Americans answered their President - Page 5

Originally posted by: chatbuster

haha, sorry to be nit-picking but Reagan got the hostages released?

Ronald Wilson Reagan (February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004) was the 40th President of the United States (1981–1989)

 Iran hostages were released Jan 20 1981. 

now coming to other points, of course Bush did not wake up any fine morning with the thought to invade Iraq. from the looks of it, his mind was made up many moons ago; he just had to find an excuse.😛

 That is a speculation on your part.

3rd point. do u find much more than 40% voting in most elections, or is that a statistic best presented only when republicans lose?😉

 Just stating the fact which btw is always reported after the elections.

as for the vietnam reference, what are you advocating? stay the course like the bushies wanted? and that will accomplish...? with the manner he jumped headlong into war, he created conditions for a vietnam, and now public is to be blamed for it. passing the buck?

 Govt does not have plan yet.. Do you? and who is blaming the public and for what?

BOTTOM-LINE, was bringing democracy to Iraq the avowed goal of the iraq war? then how come the bill of goods that was sold was the probable existence of WMDs, how saddam's agents were going around secretly in european capitals trying to get the bomb etc? btw, wasn't the second "factoid" discredited as a lie at the outset itself? any case, if this was about bringing democracy, perhaps that shld have been forthrightly stated upfront to the public, no? was there any need to be shifty about the objectives, putting out one trial balloon after another in an attempt to find something that the public wld buy? incidentally, i wonder how many Americans wld have voted to go to war to "bring democracy" to iraq. that's never been a very popular cause, is it? unless of course there's some oil involved😛

 Iraq war resolution states why and how the war was approved.

Edited by lighthouse - 17 years ago

Originally posted by: Pradarshak

You seem to approve continuously of what Bush did  to Iraq even after it proved to be a disaster.

Quoting someone else's mistake does not make one less. From the point of America's involvement , after Vietnam nothing looks bigger than Iraq.

 With the benefit of hindsight it is easy to harp on Bush and Iraq war but when Baghdad fell and Hussein sons got killed Bush had the highest approval rating. Since then the rise in insurgencies has threatened the stability in the region and in turn been the cause of dissatisfaction at home. War is never the first option but when the enemy causes harm in your home , it is inevitable.

 I am not approving Bush or disapproving anyone else but my allegiance will be with the one who tried to fight rather then the one who chose to do nothing and perhaps could have avoided 9/11... 

Originally posted by: lighthouse

good u got some of that. fyi, inauguration days are Jan 20th. Reagan was sworn in around noon Jan 20th 1981 as Prez . right at the moment he was being sworn in, the hostages were being released. till the moment Reagan was sworn in, Carter was Prez and he had been working feverishly to get them released before his term expired. so question remains- PRAY WHAT DID REAGAN DO TO GET THOSE HOSTAGES RELEASED? attending fancy dress balls?😛

it actually doesnt matter whether we have a plan or not. question is whether the folks who would be our leaders have a plan. a plan that works. from the mess that iraq is, from the costs that we have run up, seemingly it is a plan that isnt working, that is if we could call "staying the current going-downhill course" a plan. 6 out of 10 voters seemed to think likewise, but then i guess some of us think we know best? and yes, if it is turning out to be another vietnam, that's thanks to the current admin.

as for the part which u say is my speculation, it's ironic but i was agreeing with u.  he sure did not make up that plan one fine morning, did he?

incidentally, did u read the resolution? over and above that piece of fine-print, what was the drum-beat all about- to bring democracy to iraq? now that would be a riot.

if we cant even get simple facts such as the saga about the iranian hostage crisis right, maybe i can understand why we are having so much difficulty getting the other stuff.😉 

Edited by chatbuster - 17 years ago

given constraints on time, budgets etc, a basic quality a good leader shld have is in terms of setting the right priorities. iraq IMO was way down on priority. if we had to go after terrorists and WMDs, which ultimately is what the war was INITIALLY supposed to be about, we wld have been better served if we had instead gone really hard after the outfits in afghanistan and it's neighboring countries. after all, iraq's possessing WMDs was just a conjecture at best, but some countries' actually proliferating nukes and missiles to shady countries is no conjecture, is it? in any case, starting a war to finish off popsy's unfinished business is not my idea of good priority-setting. Edited by chatbuster - 17 years ago

Originally posted by: chatbuster

fyi, inauguration days are Jan 20th. Reagan was sworn in around noon Jan 20th 1981 as Prez . right at the moment he was being sworn in, the hostages were being released.

 Can't believe you missed that.... You think the timing was because Fed-ex missed the AM delivery before Carter left ?  And btw Reagan was elected 2 months prior to Jan 81.

Edited by lighthouse - 17 years ago

Originally posted by: lighthouse

 Can't believe you missed that.... You think the timing was because Fed-ex missed the AM delivery before Carter left ?  And btw Reagan was elected 2 months prior to Jan 81.

haha yes, he was elected first week of nov 1980. so? in case u still dont get this, a guy gets to be president only after inauguration, not after election night. sorry chief, gotta wait in line😛

again, while reagan was getting sworn in and attending all those inaugural fancy balls, the hostages were being released. now, i wldnt have guessed it, but he sure wld be some kind of magician, doing something heroic and all, if he cld get those hostages released within an hour of being sworn in. is that what u are trying to say? magic Ron? 😛

and for the umpteenth time, WHAT DID HE DO TO GET THE HOSTAGES RELEASED? u might try google though i doubt u'll find any answers there in this case😛

 

Edited by chatbuster - 17 years ago

Originally posted by: chatbuster

given constraints on time, budgets etc, a basic quality a good leader shld have is in terms of setting the right priorities. iraq IMO was way down on priority. if we had to go after terrorists and WMDs, which ultimately is what the war was supposed to be about, we wld have been better served if we had instead gone really hard after the outfits in afghanistan and it's neighboring countries. after all, iraq's possessing WMDs was just a conjecture at best, but some countries' actually proliferating nukes and missiles to shady countries is no conjecture, is it? in any case, starting a war to finish off popsy's unfinished business is not my idea of good priority-setting.

Also a leader's responsibility is to assess threat, You have to look around, identify

Which of the rulers would want to acquire WMD

Which one is more than likely to use it against you

Which one is more than likely to proliferate

If the intelligence tells you, a leader who used a chemical weapon on his own subjects to put down a resistance is in the works of acquiring nuclear weapons and he is 2-3 years away from doing so. With nuclear programs we have seen in the past year with N. Korea or Iran, if a regime is close like a year away from building weapons, nothing can be done to stop then.

Even with the sanctions nobody was really sure whether Saddam had nuclear weapons program or not, nobody, the Democrats, UN was able to tell for sure.With Saddam as a ruler that is a hard risk to take to go blind on this issue, someone or the other had to take the risk of deposing him down the road, Bush had the accumulated the goodwill, he had to use it or waste it, he decided to use it. He did not have the right people in place to secure the peace.

Yes he could have gone after Osama a bit more, but a manhunt is very difficult to persue(We Indians know it with Dawood), it takes it own time. Or He could have gone after different regime(indirectly doing our job), but he assesed the risk for his country and chose to go after Saddam

The issue is dealing with the insurgency and unrest in Iraq. There is certainly blame for Bush and team for that

The politicization of the issue is "Why did we even go to Iraq".

We should be able to seperate the issue from the politics

Edited by sareg - 17 years ago

Originally posted by: chatbuster

haha yes, he was elected first week of nov 1980. so? in case u still dont get this, a guy gets to be president only after inauguration, not after election night. sorry chief, gotta wait in line😛

again, while reagan was getting sworn in and attending all those inaugural fancy balls, the hostages were being released. now, i wldnt have guessed it, but he sure wld be some kind of magician, doing something heroic and all, if he cld get those hostages released within an hour of being sworn in. is that what u are trying to say? magic Ron? 😛

and for the umpteenth time, WHAT DID HE DO TO GET THE HOSTAGES RELEASED?

 

 😆 😆 ... Very simple... Reagan got elected and made a deal to release hostages that is why they got released on 20th and not on 19th or before....And I can assure you Fed-ex had nothing to with it. 😉  But I am sure you can find out all that Carter did...

Originally posted by: sareg

Also a leader's responsibility is to assess threat, You have to look around, identify

Which of the rulers would want to acquire WMD

Which one is more than likely to use it against you

Which one is more than likely to proliferate

If the intelligence tells you, a leader who used a chemical weapon on his own subjects to put down a resistance is in the works of acquiring nuclear weapons and he is 2-3 years away from doing so. With nuclear programs we have seen in the past year with N. Korea or Iran, if a regime is close like a year away from building weapons, nothing can be done to stop then.

Even with the sanctions nobody was really sure whether Saddam had nuclear weapons program or not, nobody, the Democrats, UN was able to tell for sure.With Saddam as a ruler that is a hard risk to take to go blind on this issue, someone or the other had to take the risk of deposing him down the road, Bush had the accumulated the goodwill, he had to use it or waste it, he decided to use it. He did not have the right people in place to secure the peace.

Yes he could have gone after Osama a bit more, but a manhunt is very difficult to persue(We Indians know it with Dawood), it takes it own time. Or He could have gone after different regime(indirectly doing our job), but he assesed the risk for his country and chose to go after Saddam

The issue is dealing with the insurgency and unrest in Iraq. There is certainly blame for Bush and team for that

The politicization of the issue is "Why did we even go to Iraq".

We should be able to seperate the issue from the politics

haha, good that we have finally moved away from the "bring democracy to iraq" excuse for a sorry war. one almost did not know what to criticize since the objectives for the war kept getting fudged.

now, as for threat assessments and all, firstly one shld be able to also correctly assess one's own capabilities and will-power, no? were we so sure that a war in iraq was something we cld handle politically, economically and militarily in addition to the war in afghanistan? that has not really turned out to be the case, has it? only a fool-hardy general rushes headlong into war without first assessing strengths and consequences.

second, are u saying Iraq was the biggest threat after afghanistan? 😕wasnt there an American UN inspector who got "laid off" for saying there were likely to be no WMDs? and that inspector had been anti-saddam? even if we swallow the bull about these guys really believing what they were telling the public, was iraq really the biggest threat?

third, are u sure one cant do something abt a country which is a year away from acquiring weapons? didnt we go into iraq claiming they probably already had WMDs?😉

ok, so we know that the war was a bad idea. hindsight? hadn't bush been warned about these consequences before? or was it just the rest of us who could read editorials and watch analysts on TVs? if he had not been warned, whose fault was it anyway for having like-minded cronies who cldn't give him real color? for appointing incompetent folks? doesnt hiring good competent personnel come with the job? 

 

Edited by chatbuster - 17 years ago

Originally posted by: lighthouse

 😆 😆 ... Very simple... Reagan got elected and made a deal to release hostages that is why they got released on 20th and not on 19th or before....And I can assure you Fed-ex had nothing to with it. 😉  But I am sure you can find out all that Carter did...

haha. kitna spin maroge? 😆 btw, werent there laws even back then against making deals with hostages, against trading arms for hostages etc? never knew he got started even before he was inaugurated 😉