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Presidential poll

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  • #61
Finch, what are you refering to? you just accuratly described 2 situation, Iraq during Saddams riegn of power AND what is happening and has been allowed to happen in parts of Africa.
 
  • #62
It's a deal, rattler. I've enjoyed the exchange, and am glad it's still possible to have civil political debates. I will never let these recreational debates interfere with our shared hobby or all the friendships I've made on this board.

Capslock
 
  • #63
Saddam did NOT kidnap children into slavery, 40% of the woemen and girls in his reagon were NOT raped as a scare tactic, and saddam did not kill 300,000 people. he killed 30,000

*NOT in capitals arnt yelling in this case, but for emphises
 
  • #64
thats good, caps.

[b said:
Quote[/b] ] I will never let these recreational debates interfere with our shared hobby or all the friendships I've made on this board.
nor should it.
 
  • #65
300,000 dead? do please show me where you got that figure. it is a fact Saddam tortured olympians and there families if they did not win medals, fact Saddam has used WMD on his own ppl. you really need to think of the Iraq war as a war of independace for the Iraqi ppl. Iraq is now on its way to becoming a free nation something that wasnt possible under the evil dictator and his saddistic sons. for all intents and purposes Afganistan is now a free nation they just need to find a profitable export other than opium.
 
  • #66
Blah dee blah dee bleurk
smile_t_32.gif
to all of this

I find that intellect is the first thing to look at when trying to decide between one or the other. I personally wouldn't back someone who can't put a proper sentence together. I don't like Kerry, but Bush... well, let's just say he's very special in my opinion.

We may all be human but I wonder how many of us are humane?

Amori
 
  • #67
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]You really need to think of the Iraq war as a war of independace for the Iraqi ppl. Iraq is now on its way to becoming a free nation something that wasnt possible under the evil dictator and his saddistic sons. for all intents and purposes Afganistan is now a free nation they just need to find a profitable export other than opium.
Forgive me if I'm wrong but I thought that the war in Iraq was because Saddam was very dangerous to us because he had weapons of mass destruction. I didn't think that freedom of Iraq had anything to do with it. I thought Bush said that we were in danger of being attracted by the weapons that he had. Now that no weapons were found, it's a war to free Iraq.
I also thought the war in Afghanistan was to shut down Al- Quida and to bring Bin Laden to justice. Now that Bin Laden and most of Al-Quida escaped, all Bush talks about is how free Afghanistan is. I don't think it was worth the human lives spent in either country was worth it, if all we achieved was free elections. I think Bush has failed at everything he's done. I can't think of one thing he's done right. I challenge any of you to show me one success Bush as ever had. He couldn't even find oil in Texas.
Somebody said that they just don't trust Kerry, well I don't trust Bush. He's lied to us over and over and because of his lies thousands of people were killed. In my opinion Bush is as dangerous as Hitler and Saddam. He's has no idea what it's like for the average American, he's had everything given to him, including the last election. He's never had to work just to survive, so he had no idea what it means to do away with overtime pay. Give me one reason how it can be good to elimante overtime pay. He's never fought for his county. If Kerry ever sends a to war, he knows what it's like to be there. He knows what it's like to be shot at.
 
  • #68
dont go on how Kerry knows what war is. he was there for THREE months. who do you know that went to Vietnam and only stayed for THREE months? i sure know all my uncles were there in the thick of things for over a year. on top of which he absolutly refuses to release his war record. do you know why? because he did not recieve a honorable discharge until he had a president intervien and change it. his picture is in a museum in North Vietnam as a war hero for for the communists. Bush may have had a fairly "cushy" war experiance but Kerry has a yellow streak a mile long and there are many first hand accounts about how he tucked tail and ran and didnt help his commrads in arms on the rivers in Vietnam.
 
  • #69
maybe you should read this link and this washington times article if you really want to know what kind of guy Kerry really is:

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/markalexander/ma20041023.shtml

Security Council members deny meeting Kerry


By Joel Mowbray
SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES


U.N. ambassadors from several nations are disputing assertions by Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry that he met for hours with all members of the U.N. Security Council just a week before voting in October 2002 to authorize the use of force in Iraq.
An investigation by The Washington Times reveals that while the candidate did talk for an unspecified period to at least a few members of the panel, no such meeting, as described by Mr. Kerry on a number of occasions over the past year, ever occurred.

At the second presidential debate earlier this month, Mr. Kerry said he was more attuned to international concerns on Iraq than President Bush, citing his meeting with the entire Security Council.
"This president hasn't listened. I went to meet with the members of the Security Council in the week before we voted. I went to New York. I talked to all of them, to find out how serious they were about really holding Saddam Hussein accountable," Mr. Kerry said of the Iraqi dictator.
Speaking before the Council on Foreign Relations in New York in December 2003, Mr. Kerry explained that he understood the "real readiness" of the United Nations to "take this seriously" because he met "with the entire Security Council, and we spent a couple of hours talking about what they saw as the path to a united front in order to be able to deal with Saddam Hussein."

But of the five ambassadors on the Security Council in 2002 who were reached directly for comment, four said they had never met Mr. Kerry. The four also said that no one who worked for their countries' U.N. missions had met with Mr. Kerry either.
The former ambassadors who said on the record they had never met Mr. Kerry included the representatives of Mexico, Colombia and Bulgaria. The ambassador of a fourth country gave a similar account on the condition that his country not be identified.
Ambassador Andres Franco, the permanent deputy representative from Colombia during its Security Council membership from 2001 to 2002, said, "I never heard of anything."
Although Mr. Franco was quick to note that Mr. Kerry could have met some members of the panel, he also said that "everything can be heard in the corridors."

Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, Mexico's then-ambassador to the United Nations, said: "There was no meeting with John Kerry before Resolution 1441, or at least not in my memory."
All had vivid recollections of the time frame when Mr. Kerry traveled to New York, as it was shortly before the Nov. 7, 2002, enactment of Resolution 1441, which said Iraq was in "material breach" of earlier disarmament resolutions and warned Baghdad of "serious consequences as a result of its continued violations."
Stefan Tafrov, Bulgaria's ambassador at the time, said he remembers the period well because it "was a very contentious time."
After conversations with ambassadors from five members of the Security Council in 2002 and calls to all the missions of the countries then on the panel, The Times was only able to confirm directly that Mr. Kerry had met with representatives of France, Singapore and Cameroon.
In addition, second-hand accounts have Mr. Kerry meeting with representatives of Britain.

When reached for comment last week, an official with the Kerry campaign stood by the candidate's previous claims that he had met with the entire Security Council.
But after being told late yesterday of the results of The Times investigation, the Kerry campaign issued a statement that read in part, "It was a closed meeting and a private discussion."
A Kerry aide refused to identify who participated in the meeting.
The statement did not repeat Mr. Kerry's claims of a lengthy meeting with the entire 15-member Security Council, instead saying the candidate "met with a group of representatives of countries sitting on the Security Council."

Asked whether the international body had any records of Mr. Kerry sitting down with the whole council, a U.N. spokesman said that "our office does not have any record of this meeting."
A U.S. official with intimate knowledge of the Security Council's actions in fall of 2002 said that he was not aware of any meeting Mr. Kerry had with members of the panel.
An official at the U.S. mission to the United Nations remarked: "We were as surprised as anyone when Kerry started talking about a meeting with the Security Council."

Jean-David Levitte, then France's chief U.N. representative and now his country's ambassador to the United States, said through a spokeswoman that Mr. Kerry did not have a single group meeting as the senator has described, but rather several one-on-one or small-group encounters.
He added that Mr. Kerry did not meet with every member of the Security Council, only "some" of them. Mr. Levitte could only name himself and Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock of Britain as the Security Council members with whom Mr. Kerry had met.

One diplomat who met with Mr. Kerry in 2002 said on the condition of anonymity that the candidate talked to "a few" ambassadors on the Security Council.
The revelation that Mr. Kerry never met with the entire U.N. Security Council could be problematic for the Massachusetts senator, as it clashes with one of his central foreign-policy campaign themes — honesty.
At a New Mexico rally last month, Mr. Kerry said Mr. Bush will "do anything he can to cover up the truth." At what campaign aides billed as a major foreign-policy address, Mr. Kerry said at New York University last month that "the first and most fundamental mistake was the president's failure to tell the truth to the American people."

In recent months, Mr. Kerry has faced numerous charges of dishonesty from Vietnam veterans over his war record, and his campaign has backtracked before from previous statements about Mr. Kerry's foreign diplomacy.

For example, in March, Mr. Kerry told reporters in Florida that he'd met with foreign leaders who privately endorsed him.
"I've met with foreign leaders who can't go out and say this publicly," he said. "But, boy, they look at you and say: 'You've got to win this. You've got to beat this guy. We need a new policy.' "
But the senator refused to document his claim and a review by The Times showed that Mr. Kerry had made no official foreign trips since the start of 2002, according to Senate records and his own published schedules. An extensive review of Mr. Kerry's domestic travel schedule revealed only one opportunity for him to have met foreign leaders here.

After a week of bad press, Kerry foreign-policy adviser Rand Beers said the candidate "does not seek, and will not accept, any such endorsements."
The Democrat has also made his own veracity a centerpiece of his campaign, calling truthfulness "the fundamental test of leadership."
Mr. Kerry closed the final debate by recounting what his mother told him from her hospital bed, "Remember: integrity, integrity, integrity."
In an interview published in the new issue of Rolling Stone magazine, Mr. Kerry was asked what he would want people to remember about his presidency. He responded, "That it always told the truth to the American people."
 
  • #70
I have seen the figure in three sorces: Newsweek, The washington post, and the official website of the International Red Cross
 
  • #71
ok finch ill look into them. thanks for the info
 
  • #72
newsweek was this weeks addition, i dunno the date of the post. I
 
  • #73
ill double-check my sorces too
 
  • #74
When putting into perspective the notion that Kerry overstated the number of Security Council ambassadors that he met with, compare it with the rampant corruption of the current administration's handouts to Cheney's former firm. This, from AP:

WASHINGTON (AP) - The FBI has begun investigating whether the Pentagon improperly awarded no-bid contracts to Halliburton Co. (HAL), seeking an interview with a top Army contracting officer and collecting documents from several government offices.

The line of inquiry expands an earlier FBI investigation into whether Halliburton overcharged taxpayers for fuel in Iraq, and it elevates to a criminal matter the election-year question of whether the Bush administration showed favoritism to Vice President **** Cheney's former company.

FBI agents this week sought permission to interview Bunnatine Greenhouse, the Army Corps of Engineers' chief contracting officer who went public last weekend with allegations that her agency unfairly awarded a Halliburton subsidiary no-bid contracts worth billions of dollars in Iraq, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

Asked about the documents, Greenhouse's lawyers said Thursday their client will cooperate but that she wants whistleblower protection from Pentagon retaliation.


"I think it (the FBI interview request) underscores the seriousness of the misconduct, and it also demonstrates how courageous Ms. Greenhouse was for stepping forward," said Stephen Kohn, one of her attorneys.

"The initiation of an FBI investigation into criminal misconduct will help restore public confidence," Kohn said. "The Army must aggressively protect Ms. Greenhouse from the retaliation she will encounter as a result of blowing the whistle on this misconduct."

FBI agents also began collecting documents from Army offices in Texas and elsewhere in recent weeks to examine how and why Halliburton got the no-bid work in places like Iraq.

"The Corps is absolutely cooperating with the FBI, and it has been an ongoing effort," said Army Corps spokeswoman Carol Sanders. "Our role is to cooperate. It's a public contract and public funds. We've been providing them information for quite a while."

Wendy Hall, a Halliburton spokeswoman, said the company is cooperating with various investigations, but she dismissed the latest revelation as election politics. She noted Congress' auditing arm, the Government Accountability Office, found the company's no-bid work in Iraq was legal.

"The old allegations have once again been recycled, this time one week before the election," Hall said. "The GAO said earlier this year that the contract was properly awarded because Halliburton was the only contractor that could do the work.

"We look forward to the end of the election, because no matter who is elected president, Halliburton is proud to serve the troops just as we have for the past 60 years for both Democrat and Republican administrations," she said.

Capslock
 
  • #75
confused.gif



hum as i can see the death toll estimates vary greatly from sorces
 
  • #76
i still state that it wouldnt matter who went to war for what. whoever is president, him and his buddies will make money off of it some way some how because capitalism runs very strong here in America. and on Kerry's war record HE is the one who choose to run on it. i wouldnt be such a big deal if he had just left it alone but he choose to bring up and run on the fact that he is a war hero and if he then refuses to release his military papers, AND the simple fact that he has been proven a liar on most of what he says he stands for speaks alot to his charector. Kerry was discharged from the Navy in '72. he didnt recieve an honorable discharge until several years later. now can anyone in the armed forces step up and say just how screwed up that is?
 
  • #77
hmmmm so much for bowing out. oh well if i kept my temper as short on sleep as i was last nite i should be able to keep it for a bit longer
smile_n_32.gif
 
  • #78
Hey, both of my grandfathers served in WWII and one received a honerable status 2 years after he was discharged, theres no doubt he deserved it.
 
  • #79
hmmm my understanding is that Kerry was completely discharged in '72. it was Carter who changed it from what ever the original ruling was to honorable. im not going to argue on you grandfather as i know nothing on that matter. things may have been different during that time. but what i understand is that Kerrys situation is extreamly irregular. if he would just release his military record like every other presidential candidate has done be it Bush, McCain or who ever it would clear up and straighten out alot of things.
 
  • #80
I'm sorry Rattler but I just don't see your point. You can take any bit of information and twist and turn it to make it read the way you want it to. I think the facts speaks alot louder than qoutes from ambassators. It's like you said to Caps, we'll never agree on this so lets move on.
 
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