Why does it seem like every non-theist is a Kerry voter?

[Faminedynasty]

Kerry would have weakened our military, that's just what liberals do (like Clinton). That's why republicans always win the military vote.

Bush has weakened our military by bogging them down in a useless war. As a result we are too weak to do something actually productive like capturing Bin Laden.

 

[Feathers in Hair]

Kerry would have weakened our military, that's just what liberals do (like Clinton). That's why republicans always win the military vote.

Not sure about that. Doing lovely things like cutting benefits for veterans is probably not going to endear the Rebublicans to the military. (That, plus the whole 'not enough armor on the tanks' thing.)

And Clinton was recognised for his anti-terrorism crusade, which was noted for being one of the strongest campaigns yet against such a thing. (I'll have to find the article.) Strangely enough, when someone else took office and cut those budgets, it became something to be blamed on Clinton. (I'm still not quite sure how that can be.)

Yes, I think Clinton was a sleazeball, but mock him for the many mockable things he did do.

 

[Quoth The Raven]

Kerry would have weakened our military, that's just what liberals do (like Clinton). That's why republicans always win the military vote.

Ya what?! That's just what Liberals do?! Pretty simplistic, don't ya think?

 

[Saw11_2000]

Well when the Cole was attacked how much did Clinton do? Now look at how much Bush has done. Of course Bush is an idiot. But he knows how to handle terrorism better than Clinton could.

 

[jewscout]

Kerry would have weakened our military, that's just what liberals do (like Clinton). That's why republicans always win the military vote.

and yet our boys and girls are over there w/o the equipment they need and slapping tin metal to the sides of their vehicles to protect themselves...we need the government funds to fight this war and yet W. cuts taxes...he's gotta be one of the most liberal spenders we've had in the white house in 50 years....
not to mention the 100 billion dollar price tag that the war has created....
after they told us in 2003 it would cost around 1billion.

as far as the military vote goes...i wouldn't be too sure about that...got a cousin who was in Iraq in the 101st, an uncle who served in Desert Storm and my best friend works for the DOD...that wasn't what i was hearing from them

on a personal note....i couldn't stand either of these 2 slime balls....and man if it's an Awnald Vs. Hillary battle in '08:sarcastic ::shudders at the thought::
CAN'T WE DO BETTER??!!!??

 

[Feathers in Hair]

Saw, I admire your stance, but I think a better way of handling terrorism is to prevent it from actually happening.

Article from Juan Cole found here

Juan Cole: Why Clinton Did a Better Counter-Terrorism Job Than Bush



Juan Cole, on his blog (March 28, 2004):

The pundits and politicians who keep saying that Clinton's anti-terrorism policies and Bush's are the same are missing a key piece of the puzzle. The policy outline was the same, but the implementation was very different.

Hint: The key piece of evidence is the Millennium Plot. This was an al-Qaeda operation timed for late December 1999. Forestalling this plot was the biggest counter-terrorism success the US has ever had against al-Qaeda.

the plot involved several key elements:

*Los Angelese International Airport would be blown up.

*(Possibly: The Needle in Seattle would be blown up).

* The Radisson Hotel in Amman Jordan, a favorite of American and Israeli tourists, would be blown up. A lot of the tourism for the millennium was Christian evangelicals wanting to be in the holy land.

* Bombs would go off at Mt. Nebo, a tourist site in Jordan associated with Moses.

* The USS The Sullivans would be targeted by a dinghy bomb off Yemen.

The story of how the LAX bombing was stopped on December 14 has been told in an important series in the Seattle Times. Extra security measures were implemented by US customs agents, leading to the apprehension of an Algerian, Ahmed Ressam, with a trunk full of nitroglycerin, heading for LAX (he wanted to start his journey by ferry from Port Angeles, Washington).

Ressam grew up fishing in the Mediterranean and going to discos. But like many Algerians, he was radicalized in 1991. The government had allowed the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), an Islamist party, to contest elections. FIS unexpectedly won, however. The military feared that they would never allow another election, and would declare an Islamic state. They cancelled elections. FIS went into opposition, and the most radical members formed the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), which got money from Usama Bin Laden, then in the Sudan. Ressam seems to have been GIA.

Ressam fought in Bosnia in the early 1990s. Then he settled in France and became part of the terrorist Groupe Roubaix, which carried out attacks in that city (pop. 98,000, near Lille in the north). In spring of 1998 he flew to Afghanistan and was trained in two camps under the direction of Palestinian-Saudi Abu Zubaida. Abu Zubaida recruited Ressam into an Algerian al-Qaeda cell headed from London by Abu Doha al-Mukhalif. Ressam was assigned to form a forward cell in Montreal, from which he and several other Algerians plotted the attack on LAX.

What Clarke's book reveals is that the way Ressam was shaken out at Port Angeles by customs agent Diana Dean was not an accident. Rather, Clinton had made Clarke a cabinet member. He was given the authority to call other key cabinet members and security officials to "battle stations," involving heightened alerts in their bureaucracies and daily meetings. Clarke did this with Clinton's approval in December of 1999 because of increased chatter and because the Jordanians caught a break when they cracked Raed al-Hijazi's cell in Amman.

Early in 2001, in contrast, Bush demoted Clarke from being a cabinet member, and much reduced his authority. Clarke wanted the high Bush officials or "principals" to meet on terrorism regularly. He couldn't get them to do it. Rice knew what al-Qaeda was, but she, like other administration officials, was disconcerted by Clarke's focus on it as an independent actor. The Bush group-think holds that asymmetrical organizations are not a threat in themselves, that the threat comes from the states that allegedly harbor them. That funny look she gave Clarke wasn't unfamiliarity, it was puzzlement that someone so high in the system should be so wrongly focused.

In summer of 2001 the chatter was much greater and more ominous than in fall of 1999. Clarke wanted to go to battle stations and have daily meetings with the "principals" (i.e. Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Powell, Tenet). He wanted to repeat the procedures that had foiled the Millennium Plot. He could not convince anyone to let him do that.

Note that an "institution" is defined in sociology as a regular way of getting certain collective work done. Clarke is saying that Clinton had institutionalized a set of governmental routines for dealing with heightened threats from terrorists. He is not saying that Clinton bequeathed a "big think" plan to Bush on terrorism. He is saying that he bequeathed the Bush administration a repertoire of effective actions by high officials.

He thinks going to such a heightened level of alert and concerted effort in 2001 might have shaken loose much earlier the information that the CIA knew that Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi were in the US. As it is, the INS wasn't informed of this advent and did not start looking for them until Aug. 21, 2001, by which time it was too late. Since they made their plane reservations for September 11 under their own names, names known to the USG, a heightened level of alert might have allowed the FBI to spot them.

So it just is not true that Bush was doing exactly the same thing on terrorism that Clinton was. He didn't have a cabinet-level counter-terrorism czar; he didn't have the routine of principals' meetings on terrorism; he didn't authorize Clarke to go to 'battle stations' and heightened security alert in summer of 2001 the way Clinton had done in December, 1999.

The key to understanding Clarke's argument is to understand how exactly the Millennium Plot was foiled.

Meanwhile, the Bush slime machine has thrown up the charge that Clarke admitted that there was an al-Qaeda-Saddam connection in Sudan in the early 1990s. This is such a non-story that it is incredible to me that anyone even bothers with it.

Clarke is straightforward that he suspected an Iraq-Bin Laden link in the very early 1990s in Khartoum. He also admits that Saddam tried to have Bush senior assassinated in Kuwait in 1993. What he told Wolfowitz in spring of 2001 was that there hadn't been any Iraqi terrorism against the US in ten years. Note that he does not say "there never had been." I am personally skeptical that even the early 1990s Khartoum-Baghdad links are based on good intelligence. But Clarke is entirely consistent if you read him knowing the whole story of al-Qaeda in the 1990s. His critics still don't get it.

 

[Saw11_2000]

Well, I would just rather to be fighting on their land then ours. I do have some doubts about the war in Iraq however, something like Iran or North Korea might have been better, because they have or are developing nuclear weapons. I also understand that attacking them makes them hate us even more, which might come back to bite us in the #*#. But, I do have to say, we need to do something to stop them. I totally understand you and everyone else view on Bush, however. We just think differently on ways to protect the US.

 

[Fat Old Sun]

And Clinton was recognised for his anti-terrorism crusade, which was noted for being one of the strongest campaigns yet against such a thing. (I'll have to find the article.) Strangely enough, when someone else took office and cut those budgets, it became something to be blamed on Clinton. (I'm still not quite sure how that can be.)

Yes, I think Clinton was a sleazeball, but mock him for the many mockable things he did do.

Clinton's response to terrorism was to tuck tail and run. Was there any retaliation for the USS Cole? How about Mogadishu? The first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center was pawned off as a police matter. Why spend federal dollars on that when it could be given to North Korea to fund their nuclear research project? :sarcastic Bin Laden was offered to Clinton and he said "No". They begged us to take him. I guess there could have been something more important to do that day, like forging Vince Foster's suicide note or covering up the fact that Ron Brown, who died in a plane crash just before he was about to spill his guts, had a bullet hole in his head.

With a heavy heart, I voted for Bush. I could not bring myself to vote for a man who keeps saying he has a plan, but doesn't want to tell me exactly what it is until after he is elected. I also could not vote for a man who makes his military service a focal point of his campaign when he lied to get enough commendations to be sent home early so someone else could take his place. I took more damage playing high school football than John Kerry did "earning" those Purple Hearts. My grandfathers earned theirs. My uncle earned his. My friends Jeff and Jay earned theirs. When Memorial Day comes around, ask the first old man you see in a wheel chair who gave his legs to earn that Purple Heart pinned to his chest how he feels about John Kerry receiving three of them and an early ticket home without once having to miss even a day of duty because of his injuries. He'll be able to tell you why I didn't vote for John Kerry.

 

[Saw11_2000]

^Yeah!!! Finally someone kinda sorta agrees with me!

 

[Jaymes]

With a heavy heart, I voted for Bush. I could not bring myself to vote for a man who keeps saying he has a plan, but doesn't want to tell me exactly what it is until after he is elected.

Kerry and Edwards sure managed to write a rather long book on nothing.

 

[Scott1]

I took more damage playing high school football than John Kerry did "earning" those Purple Hearts. My grandfathers earned theirs. My uncle earned his. My friends Jeff and Jay earned theirs.

And I earned mine...... I don't like John Kerry for other reasons, but I don't think anyone who was not there and especially those who never have been wounded in battle should not comment on it. An officer in the Armed Forces must write a written statement under penalty of purjory and the medal is signed by a member of Congress (usually)..... to consider their judgment spurious is kinda spitting in the face of all wounded veterans.

 

[Saw11_2000]

We know what Bush is going to do, he's already worked as president for 4 years. The only reason he didn't write a book because he is illiterate.

 

[Fat Old Sun]

Kerry and Edwards sure managed to write a rather long book on nothing.

There was no way I was going to lay down money for that book when I was going to need it for my tax hike if those putz's were actually elected.

The whole thing is suspect anyway. Do you really believe a man who made millions of dollars as a malpractice attorney when he says he is going to manage skyrocketing health care costs? :biglaugh::bonk:

 

[Saw11_2000]

Don't forget the Ketchup lady.

 

[Jaymes]

The whole thing is suspect anyway. Do you really believe a man who made millions of dollars as a malpractice attorney when he says he is going to manage skyrocketing health care costs? :biglaugh::bonk:

I'd trust him sooner than a man that's crashed every company he's run into the ground.

 

[Fat Old Sun]

I'd trust him sooner than a man that's crashed every company he's run into the ground.

That is a tough decision. Do we go with the man who tried to run a business and failed, or the man who tried to line his pockets while ruining doctor's careers and bakrupting their families over congenital conditions they had no control over, and succeeded?

 

[Saw11_2000]

I also think that Kerry is very undecided. He at first endorsed the Patriot act, and is now agaisnt it. He doesn't want to provide extra armor for soldiers in Iraq, and at first supported the war, now he doesn't. He seems to sway with whatever is "popular" so he appears "popular". Thanks for debating though Jensa I do appreciate all the input to my topic.

 

[Jaymes]

That is a tough decision. Do we go with the man who tried to run a business and failed, or the man who tried to line his pockets while ruining doctor's careers and bakrupting their families over congenital conditions they had no control over, and succeeded?

To me, it's a question of which would ruin the country quicker.

 

[Fat Old Sun]

To me, it's a question of which would ruin the country quicker.

Unless I decide to run and straighten everything out, it will probably be a coin toss every four years.

 

[Jaymes]

I also think that Kerry is very undecided. He at first endorsed the Patriot act, and is now agaisnt it. He doesn't want to provide extra armor for soldiers in Iraq, and at first supported the war, now he doesn't. He seems to sway with whatever is "popular" so he appears "popular". Thanks for debating though Jensa I do appreciate all the input to my topic.

From what I understand, he supported the PATRIOT Act until it was abused, the (bill? Would that be the correct term?) had useless things added on to it, and he supported the war when he thought there were WMDs, as we were lead to believe.

It's not a matter of popular, but of new things coming to light.