Posted by iceburn on 4/1/2003, 10:27 pm, in reply to "I spent over two hours summarizing everything here." I could reply to this and make up all kinds of silly counterpoints, but I think I'm actually going to just let us both off the hook. To sum up, I HAVE been kidding. I've mostly been playing a little bit of devil's advocate with you. From your first post, you sounded like you wanted to rant a bit. Everyone needs to let off some steam every once in a while, and I thought I'd give you a hand. The Iraq war hasn't made much sense to me either, and I think that a lot of people on this message board have very similar feelings or thoughts as you and I both have. I know my wife has come to me on more than one occasion to ask if we are doing the right thing. She has also come to me and told me that her friends think that this is the end of the world. Coincidentally, she and I are moving out of state in a couple of weeks. LOL. On a related note (to this thread), I read an interesting article in Newsweek or Time today (the article was actually published months ago, but I found this at a doctor's office), that talked about Bush and how faith has shaped his presidency. It was a pretty interesting article. Basically, the article was a short biography of how Bush stopped drinking, became a decision maker, President, and how he made his decision about policy towards Iraq. Believe it or not, the article states that the entire thing is up to Bush's faith. According to the article, Bush found a study group that helped him through quitting drinking without making him feel like he was in AA or something. He became immersed in faith, and began looking into the bible for answers to just about everything. He began socializing with religious leaders, and began going to them often for council, which he later used directly in his governorship, and still consults with such persons today. This very faith-based presidency has resulted in a certain wariness from other non-Christian world leaders. Although a religious President is not altogether bad, a lot of leaders have been taken aback by Bush's speeches (especially when he uses such terms as 'Crusade'). The article states that according to friends and former aides of the President, he often makes decisions solely based upon what he thinks God would find good or evil. Once he makes a decision about who or what is good, and who or what is evil, his mind is made up, and he is doing the right thing. No politics. No bullcrap. Just doing what he feels God would do. Which brings us to the Iraq issue. The article didn't name any names, but it stated that staff who've worked with Bush said that after 9/11, Bush labelled Al Qaeda as evil. To most Americans that is obvious. During the investigations that followed, and after Bush had reviewed a lot of information about Iraq and after he had read quite a bit in his bible (I'm not joking), Bush decided that Iraq was evil. The article describes Bush as a very straight forward decision maker who doesn't like to beat around the bush (as made pretty obvious by his characterizations of nations as either good or evil, having no middle ground), and thus, his stance was this nation is evil, now what are we going to do about it. Does anyone else find this slightly disturbing? Does anyone else feel that a few questions have been answered? I just kind of looked up from the article, and went 'Oh...' I mean our President can't make things that simple can he? He can't just say, 'That nation is evil, and God doesn't like evil nations. We need to send our military over there to remove that evil nation and build a good nation, no matter what the costs.', can he? If this article has any merit, wouldn't that kind of decision making be the only thing that makes sense? Thank you for your time, Iceburn P.S. I didn't mean any offense by typing 'Phoebe'. When I thought of the word in my brain, my brain said 'Fobe', not 'Feebee' or 'Fobee'. I'm sorry you were offended, but the offense was not intentional, whatsoever. And if it makes you feel any better, I spent most of the day coming up with counterpoints for your excellent objections. Good debate. I enjoyed it.
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: You must be kidding.
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