John Kerry for President!!!!!

“GW is a tough-talkin' girly-man.”

“violin, that's all wrong. i'll proove it to ya.

alqueda bombed spain to get spain out of iraq. it worked.
they want spaIN out of iraq because they want the us out of iraq. the best way to get the us out of iraq is to have kerry for president.

"If I were president, we would not be in Iraq today, we would
not be at war." --John F. Kerry on the campaign trail."



nice try.....NEXT?”

“You're a deep thinker dewd.”

“aww shucks.....”

“One thing about that argument seems fairly counter-intuitive to me.

If there is another domestic al Qaida attack, it would be evidence to me that Bush, Inc. simply isn't getting the job done, security-wise.”

“Kerry's said time and again that we can't pull out now. Dubya has screwed us.

If Kerry had been elected in the last cycle, we would not have invaded in the first place based on such flimsy evidence.”

“I know it was three whole years ago, but Kerry was not a candidate 'in the last cycle.'

It is election day, not wash day.”

“LATEST sKERRY FLIP-FLOP

Kerry's past continues to haunt him, this time the issue is abortion. Today, sKerry will speak at a rally for abortion rights and ask those in attendance to join him in his campaign for the White House. Nothing out of the ordinary...except this. Check out what Kerry was saying in a 1972 interview uncovered by the Drudge Report.

"It's a tragic day in the lives of everybody when abortion is looked on as an alternative to birth control or as an alternative to having a child. I think that's wrong. It should be the very last thing if it has to be anything, and I say that not just because I am opposed to abortion, but because I think that's common sense. I think the question of abortion is one that should be left for the states to decide. " Oh really? Doesn't sound a bit like what 'ole sKerry is telling us today, does it? When faced with this, he will no doubt say that was 32 years ago, and he has changed his mind since then, with the media giving him a pass (if they even bother to ask.) But you have to ask yourself...would George Bush get the same courtesy? Of course not.

[Note: Just because I made a reference to abortion in the news doesn't mean we will discuss it on the air. It is still a banned subject. This reference was made only to show that Kerry can't stick to one position on anything.]

Kerry also shared this nugget of wisdom in the same interview: "I think liberals spend too much time pushing issues which just aren't relevant to the mass of people, including among such issues abortion, the death penalty and amnesty" (for draft-dodgers, probably.) Whoa boy...that sounds more like George Bush than John Kerry. Wonder how he'll get out of that one.

Here's another sKerry tidbit from the vault. Back in 1971, at an appearance at a college in West Virginia, Kerry delivered this line: "Our democracy is a farce; it is not the best in the world." Now, setting aside his general ignorance that the United States is not a democracy, just what country was he implying was better? He didn't say.

Kerry is running around writing off remarks such as this as "young and foolish." However, at the same time, he is campaigning on his record of military service, which at the time he denounced. So which is it? sKerry's having it both ways, and the mainstream media is letting him get away with it.

Oh ... and by the way. Do you know that The Poodle has forgotten how to speak French? What do you want to bet he would reacquire that skill in amazing time if he actually wins this election.”

“Marketing idea for Johnson & Johnson. The "Purple Heart" Band-aid.”

“Sideshow: Politics in wartime
Paul Greenberg
April 23, 2004


With the country at war and a presidential election approaching, the leader of the opposition got wind of some disturbing information about his opponent: Thanks to decoded messages, the president of the United States had known a surprise attack on this country was being planned by the enemy, yet had failed to prevent it.

The year was 1944, the Republican running against President Franklin D. Roosevelt was Thomas E. Dewey, and the surprise attack had occurred three years before at Pearl Harbor. The American fleet had been caught unawares - even though the Japanese diplomatic code had been broken by then, and the president had been reading intercepted messages warning of just such an attack. Yet word of the danger failed to reach the commanders on the scene in time to disrupt the attack or mount an effective defense against it.

Governor Dewey was planning a major campaign speech in which he would reveal FDR's prior knowledge of the threat to American territory, but General George C. Marshall persuaded him not to deliver that speech - in the interests of military secrecy and national unity.

Times were different then.

Today, almost three years after another day that will live in infamy - September 11th, 2001 - a commission continues to look into how and why the country fell victim to the most devastating attack on the American mainland in modern times.

The model for its work should have been the Warren Commission, whose painstaking conclusions have been upheld by every serious work of history since. Instead, the commission adopted the style of the more prosecutorial Watergate Committee - but without anyone like Sam Ervin or Howard Baker to lend it insight and stature and, most important, control some of its more intemperate members.

Instead, the commission's hearings have degenerated into a partisan sideshow - a search for scapegoats instead of an exercise in deliberate judgment.

A succession of spectacles has ensued. The star witness for the prosecution was Richard Clarke, the counterterrorism chief who was supposed to have prevented this disaster. He didn't, but he did manage to publish his memoirs just before testifying and sell the movie rights to his story, too, and now he's granted a major television network exclusive rights to his services as a talking head. Not since Ollie North's Iran-Contra caper has presiding over a catastrophe inspired such a successful career in the media.

The prosecutor-in-chief, Richard Ben-Veniste, sees a presidential briefing paper and reads into it a clear warning of a plot to plunge airliners into the Pentagon and World Trade Center - warnings that no fair-minded reader saw when the paper was declassified.

Those of us who have come to relish Mr. Ben-Veniste's rhetorical tricks particularly enjoy the way he prefaces any factually dubious assertion with the phrase, "Isn't it a fact that . . . ."

That little shtick had become his trademark even before Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, called him on it. Counselor Ben-Veniste has never really recovered from their exchange, although he tried to by making the rounds of the talk shows.

Thomas Keane, the chairman of the commission, now has (a) denied that its stars are grandstanding or playing politics, and (b) promised that they'll stop. Or as he put it, "There will be a lower profile." How delicately put. The Bob Kerreys and Richard Ben-Venistes could scarcely have higher ones by now.

The most effective witness before the committee has been Attorney General John Ashcroft, who pointed out the principal problem with American intelligence-gathering before September 11th - the wall between the FBI and CIA. Despite the Patriot Act, the remains of that wall and the institutional rivalries it fostered still hamper American intelligence operations today.

Even back then, Mr. Ashcroft noted, a frustrated FBI agent had predicted that "someday somebody - someone - will die. And wall or not, the public will not understand why we were not more effective . . . ."

As the attorney general noted, the crippling separation between foreign and domestic operations did not arise by itself. "Somebody built this wall," he told the commissioners, and now we have a good idea who some of those people were. For the attorney general mentioned a Justice Department memorandum of 1995 elaborating on the law that established foreign and domestic intelligence operations as separate realms.

John Ashcroft pointed out that the author of that 1995 memorandum was now a member of the 9/11 Commission, sitting in judgment on the very policy she'd helped shape. He was referring to Jamie Gorelick, the deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration. Which only adds to the farcical aspects of this "impartial investigation."

Ms. Gorelick did have enough grace to recuse herself from questioning the current attorney general, but she remains on the commission. Even though, instead of asking questions, she needs to be answering them. Under oath. Jamie Gorelick now has entered the polemical wars by publishing her own version of events in The Washington Post. But no matter how much she protests, Ms. Gorelick can't deny that the stated purpose of her memorandum was to "more clearly separate" counterterrorism efforts from law enforcement. That is, to build that infamous wall higher.

But none of that has stopped her from acting like an advocate instead of an impartial investigator. It's a bit like a judge deciding to step down and argue a case before resuming his place on the bench. But almost nobody seems to notice. That's just the way Washington is these days.

And so it has gone.

It's 2004, another election year, and there's another war on, but the temptation to make partisan hay has proven irresistible to this nonpartisan commission. Its final, written report will doubtless provide useful grist for discussion and maybe even action, but day after day its headliners have embarrassed themselves and the whole idea of blue-ribbon commissions. In short, this is proving the kind of investigation that needs investigating.

Immediately after September 11th, united we stood. But the enemy has been unable to mount another such attack on these shores - so far - and a familiar American syndrome now has set in: historical amnesia aggravated by political backbiting. With the passage of time and the return of complacency, divided we fall.”

“How many times have you been in combat ya chickenshithawk mofo?”

“Don't even go there, tilted.”

“If I could just wrap my arms around every courageous liberal.

I could not stop myself.”

“every night with my wife and 3 boys....b!TCH!

how many times have you been killed by a 767 slamming into your office?”

“You guys kiss the chickens' ass then degrade the guy who actually walked the walk.

You have no honor.”

“Going back to the U.N.? For what?
Charles Krauthammer
April 23, 2004

WASHINGTON -- In 1952, a presidential candidate running against an administration that had gotten the U.S. into a debilitating and inconclusive war abroad pledged: ``I will go to Korea.'' He won. A half century later, a presidential candidate running against an administration that has gotten the U.S. into a debilitating and (thus far) inconclusive war abroad, pledges: ``I will go to the U.N.''

Electrifying, is it not? And Democrats are wondering why their man is trailing a rather wounded George Bush not just overall, but on Iraq -- and precisely at a time when Iraq is going so badly.

``If I'm president,'' Kerry said, ``I will not only personally go to the U.N., I will go to other capitals.'' For Kerry, showing up at Kofi Annan's doorstep and sweeping through Allied capitals is no rhetorical flourish, no strategic sideshow. It is the essence of his Iraq plan: ``Within weeks of being inaugurated, I will return to the U.N. and I will literally, formally rejoin the community of nations and turn over a proud new chapter in America's relationship with the world.''

This is an Iraq policy? Never has a more serious question received a more feckless answer. Going back to the U.N.: What does that mean? It cannot mean the General Assembly, which decides nothing. It must mean going back to the Security Council.

There are five permanent members. We are one. The British are already with us. So that leaves China, indifferent at best to our Middle East adventure, though generally hostile, and Russia, which has opposed the war from the very beginning. Moscow was so wedded to Saddam that it was doing everything it could to prevent an impartial Paul Volcker commission from investigating the corrupt oil-for-food program that enriched Saddam and, through kickbacks, hundreds of others in dozens of countries, including Russia.

That leaves ... France. What does Kerry think France will do for us? Perhaps he sees himself and Teresa descending on Paris like Jack and Jackie in Camelot days. Does he really believe that if he grovels before Jacques Chirac in well-accented French, he will persuade France to join us in a war that it has opposed from the beginning, that is now going badly, and that has moved Iraq out of the French sphere of influence and into the American?

The idea is so absurd that when Tim Russert interviewed Kerry and quoted Democratic foreign policy adviser Ivo Daalder as saying that handing political and military responsibility to the U.N. and other countries is not realistic, Kerry simply dodged the question. There was nothing to say.

Which might help inside-the-Beltway Washington find its way out of its conundrum over the latest polls. No one can understand how, with the president being pummeled daily on the front pages by Richard Clarke, the Sept. 11 hearings, the Woodward book, and the eruption of Iraq into open warfare again, Bush nonetheless has gained over Kerry on the issue of national security.

The answer is simple: Americans are a serious people, war is a serious business, and what John Kerry is offering is simply not serious. Americans may be unsure whether Bush has a plan for success in Iraq. But they sure as hell know that going to U.N. headquarters, visiting foreign capitals and promising lots of jaw-jaw is no plan at all.

I give Kerry credit for not taking the easy antiwar path. He agrees that abandoning Iraq would be catastrophic for the United States and for the war on terror. Kerry did flirt with Howard Dean in the primaries, but has consistently opposed ``cut and run.''

True, it would be politically suicidal to zigzag yet again on the war. After having voted No on the Gulf War, Yes on the Iraq war, No on the $87 billion for reconstruction, and today advocating a firm Yes on finishing the job, to now reverse himself once again and advocate pulling out would be a politically fatal flip-flop.

But his tortuous path to his current position has left him politically bereft on Iraq. Ralph Nader has now made himself the antiwar candidate by calling for a pullout in six months. With that, his candidacy found a rationale beyond mere vanity, and may indeed draw some serious Democratic support. Many liberals and left-wingers will find it hard to support a Democratic candidate who, like Hubert Humphrey in 1968, advocates staying the course on a war they hate.

Kerry's political problem is that he supports Bush's Iraq objective and differs only on the means. Unfortunately for Kerry, ``I will go to Turtle Bay'' is not the stuff of legend. Unless he comes up with something better, Kerry may lose the war issue that was his for the taking.”

“Walk with me.”

“"How many times have you been in combat ya chicken#&%!$hawk mofo?......"


Tilt


"every night with my wife and 3 boys....b!TCH!....."

stratdewd


"I've been to war [sic]. I've raised twins. If I had a choice, I'd rather go to war."

-- Bush, flat out lying in 2002”

“Bad news for W is worse news for Kerry

The more blows he takes, the better W does in the polls



In the last month or so, everything has gone wrong for President Bush. He has been criticized by members of the 9/11 commission for being lackadaisical about terrorism. Richard Clarke accused him of being weirdly obsessed with Iraq. More than 100 Americans have been killed there in the last 30 days, and Bush was so inarticulate in his recent press conference that you could say he violated the standards of his own "No Child Left Behind" policy.
Still, if this keeps up, he'll win reelection in a landslide.

That, at least, is the forgivable conclusion you can draw from The Washington Post-ABC News poll released this week. It had Bush ahead of John Kerry by 48% to 43%, with most of the rest (6%) going to someone named Nader.

What's particularly telling is that Bush and Kerry have traded places on two key issues - national security and the economy. Where Bush once lagged, he is now in the lead.

The campaign may have just begun, but it looks to me as though it may be over. Why? Well, the last month should have been ruinous, and yet the President not only survived, he thrived. Explanations abound. Some credit the Democrats on the 9/11 commission for being too partisan and thus eliciting support for Bush.

Maybe. More likely, though, and certainly more important, is the $41 million the Bush campaign spent on television ads in March alone.

Money undoubtedly will matter in the presidential campaign. But what will matter just as much, if not more, is Kerry's message. At the moment, it is nowhere to be found. If anyone out there can complete the following sentence, please let the Kerry campaign know: Vote for John Kerry because.... The only thing that comes to mind is that he is not George Bush.

Significantly, in one area where Kerry is demonstrably not Bush, it works against him. Bush is minimally articulate; Kerry is downright verbose. When Kerry opens his mouth, whole chunks of paragraphs fall out and hit the floor with a clunk. He truly knows too much - a charge that cannot be leveled at Bush.

If I were running the Kerry campaign, I would show over and over Bush's press conference response about why he insists on appearing at the 9/11 hearings with Vice President Cheney. Bush had no answer - none whatsoever - and even a followup failed to get a response. (My followup would have been to ask if they were going to dress identically.)

The look on his face was both telling and scary. He simply had no acceptable answer.

Whether that would work with the American people, I don't know. A majority of them favor the President in the one area in which he has clearly failed them - national security. He has presided over two unprecedented intelligence failures - the surprise attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the fruitless hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq - and took the nation into a war in Iraq before the one in Afghanistan had been successfully concluded. Still, Kerry has not been able to lay a glove on him.

Another bad month like the last for Bush, and the President will have his second term in the bag.”

“Fighting words
Mona Charen
April 23, 2004

There is one huge problem with the 9-11 Commission. It's a bipartisan problem -- and it's a problem of such enormity that I must comment on it. A number of our leading citizens do not know the meaning of the word "enormity."

I give you Philip Zelikow, the staff director of the 9-11 Commission who reads an introductory set of findings at the start of each hearing. "The FBI received congressional approval in late 2000 for the Trilogy project, a 36-month plan for improving its networks, systems and software. Dies told us that given the enormity of the task at hand, his goal was merely to 'get the car out of the ditch.'" Here, too, is former Senator and Secretary of Defense William Cohen: "To do anything less than that, to put these young people at risk with the enormity of the task of that country, that size, with that many caves with, by the way, the support of the Taliban, and not the support of Pakistan, I'd have to question whether or not that was reasonable to do so."

It isn't just the commission, of course. The word enormity is quickly slipping its moorings. Here is the definition offered by the American Heritage Dictionary: "1. The quality of passing all moral bounds; excessive wickedness, outrageousness. 2. A monstrous offense or evil; an outrage." The word does not mean hugeness, immensity or enormousness. So to say "the enormity of the task" is nearly always wrong, unless the task is to fly passenger airliners into skyscrapers.

One hates to pick on the 9-11 Commission -- well, no, one doesn't. Here's a word whose misuse has engendered chuckles. The word is fulsome. People seem to think it means complete or comprehensive. Not quite. Here's American Heritage again: "1. Offensively excessive or insincere. 2. Offensive to the senses; loathsome; disgusting." Former Governor Tim Roemer introduced his comments to Attorney General John Ashcroft with a hearty "Welcome, General. Thank you for your time here and your fulsome testimony." Likewise, Fred Fielding, former counsel to President Reagan, welcomed former FBI director Louis Freeh with equal appreciation: "Good morning, Mr. Director. Thank you very much for being here today and for all the cooperation you've provided to the commission and its staff in closed sessions heretofore and for your really fulsome statement that you gave us." Secretary of State Colin Powell told an appropriations committee last week that "I'd like to provide a more fulsome answer from Ambassador Bremer and the Pentagon."

In the midst of live testimony, it is a rare person who speaks in complete sentences, let alone paragraphs. Still, is there no floor to the fragments, pauses and incomprehensibility that some call public speaking? Here is Louis Freeh: "But I guess what I'm saying is there was, I mean, Janet Reno and myself, together on a very, very regular basis. Myself individually on numerous occasions directly with Sandy Berger, that's all we talked about was the Khobar case."

There are a number of words that have tumbled out of otherwise well-educated mouths that do not, strictly speaking, exist. One is snuck. The past tense of sneak is sneaked. But here is reporter Seymour Hersh, on CNBC describing his reporting from the field: "In earlier attempts we went only from Afghanistan, and Al Qaeda and Bin Laden, perhaps others, just sort of snuck through the mountain passes back into Pakistan ... " Ron Harris of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported on National Public Radio that "the Iraqis don't wear uniforms, and they looked like anybody else. The Marines didn't find out until actually the battle had started, and they got a telephone tip that told them that these guys had snuck into town." Another nonexistent word is irregardless, but it has, ahem, snuck into lots of sentences.

OK, I don't want to poach any longer on William Safire's territory (which reminds me of the time I served poached salmon at a brunch and a 15-year-old guest took her mother aside to ask if the meal had been stolen). But allow me to get just a couple more pet peeves off my chest. Disinterested means unbiased, not uninterested. Decimate means to reduce by one-tenth, not to annihilate. Fortuitous means accidental, not lucky. And literally means literally. People are constantly using expressions like "I was literally freezing." No, they weren't. If they were literally freezing, they'd be dead or close to it.

I am literally finished with this diatribe. If it seemed fulsome, I hope you will continue to read this column irregardless.”

“Just don't bend over when bacpac's in the neighborhood. I'd bet even money he's a registered sex offender.”

“Helle Dale
April 22, 2004


Of the many appalling aspects of Saddam Hussein's tyranny, one of the most unforgivable was the pain and death he inflicted on Iraq's children. And even more shocking is that the program that was meant to help them, the U.N. Oil for Food program, turned out to have been disgracefully corrupt, a caricature of a foreign-aid program.

During the 1990s, it was always the U.S. government that took the blame, even though it was Saddam who should have. The purported reason was that we refused to let up on the U.N. sanctions against Iraq, which were imposed because Saddam failed to open up his weapons of mass destruction programs to international inspections and demonstrably disarm — as he had agreed in the Gulf War ceasefire resolution.

For instance, a UNICEF report from 1997 stated, "32 percent of Children under the age of five — a total of 960,000 — are undernourished." By some reports, 5,000 Iraqi children died every month due to sanctions. More than 1 million Iraqis were said to have died from disease and malnutrition during the 1990s.

Now, it was this suffering that the U.N. Oil for Food program was meant to assuage when the program came on line in 1995, but it did not. Since the fall of Saddam and the end of the Oil for Food program on Nov. 21, the staggering failings of the program, now better known as the Oil for Palaces program, have been revealed.

Writes Claudia Rosett in Commentary magazine,

"Suddenly, Oil-for-Food is with us again, this time splashed all over the news as the subject of scandal at the U.N.: bribes, kickbacks, fraud, smuggling, stories of graft involving tens of billions of dollars and countless barrels of oil, and implicating big business and high officials in dozens of countries; allegations that the head of the program himself was on the take."

Today on Capitol Hill, Rep. Christopher Shays, chairman of the Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations, will convene a hearing to examine the Iraqi Oil for Food program. Anyone interested in how not to run a foreign-aid program should be there at 10 a.m. in Room 210 of the House Cannon office building. This is the second congressional hearing. The Iraqi Governing Council has started its own investigation, and even U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has finally agreed to an independent investigation, as well.

Some details of what is already known, which can be found in a new paper by Nile Gardiner and James Phillips of the Heritage Foundation, "Investigate the United Nations Oil-for Food Fraud":

• Between 1997 and 2002, Oil for Food generated $67 billion in revenues for the Iraqi regime. There was little or no oversight from the United Nations of how this money was spent.

• In addition, Saddam is estimated to have generated $10.1 billion in illegal revenues by exploiting the Oil for Food program, through smuggling through Syria and through illicit surcharges on oil contracts.

• Saddam used Oil for Food to stay in power through a global network of companies, politicians and other individuals who benefited from the program. The list reaches into Western governments, into the United Nations itself and includes 46 Russian and 11 French names.

• Between 1996 and 2003, Russian companies received $7.3 billion in business through Oil for Food; French firms earned $3.7 billion.

• The United Nations itself had a vested interest in the program, overseeing a flow of funds averaging at least $15 billion a year. It was administered by 10 U.N. agencies, employing over 1,000 staff, and the United Nations collected 2.2 percent commission on every barrel of oil.

There are a couple of lessons in this.

One is that these revelations do not inspire confidence that the United Nations is capable of running anything in Iraq — exactly at the moment when the Bush administration is hanging its hopes for a June 30 transition in Iraq on U.N. guidance. Any role for the United Nations must be limited.

Second, it is critical to remember that Iraqi children are so much better off today than they used to be under Saddam's dictatorship and his corrupt dealings with the United Nations. Despite all the attacks on Bush administration policy, we are giving Iraqis a future. Through USAID, 3 million Iraqi children have been vaccinated. Almost a quarter-million children and pregnant women have been given high-protein foods. More than 2,500 schools have been renovated, and 2.5 million children have been given school kits, and on and on.

If 5,000 Iraqi children were dying every month under Saddam, and we have now been in Iraq one year, it means that 60,000 children have been saved. That's a number worth remembering.”

“April 22, 2004

Max Boot:
Don't Blame Halliburton
The company and its subsidiaries don't deserve the thrashing they are getting for their wartime work.

April 22, 2004

Halliburton surely got lambasted last week by John Kerry. "This war brings billions of dollars to big companies, either to those that manufacture weapons or those who reconstruct Iraq, like Halliburton and its sister companies," he thundered. "And from here it becomes clear who benefits from the outbreak of wars and bloodshed: war traders and vampires who administer world politics from behind the curtain."

Oops, sorry. That wasn't John Kerry. That was Osama bin Laden, or at least someone claiming to be him on an audiotape. When the rhetorical lines blur between the leader of the Democratic Party and the leader of Al Qaeda, maybe it's time for the Democrats to reconsider their demonization of the Houston-based corporation. Especially when the bodies of three more Halliburton employees have been found, bringing to 33 the number killed in Iraq.

The critique of Halliburton comes in two parts. First, the company is said to have unfairly acquired its contracts in Iraq through political influence. Second, it's said to have unfairly taken advantage of those contracts to engage in war profiteering.

The first charge is particularly seductive because Halliburton's former No. 1 man is now the country's No. 2, and there is a long history of companies getting government work through political influence. Kellogg Brown & Root, now a Halliburton subsidiary known as KBR, had close ties with Lyndon Johnson, which helped it to snare lucrative contracts during the Vietnam War. Surely, cynics reason, similar machinations were behind Halliburton establishing itself in Iraq.

Actually, Halliburton is in Iraq primarily because in 2001 it won a competitive bidding process to administer the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program, a multiyear contract to supply the Army. Halliburton has also gotten some no-bid jobs in Iraq, just as it did in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s, and for the same reason: Not a lot of other firms have similar expertise in supplying the U.S. military, and with a war on there's no time to stage a lengthy bidding process.

Although Halliburton's work in the 1990s was praised by Al Gore's "Reinventing Government" panel, its current contracts have led to charges that it's mulcting the taxpayer. Maybe so, but the proof is hardly in. The biggest controversies have involved alleged overcharging by subcontractors for food and fuel. In both cases, Halliburton argues that its expenses were justified, and some Army officials back it up. It has, however, suspended billing for $176 million in meals until this dispute is resolved. A criminal investigation of the fuel flap is underway.

Halliburton certainly does not appear to be making a fortune under its deal with the government. It's guaranteed only a 1% profit on most of its Iraq work plus performance bonuses of 2% to 3% — not a whole lot considering the risks it runs.

By focusing on Halliburton, critics ignore the real scandal, which is how inefficient our procurement bureaucracy is. Remember those stories from the 1980s about the Pentagon buying $640 toilet seats and $435 hammers? Well, things haven't changed a lot. The same gold-plated approach is being taken to administer aid to Iraq.

Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, when he was in charge of northern Iraq, was told by the Army Corps of Engineers that it would cost $15 million to $23 million to rehabilitate a single cement plant. He managed to get it done for just $800,000 by paying local firms.

Why was the original estimate so high? Not because the Army or its contractors are corrupt. It's because they are obligated to build everything to extremely demanding standards and to fill out reams of paperwork justifying every nickel they spend.

This system is bad enough for normal military needs; it's even worse in the case of Iraq. We desperately need to create jobs so young Iraqi men will have something better to do with their time than shooting coalition soldiers. The best way to do that would be to toss the procurement process out the window. If the result is that buildings in Iraq aren't up to the latest in U.S. standards, or a few million dollars goes astray, so what? That's a small price to pay for getting the country back on its feet.

U.S. military commanders have done some informal contracting, but their discretionary funds are limited. Big projects have to go through the bureaucracy — which means they have to be administered by giant firms like Halliburton that have legions of lawyers and accountants to decipher the impenetrable thickets of procurement regulations.

Instead of blaming Halliburton, critics would be better off trying to change the system. But that's not terribly glamorous. It's much more fun to beat up Texas plutocrats.”

“Liberals are learning the wrong lessons
Jonah Goldberg
April 23, 2004


In 1993, in an interview with The Washington Post, the newly elected Bill Clinton joked that he missed the Cold War. Clinton explained to the Post that, "We had an intellectually coherent thing. The American people knew what the rules were."

Of course, when the pressures of the Cold War actually pinched Bill Clinton, he took a different tack. As a young man of draft age, Clinton wrote that Vietnam was "a war I opposed and despised with a depth of feeling I have reserved solely for racism in America."

Meanwhile, a young John Kerry nobly volunteered for military service.

So, going by the actions of the last Democratic president and the man who hopes to be the next one, maybe the Cold War wasn't really this "intellectually coherent thing" where everyone knew what to do.

Charles Krauthammer, who in a 1993 Time magazine essay decried "The Greatest Cold War Myth of All," first identified this pernicious tendency toward historical revisionism. Despite its recent denials, during the last 20 years of the Cold War, the Democratic Party was on the wrong side of the argument and it was only after the Berlin Wall came down that most Democrats claimed to have been Cold Warriors all along.

Obviously, there were countless honorable exceptions from the liberal anti-Communist senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, to Georgia's Sen. Sam Nunn to the 1980s version of Al Gore. But, in the broad scope of things, the liberals learned all the wrong lessons from Vietnam. John Kerry, who left for war presumably thinking the exact opposite of Bill Clinton, returned even more of a dove than Clinton, believing the U.S. military to be a bunch of war criminals and that American troops should only be dispersed under United Nations supervision.

For the next 30 years, Kerry was a tenacious dove on national security. In 1982, in his race for lieutenant governor, Kerry came out in favor of the nuclear freeze - not that anyone cared much then. But, two years later, when Kerry moved to the United States Senate, he kept to his principles battling Sam Nunn and Ronald Reagan over everything from arms control to "Reagan's illegal war in Central America" to missile defense. He called the war in Grenada a "bully's show of force." And, in 1991, he opposed the use of force in Iraq because it would constitute a violation of "the theory of deterrence" - even Saddam was not theoretically in Kuwait.

The point of this worrisome litany isn't so much to rehash the extent of Kerry's post-Vietnam dovishness, though that's certainly a worthwhile task during a wartime election year. No, what I want to point out is that even the most obvious good vs. evil conflicts don't seem that obvious to lots of people when they're in the middle of them. I have no doubt that when Americans look back on what we are now calling the "War on Terror" the morality and necessity of it will seem every bit as obvious as the morality and necessity of the Cold War seems to most of us, including Bill Clinton.

But just as millions of Americans were flat-out wrong about the urgency and necessity of fighting the Cold War, today there are millions of good and decent Americans who do not want to look the current enemy in the eye. They cling to polysyllabic professors who find clever ways to say the same dumb things over and over again. They look to America-detesting Europeans, mistaking cynicism for sagacity. And they look to politicians like John Kerry who proudly shift their opinions based upon the most convenient way of avoiding tough decisions, calling their zigs "nuance" and their zags "sophistication," promising to "stay the course" only if it's plotted as a U-turn.

It's far from clear why George W. Bush's poll numbers have been rising while he's facing the worst barrage of criticism of his "war presidency," but I can't help but think that it's partly because he calls himself a war president at a time when Americans realize they need one. John Kerry may be qualified in all sorts of ways, but it's clear that, since he returned from Vietnam, the one thing he hasn't prepared for is to be "war president."

The same went for Bill Clinton, of course. But he was lucky enough to run for president when we lacked an "intellectually coherent thing."”

“You can't even keep track of what you've already pasted.”

“And he wonders why I have him on ignore?”

“Christ! I'm going to have to put the young man on ignore as well......just to make the frickin' pages load faster!!!”

“ignore me.....that'll teach me a lesson.....

forget debate, discussion, intellectual stimulation, rational thought.... have nothing to do with those who disagree....just keep telling yourselves i'm not here and hoping i'll go away. i don't do it for you anyways because you are not interested in truth, or opposing viewpoints. perhaps there are some, who have yet to close their minds, who aren't afraid to actually think through thier beliefs completely, to make sure they are on the right side of things. maybe, just maybe some people aren't afraid to think for themselves, even if it's not "cool". i'll post what i want, and you all will never have any say whatsoever in my decisions. and you can continue to ignore me, because you have no way of countering my incredibly astute viewpoints. i'm not being arrogant, i simply know in my heart that i am correct and you are wrong. try to prove me wrong and i'll debate you......or keep ignoring me and prove i'm correct.

But just as millions of Americans were flat-out wrong about the urgency and necessity of fighting the Cold War, today there are millions of good and decent Americans who do not want to look the current enemy in the eye. They cling to polysyllabic professors who find clever ways to say the same dumb things over and over again. They look to America-detesting Europeans, mistaking cynicism for sagacity. And they look to politicians like John Kerry who proudly shift their opinions based upon the most convenient way of avoiding tough decisions, calling their zigs "nuance" and their zags "sophistication," promising to "stay the course" only if it's plotted as a U-turn.


this is you.....sophisticated u-turns.....

care to debate me....just once?
i predict you'll just "go negative" and insult my intelligence, or use the old liberal lexicon of buzz words like "NEOCON" or "chickenhawks" to try to divert attention from my points...muddy the water, it often works on the mind numbed masses....but not a thinking man.

come on guys, don't be skeered of me....i'm just a poor, dumb hick from the sticks.....


right straight outta compton, i'm straight out da trailor!


SOMEBODIES GOTTA FEEL THIS!”

“I'll debate you strat, if you'll use your own words, rather than plagiarize other people's words and then claim them as your own.


For instance, you stole two passages from your last post from Jonah Goldberg (another article I'd already read).

”

“He gets strangely silent at times.”

“no, he goes of to look how high the river is at times.

2 passages phaed? actually it was one paragraph and it was from the exact same article from the previous post , where i displayed the entire ppiece.

i never claimed anything was/were my own words. not once ever.

i hear you using the talking points on a regular basis, so i don't see why you get in such a tizzy. my posts make a point. adress the point or GTFO of the way.

geesh, that's like saying...i'll debate you, but you can only say what i say you can say.....come on man, look at the content, think about it in that brain of yers, and tell me why you disagree with it....cuz i know already you'll disagree with it....so let's hear it.....

on second thought....forget it....i'll let ya off the hook and declare victory now. i knew all along it was hardly going to be a challenge and it's grown tiresome giving you chance after chance to say something rational, something relevant to the point... you fail again and again.


ok, one more chance....
i'll check in later, to see if you can muster up a response that doesn't ridicule me personally(plagerising, stupid, bad typist, noecon). let's see if it's possible. i'm throwing down the gauntlet(whatever the he11 a gauntlet is), once and for all. you are now in the spotlight to shine for us all....the assignment is simple, talk about the subject, not me....

think before you type...this is a test.”

“1. I didn't see that you had posted goldberg's article since you threw it up in the midst of yet another orgy of cut and paste.

2. You have yet to make a coherent point that can be argued for or against, so there's nothing to debate.”

“STEEEEEEEEEE-RIKE THREEEEEEEEEEEE!

phaed is on ignore

next?”

“phuck off, strat!














that outta do it :)”

“strat

1. What do you mean by "polysyllabic professors"? Hmmm?! Was this a bigoted poke at someone's heritage? Please explain the relavance of the syllabic content of a person's name to the subject they write and speak about.

2. Who is the current enemy we need to look in the eyes? Do you really know? How do you know?

Let's start there dewd. That's a nice short list to debate. And another thing....the debaters don't get to go around declaring victories

And you're right. There should be no remarks about your intelligence, education, spelling, syllables in your name, ethnic heritage, etc.

And when referring to Bush's military service, I won't say chickenhawk. I'll just point out that he signed up for safe and easy National Guard duty, didn't fulfill his service requirements and that John Kerry served this country in combat.

So it's

a. polysyllabic professors
b. the real enemy”

“laq=ignore


2 down, 437 to go”

“????”

“a. polysyllabic professors:
They cling to polysyllabic professors who find clever ways to say the same dumb things over and over again.

obviously a reference to their linguistic style, not their names, as you inply.


b. the real enemy:
islamofacist”

“YEAH!

and kiss my ass while yer at it! :)”

“imply*”

“Excellent!

The boy couldn't make a valid point if his life depended on it.”

“uh...... everyone is polysyllabic when they but together more than two syllables. I guess I'm polysyllabic too.

Nice try to weasel out of it.

Islamofacist? Care to define that?


Let's keep the debate going.”

“Floc whom?”

“Nice try to weasel out of it.

WTF? i ain't weaselin outta nuttin. you are though. it is clear what he meant by that word. he's not a racist, as you seem to reimply. come on man, is that all you gather from the whole op ed piece> weak dood, weak.

Islamofacist? Care to define that?

you know exaCTLY WHAT THE WORD MEAN. YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHO THE ENEMY IS. AND , AS (Oops, caps) mr Krauthammer said, you are scared to look him in the eye, apparently. dood, you are supposed to be adressing the content, the idea, the overall concept....the point, what do you think about the point he is making?

the point....get it?

not one word out 2,000.....the point jo. can you understand that?




Let's keep the debate going."
JO”

“Kerry's in deep now, More "Senate Speek" on GMA this morning. He needs to fire his campaign staff, As much as any of us would like a President who can make all his own decisions, handle himself etc... No one can do that while running for Pres. No one. Bush listens to Rove and let's Rove "Handle" him, Kerry needs someone forceful enough to "Handle" Kerry.”

“Rove is a menace.”

“Oh ...those were someone else's words!! I figured you weren't doing that anymore and those were your words. The way you post, one can't tell.

Krauthammer is known for being anti-intellectual if they disagree with him. His use of polysyllabic is meant as ridicule and your choice of using it shows your tendencies too.

I've read Krauthammer for years and he lumps all Arabs who disagree with Israel as Islamofacists. He'd have Sharon's baby if possible.

The term Islamofacist is effective as it implies a struggle of good against evil, akin to the fight against the Nazis in WWII. And who could oppose such a just struggle , eh? Me.

The truth is murky and in the gray area. There are many different groups in the Middle East who oppose the US and Israel and they are all not facists. Many Palestinians are Christians. Whereas Saddam was a horrible tyrant,our actions there have stirred the pot and brought together many different groups, many facist in nature, others just folks who want to run their own affairs. We need to get the hell out of there.

Here's an enemy to consider. Our dependence on oil from the middle east. All this crap about bringing democracy, installing democracy is ridiculous. It's a war about resources.”

“"Installing democracy" is an excuse for securing the resource.

I don't believe installing/imposing democracy can be done.

The act of "installing" may in itself be anti-democratic.”