NEWS: Boys Request Right Wing Radio Call Them \"Pussies\"

Can I at least point out that there is exponentially MORE wrong with Bush in office?

And also "our government does not have to tell us anything" does not translate to "our government is allowed to violate our privacy and break its own laws."

1. actually, you know who wasnt convinced they had WMD? Hans Blix, the guy whose job it was to inspect Iraq for nuclear weapons.

2. yes, all those peoples lives are better. especially the dead ones. and the ones without power and clean water. and the orphans who werent orphans before.

Welcome newbie - and just a reminder, before you start spouting off about what people might, or might not know - check out their previous posts and their profile; because this time, you have bitten off more than you might be able to chew.

Let's begin with your first irresponsible assertion:
No, "everyone" did not think Saddam or Iraq possessed WMD. The UN inspectors did not. By 1996, the inspectors were able to verify that 98% of the weapons had been destroyed and that Saddam no longer had any active weapons programs. The data on this fact is irrefutable. Before anyone wades in on the 2%, I think you would agree that it was covered during the next six years.

Nor did everyone in the CIA; in fact:

I could go on, but a simple search of Google News (“who said no WMD existed”) or this site (TSG) will demonstrate the categorical defenselessness of your declaration.

Now to your second naive critique:
Yes, Saddam could be a despot and regime change in Iraq, undertaken in reasonable manner, could benefit the country and its citizens. Such is the case throughout the world and history books provide valuable insight into the broad success the US has endured in similar undertakings.

However, that is not what happened. Instead, the US took on $1 trillion in new debt (something you will be paying for a long time – because it’s not going to come from Iraqi oil productions), killed 10's of thousands of innocent civilians, destroyed what remained of a very frail industrial infrastructure, and has largely failed to either rebuild that infrastructure or managed to reinstitute a truly democratic government and manage secular violence -choosing instead to market the challenge with the broad-sweeping claim of "insurgency."

What makes your blind support of this effort so repulsive is your amateurish failure to examine any form of rational balance between cost, reward, and risk. But I am unsurprised at this failure.

Finally, to your point about what I may or may not know about "our government" and what they do or do not share.

It is clear that Bush lied in the run-up to the unprecedented invasion of another country. We may not know "his" motives, but we can pick from a number of reasonable options - none of which are compelling, necessary, or justified:
1. He felt threatened by the fact that Saddam was selling Iraqi oil reserves (futures) in Euros instead of dollars, undermining the ability of the US to manage oil futures. (Let me hear you complain about today's price at the pump - and then we can discuss the fact that the futures market has gone "contango" the phrase we use to describe a market where the futures price of a commodity is more than 5% above the current price when supplies are sufficient)
2. He was sold a bill of goods by a small number of hawks who insisted that future US economic stability and required an alignment of interests and strategy throughout the Middle East. If Bush has his way, Iraq simply becomes the “base-camp” for furthering his bizarre mixture of Christian zealotry and US economic expansion.
3. He was pursuing some form of personal vindictiveness.
And none of these has anything to do with regime change or WMD.
Personally, I think it's all three, wrapped up in a package that neatly fit GW's way of thinking, his idealism, and his inability to navigate to his goals through compromise and good management.

Bush enjoys the worst approval rating in the history of the US presidency. He is an abject failure. He has failed to deliver on his promises to the conservatives on whose shoulders he rode into the white house (gay marriage, Roe v Wade, Social Security, etc) and he has alienated the country as no other president before him - all on the back of what was nearly unanimous support following 9/11. He was so busy flaunting his success and performing his end-zone dance – (before reaching the goal) that he failed to see the middle linebacker come from behind, snatch the ball, and run the other way.

What these polls say is that American never got what GW promised and they are disappointed. He did not deliver for the conservatives, he did not deliver for the religious right, and he did not deliver on his promise to be a “builder. He performed better at Yale with a C average.

There are some of us who believe that we got exactly what we expected!

If you prefer, you can set aside Sean Wilentz's conclusions or even the 400 historians he interviewed regarding Bush - except one key thing comes through; 81% of the 400 historians interviewed said Bush was the worst president ever. Now, they had nearly unlimited supply to work with considering those that came before him, and over 400 people you would expect to get a wide dose of opinion; but 81% is nearly unanimity.

Without getting into the superlative debate because I can't bring myself to care about the order of your personal Top Five biggest baddest geneva convention-breaking mo'fuckers...

What's your evidence that a global plurality believed Iraq had wmds? Despite the fact that the U.S. sold Iraq significant amounts of chemical weapns during the Iran-Iraq war to prevent Soviet-backed Iran dominance of the strategically-important Northern Tier, by 2003 (before the invasion) UN weapons inspectors and the CIA were convinced that Iraq had either used, destroyed or sold them.

See the March 6, 2003 report by the UN weapons inspectors: Unresolved Disarmament Issues
or the recent disclosures by Tyler Drumheller: "Naji Sabri, Iraq’s foreign minister, had made a deal to reveal Iraq’s military secrets to the CIA. Drumheller was in charge of the operation.... "He told us that they had no active weapons of mass destruction program," says Drumheller. " (from wfrv.com but i'm sure you can find it at your preferred news source, too).

The so-called "resistance" to UN weapons inspections consisted of, "a 45 minute delay...a rebuffed attempt to interview college students at Baghdad University...[and] attempts to inspect facilities on Friday, the Muslim Holy Day" (see Nafeez Ahmed, Behind the War on Terror from New Society Publishers: BC, Canada, 2003.)

And even if "almost EVERYONE in the world" was more suspcious than the UN weapons inspectors and CIA officers (who some people might argue are in a slightly better position than most to make an informed judgement call and guide U.S. policy than some vague global unease), the international position taken by the UN was that weapons inspections should be allowed to continue.

Second, whose lives are better? Increasingly embattled U.S. soldiers in the more volatile parts of the country erect barbed wire around villages, enforce strict curfews, and tear through civilians' homes in the middle of the night searching for "enemy combatants. " Meanwhile, many parts of the country still lack reliable electricity and water, let alone operational schools or workplaces. For one account that's particularly sensitive to the situation of the soldiers in Iraq see the NY Times Magazine piece: The Fall of the Warrior King

Some Iraqis have even claimed that Saddam Hussein did a better job rebuilding after the first Gulf War than the U.S. has done (see Pratap Chatterjee Iraq, Inc. from New York: Seven Stories Press, 2004).

Third, they do have other reasons for being there. Saddam Hussein's 2000 decision to revalue Iraq's oil reserves in Euros instead of U.S. dollars posed a serious threat to U.S. fiscal policy, which relies on petro-dollars to finance the capital-account deficit (which helps finance the trade deficit). (See Henry Liu: US Dollar Hegemony Has to Go) And furthermore, Iraq was an experiment in neo-liberal economic policy. Under Bremer, the entire Iraqi government was privatized overnight and the U.S. awarded billions of dollars in contracts to U.S. corporations and waited for investors from all over the world to start eating up pieces of the pie. Unfortunately, the pieces of the pie kept blowing up, killing factory managers at the threat of privatization, and not getting from production to market because of the instability of the country. (For more, see Naomi Klein Baghdad Year Zero).

But those aren't the reasons that were submitted for public debate in the lead up to the war, and I don't think it's acceptable to just sit back and assume the U.S. administration "[has] a reason for being there," with no attempt to make them publicly accountable. The citizens who pay for the war with their taxes and their lives have a right to debate the merits of the conflict based on better information than they were given by the administration; participatory democracy isn't just about voting and sitting back and assuming that the people you did or didn't elect know best.

oh dear. spend too much time digging up your sources and everyone else will beat you to the punch, eh? sorry to be repetitive...i'll catch on, i swear.

on topic, i'm a bit surprised there isn't a "national security" clause in FERPA and I'm sympathetic to concerns that the gov't should follow the legal restrictions on compiling information about students, i do rather agree with the undersecretary who said "There's nothing sinister."

this isn't going to be anyone's Rumsfeld resignation wet dream... seems like the NYCLU's efforts might be better concentrated entirely on the illegal detention of "suspected terrorists," imho

Howsabout you and me and anyone else who is interested go hang around outside highschools and distribute 'Get the military to leave you the fuck alone' Fliers. All it will say is "Tell them you're gay" in thirty six point font.

Responding to all that shit would take forever so I won't, although I could on most of that. I will just point you to links regarding UN inspections and hit one other thing.

UN Quarterly Report - start at Section II Paragraph 6
http://www.un.org/Depts/unmovic/new/documents/quarterly_reports/s-2004-435.pdf

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20154

Read the first half of the Background section here at Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_disarmament_crisis

They didn't comply with the UN like you think they did. As far as what countries believed it, I can't find that information exactly. The Prince of Saudi Arabia was one of the people that told us Iraq had WMD's and the countries that were in Iraq with us at some point were Albania, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Rep, El Salvador, Estonia, Georgia, Honduras, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, South Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, United Kingdom, and Ukraine.

Oh and regarding privacy, if you're so worried about privacy, why are you on the internet? You can learn more than enough about a lot of people just through internet research.

[Edited on Apr 25, 2006 1:48PM]

Great introduction newbie - "I would if I could, but..."

From your own UN Quarterly report:

Also note that much of this report deals with Iraq's longer range missle programs; a violation of the UN sanctions, but not related to WMD and certainly no real threat.

I read your Wikipedia link, but it seems designed for those who need to catch up to 2003

What's with the privacy comment?

And monkeys might fly out of my butt!

Deal with that, sir!

just thank your lucky stars you don't have mandatory millitary service (the draft) yet. I'm one of the last generation (highschool class of 1999) to ever be drafted in my country. Thankgod I was put in communcations or my ass would have been fried, I know 2 guys who were injured due to friendly fire whilst training (the fuckwits !). This is was back in 1999. In 2000 the draft was cancelled in kuwait.

The best thing about being draft was the uniform. Apart from that it was boring as fuck, it sucked and they spent the whole time telling you how good your pay would be if you were to become fully enlisted and how good an army scholarship is etc. (Bascially the same brain vomit as the recruiters in the states).

"Sensitive"?

That was a visual representation of the two fingers in the air, bunny rabbit ears of sarcasm. Say it out loud, and really lean on the word writer.

My point was that this item is a verbatim reposting of the article he linked to, with a couple of supposedly snarky comments thrown in that do nothing but obscure the issue he's pointing out.

i haven't laughed this hard all day. thanks!

Its the same as pissin into the wind..............

..... the government will ALWAYS keep records on possible recruits, this lawsuit is nothing new

We need guns like we need butter
(econ joke for those who dont get it)







[Edited on Apr 27, 2006 by Dark_Templar]

"There is no way to peace. Peace is the way." Is a truer statement.

If you have a military, you will eventually find something to use it for.

stop making sense.

You don't think the govt has and keeps all that info on you? Except for the grades thing because who but recruiters would care?

Recruiters tax? Put you in jail? Appropriate your property?

It's a stupid question because we let govt have all that info on us already except for the grades. And hell if the info is out in the public domain then it's out there. I'm not thrilled that anyone with the right info can legally find out my current and former addresses, my work history, my spending habits, ect. But they can. Expecting Govt to have less info than the private sector seems strange to me.

So far the only thing that's been brought up that seems as if it is significant is the grades. If the laws says not to keep them then they should abide by that. Personally though the only reason I can see anybody really caring aside from that is just because they want to give the army a hard time, not that there is anything real to get outraged at.

I agree with most of what you wrote, though that probably has as much to do with the specific words you used as anything else.

However, I would first of all caution that Republicans are not supposedly for blind trust of the government to do the right thing. In fact, the reverse is true; pretty much up until this administration, Republicans were for non-intervention and total distrust of the government to the point where they felt that it was preferrable to have a leader who did absolutely nothing than one who tried to improve things. The general idea was that this is a good country, don't rock the fucking boat. Hence, "conservative." I mention this because we've done a total 180 here and I want to know how the hell this happened. I know it has something to do with Reagan's enormous popularity, but he basically upheld the "do nothing except term supply-side economics 'Reagonomics'" principle. Robert Novak thinks that he and Coolidge were the only two great presidents of the 20th century for exactly that reason.

But I really want to address what you said earlier, because you seem to be confused. Iraq is in what the administration is denying is an all-out civil war right now. Even granting them that, it's not bloody far off. Given that, I have to ask you if the people there actually are better off, or if we have simply thrown them into a different state of tumult. Because here's the thing: removing an atrocious dictator is NOT worth it if we don't set up a working government. It doesn't seem like we had a plan for that, because estimates for this war were what now seems comically optimistic.

I would agree, though, that this article doesn't come across well just because - well, I didn't even have a clue as to what the story would be about when I clicked it. If it were something funny, I would understand that, but it isn't. It's about a legitimate concern, and it turns out the Newswire is mocking Hannity and Limbaugh before they've said a fucking word about it. Yeah, probably the kids are going to be called opportunistic scum and told to stay the hell out of it, but I don't think it's desirable to predict right-wing arguments and then mock them for the responses that we came up with. I'm going to get told I'm overanalyzing and maybe that's true, but it isn't exactly encouraging intelligent discourse around here so much as the liberal circlejerks that come with most threads.

Please note I am arguing for intelligent discourse from people with opposing viewpoints, not blanket unproven statements and trolling.

opposing armies like who, exactly?


there's no margin in invasions anymore. i think we've proved that.


the iraq-afghanistan wars may have actually proved the fundamental uselessness of the military.

Kool-Aide anyone?

I wonder what grades they are keeping? Is this like ASVAB test scores or is this a full high school transcript?

Much respect to Adroit, but it was much better reading all of that with your picture next to it.