How important to you is it for Obama to rehabilitate America's reputation overseas - Page 2 - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

roachboy · 02-03-2009, 10:06 AM

i've already gone through some basic information in this thread ace.
you're wasting my time.

aceventura3 · 02-03-2009, 10:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

i've already gone through some basic information in this thread ace.
you're wasting my time.

So, by some objective standard - what you have posted in this thread shows that you have more knowledge and insight on the Iran issue than I? Is that your point?

For the record - I can not waste your time, only you can waste your time.

powerclown · 02-03-2009, 10:34 AM

I hear roach is tight with Salman Rushdie. Although it does bring up an interesting thought: does one need to live someplace to know all about it?

roachboy · 02-03-2009, 10:45 AM

so if i understand this "debate" as it now stands, the folk on the right are effectively arguing against needing **any**information before having a position because they assume that to have *any* information means you have to have *all* information and what's the point?
so why research anything?

so you're mounting a defense of being lazy.

nice work.

Willravel · 02-03-2009, 10:55 AM

Look, we've had debates on Iran's nuclear program before. It's okay if your opinion is that Iran might be developing nuclear material, but it's important to admit that there's no real evidence to support that. What we know right now, what we can demonstrate through verifiable evidence, supports the conclusion that they are developing nuclear power.

Until new information comes to light, there's no probable cause to demand that Iran discontinue their nuclear power program. Speculate to your heart's content, but draw the line between speculation and verifiable fact.

Sun Tzu · 02-04-2009, 09:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

Circumstance under Bush will be different than what Obama faces. The point is our national position on Iran will only change when Iran is willing to talk in good faith. Bush would have talked to Iran under the correct circumstances. From today's WSJ.

Senior Democrat Snubbed by Iran in Outreach Bid - WSJ.com

I certainly hope Obama is not really as polyannaish as it seems some Americans are regarding doing things like, interviews, "engagements", or responding to demands for apologies.
-----Added 2/2/2009 at 11 : 56 : 20-----

How about Iran discontinuing their nuclear program. Or, even if all they did was address technical questions regarding their program, "we" could be a lot more "connected" and would act like it.

I meant "we" as in humanity. Its my opinion if things havent changed a couple hundred years from now we wont survive as a species. Iran has its problems, so do a lot of countries. The fact that the US has nukes, supplied Israel with nukes, and dictates how things are going to be to other countries seems a little hypocritical. Thats not to say I hope Iran develops weapons of mass destruction, there are already enough on this planet to destroy everything. A thought may be "but we dont go around saying we are going to attack other countries". There are really two pathways of thought: investigate the root of anger or disregard the reasons and hone in on the actions. The later carries the attitude that the "war on terror" can actually be won.

gardens · 02-26-2009, 08:49 PM

its the most important thing to me, as no matter how bad it gets here in country we'll still be here, and if we still have allies they can help us akin to the marshal plan or at least not treat our tourists with such derision

Telluride · 03-03-2009, 10:55 AM

I want politicians to run this country within the limitations set by the Constitution. How other nations feel about it is irrelevant.

Baraka_Guru · 03-03-2009, 12:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Telluride

I want politicians to run this country within the limitations set by the Constitution. How other nations feel about it is irrelevant.

How do you feel about foreign policies and the role of secretaries of state?

Telluride · 03-04-2009, 08:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Baraka_Guru

How do you feel about foreign policies and the role of secretaries of state?

Foreign policy: Non-interventionist. I believe that we should strive to have courteous relations with all and entangling alliances with none.

SOS: It depends on what the president wants him or her to do and why.

roachboy · 03-04-2009, 09:12 AM

i think that this economic situation is revealing a basic problem for the nation-state---and by extension ways of thinking that center on location or place--both have been supplanted by flows, and these flows intertwine entities in ways that are more significant than are the ways in which they are separate one from the other. it's an interesting situation.

for example, what exactly does aig mean? it's defined more by its activities than by its statutes or physical location. aig is tightly intertwined with any number of other firms and governments, so when it was threatened by implosion, it affected far more than just a legal entity (the firm) and it's physical spaces.

this has always been true to an extent--activities and interconnections between firms or nations are different from and bigger than the entities themselves. but this seems to me different, maybe as a function of the speed of communications and thereby of flows themselves. space is being dissolved into pattern, movement and repetition...it's disorienting.

you could see almost the whole of neoliberal thinking as centered on an obsession with the reassertion of space, of the discrete as over against the intertwined. you could see the iraq debacle as the theater of this obsession in its neocon variant. it's hard to say what would have happened had that not turned out to be a disaster, because it did turn out to be a disaster.

i think the implications of this extend to legal frames within nation-states, but it's not at all obvious yet what they'll result in.

aceventura3 · 03-04-2009, 12:15 PM

I think Obama's reported letter to Russia soliciting their help with Iran is at best a "rookie" mistake, but most likely illustrates an on going problem Obama has had with saying one thing to one group and saying something contradictory to another group during his campaign. That does not work very well on a global scale. I am wondering what the leaders in some of those Eastern European countries are feeling about our new President. Bush spoke in simple terms, but he did speak clearly and had no secrete agendas.

Quote:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama has offered to back off deploying a new missile defense system in Eastern Europe if Russia helps stop Iran from building nuclear weapons, The New York Times reported on Monday.

Obama writes Russia president about Iran, missiles

Oh, and a few questions for those who felt Bush lied about intel, how do we know Iran is building nuclear weapons? When did we conclude this? Why hasn't Obama started his "engagements"? If we are now more respected, why negotiate with Russia on this issue?

Telluride · 03-05-2009, 07:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

Oh, and a few questions for those who felt Bush lied about intel, how do we know Iran is building nuclear weapons? When did we conclude this? Why hasn't Obama started his "engagements"? If we are now more respected, why negotiate with Russia on this issue?

Obama is The Messiah. He just knows.

Derwood · 03-05-2009, 07:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Telluride

Obama is The Messiah. He just knows.

this is a useful post

Telluride · 03-05-2009, 07:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Derwood

this is a useful post

Glad I could help a fellow Johnny Cash fan.

roachboy · 03-05-2009, 07:27 AM

gee, ace, such question based on so little in the way of thought or information.
i wonder sometimes why you bother.

fact is that there is concern about iran amongst other countries in the region in part because there have been claims concerning the nuclear program floating about for some time, most of which link one way or another to bush administration dick-waving during the period when an action was being contemplated. remember? i suppose not...

and the fact is that nuclear containment in general requires co-operation amongst the nuclear powers. this self-evidently includes russia. this is not rocket science. it's bad enough those weapons exist. it's better that they not proliferate, don't you think? or had this not occurred to you?

relative to iran, the shifts in approach have been indicated, but neither you nor i knows yet what's come of it. it's been a bit over a month ace darling.

it seems to me that conservatives are becoming more and more dissociative by the day. first the right floats this "messiah" idiocy, then they construct a "standard" for evaluating what obama does that presupposes he is, in fact, some kind of messiah who is able to simply wave his hands about and everything changes, and then the right trashes obama for not being a messiah on the one hand, while nonetheless continuing their "witty" use of that meme as if it was parody of everyone else and not a description of how conservatives, in their period of wholesale implosion, actually think.

aceventura3 · 03-05-2009, 01:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

gee, ace, such question based on so little in the way of thought or information.
i wonder sometimes why you bother.

I like to transfer my thoughts to writing, it is simply an exercise for my personal benefit. TFP is useful for that purpose. Occasionally, when my thoughts are challenged in a constructive manner it causes me to dig deep and clarify my positions.

I never pretend to have all the answers and most of my questions are actual questions and not meant to prove anything but to understand how others think. I am often confused by your posts and you rarely answer a question directly, which is disappointing.

Quote:

fact is that there is concern about iran amongst other countries in the region in part because there have been claims concerning the nuclear program floating about for some time, most of which link one way or another to bush administration dick-waving during the period when an action was being contemplated. remember? i suppose not...

No I don't remember. Are you suggesting that Iran's nuclear program, which they say is for electrical power, is the fault of the Bush administration? Are you saying you don't believe Iran's nuclear program is for electrical power? What evidence do you use to support that conclusion?

Quote:

and the fact is that nuclear containment in general requires co-operation amongst the nuclear powers. this self-evidently includes russia. this is not rocket science. it's bad enough those weapons exist. it's better that they not proliferate, don't you think? or had this not occurred to you?

I agree. But my problem is the approach Obama is using to address the issue. Why didn't he pick up the phone and talk to the Russian leader. I simply believe the "secret letter" approach will hurt Obama's and our credibility. I like Bush's straight talk.

Quote:

relative to iran, the shifts in approach have been indicated, but neither you nor i knows yet what's come of it. it's been a bit over a month ace darling.

I don't care if it has been a month or 30 minutes. If I were President I know exactly what my position on Iran would be, and everyone in the world would know. There would be no need for "secret letters". If I wanted to negotiate some kind of a deal with Russia, I would pick up the phone or fire up Air Force One, and negotiate face to face. However, I would not compromise the security of Eastern European nations wanting to maintain their independence and autonomy.

I see the world in "black and white" not shades of gray, that is the main reason I don't understand the liberal mind.

roachboy · 03-05-2009, 01:22 PM

ace--let's not tip over into disengenuousness, shall we?
the iranians have claimed that their nuclear program is geared around production of electricity. the bush administration claimed that it was also geared toward production of weapon systems. the concerns about the iranian nuclear program have much to do with the latter. you know this. when the bush people were contemplating an action against iran--which they did---it was in their interest to create suspicions about the latter. which they did. the israelis, who are armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons, also felt it was in their interest to make similar arguments to those of the bush people, perhaps because they were concerned about the language coming from the iranian president, perhaps because they were (are) concerned with the increasing role iran plays in supporting groups that oppose israeli colonialism. given that the israelis continue building settlements in the west bank, a coherent peace solution to the palestine matter is not in the cards, so the obvious move was to act as though the horseshit that the "Weapons of Mass Destruction" folk in the bush administration were advancing was true and reason to contemplate acting militarily. which they did.
the concerns about iran that hclinton noted from her last trip seem to me to center on this earlier dickwaving.

on russia--what on earth are you talking about?
that you prefered bush's "straight talk" is an aesthetic matter and worse a thing of the past. the only response to that is something like "that's nice for you."
as for the rest of your claim, it's gibberish.

aceventura3 · 03-05-2009, 01:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

ace--let's not tip over into disengenuousness, shall we?
the iranians have claimed that their nuclear program is geared around production of electricity. the bush administration claimed that it was also geared toward production of weapon systems. the concerns about the iranian nuclear program have much to do with the latter. you know this. when the bush people were contemplating an action against iran--which they did---it was in their interest to create suspicions about the latter. which they did. the israelis, who are armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons, also felt it was in their interest to make similar arguments to those of the bush people, perhaps because they were concerned about the language coming from the iranian president, perhaps because they were (are) concerned with the increasing role iran plays in supporting groups that oppose israeli colonialism. given that the israelis continue building settlements in the west bank, a coherent peace solution to the palestine matter is not in the cards, so the obvious move was to act as though the horseshit that the "Weapons of Mass Destruction" folk in the bush administration were advancing was true and reason to contemplate acting militarily. which they did.
the concerns about iran that hclinton noted from her last trip seem to me to center on this earlier dickwaving.

Bush did not take any military action against Iran that I am aware of. Now, that Bush is no longer in office the concerns about Iran still exist. In fact, concerns about ME nations like Iran obtaining nuclear weapons and Israel having them pre-dated Bush. To make Bush the center of this issue seems odd to me. And, certainly Obama is under no obligation to interpret intel the same way Bush did.

Quote:

on russia--what on earth are you talking about?
that you prefered bush's "straight talk" is an aesthetic matter and worse a thing of the past. the only response to that is something like "that's nice for you."
as for the rest of your claim, it's gibberish.

Clarity is not gibberish. I can state my position in a simple declarative fashion. Although, I have asked previously, I still don't know what your position is and especially given the "secret letter" I am even less clear on what Obama's position is, and what his thoughts are on Eastern Europe. But, what I understand is not important, I am in the 30% that don't approve of Obama - but given the OP I wonder what other nations think.

roachboy · 03-05-2009, 01:57 PM

obama is not interpreting much of anything the way in which bush did, ace.
for example, the administration has invited iran to a regional conference on afghanistan. they're concerned about the lack of transparency regarding the nuclear program, but have entirely different ideas than did the neo-cons about how to deal with them. personally, i think obama's approach has a far greater chance of working, but we'll have to see won't we.

aceventura3 · 03-05-2009, 02:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

obama is not interpreting much of anything the way in which bush did, ace.

What was the point of the "secret letter"?

roachboy · 03-05-2009, 03:09 PM

i was travelling the past 10 days----but if it's a secret letter, wouldn't it follow that we wouldn't know the contents? if we knew the contents, it wouldn't be terribly secret, would it? unless the words "secret letter" are the contents--which is the only way i can think of that a secret letter can be public and so not secret but still be a secret letter at the same time. but if the contents are "secret letter" then the whole thing just seems goofy, doesn't it?

o wait--i know---you're one of the 4 people who actually saw a point beyond provocation in that missle-based deodorant idea that the bush people sold to poland and which was rejected by the czech republic and which didn't involve any actual missles at this point and had no particular strategic function but which did enable those nice free-enterprisers like morton thiokol to get nice new allotments of "taxpayer money" which normally you're such a defender of. so you might actually believe that there was some kind of security function to that bit of---oh what's the word you quaint conservatives use to denote programs that do not benefit the patronage network that kicks back money to the republican party as campaign contributions?--o yeah--that bit of conservative-style pork.

well, ace, i don't think the view of yourself and those 3 other people who believed there was some plausible strategic function to those systems really have much of a platform these days, and i think obama probably did the smartest thing he could with a system he probably wasn't going to continue squandering money on anyway, and used it as a bargaining chip.

but that still doesn't resolve the question of how a secret letter is secret if everyone knows about it.

Psycho Dad · 03-05-2009, 03:49 PM

What is the old saying? You can please some of the people all of the time, but you can't please all of the people even some of the time.

I think to believe that the whole world hates us because of George Bush is a stretch. But it does give Internet message boards something to talk about other than American Idol. Every country on every continent has it fair share of problems. I guess everyone's expectations of us are too high.

aceventura3 · 03-09-2009, 01:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

i was travelling the past 10 days----but if it's a secret letter, wouldn't it follow that we wouldn't know the contents? if we knew the contents, it wouldn't be terribly secret, would it? unless the words "secret letter" are the contents--which is the only way i can think of that a secret letter can be public and so not secret but still be a secret letter at the same time. but if the contents are "secret letter" then the whole thing just seems goofy, doesn't it?

o wait--i know---you're one of the 4 people who actually saw a point beyond provocation in that missle-based deodorant idea that the bush people sold to poland and which was rejected by the czech republic and which didn't involve any actual missles at this point and had no particular strategic function but which did enable those nice free-enterprisers like morton thiokol to get nice new allotments of "taxpayer money" which normally you're such a defender of. so you might actually believe that there was some kind of security function to that bit of---oh what's the word you quaint conservatives use to denote programs that do not benefit the patronage network that kicks back money to the republican party as campaign contributions?--o yeah--that bit of conservative-style pork.

well, ace, i don't think the view of yourself and those 3 other people who believed there was some plausible strategic function to those systems really have much of a platform these days, and i think obama probably did the smartest thing he could with a system he probably wasn't going to continue squandering money on anyway, and used it as a bargaining chip.

but that still doesn't resolve the question of how a secret letter is secret if everyone knows about it.

I was not the one who initially described the letter as "secret". If you want to debate that issue you can start by questioning the New York Times.

Quote:

Obama Offered Deal to Russia in Secret Letter

WASHINGTON — President Obama sent a secret letter to Russia’s president last month suggesting that he would back off deploying a new missile defense system in Eastern Europe if Moscow would help stop Iran from developing long-range weapons, American officials said Monday.

The letter to President Dmitri A. Medvedev was hand-delivered in Moscow by top administration officials three weeks ago. It said the United States would not need to proceed with the interceptor system, which has been vehemently opposed by Russia since it was proposed by the Bush administration, if Iran halted any efforts to build nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles.

The officials who described the contents of the message requested anonymity because it has not been made public. While they said it did not offer a direct quid pro quo, the letter was intended to give Moscow an incentive to join the United States in a common front against Iran. Russia’s military, diplomatic and commercial ties to Tehran give it some influence there, but it has often resisted Washington’s hard line against Iran.

“It’s almost saying to them, put up or shut up,” said a senior administration official. “It’s not that the Russians get to say, ‘We’ll try and therefore you have to suspend.’ It says the threat has to go away.”

On Tuesday, a press secretary for Dmitri A. Medvedev told the Interfax news agency that the letter did not contain any “specific proposals or mutually binding initiatives.”

Natalya Timakova said the letter was a reply to one sent by Mr. Medvedev shortly after Mr. Obama was elected.

“Medvedev appreciated the promptness of the reply and the positive spirit of the message,” Ms. Timakova said. “Obama’s letter contains various proposals and assessments of the current situation. But the message did not contain any specific proposals or mutually binding initiatives.”

She said Mr. Medvedev perceives the development of Russian-American relations as “exceptionally positive,” and hopes details can be fleshed out at a meeting on Friday in Geneva between Foreign Minister Sergei V. Lavrov and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Mr. Obama and Mr. Medvedev will meet for the first time on April 2 in London, officials said Monday.

Mr. Obama’s letter, sent in response to one he received from Mr. Medvedev shortly after Mr. Obama’s inauguration, is part of an effort to “press the reset button” on Russian-American relations, as Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. put it last month, officials in Washington said. Among other things, the letter discussed talks to extend a strategic arms treaty expiring this year and cooperation in opening supply routes to Afghanistan.

The plan to build a high-tech radar facility in the Czech Republic and deploy 10 interceptor missiles in Poland — a part of the world that Russia once considered its sphere of influence — was a top priority for President George W. Bush to deter Iran in case it developed a nuclear warhead to fit atop its long-range missiles. Mr. Bush never accepted a Moscow proposal to install part of the missile defense system on its territory and jointly operate it so it could not be used against Russia.

Now the Obama administration appears to be reconsidering that idea, although it is not clear if it would want to put part of the system on Russian soil where it could be flipped on or off by Russians. Mr. Obama has been lukewarm on missile defense, saying he supports it only if it can be proved technically effective and affordable.

Mr. Bush also emphasized the linkage between the Iranian threat and missile defense, but Mr. Obama’s overture reformulates it in a way intended to appeal to the Russians, who long ago soured on the Bush administration. Officials have been hinting at the possibility of an agreement in recent weeks, and Mr. Obama’s proposal was reported on Monday by a Moscow newspaper, Kommersant.

“If through strong diplomacy with Russia and our other partners we can reduce or eliminate that threat, it obviously shapes the way at which we look at missile defense,” Under Secretary of State William J. Burns said about the Iranian threat in an interview with the Russian news agency Interfax while in Moscow last month delivering Mr. Obama’s letter.

Attending a NATO meeting in Krakow, Poland, on Feb. 20, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said, “I told the Russians a year ago that if there were no Iranian missile program, there would be no need for the missile sites.” Mr. Obama’s inauguration, he added, offered the chance for a fresh start. “My hope is that now, with the new administration, the prospects for that kind of cooperation might have improved,” he said.

The idea has distressed Poland and the Czech Republic, where leaders invested political capital in signing missile defense cooperation treaties with the United States despite domestic opposition. If the United States were to slow or halt deployment of the systems, Warsaw and Prague might insist on other incentives.

For example, the deal with Poland included a side agreement that an American Patriot air defense battery would be moved from Germany to Poland, where it would be operated by a crew of about 100 American service members. The administration might have to proceed with that to reassure Warsaw.

Missile defense has flavored Mr. Obama’s relationship with Russia from the day after his election, when Mr. Medvedev threatened to point missiles at Europe if the system proceeded. Mr. Medvedev later backed off that threat and it seems that Moscow is taking seriously the idea floated in Mr. Obama’s letter. Kommersant, the Moscow newspaper, on Monday called it a “sensational proposal.”

Mr. Medvedev said Sunday that he believed the Obama administration would be open to cooperation on missile defense.

“We have already received such signals from our American colleagues,” he said in an interview posted on the Kremlin Web site. “I expect that these signals will turn into concrete proposals. I hope to discuss this issue of great importance for Europe during my first meeting with President Barack Obama.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/03/wa...edvedev&st=cse

Again, what is the point of the "secret letter"? What is Obama's plan? What is his goal? Is Obama being naive or is he diplomatic genius? Should we trust the fate of the world to Obama?

Feel free to continue to mock me and ignore serious questions because it is easy, but realize the questions will not go away.

02-03-2009, 10:06 AM	#41 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	i've already gone through some basic information in this thread ace. you're wasting my time. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

02-03-2009, 10:45 AM	#44 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	so if i understand this "debate" as it now stands, the folk on the right are effectively arguing against needing anyinformation before having a position because they assume that to have any information means you have to have all information and what's the point? so why research anything? so you're mounting a defense of being lazy. nice work. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

03-03-2009, 10:55 AM	#48 (permalink)
Telluride Browncoat Location: California	I want politicians to run this country within the limitations set by the Constitution. How other nations feel about it is irrelevant. __________________ "I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice." - Friedrich Hayek

03-04-2009, 09:12 AM	#51 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	i think that this economic situation is revealing a basic problem for the nation-state---and by extension ways of thinking that center on location or place--both have been supplanted by flows, and these flows intertwine entities in ways that are more significant than are the ways in which they are separate one from the other. it's an interesting situation. for example, what exactly does aig mean? it's defined more by its activities than by its statutes or physical location. aig is tightly intertwined with any number of other firms and governments, so when it was threatened by implosion, it affected far more than just a legal entity (the firm) and it's physical spaces. this has always been true to an extent--activities and interconnections between firms or nations are different from and bigger than the entities themselves. but this seems to me different, maybe as a function of the speed of communications and thereby of flows themselves. space is being dissolved into pattern, movement and repetition...it's disorienting. you could see almost the whole of neoliberal thinking as centered on an obsession with the reassertion of space, of the discrete as over against the intertwined. you could see the iraq debacle as the theater of this obsession in its neocon variant. it's hard to say what would have happened had that not turned out to be a disaster, because it did turn out to be a disaster. i think the implications of this extend to legal frames within nation-states, but it's not at all obvious yet what they'll result in. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

03-05-2009, 07:27 AM	#56 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	gee, ace, such question based on so little in the way of thought or information. i wonder sometimes why you bother. fact is that there is concern about iran amongst other countries in the region in part because there have been claims concerning the nuclear program floating about for some time, most of which link one way or another to bush administration dick-waving during the period when an action was being contemplated. remember? i suppose not... and the fact is that nuclear containment in general requires co-operation amongst the nuclear powers. this self-evidently includes russia. this is not rocket science. it's bad enough those weapons exist. it's better that they not proliferate, don't you think? or had this not occurred to you? relative to iran, the shifts in approach have been indicated, but neither you nor i knows yet what's come of it. it's been a bit over a month ace darling. it seems to me that conservatives are becoming more and more dissociative by the day. first the right floats this "messiah" idiocy, then they construct a "standard" for evaluating what obama does that presupposes he is, in fact, some kind of messiah who is able to simply wave his hands about and everything changes, and then the right trashes obama for not being a messiah on the one hand, while nonetheless continuing their "witty" use of that meme as if it was parody of everyone else and not a description of how conservatives, in their period of wholesale implosion, actually think. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

02-03-2009, 10:34 AM	#43 (permalink)
powerclown Junkie Location: Detroit, MI	I hear roach is tight with Salman Rushdie. Although it does bring up an interesting thought: does one need to live someplace to know all about it?

02-03-2009, 10:55 AM	#45 (permalink)
Willravel ... a sort of licensed troubleshooter.	Look, we've had debates on Iran's nuclear program before. It's okay if your opinion is that Iran might be developing nuclear material, but it's important to admit that there's no real evidence to support that. What we know right now, what we can demonstrate through verifiable evidence, supports the conclusion that they are developing nuclear power. Until new information comes to light, there's no probable cause to demand that Iran discontinue their nuclear power program. Speculate to your heart's content, but draw the line between speculation and verifiable fact.

02-26-2009, 08:49 PM	#47 (permalink)
gardens Tilted Location: Kolob	its the most important thing to me, as no matter how bad it gets here in country we'll still be here, and if we still have allies they can help us akin to the marshal plan or at least not treat our tourists with such derision

03-05-2009, 01:22 PM	#58 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	ace--let's not tip over into disengenuousness, shall we? the iranians have claimed that their nuclear program is geared around production of electricity. the bush administration claimed that it was also geared toward production of weapon systems. the concerns about the iranian nuclear program have much to do with the latter. you know this. when the bush people were contemplating an action against iran--which they did---it was in their interest to create suspicions about the latter. which they did. the israelis, who are armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons, also felt it was in their interest to make similar arguments to those of the bush people, perhaps because they were concerned about the language coming from the iranian president, perhaps because they were (are) concerned with the increasing role iran plays in supporting groups that oppose israeli colonialism. given that the israelis continue building settlements in the west bank, a coherent peace solution to the palestine matter is not in the cards, so the obvious move was to act as though the horseshit that the "Weapons of Mass Destruction" folk in the bush administration were advancing was true and reason to contemplate acting militarily. which they did. the concerns about iran that hclinton noted from her last trip seem to me to center on this earlier dickwaving. on russia--what on earth are you talking about? that you prefered bush's "straight talk" is an aesthetic matter and worse a thing of the past. the only response to that is something like "that's nice for you." as for the rest of your claim, it's gibberish. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

03-05-2009, 01:57 PM	#60 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	obama is not interpreting much of anything the way in which bush did, ace. for example, the administration has invited iran to a regional conference on afghanistan. they're concerned about the lack of transparency regarding the nuclear program, but have entirely different ideas than did the neo-cons about how to deal with them. personally, i think obama's approach has a far greater chance of working, but we'll have to see won't we. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

03-05-2009, 03:09 PM	#62 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	i was travelling the past 10 days----but if it's a secret letter, wouldn't it follow that we wouldn't know the contents? if we knew the contents, it wouldn't be terribly secret, would it? unless the words "secret letter" are the contents--which is the only way i can think of that a secret letter can be public and so not secret but still be a secret letter at the same time. but if the contents are "secret letter" then the whole thing just seems goofy, doesn't it? o wait--i know---you're one of the 4 people who actually saw a point beyond provocation in that missle-based deodorant idea that the bush people sold to poland and which was rejected by the czech republic and which didn't involve any actual missles at this point and had no particular strategic function but which did enable those nice free-enterprisers like morton thiokol to get nice new allotments of "taxpayer money" which normally you're such a defender of. so you might actually believe that there was some kind of security function to that bit of---oh what's the word you quaint conservatives use to denote programs that do not benefit the patronage network that kicks back money to the republican party as campaign contributions?--o yeah--that bit of conservative-style pork. well, ace, i don't think the view of yourself and those 3 other people who believed there was some plausible strategic function to those systems really have much of a platform these days, and i think obama probably did the smartest thing he could with a system he probably wasn't going to continue squandering money on anyway, and used it as a bargaining chip. but that still doesn't resolve the question of how a secret letter is secret if everyone knows about it. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

03-05-2009, 03:49 PM	#63 (permalink)
Psycho Dad Mulletproof Location: Some nucking fut house.	What is the old saying? You can please some of the people all of the time, but you can't please all of the people even some of the time. I think to believe that the whole world hates us because of George Bush is a stretch. But it does give Internet message boards something to talk about other than American Idol. Every country on every continent has it fair share of problems. I guess everyone's expectations of us are too high. __________________ Don't always trust the opinions of experts.