MoonDog

I just wanted to acknowledge Host's response. I've been a bit busy to respond, and really lack the time today to do so properly. So I expect this reply to be somewhat incoherent and rambling, and for that I apologuize. But, since he invested some personal energy into it, I felt it right and proper to do the same.

I was raised in a conservative household as well. The big difference is that I was born in 1968, denying me the opportunity to experience the political maelstrom that you did. The closest thing to the Nixon scandal that I have experienced would have to be either Iran/Contra or the Clinton-Lewinsky ordeal.

As for this, I have to ask what you would have wanted me to do? Vote for someone like Kerry, who - as far as I could tell - did not have a single coherent plan for the issues facing the United States? Honestly, remove George Bush from the campaign and he still doesn't impress me.

I post in several different forum sites, so I may not have shared this here. I supported the war, but from my point of view, it should have happened YEARS ago, while Clinton was still in office. I was worried about a person who had oil money at his personal disposal - a person with a grudge against the US and its allies for thwarting his plans to retake Kuwait for Iraq. A person who did not seem to be entirely rational and stable. A person who was willing to use chemical weapons - and God knows what else - to achieve his goals. A person who was reported to have significant stockpiles of said weapons. A person who might find it acceptable for other persons or groups to "acquire" one or more of those weapons from him. A person who had sponsored an attempt on the life of former President Bush (albeit a laughable attempt). A person who was in clear violation of the UN resolutions that negotiated the very same cessation of hostilities that saved his hide and kept him in power.

When the current President came along and said Hussein was bad and needed to go, he had me at "Hello". All of his "intelligence" that came out supporting him was - to me - icing on the cake.

Now we find out that the intelligence was wrong - horribly, horribly wrong. Damn, that is unacceptable. And truthfully, if you and the rest of the people in the US and the world want someone to take a fall for it, then I would whole-heartedly agree that a Ken Starr-like probe be put together. When the results come out, take whoever you want to trial and throw those you convict in the slammer.

If the current Administration had had any sense, they probably would have sacrificed Rumsfeld and Cheney, as well as some others, as soon as it became apparent that there were no WMD's. They take the fall, Bush offers up the cheap presidential pardon, yada yada yada. Instead, they stuck to their guns and still have a real shitstorm on their hands.

Now we have a "bi-partisan" report on the intelligence failings that spurred the Bush Administration into the Iraq War. It says valuable, if unsurprising, things about the state of our intelligence community and what they did wrong. And yes, while it doesn't investigate the concept of political pressure being brought from the White House or other agencies, it certainly acknowledges the possibility. It even provides a method to report on actual cases anonymously. I put the "bi-partisan" in quotes because - as you yourself state - people are not happy with the way the members of that committee were selected, nor were they happy with the scope under which they operated. I'm sorry about that, but this cuirrent report is the best we have out there. I have to live by it until something else concrete comes along.

I should also point out another thing that baffles me. Over and over again, I am bombarded with the message of how incredibly stupid the current president is. Out and out dumb, I'm told. And yet, this is the same guy that the SAME PEOPLE will tell me - over and over again - has orchestrated perhaps the biggest Presidential crime in history! Which is it?

But I digress. I happen to support other Bush policies, such as the ending of appeasement policy towards North Korea, personal accounts in Social Security, No Child Left Behind, etc. The other presidential candidates did not offer me a single message of interest to even make me say, "Hmmm, that sounds interesting." Why then, should I give them my vote? Because you say that Bush is bad? Because a whole BUNCH of you do? No thanks, I don't vote based on what others tell me to do. I guess that makes me an enabler, fully complicit in the policies of the Bush White House, even though I mentioned in my previous post that I do not support all of the policies of my presidential choice.

So, if I am complict in all that is good and bad in the Bush White House, what does that make you? I assume that you wholeheartedly voted for the returning of President Clinton for his second term? If so, aren't you an enabler of adulterous behavior in the White House? Aren't you then fully complict in perjury? How much responsibility will YOU then claim in the bombing of that plant in Sudan where Osama bin Laden was supposedly getting chemical weapons? (http://partners.nytimes.com/library/...9us-sudan.html). These things may lack the gravity of what you accuse Bush and his administration of, but they still lurk in President Clinton's closet.

So, there you have it, my admission to you that I am, indeed, an enabler of Bush policy. Since I voted for the man, I apparently have to take full responsibility for his each and every action, whether I approve of it or not. What will you do with this admission of mine, now that you have it?


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I want to put a final note here: I spent longer than I should have on this post, which means that my wife will be well and truly PO'd when she finds out that I didn't do the chores I promised I would! Oh well. However, I have read and re-read this post of mine, and I find that it doesn't even come close to expressing how I feel...I suspect that a 3-hour long conversation wouldn't suffice! I leave this post here, however, because Host deserved a response.