Hugo

This was not what I meant. I'll address the mistaken point first: The UK and USSR were dependent upon supplies of American war materiel, not the other way round. It's highly doubtful that the USSR could have won without American help. It's virtually impossible that Britain could have won. Now to the actual point: I've heard it argued by a historian and grand strategist that the USA would have achieved world supremacy by 1951. WWII just accelerated that by 6 years. In 1945, Europe lies in ruins, Britain is bankrupt and broken after fighting a war far beyond her means, and the USSR has vast armies but little else as most of her economic indicators are lower than they've been since the Tsars. America, however, is at an unprecedented industrial and economic high, the world's largest creditor nation, owner of the most powerful military and the atomic bomb. This has set the stage for the world order thereafter. While the post-war world was bipolar, it's no secret that the USSR was playing second fiddle to the US in every respect, by a long way. That is what I meant. You want to know when the world became America's bitch? 1945. Simple as that.

That's a good Leftist. Cite some worthless "evidence", and when it's proven false, stick your fingers in your ears and repeat, "Bush is stupid, Bush is stupid, Bush is stupid." Hey, click your heels together too, you might get to go back to Ba'athist Iraq, Stalinist Russia or wherever your fantasy wonderland is.

Oh, it's applicable, my friend. You said yourself that Allende was a Marxist. So, two points for your consideration: 1) The enemy of your enemy is your friend. 2) If the US does not gain a foothold in a country, the USSR would certainly try to. Hence the expression that the post-war world was bipolar. I see. And what of the billions of dollars poured into the rebuilding of Europe after WWII, into countries whose profits would be entirely their own? The fact is that throughout the conflicts of the 20th Century the USA has been the "good guys". Maybe they don't live up to your lofty expectations, but their enemies were far, far worse - something you seem to have glossed over in your rather ridiculous view of history.

Riff, I fully agree with you here. Government has a finger in every pie these days, and it simply isn't necessary. Nor is it prudent to be pissing money away on ridiculous projects (gun registry, bilingualism, the useless Telehealth Ontario) when the services government is supposed to be providing are in such sorry shape (education, healthcare, police, military). If I was a conspiracy theorist, I'd say that the Liberals were bent on expanding government and creating new government jobs, because those government workers can be counted on to vote Liberal because they know that any other party might downsize them back to the private sector, where they actually have to work instead of messing about and taking the day off for every obscure holiday, if it rains, if they don't feel like working etc. Buying votes with taxpayer money. If I was a conspiracy theorist...

Ummm... no. The US installed a dictator, backed the Mujahedeen and so forth to oppose Soviet (and Maoist) Communism, a brutal force that killed or imprisoned 50 million of its own people, stole the products of the proletariat it was deemed to protect in order to support a massive military, annexed neighbouring countries and then began oppressing their people too, and was bent upon spreading its tentacles through coup, insurrection or outright warfare wherever it could. Now, it's tragic that US proxies ended up killing innocents, but had the Cold War been lost, a great many more lives would have been forfeit, and while US proxies eliminated freedom in some parts of the world, Communism would have eliminated freedom everywhere. The Cold War is over. Clinton should have started eliminating the egregious allies but didn't. Bush Jr has begun that process... and you are moaning about it!!!

Pell, you need to learn more about Islam. The sad fact is that Mohammed was a liar and a warmonger who twisted the words of the religion and the God he claimed to be a prophet of in order to satisfy personal ambition and settle personal scores. There are Islamic theologians who are attempting to cast off this legacy, to recognise the lies within Islam and to reform and return to the original, pre-Mohammedan vision of God, but so far they are voices in the wilderness. The Islamic clerics most heard are the true descendants of Mohammed: warmongers, abusers of power and violators of their own religious mores.

Yes, and Martin was also wholly behind the traditional definition of marriage, until he suddenly changed his tune a few short years later. Martin is not a leader, he is a follower, a sheep if you will, since he does not take clear and decisive action that he believes is right, but instead follows the latest polls and does what he believes will curry the most favour.

Quite so, for they were "destroyed" without witnesses or proof. When the US and Russia were disarming, witnesses from many nations were invited to see the destruction of armaments so that the world would know that the claims of disarmament were true. This is international protocol. Saddam is wholly evil. His word alone is worth absolutely nothing, so when he says "Yes, I destroyed them as asked" without any proof or witnesses that he did so, only the most gullible of idiots would believe him.

Three things: Winston Churchill was described as a "dunce" by his masters at Harrow. Albert Einstein's physics teacher called him "an idiot who will never amount to anything." Adolf Hitler's teachers referred to him as a thoroughly mediocre student. What does this tell you - that these three men, and President Bush, were all really morons, or that teachers and tests can be wrong? You are still being obtuse. You demand to know where the infrastructure for chemical/bioweapons are. I inform you that you need no great infrastructure. You then ignore that and demand to know where the infrastructure for nuclear weapons is. The answer: there probably isn't any, but according the the UN and the Geneva Convention WMD does not have to be just ICBMs. How do we punish a genuine mistake? Was it malicious? No. Was it deliberate? No. Therefore, we should probably mete out the same punishment that you deserve for your uninformed mistakes in the "US Carriers" thread - nothing, since it was a genuine mistake and, to the best of your knowledge at the time, what you were saying was true. Yes, and they're bombing the UN. Funny, that. The civilian casualties in Gulf II were about 25% of the number of civilians that Saddam's regime usually executed in the same time period. I'm sure that most Iraqis are really, really unhappy about that - probably about as unhappy as Auschwitz inmates were when the Red Army turned up at the camp. No, we are going to cut support and go after them, as the US did in Afghanistan. Pure nonsense. Go study the costs of the war, the expected timeframe for Iraqi oil supplies to be up to speed again, the length of time for the US to recover the war costs alone even assuming they plundered the entirety of Iraqi oil wealth, which they aren't and won't... don't post in ignorance. No, I don't, but as it turns out even if all 70,000 of them had voted for Gore it wouldn't have made a difference.

Oh, Riff, come on. You started out arguing the exact opposite of what you are now arguing, as you did in the thread on genetic engineering. It's my belief that you think homosexuality is A-OK, probably because of media influence, and you are searching for the facts to fit your theory in true "scientific" fashion. You keep stating that the truth is "obvious" and that I must be stupid for not seeing it, but what that truth is evidently isn't clear to you. It took me a long time to actually drag your opinion about this out of you, and now it seems you've forgotten it already. The two posts I gave are pretty self-contradictory and they are evidence of your floundering between different viewpoints. Like I said, go study your books (if you have any, which I doubt), use your "superior knowledge" (which cannot have been gained at any faculty that had a written entrance exam), figure out what you actually think about this issue and get back to us. Until that point, spare us the "I am an expert, listen to me" nonsense, especially when what it is we should listen to is a bunch of half-baked warbling with no clear point.

After the USS Cole, the first WTC bombing, the attacks on African embassies etc., each time Clinton promised to bring the perpetrators to justice and then did nothing about it. He spent more tax dollars pursuing Bill Gates than Osama bin Laden - making Windows 98 is a crime, but killing US sailors and citizens is not, apparently. These promises are not the same as believing that the search for WMD will take 6 months and then being proven wrong. This is an actual lie: repeatedly promising action that you have no intention of taking. Not to mention selling cruise missile engines, decryption supercomputers, nuclear weapons technology and missile/rocket information to the Chinese. Great idea! We all know that the Chinese are real, real trustworthy and aren't passing all of this on to the North Koreans and the Pakistanis. Sure. Maybe Clinton wasn't actually responsible for 9/11 in that he didn't plan it and carry it out, but if he'd done what he should have done and what he promised he would do it probably wouldn't have happened. I don't know how he sleeps at night - but then a man who can veto all Congress' bills to curtail partial-birth late term abortions obviously doesn't understand morality the way most of us do. I mean, if you think stabbing viable babies in the back of the head with scissors and suctioning their brains out is just dandy, what's it matter if a few thousand US citizens die? Like you say, Craig, if you do a little research you find out that Clinton was not a peacemaker, just a war-postponer.

I already gave that information here: Previous thread

Yes, and it's been argued (recently) that the Earth is flat. That doesn't make it so. Do you have any reasoning behind this, or is this going to become another "US Carriers: beating some sense into Nova Satori" thread?

47 allies, actually. Do they teach math at this wonder school of yours?

But is this a lie or just a poor estimate? The 6-month figure probably didn't originate with Bush - unless you believe that all his advisors told him, "We don't know when", and he said, "Screw that, I'm telling the people 'six months'"? You're being obtuse. And by the way, yes, until the Israeli Air Force wiped out his reactor. Well, when the US attacks Japan, I'll eat my words. In the meantime, while the US is going exclusively after tyrannical regimes and terrorists, you'll have to excuse me if I feel little to no pity for their "victims". Ahem. Selling supercomputers for decryption, nuclear weapons technology and missile technology to China? You don't have to be a genius to tell that that's going to cause a huge problem for somebody pretty soon, bearing in mind who the recipients of China's goodies are. No, hence the pursuit of terrorists, destruction of their camps and annihilation of their sponsors. Or were you out to lunch when that was going on? Yeah, he was real contained. Didn't stop him sponsoring terrorist attacks on Israel one bit. It's also pretty lousy being one of 25 million or so Iraqis that have to endure being contained with him. Point A: Who are the Axis of Evil? Point B: Not being in the CIA, neither of us can say why Iraq posed a bigger threat than Iran, but as the White House does not have a death wish I think it's safe to say it did.

Since 1945. Not a moral judgement, just a fact.

I'm getting tired of explaining this to you, Riff. It seems that every time you come on this board it's as though someone wiped your memory. Cold War, Alliances, Communism not marching over the face of the earth... ring any bells?

I already did. That's what "read above" means. Seeing as you are too lazy, though: You see? You have no idea what you're even arguing. You made both those statements above, but they are mutually exclusive (that means they can't both be true at the same time). If you really studied, perhaps you should go back to your books, decide what you actually think about this issue and get back to us when you have a coherent idea, hmmm? Quite honestly, I don't believe that. As I said before, I have never met or read a geneticist who could not write at a Grade 10 level. Not to mention the fact that for someone who finds it "very simple", you are having great difficulty gathering your own thoughts on the subject.

I think it would be more accurate to say that the UN would grind the shit into the rug, place a coffee table over the spot, spray some air freshener around, and declare it clean.

That was just intended to show you that the "infrastructure" required to create WMD isn't that great, and great quantities of biological and chemical weapons could be produced by any country with some semblance of industry. While no WMD have yet been found, the fact remains that if UN inspectors could not find it in 12 years, you might want to allow the US longer than 7 months! Iraq is a big country, and WMD can be hidden pretty well, assuming they aren't in Syria by now anyway. If it irks you that President Bush "lied" to the people, I must point out the obvious difference between telling that which you believe to be true and may later be proven false, as Bush did, or telling that which you know and believe is false and passing it off as truth, as Clinton did. Regardless, it's irrelevant since the WMD were a sidenote to the reasons for invasion, namely, that Iraq refused to comply with the UN for 12 years, and the UN had stipulated that stronger measures be taken, which were not. Saddam posed a danger to the world and to his own people, and if you ask, why him, then I ask, why not? What do you call one deposed evil dictator? A good start. The world is a better place without Saddam Hussein. What are you complaining about - so-called "unilateral" action, "unilateral" being Newspeak for "coalition of 30 nations", by the US? You're complaining because you like evil dictators and you feel that more of them should be in power? You're complaining because you feel that the Iraqi people deserve torture and murder? What? Well, at this point or at any point since the election, it might have accomplished something. As I said, had Rosa Parks and the Civil Rights movement just said, "Well, the law says we have to sit at the back, and courts have already ruled on it, so, oh well!" history might have turned out differently.

You know what's funny? 12 years is not enough time for the UN to find WMD, they should have been given longer. 7 months is far too long for the US to find WMD, they should have found them sooner. So... I guess when the UN was around, all the WMD were well hidden, and now the US is there, they all have big signs on saying "Illegal Weapons Here! Don't tell! Shhh!" "The means" can be household cleaning products, fertilizers, industrial chemicals etc. We've been over this. I just find it strange that the one group of people who stand the most to gain by complaining about this are silent on it.

Please go back over the thread, I already gave examples of your self-contradictory opinions. This is why I draw the conclusion that you don't really have any idea about this. Your position is inconsistent and your conclusions contradictory. If your only response is to launch into another ad hominem attack on how "ignorant" I am, then I suppose you will have to live with that. All you can do is beat your chest about your credentials, and then make assertions that lead one to have serious doubts about the quality of the faculty that would give you such credentials. The purpose of sexual intercourse is procreation. Intercourse and relationships that may possibly lead to procreation are normal. Masturbation is neither intercourse nor relationship, and neither is abstinence. Gay sex is intercourse but it can't possibly procreate. A homosexual relationship is a sexual relationship but it will never bear children. Sex with a condom (heterosexual, of course) has at least the potential to procreate, even disallowing condom failure, the relationship has the potential to procreate. Sex with animals or children does not, and neither does a sexual relationship with a child or an animal. You may have oral sex with your wife, and that won't produce children, but at least you are doing it with your wife and the sexual relationship may quite possibly produce children. A pair of men, however, can never, ever produce children no matter what they do.

How about doing anything? They are not even making their cause known, if they have one. What would have happened if the Civil Rights movement said, "well, the law says we have to sit at the back of the bus, so that's that, I guess"? While seven of the nine justices were appointed by Republicans, you should note that the split was 5-4 on what should be done. Included amongst those who dissented with the action that would favour Bush was David Souter, himself appointed by Bush Sr. I don't think that the Supreme Court is so easily bought as you think. It's also interesting that if you google on "us supreme court democrat", a lot of links you get that support your theory come from openly socialist websites (World Socialist Web Site, Youth for International Socialism etc). Basically, to satisfy you, the only answer the SC could have returned would be to have a recount, since anything else just "proves their bias", regardless of which is actually right. Furthermore, we are not talking about a rigged election here, we are talking about a decision on whether or not to have a recount. That's a second count of votes already made. Normally you don't have recounts in an election, and by that method, Bush won. Gore demanded a recount, and the Supreme Court said no. Even if there had been a recount, Gore could very conceivably have lost again. The recount decision was not going to decide anything. That's basically it. Gore was a sore loser. The reason why the Democrats aren't pushing it or haven't pushed it is because they know that they lost.

You're saying that the Democrats weren't too bothered that a Republican was going to be President, and that they felt that they stood to gain more with a Republican in the White House? OK, so the Republicans and the Supreme Court are in cahoots to forge an election and make a complete mockery of justice by ignoring all evidence and making a partisan ruling. And once again, of course, the Democrats feel their interests are best served by rolling over and taking this.

I see. And why, pray tell, do the Democrats also choose not to? Are they just good sports, too polite to say anything, or do they actually prefer Bush to Gore?