Mickey

Actually, "Jimmy Carter gave away the Panama Canal" has been a sure-fire saliva trigger for the far right since it happened. In fact, decades later it still pops up now and then as a guaranteed applause line. The only problem with it as a partisan reference here is that republicans are just as mad about the UAE/Port thing as the democrats.

Thanks for the time you put into that and I am trying to understand what you are saying better than I think I do right now which is why I didn't respond sooner. Maybe you could give me a concrete example of a plan that went wrong or was ill conceived from the start due to some rules or laws that fouled up that plan. It might be easier to understand this in the context of a real life example or even maybe a hypothetical. Without wedding myself to them, I do have some concerns about some of what you are saying. For example: I would think that maybe the answer to that is leadership. Leadership of the kind that seeks to unify rather than divide and conquer. I think that after 9/11 we were prepared to be led and were unified like we never were before. An opportunity squandered. I just don't know how else you can get all the elements of a nation's power, the most important element being the unified resolve of its "...they eat from various rice bowls too, and I think it's a good bet that in general, they don't have a clue. They don't care enough to know. They don't follow up on anything important. They want their face on TV, for TV made issues."people, given our basic democratic structure with multiple branches, checks and balances. Sounds touchy feely I know but what makes a leader a leader is his ability to get disparate elements to work together. It has been done. It is the difference between Reagan's city on a hill and swift boating. I agree with you when you say: I would just expand that to include the executive. The President has to face re-election in 4 yrs and so spends the first two years governing, if even that, and the next two running a re-election campaign. Senators at least only run every 6 years and some are so entrenched, with no serious Presidential ambitions, that they can acutally afford to do what they think is right now and again rather than what will poll well.

It is as dead as my dream to one day become a judge....of the Miss Porn USA pageant. Seriously, I haven't the foggiest idea as to what economic and security issues are at stake here. Politically though, if you have Charles Schumer and Bill Frist both against it and a lame duck Prez who is getting lamer by the second, where else can this possibly go but into the "nevermind" bin? The administration has bigger fish to fry so they are not going to hitch their wagons to this lead balloon. There, I think I set the record for the multiple mixing of hackneyed metaphors in one sentence. Top that amigo.

How so? Bib lamented in several posts how badly it was planned. Okay, why not fire the guy(s) who came up with the bad plan? As for safes falling on heads, I'm not the one who called the sixth attack on a mosque an example of being blindsided by "unexpected events". There may have been even more but I got tired of googling.

In the spirit of MW being released by the Bills today, who should we fire for Iraq?

Is it possible that maybe no matter how great the plan or how wonderful the interagency coordination, invading Iraq was just a bad idea? I'm just asking.

I don't know, that seems to be a pretty good definition of "fundamentally flawed". Mabye we didn't expect this but if so, I can't imagine why we wouldn't have. Hasn't there been conflict, violent conflict, between Sunni's and Shiites since we invaded? 4/16/05: "The Sunni-Shiite conflict exploded Thursday in Madain, 15 miles southeast of Baghdad, when Sunni militants attacked the town mosque with explosives. National Security Minister Qassem Dawoud said government security forces had the town surrounded and were conducting raids to root out the hostage-takers. He said U.S.-led forces were backing the operation, but the U.S. military said it had no information on the matter." Sunnis attack mosque 1/6/04: With the threat of sectarian strife hanging over Iraq's transition, punctuated by mosque takeovers in the southern city of Basra, an explosion at a small Sunni mosque in Baghdad, and the press rife with talk about rivalry across Iraq's great sectarian divide, the imams want to head off potential conflict. Shiites and Sunnis on Edge 1/9/04: "An explosion ripped through worshippers streaming from a Shiite mosque Friday, killing five people and wounding dozens, and police defused a car bomb outside another nearby mosque." Mosque Blast Kills 5 11/20/04: "IRAQI forces, backed by US soldiers, stormed one of the major Sunni Muslim mosques in Baghdad after Friday prayers, opening fire and killing at least three people, witnesses said." Mosque Stormed 9/5/03: "Three gunmen have sprayed worshippers with bullets at the end of dawn prayers at a Sunni mosque in Baghdad, wounding three people. "They wanted to harm the unity of Islam," said imam Walid al-Azari at the Quiba mosque. He said the attack took place when three gunmen got out of a pickup truck and opened fire with Kalashnikov rifles. In Najaf, 110 miles south of the Iraqi capital, more than 10,000 worshippers filled the area around the Imam Ali shrine waiting to hear a sermon from Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, whose brother was assassinated in a huge car bombing outside the mosque a week ago. " Gunmen Target Mosque Unexpected? Blindsided?

I'll continue buying 4 season tickets but if they don't sign him, I won't. Is that a sufficient contribution?

I'm confused. You are not saying that this event, alone has caused the failure of the policy, right? It is not the sine qua non of the failure, is that right? If that were true, what kind of policy is so fragile that it would collapse the minute any Mosque gets bombed?

I think that we agree that without all that has gone before, the bombing would not have ruined their policy. Its all that, and now this, that has ruined their policy. That and whatever fundamental flaws were present in that policy from the start, aided and abetted, in some respects, by poor execution. Kind of reminds me of the Bills' offense.

I think the statements they are making are the kind of ones a few here have said they need to make. What would be a better or more effective statement for them to make vs. the one Bush made that I quoted in the lead post? I think its reality that is killing this bunch, not their lack of effective spin. You may be right that at this point their reputation is so bad that its impossible for them to make a good showing no matter what they do but if things were really, truly going well in Iraq, they wouldn't need PR. Good products sell themselves, it just takes longer. Bad products ultimately don't sell even though, with good PR, they will do well initially.

Or someone who wants people to think that there is someone who wants people to think that....

The bombing story is on the front page of the online ed. of the Washington Post and Bush is quoted three times in the story Mosque Bombing. Its also the lead story in the online NYT where Bush and General Casey are quoted calling for calm and referring to the attack as a crime against humanity. Sectarian Fury It is also the lead story in the online LA Times and Bush is quoted there as well. Shrine Blast CNN.com also has a featured article on the bombing quoting the President and General Lynch who says the attack has the thumbprints of terrorists all over it. Sunni Party Quits... Their message is getting out, lets not blame the messengers. The problem is a civil war in Iraq, not the reporting of the NYT or Fox or anyone else. The idea that things are really going swell and it just seems otherwise because the administration is really bad at PR or the Press is ignoring their good PR or some combination does not, I think, survive contact with reality. That doesn't mean that their PR isn't bad or that the press doesn't screw them over, it just means that there is no cause and effect between that and conditions on the ground. If its poll numbers we are talking about, which PR can effect, I think that even if their PR stunk and the Press screwed then over daily, their numbers would be solid, spectacular even, if things in Iraq were just great. They are not.

Maybe its not effective because its simply not true. That is pretty much what the President said in the quote I listed in the first post. "It was an attack against people of all faiths is what Mclellan said and the Prex said that they are enemies of people of all faiths and of all of humanity. That PR is not falling in an empty forest, it was on the AP wire in the story I linked. To me, it looked like an attack by Sunnis against Shiites who have responded with reprisals. In a touchy-feely way, all humanity is offended, sure but that is not what is going on there. Its sectarian violence, a struggle for control in a bitterly divided nation where the status quo has been obliterated by the invasion of foreign troops, a status quo which had only been maintained through a brutal dictatorship. These are not global terrorists trying to destroy the US, these are star bellied snoots and snoots with no stars on their bellies fighting for control of the place where snoots live.

Well, I think its cummulative. This may be the worst and most effective attack in terms of bringing about a civil war but it's hardly the only Sunni vs. Shiite clash since we invaded unfortunately.

We need Bentley. We really, really, really do. If we have another crappy season, please God, don't let it be because of the offensive line, again. Let it be the defense, let it be the receivers dropping passes, something, anything, just not the line again.

Jack Murtha on January 12, 2006: According to the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, Second Edition, the definition of a civil war is a "war between political factions or regions within the same country." That is exactly what is going on in Iraq, not a global war on terrorism, as the President continues to portray it. 93 percent of those fighting in Iraq are Iraqis. A very small percentage of the fighting is being done by foreign fighters. Our troops are caught in between the fighting. 80 percent of Iraqis want us out of there and 45 percent think it is justified to kill American troops. Iraqis went to the polls in droves on December 15th and rejected the secular, pro-democracy candidates and those who the Administration in Washington propped up. Preliminary vote results indicate that Iyad Allawi, the pro-American Prime Minister, received about 8 percent of the vote and Ahmad Chalabi, Iraq's current Oil Minister and close associate of the U.S. Iraq war planners, received less than 1 percent. According to General Vines, the top operational commander in Iraq, "the vote is reported to be primarily along sectarian lines, which is not particularly heartening." The new government he said "must be a government by and for Iraqis, not sects." The ethnic and religious strife in Iraq has been going on, not for decades or centuries, but for millennia. These particular explosive hatreds and tensions will be there if our troops leave in six months, six years or six decades. It is time to re-deploy our troops and to re-focus our attention on the real threats posed by global terrorism. Today's Reports in the wake of the bombing of the Golden Mosque: 46 Bodies Found in Wave of Iraqi Violence The President's reaction: "The terrorists in Iraq have again proven that they are enemies of all faiths and of all humanity. The world must stand united against them, and steadfast behind the people of Iraq." Which Iraqi's are we standing behind, the Shiites who are killing Sunnis or the Sunnis who are killing Shiites or the whopping 8% that voted for Allawi? The reality is that people like Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani who is forbidding his followers from taking part in reprisals against Sunni's, are just too few. I have said it before and will say it again, if the Iraqi's want a civil war, they are going to have one and there is nothing we can do to prevent it. And it certainly looks like they want to have a civil war doesn't it?

I'm not quoting anyone. I just think that anyone who is critical of the President is a friend to his enemies and his enemies are terrorists therefore, all who are critical of the President are terrorist sympathizers. I learned this kind of Republithink from Hannity and O'Reilly. What, you don't think the logic is sound?

Prickly? Thanks for playing. 608875[/snapback] If we keep this up, we will both be topping the charts in no time.

I think it is clear that she is a terrorist sympathizer. The UAE are allies in the GWOT thus anyone who is against them is for the terrorists and by extension, against our troops. I think that, in the end, that makes her a traitor, right? Time for another quail hunt. I'm getting the hang of this new republithink.

I have no opinion at all on the port thing, no idea if it is good, bad or indifferent. Regardless, the letter from Republican Congresswoman Susan Myrick (NC) to the President on the issue is classic: Dear Mr. President: In regards to selling American ports to the United Arab Emirates, not just NO----but HELL NO! Sincerely, Susan Myrick Member of Congress thumbnail at thumbnail

What is the word that the knighs of Nee cannott say?

I'm sorry, have you not posted 10,000 times in 1 1/2 years less than me? Do posts about non-political opinions take inherently less of one's free time than posts about schizo son's of ex-Presidents so that you're waste of time is so much less appalling than mine? Given your 10,000 posts, placing you 18th overall on the list while I languish far back in the pack at 44th, I think it both hypocritical and a cheap shot to go on about wasting time posting opinions. You do plenty of that. If your purpose was to stir up trouble, why are you so prickly about having done just that?

The governing stuff is part time, the campaiging is full time with lots of O/T.

Any appearance that I followed your advice is purely coincidental.