Calm
Topic: Personal
"You've been hoodwinked. You've been had. You've been took. You've been led astray, run amok. You've been bamboozled." Malcolm X
I'm mad. No, I'm angry, pissed off, and enraged.
Every time that I drive around in my not so sleepy town of Wake Forest, North Carolina, and I see the Bush/Cheney signs or bumper stickers I get mad.
I don't want to harm anyone but I want to shake them. I want to figuratively slap them. I want to tell them to snap out of it.
I want to make the common man (or woman) who has that bumper sticker on the back of that beat up Ford Escort realize why they have that bumper sticker on the back of that beat up Ford Escort. I want to make them realize that the decisions that they make affect not only their lives but the lives of others. I want to make them realize that their choices are hurting people, especially themselves.
I want them to understand that there are men who will do things against their own self-interest for the greater good. That there are people who will say important things, things that they don't want to hear, things that they need to hear. There are men who will unite us not divide us.
I want to make people realize that in order to protect their religion it absolutely needs to stay out of their government. I want people to believe the words of their prophets and their God when they were told that violence isn't the way. I want them to understand that simple men have solved world problems like slavery, fascism, nazism and communism, through the power of their peaceful ideas. I want to make them think for themselves so that they can come up with their own ideas.
I want to make them realize that they must stop trying to tell other people how to live their lives.
It is usually at this point in my thinking when a calm comes over me and I realize that I need to start doing the same. This is when I realize that people are not going to change overnight. I need to have patience. I need to realize that I can't do it for them. I can't tell them what to do.
What makes me grow calm is that I become aware that I need to allow people to learn on their own. I can inspire them and educate them but until they realize these things for themselves nothing is going to change.
I wish I could make the President and his followers understand this so that they could take responsibility for their greed, division, lack of patience and support of violence. I wish I could make them understand that the preservation of the union for a little perceived security isn't worth destroying the fundamental principles that it was built upon.
I wish I could make them understand that they can't force people to do what they want them to do.
... ah, the calm.
Posted by The Indy Voice
at 10:18 PM EDT
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Updated: Thursday, 26 August 2004 12:26 AM EDT
January 26, 1998 PNAC Letter
Topic: Iraq
This is a letter from the "The Project for the New American Century":
"January 26, 1998
The Honorable William J. Clinton
President of the United States
Washington, DC
Dear Mr. President:
We are writing you because we are convinced that current American policy toward Iraq is not succeeding, and that we may soon face a threat in the Middle East more serious than any we have known since the end of the Cold War. In your upcoming State of the Union Address, you have an opportunity to chart a clear and determined course for meeting this threat. We urge you to seize that opportunity, and to enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies around the world. That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from power. We stand ready to offer our full support in this difficult but necessary endeavor.
The policy of "containment" of Saddam Hussein has been steadily eroding over the past several months. As recent events have demonstrated, we can no longer depend on our partners in the Gulf War coalition to continue to uphold the sanctions or to punish Saddam when he blocks or evades UN inspections. Our ability to ensure that Saddam Hussein is not producing weapons of mass destruction, therefore, has substantially diminished. Even if full inspections were eventually to resume, which now seems highly unlikely, experience has shown that it is difficult if not impossible to monitor Iraq's chemical and biological weapons production. The lengthy period during which the inspectors will have been unable to enter many Iraqi facilities has made it even less likely that they will be able to uncover all of Saddam's secrets. As a result, in the not-too-distant future we will be unable to determine with any reasonable level of confidence whether Iraq does or does not possess such weapons.
Such uncertainty will, by itself, have a seriously destabilizing effect on the entire Middle East. It hardly needs to be added that if Saddam does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, as he is almost certain to do if we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world's supply of oil will all be put at hazard. As you have rightly declared, Mr. President, the security of the world in the first part of the 21st century will be determined largely by how we handle this threat.
Given the magnitude of the threat, the current policy, which depends for its success upon the steadfastness of our coalition partners and upon the cooperation of Saddam Hussein, is dangerously inadequate. The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.
We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your Administration's attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power. This will require a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts. Although we are fully aware of the dangers and difficulties in implementing this policy, we believe the dangers of failing to do so are far greater. We believe the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf. In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.
We urge you to act decisively. If you act now to end the threat of weapons of mass destruction against the U.S. or its allies, you will be acting in the most fundamental national security interests of the country. If we accept a course of weakness and drift, we put our interests and our future at risk.
Sincerely,
Elliott Abrams (National Security Council,
Elliot Abrams)
Richard L. Armitage (Deputy Secretary of State,
Richard Armitage)
William J. Bennett (speechwriter for George W. Bush,
William J. Bennett)
Jeffrey Bergner (His lobbying firm, Bergner, Bockorny, Castagnetti, Hawkins & Brain, represents a number of high profile firms, including Bristol-Myers Squib, Boeing, Hewlett-Packard, Phillip Morris, Monsanto, Lucent, and Dell,
Jeffrey Bergner)
John Bolton (Under Secretary, Arms Control and International Security,
John Bolton)
Paula Dobriansky (Under Secretary, Global Affairs,
Paula Dobriansky)
Francis Fukuyama (professor of political economy at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies,
Francis Fukuyama)
Robert Kagan (co-founder of the Project for the New American Century,
Robert Kagan)
Zalmay Khalilzad (special envoy to Afghanistan, advisor for the Unocal Corporation, counsellor to United States Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, senior United States State Department official advising on the Soviet war in Afghanistan and the Iran-Iraq war, and from 1991 to 1992, he was a senior Defense Department official for policy planning,
Zalmay Khalilzad)
William Kristol (advocate for Israel, political contributor to the Fox News Channel,
William Kristol)
Richard Perle (Advisory Board of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, former chairman of the Defense Policy Board,
Richard Perle)
Peter W. Rodman (Assistant Secretary for International Security Affairs in the Department of Defense,
Peter W. Rodman)
Donald Rumsfeld (Secretary of Defense,
Donald Rumsfeld)
William Schneider, Jr. (Chairman of the Defense Science Board,
William Scheider Jr.)
Vin Weber (former U.S. Representative from Minnesota,
Vin Weber)
Paul Wolfowitz (Deputy Secretary of Defense,
Paul Wolfowitz)
R. James Woolsey (former director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency,
James Woolsey)
Robert B. Zoellick (member of President George Walker Bush's Cabinet,
Robert B. Zoellick)
Posted by The Indy Voice
at 6:26 PM EDT
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Updated: Sunday, 2 January 2005 10:19 PM EST
Our Differences...
Topic: Retort
There are great distinctions between conservatives and liberals. One of the main difference (besides conservatives being spoiled little cry babies (that was a personal attack but I'll explain later))
is the propensity for conservatives to not understand the difference between what constitutes a personal attack and what is substantive and topical argument.
I think the distinction is so great because there is a hereditary gene that persists amongst conservatives that causes them to blindly follow their perceived leaders. Loyalty is an admirable characteristic in many places except when it's blind and especially when it's applied to our democratic leaders.
I'll give you an example:
"George W. Bush has never had a mandate because he actually lost the popular vote by over 500,000 votes". You see that statement is an opinion based upon a fact. There was nothing personal about that statement.
"George W. Bush's policies have caused tremendous division both domestically and abroad".Again a statement of opinion.
"George W. Bush is a selfish and stupid man, who's inadequacies, which probably include a very small penis, cause him to violently impose his will on others".Now that was a personal attack because it didn't include any facts (except for the small penis remark).
The way that you can tell the difference between a personal attack and a substantive argument is within the content of the statement. If for instance, the statement includes characteristics of an individual the statement is most likely personal. One the other hand, if someone makes a statement about the actions of an individual, their argument, in general, would not be personal. The way to be assured that the argument is not personal is to verify if a fact is being used in the statement.
There is a clarifying point that needs to be made here. If a person is attempting to use a fact, which is in fact, not a fact, then most likely that person would be carrying out a personal attack.
For example when Larry Thurlow says:
"...I distinctly remember we were under no fire from either bank."The statement is clearly a personal attack against John Kerry. While it would seem that this is the expert opinion of an eyewitness, the fact is that Thurlow was saved that day by Chief Petty Officer Robert E. Lambert *corrected- the facts are important*, who also received a bronze star for his actions in that incident. In the supporting paperwork, which is corroborated by other eyewitnesses (including the commanding officer who is apart of this partisan personal attack) and a Naval investigation, it states that there was, in fact, enemy small arms fire.
So in this case, as it would be a court of law, the events of that day can not be shown to differ from the account given by John Kerry because the men making the accusations have been shown to be contradicting their own earlier statements. Because this statement attempts to impugn the character of the man, this is clearly a personal attack.
Yes, sometimes it is hard to distinguish between a personal attack and a substantive argument but when people concern themselves only with the facts the distinction becomes clear.
Posted by The Indy Voice
at 6:41 PM EDT
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Updated: Friday, 27 August 2004 1:19 PM EDT
The Decision Was Made
Topic: Iraq
Store this in the vault of overwhelming evidence that Iraq NEVER posed a threat to the United States.
Iraq NO ThreatRemember this:
"
I think it didn't even constitute an imminent threat to its neighbors at the time we went to war." Greg Thielmann, Director of the Office of Strategic Proliferation and Military Affairs (they're responsible for analyzing the Iraqi weapons threat. "He and his staff had the highest security clearances, and saw virtually everything - whether it came into the CIA or the Defense Department".)
Posted by The Indy Voice
at 11:42 AM EDT
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Updated: Saturday, 21 August 2004 11:43 AM EDT