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For background, here's the story Its semantics, but still, enough already with the cowboy talk. |
After Somalia, the terrorist factions learned that a truck, an M-16, RPG's etc shot at troops from the crowd was effective. And when casualties and losses started coming in, American's got weak. We pull out. What he is trying to convey is that we are not pulling out this time. |
And dont get all huffy, and slam me for being a bush hater, or whatever... This is a non-american, giving an outsiders (non-political) opinion about a comment made in the public domain. Even if he was just "showing confidance" in the american military, and the soldiers.. SOMEONE should be proofreading his speechs.. this really does sound like a taunt. |
(I even spelt it correctly this time) |
That has nothing to do with pulling out or not. And everything to do with a bad movie about cheerleading. That speech was way out of line and clearly the white house thinks so if they are issuing speechs to apologize. |
...however I dont think its really going to make any difference or threaten soldiers lives... (but that didnt stop me from wanting to spit at Coulter as she said the exact same thing on CNN) |
Too bad the white house is so appoligetic. I was hoping this administration would stick to it's "guns" (pardon the pun) and stop weenieing out everytime someone starts whining foul. |
I know thats what he meant, but the choice of language is poor. I dont think its a real issue that deserves this coverage, but it clearly is a poor choice of language. |
You're full of shit spunky. You're regurgitating Limbaugh shit line for line. Bush has ALWAYS spoken this way, even when we WEREN'T being attacked "Somalia-style" so it really has NOTHING to do with that. You just CHOOSE to believe that he said it with such intent behind it. No. The intent has been put in since he came under fire for saying it. Once again, he spoke off the cuff and said something stupid. He sounds like a stuttering jackass with no statesmanship whatso ever. The only time the asshole sounds even remotely intelligent is when he's reading someone else's words. Don't give me this shit about cowboys being honorable. Jesus christ you really get swept up in the male bravado shit don't you. This has everything to do with appropriate and intelligent language for the leader of the USA and in effect the free world. Most Americans, I think, demand more, in terms of language, than that. So fuck off with your 'honorable' 'rally-the-troops' shit. Its crap. |
Cowboys have been overly romanticized, so much that the stereotype is ripe for ridicule. The stereotype that bush is trying to fit is not so much a "cowboy" but a "gunfighter" or "wild west" stereotype, methinks. Not appropriate for the supposed leader of the free world. Aren't there any statesmen left in America? |
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speaking of diplomacy, remember when Bush said the UN was rendering itself irrelevant? what does crow taste like |
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where was the US continuing its effort to maintain the relevancy of the US by vetoing over half the 70 resolutions against Israel? are you being sarcastic..... DUDE? |
I think it is disgraceful, and shows a lack of humility that should go along with the position of President of the US. Self promotion like that is exactly like the political propaganda that the Soviets and Nazi's used, and is out of place in the States. and no, Rowlf. You do not seem to understand it. |
speaking of Israel and to totally change the subject, has anyone heard of how the israelis nearly helped us start WWIII back in 1967? I just read the story of the USS Liberty and how the IDF nearly blew it to pieces in a concentrated attack, and how the State department had a carrier group recall fighters from going to its assistance. Funny you don't ever hear anything about this. I guess the plan was to sink the Liberty with all hands and blame it on the Russians, thus giving a pretext for an attack. This is all in the new issue of Fortean Times, which is a special conspiracy issue. I highly recommend this one, as it has an article on some perhaps convincing proof on who was really behind the JFK assassination, 9-11 and the media, a Trotskyite saucer cult, and some interesting photos and news items on miscellaneous subjects. |
I am not sure what the hell was going on. I think Isreal was trying to pull some shit with that, what was it called, 12 day war or something like that? They knew the liberty had CIA and NSA decryptors on board, listening to radio signals coming out of Israel, and needed to cover something up. |
recently, i was watching "greatest raids" on history channel and thoroughly digging the channels recent use of computer graphical visual aides. they were depicting a raid in 1977 to rescue hostages from Entebbe airport in Uganda. a couple 100 commandos, going 2500 miles undetected from Israel to Uganda, landing at their friggin airport, avoiding radar the whole time flying just feet above lake victoria prior to landing, securing the terminal, reclaiming all but 3 of the 100 hostages, killing 20 Ugandan soldiers, all 7 hijackers. Only one Israeli soldier died. They were in and out in less than an hour. They used 3 hercules transport craft, had a handful of armored jeeps. nearly 800 Ugandan troops were within 2 miles of the airport. they also managed to destroy a dozen or so Ugandan fighter jets as not to be attacked on their way out. Its an impressive story. Im unfamiliar with the USS Liberty. Sounds interesting. |
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help me understand spunk. Is the UN then only 'relevant' when it can help the US? Does the UN magically disappear when the US thinks it can handle itself, then reappear when it needs it? Is Kofi Annan the Great Gazoo? Here's something YOU don't understand spunk. The US has military force but it don't know shit about peacekeeping, and from the looks of it, nothing about nation building either. You need help. The UN is not an ATM. You cant just go in there, ask for troops and money, and say "no, we're still leading this thing" and THEN come and brag about how you're "making them relevant again". By expecting the UN to be some giddy dog waiting for you to come home, happy to get a little role "yay the US is acknowledging us", you are really just viewing them as a property . Its disrespectful and the UN should now lay it down and say "listen, either you give us a big role or you get nothing at all". period. The US is in trouble in Iraq, and its going to have to pay some cost for its diplomatic failures. Either the US can be smart and pay it in humility to the UN and acknowledge how much they need them, or they go it alone and pay the cost with soldiers' lives and taxpayer dollars. Any UN member country should be damned before they let Bush have it both ways. |
http://slate.msn.com/id/2088799/ |
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No one ever thought this would be accomplished without loss of life. The current resistance was anticipated. It is localized to a small region around Baghdad. The majority of Iraq is free of guerilla violence. I challenge you to read Bush's speech instead of just reading the commentary. I just did. Bush doesn't tell the world "Drop Dead." I didn't read that into what he said at all. He said, "This is what the US is doing, we're doing the right thing, we're doing the work the UN was chartered to do, the UN should come aboard." |
thats not what Chalabi said... I read the speech. Its subtle, but its fucking there. Its awful, and you know the other nations picked up on it by the reaction of their subtle applause. If they thought they were getting invited into something good, at least the vast 'coalition' would have been up and clapping loudly. Nate, didn't you blame the troops, saying they're fucking up a good thing, a while back? what could have possibly happened since then to change your mind? The forming of a PTA? |
I did blame the troops, and I do blame the troops. The military leadership is horrible and terrible, terrible things are happening in the name of the USA. One more reason the UN should involve itself. Explain to me why any 'good' nation would not take this opportunity? No one has the goodwill of the people of Iraq in mind. The US has its interests, good and bad, and the rest of the world is either with us or thumbing their noses at us. Regardless of what you feel our motives have been, we have done a good thing for the people of Iraq. It has cost us quite a bit, in lives and money. We're not profiting from the oil as everyone said we would. We're not profiting, period. We're losing money. For security. The majority of Iraqis, it seems, agree that the US did the right thing. Saddam played the world like a violin. He used the division in the UN to his advantage. He would have continued to do that if the US hadn't gone off on its own and taken him out. Did he have weapons of mass destruction? Maybe, maybe not. At the least he was working to make it seem like he had weapons of mass destruction. He was playing games with the UN inspectors and he was stopping just short of complying with the UN resolutions. Is the US always right? No. Does the US tend to be excessively violent? Definitely. But we are not the evil empire that you see us as. |
The United States has no place in policing the world. That's not our job. Does the UN have an independent force of their own? |
so why in hell would any other nation want to commit their kids to fight guerillas under this fucked up leadership? |
No scratch that. We need more kids so they can have barbeques instead of MREs. |
some problems are too big for even a nation as powerful as the US to handle. this is one. "Explain to me why any 'good' nation would not take this opportunity? " all it would teach the US is that it can go in anywhere and make a mess and the UN will bail them out in their hour of need. On to Syria. Call it 'tough love' until the US realizes that giving the UN more responsibility has been the model, and it has helped before and will again. What does the US have as its model? Vietnam? |
And the US is sticking around to make things right, which is what many said we would not do. Regardless of if our motives were right or wrong, if our published reasons for entering the war were fabricated or not, the people of Iraq have benefited from the removal of Saddam. And if the world comes together to assure democracy takes root in Iraq, Iraq can be the state that Bush is talking about. An example for the middle east. If the world won't get behind us, it will be a greater burden to the american people. But guess what, we're still going to do it. The US has the Marshall Plan as its model. Don't try to tell me that wasn't successful. Vietnam is nothing like this war. Vietnam was a proxy war with China. Iraq is not a proxy war with anyone. That is a key and important distinction. As for the poll only happening in Baghdad, that's the only place in Iraq where there are any siginficant problems. The bulk of Iraq isn't plagued by guerilla activity. |
We're not sticking around to make things right, we're sticking around to make sure things get done "our way", often perceived but patriotists to be "right". |
"Why are they so high?" "Because Bush is sending troops to fight Iraq." In a dismal tone. I wonder how many other kids have had situations like that. Don't even know where the country is but we're at war and isn't this great it's america. This time. |
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What's that you say? None of that actually happened. Um, well. Hey, how about Iraq? We're staying the course and doing what's right there! Apart from Baghdad, the whole country is shiny and happy and American soldiers are spreading democracy like Johnny Appleseed! Oh, they aren't...? What do you mean they are getting shot at all over the country? I never see the flag-draped coffins on the news, so it must not be happening. Heck, I wouldn't even have known about all the mutilated soldiers recuperating in DC if they hadn't been in the front row of RAW on monday night, blank looks in their eyes and prosthetic arms resting on the safety rail. But Democracy is well on its way in Iraq - well, except for that member of the Iraqi Council that was killed today... Seriously, the USA is not an evil empire, BUT it's real easy for it to start acting like one. I think the only way we will be able to regain the respect that used to be accorded to use is to get Bush out of office. He's been an unmitigated disaster. Then maybe we can get some rational cooperation going on. |
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I love it! |
we are still in afghanistan. i have a friend who is likely being deployed there in march. i don't understand why anyone would expect a reconstruction effort to work in a matter of months or even a year or two. it just isn't feasible, it isn't logical, and it sure as hell isn't practical. i think we need to get bush out of office. i think he has throughly distanced us from the global community and, because of that, the global community is going to punish the people of iraq just to see the US fail. just to get to the 'i told you so, you american swine cowboy.' but as for the core of bush's actions, it's a load of shit. bush went into iraq and afghanistan with the support of congress. with the support of kerry and lieberman. they gave him the ridiculous war powers. we went into iraq and afghanistan as a nation. |
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I've been saying for the last couple years that Afghanistan isn't getting the commitment and resources we are capable of providing. |
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You know, I would have fully supported the Iraq war if BUsh would have just come out and admitted that we were really there to retrieve that crashed flying saucer. |
you know. its both. There is a bitterness to the US, but if you read foreign newspapers, you see they claim that holding out a while and letting the US see how tough it is will force the US to give the UN a greater role. You can argue about who will do a better role in Iraq, the UN or the US, and I'm going with the UN based on peacekeeping abilities, plain and simple. i think they'd do a better job, and if they were to jump on board the US right now at this very moment they'd have a role much like the current 'coalition', pretty much in name only, more a political move than an actual act to make Iraq a better place. Do you see where I'm coming from here? A lot of my hostility from this speech I think comes from when Bush said all this, but then started going off about AIDS. Bear with me here. I think most people can see right now, as the true reasons for war are being exposed, that the need for war at THAT MOMENT was unnecessary, that there definitely was no immininent threat. Thusly, diplomatic solutions could have continued. War was not the 'last option' at all. So then theres a war that destroys everything, destroys needed government buildings for rebuilding, have no control over looting of essential items and services to keep these places operating, workers who could have helped were either killed, ran off or dismissed because they were just a little too high in the Ba'ath party. (even if they were in the party against their will, even if they were highly skilled and could have at least trained SOMEONE ELSE) the cost gets higher and higher, the people aren't there to get things moving... expected to be 400 billion, maybe more. Back to AIDS. I mentioned this before the war, you can look it up. The money spent on this war could have gone to wipe out AIDS in Africa. THAT would be doing good. THAT would bring the world together. THAT is a real threat to America, to everywhere. Not some pissant little tyrant who might have never had weapons, who destroyed the few known weapons he did have under UN and US pressure. So when I see Bush all smug, giving little tiny jabs, not admitting the problems that do exist, not giving any insight to where they need help, and THEN bring up AIDS in Africa when the wealth is there to truly lead THAT fight. Come on, thats not cool. Lets get our priorities together before we bomb any other nations over paranoid speculation. Lately I've been thinking... If there was no surplus when Bush went into office, would there still have been a war? bah, best not think about that... |
the UN is faltering. and when the countries of the UN act in the same, self-interested vein they accuse the US of acting in, it is kind of hard to shed a tear. and it isn't even the countries of the UN. it is the arrogant few that hold the real power of the UN. they want to butt heads with the arrogant US. unfortunately, the arrogance of the US is founded in our military might. which could take on the world if it came to it. so, sure, your complaints about the US are largely valid. but big fucking deal. every powerful nation on earth is self serving and self interested. we're all playing the same game. and on the other side of the coin, no country on earth matches the charity of the US. not even close. |
specifically, UN weapons inspectors, and military presence, in Israel... From what I read, the European nations say they have a harder time funding these global missions, because they say they can't just "create money out of thin air" the way the US does. I don't particularly understand it, money and numbers dont' make sense to me anymore, they don't really exist. ...not since AOL bought Time Warner. does anyone have any statistical information on charity? I want to see the difference between total amount of charity versus the percentage of a country's wealth. Google is no help to me this evening. |
http://search.csmonitor.com/durable/2000/12/04/fp14s4-csm.shtml |
She didn't give a reference, but I don't think she'd lie. And the Carter's tend to be pretty well informed. Although she was pretty mad at Bush for cancelling her and Jimmy's trip to Africa. Just like his father did back during the Gulf War. So, who knows? |
Whassup wit dat? |
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