Subject: RE: BS: Who's gonna beat Bush... and make peace? From: *daylia* Date: 11 Mar 03 - 01:56 PM I find the days I forego reading newspapers and turning on the TV (or the computer) are much happier, a lot less "downhill". But eventually I feel guilty about hiding my head in the sand so to speak, and climb back on board ... I'd just like to be sure my 'involvement' does anyone any good. Some days I really wonder. daylia |
Subject: RE: BS: Who's gonna beat Bush... and make peace? From: Thomas the Rhymer Date: 11 Mar 03 - 06:16 PM So, who's gonna beat Bush? ...and don't beat up DougR (though it's tempting), he keeps us in touch with the incredibly well informed American public... Listen up and take notes! ttr |
Subject: RE: BS: Who's gonna beat Bush... and make peace? From: DougR Date: 12 Mar 03 - 01:49 AM Peg: my rememberance of the Carter years was long lines at the gasoline pumps, double digit inflation, hostages in Iran and failed attempts to rescue them. You, of course, are entitled to whatever memories you choose. Ebbie: your attack, I believe is unwarranted. I don't believe I directed my remarks to the Carter Center or any works that it may or may not have done good or bad. My remarks were aimed at a failed president who is trying desperately to preserve a positive image in history. His winning of the Nobel Peace Prize was a laugh. Many believe the only reason he got it was the committee wanted to deliver an insult to the current president. I am one of those people. Admire him as a peacekeeper if you wish, but tell me what he has actually accomplished. The conflict between Israel and Palestine is the same as when he left office (but I admit that he did try hard to resolve it). The fiasco in North Korea is largely a result of his bungled negotiation. What victories can he claim? DougR DougR |
Subject: RE: BS: Who's gonna beat Bush... and make peace? From: CarolC Date: 12 Mar 03 - 01:16 PM DougR, the conflict between Israel and Egypt was successfully resolved with President Carter's assistance, during his term of office. That's a very significant accomplishment. |
Subject: RE: BS: Who's gonna beat Bush... and make peace? From: Thomas the Rhymer Date: 12 Mar 03 - 03:04 PM Yeh, boy DougR... Bush 'the first' and Carter were like night and day Huh? He HE He ...ttr |
Subject: RE: BS: Who's gonna beat Bush... and make peace? From: GUEST,Mudjack Date: 12 Mar 03 - 03:16 PM More direct answer to the question posed by Thomas "H" the Rhymer. I am voting for Jeb Bartlett, off course we have to have all those NBC writers to write the scripts that will guaratee peace. For the real world I can only say it won't be Al Gore. Mudjack |
Subject: RE: BS: Who's gonna beat Bush... and make peace? From: DougR Date: 12 Mar 03 - 03:44 PM Gee, Carol, I wasn't aware the conflict between Israel and Palestine had been settled. Do they know that? DougR |
Subject: RE: BS: Who's gonna beat Bush... and make peace? From: CarolC Date: 12 Mar 03 - 06:21 PM DougR, perhaps you aren't aware that Egypt and Palestine are entirely separate countries. Or maybe you didn't read my last post very carefully. |
Subject: RE: BS: Who's gonna beat Bush... and make peace? From: Thomas the Rhymer Date: 12 Mar 03 - 10:29 PM Hi Ho Mudjack! Long time no see! How's that fine voice of yours? So, who is this Jeb Bartlet, and how electable is he? I'm concerned by the lack of charismatic politicians these days... or is that an oxymoron? ttr |
Subject: RE: BS: Who's gonna beat Bush... and make peace? From: Bobert Date: 12 Mar 03 - 10:54 PM Doug: Get a current World Atlas. The one you used in college is a tad dated! Either way. You won't find Egypt and Palestine occupying the same territory. Hey, I've just fuggured out who is gonna beat George Bush! (Drumroll...) Goerge Bush! Yep, you knowtice that every time he gets up and tries to convince the world that he is justified in attacking Iraq, fewere and fewer people actually, ahhh, *believe* him as the demonstrations get larger and larger. Yep, he's about 5 speeches away from being put in a rocket ship and sent to live out his days on Mars! Keep running your mouth, King George! Speech! Speech! Speech! Bobertr |
Subject: RE: BS: Who's gonna beat Bush... and make peace? From: Forum Lurker Date: 12 Mar 03 - 11:28 PM Mudjack-If Martin Sheen ran against Bush on the Democratic ticket, I'd vote for him. He'd at least be able to convince other nations that he knew what the hell he was doing, and he's probably both smarter and saner than our real president. I trust his staff more, too. |
Subject: RE: BS: Who's gonna beat Bush... and make peace? From: Jack the Sailor Date: 13 Mar 03 - 12:58 AM DougR the current "crisis" in North Korea is because GW called their current leader a pigmy then putting North Korea in the "Axis of Evil" when he declared war on terrorism. Even after all that, all North Korea is asking for is a promise that the US won't preemptively attack them and the 2 billion dollars the Clinton administration promised them in exchange of SHUTTING DOWN THEIR NUCLEAR PROGRAM AND ALLOWING INSPECTORS. Do you remember that the Bush administration started to call it a crisis when Kim Jong Il kicked out the inspectors and threatened to restart their breeder reactor? Carter should be given a peace prize for even attempting to clean up Bush's mess rather than laughing in his face. |
Subject: RE: BS: Who's gonna beat Bush... and make peace? From: DougR Date: 13 Mar 03 - 01:10 AM Well, Jack, never let it be said I didn't say you certainly have a right to your opinion. You think Carter is a super negotiator, okey dokie by me. I just don't happen to agree with you. DougR |
Subject: RE: BS: Who's gonna beat Bush... and make peace? From: GUEST,terilu Date: 13 Mar 03 - 01:36 AM Troll and others - from http://www.truthaboutwar.org/1brutal.shtml- These stories make for great propaganda, but none of them are true, and the Bush administration knows it. Saddam Hussein did not gas his own people. Supposedly Hussein gassed Iraqi Kurds at Halabja in March 1988 during the closing days of the Iran-Iraq war. But it isn't true. In 1990, the U.S. government found that the Kurds died by cyanide gas. It was the Iranians who used cyanide, while the Iraqis used mustard gas. This means it was the Iranians who accidentally killed the Kurds during battle. Hussein had nothing to do with it. (Source: Army War College, Stephen Pelletier & colleague) In a related lie, Hussein is also said to have committed genocide in August 1988, killing 100,000 Iraqi Kurds with machine guns, then burying them in mass graves. U.S. intelligence services have uniformly dismissed this story. According to Stephen Pelletier of the U.S. Army War College, no such mass graves have ever been found because none exist. The incident never happened. Human Rights Watch, which originally reported the story, has since retracted it, but the lie lives on. Saddam Hussein did not try to assassinate George Bush, Sr. Bush, Jr. loves to tell the story of how Hussein "tried to kill my dad." But it's not true. Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh debunked the story in a December 5, 1993 article in The New Yorker titled "A Case Not Closed." The bomb was actually miles away from Bush, Sr. and was likely a set-up by Kuwait to keep Clinton from easing sanctions on Iraq. Saddam Hussein's soldiers did not remove babies from incubators in Kuwait. A New York public relations firm hired by the Kuwaiti government created this story to win American public support for U.S. military action against Iraq. The fiction was based on the tearful testimony of a Kuwaiti woman before the U.S. Senate as it debated war in 1990. The woman claimed to have witnessed the incubator incident with her own eyes, but she was really the daughter of the Kuwaiti Information Minister, and hadn't even been in Kuwait on the day the alleged atrocity took place. (See csmonitor.com/2002/ 0906/p01s02-wosc.html.) In conclusion, Bush's claim that we should go to war because Hussein (our former client) is a brutal dictator is blatant hypocrisy. Our politicians have been the great creators and patrons of dictatorships around the world. They have… Toppled the legitimate government of Iran for the benefit of U.S. oil companies, eventually leading to the Islamic revolution and its related problems, Installed dictatorships in Central America for the benefit of the United Fruit Company, Installed the current government of Iraq, Destabilized a working democracy in Lebanon, leading to decades of civil war, Assassinated the elected President of Chile, And on and on and on… (See Endless Enemies by Jonathan Kwitny, The Fifties by David Halberstam, and The Price of Power by Seymour Hersh for details about the above list of CIA interventions.) |
Subject: RE: BS: Who's gonna beat Bush... and make peace? From: Amos Date: 13 Mar 03 - 08:57 AM For a real firebrand discussion of the case against the Resident, check out Wayne Madsen in Counterpunch.org -- it appears even Bush I is getting pissed off at Junyuh. An excerpt: Junior, let's face it, you have done more damage to the world and your country in two years than most tyrants have accomplished in decades. Your Dad now even believes you are way off base. Your predecessors Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton think you are an embarrassment. Your Dad's best friends and colleagues think your Iraq adventure is ill-timed and ill-conceived. You need to either dump that aforementioned band of lunatics you stuck into your administration and who are steering you into political oblivion or you should let Laura and Daddy sign the papers and let the 25th Amendment take its course. Regards, A |
Subject: RE: BS: Who's gonna beat Bush... and make peace? From: Bagpuss Date: 13 Mar 03 - 09:32 AM Terilu - I had never heard that the Halabja attack might have been committed by anyone other than the Iraqi's so I did a little bit of googling. Whilst i did find many articles repeating your claims, I also checked the Human Rights Watch website. Their view is that the claim you repeat was put about by the US as a cover up since the US was pretty much in cahoots with Saddam at the time. They believe that the gassing was done by Iraq as part of a much larger and more extensive systematic campaign against the Kurds known as the Anfal campaign and concludes that this campaign constituted genocide against the Kurds. However, I believe that the no fly zones over Kurdish territory have been faily successful in preventing the continuation of this campaign, so it is hardly a premise on which to go to war. I have also read that the Iraqi Kurds are now more fearful of Turkey (who have *not* been prohibited from the no fly zone) - who are also known for human rights abuses against Kurds, and may have more access to the Iraqi Kurds if this war goes ahead. (sorry if this is thread drift...) |
Subject: RE: BS: Who's gonna beat Bush... and make peace? From: Wolfgang Date: 13 Mar 03 - 10:08 AM You'd have to look very long to find any recent book on negotiations that is not mentioning as a positive prime example Carter's mediation in the Egypt-Israel negotiations of 1978. The only nasty remarks I have read about his recent Nobel prize were that this award was a belated silent admission that he should have got the award much earlier for his contribution to the Camp David agreement. BTW, speaking about the Camp David agreement, one part of that agreement was that a little strip of land, called Gaza strip, changed from being a (entirely Israel occupied) part of Egypt to being a (intermittently Israel occupied) part of Palestine. That only dates back to 1948 I think. Though never at the same time in history, but at different times in history both the names 'Palestine' and 'Egypt' have been written to the same strip of land. Wolfgang |
Subject: RE: BS: Who's gonna beat Bush... and make peace? From: Ebbie Date: 13 Mar 03 - 01:04 PM Amos, if only bush would listen! I suspect he is surrounded by so many yes men he is being told only what he wants to hear. I found this excerpt most telling: "After Kiesling's resignation from the State Department came a blast from within the ranks of the GOP. Jack Walters, the GOP Chairman in Boone County, Missouri, resigned over Bush's war plans. Walters' letter made some cogent points and posed some agonizing questions: "The consequences of our planned attack on Iraq (and also probably Iran, given the size of our forces and their location in proximity to Iran), should cause us all to pause. The Pentagon has announced that we will hit Baghdad with a force almost equal to the bombing of Hiroshima. Obviously many thousands of civilians will perish, with untold thousands maimed. And for what? To liberate them? To bring them freedom? Or democracy? Or is it to really secure the world's second largest oil reserve and establish a base from which to subjugate other Middle Eastern nations? Is it also the plan for Israel to use the cover of war to forcibly relocate the Palestinian population (as has been publicly stated by some members of Israel's current government)?" I still think that this nation should be governed by a tripartite presidency. |
Subject: RE: BS: Who's gonna beat Bush... and make peace? From: Troll Date: 13 Mar 03 - 11:45 PM NK started on its secret nuclear program in 1995, a year after the Carter-brokered deal. Bush included NK in his "Axis of Evil" speech and, as it happens, he was right. They were and are trying to develop nuclear weapons. They have admitted that they cheated on the agreement which THEY signed. And they have reopened a closed nuclear plant to begin making weapons grade plutonium. They have claimed that it's to generate power but a member of the INC said that he knew that plant and that it could barely generate enough power to keep itself running. This was several weeks ago and I don't have a link. I'll try to find one. Jack do you honestly believe that that's ALL Kim Il-Jong wants? Because if you do, I fear that you are in for a dreadful surprise. troll |
Subject: RE: BS: Who's gonna beat Bush... and make peace? From: Forum Lurker Date: 14 Mar 03 - 08:48 AM Troll-Just because they want nuclear weapons makes them evil? You do realize that that makes the U.S. truly fit the name of Great Satan, then, don't you? We invented the damn things and are the only ones ever to use them in war. |
Subject: RE: BS: Who's gonna beat Bush... and make peace? From: Amos Date: 14 Mar 03 - 09:10 AM Forum Lurker, I am sorry but that is a half-assed comparison. The concern is not that WMD exist but that they exist in the hands of an unstable government. Right now, though, Bush looks pretty unstable, I grant you! :>) A |
Subject: RE: BS: Who's gonna beat Bush... and make peace? From: Bobert Date: 14 Mar 03 - 09:10 AM And if ya' think that NK is evil fir wanting nuclear weapons, let just examine the facts here. Look who Bush doesn't want to mess with? Hmmmm? Then look at who he wants to mess with. Hmmmmm? Tell ya' what, if someone threatens me I'm going to look for a big stick! If I were the leader of any country right now, I'd be doing just that. When ya' got a nut with a big stick threatenin' folks you gonna need a stick. Bobert |
Subject: RE: BS: Who's gonna beat Bush... and make peace? From: GUEST,Forum Lurker Date: 14 Mar 03 - 11:05 AM Amos-I wasn't saying that we were evil. I was pointing out the fallacy of claiming that any nation seeking to develop nuclear weapons must be evil. I don't think that you can pick and choose who can do what based on your opinion of the current leadership. Besides, North Korea actually has a very stable government-how long has it been since it changed? |
Subject: RE: BS: Who's gonna beat Bush... and make peace? From: Amos Date: 14 Mar 03 - 11:31 AM FL: Good point. Aside from their dubiouus ideology about which I know very little. Nukes do not equal evil. But those predisposed toward evil as a result of fanatical upbringing are the last ones who should have 'em! The only concern about NK is that they have done this before and they have been a constant threat to SK ever since. It would simplify life a lot if we could get into a real dialog witrh them. Some whimsical piece of last minute editing put them into the Axis of Evil speech, and they have been on a different tack ever since. A |
Subject: RE: BS: Who's gonna beat Bush... and make peace? From: DougR Date: 14 Mar 03 - 11:59 AM Amos, I'm sure you are aware that the NKs were developing their nuclear weapons long before the Axis of Evil speech. Perhaps that was why they were included (their aggressive history and possession of nuclear weapons). DougR |
Subject: RE: BS: Who's gonna beat Bush... and make peace? From: Thomas the Rhymer Date: 14 Mar 03 - 12:06 PM The 'axis of evil' is planted firmly in GWB's 'James Bond' world view. A simpleton's boyhood romp was all he wanted... why is everyone so uptight? ;^) OK... so the Prez needs to be 'more choosy' about his sexual partners, More diplomatic overseas, have a grasp of the underlying reasons for a ballanced budget, and a zesty new approach to peacemaking... Oh, and how's about a sense of humor too! Show Bush the door in Two Thousand and Four! ttr |
Subject: RE: BS: Who's gonna beat Bush... and make peace? From: GUEST,Forum Lurker Date: 14 Mar 03 - 12:50 PM DougR-Yes, they were developing nuclear weapons. SO WHAT?! Nuclear weapons cannot be the sole basis for determining if a country is a rogue state, or we head the list by far. Their "aggressive history" includes fewer wars than ours in the same span of time. While I'll warrant that Kim Jong-Il isn't the picture of a kind, sensible, benign ruler, I don't think that there is anywhere near sufficient evidence that he poses a threat to anyone. I'd be far more worried about leaders who state their willingness to use their admitted, tremendously large nuclear arsenals than those who simply announce that they intend to keep working towards making one or two. |
Subject: RE: BS: Who's gonna beat Bush... and make peace? From: Ebbie Date: 14 Mar 03 - 12:51 PM Paul Krugman of The New York Times this morning has an Op-ed piece that concludes that Bush et al is simply the wrong man for the job, saying: If that sounds harsh, consider the debacle of recent diplomacy — a debacle brought on by awesome arrogance and a vastly inflated sense of self-importance. He goes on to say, "Wasn't someone at the State Department allowed to point out that in matters nonmilitary, the U.S. isn't all that dominant — that Russia and Turkey need the European market more than they need ours, that Europe gives more than twice as much foreign aid as we do and that in much of the world public opinion matters? Apparently not. And to what end has Mr. Bush alienated all our most valuable allies? (And I mean all: Tony Blair may be with us, but British public opinion is now virulently anti-Bush.) The original reasons given for making Iraq an immediate priority have collapsed. No evidence has ever surfaced of the supposed link with Al Qaeda, or of an active nuclear program. And the administration's eagerness to believe that an Iraqi nuclear program does exist has led to a series of embarrassing debacles, capped by the case of the forged Niger papers, which supposedly supported that claim. At this point it is clear that deposing Saddam has become an obsession, detached from any real rationale." I am withholding the italics; I believe it is clear that some amongst us don't read italicized excerpts. :) |
Subject: RE: BS: Who's gonna beat Bush... and make peace? From: Amos Date: 14 Mar 03 - 05:49 PM His attitude -- which is certainly his most precious, if not his only, asset -- has managed to undermine three decades of evolving relationships. I was glad to see him coming up with some sort of Middle Eastern peace plan. I don't think for a moment that it was his idea. And, as the song says, "We'd all love to see the plan...." A |