Voters unhappy with Bush; Congress
 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Most U.S. voters think the country is on the wrong track and remain deeply unhappy with President George W. Bush and Congress, but still feel good about their finances and optimistic about the future, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday.

"Americans feel their government is not accomplishing the people's business," Zogby said. "They feel the system is seriously broken."

In the national survey of 1,012 likely voters, taken July 12 through July 14, about 66 percent said Bush had done only a fair or poor job as president, with 34 percent ranking his performance as excellent or good.

But the marks for Congress, mired in gridlock over a series of partisan political battles after Democrats took power in the 2006 elections, continued to drop.

While 83 percent said Congress was doing a fair or poor job, just 14 percent rated it excellent or good. Last October, in its final days, the Republican-led Congress earned ratings of excellent or good from 23 percent of voters.

"There is a growing sense that people voted for change in 2006 and they aren't getting it," Zogby said.

Several years of headlines about possible torture of U.S. detainees, treatment of prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention center and international anger over the Iraq war has not dented the pride of Americans.
About two-thirds of the likely voters surveyed said they were "very" proud of the United States, with 22 percent saying they were "fairly" proud and 8 percent saying they were not very proud of their country.

I heard about this same report in 1846. Weird.

Might as well say it here: the recent action of Senate Democrats gave aid and comfort to an enemy, and in a time of war. That is the Constitution's definition of treason, Article III, Section 3. No wonder I stay ticked at the Democratic senior leadership. No wonder I like the Republicans for not doing this.

UG, you are not only giving aid and comfort to the enemy, but ways and means for them to justify their slaughter of innocents and recruit more terrorists.

What's the Constitution's definition of war?

UT, it doesn't have one. It allocates to the Legislative Branch the power of declaring a state of war, and to the Executive the power of command in chief of the military forces prosecuting that war. It does not confine the power to actually make war to either party -- albeit no one would trust the Legislative Branch to prosecute a war effectively. This has produced, naturally enough, wrangling between Legislative and Executive in every Presidential term of office that included a conflict from the opening of the nineteenth century onward. This dance goes back a long time in our country's history.

What can be said is that nobody responsible has ever charged a President with a crime for his trying to win a fight. Certain irresponsible people would like to try it now, but I can only imagine why they are so toxically motivated to lose a war to a bunch of un-democrat religious bigots who would as cheerfully behead these aiders-and-abetters as they would the more resistant sorts like me.

I am not giving aid and comfort to the enemy, Bruce. I want to win; you don't. You may be able to lie to yourself, but I am immune to your kind of supine, let the shitbags win and maybe they'll like us, kind of (hee hee) thinking. Those who would oppress us cease it immediately the 7.62mm slug transects their brains.

Let the shitbags win? Since they haven't in 4 years, there's not much chance the shitbags can win before they vacate the White house.

War is peace?

I'm really starting to doubt Orwell...

You mean the Executive branch.

So if it hasn't done that, is it war?

No. The legislative branch. Article 1 Section 8.

says, in part...

To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;

To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;

To provide and maintain a navy;

Ah yes that's right, I was fast-fingerin'.

So if it hasn't done that, is it war?

It is quacking like a duck.

Griff got in ahead of me -- I went off to make the scene of the Deathly Hallows midnight-plus-one -- hey, as I type we just looked under the front doormat and there's our copy; UPS must not be ringing doorbells today to speed their operation, so there's :) :) in our house -- but yeah, Article I Section 8-11. Section 8 enumerates the Constitutional powers of Congress. It does NOT state that Congress has the sole power to call out the troops; indeed it doesn't seem to give it such power at all. Calling up the troops really seems much more directly related to the Commander In Chief anyway.

America has been in about a hundred and fifty shootin' conflicts, and if gunfire is quacks, well, they'll certainly do. Only five of these were Congressionally declared. Undeclared conflicts started almost immediately with an undeclared naval war with France -- the Quasi-War with France, 1797-1800, over treaty provisions that had come into what must have been regarded as very unfortunate conflict. After a couple of years, negotiation and claims adjustment, basically, settled things. Some of them -- a few claims continued unsettled into the twentieth century. I'm quite surprised to read here in the National Archives' Prologue Magazine that this ruckus led directly to the Louisiana Purchase as an integral part of trying to get matters settled.

Would that include the Korean War?

The "Bumper Sticker" That Blows Up

I guess they are on their own side, patiently waiting for the republicans to exit power so that they can implement all their own plans and agendas.

And if they contrive to lose the war -- while trying their damnedest to blame it on the Iraqis -- it redounds to the Republicans' credit.

If they contrive to lose the war there is greater probability that we will have another major terrorist attack on U.S. soil. How about if it's a mushroom cloud over a port city? That too redounds to the Republicans' credit, in effect, by completely wiping out that of the Democrats.

For any interested parties, the Wiki:

33rd_Waffen_Grenadier_Division_of_the_SS_Charlemagne_(1st_French)

What the French did under the Nazis has no bearing on the current situation in Iraq. Apart from anything else the cultural differences are vast enough to render any such comparison facile.

'evil people' galvanised to fight on one side and 'good people' galvanised to the other.....nothing like the crude simplifications of a Hollywood story to facillitate solutions in one of the most politically and socially complex areas of the globe.


As an interesting aside. Do you take much notice of the place names on the map? Nineveh and Nimrud, Baghdad and Babylon. These names, some of which are older than any of our written histories. Nineveh fell, and one of the ancient world's greatest empires with it, in 612 B.C. Next the Babylonians and the Medes, the Achaemenid Persians and the Macedonians, Romans.....and on across two thousand and more years. The culture of Iraq has some very deep roots.

No Dana, Iraq is exactly like Texas, they will accept our western democracy with open arms.

I also have a question for UG. Which is worse, admitting you have lost or refusing to admit that you have lost?

So you're arguing that the 2 billion dollars a week we're spending on Iraq wouldn't be better spent on port security, especially since we have outsourced the real hunt for Al-Qaeda to the Pakistanis?

You really think in the unlikely event that they did acquire a real nuke, that it would be delivered from Iraq, and not Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia?

You think that the terrorists are all concentrated in Iraq and are incapable or multi-tasking, especially since they probably favor a cell structure?

I'm guessing that your military career wasn't in intelligence. Or maybe, heaven help us, it was.:eek:

Oh dear God what a frightening thought.

FYI...
Recent Congressional Votes -
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This $90.7 billion bill would fund the Department of Agriculture, FDA, Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Farm Credit Administration for the upcoming fiscal year.



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This $459.6 billion bill would fund the Department of Defense for the upcoming fiscal year.

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Congress approval ratings will get lower because they swallowed--yet again--concerning warrantless wiretapping. Fitting they passed the law during the dead of might.

Signals intelligence, to be exact, Rich. Sure, we -- the West, DanaC -- suffered defeat upon defeat in the Eighties, eh? Heh heh.

I'm arguing that the place to spend a couple billion a week is over in their backyards -- which has worked for four years and more now. The best defense is not the defense you're calling for, Rich, but a good offense, and what we've got now is far better than a defense.

No one, repeat no one, critical of our offense has a better offense. Such people are jackasses, braying. The Jackass Party is only now, four to six years behind time, growing any sense of national responsibility. This is not yet being paired with foreign-policy competence.

No, the nuke wouldn't be delivered by Iraq. Pakistan would be my pick. Iran second -- more motivation, less current capability. And I wouldn't assign a high likelihood to either one, as they'd have too much to lose in return. You can imagine what we'd do if the Rose of Sauron were to bloom over one of our cities.

Bush: there will be no pullout from Iraq while I'm president

The fact remains we can't win this war. Only the Iraqis can win or lose their country, to the radicals that want it.
Recent events indicate the man in the street is disillusioned with the type of regime the radicals will install and severely enforce. But all they are doing is switching support for different foreigners... us. They have to get their shit together, and not stand by, while any foreigners control their country, including us.

Absolutely, but we should help them have the opportunity to do so if we can.

Well that's what is going on, but for how long should we wait for them to step up, especially in the political arena?

I don't know - we have to equate the psyche of a nation that has been abused by decades of tyranny and a dictatorship in addition to the accepted ways of life in the mideast to make that determination. Is it comparable on a mass scale to an abused or battered woman or someone who was tortured? How long does it take to regain some type of rational thought - especially in the current setting? How long will it take for them to rid themselves of the shock, of the fear of death that has gripped them, many since birth - that they have been living with everyday for so very long? Personally, I have no idea, but I don't think we are that close yet. They are probably scared to death, and rightly so, that the next president is gonna leave them as soon as possible once s/he takes office.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/...ef=mpstoryview

Sadly, this is what may very well happen. Better than genocide and Somalia-like anarchy though.

We, as a democracy, cannot force any type of Gov't on them or anyone else for that matter - we can only give them the chance to do it on their own.

A benchmark for any accomplishment is Kurdistan. Until the rest of Iraq gets tired of killing one another, then nothing will change there. Violence is even routine in Basra. The only viable challenge is to create an Iraq that does not spread violence into Kurdistan.

This is not just about Sunni and Shia attacks on Kurds. There is the ongoing problem of Kurd and Turk violence across those borders. And Kurdish violence in Iran. To avoid such violence means that Kurdistan, so independent as to fly its own flag, still remain part of Iraq.

It's just not viable to wish the rest of Iraq will be peaceful even in five years. Even the electric grid is now breaking about into fiefdoms defined by the many maybe one hundred different adversaries that some foolishly want to call Al Qaeda. As a result, Baghdad now only gets 2 to 6 hours of electricity every day as outlying areas horde electricity rather than share it with Baghdad.

This is not a country that can be measured in peace. The question is how much routine violence will be acceptable AND how does a US Military that entrenched itself (with intent to have permanent bases) now withdrawal – and without letting violence expand into Kurdistan.

The Iraq Study Group had our only viable plan. The question is now whether that is still possible. Back then, violence in Basra was not routine. So far, we have been lucky. Kirkuk has not become another hotbed of overt violence, yet.

The question of 'is it still possible' is a difficult one, tw. And I certainly agree with your revue of the Kurds. But any withdrawal is, in my dearest opinion, a horrible moral mistake.

And now, this is bound to upset most of the left wing in these here forums (the left of which I consider myself a part), I look at this as a simple question of cause and effect. What will happen if we withdraw? Chaos and destruction, plain and simple. Anyone argues otherwise out of their hat. I look at the American military, still (although it's getting close) the only military superpower, and I look at the mess we've made. The horrible, appalling, murderous, teeter totter that we've made. I look and worry about the families and children that I've seen and never met.

I was against this war from the start, and although the disastrous mistakes have all but ruined our chances, we can still effectively win this counter insurgency and insure a safer Iraqi people. But not with this paltry force and underfunded reconstruction we're doing now. There is so much disgust for the up-til-now handling of this war.

Problem is, this will never happen. The american voter will never stand behind the 350,000+ troops that would be needed, nor the multi-billion that we'd need to spend on reconstructing that which has rotted away (the electricity, water, business, schools and even military). America is weary of the lies and the coffins.

Counter insurgency campaigns can be won, and there are dozens of historical manuals from French, British, and even American CI wars fought. Up til now, we've broken every rule of the CI handbook with our ham fisted, short sighted tactics. We'd have to test new ground to regain lost trust, but I really do believe that if the american people stood up and said "fuck all, let's do this," we would see a thriving Iraq in about 9 years (the almost universal timespan CI campaign lasts).

And yes, before you ask, I absolutely believe that the thousands of men and women who signed up to fight in wars that would die (and have already died) would do so willingly to save the lives of the hundreds of thousands who will die if we don't.

More useful might be the gradual replacement of US Troops with a combined UN and NATO force.

See, that I can get behind. I have no preference whatsoever with who's under the helmets, as long as they fight surgically, and respect the Iraqi people, not like many soldiers there now.

I could link many others, but they're not in english, so I don't know if anyone can read them.

I think it may feel less like an occupying army if it was an international force.

Also, it might help with trust issues... and an international force wouldn't, by virtue of working for one of the dumbest non-retarded people alive, by obsessed with fighting Al Qa'ida in Iraq (which comprises about 10% of the actual insurgency, has no weight with it's populace, and barely has ties with the UBL network).

Glad we can agree on that. ;)

Yes, the big problem I have with fellow lefties on the Iraq issue is that they are trying to tell people that pulling out is best for the Iraqi people when they are getting their sources from people that want us out of Iraq regardless if it is best for the people or not.

I don't much trust for any source about Iraq anymore, bad or good.

edit- I would be considered a leftist btw