Thinking about voting for Obama?

Louisiana is a purple state.

 

They have failed to find him in seven years. Pakistan is a great place to hide. We have given them $10 billion dollars and it has gotten us nothing in return. They won't go get Osama and they won't let us go get him. They do let the taliban exist openly in Pakistan. They allow taliban and al qaida terrorists to attack Afghnaistan from safe refuges in Pakistan.

We are making the same mistake that we made in Iran in the 70's. We supported the Shah of Iran, a pro-american strongman who did not enjoy the support of the islamic population. In time a revolution overthrew the Shaw and set up the Islamic Republic that has been a dedicated enemy of the US ever since.

Musharrif will not last much longer. His replacement is almost certain to be an Islamist and anti-American. We're pouring money onto a Islamic state, ripe for fundamentalist revolution, that already has nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles to toss them with . . . oh, and they shelter our 9/11 enemies, Al Qaida and The Taliban, too. Some friggin' allies.

Pakistan is a much bigger problem that Iran, who mostly have only martial rhetoric and the funding of Hamas and Hezbollah to annoy us with. They have no nuclear weapons and ICBM to deliver it with, moreover, they did not particiapte in 9/11 and do not get along with Osama bin Ladin. Iran is an annoyance. Pakistan is a real problem and the potential catalyst of a future nuclear war.

Fantasies aren't very helpful, unfortunately. I believe Superman and Ironman will smite the evil villains for us . . . behind the scenes of course.

Both sides need to show a little flexibility and arctic drilling could happen. Proven (standard) technology doesn't cut it as far as environmental impact, but new technologies show great promise to get the oil without lacing the region with roads. This is going to get settled.

Your personal moral beliefs are not among the issues that I care about when electing a politician. I just care that they do not try to inject their own religious beliefs into their government decisions. I also care that governments do not intrude upon private family issues and religious practices. Separation of church and state is a foundation of the United States Constitution.

What nuclear-armed terrorists? I know that we have a fear of nuclear-armed terrorists and Hollywood has movies of nuclear-armed terrorists but there are no actual nuclear-armed terrorists for us to bomb. This is the problem with terrorists and guerillas in general--traditional military action is ineffective agianst them. It takes some smart use of bombing, but only in conjuction with an awful lot of covert Special Ops, CIA shenanigans, bribery, diplomatic influence, fomenting internal resistance, economic pressure, etc. It's not as simple as "bomb them and they'll quit and go away".

Of course, not, what a load of tripe,the intel did not get us into the war, the decision-makers did that. The intelligence community has complained loudly that they were often ignored by the Bush administration. You should read the books by former CIA Al Qaida unit head Michael Scheuer, Richard Clark, chief counter-terrorism adviser on the U.S. National Security Council and CIA Director George Tenet. They were there, have put their reputations on the line, and they level harsh criticism at George Bush and his advisors who, they assert, failed to take terrorism and Al-Qaeda seriously. They detail how, after the attacks took place, Bush and key figures such as Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Dick Cheney turned their attention almost immediately to Iraq, a nation not involved in the attacks.

Nonsense. They were on top of the terror situation and foiled the Millenium Bombings, which would have been terror on a 9/11 scale, Clinton bombed Al Qaeda bases in the Sudan in retaliation for the embassy bombings and bombed bases in Afghanistan twice trying specifically to kill bin Ladin (who was tipped off by our friends the Pakistanis).

Before 9/11 the Bush Administration did nothing to derail Al Qaeda,not even retaliating for the USS Cole bombing. Clark the national counter-terrroism czar couldn't even get a meeting with Bush.

That ain't our job! That ain't the reason we were told we were going to war. Iraq has been a political disaster for centuries and we aren't going to change it a damn bit. This republican mismanagment of their own blunder is crazy. Republicans want to keep writing blank checks ($ 2Billion a week) blindly pursuing a failed policy in Iraq. We've had enough of that chit.

I think that they have delusions of grandeur and that they live in a region that already has Israel, India, and Pakistan with nuclear weapons. Sure they desire to be on the same militray and power-player level as their regional rivals. But they are years away from it and may even have given up. Our own National Intelligence Estimate says that they stopped work on wepons design in 2003. Like Saddam, I think Ahmadinejab is talking the talk but they can't walk the walk.

Republican just don't learn very fast. Read my lips . . . Iran doesn't have any nuclear weapons, they just demand the right to conduct nuclear research. Hasn't Iraq taught you anything? Misplaced fear of imaginary nuclear weapons (which our own experts said were not there) led to the snowballing clusterfugg that is the occupation of Iraq. Republicans need to grow a pair and not overreact in fear of every third-world strongman who boasts loudly.

What would Iran do with nuclear weapons if they had them? Nothing. What can they do? They will parade them down the steet like Russians for all to see and they will slap each other on the back and beam with pride. If they had them they will discover what we already know. You can't use nuclear weapons against a nuclear rival without risking annihilation. It would give them protection and leverage in dealing with Pakistan, Israel, and India.

They possess no nuclear threat to attack us. They have no ICBMs, for one thing. If they were to attack a US base in the region with a nuclear weapon, one submarine in the Indian Ocean could rain 240 warheads on them within a hour. They are equally unlikely to give a nuclear weapon with their return addres on it to a terrorist. It would lose them the one thing they seek above all by possessing a nuclear weapon--deterence from an Israeli nuclear attack.

 

There is a moderate inside you, trying to get out, i think.:thumb: