so that you can do some calm, clear thinking.
Concerned,
Steve
Re(8): The power of intellect with mismatched dentures!
Thanks for the offer Mahmood. Truth be told, I just like giving Steve a hard time … 😉
Re(2): Man and fish
It’s a tough call for me, too, Jasra. I wish I could stuff them all in one big bag with a dozen hungry alleycats and an alligator or two.
I guess I would divide them in two piles. Osama and the Saudis in one pile. Hillary and the liberals in another. Osama and the Saudis should be destroyed for their evil deeds. I think a good beating would suffice for Hillary and the liberals, repeated weekly. That’s being very generous, I’d say.
Steve
Re: The American Connection
Hmmmm. I can promise you I will at least flip through it in the book store to get a taste of it. That’s the good news. The bad news is that I have a tall bookshelf next to my bed full of the books I’m going to read. However, I am on a Middle East reading rampage right now, so …
Thanks,
Steve
The American Connection
Steve, I’m reading “The House of Bush and The House of Saud” by Unger at the moment, and if 10% of the details in the book are to be believed, then the American administrations since Carter were complicit in Al-Qaeda manufacture in a direct way.
I would love you to get a copy of that book and think of the questions it raises and the ones it answers.
Re(3): Re: Bush
I’m just wondering here Steve, is the whole George W. Bush presidency about fighting terrorists? What about the economy, jobs, and the other million details he’s got to lead the nation to? It seems to me he’s quagmired just in this fight against terrorism which although admirable, but cannot be won just by military power. You being in the military should know the answer better than most, how can you fight against ghosts who flit in and out of countries, mountains, etc?
Shouldn’t he concentrate much more on the economy, education, health or has this “terror” war been a real Godsend for him which he latched on to tooth and nail?
Are the American people happy with their president not solving their other mundane problems?
Re(11): The power of intellect with mismatched dentures!
Steve.
Please explain to me the difference between collabarating with the ISI to get things done and doing it yourself?! Where does the responsibility stop? And dont alot of people who end up working with/for CIA do so without ever being on payroll?
Semantics, my friend …
15-Love.
JJ
Re(1): Man and fish
Steve.
Sometimes I wonder who you despire more … ‘The Liberals
Re(4): Re: Bush
Mahmood,
I’m not in the military anymore. I was once a glorious fighter jock, flying as a WSO/navigator in F-4Es in the Air Force. Now I’m a boring computer geek.
The War On Terror is Bush’s main issue. I would prefer to call it the War On Wahhabi Terror, but I suppose that would offend the evil Saudi princes, who keep telling us what great allies against terror they are. That aside, his temperament is well-suited to waging a war, especially a war where it would be easy to take the easy way out and take half measures in defense. Bush sees correctly that we must take the fight to the enemy, to go on offensive, because the spread of WMD has made it far too dangerous to continue a reactive policy.
The economy is doing pretty good. Inflation is still way low and job creation is up. The Democrats have even given up trying to make points about the economy. The only disadvantage the Republicans have on the economy is that there is an entire generation of young numbskulls who entered the job market during the 1990s and think boom times are the norm.
The only problem with education is that college has gotten too expensive, indirectly due to the government which has guaranteed easy loans for students. The students aren’t required to make payments until after graduation so they are insensitive to price, which the colleges ratchet up. College administrators claim costs are increasing, but most of those costs are discretionary projects they initiate that do not support classroom instruction. It’s quite a scandal waiting to erupt. Tuition increases have outpaced inflation for decades now. Yet as long as middle class kids can get into college, even though leaving with a huge debt burden, nobody gets excited.
The health crisis is also a phony issue. The Democrats keep hyping the 43 million who have no health insurance, but the bulk of those are young healthy kids who don’t really need it and don’t want to pay for it. The government has also indirectly screwed up the health industry by trying to “improve” it with government meddling. They should just allow people to put aside tax free dollars into medical accounts, let them spend it on any health plan that will follow them all their life, write the checks themselves from their own accounts, and provide a little catastrophic insurance on the side. The problem with health costs is that they have risen to the moon because consumers are not price conscious, having no idea what they pay for a doctor’s visit. You don’t really know how much it costs unless you read your medical insurance statement a month after the visit, which few people do.
You’re right that a guerrilla war can not be won with military means alone. My preferred approach is the tache d’oeil approach (drop of oil) of the French in Algeria, though it was overshadowed by their more brutal tactics. The idea is that you build up the infrastructure and economy of the country, bit by bit, until the people have more invested in stability than in revolution. You don’t want to burn the country down if you own a piece of it. This slowly denies the guerrillas a foothold by turning the population against them. I guess the oil metaphor was about calming stormy waters by methodically flooding it with oil, a drop at a time.
This looks like the approach we are taking in Iraq. Sooner or later, the people in Fallujah will come to realize that if they keep firing on the GIs escorting sewer workers into their town that the filth will continue to flood their streets.
The people in the US are fairly evenly split down the center on Bush, largely by subculture, and highly polarized. If you are a liberal, you really hate Bush. If you are a conservative, you really love Bush. There is only a narrow group of undecideds, maybe 10 to 15%
For liberals, Bush is everything they hate. He’s Republican and doesn’t pretend to acknowledge their self-righteousness. He’s from Texas. He is born again religious and mentions it from time to time. He likes baloney sandwiches instead of brie and Chablis. He sees things too clearly rather than the fuzzy-wuzzy image they have. He believes in good and evil while everything is relative to them.
For conservatives, Bush is the right man at the right time with the right idea. He means what he says. He doesn’t give in nor give up. If he puts your name on his Bad Guy List, you are in a world of trouble. He knows how to use the military and respects the men who serve in it. He doesn’t look down on ordinary people in America as most liberal elitists do. He doesn’t believe in negotiating with foreign liars who have no intention of keeping their word. He is the anti-Clinton.
I’d like to say Bush will get reelected but it just looks too close to call. I can say for sure that we conservatives will vote for Bush came hell or high water. By contrast, the liberals don’t dig Kerry too much. He’s a pompous, arrogant load of crap even for them. But they will hold their noses and vote for him just because he’s not Bush. That may not be enough to swing it their way.
Right now, political small talk in America is as poisonous as I have ever seen it.
Steve