[an0n]

On a completely late note: A 'friend' of mine once shot me in the head with an air-gun dart.

Everyone else was running away screaming. I just stood there, got a dart lodged in my skull, then called him a pussy.

[Gank]

Originally posted by Bobboau
the people who talk about the 'US' sanctions, seem to be forgeting that it was the UN that implemented them, and also that was the alternatave to war, wich I have gotten the impression that you were aganst. you can't have both sides, ether the sanctions (that killed half a million babies) were great and the war was horable, or the war (killing 10,000 civilians) was great and the sanctions were horable (I take the second view, if we would have finished the job 12 years ago those 500,000 babies would not have died, but no, war bad, economic preasure good)

US introduced the sanctions in the UN, enforced the sanctions for the UN and vetod any motion to have them lifted or lessened when it was apparent how many innocents were being killed as a result. They were not an alternative to war, they were introduced at the end of the first gulf war as a means of preventing Iraq from rebuilding its army/economy and invading someone else.

"Funny how they didn't have 'terrorists' until we got there."

Ansar al-Islam
northern Iraq,
bombed the Kurds,
they were, and still are, terrorist in Iraq

FYI Ansar were operating in the Kurdish autonomous area, which was not under Iraqi control.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Liberator
I'm not going to defend the actions of mentally-unbalanced people when they claim to be a representative of my religion.  

Yet when a member of another faith does something equally bad you hold that up as an example of the belief of the entire faith.

BTW It took me 5 minutes to stop laughing at Liberator's earlier postings Best laugh I've had in a while

[an0n]

Originally posted by Gank
US introduced the sanctions in the UN, enforced the sanctions for the UN and vetod any motion to have them lifted or lessened when it was apparent how many innocents were being killed as a result. They were not an alternative to war, they were introduced at the end of the first gulf war as a means of preventing Iraq from rebuilding its army/economy and invading someone else.

Firstly, the UN is little more than a rubber-stamp. It's basically France, the UK, the US, China and Russia's ***** so they can say their actions were just and so they can force other countries into helping them.

There are UN sanctions (well, if you can call them that) against both Israel and Palestine, but everyone ignores them because it's not financially or politically beneficial to the US and UK to enforce them.

Secondly, the sanctions weren't to prevent Saddam attacking other countries, they were to stop him attacking US allies.

The US was all ****ing pally with Saddam when he was harrassing Iran, but then he used the biologcial and chemical weapons that the US gave him to gas some Kuwaitees (sp?) and try to reclaim the oil-fields the Kuwaitees stole when they broke from Iraq. Just like how France kept trying for 50+ years to **** Germany up for stealing their land (Franco-German war to just after WW2).

All the sanction were, were a neat little rope to tie the Iraqi's to the ground with while the US went to get more rocks to drop on their heads.

[Kazan]

libby doesn't know the difference between MACROevolution (ie his missing link reference) and MICROevolution

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Liberator

@Rictor
Evangelism is making people aware that they have the choice and that eventually they must make it.

and then trying to force them to change that choice until they make one that pleases the Evangelicist.

[.::Tin Can::.]

Now we're talking about religion eh? Oh boy. I dont even want to get started because there was about a 28 page topic on AG about religion and the posts were too fast for me to keep up with. So I'm done with that.

[Grey Wolf]

*Points to the "Religion in the Modern World" and whatever the one on the odd Mel Gibson movie is named threads*

Those are for religious debates. This thread is for nice, violent, hostile debating of politics. Don't mix them. Got it?

[.::Tin Can::.]

Alrighty. Well, here are some responses:

Just out of curiosity though, on what do you base your opinion of Reagan? He was out of office before you were born. Some of us, like myself, were alive and watching through the entire Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II presidencies. I remember watching Reagan's inauguration on AFRTS when my father was stationed in Germany.

I happen to do my research unlike a bunch of other mofo's who make assumptions, and I also have parents who lived during his era. Trust me, I'm more educated then I look. He picked up after Jimmie Carter's mess and made the entire country what it should be. Jimmie Carter totaly f**ked the country over, that it looked like America was getting rapped up the ass by its own president. Wasn't cool.

But although his foreign policy might be shady to most of you and it seems if a president does a million good things but screws up on one accord, everyone hates him. Thats also bull****.

You know, I was in Bahrain once. I was in Saudi Arabia, Oman and Kuwait too. What's your point?

I meant recently.

[Rictor]

Supporting Nicarguan Contras resulting in the deaths of thousands is not what you might call a little **** up. Its a big one.

If the President of the United States makes life for his citizens better, by making the lives of others worse, he hasn't done a good job. He is not a good President. But look, I don't pretend to know much about Reagan, so I'll drop the subject.

[Grey Wolf]

He couldn't have been the worst president (that's not even a question), the real problem is that he wasn't as good as the conservatives who want him on the dime claim he was. For that matter, no one could be. From what I've read, he had quite a few foreign policy decisions that either should or did cause problems for us afterwards. A small list of examples are giving weapons to Iraq and the Iran Contra affair. I'm sure he did some good for the country, but he was far from what he has been claimed to be.

[Liberator]

I am going to ask all you kids(and most of you are kids to me, I am nearly 26):

What would you do I his place?

You don't know because your concern primarily with how others peceive you.  The trademark of a True Leader is the willingness and ability to put aside public opinion and make the right decision.

That's the thing about The Left, they want to be President because of the personal power it brings, mostly because almost all of them are morally and ethically degenerates, more akin to animals than the ideal representative of humanity that they should be.

[Stryke 9]

EAT BABIES!@!!!

[Grey Wolf]

Originally posted by Liberator
That's the thing about The Left, they want to be President because of the personal power it brings, mostly because almost all of them are morally and ethically degenerates, more akin to animals than the ideal representative of humanity that they should be.

Remember, no flaming the other side of the argument.

[mikhael]

Originally posted by .::Tin Can::.
But although his foreign policy might be shady to most of you and it seems if a president does a million good things but screws up on one accord, everyone hates him. Thats also bull****.

It should be pointed out that all your standard economic indicators (GDP, jobs, revenues, etc) were all positive when Reagan took office. Read that again. Reagan inherited a reasonably strong economy. Whilst inflation was high under Carter the economy was growing. Reagan era tax cuts led to a twelve year recession that was only reversed during the first Clinton presidency.

As for Reagan's failures, you left out a few things:

• The Iran-Contra affair
• Honduras
• Lebanon and supporting Bashir Gemayal
• Funding Saddam Hussein
• Funding Manuel Noriega
• Funding Osama Bin-Laden
• Supply side (AKA trickle-down) economics
• Unprecedented unemployment (outside the Great Depression)
• Giving Iraq chemical weapons in spite of the US being a signatory to a chemical weapons ban treaty
• "Star Wars"
• The national deficit. He promised to eliminate it. He tripled it.
• He put Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court

Come on, Tin Can. The guy was a bad president by any measure. He may have been a great MAN, but he was a bad PRESIDENT.

You know what the best thing he ever did was? He double enlisted military pay, correcting a woeful injustice in the compensation that soldiers and sailors recieved.

Some of my favorite Reagan stories and quotes:
First, a Reagan story:

Reagan was widely criticized in 1985 for a few incidents in East and West Germany. First, he announced he would not visit a concentration camp in West Germany because there were "very few alive that remember even the war, and certainly none of them who were adults and participating in any way." On April 11, the White House announced that Reagan would be visiting the Bitburg, West Germany military cemetery, to lay a wreath in honor of the Americans and Nazi SS buried there. There are no U.S. soldiers buried in Bitburg. Reagan, in an attempt to defend the incident, claimed that he had done so in response to a letter he received from a teenage girl in Chicago; she promptly surfaced with her letter which had urged him not to do so.

And then some quotes:

"What does an actor know about politics?"

He was criticising Screen Actors Guild president Ed Asner for his views on foreign policy. Of course, Reagan was a successful actor before he became a politician.

"I know all the bad things that happened in that war. I was in uniform for four years myself."

He was defending his visit to the Bitburg Military Cemetery. He spent the duration of World War II making military training videos in Hollywood. He was never a soldier.

"My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I just signed legislation which outlaws Russia forever. The bombing begins in five minutes," during a radio microphone test in 1984

[Rictor]

I agree with you Liberator that public opinion should not prevent one from doing the right thing. However, you also have to consider the possibility that a leader is misguided, or just flat out wrong. In this case, public opinion restrains him from doing that which he believes is right, but is in fact wrong. Its a system of checks and balances. The President should not have total power to do what he thinks is right. If he did, he weould not be a President at all, but rather an Emperor.

But aside from public opinion, do you think that Reagan's foreign policy was the right thing to do? Supporting dictatorships and so forth, in order to advance Amercian interests. Causing widespread suffering. Is this right?

[.::Tin Can::.]

SIDE NOTE: Jimmy Carter was a nice guy, sure, but he made the economy and life here in America as hard as it could be. With high interest rates, hostage crisis, (which he took no action to) high unemployment, high amounts of inflation, downsized military, etc. The only good thing he did was create a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. But the inflation and the horrible interest rates ran the country into the ground most of all. We were all screwed after he got into office, and when he lost his job as president and Reagan came into office, things started to look a whole lot brighter.

Reagan made this country on shining star after Jimmy Carter got out of office. Interest rates went down significantly, with tax breaks for everyone, inflation dropping out of site, and wouldn’t you know it, but the hostage situation was resolved after the terrorists released the hostages the day of his inauguration. You see, Reagan doesn’t take anything like that from anyone, and for sure he would have gone there within the week to get them. He resized the military back its former glory, and unemployment dropped to a minimum. Not to mention the economy rose by a third, and it was the greatest peace-time prosperity that the country had seen in a long time, which is why they call the time the “Reagan Era.”

Not to mention that small incident with Castro in Cuba, where the psycho terrorized Africa, Grenada, and Central America from Cuba. Carter didn’t give heads or tails about it, thinking if he was nice to Castro, Castro would be nice back. Didn’t happen. Reagan decided he could explore a diplomatic solution and met with the man himself in Mexico City, along with the Vice Prez. Castro didn’t even budge. So, Reagan said, “Suit yourself” and then within the year, Castro’s troops were stomped and booted out of Grenada and Africa. And so, the embargo on Cuba was placed, and it was mainly because Castro stole, (that’s STOLE, as in THEFT) 1.8 billion dollars from America, so we just cut him off. So, now he’s stiffing Russia for 50 billion, Europe for 4 billion, and all of its unioners. America is the only one who didn’t get stiffed by a madman because Reagan was holding the job steady.

If Carter was such a “great” and “prosperous” president, then why did Reagan win by a MASSIVE landslide, with a 489-49 electoral vote and 45 states to Carter’s 5. Sound coincidental? No. Carter just sucked. Reagan was left to clean up Carter’s mess and did an outstanding job. While raising national debt to fix up a torn and ravaged economy and paying for domestic programs to get the poor back on their feet, it goes to show that a Socialist would see this man proud, seeing as how HE cared for the lower income portion of America, that Carter to heartily oppressed. A criticism of Reagan's policies is that they created a situation in which the rich got richer while the poor got poorer.  However, a 1990 Bureau of the Census study revealed that all income groups realized gains from 1980 to 1989.  Average real income rose by 15%.  Average household income for the lowest fifth was $6,836 in 1980 and $7,372 in 1989.  The gains of those in the upper levels were greater, however -- in 1980 the average household income for the highest fifth was $73,752, and that rose to $90,150 in 1989.  A Treasury Department study showed that there was great mobility within the levels, with 86 percent of those who were in the lowest fifth in 1979 moving into higher income categories by 1989.  In fact, more people moved up than down in every income group except the top 1% -- in that group, 53% went down.  The poverty rate did, however, rise from 11.7% in 1979 to 13.5% in 1990, according to Business Week.  Provocateurs like Mitch Snyder used grossly exaggerated and misleading numbers to claim that an epidemic of homelessness reflected the government's callous attitude toward the less fortunate.  (Snyder claimed there were 2-3 million homeless when, in fact, as a thorough study by HUD indicated, there were but 250,000 to 350,000; in 1989 Snyder admitted his figures were bogus.)


A little something I wrote a bit ago.

[mikhael]

Originally posted by Liberator
I am going to ask all you kids(and most of you are kids to me, I am nearly 26):

What would you do I his place?

In whose place? Bush II or Reagan? There's a lot of things I would have done differently than Reagan and Bush II. Strangely, I can't find much to argue about with Bush I. I did vote for the guy though. That might have been a mistake.

You don't know because your concern primarily with how others peceive you.  The trademark of a True Leader is the willingness and ability to put aside public opinion and make the right decision.

Actually, I do know, because I really don't give a damn about how people percieve me. Its rather the hallmark of my personality and why I have so very few friends. It also drives my wife nuts.
Actually, that's not true. I give a damn how my wife percieves me.

The hallmark of good leadership lays in doing the right thing, and doing it the right way. Bush I knew this. Bush II does not. Its what separates the two, and one was an okay president and one is a horrible president.
Bush I went to war in the Gulf by first gathering the support of the free world. Did he do this to protect the United States' image, so we could be popular? I say no. He did it because this was not an American fight. This was a world issue. Bush II is not his father's son. Given the same situation, he alienated the rest of the world, our friends and allies, our trading partners, our friends. He told the world that the United States doesn't need them, and he commited US troops to invading a sovereign nation on a platform of lies, half truths, and suspicions.

That's the thing about The Left, they want to be President because of the personal power it brings, mostly because almost all of them are morally and ethically degenerates, more akin to animals than the ideal representative of humanity that they should be.

Really? That's pretty much how I view Bush II. He likes the personal power of being president, but he's a moral and ethical degenerate. How you can call someone who breaks a solemn oath (made before God! Go read the Oath of Office for officers in the National Guard) "moral and ethical" is beyond me. Is it because he vocally espouses the same religion you do, regardless of his failings, regardless of the lies he's told, regardless of the mistakes he's made? I'll draw the line at calling him names. I don't really think he's a 'degenerate'. But I do think he's a liar and an outright failure as the President of these United States.

Oh, and be careful of calling people "moral and ethical degenerates, more akin to animals", Liberator. By attacking people, you cross over into "he's a poopyhead!" territory. Personal attack isn't needed (that goes for Kazan too, but good luck getting him to listen).

[Bobboau]

"...more akin to animals ..."

hey look, liberator is demonstraiting the "not my kind" behavior, were a human can treat other humans as objects rather than people becase they are not within there cultural context (famely, religon, race, tribe). I am glad to see you useing your emotions so that people can juge you by who you realy are

"The trademark of a True Leader is the willingness and ability to put aside public opinion and make the right decision."

like gay marrages, opionion is 60% against it right?
nice to see that mayor in San Francisco showing true leadership

[mikhael]

Originally posted by .::Tin Can::.
SIDE NOTE: Jimmy Carter was a nice guy, sure, but he made the economy and life here in America as hard as it could be. With high interest rates, hostage crisis, (which he took no action to) high unemployment, high amounts of inflation, downsized military, etc.

Inflation was bad, but the economy was also growing and keeping pace. That's something you might have missed.

As for the Cuban embargo, I think you'll find it started in 1960, not during the Reagan Era. Kennedy tightened it, Carter loosened it a bit, Reagan clamped it down hard. And to what real purpose? Cuba stopped being an eminent threat ages ago. Hate to tell you, but just because they're Communists doesn't mean we can't trade with them. We trade with China, and we opened trade with the Soviet Union long before they collapsed.
If you want to talk about Cuban support for revolutionaries and dictatorships, you need to go learn do US history. We've set up more puppet governments, mouth piece dictators and the like than any other nation on earth. If we didn't set them up, Reagan supported them. Saddam Hussein ring any bells for you?

If Carter was such a “great” and “prosperous” president, then why did Reagan win by a MASSIVE landslide, with a 489-49 electoral vote and 45 states to Carter’s 5.

Does that mean Bush I sucked and Clinton rocked? Because, as I recall, Clinton handed Bush I his tail, roasted and dressed. All this, coming out of nowhere, without even a carreer as an actor to back him up.

As for Reagan's economic policies, I point out, again, that he tripled the national deficit in eight years. If you adjust for inflation, Reagan's economic policies did indeed make 'the rich get richer and the poor get poorer'. Whilst average salries went up in each group, unfortunately the gains were still not enough to keep pace with inflation (and Reagan didn't stop inflation, he slowed it down), resulting in the poor being worse off. Meanwhile, his economic policies led to the large scale rape of the American worker by the rich, who did indeed get richer faster than they ever had before under ANY prior American president. I say "prior" because Bush II's economic policies beat out even Reagan when it comes to scratching the rich man's back whilst stomping on the poor guy.

Whilst Reagan did indeed boost military spending and expanded the military (a good course of action, considering the timeframe), he also threw literally billions of dollars away on some of the worse defense spending decisions in the history of the nation. The B1B, whilst a technically brilliant aircraft, is one of the worse military financial mistakes ever made. "Star Wars" was equally a horrible decision, especially considering the program was acknowledged by even Reagan's experts to be a long shot.

Perhaps, you subscribe to that other famous Reagan quote, "Facts are stupid things."