bush is an idiot

[TN_Independent]

Is Bush an idiot? No more so than any of the rest of us, I would suspect. Do I agree with all of his policies? No. That in and of itself, however, does not make him an idiot any more than it would make him a genius if I did.

Is the cartoon denegrating? It isn't as far as I'm concerned. Is it in poor taste? Again, not to me. As a Christian, I feel that we need to be able to laugh, and even laugh at ourselves.

If someone found the cartoon objectionable because it poked fun at Bush, I'd say they were hypocritical. I'd be willing to bet that they'd laughed at something that made fun of Clinton (either with words or pictures or both).

 

[nycflasher]

I couldn't agree with you more, TN.
The only reason I asked if you thought Bush was an idiot is that this is the thread you chose to introduce yourself in, so I ws curious what you thought of the topic.

Great points though, all of them.

 

[TN_Independent]

Thanks for the welcomes.....

Here's hoping we can all get along....

 

[Gop guy]

Originally posted by dennis
It's a pretty funny cartoon ..if something is funny it's funny, period. The reality though, is that it is shallow and mean spirited and therefor not so funny to some of us deeper thinkers.

Albeit inadequate, there is a plan by the administration, but it is imperfect and it is like pulling teeth to get the left and mass media to see the big picture in Iraq. Even though the WMDs have vanished and US intelligence had become laughable (mostly because of the Democrats), I still support our President's courage to establish stability in that country which is so strategically important to the world's future prospects for peace. The United States has freed millions of people and is TRYING to help them maintain this evasive freedom, but the left offers no help to the Iraqis and gives no credit where its due...to our administration and even more so to the troops who BELIEVED in what they were doing and died doing it.

No Democrat would have prevented 9-11, and no democrat has a better plan for stability in the middle east. I'm pretty sick and tired of Bush bashers who offer absolutely no creative solutions to help our country win respect because we stand for freedom. Sadly the left has become a bastion of spitting slackers who offer nothing but venom.

The main problem is that the left is successfully drowning out the clear headed leaders in our government. The mass media is weakening any sense of intelligent debate by being so transparently biased. Americans don't fully understand or care to understand Iraqis, and Iraqis either can't seem to think for themselves and seize this opportunity to fight for freedom because they have been brainwashed, or because they don't trust that we mean well.

Frankly the left is helping kill those few Iraqis and Americans who really do understand the absolute necessity of establishing peaceful free elections in Iraq for the future of Iraqi children and perhaps even our own. Through its apathy, the left perpetuates the bus bombings that destroy innocent lives.

The liberal rantings remind me of the last words of the lost lamb who's entire family has been devoured by a pack of wolves: "Couldn't we just talk" I want to understand how you feel".

You are right, so right. Welcome to the board.

 

[Annie]

Interesting article from Daily Times of London:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml;$sessionid$ZGKVHYWZPEROFQFIQMFSFFWAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/opinion/2004/04/23/do2301.xml&sSheet=/opinion/2004/04/23/ixopinion.html

The UN is a ship of fools, and not the panacea for Iraq
By Alan Philps
(Filed: 23/04/2004)


The harshest test of a reporter in Iraq was a visit to the Saddam Hussein children's hospital in Baghdad. No heart could fail to be moved by the suffering of the patients in their fly-blown beds, and no head could fail to understand that the sanctions imposed after the 1990 invasion of Kuwait were in part to blame. But still there was a nagging doubt about the reality of the scene: although the suffering was real, the regime was partly responsible for the shortage of drugs and was using it to tug at the heart strings of the West.

The dilemma eased somewhat after 1995 when Saddam agreed on an oil-for-food deal. The UN would authorise sales of oil, and the money would be spent on imports of food and medicine. This humanitarian gesture has now been exposed as perhaps the biggest financial scam of all time. Saddam and his lieutenants creamed off millions of pounds in kickbacks, while at the same time buying influence abroad, particularly in Russia and France. The biggest humanitarian effort in the history of the world - feeding 23 million people - turns out to have been an oil-fuelled scandal. It is alleged that friendly politicians and businessmen around the world, as well as at least one senior UN official, benefited.

UN officials will say that they were not responsible for auditing the contracts (read: they turned a blind eye); they were tasked with preventing a catastrophe brought on by the failure of the first Bush regime to get rid of Saddam in 1991. If Saddam creamed off 10 per cent, that is a small price to pay for preventing the starvation of millions.

A colder eye would see the oil-for-food programme as a fine example of the law of unintended consequences. The oil-for-food programme, as implemented by the UN, made war inevitable, since it provided Saddam with a steady revenue to pay his security forces and build his palaces, while he penned sub-Mills & Boon novelettes.

Bolstered by the illegal revenues of the oil-for-food programme, and relieved of the duty of feeding his people, Saddam was able to drift comfortably off into a fantasy world. This made his downfall at the hands of the Americans inevitable. Had he been under real financial pressure, he might have provided the proof that he had no weapons of mass destruction - as now appears to be the case - which would have led inevitably to the lifting of sanctions.

It is worth examining the UN record. At the level of emergency aid, the UN keeps millions alive in Africa. The World Food Programme, a UN agency, is the largest humanitarian organisation on the planet. All over Africa, it is the UN that has the lorries, the planes, the 4x4s and the know-how to get food to the starving.

But, once again, the question has to be asked, where does all this effort and dedication lead? Ultimately, the effect is to prop up corrupt regimes and stifle economic reform. In gloomy moments, staff complain that they are just a sticking plaster on a patient who needs stronger medicine - political reform at home and a fairer economic system globally.

On the military level, there is not enough space on this page to detail all the failures of blue-helmet operations around the world. Starting with the Congo in the 1960s, they have been vessels of wishful thinking that have foundered on harsh diplomatic realities. In Rwanda, the UN force in place was actually reduced on the eve of the genocide 10 years ago. In Sierre Leone, a 17,000-strong multinational force collapsed in the face of some drunken gunmen, only to be rescued by a task force of 800 British soldiers who restored the situation. In Bosnia in 1995, the UN-enforced "safe haven" of Srebrenica turned into a death camp for 8,000 Bosnian Muslims. It was the worst massacre in Europe since 1945.

It would be unfair to blame the soldiers. The UN does not have its own army: it has to carve out armies from the crooked timber available in the General Assembly. The member states rarely have a common purpose, except to shove the problem on to some one else's shoulders.

In Rwanda, the UN commander predicted the genocide, but received no support from New York, where the Americans were desperate to avoid an African intervention. In Bosnia, senior French officers did side deals with the Serbs and exchanged intelligence. In Sierra Leone, a major component of the UN force was Nigerian, whose efforts went into fleecing the locals and smuggling diamonds.

At best, the UN can freeze a conflict - as in Cyprus or between Israel and Syria, provided both sides agree. It can do old-fashioned nation-building - as happened in Cambodia - provided there is no significant armed opposition.

On the diplomatic front, the outlook is not much brighter. The hours spent by Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, knocking heads together in Cyprus seem destined to end in failure.

So why is everyone talking about the UN as the panacea for Iraq? If we think this ship of fools will carry us to safety, we are wrong. The Spanish have blown apart the pretence that the world is just waiting to pour troops into Iraq if the operation is conducted under a UN flag. The new government in Madrid said it would wait to see if the UN was going to take over by June 30, but in fact has already started to pull its forces out. Nor is the rest of the world in any rush to send troops to Iraq. The fact that the UN headquarters in Baghdad was blown up by a suicide bomber shows that no foreign soldier - even in a blue helmet - is safe.

The UN special envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, can help broker a political settlement. The UN Security Council can help legimitise it. But Iraq is too tough a problem for the UN to play a leading role on the ground. The US and Britain will have to deal with it. To place all our hopes in the UN is wishful thinking.

There is only one solid basis to work on: that the Iraqis can find common ground among themselves to restore their state and let the foreign troops depart in time. Everything that helps to that end is to be welcomed, but Annan has no magic wand.

Information appearing on telegraph.co.uk is the copyright of Telegraph Group Limited and must not be reproduced in any medium without licence. For the full copyright statement see Copyright

 

[insein]

That deserves its own thread Kathianne. I suggest you make it one. It would sure silence some more vocal Opponents of Bush and his Crusade for Oil.

 

[Avatar4321]

It is alleged that friendly politicians and businessmen around the world, as well as at least one senior UN official, benefited.

Translation: Kofi Annan.

 

[Gop guy]

Originally posted by Avatar4321
Translation: Kofi Annan.

Guys, seriously, this entire thread is stupid, and it should be killed.

 

[MtnBiker]

Originally posted by Gop guy
Guys, seriously, this entire thread is stupid, and it should be killed.

And yet you keep coming back to it and posting, thus bumping it up.

 

[Avatar4321]

Originally posted by Gop guy
Guys, seriously, this entire thread is stupid, and it should be killed.

:whip3: :chains:

Is it dead yet?

 

[insein]

nope, lol.