She didn't take anything out of context. - sm

• did you see - Sunday
  • take what she says out of context, yet again.... - go ahead
    • She didn't take anything out of context. - sm - PollyGram
    • Thats what happens when you are desperate to - destroy someone. It is disgusting, really.nm
      • That should be Obama's new campaign song - Desparado - just me
        • And McCain/Palin's could be - "Dirty Laundry".

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Oh, the quote definitely is not out of context and the world and most of America realizes it, that is, the part of America that isnt brain washed by the radical neocons or radical christian movement, you know, the normal Americans, not the Bush sheeple..Posting on other boards?  Many years experience here, also many years experience on Yahoo groups and political chat rooms, so I dont need *lessons*.  Thank you.  Oh, also years experience in the local democratic party and government..Been a political person since high school.

Yes, I know your post appeared before Cease Fire.  As soon as I pressed the Post Reply button, there you were, right back up there taking one last “shot”…your words, not mine.  Cease fire…broken before it even began.  That would suggest that the 3^rd person rules of engagement never applied either.  You have made it quite clear that you prefer the garbage-out/garbage in approach…again, just dancing to your tune.  Remember the part about someone always being around to answer bigotry’s call-to-arms?  Thus, the gloves stay off for the time being.  Besides, your rejection of the olive branch is fairly apparent by now. 

He’s my friend, not my therapist.  He still has so many issues of his own, he would be the first one to say that he’s the one who needs the couch.  He is brilliant when it comes to helping others, just not when it comes to helping himself.  We have known each other for 42 years.  He actually seeks my advice, and I his..it’s personal, not professional. 

The economics is way to vast to get into for the time being.  May another time, but in terms of what we spend to “support” illegals, that amount is a drop in the bucket when compared to the profits generated for transnational corporations (those guys who actually run the country) in the maquilidoras in Mexico and the cheap labor pool they create once they cross that porous border.  So yeah, I got some 4-letter words on that subject.  Just ask yourself this fundamental question.  Who stands to gain/profit from all this?  As long as the transnationals’ bottom line is in the black, they have no motive to “fix” this “problem.”  Don’t hold your breath.  This is what global economy looks like.    

The yada, yada, yada was not referring to the path to citizenship.  I was talking about entering with legal status.  Let’s put a face on a case.  I had a Filipino friend (fellow MT) back in 1983, who entered on a work visa and applied for permanent residence.  That took 3 years.  She waited.  No problem.  Then she tried to apply for her 5 children.  By 1986, the laws relative to family unification requirements had changed.  In 1983, she only would have had to wait another 5 years (AFTER becoming a resident) for approval to sponsor HER OWN CHILDREN.  Whoops.  No so fast.  By 1986, that generous 5-year wait had been doubled to (count ‘em) 10 years for Filipinos.  She traveled back and forth over those years while immigration did its thing to see her children and husband, who had stayed behind to raise them in her absence. 

Her kids were school age when she when she started this.  By the time they were all together again, her youngest was a sophomore in college.  She waited.  She did it all nice and legal.  Excuses, excuses, excuses?  Good things come to those who wait?  What’s so great about a mother missing 13 years of her children’s lives?  Was it worth it?  The price they paid was way too high.  They had all become so disillusioned and had lost so much, within 5 years after completing the process, the entire family turned around and went back to the Philippines.  So much for THEIR Ameican dream and playing by the rules.  Maybe good riddance to some, a tragic shame to others.  That’s just one case….and yeah, there are plenty of 4-letter words that reveal just how many others there were.  Things have gotten a whole lot worse since then, but your party still insists these arcane laws are “too liberal” to suit them.  Puh-leeze.  So no, I don’t pick and choose laws that suit me.  Simply stated, bad laws need to be changed, or eliminated all together.  

No national spokesperson here.  Just a lifetime of experience (sorry, Sam, you left yourself wide open by trying to be so cute).  U of H, 1967…that pesky urban academic forum you love to hate.  Free speech for all students was encouraged and accommodated back then.  Alongside Viet Nam War, civil rights and nascent women’s lib protests were the highly visible and vocal Arabs and Iranians, here on student visas, nice and legal, the way you claim you like it.  Their issues were:

1. The 6-day war, when US-backed Israel stepped up its bloodthirsty quest to drive an entire Palestinian population into the refugee diaspora by expanding its illegal occupations of Syria and Egypt.  They created some great future killing fields in Golan and Gaza by rearranging a few borders and chopping up the West Bank like a piece of cheap mortadella, sending millions of refugees fleeing into Jordan, which has never been the same, Syria, Europe and the US.   


2. The pros and cons of Arab political unity as an appropriate response to such blatant aggression and invasion.  Now this idea scares the pants off the US.  If the Arabs were ever to unify, and especially if they ally themselves with Iran, the world power that would create could crush US superpower ambitions with its eyes shut.  US was really nervous about that prospect.  Not hard to figure why they have spent trillons of dollars since 1948 (Israel's birthday) and turned a blind eye to all that bloodshed in an effort to keep that region just as destabilized as possible.  Where's the outrange over that expense?  Oil makes countries do some crazy stuff. 


3. The formation of the OPEC states as organized by the Shah of Iran, the puppet monarch the US backed after their successful early 1950s coup that removed Mosadegh, the secular democratic prime minister who wanted to eliminate Western control and nationalize Iran’s oil.  Democracy in the Middle East?  Right.  “Oil”agarchy?  Nothing new under the sun.  Imperialism?  Old as the hills. 


4. The subsequent withdrawal of US backing for the Shah when he had the audacity to take a page out of Mosadegh’s book to suggest that Iran should control it OWN oil resources. 


5. The rise of a multitude of Iranian political parties, including the strengthening and empowerment of those nasty Islamic fundamentalists that eventually seized control. 


6. The overthrow of the US puppet monarch who, by that time, had systematically imprisoned, tortured and executed his opposition behind the scenes, ultimately turning Islamic party leadership into national martyrs, making it really easy for them to step right in and take over.  Not a great choice for a puppet.  Can you say "human rights?"


7. The outpouring of refugees from Iran in the aftermath, trying to escape the same-song-second-verse torture, imprisonment and executions under the new leadership.  My husband was one of the lucky ones who made it out in time.  Things were a bit hectic for him in the middle of the blood bath, there being a revolution and all.  No time for a visa.  Declared asylum when he got to  Germany and was approved.    


8. The 1951-1952 CIA-backed coup has been acknowledged by our own government and US tax dollars transfered from the US to the Israel treasury...a matter of public record, so "frankly, I don't believe it" isn't going to cut it.  I could give you some more 4-letter words, but time is short.  As you can see, this is not exactly democratic party line I'm spouting here.  No mouthpiece on this mouth.  This is information that is not served up by the US news media outlets either.  You can hear a lot about it from news broadcasts from other countries and there is a ton of information to sift through on the net should one feel so inclined.     

This is not some angry tirade or “tude” I harbor.  Not trying to condescend or educate anyone here.  History simply is not your friend, Sam, so keep those elitist accusations on the tip of your tongue where they belong.  In any case, I was just like you, at first.  Beat my patriotic chest, fought tooth and nail, until I finally started to acknowledge my own bias and prejudice against “foreigners” and decided to look into it all.  Started reading up on the subject, listening more and talking less, checking facts, etc.  Picked up a keen interest in all flavors of foreign policy.  Changed my life for the better forever.  Made friends along the way of all sorts and persuasions, over many decades, by now, way too numerous to count.  Studied together, had lots of fun, ate dinners with them and their families, baby sat their kids, went to weddings, house warmings, baby showers and funerals, shed bucket of tears, learned respect for their customs and cultures. 

I married once to an Arab for 12 years, went overseas and lived with the family for 2 years in Madaya, a RURAL village 40 miles west of Damascus in the Bekka Valley.  Most beautiful orchards you ever laid eyes.  Too bad the skies over this particular pastoral scene were often darkened by the storm clouds of war.  That was the year Israel tried to push itself all the way to Beruit, a mere 45 miles to the west of us, decimating whole villages in the wake of that land grab (been so many, I've lost count)…but not quite as gory as their most recent offensive into Lebanon.  Israeli fighter jets (bank-rolled by good ole’ American tax dollars,) would often fly so fast and so low under the radar screen they sounded like they were getting ready to crash into the house.  This would send us all scrambling to the floor, nose to the ground and hands clenched tightly behind our heads in a hopeless attempt to somehow feel safer, where we would cower for a couple of minutes until it was over.  Kind of reminiscent of those war photos from Sadr City and Mosul when American soldiers ransacked those villages in search of insurgents, going door-to-door, breaking in with the butt of their rifles, sending civilian old men, women and children dropping like flies in the absence of all military-age male family members (out trying to protect everybody), as the GI planted his boot into the small of an Iraqi teenager’s back, shaking like a leaf.  Just how proud, safe and strong do you think that “should” make me feel? 

Later married that Iranian refugee I spoke of earlier.  Got in-laws abroad and here.  My husband has difficulty accepting the idea that he may never see his mother, father, 3 brother(s), sister(s)-in-law, nephew and neice, aunts, uncles and cousins.  We make do with weekly phone calls.  My son is a native-born citizen, with very much of a westernized hyphenated Iranian side to his identity….American-Iranian, according to him.  My sister lives in Tehran with her husband and her own 12-year-old American citizen American-Iranian/Iranian-American son.  Hope they don’t get caught up in the aftermath of the latest nuclear flap and proposed American diplomatic efforts.  You’ll forgive me if I a bit suspicious of Bush’s stunning reversal of “we don’t negotiate with terrorists” mantra.  An “American interests section?”  Indeed.  Don’t look for the Iranian madman to agree to another CIA spy dugout in the middle of his capital city any time soon.  Shades of ignored WMD inspector reports and manufactured “intelligence” (give me a break) findings.  I take little comfort in the fact that he is running out of time for another Middle East invasion/fiasco. 

Through it all, I have engaged myself with immigration law, starting back in college, trying to help different nationalities navigate the stormy waters of the LEGALIZATION process.  Furthermore, because of my husband’s political refugee status, we are well acquainted with Homeland Security (DHS) issues.  One of our friends is a DHS regional director.  He is an advocate for immigrant rights and reform, legal and illegal…a position he takes after his retirement from INS after 30 years and 5 years with DHS.  Probably knows a thing or 2.  He can’t wait for the inauguration.  Says his job will be a lot easier and kinder once McCain or Obama take office, since they both support immigration reform.  Looking forward to going to sleep with a cleaner conscience, he says. 

Anger?  Not exactly.  Passion?  You bet.  Please forgive me if I feel like I might have something of substance to bring into this debate.  I take these issues very seriously since were are talking about my families, my friends.  In my experience (not some passage out of some old dusty textbook), these are matters of life and death.  I may be a little far out in left field to suit you, but I feel I have at least earned my stripes.  I am no less American than anyone else born and raised here.  Keep in mind that I am not by myself here either.  The last 2 elections were too, too close to support that notion.     

You will be relieved to hear this.  That’s all the time I have right now.  One thing we all can see about you is you somehow feel if you get the last word, it must be the best word.  Ain’t necessarily so, but at least for the time being, you can have it your way.  Have no intention to leave the remainder of your slanderous post unanswered.  Debate is suspended from this side due to the job hunt thing, but certainly not finished by any means.  

One thing I look forward to is the (un)Cival War discussion.  Maybe you can enlighten me as to how to construe a war which produced more than half a million deaths of various sorts in 4 years was about anything except some of the same fundamental issues that divide us to this day…the economics and human rights issues that surrounded slavery then, the common thread that divides us, then and now, being the bigotry of it all.  Will follow your advice and read up on the Republican party, but before playing the Abraham Lincoln was a Republican card, better bone up on how your party platform has reversed itself on most issues since it formation in the early 1850s.  HisRepublican Party in no way resembles the GOP of today.  Confusing?  Yes.  Alas, another 4 letter word for you. 

I appreciate your parting “shot.”  Wouldn’t want to let a little thing like a hurricane sink OUR hot air balloons (pleural). now, would we?  Enjoy your last word and the sabbatical.  Gonna get swallowed up by poverty if I don’t find a job soon. 

manufactured outrage is to create the impression that O and media are against SP.  That way, as more and more damaging information is revealed with investigations by reporters in alaska, hopefully the limited-information voters will disregard the facts that are revealed.

whatsoever to inflame prejudice.  shameful, shameful behavior. 

of the True Believers, oh grand puhba. Everyone grab match.

In fact, the conversation was very polite and respectful at all times. Wow, how two people can remember things so differently.  Says a lot.

He didn't say he made a mistake, at least not directly after speaking the phrase, but please listen to the video and decide for yourself.  It has been taken out of context. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpoAVAA1F30&NR=1

the philosophy of the website, only one soldier's opinion, and actually after looking at the bulk of the soldiers' comments on this website, it is not indicative of the general sentiment presented.  That is what I meant by out of context. 

I just have a problem with folks taking bits and pieces of a news story, quote, website and presenting a fragment of it as indicative of the overall sentiment.  But perhaps that was not your intention. 

his own personal reasons.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050620/why_george_went_to_war.php

The Downing Street memos have brought into focus an essential question: on what basis did President George W. Bush decide to invade Iraq? The memos are a government-level confirmation of what has been long believed by so many: that the administration was hell-bent on invading Iraq and was simply looking for justification, valid or not.

Despite such mounting evidence, Bush resolutely maintains total denial. In fact, when a British reporter asked the president recently about the Downing Street documents, Bush painted himself as a reluctant warrior. "Both of us didn't want to use our military," he said, answering for himself and British Prime Minister Blair. "Nobody wants to commit military into combat. It's the last option."

Yet there's evidence that Bush not only deliberately relied on false intelligence to justify an attack, but that he would have willingly used any excuse at all to invade Iraq. And that he was obsessed with the notion well before 9/11—indeed, even before he became president in early 2001.

In interviews I conducted last fall, a well-known journalist, biographer and Bush family friend who worked for a time with Bush on a ghostwritten memoir said that an Iraq war was always on Bush's brain.

"He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999," said author and Houston Chronicle journalist Mickey Herskowitz. "It was on his mind. He said, 'One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.' And he said, 'My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.' He went on, 'If I have a chance to invade…, if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency.'"

Bush apparently accepted a view that Herskowitz, with his long experience of writing books with top Republicans, says was a common sentiment: that no president could be considered truly successful without one military "win" under his belt. Leading Republicans had long been enthralled by the effect of the minuscule Falklands War on British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's popularity, and ridiculed Democrats such as Jimmy Carter who were reluctant to use American force. Indeed, both Reagan and Bush's father successfully prosecuted limited invasions (Grenada, Panama and the Gulf War) without miring the United States in endless conflicts.

Herskowitz's revelations illuminate Bush's personal motivation for invading Iraq and, more importantly, his general inclination to use war to advance his domestic political ends. Furthermore, they establish that this thinking predated 9/11, predated his election to the presidency and predated his appointment of leading neoconservatives who had their own, separate, more complex geopolitical rationale for supporting an invasion.

Conversations With Bush The Candidate

Herskowitz—a longtime Houston newspaper columnist—has ghostwritten or co-authored autobiographies of a broad spectrum of famous people, including Reagan adviser Michael Deaver, Mickey Mantle, Dan Rather and Nixon cabinet secretary John B. Connally. Bush's 1999 comments to Herskowitz were made over the course of as many as 20 sessions together. Eventually, campaign staffers—expressing concern about things Bush had told the author that were included in the manuscript—pulled the project, and Bush campaign officials came to Herskowitz's house and took his original tapes and notes. Bush communications director Karen Hughes then assumed responsibility for the project, which was published in highly sanitized form as A Charge to Keep.

The revelations about Bush's attitude toward Iraq emerged during two taped sessions I held with Herskowitz. These conversations covered a variety of matters, including the journalist's continued closeness with the Bush family and fondness for Bush Senior—who clearly trusted Herskowitz enough to arrange for him to pen a subsequent authorized biography of Bush's grandfather, written and published in 2003.

I conducted those interviews last fall and published an article based on them during the final heated days of the 2004 campaign. Herskowitz's taped insights were verified to the satisfaction of editors at the Houston Chronicle, yet the story failed to gain broad mainstream coverage, primarily because news organization executives expressed concern about introducing such potent news so close to the election. Editors told me they worried about a huge backlash from the White House and charges of an "October Surprise."

Debating The Timeline For War

But today, as public doubts over the Iraq invasion grow, and with the Downing Street papers adding substance to those doubts, the Herskowitz interviews assume singular importance by providing profound insight into what motivated Bush—personally—in the days and weeks following 9/11. Those interviews introduce us to a George W. Bush, who, until 9/11, had no means for becoming "a great president"—because he had no easy path to war. Once handed the national tragedy of 9/11, Bush realized that the Afghanistan campaign and the covert war against terrorist organizations would not satisfy his ambitions for greatness. Thus, Bush shifted focus from Al Qaeda, perpetrator of the attacks on New York and Washington. Instead, he concentrated on ensuring his place in American history by going after a globally reviled and easily targeted state run by a ruthless dictator.

The Herskowitz interviews add an important dimension to our understanding of this presidency, especially in combination with further evidence that Bush's focus on Iraq was motivated by something other than credible intelligence. In their published accounts of the period between 9/11 and the March 2003 invasion, former White House Counterterrorism Coordinator Richard Clarke and journalist Bob Woodward both describe a president single-mindedly obsessed with Iraq. The first anecdote takes place the day after the World Trade Center collapsed, in the Situation Room of the White House. The witness is Richard Clarke, and the situation is captured in his book, Against All Enemies.

On September 12th, I left the Video Conferencing Center and there, wandering alone around the Situation Room, was the President. He looked like he wanted something to do. He grabbed a few of us and closed the door to the conference room. "Look," he told us, "I know you have a lot to do and all…but I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this. See if he's linked in any way…"

I was once again taken aback, incredulous, and it showed. "But, Mr. President, Al Qaeda did this."

"I know, I know, but…see if Saddam was involved. Just look. I want to know any shred…" …

"Look into Iraq, Saddam," the President said testily and left us. Lisa Gordon-Hagerty stared after him with her mouth hanging open.

Similarly, Bob Woodward, in a CBS News 60 Minutes interview about his book, Bush At War, captures a moment, on November 21, 2001, where the president expresses an acute sense of urgency that it is time to secretly plan the war with Iraq. Again, we know there was nothing in the way of credible intelligence to precipitate the president's actions.

Woodward: "President Bush, after a National Security Council meeting, takes Don Rumsfeld aside, collars him physically and takes him into a little cubbyhole room and closes the door and says, 'What have you got in terms of plans for Iraq? What is the status of the war plan? I want you to get on it. I want you to keep it secret.'"

Wallace (voiceover): Woodward says immediately after that, Rumsfeld told Gen. Tommy Franks to develop a war plan to invade Iraq and remove Saddam—and that Rumsfeld gave Franks a blank check.

Woodward: "Rumsfeld and Franks work out a deal essentially where Franks can spend any money he needs. And so he starts building runways and pipelines and doing all the necessary preparations in Kuwait specifically to make war possible."

Bush wanted a war so that he could build the political capital necessary to achieve his domestic agenda and become, in his mind, "a great president." Blair and the members of his cabinet, unaware of the Herskowitz conversations, placed Bush's decision to mount an invasion in or about July of 2002. But for Bush, the question that summer was not whether, it was only how and when. The most important question, why, was left for later.

Eventually, there would be a succession of answers to that question: weapons of mass destruction, links to Al Qaeda, the promotion of democracy, the domino theory of the Middle East. But none of them have been as convincing as the reason George W. Bush gave way back in the summer of 1999.

in AR's post that she was against it.  Instead, she acted as if the topic has no place on this board and shouldn't be discussed... like some kind of dirty little secret.

The *attack the messenger* technique has been used constantly in the last 5 years by the current administration (and his followers) when someone gets too close to the truth.  Don't believe me?  Ask Valerie Plame.