Political Thread [12] - CLOSED

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Message 209850 - Posted: 11 Dec 2005, 1:45:18 UTC

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Message 209860 - Posted: 11 Dec 2005, 1:56:29 UTC
Last modified: 11 Dec 2005, 2:06:22 UTC

I still had problems convincing them that there was a problem when I reported my ex to them.

Same over here. We've had quite a lot of cases in the past where women have gone to the police and asked for protection and then found dead the next week because they were turned down.


For what's it's worth, over here in the State of Nevada, the police put domestic disturbance calls on a high priority, and when they arrive, someone is going to jail, period. Who ever is sent to jail is put on notice that their behavior is going to be closely monitored by the police and courts. A second time offense is punished by an automatic six months in jail. Counseling is given to the victim from the get-go.

Unfortunately, you cannot protect someone from a significant other who is bent of destruction. The only option for them is to realize the gravity of the situation they are in and immediately move out, and flee to somewhere else, and leave no tracks or forwarding address. Easier said than done.

If you look back, people who find themselves in these kinds of relationship have developed a pattern. Their parents had the same kind of relationship and they look for a partner who will provide for them the same thing. This, of coarse, is done on the subconscious level.

But we digress...
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Message 209879 - Posted: 11 Dec 2005, 2:13:33 UTC

Ex-judge OKs plea deal for pornography

Associated Press

December 10, 2005

LOS ANGELES - A former Orange County judge accused of having child pornography on his court computer has agreed to a plea deal that could put him in prison for nearly three years, according to court documents released yesterday.

Ronald Kline, who served on the Superior Court bench, was expected to plead guilty to four counts of child pornography Monday under the terms of an agreement filed with the U.S. District Court. Prosecutors dropped three other counts of child pornography, said a U.S. attorney's spokesman. Kline was charged with seven counts of possessing child pornography after a Canadian hacker used a computer program to download diary entries and images from Kline's computers.
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Message 209880 - Posted: 11 Dec 2005, 2:15:47 UTC

Stop hindering work, atomic chief tells Iran

By Walter Gibbs
NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE

December 10, 2005

OSLO, Norway – Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, warned Iran yesterday to stop hindering an investigation into the country's nuclear energy program, which the United States and many other observers suspect is a cover to develop nuclear weapons.

"The international community has begun to lose its patience," he told reporters here before a ceremony today at which he is to be awarded the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize.

While denouncing Iran's repeated delays in accommodating inspectors from his agency, ElBaradei also said that forcing a showdown on the matter could backfire. The United States has urged the agency to report Iran's history of concealment and sluggish cooperation to the U.N. Security Council for possible punitive measures.

"Let us not think we should jump the gun and use enforcement," said ElBaradei, adding that no "smoking gun" had emerged to prove that Iran's intent was hostile. "If you can wiggle your way to cooperation, that is better than the alternative."

He took a similar approach before the invasion of Iraq, when, he said, inspectors had turned up no evidence to support the Bush administration's claim that Saddam Hussein had revived a nuclear weapons program. The subsequent failure of U.S.-led troops to find such evidence seemed to vindicate ElBaradei, while burnishing his Nobel credentials.

According to scientists and policy analysts, the case against Iran's openly belligerent regime is harder to dismiss because the existence of its uranium-enrichment program, ostensibly to produce energy, is not in doubt. The question is whether the program will be modified out of view of the atomic energy agency to make bombs.

"ElBaradei needs a touch of Churchill now," said Paul Leventhal, founder and president emeritus of the Nuclear Control Institute, a nonprofit research center based in Washington. "He must acknowledge the unique danger of this regime, which is comparable to the rise of Hitler in the 1930s. The Nobel will give him a bully pulpit if he's prepared to use it. But so far he has put a rosy picture on things in order to avoid a crisis."

The Nobel Peace Prize includes a $1.3 million prize, which ElBaradei and the U.N. agency will split evenly. He said he would donate his prize money to orphanages in his native Egypt. Yukiya Amano, chairman of the agency's board, said its share would go toward cancer treatment and nutrition in the developing world.
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Message 209882 - Posted: 11 Dec 2005, 2:19:33 UTC

Too few preparations for next attack

TRUDY RUBIN
THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

December 10, 2005

While President Bush paints Iraq as the central front in the war on terror, the former members of the 9/11 commission say the government isn't doing enough to protect us from another attack at home.

The bipartisan panel issued a shocking report card this week on the government's response to 41 recommendations the commission made in July 2004. The government earned five F's, 12 D's, two incompletes and only one high grade (an A minus for blocking terrorist financing).

Even more unsettling were the emotions panelists displayed about the gaps in security precautions. "Are we crazy?" demanded former Republican governor of Illinois Jim Thompson. "Why aren't our tax dollars being spent to protect our lives?"

If they're that scared, we should be, too. Despite some progress on homeland security, the issue isn't on the national front burner. "It's not a priority for the government," complained Thomas Kean, former Republican governor of New Jersey and co-chair of the panel. "A lot of things we need to do to prevent another 9/11 just simply aren't being done by the president or by the Congress."

One example that earned an F: Four years after the events of Sept. 11, 2001, Congress still hasn't helped police and firefighters to communicate with each other in a disaster. At the World Trade Center, police couldn't talk by radio to firemen to tell them the South Tower was about to topple. In 2005, local, state and federal officials couldn't communicate during Hurricane Katrina because their radio bands were not compatible. The same problem exists countrywide.

"This is a no-brainer," 9/11 commission co-chair Lee Hamilton declared on "Meet the Press." "From the standpoint of responding to a disaster, the key responders must be able to talk with one another." Yet Congress won't allocate needed radio spectrum to public safety agencies until 2009.

Another F-grade scandal: Congress has appropriated billions in homeland security funds on the basis of politics, not risk. Legislators from small states demand the same funds as states such as New York or California, where terrorist strikes are most likely. In fiscal 2005, Wyoming got $27.50 per person in first-responder grants, while California received $8.05 per person. The port of New York and New Jersey – a prime potential target – got $6.6 million in security grants in 2005, about the same as the port of Memphis. Congress is voting on a new funding formula this month, but small-state senators want their pork.

Have the stomach for more?

The Department of Homeland Security gets a D on making critical risk assessments to determine which nuclear and chemical plants are in danger. Without such assessments, priorities can't be set and funds allocated to protect key sites.

Airline security rates C and D grades. There's still no unified watch list for terrorists, against which to check passengers coming through airports. While we quibble about allowing passengers to carry small scissors on planes, most airline cargo still isn't checked for explosives.

And real scary: At most government levels there's still no unified command system to respond to a disaster. No one knew who was in charge on Sept. 11 – or during Hurricane Katrina. Some local leaders, such as New York's Mayor Michael Bloomberg may make their own plans, but Homeland Security has to set the standard from the top.

Why, four years after Sept. 11, 2001, is the government's report card so dismal? I asked Daniel Benjamin, co-author of a must-read: "The Next Attack: The Failure of the War on Terror and a Strategy for Getting it Right."

"I don't think the administration ever had its heart in homeland security," Benjamin says. "It genuinely believed that if it fought terrorists 'over there' (in Iraq), it didn't have to worry about over here."

But, far from removing the terror threat, the Iraq war has bolstered global terrorist recruiting, which continues to threaten our homeland. Yet there's no sense of urgency at the White House.

"We believe another attack will occur (in the United States)," says Hamilton. "We better get to it and protect the American people."

And the American people better urge the president and legislators to provide the protection they need.
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Message 210529 - Posted: 11 Dec 2005, 18:17:35 UTC
Last modified: 11 Dec 2005, 18:17:56 UTC


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Message 210582 - Posted: 11 Dec 2005, 19:19:24 UTC

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Message 210584 - Posted: 11 Dec 2005, 19:22:29 UTC

Jobs no one else wants to do

RUBEN NAVARRETTE JR.
THE UNION-TRIBUNE

December 11, 2005

The minute I saw the harrowing video of the scaffold caught up in high winds and crashing into a Denver office building 12 stories above the ground – with two terrified window washers hanging on for dear life – I just knew that when the time came to get the men's statements, we'd need a translator who spoke Spanish.

Maybe it's because Denver is one of those U.S. cities with a substantial immigrant population, both legal and illegal. Or because this looked precisely like the type of job that immigrant-bashers insist that Americans are eager to do – dirty, distasteful and sometimes dangerous.

Maybe it was because of what I saw one afternoon a couple of years ago outside the 72-story Bank of America Plaza building in downtown Dallas. Coming back from lunch, I noticed what seemed to be two Mexican immigrant men getting instructions from a third man through an interpreter. The two men were tied to a harness and had cleaning supplies. It was obvious that they were window washers, and that they were headed straight up.

As I walked away, I remember thinking that this episode was positive proof of two things – that immigrants will do just about anything, and that I'm no immigrant. Washing windows while dangling 70 stories off the ground? Not me. No thanks. Not at any price.

Still, someone has to do those jobs. That's where immigrants come in. The fact that a lot of Americans – like me – won't go anywhere near this kind of work swings open the door of opportunity for people such as Oscar Gonzalez and Hector Estrada, the two men who were nearly killed on that scaffold in Denver.

In news reports, I couldn't find any mention of whether these two men are in the country legally, but it was pretty clear from their interviews with local television stations that they are foreign-born.

It's also clear that Americans have become – because of a work ethic that diminishes from one generation to the next – much more dependent on people like this than our pride will allow us to admit.

That's part of the honest discussion over immigration that Americans need to be having – where we talk candidly about how we got to this point and admit that this is a problem of our making.

Don't count on Congress to lead the way. Democrats are convinced that the immigration issue will hurt Republicans, so they're just trying to stay out of the way. Meanwhile, Republicans are trying to manage a split between those who want to beef up enforcement before broaching the thorny subject of guest workers, and those who want to deal with all the issues at once.

This week, the House will have a floor debate over an enforcement-only bill proposed by Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis.

This isn't a good sign. It would be a disaster if, after all the hand-wringing over immigration reform, all we were left with was yet another bill that talked about building new fences and dispatching more border guards. There's nothing wrong with doing those things, but if that's all we do, we won't have done much to stop illegal immigration. Something must be done about the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants who are already here, and about the employers who thumb their noses at the law.

It's still not clear whether Bob Popp Building Services – the company identified by Denver news media outlets as being at the center of the near tragic window-washing incident – is one of those employers and whether the workers it hired are here illegally. The company is cooperating with federal workplace safety investigators. Gonzalez and Estrada insist that they were not warned about the possibility that they'd encounter high winds that day, and that their calls for help were ignored by their supervisor. (The 911 call came from someone within the office building.) The workers told a Denver newspaper that they were offered raises if they would sign a form agreeing not to talk about the incident.

The company says "these are false allegations." But it is looking for replacements. Gonzalez and Estrada quit.

Say, there may be an opportunity for those who like to complain that immigrants – legal and illegal – take jobs away from Americans. Work conditions can be life-threatening, but the pay is decent: $11.50 an hour.

Not everyone at once. Don't crowd. The line forms to the right.
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Message 210588 - Posted: 11 Dec 2005, 19:24:30 UTC
Last modified: 11 Dec 2005, 19:25:01 UTC

Q&A: Admiral Timothy Keating; Commander NORAD and Northcom
Keating's Northern Command is the headquarters responsible for defending the continental United States against any external or internal threat, included that from terrorism. His North American Aerospace Defense Command is a U.S.-Canadian headquarters responsible for the air defense of both countries. Keating was interviewed Nov. 16 by members of the Union-Tribune's editorial board.
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Message 210945 - Posted: 12 Dec 2005, 0:35:13 UTC

Agreement on global warming signed by 157 nations, not U.S.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

December 11, 2005

MONTREAL – A U.N. conference on global warming ended yesterday with a watershed agreement by more than 150 nations – the United States not among them – to open talks on mandatory post-2012 reductions in greenhouse gases.

The Bush administration, which rejects the emissions cuts of the current Kyoto Protocol, accepted a second, weaker conference decision, agreeing to join an exploratory global "dialogue" on future steps to combat climate change. However, that agreement specifically ruled out "negotiations leading to new commitments."

The divergent tracks did little to close the climate gap between Washington and the Kyoto supporters, which include Europe and Japan. But environmentalists welcomed the plan to negotiate "second-phase" emissions cuts.

Before finally gaveling the two-week conference to a close early yesterday after working overtime in Montreal, conference president Stephane Dion told delegates, "What we have achieved is no less than a map for the future, the Montreal Action Plan." But Dion, Canada's environment minister, later acknowledged to reporters, "I would prefer to have the United States in Kyoto."

The Montreal meeting was the first of the annual climate conferences since the Kyoto Protocol took effect in February, mandating specific cuts in emissions of carbon dioxide and five other gases by 2012 in 35 industrialized countries.

A broad scientific consensus agrees that these gases accumulating in the atmosphere, byproducts of automobile engines, power plants and other fossil fuel-burning industries, contributed significantly to the past century's global temperature rise of 1 degree.

Continued warming is melting glaciers worldwide, shrinking the Arctic ice cap and heating up the oceans, raising sea levels, scientists say. They predict major climate disruptions in coming decades.

The United States is the world's biggest greenhouse-gas emitter, and the Clinton administration was instrumental in negotiating the treaty protocol initialed in 1997 in Kyoto, Japan – a pact the Senate subsequently refused to ratify.

When Bush rejected Kyoto outright after taking office in 2001, he said its mandatory energy cuts would harm the U.S. economy, and he complained that major developing countries were not covered.

The protocol's language required its 157 member nations by 2005 to begin talks on deeper emissions cuts for the next phase, which begins when Kyoto expires in 2012.

In days of talks, the Kyoto nations settled on a plan whereby a working group would begin developing post-2012 proposals. The agreement set no deadline for completing that work, except to say it should be done early enough to ensure no gap develops after 2012.

That would guarantee an uninterrupted future for the burgeoning international "carbon market," in which carbon reductions achieved by one company can be sold to another to help it meet its target.

At the same time, the host Canadians tried to draw in the Americans on the parallel track, under the umbrella 1992 U.N. climate treaty, which does not mandate emissions cuts. As the days wore on, the language offered to the Americans, and finally accepted by them, weakened.
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Message 212285 - Posted: 13 Dec 2005, 1:51:16 UTC


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Message 212297 - Posted: 13 Dec 2005, 2:01:33 UTC - in response to Message 210945.  

Agreement on global warming signed by 157 nations, not U.S.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

December 11, 2005

MONTREAL – A U.N. conference on global warming ended yesterday with a watershed agreement by more than 150 nations – the United States not among them – to open talks on mandatory post-2012 reductions in greenhouse gases.



Little doubt there's 'global warming' going on. There's a Great Deal of doubt that anything humans are doing has anything to do with it.
Most of the little substantive evidence points towards long term climate cycles, not human pollution.
If you don't touch it, you can't break it.
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Message 212305 - Posted: 13 Dec 2005, 2:08:21 UTC

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Message 212375 - Posted: 13 Dec 2005, 2:54:06 UTC

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Message 212534 - Posted: 13 Dec 2005, 5:53:25 UTC

Iran is open to U.S. bids on nuclear plant

ASSOCIATED PRESS

December 12, 2005

TEHRAN, Iran – Iran opened the door yesterday for U.S. help in building a nuclear power plant – a move designed to ease suspicions that Tehran is using its nuclear program as a cover to build atomic weapons.

The offer, which seemed unlikely to win acceptance in Washington, was issued as Israel said it had not ruled out a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities.

"America can take part in international bidding for the construction of Iran's nuclear power plant if they observe the basic standards and quality," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi. He was apparently referring to a 360-megawatt light-water nuclear power plant that the head of the country's atomic organization said Saturday would be built in southwestern Iran.

Neither the U.S. State Department nor the White House issued any comment.
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Message 212538 - Posted: 13 Dec 2005, 5:56:25 UTC
Last modified: 13 Dec 2005, 5:56:46 UTC

Navy's last 2 battleships face retirement; critics assail plan



By Drew Brown
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWS SERVICE

December 12, 2005

WASHINGTON – Capitol Hill lawmakers are considering whether to retire the Navy's last two battleships, the Iowa and the Wisconsin, and turn them into museums. Critics warn that the move could leave Marines vulnerable in future battles.

The Navy expects that most such battles will be in or near coastal waters, and that it will need ships that can deliver huge amounts of gunfire to support land operations. Cruisers and destroyers serve that purpose now, and the Navy expects the new DD(X) destroyer to take over the job when it goes into service in 2014.

A small group of critics doubts the capabilities of the DD(X) and says the Navy can't afford to wait until the next decade.

"At present the Navy's active fleet has no effective (naval fire support) capability," says a statement by the U.S. Naval Fire Support Association, a group that supports reactivating the two battleships. "The Navy's attempt to rectify this serious deficiency by developing long-range 5-inch and 6.1-inch 155-mm gun systems and medium-range missiles is not adequate."

The Navy currently uses 5-inch guns on its destroyers and cruisers to support land operations.

The battleship supporters say only battleships can provide accurate and high-volume fire in all weather and conditions.

Battleships ruled the seas in the first half of the 20th century until the Japanese sank five of them in the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. Aircraft carriers then became predominant.

The last two U.S. battleships have been decommissioned and reactivated several times in their 60-year history. They were last deactivated in 1991, but Congress ordered them back into reserve status five years later after determining that the Navy would have a gap in its ability to support Marine Corps land operations until early in the 21st century.

From World War II until the 1991 Persian Gulf War, support for the Marines was provided mostly by the Iowa-class battleships' 16-inch guns, which can hurl a 2,000-pound projectile 24 nautical miles.

The last Navy ship to fire its guns in support of U.S. troops ashore was the Wisconsin in 1991.

A report by the Government Accountability Office said the Iowa and Wisconsin together cost about $1.4 million a year to maintain.

Members of Congress soon will decide whether to decommission the two battleships for good as they work out final decisions in the defense authorization and spending bills.

The Iowa and the Wisconsin each are nearly three football fields long. The Iowa would become a floating museum in Stockton, and the Wisconsin would become a museum in Norfolk, Va.

"The issue here is the need to press forward with a new ship and new technology to meet 21st-century threats," said Landon Hutchens, a spokesman for Naval Sea Systems Command. "The battleships performed marvelously in the 20th century, with 20th-century technology. DD(X) incorporates stealth technology, precision-guided long-range naval fire support, the capability to shoot down enemy aircraft before they can fire anti-ship missiles and high-tech command and control communications capabilities."

The Navy originally planned to put 24 DD(X) destroyers into service but now says it needs eight to 12. The first two are expected to cost more than $3 billion each. Later ones will cost $2.2 billion to $2.6 billion per ship.

The Navy says the 155-mm guns on the DD(X) will be able to fire 10 precision-guided rounds a minute at ranges up to 83 nautical miles.

Last year, the Government Accountability Office estimated that it would cost $500 million and take 20 to 40 months to reactivate the battleships. The Naval Fire Support Association says that for the cost of one DD(X), the Navy can modernize the two battleships and add extended-range munitions and up-to-date guidance systems.

The Navy dismisses those claims as unrealistic.

Until last year, the Marines supported reactivating the ships. The Marine commandant, Gen. Michael W. Hagee, told Congress two years ago that an absence of adequate naval gunfire support placed his troops "at considerable risk," and several retired Marine generals have spoken in favor of the battleship plan.

The Marines now say that bringing back the big battleships would be too expensive and the ships would require too many sailors to operate.

Marine Corps spokeswoman Maj. Gabrielle Chapin said the Marines thought it was "no longer feasible nor economical" to keep the battleships in reserve status.

Chapin said the Marines now backed the Navy's research and development efforts into new extended-range munitions and its plan to commission the first DD(X) in 2014.

William L. Stearman, the executive director of the Naval Fire Support Association, said battleship advocates supported the development of the DD(X), at least as a research and development program, but didn't think the DD(X) could provide Marines with the support that battleships could until future systems come on line.

Retired Marine Corps Gen. John J. Sheehan said the battleship wasn't only a potent symbol of American power but also an asset that existed now, instead of one that might exist in the future.

"You can argue that if the B-52 (bomber) continues to play a role in the U.S. war-fighting tool kit, then the same argument applies to the battleship, especially with a cruise-missile capability," Sheehan said.
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Message 212838 - Posted: 13 Dec 2005, 14:20:05 UTC


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Message 212846 - Posted: 13 Dec 2005, 14:26:30 UTC
Last modified: 13 Dec 2005, 14:27:35 UTC



Abetting Iran - Real life mocks case for envoy's Peace Prize

UNION-TRIBUNE EDITORIAL

December 13, 2005

Perhaps no diplomat in the world is seen as more of an irritant to U.S. interests than Mohamed ElBaradei, the Egyptian-born head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, an arm of the United Nations. This was the plain subtext to the Nobel Foundation's decision in October to honor ElBaradei and the IAEA with its 2005 Peace Prize for their work against nuclear profileration. It was the latest Nobel honor for those who peddle the anti-Americanism that is close to a secular religion in large parts of Europe.

Alas, real-life events sometimes can jar the complacency of those who think the-enemy-of-George-Bush-is-my-friend is a coherent philosophy. One of those events came over the weekend when ElBaradei – in Oslo to accept the Peace Prize – had his moment of glory undercut by new evidence backing up U.S. criticism of the IAEA's blinkered approach to the menace posed by Iran.

This evidence: the declaration by new Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that the Holocaust probably never occurred. He added that if it were true that Jews suffered in Europe during World War II, then Israel should be relocated to Europe. This came amid still more signs that despite years of relatively mild rebukes from ElBaradei and the United Nations, Tehran is proceeding with a nuclear program likely to end with the manufacture of nuclear weapons.

Between Iran's aggressive pursuit of nuclear technology, its long record of lying to U.N. weapons inspectors and its deep hostility to Israel, both the Clinton and Bush administrations concluded Tehran's nuclear program was a gravely serious threat. Nevertheless, ElBaradei has argued for years that there is no "smoking gun" showing Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons, not nuclear energy. Given that Tehran was caught trying to buy devices that could be used to trigger a nuclear bomb, this is a strikingly blithe attitude.

Even after Ahmadinejad called in October for wiping Israel off the face of the Earth, ElBaradei maintained his belief in Iran's good faith. Yes, after Ahmadinejad's latest outrage, he came close to taking a tougher stand, saying "the international community is losing patience" with Iran. Unfortunately, he also repeated his opposition to the U.S. call for U.N. Security Council sanctions on Iran – meaning Tehran's bomb makers will continue to work unimpeded.

This is what makes it simply bizarre that ElBaradei, of all people, has a Nobel Peace Prize on his mantle. His obstinance is one of Iran's great assets as it pursues a nuclear arsenal. The sooner the rest of the world realizes this, the safer it will be.

For now, unfortunately, it's not hyperbole to worry the only "smoking gun" that finally could convince ElBaradei of Iran's malign intent is a mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv.
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Message 212849 - Posted: 13 Dec 2005, 14:29:13 UTC - in response to Message 212285.  
Last modified: 13 Dec 2005, 14:30:03 UTC



On the "Bush lied" myth, I would like to point out a few of President Clinton's statements on issues of his day. To get President Clinton's statements on an issue in context, it is always necessary to provide two quotes... one for each side that he has taken.

If anyone is going to make the case that "it's unfair because circumstances changed" or "he was acting on the information given to him" then that person also has to give President Bush the exact same latitude. President Bush has been wrong on a number of important issues, but at no point does it rise even close to the claims of the "Bush lied" hysteria.

---

"I am appalled by the decision of the Bush administration to pick up
fleeing Haitians on the high seas and forcibly return them to Haiti before
considering their claim to political asylum.... If I were President, I
would -- in the absence of clear and compelling evidence that they weren't
political refugees -- give them temporary asylum until we restored the
elected government of Haiti."
--Bill Clinton on May 27, 1992.

"For Haitians who do seek to leave Haiti, boat departure is a terrible and
dangerous choice.... For this reason, the practice of returning those who
fled Haiti by boat will continue, for the time being, after I become
President. Those who do leave Haiti...by boat will be stopped and directly
returned by the United States Coast Guard."
--Bill Clinton on January 14, 1993.

---

"I want to make it very clear that this middle class tax cut, in my view, is central to any attempt we're going to make to have a short-term economic strategy and a longterm fairness strategy which is part of getting this country going again."
--Bill Clinton on January 19, 1992

"From New Hampshire forward, for reasons that absolutely mystified me, the press thought the most important issue in the race was the middle class tax cut"
--Bill Clinton on January 14, 1993

---

"We will link China's trading privileges to its human rights record and its
conduct on trade and weapon sales."
--Bill Clinton on August 13, 1992.

"I am moving, therefore, to delink human rights from the annual extension
of most-favored nation trading status for China."
--Bill Clinton on May 26, 1994.

---

"I think we should act. We should lead. The United States should lead."
--Bill Clinto on April 23, 1993.

"The United Nations controls what happens in Bosnia."
--Bill Clinton on June 15, 1993.

---

"The ultimate goal is to make sure that the United Nations can fulfill its
mission there and continue to work with the Somalis toward nation
building."
--Bill Clinton on June 16, 1993.

"The U.S. military mission is not now nor was it ever one of `nation
building.'"
--Bill Clinton on October 13, 1993.

(edit for spelling)
No animals were harmed in the making of the above post... much.
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Message 213009 - Posted: 13 Dec 2005, 16:56:28 UTC - in response to Message 212285.  
Last modified: 13 Dec 2005, 16:57:25 UTC

lie (li) n. 1. A false statement deliberately presented as being true.

When President Clinton said, “I did not have sex with that woman.”, does anyone think that he was unaware that he had actually had sex with that woman?

Compare that to President Bush saying, “Iraq has WMD’s.” It has been suggested that despite the fact that every intelligence organization and the UN weapons inspectors believed that Iraq had WMD, somehow Bush knew they were not there. If he knew that WMD were not in Iraq, his statement would be a lie; but there is no reason to believe that he knew WMD did not exist when every agency, whose function it is to know these things, said they did.

As for the silly cartoon, Saddam acutally was connected with Al Qaeda (even though Saddam was not involved in 9/11 as far as we know). The rest of those statements may very well have been believed to be true when said – we don’t have much from the cartoon as to when and under what circumstances – so, the scale should really tip decidedly the other way.

Oh, and don't tell me that I am putting a "spin" on this: I am simply pointing out the dictionary definition of "to lie". The author of that cartoon has spun his message right out of reality.
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