Posted on 03/28/2004 2:57:31 PM PST by GraniteStateConservative
If it was a *gotcha* moment .. they would have been all over it on the Sunday Morning Shows
And To be honest .. I don't get this whole hype about wanting her to testify in public
She's already met with them for several hours and is willing to meet with them for more time.
I could understand if she was avoiding the 9/11 Commission .. BUT SHE'S NOT DOING THAT
Horse hockey.
In my more paranoid moments I suspect the whole opposition to the Iraq conflict centers around our willingness to support Israel in defeating this proven enemy of theirs.
Are you sure those aren't your more rational moments?
The change seems especially noticeable lately.
It might sound silly, but I think a big factor is just a natural change in baby boomers: we're older and wiser now and believe "half of what we see and none of what we hear" as my grandfather used to say.
I think that's a big part of it, but I think they also want to drive her out of office, so they can use her corpse to flog the Bush Administration from now until November. The media and the Rats are nothing more than hyenas, and just like hyenas they cut the weak and vulnerable out of the herd and prey on them - they don't attack the strong. Right now Dr. Rice looks wounded and weak, so they're snapping at her heels.
Dr. Rice has gotten the worst of this behind her, IMHO. The media and Kerry will bay about it for a few more days, but at this point all she has to do is hang tough and this thing will blow itself out, and then the hyenas will move on. There are some signs already that Kerry and the media have overplayed their hand once again - did you notice the statement that Lee Hamilton, the Rat vice-chairman of the 9/11 commission, made this morning?
He came out and basically said that the commission was looking at other administrations besides Bush's, trying to reassure people that the report was going to be objective and fair. THAT tells me that the commission's getting more than a few angry calls and letters from people who see this thing for what it is - an investigative panel that has been hijacked by the Rats for the sole purpose of digging up political ammo to use against President Bush in the election. A survey that came out earlier today shows that twice as many people think that Clarke is acting for political gain than think he's doing this out of any crisis of conscience. This is what the Administration needs to use to make its case, and the first thing they can do to use it is to tell this kangaroo court that is hectoring Dr. Rice to offer herself up for slaughter to go and f**k itself.
Sorry, but I was responding to specific posts that mixed the two points up. Some said she appeared "startled" which I didn't see and that she (not Bradley, but she) was "weak".
I can see what people are saying. Also the term "abysmal" was thrown out.
How many articles are preceded by AP or NYT?
Me, too. He was unfair and rude and his points, being as they came from the left, were stupid.
"Read" yes occaisionally, Do I pay for a newspaper.....NO. Ten years ago I subscribed to both my local newspaper and the New York Times. The NY Times subscription I stopped after about 2 years. After a lifetime of reading a local newspaper, I cancelled my subscription when they endorsed Al Gore for the 2000 election. I wrote a letter to the editor, describing why they had lost a person who had subscribed and why I would no longer subsidize their propaganda. I also informed them that when I needed to read the local paper, (death notices mainly) I would get their content.....FREE on the internet. Guess which part they edited out of my letter to the editor, that they did indeed publish?
If either of them thought the war was wrong, they shouldn't have voted for it. Maybe Kerry and Rockefeller only did so because not doing so would have been political suicide, but both of them authorized the forcible removal of Saddam Hussein after a debate that raged for over a decade. You'd think you would at least express some concern for their support of Bill Clinton, who took us into war in the Balkans pretty much singlehandedly, and who some argue was responsible for the policy shift from containment to regime change. (Our troops are still mired down in the Balkans, too, though Bush has moved to withdraw some troops there.)
As regards Rockefeller, perhaps he should just stick to doing his duty instead of using Senate Intelligence Committee staffers and other resources - paid for by folks like me- to wage war against the president and to try to undermine the war effort.
had pulled rank and demanded the right to once again "Declare War"
Pulled rank? Since when do two Senators outrank congress? Define a declaration of war using the Constitution. You cannot, because the US constitution does not define it, nor does it even use the term "declaration of war." Most likely, this was largely because even at the time the ink was drying on that document, declarations of war were considered little more than quaint customs. Do you even know what a declaration of war is? It's usually only about one or two paragraphs long by our tradition, but given that it is constitutionally undefined, it can be just about anything that Congress wants it to be that authorizes a conflict. To better understand the tradition, you can dig through the very old Law of Nations- and by that I don't mean the recent concept of international law.
Congress always had and still retains the right to declare war or other actions and it excercises this right through a simple joint resolution, as it did in this case, and most importantly, by allocating funds for war. As far as the constitution is concerned, that is a 'declaration of war.' It's congress, not the presidency, which has proven unwilling to commit fully to anything; it is congress which has let personal advantage and politics rather than duty and patriotism govern their decisions. And it is congressmen even now who seek to further cripple the United States' foreign policy and defense by hobbling it with having to obtain permission slips from the United Nations as well before it can engage in activities to defend its interests.
Declarations of war have always been nothing more than a courtesy designed to notify primarily all OTHER countries that a state of war exists between your country and another nation or group so they can act accordingly. For those of you who haven't been paying attention, a state of war has existed with Iraq since the beginning of the first Gulf War- which never really ended since its ending was contingent upon Iraq fufilling the terms of a cease fire which of course, Iraq never fufilled.
as is their "duty" under the Constitution,
If either of those individuals really adhered to their duty, Mr. Kerry would never have associated himself with Jane Fonda, the VVAW,and other radical groups and would have reported the VVAW vote on the assassination of US Senators his organization took back in the seventies immediately- nor would he have an association with Ron Dellums, notorious for asking Cuban officials how he should vote!
we wouldn't be in this mess in Iraq.
What 'mess?' this is one of the most successful military undertakings the US has ever engaged in.
If it were done earlier, our troops might have been home rather than killed in Lebonan
Our troops want to finish the job- the job they weren't allowed to finish before. They want to finish it so we don't have to go in again, and so there won't be another regime in Baghdad supporting terrorism. Some want to do a good deal more and understand that the process of fighting terrorism is a long one- one which we have not choice but to win. If it hadn't been for JIMMY CARTER, and people like John Kerry, Ramsey Clark, and others, there never would have been a problem with Lebanon. (Or Iran, for that matter... or Afghanistan...) All of these people want nothing more than to see an American defeat, because they want to destroy the America we love and replace it with a weak and dependent nation that NEEDS foreign concensus to do anything, a nation which cannot act even in its own defense without begging for help nad which they know very well it would not receive. This is how they think peace can be obtained- by killing of American sovereignity.
or the people in the WTC might not have died.
the people in the WTC died because no one had made an effort to stop al Qaeda when it declared war on us years before, and when it attacked us before. A wishy-washy state dept which dared not go after the likes of Arafat and bureaucrats like Mr. Clarke who advocated half-measures - or worse bureaucrats who advocated letting the UN handle it- who didn't have the guts to do anything against terrorism other than - to put it in the words Clarke attributed to Bush- to "swat flies," certainly helped.
Bin Laden himself pointed to America's weakness, specifically in Somalia and Lebanon and Iraq, as an example of our cowardice which enticed him to make further attacks. even the GoreWar election debacle and all the liberal caterwauling and undermining of the presidency was seen by the terrorists as an indication Bush didn't have the support and they thought he would be weak as well. They misjudged that to their detriment.
Fidel Castro also egged on a confrontation with the US during a speech he gave in Iran in the latter days of the Clinton admin because he knew we were weak from his position up close.
Also, the death of the troops in Lebonan is often called "terrorism", but aren't foreign troops "fair game"?How is that terrorism?
You come on like you are some kind of 'patriot' trying to chatter about 'declarations of war,' but know so little that you cannot tell a terrorist from a soldier?
If you knew your history, you'd know that Lebanese soldiers didn't attack the US. The people who attacked US troops were Hezbollah, led by Imad Mugniyah, certainly not a group authorized by the government of Lebanon to fight in their country nor could they be recognized as even a citizen's militia of any kind. They were not following the rules of war, if anything they were exactly the sort the Geneva Convention was created to discourage. They were not in uniform or wearing recognizable insignia ; they had no responsible chain of command, no documents issued from a responsible and identifiable chain of command defined them as combatants, they go by alias even when captured rahter than identify themselves as would a soldier; they were not carrying arms openly but instead used the civilians around them as cover, instead of shuttling civilians to the rear and to as safe an area as possible. They wouldn't even rate as high as mercs- they were just terrorists working on behalf of Iran's revolutionary government and Syria's Baathist one, neither legitimate governments by any stretch of the word and both of which were trying to destroy Lebanon. Syria occupoies Lebanon and controls it to this day. There is no other description for Hezbollah or islamic jihad or any other similar group BUT 'terrorists.'
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