To: michael97123 who wrote (150619) | 11/2/2004 4:12:21 PM | From: Nadine Carroll | | | Bush isn't dopey, just inarticulate. He basically sees his press conferences as a forum where the press tries to get a "gotcha" quote out of him, and his job is to stay on message and refuse to give them the gotcha. This doesn't make for good press relations or good quotes.
Worse still, Bush has the chutzpah to think that the MSM are not representatives of the American people, and that the thinking of the elite universities and think tanks doesn't produce ideas he should have reverence for, either. In response the MSM and the elite universities think, nay, they KNOW, that Bush must be an idiot. QED. |
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To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (150641) | 11/2/2004 4:14:36 PM | From: Michael Watkins | | | I completely disagree. Iraq is far from wrapped up, unfortunately
Agreed.
Kerry, who intends, I believe, to lose the war in Iraq by bailing as soon as he can, will do wonders for terrorist recruiting by providing them with the best recruiter of all: a winning cause.
An apparent win might play in the short term, but I think the Bush/Cheney war itself has done more to aid recruitment of new terrorists than any other actions the Bush administration has taken.
If you accept for a moment that 5,000 - 15,000 civilians have been killed, that's probably 15,000 - 75,000 families touched, with some 100,000 to 2,000,000 persons (extended families) affected.
That's a pretty big "funnel" (using sales-speak here) from which to recruit new terrorists, most of whom will have at least some anger towards the US regardless of how they felt about Saddam. Even if only one quarter to one half of these people feel real anger or hate, its more than enough. |
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To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (150649) | 11/2/2004 4:15:15 PM | From: michael97123 | | | i said dopey--bush isnt dumb by any stretch.
Bush scored higher in his military iq test. He was in top 5% and kerry in top 10%. When kerry was asked about this kerry said he must have been out drinking the night before--now thats chutzpah. What bush should have said the next day is that at the time he could have drunk kerry under the table and still fly an F116. Of course we know what happened with Kerrys dui on the swiftboat. (g) |
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To: michael97123 who wrote (150648) | 11/2/2004 4:17:02 PM | From: Dr. Id | | | Nixon gets credit for China, and for much of his social policies. His foreign policy was a disaster (cost the lives of many Americans and millions of Vietnamese and Cambodians) and his sociopathy and paranoia brought him down. Human? Yes. But Clinton's "indiscretion" shouldn't even be spoken about in the same sentence.
Clinton didn't do anything that many other Presidents (and men in congress) have done. He was just stupid about it, and subject to a rabid Republican party that was out to get him. |
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To: michael97123 who wrote (150645) | 11/2/2004 4:31:22 PM | From: GST | | | I am not sure -- but then who is as good as they used to be? Look how much "news" there is today, and yet look at how poorly informed Americans are -- it is bewildering. |
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To: Michael Watkins who wrote (150651) | 11/2/2004 4:34:10 PM | From: Nadine Carroll | | | That's a pretty big "funnel" (using sales-speak here) from which to recruit new terrorists, most of whom will have at least some anger towards the US regardless of how they felt about Saddam. Even if only one quarter to one half of these people feel real anger or hate, its more than enough.
Enough for what? Enough to lay bombs in the marketplace to kill 20 Iraqis in the hope of killing one American? or enough to commit suicide in a frontal assault on the US Marines?
Arabs aren't robots with one result for any input. Consequences also matter. It is very hard, I admit, to deal with a people who seem to be running mainly on wounded pride and humiliation. For example, do you have the least idea how many French civilians the Allies killed in 1944? Yet for some reason, the anger was not funnelled towards the Allies in that case. |
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