Bush Pardons Thanksgiving turkey

[xfer]

Innocent Afghan shopkeeper in Gitmo/retarded Lenny-clone in Texas sobs upon hearing story.


http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/11/24/turkey/index.html

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush Monday pardoned the national Thanksgiving turkey, marking the 56th anniversary of the annual event. Apart from some gobbling while the president spoke, the lucky turkey, Stars, was generally well behaved during the Rose Garden ceremony.

 

[lizard]

too bad he won't pardon his own troops and get us THE FUCK out of iraq.

did you know he hasn't attended the funeral of even one of our dead soldiers?

 

[xfer]

i think if anything Bush will stay in Iraq too short, not too long. i think he's trying to get out of there as quickly as possible, no matter how many corners have to be cut.

and i don't think the President should waste his time attending grunts' funerals. especially when there's a a few thousand more comin' down the pike.

 

[lizard]

the deal is he supposedly went to visit the families of some of the British who have died.

 

[xfer]

I think we're mature enough as a country not to care about something as trivial as that, eh? Envying the British is so...1775.

 

[lizard]

I'm not envying the British...I'm saying that he should face the people whose deaths he's caused. and he should state his case face to face with our people before he does it for others.

then I read about a memorial service he attended in australia, which was all very well and good...except they forgot to invite the widow.

 

[FalseTodd]

i think if anything Bush will stay in Iraq too short, not too long. i think he's trying to get out of there as quickly as possible, no matter how many corners have to be cut.

and i don't think the President should waste his time attending grunts' funerals. especially when there's a a few thousand more comin' down the pike.

My new prescient prediction is that the majority of our forces will be out of Iraq by the end of summer 2004 if not sooner. The admin. is already making rumblings about the Iraqis being ready to take control of their own government.

 

[lizard]

this is going to be a complete disaster.


p.s. if bush attended a couple of funerals, that would be a better use of his time, practically and symbolically, than him spending an entire month of his fucking ranch cutting brush or some such stupid task.

 

[xfer]

I don't know if I mentioned this before here, but the latest New Yorker has a really good piece about the reconstruction effort in Iraq, and the terrible, amateurish, fumbling mistakes the Administration made. I guess the had originally planned to have the reconstruction done by August, elections by September, and the US out by October.

You can argue about the need for war or lack thereof, but can you really argue that if the US is going to end up going in and smushing a country, it ought to stay for as long as necessary and spend as much money and effort and lives as necessary to help prop it back up?

I guess it will be a measure of Bush's moral mettle to see if he follows through with the money and troops needed, and doesn't listen to the conservative get-us-outers or the liberal get-us-outers, pulling the US nicely in time for the 2004 election and leaving Iraq ruled by another mustachioed thug or two or three.

 

[FalseTodd]

Yeah - prediction number two: This is not the last time Afghanistan and Iraq will be visited by the U.S. military in the near future. (Near future = next 10 years or so)

 

[xfer]

i'm not going to lay down a dime against that statement.

 

[avi]

my thoughts:

the govn't fucked up and put us in a situation we can't back out of. they didn't plan well in advance and it's too fucking late. pulling out too early would be disastrous so we gotta stick it out and finish what we started. I'm pissed b/c it was an obvious quagmire from the get-go. no way it was gonna be wrapped up by election season. fucking morons.

 

[xfer]

I don't think it was a quagmire, by my understood definition of the term. A president who hates nation-building tends to be pretty okay with saying "time to cut the bastards loose" before tens of thousands of deaths manage to pile up.

 

[avi]

you don't think Iraq was a quagmire waiting to happen?

 

[AndICried]

I'm saying that he should face the people whose deaths he's caused. and he should state his case face to face with our people before he does it for others.

I do agree.

It'd be pretty rude to blow up a country, overthrow their government, kill 7000 civilians, then just run away. FalseTodd, is it true that the admin. is already talking about (effectively) pulling out of Iraq? That's quite shocking.

 

[FalseTodd]

Yeah The Daily Show had an amazing segment that was a point-counterpoint between George W. Bush, Governor, and George W. Bush President.

(paraphrasing): Governor: "I don't believe we should use our troops for nation-building."

President: "We must ensure that the Iraqi people are given a stable democracy and the freedoms that all people should enjoy."

 

[xfer]

I think that Vietnam was a quagmire because there were real forces keeping the U.S. in the war--namely, the Cold War and Soviet involvement. I think the only thing keeping the U.S. in Iraq is international opinion (which doesn't count for much to the U.S. anymore), domestic opinion (which will turn against staying in once the American deaths really start to pile up--we're nothing if not a selfish nation), and a notion that it's the right thing to do (which will fall by the wayside, as it has so many times before, once it becomes unteneble).

So, not a quagmire, in my mind.

 

[xfer]

i had that daily show thing on my computer--i wish i could find it again.

 

[Chuck Manson]

talk about a quagmire...try getting a pack of bloodthirsty stoners out of the sharon tate house! jesus

 

[FalseTodd]

IFalseTodd, is it true that the admin. is already talking about (effectively) pulling out of Iraq? That's quite shocking.[/QUOTE]

Not in those words, but Condi Rice, et al. have definitely begun saying that they want to "accelerate the timetable" for a handover of power. I'm drawing a conclusion from that statement, but I think it a reasonable one.