clinton

[number6]

I don't know the answer to that question, but I doubt it had any real effect on the economy. You may be aware that the current US budget for military spending is greater than all of the other nations of the world combined, but it only accounts for about 2% of the US Gross National Product. I think you will find that the SDI program is also small potatoes in the grand scheme of things. I was not referring to you Acriku in my previous post. I know you were just asking a question.

[sneezer3]

Has anyone here heard of the Ruby Ridge Situation?

[Zopwx2]

WHOA! back to clinton! I never said he was perfect. I was just saying , compared to other presidents. the clinton years were pretty good. and he didnt lie, he didnt have sex, he just got blown. ;)

[Gobalopper]

The years during a presidency aren't always a good sign of how a president impacted the economy. You could argue that the good economy during the Clinton years were from the actions started by Reagan. The entire economy during the Clinton years was built off of the dotcom bubble and look what happened to that.

[Caid Ivik]

Clinton was a saint compared to such great presidents as Richard "Watergate" Nixon and Ronald "Iran-Contra" Reagan. :)

So, about Nixon I can say he should been awarded by Nobel Prize for peace due to he understood war in Vietnam cannot be won. Also he led USA for first weapon limitations with USSR. And Reagan was a great president, because he found out those SALTs are nonsense and only way to bring USSR down is to overproduct them in weapons - what succeeded.

Clinton was on good way to solve the Palestine problem. However, death of Jicchak Rabin ended it. Second problem were his contacts with Ms Lewinsky. With such embarassment he lost courage to deal with Iraq, when they banished the UN inspections in 1998. At least in Yugoslavia won intellect and logic over boulevar magazines.

[DukeLeto]

I am amazed at how young people on these forums freely bash great presidents like Reagan and whine because Clinton gets in trouble for lieing under oath. If Clinton had answered truthfully from the beginning I would agree no big deal, but he outright lied and tried to cover up. No different than what Nixon did. Nixon lied too, but at least he had enough honor to resign instead of going on TV and asking what the definition of "is" is. President Reagan was responsible for bringing down the Berlin wall and ending the USSR. I think he did a great job. Why is Reagen such a bad president? Please inform me.

lol, I am sooo sick of hearing ignorant Republicans say that Reagen ended the cold war...Relations with the Soviets plummeted into non-existense. Reagen hated communists, and he made those feelings felt. And you don't win a cold war by further pissing off your opponents.

People with some grasp of real history can tell you Michael(?) Gorbachev ended the cold war. ::)

Oh, and how was Reagen a bad president? He was illegally selling weapons to Iran, for god's sakes! ::)

[Anathema]

Duke, I take you meant Iraq? Reagan sold chemicals to Sadam so he could gass Iranese troops.

Anyway, I'll remember Clinton as the man that made the US look stupid in front of the whole world. That's not to say he was the worst president ever- Nixon was. Nixon used the FBI to steal documents from political adversaries and he was about as anti semitic as Sadam Hussein.

I don't know how well Bush manages his own country, and frankly I don't care, but he's been a dick al along when it comes to foreign policy. Remember the spy plane incident above China? Or how's about the START treaties he didn't uphold, while Russia did? He also refused to sign the Kyoto treaty, while every other country in the world did.

[exatreide]

The years during a presidency aren't always a good sign of how a president impacted the economy. You could argue that the good economy during the Clinton years were from the actions started by Reagan. The entire economy during the Clinton years was built off of the dotcom bubble and look what happened to that.

Wasnt American In a ressesian after Bush?

[Zopwx2]

We are looking all over iraq for chemical weapons. when there is this barn looking structure in russia that has thousands of vials of chemical weapons guarded by one padlock! And guards with no guns. America finally gave them somthing like 10 million, but its still going to take ten years to build a disposal site.

[Zopwx2]

PS, Every president lies, thats why they are in polotics

[Caid Ivik]

Duke, I take you meant Iraq? Reagan sold chemicals to Sadam so he could gass Iranese troops.

How you can blast such nonsense?

[number6]

I am amazed at how young people on these forums freely bash great presidents like Reagan and whine because Clinton gets in trouble for lieing under oath. If Clinton had answered truthfully from the beginning I would agree no big deal, but he outright lied and tried to cover up. No different than what Nixon did. Nixon lied too, but at least he had enough honor to resign instead of going on TV and asking what the definition of "is" is. President Reagan was responsible for bringing down the Berlin wall and ending the USSR. I think he did a great job. Why is Reagen such a bad president? Please inform me.

lol, I am sooo sick of hearing ignorant Republicans say that Reagen ended the cold war...Relations with the Soviets plummeted into non-existense. Reagen hated communists, and he made those feelings felt. And you don't win a cold war by further pissing off your opponents.

People with some grasp of real history can tell you Michael(?) Gorbachev ended the cold war. ::)

Oh, and how was Reagen a bad president? He was illegally selling weapons to Iran, for god's sakes! ::)

Yes, weapons were sold, but Reagen was never found guilty. It seems you are the one who fails to grasp real history. Gorbachev was a key factor in bringing an end to the cold war, but it was Reagen's SDI program and a poor Russian economy that guided his decisions. To say that Gorbachev alone ended the cold war is an overly simplified view of history and I suggest you learn some humility. You are a very arrogant person.

[Acriku]

Some conspiracy theories say that this Iraq war is a continuation against communism, and of the cold war.

[Caid Ivik]

Weapons for Iran (i.e. F-14 Tomcat fighters, Rapier SAM system...) were sold in era of president Carter, who was made an idol last year. His actions after these things fell to Chomeini after revolution were nicest embarassments in US history (fields of mighty Hueys shot down by Rapiers...). Reagan was a master of bluffing, as whole SDI project was. But it very helped knocking down USSR.

[Anathema]

Caid: we've been over that a million times on this board. Did you miss that? Technicly, it was like this. During the administrations of Reagan and Bush senior Sadam was allowed to purchase "dual use" chemicals and other materials. Of course everybody believed that the anthrax Sadam got was meant for university studies and such ::)

I suppose that Reagan deserves some credit in ending the Cold War (calling the Soviet Union "an evil empire" doesn't improve foreign relations much). However, Gorbachov played a bigger part in this.

[Caid Ivik]

Maybe you was just unable to prove that fact. Also, what makes you think Iraq hasn't bought it all from Russia? Also if Saddam was so hostile to Israel, why should USA support them with such devastating weapons? Weird they haven't given no ampulle to Turkey, which is close to Iran too...

[Anathema]

Maybe you was just unable to prove that fact.

Sigh.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,866942,00.html

Also, what makes you think Iraq hasn't bought it all from Russia?

Why would I think that? Do you believe that?

Also if Saddam was so hostile to Israel, why should USA support them with such devastating weapons?

To kill Iranese.

Weird they haven't given no ampulle to Turkey, which is close to Iran too...

Technicly, Turkey wasn't in war with Iran at that time ::)

[Caid Ivik]

Why they haven't sent anthrax to Afghans, South Vietnam, South Korea and any other friendly country?

Who is that Julian Borger? Some kind of british anti-war protester? Next time there should be written a source for such unbased yells.

[Anathema]

They gave chemicals and biological materials to Saddam because the war was going badly for the Iraqis, and the US didn't want Iran to win.

Here's another one:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A52241-2002Dec29&notFound=true

The story of U.S. involvement with Saddam Hussein in the years before his 1990 attack on Kuwait -- which included large-scale intelligence sharing, supply of cluster bombs through a Chilean front company, and facilitating Iraq's acquisition of chemical and biological precursors -- is a topical example of the underside of U.S. foreign policy.

The administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush authorized the sale to Iraq of numerous items that had both military and civilian applications, including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological viruses, such as anthrax and bubonic plague.

[number6]

"It was a horrible mistake then, but we have got it right now," says Kenneth M. Pollack, a former CIA military analyst and author of "The Threatening Storm," which makes the case for war with Iraq. "My fellow [CIA] analysts and I were warning at the time that Hussein was a very nasty character. We were constantly fighting the State Department."

"Fundamentally, the policy was justified," argues David Newton, a former U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, who runs an anti-Hussein radio station in Prague. "We were concerned that Iraq should not lose the war with Iran, because that would have threatened Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. Our long-term hope was that Hussein's government would become less repressive and more responsible."

What makes present-day Hussein different from the Hussein of the 1980s, say Middle East experts, is the mellowing of the Iranian revolution and the August 1990 invasion of Kuwait that transformed the Iraqi dictator, almost overnight, from awkward ally into mortal enemy. In addition, the United States itself has changed. As a result of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, U.S. policymakers take a much more alarmist view of the threat posed by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

The above quote is from the same page you linked above Earthnuker. Things change for many reasons and what seemed like a good idea in the past should not dictate all future decisions. Was it a bad idea in retrospect? Yes. Did they know back then what we know now? Of course not. It's always easy to point to past mistakes to prove current arguments, but it is history and we should learn from these mistakes and not dwell on them. The article very plainly points out that September 11 drasctically changed the US view on terrorism and Weapons of Mass Destruction. If they can strike are inner most cities with airplanes just think what they can do with WMD.

[Edric O]

Number6, Reagen had little to do with ending the Cold War. If anything, I could say that the Cold War ended despite Reagen's best efforts to really piss off the Soviets.

In fact, the collapse of the USSR was inevitable, and had been predicted as early as the 1930's by people who had inside knowledge on it, such as Leon Trotsky. Mikhail Gorbachev just helped it go down faster (and probably a lot more peacefully than it would have happened otherwise).

Many people believe that communist economies were flawed, and that this is what lead to the collapse of the Eastern bloc. On the contrary! It was a miracle that the East held up as much as it did, in the face of vastly superior Western economic power. At the time of WW2, the East was already extremely far behind the West - much more than it is now. Communism was what allowed it to catch up to the West. Bust as this "communism" still carried the fatal flaws caused by Stalin (the most notable among them being the lack of freedom), it could not sustain itself, and eventually collapsed. Think about it: What brought down the Soviet bloc? The people's desire for freedom. Stalinism failed precisely because it opressed the people. In true communism, this wouldn't have happened.

But, in any case, what I'm trying to say is that the already existing East-West gap is what decided the fate of the Cold War. If America had been communist and Russia capitalist, then communism would have won.

[number6]

I am not sure where you get your information. Perhaps a link or 2 to support your statements? Many reputable sources have credited Reagen with winning the cold war. Now you say he had nothing to do with it. Do you see why I am skeptical?

[exatreide]

Number6, Reagen had little to do with ending the Cold War. If anything, I could say that the Cold War ended despite Reagen's best efforts to really piss off the Soviets.

In fact, the collapse of the USSR was inevitable, and had been predicted as early as the 1930's by people who had inside knowledge on it, such as Leon Trotsky. Mikhail Gorbachev just helped it go down faster (and probably a lot more peacefully than it would have happened otherwise).

Many people believe that communist economies were flawed, and that this is what lead to the collapse of the Eastern bloc. On the contrary! It was a miracle that the East held up as much as it did, in the face of vastly superior Western economic power. At the time of WW2, the East was already extremely far behind the West - much more than it is now. Communism was what allowed it to catch up to the West. Bust as this "communism" still carried the fatal flaws caused by Stalin (the most notable among them being the lack of freedom), it could not sustain itself, and eventually collapsed. Think about it: What brought down the Soviet bloc? The people's desire for freedom. Stalinism failed precisely because it opressed the people. In true communism, this wouldn't have happened.

But, in any case, what I'm trying to say is that the already existing East-West gap is what decided the fate of the Cold War. If America had been communist and Russia capitalist, then communism would have won.

East europes econemy wouldnt have bene crap if they would have stuck with the turks now would it? NO! mwahahahhahaha(runs away dancing like a little school girl) but really you had to get all freedom wanting and rebel...well next time dont do it! I think you learned your lesson balkans!

[Anathema]

Number6: the US hasn't been able to prove ties between Iraq and terrorist groups active within the US, let alone that Sadam has supplied them with any weapons.

Is this war truly about terrorism? The US has been talking about war for several months now, first it was because of Saddams part in the 9/11 attacks. The White House claimed to have evidence of ties between Hussein and Al Quada, but never showed this evidence to the outside world.

When the world didn't buy that excuse, they started looking for others. The new argument was that Saddam was constructing nuclear weapons. The US was said to have evidence, but didn't provide any real evidence- the evidence they did provide turned out to be forged:

Guardian Article

CNN article

And when the war started, the operation was called "Iraqi Freedom" and the White House put the focus on the deplorable human rights situation in Iraq rather then WMD or terrorism. Human rights is a valid, though in my opinion insufficient, reason to invade, but it does clearly show that the US was just looking for a reason to start a war. You can't really say that the US did their utmost best to solve the situation through diplomatic means either. In my eyes, Bush wanted to start a war against Iraq. And why wouldn't he? War times do wonders to popularity ratings, and of course he wanted to nail the bastard that tried to kill his father.

[number6]

Eartnuker,

I don't want to get into this discussion about terrorism and WMD in this thread. I was just pointing out that the link you provided had information that you selectively did not include in your quote and answered some of the questions that you raised. I just wanted the rest of the story to be told. Why not open a new thread about this subject?