Recent content by Mariner

lying. Rumsfeld disliked what he was hearing from the established intelligence agencies, so he set up his own shop designed to "cherry pick" intelligence. Many career intelligence people complained that they were being pressured by Cheney and Rumsfeld. Bush claimed that his intelligence that...

With Boehner and Lott both suggesting that meaningful progress must be shown by early fall for them to continue to support Bush's Iraq policy, the Iraq war is now on its way into the history books. Petraeus has made clear that he feels the real solution is not military, but political. And he...

nuclear devices, then let's talk Bush: his schedule for securing the loose nuclear material of the former Soviet Union take 20 years, it's so slow. Scientific American ran a piece about a year ago saying it could be done in 2 years for a measly 8 billion dollars. If the writer, and RSR, are so...

veto, and the Republican Congress said no. The "pork" attached to the Democrats' bill is the price of the horse-trading required to bring the most extreme anti-war Democrats into line. Otherwise, they would have refused to support the bill that was vetoed today as not requiring withdrawal...

My point was that you need to distinguish different types of terrorists from one another. I'm at work and don't have my references handy, but the most recent estimate was that only 3% of killings in Iraq are due to Al Qaeda. In other words, we're not fighting the enemy that attacked us on...

Avatar suggested on a different thread that any military bases we build in Iraq would be temporary and the keys would be handed to the Iraqis when we leave. In fact, building permanent bases was a major goal of the original neoconservative strategy for the invasion. The hope was that a...

I couldn't agree with you more: Congress has avoided its responsibilities in several areas, including declaring wars, containing pork, policing itself ethically (both Republicans and Democrats), and taking wise, long-term views of extremely important issues such as agricultural subsidies (which...

Bush is the commander-in-chief. He tells the troops what to do. The U.S. Constitution, however, clearly gives both the "power of the purse" and the power to declare war to the Congress. In other words, presidents are supposed to work with Congress to win approval for the things they want to...

I will check that out. I got interested in Algeria from the angle of Camus, who has long been my favorite writer but whose tremendous record as a humanist was somewhat marred by his inability to see the justice of the Algerian Nationalist cause. It's fairly forgiveable, given that he grew up...

I'm happy to see your avatar, and happy you're still around. Yes, I was aware that the board was sold, but you certainly remember the monolithic Bush support here from 2003-2006. It's not only here that this monolith has crumbled, but nationally. Republicans and conservatives should be...

in the good old days on USMB, there were one or two liberals at a time... me, Naked Emperor, Jillian, Psychobabble... Now, it's just RSR sticking to his guns, and the dozens and dozens of other former Bushies who used to own this place have suddenly gone quiet. No surprise, as we "libs," so...

This whole concept is circular. As commander in chief, Bush gives the troops their orders. Yet the constitution wisely gives Congress power of the purse. Therefore the legislative branch can thwart the will of a president if it disagrees with his decisions. This was one way the founders...

into anonymity, since it seems that RSR is not dealing with actual facts or questions, but simply enjoying blaming "Dems" and "libs" for all the wrongs of the world. He made no attempt to address the specifics of my questions, MaineMan, and he's obviously made no attempt to address the specifics...

I haven't posted on this forum since before you joined last summer, so I don't know you, and I was curious about your point of view on a couple of things: 1. General Patraeus requested a surge of 80,000 troops. If Bush truly supports the troops, why did he request fewer than the actual amount...

tears to my eyes with your admission that capitalism does need some limit-setting. Maybe you owned some Enron stock and learned this lesson the hard way? (I hope not.) Here's another reason to distrust Walmart: in an excellent (and terrifying) piece in this week's New Yorker magazine...