posted on November 14, 2001 05:10:38 AM
"It is time for President Bush to stop the cheer-leading and speak the truth. He said last Thursday, "This great nation will never be intimidated. . . . Life in America is going forward."
"Who is he trying to kid? Last Friday at Los Angeles airport I saw people trying to check their baggage – standing in a line that was at least 200 yards long. I stood in five separate lines to identify myself and my
carryon luggage. The soldiers in fatigues with submachine guns reminded me of a Third World country."
The politicians live in their own unreal world, with no idea of what's happening in America. How many times has Air Force One been late taking off? How many security lines have Donald Rumsfeld, Tom Ridge, and Dick Cheney stood in? They care little about the traveling businessman who now must cut his work short at lunchtime in order to catch a 5pm flight. Or the individual who must get up
at 4am to catch a morning flight.
"Has the President noticed the hundreds of billions of dollars being added to federal, state, and local government budgets – spending piled on top of previous budgets, spending that's causing huge deficits and tax increases, spending that's coming out of the hide of American taxpayers?"
When will he say straight out: "America rules the world by force, and the price of that is for you to pay high taxes and live in a nation that looks more and more like a police state."
No Neutrals
President Bush says, "You're either with us or against us." Does that mean he'll bomb neutral Switzerland – the island of freedom, privacy, and security in the midst of socialist Europe – if it doesn't confiscate private bank accounts and otherwise act on every whim of our President?
Why doesn't he simply tell the truth: "America rules the world and I rule America. You will do as I say or I'll kill your people."
Opposition
The President keeps telling us that the world
supports the American war against Afghanistan. But the truth is that he has bought the support of foreign leaders with your money – while public opinion polls
show people in foreign countries are overwhelmingly opposed to American military attacks.
Why doesn't he just tell the truth: "We are destroying the last vestiges of love for America around the world – but that's the price we must pay for me to become powerful and popular at home beyond my wildest dreams."
Time for the Truth
When you know some of what politicians tell you are lies, you have to wonder how many of their other statements are lies as well. What I want is the truth. I'd like to think I'm mature enough to handle whatever that may be. And I could prepare for the future much better if someone told me the truth – instead of all this rah-rah stuff.
America isn't leading the world. Leaders lead by example. And America is providing no example of individual liberty, personal responsibility, small government, or peace.
America rules the world. Rulers rule by force. They may succeed temporarily, but at an awful cost.
It is long past time for the truth – the truth that many more Americans will have to die to satisfy the politicians' lust for power."
posted on November 14, 2001 07:00:21 AM
Harry Browne has always been the man with the answers.
6-point plan to get government out of war programs
There is so much we can do to avoid war-to assure that America’s youth never go to war again, and that our lives and homes are secure against foreign attack:
1.End all loans & giveaways to foreign governments & international agencies. Stopping giveaways keeps our government from taking sides in foreign disputes. 2.Get out of all alliances, treaties, & international organizations. America doesn’t need to be a joiner to have good relations with the rest of the world. 3.End all arms sales by the government. 4.Open our markets to goods & services from all over the world. Nothing could do more to give foreign people a vested interest in keeping the peace with us. 5.When a foreign leader threatens the US, announce that carrying out any warlike act against us will lead to a multi-million-dollar reward for his assassination. 6.Establish a defense that protects against missiles launched from anywhere in the world-a system built by private companies competing for a reward.
Why Government Doesn’t Work, by Harry Browne, p.158 Jul 2, 1995
Kumbaya My Lord, Kumbaya... (come on krs, lets hold hands and join together on a chorus)
posted on November 14, 2001 07:25:08 AMkrsAs to your stupid chanting, why don't you go outside and do it-you might find a friend.
That's not the way to respond to an out stretched hand, is it?
Come on, a few choruses and we'll be best buddies. Step off the soap box and join me.
Kumbaya My Lord, Kumbaya...
See doesn't that feel better, don't you get the urge to smile and talk about something pleasurable. Can you feel how the lyrics are working. Sing a few more choruses, notice the difference, you feel that bug up your butt getting weaker?
posted on November 14, 2001 07:42:41 AM
The United States and its allies were desperately struggling to
keep a grip on events in Afghanistan as the opposition Northern
Alliance swept ahead from Kabul with no international
peace-keeping force ready to move in, and no agreement on a
broad-based government to succeed the reeling Taliban.
Stunned by the speed of military developments on the ground,
world leaders in Washington, London, Islamabad, and New
York were scrambling to set up a force under the aegis of the
United Nations to move into the capital and other Afghan cities
"liberated" by the Alliance and to lay the foundations of a new
government capable of bringing unity and stability to the
country.
posted on November 14, 2001 10:24:10 AM
What are the hoards of lies being told to the American public? Because certain things aren't talked about, doesn't mean the average citizen can't read between the lines and figure things out for themselves.
Let's pretend I'm the President and say... "America rules the world by force, and the price of that is for you to pay high taxes and live in a nation that looks more and more like a police state." What would be different? This is nothing new.
posted on November 14, 2001 12:05:03 PM
It's long established that you are easily amused, hcross, but only assumed that you drool. Do you have a little mobile over your crib?
The words "Kum ba yah my Lord" come from a Southern dialect of America, and means "Come by here my Lord". The song does not have its origins in Voodoo, but in Christianity of the most fervent kind.
Now, I think that it means "WHatever!". LoL
It is used sometimes to indicate agreement,
sometimes blind agreement.
posted on November 14, 2001 06:11:14 PM
Afghanistan wasn't another Vietnam-like quagmire, despite so-called expert (ho hum) predictions. There was a clear, quick victory with little loss of American life. (Except for that darned forklift accident.) We didn't bomb Afghanistan back to the stone age. There was very little collateral damage, even by Bush-baiter standards.
It's sad, in a way. The accusers have nothing to accuse, and the apologists have nothing to apologize for. I think some are disappointed the victory was so quick and easy.
posted on November 14, 2001 07:58:30 PM
Below is why getting the Taliban and bin Laden is important.
From The Times UK
Bin Laden's nuclear secrets found
FROM ANTHONY LOYD IN KABUL
Times reporter finds blueprint for 'Nagasaki bomb'
Singed files left by fleeing terrorists
OSAMA BIN LADEN’S al-Qaeda network held detailed plans for nuclear devices and other terrorist bombs in one of its Kabul headquarters.
The Times discovered the partly burnt documents in a hastily abandoned safe house in the Karta Parwan quarter of the city. Written in Arabic, German, Urdu and English, the notes give detailed designs for missiles, bombs and nuclear weapons. There are descriptions of how the detonation of TNT compresses plutonium into a critical mass, sparking a chain reaction, and ultimately a thermonuclear reaction.
Both President Bush and British ministers are convinced that bin Laden has access to nuclear material and Mr Bush said earlier this month that al-Qaeda was “seeking chemical, biological and nuclear weapons”.
The discovery of the detailed bomb-making instructions, along with studies into chemical and nuclear devices, confirms the West’s worst fears and raises the spectre of plans for an attack that would far exceed the September 11 atrocities in scale and gravity.
Nuclear experts say the design suggests that bin Laden may be working on a fission device, similar to Fat Man, the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. However, they emphasised that it was extremely difficult to build a viable warhead.
While the terrorists may not yet have the capability to build such weapons, their hopes of doing so are clear. One set of notes, written on headed notepaper from the Hotel Grand in Peshawar and dated April 26, 1998, says: “Naturally the explosive liquid has a very high mechanical energy which is translated into destructive force. But it can be tamed, controlled and can be used as a useful propulsive fuel if certain methods are applied to it. A supersonic moving missile has a shock wave. That shock wave can be used to contain an external combustion behind the missile . . .”
The document was one of many found in two of four al-Qaeda houses which had been used by Arabs and Pakistanis and even reportedly by bin Laden himself. The houses — two in the Karta Parwan district and the others further to the east — were abandoned on Monday as Taleban units and their allies fled the city.
Attempts had been made to burn the evidence, but many documents still remained. They included studies into the development of a kinetic energy supergun capable of firing chemical or nuclear warheads, external propulsion missiles, preliminary research on the creation of a thermonuclear device, as well as a multitude of instructions for making smaller bombs.
There were also studies into Western special forces’ hostage rescue techniques, phone numbers for industrial chemical and synthetic producers, flight manuals, aerodynamic research, and advanced physics and chemistry manuals.
The houses were identified by local people. Looters had concentrated on more appetising objects, ignoring foreign language documents that were of no use to them.
Bin Laden sees it as his “religious duty” to obtain a nuclear bomb. In an interview with a Pakistani journalist last week, he threatened: “If America used chemical or nuclear weapons against us then we may retort with chemical and nuclear weapons as deterrent.”
Intelligence agencies already have indirect evidence from defectors, middlemen and scientists of bin Laden’s obsession with obtaining or producing a nuclear device.
Al-Qaeda agents are known to have spent more than £1 million trying to obtain enough fissile material to make a “dirty bomb” that, if detonated with TNT in a populous area, could kill thousands and contaminate it for decades.
Intelligence sources told The Times last month that bin Laden and al-Qaeda had acquired nuclear materials illegally from Pakistan. And at least ten Pakistani nuclear scientists have been contacted by agents for the Taleban and al-Qaeda in the past two years, according to reports.
Fears that bin Laden has components for a nuclear weapon is believed to lie behind the warnings from President Bush and Tony Blair that he would commit worse atrocities than the suicide assaults in America if he could.The Prime Minister’s spokesman said: “Bin Laden would have killed 600,000 people on September 11 if he could have done. This underlines again why he has to be stopped. ”
posted on November 15, 2001 01:31:04 PM
The article comparing the Russian "victory" to the recent state of affairs is interesting, but highly irrelevant, since the goals of the former soviet union and the US now are so different.
the soviets wanted a puppet government that had the country under control so that they could extend their influence even further, to iran/iraq/etc. Besides just wanting a larger land empire, this would give them warm water ports, the ability to deny oil to the west, etc. This required them to send a large army to prop up the puppet goverment, and exposed them to all the problems they had.
The US isn't interested in the same things at all. They just need the Taliban dethroned (to eliminate having a whole government/country serve as a staging ground for large, well-organized attacks on the US). The US doesn't have to occupy afghanistan, nor try to similarly occupy iran/iraq. Either a moderate islamic government, or, frankly, a disintegrated country will accomplish our objective of disrupting the status quo.
So i agree that the US already has a pretty good "victory" on its hand...al qaita is on the run and on the defensive, which will severely hamper their ability to attack the US in any significant way. And with every day, there are fewer of them.
