Moonlight Graham

i wonder what the DVD's were! As for the bust, its a non-issue. New presidents like to redecorate the oval office.

Obviously Ignatieff is a Canadian, his birth certificate says so. But when you are out of the country for so long it raises questions on how much does he actually know about issues facing Canadians. There's a difference between reading about it in a book or newspaper and actually living it. How many times has he waited 8 hours in an ER emergency room? Dont' "poo-poo" this, its a legit concern. I mean, its nice to have the leader of your country actually live there for pete's sake. I do however find him to be a very intelligent, level-headed, and well-spoken leader, which has him leaps and bounds beyond the other party leaders IMO.

I will never give a dime to any of these moronic parties. As people say, its voting for the lesser of evils. So far Ignatieff has my vote most likely, even though i despise the fact he has been out of the country for decades.

Bin Laden has named Canada as a potential target. We definately aren't squeeky clean in their eyes. In fact since we have been in Afghanistan Canada has almost certainly become a bigger target for terrorist plots, ie: the Muslim terror plot & training camp the RCMP stopped outside Toronto a couple of years ago, which the arrested said was partially in response to Canadians killing Muslims in Afghanistan. Agreed. Though most people didn't give a crap until the scale was upped enormously.

Interesting: "The CIA destroyed a dozen videotapes of harsh interrogations of terror suspects, according to documents filed Friday in a lawsuit over the government's treatment of detainees. The 12 tapes were part of a larger collection of 92 videotapes of terror suspects that the CIA destroyed. The extent of the tape destruction was disclosed through a suit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union against the government..." Also, Guantanamo worse since Obama election: ex-detainee: LONDON (AFP) — A freed Guantanamo prisoner has said conditions at the US detention camp in Cuba have worsened since President Barack Obama was elected, claiming guards wanted to "take their last revenge". Binyam Mohamed, the first detainee to be transferred out of Guantanamo Bay since Obama took office, also said British agents "sold me out" by cooperating with his alleged torturers, in his first interview since release which was published Sunday. "Since the election it's got harsher," Mohamed told the newspaper. "The guards would say, 'yes, this place is going to close down,' but it was like they wanted to take their last revenge."

Bin Laden wasn't "justified" in attacking the U.S. It was a horrific & inexcusible act of violence. But hardly suprising. But if you want to know why he attacked the U.S. and why many Muslims resent the U.S. you can start with Operation Ajax which was a covert CIA coup in Iran where the U.S. disposed of Iran's democratically elected government and reinstalled the pro-U.S. Shah as ruler in order to secure oil interests, which ultimately led to the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Probably the biggest factor in Bin Laden wanting to attack the U.S. was the U.S. using Saudi Arabia soil to launch attacks against Iraq during the Gulf War. Saudi Arabia is a sacred land for Muslims because it is the location of the two holiest sites in Islam, Mecca and Medina. This not only PO'd Bin Laden, but a great many Saudi's and Muslims. There are many other examples of U.S. covert (and overt) military operations in the Muslim world & them interfering in Muslim affairs. Is it really any suprise to anyone that somebody, somewhere took offense to this and decided to attack the U.S.?

You are 100% correct. Yet many people, actually i would say most people, still have the dillusion that al-Qaeda attacked the U.S. simply because "they hate our Western values".

Who cares. Canadians determine their own foreign policy. The U.S. didn't think kindly when we didn't join them in Iraq and Vietnam either. You are right, the U.S. had to react after 9/11. You can't just let someone kill thousands of your civilians without any consequences. However, a full-scale invasion and occupation of the country wasn't necessary. I think air strikes targeting al-Qaeda within Afghnaistan would have sent enough of a message. Unfortuntely, the American publics' lust for bloody revenge and having Bin Laden's head on a stake would have made such a response likely political suicide for Bush.

This is a joke. The ANA and police forces will never be able to handle the Taliban. How can they do this when the strength and numbers of the Taliban is growing much faster than the ANA and Afghan police? If the Soviets, the U.S., and NATO have been whooped by the Taliban, do you think these Afghan police have a chance?

Afghanistan is only a threat because the Taliban gave safe haven for Al-Qaeda. But the Taliban did not attack the U.S. on 9/11. Of the 19 hijackers on 9/11, none of them were Afghanis and none of them were members of the Taliban. What we've done in Afghanistan over the last 8 years has actually made things worse for our security. We've gone from having al-Qaeda having safe haven in a poor, lightly armed country like Afghanistan and have pushed them into Pakistan, a very unstable (both polically and economically) nuclear-armed country. And we've done so while spending ridiculas sums of money, having hundreds of thousands of people dead, and giving Arabs in the region even more reason to hate the West. Brilliant!

Stephen Harper has admitted what anyone with any understanding of the history of Afghanistan should know: Defeating the Afghan insurgency militarily is not possible. Afghanistan is known as "the place where foreign armies go to die". It has been invaded numerous times since Alexander the Great and virtually all invaders have had their butts handed to them. If the might of the Soviet military couldn't defeat the Afghans in the 1980's, even while having the massive advantage of sharing a border with Afghanistan, what makes anyone think the U.S. and NATO can do much better? NATO & the West has under-estimated the resiliency of the Afghan fighters, despite a few thousand years of precident. I’m thankful Canada’s military mission ends in 2010, though frankly it should end immediately. Negotiating with the Taliban & helping to provide aid to the country while keeping out of their countries' internal affairs as much as possible is the only way the many problems in Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries in the world, can hope to be solved.

I love America and have many good American friends. I really detest a lot of U.S. foreign policy. And i kinda want to urinate on Cheney and Rumsfeld.

WHERE CAN I GET MY TICKETS??!!!??!??!?

This is very disappointing. But as an avid Bush/Cheney supporter you must be very pleased.

This is such bullcrap. Laughable. How about they send Amnesty International or the UN into Gitmo instead of the Pentagon and see what they say? This is like a drunk driver giving himself his own breathalizer test and saying he's good to go. And if by miracle the report is true, there must have been some mad scrambling to clean the place up. I can still hear the paper shredders buzzing...

You don't see a difference between "regime must vanish from the page of time" and "Israel must be wiped off the map?". The latter is much more aggressive and less politically targeted. Though if Iran itself did the translating, then they probably mean the latter as well.

The phrase "Israel must be wiped off the map" has been attributed to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and has been used by politicians and the media for various reasons, including reasons to be concerned about Iran's nuclear ambitions. However, did he actually say those words? Consider this article by Arash Norouzi: Ok, so how or why did this happen? Interesting.

Polls are useful is you have a large enough sample-size.

Congress has been garbage the past 8 years, no doubt. Obama isn't new to the vetting scene or hiring people for a staff. Obama may not be the most experienced politician, but his team knows how this works and should have known better. But i'm more lenient about mistakes that don't get people killed.

Shady, even though you bring up a good topic to discuss, it's obvious that your posting this stuff is much more an excuse to hammer on someone you ideologically don't like rather than actually caring about political accountability. Where were you the last 8 years?? On the actual subject: All of these people with tax problems Obama has appointed is disappointing and disconcerning. It should be worrisome to all that Obama & his team made mistakes on something so routine and mostly avoidable. I mean just check their taxes man! If Obama made mistakes on simple vetting, what others will he make? However, give him credit for at least admitting these mistakes of his and taking responsibility for them, a big change from the last administration.

I would add ideology to that list. Its certainly not so the "little girl can go to school", thats for sure.

Thats certainly true. Why end the Iraq War or leave (or even ratchet down) Afghanistan? If Obama did that it would be disasterous to the U.S. economy because of the military industrial complex. War is huge business, and business is booming. Someone's gotta manufacture those bombs & bullets. Imagine if instead of spending half the U.S. budget on defense, they spent most of that on education & healthcare? OMG how brutal it would be for the U.S. economy! No joke.

Jesus died for us. We might as well die for him....or make brown people die for him.

let them put it up. who cares.

Bingo.