^^^^FootReads 2016

My plan is just to keep breathing to 2016

I gotta be honest, I only read one segment:

"Cheney was the one who probably had closed door sessions with the oil sector people with maps of Iraq drawn up before the invasion was even launched."

Then fell on the floor laughing.

I was willing to come here to discuss politics if you want; you can ask most of the guys, I know a thing or two like the USA is a country and North Korea is full of North Koreans. But when you open up with an accusation which holds no merit, It's easy to see the side you will stand for. I tend to lose interest because you will in return, good sir, will be expressing the values and opinions of your party, not your own thoughts and beliefs. And NOBODY wins those pissing contests my friend.

Don't take what I'm saying as an insult. I've read some of your posts on other threads and you seem like a well educated guy by your writing style and technique. I'm trying to avoid the "Me Party Good, You Party Bad, Me Throw Rock At You" Caveman argument.

PB........COME OVER TO THE DARK SIDE

Happy New Years, it's good to have you back from "college"!

it would be great to have an attorney general who would prosecute the criminal wall streeters. they need to be prosecuted, and if they never are, then, there is absolutely no risk in crooked investment banking.

and I for one think that government bailouts of the big brokerage houses and banks, should never happen again. never!!

...I recognize that Islam acts like the fucking mafia. That it needs a reformation. I'm not at all an advocate for it and I lived through the towers too, and the Charlie Hebdo attack. Nor is it a religion of peace.

I'm not that idealistic. I don't believe in torturing innocent people when common sense shows theyre innocent. Happened plenty of times when it didn't need to. Like in the case of Dilawar, the Afghan taxi driver who was tortured for trying to cross a border in his taxi (died by the way). His two passengers are still in guantanamo bay when its been proven they were just civilians. And Khalid Al-Masri, who was tortured for having the same name as a terrorist when a simple background check would clear up the confusion.

You don't have to dislike me for my politics either, man. Two of the people I most look up to in the world, almost like father figures are both fiscal republicans and we can hang out and shoot the shit just fine.

A modern democrats take on this issue would piss you off much, much more.

No argument there whatsoever. This is not the same party that welcomed my grandparents, but at the same time made them aware that living here was a privilege, and that they were expected to live up to their part of the bargain.

Barrett, I'm not coming in here to pick a fight because when you post on here or in the OC threads, you never post bull. And I do respect your decisions and thinking so do not think I'm trying to bash them.

Do you really think we picked up those taxi cab drivers for no reason? Like total mistake? Just picked them up off the streets and said "Here's some guys we can use for practice" Regardless of what side of the political line the officials that made the call to pick them up stand on, the guys that did so on months of intelligence. They are professionals that handle these situations very seriously.

Now I'm not saying I'm right and your wrong. When it comes to international politics, everyone has to understand that we as civilians know only around ten percent of the whole story. You can even look that statistic up if you don't believe me.

The information that CNN, Fox news, and other media outlets obtain to report on these situations are from third and fourth hand sources. The guys reporting straight to the top that says "Hey we are taking this guy in" are pretty much all high level officials in the defense agencies like CIA, NSA, FBI. These aren't "Private First Class Harry" out of basic training saying alright he's going to Gitmo. If I had to make an educated guess, I'd bet that there was a lot to the taxi driver situation that me and you do not know about and probably never will know about because it will remain classified.

It doesn't add up. We recently let out a bunch of high level terrorists from Gitmo, yet we are keeping these two clowns? Whether if they were couriers or actual members I do not know. But the government has to have a good reason for them still to be locked down.

It's fine man, as I understood it the purpose of the thread was for debate. I'm not too thin skinned. And thank ya



Of course. About 90% of the cases were handled well. I'm not losing any sleep over Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. My point was that in a wide-net torture program, that wide net is inevitably going to catch a few people in its midst that really don't deserve to be there. My point is there should be more oversight so incidents like this don't happen, and after the fact, we should be aware of what happened so as not to have a repeat scenario.



Yeah. We really don't know much. And transparency is very important. One of the great letdowns of the Obama administration, of course is a lack of transparency. There are some aspects of the torture program we probably WANT to be kept in the dark about, but some data that showed us how well it was working would have put a lot of people at ease.



That's fine. I just would prefer a demonstration by the NSA or a demonstration by the military to Congress that their respective programs instituted after 9/11 are doing their respective jobs admirably. You get me?



Right. It's definitely worth looking in to. There is a documentary out called Taxi to the dark Side as well as some investigate journalism on the subject. The other two mens names are "Abdul Rahim" and "Zakik Shah" if you want to look in to it. One has to form their own conclusion.

Some good debate on these topics. Moderate people willing to give an inch or two often come to reasonable conclusions without losing their heads. Case and point was Reagan and O'Neill. Literally on the opposite side of the political spectrum but they got along and passed some very effective legislation. Wish it was still like that

I used to be HARDCORE Republican and believed everyone else was wrong. I enlisted at 18, Infantry all the way. 6 months later got picked up on an ROTC scholarship and went to LSU. Graduated and thought I was going to kick ass, become the next MacArthur, all that Call of Duty, SOCOM stuff.

I was 23 and a Second Lieutenant when I landed in Kuwait, then flown to Iraq via Chinook. Spent day to day wearing 60-75Lbs of gear in the the damn desert in charge of 38 other guys in my platoon. Yeah at that point I realized why all my friends in college branched Aviation, Quartermaster, and Armor. Long story short, 15 months of 130 degree max temperatures make you look at all aspects of a situation before you jump in head first. Lesson learned.

Being around guys from different walks of life is what opened my eyes. My PSG was a Latino Democrat from Los Angeles and I was a southern white Republican from Louisiana. It's safe to say at first we had our preconceived notions about each other. I learned A LOT from that man about the Democrat side of the spectrum and actually understood his views. To this day, if that guy needed, I'd jump on a plane to help him out.

Now, I'm saying all of this as an example because he didn't try to push his party on me or prove he was right and I was wrong. I would state my views on a subject and he would respond why he thought the way he did. Pretty much what Barrett and I just did. Too many posters see the threads as an "I'm right your wrong" ordeal that gets people banned.

Barrett, I'm gonna check out that documentary you were talking about. You may be right and if so I'll admit it. I have one more question and it's pretty amateur: How the hell you separate quotes like that?

LaLouisiane, sorry you had to make it 900+ posts without figuring out this helpful tip

Just copy paste what you want within quote tags

(quote)(/quote)

Except use brackets instead []





Is that what you're asking? Use ctrl c for copy and ctrl v for paste or command c and command v if youre on mac and its mad easy.

And yeah not enough people can find middle ground these days on the issues like Tip and Reagan did. Kinda sad but the left moved further left socially and the right moved further right fiscally. Media divisiveness of course doesnt help. And I need to learn how to debate since im going in to politics after college so if Im being an asshole or gettting it wrong dont be afraid to call me out

One of my favorite quotes on media is by Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged wrote “There are no objective facts…. Every report on facts is only somebody’s opinion. It is therefore useless to write about facts"

I don't think it matters who you watch, nothings really fair and balanced

It used to be the party of the working man- before it got caught up in transgender rights, extreme environmentalism, white privilege guilting and all this navel gazing bs. It went from the party of the union worker to the point that I doubt they could even concede that a white male steelworker or mechanic could face more economic trouble than a hispanic journalist, black federal employee, or asian dentist.

Lol thanks man, I'll revert to this thread when the time comes.

Personally on that point quoted, I think its the public's lack of education on the principles of each party. Too many people take one specific topic a party stands for and embraces them as a whole because they agree on one issue instead of many. Go talk to a feminist about women's rights. Republicans are apparently the devil that want to hold them down. Ask her about immigration, if she responds put up a wall and keep them out, well that's kinda contradictory to a progressive democrat fighting for rights.

Not sure what level your in at college right now, but when you get to your upper level classes if you aren't taking them already, watch the others and what they talk about if you guys have class discussions. The ones that can only speak intelligently on one issue, say marriage and draw a blank stare on the others have no idea where they side.

That and the fact that the majority of Americans no longer think for themselves. A lot of people jump onto whatever party their parents were and vote along what they are told. Others follow their friends on who they want to vote for. Then the younger generation, 18-25 couldn't tell you what Obama or McCain stood for in the first election but "wanted to be a part of history in electing the first African American President." Took me a while to accept that my generation would elect someone to lead the nation based on skin color rather than what he could do for the nation.

Constitutional Law was a pretty good class. First day the professor asked who was affiliated with what party and if they knew how to debate the issues in that party's entirety. She would tally down our specific responses from day to day on which side we stood on different issues and tell us if we really sided with the party we claimed.

One female claimed liberal democrat all the way. When it got to abortion, pro choice til the cows came home. All other issues, conservative. Pissed her off something awful when the professor told her she was more Conservative than Liberal.

Still that was better than me. Being a kid that came from a rural town and fresh in the military, I was considered borderline Fascist.