"dave weil" wrote in message


You've thrown plenty of those blinkered viewpoints yourself. For
instance, Clinton can't seem to have done anything right, and yet, his
administration marshalled just about the strongest economic period in
American history.

Does anybody actually believe that the economic state of the world or even a
large sophisticated nation starts and ends on the boundaries of any given
president's administration? I would sincerely hope not!

True, he did something's wrong, like actually being
the cause of 9/11 with his botched attempt on bin Laden's life.

As if 9/11 had a single cause or a single major contributing cause. Then
there's the question as to whether or not any American president could have
done anything effective about them. There's a large scale management problem
in the Arab world that is beyond the scope of these comments to even
outline. It didn't get set up in a day, but instead it evolved in place
over centuries. Guess what the time scale of any effective solution to it is
likely to be!

But, I think if you throw out the vindictiveness of the Republican
marshalled sexual harassment suit, the intense scrutiny of the
Republicans over Whitewater (talk about your massive spending), and
the hectoring over extramarital affairs, the Clinton times can be
seen as a period of great things for the US as a whole.

The historical perspective on the Clinton years seems to be forming along
the lines of "good in spite of", rather than "good because of". I think
that the Republicans deserve points for keeping Clinton from doing maybe 80
or 90% of what he and his wife wanted to do.

We'll never know for sure what the Clinton response to 9/11 would have been,
but all informed speculation I've seen has been a lot less than encouraging.
Of course we don't really don't know yet what good we did with the Bush
response to 9/11, but what we saw on TV sure was satisfying to most of us! I
might add that if we had done as well in Iraq as we did in Afghanistan, the
world would be a happier place, not that Afghanistan is shaping up as any
kind of an encouraging success.

And, it seems that President Bush is no Truman. Whatever happened to
"The buck stops here".

Different times, different worlds; simpler times, a vastly simpler world.
You've got to remember that the CIA was formed under Truman's
administration, as an example of how much simpler those times were.

Consider that we've heard almost nothing on how and why Liberia is
in such a state of chaos.

Speak for yourself.

Not that long ago Liberia and it's
president were fading out due to the world turning it's back on the
regime there. Then some asshole gave the Taylor government
legitimacy.

Say what?

Well, who gave weapons to Hussein way back when?

I think someone needs a little historical review here. Both times we went up
against him, were Hussein's troops pushing US iron or Russian iron? Were
his troops carrying M16s or AK47s? Were they driving M1s, and M60s or T60s
and T70s? Where they flying MIGs or F-15 and F18s? Were they launching Scuds
or Pershings? Who gave weapons to Hussein? Well they didn't give Hussein
squat, they sold it to him and they are still waiting to get paid. They are
probably going to wait a long time!

The Russian, French, and German response to our invasion plans can be summed
up in two words: accounts payable. We probably did them a big favor by
setting the stage for them to charge off their bad debts now, before they
drag their economies down for years like is happening to the Japanese.

OK, we gave Hussein some help back during the Iraq-Iran war. However, any
reasonable analysis shows that what we gave him was mostly highly
perishable, and he pretty much squandered it anyway.