Submitted by donerail on December 9, 2004 - 3:06pm.
js: I guess you can see from SalB's last post what I was referring to with regard to her defensiveness. It is too bad that SalB feels the way she does. She seems to be very knowledgeable and certainly well traveled with regard to France. As I'm sure you can appreciate, this is an internet forum with lots of diverse subject matter and lots of diverse people to go along with it. In my view, our banter is entertainment of a sort and should not be either boring or taken too, too seriously. It seems, to me anyway, whenever you try to point something out or make some kind of a point or to disagree with SalB, even in jest, she goes into that 'you misunderstood me' mode. If she is not overly defensive, then I guess she just has a tendency to whine a lot.
With regard to the outcries over Iraq in the UK I agree with you. I live in a very "Blue" state (Massachusetts) and there was some - but not much - coverage of the folks in the UK that disagreed with Tony Blair over Iraq. Some of the reason that our media did not shed more light on this was out of fear of the GWB folks and the sizable percent (I guess 51%) of the people who were not going to listen anyway. I think the media probably felt they would be criticized as "unpatriotic." Anyone else who was critical of Bush was looked upon in that fashion. We have these right wing talk radio and tv shows that pound away like that every evening. You are right about the death penalty as well. It is clearly uncivilized. I don?t think religion has much to do with it any more, either. The USA can improve in so many ways and I feel bad that the rest of the world has to put up with our shortcomings. In reality, people on both sides of these issues had some interesting arguments. I think eventually we would have had to take Saddam Hussein off the board. It appears the US wanted a "friendly face" in the Mid-East other than Israel that could be used to leverage states like Syria and Iran. The more that Bush delayed, the greater the risk that Hussein would be actually able to clean up his act in the eyes of the world. That would have probably strengthened Europe too much in the eyes of our Right Wing. In any event, here we are and we have to figure a way out of this. Donerail
With regard to the outcries over Iraq in the UK I agree with you. I live in a very "Blue" state (Massachusetts) and there was some - but not much - coverage of the folks in the UK that disagreed with Tony Blair over Iraq. Some of the reason that our media did not shed more light on this was out of fear of the GWB folks and the sizable percent (I guess 51%) of the people who were not going to listen anyway. I think the media probably felt they would be criticized as "unpatriotic." Anyone else who was critical of Bush was looked upon in that fashion. We have these right wing talk radio and tv shows that pound away like that every evening. You are right about the death penalty as well. It is clearly uncivilized. I don?t think religion has much to do with it any more, either. The USA can improve in so many ways and I feel bad that the rest of the world has to put up with our shortcomings. In reality, people on both sides of these issues had some interesting arguments. I think eventually we would have had to take Saddam Hussein off the board. It appears the US wanted a "friendly face" in the Mid-East other than Israel that could be used to leverage states like Syria and Iran. The more that Bush delayed, the greater the risk that Hussein would be actually able to clean up his act in the eyes of the world. That would have probably strengthened Europe too much in the eyes of our Right Wing. In any event, here we are and we have to figure a way out of this. Donerail