Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Bush's Legacy....I'd Vote For Him A 3rd Time, If I Could!!

Thanks...I hope you have a good up-coming season too. Waterfowling was great here last year.

But, no other countries except ours and England went in (93% of coalition forces were from the U.S.). There were some smaller numbers from powerhouses like Tonga, El Salvadore, and Lithuania. Lots of evil dictators rape women and mutilate their opposition...do we need to invade them too?

No other countries except the rest of the known world LOL


U.S.-led coalition in Iraq.

ALBANIA: 120 non-combat troops, patrolling Mosul airport; no plans to withdraw.

ARMENIA: 46 soldiers serving under Polish command through 2006; no withdrawal plan.

AUSTRALIA: Roughly 550 troops and support in Iraq, plus several hundred others in Persian Gulf region; no dates set for pullout.

AZERBAIJAN: 150 troops; no withdrawal plans.

BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA: 36 ordnance experts rotated every six months; no plans to withdraw.

BRITAIN: About 8,000 troops in southern Iraq, roughly 2,000 others in Gulf region; government and military deny media reports that 2,000 will be withdrawn starting in May.

BULGARIA: Pulled out 380 infantry troops in December; will deploy 120 non-combat troops by mid-March to guard refugee camp.

CZECH REPUBLIC: 100 military police training Iraqis; mission extended to end of 2006.

DENMARK: 530 troops patrolling southern Iraqi city of Basra; mission expires July 1.

EL SALVADOR: 380 soldiers doing humanitarian work in Hillah; no plans to withdraw.

ESTONIA: 34 troops, mostly infantry, serving under U.S. command in Baghdad; mission extended to end of 2006.

GEORGIA: 858 combat forces, medics and support personnel serving under U.S. command in Baqouba; no plans to withdraw.

ITALY: About 2,600 troops, most in Nasiriyah; government plans to draw down gradually, with contingent halved by June and civilian replacements to be deployed.

JAPAN: 600 non-combat troops based in Samawah to purify water; government and military have not confirmed media reports that pullout could begin in March.

KAZAKHSTAN: 27 military engineers; no plans for withdrawal.

LATVIA: 135 soldiers, mostly infantry; mission expires at end of 2006.

LITHUANIA: 60 soldiers, mostly infantry, serving with Danish contingent; mission to last at least through end of 2006.

MACEDONIA: 32 troops providing security; no plans to withdraw.

MOLDOVA: 11 bomb defusal experts; mission expires in July; extension uncertain.

MONGOLIA: 160 troops; no withdrawal plans.

NETHERLANDS: 15 soldiers as part of NATO mission training police, army officers; mandate expires in August.

POLAND: 900 non-combat troops; commands multinational force south of Baghdad; could be extended into next year.

ROMANIA: 863 troops, including 400 infantry, 150 mine experts, 100 military police, 50 military intelligence plus medics and U.N. guards; no plans to withdraw.

SLOVAKIA: 107 troops stationed in Hillah in Polish sector, mostly engaged in demining; no plans to withdraw.

SOUTH KOREA: 3,270 troops training Iraqis; security for U.N.; 1,000 to withdraw this year; mission expires at end of 2006.

The 'real world'? You mean the Republican World...where all Republicans are good and all Democrats are bad...where your opinions and observations are 'fact'...where invalidating a Republican talking point is labeled a 'diversion'...where everything that happens that's bad for America is the fault of the Democrats...no thanks. Your reality and mine appear to be two very different things. Incidentally...the idiot 9/11 hijackers also flew jet aircraft...and Ivy League degrees 'can' be bought.

I'm glad "the rest of the known world", all 7% of 'em, were there 'in force' to help us out. As stated earlier, U.S. forces made up 93% of the coalition forces. It's good to see such dedication 'in numbers' from our allies. You can certainly tell from these numbers just how committed they were.

Yeah, about 100% more committed than liberals. LOL

Gee Whiz Steve, even though I almost never agree with you, or at least rarely admit it, and may be one of the crazy 8, I'm with you all the way this time.

Or at least now maybe we've got someone to counter balance us for Stan!!!

I was cruising the internet and I found a picture of Antlers. How dare you say he is a troll and doesn't own any guns!

"Remember the moronic look on his face when he first learned of the 9/11 attacks?"

To the best of my memory when George Bush was informed of the attacks(saw a clip on TV) he was sitting in on a grammar school class and gave all the appearance of a man trying to hold back a river of tears. For you to call that "a moronic look" releases me from any guilt in refering to you as a sub-human organism. The more you post the more your true colors come out. Maybe I let my emotions take sway too often but when YOU are the one that demands honest discussion and then makes statements like that it just strenghtens my opinion of your reason for being here and any regrets I may have had for flying off the handle just went out the window. You are a zero, and that's about the kindest thing I can say about you at this time. I'm done wasting PC time with you and your ilk. You really remind me of a guy named Frostbite.

Qtip
Soli Deo Gloria!

Antlers, welcome to the fire. I apologize for some of the moronic insults you have endured here already. Most of the forums here are very polite and informative. You just happened to step into a political discussion where you were outnumbered. I had stuff to do today and long ago I quit letting internet pisssing matches pull me in to the point that I neglected business. At any rate, I agreed with a lot of what you said in the first twenty or so pages that I read before deciding I didn't have time to catch up. Please don't let a few here drive you off. There are plenty of posters here who share your disdain for big government/big business and the stranglehold it has on our fair country.

Be advised that most of these old boys are fairly decent on the other forums. They just step into some phonebooth somewhere when they see a political thread and wallah! Suddenly they emerge as Super Assclown, defender of all that is big business and big government. Of course some of them are just in love with Bush and that's as far as it goes.

At any rate...party on.

Dude, this is a family site. It just ain't the place for such like that.

Excellent post. You forgot to add (unless I missed it) the appointment of two young conservative supreme court justices, the discovery of the "oil for food" UN scandal, and what was basically a pocket veto, by allowing it expire, of the assault weapons ban.

The "no child left behind program" has good and bad points. Unfortunately, all that most people hear from the left is that it was an unfunded program pushed through by Bush. That's not quite true. This is a nice topic for a separate threat because I doubt that this can be intelligently discussed in this thread. There is IMHO no shortage of money in public education. One of the problems is how the money is allocated.

It's also a myth that teachers are all liberals, the NEA certainly is, but the rank and file (especially the older ones) are quite often conservative.

Another major problem in education is also one that I see on display in most malls and restaurants, kids today have little or no discipline and parents that don't know how to discipline their children. The result is that kids aren't prepared for the structure of school. To combat that parents look for medical excuses and prescription drugs. You can't go back and fix these problems very easily. A lot of parents at this point just figure it's the school's problem to deal with. I've watched this for most of my life, through the eyes of my parents who were both 30yr+ public school teachers (both republicans). My mother who has already retired and decided to go back to work to teach 3rd grade spends up to half her day dealing with the few chronic discipline problems in her class to the point that it takes away time from the others.

We spend the most money per child on students that will likely drop-out as soon as they can either voluntarily or through expulsion. Why do we do this? Why is it that private schools seem to do a better job? They don't, they just don't have to take deal with the bad apples, they get tossed out.

Well, so much for starting a new thread.

Mr.Edwards,

I have no idea what your credentials are, but I think I can fairly say that reading comprehension is not one of your strongest suits.

Throughout all of his venomous, hateful and completely unfounded rantings about the President of the United States, Mr. Antlers rarely indicated a (as you put it) "disdain for big government/big business."

Had this been his central premise, I'm confident that both he and his opinions would have been treated respectfully by most of the contributors on this site.

May I remind you that Mr. Antlers initial reply on this thread (shown below)was nothing more than a regurgitation of the Code Pink/Cindy Sheehan talking points and was responded to as such by some of the more astute members of the Campfire forum.

Now Mr. Edwards will you please enlighten us with regard to what YOU "agreed with" in the following remarks by Mr. Antlers?


Mr. Antlers speaking:

"With all due respect, ALL politicians are worthless, self-serving rat bastards. But one thing is certain, in my opinion...our LYING president has led our country into a war for oil which profits ultra-wealthy robber barrons and corporate kingpins so they can live lives of opulent luxury, and leave the wealth to their children, tax free, so their lives too can be one of sickening narcissism...all at the expense of the people of our country, and the blood of our soldiers. We have spent nearly a TRILLION dollars on this war that has made our citizens NO SAFER from terrorists; a war that has probably killed over a hundred thousand people. It was misrepresented from the beginning, and has only 'riled up' the radical muslims even more. Life in Iraq is worse now, not better, than before. We survived a sneak attack, mobilized for war, and WON the war against our enemies in World War II in less time than we have been in Iraq.
This 'conservative' president took a fiscal surplus, that was left to him by a 'liberal' president, and has spent more money than any administration in history. He has widened the gap between the 'haves' and 'have nots' more than at any time in our history, except during the 'Great Depression'. He has rewarded those that contributed so much to his campain coffers (Big Oil), and we have seen oil go from $12 dollars a barrel...to over $130 dollars a barrel during his terms. Our economy is so far in the tank because of him, and his administration, that people are now having to decide between heating/cooling their homes and buying gasoline so they can drive to work...or, instead, buying food and medicine for their families. Before this president Bush, much of the world admired America and aspired to much of what it represented...now, after 5 years of death, destruction, and occupation in Iraq, and his disasterous fiscal and foreign policies in general...he will go down as one of the worst presidents, if not 'the worst', in our history. The legacy of the current Bush is no different than the legacy of organized crime. A country that was run by, and ruined by, corporations, special interests, and money...that's his legacy."

It is not a question of tariffs curing problems. It is a question of fair play and of national interest. The men who work in manufacturing have been getting SCREWED by tactics like the Value Added Tax and by state partial ownership and sponsorship of foreign companies.

And for decades our political elite have turned their heads away and said nothing. It is a disgrace.

And a damned good question for you might be why the countries that engage in these tactics are doing so much better than we are. We have been bleeding manufacturing jobs to these very same companies and countries that employ the tactics you, and those like you, say won't work. And then they use the money from the trade deficit to buy up our very own corporate infrastructure.

The real world says that limited protectionism works. And it works well.



No we haven't.

We have had 'historically low' unemployment rates since they last changed the way unemployment was calculated under the Clinton administration. Right now we are running a little over 12% unemployment if you use the 'historical method', which is not a 'historically low' number.



And why is that Steve?

Why is it that Ben Bernanke and GW Bush turn over heaven and earth to salvage the toxic mortgage backed securities and the dolts on Wall Street who bought and sold them, but do nothing to ensure that American workers go up against workers, companies, and countries that play by the same rules we do?

The Value Added Tax employed by countries like Japan and the European companies has been nothing less than a 15% import tariff on American goods.

China insists on partial ownership of most major corporate investments in their country. We trade with and enrich a communist entity every time we move a company to their shores.

And still these so called 'Free Trade' ideologues insist that American workers go up against this stacked deck each and every day. And not one damned one of them fights for American companies and workers.

It is a disgrace. It is worse than those moronic journalists who insisted on a 'neutral' stance in regards to the wars we are currently engaged in. They serve an ideology without a debt of gratitude or any type of loyalty to the system and country that nurtured them.

And if protectionist sentiment sweeps them all out of office and puts them and their Wall Street buddies bankrupt they have no one but themselves to blame. They could have insisted on a fair and free marketplace and instead allowed the people they are supposed to represent to be SCREWED in the name of Free Trade.

If what I have seen over the last 15 years is free trade brother you can have it. It is a stacked deck. The system is gamed. Tear it down.

Will

watch4bear:

Dude, you left out Canada! They've got troops there, too.

Oh, and Mexico. Our trading partner and ally to the south. You left Mexico off the list.

Let's see. How many troops does Mexico have fighting alongside our soldiers? I'm trying to remember.

- Tom

It is Iraq! We didn't need the Mexicans. There is no grass to cut!

You'll hear it in this forum and in other places over and over again. An American corporate executive has no other loyalty than the loyalty he gives to his shareholders.

Not loyalty to his country. Not loyalty to his fellow Americans. And certainly not loyalty to the employees of his corporation.

The only loyalty an American corporate executive has is to the shareholders of his corporation. He does not care who the shareholders are or what country they come from. They can, in some cases, be Arabs who use some of their profits from the corporation to fund terrorists.

At the levels of corporate executive power that people like Dick Cheney inhabit, love of country and patriotism are abstract ideals that must always, always be kept in perspective, relative to their primary loyalties, which are to the shareholders of their corporations.

It seems to me now that the idea of America being a country where Americans work to protect each other and support each other and are loyal to each other has been nothing more for all these years than a Hollywood fantasy.

America, it seems to me, is now merely a location on the globe where people happen to live.

I often wonder how we can get so many young men and women to fight for us in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. How we can get them to risk and sometimes lay down their lives.

When I know that they're not going to get much, if any protection, or any loyalty in return when they come home and take off their uniforms.

- Tom

Excellent post Penguin. Outstanding.

Most teachers are members because they want the protection the NEA provides. Most members don't give a damm about what anything but their own chapter does, except for other schools ratcheting up the average salaries so they can compare them to their own and get them up. The NEA leadership sucks in a few who listen to the party line and become their leaders of the future. Most unfortunate.

The NEA is one worthless organization.

Ethan thank you, I believe that is the first time you have ever agreed with a post of mine.

Tom, I have been puzzled by this phenomena myself. Corporate leaders have been allowed to adopt this attitude. And it is a shame that business leaders have chosen to turn their back on the very country that allowed them to succeed to such a level.

I am not saying that our businesses should be sheltered or coddled. But I firmly believe that American workers and companies could have made this adjustment to a larger and less expensive labor pool without the massive displacement that has taken place. And a good bit of it has come as the result of allowing other countries to set their rules and then not reacting in kind. One sided free trade resulted in an excruciating collapse in American manufacturing.

Will American engineers and manufacturing workers have to accept lower real wages? Probably. That adjustment should have been a fait accompli by this time. Instead we, and our government, instead tried to maintain a higher standard of living that was probably realistic through a massive increase in debt load. The entire system has gotten into very dire straits because of this.

But the adjustment should have been gradual. And it should have occurred naturally. And in the process we should have insisted that the other countries that were coming on line to compete against us were held to the same standard as we were. Instead we allowed other countries to impost strict tariffs on our goods and services by many different methods while we insisted on turning them loose in our marketplace.

What has resulted is a manufacturing base that instead of adapting and evolving into a sleeker more competitive sector that branched out into new and different products was simply allowed to collapse entirely. We wrote off manufacturing and production completely and allowed other countries to it over. What has resulted is that they have expanded their tax and employment base. They have become workers and savers like I mentioned a few posts back.

We decided to sell our houses to each other at increasingly high debt loads and call it the 'new economy'... bah! You see where that got us don't you Steve?

Will