Without the cherry-picked WMD intel and the bogus links to 9/11, do you honestly think the American public would have supported the idea of 4,147 military deaths, tens of thousands of combat wounded, a trillion dollars in foreign-held debt, and the diversion of resources from fighting our legitimate enemy in Afghanistan because "we invested heavily in the Gulf War" and because Iraq periodically took a shot at our jets? I can tell you the answer to that question is a resounding NO. A solid majority of Americans disagree with your flawed rationale.

A solid majority of Americans think that John McCain is the man best suited to command our military, including the troops in Iraq.

 

Good decision, BTW, to abandon your attempt to prove that things are not getting better for the Iraqis and to move on to another subject. You must have found the details of the survey that you cited earlier, which show that Iraqis believe things have improved in Iraq and are increasingly optimistic about their future.

 

I am looking forward to reading the results of the next survey, which should be released soon if ABC keeps to the same schedule as the past.

The decisions to take the fight to the real enemy in Afghanistan, to increase cooperation with foreign countries, and to step up anti-terrorism efforts at home are responsible for the fact that America has not suffered a large scale terrorist attack since 9/11. For those (rather obvious) actions, credit is due. Of course, the same result could have been achieved with a fraction of the loss of life, cost, and damage to the international standing of the United States if it had stopped there.

So the Islamic fundamentalists who poured into Iraq and killed American troops and innocent Iraqis alike were not real enemies. What was Al Qaeda-in-Iraq, a mirage?

 

Bush and our military have taken the fight to terrorists in Afghanistan, Iraq, and around the world. I doubt that our troops would have found many terrorists to fight if they had been redeployed to Okinawa, as that Democratic military genius John Murtha once suggested. :lol:

A solid majority of Americans think that John McCain is the man best suited to command our military, including the troops in Iraq.

 

OK, that would be great if our country was a military dictatorship.

 

 

Good decision, BTW, to abandon your attempt to prove that things are not getting better for the Iraqis and to move on to another subject. You must have found the details of the survey that you cited earlier, which show that Iraqis believe things have improved in Iraq and are increasingly optimistic about their future.

 

 

No No No. Please find a quote where I said that things are not getting better for the Iraqis. I never said that. I said the Iraqis don't attribute improvements in security in their country to the surge. And I provided data to support the claim. I think it's great that the Iraqis are finally showing some initiative to improve their country instead of cutting each other's heads off. It means we can pull our military out and put this fiasco behind us.

^So far, Biden has had no discernable impact on the campaign. Most people have never heard of Biden and many of those who have associate him with Neil Kinnock's speech - the one from which Biden even copied Kinnock's coal mining roots. :lol:

 

Biden and Obama have taken different positions on the Iraq War in the past and both of them have been more wrong than right. McCain was right about the surge and most Americans would rather see him in charge in the event of a serious national security crisis. McCain advocated the surge and the surge has worked. That has earned McCain the trust and confidence of potential voters in an area where Obama cannot compete.

 

Biden brings very little to the campaign because Obama will be exposed as the weakest in a string of three very weak candidates. As Ed Rendell pointed out, the media's enthusiastic support of Barack Obama has been embarrassing, yet he is still in a dead heat with McCain. Hoping Biden will make Obama look like a stronger candidate is just wishful thinking.

 

Unfortunately, Obama is only 47 and even a sound defeat in November will not end his presidential aspirations.

Yes, I did indeed mean UN resolutions. The comparison between Georgia and Cuba is also flawed (although less so than the Georgia/Iraq comparison). Cuba's government was not democratically elected. JFK could have saved a lot of lives and decades of misery if he had finished the job that he started before the Cuban thugs became entrenched.

 

You're right about that. But if I recall correctly neither were the military governments in various Latin American countries that we supported through the 70's and 80's. Yet we did our best to undermine the Nicaraguan government (Sandinistas) that was I believe eventually empowered by elections that were monitered and approved by everyone but the US.

You're right about that. But if I recall correctly neither were the military governments in various Latin American countries that we supported through the 70's and 80's. Yet we did our best to undermine the Nicaraguan government (Sandinistas) that was I believe eventually empowered by elections that were monitered and approved by everyone but the US.

Jimmy Carter's certification of the legitimacy of elections in banana republics have demonstrated the value of international monitors.

 

The US should always act in its own national interests and during the Cold War, keeping communism from spreading across the western hemisphere was in our own national interests. Unfortunately, our elected officials no longer seem to care that Russia and China are sinking their hooks into an increasing number of our neighbors. The Monroe Doctrine has apparently become an anachronism to Democrats and Republicans alike.

Jimmy Carter's certification of the legitimacy of elections in banana republics have demonstrated the value of international monitors.

 

The US should always act in its own national interests and during the Cold War, keeping communism from spreading across the western hemisphere was in our own national interests. Unfortunately, our elected officials no longer seem to care that Russia and China are sinking their hooks into an increasing number of our neighbors. The Monroe Doctrine has apparently become an anachronism to Democrats and Republicans alike.

 

 

I can live with that as a stand for policy. The only thing I usually would disagree with is to have it both ways. "We are going in there to liberate the oppressed."

 

Just say, "We are acting on the best interests for our nation," and don't try to couch it in noble terms of democracy, freedom and liberation. The reality is we'll prop up a despot if it's in our national interests or we will grant liberty if it's in our interests as well. The determining factor is our own self interest and not a noble humanitarian effort for all. :thumb:

I can live with that as a stand for policy. The only thing I usually would disagree with is to have it both ways. "We are going in there to liberate the oppressed."

 

Just say, "We are acting on the best interests for our nation," and don't try to couch it in noble terms of democracy, freedom and liberation. The reality is we'll prop up a despot if it's in our national interests or we will grant liberty if it's in our interests as well. The determining factor is our own self interest and not a noble humanitarian effort for all. :thumb:

 

:thumb:

I can live with that as a stand for policy. The only thing I usually would disagree with is to have it both ways. "We are going in there to liberate the oppressed."

 

Just say, "We are acting on the best interests for our nation," and don't try to couch it in noble terms of democracy, freedom and liberation. The reality is we'll prop up a despot if it's in our national interests or we will grant liberty if it's in our interests as well. The determining factor is our own self interest and not a noble humanitarian effort for all. :thumb:

I agree with everything that you said but if we do not, as a nation, believe that democracy, freedom, and liberation are noble pursuits, then we should be working to install a different type of government in our own country. Just as in elections, it is often necessary to choose the lesser of evils when deciding which foreign governments to support.

Do you think this might make it into a McCain ad? :lol:

 

Too bad there is no video to go with the audio clip.

 

Why does Michelle Obama have this look on her face like she wants to strangle Hillary? :eek:

You have a sharp eye, BF. Here is a close-up.

 

It is bad enough that Biden has a history of plagiarizing speeches, lying, and exaggerating but he is not even good at it. :lol:

 

The man who copied parts of Neil Kinnock's biography as his own, perhaps thinking that nobody would recognize the work of a British politician, but he was apparently too lazy to try to disguise some Bobby Kennedy speeches as well.

 

This article covers all of the lowlights of Joe's plagiarism, lies, and distortions.

 

Biden's history of lies and lifted quotes

 

Biden also lifted words from Bobby Kennedy’s speeches — paragraphs that political junkies prized so much they knew them by heart.

 

Here’s RFK: “Few will have the greatness to bend history itself. But each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.’’

 

Here’s Joe Biden: “Well, few of us have the greatness to bend history itself. But each of us can act to affect a small portion of events, and in the totality of these acts will be written the history of this generation.’’

 

Bobby Kennedy: “The gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry, or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile, and it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.’’

 

Here’s Joe Biden: “‘We cannot measure the health of our children, the quality of their education, the joy of their play. . . . It doesn’t measure the beauty of our poetry, the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate, the integrity of our public officials. It counts neither our wit nor our wisdom, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. . . . That bottom line can tell us everything about our lives except that which makes life worthwhile, and it can tell us everything about America except that which makes us proud to be Americans.’’

Did somebody vet Joe Biden for Obama?

 

Biden son's job with credit giant MBNA draws scrutiny

He worked as a consultant as father pushed legislation that toughens bankruptcy rules

 

WASHINGTON — A son of Democratic vice-presidential candidate Joe Biden was paid an undisclosed amount of money as a consultant for MBNA, the largest employer in Delaware, during the years the senator supported legislation that was promoted by the credit card industry and opposed by consumer groups.

 

Barack Obama's presidential campaign said Biden helped forge a bipartisan compromise on the measure, which is now law and makes it harder for consumers to obtain bankruptcy protection in the courts.

 

MBNA's consulting payments to Hunter Biden, first reported by the New York Times, followed his departure in 2001 from the company, where he had been an executive.

 

Obama opposed the bankruptcy law, enacted in 2005, while Biden supported it.

 

David Wade, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, said that "after working in the Clinton administration in the Department of Commerce on Internet privacy and online commerce issues, Hunter consulted for five years as an expert on these very same issues at a time of enormous expansion in online banking."

 

At the time Hunter Biden was receiving consulting payments from MBNA, he also was a Washington lobbyist at a firm he had co-founded.

Note how and why Hunter Biden landed his $1.2 million/yr. job as a hedge fund manager. Does anybody else see a potential problem for Obama/Biden here, depending on the timing of hearings and depositions?

 

Do these guys really want a mud fight with McCain and Palin? :lol:

 

A son and a brother of Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) are accused in two lawsuits of defrauding a former business partner and an investor of millions of dollars in a hedge fund deal that went sour, court records show.

 

The Democratic vice presidential candidate's son Hunter, 38, and brother James, 59, assert instead that their former partner defrauded them by misrepresenting his experience in the hedge fund industry and recommending that they hire a lawyer with felony convictions.

 

The legal actions have been playing out in New York State Supreme Court since 2007, and they focus on Hunter and James Biden's involvement in Paradigm Companies LLC, a hedge fund group. Hunter Biden, a Washington lobbyist, briefly served as president of the firm.

 

A lawsuit filed by their former partner Anthony Lotito Jr. asserts in court papers that the deal was crafted to get Hunter Biden out of lobbying because his father was concerned about the impact it would have on his bid for the White House. Biden was running for the Democratic nomination at the time the suit was filed.

 

Hunter Biden was made president with an annual salary of $1.2 million, despite his inexperience in the hedge fund industry, the lawsuit said. Before that, he had been part of the Washington law firm Oldaker, Biden & Belair, which earned $1.76 million in lobbying revenue in the first half of 2006, according to Congressional Quarterly's CQ MoneyLine. One of its biggest clients is the National Association of Shareholder and Consumer Attorneys, a District-based group representing law firms specializing in investment and corporate law.

 

Biden's Son, Brother Named in Two Suits

 

Everyone and their brother knows who Joe Biden is and the baggage he comes with. And, for whatever reason, the public has decided that they are willing to look past those issues, lest he wouldn't be a well known, popular senator. The Edward Kennedy conundrum. Unless Biden shoots his mouth off before November, his nomination as Obama's running mate will be exactly what it was meant to be: suitable.