REPUBLICANS: Please vote for John McCain.

[Valkenar]

It never occurs to you that Gore or Kerry could have been worse and that many Americans could have been choosing between the perceived, if not actual, lesser of two evils?

It's not impossible, but I honestly don't think that Gore or Kerry would have gone to Iraq using 9/11 as a smokescreen. With few exceptions, starting immoral, unilateral, interminable war is probably the worst thing a president can do. On so many levels it's just awful. Morally, economically, and on every other basis it's terribly damaging. It's even made us less-safe. So while it's vaguely possible that Gore or Kerry could have outdone Bush by staging a fascist revolution or something, I find it exceedingly unlikely.

Bill:

voted for Gore because I was voting for gridlock. I liked the fact that we had the dynamic tension between these two branches of government.

Gridlock is good, I agree that the tension is good. In fact, I tend to vote neither democratic nor republican because I'd rather vote for a third party. Usually that's going to be green or something. It's strategy more than anything else, I'd like to see our politics break free of the two-party system.

I'm not a Clinton fan either, but voted for him

Clinton was okay. He did some bad things and some good things. At least he didn't start any wars for oil or go around helping overthrow democratically elected governments the way Regan did.

I have very little respect for Kerry as well.

Yeah I didn't think too much of Kerry. The only thing he had going for him is that he wasn't Bush, which isn't much of a campaign. Still, I would probably vote for the president to be pulled randomly from every citizen in the US than vote for Bush.

I refrained the first time, Justin. But second time? We think a lot of our center of the universe, don't we?

No need to hold back, Bill. We're friends and I've received a lot worse on these forums. I stand by my statement.

What is more intolerant than writing discrimination into the constitution?

What is more gullible than *continuing* to believe that Sadaam was responsible for 9/11 just because says "Sadaam" and "9/11" in the same sentence often enough?

What is more small-minded than supporting a war that is little more (to many people) than revenge against people who look and sound like the people that attacked us?

What is more small-minded than shrugging off huge amounts of corruption, lies and chicanery just because the president agrees that atheists aren't real citizens and that it's wrong to be gay?

Where am I wrong here?

I can preface everything I say with "in my opinion" if that will seem less to you like I consider myself the center of the universe. There are many things I disagree with, but it doesn't seem morally wrong to support. Then there are things that pretty much mean you're an bad person, or else hopelessly ignorant. If you hate the jews? Guess what, you're a bad person. If you shrug off loss of innocent life because "hey that's what happens in a war" then what does that say about your priorities when the war isn't even in self-defense? If you like to molest children? Guess what, you're a bad person. While I would never punish or censor anyone for thoughts alone, I don't think it's putting myself at the center of the universe to think that people with certain kinds of particularly horrible mindsets are seriously lacking in humanity.

[mhosea]

It never occurs to you that Gore or Kerry could have been worse and that many Americans could have been choosing between the perceived, if not actual, lesser of two evils?

It's not impossible, but I honestly don't think that Gore or Kerry would have gone to Iraq using 9/11 as a smokescreen. With few exceptions, starting immoral, unilateral, interminable war is probably the worst thing a president can do. On so many levels it's just awful. Morally, economically, and on every other basis it's terribly damaging. It's even made us less-safe. So while it's vaguely possible that Gore or Kerry could have outdone Bush by staging a fascist revolution or something, I find it exceedingly unlikely.

You miss the point. The 2000 election against Gore didn't have anything to do with Iraq or terrorism. That one was more about domestic policy. No way does Gore get the nomination if he hadn't been vice president. He just wasn't a very good candidate, IMO, and it doesn't reflect badly on anybody to have voted for Bush in 2000 against Gore. In 2004, the war in Iraq was already in swing, and Kerry couldn't figure out what he wanted to do to fix the problem. He also seemed to regard the terrorist threat as a criminal rather than military security issue. Everybody has to decide for themselves what they think will happen if either one is elected and vote accordingly. I do not think it was unreasonable to project that Kerry would A) not have been able to do any better in Iraq since 2004 than Bush, and B) would have made ideologically-based decisions which could have left us more open to attack at home. Maybe it would have been this way maybe not, nobody will ever know, but I think your frustration with the electorate is misplaced. You, and the democratic party, seem to think that the argument "anybody but Bush" is cogent. It's not.

[f.Channell]

Our population is aging. Medicine is getting better at keeping older people healthy for a lot longer.

I don't buy this one at all.
Other than much higher infant death, Kidney disease and TB I would say people lived into their 80's and 90's much more frequently than today.

At least this is true in my family.

I attribute it to more exercise, better food and water, and lower stress levels, but hard to say on that count since I wasn't there.

In fact if healthcare was charged by the pound or substantially more for smokers or drinkers it would make a lot more sense to me.

F.

[AAAhmed46]

You know...though i live in canada ill say this:


I MIGHT be supportive of Republicans if it wasn't for the fact so many of thier voters weren't all "lets kill all them towel heads! Lets pull their nails out!".

And im talking voters here and some candidates.

[Bill Glasheen]

There are all kinds over here, Adam, just as there are over there. And the crazies and whackos vote all ends of the political spectrum.

- Bill

[Bill Glasheen]

Fred

Stay away from the anecdotes, and check the data. This says it all.

Life Expectancy by Age, 1850–2004

The better care you take of someone, the longer they live. And when they get older, NEW diseases rear their ugly heads.

When I was a kid, taking care of someone who had a heart attack meant leaving them in the hospital for a month or longer so that the myocardium fed by the blocked vessel could die and scar over. That's assuming of course that they didn't die first, which they often did in the first hour. Now having a heart attack means you often get to the hospital within the precious 6-hour time window where some or all of that myocardium (heart muscle) can be saved. You cath the person and put a stent in, or reroute the plumbing via a CABG. I was looking at some data just yesterday on hundreds of thousands of people who had an acute myocardial infarction (AMI or heart attack) in 2004. Most of them actually were BETTER in 2005, and cost a LOT less money. Basically we fix them. Heart operations today are a commodity, albeit a really, really expensive one.

We get peoples' blood pressure and high cholesterol lowered with drugs so they don't have the heart attack in the first place. It costs a lifetime of drugs, but it works. It's a lot cheaper to let a certain fraction of them have a heart attack and fix it (when we can), but we save them the bad ambulance ride and the risk of not making it.

We treat and cure hundreds of thousands of cases of cancer a year. Breast cancer treatment as well is now a commodity. We even save women's breasts - something that generally wasn't done as recently as a decade or so ago.

Once you make headway against the 3 biggest killers (heart attacks, cancer, stroke), these people live longer. Then when they get older and get older age diseases, they are now REALLY sick. And they cost a lot of money all over again after having spent a lot of money keeping them alive long enough to get old and get really old persons' diseases. Men live long enough to have to deal with their failing prostates. It used to be that they did the roto router operation (TERP) and got it over with. Now you can take medication for a lifetime so you still have a sex life with your old lady (in the literal sense). Ca-ching! Most live long enough to need cataract operations for failing eye lenses. Ca-ching! Our knees and hips begin to fail, so we replace them. Ca-ching!

Get the picture?

We shouldn't fret over the successes of modern medicine. Be thankful. These successes are a lot more important than the material things people (not necessarily you, Fred) would rather spend their pocket change on.

- Bill

[Bill Glasheen]

We're friends and I've received a lot worse on these forums.

The feeling is mutual.

You do seem to be the champion of minority causes at times. That's not altogether a bad thing - particularly at your station in life. It is in fact very healthy to have a certain number of Justins in the population.

It's not impossible, but I honestly don't think that Gore or Kerry would have gone to Iraq using 9/11 as a smokescreen.

You need to stay away from the partisan propaganda, Justin, and stick with the facts.

THE WHOLE WORLD thought that Hussein had WMDs. He had them before, and used them on the Iranians and his own people as well. He killed a million (1,000,000) Iranians in the Iran/Iraq war, partially via the use of these WMDs. Our foreign friends had intelligence which led them to believe he still had WMDs. Virtually all of Congress believed he had WMDs. Democrat after Democrat lined up to deliver the bellicose speeches. They are there for the quoting and will be dragged out if you wish. And he was targeting and shooting at US and British planes on a regular basis. In case you forgot, they were protecting the UN-mandated "no fly zones" to keep Saddam from exterminating more Kurds and Shia. That of course came on the tail end of taking over Kuwait, raping their women, and then leaving the whole country ablaze. That wasn't just a five-alarm fire he left. It was a fire that cost billions and billions to put out, and compromised the health of hundreds of thousands of people. And the entire Kuwaitt misadventure of our dear Saddam cost the whole world dearly. His "screw you" attitude after extracting him didn't give the world any warm and fuzzy feelings about him. (e.g. the myriad scandals associated with the food for oil crisis, bribing of various European government officials with oil credits, thumbing his nose at the IAEA, funding the families of terrorist Palestinian bombers, etc.)

Even Hussein himself thought he had more WMDs than he did. His own scientists were lieing to him, telling him they were farther along than they were. They didn't particularly care to be another casualty of his death squads or torture prisons.

This was a bad, bad man who wanted a fight. He fashioned himself as the new leader of the Middle East. Check out his own quotes, and his fantasies rooted in Middle East history.

Morally, economically, and on every other basis it's terribly damaging. It's even made us less-safe.

Straight from the John Edwards political propaganda machine.

You have no evidence that any other path would have made us safer. You can't blow sunshine up our kilts with your woulda coulda shoulda alternatives.

The Middle East was a problem back then, it is a problem now, and it will be a problem in the future - NO MATTER WHAT IS DONE.

The thing I admire about Hillary Clinton is that she doesn't engage in this revisionist history BS. Of all the Democratic candidates in the debates, she's the ONLY ONE with a set of cahones on this issue. She's the only one who says she made the best decision at the time based upon the facts that were available at the time. And she would be right, FWIW. For once, let's applaud a politician for telling the truth even though the extremists in her party keep saying "wrong answer." The rest of them are spineless on the issue.

OF COURSE many mistakes were made along the way. WE ALL make mistakes. The greatest presidents make horrible mistakes. Talk to JFK about the Bay of Pigs some time. Just this morning I was reading about Abe Lincoln's big blunder in the Civil War. He couldn't get Meade to finish the job at Gettyburg and end the war early. Those two additional years of Civil War cost our nation orders of magnitude more American lives and property damage than this Iraq thing ever will.

Bush made many military mistakes. And the WHOLE WORLD had terrible Middle East intelligence. We're not much better with the intelligence thing today. That's pretty scary when you think about it.

No matter what solution you or anyone else proposes and would see executed, we are in some deep doo doo for a long time. There is no golden ending. Blaming Bush for the Middle East may delight the party faithful, but it doesn't make you friends with the truth and a bright future.

Ever wonder why Bill Clinton and George HW Bush are such good friends now? They've been there in the White House. They understand. That's why Hillary isn't mouthing off a crock of extremist propaganda as well.

The only ex president singing a different tune is Jimmy Carter. Yea, right. Now THERE'S someone who had the Middle East under control. Long gas lines, OPEC embargos, invasion of our Iranian embassy (US sovereign territory, BTW...), Iran hostage crisis, failed hostage rescue attempt with lives lost, resulting "stagflation" (recession AND inflation) of our economy, etc., etc. Sure, Jimmy....

- Bill

[f.Channell]

Bill,
Just going by my family. My best research is on my surname.
My father 78 years
Grandfather 68 years
Great grandfather 76 years
2nd great grandfather 80 years
3rd great grandfather 79 years
4th great grandfather 94 years, his brother 97, one sister 98 another 56.
Their father, my 5th great grandfather, fought in the Revolution 110. Buried in Canada. A nice guy sent me a photo of his headstone.
Totally accurate by the way, these are all from town vital records.

I hope I have his genes. I have at least some, somewhere.

You have to admit, it's interesting. But factor in some of the children who died in the first couple of years, then it changes significantly. But cancer and heart disease, didn't seem to be a problem. If they could even diagnose it at that time.

F.

[IJ]

"We shouldn't fret over the successes of modern medicine. Be thankful. These successes are a lot more important than the material things people (not necessarily you, Fred) would rather spend their pocket change on."

Bill, I love my computer. It's got lots of new features and a cool monitor and its substantially better than the thing that used to look like a microwave and was infinitely slower just 20 years ago. They cost LESS as time goes on.... medicine is great, the advances are great, they cost way too much due to waste and people in other systems pay less for the same thing. THAT is what people are right to be upset about.

"Straight from the John Edwards political propaganda machine."

In a sense, yes, and in another sense, you're the mirror image, because you're loathe to admit Bush had an itching to go after Saddam that exceeded and preceeded the evidence you mention. He immediately tried to link 9/11 to SH when his intelligence staff was telling him he was missing the point. He had a conclusion and a bunch of yes men to back it up. SH was a bad man. Kim Jong Il is a bad man too. That's not enough, and the clusterf**k we'd have going after the DPRK wouldn't be worth removing him, bad man or not. And they HAVE WMD, indisputable proof, they blew one up. Sure, people were fired up about SH on both sides, but in part they were going on data Bush provided--that whole myth that SH was involved in 9/11 that Valk mentioned... people didn't make that up in their own minds. We were fed a lot of nonsense. Both sides have mistakes to answer for, but I'll bet you a plate of steamed veggies and sashimi that history is going to hand Bush his butt. You can point out that "The Middle East was a problem back then, it is a problem now, and it will be a problem in the future - NO MATTER WHAT IS DONE," but it would be LESS of a problem and we wouldn't be down 3500 soldiers at this point if we hadn't tried to stage a budget crushing supersized remake of Black Hawk Down with insufficient planning and a utopian, neocon vision of a stable instademocracy after a war that would pay for itself before the Jiffypop was finished.

"Talk to JFK about the Bay of Pigs some time."

I was really impressed listening to him take prompt responsibility for that.

"Blaming Bush for the Middle East..."

No, he's being blamed for blowing up a hornet's nest, and doing it carelessly. The place is cursed and always will be. But one can make things worse for sure and skewer our credibility for generations. Blaming Bush for his documented errors isn't "BDS," it's quite reasonable; it sounds like BDS to you because you think he's being "blamed for the middle east," which we all know was a mess before he arrived. Let's not take on strawmen--as Bush will tell you, if you woefully underestimate the task, you get creamed.

[Bill Glasheen]

He immediately tried to link 9/11 to SH when his intelligence staff was telling him he was missing the point.

Absolutely, positively not.

I watched a very early interview where Bush told the press point blank that 9/11 had nothing to do with Saddam.

Sorry to burst this popular Bush-bashing bubble.

you're loathe to admit Bush had an itching to go after Saddam that exceeded and preceeded the evidence you mention.

What???

The Clinton administration before him had announced regime change as a goal. It wasn't just Bush.

Furthermore, the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 is a United States Congressional statement of policy calling for regime change in Iraq.

The Act found that Iraq had, between 1980 and 1998 (1) committed various and significant violations of International Law, (2) had failed to comply with the obligations to which it had agreed to following the Gulf War and (3) further had ignored Resolutions of the United Nations Security Council. The Act declared that it was the Policy of the United States to support "regime change." The Act was passed 360-38 in the U.S. House of Representatives[2] and by unanimous consent in the Senate.[3] US President Bill Clinton signed the bill into law on October 31, 1998. The law's stated purpose was: "to establish a program to support a transition to democracy in Iraq."

- Wikipedia


This is more revisionist history. There's no point having a discusion about this if people are going to declare amnesia about the origin of US policy against Saddam.

- Bill

[IJ]

Bill, you see the world through BDS colored glasses. Can you not understand that Congress might have regime change as a GOAL for Iraq and yet, not believe that invading was worth it? I mean, seriously, who is it that's supposed to declare war? Congress did not declare war on Saddam in 1998, so they must have meant something else, and perhaps what they meant was what they said, which was, according to your source, "to establish a program to support a transition to democracy in Iraq." Head Start is a program; the Iraq war is not a "program." Regime change in the DPRK, Russia, White House, Cuba, and most of the middle east are goals of mine (and at least for some of those nations, goals of our country as well), but I have no plans to invade, and I hope the US can restrain itself as well. I'm not 100% sure after hearing the republican candidates offer up the idea of nuking Iran.

Here's an excerpt or two for you WRT the first point you rebutted (the author is describing a meeting on 9/12/2001 in which Rummy pointed our that Iraq had better targets than afghanistan):

"Having been attacked by Al Qaeda, for us now to go bombing Iraq in response would be like our invading Mexico after the Japanese attacked us at Pearl Harbor.....

The president later called Clarke and some aides aside:

"Go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this. See if he's linked in any way."
"But Mr. President, al Qaeda did this."
"I know, I know. But--see if Saddam was involved. Just look. I want to know any shred--"
"Absolutely, we will look--again." I was trying to be more respectful, more responsive. "But you know, we have looked several times for state sponsorship of al Qaeda and not found any real linkages to Iraq. Iran plays a little, as does Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, Yemen."
"Look into Iraq, Saddam," the President said testily and left us."

Counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke in "Against All Enemies."

"I watched a very early interview where Bush told the press point blank that 9/11 had nothing to do with Saddam. Sorry to burst this popular Bush-bashing bubble."

Great. So, there was a media blitz from Bush and his gang regarding their move to invade Iraq, to educate and sway the public, and as a result of that, or at least coincidentally right after that, whether by direct accusation or by conflation, eg the endless repetition of the degree of the terror threat and mention of Saddam, the majority (!!) of the US came to believe Saddam played a role and many still do. And because Bush said at a press conference once there was no connection, then clearly no responsibility for this heckuva misunderstanding could ever be laid at his feet, or those of his minions who spread the word?

I know that if I were President, I would make it a goal (but not an invasion) to correct (rather than wink at, and innocently benefit from) this misperception and make it crystal clear that our invasion of Iraq would have nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.

[mhosea]

this misperception and make it crystal clear that our invasion of Iraq would have nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.

Personally, I never suffered from this mis-perception, not for one second ever. My recollection is that the question was asked and answered in the negative. It was crystal clear to me.

[AAAhmed46]

Anyone like Ron Paul?