"Andy Dingley" wrote in message
...
As someone who was laid off from a large US corporate during Bush's
reign, I'm not seeing much "economic improvement". The dollar is
through the floor, the deficit is enormous and all your manufacturing
base are belong to China.

This reminds me of the complaints about the stock market. When Republican
presidents were concerned about the market when it was up, they were
pandering to the rich. More recently, when the market was down, liberals
want something done to bring it back up for all of the 401Ks. Similarly, I
don't remember ever hearing any meaningful discussion about the dollar in
the last 10 years. Now that's it's down, the dollar is "through the floor".
Here's a question: what is China's factory output for US-bound goods
compared to the output of US factories? Should be an easy figure to get to
back up your assertion that all our manufacturing base are belong (sic) to
China.

Iraq has almost no infrastructure. Now I'm hardly surprised by this -
we've just fought a war through the place. I hope they will have one
soon, and I have faith that many well-intentioned soldiers are doing
their damnedest to assist this.

Neither does Iraq have a "brave new political system". It has protests
on the streets against a US-led war to bring "democracy", where this
appears to be US-selected non-elected placemen.

How many protests were there when Saddam was in power? I guess everything
was fine then and there was nothing to protest.

The US government _hates_ democracy. Democracy keeps giving the wrong
answer, so America has to depose the freshly-elected popular leader.
As democracy in a united Iraq would almost certainly give power to a
Shia majority, this would lead to rapprochment with Iraq and
everything that America is most scared of. America's best hope for a
permissible democracy in Iraq is to Balkanize it (in the original
sense of the term) into federal states where no one state can dominate
the others. And then try to mollify Turkey when they have a US-created
Kurdistan on the doorstep.

You're right. I forgot that there was an election recently in Iraq where
Saddam received 99.9% of the popular vote. So are you saying we won't allow
elections to take place? I thought I just heard that the US has asked the
UN for help in studying how quickly elections can be held (a task the the UN
is, at least, marginally qualified to handle).

I am not a fan of
Bush nor am I defending him, but that article does not represent American
opinion, merely British.

I wouldn't say that article represents anyone's opinion. It's a
collection of isolated facts that doesn't look anything like the
"opinion" of either a "My President, right or wrong" Blairite, or a
"Make noise, not war" Spartist.

Nor is the Indie a British tabloid. No tits, no royals, no soapstars.
If anyone can see a single erroneous figure in that list, then please
correct it so that we may all learn.

My answer to many of these "statistics" would be "so what?". The number of
funerals that the President has attended? What do you want? The President
to go and invade some poor serviceman's funeral? I'm sure if our previous
President was here, he'd find a way to get in there for a photo-op and "feel
their pain". The year in which Donald Rumsfeld gave Saddam Hussein a pair
of golden spurs? Who gives a damn if Saddam was a friend of the US 21 years
ago? As Lord Chamberlain once stated (I may be paraphrasing a bit), there
are no permanent allies, only permanent interests. Apparently, there's a
nice photo of Wesley Clark being chummy with Bosnian Serb Gen. Ratko Mladic,
an indicted war criminal. This happened just 10 years ago. Should Gen
Clark be prevented from seeking office? 88% of American citizens will save
less than $100 on their taxes? There's a bogus statistic. How many of
these don't pay any taxes in the first place? And gee...fewer people
approve of the President's job approval now than 2 weeks after 9/11? No
kidding. Maybe if we could change another statistic "Number of times
President Clinton was offered Osama Bin Laden and refused", we wouldn't have
had a 9/11. I could go on, but I think you get the drift.

Socialism: Eric, not Tony

todd