John Yoo woulda made a great Nazi - Page 2

I don't know.

I think that McCain swallowed the pill and made nice with GWB to win the nomination, but I don't think he'll continue the historically bad practices of the Bush administration. The President has an extraordinary amount of power to shape the culture around him, and I think McCain can use that power to right the ship.

But that's just prognostication. The real question is whether or not you're right when you assert that the W culture has achieved enough momentum to continue through a McCain administration. Unfortunately, only time will tell.

I think that, at this point, we'd be willing to settle for a reasonably free and stable country. I don't think the control of the oil reserves in an exit criterion.

It means that we owe it to the Iraqis to hand off a country that doesn't devolve into a total bloodbath.

The establishment was right about Vietnam. That was was winnable until the American public lost heart.

I respect that position, yt, and I fully expect to engage that position very thoroughly in the coming months. At this stage in the game, I'm looking to ensure that each candidate gets a fair shot based on their records and their rhetoric. Their political philosophies don't necessarily deserve the benefit of the doubt, but they do.

I think it is. I think that, somewhere along the line, "winning is the only thing" became an accepted position in American life. I don't think it's the only cause, to be sure. But I do think it contributes.

I've recently had the opportunity to see a lot of televised news, and I'm appalled at the thin gruel masquerading as journalism that gets broadcast every day. It goes from fluff to fiction to fires, and there's no rigor or insight to be found. How do people watch this?

Other than a borderline hit piece Politico did a few days ago, no one as really looked at McCain's religion. The base doesn't like McCain because of policy issues, not religious ones. Religion really has nothing to do with it. The base is wary of McCain because of his stance on immigration (McCain-Kennedy), free speech (McCain-Feingold), and, to some extent, global warming (McCain-Lieberman). They also don't like that he initially opposed the Bush tax cuts as being irresponsible. He's a guy who is known not only for failing to fall in line with the party, but for actively working with the biggest liberals in the Senate to pass legislation his own party generally opposes but he thinks is right for the country. Of the three people left in the race, he's the one with the best claim to transcending party lines to get things done.

You are not. I mean, Paycheck was bad, but not Nazi bad.

On further consideration, I shouldn't have taken the bait regarding Viet Nam. The Boomers allowed the domestic fracture over Vietnam to define American politics for far too long, and it's time we put that fight to bed and moved on.

In spades. But that's not going to happen under military occupation. The only way the US is going to be able to pacify the place is to either wipe out or segregate one of the factions in this war, and you can't tell me that won't be done to the US's greatest advantage. I consider that unjustified meddling in the governance of another nation, and why should I think the US would do what's best for Iraq in pursuing its interests? It's not the US's or any other nation's place to manipulate a civil war thus. It's by definition nation-building, and more importantly it's an undertaking that will lead to the bloodbath you want to avoid. That's assuming the US can come up with a strategy that will accomplish this, and that's assuming it doesn't go broke first. But even assuming for the sake of argument that the US has only the best intentions towards Iraq, I still don't think the US can come up with an effective strategy or afford to carry it out.

I do not think the bloodbath can be avoided. It hasn't been avoided. Half a million dead, millions fled, the country is a failed state. Stop digging.

Drunk. It helps to be drunk.

I think LBJ would probably feel the same way. If he wasn't dead.

Really? Really???

Yea, that domino theory thing was pretty sound. Just like Iraq starting a democratic revolution in the Middle East.

All that, except the exact opposite.

Well played, sir!

I'd say it's false and that there has been serious Republican election tampering in key states. It's not reported by the corporate media. It's not prosecuted by the politicized Justice Department. It's not so easy to pin down because of the persecution of whistle blowers, but it's very real, and a safe bet that come November, poor, black and democratic districts will have a) too few functioning voting machines, b) wild irregularities in their hackable vote counts, c) voters showing up at the polls only to learn they're no longer registered, d) voters not showing up on election day because they received mysterious calls and flyers giving them the wrong date/time, e) substandard ballots that magically negate tens of thousands of votes.

Whether McCain's onboard or completely unaware of Republican election tampering, I can see him being the beneficiary of stolen votes this November.

The ship is upside down, and the captains quarters flooded by the polluted drink, but I hope you're right.

And we will be its b*tch.

The thing is though, FC, that's what I've been hearing for five years, and yet it's only gotten worse in Iraq, with highs and lows but no evidence that anything is happening there but abuse, fraud, waste, and murder.

According to Occam's Razor, there's no other explanation for this enduring tragic mess.

Again, it's a bloodbath now. I'd say our presence is hardly a sign of safety and security at this point. We owe it to the Iraqis to give them restitution for destroying their country maybe, but not putting in place ineffectual puppet governments and forcing self-serving oil agreements into its parliament.

Therefore unwinnable.

Indeed, and I'll keep my similes and metaphors in check, but as he starts defining his positions on issues, I really hope his record bears those positions out.

We all need to soul-search in terms of the future, but it's also important to remember that this acrimony was turned into an art by a long line of Republicans, from Newt to Karl. Democrats and other non-Republicans have been taken advantage of by not getting with the program quickly or efficiently enough to do anything about it. And the country has suffered from people not having the fortitude to call a liar a liar.

I don't know. It's alarming and horrible. Yet until these conglomerates are broken up and a measure of independence returns to the airwaves, this is what's keeping most Americans from understanding that Saddam was not behind 9/11, and the "illegals" aren't the root of all evil, etc., etc.

So which candidate is most likely to put some breaks on media ownership and inject some independence in the independent press?

That's inaccurate. Iraq is in better shape today than it was five years ago.

Why? What we need to do is move on.

I don't think any major candidate is likely to do that.

FC, not only is Iraq a quagmire with daily death and destruction, the second worse refugee crisis in the world, and a total absence of basic services, this war is bleeding this country and the military dry. If people were asked to believe in this war enough to start paying an appropriate war tax, how much longer do you think it would last before Bush was forced to end his occupation?

The painstakingly constructed GOP noise machine isn't going anywhere any time soon. No one can go anywhere until the justice department, the media and practically every other aspect of public life is de-politicized.

But one in particular is more likely to stand up than the others.