mr mahs

So you don't agree with the U.S. digitally fingerprinting our guests???

I heard about this this morning. Brazil is flipping about the new steps were are taking to control our immigration promblem.. Someone should tell this tool about Sept 11th and the 3000 that were killed. One last thing.. I don't care if Rio sinks to the bottom of the ocean floor... They will never get a chance to fingerprint me because you couldn't pay me to go there but I bet the tourism driven businesses in Rio are upset the american dollar will have to jump hurdles to reach their pockets....

NEVER HAPPEN.....

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/4965.htm January 5, 2004 -- IT'S fashionable in left- wing circles to describe anyone who admires America as a fascist. But the real totalitarian threats of our time come from the left. And no public figure embodies the left's contempt for basic freedoms more perfectly than Howard Dean. One secular gospel of the left preaches that the Patriot Act has drastically curtailed American freedom. Free speech, the teacup Trotskys claim, is a thing of the past. Whenever one of my forlorn leftie pals raises the issue, I ask him or her to cite a single example of how the Patriot Act has limited their personal liberty. They never can. Instead, they rail about what-ifs and slippery slopes. But Howard Dean and his Deanie-weenies do all they can to restrict the free speech of others. I can predict with certainty that Dean's Internet Gestapo will pounce on this column, twisting the facts and vilifying the writer, just as they do when anyone challenges Howard the Coward. Free speech, you see, is only for the left. Dean wants to muzzle his Democratic competitors, too. He believes the Democratic National Committee should shut them up. His followers try to intimidate other presidential aspirants by surrounding the cars delivering them to their rallies and chanting to drown out their speech. Of course, Dean denies any foreknowledge or blame. These are the techniques employed by Hitler's Brownshirts. Had Goebbels enjoyed access to the internet, he would have used the same swarm tactics as Dean's Flannelshirts. Then there are Dean's endless "Big Lies": Liberating 25 million Iraqis was "wrong." Saddam's capture doesn't make any difference. Osama bin Laden should be presumed innocent, despite his own admission of responsibility for the 9/11 attacks. Bush knew in advance about the 9/11 attacks. The Global War on Terror is a failure. The economy's a disaster. And the administration is hiding terrible secrets. Paranoids and conspiracy theorists rejoice! You finally have a candidate of your own. Of course, when Dean seals his gubernatorial records so Americans can't examine his own back-room deals, that's perfectly legitimate. In Dean's alternate reality, everything the Bush administration has done and might do is a failure, no matter the facts. The president's even responsible for Mad Cow Disease. It's Goebbels again: Just keep repeating the lies until the lies assume the force of truth. I met Dean a few times while taping a TV panel show in Montreal. The first time I saw him, chattering on a monitor, I had no idea who he was. I assumed he was some small-time politician on the hustle, Babbitt at the ballot box. I was stunned to learn he was (then) the governor of one of our 50 states - even if the state was the People's Republic of Vermont. After a few tapings, I declined to continue doing the show. It was a waste of time to travel so far just to spend all the air-time politely explaining why Dean's comments on foreign policy bore no relation to the reality I'd seen with my own eyes. Dean was already practicing the Big Lie. Montreal was just a stop on his journey from Munich to Berlin. He was already looking around for his Leni Riefenstahl. Listen to Dean's rhetoric, especially on security and international issues. He never offers specifics; it's all hocus-pocus. He knows how best to deal with terrorists. We voters from the humble Volk need to take it on trust. He understands how to employ our military more effectively - despite dodging the draft during the Vietnam War. Dean's going to improve our intelligence system, too. How? If pressed, he may go so far as to mention HUMINT - a term he doesn't understand - or the need for more Arabic speakers. Great, Herr Howie. We agree. But how does he intend to develop our human intelligence capabilities? Which presidential directives and findings would he rescind or issue? Precisely what would he do that isn't being done? He has no answers. None. As for the need for more linguists, how would he recruit them, then train and retain them? Does he intend to reinstate the draft? Dean never deals in specifics on security issues. Because he doesn't know the specifics. It's all Big Brother Doublespeak. Perhaps it would be easier for those on the left to grasp this column's arguments if we cast the drama with characters closer to their hearts. Dean began his campaign as an uncompromising Lenin. Now that his Bolsheviks have been organized, he's trying to pose as Gorbachev for the masses. But for anyone who pays attention to what this power-hungry huckster says and does, he comes off as a down-market Brezhnev. Of course, I don't really see Howard Dean as a potential dictator - just another hollow man soiling the halls of power. And this is America. Our system is far stronger than any individual. Besides, even the vilest dictators have a vision of something greater than themselves. Howard Dean has nothing beyond ambition. And a shameless disregard for the First Amendment.

I was looking through Drudgreport and noticed this news wire about the elevated threat to Las Vegas and how the ACLU is all bent out of shape for the seizure of "patron information". My question is, do you agree with the strongarming of Casinos to release this info or do you think it's a trashing of our civil liberties? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://news.myway.com/top/article/id/331898|top|01-04-2004::15:45|reuters.html By Jim Wolf WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The FBI demanded Las Vegas hotels turn over their guest lists leading up to New Year's Eve to check against a U.S. master list of suspected terrorists, a law enforcement official said on Sunday. The demand for "patron information" went to all major hotels in the Nevada casino and entertainment city, said the official who declined to be named. Las Vegas was one of six or seven cities mentioned in intelligence reports as potential targets for a terrorist attack during the holiday period, Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn said on New Year's Eve. A second U.S. government official said to his knowledge only one hotel had balked at providing its bookings list. Newsweek, the first to report the FBI demand, said one big hotel had refused and was "slapped with a subpoena." The unspecified hotel apparently wanted some "cover" against any privacy-related guest complaints, the official told Reuters. The FBI sent a letter linking the demand to a national security investigation or hinting at a "friendly" subpoena to meet the hotel's concerns, he added. The Justice Department, the FBI's parent agency, declined comment on any specific effort to thwart possible plots since the Dec. 21 raising of the U.S. warning level to Code Orange, its second highest level. Among other worries, U.S. officials have said they fear terrorists may be trying to outdo the Sept. 11, 2001, hijacked airliner attacks that killed about 3,000 people in the United States. Las Vegas, along with New York City's Times Square, features one of the biggest New Year's Eve block parties with revelers thronging its garish, 3-mile long, hotel and casino "strip." The Federal Aviation Administration barred pilots from flying over the New Year's Eve festivities in Las Vegas and New York as a precautionary measure. Asked about the Las Vegas hotel records, Mark Corallo, a Justice Department spokesman, said: "Without comment on any specific case or instance, we will use every legal tool we have to protect the American people from terrorist attacks." PRIVACY CONCERNS A representative of the American Civil Liberties Union said the demand for guest records, without any individual suspicion, infringed on the privacy of as many as 300,000 people "whose leisure activities are no one's business but their own." The action also showed the FBI's expanded, post-Sept. 11 power to obtain personal records without judicial review or suspicion about an individual "may well be used to monitor ordinary Americans," said Timothy Edgar, the ACLU's legislative counsel. In a sign of unabated U.S. concern, the head of a House of Representatives' committee with access to intelligence information said on Sunday al Qaeda remained bent on using hijacked airliners as weapons. "There is no question that al Qaeda still wants to use airplanes as weapons," Rep. Christopher Cox, the California Republican who chairs the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, said on CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer." "There's no question that there's planning going on and there's no question that the threats, as they've been assessed, are real," he added

Here is a list of question's that Rich Lowry thought "Angry man Dean" should have been asked at the debate. I was listening to the debate and thinking most of the proposals are just regurgitation of what is going on now or attempted but denied, such as getting U.N involvement in Iraq. The candidates are constantly criticizing for not having International help but failing to take notice that the U.N. ALREADY PACKED UP AND LEFT..... http://www.nationalreview.com/lowry...00401050848.asp ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The other Democratic candidates for president are beginning to challenge front-runner Howard Dean daily, asking questions about his positions and fitness for office. Here are the questions that they're not asking Dean, but should: The U.N. Security Council in November 2002 unanimously passed Resolution 1441, giving Saddam Hussein "a final opportunity to comply." How do you interpret the phrase "final opportunity"? You routinely say that the Berlin Wall came down without a shot. You mean without a shot excluding Korea, Vietnam and small wars throughout Latin America and Africa during four decades, right? You say Osama bin Laden should be presumed innocent until a jury gets to decide his fate. Who do you think would best represent bin Laden at his trial, Johnnie Cochran or Mark Geragos? You say the United States shouldn't have fought the Iraq War because Saddam did not present "an imminent threat" to the United States. Yet you supported wars in the 1990s in Bosnia and Kosovo. How exactly did Slobodan Milosevic pose an imminent threat to the United States? You say that it was a mistake for the United States to go to war without the "permission" of the United Nations. For what other sovereign acts of the United States would you require U.N. "permission"? You have said at various times that it would be irresponsible not to support President Bush's $87 billion funding request for the troops and reconstruction in Iraq, and that you opposed the $87 billion. What is your position right at this moment on the $87 billion? How about now? And...now? You quit the Episcopal Church because you thought its position on a Burlington, Vt., bike path was "not very Godlike." What is God's position on bike paths? Scriptural references would be helpful. You say that the invocation before congressional sessions makes you uncomfortable. What phrase or sentiment makes you most uncomfortable from this passage from a recent invocation: "Help each of us to depend upon Your strength as we navigate life's challenging seas. May we trust the wonderful laws of sowing and reaping, knowing You will bring us an abundant harvest"? You say that Republicans want to end public education. Education spending under Bush has increased 65 percent. How is that consistent with the alleged goal of ending public education? Did you have any favorite ski spots during the Vietnam War? In the North Korean crisis, the Bush administration is engaging in intense multilateral diplomacy to make North Korea's neighbors part of any settlement. You advocate that the United States instead cut out other countries to engage in direct talks with Pyongyang. What explains your burst of unilateralism? Do you prefer your would-be southern voters to fly the tasteful "stars and bars" that was the official flag of the Confederacy from March 1861 to May 1863, or the more familiar and popular Confederate battle flag? You have at various times said you supported NAFTA, and said you opposed any agreement like NAFTA. You have both said, "NAFTA is here to stay," and advocated negotiating a "New Deal" with Mexico. What the hell? You said recently that the Saudis might have tipped off the Bush administration prior to Sept. 11. Are there any other bizarre theories that you have picked up from the Internet that you would like to share at this time? You say that Bush doesn't understand the needs of middle-class families. Yet your proposed full repeal of the Bush tax cut could, as some of your opponents point out, result in a $2,000 tax increase for a middle-class family of four. What do you understand about middle-class families' hunger for higher taxes that the rest of us don't? If you had to choose your percentage of the popular vote in a general election right now, would you pick George McGovern's 37.5 percent, Walter Mondale's 40.5 percent, or Michael Dukakis's 44.8 percent. Please round to the nearest single digit

You and Kucinich live in LA LA land if you think everyone and everything will just play nice.. I tell you what, we should just send Bin Laden a dozen roses and hope he doesn't annihalate us...The guy is a fawking pacifist, testical less loon who was thrown out of office for his rants and lets just say, illogical fiscal policies.... I would rather vote for that racist, coke dealer, Slim Shady Al Sharpton then Kucinich....

Here is little article I wanted to post to get some feedback from people on this board. The article is a about a raid that took place in the Sunni triangle, where the Sadam loyalists are focussing most of their insurgency efforts... The troops said they found a weapons cache and other forms of weapons but the sunnis claim it was for self defense.... My question to you all is, were we wrong on following an intelligence lead into a mosque where the obvious advantage a enemy would have with concealing weapons in a place of worship or should we have refrained on acting on a tip that probably saved American lives??? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The U.S. military raided a Sunni mosque in western Baghdad and said it had seized arms and explosives in an operation that sparked an angry Muslim protest after Friday prayers. More than 1,000 worshippers at the al-Tabool mosque denounced Thursday's raid in an emotional demonstration and accused U.S. troops of trampling on the Koran, or Muslim holy book. "American soldiers entered the mosque with their shoes on and with machine guns in their hands," the imam, Abdulsatar al-Janabi, told Reuters, adding the raid had lasted five hours. "They trampled on the holy Koran, beat up some of the worshippers and stole computers and a donations box," he said. Others claimed that a page was torn from the Koran. Protesters screamed and cried, chanting: "God is great" and "America is the enemy of God". Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, a U.S. military spokesman, said U.S. troops had conducted the operation after a tip off from Iraqis and netted a wide array of weaponry to be used against occupying forces facing a relentless insurgency. "Over recent months, the U.S. 1st Armored Division has received numerous reports from Iraqis that the al-Tabool mosque was being used for criminal and terrorist activities," Kimmitt told a news conference on Friday. "U.S. forces, led by the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps and the Iraqi police therefore conducted a cordon and search." He said troops had found several sticks of high explosives, hand grenades, AK-47 rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and thousands of rounds of ammunition. "There is clear evidence from what we seized that this mosque was being used for things other than free religious expression," Kimmitt said. He said 32 people had been detained, including several believed to be foreigners, and dismissed suggestions that U.S. forces might have defiled the mosque. "We are aware of the allegation that coalition forces tore pages from the Koran... But I can assure you that the greatest possible care was taken to respect the sanctity of the mosque," he said. Al-Janabi, the imam, denied the raid had netted much weaponry. "In every mosque in Iraq we keep light guns for self protection," he said. "They claim it's an arsenal of weapons, but it's just for self protection." He said the raid showed U.S. forces were persecuting Sunni Muslims, who were favoured under ousted President Saddam Hussein, and warned there would be repercussions. "The army of Sunnis will come back again," he said.

Who are these Financial Lords?

You are soo off with this MARK...

Arhhh "Bush is Hitler" Fascism A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism. A political philosophy or movement based on or advocating such a system of government. Oppressive, dictatorial control Yeah this is def the US... Mark worry about your own country....

Here he is ladies and gentleman, the dumb laughing with the blind...

Isn't that enough? Isn't the world better off especially in the wake of recent events,with other rogue nations giving up their WMD's? You bitch that they exist and bitch when force is used to remove them, make up your mind.. The soft power approach is a failure, the 12 years of dilly daddling in Iraq is proof of that.. Sanctions were placed the people suffrered while the Dictator made billions I just donb't get what you people are protesting about...Is it about civilain deaths? Where were your marches when they were putting thousands in mass graves? Hypocrisy...

I can see the smoke from here....

Real quick.... 1)If your are talking about the U.S population loathing him, the +61% of the american public approves of the job he is doing If you are talking about EUROPE... then who gives a flying fawk what you idiots think, worry about yourselves.... 2) Great so comedians are making fun of Bush so thats why he should lose his seat.. Take a look around Jack his pre-emptive stance is working. -Iran is allowing inspections.. -Lybia is dropping his WMD program.. -North Korea is allowing inspections.... How many of these accomplishments would have taken place if the same "sit on your hands" policy The Europeans praise but fail to produce results??? Kucinich? The guy's a pussy??? He would raise taxes and pull the troops from Iraq....You think alot of civilians died in the war, what do you think would happen if we pulled the troops out completly.... Kucinich is a scary joke, CHAP........

Word of advice...9 out of 10 times these .org websites are as effective as a lamb skin condom in a hore house. It's funny how your little website didn't read Kay's report in October which details what material they found and the actions taken pre and post war to conceal and cover up what they didn't want anyone to see... Here is a little piece taken from the speech... What have we found and what have we not found in the first 3 months of our work? We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002. The discovery of these deliberate concealment efforts have come about both through the admissions of Iraqi scientists and officials concerning information they deliberately withheld and through physical evidence of equipment and activities that ISG has discovered that should have been declared to the UN. Let me just give you a few examples of these concealment efforts, some of which I will elaborate on later: · A clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service that contained equipment subject to UN monitoring and suitable for continuing CBW research. · A prison laboratory complex, possibly used in human testing of BW agents, that Iraqi officials working to prepare for UN inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the UN. · Reference strains of biological organisms concealed in a scientist's home, one of which can be used to produce biological weapons. · New research on BW-applicable agents, Brucella and Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin were not declared to the UN. · Documents and equipment, hidden in scientists' homes, that would have been useful in resuming uranium enrichment by centrifuge and electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS). · A line of UAVs not fully declared at an undeclared production facility and an admission that they had tested one of their declared UAVs out to a range of 500 km, 350 km beyond the permissible limit. · Continuing covert capability to manufacture fuel propellant useful only for prohibited SCUD variant missiles, a capability that was maintained at least until the end of 2001 and that cooperating Iraqi scientists have said they were told to conceal from the UN. · Plans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with ranges up to at least 1000 km -- well beyond the 150 km range limit imposed by the UN. Missiles of a 1000 km range would have allowed Iraq to threaten targets through out the Middle East, including Ankara, Cairo, and Abu Dhabi. · Clandestine attempts between late-1999 and 2002 to obtain from North Korea technology related to 1,300 km range ballistic missiles --probably the No Dong -- 300 km range anti-ship cruise missiles, and other prohibited military equipment. In addition to the discovery of extensive concealment efforts, we have been faced with a systematic sanitization of documentary and computer evidence in a wide range of offices, laboratories, and companies suspected of WMD work. The pattern of these efforts to erase evidence -- hard drives destroyed, specific files burned, equipment cleaned of all traces of use -- are ones of deliberate, rather than random, acts. Sounds like Kay found a whole lot... Here is the reference before the conspiracy wood in your concrete skull starts to burn and churn out excuse after excuse to discredit the facts..... Please read...Look it's even CNN http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/10/02/kay.report/

This is a good article for the US haters who paint us as the imperial evil nation.. The impact we are having over seas http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1114916,00.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ There was nothing grand about the opening of an American field hospital in devastated Bam yesterday, except the symbolism. The hospital was small, arrived late and according to many observers was surplus to requirements. But if little pebbles make big ripples, US-Iranian relations are headed for a thaw. Often blinking back tears, the 81-strong American team got to work with vigorous goodwill, openly appalled by the agonies inflicted by an earthquake inside a regime that George Bush has branded "evil". And the people of Bam reciprocated, welcoming the henchmen of the "Great Satan" with mild curiosity, quiet good manners and generous thanks. "What these people are going through, it's unimaginable; so many have lost their entire families, we just had no idea," said Dr Tim Crowley, a general physician from Boston, standing scrubbed and ready for action outside the hospital's five modest marquees. "And, you know, they're just getting on with it. I had no idea the people here were going to be so friendly, receptive, welcoming. It's really incredible." Dr Crowley had time to talk because patients were in short supply. The hospital opened at 1pm and five hours later its 14 doctors and surgeons - some of whom gave emergency help to the survivors of the September 11 terrorist attacks - had seen just a dozen patients. But in another sense he was already overwhelmed. One of his first patients was nine-year-old Fatima, who arrived, having already been treated for a broken arm, complaining of headaches. Dr Crowley diagnosed a brain haemorrhage and packed her off to the airport to find a neurosurgeon in Tehran. "That little girl, if she hadn't made it here, she'd have died in a few hours," he said, wiping back tears with a gloved hand. "But if she finds the right treatment, she'll live. That would make it all worthwhile." Another patient limped in with a pinned right leg, having also been previously treated in one of the 13 foreign field hospitals that began opening in Bam on Monday, 36 hours after the earthquake. Security - non-existent in any other field hospital - was tight. Majid Vafiee, 29, had first to limp through a cordon of Iran's elite presidential guard, then to be vetted by Deputy-Sheriff Bob Boomhower, the mission's security chief. "OK, we're the only team with security officers, but we're pretty relaxed, and we're going to get more relaxed the longer we're here," said Mr Boomhower, a thick-set police officer from Massachusetts with a greying walrus moustache. "There was a bit of fear from everyone on the way because it's been a long time since [Americans] were here. But because the government invited us, we weren't really worried about our safety." Shortly afterwards, Mr Vafiee limped out. "I'm very grateful to the Americans and all the foreign people for coming to help us; they are very kind people," he said, blinking before the cameras of a dozen international journalists in the pale evening light. "But, to be honest, it doesn't make any difference which hospital I go to because they can't help me." It turned out he needed a major operation to reset his leg, which the Americans could not provide. Though mobilised within hours of the emergency, the US team took five days to arrive - three days more than a group of South African trauma psychologists. The first hold-up was logistical, when the team's unusually large size called for a C-17 military transport plane to fly it the first leg of the journey to Frankfurt. The second was political, after the Iranian government got cold feet about allowing a US military plane into Iran. Dr Crowley was sympathetic. "Five minutes ago it was raining steel down on the Iraqi people and now, gee, we're bringing humanitarian aid. I think that worried the government a bit." By the time the team was cleared to proceed, its search and rescue component was considered superfluous by the government, and was dropped off in Kuwait. Only a handful of survivors have been pulled from Bam's suffocating rubble this week, and none by international rescue teams. The team landed in Kerman on Tuesday, where the emergency relief team was forced to remain inside the plane for six hours before visas were issued. After further logistical troubles, the team arrived in Bam on Wednesday, only to find that no site had been allocated for their clinic. At last, the American "can-do" spirit triumphed. "We just said, 'Okay, we're setting up,' and this Iranian general said he had no problem with that, so we didn't wait a second," Dr Crowley said. "We don't want to be political showboats; we came here to treat people." Twenty metres away, Dr Georgyi Roshchin, the head of a 100-bed Ukrainian field hospital that has been operating since Monday and which treated nearly 200 patients yesterday, took a five-minute break. "The American hospital is a political question," Dr Roshchin said. "They have a very small hospital. We have a very big hospital."

Not really...

BULLETPROOF IN 2004

I don't agree with her actions... The govt and agencies involved know where they messed up, they don't need a trial by family members to figure it out. Now before anyone gets on my case listen up for a second... The fund was set up to spare the LONG expensive litigation and to compensate the families for their loss. There is no doubt in anyones mind that the govt and local authorities got caught with it's pants down but is a trial necessary to expose those faults so others can exploit them in a diffrent way or avoid reattemping a procedure we knew we failed at but the terrorists still believe they can accomplish. Wouldn't that make us miss an oppurtunity to apprehend terrorists before their attempt at mass death is underway... Napolean once said never correct your enemy when they are making mistakes why should we tell them how we dropped the ball let them make the same mistakes so it makes it easier to nab em...get my point? Wasn't it smart to limit the damage done to the Airline industry as well as the govt? If lawsuits were filed and won, the gov't as well as the airline industry would have gone bancrupt. Does the end result of a bancrupt industry, which will carry ramifications unmeasured on other parts of our economy really going to make anyone happier or safer? Shouldn't the govt concentrate on taking that information and processing it to avoid another tragedy not prepare it for a trial where admittance of fault was already conceeded when the fund was set up after 911..... Steps have been implemented to prevent another catastrophe such as improved security at airports, better communication between authorities and the severe asskicking Alqaeda's leadership has received that last 2 years.... we are on the right track that last thing we should be doing is diverting our resources to a courtroom instead of the battlefield....

Ralph Petrs does it again in this piece talking about what simpletons can't see,the underlying goal of creating a beacon of democracy in a despot opression filled cess pool region.... He also points out power and strength is whats needed to acheive our goals.. Great read for us conservatives, poison and torture for you lefties.... http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/14815.htm ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 31, 2003 -- EVEN if terrorists attack our homeland before the stroke of midnight, 2003 will still have been a year of remarkable progress on every front in the global War on Terror - and the greatest year for freedom since the Soviet Union's collapse. A decisive government in Washington, backed by the courage and common sense of the American people, worked with allies around the world to carry the fight to the terrorists' home ground. We continued to seize the strategic initiative from the most implacable enemies America has ever faced. Unless we choose to defeat ourselves, there is no chance of a final terrorist victory. In 2003, a new generation of enemies learned that America not only fights ferociously, but follows through with tremendous residual power. In one of history's great paradoxes, the provocation of 9/11 - intended to humble us - unleashed our dormant might and rejuvenated the historical trend toward liberty. The Twin Towers fell, but two years later America towers over the world as never before. The autumn of 2001 saw our initial counterattacks, while 2002 broadened the international struggle and improved our domestic preparedness. But 2003 was our breakthrough year - 12 months of successes that changed the course of history. Consider just a few of our achievements: * We deposed and captured one of the world's worst tyrants, liberating 25 million people and demonstrating the inherent weakness of dictatorships. In doing so, we destroyed a regime that had terrorized its own people and the region. We drew an unmistakable line between America's reinvigorated support for the liberation of the oppressed and "old Europe's" cynical defense of the status quo. * The stunning campaign that took our troops to Baghdad in just three weeks made it clear to the world that no other state or combination of powers can oppose us militarily and left us with the most experienced, combat-proven forces of our time. * Our president's courageous decision to target Saddam himself while sparing innocent Iraqis upset the traditional rules of warfare, according to which the draftees die while the ruler survives by signing a peace treaty. Even though our attempted "decapitation strikes" failed, the message sent to the world's dictators and sponsors of terror had far more force than Western pundits yet realize. And our ultimate, humiliating capture of Saddam left every remaining tyrant worried that he might topple next. * As a result, Libya has opened its nuclear facilities for inspection, while Iran hastened to strike a no-nukes deal with European governments anxious to save face after their support of Saddam backfired disastrously. North Korea has grown remarkably subdued. Syria treads cautiously. No tyrant wants G.I. Joe as his houseguest. * Even Saudi Arabia, the great incubator of terror, has become newly cooperative, both because the terrorists - predictably - bit the many hands that fed them and because Riyadh's relative importance has declined precipitously with G.I. Jane in Baghdad. * We've continued to kill and capture terrorists by the thousands, dismantling their networks, seizing their assets and destroying their bases. Terrorism won't disappear in our lifetimes, but its reach and capabilities have been powerfully reduced. * Our president had the sound instincts to realize that you can't treat the deep cancer of terrorism with a topical salve. Apprehending terrorists isn't enough. Meaningful treatment of this long-untended disease requires radical surgery and great risk. Those naive or disingenuous voices insisting that our liberation of Iraq was a diversion from the War on Terror refuse to accept that the problem isn't a few deadly fanatics but a suffocating civilization. The administration's resolve to force change in the Middle East was as crucial as it was courageous. We can't force Iraqis - or anyone else - to succeed, but we've done what no others have dared: We've given tens of millions of long-oppressed human beings a chance to live in freedom. Much of this century will be shaped by what they make of that great chance. * Most vitally for Americans, our government kept our country remarkably safe. Terrorists yearned to strike us massively, to punish us for our successes, while proving that they remain a potent force. Instead, our federal, state and local authorities achieved new, if still imperfect, levels of cooperation and blocked each terrorist attempt to wound us. Politically motivated critics charge that the War on Terror has been a failure, despite the obvious proof to the contrary: Our enemies have been unable to harm our homeland. And while we will be struck again eventually - no defense is perfect - every day of safety is a victory. Two Thousand Three was a year that changed the world. For the better. The reverberations will echo for decades. Not every result will please us. We will not turn broken states into little Americas overnight. Each culture has its own strengths and weaknesses. But we're making a noble effort to help the wretched of the earth make their societies better. Perfection belongs to God. Progress is the best that humans can do. Whether facing down Taliban remnants in Afghanistan or shaming the rest of the world into providing more assistance to Africa's struggle against AIDS, we've made an epochal break with the tradition of wealthy states embracing easy short-term solutions instead of engaging long-term problems. Future historians will regard 2003 as one of the dates when history made a great turn, as a global 1776. Yet 2004 is going to be a year of decision in the War on Terror. As our presidential election approaches, the terrorists remaining at large will sacrifice their last reserves in an effort to dislodge President Bush, freedom's great crusader, from the White House. The terrorists will seek to convince American voters that the War on Terror is failing, paving the way for the electoral victory of a weakling and allowing them to surge back into vacuums created by an American retreat. Their last, desperate hope will be to hit us so hard that we elect a coward in place of a hero. I'm betting on American guts. And glory.

Here we go again with the tax cuts for the rich gibberish!!! We have debated and defeated this distorted interpertation on here before... Please refer to the link about our tax structure. The system is progressive, meaning the more you make the more you are taxed so...if the top 50% pay 96% of the taxes how can you give the bottom half more of a tax cut? This isn't France lol... The Bush tax reduces the marginal tax rate for all tax payers, as well as other tax incentives on investors and small businesses which have been opening up in record levels.. Oh in the IRS's mind a person making over 28k is considered rich, think about that when you hear your leftie buddies talkng about the "Tax Cut for the Rich" gibberish... 27% rate goes to 25% 30% rate goes to 28% 35% rate goes to 33% 38.6% rate goes to 35% The existing 10% and 15% rates remain unchanged Economics teaches as income rises, consumption rises so why wouldn't we give the higher earning individuals a bigger break when 1)They pay more taxes 2)Spend more. If the consumer consists of 2/3rds of our economy doesn't it make sense to return more of what they earn? Here are the links to discount the myth of the lefts argument of unemployment and tax cuts...You will find it interseting to see supply side econmoics works like it did for Kennedy, Reagen and Bush... http://www.nationalreview.com/kudlo...00312080910.asp http://www.nationalreview.com/nrof_...ewicz011003.asp http://www.smartmoney.com/taxmatter...?story=20030527 http://www.nationalreview.com/kudlo...ow071503.asp... The 500billion dollar deficit is peanuts to our massive 10 trillion dollar economy so stop preaching about the US and worry about your own economy in the EU with it's stagnant growth and double digit unemployemnt!

Pulled this off another site a definite to get an up roar out some peole here. Th author brings up some valid points good read enjoy! --http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=11483---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Conspiratorial Mind of the Arab World By Robert Spencer FrontPageMagazine.com | December 29, 2003 Have you heard? Saddam Hussein is in Tel Aviv. He has been an agent for the U.S. and Israel since 1980, and followed instructions given him by George W. Bush himself in a phone conversation last winter about how to behave when American troops entered Iraq. The capture of Saddam was an elaborate charade designed to bolster the flagging morale of American troops in Iraq. The bearded, broken man who was captured wasn’t Saddam; any keen observer would know that Saddam had a mole or wart on his cheek, but that the crude double in the hands of the Americans has no such mark. What’s more, in the footage of Saddam’s hideaway, the foliage is from late summer! Clearly the Americans are trying to fool us with months-old archival footage that has nothing to do with Saddam at all! Saddam’s sons Uday and Qusay, meanwhile, are in Monte Carlo, continuing to live the high life. American troops spirited them out of the country and staged their deaths in order to demoralize the Iraqi resistance. This kind of talk, fantastic and unbelievable as it is, is rampant in the Muslim world today. The idea that the Americans faked the capture of Saddam, and that the genuine article is still at large somewhere, is just the latest installment in a string of paranoid fantasies that have captured the imagination of untold numbers of Muslims worldwide. Most notorious, of course, is the idea that Mossad or the CIA, or both, actually flew airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. If Muslims were involved at all, goes the story, it was only to take the rap and justify the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan (as well as, coming soon to a theater of war near you, Syria and Iran). While courageous souls such as the American Ambassador to Egypt, David Welch, have confronted these lurid fictions head-on in meetings with Muslim media figures, the stories persist — in no small part because some of these have been spread at the highest levels. Not long after 9/11, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Yasir Arafat declaimed to an appreciative audience in Ramallah: "Oh brothers, there is a conspiracy to Judaize Jerusalem." MEMRI also reports that Uday, before he took up his place at those great Monte Carlo gaming tables in the sky, wrote in an Iraqi paper in 2002 that Iran was "part of the new conspiracy against Iraq and that the Iranians were ready to cross the border at any moment to materialize their ambitions." And of course, the mother of all conspiracy theories, that noxious incitement to genocide known as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, still circulates widely in the Muslim world. Nor would an inquiring mind have to go to a seedy bookstore in a shabby part of town to pick up a smudgy copy of this implausible account, cooked up by the Czar’s secret police in the 19th century, of the Zionists’ plot to rule the world. An up-to-date conspiracy theorist would need only a television: during this past Ramadan, Hizballah’s worldwide satellite TV network broadcast a thirty-part dramatization of "the criminal history of Zionism" that was quite similar to the Protocols — the genuine article was already dramatized on Egyptian television the previous year. More literary types could repair to the new Library of Alexandria, the heir to the legendary collections that shone in antiquity as beacons of civilization. There, until an international outcry forced its removal, the first Arabic translation of the Protocols was prominently displayed next to a Torah in a manuscript exhibit. According to MEMRI, a library official, Dr. Yousef Ziedan, explained that the Protocols "is more important to the Zionist Jews of the world than the Torah, because they conduct Zionist life according to it... It is only natural to place the book in the framework of an exhibit of Torah [scrolls]." Amid all this there are glimmers of self-awareness, particularly in post-Saddam Iraq. "Every time Arab peoples are afflicted with disaster, defeats, or tragedies, it is always blamed on a Zionist, colonialist, or American imperialist conspiracy." This strikingly honest assessment comes from Iraq’s Al-Ittihad daily. Unfortunately, however, it’s unlikely that conspiracy paranoia will be extinguished in the Islamic world anytime soon. After all, it has deep roots. A fundamental element of Islamic culture is an implacable belief in its own superiority. This idea is rooted in the Qur’an and Islam: the revelation to Muhammad, according to orthodox Muslim belief, is the final and perfect revelation from the one true God. It corrects and abrogates all previous revelations, including the Torah and Gospel that form the foundation of the culture of the non-Muslim West. The Jews and Christians who remain in the world after the time of Muhammad are renegades who have rejected this final revelation out of corruption and malice. At certain points in the Middle Ages, this Muslim self-understanding meshed quite well with the realities of the world: a unified Muslim empire encroached inexorably upon a Christendom riven by squabbles and overmatched in both military might and technology. But when all that began to change, and when the squabbling mini-states of Western Europe began to chip away at the former domains of the Mehmet the Conqueror and Suleiman the Magnificent, the Muslim world found that it had no framework to deal with defeat. The superiority of the House of Islam was a given. How then did it lie defeated, divided, colonized? Well, it must not have been a fair fight. The Muslims must have fallen victim to shabby, shadowy trickery — to a conspiracy. After all, even the Qur’an itself portrays Jews and Christians as scheming liars: "When they come to [Muhammad], they say: ‘We believe’: but in fact they enter with a mind against Faith, and they go out with the same, but Allah knoweth fully all that they hide" (Sura 5:61). Jews are even portrayed as fabricating divine revelations in their lust for money: they "write the Book with their own hands, and then say: ‘This is from Allah,’ to traffic with it for miserable price!" (Sura 2:79). The orthodox Muslim view of verses like these (and there are many others like them) is not that they are seventh-century polemic, but words spoken by Allah himself which retain their validity for all time. Consequently all too many Muslims today see them as revelatory of the twenty-first century world. The crafty, dishonest Jewish and Christian renegades are up to their same old tricks. But even though Bush, Sharon and Co. have all the world’s resources at their disposal as they weave their conspiracies and deceptions to ensnare the Muslim world, the Muslim can see through them: he has the Qur’an. This is the point at which all these conspiracy theories stop being merely amusing or pathetic and start to appear genuinely lethal. For what bridges of genuine trust can be built with people who view the world from this perspective? The epidemic of conspiracy stories in Middle East and Iraq in particular today betrays a mistrust that is far deeper than most anyone has imagined, and is in fact founded upon fervently held religious concepts. We may fervently hope that cooler heads will prevail, and it isn’t inconceivable that they ultimately will. But it would be wise not to expect too much in the short term. Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and the author of Onward Muslim Soldiers: How Jihad Still Threatens America and the West (Regnery Publishing), and Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World’s Fastest Growing Faith (Encounter Books).

Dude someone better because muslims are being oppressed by their own gov't all over the world and the good ones are being overshadowed by the "Extremists"... Funny thing is that the U.S. govt especially the President has said time and time again that this war is not against Islam but against the Extremists and the govts that harbor them also that freedom, no matter what religon is every humans god given right.. What other govt says that?

The GDP of Iraq is 22 billion per year...& the War is running a bill at 200+billion so far... So if we took ALL of the revenue from Iraqi's, it would take over 10 years to recoup, if completed on partial payments it would take decades, even if we sold the oil our selves... What do you think we are going to have tankers smuggling oil to our shores? can't you see how rediculous that sounds?? The oil will be fetching the going price per barrell on the commodity exchange and the proceeds will be redistributed back into Iraq... You show zero financial and common sense with these baseless accusations about "war for oil" when one can easily point to the sovereignty of Kuwait, after all we liberated them as well and we don't have a hand in their pockets... hmmmmmm.... makes you think doesn't it....Willie Nelson?