Do you really believe the news media properly did its job (or does its job) back in 03, or even in 04, as far as questioning the reasons behind invading Iraq? Whether you agree w/ the war or not, I definitely don’t think anyone can rationally say that the press did its job of asking pointed, tough questions about the true threat posed to our nation by Iraq & the need for military action.

I wish I could spend more time here commenting on some of your other new posts (like the partial birth ban & the health consequences it poses - I’m sure you’re aware of them), but dang it, finals have got me by the … I think you know what I’m talking about. Fear not, I’ll be back soon to balance you out a bit. In the meantime, stop listening to Rush Limbaugh

RE: Partial Birth Abortion…The biggest health consequence it poses is that it takes the life of a human being, just like any other abortion. The technique of dismembering a fully formed baby as it passes through the vaginal canal serves no purpose but to destroy a life. Any elective abortion does the same thing: destroys an unborn life.

Have fun with finals..I understand completely.

I believe that the media definitely did not do its job. It hasn’t been doing its job in decades. If it were, the number of Americans blindly under the assumption that there were not copious amounts of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (and probably still are) would not be so high. They would actually support the military (and the funding that goes with it) instead of taking an occasional break from bashing what the military is doing in order to throw in a quick meaningless “But I support our troops!”. If the media were doing its job, liberal activists would not be able to get away with persuading so many American citizens that Bush is an idiot and that Cheney and Haliburton are ruling America, Mike Moore would not have sold so many tickets to his falsehood-ridden rant film, and Al Gore would find Global Warming a harder sell.

I have no doubt you are shaking your head in disgust at my ignorance (if you’ve read this far), but these things I’ve listed are actually beliefs commonly held by much of the American public. I believe that would not be the case if the media were doing its job.

The truth is, we’ll never know for sure whether there were WMD’s in Iraq (I personally doubt that there were, & even if they were there, I seriously doubt Saddam had the balls to drop one on us). I’m ok with never knowing that. What really pisses me off (and led to my departure from the Repub party) was that we had so much going for us when we went into Afghanistan, & if we had just stayed there & focused our efforts things would be remarkably better in the world today. Instead, Feith & Pearle & Wolfowitz & Cheney got to spew their garbage neo-con crap, & we’re in the middle of a civil war that’s been brewing for centuries b/c of it.

Don’t listen to Mike Moore, don’t listen to Rush, don’t listen to Michael Weiner (oops I mean Savage), don’t take them seriously. It’s schtick, it’s made them all rich, and it’s made our country worse off. We aren’t all as polarized as they like to portray us as being.

Re: the partial birth - there is no exception made to protect a woman’s life if the procedure is the only thing that will save her from complications; they only allow it on an as-applied appeal basis. That takes way longer than that woman has; she’ll be dead, & the fetus will be dead. What is interesting to me re: the abortion debate is that most conservatives are willing to fight tooth & nail for the unborn child, until it’s actually born into squalor, w/ a non-existent family, or an abusive foster home, or a crappy orphanage. At that point, they should be “pulling themselves up by their bootstraps”. The only problem is, you don’t have any bootstraps if you don’t have any boots. My girlfriend teaches middle school at a “D” school here near Gainesville. The kids don’t care, their parents don’t care, & we’ll likely be paying for them in one way or another in the future. I’m not accusing any of you of this mindset, or all conservatives in general, but it is a striking dichotomy…(and of course I realize that an aborted baby could’ve cured cancer if it had been born, etc…) Abortion is a tough one for me personally, I can’t see it as a cut and dry issue.

Thanks for the thought-provoking response. I like your tone (it’s not the mindless ranting most of your ilk resort to).

I have to disagree with much of what you’ve said, unfortunately. The fact is, you absolutely can know whether Saddam had WMDs. It’s a fact. What’s unknown now is where he hid them (or who he gave them to). It’s conjecture to wonder about whether or not Saddam would’ve had the cajones to drop one on us himself (in fact, he was much more likely to have used them against one or more of his country’s neighbors than the U.S. itself). It is also not unreasonable to imagine Saddam supplying terrorist organizations with the weapons. Attack by proxy. You should read what Bill Clinton had to say about this.

I’m not of the mindset that big corporations and defense contracts are a shady and/or evil combination. The Halliburton/Cheney issue is not something I’ve studied in depth, and you are welcome to present your arguments about it, but you will have to show me more than just suspicion and false details in order to convince me (I’m not accusing you of that, by the way, but that is the way that case is normally presented by the Left).

I won’t listen to Mike Moore, and I won’t listen to Savage either (too cynical). Rush Limbaugh, however, is hardly schtick. He’s definitely an entertainer, but he believes what he says and he’s not a party-line-tower. I’ll take the truth over deceit any day, and it’s nice when it comes with a dose of humor the way Limbaugh presents it most of the time.

As far as abortion goes, I could not disagree with you more. Murder is not a gray issue. It’s the sixth Commandment. It is not for us to judge whether an unborn child would be better off dead (we can’t possibly know that). I do, however, agree that we (the Church) are not doing as much as we could be doing to take care of not only pregnant mothers, but also unwanted children. You were correct in pointing out that failure, but that does not excuse killing, by any means.

As for cases where the life of the mother is at risk, who can say which life is worth more? Is it for us to make that decision and actually kill the child so the mother may live? Can she make that choice herself? Where in the Bible does God give us the right to murder an innocent person in order to protect our own lives?

Peace,
Jon

We are working from different foundations of belief. So, on abortion, we will disagree.

To say definitively that Saddam had WMD’s is, in my opinion, false. I don’t think we’ll get anywhere on that one.

When it comes to Haliburton, et al, you’re gonna have to give me until finals are over. There is a wealth of information that is damning beyond any spin.

I must also disagree w/ re: to Rush, I don’t think he always necessarily believes what he says. The thing I dislike about him the most is that he will consistently claim the moral high ground, no matter the issue & no matter whether his past actions are contra to what he’s saying. The OC addiction, I understand it. But, I also think (especially if he’d never gotten caught) that he would come down on another, less well-positioned (monetarily) individual w/ a fury for the same behavior if it suited his political needs. He got away w/ that b/c he could afford a good lawyer, & it happens everyday, but I have a feeling he doesn’t feel any remorse for some sap sitting in prison for 10+ yrs for simple possession (trust me, it happens a hell of a lot). I won’t even comment on the trip to the Dom. Rep & the viagra…suffice it to say, though, I have my suspicions; my old roommate is from DR, & prostitution (starting at age 12, at least) is their tourist industry. Like I said, not pointing fingers, but he doesn’t get a free pass either

I’m surprised you haven’t brought up the examples of the troops uncovering nerve gas and other chemical weapons that were found in Iraq. Are those WMDs? According to the definition, yes they are.

I think it’s safe to say that WMDs to the media are dirty nukes and such. Yeah, sure none of those were found (or so we think).

As for the partial birth issue, I guess it’s safe to say that you would believe in killing a baby after birth Kaleb? It’s the only logical conclusion I can come to since you think it’s ok to pull the entire baby’s body out of the birth canal except the head and then kill the baby by inserting scissors into the skull. So it’s a fetus until the whole body gets out, but it’s a baby when it’s born? Let’s have some consistency atleast.

Yeah, sure the mother could die, but every woman wanting to become pregnant or not should know that pregnancy is no picnic. Complications happen all the time.

Are you a libertarian or a Green Party member Kaleb? Just wondering.

There are plenty more facts that I could have mentioned, many of which are contained in the article I posted a link to.

For instance, did you know that there are 130 confirmed Iraqi ammunition depots, many more than 25 square miles apiece? Some the size of Manhattan Island? Did you know that as of three and a half years ago we had only been able to search 10 of these depots for WMDs? At that rate, it will likely be four more years before we’ve finished searching, if the Left doesn’t pull us out first.

We got not quite 8% of the searching done before the Left started squealing that there are definitively no WMDs in Iraq. That, to me, is deceitful beyond belief.

Wow, didn’t expect that one. Certainly don’t see anything logical about you jumping to the conclusion that I am all for killing babies. There’s nothing inconsistent about anything I’ve said thus far; I recognize a tough situation involving what some call privacy rights vs. what some call moral obligations. However, I don’t think it’s anyone’s right to tell a pregnant, dying woman, “Sorry, we’re gonna let you die because we think what you’re doing is wrong. It doesn’t matter to us that you may have wanted this baby more than anything in the world; all we see is what we want to see, & that’s how we’re gonna frame it - you’re killing babies.” Your moral certainty shouldn’t lord over every other person in this country (& please don’t pull out some lame argument about other moral issues being crimes, like murder, robbery, etc… there are too many distinguishing qualities b/t these issues).

Re: the ammo depots & the inability to search them all…I do not buy that for one second. How much manpower does it take to search 130 25 sq mile ammo depots? If these depots were the key to showing that Saddam was every threat the Repubs said he was & more, then wouldn’t it behoove them to make that among their highest priorities? Your party has been in power for all but the last 4 months, yet you want to place every inch of the blame on Dems b/c it’s convenient for your political views. From my point of view, if there was some smoking gun re: WMDs in these depots, & the people in charge of running this war were too stupid/lazy/whatever to search them out in the FOUR yrs that have passed, what am I supposed to think?….It’s like you’re just putting blinders on to believe what you want to believe.

Re: party affiliation, I have been a registered Independent for the last 3 yrs. I think I’ll likely sign up w/ one of the major parties before the primary votes (since FL won’t allow Ind’s to vote in primaries, which I think is garbage, but what can you do?).