Justice

All motherfucking right, I hear so much about the Patriot Act yet all I can really find on it are extremely biased sites when I look. Can someone please explain what the fuck it is without just saying "It affects a lot of your rights" and leaving?

you could pretty much say that about Uzbekistan(a country of the coalition). should we liberate them as well? They actually don't have the chemical weapons as such, but I'd agree that we should after we get done with those who are actually a threat to international security (Because Saddam DID try to invade Turkey, Kuwait, and Iran) and have access to WMDs. Uzbekistan, in the area of NBC weapons, have been fully cooperative with allowing us to dismantle them and they completely lack anything on that scale, and they haven't actually invaded anyone or make threats to do so recently (Off the top of my head, at least). So after North Korea and possibly Iran (If they don't stop their Nuclear Programs) and Syria (If intelligence leads us there, plus the fact that they are very well known supporters of Islamic terror groups), they may be next. I certainly wouldn't mind it, I could understand the reasoning behind it, but I'm sure people like you'd bitch about it. Personally I can only hope that they start moving forwards with towards more democracy and improving in the area of human rights.

it should be about 3 to 6 percent on the federal budget. I think the school funding issue is a state rather than federal. I think it's fine where it's at, otherwise there'd be a real hit towards schools all around the country. But that seems okay; Bush definitely supports Education, eh? SPECIAL EDITION EDIT: It seems you changed what you originally said, there. If it's a State Issue, what could Bush do outside put more money into it? That's a failure on THEIR part, not his part. Unless it's a federal issue, that is. But you say it's not, so it's not a failure on his part. I think the bill past. Yeah, but which one? The two were very different in their approach, which is why I'm wondering about it. Again, technically we've only been there 3 months and we've already found things that the UN Inspectors in 12 years never found. I honestly wasn't surprised that he didn't use them. By doing so he would have made the US look completely in the right and by just hiding them and trying to lie low he can try to hurt the US on the PR front. The only thing he'd do if he used Chemical weapons is unite the nation again and fuel even more effort against Middle East. We'd be in Syria right now had he done that sort of stuff. Again, give us time. We are trying to be as accurate and sure about things as possible instead of quickly rushing through everything trying to find evidence. Time is on our side right now, so rushing the process (Like everyone on the left wants to do) will only make our results more inaccurate. glad to hear your'e not a dittohead;). I find the people who constantly scream "FAUX NEWZ LOL2K3" to be quite possibly some of the most irritating people I know. Fox can be inaccurate at times, but just shut the fuck and stop beating the God damn dead horse already. And please, don't try to stereotype conservative thinkers as people who listen and watch the same things. It makes you look close-minded, not me.

If not wanting to invade and "liberate" (ie. forcing people to do things the same way we do them) a country is being fond of them well I must agree with you. Sure, US gives a fuck load of aid and has done a lot for human rights. I support them for that. No, they are not the ONLY aid givers in the world, but America can afford to do so and so they should give out aid. Highlighted that part because yes, we are forcing them to have a similar democracy to ours. We aren't forcing a religion on them, we aren't forcing a belief of some sort on them, we are forcing a governmental system on them in lieu of many of them wanting a Theocracy. If you actually believe that they were far better under Saddam's Tolitarian Dictatorship (Which seems to be the point here since that's what we are destroying so that we may "force" democracy on them), please explain. And it's nice that you can hate us for giving aid to a country by freeing them from a hostile dictator yet still love us for doing it. Now that's talent. Or stupidity, one or the other. Of course you didn't seek to have colonies. The cononial era was long gone before America stopped becoming Englands bitch and became what it is today. You don't want to have colonies, but you still want to milk poorer countries for all they're worth. This way you don't even really have to care about them. We were England's bitch, yes. Then again, what happened 200 years ago really doesn't matter, does it? Oh God, watch me laugh at this statement. Okay, how are we milking Iraq, or Kosovo, or Bosnia, or Afghanistan right now? Please, do tell us. Because honestly, I haven't seen us try to "milk" smaller countries for wealth. We give tons of AID, though, to these small countries we are supposedly "milking". It's hilarious to see people resort to making outrageous claims that lack basis in reality against the US. It's almost comparable to what the Islamic extremists always claim of us.

And hey, for all those that say we don't do enough for the UN, we foot a $2,400,000,000 bill for them, approximately 25% of their budget for only one vote there. Wow, and people say we should kiss the UN's ass? Hell, the other four security council members combined only foot HALF of what we are. So who really wants to claim we don't do enough for this ineffectual organization? Edit: Another interesting fact I noticed is that Japan foots 20% of the bill themselves. I'd like to start a movement to get Japan a permanent seat on the Security Council with a veto power rather than France, Russia, or China. Who is with me?

remember Bush's "No child left behind" act of 2002. thats supossed to give minority schools funding(IIRC). Fixed that little problem you had there. You have to put a "/" tag at the end of it, which is why the rest of your post was all weird. A friendly gesture from me to you . I really doubt it was "Minority" schools, but rather "underpriviledged". Just a change of wording since "minority" school is pretty racist. You don't give out funding on whether or not someone is African-American, you give it out if they actually need it. There are under-funded schools in rural areas, remember? And the schools can't depend so much on the Federal Government. I want your honest estimate on a percentage of Federal Money that should make up a school's budget. I honestly don't think you can get any good argument against Bush here for that one. Former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson ''We're the world's greatest superpower, but we have a 3rd World electricity grid. " "We need to bring our power grids back to the 21st century. We need to modernize our grids, but to do that, we need to set up a national "rules of the road" on governing and managing and especially providing better access to the nation's transmission system. Presently, utilities just use the electric lines in the same way that truckers use highways, they have no interest in upgrading the grids, no more than truckers have an interest in fixing potholes on the highway. So it's the role of government to help set up the financial incentives for utilities to build new transmission lines. " The Senate was already working on a bill when I was checking on it. The Democrats had prepared a bare-bones one to fix what looks like failed while the Republicans were offering a much larger total revamping of the power grid, which would cost more but probably help a lot more than just putting a patch in the hull and saying "Hopefully that will be the last problem". Does anyone remember how that vote came out? I was moving back to my dorm at the time and was really busy, so I don't really remember how it ended up. Moving on to the post before that... You are very confused on this issue. He had only been there three, I believe. The team was not in Iraq during the war and got there over the summer when things had calmed down. All the other searches were looking stuff just lying around in the open. He's found unreported labs and research on things that were supposed to be declared to the UN but never were. That right there would technically disobey the UN's order against Iraq and allow us to go in. We've also found illegal missile research that would allow Saddam to hit things as far as Cairo, Egypt and with that, Israel. No one has been able to dispute this fact and that alone makes him a threat since he can bomb places from afar with High Explosive or quite possibly with NBC cargos. Secondly, they've found evidence that suggests he was still doing research into Bioweapons. Maybe not much research found about chemical weapons (As was pointed out in Kay's report), but he had tons of CWs before the Gulf and has always been thought to have hid away enough to still cause significant damage. Thirdly, the Ammo dumps they are searching through are enormous. Tyler's little article from the LA Times said that CWs and BWs are always marked with special insignas, but those can be easily taken off since they are only painted on. Couple that with the fact that France's delaying in the UN afforded Saddam a week or so to mix up his WMD stocks with his conventional weapons makes it a daunting task which requires the small team to search each and every shell in the massive ammo dumps. And those are only the locations we knew of: that doesn't even account for the hidden places Saddam may have had or even him trying to bury them before the US could come in. Hans Blix didn't find any of this stuff. No UN inspectors did after 12 years. We only found that after 3 months of having no Iraqi Government to jerk us around and constantly play hide and seek with. Where's the hypocrisy? I don't get Fox News at my college and never really watched it much anyways, I only go to cnn.com for my news updates since it's devoid of liberal anchors like Aaron Brown who seems so full of himself that it makes it nigh unbearable to get any real news from him, and I honestly don't listen much to the AM dial. I don't honestly believe that I've ever given sources from the above, though Limbaugh can be interesting to listen to sometimes (You can't deny that he's an entertaining speaker even if you disagree with his views). But hey, thanks for trying to stereotype me *Buddy Christ Thumbs-Up*.

It's been stated hundreds of times already that it is as big as California. Iraq is actually over 271,583 miles square. That's more than 100,000 square miles bigger than the state of California. Wow, thank you, Marney. I stand corrected. I believe the proper measuring stick, though, is generally California.

You fucking moron. The difference between Kay and Blix? One doesn't have a hostile government constantly working against his efforts. You couldn't do proper searches against a Government when the Government still had the power to move things, misdirect your people, and constantly thwart your efforts to go where you needed to go. We've never had a clean go at Iraq, which is why all the UN Inspectors back before the war were useless: We'd never get the evidence we needed because the criminals always had a chance to hide it. We have a clean chance now, we just need to actually look. It's funny that people try to claim hypocrisy when the situations are different in a very fundamental way. BWUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. This is hilarious. We bring up evidence, you bring up unresearched rhetoric. Hell, you rarely bring up any points that aren't outside of the basic "I'm a liberal but I don't actually look into things" variety. And did you know that Dean is calling for a repeal of all tax cuts? Mondale 2K4 :lol:!! The fact that Lieberman is still hanging with him and Clark is ahead of him is a testament to his electability.

And nothing would have changed, Xero. Right now they are just going to give us some money (Which we can easily shoulder) and a token amount of troops. It's not as though the UN being involved is anything more than a publicity stunt. And hey, I wonder: Did the UN give any aid to the US after September 11th? In fact, did ANYONE give the US aid after that to help the families and to help rebuild the Twin Towers? We help people who get kicked around and don't get it when we are the ones getting kicked. That's the American way, I suppose. You stupid fuck. Check out the aid we gave in 2001. Wow, a lot of that looks to be to the UN. I wonder how many other countries give that much. With a lot of our money, remember. We never fucking forgot. Hell, the UN wasn't going to GO into Kosovo until we did, despite the proof of genocide there. Shows how the selfish and self-serving motives of only one country (Russia, in this case), can completely stop the UN from doing something it should, which is it's primary flaw. And just to note: Kosovo IS IN Yugoslavia, moron. Last time the UN tried to go it alone there they got completely kicked in the ass and had to call on US to bail them out. When you really look at it, we fight, they clean up with our money. Wow, what a self-sufficient organization, Xero! ... Because, as we all know, terrorist groups really care who they piss off with their suicide attacks and what happens afterwards. Christ, we've arrested dozens of people with plans to attack the US. Why, because all we did was chuck missiles at targets and never really fight back? Or was it when we backed out of Somalia after one "bad" operation? We were threatened. Don't you remember the US Embassy in Tanzania being blown up? Or the World Trade Center Bombing in 1993? How bout the attack on the US Cole? You are kidding, right? We were obviously being attacked, just from afar. Clinton did nothing except chucking missiles at them(Not really his fault, but we realize what is wrong with that now) to look as though we really are doing something when we aren't actually doing anything substantive? And hey, I don't remember Clinton having the Twin Towers being destroyed on his watch. It's not the 90's anymore, no matter how much we all want to return to that age of ignorant bliss. We ignored Terrorism then, but we can't ignore it now. So take out your earplugs and wake up. It's been stated hundreds of times already that it is as big as California. If you can't grasp that much after it being bombarded into your head, you give me serious doubts on your intelligence here. It has improved. So what if it won't be a super country, it could at least be one where you don't have to live in fear of you or your family members being dragged out of your house and tortured because you are a perceived threat to the state. It can be tolerable state, something where it may not be the best living conditions, but you can live comfortably there. I mean, aren't most European countries at this level? We aren't conquering it, we are liberating and educating it. We don't intend to make it a state, we intend to teach them and guide them on how to be a democracy with a system similar to our own. With the defeatist attitude, why didn't we let Hitler just take over Europe? It's not like we could stop him. Or how bout Korea? It's not like we could stem the North Koreans or something like that. I know Mike already did this, but this one was just too stupid to pass up.

Was it their Prime Minister who said that "Jews Run the World" and such comments? Wow, that doesn't show us any underlying hate, eh?

6 months and they still haven't found any WMD We've only been searching for three with a team of about 1500, and Iraq is the size of California not to mention how massive the ammo dumps are. And he effectively can't do anything to the US anymore since we are constantly tracking him down and we've torn out the infrastructure in his terror network. And Saddam lacks any power to do anything anymore either. He's powerless to do anything to stop us at this point because all his power came from the government we toppled. Your point on these three?

*Fires*

Would you be willing to accept old CIA reports? I do have those. And... Give me proof that he didn't.

You're thinking of Syria. Was it just Syria? I'm almost dead sure we had a whole bunch of offenders sit on the committee. It was embarassing.

*Fires and hits Tyler in the leg*

Here's one: we haven't found anything. Therefore, the ball is in your court. "Absence of Proof is not Proof of Absence." Everyone and their brother knew that Iraq had Chemical and Biological weapons. It's practically impossible to find someone who says otherwise before this whole war started. Everyone knew this through their intelligence agencies. Now, after three months of searching, we are to say that they all this is wrong? Tyler, you have the burden of proof as well. You haven't given anything substantial to say that Iraq didn't have weapons. Common knowledge suggests they do. Development doesn't have anything to do with actually having the bombs. Give me actual evidence that they don't have them, otherwise you are as wrong as I supposedly am. Tyler, we've known that he was an evil dictator for a decade. But his country was still represented in the UN, and I'm pretty sure they recently had a seat on teh Human Rights committee. If everyone knew this, why didn't anyone try and make a motion before? Get in touch with reality: No one outside of us cared. Otherwise you'd have seen soldiers in Iraq much earlier than 2003. People don't want a war, Tyler, no matter the reason. They want the status quo. Convince me otherwise.

And I'm still looking for evidence showing they didn't have the weapons in question. All your 'proof' has been on the developmental side, not on the stock side. If they already have a sufficent amount of Chemical weapons, why develop anymore? And Tyler: You still haven't given me a good reason for the World to give a fuck about Iraq.

But NOTHING you've said that has been backed up with evidence -- evidence that isn't a critical reading of another man's reports -- that states that they DO. In this case, the burden of proof is in YOUR court. And hey, while we're at it, let's get in the time warp machine and look at quotes from Bush's OWN ADMINISTRATION in 2001. http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/powell-no-wmd.htm *Laughs* This stuff is great. Powell still says they have the things but they may not be able to deliver it as well as they could 10 years ago. That's pretty much a "No-Duh" answer, Tyler. To say that the Iraqi military can't do what it could 10 years ago is an understatement: This things was a massive machine that was a serious threat to any country near it and it wasn't known whether or not the US could actually stop it. But just because he says that the military isn't as strong as it used to be doesn't make it a non-threat. It could still cause some real damage in the Middle East even if it wasn't up to it's Pre-Gulf War strength. If you want to debate that with me, you can try but I think we'll both agree that under Saddam's control they could still do damage and upset things even more. Secondly: Power never said that they stopped trying to produce the weapons or that they didn't have the weapons anymore. In fact, he comes out and says both: Now after 9-11, suddenly delivery of such weapons doesn't become a problem when you have dozens of willing terrorist groups to them in themselves, do you? But hey, this is just taking stuff out of context or just trying hard to turn it your own way. The LA Times article is much better for your cause, admittedly. I believe this is before they flushed their credibility down teh toliet, right ? Anyways, they do admit that while not effective weapons they could be used as Bioweapons. They never deny the fact that Iraq was working on a longer-range rocket delievery system, which does make you wonder what exactly they were going to deliver with it. Just as well, just because the two diseases are indigenous to the region doesn't mean that they weren't being worked on as weapons. It just shows that they were easy to find and procure samples of. But certainly a better article than the above one.

Well, when they have a recorded interest in Bioweapons, it does become a big deal. Christ, I can't believe you are fucking writing this off as "Well, they're evil. What can they do just studying germs?" Tyler, I would have gone in a second had he done that. But what the fuck will the French or Germans, who have billons of dollars in Oil interests with Saddam, care if he did some bad shit. Am I mistaken when they allowed Iraq on the Human Rights Committee at the UN, or was that some other country that constantly abuses their people? I mean, chemical weapons used on the Kurds? That was over a decade ago and your whole argument says he doesn't have Chemical weapons, so what the fuck does it matter? And the claim isn't fucking false, Tyler. You have one little things saying they might not produce Chemical Weapons anymore. Congrads. That doesn't mean the didn't already have enough and that totally ignores the Bioweapons stuff.

The thing is, Tyler, if we couldn't get multilateral support when Iraq was shown as a threat, what makes you think we would when it wouldn't be? Seriously, this is the greatest mystery to me. Everyone seemed completely content to let the guy terrorize his own people as long as it didn't get close to them, so why would they even think about this? If anything they would have gotten even MORE resistance. Please explain that to me. And a clarrifacation: Isn't the Uranium thing disputed by a guy who admitted he was a bad investigator and went completely through public channels? I find issue with that. And a quote from the actual report: No, they weren't mass producing these things, Tyler. That paragraph was correct. But they were still researching on a smaller scale Bio Weapons after 1996 and they obviuosly had the capability to quickly increase their production. Hell, when really look at it, do you really need a ton of Bio-weapons to cause terror quickly and effectively? Edit: Even more after a close look at the statement you posted. That only refers to the production and research of Chemical weapons. That doesn't at all state that they didn't have a sufficent amount of Chemical weapons already and that building more would have only been Redundant. That statement means absolute jack when you look at it.

A find, yes, but hardly a new find. We've known for months that they had the groundwork for dormant programs that could be possibly theoretically ressurrected. The Kay report gives nothing else to possibly suggest that it was in use. Well, considering this is new research, one would think they had used it. And if they left the labs in working conditions, what makes you think they didn't intend for them to be used again?

Where in the passage does it say that they had the chemicals/ingredients to do that in these labratories? Hint: don't even look. It doesn't. If you had the substances, you could use any high school lab to make those chemicals. It's hardly an amazing find. More the fact that Iraq failed to report said laboratories to the UN in light that they could be used to make said weapons does make it a find. I misinterpretted Tom's statement, but it doesn't mean that you are any more right. The fact that these aren't used in High Schools and weren't reported to the UN would make one suspicious of their nature. That doesn't mean VX isn't among those. Considering it's one of the most prominent chemical weapons out there generally means it is one of those included when someone says "For the research of Chemical weapons". Even if VX gas can't be produced there, deadly chemical weapons obviously could be produced there, and they are all deadly. But hey, if you want to grasp for straws, go right ahead; It's fun to watch you defend Saddam's claim of having no WMDs.

WHOA!!! They found VX and Anthrax!?!?!?! Really?!?! No. But those are the chemicals weapons that can be made in those facilities. You can;t fucking make those in a High School lab, which is what Dr. Tom is trying say. This is almost more toolish of you than the gun incident.

Congratulations, Mr. Kay, you've described every high school labratory in America. Well thanks, Tyler. The major problem is they were supposed to report this to the UN. And from what it looks like when they say "Safe Houses", these probably weren't used for High Schoolers.

Shhh!!!!! You're not supposed to mention that! Ever! The correct stance to take is "OMG WEAPONS NEVER WERE THERE!!!!" And what about the people who were REFUSING to give them more time? Now these people WANT more time. The roles are simply reversed. Tyler, there's a difference between trying to do an investigation where a government is actively trying to thwart your findings and one where they aren't. One is likely to be a failure and one isn't. I hope you can see the difference there.