Comment Re:Why I don't like Bush (Score 1) 3201
You're right, I put words in your mouth, I thought I might have been when I typed it, but I thought that maybe you did think that about everything his administration says... I should have taken more time to word it better.
"Oh dear. I thought I'd heard everything. I suggest you take a step back, read what you wrote, and think about it."
I wasn't defending the actions of the prison keepers. I was just saying, that one would be a lot worse than the other.
In reference to your theoretical story. I believe that it was estimated that 6-10% of the people were wrongly imprisoned. Yes, that is a horrible number. I believe the military is doing the best they can. I believe it's a difficult job to do, I don't exactly what it's like over there, so I'm not going to condemn the military for that, but it is difficult to defend too.
"But what you _don't_ do is go and put a whole bunch of laws and procedures in place that have less to do with terrorism than generally expanding powers. You don't use terrorism as an excuse to pass laws the country doesn't need, and you also don't exaggerate the threat of terrorism in order to convince people that such laws are necessary."
I don't know what all the laws and rules were that were in the patriot act, I don't know how much it helped police agencies actually capture bad guys - I know it didn't affect me in anyway, except psychologically. I would have to find some numbers to see if it did, in fact, help catch bad guys. Generally I am against expanding government in any way, but I do believe that there are too many laws protecting criminals, instead of the citizens, but it is a difficult thing to do because until a criminal is a criminal he's a citizen - so how do you separate them out?
"Terrorism by its very nature is as much about instilling fear as it is inflicting damage, and since 9/11 the Bush administration seems to have done a lot to keep the level of fear raised unnecessarily"
Now you should back the boat up a bit here. When 9/11 happened the Bush administration, and all the intelligence officials in the U.S. were crucified for letting it happen. The news kept saying "why didn't you know?" "why didn't you warn us?" "how did this happen?" And now some intelligence is shared with the general public, and they get crucified for spreading fear. We can't have it both ways. And even if the administration had warned against the 9/11 terror attack, would anyone have believed them - here's a possible scenario - the administration warns of the attack, but they don't have an exact date, so are the twin towers really going to shut down for days or weeks until the threat is over? No, I don't think so, for several reasons: 1. They aren't going to let terrorists run their lives. 2. Yeah, right, like people would actually crash planes into the twin towers - that would never happen. 3. Costs too much money to shut down that many bussiness for that long (I'm just saying in terms of a non-cautious business owner). So while the twin towers are thumbing their noses at the terrorists, airport security pays more attention and catches the creeps before they crash into the twin towers. Then the attack never happens, and the administration get's blamed for spreading fear needlessly for an attack that never happened, and you can't prove was going to happen because they don't have any proof (because Osama doesn't use memo's or faxes), all they have is "some discussions that 'might have' happened", that were intercepted by U.S. intelligence, and some circumstantial evidence that some Muslims were taking flight lessons. Plus, if per chance the twin towers did shut down for a while, you would have a bunch of business' angry at the U.S. government for scaring them into shutting down for a couple days, and they lost millions of dollars, and nobody appreciates what the U.S. government did because nobody knows what didn't happen because it was prevented and never happened. I believe that is the nature of the war we are engaged in now - it is preventative - and simply by the nature of the way terrorists communicate (not passing memo's and faxes etc.) it is a very difficult thing to prove.
In reference to everything else - I'll admit, you've shut me up for a little bit, at least until I find some documentation to support my beliefs or refute yours, if there is any. But it's going to have to wait a bit, I have to move this week, and I'm taking 17 credits, and my wife should be having our third child any day now, so it's going to be probably at least a week before I can do some reading on this. Thanks so much for the engaging conversation - it's made me dig deeper. But in the mean time the main choice, we have before us, is: who's better, Kerry, or Bush - the question is - which one is less evil. Kerry hasn't had as much of a chance to be bad because he's 'only' been a senator, so all we have to go on, is his record so far. We have to try and predict the future, and guess which one of these two guys is going to do more good and less bad. Righ now, I still think Bush will do less bad than Kerry. The main reasons I have now, are 1. Kerry and Edwards voted against $87 billion that our troops needed to continue the war (only 12 out of 100 voted against that) - he wanted to leave our troops high and dry. That was after we were already in Iraq, at that point, arguing the correctness of going into Iraq was a little moot, what was important, was fixing what we broke, make the country better, survive and leave. 2. Before Kerry started the campaign he was the 'anti-war' president, then he was for the war, now it's the wrong war at the wrong time, but somehow he thinks he's going to gain more international support than the 130+ (I'm not positive on that number - it's just from memory right now) countries that already support us, and convince them to send their troops to this wrong war, at the wrong time. 3. It seems he tries to pretend he's an average working man, for the working class, and his wife seems to think there's still a lot of oppressed women in this country still, and she's one of them - they have $200 million in the bank - and they paid less money in taxes last year than President Bush, and they have about 10x as much money in investments and property. 4. He wants to raise taxes. 5. He wants government controlled health-care... the government isn't quick or competent enough to handle this, neither do they have the resources, without raising the taxes a lot. The U.S. has the best health care in the world, and it's because it's motivated by money - it's sad but true - but money is a very good motivator - a much better motivator than taxes. If they want to solve the health-care crisis (out of control prices) they need to start by ending frivolous lawsuits, and exorbitant non-economic damage awards.
In summary I think Kerry is a vaselater who goes where ever the polls take him, and he doesn't really stand for anything himself. I want somebody better to choose from, really I do, but right now, I don't think it's Kerry.
