Re: [Gnu-arch-users] [OT] the poetry of donald rumsfeld

[rdp]

> From: Tom Lord [mailto:address@hidden
> Sent: Thursday, March 18, 2004 3:46 PM

As long as we're this far off-topic.  I've never thought much of Mr.
Rumsfeld personally.  But, we didn't exactly vote for him (directly)
either.

> (The US now has a huge base in the middle east.  We win, haha.  Look
> no further (except to note that iraq was notably weak) for an
> understanding of why we went to war.  I'm personally quite uncertain
> that that was a bad idea.  But jeeze, I wish they would just say that,
> straight up.  So I'll do it for them.)

You know my whole complaint even before this whole thing got started was
that President Bush, or his advisors, made a tactical mistake in making
this about WMD.  Do they exist or not?  I don't know, and for the most
part I don't care.  They were a bad excuse to begin with and I expected it
to come back and bite the President where he sits, in the long run, before
it ever began. If they had just made it an issue of going in after
terrorists and those supporting them, I think that would have been
sufficient and reasonable.  But operating from the WMD position was weak
and really makes it look like he was finishing Daddy's fight for him.

I think the daily killing currently going on in Iraq with car bombs,
road-side bombs, and walking bombs, is fairly good proof that at least
now, there are plenty of terrorists in the country.  This unfortunately
seems to be the only aspect of Iraq that "our" (the American) media seem
interested in focusing upon.  How about a little more attention to what
day-to-day life is like for the troops there or for the appreciation that
they are being shown by the majority on a daily basis?

There are many people I know that are just returning from Iraq, some of
whom have been there for nearly a year, and they don't seem to be
reporting that everyone is mad that the government was overthrown from the
outside.  To the contrary it sounds like most of the peoples of Iraq were
thankful and just want to see a national government peacefully
established, so everyone, American, terrorist, etc. can go back home and
allow them to be Iraqis again.

I happened to be in Minsk, Belarus on September 11th.  The people on the
street would recognize us as Americans, stop, clench us to their breasts
and weep out loud because they understood, probably better than many, what
had just happened to our country.

If you know nothing about Belarus, it is a place that has been invaded and
repeatedly pillaged for centuries by who ever was the power in the area. 
Virtually everyone there has family members, grand-parents, etc. that were
killed during WWII, many in prison camps.  For years the USSR forbade them
to be Belarussians and made them speak, eat and act Russian.  They have
one of the most corrupt leaders in the world and they know it, but they
are glad to be Belarus again, for the first time in centuries.  Are things
perfect, no.  Are things "up to" American standards, no.  Would they have
supported us going into Iraq, probably not.  (A lot of their oil came from
Iraq.)  But, their neighbors, Russia, have to deal with a terrorist war as
well.  So, at least they would have understood, if only our leaders had
had the guts to prosecute a war against terrorists instead of just going
after easy targets to give the appearance of doing something.

I only wish we had someone with integrity running for national leadership.
 Someone who was willing to make the hard choices even when they aren't
popular.  Someone who knew their principles and stuck to them no matter
what.  I can dream, can't I?  Hey!, Tom have you considered running for
President? :-)  (I had to get some levity in this post.)  Unfortunately,
it is apparent that our leaders are all to comfortable compromising and
would rather do things that give the appearance of security, while
continuing to negotiate with those that started Islamicist terrorism in
the first place.

(Sorry, it was OT and you touched a sensitive spot of a relative
conservative that has seen to much and wishes there was a good choice in
the upcoming election.  I'd vote for just about anyone that had some
honest integrity.)