Is lying about the reason for a war an impeachable offense?

[CW]

We had a war that I didn't hear about? When was that?

[Dan White]

The same one who tried to assassinate one of our presidents and shoot down our pilots. For me, there should be a simple policy. If you are caught trying to assissinate our president, we reserve the right to remove your regime.

dwhite

[CW]

I've never seen anything more than claims about the assassination attempt. As for trying to shoot down our planes, they were in Iraqi airspace. What would we do about unauthorized foreign fighter aircraft in our airspace?

[Dan White]

It isn't hard to find info. Try:

then this: down to the story. Apparently Bill Clinton was convinced enough to bomb Iraq over the incident. If your whole theory is that everything is just BS and was concocted just so Bush could oust Saddam for some unknown reason, then don't bother.

They were authorized. Go back and review the details of the cease fire agreement from the Gulf War.

As far as lies go, in your words, I've never seen anything more than claims that Bush lied about anything. Do me a favor and have a look at this interesting site: Click on "Return to the Blood of Heroes" down on the bottom of the page to see some words of wisdom re 9/11. It takes about 5 minutes to wait through it, but there are some good quotes and good reminders. I think too many people forget about this.

[bridger]

yabut.... that same president of ours tried to assasinate him. they both failed, and I pretty much figured that score was even.

[PJMalone]

Two cents worth from a lurker:

The whole Swift Boat/National Guard stuff is a distraction. There are far more important issues than things that happened thirty years ago. The question really should be "what kind of America do you want to have"?

Do we want a president who thinks its okay to lock up people, including American citizens, simply on his say-so? No charges placed, no access to council or even to family members, no trial, and no release date other than "when the war against terror" is over? Whatever happened to the US Constitution? It could be that the people locked up (Jose Padilla for one) are guilty of horrible crimes. If so its up to the government to prove that in a court of law. This is supposed to be a government of laws, not of men.

Then there are the violations of the Geneva Conventions. These acts strongly concern me as a veteran. Holding people as "ghost prisoners" (i.e. without notice to anyone including the Red Cross) and the torture of the prisoners at Abu Graib and so on violate the provisions of those conventions which establish minimum standards for the treatment of prisoners of war. That creates a moral precedent that other nations _will_ use against captured Americans. Responsibility for Abu Graib starts at the top.

It could be argued that the Abu Graib torture does not violate the conventions based on some legalistic interpretation of the documents. But to the rest of the world this carries as much weight as Clinton's "meaning of is is" did to his opponents. Remember: people act not on what is true but on what they perceive to be true. The US being "bad guys" at that prison predictably has to be the inspiration for the young and hot blooded to strike out against us. Rather than make us safer Bush has made us less safe.

Another issue: Bush's spending. Doesn't anybody's memory extend to ten years back? One of the primary items in the Republicans 1994 "Contract for America" was fiscal responsibility. Among other provisions that list of proposed legislation included a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget. Instead being fiscally responsibility Bush has been throwing money into Iraq by the bushel full. From a surplus in the budget to the current enormous deficit in just three years. What's wrong with this picture? Whatever happened to paying as you go? The Republicans _were_ the party of fiscal responsibility not that of profligate spending.

Much could be written about Bush's economic policies. Most of it bad. I know that the US has lost over a million good paying jobs. The few jobs created under Bush's economic policies mostly pay less. I am out of work and have been for some time. If I am lucky I will get a job that pays half of what I was making before. If lucky I might get paid as much in 2004 as I did in 1985.

Kerry may well NOT be the best person for the job. But Bush is the worst thing to happen to DC since the British burned it in the War of 1812. Kerry could hardly worse.

Patricia Malone

[Todd Fatheree]

Then why does Kerry seem to want to talk about nothing else? Even Clinton has told him to shut up about it, a suggestion Kerry has apparently ignored. Now we have someone on the left cooking up phoney documents to try to discredit the president. They just can't stop shooting themselves in the foot.

Just so we're clear, here...which people are we talking about, other than Abdullah al Muhajir?

Well, Kerry is an admitted war criminal who concedes he has violated the Geneva Convention. So, I guess you're voting for Nader? And by the way, other nations were already treating POWs like this before Abu Ghraib. The only difference is that they don't punish the people responsible.

Man, it's too bad Abu Ghraib happened, because otherwise the middle east would just be a happy place like Disneyworld and no one would be mad at us.

I'm sorry. I must have missed the change in the Constitution that says the President gets to spend whatever he wants. The last I checked, spending bills had to go through Congress. So, if the Democrats in Congress didn't want things to go through, they could have stopped it. So, there's plenty of blame to go around. Why did the budget go from a annual surplus to a deficit? Are you kidding me? Does anything that happened three years ago today ring a bell? The surplus in 2000 of $236 billion was basically due to above-average receipts from higher-income taxpayers from capital gains from the stock market bubble, stock options, and bonus income, which added up to $300 billion. Since government budget people seem incapable of considering anything except the best-case scenario, they just assume those receipts would go on and on. In actuality, they were just another symptom of the stock market bubble that was bound to come down. Unfortunately, I haven't seen where Kerry plans to reign in that spending...in fact, he has promised trillions more.

Try again...see

I'm sure there are lots of people not making the money they made during the phoney-baloney tech bubble.

Well, we won't get the chance to find out, unless he chooses to run again in

2008. Don't worry, though...the Clintons won't let him win that election either.

todd

[Dan White]

He did? In any case, that's a pretty silly argument. Remember the original point of the thread.

dwhite

[Dan White]

Good post, and I agree with much of it. However, Kerry has no chance. This will not be a close election, certainly nothing like the last one. BTW Kerry's campaign has been in a constant state of change and it isn't working.

dwhite

[Dan White]

That's not a fair characterization of how enemy combatants and others are treated, particularly under the Patriot Act.

Why do people continue to bemoan the destruction of the Constitution when the Supreme Court has already ruled that the Patriot Act is not unconstitutional. I bet they know more about it than people with vague accusations of wrongdoing for political spin.

No, what will creat a moral precedent is what we as a country do to the handful of people out of over a hundred thousand who are going to be convicted.

Have you heard any of the inverviews with Iraqis just after the photos came out? The reports I heard said that they didn't even see how this was torture. Those people know torture. Barking dogs, underwear and nekked pyramids ain't it. I'm not defending what they did. It was wrong for many reasons, but let's have a little perspective here.

Which stipulated exceptions in case of emergencies or time of war.

Actually congress has done that. The president can't spend a nickel without congress.

I agree that he is spending too much on domestic programs. The prescription drug think is a travesty. I think you know what happened to that surplus, but don't want to recognize it for some reason. 1) lagging economy at the end of the Clinton admin and 90's market bubble burst, and 2) 9/11.

Alan Greenspan just refuted that notion as baseless. Please get back to your leaders and ask for better talking points.

Sorry to hear that, but you think the president is responsible for whether you find a job or not?

A bit over the top, don't you think? You have yet to make a reasoned conclusion based on real information, so I don't know what you have to be upset about. If you learn the facts instead of repeating cliche's then maybe you will see what's really going on, but somehow I doubt it.

I said my peace, and I realize that I shouldn't continue polluting this ng with off topic stuff. So go ahead and call me some names and we'll be done with this thread. :)

dwhite

[Renata]

You never heard of Vietnam?

R

[CW]

Not a war. Try again.

[Bob Martin]

There are worse things a major power could do !

[Dave Hinz]

Yup, that's the one. If you bluff, be prepared for us to take you seriously. The end.

By the way, CM, when you top-post, people have to fix that to follow up to you with context. Please dont' do that.

Dave Hinz

[Dave Hinz]

Yes, you're right, there are more important things. Like voting record and attendance at meetings one is supposed to be at, for instance, which is why I have a huge problem with Kerry.

Let's see. If you're fighting against our army, not in uniform, then you aren't an enemy soldier, you're someone pretending to be a civilian but you aren't. Hm, what could _possibly_ go wrong with that?

Doesn't apply; when you join the enemy, you forfeit that, don't you.

I disagree profoundly with Kerry on several issues that are important to me, so I'll be voting against him. Seeing how he lied about the Assault Weapons Ban, equating them to machine guns (they're not) and saying that lifting the ban on cosmetic features such as bayonet lugs and flash surpressors makes Americans more at danger from Terrorists (what an absurd thing to say, yet he said it)... He's another slicky-boy politician who can't tell the truth about anything. I don't trust him any more than I trusted Clinton, they're both cut from the same cloth. Then the guy misses what, 70%? 80%? of his senate obligations, and he wants a freaking promotion?

I don't think so.

[Dave Hinz]

Yup. Give notice; "Shape up or we'll take you out". They bluster and ignore. We go in, take 'em out, and get out, giving notice "Behave or we'll come back and take out the next one."

[Doug Miller]

There's one respect in which Kerry is a significant improvement over Clinton. Although he's just as big a liar, he's nowhere *nearly* as skillful at it, nor as convincing. Which makes his lies much easier to spot, and therefore much less dangerous.

-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek-at-milmac-dot-com)

Get a copy of my NEW AND IMPROVED TrollFilter for NewsProxy/Nfilter by sending email to autoresponder at filterinfo-at-milmac-dot-com You must use your REAL email address to get a response.

[Al Spohn]

In article , [e-mail] says... [...]

[...]

And it doesn't bother you that Bush was in the national guard for the same reasons? And that daddy used his influence to allow him to leapfrog NG waiting lists to pull it off?

It's true that he does deserve some measure of credit for making it through flight school, but for anyone that's ever been through the process, there's flight school and there's VIP flight school. The latter is all about the VIP saving face, keeping him alive, being available for photo ops, and passing him on to the next level of training responsibility at the earliest opportunity. I don't know enough about Bush's record to say whether or not this is true in his case (although he would be a prototypical candidate for such treatment)

- heck, he might have been a great pilot - but then again, so might have Kerry had he decided on that particular flavor of evasion.

Kerry's emphasis on "serving" is pretty gross - bordering on being as ludicrous as Bush's visit to the aircraft carrier wearing a flight suit. I think it was an unfortunate question of percieved political expediency in reaction to the public's perception that he wouldn't be "tough on terror."

But I agree with the majority of your post. It's definitely "pick your poison" time. I'd have been inclined to go with McCain too had he decided to run, but more as a reward for what he suffered in Viet Nam than anything else. That seems as valid a reason as any in today's political climate.

- Al

[Swingman]

Apples and oranges (or donkeys and elephants?). Last I heard it was required by regulation to wear a flight suit in that type of aircraft ... at least it was the only time I had the pleasure.

[Al Spohn]

Yeah, I guess that's probably still the case now that you mention it. I think that he did jump into his Washington suit later on, too. All the VIPs we flew with in the AF had to wear flight suits too, and they all seemed to relish the swagger opportunity.

- Al