Re: 600 mile range Federal law needed

"Peter A. Stavrakoglou" wrote

We're not talking about inventorying boxes of cracker jacks here.

You need to read up on the law of the conservation of mass. Here's a word problem: If he had x amount of WMD's at some point, and he used y, then, by the law of the conservation of mass, he should have or be able to account for x-y. Like I said, it's not boxes of cracker jacks that are relatively unimportant, we're talking about WMD's.

Take a look at:

See above re: the law of the conservation of mass, and snopes.com and truthorfiction.com links about what the Dems, including what both Clintons, Kerry, and Robert "Sheets" Byrd were saying - not only after Clinton, but during Clinton's admin. Kind of hard for Bush to gen up false intel during the Clinton admin,. dontcha think?

Uh - whatever.

Yes - the French and Russians were trying to conceal their cashing in on the Oil for Food programs. They didn't want to mess up the good thing they had going with Saddam.

Ummm - by inventory records. The UN as well as Dems in Congress sure seemed to think he should have been able to. At the very best, he was a victim of his own sloppy record keeping.

From the snopes page - a quote of H. Clinton: ""In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons." Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), Oct 10, 2002

The Al Qaida connection has been re-proven since our intel flaws have been brought to light.

Also - read a book called "The Third Terrorist" by Jayna Davis. Documents thoroughly Sadam's conection to the OK City bombing.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

Bill, give it a rest.

The US Army has been all over Iraq looking for WMD. You know damn well that the Republicans have been praying daily to God asking for the army to find bombs because if no WMD's are discovered by 2008 that fact will be hammered over and over and they are going to take a pretty serious political loss for it.

The army found Saddam, and his 2 psychotic sons, and it's a lot easier to hid a person, who can easily move from place to place, than a bomb which can be found by a Geiger counter.

Saddam didn't have nukes by the time of the invasion, simple as that. About the most you could possibly argue is he snuck them into Syria sometime before the war, but very few are going to believe it.

And as for biological WMD's or nerve gas or some other scenario, those simply aren't very good WMD's. Gas dissapates and if your enemy knows your going to use it, they can easily take precautions. And other biological agents like germ warfare kill indiscriminitely and you could easily cause a plague that would wipe out your own people too, they are very unstable weapons. And frankly, none of those have the sheer phychological value of a nuke - if gas or germ warfare was so good, why didn't we use them on Hiroshima instead of a nuke?

Saddam was a great bluffer in his day, and most of the rumors of Iraq having WMDs were undoubtedly plants designed to scare his neighbors.

Anyway, as I've observed over and over again, there were a lot of far more valid reasons to invade Iraq than WMDs. Such as the government there routinely using torture. Why are people so squeamish about the US going in to a country and blowing away psychotic rulers? Do Americans think it's a good thing to leave people like this up and in operation? Do they really think any other countries are going to step in and put a stop to it?

Considering that Al Qaida has a lot of people who are probably members of other terrorist organizations, it would he extremely unusual if among all the criminals that Saddam helped out, that none of them happened to be part of Al Qaida. But that does not mean that there were any high-level connections between Saddam's government and Al Quaida.

The problem with the Iraq war is that it should have been OVER a long time ago. It was frankly disrespectful of the Republican-controlled congress to not issue a formal declaration of war against Iraq, and to allow Bush unlimited time to deploy the Army in there. That is NOT what the US Constitution says is allowable and I thought you conservatives were big supporters of the Constitution. It is also disrespectful of Bush to make such an early declaration of the end of hostilities there when soldiers are still getting killed. If the war is over, then the US Army should LEAVE. And it is a crime that there's been such a lack of basics like Kevlar boots, which keep soldier's feet from being blown off by mines, and a lack of hardened HumVees - there's only one company in the country that retrofits them and they are way, way behind. When soldiers are welding scrap metal to vehicles in Iraq because some bean counter in the Pentagon is too busy playing politics, that person should be in the front lines not behind a desk! And this business of pulling in National Guard - if Bush wants to fight a war and there's not enough soldiers, then he should have activated the draft - otherwise why the hell are we still to this day registering kids for Selective Service. What a waste of money - they claim that they need a S.S. bureau in case of a draft - but when there's a lack of soldiers they don't turn on the draft!!!

Bush has run the Iraq war in the most half-assed way imaginable, just like he's running FEMA and the rest of the bureaus in the Executive branch. That is the problem.

Ted

I don't at all disagree with much (not all) of what you said. Some things are black, some things are gray, some things are white. When people say that something is one when it is the other, I may choose to speak out. You really ought to read that book by Jayna Davis ("The Third Terrorist") about the OK City bombing. It truly does document that Sadam sent some of his Republican Guard boys over here to assist in that operation (though the training that our lily whites got was in the Philipines). It also clearly documents how screwed up our FBI was at the time - clearly an intentional cover up from above of the facts that would have blown the top off of that whole thing. Senator Spector was part of the coverup.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

My my. You are delusional.

But of course you don't let what people do afffect your feelings about God.

That's fine. Each of us will see the consequences (good or bad) of our beliefs. Isn't it great how a loving God gave us all freedom of will. But you probably hold him in contempt even for that.

Can we cut it off here?

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

It seems only in your convoluted way of determine facts from rumor and distortion, is it a problem.

So, you only support front-runners?

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Yep, I think that is a large part of what happened. Saddam wanted people to think he had such weapons and managed to provide the justification for invasion by doing so. His bluff got called.

IMO, the "problem" is that the modern US is not at all geared up for playing the army of occupation role and is making a hash of it. Of course if our country and military were programmed to be effective conquerors and occupiers then there would be an even bigger set of problems!

John

Nice try. Neither Snopes nor

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

Yep - you were lying.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

Not so fast Bill.

That was reported in Ha'aretz back in June 2003. The Washington Post subsequently dug up the source of this. Bush didn't perhaps say these exact words but he did say something along these lines - the White House has never denied any of this, see:

Now whether Bush actually believes this or he was just posturing to a bunch of governments who are basically institutionalized government-controlled religion, that is left to the reader to decide.

However Bush's State of the Union speech claiming the "Axis of Evil" well that's pretty close to religious terminology I think. If Bush isn't religious he is skirting it very closely. And Bush has made it clear that he is personally a religious person.

Don't get me wrong I think that there's nothing wrong with a religious person running the government. There's plenty of religious people who are deeply spiritual or have a strong relationship with God, who are very clear on what the separation of Church and State is all about. In fact a religious person has far more to lose if the state gets involved in religion since in a twinkling a different religious faction can grab power and now you have persecutions and the Inquisition all over again. However I and many people are very concerned that Bush does not clearly understand this.

Bush could be the strongest constitutional supporter there is, but if he opens the door to state-sponsored religion just a crack, such as was done with the school voucher program, and the government/church charity initative, there's a lot more rabid religious nutcases in the Republican party who are going to be around long after he's gone, and they will keep working away at that crack until one day they will have taken over. And God help us if that happens.

Ted

(1) Bush never said anything like that to the King of Jordan. (2) The "quote" that is cited is not a *quote* at all. Whatever it was he said was heresay that even if he said anything remotely like it went thru two translations.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

You would probably disagree, but please tell me how school vouchers equally available to public and secular, Christian, Jewish, etc. private schools *establishes* (key word) a particular religion. Same about faith-based initiatives. For something to vilate the Constitution, it has to *actually* violate it - not just *appear* to violate it to someone who takes a superficial glance and doesn't think it thru. In the "early" days, states and local gov'ts were allowed to actually do things in this regard that the Constitution forbid Congress from doing (like establishing an official state religion. The question of whether that was right or wise for states to do doesn't come into play if you're looking at issues of Constitutionality. It stipulates what **Congress** may or may not do - period. And beyond that, it says that Congress can't pass laws on the subject. BTW - did you know that the Supreme Court declared that secular humanism is a religion?

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

Then there should have been no problem for the White House to simply tell the Washington Post that it was garbled in translation and Bush meant it differently. End of story.

The fact that the Whitehouse simply ignored the question speaks volumes.

I don't know about you but if I'm paying someone to do work for me and I ask that person a question and he ignores me, I fire him. And that is what the American people should have done with Bush back in 2004.

Ted

It doesen't establish religion, but it is a step towards it. The problem is while you might be OK within the strictures of the Constitution to take a lot of steps towards establishment of a state sponsored religion, once you start heading down that path it becomes a lot more difficult to stop at the line in the sand. And even if you can stop, a lot of your supporters don't have the same self-control and cannot.

History is filled with governments who have done unspeakable things and got their populate to do unspeakable things. After all it was considered perfectly normal in ancient Rome for people to go to a stadium and watch people being torn to bits by wild animals. They didn't get that way overnight, their culture grew that way. And they are still stoning people to death today in some parts of the world. None of these things happened because one day someone in power decided it was a good thing to do. They happened because over the years the people in power grew more and more favorable to these things.

And establishing a state sponsored religion is NOT anywhere near unspeakable to a surprisingly large percentage of the US populace.

Then you should have no problem when the State of Oregon decided to legalize Assisted Suicide. And when the State of California decided to legalize gay marriage (as they are getting ready to do) as well as when both those states decided to legalize Marijuana. Those things aren't covered by the US Constitution but the US Congress is doing everything it can to make them illegal.

You might not have a problem with those 3 things but look around you and look at the people your standing with - a quite lot of them do.

Ted

So Bush should stop and respond to every cackpot who comes up with half-baked stories. Like Louis Farrakhan saying regarding New Orleans: " 'I heard from a very reliable source who saw a 25 foot deep crater under the levee breach. It may have been blown up to destroy the black part of town and keep the white part dry,' Farrakhan said." (That's an example of an honest to God direct quote:

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

You have just invoked the ol' slippery slope argument. Liberals never allow slippery slope arguments when used against them, but they sure whip them out when it suits their purposes.

Seriously - from a strict legal/Constitutional standpoint, "one step towards" is the same as the commonly used expression "a near miss" (or a near hit) - (an inch is as good as a mile). Either it fits the prohibited activity or it doesn't, not "It appears to some as being similar to...". It doesn't say "nothing can be done that looks like it may be a step towards..." It says "may not pass a law that...". *Bush* is not *Congress*. *Speaking* is not *passing a law that*. Therefore "Bush saying..." is not the same as "Congress passing a law that...".

See above re: Slippery slope arguments.

I'm just the messenger. A state establishing a religion is not prohibited by the Constitution. Again, I didn't say I think they should or that it would be a good thing to do, but if we're talking about "What does the Constitution say about a state establishing a religion?", then the answer is "Nothing". Again - I'm just stating the facts. I didn't say I was for or agin'. The subject is the Constitution.

Whether I have a problem with it has nothing to do with the question of is it allowed by the Constitution, does it. This isn't a discussion of what is and is not Ok by me. This is a discussion of what is Constitutional.

BTW (and you may find this intersting and/or humorous) - I used to work with a guy that claims that the county he lives in never signed the loyalty oath that was required of all counties in the Confederacy after the Civil War (or what some refer to as "The Recent Unpleasantness"), and that it is the *only* county in the entire south not to have done so. So technically, he claims, his county is still seceded from the Union.

We live under the Constitution. If we believe in the Constitition, then we should all let the chips fall where they may and strictly enforce it even on specifics that we disagree with. And, BTW - it does have the provisions within itself to be altered/amended. It was intentionally and wisely made difficult to amend, but even a strict Constitutionalist has to acknowledge that it can be amended.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

Obliquely relevant: did you know that the UK has an established religion, the Church of Engand?

DAS

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