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You are correct SpaceNut, they aren't making their weapons. Almost all of the weapons that terrorist use are old US or Russian weapons. This is the problem with suppling short-lived allies with weapons to fight our at-the-moment enemys (thank you Reagan and Ollie).

Winning the war on 'terror' is actually quite simple. It's a radical policy change that will prove difficult. We, as Americans, need to stop looking down on these people. Calling them fanatics and evil does nothing but recruit more terrorists. These aren't video game pixels, they are people. Human beings that dream of a better life for their children just as we do.

When we bomb cities with innocent people living their lives, it creates terrorists. What is a terrorist? This is a great question that I haven't heard asked nor answered by our media. A terrorist is a man or woman who desires change yet has no voice in their government or others. They are typically limited to small arms fire and are often incapable of reaching their intended targets so they lash out at the people of their target in the hopes that people like you and I will ask, why are they so mad?

Now before some of you get irrate at my definition and retort that they are 'cold-blooded heartless godless killers', know that I am not approving of their tactics. I am simply trying to get you to understand that these people are very very anger and feel powerless.

Some of that feeling of helplessness comes from their own countries that don't recognize their point of view, but a lot of it also comes from US policy. We have no right, no right at all, telling these people how they should run their countries and who they should worship. Granted, we don't come out and say be Christian, but too many of us think it, and we do tell them to be democracys (capitalist).

'So Democrats are bad for the economy, is what you're saying.    Doom and gloom...  '

Now that isn't fair Cobra. Bush started saying the economy is in trouble when he took office. He's had three years to do something about it, and hasn't. Now that it is election time, is Kerry supposed to say that the economy is fantastic?

'Except when it's good. War can be the greatest economic motivator there is.'

If your country is stagnant like we were after the Great Depression, then yes I agree. So is Bush's plan to enter another Great Depression so he can get the other two in his axis-of-evil? 

'I'll assume you're referring to the tax cuts, which are not "trickle down" but across the board cuts. But when you cut all brackets in a progressive tax scheme then -gasp!- rich people get more money. But everyone who pays income taxes gets a percentage reduction. This does help the economy.'

73 percent of Americans say they were unaffected by Bush's tax cuts, doesn't sound across the board to me. Truth is, the wealthiest Americans pay the most tax. They also pay a higher percentage of tax than Joe Blow. So when you cut taxes for the rich (ie capital-gains, dividends) you are left with two choices, tax the poor harder and/or rack up deficits.

'You've actually got something with this one. If only there were a candidate who would actually balance the budget without doing other economy-killing actions at the same time.'

Ah, if only Clinton could have had a third term. Btw, anyone remember our projected surpluses in the last years of Clinton? Whatever happened to those? Oh yea, tax cuts.......yay? Bush should have listened to Greenspan who was against those tax cuts.

'Damn Democrat social spending.'

Yep, it's all those greedy money lovin single moms and their free EBT milk!!! How can we afford to wage a respectable war in Iraq and Afghanistan when they keep drinking all that milk!!  :angry:

'And we're decadent infidels. And let's also not forget that we're dealing with a culture that likes to think of itself as superior to others yet hasn't accomplished anything of note in a thousand years'

Good point! In just under 300 years we've managed to enslave thousands of Africans, commit genocide against the natives of this great country, round up hundreds of Jap-Americans into concentration camps, and drop two atomic bombs on two different Japanesse cities! Why just this year alone we've killed over 200,000 people in Iraq!  ???

'A family member went to see Fahrenheit 9/11 when it was first released and was telling me about it. I was invited to go along back then, but couldn't bring myself to give money to a war profiteering propagandist, but at any rate, the praise of it wasn't just the film itself, but the audience. "They were all Democrats" I was told excitedly, "everyone laughed and cheered at the same times" on and on. Apparently it was quite a wonderful experience.

Sounded a bit like a Nazi rally to me. Largely the same mindset in both cases as well.'

I noticed the same phenomenon when I went to see it. I think the release of pent up feelings after months of being silenced is why people leave the theater feeling so good. When Bush started leading this country into another war with Iraq, I was horrified. Surely, I thought to myself, no one is going to believe that Saddam is somehow linked to 9/11 and has been busy building WMD right under UN inspector's noses. But then it happened........and the great silencing came to pass. Honest, inquisitive questions were now considered treasonous and I began to be attacked by people saying that 'We must stand united for the safety of our troops'.

I always thought that they were supposed to be fighting for our freedom of speech. You can imagine my shock when I learned that questioning weither we should be diverting troops from Afghanistan to Iraq could somehow cost a life half-way around the globe!

I urge anyone who loves this country as much as I do, to see Michael Moore's movie about 9/11. I was skeptical at first, and even afterwards. Somewhere in the back of my mind I kept thinking 'this can't be real, why didn't I hear/see this on the news?'. However, the facts are real, unfortunately.

Bush knew about the first tower being hit before he went into a second grade classroom. He sat there in the classroom for over 7 minutes listening to the teacher read 'My Pet Goat' after being told that the second tower had been struck by another plane.

If you don't want to give Michael Moore any money, fine, rent it, Moore gets not a cent if you rent it, only the video store. But please, keep an open mind and watch it and do your country a favor and vote for Kerry. I don't hate Republicans and I don't love Kerry, but he cannot be as bad as Bush.

Ultimatums, no courts, god's elimination.....am I hearing this right? Comstar03, do you live in America?

I guess this administration's spin about how terrorists 'hate freedom and liberty' has shaped the publics opinion nicely to their needs. People don't just wake up one day and say 'Ya know, that America is so free and wonderful, I think I'm going to destroy the Twin Towers'.

At the risk of stirring good ol patriots into a frenzy, let me say that they have reason to hate us. The US has, for over 50 years, played one Middle Eastern country against another, and then switched alliances. The end result, in a part of the world with very long memories, is that nearly all Arabs distrust us and most hate us.

We don't want Middle Eastern peace due to our need for oil. Should the Middle East ever stop hating each other they would have a huge target for their anger, the USA. Can you imagine what oil prices would be if we didn't occupy Iraq, Kuwaitt and Afghanistan?

Suadia Arabia is the largest oil producing country over there. It is also the home to the Bin Ladens, one of the wealthiest families in the world. Osama Bin Laden is the black sheep of this rich oil family. Perhaps, and I'm only offering my opinion, Osama is tired of his family's and our greed, keeping his people poor. Perhaps he is a hero in his mind and to others.

The label of 'terrorist' reminds me of so many labels thrown around to make the 'other guy' look wrong from the start. Remember 'commie'? Or how about 'liberal'?

Does anyone remeber a few months ago when Isreal assinated the leader of the Hamas? Now that the Hamas have struck back, they are terrorists. The news even included in their account 'of the latest terrorist attacks'. The US, by the way, never came out strongly against Isreals actions, because......well, they are our buddies.

You are so right when you say that wars always have an economic angle. The civil war was started over unfair taxation of the south. Property tax being the main source of income for the federal government at the time and southerns having little of anything except land.... As I said in an earlier thread, we didn't even get into WW2 till the Germans started sinking our supply boats, genocide wasn't even on the table. We recently waged a war for control of the Panama Canal, oil rich Iraq, oil rich Kuwaitt, and oil rich Iraq again.

Comstar03, I know you are a smart guy like many others in this forum, so please don't take our differing opinions as an attack on you. You are smart enough to see through the propoganda so I would like you and other to read this link I am posting. It's called 'Bush by the numbers' and it is an accounting of how this administration has spun things to their benefit, please read it with an open mind and see if you can sort anything out from it....

http://michaelmoore.com/words/index.php … php?id=154

Well comstar, for one, I give a damn (or dame if you prefer). Support for space activities is directly related to how intelligent people are. Polls show that the more intelligent someone is, the more likely they are to support NASA and be knowledgable about what NASA is doing. You gotta understand, the average American has little or no idea what NASA does, how they are funded, or why they are doing it.

If you don't see any difference between these two canidates then vote Kerry please. We need a president who is going to make domestic, not foreign spending a priority. We need a president who will wage costly wars only when needed. We need a leader who sees national greatness in programs besides military muscle flexing.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.0 … _tophead_7

China is going nuclear........yay?

'Actually, Cheney is one of the few people in this administration who is definitely not a homophobe(he has a homosexual daughter).'

Well I know more than a few guys that love to watch movies with two women making love to each other yet freak out if they think a guy is hitting on them so.....

And can you really trust a guy that talks out of the side of his mouth anyway?

I always liked you Cindy, and I still do, but please take some of your own advise before giving it to others.

Does Cobra like war and weapons of war? Yes, he does or he wouldn't have such an avid interest in it.

I have a voice and an opinion too, is my right to speak not as valued as Cobras? Apparently not, but thats okay too.

If you look closer, I wasn't calling names, and if you are offended then you need to lighten up a little. I don't think Cobra was offended at all because he is smart enough to know what is and isn't directed at him.

That said, I will continue my retort at a later time, for I must earn my living expenses (gasp! he goes to work?). Dear Cindy and Cobra, I sincerly hope I didn't offend either of you. I enjoy a health debate as much as the next guy. My intent wasn't to alienate anyone here, but I do get a tad passionate, sorry.

Kerry 2004  :up:
Cheney 2004  :down:

'I'm an old bitter man who did what I wanted to do regardless of reason, so that makes me a hero......'               -Paton

Cobra, how do you explain our invasion of Iraq when our goal was originally to capture/kill Bin Laden?

If your goal is to capture a terrorist and his men, then you only need special forces. If your goal is to occupy a country, that's when you need all those wonderful weapons of warfare and thousands of soldiers.

Btw, that had to be the nastiest GOP convention ever! They spent way too much time talking about what Kerry would do the next four years and almost no time talking about what Bush would do with four more years. And the purple band-aids (mocking Kerry's purple hearts) being worn by people that never saw combat made me sick.

Here's what we should have done in Iraq, let the inspectors work as Hussein disarms missles in violation of the UN agreement. Barring that, we should have flown our special forces into Bagdad, had them take the capital in an hour, use our air superiority to bomb the hell out of all the roads and paths into Bagdad to protect our forces from reinforcments. That would have been the smart way to topple Hussein. But as I said, he wasn't a threat to us, he wasn't involved in 9/11, and he had no weapons of mass destruction.

Iraq has distracted us from capturing the real cause of 9/11, Bin Laden. And now it seems we will need to keep thousands stationed there for years to come. Thanks Bush!

But Cobra, we already had at least a 25 year technological advantage on our closest possible competitor. How much of an edge do we need for a stable military enrollment of 1 million? It is getting increasingly harder to keep such an advantage in this age of information too, perhaps we've reached the maximum of our realistic edge? Don't get me wrong, we need R&D in our military, but I could dedicate a thread to stupid projects our military goes ahead with even when the experts say it can't work or at best will be obsolete before it's finished.

God I hope Hillary won't lose. She is our best chance for a female president anytime soon. We deperately need a non-white, non-male president to empower our people.

'As far as we can reasonably tell, Kerry has no policies period. He hasn't really explained how he plans to do any of the things he's said he will do, particularly when the statements conflict.'

Yes, but my question was, how many challengers
ever have a space policy? Or for that matter any policy outside their own state?

Bush came to the white house with a lof of friends but only 8 years as Gov. of Texas and no space policy what-so-ever.

Btw, here are some of Kerry's proposed changes once he takes office.

1)Roll back the tax breaks for the rich to balance the budget.
2)Create realistic budgets that allow for surplus to deal with unexpected trouble (ie wars, hurricanes, etc)
3)Embrace international cooperation before and after any wars including Iraq.
4)Reduce our dependancy on foreign oil by creating incentives for both suppliers and buyers of fuel effecient cars.

Sounds like a plan to me! Go Kerry Go Ra Ra Ra!

I am Robert. I have written my senators, representatives and governor. never did get anything back though....is that a bad sign?

Thanks for the link Cobra! Wow great details but misleading if you don't know all the facts....

(1)Fox was the first network to call Florida for Bush. Before that, some other networks had called Florida for Gore, and they changed after Fox called it for Bush.
http://www.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/sto … ies/02/02/
cnn.report/cnn.pdf

(2)With information provided from the Voter News Service, NBC was the first network to project Gore the winner in Florida at 7:48 pm.  At 7:50 pm ,CNN and CBS project Gore the winner in Florida as well.” By 8:02 pm , all five networks and the Associated Press had called Gore the winner in Florida. Even the VNS called Gore the winner at 7:52 pm. At 2:16 am, Fox calls Florida for Bush, NBC follows at 2:16 am. ABC is the last network to call the Florida for Bush, at 2:20 am, while AP and VNS never call Florida for Bush.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/media/elect … ction2000/
election_night.html

(3)“John Ellis, a first cousin of George W. Bush, ran the network's ‘decision desk’ during the 2000 election, and Fox was the first to name Bush the winner.  Earlier, Ellis had made six phone calls to Cousin Bush during the vote-counting.”  William O’Rourke, “Talk Radio Key to GOP Victory,” Chicago Sun-Times, December 3, 2002. 
A Fox News consultant, John Ellis, who made judgments about presidential ‘calls’ on Election Night admits he was in touch with George W. Bush and FL Gov. Jeb Bush by telephone several times during the night, but denies breaking any rules.  CNN, November 14, 2000; http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2000/]ht … ries/2000/
11/14/politics/main249357.shtml.
John Ellis, the Fox consultant who called Florida early for George Bush, had to stop writing about the campaign for the Boston Globe because of family ‘loyalty’ to Bush. CBS News, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2000/]ht … ries/2000/
11/14/politics/main249357.shtml, November 14, 2000

Does it start to make sense now? John Ellis, Bush's first cousin admits he called george and Jeb several times that night. He headed the 'election' desk at Fox and used that position to make a call on the election based on absolutley 'baseless' information.
John Ellis used his position to throw the election by creating so much chaos that between Bush's lawyers fighting Gore's every move and a partisan Supreme Court ruling that essentially boils down to 'sorry, but your time is up' how can one see that they stole the election?

Lets throw in a couple lines from that fact sheet list of yours and see what results.
*Isn't election day always the 2nd of November? Where are the details about 11-02-00 to 11-12-00 on this website? If I'm reading this website correctly, recounts started at Nov 12 and ended by 5 pm Nov 14? Less than 48 hours to recount hundreds of thousands of votes???

11/12/00
2 a.m. Chaos. A sample recount turns up 19 more votes for Gore. The Palm Beach County Canvassing Board votes 2 to 1 for a full recount of all 460,000 ballots. (now why would Fox be calling Florida for Bush based on exit polls that say Gore won, even with a margin of error taken into account, and a sample count that again has Gore winning the state?)

11/13/00
9 a.m. Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris orders all counties to finish their recounts by the 5 p.m. Tuesday deadline.

10 a.m. Volusia County sues to extend certification deadline. Lawyers for Palm Beach County, Gore campaign join suit. Bush lawyers join Florida to block extension. (By Florida they mean Katherine Harris that called Florida for Bush)

1 p.m. U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks in Miami rejects Bush’s attempt to stop manual recounts in Florida. (ah yes, Bush's lawyers were fighting to stop a recount that legally had ground to be finished by 5pm Tues.)

2-3 p.m. Harris issues legal opinion on Palm Beach recount conflicting with one Tuesday by Attorney General Butterworth.

4 p.m. Gore appears on television, says it’s important to “spend the days necessary” to determine the winner.

7-8 p.m. A hand recount of 4,000 ballots in Broward County finds no big problems. County rejects full recount. Dem ocrats vow to appeal. (And all the votes were counted you say? Now why wouldn't a county want to count all their votes in a state decided by 300 votes? Could it be, gasp, they wanted Bush to win?!?)

8:15 a.m. Palm Beach County votes 2 to 1 to suspend its hand recount of all ballots after conflicting legal opinions. (yet again not all votes being counted)

11:30 a.m. Miami election officials decide to hand count a sample of precincts, later deciding against a full recount. (and again)

1 p.m. In Tallahassee, Judge Terry Lewis says the 5 p.m. deadline for certifying vote totals should stand but says counties can file supplemental or corrected totals later. Harris can ignore these, Lewis orders, only if she uses “proper exercise of discretion.” Officials in Volusia Countyjoined later by Broward and Palm Beach counties move to appeal Lewis’s ruling. (Now understand that this all the same day, Tues the 14th, deadline for a recount and hardle anywhere has it been done)

And it goes on and on. Nowhere in that break-down does Bush want Gore to get a fair chance. He charges that recounts are 'unconstitutional'. They try to block Dade-Miami's recount by machine sorting.Humans make judgement callls on what is and isnt a vote, and therefore you have...

The Florida Department of State awarded a $4 million contract to the Boca Raton-based Database Technologies Inc. (subsidiary of ChoicePoint).  They were tasked with finding improperly registered voters in the state’s database, but mistakes were rampant. “At one point, the list included as felons 8,000 former Texas residents who had been convicted of misdemeanors.” St. Petersburg Times (Florida), December 21, 2003. (remove 8,000 votes from texans charged with misdemeanors angry with Bush's 'Texas Justice' and presto you have FL going to Bush. These people have a right to vote btw, they were illegally removed due to, oops, bungling.)

In 1997, Rick Rozar, the late head of the company bought by ChoicePoint, donated $100,000 to the Republican National Committee. Melanie Eversley, “Atlanta-Based Company Says Errors in Felon Purge Not Its Fault,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May 28, 2001.  Frank Borman of Database Technologies Inc. has donated extensively to New Mexico Republicans, as well as to the Presidential campaign of George W. Bush. (omg, can you believe that Katherine and Jeb awarded $4 million to a Republican donator?? Gee, I hope he was non-partisan in laying out his guidelines for elimating votes......get real)

This isn't some far out conspiracy theory. You'd have to blind (volunarily or not) to not read between the lines. People with power and money do one thing very well, they stick together. Everyone knows that Republicans always vote as a block, it's how they get things accomplished even with minority control. And now they want us to believe that things got screwed up and just happened to go Bush's way, oops, so sorry. Well, I'm not fooled and I hope you won't let yourselves be fooled.

What kills me the most is that winning is everything to these kinds of people. The ends always justify the means. Sell your country or your soul it doesn't matter as long as you win!

Robert/ Cobra- I see your points but most of us aren't concerned how the votes are counted as long as you can have a fair non-partisan process.

In 2000 FL, we had the GOP in controll of everything. I know it's painful, but lets recap:

Gov. Jeb Bush telling reporters 'well he is my brother' when asked if he would use his power to cast all of Florida's electoral votes for Bush Jr.

Catherine Harris calling press conference after conference to announce that Bush has won, even before the recount was finished.

A lets not forget that Jeb picked the company to recount the votes and that this company is headed by a regular GOP donator.

We had a fairly non-partisan board to review 9/11, why can't we get the same for picking our president? Hasn't anyone seen George Bush's IQ tests? He's borderline retarded! Now I love mentally challenged people as much as anyone else, but love don't make one fit to be president. This is a puppet administration if there ever was one and I'm sick to death of his exclusionist policies......awww I fell better.