Just amazing. Every single thing he claims is an impeachable offense NEVER HAPPENED, or is AN OUTRIGHT LIE.

The Lancet/Johns-Hopkins studies (both of them) have been thoroughly debunked.

Nobody in the administration, or indeed the entire Congress used the phrase "imminent threat" to describe the (at the time) present situation in Iraq - the full statement was something to the effect of 'we cannot afford to wait until Saddam becomes an imminent threat before we act.'

The AUMF was a declaration of war in fact, if not in specific use of the word "war". What the fuck else could the "authorization for the use of military force" be taken to mean?

Illegal combatants are not protected under the Geneva Conventions at all. We are entitled to do as we please with any non-state actors that engage in hostilities against our military.

There is nobody in the administration, or indeed Congress that ever led anyone to believe that Saddam was involved in 9/11. Some leftist group that has been on Bush's ass since the day after he was declared the victor in 2000 insisted that the proximity of the two terms in his speeches was intended to make people think that, and the news cycle of course distilled that down to "Bush says Saddam done it".

It's amusing that Cafferty had that to say about New Orleans - since it was his network, and their main competitor Fox News, that caused most of the havoc. Red Cross wouldn't go in because Fox and CNN were reporting that it was a free-fire zone, that people were eating babies, bodies stacked to the rafters, etc. And not only was none of it true, nobody was fucking prosecuted for the lies and the problems they caused. Of course, the Democrats in charge are to blame, but why blame them, when we can blame Bush? I mean, it's not like there was another nearby state run by Republicans that didn't have any problems at all (and didn't even get the federal assistance) that we can compare the situation to, is there?

Why can't people like McGovern and Carter just have the simple good sense to die, already?

Puhleez! I was working for a the school district in Topeka, Kansas & they had "Impeach Bush" stickers on their cars before he moved into the Ovalteen Office. What the Republicrats did to Bubba was wrong but it would be just as wrong to visit the same harassment upon W.

Brian,
If you are referring to President Carter you need to be worried that the Secret Service will find your post with one of their data trolling programs & might want to look at your past & talk to you. President Carter was a man ahead of his time who is not deserving of a wish for his untimely demise. Is there anyone left out there with an ounce of respect for the thankless job that is the Presidency?

For those without the desire to be angry, it remains that impeachment of an Executive is not legitimate for malfeasance of office in the Legislative Branch. So many people have to please themselves with hate that they ignore what little civics they learned in school.

And as for "Bubba", forget your petty fascination with stained dresses, and look up "John Huang". Look in the Constitution, and realize that the Senate ignored the Constitutional requirement that a felon cannot be President. Now imagine the pack of lawyers in Congress claiming they don't know these things. Who, exactly, should be removed from office?

William - unlike you, I don't wear tinfoil hats.

I have not suggested that anyone help America's worst president die. That would make him a martyr, which would make all his commie-cuddling suddenly seem virtuous to a whole new generation of skulls full of mush.

No, I want him to fade into obscurity and die in his sleep of old age - with no cameras, no sobbing relatives, no state funerals. Just disappear.

Rad - after the debacle that was McCain-Feingold, I wanted Bush, the 5 Justices that validated it, and all the members of the House and Senate that voted for it thrown out on their ass. I mean, seriously - what part of Congress shall make no law do they not understand?

President Clinton is one of the best President's that we've had. He presided over the most prosperous time in our nation's history. The smartest, most honest person from your h.s. civics class can be turned into a felon if a person with influence decides to make it happen. Even people with legal degrees do not know all of the laws that exist, this fact is another problem in this country. Political fighting is all that there was to all of the allegations against President Clinton. Bubba's no crook, W's no crook, & President Nixon should not have resigned. If Nixon had Clinton as a predecessor then there wouldn't be a President Ford.

If Nixon hadn't gotten caught, we'd never have gotten Carter. Clinton is actually one of the worst presidents in history. The prosperity he presided over was largely based upon fraud (the dot bomb). His response to repeated terrorist attacks against US interests at home and abroad led Al Qaeda to determine they could attack us without risk or repercussion.

Clinton's presidency was marked by exceptional luck.

Carter damn near tanked the entire world economy with his idiocy. His policies actually caused something economists regarded as impossible - double digit inflation with double digit unemployment and double digit interest rates. Until Carter came along, higher interest rates were always a hedge against inflation.

When the history of the era from 1960-2000 is finally written, James Earl Carter will be remembered as the worst leader any nation had ever chosen. I suspect there will be speculation as to the mental illness that was gripping the US at the time that directed them to make that choice.

I blame Disco.

"President Clinton is one of the best President's that we've had. He presided over the most prosperous time in our nation's history."

I love it when people say this. The next logical statement should then be: "President Bush is one of the best Presidents that we've had. He presided over the greatest stock market recovery in our nation's history."

Of course, both statements are logical fallacies, but hey don't let that stop you from blaming one and hating the other.

"We dont want th smoking gun to be in the form of a mushroom cloud"

Remember that tidbit brian?

How does the threat of nukes not imply imminent threat

I remember Jemma Carter well, Muriel boat lift bringing tens of thousands of Cuban prisoners to roam our streets in Miami. Global cooling scare, yes, it was global cooling back then. The world was going to be one big ice cube and out of oil by....well, one year ago. Remember gas lines because we were running out of oil in twenty five years?? 55mph speed limit, That really did a lot of good, made people take longer on the roads and gave us more traffic jams. Economic situation worst in US, very much like the great depression. In west MI back then, unemployment rate was over 20%. I saw over 2000 people show up for 9 busboy and dishwasher jobs at a brand new restaurant one time. I just went out and painted houses. Iranian hostage crisis, I spent over five months at sea without touching land during that one, witnessed the failed rescue attempt. The morale in the military was so bad, we had brand spankin new ships tied to the piers with no crews! Couldn't recruit enough people to man them. Herion addiction wasn't so uncommon in the military. Jemma Carter was an arrogant, stubborn, dumb ass.

When Ronald Regan came in, the hostages were released the next day. The economy changed almost overnight. You could feel the change in the air. People became more optimistic, unemployment fell like a rock and the country started moving again. The military became strong again and got cleaned up, drug use got you kicked out after 81.

When most historians talk about the Carter years, they use the word malaise a lot. I would use the word funk.

Lujlp -

Imminent (adj):
1. likely to occur at any moment; impending: Her death is imminent.
2. projecting or leaning forward; overhanging.

Nobody said, implied, or conjectured that the mushroom cloud would happen tomorrow at lunch. The statement meant exactly what it said. It was made in response to those who feel that we should not respond to any threat until it has actually been carried out.

In other words, the proper phrasing should have been: "There are those who would prefer we wait until some Western city has been melted under a mushroom cloud. I believe we need to prevent this possibility."

Also brian the weblog of some guy isnt proof that the study was debunked

I'd have had more repect for you had you taken the extra three secods to provide a link to the article that the weblog subsequently linked to

And after reading the entire article I saw no difinitive debunking, they brought up some interesting considerations, but nothing more than the same inuendos they claim the left uses against the right

""Iraq has unmanned aerial vehicles capable of delvering a chemical or biological payload to US cities"

http://www.fas.org/irp/cia/product/Iraq_Oct_2002.htm#08

Brian, I agree with your points about McMoron's charges. I would add this. While nobody has ever been able to prove Saddam had a hand in 911, we do know that he had a training camp right outside Baghdad where terrorists learned how to take over airliners. Google 'Salman Pak'. He also knowingly harbored and financed some AQ members and they did meet with IIS, (Iraqi Intelligence Service) on a few occasions. Does that prove he had anything to do with 911? No, it doesn't, but you certainly can't discount it out of hand. Also, when we kicked his ass so bad with the Kuwait liberation, and embarrassed him in the eyes of his own country and the Arab world, you would have to be a world class idiot to not think of him as a suspect when 911 happened, because he had more motivation to do it than literally anyone else in the world. Personally, I think he definitely knew about it, and probably gave some financial and intel support but kept his fingerprints off it because he knew he would be the likely suspect.

As far as Clinton and Bush presidencies, Bill was awful. He has got to be the first guy who ran for president to get chicks! He did not take the job very seriously. In 1993, the first time AQ tried to take down the world trade center, he made a decision to pursue this as an individual crime and refused to make the AQ association to a larger general violent movement, or war. As each other terrorists act happened on his watch, he still resisted because he didn't have the guts to admit we we're in a real ongoing conflict, he wanted to bury it and hoped it would go away. Of course, when you react to aggression like that, it usually only gets more intense, so he screwed the pooch.

Economically, he was the type of business man who practices the,"Tell a lie enough till people believe it's true and it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy." method. What he did with Robert Rubin was to loosen the rules in investment banking to the point where people got real squirrely with the whole IPO and dotcom speculation. It created wealth on paper than really didn't exist, and when that came out, it all crashed.

Bush has done a similary stupid thing with the economy that may turn out to make Clinton gaffe look like a toe stub. Clinton's mistake pretty much was restricted to the dotcom, thus wallstreet angle. It sucked, but we recovered. What Bush has done was to make that same mistake on a much grander scale.

What Bush did was to ring the dinner bell for illegals to come into this country to work cheap thinking this would stimulate business. It kinda did, Wall Street was real happy, profits going through the roof because cheap labor begets lower pay for all jobs. After figuring out that we had about ten more more percent of the country being his amigos who couldn't buy homes, he decided to help them out. He, together with some fellow-morons in congress, colluded with the banking community to go lax on the rules for lending so people with low income and stolen identities could actually go out and buy a home. Well, this made the price of homes go through the roof, if I can make a loan using any criteria I want, I'm going to raise the price of the house! So between 2001 and 2006, homes prices in my county went up 135%! The problem was that these people really can't pay that and when reality sets in, the bubble bursts. Now, the idiot is trying to throw good money after bad and make it a much worse mess than it is now. Bush has made a few mistakes, but this mess could be his legacy.

By the way, when Robert Rubin, Clintons economic genius left the administration, do you know where he went? Head of Citibank, how are they doing lately?

I apologize for the long post, I'm on my third cup of coffee.

Lujlp - I'm sorry you don't like the way I link things. Get over yourself.

And make up your mind, will you? First you cry that they said nuclear attack was imminent, then you link to a statement about chemical and biological agents. Which is it? Or does it not matter to you?

Of course, this intel WAS the product of the same Tenet-run CIA that didn't see 9/11 coming, didn't see Pakistan going nuclear, didn't see Iran going nuclear, and directed the military to bomb the Chinese embassy in Sarajevo. So if Bush can be blamed for anything, really, it was believing George "Slam Dunk" Tenet. At the very least, Bush should have fired him on 9/12/01.

brian, you linked to a page where some guy said the study was debunked

Someguy who misrepresented the claim of the article he actually linked to, given you didnt link to the article yourself I'm betting you didnt even read it and took some guy at face value

And FYI the administraion was pushing the full NBC compliment and claimg we were in danger from all three. And quite frankly it doesnt matter to me, a lie is a lie, change the details and leave the mesage the same and it is just as false.

And if Iraq was such a security treat with such litle money then what about our allies?

Pakistan has nukes and the taliban runs a section of their coutry but they do nothing about it.

We pay trillions to Sadi Arabi and they are the biggest funders of terrorism.

The UAE lauders money for Al Queda, and our response was to let that forgien government which provides material support to our most dangerous enemy free access to all our ports.

So tell us again brian what a danger a piss ant country with no standing army and a decimated infrastructure was compared to the allies we give billions of dollars to?

So we have the argument of appalling v positively abysmal. The very worse president for civil liberties and secrecy - not to mention expanding executive power, next to GWB, was Bill Clinton.

And all the pedantry in the world will not change the fact that bush lied us into war with Iraq, among a host of other crimes and should have been impeached, along with Cheney, years ago.

But please, don't let me interrupt the clucking (to steal a line from crid) for your favorite horrid little president.

Oy and one last thing;
His response to repeated terrorist attacks against US interests at home and abroad led Al Qaeda to determine they could attack us without risk or repercussion.

Not that I wasn't right there beside a lot of righties in condemning his anti-terror ideas as draconian and wrong for America, but he did try to pass a "patriot" act light, while in office. While it was just as wrong as the horror we have now, it probably would have sent a very different message to Al Qaeda.

So if Bush can be blamed for anything, really, it was believing George "Slam Dunk" Tenet.

So, what you're saying is that the evidence was wrong and Bush believed it. Fine, people make mistakes, said mistake being the Iraq War.

usually once people realize they're doing the wrong thing for false reasons, they stop what they're doing. The fact that you've just copped to the fact that Bush knew the evidence was junk but still hasn't stopped the war is telling.

Shorter version: once you find out you're waging war under false pretenses, the right thing to do is stop waging war.

A_R:

Sometimes the only way out is through.

Or should we have ended the Cold War after it was obvious that the Soviet Union was full of shit somewhere around 1982?

The Iraq war was not about WMD. It should not have been sold as such. But Bush probably couldn't have gotten away with "We're gonna go kick a little muslim ass and shake things up in the middle east" either.

The simple fact of the matter is this - post 9/11, we could not allow any nation to think that we were unwilling to take them down. Of all the nations in the middle east and south asia, the only one after Afghanistan we could take on with little risk of destabilizing the entire world oil market was Iraq. Get a foothold in Iraq, and the rest of the nations around it will think twice before supporting any more terrorist attacks against the US.

Of course, there is also the argument that we took out Iraq to have Iran surrounded, but playing that card publicly would have been far worse for us than Iran's behind-the-back interference in Iraq - they would have engaged us directly from the word go.

Get a foothold in Iraq, and the rest of the nations around it will think twice before supporting any more terrorist attacks against the US.

Translation

Attack the country that has the least to do with supporting terrorism, and the countries that do support terrosim will think twice

Funny that doesnt make sense, and the fact that Al queda has a soild foothold in a country which refuses to do anything about it and our allies are still giving them our oil money.

I'd say you need to check your grip on reality brian

Saddam was directing some of the oil-for-food money to terrorist organizations. He was also the only country in the middle east with which a state of open hostility existed with the United States.

What would you have done after Afghanistan? Sit back and wait for the next attack? Invade Pakistan, who has nukes? Invade Saudi Arabia and have the entirety of middle east oil shut off? Invade Iran and risk ditto? Algeria? Morocco? Tunisia? London?

Seriously. For a great many reasons, Iraq was the perfect target of opportunity. I don't know why it didn't seem obvious that Iran would interfere, but if that had been prevented, we'd have finished up and moved on by now. I also don't understand our unwillingness to tell Iran "cut the shit or Tehran takes it in the ass". I mean, Iranian soldiers on Iraqi soil shooting at American vehicles sounds an awful lot like an act of war to me.

Damn, and I was hoping for more of the absurd and fallacious Clinton/Bush dichotomy. Instead we're treated to the truly insane notion that we should also go to war with Iran, 'cause gods know we haven't done nearly enough to destabilize the middle east.

I fear that brian is die-hard neocon nut.

No brian, what we should have done, instead of invading Iraq, was actually go after the terrorists. We should have treated the "war on terror" as a police action (albeit one that used special ops soldiers as the boots on the ground "cops"), not a overt military venture. We had support from nearly every nation in the world. We could have built a coalition the likes of which the world has never seen.

Instead we pissed it all away, along with the goodwill we had, so we could invade a country that had less to do with terrorism than most any other mid-east country, excepting Turkey. This wasn't just foolhardy, it was batshit insane.

lujlp is right, you are utterly divorced from reality friend.

I mean, Iranian soldiers on Iraqi soil shooting at American vehicles sounds an awful lot like an act of war to me.

Do you have any proof of this? HTML works great to give me links.

Also, you can say that it's Iran's fault that we haven't "finished up" here yet, but I really think that is an opinion that is divorced from the facts on the ground.

DuWayne -

It is you who are divorced from reality. Estranged even. I'm not a "neo-con nut". I just happen to understand who the enemy is.

We treated Islamist terrorism as a "crime" problem from 1993 on. Look how well it worked.

After 9/11, we did not have the support of "nearly every nation in the world". In fact, we had the support of pretty much the only nations we have ever had the support of - England, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. All the rest were empty words meant for the cameras.

And we didn't have the support of the nations we really needed it from - the ones supporting and harboring the terrorists.

And how do you propose we "go after the terrorists"? Ask Pakistan and Iran nicely? Invade both of them? Nuke 'em till they glow, then shoot them in the dark? You do realize that sending "special ops" into any country at all would be considered an act of war, unless they were invited. And the chances of that happening with any nation that harbors terrorists is exceedingly slim.

Although it sounds to me, DuWayne, that you would have been advocating invading Saudi Arabia too.

A_R - I'm not doing your work for you. If you haven't been keeping on top of things, it's hardly my responsibility to inform you. The information is available from a great many reputable resources.

Oh, and DuWayne - you are right about one thing - we haven't done nearly enough to destabilize the Middle East. 60 years of stability has allowed all these terrorist organizations to grow strong. Sure, there's been a few isolated instances of unrest. But no wholesale instability.

So brian you belive the best stratagey was not to go after those who attacked us, or those how gave them material support but someone else entirely

With that kind of reasoning perhpas we should execute random strangers for the crimes of death row inmates

Also brian perhpas if 1st world countries hadn't been so eager to do business with autocratic regimes and brutal dictators for cheap oil and demanded better representation and human rights for citizens before doing business perhaps there wouldnt be so many terrorists

Worst natural disaster in U.S. history.

Would that be Katrina, S.F. or Anchorage earthquakes, Chicago fire, Galvestion hurricane (6,00 dead). How about that big meteor crater in Arizona, or all of Yellowstone is an active caldera? Maybe those last two don't count....

Given that yelowstone hasnt blown in 700,000 yrs I'd say it doesnt count, yet

If it were to blow there would be no response anyway. Half the populkation of the north american continet would be dead within a week, and those not evacuated to europe asia or south america would be dead in less than a month

Anyone unfortunate enough to survive would face global winter, toxic atmosphere and humanity would be dependant upon hydroponocs to survive

Actually, lujlp, I was all for paving the middle east from the jordan river to the china sea.

But given the nuclear fallout from that would eventually land on us, I'll settle for going in and knocking over one dictator at a time.

And as far as us "supporting" dictators to get the oil - if England hadn't decided to treat the bedouins who happened to be on top of all the oil by luck of birth as though they had some God-given right to sell the shit to us, we wouldn't be having these problems. But, we went and made a bunch of backwards technophobes rich, and they're using it to destroy us.

Sothe british should have just taken what they wanted huh?

Tell you what give me the contact info for all your relitves and when one of them dies I'll show up and take whatever I want since your not deserving of the stuff other people own simply for being lucky enough to be born into that familly

Tell me brian if you were to discover adiomand bearing lava tube in your backyardwould you be cool if De Beers moved in and took them without compansting you?

> will not change the fact
> that bush lied us into war
> with Iraq,

This is not true. It's not "fact", it's an egotistical prayer.

Most people had enough of a hard-on for invasion without the chatter about WMDs... I certainly did.

And of course, everyone in the western world believed that Saddam had them. He never bothered to deny it, and never satisfactorily answered the UN resolutions demanding that he account for the ones he'd purchased (that other UN member states had presumably sold to him). We can't find them now. The fact that they weren't waiting for us in carefully-shelved storage doesn't mean they weren't a threat. I'd like to know where they are. Wouldn't you? Before you go screaming that "He never had any!", be prepared to explain why the United Nations was so certain that he did.

I still haven't met anyone who claims that in 2003, they were personally afraid of Saddam's WMD. So why is it so important for the Bush Lied!® people to say that WMD's were the decisive Powerpoint slide in selling the war? (I don't think it's just because they hate this war that much, though no one doubts that many righteous people hate the war.)

I think it's because they don't want to acknowledge that most Americans supported the invasion for their own reasons. It's easier to pretend they were deceived. It's condescending as hell to look at the electorate that way, but that's how my Democratic Party works. That condescension cost them the White House in 2004.

As of this evening, it looks like the Democrats have a new Rock Star on their hands. By definition, such people can be elected with convincing eplications of principle... . Though I may well vote for Obama myself.

But when future generations ask why Bush's incompetence and fiscal malfeasance was permitted to continue for a second term, we should send them to DuWayne for an explanation.

Crid -

Oddly enough, I actually think the voting masses are rather stupid - I don't even begin to limit that to republicans or people who primarily vote republican either. I also have absolutely no interest in seeing the democrats take office. Indeed, the only thing more frightening to me, than the democrats taking both the lege and the executive, is the republicans ever doing it again.

The two party gridlock on American electoral politics is horrifying enough and a sure sign of the stupidity of the electorate. But undivided rule is a sign of complete and utter divorce from reality, a mass insanity.

And if they wish to come to me for an explanation, I would be happy to give it;

The masses are fucking ignorant. Unfortunately, they are also encouraged to vote.

I should also note that for many years I didn't vote. Honestly, I wasn't really paying a lot of attention - the biggest blow on my radar, was when Clinton was pushing his patriot act light, anti-terror ideas. That was about the only specific political issue to make it into my music, the rest being general anti-corporatism. On that, the dems and repubs are on equally vile ground, all of them being wholly owned subsidiaries of big business.

Not paying any attention to which dickheads were running and why exactly I shouldn't vote for them, I just abstained. Voting for Ralph Nader in 2000, marked the first time I ever voted in a presidential election - I came to regret it. Not because I would have voted for Gore, I wouldn't have in a million years. I just later discovered he sucks balls when it comes to certain individual liberties that I believe very strongly in.

I honestly tried my damndest to vote for Kerry, I tried to justify it. I went into the bloody booth, knowing there wasn't a single option that I would actually want to see as president. I walked out without voting for anyone past the county level. For the first time in my life, I was abstaining from voting out of lack of ignorance, rather than because of it.

I wish that more people who are as ignorant as I used to be, in regards to candidates, would do as I did, abstain. For that matter, I wish every single person who votes major party "because I want my vote to count" would either refrain or actually make their vote count, by voting for someone they could support, someone they would actually like to see a president.

Oh, and I could care less about the WMDs. I think that a lot of people thought that was weak tea. It was the attempt to link Saddam to the terrorists who attacked our country. A valient enough effort, that there are still plenty of morons out there who still believe it - in spite of the very folks spinning the bullshit admitting that it was bullshit.

The second Iraq war was the only other specific political issue that ended up in my music.

Disco? Brian, how dare you blame disco? There's hope for the future. I have taught my grandson to appreciate KC and the Sunshine Band. His favorite is "Shake Your Booty". He thinks it's funny as hell so I think he's got it in perspective. He and I are both getting a kick out of the fact that there is now a baby in a diaper commercial discoing to KC and the Sunshine Band too. He's been shaking his bootie since he was her age. Personally, I blame those lying liars that proclaimed disco dead. It lives on. They just renamed it dance.

Oh, and impeach Bush.

For what, again?

"I mean, seriously - what part of 'Congress shall make no law' do they not understand?

This has been going on for decades. Look up Public Law 103-141, "The Religious Freedom Restoration Act", and see who signed it. It allowed the AG sole discretion to determine whether a religious group was a "cult", whether it was "a burden" to government, and disband it by force! And it was declared un-Constitutional, not because of its obvious evil, but because it was an un-funded mandate!

> I was abstaining from
> voting

An honorable response to a difficult choice. I went for Bush, and will be ridiculed and cursed by American generations yet unborn.

Even so...

Don't get into the habit of mocking the Little People, OK? They're hosting this party.