Political Probabilities

[Joshua May]

Originally Posted by Adam Y.

Of course everyone knows that he is going to cheat and look at George Bushes test.

And everyone knows that George will copy off of Karl and Richard's tests.

But seriously, where did you take that 16.67% from? And such things as this cannot be made so simple. And who says John will guess, John most definitely knows the mistakes that George has made and will thus perform better than George. So lets say that George got 25% on this test. John will then get at least 25% because he knows the mistakes that George made.

[Jake177]

Originally Posted by Jack Jones

Now suppose that John also took the test and answered not just one, or a few, but every question differently than did George.

Disclaimer:
*****I AM NOT TRYING TO TURN THIS INTO A POLITICAL DEBATE, I AM SIMPLY STATING MY OWN OPINION. I WOULD LIKE TO APOLOGIZE IN ADVANCE TO ANYONE WHO FINDS IT OFFENSIVE.*****


Would that include going into Iraq in the first place? If it did, then I personally would give Kerry 100% on the test and an A for the rest of the term.

[Elgin Clock]

Originally Posted by Jake177

Disclaimer:
*****I AM NOT TRYING TO TURN THIS INTO A POLITICAL DEBATE, I AM SIMPLY STATING MY OWN OPINION. I WOULD LIKE TO APOLOGIZE IN ADVANCE TO ANYONE WHO FINDS IT OFFENSIVE.*****

Ya know.. It's kinda sad that you even had to put a disclaimer on your post like that..

What a shame..

People need to chill...

[Jack Jones]

But seriously, where did you take that 16.67% from?

George got 50%, which means that John had a 1/3 chance at each of the rest.
1/3 * ½ = 1/6 = 16.67%
Of course you realize the test was rigged for sake of argument – to make a point.

And such things as this cannot be made so simple.

Exactly my point, Josh. It is not a simple as raising one finger and claiming to make everything well by doing almost everything differently!
(Note: The index finger move should not be confused with the clasping of hands, nor the snappy salute, nor the folding of arms across chest, which are meant to convey piety, bravado, and compassion. Oh, the crossing of arms is Teresa’s move – never mind that one.)

Would that include going into Iraq in the first place?

That’s a heck of a good question, Jake! One that each of us must decide for ourselves. Take a few minutes to read why Bush and I think it was not only necessary and inevitable, but good.

Would that include going into Iraq in the first place?

Such a good question that I had to quote it twice You tell me what Kerry might have done, because he certainly hasn’t.

People need to chill...

Excellent advice, Elgin! And chill I will, but not before I caution again that the problem is way to complex to be explained away with a slogan or waved away with ones index finger.

[Bill Gold]

Can someone please explain what this hypothetical test is? What were the supposed questions/tasks?

Originally Posted by Jack Jones

Such a good question that I had to quote it twice You tell me what Kerry might have done, because he certainly hasn’t.

In my (not so) humble opinion, the question of what Kerry might have done differently with regard to invading Iraq is pointless. We’re there for better or worse (I believe worse), and we need to pick the candidate we think can best resolve the situation and get us the hell out of there while leaving a sovereign and secure nation in our wake. International (read: French, German, Russian, and other thus far alienated nations) troops and money are needed to accomplish this. The only way we’ll get those troops and cash is by apologizing to those countries for our unlawful, haphazardly run, intelligence deficient, unilateral war and our overall arrogant and completely self-serving foreign policy. President Bush has proved himself to remain steadfastly wrong and unapologetic, despite mounting costs (over $225 billion), American casualties (1,040+ in Iraq alone), and civilian casualties (over 15,000 in Iraq alone), when it comes to our foreign policy. There’s no chance for us to succeed unless we deviate from our current Iraq/foreign policy positions, but Bush doesn’t want another reason to be called a flip-flopper, right?

Horray for ~4:15am posts!

[Jake177]

Originally Posted by Jack Jones

That’s a heck of a good question, Jake! One that each of us must decide for ourselves. Take a few minutes to read why Bush and I think it was not only necessary and inevitable, but good.

My only problem with this article is that it makes an assumption that I don't agree with, and that is this: just because we have survived for 213 years on one system of government (note: I'm counting from the ratification of the Constitution, not the Declaration of Independence) that must be the best system, and it is our job to spread it around the world so that everyone can be free. The last time that I checked, forcing people to accept democracy isn't giving them freedom, letting them decide what kind of government they want based on their own history and beliefs is.

[Adam Y.]

My only problem with this article is that it makes an assumption that I don't agree with, and that is this: just because we have survived for 213 years on one system of government (note: I'm counting from the ratification of the Constitution, not the Declaration of Independence) that must be the best system, and it is our job to spread it around the world so that everyone can be free. The last time that I checked, forcing people to accept democracy isn't giving them freedom, letting them decide what kind of government they want based on their own history and beliefs is.

We did that with Iraq about ten years ago. We told them to go rebel and pick their own leader. It didn't work at all. Also, historically I know the emperor of Japan still exisisted after World War II because of what you are saying.

In my (not so) humble opinion, the question of what Kerry might have done differently with regard to invading Iraq is pointless. We’re there for better or worse (I believe worse), and we need to pick the candidate we think can best resolve the situation and get us the hell out of there while leaving a sovereign and secure nation in our wake. International (read: French, German, Russian, and other thus far alienated nations) troops and money are needed to accomplish this.

I don't think France and Germany are ever going to help us no matter what president is in place. Im not sure about Russia though. They might change their minds.

[Bill Gold]

Originally Posted by Adam Y.

I don't think France and Germany are ever going to help us no matter what president is in place. Im not sure about Russia though. They might change their minds.

Now who has the pessimistic outlook for the future?

France and Germany were upset that we didn’t let weapons inspectors do their job, and that we unilaterally decided to invade a sovereign nation and overthrow its government. If they see that the American public now rejects that kind of action by removing that leader and his advisors, then, if we put forth an honest effort to include them (France/Germany/etc.) on decision making and peacekeeping control, they would have no reason not to aid us. An apology and a humble foreign policy (with regard to our allies) are needed, and George Bush has proven himself incapable of both. Why would anyone want to help us if we, as American citizens speaking in our once every 2 years voice, continue to support a President and a Congress that has continually insulted and belittled powerful foreign nations who have the ability to assist us. The only chance we have to recruit foreign ground troops and monetary support is to change our own leadership so that it is less toxic to our international relations.

[Jack Jones]

...mounting costs (over $225 billion), American casualties (1,040+ in Iraq alone)...

Horray for ~4:15am posts!

So much for chill…

Don’t ya just love statistics. We can spin them any way we want. Let’s compare the State of California with Iraq. The two are about the same area. Iraq has 5/7 the population of California.

Although many of the American deaths in Iraq were accidental, or an act of war, let’s label all 1,040+ murders. The murder rate in California is 6.8/100,000, which means that, in the same time period, there were 3,610. Adjusting for population we see that an American was about 2.5 times more likely to be murdered in California than in Iraq.

If it’s not the human cost, then it must be the $225 billion that should dissuade us? Well, according to extrapolated census statistics, federal funds and grants expended in California during the same period have exceeded $300 trillion – that’s over a thousand times the amount spent on the liberation of Iraq!

Maybe we should get the hell out of California and leave a sovereign and secure nation in our wake.

Ok (removing tongue from cheek) this is not about numbers, nor our buddies the French; and it’s for damned sure not about Vietnam. This is about the fact that we were attacked and will be again. How many times and how vicious they are will depend on how long we allow tyrants the freedom to oppress the third world. More precisely, on how long we allow it to remain a third world.

The reason Bush is unapologetic is that the coalition of the unwilling do not deserve one. It is they who aid and comfort the enemies of freedom; it is they who want profit from absentee colonialism; it is from them that the third world should demand an apology. If, instead of bringing down every last rogue state and offering the chance for prosperity, we revert to chasing boogiemen into hiding, with the occasional capture and subsequent release when the unwilling buckle again to the boogiemen’s clones, then the third world will continue to export its pain.

[Swan217]

Originally Posted by Jack Jones

Adjusting for population we see that an American was about 2.5 times more likely to be murdered in California than in Iraq.

Your statistics are inaccurate due to the fact that you forgot to add (12927+) Iraqi casualties. Recalculated, 4-5 times as likely to die in Iraq

Originally Posted by Jack Jones

$300 trillion – that’s over a thousand times the amount spent on the liberation of Iraq!
Maybe we should get the hell out of California and leave a sovereign and secure nation in our wake.

The citizens of California disagreed with the money handlings in the government. They petitioned for a recall election, got it, and elected somebody else. Following your logic, maybe we should follow their lead and ditch our national leader. I hear California is doing much better now.

Originally Posted by Jack Jones

This is about the fact that we were attacked and will be again.

You sound so sure. I thought Democrats were the pessimistic ones?

Originally Posted by Jack Jones

More precisely, on how long we allow it to remain a third world.

It seems that if we spent 1% of what we did on invading Iraq on increasing standard of living in, say, Pakistan, then they'd have 2.25 billion ($) less reasons to support terrorism. Happy educated people are less likely to become terrorists than disgruntled oppressed poor ones.

[Bill Gold]

Originally Posted by Jack Jones

So much for chill…

Don’t ya just love statistics. We can spin them any way we want. Let’s compare the State of California with Iraq. The two are about the same area. Iraq has 5/7 the population of California.

Although many of the American deaths in Iraq were accidental, or an act of war, let’s label all 1,040+ murders. The murder rate in California is 6.8/100,000, which means that, in the same time period, there were 3,610. Adjusting for population we see that an American was about 2.5 times more likely to be murdered in California than in Iraq.

If it’s not the human cost, then it must be the $225 billion that should dissuade us? Well, according to extrapolated census statistics, federal funds and grants expended in California during the same period have exceeded $300 trillion – that’s over a thousand times the amount spent on the liberation of Iraq!

Maybe we should get the hell out of California and leave a sovereign and secure nation in our wake.

Ok (removing tongue from cheek) this is not about numbers, nor our buddies the French; and it’s for damned sure not about Vietnam. This is about the fact that we were attacked and will be again. How many times and how vicious they are will depend on how long we allow tyrants the freedom to oppress the third world. More precisely, on how long we allow it to remain a third world.

The reason Bush is unapologetic is that the coalition of the unwilling do not deserve one. It is they who aid and comfort the enemies of freedom; it is they who want profit from absentee colonialism; it is from them that the third world should demand an apology. If, instead of bringing down every last rogue state and offering the chance for prosperity, we revert to chasing boogiemen into hiding, with the occasional capture and subsequent release when the unwilling buckle again to the boogiemen’s clones, then the third world will continue to export it’s pain.

With specific regard to your "So much for chill…" comment... By disagreeing with and challenged your statements I don’t mean to either insult or attack you as a person. I respect you as a person, Jack, just like I have respectfully disagreed with other good people (Andy Baker, Paul Copioli, etc.) on many political issues, some pertaining to Iraq.

I believe that the logic behind your comparison between Iraq and the state of California (both the American “murder rate” and the federal money put towards each) is fundamentally flawed, and I question the numbers you’ve cited, as well. We can discuss this in our future posts if you wish.

I didn’t bring up Vietnam as a country or the Vietnam War in particular (but I’ll say that the trumped up false information that was used as a justification for invading Iraq, the weapons of mass destruction and the blatantly false tie to 9-11 that Dick Cheney and others continue to chirp about to this day, was used exactly like the false Gulf of Tonkin situation to justify heavy American involvement in the Vietnam War).

I believe that this is certainly as much about the French/Germans/Russians/etc. as it is about the rest of the world. I believe you and I both agree that if there’s anything we should have learned from foreign terrorist attacks on American soil it’s that we, as a world superpower, cannot continue to have a selfish, ignorant foreign policy that has tunnel vision without running an increased risk of being attacked by foreign terrorists again, although, this doesn’t help much when it comes to domestic terrorism. Terrorism is a plague upon the entire world, not just individually a Russian, Israeli, American, or Iraqi issue.

I agree with you, and there’s no doubt in my mind, that there will be another major act of terrorism on American soil. I agree that a major problem for nations of all governments is an uneducated, starving, bigoted, and otherwise uncared for “third world” (even within our own country and other “advanced nations”). We happen to have a difference in opinion on how to raise the aggregate standard of living for the world as a whole.

You appear to believe that we should forcefully overthrow all tyrannical governments, and somehow replace them with another, less repressive, form of government. After doing so, we would either pray that they educate themselves and become a tolerant and peaceful country, or we’d have to spend untold billions of dollars per country building up their economy and education systems.

<tangent>
All of this, of course, after passing more tax cuts for all Americans (or at the very least the ones already making enough money so that they wouldn’t be spending this additional amount, just putting it in a safe for their great-grandchildren to use) since we want our government to spend all of this money while not wanting to give up any of our own personal earnings. Why else would we pass another tax cut while fighting a war in Iraq, peacekeeping in Kabul, and trying to fight “the war on terror” while already running up the largest deficit in the history of the world (estimated to be between $425 and $500 billion this year)? Why the hell is it that we ask our soldiers to sacrifice their lives for the prospect of stabilizing Iraq and supposedly making our country safer, yet we the American taxpayer are so greedy that we cannot sacrifice the necessary portions of our individual incomes (adjusted so that those who can afford to pay more than others do so) to pay for this war without forcing our country into the largest deficit in our history?
</tangent>

Please feel free to correct me; I’m just extrapolating this from your position on the overthrowing of Iraq (and throwing in some more tax cuts for good measure). Since there are more than 20 such governments on the planet (that’s a very conservative estimate on my part), many of which are backed by the USA, this isn’t a reasonable course of action. We do not have the military power nor would we have the international support needed to engage that large a front without bringing back conscription (and I’m sure as hell not in favor of being drafted to fight that fight).

Can we agree that at this point in time it would behoove us, and the rest of the world, if we focused on one country at a time? We need to fix Iraq, we’re already militarily spread too thin between Iraq and Afghanistan, and it’s the fault of our current administration that that is the case. It is their fault, and no one has yet been held accountable for it. There have been no public firings of intelligence officials (Tenent publicly retired to “spend more time with his family”), no firings of defense department staff for the lack of postwar planning and the prisoner abuse scandals, and no firings of other white house advisors who were involved in this decision making process. No one, other than a handful of the American soldiers who were in those prison pictures, has been held accountable for the blunders and scandals that have plagued this military campaign. Relating a Nixon-era quote to the present, Bush was either responsible or irresponsible when it comes to both the handling of the prewar justification and the management of the war and this is yet another reason to hold this group, starting with the president, accountable on November 2nd by not voting for them. If conservative America really cares about the children of our country, then how on earth could they support a candidate who doesn’t accept responsibility and hold his staff/appointees accountable for their actions or inaction? It is not a healthy life lesson for our children to see that people, who do not accept responsibility for their actions, whether they were benevolent or malevolent in intent, do not need to be held accountable for their actions.

Are you saying that the third world should demand an apology from France/Germany/etc. and not demand one from England and us, as well, just because we overthrew Iraq? It is plainly clear that President Bush doesn’t agree with you that every dictatorship or otherwise tyrannical government must be overthrown and replaced. President Bush has neither gone so far as to apologize for the USA having backed brutal totalitarian states in the past nor has the USA ceased to back brutal totalitarian regimes in the present. The only comments that have been made about the world being better off without Saddam Hussein in power have been lame attempts by the current administration to retroactively change their justification for the invasion of Iraq. If freeing the Iraqi people was the only reason for invading Iraq, then, like you believe, there should be countless other countries on the way to “liberation” by American troops, but freeing the Iraqi people from a brutal dictator wasn’t even mentioned as a reason to invade Iraq before action was taken. If the American people were pitched this idea of just “liberating” all of those countries, starting with the many of them not posing any threat to us, there wouldn’t be enough support to warrant any action at all, not even a leaflet drop. As an example, you cannot possibly believe that the USA is going to overthrow the “rogue” North Korean government in an attempt to follow the “Bush Doctrine.” This venture would be much too costly (both in human lives and in cash) for any president with aspirations to either be re-elected or have his/her party hold onto the presidency after his/her term ends. While it would be nice in a perfect world to rid the world of all tyrannical governments and replace them with fair governments and an educated and not poverty stricken population, this isn’t going to happen.

The USA and UK are just as guilty of profiting from this “absentee colonialism,” as you call it, as the next superpower. The USA has raped and pillaged, and continues to rape and pillage poor, undeveloped, and tyrannical countries. This is not a unique characteristic of those powerful countries that opposed our invasion of Iraq. It is a trait common in materialistic humanity. In order for there to be rich people, there will inevitably be poor people. Until you can convince superpower governments, credit card companies, banks, real estate developers, educational institutions, insurance companies, oil/power companies, and other industries that it is in all of our best interest to not think about profit so much as it is to encourage economic growth, education, industrialization, social tolerance (religion, political criticism, and other social issues) and worker safety in the “third world” there will be no chance at sufficiently raising the standard of living to the point where the world becomes a safer more peaceful place.

[Jack Jones]

Bill,

First of all, as indicated by the tongue in cheek, there was no logic intended in the California/Iraq comparison, other than to show how talk of body counts and dollars spent come nowhere near proving anything.

It appears we agree that the heart of the problem goes to man’s inhumanity to man. We agree that the U.S. and Britain are as guilty as any. We agree that terrorism is a plague that has thrived on our complicity with evil dooers. I hope we can agree that we're better off not sending the message; “We’re sorry, please kill us!” We would not do that intentionally, of course, but I’m not so sure that backing down now would be interpreted as anything else. I am sure that replacing our President would be interpreted as backing down now.

I have the feeling that we even agree that our choices in November basically s--k. While I’m of the camp that believes that if you want to make an omelet, then you have to break some eggs, I also believe that you don’t have to make too big a mess of the kitchen to do that. That means I believe that the right way to deal with Soddamn Insane was to cut him off at the knees and to raise a prosperous Iraq from his ashes. I know we’re real good at doing the former. What we have left is to pull off the latter, which at this point in time I’ll admit is not looking good. On the other hand, your guys trotted out a dog that just won’t hunt. (Historic examples omitted.) There was one from the Democratic National Kennel that I could have gotten behind, but that wing of the party gave way to the sloganeers. So, I’ll cast my vote to stay the course.

Please excuse the all the clichés, but when the shoe fits…

[ngreen]

Originally Posted by Jack Jones

This is about the fact that we were attacked and will be again.

Yes it is.
We will get attacked again by Osama bin Laden. Whatever happened to him. I wish this administration would have some accountability and not let the man responsible for the 9-11 off the hook.

As a democrat I am worried about our national security and think the administration has done the nation a disservice by abandoning the search for Osama and taking on the unilateral war in Iraq.

As much as I don't like Michael Moore, I would suggest seeing his movie just to get a little perspective on who we should be fighting. I don't like the propoganda behind his films but he does a good job a pointing out some things conservatives like to forget. Like that we let Osama escape.

I don't like the original intent of this thread. Don't try to spin some statistical property to try to show one canidate is over the other.

I can't wait until the debates start and the election might start to focus around issues that are important to everyone here. Mostly security and foreign affairs(how to resolve iraq, how to restore relations (ie getting back in security council, treating the UN with more respect among other things)), social issues ( education is important to me, so is the enviroment(part of the reason going into chemical engineering), social sercurity, healthcare, social services (Straight out I am pro choice even though I believe in the right of a unborn child. This is because I honestly believe making it illegal would have worse consequence because the procedure would occur illegally. I see social services and education as the best solution to this problem.)), and the third seems to be the budget (we can't ignore it. I want a fiscally responisble administration. I understand deficit in cases of national emergency aka war. But I don't like new talk of more tax cuts plus another trillion dollars of program funding.).

Hopefully in the next four years we will begin to find some solutions for these problems. Honestly we've all had our four years of Bush and he hasn't even really done anything to impress me in things that matter to me or my future. So unless he announces some logical plan (no Reganomics) to solve some of these issues, my vote is headed elsewhere. Because I want a change my only logical choice is Kerry. He hasn't impressed me anymore to be honest. But America needs fresh blood. And I love America so I'll vote for what America needs.

[Greg Ross]

Originally Posted by ngreen

[i] think the administration has done the nation a disservice by abandoning the search for Osama and taking on the unilateral war in Iraq.

I wasn't under the impression that we had abandoned the search. I think the news media have simply stopped covering it. Some day an intelligence breakthrough will be made, and then the media will pick up the story again -- when there is some juicy stuff to report.

Michael Moore... does a good job a pointing out some things conservatives like to forget. Like that we let Osama escape.

I haven't seen MM's film, and I probably won't. (I certainly won't spend money to see it.) But I am interested in hearing what specific things we did (or did not do) that allowed OBL to escape. (And no fair using 20/20 hindsight. )

I don't like the original intent of this thread. Don't try to spin some statistical property to try to show one canidate is over the other.

Be careful when you start impugning other's intent. I believe Jack has stated his intent somewhere in this thread, and it wasn't to "spin" statistics to show that "one canidate is over the other".

(Straight out I am pro choice even though I believe in the right of a unborn child....)

Woah! Does that make sense? What right does an unborn child have if a woman has the unbridled right to kill her (unborn) baby at any time? (I know you gave reasons for your position. I just think you need to be more careful with your language.)

Because I want a change my only logical choice is Kerry.

I think this was the point of Jack's original post: that just electing someone who promises to "do just about everything differently" won't guarantee that things will get better.

[Bill Gold]

Originally Posted by Jack Jones

First of all, as indicated by the tongue in cheek, there was no logic intended in the California/Iraq comparison, other than to show how talk of body counts and dollars spent come nowhere near proving anything.

Costs and body counts may not prove anything by themselves, but they cannot be brushed aside, either. Extreme American casualties and being forced to throw that huge amount of money at this war without yet bringing peace, or any semblance of peace to a country we, without provocation or cause based on fact related to the national security of our country (weapons of mass destruction), attacked should be very jolting to our citizens. These are sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, uncles, aunts, friends, neighbors, and coworkers. They are all unique people with unique and precious lives. The pitch that President Bush gave to our country and the world was that Iraq was a threat to the security of the world because they were developing and stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. If every human life is precious, it seems clear that every unnecessary death is a tragedy. These American deaths in Iraq have all been unnecessary because Iraq was no national security threat to America before our invasion. There have been 1,040+ unnecessary tragedies as a result of one of the policy blunders made by the Bush Administration.

I’d also like to add that I'm 99% sure that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been the only wars in American history during which taxes have been cut (and quite drastically), which adds significantly to our annual deficit and national debt. This burdensome debt will now be passed down to people like me, and those younger than me. I thought it was supposed to be a conservative trait not to spend money you don’t have, and to maintain fiscal responsibility. Maybe that was just the compassionate conservative from the 2000 debates against Al Gore who has been left by the wayside to gather dust for four years before magically reappearing on the 2004 campaign trail, although not as emphasized as in 2000.

Originally Posted by Jack Jones

It appears we agree that the heart of the problem goes to man’s inhumanity to man. We agree that the U.S. and Britain are as guilty as any. We agree that terrorism is a plague that has thrived on our complicity with evil dooers. I hope we can agree that we're better off not sending the message; “We’re sorry, please kill us!” We would not do that intentionally, of course, but I’m not so sure that backing down now would be interpreted as anything else. I am sure that replacing our President would be interpreted as backing down now.

I’m not sure what to think about your statement “We agree that terrorism is a plague that has thrived on our complicity with evil dooers.” I don’t think terrorism has flourished throughout the world as a result of our complicity with tyrannical regimes (at least I think that was the intent of the sentence and context, and I apologize if it wasn’t). There have been many different high profile terrorist groups in history, and a reasonable number of them have originated from free and peaceful countries. The Ku Klux Klan is an example of a homegrown terrorist group. Apparently, as a country, we’ve never really taken to heart the continual terrorism around the world until it punches us in the face.

“Bring ‘em [the terrorists] on.”
-President Bush

Intentionally or not, that pretty much said “…please kill us!” I agree with you that we shouldn’t have sent that message.

As much as I opposed this conflict back in 2002 (Should we bomb/strike Iraq?. I wasn’t as courteous as I should have been back then. We’re all learning all the time.), and still strongly feel it was the wrong war at the wrong time for our country, I believe we cannot abandon ship and leave the country the way things are right now. Kerry hasn’t been running for president saying that he would pull the troops out, no matter how bad things are in Iraq, by a certain date, and that position shouldn’t be thrust upon him by Bush or his supporters. Electing Kerry wouldn’t be backing down; it would be the same as changing CEOs during a long period of stagnation after a business decision didn’t pan out as well as projected. This administration has done all it could over the past ~18 months without significant traction (rampant terrorism, talks that the January Iraqi election will only take place in half of the country or be cancelled altogether, and the addition of no allied nation providing 5,000+ troops for stabilization other than Britain), and it’s time for another administration to take over. International support couldn’t get noticeably worse. That is, until Tony Blair looses his next election and his successor brings home their troops à la Spain (with or without terrorist involvement).

Originally Posted by Jack Jones

I have the feeling that we even agree that our choices in November basically s--k. While I’m of the camp that believes that if you want to make an omelet, then you have to break some eggs, I also believe that you don’t have to make too big a mess of the kitchen to do that. That means I believe that the right way to deal with Soddamn Insane was to cut him off at the knees and to raise a prosperous Iraq from his ashes. I know we’re real good at doing the former. What we have left is to pull off the latter, which at this point in time I’ll admit is not looking good. On the other hand, your guys trotted out a dog that just won’t hunt. (Historic examples omitted.) There was one from the Democratic National Kennel that I could have gotten behind, but that wing of the party gave way to the sloganeers. So, I’ll cast my vote to stay the course.

You’re correct that I’m not a diehard Kerry supporter; then again I don’t have to be since my state is going to be in his corner barring a coma. I didn’t support him in the primaries, and I voted for another candidate. I liked two other democratic candidates more than Kerry in the primaries, but I thought that four or five of my party’s candidates, Kerry included, were head and shoulders better than President Bush. It’s the advisors and administration that makes the president, and I feel that now is a time where Clinton’s former advisors and Kerry’s potential administration are better suited to run this country than Bush’s advisors and administration who mostly happen to be former Reagan’s and George H. W. Bush’s former advisors and administration. The candidates always change, but the advisors, staff, and administration officials stay the same.

On a slight tangent, I’m interested in which democratic candidate you would have supported and why.

Originally Posted by gwross

I wasn't under the impression that we had abandoned the search. I think the news media have simply stopped covering it. Some day an intelligence breakthrough will be made, and then the media will pick up the story again -- when there is some juicy stuff to report.

...

I haven't seen MM's film, and I probably won't. (I certainly won't spend money to see it.) But I am interested in hearing what specific things we did (or did not do) that allowed OBL to escape. (And no fair using 20/20 hindsight. )

One of the interesting facts in Fahrenheit 9/11 was that the USA has used ten times the number of troops to invade Iraq (150,000, although the current number there is closer to 138,000) than we used routing Afghanistan (15,000). Let’s compare troop saturation in each of these countries. The following sizes and populations are thanks to my trusty copy of The Statesman’s Yearbook (everyone should own the latest copy).

Afghanistan
20.5 million people (1999)
1 USA soldier per 1,366.67 people
652,090 square kilometers
1 USA soldier per 43.5 square kilometer

Iraq
22.25 million people (1999)
1 USA soldier per 148.33 people
438,317 square kilometers
1 USA soldier per 2.92 square kilometer

Statistically speaking, we would have had a much better chance of finding Osama bin Laden in Iraq than in Afghanistan. It’s just too bad that the commanding Generals, Secretary Rumsfeld, other administration advisors, and finally President Bush didn’t focus the troop strength we used to find Saddam Hussein (who definitively had no role in the September 11, 2001 attacks) in Iraq on finding Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.

What ever happened to the Governor and President George W. Bush who when questioned why he supported school vouchers in the 2000 election, and yet again three years and two days ago said that he “[thought it was wrong to continue pouring money into a failed system (public schools)]?” The choices made by this administration and its surrogates have mixed their priorities up and attacked Iraq, while failing to keep their promise to get Osama bin Laden “dead or alive.” For once I agree with President Bush, we should stop supporting this failed policy and this arguably failed presidency.

Another great part of Fahrenheit 9/11 was when the recruiters were shown trying to get kids to enlist in the armed forces. Moore raised the point that a large amount of volunteer soldiers, especially in the National Guard, are there because that’s the only way they could go to college or earn money. Many of them come from poor families in poor parts of the country, and the only chance they have to get out is to enlist and give years of their lives to defend us and our country. When joining the armed forces, they trust us to only put them in harm’s way when it’s absolutely necessary, and not before. You can go where you want from there, since you already know where I would be going with it.

Originally Posted by gwross

I think this was the point of Jack's original post: that just electing someone who promises to "do just about everything differently" won't guarantee that things will get better.

I think we all agree that just doing everything differently without thinking about the repercussions will not necessarily make the situation improve. Every time I’ve heard that sound byte of Kerry saying “I would have done everything differently” he was referring to Bush’s actions leading up to and entering the war, which doesn’t preclude him from using some of Bush’s postwar policies without breaking his word. This really doesn’t matter, though.

So far, so civil. Go us!