USMC850T

Really, Washington DC has one of the highest murder/crime rates in the US. You know what else DC also has? One of the stricktest gun control laws. Conclusion: Gun control doesn't work.

Guns don't cause crime, criminals with guns, or without cause crime.

"a big issue for me is going to be gun control"

You don't need a f)cking gun for anything. Guns are for pussies

haha

The powers that be would consist of the organization controlling/rerouting electonic votes in favor of the current admin

Yeah, that must have been what happened. No way anyone could have actually voted for them really.... But wait, I guess given the last election they must be in favor of democrats now? I'm confused :rolleyes:

And who are these "powers that be" ?

The electorate.

If by powers that be you mean the electorate.

It's not ignorant, it is the truth. No one likes him anymore, he is doing a God aweful job in Iraq, and even Republicans interviewed before the SOTU said they didn't agree. The only ignorant ones are the ones who don't see that anyone would be better, republican or democrat. And yes, we could go into approval ratings (worst since Nixon in 74) but they are not alway accurate, but still... And I have no problem with Hilary. Only really conservative people hate her because they couldn't stand having a Vagina as a President. She wouldn't be my first choice, but I need to look more into her beliefs.

~Mike

saying anyone and bringin in an absolute is the problem with your statement. I can think of plenty of peoeple I do not want anywhere near the oval office. Given the difficult situations we've found ourselves in I think he's done OK. We have no precedent to compare against and probably won't until a new president is faced with a similarly unfamiliar situation.

On a related note I'm willing to bet that we will see our first black president before we see a woman become president. Hillary is a cunface. God help us if her policies bring the economic stagnation present in NY to the rest of the country.

I think we'll see a few of the freshly democratic seats go back republican this coming election.

McCain / Powell 08!

B)-->

What part of having a little respect for those who do an extrodinarily difficult "job" is BS?

I didnt mean it that way. I support our troops because its something that I would never do, and i understand that they are there doing their job....

...but (this is going to sound mean) I don't feel sorry for them since we dont have a draft and the military is volutary..they have a job to do and we are paying for it, its no different then the people at the DMV or DOT...

Cept no one at the DMV has to rush machine gun nests or drive a convoy through an RPG infested block in a shithole town. Pretty bad analogy.

/\ the saddam sympathisers represent a very small portion of the population.

2) GOOD ONE!

no sirs yet. That little piece was from Platoon seargent gunnery seargent Rhorman at OCS.

ummm, my uncle is in the Army and he has told me alllllllll about it. Ya, you may be trained better, but I don't think the marines are on the ground fighting the damn insurgents that are killing everyone as much as the army. People join the marines so they have a BETTER chance of not seeing ground combat.

~Mike

Are you out of your fucking mind!!! holy shit I do not believe it.

Thunder Run? the 975 man force that siezed baghdad? Half Marine, half Army.

Who cleaned house in Fallujah? Army?? no fucking way. Marine 1st batallion.

People join the marines so they have a BETTER chance of not seeing ground combat.

Holy fucking ignorant shit. The number one reason people join the Marines is because they want to be in the infantry and stack bodies, period. That is why the Marine Corps exists. No other conventional force on the planet does it better. That's the reason why they're "first in".

You seem to equate who takes more casualties with who does more fighting. The reason why the Army takes more casualties is because they ride around in fucking humvees all day and get shot up and IED'd.

"The Marine Corps is called the few and the proud because not everybody can be a Marine, and that's why we have the Army."

O, that place that our prez said never existed then changed his mind. That place is a disgrace and some of the people there don't deserve to be there and tortured for nothing. I don't mind the patriot act, just think it is a little sketchy.

~Mike

That's exactly what the military hearings are about - determining whom deserves to be an esteemed guest of the United States and who doesen't. Also I would take anything you hear from a freshly released detainee with a grain of salt. read through the Al-Qaeda manual and you will see that they are instructed to lie about their conditions of captivity and their "torture". Abuse? Sure, some coersion is bound to be involved in the interrogations that take place, but I would be highly suprised if anyone was actually tortured. There is a popular belief that US interrogators are horrible humans and have developed a systemic torture institution in guantanamo and it couldn't be further from the truth. Studies have shown that torture is quite innefective, a person will say just about anything to stop the pain they indure. There are some articles on the effectiveness of torture written by german and french interrogators which i'll try and dig up, they were interesting to say the least.

I mean, it does limit or 'invade' your freedom of speech because it states that ANYONE can be arrested and then tried in a military court WITHOUT any representation.

I defy you to find anywhere in that document a passage saying that anyone can be arrested and tried in a military court.

Also, the military courts you are thinking of (guantanamo) are not courts at all, they are administrative hearings to determine what to do with detainees. There is no need for representation there since it is not a criminal proceeding.

3) Liberals hate freedom of speech? Ummmmm, who made the patriot act dumb@$$, was it a liberal, nooooo, it was a conservative, so our freedom of speech is not non-apparent.

I was unaware the patriot act somehow limited your freedom of speech? And as far as I know it was passed without much trouble by both houses. Apparently our elected representatives felt a need for it. http://www.epic.org/privacy/terrorism/hr3162.html

Ever thought that no one wants to hear the conservative viewpoint so no one shows it?

about 50% of the United States shares the viewpoint, so i think it would be inaccurate to think that nobody wants to hear it. Hell, even some liberals want to hear the conservative viewpoint so they can make up their own mind.

You two are quoting different numbers. 60-70% turn out is for registered voters, not voting aged citizens. There is a big difference in the percentages.

You are right, types like Abramoff are there to corrupt whoever they can with money to get their way. What party you are with doesn't matter.

Since when did American turn to shit? We are the most stable democracy in the world. When the Turkish people found out their president lied to them, they had riots and people died. When our presidents are found out to be lying us, what happens? Same thing that always happens. People write editorials in papers, comedians make jokes about it, protesters protest and supporters say it was justified. No one dies though.

Assuming American is "shit" now, how many years back do you believe it wasn't shit?

you're right - Total turnout in 04 was 122 million out of 220 million voting age citizens. 55.3% turnout - the highest since 1968.

Lobbyists are not there to corrupt, that's a pretty cynical outlook on their role in the political process. They are there to influence policy on behalf of their client groups, which often represent a huge segment of the population.

When I said America has gone to shit it's kind of a sarcastic tounge in cheek thing. We have always had problems since the early days, nothing has changed and nothing will. democracy is an imperfect system of government, not that there is a perfect form though. I agree that we've got it very good here, and the problems we face now are not as major as they were 60 years ago. I do find it silly to think that our problems today were caused signle-handedly by one particular ideology or political party though.

Well you guys all have intresting views...some far more differing than mine. Personally I see our democracy in shambles. Less than half the population even votes for our presidents...making the winner of the election only winning by basically a fourth of the people. Our democracy isn't even widespread to all people. I mean that is the whole meaning to democracy in the first place....to have everyone vote as a cummulative whole so that everyone has an equal say in things. And the two party election system...wtf is that. Obviously it controls the extremists out of the running, but when both parties are truely only intrested in complete power and not of the people we are all to often voting for the better of two evils. There have been a lot of corrupt officials coming into the publics view lately too...but that is nothing new. It's just that it is finally being shown on tv, in magazines, etc. Lastly I don't see how we can force democracy on others. (dawns flamesuit) I mean we violating rules of engagement, tortured people, etc. I don't care who they are, we still did it.

I think a lot of you need to think of what a democracy is first...not just think if we are in a crisis. When you see that we are very powerful, but only a small amount of the population is responsible for putting people in power...iono but to me that just isn't a democracy working to it's potential.

Voter turnout for 04 was something like 60-70% i believe, and it was normal. Off year elections such as this past november typically see far lower turnouts.

Oh and jack abramoff is not a government official btw. Like it or not, he IS the American political process. I don't think you can just blame conservatives in government for the problems we have today, because just as now and a few short years ago, we had a liberal government - and I know that American didn't go to shit overnight.

not a crisis. Why not find the scholarly articles on the subject in something like Jstor or one of the online databases.

He's written a bunch on the contemporary situation in iraq, along with some stuff in the military's scholarly journals about terrorism. http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/parameters/1993/gray.htm

Just because he is an ex officer doesn't mean his finidngs or arguments should be discounted solely on that factor.

This is a firsthand perspective from a few months ago.

Myths of Iraq

By Ralph Peters

During a recent visit to Baghdad, I saw an enormous failure. On the part of our media. The reality in the streets, day after day, bore little resemblance to the sensational claims of civil war and disaster in the headlines.

No one with first-hand experience of Iraq would claim the country's in rosy condition, but the situation on the ground is considerably more promising than the American public has been led to believe. Lurid exaggerations and instant myths obscure real, if difficult, progress.

I left Baghdad more optimistic than I was before this visit. While cynicism, political bias and the pressure of a 24/7 news cycle accelerate a race to the bottom in reporting, there are good reasons to be soberly hopeful about Iraq's future.

Much could still go wrong. The Arab genius for failure could still spoil everything. We've made grave mistakes. Still, it's difficult to understand how any first-hand observer could declare that Iraq's been irrevocably "lost."

Consider just a few of the inaccuracies served up by the media:

Claims of civil war. In the wake of the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, a flurry of sectarian attacks inspired wild media claims of a collapse into civil war. It didn't happen. Driving and walking the streets of Baghdad, I found children playing and, in most neighborhoods, business as usual. Iraq can be deadly, but, more often, it's just dreary.

Iraqi disunity. Factional differences are real, but overblown in the reporting. Few Iraqis support calls for religious violence. After the Samarra bombing, only rogue militias and criminals responded to the demagogues' calls for vengeance. Iraqis refused to play along, staging an unrecognized triumph of passive resistance.

Expanding terrorism. On the contrary, foreign terrorists, such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, have lost ground. They've alienated Iraqis of every stripe. Iraqis regard the foreigners as murderers, wreckers and blasphemers, and they want them gone. The Samarra attack may, indeed, have been a tipping point--against the terrorists.

Hatred of the U.S. military. If anything surprised me in the streets of Baghdad, it was the surge in the popularity of U.S. troops among both Shias and Sunnis. In one slum, amid friendly adult waves, children and teenagers cheered a U.S. Army patrol as we passed. Instead of being viewed as occupiers, we're increasingly seen as impartial and well-intentioned.

The appeal of the religious militias. They're viewed as mafias. Iraqis want them disarmed and disbanded. Just ask the average citizen.

The failure of the Iraqi army. Instead, the past month saw a major milestone in the maturation of Iraq's military. During the mini-crisis that followed the Samarra bombing, the Iraqi army put over 100,000 soldiers into the country's streets. They defused budding confrontations and calmed the situation without killing a single civilian. And Iraqis were proud to have their own army protecting them. The Iraqi army's morale soared as a result of its success.

Reconstruction efforts have failed. Just not true. The American goal was never to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure in its entirety. Iraqis have to do that. Meanwhile, slum-dwellers utterly neglected by Saddam Hussein's regime are getting running water and sewage systems for the first time. The Baathist regime left the country in a desolate state while Saddam built palaces. The squalor has to be seen to be believed. But the hopeless now have hope.

The electricity system is worse than before the war. Untrue again. The condition of the electric grid under the old regime was appalling. Yet, despite insurgent attacks, the newly revamped system produced 5,300 megawatts last summer--a full thousand megawatts more than the peak under Saddam Hussein. Shortages continue because demand soared--newly free Iraqis went on a buying spree, filling their homes with air conditioners, appliances and the new national symbol, the satellite dish. Nonetheless, satellite photos taken during the hours of darkness show Baghdad as bright as Damascus.

Plenty of serious problems remain in Iraq, from bloodthirsty terrorism to the unreliability of the police. Iran and Syria indulge in deadly mischief. The infrastructure lags generations behind the country's needs. Corruption is widespread. Tribal culture is pernicious. Women’s rights are threatened. And there's no shortage of trouble-making demagogues.

Nonetheless, the real story of the civil-war-that-wasn't is one of the dog that didn't bark. Iraqis resisted the summons to retributive violence. Mundane life prevailed. After a day and a half of squabbling, the political factions returned to the negotiating table. Iraqis increasingly take responsibility for their own security, easing the burden on U.S. forces. And the people of Iraq want peace, not a reign of terror.

But the foreign media have become a destructive factor, extrapolating daily crises from minor incidents. Part of this is ignorance. Some of it is willful. None of it is helpful.

The dangerous nature of journalism in Iraq has created a new phenomenon, the all-powerful local stringer. Unwilling to stray too far from secure facilities and their bodyguards, reporters rely heavily on Iraqi assistance in gathering news. And Iraqi stringers, some of whom have their own political agendas, long ago figured out that Americans prefer bad news to good news. The Iraqi leg-men earn blood money for unbalanced, often-hysterical claims, while the Journalism 101 rule of seeking confirmation from a second source has been discarded in the pathetic race for headlines.

To enhance their own indispensability, Iraqi stringers exaggerate the danger to Western journalists (which is real enough, but need not paralyze a determined reporter). Dependence on the unverified reports of local hires has become the dirty secret of semi-celebrity journalism in Iraq as Western journalists succumb to a version of Stockholm Syndrome in which they convince themselves that their Iraqi sources and stringers are exceptions to every failing and foible in the Middle East. The mindset resembles the old colonialist conviction that, while other "boys" might lie and steal, our house-boy's a faithful servant.

The result is that we're being told what Iraqi stringers know they can sell and what distant editors crave, not what's actually happening.

While there are and have been any number of courageous, ethical journalists reporting from Iraq, others know little more of the reality of the streets than you do. They report what they are told by others, not what they have seen themselves. The result is a distorted, unfair and disheartening picture of a country struggling to rise above its miserable history.

When starfish says liberal, he is talking about liberals as in the American political ideology not Liberal Democracy as in the form of government. Maybe it's just me but I never the two concepts and given the context it was pretty clear what he meant.

Well starfish, he has a point. I grew up a Roman Catholic without any guidance in politics. My family raised me to believe that I would make my own decisions whether or not they are right or wrong. I grew out of that phase of believing in mulit-millennium old folklore. Plus, religion should have nothing to do with how we view politics. If you are truly by the books, you would know about separation of church and state.

Anyways, back to Iraq. How is that study going USMC850T?

I've got a 25 page paper getting between me and finishing the report. Hopefully ill be done with the paper tonight but we'll see.

I LOVE the last link, haha, EVANGELICAL FREAK!!!

Is that really required?

There is a prominent war theorist / author who has actually suggested we let Iraq fall into a full out civil war, and use our military to attack any side which gains any type of advantage in order to prolong the ordeal. I totally forgot why he suggested it but i'll see if he can dig up the article.

FYI the word Neo Con means new conservative, meaing a newer generation of conservatives, differentiated enough from the conservatives of the 60s-70s to warrant the prefix Neo.

The people I hear using the word are usually pundit tools and the people who read their blogs. I usually stop listening to someone as soon as it comes out of their mouth because it is usually followed by some sweeping generalization of conservative ideology.