Replies

Maybe they are naive or idealistic but unfortunately in politics you have to be realist even if it means only a percentage of the time do you actually get passed exactly what you want, you simply have to look at what the alternative would have been

What is so frustrating is they all claim to LOVE Ronald Reagan. Gee Reagan was a SURPEMELY realistic politician. Reagan knew how to get things done and work with people. Now days the process is be so rabidly partisans that a good segment of the population on BOTH sides simply whats "their guys" to destroy the other side. Excuse me? We are all suppose to be American Citizens NOT Political activists THEN somewhere down the line American citizens. The "other side" never going to go away so waiting for them to "be destoried" is going to doom a certain segment of our political body to perpetual political rage. Kind of sad actually. Hopefully our 100%ers on both sides will grow up one day but I am now hopeful.

Hello,

I remember having many "spirited" discussions with some Freepers about the very points you are making here. There is not, nor will ever be, a perfect world. I view it as a 2 steps forward, 1 step back process (if we are lucky). The Left did not change the US overnight. It took decades!! We will not undo those changes overnight.

My advice to all: Keep your eye on the prize, keep working, challenge those that either demand the status quo or that demand that "perfect" candidate. Both stances will ultimately lead to the failure of conservatism and this nation.

Glad to be here, MOgirl

Want a good laugh? Think about how long we have discussed the Risen book, and how FR and others have disected it. Add in both of your insights into what goes on and how things work. Then add in Democrats have to wait for their side to develop talking points. Well.... this just came to me by a so-called local Democrat activist. At minimum, it's taken them four days to get it and figure out how to spin it.

CIA 'Ignored Iraqi Weapons Evidence'
By Rupert Cornwell
The Independent UK

Wednesday 04 January 2006

The Bush administration is facing new charges over its handling of pre-war intelligence, with a book alleging that the CIA ignored a mass of evidence gleaned from Iraqi weapons scientists, months before the 2003 invasion, that Saddam Hussein had abandoned his WMD programs.

According to the book, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration, Sawsan alHaddad, sister of an Iraqi nuclear scientist, was one of 30 foreign-based Iraqis who agreed to contact relatives supposedly working on weapons development. Every one reported that the programs did not exist.

"Don't they know there is no nuclear program?," her brother told her. The nuclear programme had been dead since 1991. "We don't have enough spare parts for our conventional military, we can't even shoot down an airplane, we don't have anything left," she reported him saying. A month later the national intelligence estimate on Iraq's alleged WMD was issued, stating that Iraq was "reconstituting its nuclear program".

The book, written by James Risen, a New York Times journalist, depicts an enfeebled and blunder-prone CIA. Its most striking chapter concerns the National Security Agency, and the disclosure that it has for three years been conducting electronic surveillance without warrants against US citizens.

President Bush has ordered an inquiry into the leak, and the Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee is to hold hearings in the next few weeks.

The book provides detail of the tension over Iraq between George W Bush and his father. It recounts how Mr. Bush "angrily hung up the telephone" after his father, who was President from 1998 to 1992, complained that his son was allowing the Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, "and a cadre of neoconservative ideologues" to exert excessive influence over foreign policy.