:o You guys are making me blush! I try to be fair minded on issues. Sometimes it isn't easy because we do draw from our own pasts.

My parents always taught me that you have to look at all issues from both sides before you pick your position. I think they were the greatest people I've ever met. They taught me reason.

Wolf

Cristobo:
War is not pretty, lets get that out of the way now. When you are dealing with a person of the quality of Hussein and all other avenues have been exhausted then war is the only answer. This is the man who had gassed his own people, had torture chambers, and a mass of other atrosities. The over whelming majority of the US population does not like the fact that we have our troops in Iraq, to include me. A man like Hussein, it is only a matter of time until he will do something on the international level. Had the world stoped Hitler in Munich, or at least stoped him sooner, there is the possiblity that WWII would have not been so catastrophic. Wheather you want to admitt it or not, Hussein is of the same type as Hitler. One of the main reasons that France and Germany were so much against the invasion of Iraq is because they were both trading with Iraq, against the international agreements of trade bans. Now look at both of their economies.

You will remember that when Hussein was first over thrown the Iraqi people greeted all military force very warmly. The vast majority of the Iraqi people are a peace loveing people that want to get on with life and rebuild their country, and enter the world market place. It is not the occupping force that are kidnapping people, and beheading them. It is not the occuping forces that are on a daily basis using car bombs. It is not the disires of the majority of the Iraqi people that this be going on either. It is the radical Muslim Clerics that are advocating this sort of conduct. When the military attacks something, it is done with men wearing distinct uniforms and rank insignias and clearly marked vehicles so that anyone watching knows who is who. When terrorist make a move they are dressed in plain clothes using plain vehicles.

Ignacio made the comment that the American people by reelecting Bush endorsed the bombing of Afganistan and Iraq. That they did not know that he was going to do it the first time so we cannot be faulted, but did know his intentions the second time so we are as guilty as Bush this time for having reelected him. I guess that Ignacio feels the world would be a better place with the Taleban still in charge in Afganistan with all their human right abuses and harboring the Alqueda. He must also seems to feel that Iraq would be a better place with Hussein still in charge of Iraq.

I read a lot of attacks on this and other web cites of the American foreign policy. For some unexplained reason nobody seems to be criticle of the radicle muslims that are advocating car bombings and kidnappings and beheadings. When an oil pipline is sabotaged, dont think the US military did that.

When the US makes a move everyone knows about it and who is responsible for that move. Twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, we can tell you where George W. Bush is. Can anyone tell us where Bin laden is?? Our leader is not hiding in a cave, and he wont be found cowering, hiding in a spider hole either.

You posed some good questions and they were not taken offensive Cristobo. I hope I have addressed them in a nonoffensive manner.

You can show me as the peace loving redneck that voted for GWB and owns an assualt rifle, living in the desert of Arizona.

Puna,

I too, am a native Californian and proud of it. I am completely put off by those who refer to it as the "Granola State: land of fruits, nuts, and flakes." But you see, I grew up in a part of Los Angeles that for all the "enlightenment" the inhabitants loudly proclaimed they had, they were still intolerant snobs.
Besides, California, unfortunately, is not how it used to be.
BTW, what brought you to NC?

Cogito cogito ergo sum cogito

Puna's geographical bio/CV:

Southern Cal (when it was nice ) to 1) Sydney, Australia (via Melbourne)to 2) Honolulu, Hawaii to 3) San Francisco, CA to 4) Honolulu to 5) Boston to 6) Charlotte -

in order of: 1) choice 2) divorce + great place to raise a child 3) job, same child but older, 4) cost of private college (one of the Claremont schools) so an offer re job I couldn't refuse 5) same job - new location 6) not being able to cope with six months a year when it's dark at 9:00AM and again at 4:00PM + wearing far too many layers in order not to freeze to death -

Plus as many trips to Spain along the way as possible!

Sure. After all, the states where democrats win are the most developed, and in the ones who follow in these parameters are usually tied like Florida.

For example, maybe this is false, but in the media these days we get the info that:

- For example, in Iowa, the industrial cities voted for Kerry whereas the country voted for Bush.

- And that the typical Bush voter is white/male/religious/living in small towns, ... Of course not all of his voters have exactly all the parts of the profile, it's an average.

If this is right (and I believe it is), we have a bipolar country, whose contradictions must be solved but never forgotten to unify in "the dark side of the force". There is no trade between the Empire and Skywalker rebels, no intermediate point. Liberties must be protected, and peace enforced, and ecology respected, ...

Now, although I like Kerry's suposedly progress mentallity, I believe Mrs. Clinton would have done much better, and now there is a new star that I like much more Barack Obama, at least by the few things I am beginning to learn about him.

Heads up! I know how you feel, I felt like that the second time PP won. There is a new date in 4 years, you'll have better leaders, and more litter will have been aroused about Junior.

The 2004 election was baffling in the sense that the polls did not accurately predict this election. Zogby.com had an apologetic note on their site because they had given Senator Kerry the election by an overall majority.

Here is a link to an article of USA Today that shows country voting patterns, this may help you Ignacio in understanding the dilemma of the impossibility of generalizing a state in the U.S.

Source: http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/vote2004/countymap.htm


This article also shows the same comparison of the 2000 election.

As many Spaniards, I’m glad that Bush has won the elections, not for the fact itself, but because the anti American Spaniards of Zapatero (and his anti-sistema separatist partners) had bet by the defeat of Bush.

For Spain, the attitude of Zapatero on tv today is a real calamity , appealing to the good friendship between España and the USA after the elections!!

Thank you all for your responses. Yeah, Desert Dweller, I have tried hard to be respecful, and I am grateful that everybody replied in the same mood. I am aware that these are touchy matters.
Wolf, if democracy means the chance to choose, once in four years, between Tweedledum and Tweedledee, then you can bet I don`t get the point of all the thing. If democracy means that the law chamber refuses to take a stance against the president when necessary, then I don`t understand it. If democracy means that the media are controlled by the same people who lobby the government, while the public remains sunk in decepction and ignorance, then I damn oppose democracy.
I agree that the Domino theory was a key argument to justify the war in Vietnam. I am sure many people believed that nonsense in those days. But I am afraid you are insinuating that there was something TRUE about that heap of lies.
Wolf, eventually the US left Vietnam, the commies came to control the country...and nothing happened. Thirty years later, you see, the world doesn`t suffer under the yoke of a new Stalin. Khruschev had a big, dirty mouth, but he wasn`t too reliable as a prophet. I see you think that you left too early. Of course twelve years of bombings and horrors were not enough. So bad that no one had the guts to drop a couple of nukes over the lemonheads. If it counts, I regard the US as the moral winners of the war: you killed some 2000 000 people, while they only slayed 50 000 of your GIs. Go, go, go!
I am now reading "War dispatches", from a Michael Herr. He is not by any means a leftist, as far as I can see, but really, after reading the book, it seems quite hard to rest on vague geostrategical theories to justify things like Vietnam. I am not any historian, but I would swear the dictatorships that flourished in the 70s and 80s would have appeared anyway, had you won the war. The Iranians, for example, didn`t seem too eager to stand the Shah for any longer, Vietnam or not Vietnam.

Cristobo,

If you ever find that country or world or universe that is run the way you would like it, please let me know, I want to emigrate there. Meanwhile, here I am, stuck in reality.

BTW, what's a "law chamber"?

Yeah, "the world doesn't suffer under the yoke of a new Stalin", just the people of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Who are they anyway?

Law chamber is wrong? er...don`t know, "parliament" would be more accurate?
Yeah, who are those yellows after all? Please, Gazpacho, it is not me who had fun shooting from a helicopter at unarmed peasants. It is not me who beheaded some ten enemies, put the heads on the ground with a cigarette on each mouth and then took a pic.
In real world, you can`t transform all of a sudden. You can`t make a perfect democracy out of a country like Laos, just snapping your fingers. Laos, Viet Nam and Cambodia sure would have suffered dictatorships in any case: and rightist dictators are not better than commies. See Suharto, or Ferdinand Marcos for instance.
The horrors of Pol Pot make me shudder in horror, but no one moved a finger, after all, to stop his genocide. So I infer that wars are not started to rescue people in danger.