I just wonder ... Bush v's Gore?

[shadowsource]

They're both lame -

Frankly, I see W handling it like the college cheerleader he was; nothing in his life has EVER prepared him for this kind of pressure. I see Gore handling it like an elementary school teacher addressing the class with reasuring platitudes; he's far better prepared, but never showed true spine or wit throughout a long, grueling campaign for the presidency. And Samuari, I think your brother's absolutely correct: Were Gore president, we'd be drowning in recriminations against Clinton, whereas there's been very little talk about the $43 million that Powell gave to the Taliban six months after OBL bombed the USS Cole.

 

[WriterDom]

Re: They're both lame -

Were Gore president, we'd be drowning in recriminations against Clinton, whereas there's been very little talk about the $43 million that Powell gave to the Taliban six months after OBL bombed the USS Cole.

http://www.literotica.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=46123

Didn't we hash out the 43 million scandal in the above thread?
You need to dig up some better propaganda

 

[shadowsource]

Good -

I hadn't seen the conclusion to the other thread, which sank under the flow of new ones durign the crisis. I usually check two of three pages, at the most, and let the others go. Thank you Morninggirl5. The LA Times columnist seems to have been wrong.

 

[KillerMuffin]

Al Gore would have been better. Al Gore would have been worse. Blather.

I think Al Gore would have done the best he knew how to do. Al wasn't the anti-christ that Republicans made him out to be. Bill Clinton and what he would have done, now that's scary as hell. The man has a nasty track record for military use in foreign situations.

We are overlooking the fact that Al Gore served not only in the military, but in the Vietnam War, as a journalist, true, but he was there and he knows what combat looks like. W was in the Air National Guard.

 

[willywanker]

I voted for Bush so I'm a little bit partial, but man for man, I'm not sure that one would or could have handled this any better.

But I go back to someones thoughts above about the people they chose to be with them.

I think Chenney is head and shoulders above Libberman in this situation. And I'm not trying to stir anything up but Libberman being jewish could have been a real problem trying to build a consenses among the arab states.

Someone above wished for Albright back versus Powell. Are they nuts??? Again, please don't take this as putting down anyone, women especially, but in that part of the world women are looked upon as second class citizens. You want someone that they have no respect for trying to build an alliance versus someone that they can believe when he tells them what we can throw at them for a military point of view?

I feel very lucky that W's cabinet is in place. Time may prove me wrong and if it does, I'll say so later but for now, since we can't undo what has happened, I'm satisfied with Bush in charge.

 

[TWB]

Watch your wallet, watch your civil liberties, watch out!

Bush is a lightweight baby. He sounds like a little child every time he opens his mono-syllabic mouth. He provides no comfort to me at all in this crisis. I have no confidence in him or his administration at all.

The US response:

Bombing Afghanistan is silly. There is no point. How can you bomb a people with nothing. . . How any person who believes in justice or freedom or a goal of peace justify a policy that will kill innocent people, children, women and men in an effort to find a killer who did the same thing to you? How can we bomb the people of a country whose government is already a repressive regime? How do we create goodwill with people so they will not want to bomb US soil if we communicate only with Cruise missiles and air strikes? Such a policy is misguided.

An opportunity

dollars in their eyes . . .

Corporations in the defense and airline businesses are lining up with hands outstretched to get on the terrorism gravy train. Airlines wanted so badly to be deregulated during Bush-Daddy/Reagan years. They got what they wanted and now they are so weak they cannot go without 5 days of flying without going bankrupt or asking for $15 billion (with a B, folks) to start to get them on their feet. If there had been no deregulation, prices would have been higher, but I doubt that we would have had McDonald’s luring away our airline security personnel.

Bushie's Cabinet and the Daddy Factor

I don't trust Bush's dad or the people in his cabinet, many of whom are the same as Reagan's and Bush Sr.:

Why? Bin Laden was created by Bush's daddy or at least on his watch. Bin Laden was a CIA backed operative in Afghanistan during the war with the USSR. Bush likely trained him & financed him. Guess who was CIA director during the creation of our Afghan policy? Guess who was Vice President and President during this time?

Daddy Bush was clueless as to the impact his policy in Afghanistan would have on the US today. Additionally, his war in the Gulf was likely a further irritant to the terrorists who committed these atrocities against the US. So is his son.

So. Do I feel comfortable with Bush in control? No.

He bowls into issues and has no clue as to how he is being received. Look at the ABM treaty, his threatening to unilaterally abandon it. He sees no consequences to his actions or our countries’ credibility. We used to roundly criticize the USSR for unilaterally reneging on treaties, now the US does it.

Bushie has no clue as to how he is going to handle this matter other than saber rattling. How are we going to come out on the other end of this, when this war is "finished?" How are we going to peacefully exist after our ill-thought-out war on terrorism? I doubt he has given it any real thought.

The blind rush in (my apologies to the sightless)

Bush rushes in blind on almost everything he does. He is a spastic actor with no visible plan. Already several courts have placed holds on initiatives that he and his administration have instituted because he blindly and illegally rushed in and implemented with no legal authority. He has no clue as to how our government is to work.

To sum up: Regarding Bush - -

He is a buffoon.

I am embarrassed.

I am scared:

Watch the lack of sound world policy decrease
Watch the civil liberties evaporate
Watch the military industrial complex grow out of control
Watch the deficit bloom
Watch the Corporate Welfare handouts fly


My conclusion:

Gore would likely have done better.

 

[shadowsource]

Bush has already curbed his own options -

His loose talk has already helped spur a global consensus that we will have to furnish proof before we can take radical action with much support. We will station troops not too far from Afghanistan in hopes of catching OBL off guard and grabbing him. It's not certain that there is ANY other move we can make this is not of the sort that Bush I, Clinton, and Gore would have done - i.e., a multinational effort of some kind. The wet-dream patriots will have to close their eyes for this one. And this could involve an ouster of the Taliban, which has miniscule international support and lots of enemies.

Hopefully, the US will find sufficient proof to sustain a truly long range consensus against thee people. That would be the best solution, anyway, as it would offer the best defense against further attacks by them.

The Pentagon is already backing off their bloody minded natter about bombing Afghanistan. Guess they read our posts here.

 

[TWB]

See what I mean:

Federal Court Blocks Bush's Discount Drug Plan


A federal court has temporarily halted the Bush administration's plan to offer prescription drug discount cards under Medicare by the beginning of next year. To find the full story on the ElderLawAnswers Web site, go to: http://www.elderlawanswers.com/members/AttorneyNews/XcNewsPlus.asp?cmd=view&articleid=68

 

[sexy-girl]

i think bush has been quite compassionate and thats been good hes handled it quite well overal i think i guess the big slip up was where he used the word crusade ... i hope he carrys on being very careful

 

[Guest]

How can we bomb the people of a country whose government is already a repressive regime? How do we create goodwill with people so they will not want to bomb US soil if we communicate only with Cruise missiles and air strikes? Such a policy is misguided.

We had 8 years of Clinton/Gore to show us that, too. 8 years of no fly zones and occasional bombing campaigns in Iraq to show that it doesn't work. 8 years of retaliatory strikes against supposed terrorist camps in Sudan and Afganistan that accomplished nothing but what we saw last Tuesday. We'd still be mucking around in Bosnia if Anthony Lake (who learned foreign policy as a deputy to Kissinger in the Nixon administration) hadn't kicked Clinton in the ass and explained that you have to put people on the ground to get the job done.

That's what is going to have to happen here. Soldiers are going to have to go in on the ground and dig these fuckers out of there holes. Once those responsible for this current situation are either dead or in custody, then we will have to follow a program of economic, political, and military sanctions and rewards to get other countries to oust the terrorist cells that exist in those nations.

My understanding of the situation is that is what the Bush administration is going to do.

Bin Laden was created by Bush's daddy or at least on his watch. Bin Laden was a CIA backed operative in Afghanistan during the war with the USSR. Bush likely trained him & financed him. Guess who was CIA director during the creation of our Afghan policy? Guess who was Vice President and President during this time?

Bin Laden left Saudi Arabia in 1979. If you pay attention, Jimmy Carter was President, Walter Mondale Vice-President, and Stansfield Turner was DCI for the first 14 months of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan... As Bob Woodward writes in "Veil" (pp. 78-79) "Faced with the December 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan... the Carter Administration had... launch[ed] its only serious, large scale paramilitary operation... For the first time, CIA supplied weapons would be killing regular Soviet Army troops. In Afghanistan the Soviets had about ninety-thousand (troops). Turner had worried that US policy was to fight to the last dead Afghan, but he had supported the operation in the end... The total coast was about $100 million."

Get your facts straight before you shoot your mouth off, TBW.

 

[morninggirl5]

Re: Good -

I hadn't seen the conclusion to the other thread, which sank under the flow of new ones durign the crisis. I usually check two of three pages, at the most, and let the others go. Thank you Morninggirl5. The LA Times columnist seems to have been wrong.

Read the entire piece, all of them and you will find that the aid has been humanitarian and the Clinton administration was giving similar amounts to the people of Afghanistan as well.

I see Gore handling it like an elementary school teacher addressing the class with reasuring platitudes

Please don't insult me that way. An elementary school teacher learns his/her first day in the classroom to be calm under pressure, to face situations head on, to deal with them to the best of your ability and to move on. Reassuring platitudes have no place in a classroom. Students learn early on which teacher is going to give them the truth and back their words up with actions. IMHO, Gore would last less than a week in an elementary classroom and even less time in a middle or high school.

 

[shadowsource]

Beat me, but make it quick!

Please don't insult me that way. An elementary school teacher learns his/her first day in the classroom to be calm under pressure, to face situations head on, to deal with them to the best of your ability and to move on. Reassuring platitudes have no place in a classroom. Students learn early on which teacher is going to give them the truth and back their words up with actions. IMHO, Gore would last less than a week in an elementary classroom and even less time in a middle or high school.

I did read the pieces, which is precisely why I pulled the flag. I always try to acknowledge when I'm wrong, though the last time I did that, I was greeted with a hideous, prolonged flaming. Be merciful. MG5.
It's uncanny that I then turned to the teacher riff, eh? I understand what you're saying. Cheers....

 

[stevie 47]

re: bush-vs-gore

Hi Nicole,

I'm a new yorker and I'm pissed about the events, but think that Bush is doing fine.
Clinton would have pardoned that cockroach Bin Laden
by now.
Gore probably got campaign contributions from him.

 

[TWB]

Chickenshit

Not who you think: Ohh you put me in my place.

Do you think the CIA had no afghan policy during the Nixon administration?

Oh, yeah. You misspelled my username.

I saw Bush clueless again last night blathering on while trying to answer a reporter's question in a press conference with another head of state. He could not answer it without the deer in the headlights, oh shit I might make a mistake look. Embarassed again.

I read today that Bush thought the Taliban was a rock band during the presidential primaries. . .

 

[XXplorher]

Could Al Gore deal with it?

Absolutely not.

We’d be playing the politically correct ‘let’s not ruffle any feathers, and have a recount’ game. ‘Let’s straddle the fence and cover my own ass with careful words, cuz I don’t want to take a risk and get it wrong’. ‘Will Ben Wah Balls be mad if I say he’s not nice? Cuz I don’t want to make him more angry’
It would be a fucking nightmare. Can you say Jimmy Carter? (Carter was a nice guy. Not a leader). I thank my stars every day since this tragedy that AL GORE isn’t at the helm. Say what you want about Bush ( I like bush – preferably shaved), but he clearly built a stellar cabinet around him and we’re in very capable hands. I’m feeling very lucky.
What does it say about a man that goes Grizzly Addams after not getting elected?

We need to cut to resolve at DECISION and action. Bush has the right people around him, and the mettle himself – to do this smartly, directly, and sternly.

I simply can’t say I’d have the same faith in Gore. In fact, I’m certain I wouldn’t. To the point where America’s most important moment in it’s recent history – could be failed so catastrophically…. That ours and the worlds future would be very grim. The steps we take immediately following this event are absolutely CRITICAL to our very existence as a free and prosperous country.

It takes a firm hand right now.
We’ve got that.
Gore doesn’t.

(Also, though I kinda liked McCain – I think he may have been a bit overzealous and reactive. Not sure he has the calm intelligence that’s also needed in this situation. I may have liked Bradley, however. Didn’t see enough of him to be sure).

 

[riff]

I think Gore would be saying much of the same

You are giving too much credit to the President. Its not a one man show- even though all Presidents would like for you to think that they are what makes everything happen.

Gore would handle it about the same way Bush is. Clinton too.

The President is just one gear in the machine. He turns a lot of wheels, but there are wheels turning him too.

 

[Black_Spider]

hello

 

[riff]

wow

so quiet. Why no surprise?

 

[morninggirl5]

Most of us have said what we wanted to say and gone on to something else.


If you believe Presidents are so interchangable, why do we have elections anyway?

 

[riff]

Because foreign policy is only a fraction of leadership.

America is not just a piece in the chesswork of international diplomacy.

More important are the domestic policies that define America on its own.