Your post fails to address any substantive matters that I posted on.

Apologies. In hindsight, I may be guilty of lumping in some of Rusty’s points with yours.

You are more clear when you use block quotes, because that last effort was rambling…

Point taken.

…and slightly strawmanish.

Now them’s fighting words.

France’s opinion of the Johnson Administration is beyond irrelevant to our current state of things, and the problems facing this country, in large part, because of W.

My point was, as bleak as you view the past eight years of this current administration, recent memory (and a quick google search) can still prove that 1968 and 1979 (in particular) were a lot worse for American “global prestige” then today. Contrary to popular belief, US Marines are not flying around the world to prevent US Embassies from burning down (like 1979) and the current (and past) President of France, or any global leader for that matter, isn’t asking for the US Military to leave his/her country immediately (like 1968.)

The only line typed by me in anyway relevant to your post is that our reputation around the world has declined.

Again, maybe I lumped your line with others that Rusty was bleating.

It’s been 30 years since your Carter examples and 40 years since LBJ, believe or not, things improved since then for the USA until W. took office.

Well, regarding US “global prestige,” I do remember the “Arab Street” still burning “Old Glory” and hopping around with some pretty derogatory signs, in English, about what a “war criminal” and a “pervert” Bill Clinton was after he bombed Sudan and Baghdad. Oh, and that mean spirited, declaration of war that OBL addressed to Clinton in late 1997. I guess I have a beef with Rusty’s and your thesis that 9/11 happened in a vacuum (eg. that the majority of our national security problems happened after GW was sworn in on 1/20/01, and that terrorism should be expected to be nipped in the bud when a previous administration throws literally hundreds of thousands of documents on your desk and one of them innocuously states that terrorists “might” use airplanes as devices in a plot because of what was attempted in the Bojinka Plot of January 1995, nearly six years earlier.

I made a joke about looking at the Carter legacy

My bad, I mistook it as one of your comparison points.

…again, since you conservatives want to give praise to a president for keeping us safe from being attacked by terrorists at home.

I don’t necessarily want to give our President “praise,” as much as acknowledgment for doing something about a very serious problem of terrorists who want us all destroyed, and the Nation States who support them. (You may disagree with the Iraqi front in this current war, but you can’t convince me that a Nation in violation of 19 UN resolutions regarding a 1991 cease-fire and WMD issues wasn’t a threat to our national security.)

…You won’t see any posts by me on this site giving praise to the Carter years.
You mentioned the terrorist attacks overbroad during the Carter years, and yes they were tragic,

Point taken.

…but do you want to tell me that they are anywhere near what 9/11 meant as an event on our soil, after YOUR president was in office for 8 months? Nothing during the Carter years compares to 9/11, which will rank right up there, and AHEAD of the assassinations of King and the Kennedys, and perhaps Pearl Harbor as our country’s lowest moments and worst days.

I agree with the “lowest moment” part, but I still bristle at any comparison of Carter’s inaction and inability to do anything to even the playing field with 1979 Iran, with GW’s strategy of taking the fight right back to the bastards of the world.

Get a little perspective, if you want to devote an entire post to this line:
3.Our reputation in the world declines.

Addressed above.

I have conceded Clinton’s inaction leading up to 9/11, and you have conceded nothing in regards to Bush’s failings before and after the event.

I don’t judge any of them on where they were when crap goes down. I judge them on their response, or lack thereof.

Would you vote for this guy again?

Against Al Gore or John Kerry? Yes. Al Gore’s 2000 campaign lies stacked too high for my sensibilities, and his denials regarding his involvement in the Clinton’s 1996 illegal campaign fund raising activities were not plausible in the slightest. And John Kerry was just too inconsistent in style and substance. I also found his attitudes towards our Military unacceptable for a war-time President.

Also, let me ask you a question that Soapbox failed to answer. A percentage of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Are you one of these people?

I hope my answer would reflect yours if I tweaked the question as such:
A percentage of Americans believe that Saddam Hussein 9/11 was responsible for the 9/11 attacks an inside job. Are you one of these people?

If you are, there really isn’t much to discuss in any type of a rational manner.

Likewise.

I apologize for any grammar or style problems with this post.

Don’t. I cringe when I reread the misspellings in my own writing.

I’m about to cut out of work early for vacation. Peace out to all, and be safe.

Right back at’cha.

On July 3rd, 2008 at 4:35 pm, mistressjustice said:

….and you have conceded nothing in regards to Bush’s failings before and after the event.

Reality check:
http://www.newswithviews.com/Devvy/kidd372.htm

Rusty, yes, the Baltimore Sun used the same old discredited nonsense that came out of the Soviet Cold War propaganda machine.

!?!?!?

Ok, you are no longer on Planet Earth.

I see you missed the fact that Iraq’s army was equipped with Soviet tanks and gear. Yep, you’re right, that made them an American ally, huh?

I didn’t miss that. The USSR and US were both supporting Iraq. So what?

3.Our reputation in the world declines.

I have conceded Clinton’s inaction leading up to 9/11, and you have conceded nothing in regards to Bush’s failings before and after the event. Would you vote for this guy again? Also, let me ask you a question that Soapbox failed to answer. A percentage of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Are you one of these people? If you are, there really isn’t much to discuss in any type of a rational manner.

I apologize for any grammar or style problems with this post. I’m about to cut out of work early for vacation. Peace out to all, and be safe.

I see you missed the fact that Iraq’s army was equipped with Soviet tanks and gear. Yep, you’re right, that made them an American ally, huh?
Supporting both to bleed them dry so they wouldn’t bother the rest of the world made Reagan an American hero – only you would believe that an American hero was a war criminal.

We helped both sides continue a long war so they wouldn’t bother with us? What the Hell are you talking about? Iraq had never, ever bothered with us. Iran was an enemy so supporting Iraq made sense. Supporting both makes Reagan a war criminal.

You do have something partly right – we helped both sides continue a long punishing war. We did that so that they would be occupied with each other and less with us.

There are many and plentiful objective ways ways to claim – and prove – that Bush has been a better President than Clinton. The problem here is that your BDS keeps you from seeing anything that doesn’t fit your BDS template.

Take off the blinders.

Put down the Kool-Aid.

JHSII, it’s fact that we provided Iraq with anthrax and other chemical weapons. It’s fact that we helped both sides in a long punishing war that killed 750,000 people, many of whom were civilians.

It’s fact that there were many more civilian and military deaths under Bush’s watch then there were under Clinton’s. It’s also fact that the Bush administration featured members of an organization dedicated to invading Iraq.

And although it’s not fact, there are reports of the Bush administration focusing on Iraq at the expense of focusing on international terrorism.

There is no objective way where one claim that Bush has been a better president than Clinton. Even if the Clinton prosperity was a mirage caused by the dot com bubble, remember the good old days when we had a federal surplus? When we won wars without losing American soldiers and keeping civilian casualties to a minimum? When we had international support? When there were no major international terrorist attacks?

And yes, Rusty, that is revisionist history. Have you ever heard of Walter Duranty?

And JHSII, if you can’t see the difference between the way Soap uses his numbers (to promote falsehood) and the way I am presenting his numbers (facts!), then there’s no way I can convince you of anything.

Soap’s claims that Bush has handled the military better than Clinton because of non-combat death rates is ridiculous when his own numbers don’t even back him up.

until you take an adult education course in basic statistics, please stop using numbers.

Then Rusty continues to do exactly what he was accusing Soap of. It doesn’t get any better than that.

Rusty, if you want to be taken seriously, then you have got to stop with the revisionist history. We never gave chemical weapons to an evil regiime. We never helped either Iran or Iraq kill civilians.

Clinton gave us the attacks on 9-11 because the terrorists learned from him that we wouldn’t give a real response to a major terrorist attack. We’re still cleaning up the international political mess from the Clinton regime – and we’ll probably be cleaning it up for the rest of my life!

From FactCheck.org

Looking at the non-hostile deaths (i.e., accidents, homicides, suicides and illnesses), we find that an average of 947 military personnel died each year during the Bush administration compared with 913 during the Clinton administration .

Using non-combat deaths in this thread is disingenuous anyways since we’re discussing specifically combat deaths and deaths caused by terrorism.

President Clinton was able to stop a genocide with international cooperation, promote democracy, and prevent a major terrorist attack over eight years with under 100 military casualties. Some of that is luck. But a lot of that was preparedness and a lot of that was not stuffing your administration with PNAC members determined to use any excuse to invade Iran.

Soap, until you take an adult education course in basic statistics, please stop using numbers. You are incredibly uninformed and your use of statistics to prove your point proves what Mark Twain said about statistics being a type of lie in the wrong hands.

Brian, your analysis of Iran/Iraq is way off the mark. First, we gave chemical weapons to an evil regime. There’s no way around that. We contributed to some horrible human rights abuses.

Why? To stop Iran who was “sticking it in our eye.” Well, let them stick. Our hostages were long out and they weren’t an immediate danger to anyone. Helping Iraqis kill Iranian civilians accomplishes what? I am perilously close to invoking Goodwin’s Law, but that’s like bombing the concentration camps to contain Nazi Germany. By attacking the Iranian people, many of whom were victims of a revolution they had no part in, we strengthened the Iranian government and cemented the anti-American hatred so prevalent there.

And how psyched was Iraq when it turned out we were illegally providing Iran with weapons too!?

Now we are the devil to that entire region. Which is a shame since our human rights record blows Iran and Iraq out the water. But when we’ve worked hard to kill so many with no tangible benefit, it’s a designation that I totally understand.

If your family was hit with American provided chemical weapons, you’d want to see us destroyed too. If your brothers all died on the front lines because we were artificially extending the length of the war, you’d be more likely to associate with terrorists than Westerners.

Iraq, with our support, killed approximately 215,000 Iranian civilians. 215,000 innocents bombed in their homes and on the streets in a war that Iraq declared for no reason with our support.
That, my friends, is terrorism. That’s 72 9-11s.

And still some wonder why other countries hate us!

The pages were not loading and I had a printout through 2006. Still, the numbers are telling of a sever problem with the Clinton admin. The deaths by “self inflicted” were real scarry – 20% (thru 2000). We hear a lot about the “self inflicted” deaths in the Bush admin. I am just trying to make a point that we are at war in three countries and have lost 11,500 souls (I guess that is what you came up with) while Clinton kept us safe and secure and out of war and we lost 7,500 under him.

Disturbing.