Thx for posting your comments. You are not obligated to read anything posted on this site. It costs you nothing and I don't even bother my readers with advertising banners.

Furthermore, I provide ample opportunity for you/them to express their views, whether they agree or disagree.

Personally, I like many things about GWB. I voted for him and consider myself a republican, but on 9/11 (which I haven't forgot), he and his administration failed in the biggest screw up in our nation's history. That is not a point any "liberal" media has made. It is a conclusion I came to myself.

We pay the government tons of money to keep us safe. That's thier job. It's their number one job (or should be). It's certainly their most important job. And I contend that anytime innocent civilians are forced to decide between leaping to their certain death and being burned alive, as a result of some terrorist attack on our soil, that's a good indicator our government has failed the people.

http://radified.com/911/911_jump_01.htm

So yeah, I find fault with the administration for dropping the ball on 9/11. And I'm not the only one:

http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/index.htm

The White House fought tooth and nail to keep that commission from being formed. Why do you think that is? If they had nothing to hide? It's clear now, I regret to say, that the White House was being run by a bunch of incompetents. Read the report for yourself. (I'm guessing you haven't, or you wouldn't be posting dumb shit here.) They failed: plain & simple.

I also chat daily with people from all over the planet. People who are neither republican or democrat, neither liberal or conservative. Not one feels our government is making the world a safer place. On the contrary.

Maybe if George would've went to Viet Nam, and experienced what it's like to have bullets wizzing by his head, he's be a little less eager to send our young men into harm's way. But he chose to avoid the draft. He could have enlisted and served in Viet Nam if he wanted. That was certainly his option, but he chose to stay at home. Talk about

Quote:

Oh, and by the way, I spent 6 years in the military, stationed aboard an operating ballistic missile nuclear-powered submarine, homeported out of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, where I ran a reactor plant for them. So I gladly served my country, thank-you very much.

Again, I sincerely appreciate your dissenting views. If you don't like mine, remember that nobody is forcing you to read them or come to this site. Everything you find here is gratuitous. It costs me money to host this site (US$16/month) and I ask nothing in return.

I don't see how anyone could call you wacked-out when we were in fact attacked in '93. I mean, the evidence was there: explosion, smoke, broken glass, etc.

Hi. Thx for responding:

Re: "he was smart enough to listen to 41 "

In his book, 41 mentioned the reasons why he didn't go into Iraq after the 1st gulf war. George should've read his father's book and heeded his advice.

Re: "Lets begin with the liberals"

You sound anti-liberal. I do not stereotype people into such groups. I know it takes a little more intellectual energy to evaluate each person and decision on its own merits, but, I think, if you do, you'll see the world a little differently. I agree & disagree with policies from both sides. I think that people who either agree or disagree with everything one group does or says is weak-minded and naive.

Which is why you never heard me singing the praises of liberals, Conservatives, republicans or democrats. Stupidity knows no political or idealogical boundaries. But if conservatism is your bag, then George's record budget deficits must be killing you .. the biggest increase in spending in our nation's history. It's simple fiscal irresponsibility. Who's gonna pay all that money back? Of course, nothing is George's fault, because he takes responsibility for nothing that goes wrong. All he can do is make excuses, which is one of his greatest talents.

Re: "the Kobar towers, the Cole..the list goes on and on"

All these added together don't begin to scratch the surface of what happened on 9/11. The level of incompetence we saw on 9/11 was in a whole 'nuther league.

Re: The comissish places blame on the "infrastructure""

The 9/11 commission made it a point (regrettably) not to assign blame, but anyone with a sixth-grade reading level can easily see the incompetence at the administration level. The comish said all the clues were there, but nobody connected the dots. We pay the government to connect the dots. (i.e. they failed).

A month before the attacks the president was handed a security briefing (the now infamous PDB) saying Bin Laden determined to attack inside the US, while Arabs were taking flying lessons in our schools where they don't want to learn how to land. What are they doing with billions of tax dollars we give them for national security? Do they need Osama to call with flight numbers and departure times? If they're not going to do the job, they shouldn't take the money.

I honestly think GWB's years of alcoholism have damaged his ability to make sound, rational decisions. His inability to admit mistakes is a personality defect commonly associated with alcoholics. I actually like a lot about the guy, character-wise. I just don't think he possesses the intelligence (no pun intended) necessary to be president. Whatever part of the brain is responsible for foresight, I think that's the part that was damaged by his years of alcoholism.

I also find it hard to respect a man who dodged the draft by having his daddy get him into the national guard, altho I can certainly understand it. But it looks hypocritical for him to now send boys to die in Iraq when he himself wouldn't go to Viet Nam. You see no inconsistency there?

Re: "I seriously doubt you possess a CERTIFIABLE dd214"

Why the emphasis on "certifiable"? I have dd214, honorable. Do you really care? I'd be honored if you do. I agree with your views on social programs (welfare dollars).

Dickie, the name sounds familiar, but I can't say I know who you're talking about? That makes me a non-squid?    I wish it were that easy. I spent most of my time in the Pac fleet, stationed at Pearl Harbor & Bangor, Washington, at the new Trident base there.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/facility/bangor.htm

Talk about some serious WMDs. Both nice places, tho.

Gotta go .. "Full Metal Jacket" is on HBO tonight (Stanley Kubrick):

http://www.historyinfilm.com/jacket/

I appreciate all comments, pro & con, for that's how we learn.

Re: Quote:


I doubt GWB knew when he was going in the Air national Guard what type of plane he would be flying.

Even still, flying a plane state-side, no matter how unreliable it might be, is a far cry from dodging bullets in the jungles of Viet Nam.

He had the opportunity to serve in Viet Nam and chose not to. And if his daddy didn't have such political pull, that's exactly where he would've wound up. And if he went to Viet Nam, there's a good chance he might not be here today.

I think the decisions he is making today are a direct result of not having to serve in Viet nam. Said another way, I feel that if he *did* serve in Viet Nam, he would be making very different decisions today, regarding our troops in Iraq.

You might've heard about the soldiers who recently refused to follow orders to go on a mission. If you've ever been in the military, you know how big of a deal it is to refuse to follow orders. This tells me the administration is out of touch with what it means to serve in Iraq, because neither GWB or Dick Cheney even served in the military.

Why did you delete your posts?

part2:
"Saddam was a threat." So runs the mantra Mr. Bush repeats in his attempt to justify America's unprovoked war of aggression on a third-world country that did not attack us, and that had no capability of doing so. The president appears to believe that any thinking mind would move inexorably from this bald statement (assuming, for the sake of argument, that it is true) to the conclusion that he was justified in launching a preemptive war against Iraq – one that would inevitably kill thousands of innocent Iraqis and well over a thousand young Americans, not to mention seriously injuring many thousands more.

There were plenty of alternative actions that could have been taken and that were in fact being taken to deal with the threat, such as it was, that Mr. Hussein posed to American and world security. In spite of his protests to the contrary, Bush was clearly not interested in those options. His determination to go to war with Iraq was patent, and his frequent protestations that war would be for him a last option were dishonest in the extreme.

"Americans at least know exactly where I stand, what I believe" is another of Bush's favorite slogans these campaign days. Frankly, what Mr. Bush believes does not interest me in the least. As president of the United States, he should act in a rationally and morally defensible way, one based on objective facts and values. He did not do so when he chose to take America to war with Iraq, and his repeated assertion that "we did the right thing" does nothing to diminish the foolishness and immorality of his decision.

We are supposed to sympathize with Bush because, as he tirelessly reminds us in his stump speeches, his determination to go to war all over the world involves "hard" or "tough" choices. In that his choices seem always to involve the use of lethal force, you will pardon me for feeling more sympathy for the innocent victims of the president's "tough choices" than I can muster for his alleged agony in making them. And I have never thought that there is anything particularly "tough" about a president who orders missile strikes from his comfy leather executive chair.

Missile strikes almost inevitably kill noncombatants and "targeted" bombings reliably extinguish the lives of innocent civilians along with (or instead of) the intended target. In one of his recent televised debates with Senator John Kerry, Bush seemed annoyed, even peeved, that the Iraqis failed to cooperate, when we initially entered their country with a campaign of "shock and awe," by lining up their soldiers in an open field, where they would have been incinerated by bombs dropped from thousands of feet in the air by American pilots.

That by his own confession Commander-in-Chief Bush actually expected (and planned on) the Iraqis to embrace such a strategy of wide-open combat with an absurdly advantaged and dependably overpowering American force I find breathtakingly naive. That Bush feels no remorse or revulsion at the idea of having purposely launched a needless war of aggression that was supposed to feature such an orgy of human carnage I find obscene.

As a representative of Republicans in my voting district, I suppose I should say something about Bush's domestic policies. I choose instead to limit my comments to the president's "war on terror" because I think this global preemptive strategy, particularly as he defines and directs it, is by far the most significant aspect of the Bush presidency from a moral point of view. I happen to agree with much of the president's domestic agenda, in particular his support for the "pro-life" movement. But somehow the president's "pro-life" rhetoric rings hollow to me in light of his anti-life, militaristic foreign policy and the curious doctrine of never-ending preventive warfare in the interest of "securing world peace" that he has adopted from his neoconservative advisers.

In sum, my primary reason for rejecting the 2004 Republican presidential candidate is precisely the quality many party members regard as Bush's "strength," namely, his manner of "leadership" in the war on terror. A strong leader moving us in the wrong direction is worse than no leader at all. For this reason, my Republican friends and I were extremely disappointed that our party offered no alternative candidate to Bush in this year's primary elections.

Through the policies of this president, our country has drifted far from the spirit of its founding fathers and their principled pursuit of peace and opposition to American involvement in foreign affairs; and Bush's apparent enthusiasm for big-government "security" at home and big-government warfare abroad hardly exemplifies a conservative ideal. Instead of calming American fears through rational guidance and prudent leadership, Bush has led, and profited from, a surge of national paranoia and xenophobic militarism that is as morally bankrupt as it will be politically suicidal.

Leonard Maluf is a professor of Philosophy and New Testament at Blessed John XXIII National Seminay in Weston, MA, where he has been teaching since the fall of 1997. He studied scripture and theology in Rome, at the Pontifical Biblical Institute, during the 1980s and has been teaching in Catholic seminaries since 1994. He has published articles on biblical topics and philosophy, as well as an abstract of his doctoral thesis on the Benedictus of Zechariah, which was accepted in 1994 by the Gregorian University in Rome. In the last twenty-five years, he has translated a number books from French, mostly in the areas of philosophy and theology. While in Rome, he worked as a translator for the Osservatore Romano, and currently does translation work for the Catholic Biblical Federation in Stuttgart, Germany.