No WMD's? No problem! At least we're honest!

[questionnaire]

19,000 - 23,000 murders every year since 1986.

30 million functionally illiterate, and another 60 million semi-literate.

The West's worst obesity problem.

The West's worst drug addiction problem.

The West's worst social security system.

Low-quality health care for the poor.

The retention of the death penalty in some States.

The refusal to outlaw hand-guns.

The highest numbers of religious fundamentalists and wacko Neo-nazi groups



Like Debbie says, Mike, answer the points, don't reduce everything to an ad hominem argument. One at a time, if you want. We've got all day.



Oh, and I forgot to mention - your prison population has increased p from 200,000 in 1970 to 1,200,000 and rising today. Why's that? Is it because, despite it's huge financial wealth, your country is a social disaster zone?



Best music? That was true in the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. It was fresh and innovative, and I loved it. Now, apart from what some of the young black guys are doing, it's tired and worn-out. Country, rock and soul are reaching the end of their shelf-life, and jazz is now exploring world music.



America was at it's most creative when it was taking in cultural influences from its variety of immigrants. Now it's become a tedious cultural bigot.



And stop pretending that you represent 'freedom'. The market is the most stringent authority in human history. Nothing has ever been more strict. American freedom is an illusion - it has been since the end of the 19th century land rush. This 'price of freedom' argument is just a tedious mantra that you've all been taught to chant.



Intelligent Americans know all this. In fact, I get most of my information from them. Over to you, Mike.

[memphis mike]

We are not a small country so, of course #'s will be large. I don't disagree about our social ills. We are a diverse people, we have immigration problems, too many drugs and no fathers around. btw, the neo nazi groups, etc. once again, overexagerrated. i personally know of no one in that category. Who do you want me to relate all these questions to? Is your country without these ills? We have a lot of bad, but also a lot of good. If our problems are so immense how do we retain the staus as the world's only super-power. Now, if you'll excuse me, I am teaching my bullfrog to bark!



Oh, and I refer you back to my previous answer for all your questions. Being free is not cost free. IMO, yes we give the criminals too many rights, I personally do not agree with the death penalty and I've never owned a gun. Again, the cost of freedom and yes, we do try and change things for the better.



Back to my bullfrog!

Edited by: memphis mike at: 6/15/03 2:54 pm

[LarreeMP3]

Like Memphis Mike says...



"We are not a small country so, of course #'s will be large."



Exactly. If my home state of California was a country, it would be one of the largest countries in the world!



My CITY has a larger population than many countries!



And getting back to music... NONE of the music being produced ANYWHERE on this planet today even comes close to touching American music from the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. Except for my music, of course. And that is a FACT!

[AQUARIAN AGE]

Quote:

---

"We are not a small country so, of course #'s will be large."

---

If you compare percentage of the stuff mentioned above per population of each country in the world, then statistically the USA is a banana republic.



But yes, I believe you can do better than that!

Edited by: AQUARIAN AGE  at: 6/15/03 5:50 pm

[questionnaire]

"We are not a small country so, of course #'s will be large."



It's not the numbers, Mike and Larree, it's the RATES that are important, as Galmin recognized immediately. To put it simply - 20,000 murders as a proportion of 260,000,000 is 1 in every 13,000 in the USA, where in England 600 as a proportion of 65,000,000 is 1 in in 108,000, which means - now pay attention - 8.5 people are being murdered in the USA to every 1 in England. Now, that's only ONE reason why I don't want your way of life influencing mine too much - another reason is that I have to EXPLAIN this to you, you dummies!!



Larree, I've already admitted that that period was a creative purple-patch. But now it's just about over. But you're saying that a few good pop songs are qualitatively BETTER than what came out of Europe between the 17th and mid-twentieth centuries? Bach, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Debussy, Sibelius, Stravinsky, Holst etc etc? And the great folk musicians from around the world? And what about the African music that forms the basis of blues, jazz and American popular music anyway? Shows how utterly arrogant, insular and deluded some of you lot are.



I can't be bothered with you anymore - go back to teaching your bullfrog to be the greatest guitarist on earth, or whatever it was you were doing.....

[LarreeMP3]

I have always listened to music from all over the world. I've studied classical composition. I have written fugues. And I have always dug Ravel's Piano Concerto in G! Puleze! Thank you!

[LarreeMP3]

"And getting back to music... NONE of the music being produced ANYWHERE on this planet 'today' even comes close to touching American music from the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. Except for my music, of course. And that is a FACT!"



I said TODAY! Are we living in the 17th century?

[Galmin]

It seems we are derailing, is the thread about the absence of WMD or is it about people, criticising how the war was sold, really are merely jealous and want that kind of government themselves?

Quote:

---

Is thier anything kind you can say about the US?

---

Woah. Good thing you're American, Mike. Else a flood of critics, while trying to hide their own strawman argumentation, would invade the thread in the holy cause of "non-native speakers inability to read and comprehend the English language".

[memphis mike]

inadvertent error....

[debbie mannas]

Has this been reported on FOX??



www.observer.co.uk/intern...53,00.html



Iraqi mobile labs nothing to do with germ warfare, report finds



Peter Beaumont, Antony Barnett and Gaby Hinsliff

Sunday June 15, 2003

The Observer



An official British investigation into two trailers found in northern Iraq has concluded they are not mobile germ warfare labs, as was claimed by Tony Blair and President George Bush, but were for the production of hydrogen to fill artillery balloons, as the Iraqis have continued to insist.

The conclusion by biological weapons experts working for the British Government is an embarrassment for the Prime Minister, who has claimed that the discovery of the labs proved that Iraq retained weapons of mass destruction and justified the case for going to war against Saddam Hussein.



Instead, a British scientist and biological weapons expert, who has examined the trailers in Iraq, told The Observer last week: 'They are not mobile germ warfare laboratories. You could not use them for making biological weapons. They do not even look like them. They are exactly what the Iraqis said they were - facilities for the production of hydrogen gas to fill balloons.'



The conclusion of the investigation ordered by the British Government - and revealed by The Observer last week - is hugely embarrassing for Blair, who had used the discovery of the alleged mobile labs as part of his efforts to silence criticism over the failure of Britain and the US to find any weapons of mass destruction since the invasion of Iraq.



The row is expected to be re-ignited this week with Robin Cook and Clare Short, the two Cabinet Ministers who resigned over the war, both due to give evidence to a House of Commons inquiry into whether intelligence was manipulated in the run-up to the war. It will be the first time that both have been grilled by their peers on the Foreign Affairs Select Committee over what the Cabinet was told in the run-up to the war.



MPs will be keen to explore Cook's explanation when he resigned that, while he believed Iraq did have some WMD capability, he did not believe it was weaponised.



The Prime Minister and his director of strategy and communications, Alastair Campbell, are expected to decline invitations to appear. While MPs could attempt to force them, this is now thought unlikely to happen.



The Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, is expected to give evidence the week after.



The revelation that the mobile labs were to produce hydrogen for artillery balloons will also cause discomfort for the British authorities because the Iraqi army's original system was sold to it by the British company, Marconi Command & Control.

[NRKofOver]

I'm generally confused when people who criticize our nation are characterized as 'jealous'. More interestingly, in this day and age, if you're an American (like I am) and criticize the government, you're called a traitor or a terrorist sympathizer or Anti-American.



The criticism of our government has long been a tenet of this nation. That's what makes it good. We're supposed to express our discontent when we're concerned it's not going as well as possible. From the latest questions regarding Bush's element of truth to all those things mentioned by others in this thread, it's important to ask why. This is a decent country but it can be so much better and many of us believe it is going the wrong direction and becoming a place that is nowhere near the 'greatest country in the world'. To stay silent about such things is a disservice to every American.



I am generally surprised by the reactions of Americans. If Bush and Co. actually falsified/heightened/embellished intelligence reports simply to garner support for this war with Iraq, every American in the nation should be thoroughly pissed off, but most people don't care. As an American I am concerned and confused, so why wouldn't people from other countries be just as concerned and confused? I feel like every American should be pissed that legislation has passed essentially throwing out very important aspects of the Constitution, like reasonable search and seizure, like due process, like innocent until proven guilty, but again, most Americans don't seem to care.



And if you just do a bit of reading, we are leading the industrialized/technological world (in percentages of total population) in prision inmates, in abortion, in teeanage pregnancies, in most violent crimes, in drug abuse, in alcoholism. We have abject poverty in one of the richest nations in the world. We have an economic disparity that is growing at an astounding rate (twenty years ago a CEO's average wage was about 10 times that of the average wage of all employees, now it's hundreds and even thousands of times more than the average wage). We have umbelievable white collar criminals whose greed affects 1000's of families negatively and they are barely slapped on the wrist. Our education system is inneffective for many many kids. And we can go on and on. These are serious problems for one of the richest and supposedly 'freest' countries in the world.



As far as one small part of this thread. We do have neo-nazis and hard core right-wing militia groups. And as long as they don't violate the law, one of the things that makes this country great is free speech. I disagree completely with those particular ideologies, but I will defend their right to speak their minds. I hope that everyone in this country believes the same thing. I hope that everyone continues to defend the right of all Americans to say what they believe, to speak it loudly and to not suffer repercussions of a legal or violent nature. Because the America I see coming is where the things I say will be prosecuted as some bizarre form of treason or that I'll have my ass kicked in a bar because someone doesn't like my 'Anti-American' opinion. That's truly anti-American.

Read all about ME!

[LarreeMP3]

...if 9/11 never happened. But as far as I am concerned, all bets are off. I have no problem with destabilizing the region and messing with ALL of the countries who support terrorism. Sorry.

[debbie mannas]

9/11 was just cause to go to war with Iraq??



Have you been following ANYTHING??

[debbie mannas]

Quote:

---

An accurately informed public is the essence of our democracy.

---

www.counterpunch.org/cony...62003.html



A Threat to Democracy

Bush's Deceptions About Iraq

By REP. JOHN CONYERS



Speech in the House of Representatives, June 10, 2003



Mr. Speaker, my service in this House has often shown me the profound tension between government secrecy and democratic decision-making. Rarely however, has that tension been as starkly posed as in the current revelations of divergence between President Bush's assertions based on "secret information" about the alleged threat to America posed by Iran and the actual assessment of that threat by America's intelligence professionals.



I have seen the American people apparently deceived into supporting invasion of sovereign nation, in violation of UN charter and international law, on the basis of what now appear to be false assurances. The power of the Congress to declare war was usurped. The consent of the governed was obtained by manipulation rather than candid persuasion.



Instead of conducting a sustained all-out war against the genuine terrorists behind 9/11, President Bush chose to terrorize the American people. The President, Vice President Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld painted lurid nightmares of al Qaeda's attacking U.S. cities with insidious anthrax or clouds of deadly nerve gas. All of this was portrayed as coming courtesy of Saddam Hussein, unless we destroyed the Iraq regime. They also wielded the ultimate threat that Iraq would imminently endanger America and our closest allies with nuclear weapons. Members of Congress who voiced deep distrust of those claims were privately briefed with even more vivid descriptions of the deadly threats that Saddam posed to American security.



In public speech after speech, the President and his supporting players assured America's anxious citizens that attacking Iraq was absolutely necessary to prevent the imminent threat of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction from harming them and their loved ones.



In addition, President Bush was determined to convince the public that Saddam was personally behind, or at least intimately involved in 9/11. He and Vice President Cheney repeated that mantra incessantly. No wonder that about half of the country still believes that Saddam was involved, although our intelligence community has emphasized that there is no credible evidence that is true.



The manipulation was massive and malicious. The motive was simple. The Administration wanted to attack Iraq for a variety of ideological and geopolitical reasons. But the President knew that the American people would not willingly risk shedding the blood of thousands of Americans and Iraqis without the immediate threat of deadly attack on the United States. As Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz recently admitted to an interviewer in an unguarded moment, when the threat of weapons of mass destruction was chosen as the banner to lead a march to war, it was chosen for "bureaucratic reasons," not because the danger was imminent or paramount.



The President and his Cabinet were well aware that these claims either rested on flimsy projections or came from sources that most of our Intelligence Community disdained. The President and his Cabinet knew that in some cases those discredited sources' assertions were flatly contradicted by the professional assessments of the intelligence Community experts at CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the State Department, and were only supported by a rogue special office established under Secretary Rumsfeld precisely to "find" or reinterpret intelligence in order to support the Administration's determination to invade Iraq.



When war came, our own military field commanders were surprised by the fierce, often deadly, resistance that our troops faced from Saddam's "militia." We, and our British allies, were surprised when the Iraqi people in Basra and elsewhere did not rise up to welcome our troops with open arms. Most of all, our military commanders, the Congress and the American people all were surprised when no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) were found. Now, as each day passes, and no WMD has been found, that surprise has turned to suspicion, to concern and finally to outrage at the deception practiced by the Bush Administration.



In response, President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld, and their spokespersons have offered one excuse after another. As reporters and whistle-blowers have exposed the flaws in each excuse, the White House has scrambled to create another, with the confusing speed of a kaleidoscope's changing patterns. Law students are taught to plead in the alternative: "I never borrowed your pot." "Besides, it wasn't cracked when I returned it." "Anyway, it was not cracked when I borrowed it in the first place." The Bush Administration has learned that lesson well:



The Bush White House assures us that weapons of mass destruction will inevitably be found.



At the same time, the Bush White House argues that they never really said Iraq had such weapons in 2002, only that they had programs to develop those weapons.



Finally, the Bush White House argues that it doesn't matter whether Iraq did or did not have such weapons posing a threat to the United States, because Saddam was a repressive ruler and its good that the world is rid of him.



They cannot succeed with this shell game because they cannot outrun the truth. There are too many previous contradictory statements, too many reports leaked by outraged veteran intelligence analysts, and too great a record of established facts. The Administration's arrogantly crafted script is unraveling. President Bush and his courtiers now have learned the wisdom of the Scottish poet Robert Burns, who warned:



"Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive."



Now, the Administration's final refuge is that the public thinks the war was justified even if no weapons are found. Obviously, those poll results reflect the American people's relief that our military's losses, and the loss of Iraqi civilians, regrettable as they are, have not been even greater. They reflect understandable revulsion at the horrors of Saddam's regime. Nevertheless, continued ethnic conflict and violence, ambushes of American soldiers, political disarray, malnutrition and disease mount daily in the aftermath of this "easy war." Also, the Bush White House is forced to acknowledge the re-emergence of al Qaeda's terrorist threat. So the American people have begun to focus on how badly it appears that they, and their congressional representatives, may have been misled by a president anxious to stampede America into war.



In any event, regardless of the final tally on the war in Iraq, there is a growing awareness that this disturbing presidential conduct raises issues that transcend any particular hostilities in which America might engage. It raises the most profound constitutional questions. How can the separation of powers and checks and balances designed to protect our Republic continue to do, if the Executive can work its will through falsehood, deception and concealment?



Equally pressing is a determination of the appropriate remedy, should the Administration's assurances to Congress and to the electorate prove to have been as knowingly false [*E1208] as now seems to be the case. In the days ahead, I shall consult with my colleagues, with legal scholars, political scientists and historians, in order to weigh the appropriate actions necessary to prevent this or any future Administration from usurping the power of Congress and the power of the people to decide public policy on the basis of accurate knowledge.



An accurately informed public is the essence of our democracy. It is most essential on the ultimate question of peace or war. To deceive the Congress and the public about the facts underlying that momentous decision is to transgress one of the president's supreme constitutional responsibilities. I believe the House Committee on the Judiciary should consider whether this situation has reached that dimension.



That question is especially acute at this time because President Bush's disturbing doctrine of "preventive war" means he plans to persuade the Congress and the electorate that additional "preventive wars" are necessary. Will that advocacy be based on deception and false statements, too? The prospect is frightening.



Finally, I note the provocative analysis on this point recently offered by former Counsel to the President John Dean, who has carefully analyzed the nature and context of the President's many assertions about the threats allegedly posed by Iraq and the constitutional implications should they prove false upon further examination. It deserves wide dissemination.

[NRKofOver]

Thank God someone is speaking in an official capacity within our government seriously questioning the actions of our President. If deliberate and intentional actions were taken to deceive the American people, I can think of no higher act of treason. This is a democracy dammit! It's imperative that we not be lied to by the people that we elected especially in such serious situations as the death of Americans and other humans across the planet. I hope this becomes important to every American, I really do. I hope that the message is sent that you can't manipulate information, you can't embellish information, you can't lie, you can't do anything like that just because you think the end result is ultimately right. The more I think about this the more I get pissed off.

Read all about ME!