Cordy,

Certainly you can't be suggesting that we are finished in Afganistan, or even that Afganistan has really moved all that far along the way. Don't make the same mistake that Bush made. Don't declare victory before the real war begins.

I think it's premature to say how many American lives will be lost in Afganistan or even how long we will be there. I think it's premature to say that the elections in Iraq mean that they have achieved democracy or stability. The test is when and if American troops can leave and the nation can stand on it's own. Rather than bringing democracy, this election may in fact bring more American troops and less stability into the arena.

 

I think that's a very good comparison. This administration was very good at promoting and capitalizing on fear, as well as exploiting 9/11 during the campaign. However, they haven't done so well with maintaining the same level of hysteria.

 

That's a question that was posed to Sen. Joseph McCarthy at the televised Army-McCarthy hearings, which led to McCarthy's fall from grace.

 

Correct. Who said it and why?

 

An attorney for the Army - Welsh(?). IIRC, the question was in response to McCarthy's suggestion that the attorney's young assistant was a Communist.

 

Correct again. It was the beginning of the end of Mr. McCarthy. Unfortunately his tactics lived on.

 

Let's not give old slimy Joe more credit than he deserves. Political figures have been using those tactics for centuries. They've generally very effective for a time. How long it takes for it to be realized that the emperor has no clothes in our current situation remains to be seen. I hate to wish my life away, but I can't wait for this four years to be over.
On a related note, I saw a news report that Shrub used the word 'freedom' twenty seven times and the word 'liberty' fifteen times in his inaugural speech. The guy really needs some new speech writers. I wonder what Pat Buchanan is up to these days...

 

Question, not entirely unrelated: How many color-coded terror alerts have we had in the three months before the election? How many in the three months after the election?

Hmm.

 

I have a "Christian background", and I wouldn't be surprised if Dean did too. Yet it seems neither of us is even Deist, much less Christian.

Of course, Dean definitely seems "mindful of the role of religion in past governments".

 

So he's saying what he believes, rather than what some fancy speech writer writes for him. Personally, I kind of like that. Anyone have a link to the speech?