Now that we know that the Bush administration lied to us, can we blame those that had the correct intelligence after all? Is this about something else, like loyalty?  Does France truly owe us something?  Or do we owe France perhaps?  After all they did warn us that our intelligence didn't match up with their own.  After all they did help us fight the English in the Revolution.  After all they did sell us a third of our country for a song.  After all they did build us the statue of liberty.  After all they do love us dearly, and fly our flag all over their country.  They look up to us and appreciate our sacrifice in WW2.  After all they take care of our solders graves at the beaches of Normandy with tears in their eyes. Should they have joined us even though they knew it to be wrong?
208177
France was absolutely right!  its just that too many americans were too stupid to listen!  Americans think they know everything and through the leadership of bush have tried to dominate the world.  Now they understand how wrong their plan was and yet some people still try to justify bush's actions.. What a shame!\n\nBTW meandmine, france has NOT had terrorist attacks since 9/11 maybe spain, maybe london but NOT france!  Get your info straight!  And yes bush ahd the same intelligence info that clinton did so why did bush throw it away and decide to go with his doctored info??? because bush is the biggest bastard the world has ever seen!  He is a lying sack of shit and won't stop until he has total world domination.
541398
It's not one or the other. Other people and countries are making out like bandits while we sink and yes it is all their fault! They were smart enough and willing to do what was necessary to make change or take advantage of opportunities. We sit around on our overfed behinds debating issues sometimes yes, but really we're more worried about what's going to happen tonight on Lost. We never get past a half baked debate, we never implement real, sensible working plans. When we do put a plan in place if it doesn't work we just keep hammering away with it, instead of looking in a new direction! The list goes on and on...but where do i see America headed... welcome to the new third world!...only we have a plethora of malls and Burger Kings. It's so sad really, I grew up(an I'm only 30 now!) thinking America was the greatest. Now i feel more like any day now they should just go ahead and replace the statue of liberty w' a beer gutted guy w' his pants around his knees, a remote in one hand and a burger in the other. Our laziness and apathy is our downfall, not other people.
80914
No, the truth does not always necessarily find you out, however, in this case it did. We ALL knew the danger the people of NO were being put in when they sent them to the dome.  Of course the president knew. It's just coming to light to the people of the United States? Should have listened to Kanye West if there was ever any doubt...
74147
I'm on the fence about this. I think it was ploted by this administration to insight patriotism in the peaople and as incentive for war. Somewhat like what was done in the 70's. But was it Bush's idea? No he isn't smart enough. It had to be someone higher up like his father or the Freemasons. I know I may sound crazy but its just my opinion. \n\nHey I might be wrong and Bush is probably the best president we've had in years. \n*bursts out laughing*
467075
Nice joke, it never gets old pinging on the french. Polisci the french didn't really want to help the colonies they just hated the Brits but couldn't declare war on them due to lack of political correctness however they did have a considerable stake in the new world. Thus, having the colonies write the declaration of independence they could legitimize coming to the aid of a sovereign nation, furthermore protecting their stake. Free colonies would put a sizable gap (landwise) between britain and the french claim. Thereby using us as shields for their land knowing that britain wouldn't have the strength to fight through the americans and be able to maintain the battle when they reached french lands. If the colonies stayed british then the french would have had a larger problem given that the brits are next door. hurray for the brave french.\nDane the french paid such a high price due to fact they were invaded and occupied, not because of galiant heroldry. The brits suffered heavily from V1 and V2 rockets along with bombing runs. At least the brits mounted a useful defense.
313885
Hell, we got outside help in fighting the English for our independence.  One of my ancestors was a German with money who came over during the revolution and fought against the English.  After the war of independence, he decided to stay and married one of my direct ancestors who's family had already been in the colonies for 100 years. Sorry, I digress!\n\nSo you see, this help thing can work both ways. If you want off on Cinco De Mayo, you first have to get a Mexican to acknowledge they got help from the US against the French.   Do you think that's possible??? \n\nBoy, these Mexicans who still have jobs must have money to burn, if they can afford to take off work two days in one week, so they can attend their Mexican holidays.  I wonder if they will be waving the American flag to show their loyalty to the US on that day???
89434
I saw this sticker on the back of a pickup truck, "WAR SUCKS, but FREEDOM is worth it!"\n\nSUPPORT OUR SOLDIERS!   (You can't sincerely support our soldiers, if you don't sincerely support their cause.  Think about it.)\n\nDid we already forget about 9/11?  Where would we be if our troops weren't protecting our freedoms.\n\nBlame the military?  Blame the president?  What is so wrong that we need someone to blame?  Blame them for what?
668691
NOT ME, we did what we should have done when NATO sent our troops into Kuwait to get Saddam.....WOW !!!   That fact has long been forgotten by many !!! NATO made that choice....we had Saddam right under the helicopters,in full view,  when they called NATO,they said let him go..he left the place & that's all we wanted done....Nothing about all the people in his own country he orderd tortured,beheaded,raped,starved,beaten and killed by that chemical bomb !! \n They also knew exactly where Bin Laden was too (they still do),yet allowed that war criminal to go too...\n The English are probaly still upset we kicked their *sses out of America...and they lost all our national resources,our taxes and some awesome land.....can't blame the blimey idoits for that !!  LOL\n I too have met many really awesome people from England...who  think we are doing the right thing...big problem there is that there are alot of muslium exteremists spreading their hate to the young people of England....
142053
SORRY I THINK YOU DRIFTED AWAY FROM ANY POINT YOU WERE TRYING TO MAKE.\nRIGHT GOT YA NOW.\nWHY DONT THE PEOPLE OF OTHER COUNTRIES DO SOMETHING ABOUT THEIR LEADERS.INSTEAD OF RELYING ON OTHERS TO DO IT FOR THEM.\nSORRY THE PART ABOUT, THEN BUSH ONLY CAN?\nTOTALLY LOST ME THERE.
248972
Why do self-proclaimed conservatives have absolutely no grasp of history or politics?\n\nIraq has never attacked us.  Ever.  We have attacked the soveriegn nation of Iraq two times completely un-provoked.  The first time we had no alliance with Kuwait and still became involved.  The second we went to war under the pretense that Iraq would proliferate WMD's to terrorists...neither part of that charge makes any sense to an intelligence analyst (myself among them).\n\nWhen those twin towers collapsed on 9/11, the media was immediately handed a culprit within minutes.  The first question that should have been asked from an un-emotional standpoint is "Who benefits?" (que bono?), the "Who did this?" would logically flow straight from this.  Facts are nasty things though, and nearly all "couch conservatives" would rather tout hate speech rather than research an actual fact.\n\nMy favorite arguements:\n1) Bush is big on national security, I feel safer with Bush in power.\n\nFact:  We have over 11 million illegal immigrants in our country and they keep coming and going at their leisure.  Our borders are little more than Swiss cheese.\n\n2) Liberals want to take away our freedoms, they're just like the terrorists.\n\nFact:  The PATRIOTS acts introduced by our Bushie friends have destroyed our constitution by rendering it invalid.\n\n3) Liberals want big government and to waste our tax dollars.\n\nFact:  Under the Bush administration, government spending increased 25%.  This is the biggest increase since Lyndon B. Johnson's administration during Vietnam.  We have also reached a trade deficit with Asia of almost $1 billion just in the first quarter of this year.  Our national debt is now at a record almost $7 trillion.  Under Clinton, we actually had a budget surplus and our national debt was in reversal...wierd for a "criminal" eh?\n\n4) Liberals don't support our troops!\n\nFact:  Veteran's Benefits have been repeatedly cut in the last 6 years to the point where some vets no longer have benefits from Republican introduced bills in Congress that Bush happily signed into law.  Liberals also want our troops to come home to do the job of defending our country, not become psychologically scarred and physically maimed.\n\n5) Bush is "smoking the terrorists out of their holes"\n\nFact:  There are 3 times more "terrorists" in the world today than before 9/11.  Osama himself had been cornered more than once and each time our Special Forces were ordered to "stand down" the moment before capture via mysterious orders from on high.\n\nTo this date, there has only been 1 single (dubious) conviction of an Al Queada member in a court of law for a (potential) terrorist act.\n\n6) Bush is "finding and punishing the guilty party (for 9/11)".\n\nFact:  We spent a total of $9 million to investigate the events of 9/11.  We spent $54 million to investigate Clinton's affair.  ALL forensic evidence (camera footage, building wreckage, financial records, black boxes, etc) has been carted off and sealed and no independent OR government sponsored investigators have been allowed near it.  7 of the 19 alleged hijackers are alive and well in their home countries as of today.\n\nIn short, keep watching your Fox news and your American Idol (the Roman Empire called it the "bread and circuses" approach), save your hate speech for your Sunday school class, and at least do a modicum of research before you spout something you overheard your misinformed parents rattle off.
187398
You hit so many nails so squarely on the head that it is difficult for me to add to the essay you have written. I don't feel we are a "complete failure" because our foundation is (or was) so strong. I do feel that we are, however, chipping away at that foundation...actually sledge hammering it would be more like it! So many people have been looking out for number one and therefore have become blind to the fact that the very freedoms on which this once great nation was founded are being ripped from us RIGHT and LEFT (pun intended). It is like a repeat of the "rise and fall of the Roman Empire". The greed, arrogance and not just short-sightedness, but blindness of the Bush administration have hastened our downfall tenfold. I am not a bleeding heart liberal, though I am a bit left of center (Neither extreme is good). I do believe that at heart most Americans are good and decent people. But we have allowed our voices to be silenced and become too unwilling to open our eyes and look in the mirror.\n\nAfter 9/11 most of world was behind us. Democrats and Republicans, who were very divided before that dark day, became, for a brief shining moment, once again "united" as AMERICANS. Bush could have led us into the sunlight again. Instead he used that terrible tragedy to further his own agenda...(well actually I say Bush, but the person really running the country is Chaney, with Rove, Rumsfeld and Rice , et al, right along side). Americans have been arrogant for a long time, but the arrogance of this administration has never been equaled. We no longer are a country to be admired...basically, as you have already alluded to in your question, we are no longer a country at all, but a business...and not even a good business, but a corporation like Enron, where the leaders get rich and the workers get screwed.\n\nBoth of the last presidential elections were rigged (this is not the first time this has happened, but certainly the most blatant!)\n \nKatrina victims who have already been devastated by nature (the severity of the hurricane, a direct result of global warming) have been further victimized by the govt. and now won't even be able to vote in the next election! I could go on forever on my tirade too, so I'll TRY to cut this short because I realize with you I am singing to the choir (though we both are going to get blasted on this one).The American PEOPLE, not the government, have come together in an effort to help the victims of Katrina and the victims of the tsunami.(Note to readers who disagree with my views: Please don't quote me the stats on the million$ our government spent on either catastrophe...it wasn't enough. PERIOD!)\n\nI believe the heart of America still beats strongly, but we need to find leaders who are better cardiologists. We need to find leaders who will pull this country back together and not turn our political differences into unnavigable crevasses, or who make our financial disparities so vast...leaders who still believe in the separation of church and state, still believe that our system of checks and balances, engendered by our three branches of govt.(executive, legislative and judicial) ONLY works when one branch does not try to control the other two. We need leaders who recognize that one religion is not superior to another and who won't proclaim that only THEY have a finger on the moral pulse of our nation.\n\n A good leader is someone who ACTUALLY does believe that "all men are created equal" and who remembers that this is a "government OF the people, FOR the people and BY the people" and by this, I mean ALL people (all colors, all religions, all sexes - including homosexuals, all income levels). Whether our next administration is Republican or Democrat , Independent, Libertarian etc., the task ahead is greater than it has ever been...the ideal America as envisioned by our forefathers, the government re-united and rededicated by Abraham
34653
I cant help you a lot, but french endorsed the revolution of the colonies in the us, in fact i think they even sent troops at the time consisting of the royal navy.\n\nAs of the second part, the people of both spain and france were and are totally against the occupation of iraq, i was in madrid at the time and a manifestation of 1.5 millon people crowded madrid`s center "puerta del sol" regardless of what their at the time president Mr. Aznar said. so you have a big dicotomy there, goverment endorsed the US, and people deplored it.\n\nFrance on the other side, both goverment and people were actively involved and against the iraq invasion.
480078
Hey Maj Johnson!\nWhat the hell do you think that our "Rulers" want to protect us from "so called terrorists", no it is to fulfill the ancient human desire to dominate. Like all the king from past, US Kings think on the same lines. Understood!\nMoreover, Isolated Foreign Policy? Has our country a foreign policy? I'm flabbergasted, Man??????\n\nSo Maj! Please tell it to your seniors to force the ruler to call the forces back, save the lives of own soldiers, innocent Iraqis, Military resources, weapon and equipment.
588234
Whoa there nighthawk! Innocent till proven guilty huh?\nMight I mention Guantanamo?\n\nDissenting is unpatriotic, huh? Sorry your time machine screwed up and landed you in 2006 USA instead of 1938 Germany. Patriotism is NOT just flag waving and supporting your troops. There are lots of angles to patriotism. Let's see. Have you taken care of your poor needy fellow citizens recently? The clothes you wear, the appliances you use, were they made in the USA by US labor or did your money feed someone else? The "support our troops" ribbon you have on your car? Did you turn it over and notice that it says "made in china"?\n\nAnd to the person who asked the question, yes we are allowed to disagree. I disagree with you. :-p
402826
God, you Yanks really are as thick as sh*t.\n\nOf course the asker knows Bush wasn't PERSONALLY responsible for Vietnam.\n\nThe question is should he apologise on behalf of the American people for the atrocities committed in their name.\n\nAnd of course he should.\n\nAnd of course you lot, who seem to make a habit of going into other people's countries for no good reason, and killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people in the process, are too dumb to see it.\n\nShame on you all.
461599
There is little outrage due to the big lie.  Whatever the case,you can bet we are misinformed.  We follow our leader's story, trusting them to tell us the truth, a big mistake, and then back him up at crunch time. Fascism thrives on ignorance, complacency,  and trust, until it is too late to change course.  Iraq is a good example.  We were worked up because of 9/11, we wanted justice for the attack, so we went into Afghanistan.  Somehow we also ended up in Iraq!  The big boys who run things, sip on their Napoleon Brandy and  cigars, while the rest of us are always trying to catch up.  It is always too late if we do,  after the violence has been done.  Then we are left to offer lame arguments for why it was all such a good idea in the first place.
600065
By the way, I feel like I am always being lied to by Bush and authorities in genral. I've just gotten use to it, so instead I try to figure out why they belive in what they believe or in alot of cases I try to figure out why some humans seem to be so easly manipluated by any little thing. Like misinformation.\n\n... here is my main response:\n\n“The president won backing for the demand that North Korea abandon plans to test-fire a long-range missile. "It should make people nervous when non-transparent regimes that have announced that they've got nuclear warheads fire missiles," he said.”\n\nHmmm, as I recalled we (the USA) have the most destructive weapons (of mass destruction) in the world and we have the majority of them, so who is policing us? The USA has misused their weapons countless of times and conducted biological warfare/experiments countless of times too (read your history books).\n\n\n\n“Schuessel welcomed Bush's statement. "We got clear, clear signals and a commitment from the American side — no torture, no extraordinary or extraterritorial positions to deal with the terrorists," he said. "All the legal rights must be preserved."”\n\nHmmm this too can be argued that only a few months ago I heard about yet another abuse of the prisoners (isn’t this why they’re finally contemplating on shutting down the Gawtanomo Bay base? … can’t spell LOL)\n\n\n\n“Again, Bush asked Europeans to look beyond their anger over the U.S. invasion of Iraq three years ago and support the country's reconstruction.”\n\nWhy should the European nations (or anyone else for that matter) turn a blind eye of past injustices?\n\n\n\n“…but the split between the U.S. and Europe is rising, and the Bush administration looks increasingly desperate.”\n\nYes, they DO. I’m surprised some republicans who are devoted to Bush don’t see past the façade.\n\n\n\n“The Bush administration's decision to participate in talks with Iran is a direct result of its failure to win even a modicum of international support for its military and economic threats, as well as a rising chorus of influential military, retired diplomats, and other elite voices within U.S. policy circles.”\n\nHey because ignorance doesn’t blind people forever, that’s why.\nAlso, from this statement right here is REALLY sounds like he doesn’t have very much support at all, unlike what FOX news would have you believe.\n\n\n\n“While international governmental pressure on Iran continues, there remains a significant split between the non-proliferation focus of Europe (willing to consider sanctions) and to a lesser degree Russia and China (preferring enticements), and the ideologically-driven "regime-change" approach of the U.S. (favoring regime change, including military attack).  So far the Bush administration has failed to win broader support even for an anti-Iranian "coalition," let alone a unified Security Council resolution, but this White House has shown its willingness before to move recklessly and unilaterally despite global opposition.  So there is no room for complacency or assumptions that an attack on Iran won't happen because the military is against it or because it is so obviously dangerous.”\n\nWhy is it that the USA’s government officials have to think with their muscles, and big metal toys? Have they learned nothing?\n\n\n\n“The new report just issued by Hans Blix and his Sweden-based international commission concludes that disarmament was being set back by "increased U.S. skepticism regarding the effectiveness of international institutions and instruments, coupled with a drive for freedom of action to maintain an absolute global superiority in weaponry and means of their delivery.  The U.S., the sole superpower, has looked more to its own military power."  The report called on nuclear powers to reduce their nuclear arsenals, and said nuclear weapons sho