It's possible I've missed something in this discussion but unless they actully cheered for the attacks on WTC then how could they have "fucked up"? Isn't it actually the media that fails to report the truth and fails to retract the false claims that has fucked up? I wish journalists could be held responsible in the same way as doctors.

they started the fight? I guess that's correct if you don't think taking people's homeland is instigation for a fight...

I dunno if you read the links in my post, but what they claim that the celebrations were fabricated and made to look larger then they were. you said you saw it on TV, and the reason i ask, and ask again if anyone can find the video in its entirety, is because the claim is that parts of the video were edited out, parts that would incriminate the cameramen.


In a later post you said something to the effect that "what does the context matter, it's just what Americans saw?"

well, we were discussing taking sides in the palestinian/isreal issue, and if you support one side based on a lie....then i think it is very important.

Also, in those shots of people cheering, children has pieces of bombs that said " made in USA". Those shots of the kids with bomb shells were edited out of most of the footage. Is it any wonder they were cheering when the nation that made the bombs that drop in their nation got attacked?

If your friends and family were maimed by bombs that said "made in IRan" would you cheer as we shoot the fuck out of Teran?

That's incorrect. John McClaugrhy, former Vermont state senator, September 6, 2003:

"In his early years, when he was still restricted by his predecessor's fiscal bailout program, he earned a respectable 'B' [1996] on the Cato Institute's fiscal responsibility report card. By 2002 his ranking had dropped to 'D.' During his last eight years Dr. Dean signed into law increases in the sales and use, rooms, meals, liquor, cigarette and electrical-energy taxes."

His 2002 mark, "D," is not what I would call a "top" mark.

Also, considering the popularity of the liberation of Iraq, Dean's anti-war views do solidly put him in the "liberal" and not "moderate" camp.


Those "most powerful leaders" are the leaders of India, Chechnya, Pakistan, and Taiwan. India, yes (where is their Security Council seat?), but it'd be hard to make compelling cases for the other three.

So far, outside of being pounded on "Meet the Press" (where he was unfairly pounded for not knowing troop strengths), we don't know much about Dean's foreign policy. I wouldn't yet call him foreign policy, being that his experience in Vermont is probably not the same as being governor of California, New York, or Texas.

What I see is a massive media effort to "convert" Dean from left-wing extremist to "moderate." Six months ago, the major media consistenly labeled Dean as "far-left" and "liberal." His fundraising is a massive success, and all of a sudden the media is rehabilitating his image.

-- Alvin

Heaven forbid we should be fair or impartial in our foreign policy, what is this guy smoking?

Uninformed people assume after WWII you all of a sudden have jews there in "Palestine". Fact of the matter was the Zionist movement started in the latter half of the 19th century, further more there were always Jews living there. Palestine never was an Arab-State unto itself... (there is no Palestinian culture or language), obviously it is their home and they've always been there, but basically the place used to be part of Syria/Jordan (Thanks Britain for the mess). As far as "who started the conflict" if you want to start with who threw the first punch then it was the Palestinians, after the UN made the State of Israel in 48'.

Actually the fight was started with the Balfour declaration, which basically stated that Jews should have the land that Arabs were fighting and dying for against the Turks. The Jewish population of Palestine was insignificant prior to 1897, though the Jews who were living there did so in harmony with their neighbors.

Yeah I know the footage. I have it on VHS. I taped for 2 days solid with the time and date showing. 2 1/2 hours after the twin towers fell CNN was showing footage of Palestinians dancing in the sunlight handing out candy; laughing; celebrating the fall of "the great Satan". Shortly after that in an almost humerous manner Arafat is shown giving blood. He was shitting a brick as you put it, but not becaused his people fucked up. Ive sent the tape to CNN along with follow ups; numerous phone calls before realizing they had no intentions of addressing it.

Daylight on both sides of the Earth at the same time.

Moooooooooo

And the English also forgot their promise to the Palastinians that they would give them a homeland if they helped fight. Anyone see Lawrence of Arabia?

"the Theocracy of Israel"

You had me right up to there. Come on, it's probably true in the sense that it is a democracy that has enough religious citizen (of a fairly uniform religion), that the resulting representatives amount ot a theocracy, but that is such a loaded way to put it.

Now, I do agree with Dean that, unless we are perceived as impartial, we don't stand a chance of brokering a peace, and that a change in the rhetoric to and regarding Israel may be a necessay (if politically dangerous) adjunct to this. We need to be careful though, on how far we go in doing this. It's a good thing to have a centrally located ally in the region, even if their presence is a destabilizing factor in and of itself. On the other hand, if you think this country would do any better than Israel, human rights wise, if it were surronded by hostiles and under regular terrorist attack, then you haven't been paying attention for the last two years.

I'm not sure what you mean by this, but if you are saying that this is unlikely, then you should know that Israel is approximately 7 hours ahead of East Coast time, making 2 and a half hours after the attack about 5 o'clock. That's about daytime in September over there I do believe. As for the other questions about whether or not it was developed by someone, that I do not know.

Interesting note, as of a 9/5 Zogby poll, Dean is actually the second running Democrat in the polls. Gore is first, and in a statistical dead heat with Bush. Long way to go to the election, yet.

<b>rgr22j</b>
<i>Also, considering the popularity of the liberation of Iraq, Dean's anti-war views do solidly put him in the "liberal" and not "moderate" camp.</i>

I don't think so. Popularity of a position does not make ones position in the political spectrum. If that calculus were right, then Pat Buchanan would be to the left of Jerry Brown instead of to the right of Mussolini.

He got his stance on Iraq just right: It was a dumbass war, started by a dumbass, for dumbass reasons. However, now that we are there, it is actually easier and more cost effective (prvided you make Haliburton compete their f*cking contracts) to stay the course and try to do right by it. We've got buddies that'll help us out with this if we're willing to eat a little crow, and all the next President hast to do to get that help is say what amounts to "My predecessor was a jackass, and we have no buisness being there. Give us a hand getting out and you won't have another Taliban on your south porch."

Sharon is a freaking warmongering dinosaur.

Good. He no is no worse the Arafat.

Do we really need to use inflammatory statements like this?? You reacted to the sentiment of my message not the content, to reiterate, people will fight, when their homeland is taken from them. What this means is that all those Palestinians had their land, their homes taken away from them. This is an indisputable fact...thousands of refugees don't just happen. Now the question of whether or not this is justified is another question but Israel took Palestinians land. True. Palestinians angry about this true. Twas all I was saying....



Perhaps I could refer you to a court decision by the Israeli Supreme Court...
In a landmark Supreme Court decision, Justice Agranat ruled against a man who wanted to have his nationality registration changed from "Jewish" to "Israeli" saying: "There is no Israeli nation separate from the Jewish people." He asserted further that "the Jewish people is composed not only of those residing in Israel but also of Diaspora Jewry

The jewish state is a theocracy with the Jews being first class citizens and non-jews being second-class. This is an under-reported yet important part of this entire conflict

Zionists in Israel have no more in common with Jews than Nazi's had with Christianity. I thank god every day I get to live in a country which doesen't support such a regine of terror with weapons or money. And that I get to watch news portraying both sides of the situation whenever a sucide solider attacks, or a refugee camp is destroyed. How much longer will americans fail to see that this is a war with no good-guys? Dean had the right idea, the rest seems blinded by inane political blindfolds.

I'll get the footage I have on VHS converted to a .mov file I was researching how to do that tonight. In the meanwhile I'll see if I can hunt it down on the web. The time of day being portrayed is unmistakable. I'm aware of the zones. In the several times I went there (with archeologist; Ron Wyatt) frequent communications were done to several parts of the US at different times. I'll only state what I believe. As far as I’m concerned what that footage is being portrayed as is bullshit.

Another recent episode was during the war; with the cameras rolling as they went along. I was watching Fox. Did anyone else see when they came upon the site that had large quantity of barrels? WMD were found and it was shut up shortly after. I wish I had been taping, that was footage I’m sure some were concern about being transmitted. Did anyone else see?

I will laugh my ass off (seriously, my ass will detach and fall to the floor) if this is true, and a month before the election said WMDs are "discovered". I wouldn't put it past our government to shush up any discoveries until it is politically convenient to release such information.

I saw this the third day into the war. It was plain as day right there on FOX. Surely someone else out there saw as well. I was puzzled why they never said anything. I was thinking to myself "This is what everything has come down to; they find chemical agents and no word." I heard on a radio talk show which had a former CIA officer stating the reason why the drums were never brought out is because of who's name was stamped on them. Is it fact; I dont know. I know the discovery of the drums was televised to millions of TVs across the world and no commentary was ever given; strange.

I'm sorry? I'm afraid I don't quite follow you. In a democracy, typically the most popular position is considered the "moderate" one, with extremists on either side. For example, 70% of Americans oppose abortion, except in cases of incest, rape, and to save the life of the mother. On each side, you have your extremists: on the left, abortion in all cases (on demand), and on the right, abortion in no cases (even to save the life of the mother).

As a whole, America may be well to the right of say, Europe, but we are talking about the context of the American population. If we have no statistics on the popularity of opinions on certain issues, how are we to decide what is moderate and what is not? It is not as simple as taking half of two extreme doctrines, because the breakdown of the popularity of those positions is required to differentiate between a "moderate" Vermonter and a "moderate" Texan, or a moderate American and a moderate Frenchman. Moderate clearly refers to distinctly different positions, which we can only derive by knowing the popularity of those positions in the context of the population.

Dean's position is so virulently anti-war, more so than his colleagues, and he has gained considerable political traction as a result. In this case, Dean is clearly a liberal.


His stance on Iraq is wrong; it was a just liberation, started by an effective, straight-spoken leader, for just reasons. You are also wrong about the effectiveness of the Halliburton contract. The Halliburton contract in Iraq (to its KBR subsidiary) was awarded under the auspices of the Army Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP) program. This is how it works: every few years, the Army receives bids for emergency services work. Rather than hold a bidding process for emergency work (like reconstructing oilfields), which could take weeks, the Army allocates a block contract for all emergency services. If anything needs to be done quickly, the Army calls up the company, which is responsible for a wide range of emergency work. You can think of it an emergency Wal-Mart.

Rather than tie up soldiers doing work they are not trained for, the Pentagon has trained civilian specialists on call that can do the job more effectively, more quickly, and at a lower cost. This contract is a COMPETITIVE process, with contracts awarded for several years. Halliburton first won LOGCAP in 1992 (as Clinton was entering office), and lost it in 1997. During this time Halliburton performed emergency work in Bosnia. In 1997, based on Halliburton's record in Bosnia, the Clinton Defense Department chose to keep it on to complete work in Bosnia. In 1999 (under Clinton) and 2001 (under Bush), Halliburton competed and won the contract, and thus was the point of contact for emergency work for the Bush administration in Iraq. No scandal, no impropriety, just standard operating procedure.

Also, if our "buddies" had been willing to eat a little crow, the top UN official in Iraq would not have been killed in a terrorist attack. In fact, if our "buddies" had been willing to eat a little crow and join us in the just liberation of Iraq in the first place, we might have had more soldiers and civilians on the group reconstructing Iraq in the first place.

-- Alvin

EDIT: Grammar errors. Apologies, English is not the language we normally speak at home!

Inkriminator, sorry if I came off as a dick, but what I said wasn't in regard to your comment so much as the belief that jews magically appered in Palestine shortly after WWII.

Bingo.

I guess this is a bit off-topic, but straight-spoken?? He didn't take the time and effort to verify what he was saying.

Are you referring to the uranium from Africa claim? The quote beginning "The British government has learned...?" If so, at best you can say that the claim is still questionable, and at worst he was telling the truth. The British government still stands by their report, and the BBC reporter (Gilligan) who broke the story that the intelligence dossier was flawed has been completely discredited and, as reported recently, "will be forced to quit." (Daily Telegraph, August 24). At best we can say the jury is still out. Being that MI6 is considered the best intelligence agency in the world, I'm inclined to believe them over a discredited BBC hack.

I really shouldn't be the one defending George W. Bush, but someone has to stem the tide of the anti-Bush angry left before the reasonable left gets swamped at the next election.

-- Alvin