A little "background information" on some of the many celebrities who have made it their mission to disparage our leaders, question their intelligence and second guess their decisions. An example? Let's compare the President and one of his staunchest (and most in need of better grooming habits) opponents.


President Bush
Bachelors Degree from Yale University
MBA from Harvard Business School

Michael Moore
Dropped out first year University of Michigan


Bit of a gap there, eh?

(Caution!!! Extreme sarcasm ahead!!!)

The list also exposes the ever so slight gap in experience that exists in dealing with domestic and foreign policy, international diplomacy and actual knowledge of sensitive data and information between those who have actually spent their entire lives studying and working in those fields as opposed to a bunch of people who have had next to no experience in those areas whatsoever.

Really! It's almost like asking celebrities to defuse explosives even though they have no experience or depth of knowledge on the subject. Hmmm?! Actually, that's not a bad idea...

lol
A small town called South Park in Colorado.

Ill update my profile. :D

isa floats off into her little dream world where everyone gets what they deserve...

[steven segal] Defuse this 20-kiloton bomb with tweezers and a gum wrapper? No problem. I've done this dozens of times in my movies! [/steven segal]

Of course, we all know Bush got into Yale soley on merit ;)

In any case, there is no such thing as a degree in invading Iraq, so what does this matter?

FWIW, I do agree that actors making political speeches (from any point of view) at the Oscars, etc., is a pretty stupid idea.

Alex

That's what I am saying. I personally think a lot of actors are doing the anti-Bush bit because it's popular. They really don't care about the issues. If they cared so much about other people they would give up a fraction of there 100 billion gazillion dollar salaries to help the underprivledged people, but :GASP!: Give up some money so we can't live in our lavish mansions and drive Aston Martin's...no way!
These people have no clue and personally make me sick. They drive around with their pompus attitudes like there God, Allah, Yaweh, Buddah, whatever...and think they are above the law (in which most cases are). I make it a point of boycotting actors and musicians who are against Bush and this situation. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, it's a free country. however those jerks have no right speaking, they do nothing for the country. Anyone heard the Good Charlotte song "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous"?

Isn't that always the case? I am sure it works the same way for Oxford and Caimbridge Universities as well.

Iraq War Quiz
by Stephen R. Shalom


1. The anti-war movement supports our troops by urging that they be
brought home immediately so they neither kill nor get killed in a
unjust
war. How has the Bush administration shown its support for our troops?

a. The Republican-controlled House Budget Committee voted to cut
$25 billion in veterans benefits over the next 10 years.

b. The Bush administration proposed cutting $172 million from
impact aid programs which provide school funding for children of
military personnel.

c. The administration ordered the Dept. of Veterans Affairs to stop
publicizing health benefits available to veterans.

d. All of the above.



2. The anti-war movement believes that patriotism means urging our
country to do what is right. How do Bush administration officials
define
patriotism?

a. Patriotism means emulating Dick Cheney, who serves as
Vice-President while receiving $100,000-$1,000,000 a year from
Halliburton, the multi-billion dollar company which is already lining
up
for major contracts in post-war Iraq.

b. Patriotism means emulating Richard Perle, the warhawk who serves
as head of the Defense Intelligence Board while at the same time
meeting
with Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi on behalf of Trireme, a company
of which he is a managing partner, involved in security and military
technologies, and while agreeing to work as a paid lobbyist for Global
Crossing, a telecommunications giant seeking a major Pentagon contract.

c. Patriotism means emulating George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Paul
Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, John Bolton, Tom DeLay, John Ashcroft, Lewis
Libby, and others who enthusiastically supported the Vietnam War while
avoiding serving in it and who now are sending others to kill and be
killed in Iraq.

d. All of the above.



3. The Bush administration has accused Saddam Hussein of lying
regarding his weapons of mass destruction. Which of the following might
be considered less than truthful?

a. Constant claims by the Bush administration that there was
documentary evidence linking Iraq to attempted uranium purchases in
Niger, despite the fact that the documents were forgeries and CIA
analysts doubted their authenticity.
b. A British intelligence report on Iraq's security services that
was in fact plagiarized, with selected modifications, from a student
article.
c. The frequent citation of the incriminating testimony of Iraqi
defector Hussein Kamel, while suppressing that part of the testimony in
which Kamel stated that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction had been
destroyed following the 1991 Gulf War.
d. All of the above.

4. White House Press Secretary Ari Fleisher stormed out of a press
conference when the assembled reporters broke into laughter after he
declared that the U.S. would never try to bribe members of the UN. What
should Fleisher have said to defend himself?

a. It wasn't just bribery; we also ordered the bugging of the home
and office phones and emails of the UN ambassadors of Security Council
member states that were undecided on war.

b. Oh, come on! We've been doing this for years. In 1990 when Yemen
voted against authorizing war with Iraq, the U.S. ambassador declared
"That will be the most expensive 'no' vote you ever cast."

c. Why do you think the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act makes one
of the conditions for an African country to receive preferential access
to U.S. markets that it "not engage in activities that undermine United
States national security or foreign policy interests"?

d. All of the above.



5. George Bush has declared that "we have no fight with the Iraqi
people." What could he have cited as supporting evidence?

a. U.S. maintenance of 12 years of crippling sanctions that
strengthened Saddam Hussein while contributing to the death of hundreds
of thousands of Iraqi civilians.

b. The fact that "coalition" forces have indicated that they will
use cluster bombs in Iraq, despite warnings from human rights groups
that "The use of cluster munitions in Iraq will endanger civilians for
years to come."

c. By pointing to the analogy of Afghanistan, which the U.S.
pledged not to forget about when the war was over, and for which the
current Bush administration foreign aid budget request included not one
cent in aid.

d. All of the above.



6. The Bush administration has touted the many nations that are
part of the "coalition of the willing." Which of the following
statements about this coalition is true?

a. In most of the coalition countries polls show that a majority,
often an overwhelming majority, of the people oppose the war.

b. More than ten of the members of the coalition of the willing are
actually a coalition of the unwilling - unwilling to reveal their
names.


c. Coalition members - most of whose contributions to the war are
negligible or even zero - constitute less than a quarter of the
countries in the UN and contain less than 20% of the world's
population.


d. All of the above.



7. The war on Iraq is said to be part of the "war on terrorism."
Which of the following is true?

a. A senior American counterintelligence official said: "An
American invasion of Iraq is already being used as a recruitment tool
by
Al Qaeda and other groups....And it is a very effective tool."

b. An American official, based in Europe, said Iraq had become "a
battle cry, in a way," for Al Qaeda recruiters.

c. France's leading counter-terrorism judge said: "Bin Laden's
strategy has always been to demonstrate to the Islamic community that
the West, and especially the U.S., is starting a global war against
Muslims. An attack on Iraq might confirm this vision for many Muslims.
I
am very worried about the next wave of recruits."

d. All of the above.



8. The Bush administration says it is waging war to stop the spread
of weapons of mass destruction. Which of the following is true?

a. The United States has refused to ratify the Comprehensive Test
Ban Treaty, viewed worldwide as the litmus test for seriousness about
nuclear disarmament.

b. The United States has insisted on a reservation to the Chemical
Weapons Convention allowing the U.S. President the right to refuse an
inspection of U.S. facilities on national security grounds, and blocked
efforts to improve compliance with the Biological and Toxin Weapons
Convention.

c. Vice Admiral Lowell E. Jacoby, Director of the Defense
Intelligence Agency, testified on Feb. 11, 2003, "The long-term trends
with respect to WMD and missile proliferation are bleak. States seek
these capabilities for regional purposes, or to provide a hedge to
deter
or offset U.S. military superiority."

d. All of the above.



9. The Bush administration says it wants to bring democracy to Iraq
and the Middle East. Which of the following is true?

a. If there were democracy in Saudi Arabia today, backing for the
U.S. war effort would be the first thing to go, given the country's
"increasingly anti-American population deeply opposed to the war."

b. The United States subverted some of the few democratic
governments in the Middle East (Syria in 1949, Iran in 1953), and has
backed undemocratic regimes in the region ever since.

c. The United States supported the crushing of anti-Saddam Hussein
revolts in Iraq in 1991.

d. All of the above.



10. Colin Powell cited as evidence of an Iraq-Al Qaeda link an
audiotape from bin Laden in which he called Saddam Hussein and his
Baath
Party regime "infidels." Which of the following is more compelling
evidence?

a. An FBI official told the New York Times: "We've been looking at
this hard for more than a year and you know what, we just don't think
it's there."

b. According to a classified British intelligence report seen by
BBC News, "There are no current links between the Iraqi regime and the
al-Qaeda network."

c. According to Rohan Gunaratna, author of Inside Al Qaeda: Global
Network of Terror, "Since U.S. intervention in Afghanistan in October
2001, I have examined several tens of thousands of documents recovered
from Al Qaeda and Taliban sources. In addition to listening to 240
tapes
taken from Al Qaeda's central registry, I debriefed several Al Qaeda
and Taliban detainees. I could find no evidence of links between Iraq
and Al Qaeda."

d. All of the above.

--------

On a less serious note, I saw a *bumper sticker* that read "No War For Oil." Those are always funny :)

Of course they have a (legal) right to speak, let's not go too far. But I do agree that they often abuse the media attention they get. I suppose I'm a bit more sympathetic, since I tend to agree with their viewpoints.

Alex

Re: war has begun, why does US want a war?
 

I thought this was worth posting.

When in England at a fairly large conference, Colin Powell was
asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury if our plans for Iraq were
just an example of empire building by George Bush.
He answered by saying that, "Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return."

There's more to empire building than grabbing land. The Bish was presumably thinking more along the lines of an economic empire. If you think about the influence the US has on smaller countries through the WTO, etc., you can see his point.

Alex

d

Short Quiz.

After the Persian Gulf War, Iraq according to UN resolution was supposed to destroy all of their Scud missiles, yet in retaliation to US missile strikes the Iraqis fired?

a. Ping Pong Balls

b. SCUD Missiles

c. Jelly Donuts

d. Iraq never fired anything, they are a non-violent regime


Former President Bill Clinton before attacking Serbia got approval from whom?

a. His mother

b. The public

c. The UN

d. None of the above


Russia and France are opposed to this war because (circle all that are true):

a. they love people

b. They have business interests there

c. evidence showing they sell weapons to Iraq ( sample case: One Al Harith, a long-range sea-skimming missile which could threaten allied warships in the Gulf, was on a stand awaiting the fitting of its rocket motor. Someone had drawn a shark's face on its warhead. Another was still in its crate in another bunker.

Both weapons had Russian Cyrillic characters stenciled on their sides and were dated 2002. A strict UN arms embargo on Iraq has been enforced since 1991.)

d: while the U.S. gets less than 3% of it's oil from Iraq, France receives about 60% of it's oil from there.

A little more on the weapons inspectors :
I've been seeing this report as a footnote to many other stories but this seems to be the best single article on this development. I hope you didn't start giggling like I did over the line that contained the phrase "strict UN arms embargo" and the verb "enforced". Of course, these weapons were found in a military installation, right? They were found somewhere that an arms inspector would have cause to search, correct?


"From the number of limpet mines and some of the other armaments found so far, it seems to have been a naval storage depot," said Lieutenant Watson. "It makes you wonder what chance a couple of hundred UN inspectors had of finding anything damning in a country this big. On the surface, this was, after all, supposed to be a civilian heliport."

Current Score: U.S. - 1,000,000,000 / UN - 0

Oh yeah the left is in a tizzy because the predicted mass civilian casualties, and millions of starving refugees have failed to materialize. Mean Mr. Mustard has the goods...


Listening to NPR tonight, a report detailed the current humanitarian situation. International aid workers have placed various stocks of humanitarian supplies at border locations in countries adjacent to Iraq, anticipating a tidal wave of refugees. Barely any have showed up.

The NPR reporter supposed several possible reasons as to why this might be... Of course, what she didn't have the breadth of mind to touch on was the not altogether wacky notion that refugees haven't materialized because their homes and the Iraqi infrastructure that feeds them have been relatively undamaged by the precision bombing campaign, the most focused and collateral damage-free military campaign of such size in history.


Simply put, the US was right and the UN was wrong. So by not wanting to topple Suddam you would rather have a regime that deceives and makes fools of the UN by secretly making WMD and trying to hide it. Doctoring their inventory of weapons and blatantly lying to the world. Manufactures chemical weapons in the same place it makes children's medicine. Dress up in US and UK military uniforms and kills they're own people just to feed his own propaganda war machine.

He's enjoyed his time as a tyrant long enough. He's gotta go.

As for the VA, that was going on long before Bush. As I remember, Bush has raised the salary of the Military 4% (the largest ever) and increased VA benefits so now veterans get more for going to school than ever before. The VA never "advertised there benefits, and they were being cut off by the Democrats during the 1990's military cutbacks. Which in turn left budget for on the job military training leading to under trained personnel. But Bill should know so much about the military, seeing as he skipped out on Vietnam to go smoke pot.

Not all are bad, just the ones who think it's there right to criticize the US every chance they get. They honestly don't care about people, they just want drones to pay 9 dollars (what's that about 7 british pounds?) a movie and 21 dollars a CD to feed thier big wallets and even bigger egos. Some have legitimate points, but ones such as the Dixie Chicks and Madonna need to be quiet.

check this out-http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm and you can watch-http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq/

That's a sick thing to say, about anyone.

http://www.iraqbodycount.org