Actually, I have a lot of respect and admiration for the troops…I wish there was more I could do for them than send care packages…like bring them home (yes, I DID read the article and still feel that way) (I guess for your intentions there is no hope for me). Also, just to show that none of us can be pigeonholed, my family and I got so excited about care packages, we sent out five of them. It was a wonderful feeling, especially because dear friends of ours lost their son in Iraq in Aug 04. They are totally against the war now. So are many veterans of this war and other wars we have fought. My only point is that anectdotal evidence can be gathered on both sides. I won’t torment you will rebuttal articles.

Lorica, I am glad to say I believe that in God’s world, we all get the equivilent of a trial, a much better one than we’d get here. And I would never presume to know how any single one of us would be judged….even an apparent gimmee like Sadamm. I can only speak for myself and how I live my own life.

Hope your tile is going well, Baklava. And incidentally, about something else you posted, my point about the RTLifers voting in Joe, is that the “outside issue” can only (for them) matter if it matters to THEM. Yes I admit it, I find that irritating. But I think removal from the rhetoric will help with that. It is only recently we migrated to another church.

I think you did help me to understand it a little though, why someone who believed certain things would think staying in Iraq trumped RTL. I feel as strongly about my own issues which unfortunately trump RTL at times.

You see Rebecca I too wonder what Jesus would think. But know that Jesus doesn’t see this life to be the end all be all. He knows that there is life after death, after all he conquered it. His concern isn’t this life, as much as it is the next. So evil needs to be aware of their deeds, and dealt with by good men – Lorica

The nature of Saddam as a dictator was to kill thousands of people if he sensed an uprising in a city. You, Rebecca should accept what is is. And that is the fact that the people were not able to rise up against him. And post 9/11 we needed to stop the breeding ground for terrorists and there WAS collaboration going on with Saddam and Al Qaeda and he also gave thousands of dollars to families of Palenstinian suicide murderers. In IRAQ Rebecca we have killed and captured quite a few Al Qaeda leaders and it is only lies by the left to suggest that Al Qaeda only came to Iraq after we removed Saddam. It’s just not true.

Your second to the last paragraph is interesting but you have to weigh your choices. Given a post 9/11 world most people think in terms of will we have a republic that we can debate the issues or not. We can belly ache about civil liberties, abortion, environment, race, etc – but if we can’t be strong on national security first then what’s the point. And Joe L. got that. He may differ on everything else but as leftism seems to me to be perpetuating a disease as of late of “lack of perspective” you get the Ned Lamont’s of the world who DON’T get it. Islamofascism is a serious threat and we need to continue a GWOT waged on many fronts not just militarily. Democrats in general have fought against this administration on every tool and none of them have been illegal as has been alleged. And alleged during a time of war even.

Thank you for your last paragraph. Though misguided, You have not done what EVERY liberal here has done which is call names – though you do go on with the accusations as most liberals do. It’s about what you believe I understand.

Here is something to consider. You do a lot of worrying about what other people think. Just develop what you believe based on history and research and facts. Hypocrasy? Don’t worry about it. What other pro-lifer’s screamed? Don’t worry about it. Those that you consider not nice people are part of EVERY group. You’ll find not-nice people working for GM, Ford, the Catholic Church, Lutherans, the police, librarians, Democrats, Republicans.

Personally, I consider myself pro-life. Does that mean I condone every position that every pro-life person takes. No? Does it mean that I won’t vote fot a candidate that is not pro-life? No. All of that is nonsense is Barbara Streisand. We have to weigh a lot of factors when voting. I tend to look at the candidates OVERALL perspective. I tend to think that Democrats have a sorely lacking overall perspective on economics and national security which filters down to their lack of perspective on a whole host of issues. You Rebecca may disagree with me on those points but that is fine. Maybe you can realize that this country provides the most opportunity and prosperity to more people than ever. Our people below our poverty line have a better standard of living than the AVERAGE European. I’ll find those statistics for you one day if you are interested. You’d have to stick around. I have to get back to my tiling job or I’ll never finish this three day weekend and I plan to finish.

But of course that was not going to happen.

I actually stumbled upon this thread looking to see if anyone else felt the way I do in Connecticut about the pro life major hypocrisy that happened during the last election. Whatever key words I typed in led me here and I got interested….But what do you think of this? Here I am, living in Connecticut, a former pro lifer, now pretty consertaive pro choicer, until very recently catholic, who has been told all her life that to vote for a pro choice candidate is EVIL. You were going to HELL in a handbasket if you did that…no matter what other issues you felt were important, and what not. My dear old dad was big on that too, once. Now he suddenly had amnesia, along with most of the republicans and pro lifers here, and voted for Joe L., the biggest baby killing supporter on the planet! What happened to all those sermons I sat through, telling me I should not take communion if I voted for any pro choice candidate? All those guilt trips? I cannot believe it! Because I’ll tell you what, the liberal pro choicers, for the most part, were behind Lamont here. All of them. It was the moderate dems and the pro life republicans who got us ole Joe again. Their moral high ground went down the toilet in my book. I’m tempted to spout some less than congenial words about supposing killing Iraqis is more important than saving the unborn to the pro life people in CT…but I won’t because even though it makes me mad, I know killing Iraqis is not what it is all about over there (the terrorists are killing many more of them than we are….) But obviously, this kind of moral dictate can be disregarded when the “other issue” besides abortion is important to the pro life side, and not anyone else. Incredibly hypocritical in my opinion.

Incidentally, Sir Baklava, you are the nicest, most congenial conservative I have ever “chatted” with. You remind me of one of my favorite students (I teach college….I know, the typos are embarrassing, but I find it hard to take the time to proofread when posting to dicussion boards…) who liked to wear a tshirt that said “Liberals are not stupid, they just believe a lot of things that aren’t so.” He was a sweet kid, however much I disagreed with most things he said….

What I was trying to say unsuccessfully is there a LOT of writers out there who have made the lazy accusation and there are a lot of writers on the other side (not paid any attention to by the legacy drive-by media) who have debunked those accusation with common sense.

How?

They have identified and counted the ranks of Al Qaeda and how many have been killed or captured. There actually is data on this and NOBODY needs to speculate. We’ll see these types of accusations in print over and over but seeing them in print doesn’t make them true. The lazy ones are the ones who wrote it in the first place – not you.

Rebecca wrote, “I doubt there is even one small thing we are doing in Iraq that will make the world safer from terrorism….”

The pessimism is unfortunate. People could’ve had that perspective when we spent 7 years rebuilding Japan and 10 in Germany but they didn’t because the media has changed. From day 1 the legacy drive-by media has given aid and comfort to the enemy, emboldened them, challenged them to step up to the plate and fight us basically, giving them the impression that they could drive us out and we are this close “” to leaving.

Iraq is such a ’small’ problem compared to what we fought in WW2. We lost more men in the battle for a VERY small island named Iwo Jima and in a much smaller timeframe than Iraq.

Given an Iraq that is free of Saddam and a representative republic, prosperity and education would be Quadrupled every decade as Japan and Germany has seen. It would be hard for a ‘Saddam’ to come in and take the prosperity away from them once they’ve tasted it.

Rebecca wrote, “The president convinced the country to go in there on false pretenses.”

You REALLY do need to change your sources of information. The President was saying the same things as many others including Democrats like Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Albright, Edwards, etc. Additionally, they were saying these things as far back as 1998 before Bush took office in 2001. Additionally – the intelligence that the U.S. had, the British intelligence, French Intelligence, German and Russian intelligence all thought that Saddam had ’stockpiles’ of weapons of mass destruction. So what Bush “sold” to the people was what the world believed and what Democrats said. It is highly convenient for Democrats and the drive-by legacy press to put ALL of the words back on Bush and then call him a liar or someone who “manipulated intelligence” when Bush did nothing of the sort.

I know how being duped is – as I was pre 1991. I do not judge you Rebecca for being duped. I hope you don’t take offense to me saying you are duped. But really – it simply isn’t true that Bush has a bad heart and wanted to do the things that he has been accused of. I personally disagree with over 50% of Bush’s policies as Bush is actually too far left – that is for another conversation – and the result of leftist policies is a weaker American and more poor people and more people in misery.

Rebecca wrote, “I don’t think there is a way to win that war,”

No. You wouldn’t given the sources of info you read. But let me put it to you this way. It is imperative that we strive for victory here. The 3 million Cambodians that died when we left Vietnam will be similar to what happens when we leave Iraq. ADDITIONALLY, however there is the terrorist’s obectives. The Vietnamese didn’t want to then follow us over here and take over America. The radical Islamists (see what that word means from Daniel Pipes) want to first establish an Islamic Caliphate in the middle East and then move to the EU and the U.S. and either you will have to submit or die. Submit can mean peace for the pacifists of the bunch but it will mean you will be wearing the burka. For me – I don’t submit to anyone but my woman. and the IRS, and the local authorities, and my children, and my boss

Rebecca wrote, “We would have been MUCH better off leaving the whole thing alone.”

That is 1 opinion. I think we would’ve been much better off without the drive-by legacy media creating so much disunity and giving the terrorists this constant feeling that we are this close “” to pulling out. Resolve goes a long way to de-spiriting the enemy. We would’ve been done a year ago. I also disagree with your opinion because of the oil for weapons (food) program where UN officials were receiving bribes and giving Saddam money instead of food for his people. It HAS been written by the Iraq Survey Group that Saddam was interested in re-establishing with his money the weapons programs and DID have weapons that could threaten Israel in violation of the 1991 agreement and UN resolutions. So, given those facts – it doesn’t seem like doing nothing would’ve been good (as we learned on 9/11 we can’t stick our heads in the sand) as time was on Saddam’s side.

I do not understand your last paragraph. We are waging this GWOT (Global War on Terror) on many fronts (not just militarily) and all around the world. Countries like Britain are helping by trying to find and capture the terrorists within their own country before they can strike again. It is a matter of perspective here that we cannot simply give up because the job seems too big. I personally don’t think we are doing a good enough job in this GWOT either but I think we need to be more aggressive – taking down propagandist radio and TV and replacing it with messages of love not hate. Palestinian children learn from day 1 to hate the Jews and want to kill a jew. Sesame street type programs aimed at children brain wash children to want to strap bombs on them and kill. Time is not on our side – we need to try to make this world a better place and we can’t do that if we don’t take these information sources out. All of the environmental and abortion debate is irrelevant (yes we are off topic ST – sorry) if we can’t protect ourselves and change the minds of the people who are interested in killing millions of us and wiping us off the face of the planet.

Who are we going to invade next? Iran? Pakistan? Any number of African countries? Saudi Arabia? The whole world? Maybe Britain, since the last big foiled plot (the one we know about) involved people from there….Maybe we should turn our own coutnry into a police state since our famous civil liberties allow terrorists so much freedom here….But they are EVERYWHERE and taking control of any one country (which even that is obviously not what has happened in Iraq) is not going to help. We need to think about what is. I think the words peace, love and generousity figure into what could help somewhere….

I submit to you that the question about what we do about the 10% of people who follow Islam who want to “kill the infidel” is complex.

We definitely should be as compassionate as we can be – but what has been going on and what is being planned for attacks on this nation needs people with stomach and due diligence – not lazy accusations.

I respectfully submit that it is a lazy accusation that we are creating more terrorists by bringing democracy to a nation and removing a brutal dictator who killed hundreds of thousands of his people. It might be that you’ve been reading too much “mainstream” drive-by legacy press (who has no interest in helping this nation to victory) and need to change your sources of information.

At least do research and think for yourself.

I was a liberal once. I converted to conservatism in 1991 after visiting the library 4 times a week for a full year. I’ve been reading and learning ever since on a variety of topics. And see what I’m doing on a Friday night?

I think the circumstances of this war are a little different. But I am not so sure that I know everything about what is going on over there to be completely sure about it either way. I do think we are literally inspiring more and more terrorists each and every day that the whole mess goes on.

I don’t blame you. Mean people are in every organization. People without perspective also. There are kind and warm (just misguided) leftists and kind and warm conservatives.

I have a neighbor who is a knee jerk mean redneck conservatives who give conservatives a bad name. I have a nieghbor who is an NPR listening mean uncaring leftist. I treat each of my neighbors as kind as I can though because good neighbors are a higher priority of mine than controlling them. You have to accept what is is with neighbors sometimes.

As far as pacifism and Christianity – you should read works or listen to Dennis Prager. I have formed beliefs very similar to his.

Pacificism is more dangerous than vegetarianism. Because with pacificism and the belief in non-violence (in all cases – otherwise it isn’t pacificsm it is just the belief in trying not to do violence), evil go unchecked to do as much harm as they can. There used to be a poster here named Steve – I posed an actual hypothetical to him.

An Islamic fundamentalist (in the news story) had gone and killed each one of his kids one by one with the woman crying and pleading with the man to stop. I put Steve there – his only answer was that he would do the SAME as the woman – plead for the man to stop. With this story it was easy to show how his belief ended up in more death whereas someone who would’ve been a man and didn’t think SO BIG of himself that he could simply talk the man out of his actions but through the kindness of his heart actually physically STOPPED the man by whatever means necessary (as cops do all the time) when trying to “control” a situation.

Additionally, leaders and observers of crimes against humanity are NOT required to turn the cheek of the victim(s). Just the opposite. They are required to act, to protect, to bring force to evil. A husband would never be required to turn the wive’s cheek to her rapist. He would be required to show love and bring evil to a halt and he would not be guilty for murder if it ended badly for the criminal. A president would not be required to offer another building of people but to set boundaries and expectations with the terrorists including the fact that their actions will not be tolerated and we cannot simply wait for more attacks on our soil anymore. Negotiation with mad evil people is not an option.

Vegetarians only affect themselves unless they impose their health illiteracy on their children (as children need all sorts of protiens and acids). The last half of life can be accomplished without meat but vegetarians don’t allow evil to thrive they just simply do not eat meat.

Therefore Pacificsm is by far more negative and should be taught against.

However, it is true that war and force should be a last resort. That is a different question from the question “do we pull our troops out now” because that would result in lots of death and a worsening humanitarian crisis until evil people in the Middle East prevail and create their power structure that is unopposed (as happened with the hundreds of thousands of humans who perished when we left Vietnam).

God bless all of you here!

Rebecca

And I also love baklava.

I just think it’s too much to ask a woman to go into a court and prove she was raped, or that incest happened.

I agree the whole partial birth abortion thing is just….mind boggling. I think the pro choice advocates at the top have lost their minds and are not in touch with most of pro choice america.

When I was in college, I was poor. Really poor. I was so thankful that there was a planned parenthood to go to for health care. At that time, I was a card carrying,militant pro lifer. And I was so angry, really angry, the day I showed up for my pap smear and had an angry, middle aged white man snarl insults at me as I walked across the parking lot. It occured to me then that this was not the best way to reach people who were thinking of having an abortion…It certainly was the beginning of the end for me in terms of supporting the pro life movement.

I would agree with you that the language has gotten more and more course – all based on disagreeements.

This pargraph of yours could be applied to the following issues where leftists think the right is for something bad:
1) Global warming
2) Terrorists suveillance (not domestic wiretapping as leftists call it)
3) Minimum Wage
4) The Iraq War

Rebecca wrote, “However, in certain cases (rape, incest, and various health concerns of the mother) the pregnant woman should have a right to prayerfully decide what to do. And there is no way to legislate that…

Most conservatives would agree with that position as it would reduce abortions by 99% and it certainly could be legislated. Too many times the partial birth abortion law has either been veto’d or filibustered and it included protection for the life of the mother.

Germany, Britain and other European countries have bans on abortion past a certain week such as 12 weeks or 14 weeks.

Rebecca wrote, “adn I am tired of the catholic church telling me that makes me a bad person.”

And I’m tired of the bob’s and tommy’s of the world telling me what makes me a bad person. I have to be for the Kyoto treaty or I’m not for progress and an idiot?

Rebecca wrote, “Really, the catholic church baffles me sometimes.”

So does Planned Parenthood. They baffle me. Their distortion of the record and opposition to good people running for Congress and suppport for people who are economically illiterate (Democrats/leftists in general) with tax payer dollars is unconscionable. But they have the right to believe what they want to believe just like the CatChurch. Can you let it go? Do churches have to bend to its current membership thinking? Maybe. But I kind of like their messages for the most part. Their messages help usually. I disagree with the church when they take out full page ads urging Bush not to attack Afghanistan as they did after 9/11 – that’s why I left the Catholic church. It’s leadership wasn’t reflective of the bible that I knew. You left because the church’s leadership does not reflect your beliefs (which is different than the bible).