i think it was fear of john kerry and his wako ideas. give iran the nuclear fuel they need to see if their claims were ligit on having it for peaceful means... what a nutjob.

Bigsole, I don't know how closely you read the news, but this wacko nutjob idea from John Kerry is now US policy under George W. Bush.

I'm not kidding. Look it up. It happened recently.

The idea behing the wacko, nutjob idea, that George W Bush now supports is to call Iran's bluff. If they want safe fuel for a peaceful nuclear progra, we supply it, and recycle out the used fuel that could be made into weapons. The condition is that Iran has to become more transparent about their nuclear program.

and where are we after this so called 'drastic mistake of a war' ? Sandwiching the punks with our forces in Afghanistan. I think they were the real terror threat all along, the goal of the administration.

So you're saying the whole point of the Iraq war was to get better prepared to fight Iran? If that's true, then it proves my argument that the campaign to invade Iraq was decptive. In fact, if we invaded a country and turned it upside down, that would actually prove Michael Moore's that Bush is a horrible war criminal. (That is if Moore ever made that claim. I have no idea if he did, but just like you use Moore as the source of all anti-Bush criticism, I'll use him as the boogey man the right wants to when don't actually want to address the arguement. Personally, I think Moore helped Bush get elected in 2000. The Green party that he supported got tens of thousands of votes in Florida.) Why not invade Turkey next? Or Armenia or Azerbaijan?

If Iran the point all along, it only proves my arguement that Bush is incompetent. The Iraq war has strengthened Iran. The are the big winner in the region. We got rid of their main enemy and the folks who won the election are mostly supported by Iran. The goverment of Iran is going to run by Shiite religious parties. We certainly have the power to lay waste to any country in the area, but we do not seem to have the ability to get it back up to a functioning state again. This actuals decreases our security. If we can't get Iraq safe after three years, you think we are going to better in Iran? Iraq's economy was in ruins after 12 years of Sanctions, it's military was far reduced from 1991. Iran has three times as many people as Iraq, there economy is doing fine. Going into Iran probably means oil at $100 a barrel. That does more damage to the American economy and world economy than 9/11.

As a matter of fact Iran and Syria were both helping us against Al Qaeda after 9/11. It's because Al Qaeda is a common enemy for the three countries. Iran detested the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Iran being the largest Shiite country in the world and the Taliban and Al Qaeda being radical Sunnis who say Shiites are infidels. Iran also supported the enemies of the Taliban because they did not want Afghanistan falling under the sway of Pakistan. Syria is mostly Sunni, but their government is Baathist and secular. Syria also found its own battle against Islamist terrorists in the '80's when they bombed the Syria Brotherhood into non-existence. The Syria Brotherhood was the local chapter of the Muslim Brotherood (in several countries this is a terrorist organization, in several it is not these days.) Half of Al Qaeda is made of the Egyptian Brothehood. This is the heritage of Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al Qaeda's number two man.

Afghanistan was totally justified and the world supported us there. Iraq was not justified, it wasted our support and it has turned into "the greatest strategic mistake in US history."

Who called it that? It wasn't Michael Moore. It Ronald Reagan's National Security Advisor, Lt. General William Odom. He hasn't turned to the left since Reagan, he works at the conservative Hudson Institute these days. So do me a personal favor, and don't give me that Michael Moore BS.


EDIT: Sorry about the full bold, I closed my tags but left out the backslash...was running out the door to see a play, and didn't see how it looked until just now. The play was very good and I almost shared an elevator with Ben Stiller.

I said there was a question I thought worth asking.

The simplistic “they are evil and we are good” stuff belongs, if anywhere, to kids comics, not to reality. What happened on 9/11 was one of worst imaginable actions, but it didn't come out of nowhere. If our world creates events like this, our world needs changing.

Fundamentalism – the refusal to update one’s ideas, whether Muslim, Christian or otherwise, is the cause of so much conflict. It needs dissolving.

Well said Peter, and just for the record, Islam isn't thousands of year old!
And here's a little side note:
This drama isn't just happening as a West versus 'them' thing.
A few years ago I travelled in western China, what used to be East Turkistan but annexed by China in the '60s. The locals want their identity back but Beijing sure is no hurry because under the desert lies huge oil deposits. Needless to say it's foreign oil companies pulling the stuff out of the ground, one of the world greatest engineering feats was building a road across the shifting sands of the desert so it could be got at.
Now the local ethinc minorities are Moslem but a pretty moderate bunch at heart, they live in one the oldest culteral cross roads in the world, Islam and Buddhism crossed those deserts leaving a trail of artifacts still being investigated. But recently the locals have upped the ante, not because of any initial fundamentalism but because of the way they've been treated. One of guides for part of the trip was both a Moslem and the local party rep, that means travelling to Beijing to attend the party meetings in the Great Hall of the People. But guess what, they can't get a room in a hotel in Beijing, the Han Chinese in Beijing see them as animals and they don't want animals staying in their hotel!
Now this person was anything but anti US, in fact their life had been much helped by the generosity of an American tourist who got them medical assistance from the US and US citizens continue to support local aid programs for the ethnic minorities.
Worst of all, their local non oil economy relied very heavily on tourism and 9/11 had done a good job of killing that off, we pretty much had hotels to ourselves so Bin Laden was sure on the nose over there.
Why did I go there, why would I have continued on into Pakistan if I could have?
Because in my own small way that's how I decided to fight the lunatics, they want us to stay at home, they want these people robbed of their tourist dollars because when they're poor and starving they'll turn to the only thing left, fundamentalism.
Bob.

hey, honestly, sorry if i came off hard. nothin' against ya. just what you said.

why is it that these knuckleheads murder our american blood, and we have rethink our position. how can you justify murder? MURDER!!! is that what we've become in this country? we back down ot the demands of a minority of murderers?

i'm a fundamentalist now. so far, i'm a insensitive american, a communist, and fascist, and now a fundamentalist. that's great guys, keep it coming. not once did i label any of you to be of any 'isms', and already you've insulted my how many ways, boo hoo hoo. bring it on bad boys. bring it on.

So you're saying the whole point of the Iraq war was to get better prepared to fight Iran?

maybe, but what do i know, i'm not a war strategist, are you? i just threw that out there to see your response. entertaining tho.

'nomore of that michael moore BS'...
sheesh. sorry. didn't know i'd pop a fuse. OKAY, i won't call you a michael moore drone again... ever. how about a George Soros?... hehe, kiddn.

Lighten up man, it's just our country at stake. sheesh.

farss... if you gotta go there, then go there brutha. obviously you just alienated me and labeled me something bad. hey, thanks for all the help you've given me with my situations. i really appreciate it, i use the knowledge you passed on to me to this very day. i wish you the BEST in your endeavors.

G'day mate. Aussie, Aussie, Aussie!!!

Sheesh! I haven't clicked this thread since the first post, wondered why there were 126 responses...now I know.

My $.02: Go Google; the current American government is scary; us average American citizens are still good people; oil is going to go to $100 a barrel before anyone goes into Iran; one and/or many countries will go into Iran, say within three to six months; America will have the Democrats in charge in two years due to Republican ineptitude/corruption; my bills will be a lot higher in two years.

I noticed on a map of Vegas users that there were a few in Iceland. Need anymore help for a couple of years?

The world is a scary place right now. Too bad we can't make it the Utopia we all desire.

I'd rather have a president getting bj's in the oval office than someone that has "grand designs" on the world.

Thirty Four years ago President Richard Nixon and his administration were unsuccessfully engaged in a war in Vietnam that they had made a campaign promise to end. They were engaged in an unsuccessful attempt at limiting the media's access to information. The Washington Post and The New York Times published a leaked Defense Dept chronology of the war that clearly showed the incompetence of that administration.
The NIxon Administration took them to federal court independently citing the usual national security blather and charged them with treason. They were successful in stopping the publication of the so-called "Pentagon Papers". That was until the Supreme Court sided with the First Amendment by a 6-3 vote. That the government got even THAT far was a first.Two days before the vote the guy who had leaked the information (Daniel Ellsberg) was indicted for espionage, theft of government property, and conspiracy amongst other things. Special White House Council Charles Colson pressed the CIA as to whether they could nail him. That started a special investigative unit in the White House called the "Plumbers". Among other things they broke into Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office looking for things to smear him with. The paranoid White House also (as all of you know) committed other burglaries including the famous Democratic Party National Headquarters at Watergate, misuse of tax return information, and mail fraud, electronic eavesdropping, and obstruction of justice. That lead to the one and only resignation of a president in US history.
The whole thing had quite an effect one would imagine on those who worked for Nixon including Dick Cheney (our current vice president), George HW Bush (former president), and Donald Rumsfeld (our Secty of Defense). Cheney was a pioneer in the ploy to restrict coverage of war by the meida as exemplified in the conflicts in Genada, Panama, and the Persian Gulf in the 80's and early 90's.
Before September 11, 2001 the Bush administration was already at work obsessing over secrecy and agressive media control. When Bush left the governorship of Texas in 2000 he took his papers with him instead of turning them over to the Texas State library as is usually done. He tried to hide them in his father's presidential library but was caught by the short hairs by the state's attorney general in violation of Texas freedom of information laws.

In July of 2001 Dick Cheney refused to release information about meetings he and other administration officials had with energy companies on government property during business hours. A few years later the majority in Congress cowardly refused to exercise their Constitutional responsibility to the public by forcing it out of Cheney.

In August of 2001, the Justice Department subpoenaed John Solomon's home telephone records (he was a reporter for the AP). Solomon was quoted as saying "The Justice Department was trying to stop publication of a story that I was working on and wanted to know who I was talking to to cut off the flow of information".

In the weeks after September 11, the Bush administration was able to get The Patriot Act passed with No public debate and NO amendments which among other things gave the feds more power to access e-mail, phone records, and other personal information. Hundreds of people were detained without charges indefinitely and without being required to release information about them. Bush signed the Executive Order number 13233 which overrode the 1978 Presidential Records Act written after Watergate BECAUSE of Watergate WITHOUT ANY MEDIA ATTENTION. That reduced access to presidential records including his father's.
In Afghanistan journalists had restricted access to the field of war. Their information came from Pentagon briefings, screened videos, and controlled leaks. Three months after 9/11 reporters were locked in a warehouse in Afghanistan so they couldn't cover what was going on in Kandahar.
In the lead up to the war in Iraq reporters and news agencies relied upon official statements in their coverage. In effect they helped SELL THE WAR to the public by reporting this information as fact. The administration took full advantage of the paranoia and hysteria in the United States after 9/11. By February 2002 over 300 state, local, and federal officals restricted access to government records done by executive order or new laws under the guise of "national security". When the Homeland Security Act was introduced it contained a Protected Critical Infrastructure Information section which would have created a binding system of non-disclosure agreements which would have put a muzzle on millions of local and state officials and also private contractors doing work for the government..

This administration has successfully created (with the media's help) a black and white situation with respect to their so-called War on Terror. They have taken an event in 9/11 which by it's nature UNITED a relatively divided country and managed to DIVIDE it again because the division suits their agenda. They have successfully framed this nation's debates as a NECESSITY to choose between
liberty and security and left vs. right. When the Patriot Act II was proposed the Justice Department tried to stop websites from posting it's contents. It's contents not only infuriated Democrats, but also a lot of us in the Republican Party who were also kept in the dark for six months in terms of it's contents by the Attorney General's office.
The more the media caters to this administration's clamp-down on freedom of the press and access to public information the more they will spit on them. Hopefully they will wake up before it is too late.

John

Craftech,

The Pentagon Papers only deal with the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Nixon's first instinct was not to do anything, since he figured anything that embarassed the Kennedys was good for him. Then folks convinced him the public could lose faith in government once they found out how much they were lied to.
Also about the instinct for secrecy, one of first acts of Bush the Son's presidency was to create a way for Presidential Papers to remain secret forever.

The Bush White House has drafted an executive order that would usher in a new era of secrecy for presidential records and allow an incumbent president to withhold a former president's papers even if the former president wanted to make them public..

Now Bush took office in 2001, who was president 12 years earlier?....Hmm, let me see, he was from Connecticut, but moved to Texas, had a funny way of talking? If he only served one term, all his papers would be public by now......I'll think of it in a minute.

If you never read Ellsberg's memoir Secrets, it's a very interesting read. He went to Vietnam in 1965. He saw firsthand how much deception was going on. There would be maps of the territory we held in green and the territory the enemy held in red. He learned much of the territory we held, we didn't hold during the night. The South Vietnamese troops refused to sleep there because they would be overrun, they would go back to headquarters to sleep. Ellsberg hooked up with the only US official who still drove around Vietnam, retired Colonel Paul Vann (Bright and Shining Lie was written about him.) They went to one US outpost and were told they were the first Americans to get there by road in over a year. So by mid 1964 the place was unsafe to drive in, but reports of progress and success kept getting sent back, because the maps looked so green. When the US press reported accuratly on the conditions in Vietnam, they were attacked as hurting the cause and too negative

bigsole, my copious bolding was a mistake, if that's what you mean by pop a fuse. If you meant my copious length, well that was intentional. :)

I know that George Soros has become a right-wing boogieman recently. I know that Bill O'Reilly is really pissed off that their is a website monitoring his bullshit and provding the audio/video to prove he said it. But do you know anything about George Soros? You are aware of his decades long activity against apartheid, communism and totalitarianism? You are aware he has spent over a billion dollars of his own money backing this up right?

That he has promoted the philosopher Karl Popper's idea of an "open society." That he has help set up foundations in 29 countries to help achieve an open society, that has not just open commerce but

"a society based on the recognition that nobody has a monopoly on the truth, that different people have different views and interests, and that there is a need for institutions to protect the rights of all people to allow them to live together in peace. Broadly speaking, an open society is characterized by a reliance on the rule of law, the existence of a democratically elected government, a diverse and vigorous civil society, and respect for minorities and minority opinions."

So I have no problem with you calling me a George Soros acolyte, except that I would have do a lot more good that I do to deserve it.

Also George Soros has a warm an infectious laugh.

I used to work in a building where his foundations were set up. I rode the elevator with him a couple of times. At the time I didn't know much about his foundations but they had some interesting names for that floor in the elevator. I doubt I knew what an open society was. I knew he was rich, (I always wondered what would happend to the Stock Market if me and him got stuck an elevator for several hours.) but I had no idea of his politics. I happened to have been reading the Village Voice which had an article based on Christopher Hitchens's book, The Trial of Henry Kissinger which says that Henry Kissinger was a war criminal and he might be subject to arrest in Europe like Pinochet was. The front cover of the paper was a big picture of Kissinger with the headline Manhattan's Milosevic

We were alone in the elevator and I asked him have you read this? He was a little confused as to why I was talking to him, but then his face lit up and he said "No, I'll have to check that out."

hey. like i said, i was kiddn bot the george soros thingy. u want to take offense to it, that's your biz. your people that you hold high i don't feel the same for. that's my freedom. i hold high my country's leaders, whether you like them or not. who are you to say i'm worng? it's my opinion. u can argue til your fingers bleed from typin', but do you honestly think you'll cange my mind be calling me a fundamentalist, a fascist, a racist, a communist (or imply that i admire examples from hitler, russia or the like)?

you're startin' to soil my freedoms, like enjoying a nice thread here in the sony forums, without being labeled an extreme. not once did i question anyone's patriotism, yet some of you already consider me the worst american because of my beliefs.

in the words of the great A. Silverstone... "WhatEVER!".. okay, maybe she's not so great...

this sux. when people starts calling me things, then it loses it's appeal. i feel like bustin some caps, but i'm lazy so i just type the lower cases...hee hee.

have fun guys. see you on a more positive thread.

wow pmasters, that was deep.
you broke it down sentence by sentence.

i like it. i'm so busy in my world, that i never noticed some of these issues. glad you pointed them out.

not being sarcastic. thanks dude. don't appreciate the tone, or some parts, but the general info is well received.

> " calling me a fundamentalist, a fascist, a racist, a communist"
> "when people starts calling me things, then it loses it's appeal"
> "being labeled an extreme"

Bigsole - settle down and read back - these are labels YOU have put on yourself - unless I'm mistaken, which is always possible, I can't see where anyone has called you anything.

Peace brother. There - now I called you something ... brother.

nice spin on that 'brutha'.

crap! i thought i was done here....

bigsole, I'm the one you've directed the soros thingy to, and I haven't called you fundamentalist, a fascist, a racist, a communist nor did I imply you admired Hitler. I asked if you knew about Soros's work against them.

Do you hold high our country's leaders whoever they are, whatever they do? You admire this president as much as the last president? If that's the case, I will call you something, I think that you'd be pretty much unique if that was the case.

The Pentagon Papers only deal with the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Nixon's first instinct was not to do anything, since he figured anything that embarassed the Kennedys was good for him. Then folks convinced him the public could lose faith in government once they found out how much they were lied to.
=========
Actually Henry Kissinger (who was National Security Advisor at the time) convinced Nixon that the release of the papers would make the administration look weak. The papers also stirred growing antiwar sentiment which with the help of yesterday's media brought the war and it's claimed purposes under public scrutiny. Today's media does the opposite.

======
Also about the instinct for secrecy, one of first acts of Bush the Son's presidency was to create a way for Presidential Papers to remain secret forever.

The Bush White House has drafted an executive order that would usher in a new era of secrecy for presidential records and allow an incumbent president to withhold a former president's papers even if the former president wanted to make them public..
=========
I did mention that but it doesn't hurt to drive the point home with some of the unquestioning believers.

John

why thank you. appreciate that. i look at it this way. i don't have all the time in the world to find out all the corruption. seriously, at least in this point of my life. when things slow down, my kids get older, and i have a bit more free time on my hands, then yeah, i'd be where you are, researching, probing, and looking for facts. i am doing that, but not on the scale of where you are.

i believe in God. i pray for my leaders. if they screw up, sooner or later, the pros in this media game will uncover it. i'm no jounalist. seems like you're at that point in your life where you excell in that (and that's a compliment). i live my life according to what my bible teaches. like i said, i don't know every lil' detail of the bush man, i just see the results. doesn't mean i've seen all good, but at this point of my life, i approve.

i may be wrong, nothing new here, but it's my opinion. it's kinda tricky trying to get details in a liberal controled media. what i do get is usually on the 'right' side of things. but i'm not closed minded.

the racist, commy, and hitler stooge thing was how you and others refered to my beliefs to be similar with. no biggie. i must say that i do admire you're knowledge on what you've uncovered. it's inspiring. after all, only a fool rejects wisdom (proverbs).

about farss tho, how you've made me into this insensitive guy who doesn't care about world events, how i lack compassion or such for those who lost love ones in attacks in spain, egypt, britain.. etc. it's amazing how i prioritize my country, my freedoms, and i'm looked at as being selfish or uncompassionate about other countries suffering from terrorists. what about them knuckleheads who's doing the damage? why not vent off of them? why i gotta be the bad guy? they're the ones blowing people up. why not figure out measures to stop them? why does the blame have to fall on americans? the american government?

you lift these punks up as if they deserve a platform for their anger or frustration against the west. like they're poor deprived people who are being treated inhumanly by the west. let me ask you this, where do you suppose they get their expensive weapons from? (i can hear it now... "america"... lol) their weapons costs more than all of our systems put together. osama... heh, he's a billionaire, yet he's trotted around the press as if he were a poor humble insurgent or worse, a freedom fighter.

all in all busterkeaton, i appreciate you. don't think i've come away from all this without anything. i've leaned some things from you, and thats priceless.

crap, so much for being done here. oh well, i guess that's the power of the SONY FORUM, yeih YEIH!

their weapons costs more than all of our systems put together.

It's not clear who you are referring to, but the U.S. military budget is as big as that of the 26 runner-ups together.

osama... heh, he's a billionaire

There's been a number of believed competent estimates of his wealth, ranging from $50M to $250M, with the lower end of the range thought to be more likely.

Sometimes it has been difficult to extract what he control from what his very wealthy family controls. The other Bin Ladens are extremely wealthy, but it seems very likely that they are keeping their noses very very clean because of the association.

It seems we need a bogey man at all times, a monster under the bed, that can be used to justify anything. For a while it was "jews", then it was "communists", then it was "The Evil Empire" (the Soviet Union)", and now everything is "Al Qaeda".

It's so easy to think in black and white, but it leads to very suboptimal solutions. If our supreme leaders had taken a deep breath and thought about the big picture after 9/11, they could have come up with something actually effective for a fraction of the one to two billion dollars we are getting hit for.

If major parts of the muslim world (it's not 100%) for example have a problem with thinking like it's 2005 rather than 705 (the beginning of islam), then perhaps we could be brothers and find a way to help them that is not demeaning.

Even in Iran they love Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and many other things American. They don't hate America, they hate that they themselves don't seem to have so much to be proud of for the moment.

You could say that they are now in a similar position to where Europe was relative to Asia 1,000 years ago. Asia and the middle east were the centers of science and everything cultural.

Where do you think we got "Arabic numerals"?

They got them from Asia originally, probably from what is now India, where the positional decimal system was invented (compare that to the Roman notches carved in a piece of clay or wood).

The Arab world collapsed when Muslim fundamentalists banned science as being the work of the devil, and here we are...

The Christians banned charging interest, so the Jews ran all the banks until people came to their senses and understood that time has value for money too.

I would bet there is a lot that we could do to accelerate the Muslim world into this century a bit, and it would not involve handing out $100 bills in the streets.

now that was informative. that was way cool. thanks coursedesign.

as far as 'weapons cost more than our systems put together' i was talking about them terrorists.

as far as black & white thinking, for face value, not what's in the news, blogs, or talkshows, i don't care what motives you have to killing innocent americans, osama and co. don't have any right to take lives. when they took that step, i took it as is. i don't care what their history was, what their reasoning is, or who the devil is in their eyes. they're evil. plain and simple. i don't view him as the 'new boogieman' for our age, i just see him as someone i want justice brought to... perferably in a jdam. I can say i honestly pray for him. i pray that he'll know Jesus by the time we catch up to him, cause he'll have alot of explainin' to do when he gets to the judgement line.

Article from Newsweek/MSNBC.