Hillary can't do much for our state. I mean, not only is she a joke, but she seriously has no idea what we need. We're really don't horrible in Buffalo, have been for awhile. She does nothing except promote that "she's the people person."

 

Yeah...my inlaws are from West Seneca...I know what you mean. They all hate her out there.

 

West Seneca isn't too far from me. :nervous: Yeah, we don't like her, but Lazio wasn't much better.

 

"Slander or Treason" eh?

*goes to www.amazon.com* =)

 

so about those WMD's, and what the thread was about in the first fucking place.....

 

Technically we know they had them at one point, because didn't we give Sadam some chemical weapons in the '80s during the whole Iran thing?

 

 

I'm sorry I chose to opt out of reading your "left v. right" blabber. They both lie. Suck it up and move on.

 

I'm going to start this off with a few quotes.

"[Middle East oil is] a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history."
-- U.S. State Department, 1945

"The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda accomplishments of the dominant political mythology. "
-- Michael Parenti

“I came to America because of the great, great freedom which I heard existed in this country. I made a mistake in selecting America as a land of freedom, a mistake I cannot repair in the balance of my lifetime."
--Albert Einstein

"The great masses of the people at the very bottom of their hearts tend to be corrupted rather than consciously evil ... they more easily fall a victim to a big lie than to a little one, since they themselves lie in little things, but would be ashamed of lies that were too big."
-- Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf

Now lets take a look at Bush's Cabinet

•Dick Cheney, VP: Until 2000 - CEO of Halliburton (in position to build the Afghan oil pipeline).

•Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor: 1991-2000 - Manager of Chevron Oil, and Kazakhstan go-between.

•Donald Evans, Sec. Commerce: former CEO, Tom Brown, Inc. ($1.2 billion oil company)

•Gale Norton, Sec. Interior: former national chairwoman of the Coalition of Republican Environmental Advocates - funded by, among others, BP Amoco.

•Spencer Abraham, Sec. Energy: Up through his failed bid for senatorial reelection in 2000, he received more oil and gas industry money than all but three other senators (January 1997 through July 2000).

•Thomas White, Secretary of the Army: former Vice Chairman of Enron and a large shareholder of that company's stock.


Iraq was NOT a threat to the U.S. Even if Saddam did posess WMD he would be unlikely to launch a strike against the US (which he did not have the capability to do) or its interests (IE. Israel) or give them to terrorists....UNLESS his existence was threatened by the US. (Remember when Iraq launched missles into Israel in the first Gulf War....none of them contained chemical or biological weapons (which saddam was known for having at that time).

5 February, 2003. Colin Powell: "Our conservative estimate is that Iraq has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent. That is enough to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets. Even the low end of 100 tons of agent would enable Saddam Hussein to cause mass casualties across more than 100 square miles of territory, an area nearly five times the size of Manhattan."

After seven weeks of fruitless search, the Bush administration had come the closest so far to conceding that, contrary to its pre-invasion scaremongering, there may not have been any chemical or biological weapons in Iraq.

Several US military officers involved in the hunt in Iraq have raised the possibility that the illegal arms might have been destroyed, but the official line in Washington has been that Saddam Hussein had artfully hidden them, and sooner or later they would be found.

But, Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary and one of the leading hawks on Iraq, has admitted that the weapons may not exist. On May 28, 2003 he told the Council of Foreign Relations in New York: "We don't know what happened, It is also possible that [Saddam's Regime] decided they would destroy them prior to a conflict." This statement is what got Tony Blair in such hot water in England over the claim in the dossier that Iraq had weapons that could be deployed within 45 mins. What Mr Rumsfeld did not discuss was when the weapons might have been destroyed - immediately before the war, or long beforehand (as suggested by Iraqi defectors, who said as long ago as 1995 that they had been destroyed). Experts also doubt that, in the weeks or months before the war, Iraq could have got rid of chemical and germ warfare stockpiles of the size alleged by Bush officials, without it being picked up by US and British intelligence.

Iraq has gone to hell. Shiites are killing Sunnis, Kurds are killing Arabs and Islamists are killing secular Baathists. (Islamists (like Osama bin Laden) are killing Baathists (like Saddam) because they clash. The lack of evidence of any genuine connection between Saddam and al Qaeda is not surprising because relations between Saddam and al Qaeda (which...lets not kid ourselves on this WMD issue...was the original reason for war)had been quite poor in the past. Osama bin Laden is a radical fundamentalist (like Khomeini in Iran), and he detests secular leaders like Saddam. Similarly, Saddam has consistently repressed fundamentalist movements within Iraq. Given this history of enmity, the Iraqi dictator was unlikely to give al Qaeda WMD, which it might use in ways he could not control. Intense U.S. pressure, of course, may have forced these unlikely allies together, just as the United States and Communist Russia became allies during World War II. Saddam would still be unlikely to have shared his most valuable weaponry with al Qaeda, mainly because he could not be confident it would not be used in ways that placed his own survival in jeopardy. During the Cold War, the United States did not share its WMD expertise with its own allies, and the Soviet Union balked at giving nuclear weapons to China despite their ideological sympathies and repeated Chinese requests. No evidence suggests Saddam would have acted differently.

The war has, however, managed to unite Iraqis in one respect: everyone loathes the United States. Some Iraqis hate us for getting rid of Saddam Hussein. No dictator remains in power without the full support of at least some of his subjects. Now that we've committed the cardinal sin of conquest--getting rid of the old system without thinking up a new one--even those who suffered under Saddam blame us for their present misery.
Others resent our Pentagon-appointed pretender, banker/embezzler Ahmed Chalabi. The State Department points out that Iraq's new puppet autocrat has zero support among Iraqis, having lived abroad since 1958. But who knows? Maybe he was a really popular kid. Thousands of Iraqis have been reduced to poverty, raped and murdered by rampaging goons as U.S. Marines stood around and watched. I wonder how long it will take them to "get over it"? We watched the plunder of museums in Mosul and Baghdad safe at home with our tisk-tisk dismay, but Iraqis will remain outraged by the vast devastation we brought through war, permitted through negligence and shrugged off through arrogance. ("We didn't allow it," Rumsfeld shrugged. "It happened.") Imagine foreign troops sitting idly, laughing as hooligans trashed the Smithsonian, stole the gold from Fort Knox and burned down the Department of the Interior.
That was us in Iraq.

But let's forget this penny ante stuff. Let the real looting begin! Bushy's best buddies, corporate executives at companies which donate money in exchange for a few rounds of golf and a few million-dollar favors, are being handed the keys to Iraq's oil fields. Bush's Genghis Khan act seems to confirm our worst suspicions. First he appoints retired general Jay Garner, president of a GOP-connected defense contractor, SYColeman Corp., as viceroy of occupied Iraq. A smart and/or decent president would have picked a civilian for a civil administration post.

Then Bush slips a $680 million contract to the Bechtel Group, whose Republican-oriented board includes such Reagan-era officials as CIA director William Casey, secretary of state George Schulz and defense secretary Caspar Weinberger (all of which i may add were involved with illegally giving Iraq WMD in the first place). The deal puts the company in position to receive a big part of the $100 billion estimated total cost of Iraqi reconstruction. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Bechtel gave Republican candidates, including Bush, about $765,000 in PAC, soft money and individual campaign contributions between 1999 and 2002.
Finally, refusing to accept bids from potential competitors, Bush grants a $600 million contract for Iraqi oil field repairs to Halliburton Co., a Houston-based company where Dick Cheney worked as CEO from 1995 to 2000. Only Bush's most intimate friends were invited to bid for these contracts. Even businesses based in Great Britain, where Tony Blair risked his political career to support Bush, were excluded from a rigged process where only U.S.-based, Republican-led, Bush-connected companies need apply. Are we looking bad yet?

We go to war against one country, throwing around words like 'crimes against humanity' as a rationale (Serbia), but we've enabled the same severity of crimes by another regime, when their democratically elected government refused to bend to our political and economic will (Chile). We rally against one government, calling it 'undemocratic' and 'evil' (Iraq), while slavishly supporting another regime every bit as politically extreme, undemocratic, and who do support terrorism, because they happen to control vast reserves of oil (Saudi Arabia). NONE of the 9/11 hi-jackers were from Iraq, however, 15 of the 19 were from Saudi Arabia.

To hell with worldwide protests, an unsupportive Security Council, a diplomatically dubious Hans Blix, and Osama giddy at the prospect of a united Arab world, and a panicked populace grasping at strips of duct tape and plastic wrap to protect itself from the inevitable terrorist blow-back -- the business of America is still business.

No one in the administration embodies this mentality more than Dick Cheney. The vice president is one of those ideological purists who never let little things like logic, morality, or mass murder interfere with the single-minded pursuit of profitability.
His on-again, off-again relationship with the Saddam is a textbook example of what modern moralists condemn as "situational ethics," an extremely convenient code that allows you to do what you want when you want and still feel good about it in the morning. In the Cheney White House (let's call it what it is), anything that can be rationalized is right.
The two were clearly on the outs back during the Gulf War, when Cheney was Secretary of Defense, and the first President Bush dubbed Saddam "Hitler revisited."
Then Cheney moved to the private sector and suddenly things between him and Saddam warmed up considerably. With Cheney in the CEO's seat, Halliburton helped Iraq reconstruct its war-torn oil industry with $73 million worth of equipment and services -- becoming Baghdad's biggest such supplier. Kinda nice how that worked out for the vice-president, really: oversee the destruction of an industry that you then profit from by rebuilding.

People are afraid of another terrorist attack with the magnitude of the one on 9/11. How easily do we forget that the towers collapsing was a complete fluke, Nobody...not even Osama saw that coming, and when it comes down to it, was the reason for such a high number of casualties. Think about it... before 9/11 when was the last time a terrorist attack killed 3,000 people? Never, that amount of casualties is comparable to a military conflict. We hear about new terrorist attack world wide nearly every day, and nearly every one pales in comparison to the attacks on 9/11. Now, 1 terror attack is too many in my opinion, but we attacked Iraq, a country who's government consistantly crushed these Fundamentalist Islamic Uprisings, with no likely support for terrorist actions, and we create a situation even worse. Sure saddam is gone...but we've enraged MANY MANY MANY more muslims (many of whom view it as an attack on Islam) possibly pushing more into support for bin Laden, who are willing to carry out suicide attacks on the USA, and we have paved the way for someone like Khomeini, who is every bit as extreme as Osama Bin Laden to take power. Was this war a good idea. I think not. Even the CIA director seems to have agreed before the war began..."...Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or C.B.W. against the United States.
Should Saddam conclude that a U.S.-led attack could no longer be deterred, he probably would become much less constrained in adopting terrorist actions." -George J. Tenet Oct. 2 testimony to the Senate. So...yeah....this war was to "protect us"....funny how all the evidence seems to show that we are in more danger now than before the war.

It seems like this administration needs to get its priorities in order if they are truly trying to protect us. While we are screwing around in Iraq HOPING to find WMD, North Korea is busy testing nukes (which iraq did not have) with intercontinental capabilities (which iraq also did not have), and Iran (with a leader who is a fundamentalist like bin laden) is extremely close to achieving nuclear capabilities.

May i also add that Clinton did try to do SOMETHING about Osama bin Laden when he launched Cruise Missles into training camps bin laden was suspected of being at after the Cole Bombing. Thats more than bush did before 9/11. In August 2001 the Deputy Director of the FBI John O'Neill (An established national expert and in charge of the investigation of al queda) quit in protest over the Bush administrations obstruction of the ongoing al-queda investigations. He got a job as the chief of security of the World Trade Center buildings....one month later he lost his life on Sept. 11th. Don't try to blame clinton for 9/11 when it was your good 'ol Bushy's administration who obstructed the investigation of al queda before 9/11.

and guess what....MAYBE if the 200 FBI agents the Conservatives had looking into whether Clinton got a blow job or not had not been wasting their time with the most ridiculous investigation and attempt at removing him from office THEY COULD HAVE BEEN CHECKING ON REPORTS OF SUSPECTED TERRORISTS IN US FLIGHT SCHOOLS. You bitch because Clinton didn't get Osama, yet I don't think i've heard of Bushs team getting him. Maybe if the conservatives wouldn't waste resources for their own political gain those two towers and more importantly those 3,000 people would still be around today. You make the decision....which is of more importance...investigating a president for lying about a blow job, or investigated why we were giving training to terrorists who then turned around and used it against us? (Some of the high jackers actually recieved language training at US Military bases WITHIN our borders.

And finally i will end on a quote

"...the issue is whether we want to live in a free society or whether we want to live under what amounts to a form of self-imposed totalitarianism, with the bewildered herd marginalized, directed elsewhere, terrified, screaming patriotic slogans, fearing for their lives, and admiring with awe the leader who saved them from destruction, while the educated masses goose-step on command and repeat the slogans they're supposed to repeat and the society deteriorates at home. We end up serving as a mercenary enforcer state, hoping that others are going to pay us to smash up the world." --Noam Chomsky "Media Control"

I apoligize for the length, but i had alot to say and....if it hasn't changed yet....i have the right to say....wherever, whenever, and whatever i want.

 

We're very lucky we get more out of Rumsfeld than his usual "I do not know" banter.