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here's the reply, sent to all the people on the forwarded message list...
the >>'s indicate the original text, followed by my replies.
> >Learn these facts to properly debate our poor
> misguided friends & family
> >before election time !!!
> >
postulating random facts (some of which are either incorrect, not facts at all, or disingenuously misleading characterizations of the accurate historical record) and then trying to compile them into a quasi-argument in support of dubya's merry little crusade is hardly the drivel you should be giving to your "poor misguided" acquaintances, let alone your friends and family. but that's just my opinion.
shall we?
> >
> >There were 39 combat related killings in Iraq during the month of
> >January..... In the fair city of Detroit there were 35 murders in >>the month of January. That's just one American city, about as >>deadly as the entire war-torn country of Iraq.
right. let's run with this little tid bit, shall we?
1. you make a compelling argument for a renewal of the assault weapons ban. i assume you've already contacted your local congresscritter to let them know accordingly?
2. what about other months in iraq vis a vis other months in detroit? it's easy to cherry pick statistics when one only takes a snapshot view of it.
3. also, you compare "combat-related killings" in iraq to all killings in detroit. compare apples to apples, please. what about ALL murders in iraq during january, if you insist on the myopic. hell, what about ALL murders in baghdad alone during january? by your logic referenced above, deaths of iraqis are irrelevent at best, invisible at worst; apparantly only 'merkins matter anymore. sad. pathetic, really.
i'd wager a hefty sum of money that the number of homicides (combat-related, murders, whatever, they all leave a dead body and greiving others) in baghdad during january far surpassed those in detroit.
4. where are the flowers we were supposed to thrown? what about the cake we were supposed to walk up when entering a sovereign nation with our military? hmmmm...seems i remember promises and assurances to that effect...
> >
> >When some claim President Bush shouldn't have started this war, state
> >the following ...
> >
ok, i already know what's coming...a bunch of drivel attempting to distract one from focusing on the fact that Bush DID in fact start a preemptive war despite evidence to the contrary of his assertions. oh, did one happen to catch the recent revelation from the 9/11 commission that there was decidedly NO connection between al-queda and saddam hussein, let alone any connection between hussein and 9/11? no? you might look into it. it's fascinating stuff, if your head doesn't explode first.
> >FDR...
> >
> >led us into World War II. Germany never attacked us: Japan did.
This statement is only half correct. True enough, Japan did attack us. i'm sure we're all familiary with the story of pearl harbor, and what FDR knew or didn't know...we knew an attack was coming, but expected it in the philippeans, not at pearl. the japanese DID attack the phil. islands the same time they attacked pearl harbor.
However, your statement regarding Germany is egregiously incorrect, and therefore not a "fact" you should attempt to use:
1. after pearl harbor, we declared war on japan on Dec. 8. the japanese reciprocated that favor. three days later, on Dec. 11, germany declared war on us. only then did the US declare war on Germany.
2. Germany DID attack us...On June 10,1941, the U.S. freighter Robin Moor 's lifeboats were found - the 1st U.S. ship sunk, on May 21, 1941. on June 20, 1941 the U.S. battleship Texas enters the combat zone near England & is tracked by U-boat. The following is a further chronology of U.S. ships attacked by Germany before December 7, 1941, which, if you'll excuse the pun, sinks your battleship of an argument that Germany never attacked us:
Sept. 4 - U.S. destroyer Greer attacked by U-652, eluded 2 torpedos
Sept. 11 - FDR declared Greer attack was "piracy" as was Aug. 17 sinking of U.S.-Panamanian freighter Sessa killing 24 of 27 crew, and the Sept. 5 sinking of U.S. freighter Steel Seafarer clearly flying U.S. flag - ordered "shoot-on-sight"
Sept. 11 - U.S. freighter Montana sunk en route to Iceland, none killed
Sept. 19 - armed U.S.-Panamanian freighter Pink Star sunk en route to Iceland with cargo of food
Sept. 27 - U.S.-Panamanian oil tanker I.C. White sunk en route to South Africa, 3 killed
Oct. 16 - U.S. tanker W.C. Teagle sunk and U.S.-Panamanian freighter Bold Venture sunk
Oct. 17 - U.S. destroyer Kearny torpedoed and damaged with 11 killed inside Security Zone (a designated area including waters off Greenland, the Azores, the Red Sea, and and broader 300 mile zone in the Western Hemisphere including Panama)
Oct. 19 - U.S. freighter Lehigh sunk in South Atlantic
Oct. 27 - FDR Navy Day speech - "I have in my possession a secret map made in Germany by Hitler's government-by the planners of the new world order. It is a map of South America and a part of Central America, as Hitler proposes to reorganize it." (but the map was a fake from the British Secret Service)
Oct. 30 - U.S.-Panamanian armed tanker Salinas torpedoed and damaged
Oct. 31 - U.S. destroyer Reuben James sunk inside Security Zone, 115 killed - was the 1st U.S. warship lost
so you see, the "fact" above, isn't.
> >
> >From 1941-1945, 450,000 lives were lost, an average of 112,500 per year.
> >
> >
see, there you go manipulating the data again. it's true...450,000 lives WERE lost during those years. however, the way it's stated is extremely misleading and ethnocentricity at it's very worst...there were 450,000 AMERICAN lives lost during those years...all together, many times that number lost their lives. the soviets lost 27 million alone during their involvement in the war, civilian and military.
please don't be so narrowly focused on excluding others out of existence.
> >Truman...
> >
> >finished that war...
one that he was woefully unprepared and uninformed about, as FDR kept all his vice presidents in the dark about what was happening. not until Al Gore took on serious responsibilities did the vice presidency in this country mean more than a bucket of warm piss. of course, now the country is being run from the vice president's residence...
>>...and started one in Korea. North Korea never attacked us.
Correct on a very legalistic, parsing level, but again, misleading. the North Koreans didn't attack us, they attacked our allies in one of the first hot proxies wars we would fight with the soviets for the next several decades. what's your point?
> >From 1950-1953, 55,000 lives were lost, an average of 18,334 per year.
> >
ummm...i think we've already covered this particular false version of "fact."
> >John F. Kennedy...
> >
> >started the Vietnam conflict in 1962.
wrong. completely and totally wrong. Eisenhower first committed US military personnel after the French fell at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. of course, they were just "advisors." kind of like the civilians toting around american weaponry in baghdad are "civilian contractors" and not mercenaries. let's call a spade a spade, shall we?
>> Vietnam never attacked us.
ahhh...now doesn't that feel good to state something that's actually has some grounding in veracity? good job.
just like iraq, the vietnamese never attacked us, yet we proceeded to fight a 21 year (1954-1975) war in some form or another against them. hmmmm.....
> >Johnson...
> > turned Vietnam into a quagmire.
> >
granted. although the sharp ones among you will note that this is actually a statement of opinion, disguised as a fact. and anyway, how does this make it ok for Shrub to turn Iraq into a comparable quagmire? that's like saying it was bad for your right hand to punch the retarded kid in the face, but it's ok for the left hand to do so. two wrongs don't...blah blah blah.
> >From 1965-1975, 58,000 lives were lost, an average
> of 5,800 per year.
> >
DAMMIT PEOPLE! OTHERS BESIDES 'MERKINS LIVE IN THIS WORLD TOO! yes, 58,000 lives were lost during those years...however, let's also count in the casualties from 1954-1964, as well as the many who returned from vietnam physically, but were dead in many ways mentally, as well as all those suffering from Agent Orange-like maladies that will eventually kill them, only slower and without them being recognized with their name on the Wall. Also, we need to add in the, oh, more than 1 million vietnamese on both sides who perished during that conflict.
> >Clinton...
> >
> >went to war in Bosnia without UN or French consent, Bosnia never
> >attacked us.
> >
no, he didn't go to war. he used U.S. military force within the context of a NATO action, to put an end to a genuine, ongoing genocide. as opposed to the much-touted "gassed his own people" charge against hussein that actually dated back to 1992, not a current event.
> >He was offered Osama bin Laden's head on a platter three times by Sudan and did nothing.
wrong. the Sudanese never had Osama to hand over. in fact, the Afghans (NOT Afghanis...that's their monetary unit) offered Osama up to the Bush admininstration in the days after 9/11 as a way of avoiding the coming military slaughter, and Bush refused. touche. Also, while the Big Dog was waging a fight for his political career against an enemy using a blatant abuse of power designed to effect a coup of a democratically elected leader (as opposed to one appointed by judicial fiat), Clinton missed Osama with a missile strike by 15 minutes or so. of course, that was just chalked up as "wagging the dog" and other such drivel by those who now demanded that we just had to go get saddam, "cuz he's a bad guy."
> >
> >Osama has attacked us on multiple occasions.
correct. buy hey, we got saddam, and he's a muslim too, so that should be good enough, right? again, you do state a fact here, but there is no context, and although the fact you do state is correct, there is no further mention of anything regarding his current whereabouts; i was under the impression that he was going to be caught by the Shrub boy "dead or alive." que pasa?
> >
> >In the two years since terrorists attacked us
> President Bush has ...
> >
> >liberated two countries,
in the eye of the beholder, i suppose. it's true that the afghans are now free to grow their poppy again, thus allowing them to make a prosperous living, so perhaps they do feel "free." of course, general anarchy and warlord-ism that continues to rule the country might indicate otherwise. but hey, the pipeline that UNOCAL wanted built and pushed for, for years, is finally getting built, but i'm sure that's just a coincidence.
>> crushed the Taliban,
hmmm...not what i've heard...it seems that the drug trade (the afghans now produce approx. 75% of the world's opium) has been a lucrative market for the taliban and they're rebuilding their strength through that funding.
> crippled al-Qaida,
but i thought they were supposed to have been planning a bombing here in columbus? no, all we've done is decentralized al-qaida, making it more difficult to prevent future acts of terra. and we still haven't caught osama...this guy's supposed to be lugging a dialysis machine around with him, through the mountains, and yet we can't catch him? i don't buy it.
>> put nuclear inspectors in Libya...
wrong, that was the 100% effort of the british. score one for bush's poodle.
>>...Iran...
yeah, not so much. we've inspected them so much they're now demanding to be recognized as members of the "nuke club." but hey, at least Chalabi told them that we're reading their codes...
and North Korea...
again, wrong.
> without firing a shot,
i don't get it...i thought the idea was that by demonstrating that we'd invade on only a misguided perception of a threat to our "national security" interests, these guys just gave up...so which is it - with or without a shot? are you saying that no one has died in Iraq? your misguided attempts at demagoguery are failing here.
> >and captured a terrorist who slaughtered 300,000 of
> his own people.
depends what your defination of "terrorist" is...there's no evidence that he was involved in 9/11, nor any other such terrorist acts, and if using force or violence to effect change is the defintion of terror by which saddam becomes a terrorist, that hardly differentiates him from the current U.S. president. likewise, if paying palestinian bombers' families constitutes making one a terrorist, does that mean that when we paid and trained osama to carry out acts of terror against the soviets during the 1980's war there that our dearly departed saint ronnie was therefore a terrorist as well?
oh, and those 300,000 people? how did he kill them? oh, that's right...with U.S. weapons systems, sold/given to him by Rummy, Reagan and Bush I. those 300,000 thousand (i'm so glad you're finally recognizing the deaths of people other than 'merkins) iraqis died with "made in USA" stamped on the insides of their lungs.
> >
> >The Democrats are complaining about how long the
> war is taking, but...
no, I'm saying that it was effed up to begin with (sold to a gullible 'merkin public drenched in fear, based on false pretenses at best, lies at worst), and even after we've taken over and good could still have come out of it, the reconstruction part has been thouroughly fucked up...we've employed 'merkin contractors to do jobs that should go to iraqis, and as a result, we have 'merkin companies making money hand over fist on cost-plus contracts, while iraqis are sodomized with light bulbs and police batons.
but i'm sure this will all be over in, oh, a generation or so. hope you don't have young 'uns.
> >
> >It took less time to take Iraq than it took Janet
> Reno to take the
> >Branch Davidian compound. That was a 51 day
> operation.
> >
Where did we take Iraq? have we moved it? or is that simply a freudian slip of the fingers, revealing the grand plan all along? and last i checked, we still haven't secured the country, and we're decidedly past the 51 day timeframe. or was that just predicated on the date the chimpy stuffed a sock in his flight suit and delayed sailors from seeing their families for several hours so he could play dress up and declare mission accomplished?
> >We've been looking for evidence of chemical weapons
> in Iraq for less
> >time than it took Hillary Clinton to find the Rose
> Law Firm billing
> >records.
> >
ummm...again. it's been over a year now, more so if you really consider that we've been looking for WMDs since the 1991 Gulf War ended. by my count, that's 13 years. a long time to find some billing records.
> >It took less time for the 3rd Infantry Division and the Marines to destroy the Medina Republican Guard than it took Ted Kennedy to call the police after his Oldsmobile sank at Chappaquiddick.
> >
see, now you reveal your true colors. there is absolutely now correlation between these two events. are you sure you're not Ann Coulter? this smacks of her hystrionics. i would ask, however, how long it's taken for the terrists to be all disposed of. oh, you mean they're not all handled? but i thought this was the war on terra, right? and iraq was supposed to be the "central front" for that war. the republican guard, for better or worse, were legitimate soldiers attempting to repel an invasion of their country by a massively superior military force. think the polish on horseback attempting to repel the germans in August of 1939. were the polish terrorists or defenders? you tell me. there's no shame in the fact that they were most likely killed and/or overrun rather expeditiously by american forces.
> >It took less time to take Iraq than it took to count the votes in Florida!!!!
> >
the votes in florida weren't counted. a moot point here, except for the actual fact (as opposed to the "facts" you cite) that we still haven't "taken" iraq.
> >Our Commander-In-Chief is doing a GREAT JOB!
agreed. however, our idea of what it is he's actually doing a "great job" of may differ. our collective rectums have only occasionaly felt the ripping pain, what with all the faux news-supplied media KY that georgie has used. at least some of the country will actually turn around and give the bush boy a thank you reach-around in november, too!
as for how bush is doing in all other facets of the "job," well, i'd have to disagree wholeheartedly, and it seems that a whole bunch of others with more experience and wisdom in these matters agree. see: the myriad foreign service and military flag rank officers who today came out with a paper stating that bushian policies have made us dramatically less safe. but hey, if that was the goal, then it's true...bush is doing a great job.
>>The Military moral is high!
> >
I assume you mean "morale"? is that before or after they get their body armor and armor plated humvees (which the mercenaries...errr...private contractors already have)? is that before or after another IED goes off and destroys an entire humvee full of soldiers' lives forever? or is that just when the chickenhawk-in-chief flies to baghdad to serve a fake turkey for thanksgiving dinner at 6:00 a.m local time? the military was the only sane bunch in this whole clusterfuck...they delayed as long as possible in the face of the neo-cons warlust, but at the end of the day, they do as they're directed by civilians.
or maybe the military morale is high b/c the troops have to watch bars and nightclubs spring up in the "green zone" for the mercs and CIA operatives, but yet are forbidden from participating in the imbibing themselves? i'm sure that one goes over REALLY well...
> >The biased media hopes we are too ignorant to
> realize the facts.
> >
>
no, they KNOW you're too ignorant to realize the facts. that's why they made "shock and awe" into a musical. that's why they don't tell you that GE not only owns NBC, but also is the biggest Pentagon contractor in this country. that's why they had reports in bed with...errr...i mean embedded with...the military as we invaded a sovereign country...so you could live your chickenhawk wet dreams via satellite phone and video.
oh, and the media is certainly biased, that's correct. i think rush/savage/hannity/oreilly/bedpanholder(she's not a doctor)laura/etc. etc. etc. would agree that they seem to have a just dandy control over the media. only it's not a librul bias as you've been brainwashed to believe...
I certainly hope this clears some things up for you about which you seem to have been misled. however, i'm still mystified as to what any of this has to do with how badly george w. bush has fucked things up since his appointment. what was the point of trying to bring in the comparisons to previous wars, as done above? yes, there are comparisons to be found, in both world war II (preemptive invasions generally aren't a successful venture, police states aren't real popular after all is said and done), and vietnam (it's impossible to impose democracy at gunpoint, and you can't "liberate" a population by destroying it. you also will never be able to successfully control a population in a culture of which you're mostly ignorant, and in a conflict wherein you cannot differentiate friend from foe). however, methinks that wasn't the intended goal of your little reposte.
i'll leave you with some actual facts:
1. tom delay is facing ethics violations charges in the house of representatives.
2. the president attempted to recruit the pope to urge american catholics to vote for bush in november when bush met with the pontiff last week.
3. someone at an extremely high level of the white house blew a CIA noc's cover, endangering not only that agent, but also everyone with which she had contact overseas.
4. mr. bush has retained a personal, private lawyer...i wonder which particular potential scandal he's worried about?
5. the loudest blowhard of them all, rush limbaugh, is getting a divorce. his third. family values at work.
6. my heterosexual marriage has barely been shaken, let alone destroyed, by all the gay nuptials in massachussets.
7. dick cheny, contrary to what he claims, WAS involved in procuring no-bid contracts for halliburton, and cheny still retains approx. 300,000 options on halliburton shares.
8. Fahrenheit 9/11 opens on June 25.
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