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Originally Posted by TheLaughingMan
Heh, my friend just summerized the debate up "One guy lies, one guy doesn't have a plan."
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That's clearly wrong; both lie, one has a dubious plan, and the other has none.
Anyway, Kerry did bring up some good points.
1> to the iraqi people, it must look like we have every intention of establishing a permament military presence in iraq.
I hadn't even thought of this before, but it does seem to be true. If we announce that we intend to have all of our troops home in 4 years, and will start pulling them out as soon as possible, much of the support for the militants will dry up. Of course that alone won't solve anything, but it would make recruitment harder for those people.
2> Iraq had nothing to do with terrorism before we invaded.
This is true, and seems obvious to a lot of people, but there are still a great number out there who believe saddam was working with al qaeda on the 9-11 attacks. Cheney still insists that there were connections between the iraqi government and al qaeda.
3>We should have sent US troops after bin laden.
I can understand why we used mainly afgani forces to deal with the taliban itself. we did not want the afgani people to see this as a foreign invasion, but instead as foreign assistance for an afgani faction. I agree with that, but we should have had a large force in afganistan to deal with al qaeda. The afgani people would have understood that we were assisting in their war, because foreigners, who had attacked us first, were in their country supporting the people who were oppressing them.
Bush really had no good points. He kept saying kerry flip floped in the issues and the country needed a leader who would hold firm on his position.
To that, I would just like to post a quote I read the other day.
"The biggest issue this election is something called flip-flopping, and all candidates are accused of doing it. A strong leader is expected to maintain steadfast resolve in his opinion even if the environment changes or he gets new information. In any other context, that would be considered the first sign of a brain tumor. When presidents do it, it's called leadership, and frankly, we can't get enough of it."