by Simon 865 Replies latest social current
thichi,
local elections are something quite different. there is certainly somediversity at this low level. on the federal level there are only the two parties with someone like perot coming into the picture once in a while more for amusement than for anything else. i mean did him gaining 15 % of the vote have ANY influence on politics in washington?
Realist:
The facts show otherwise: Most members of congress come from the local government level. The voting record shows that many cast "cross over" votes, not adhering to the party line.
Notwithstanding, Incumbents reelected is roughly half. This alone shows the turnover and the wild card aspect to voting. To assume that certain "special interests" have all members, turnovers in their pocket is very improbable.
Just the turnover alone shows that the voters are alive and well.
Projected new makeup
Democrat 206 Republican 228 Other 1 No data 0How the changes break down
Incumbents reelected Democrat 186 Republican 191 Other 1
realist-
hope you had a great vacation!
thanks, i did actually.....went deep sea fishing a couple of times (atlantic side), scuba diving, and of course hit the local beaches and local bars.........back in indiana now, back to reality.
hmmmmmmmmm the only plausible explanation for your statement i can come up with is that you MISREAD my post!i did NOT question the use of WMD but the use of bioweapons!
ah, i didnt realize you were making the specific distinction between bioweapons and chemical weapons, my mistake..........although, with your line of logic, i cant figure out why that distinction would even matter? your argument has always been that saddam wouldnt have used wmd against us or against his own people....yet he already has shown the willingness to do so.....what difference does it make if it was bio or chem? in fact, the chem weapons were the bigger issue as far as unaccounted for stockpiles, so id argue that the fact that hed used them before makes a pretty strong case for a "threat".
can you list them?
yeah, if youd like me to......notice though, that i followed that statement up with the statement about you specifically being the only person who has bothered to thoroughly discuss the issue with me........so i really shouldve said "the vast majority" hasnt tried to refute them, rather than "no one". ill look back over it when i get a chance, to see if there are any important ones youve missed. youve been pretty good about at least giving an opinion on my points though, if not exactly refuting them with facts.
thats not a matter of celebration but about who was/is closer to reality!
i agree....and i would feel the same way if 3,000 tons of chemical weapons were found tomorrow.....id be happy that closed eyes would open........a bit different than trying to taunt the other side with "lol"s every time theres not an immediate response.
aa
thichi,
i don't think there is a common hidden agenda behind all congress man. however they are all fed by the same system and it is safe to say that the vast majority plays along the system lines. a person who votes against the lobbies will at least be not reelected.
Projected new makeup Democrat 206 Republican 228 Other 1 No data 0
now how exactly does this disprove what i said previously regarding the diversity in US politics?
dubla,
great to hear that you had a good time!!! i would love to go scuba diving once...but there is no ocean around where i live
about the bioweapons...it was only a reply to yeru stating that hussein had used bioweapons against the kurds (the context were the suspected mobile biolabs).
It is the turnover and voting cross overs that show the reality. Also, most come from local Government. True, a Nation can share values that reflects who we vote in or out.
"In a Democracy, the people get what they deserve."
""To say that the CIA phonied this up for the Bush administration is to in essence say that everybody who has been warning the world of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has been phonying it up long before George W. Bush came along. All Bush is doing is echoing things that have been said by countless people who preceded him." ""
I agree!
| Resolution Requirement | Reality |
| Res. 687 (3 April 1991) Requires Iraq to declare, destroy, remove, or render harmless under UN or IAEA supervision and not to use, develop, construct, or acquire all chemical and biological weapons, all ballistic missiles with ranges greater than 150 km, and all nuclear weapons-usable material, including related material, equipment, and facilities. The resolution also formed the Special Commission and authorized the IAEA to carry out immediate on-site inspections of WMD-related facilities based on Iraq's declarations and UNSCOM's designation of any additional locations. | Baghdad refused to declare all parts of each WMD program, submitted several declarations as part of its aggressive efforts to deny and deceive inspectors, and ensured that certain elements of the program would remain concealed. The prohibition against developing delivery platforms with ranges greater than 150 km allowed Baghdad to research and develop shorter-range systems with applications for longer-range systems and did not affect Iraqi efforts to convert full-size aircraft into unmanned aerial vehicles as potential WMD delivery systems with ranges far beyond 150 km. |
| Res. 707 (15 August 1991) Requires Iraq to allow UN and IAEA inspectors immediate and unrestricted access to any site they wish to inspect. Demands Iraq provide full, final, and complete disclosure of all aspects of its WMD programs; cease immediately any attempt to conceal, move, or destroy WMD-related material or equipment; allow UNSCOM and IAEA teams to use fixed-wing and helicopter flights throughout Iraq; and respond fully, completely, and promptly to any Special Commission questions or requests. | Baghdad in 1996 negotiated with UNSCOM Executive Chairman Ekeus modalities that it used to delay inspections, to restrict to four the number of inspectors allowed into any site Baghdad declared as "sensitive," and to prohibit them altogether from sites regarded as sovereign. These modalities gave Iraq leverage over individual inspections. Iraq eventually allowed larger numbers of inspectors into such sites but only after lengthy negotiations at each site. |
| Res. 715 (11 October 1991) Requires Iraq to submit to UNSCOM and IAEA long-term monitoring of Iraqi WMD programs; approved detailed plans called for in UNSCRs 687 and 707 for long-term monitoring. | Iraq generally accommodated UN monitors at declared sites but occasionally obstructed access and manipulated monitoring cameras. UNSCOM and IAEA monitoring of Iraq's WMD programs does not have a specified end date under current UN resolutions. |
| Res. 1051 (27 March 1996) Established the Iraqi export/import monitoring system, requiring UN members to provide IAEA and UNSCOM with information on materials exported to Iraq that may be applicable to WMD production, and requiring Iraq to report imports of all dual-use items. | Iraq is negotiating contracts for procuring—outside of UN controls—dual-use items with WMD applications. The UN lacks the staff needed to conduct thorough inspections of goods at Iraq's borders and to monitor imports inside Iraq. |
| Res. 1060 (12 June 1996) and Resolutions 1115, 1134, 1137, 1154, 1194, and 1205. Demands that Iraq cooperate with UNSCOM and allow inspection teams immediate, unconditional, and unrestricted access to facilities for inspection and access to Iraqi officials for interviews. UNSCR 1137 condemns Baghdad's refusal to allow entry to Iraq to UNSCOM officials on the grounds of their nationality and its threats to the safety of UN reconnaissance aircraft. | Baghdad consistently sought to impede and limit UNSCOM's mission in Iraq by blocking access to numerous facilities throughout the inspection process, often sanitizing sites before the arrival of inspectors and routinely attempting to deny inspectors access to requested sites and individuals. At times, Baghdad would promise compliance to avoid consequences, only to renege later. |
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Res. 1154 (2 March 1998) Demands that Iraq comply with UNSCOM and IAEA inspections and endorses the Secretary General's memorandum of understanding with Iraq, providing for "severest consequences" if Iraq fails to comply. Res. 1194 (9 September 1998) Condemns Iraq's decision to suspend cooperation with UNSCOM and the IAEA. Res. 1205 (5 November 1998) Condemns Iraq's decision to cease cooperation with UNSCOM. |
UNSCOM could not exercise its mandate without Iraqi compliance. Baghdad refused to work with UNSCOM and instead negotiated with the Secretary General, whom it believed would be more sympathetic to Iraq's needs. |
| Res. 1284 (17 December 1999) Established the United Nations Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), replacing UNSCOM; and demanded that Iraq allow UNMOVIC teams immediate, unconditional, and unrestricted access to any and all aspects of Iraq's WMD program. | Iraq repeatedly has rejected the return of UN arms inspectors and claims that it has satisfied all UN resolutions relevant to disarmament. Compared with UNSCOM, 1284 gives the UNMOVIC chairman less authority, gives the Security Council a greater role in defining key disarmament tasks, and requires that inspectors be full-time UN employees. |
"""
WEAPONS OF MASS DECEPTION? To the president's opponents, the mother of all Bush "lies" is the administration's case for going to war in Iraq, specifically the president's claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. "So whose books were more cooked — Enron's accounts of its financial doings or the administration's prewar reports on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction?" asked Harold Meyerson of The American Prospect, in a column published in the Washington Post. The administration's position, Meyerson concluded, was "as phony a casus belli as the destruction of the Maine in Havana Harbor."
It's an argument that's been heard more and more in recent weeks. "Does it matter that we were misled into war?" asked the New York Times's Paul Krugman. Bush's statements about weapons of mass destruction were "one of the administration's Big Lies of the war on Iraq," wrote The Nation's David Corn. And Democratic senator Robert Byrd has issued almost daily allegations that Bush lied about Iraq.
Such accusations are risky — after all, the search for Iraqi weapons is ongoing, and any day might bring a significant discovery, or evidence that weapons have been destroyed. Still, for the sake of argument, assume there is no discovery. Does that mean Bush was lying?
In the months leading up to the war, there was a bipartisan consensus that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction; the real debate was between those who believed that Saddam would have to be disarmed by force and those who wanted to rely on U.N. inspectors to contain him. The world knew from those inspectors that, when last checked, Iraq had large stores of anthrax and nerve gas. The world also knew that before the first Gulf War, Iraq had an aggressive nuclear-weapons program. Last December, there was general agreement that Iraq's 12,000-page declaration of its weapons programs was grossly incomplete. And in January of this year, former Clinton administration officials Kenneth Pollack and Martin Indyk wrote in the New York Times that Iraq "must be made to account for the thousands of tons of chemical precursors, the thousands of liters of biological warfare agents, the thousands of missing chemical munitions, the unaccounted-for Scud missiles, and the weaponized VX poison that the United Nations has itself declared missing."
Such a consensus makes it extremely difficult to argue that the president lied about Iraq and WMD; if the administration's case was a lie, then everybody, including much of the political opposition, was in on it. Just as importantly, if it turns out that prewar estimates of Iraq's capabilities were incorrect, the Bush administration can say — truthfully — that it erred on the side of protecting American national security. One could argue that the White House paid insufficient attention to intelligence indicating a threat to American security before September 11. One could also argue that this administration was therefore determined not to underestimate future threats. "What 9/11 did was teach a generation of policymakers to interpret things in an alarmed rather than a relaxed way," says one former administration official.
Did that make the Iraq campaign a lie? The equivalent of Enron bookkeeping? Only the president's most fevered enemies would try to make that case."""
If you like travelling faster then 55mph, you don't REALLY like Ralph "Unsafe At Any Speed" Nadar.
Or if you own a Corvair...
So George Bush is going find the WMD to help Blair...what about himself?
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