Today's Political Arguement Thread : "Bush Defends Taking U.S. to War in Iraq"

nothing. quite frankly i find it depressing.

Gottschalk et al (1988) published article Presidential candidates and cognitive
Impairment Measured from Behavior in Campaign Debates. In the study they used
transcripts from the 1980's presidential debates with Reagan -Mondale
and Reagan - Carter they were rated on cognitive impairment in the
candidates verbal responses to questions posed during the debate (Gottschalk,
1988). To cut to the chase Gottschalk et al (1988) rated President Reagan as
having a cognitive impairment that in hindsight may have been a red flag to his
Alzheimer's disease. While Gottschalk (1988) qualifies, the research
by stating that despite the fact that the cognitive impairment measure
used in the study is highly sensitive marker of nonspecific compromise of
higher functions of the central nervous system. It does not provide sufficient
evidence to conclude that the candidate's ability to make decisions and
policies as a public official would be questionable by a biological
brain processing malfunction (Gottschalk, 1988).

Gottschalk's (1988) study was not a study of candidates. Level of Cognitive development. The issues of stages of cognitive development and impairment do create some questions
for the international relations and the discerning voting public.

These questions of competency of political candidates are not new to
American politics. Yet we are not demonstrating the proactive policy
development as Argentina's legislature.

Argentina has introduced legislation that all political candidates should under go psychiatric testing to ensure their competency to make decisions and govern
("Mental State.," 2002). I wonder who in our government will sponsor that law.
Should freedom also entail freedom to elect someone who is not
cognitively competent?

References

Gottschalk, L., Uliana, R., Gilbert, R.,. (1988). Presidential
Candidates
and Cognitive Imparement measured from Behavior in Campaign Debates.
Public
Administration Review, 48(2), 613.

Seriously? They're inherently anti-democratic and have to justify their vast cost to the taxpayer by making up bullshit that fits in with their employer's pre-formed ideas about foreign affairs.

I listened to this speech, two sentences later he tried to imply iraqi involvement in the WTC attack.

Stuart, Intelligence services around the world and UNMOVIC were far from convinced that Iraq had WMDs on any major scale, but the fact that they were unsure was massaged (with lots of extra 'evidence' from the oh so reputable intelligence services of countries like Romania (incidentally the 45 minute claim that was based on Romania evidece was accepted by the UK government, but rejected by the CIA but after it was incorporated into the british dossier it made its way in to the US governmental lexicon on this subject)). The intelligence services seemed, more or less to tell it as they saw it and then the US and UK governments seized on what scant morsels there were that supported their position.

This has actually always been a particular problem with me -- he and others seem to veer between pretty clear statements that there was no connection and veiled hints that there was. You can't have it both ways when it comes to that attack in specific.

Your liberal wimps and weenies have been whining for months that the Bush administration was so busy scaring the country into war with Iraq that it failed to plan for what to do after the war. That's baloney, veteran journalist James Fallows writes in a detailed 17-page Atlantic Monthly article titled "Blind Into Baghdad."

Actually, Fallows shows, many government agencies -- the Army, the CIA, and the State Department among others -- did lots of planning for postwar Iraq. But the Bush administration ignored their planning, fired planners who disagreed with it and, in several instances, barred Pentagon officials from attending meetings with planners suspected of harboring thoughts not approved by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

And guess what? The planners turned out to be right -- and the Bushies wrong -- about key issues such as how many troops were needed for the occupation, what dangers those troops would face and how much the whole bloody mess would cost.

[...]

• In 2002, Congress appropriated $5 million to fund the "Future of Iraq" project, headed by State Department veteran Thomas Warrick and designed to plan for the aftermath of war. Gathering Iraq experts and Iraqi exiles into 17 working groups, the project issued 13 reports, each addressing a potential postwar problem. But when former general Jay Garner was named to run postwar Iraq, Rumsfeld told him not to bother reading the project's recommendations and ordered him to fire Warrick...

again, how much information do people need to know before things begin to change?

Here's a dilemma for you.... This test only has one question, but it's a
very important one. Please don't answer it without giving it some
serious thought. By giving an honest answer you will be able to test
where you stand morally. The test features an unlikely, completely
fictional situation, where you will have to make a decision one way or
the other.

Remember that your answer needs to be honest, yet spontaneous.

Please scroll down slowly and consider each line - this is important for
the test to work accurately.

You're in Florida...In Miami, to be exact... There is great chaos going
on around you, caused by a hurricane and severe floods. There are huge
masses of water all over you. You are a photographer and you are In the
middle of this great disaster. The situation is nearly hopeless.

You're trying to shoot very impressive photos. There are houses and
people floating around you, disappearing into the water.

Nature is showing all its destructive power and is ripping everything
away with it.

Suddenly you see a man in the water, he is fighting for his life, Trying
not to be taken away by the masses of water and mud. You move closer.

Somehow the man looks familiar. Suddenly you know who it is - it's
George W. Bush! At the same time you notice that the raging waters are
about to take him away, forever. You have two options. You can save him
or you can take the best photo of your life.

So you can save the life of George W. Bush, or you can shoot a Pulitzer
prize winning photo, a unique photo displaying the death of one of the
world's most powerful men.

And here's the question (please give an honest answer):

Would you select colour film, or rather go with the simplicity of
Classic black and white?

then i'd save the guy anyway, since his aerospace contacts could finally get me a job building spacecraft.

Well, I think the electorate -- or, let's say, a majority of the electorate -- more or less knows that. The question is whether that will make them both a.) vote and b.) vote against Bush. I mean, I think a good percentage of Americans have a general sense that this whole Iraq thing was kind of dubious proposition to start with and has been executed badly; they also have a general sense that, whatever the Dow Jones says, the economy is in shaky shape and the future is cloudy. But on the other hand, they ... WE, I should say (should stop talking about the electorate in the third person)... don't have a really clear sense of what to do about any of those things. It's hard to debate the difficult moral issues of the Iraq invasion unless you have a pretty good grounding in international history and politics, and some study of philosophical systems helps too, and even then it's hard to come to conclusions without a lot of footnotes and conditionals and "yes, buts." So I think a lot of people are settling for the comparatively easier position of, Saddam was bad, he's gone, let's get out of there as quickly as possible without making things worse. Bring in the U.N., bring in whoever. And then the economy is even more complicated, and nobody's really talking about it honestly, Democrats or Republicans (the Democratic candidates are pretending NAFTA is the big problem, as if Mexico weren't losing jobs to China too). So, again, easier to watch the stock market go up and hope that in some way that translates into somehow things getting better.

I think a lot of Americans are pretty nervous right now, about a lot of things. "Sept. 11" gets used as a catch-all, but it's a lot more complicated than that. And one problem the Democrats have is that anyone who was going to be honest about both domestic and international issues would have to start by explaining that there are some serious challenges looming and no easy answers to anything, and who wants to hear that? If Bush gets re-elected (and just by virtue of his incumbency, his odds are better than even), it won't necessarily be because people think things are OK; it could as much be because he offers simple answers to things that people sense are spinning out of control. The Bush platform is all about reassuring people that, in essence, they don't have to worry about anything; just keep buying big houses and big cars and running up big credit card bills, and somehow it will all work out -- look, the stock market's going up!

I'm not saying any of that is healthy. But I don't think it's incomprehensible either. It reminds me a little of the Bloom County strips where they go to rescue Bill the Cat from a cult, and when Opus asks one of the cult members what the attraction is, she says something like, "Well, we all get up every morning and work in the fields and blow kisses at the swami's gold Cadillac when he drives by." And Opus gets this dreamy look on his face and says, "Hey, that does sound good."

Anyway, I'm trying to restrain my own expressions of contempt for my countrymen who are going to try to re-elect George W. I'm not sure that intramural contempt is doing anyone a lot of good.

also, Bush Declines to Back Call for Intel Probe

By TERENCE HUNT, AP White House Correspondent
WASHINGTON - President Bush (news - web sites) said Friday "I want to know the facts" about any intelligence failures concerning Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s alleged cache of forbidden weapons but he declined to endorse calls for an independent investigation.

The issue of an independent commission has blossomed into an election-year problem for the president, with Democrats and Republicans alike supporting the idea. Former chief weapons inspector David Kay has concluded that Iraq (news - web sites) did not possess weapons of mass destruction, which Bush had cited as a rationale for going to war against Iraq....

which is a less clearly-written story than this Reuters version

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush (news - web sites) on Friday sidestepped demands for outside review of pre-war intelligence on Iraq (news - web sites), but said it was important to know all the facts surrounding White House assertions Iraq's illicit weapons justified the U.S. decision to invade.

"I want to American people to know that I, too, want to know the facts," Bush told reporters at the White House.

Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record) has broken party ranks to join Democratic demands for an independent probe into how U.S. intelligence got it wrong given the failure by searchers to find weapons of mass destruction Bush insisted were in Iraq.

The president, seeking re-election this year, gave no sign he planned to yield to the demands. He stuck to a position that the U.S. government will compare in an internal CIA (news - web sites) probe the pre-war intelligence with what the weapons hunters have found....

If they said it was an imminent threat, and it wasn't, then either:
a) they were profoundly wrong and incompetent or
b) they were lying to us the whole way

OR...

If they NEVER SAID it was imminent then:

c) they knowingly prosecuted an illegal war.

Is there a "d)" that I'm missing here that exonerates them? It's like they've constructed an argument that they CAN NOT win, and in so doing have hypmotized us with their jedi mind tricks.

And now, they've decided that after all, they're gonna mess with the CIA? If ex-CIA Ray McGovern is accurate, it sounds like CIA is pissed as hell. I'm fascinated, how can Bushco win this scenario?? I've felt for the past year that Bushco is one serious defection away from total scandal, but nothing ever really happens!

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=676&e=13&u=/usatoday/kerryleadingbushinnewpoll

I thought it was July, with the weather and all.

Christians: the new niggers!

Well, the chickens are coming home to roost now, we got evangelicals out the ying-yang!!

Unfortunately, I like both sides of this exchange.

x-post

and

Reagan's Bind

http://www.slovakspectator.sk/clanok-891.html

"IN HIS OWN DEFENSE: CIA CHIEF PREPARES SPEECH"