Quick history primer of Democratic Presidents leading us to war

[supercow]

Paging Angry Whelk..........

[DougW]

Not that I want to get into an aurgement on which of your parties gets you into wars but . Wasn't it a rep. that got you into the Civil War. The first great bloody war of modern times. I believe until WW2 the causuality figures held the records for the US. WW1 was pretty small potates for you guys coming in so late and all.

I think the important thing to figure out was each of these wars a "good" war in hind sight. And if you had been more aggressive would the wars have been less bloody.

[Droopy]

I believe until WW2 the causuality figures held the records for the US.

Nah WWII was somthing like 220,000 American troops dead, Civil war was like 620,000 dead both of those figures are just battle deaths i belive, and correct WWI was relivitly small, 110,000. However the big loser in the world has always been russia WWi - 1.7 million dead, WWII - 13.6 million military dead, 7.7million civilian, 21.3 million total. They get fucking wholoped all the time

[crashnburn'd]

Nah WWII was somthing like 220,000 American troops dead, Civil war was like 620,000 dead both of those figures are just battle deaths i belive, and correct WWI was relivitly small, 110,000. However the big loser in the world has always been russia WWi - 1.7 million dead, WWII - 13.6 million military dead, 7.7million civilian, 21.3 million total. They get fucking wholoped all the time

About 405,000 US soldiers died in WW2, all your other numbers are good though.

[DougW]

Nah WWII was somthing like 220,000 American troops dead, Civil war was like 620,000 dead both of those figures are just battle deaths i belive, and correct WWI was relivitly small, 110,000. However the big loser in the world has always been russia WWi - 1.7 million dead, WWII - 13.6 million military dead, 7.7million civilian, 21.3 million total. They get fucking wholoped all the time

Ok , if you want to be silly you could say that the worst war by far was started by a rep. But that doesn't proof anything. WW1 was for Canada the worst war in that 100,000 lost for a population which was and always seems to be 1/10th of the States.

[Will]

A few points:

1) Inspectors in N. Korea and Iran? Uhhhh that's some mighty fine crack you're smoking. The inspectors were THROWN OUT of N. Korea during Bush's watch (12/2002). The IAEA inspectors in Iran are there thanks to the efforts of the Brits, Germans, and French. Our contribution was not standing in their way.

2) It took Saddam Hussein 24 years to kill and estimated 300,000 civillians. It took us 18 months to kill an estimated 100,000 civillians.

[grrrr]

Give up already!!!!

It's been proven time and time again that logic doesn't work for the conservatives. We've given them too much credit believing they can actually use reason in their "decision making process." read:herd mentality zombiness

[Buster Highmen]

I remember him (I scarcely have the right to use this ghostly verb; only one man on earth deserved the right, and he is dead), I remember him with a dark passionflower in his hand, looking at it as no one has ever looked at such a flower, though they might look from the twilight of day until the twilight of night, for a whole life long. I remember him, his face immobile and Indian-like, and singularly remote, behind his cigarette. I remember (I believe) the strong delicate fingers of the plainsman who can braid leather. I remember, near those hands, a vessel in which to make maté tea, bearing the arms of the Banda Oriental; I remember, in the window of the house, a yellow rush mat, and beyond, a vague marshy landscape. I remember clearly his voice, the deliberate, resentful nasal voice of the old Eastern Shore man, without the Italianate syllables of today. I did not see him more than three times; the last time, in 1887. . . .

That all those who knew him should write something about him seems to me a very felicitous idea; my testimony may perhaps be the briefest and without doubt the poorest, and it will not be the least impartial. The deplorable fact of my being an Argentinian will hinder me from falling into a dithyramb - an obligatory form in the Uruguay, when the theme is an Uruguayan.

Littérateur, slicker, Buenos Airean: Funes did not use these insulting phrases, but I am sufficiently aware that for him I represented these unfortunate categories. Pedro Leandro Ipuche has written that Funes was a precursor of the superman, "an untamed and vernacular Zarathustra"; I do not doubt it, but one must not forget, either, that he was a countryman from the town of Fray Bentos, with certain incurable limitations.

My first recollection of Funes is quite clear: I see him at dusk, sometime in March or February of the year '84. That year, my father had taken me to spend the summer at Fray Bentos. I was on my way back from the farm at San Francisco with my cousin Bernardo Haedo. We came back singing, on horseback; and this last fact was not the only reason for my joy. After a sultry day, an enormous slate-grey-storm had obscured the sky. It was driven on by a wind from the south; the trees were already tossing like madmen; and I had the apprehension (the secret hope) that the elemental downpour would catch us out in the open. We were running a kind of race with the tempest. We rode into a narrow lane which wound down between two enormously high brick footpaths. It had grown black of a sudden; I now heard rapid almost secret steps above; I raised my eyes and saw a boy running along the narrow, cracked path as if he were running along a narrow, broken wall. I remember the loose trousers, tight at the bottom, the hemp sandals; I remember the cigarette in the hard visage, standing out against the by now limitless darkness. Bernardo unexpectedly yelled to him: "What's the time, Ireneo?" Without looking up, without stopping, Ireneo replied: "In ten minutes it will be eight o'clock, child Bernardo Juan Francisco." The voice was sharp, mocking.

I am so absentminded that the dialogue which I have just cited would not have penetrated my attention if it had not been repeated by my cousin, who was stimulated, I think, by a certain local pride and by a desire to show himself indifferent to the other's three-sided reply.

He told me that the boy above us in the pass was a certain Ireneo Funes, renowned for a number of eccentricities, such as that of having nothing to do with people and of always knowing the time, like a watch. He added that Ireneo was the son of Maria Clementina Funes, an ironing woman in the town, and that his father, some people said, was an "Englishman" named O'Connor, a doctor in the salting fields, though some said the father was a horse-breaker, or scout, from the province of El Salto. Ireneo lived with his mother, at the edge of the country house of the Laurels.

In the years '85 and '86 we spent the summer in the city of Montevideo. We returned to Fray Bentos in '87. As was natural, I inquired after all my acquaintances, and finally, about "the chronometer Funes." I was told that he had been thrown by a wild horse at the San Francisco ranch, and that he had been hopelessly crippled. I remember the impression of uneasy magic which the news provoked in me: the only time I had seen him we were on horseback, coming from San Francisco, and he was in a high place; from the lips of my cousin Bernardo the affair sounded like a dream elaborated with elements out of the past. They told me that Ireneo did not move now from his cot, but remained with his eyes fixed on the backyard fig tree, or on a cobweb. At sunset he allowed himself to be brought to the window. He carried pride to the extreme of pretending that the blow which had befallen him was a good thing. . . . Twice I saw him behind the iron grate which sternly delineated his eternal imprisonment: unmoving, once, his eyes closed; unmoving also, another time, absorbed in the contemplation of a sweet-smelling sprig of lavender cotton.

At the time I had begun, not without some ostentation, the methodical study of Latin. My valise contained the De viris illustribus of Lhomond, the Thesaurus of Quicherat, Caesar's Commentaries, and an odd-numbered volume of the Historia Naturalis of Pliny, which exceeded (and still exceeds) my modest talents as a Latinist. Everything is noised around in a small town; Ireneo, at his small farm on the outskirts, was not long in learning of the arrival of these anomalous books. He sent me a flowery, ceremonious letter, in which he recalled our encounter, unfortunately brief, "on the seventh day of February of the year '84," and alluded to the glorious services which Don Gregorio Haedo, my uncle, dead the same year, "had rendered to the Two Fatherlands in the glorious campaign of Ituzaingó," and he solicited the loan of any one of the volumes, to be accompanied by a dictionary "for the better intelligence of the original text, for I do not know Latin as yet." He promised to return them in good condition, almost immediately. The letter was perfect, very nicely constructed; the orthography was of the type sponsored by Andrés Bello: i for y, j for g. At first I naturally suspected a jest. My cousins assured me it was not so, that these were the ways of Ireneo. I did not know whether to attribute to impudence, ignorance, or stupidity the idea that the difficult Latin required no other instrument than a dictionary; in order fully to undeceive him I sent the Gradus ad Parnassum of Quicherat, and the Pliny.

On 14 February, I received a telegram from Buenos Aires telling me to return immediately, for my father was "in no way well." God forgive me, but the prestige of being the recipient of an urgent telegram, the desire to point out to all of Fray Bentos the contradiction between the negative form of the news and the positive adverb, the temptation to dramatize my sorrow as I feigned a virile stoicism, all no doubt distracted me from the possibility of anguish. As I packed my valise, I noticed that I was missing the Gradus and the volume of the Historia Naturalis. The "Saturn" was to weigh anchor on the morning of the next day; that night, after supper, I made my way to the house of Funes. Outside, I was surprised to find the night no less oppressive than the day.

Ireneo's mother received me at the modest ranch.

[Buster Highmen]

She told me that Ireneo was in the back room and that I should not be disturbed to find him in the dark, for he knew how to pass the dead hours without lighting the candle. I crossed the cobblestone patio, the small corridor; I came to the second patio. A great vine covered everything, so that the darkness seemed complete. Of a sudden I heard the high-pitched, mocking voice of Ireneo. The voice spoke in Latin; the voice (which came out of the obscurity) was reading, with obvious delight, a treatise or prayer or incantation. The Roman syllables resounded in the earthen patio; my suspicion made them seem undecipherable, interminable; afterwards, in the enormous dialogue of that night, I learned that they made up the first paragraph of the twenty-fourth chapter of the seventh book of the Historia Naturalis. The subject of this chapter is memory; the last words are ujt nihil non iisdem verbis redderetur auditum.

Without the least change in his voice, Ireneo bade me come in. He was lying on the cot, smoking. It seems to me that I did not see his face until dawn; I seem to recall the momentary glow of the cigarette. The room smelled vaguely of dampness. I sat down, and repeated the story of the telegram and my father's illness.

I come now to the most difficult point in my narrative. For the entire story has no other point (the reader might as well know it by now) than this dialogue of almost a half-century ago. I shall not attempt to reproduce his words, now irrecoverable. I prefer truthfully to make a résumé of the many things Ireneo told me. The indirect style is remote and weak; I know that I sacrifice the effectiveness of my narrative; but let my readers imagine the nebulous sentences which coulded that night.

Ireneo began by enumerating, in Latin and Spanish, the cases of prodigious memory cited in the Historia Naturalis: Cyrus, king of the Persians, who could call every soldier in his armies by name; Mithridates Eupator, who administered justice in the twenty-two languages of his empire; Simonides, inventory of mnemotechny; Metrodorus, who practised the art of repeating faithfully what he heard once. With evident good faith Funes marvelled that such things should be considered marvellous. He told me that previous to the rainy afternoon when the blue-tinted horse threw him, he had been - like any Christian - blind, deaf-mute, somnambulistic, memoryless. (I tried to remind him of his precise perception of time, his memory for proper names; he paid no attention to me.) For nineteen years, he said, he had lived like a person in a dream: he looked without seeing, heard without hearing, forgot everything - almost everything. On falling from the horse, he lost consciousness; when he recovered it, the present was almost intolerable it was so rich and bright; the same was true of the most ancient and most trivial memories. A little later he realized that he was crippled. This fact scarcely interested him. He reasoned (or felt) that immobility was a minimum price to pay. And now, his perception and his memory were infallible.

We, in a glance, perceive three wine glasses on the table; Funes saw all the shoots, clusters, and grapes of the vine. He remembered the shapes of the clouds in the south at dawn on the 30th of April of 1882, and he could compare them in his recollection with the marbled grain in the design of a leather-bound book which he had seen only once, and with the lines in the spray which an oar raised in the Rio Negro on the eve of the battle of the Quebracho. These recollections were not simple; each visual image was linked to muscular sensations, thermal sensations, etc. He could reconstruct all his dreams, all his fancies. Two or three times he had reconstructed an entire day. He told me: I have more memories in myself alone than all men have had since the world was a world. And again: My dreams are like your vigils. And again, toward dawn: My memory, sir, is like a garbage disposal.

A circumference on a blackboard, a rectangular triangle, a rhomb, are forms which we can fully intuit; the same held true with Ireneo for the tempestuous mane of a stallion, a herd of cattle in a pass, the ever-changing flame or the innumerable ash, the many faces of a dead man during the course of a protracted wake. He could perceive I do not know how many stars in the sky.

These things he told me; neither then nor at any time later did they seem doubtful. In those days neither the cinema nor the phonograph yet existed; nevertheless, it seems strange, almost incredible, that no one should have experimented on Funes. The truth is that we all live by leaving behind; no doubt we all profoundly know that we are immortal and that sooner or later every man will do all things and know everything.

The voice of Funes, out of the darkness, continued. He told me that toward 1886 he had devised a new system of enumeration and that in a very few days he had gone before twenty-four thousand. He had not written it down, for what he once meditated would not be erased. The first stimulus to his work, I believe, had been his discontent with the fact that "thirty-three Uruguayans" required two symbols and three words, rather than a single word and a single symbol. Later he applied his extravagant principle to the other numbers. In place of seven thousand thirteen, he would say (for example) Máximo Perez; in place of seven thousand fourteen, The Train; other numbers were Luis Melián Lafinur, Olimar, Brimstone, Clubs, The Whale, Gas, The Cauldron, Napoleon, Agustín de Vedia. In lieu of five hundred, he would say nine. Each word had a particular sign, a species of mark; the last were very complicated. . . . I attempted to explain that this rhapsody of unconnected terms was precisely the contrary of a system of enumeration. I said that to say three hundred and sixty-five was to say three hundreds, six tens, five units: an analysis which does not exist in such numbers as The Negro Timoteo or The Flesh Blanket. Funes did not understand me, or did not wish to understand me.

Locke, in the seventeenth century, postulated (and rejected) an impossible idiom in which each individual object, each stone, each bird and branch had an individual name; Funes had once projected an analogous idiom, but he had renounced it as being too general, too ambiguous. In effect, Funes not only remembered every leaf on every tree of every wood, but even every one of the times he had perceived or imagined it. He determined to reduce all of his past experience to some seventy thousand recollections, which he would later define numerically. Two considerations dissuaded him: the thought that the task was interminable and the thought that it was useless. He knew that at the hour of his death he would scarcely have finished classifying even all the memories of his childhood.

The two projects I have indicated (an infinite vocabulary for the natural series of numbers, and a usable mental catalogue of all the images of memory) are lacking in sense, but they reveal a certain stammering greatness. They allow us to make out dimly, or to infer, the dizzying world of Funes. He was, let us not forget, almost incapable of general, platonic ideas. It was not only difficult for him to understand that the generic term dog embraced so many unlike specimens of differing sizes and different forms; he was disturbed by the fact that a dog at three-fourteen (seen in profile) should have the same name as the dog at three-fifteen (seen from the front). His own face in the mirror, his own hands, surprised him on every occasion. Swift writes that the emperor of Lilliput could discern the movement of the minute hand; Funes could continuously make out the tranquil advances of corruption, of caries, of fatigue. He noted the progress of death, of moisture. He was the solitary and lucid spectator of a multiform world which was instantaneously and almost intolerably exact. Babylon, London, and New York have overawed the imagination of men with their ferocious splendour; no one, in those populous towers or upon those surging avenues, has felt the heat and pressure of a reality as indefatigable as that which day and night converged upon the unfortunate Ireneo in his humble South American farmhouse. It was very difficult for him to sleep. To sleep is to be abstracted from the world; Funes, on his back in his cot, in the shadows, imagined every crevice and every moulding of the various houses which surrounded him. (I repeat, the least important of his recollections was more minutely precise and more lively than our perception of a physical pleasure or a physical torment.) Toward the east, in a section which was not yet cut into blocks of homes, there were some new unknown houses. Funes imagined them black, compact, made of a single obscurity; he would turn his face in this direction in order to sleep. He would also imagine himself at the bottom of the river, being rocked and annihilated by the current.

Without effort, he had learned English, French, Portuguese, Latin. I suspect, nevertheless, that he was not very capable of thought. To think is to forget a difference, to generalize, to abstract. In the overly replete world of Funes there were nothing but details, almost contiguous details.

The equivocal clarity of dawn penetrated along the earthen patio.

Then it was that I saw the face of the voice which had spoken all through the night. Ireneo was nineteen years old; he had been born in 1868; he seemed as monumental as bronze, more ancient than Egypt, anterior to the prophecies and the pyramids. It occurred to me that each one of my words (each one of my gestures) would live on in his implacable memory; I was benumbed by the fear of multiplying superfluous gestures.

Ireneo Funes died in 1889, of a pulmonary congestion.

(From Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges)

[Evil E]

I dont get it.

whats with you bushies? especially on a TGR board? TGR is all about exploring the world and all of the sports that we love are out in wilderness areas.

Because of this administration our environmental laws have never been weaker and our ability to explore our world as americans is riskier than ever before because all the other nations out there fucking hate us.

whats the matter with you people? How can you be skiers, climbers, kayakers, and explorers and be for a president that shits on your playgrounds and makes it tougher for you to leave the country? Freakin wierdos

[Duker]

Because of this administration our environmental laws have never been weaker and our ability to explore our world as americans is riskier than ever before because all the other nations out there fucking hate us.

Thats a mighty fine point. This is evident in Soul purpose when the russians try and detain Victoria. Although I cant seem to blame them she is an Uber-hottie.

[Blurred]

I dont get it.

whats with you bushies? especially on a TGR board? TGR is all about exploring the world and all of the sports that we love are out in wilderness areas.

Because of this administration our environmental laws have never been weaker and our ability to explore our world as americans is riskier than ever before because all the other nations out there fucking hate us.

whats the matter with you people? How can you be skiers, climbers, kayakers, and explorers and be for a president that shits on your playgrounds and makes it tougher for you to leave the country? Freakin wierdos

Bush being president has not effected my skiing experience negativly in the slightest. However, terrorists slamming planes into WTC effected my town in a huge way, being that we are dependent on tourism, most of which comes in on an airplane. I know where you stand politically Evil, and I respect that. Glad we don't bicker about it.

[splat]

Q. What's the difference between the Vietnam War and the Iraq War?















A. George W. Bush had a plan to get out of the Vietnam War.

[Duker]

Q. What's the difference between the Vietnam War and the Iraq War?

A. George W. Bush had a plan to get out of the Vietnam War.

two drops. ANd just for laughs because of the stupid ten character rule...

[Blurred]

Q. What's the difference between the Vietnam War and the Iraq War?

We won the "Iraq war".

[up an down]

We won the "Iraq war".

is that why you have not enlisted in the armed services,, cause the war is over?

[Evil E]

Blurred, I have too much fun skiing with you to get into a political pissing contest, but yes I have strong feelings against this administration.

But, If your main concern is having someone in office with military experience, why would you choose a cheerleader over a decorated veteran?

-- what i dont understand is why people act like bush is the great defender of our nation? Bush was the president DURING the attack on the WTC and reports show that he ignored warnings of terrorist attacks. He failed us in a way that no president has ever failed before, yet everyone pats him on the back the way you would a retarded kid who got a bronze in the special olympics. Good try there buddy. good try.

Look at the real facts, please, wake up. Bush uses the word "terrorism" to push every piece of bullshit legislature across the table and to distract the american people from all the other crap that he is doing. Hes trying to outlaw abortion once again, hes trying to write discrimination into our constitution to ban gay marriage. He gives unprecedented tax breaks to the richest people in the country (his buddies)

Halliburton is being investigated by the FBI for their building contracts in Iraq.

The truth will prevail, too many americans refuse to ignore the impact of this administration.

He is a failure as a president and I for one am embarrassed that this is the "leader" of our country.

[PlayHarder]

Q. What's the difference between the Vietnam War and the Iraq War?
A. George W. Bush had a plan to get out of the Vietnam War.

-Cool a "That Rocks" icon

[Game Over]

Bush being president has not effected my skiing experience negativly in the slightest. However, terrorists slamming planes into WTC effected my town in a huge way, being that we are dependent on tourism, most of which comes in on an airplane. I know where you stand politically Evil, and I respect that. Glad we don't bicker about it.

You forgot about how Condi Rice and Bush ignored memos that could have stoped 9-11. We had the intelegence, we in general terms knew how and what he wanted to attack, but the people at the top ignored it. So I guess the Bush presidency has efected you, cause 9-11 could have possibly been stoped...but he and his cronies (mostly Condi Rice) blew that chance..so we are stuck thinking what if we had compitent people there.

Too bad the media totally ignored the 9-11 commision's report.

[Blurred]

You forgot about how Condi Rice and Bush ignored memos that could have stoped 9-11. We had the intelegence, we in general terms knew how and what he wanted to attack, but the people at the top ignored it. So I guess the Bush presidency has efected you, cause 9-11 could have possibly been stoped...but he and his cronies (mostly Condi Rice) blew that chance..so we are stuck thinking what if we had compitent people there.

Too bad the media totally ignored the 9-11 commision's report.

I'm going on a road trip now, but I'll say it again. 9-11 wouldn't of happened if Clinton took Bin Laden when he was offered on a silver platter. Isn't this hindsight=20/20 stuff fun?

[FNG]

You guys hear that Rice said she'd like to be commissioner of the NFL after she's done with politics?

-edit- I'll give Clinton some blame for not taking Bin Laden if Blurred gives some blame to the current administration for botching the pre 9/11 intelligence...considering hindsight is 20/20 and all.

[mr_gyptian]

Ok , if you want to be silly you could say that the worst war by far was started by a rep. But that doesn't proof anything. WW1 was for Canada the worst war in that 100,000 lost for a population which was and always seems to be 1/10th of the States.

actually the South fired first on Fort Sumter. South Carolina seceded after Lincoln's inauguration.

Doug your argument called...it wants its leg to stand on back.

[Game Over]

I thought Clinton gave the go ahead and it was the top military brass that were worried about colateral damage and called it off.

Yea I guess you can blame Clinton, but it seems kinda..well, not as big of a fuck up as ignoring obvious memos a few months prior.

[Will]

I thought Clinton gave the go ahead and it was the top military brass that were worried about colateral damage and called it off.

Yea I guess you can blame Clinton, but it seems kinda..well, not as big of a fuck up as ignoring obvious memos a few months prior.

Here's what happened: (taken from another post)

In 1996 American diplomats pressed the hard-line Islamic regime of Sudan to expel Mr. bin Laden. They knew he wanted to attack Americans, but could not prove that he had. To build support for this effort among Middle Eastern governments, the State Department circulated a dossier that accused Mr. bin Laden of financing radical Islamic causes around the world. Sudanese officials met with their C.I.A. and State Department counterparts and signaled that they might turn Mr. bin Laden over to another country. Saudi Arabia and Egypt were possibilities. State Department and C.I.A. officials urged both Egypt and Saudi Arabia to accept him, according to former Clinton officials. "But both were afraid of the domestic reaction and refused," one recalled.
Sudan was unwilling to give Bin Laden to the US. If we wanted Bin Laden in '96 we would would have had to invade Sudan.
Conservatives claim that Clinton should have done just that. The same conservatives who probably spent the '90s pissing and moaning about how we had no business in Somalia.
---------------------------------

No one cared about any of this this 'till a speech by Sandy Berger in which he mentioned that there was a time when they might have been able to get Bin Laden; and although at the time it seemed like bad idea to invade Sudan just to get one man, in retrospect maybe they should have done it.

So, is this "offered on a silver platter" as Blurred claims? No. It is not. But the truth has never bothered Blurred before, so for him to start caring about it now would be out of character.

If you want to hate on Clinton for this, then you need to sincerely believe that in 1996 with no foreknowledge of 9/11 (and before the East Africa bombings or the USS Cole attack occured) that it would have been right and proper to invade Sudan and that you would have supported that action.

Now can you honestly say that?

[Beaver]

Tom dubious sounds like an alias of a maggot/minion too chickenshit to state his political beliefs.