So, how many of you idiots fell for that one?;D

Dammit! I was going to celebrate already

Yeah. My reactions:
1.
2.
3.

Someone should off the bastard for good already.

I agree with kazzmir and what 23yrold "said"...

I'm a kat, what's wrong with that?

So what if he looks like a monkey Yves? So far he's doing well with his plot to TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!

http://www.members.cox.net/skeevewoo2/BushConquer.jpg

I'm sorry, but comments like that show your ignorance. You didn't even know Iraqis had guns?

There were valid reasons for going into Iraq, although obviously somewhere down the line they were greatly exagerrated. Having an extremist attitude like yours will only cause people to ignore any valid points you may have.

Yves and 23 (with all those images) have too much time

Bush is a politician. There's no way he would make such a case for WMD if he didn't honestly believe they had them. For him to support going into Iraq, and nothing major is found, then he is killing his career. I really doubt he would make such a drastic decision in his first term when he was doing well enough from a rating standpoint to have a good chance for re-election.

For that reason, I really believe Bush was doing what he felt was the best for the country. Congress supported him as well, based on the presentation of the so-called "intelligence".

To me, the greatest issue at hand is not Bush, but whether or not any US intelligence report can be trusted. Without the (apparently erroneous) reports, Bush could have never mustered enough support for action.

And yes, I do not believe most presidents would have tried to go into Iraq as quickly as Bush wanted - so he definitely has to shoulder some of the blame.

The bottom line is, Bush will be accountable for his actions, and if enough people decide he is not doing a good job, then he won't get another term. To me, that's a much better policy than wishing assassination.

Hardly.

In order for Bush not to be elected in 2004, someone has to run against him that the people want to put into office more than him. As we saw from the New York senate race with Hillary Clinton, you can't win an election based on simply not being your opponent (the "Anybody But Clintion" ABC policy).

Right now, Bush has a really good shot at reelection, regardless of the fact that he has squandered the 9/11 world-wide sympathy in less than 2 years (just to take out Iraq, btw). Why? Because the Democrats are too scared to actually challenge him on anything.

Oh, they'll wave their hands every now and then. But there's no real strength to come out and really say what needs to be said. They simply refuse to really challenge him on any substantive issues, especially in matters of how he conducts the "War on Terrorism", or anything that he decides to place under the rubric of the same (ie, Iraq).

The problem with that line of reasoning is that it is clear that the intelligence about the particular Uranium deal had been debunked several months before Bush's State-of-the-Union address. So, clearly, with the accurate information in hand, he (or his advisors, who he was responsible for hiring) felt the need to propogate a lie.

The really greviousness of this act is that it isn't a lie you use to hide something. It's a lie designed for the explicit purpose of eliciting a particular response from the public that would give him exactly what he wants. It is blatently manipulative.

And this isn't a subjective lie (like, "Given the intelligence we have, Iraq has, and is developing, WMD's"). This is a purely factual lie. A subjective lie, a lie of purposly slanting factual information for one's own purposes, that's normal and accepted in politics. However, knowingly telling a factual lie, and doing so for the purposes of manipulating the populace towards a war, that is a heinous act.

Given this, who's to say that he didn't find and use other intelligence reports that were of a, shall we say, dubious nature? What lengths is he willing to go to in order to get the outcome he wants?

And he's going to get away with it because our system is inhierently adversarial; the check is that the other side will stop at nothing to bury them. The Democrats aren't doing their job, so Bush is sitting pretty.

As a general policy, sure. In fact, I don't think there has ever been an assassination that has been for the general good. Certainly not in the US.

That being said, however, when the system is being manipulated by its head, when the system's checks aren't functioning properly, and when it is clear that the system cannot correct itself as it normally would, maybe assassination isn't that bad of an idea. Sure, it isn't playing by the normal rules of the system, but then, neither is the administration.

In any case, it wouldn't really solve the problem. Do you really think that someone of the intellectual prowess of George W. Bush is really making the day-to-day decisions of running the country? Bush Jr. was a tool to get certain people into the White House who are of a certain mind on certain issues. Cheney was certainly one of them, but he isn't the only one. Killing Bush won't change much. Indeed, killing any one of the members of this "cabal" isn't going to help. The only real solution (besides a mass-assassination, which would surely kill innocents and therefore should not be done) would be an election replacing his administration. That, however, isn't going to happen if things keep going the way they are going.

That being said, I do agree with 23 and Kazzamir's posts. Using this as the subject, even if you really want it to happen, is distateful.

In other news, Yves M was killed after a horde of angry and revengeful nerds raided his house.

For the reasons stated above and more, it is impossible to support an assassination. However it is similarly hard to believe that Bush is anything like the sort of leader the world needs. Take this non-accurate quote from a US military person in Iraq to an Iraqi, in front of cameras, as shown on the news last night:

"either you help us find members of the resistance, or we will come back in our tanks and demolish your fields and houses"

They then proceeded to arrest anyone who they thought might possibly be related to the resistance (i.e. anyone young and male).

That and Guantanamo bay show that Bush doesn't even understand the most basic element of the constitution of the country he now rules, therefore if that country didn't have the most variable level of education of any rich nation he almost certainly wouldn't be commanding the level of support he does.

From the first article at the top of the front page of http://www.deanforamerica.com:

"As the Niger uranium story has unfolded, what has become increasingly obvious is that there are many questions that must be answered about the way the Bush Administration led us to war, managed the conflict in Iraq, and failed to foresee the continuing resistance that our military is now confronting."

Further down the same page, a summary of an article from the 14th of July is "DEAN SAYS THOSE IN ADMINISTRATION WHO MISLED NATION SHOULD RESIGN".

The people of America have been failed more by their supposedly independant press than anything else. Not one newspaper has stuck its neck on the line and dared to raise even the slightest qualm on any element of Bush's post Sept. 11 policy. I don't know why that is, but if I had to guess I'd imagine it's Rupert Murdoch like people trying to keep the politicians sweet, in which case the rise of a credible opposition would probably lead to a turnaround in the position of the press. If that ever happens.

My personal opinion on the run up to war is that a war is only justified if a majority of the population of a country want it. From the perspective of the UK, a majority were against the war before it happened, and now more than 2/3rds believe that the presented evidence was lies. Therefore, from the UK perspective, the war was not valid. And no quantity of revisionist briefings about the Hussein regime can change that, especially not when the regime that persecuted and victimised the citizens of Iraq has been replaced with another that does the exact same thing.

If the history empire has taught anyone anything it's that this sort of invasion is easy to present as positive but does not lead to positive results in the long run.

EDIT: Thinking about it, isn't it interesting how the two most thoroughly religious of super powers, i.e. the USA and Israel, seem to spend so much more of their life at war than anyone else?

Interestingly enough, someone connected to the Iraq WMD fiasco is dead. Not GW, though.

My $0.02:
I think it was fairly obvious that Iraq would loose the war. So, if Iraq did have WMDs, Saddam would probably have thought:

In this case, it would obviously be better to not provoke them (or at least do it quietly).

This is, of course, assuming that Saddam is the bloodthirsty killer that GW says he is.