The Comeback Kid?

Bush vs Kerry

Which candidate was better on the issues?

8.1%
Bush (439 responses)

91.9%
Kerry (4993 responses)

5432 total responses

Which candidate handled the audience the best?

9.2%
Bush (501 responses)

90.8%
Kerry (4928 responses)

5429 total responses

Which candidate came across as a better leader?

8.3%
Bush (452 responses)

91.7%
Kerry (4978 responses)

5430 total responses

Regardless of your thoughts about the issues, which candidate do you think performed better during the debate?

8.4%
Bush (458 responses)

91.6%
Kerry (4985 responses)

5443 total responses

Which candidate was the most credible?

8.3%
Bush (455 responses)

91.7%
Kerry (4997 responses)

5452 total responses

(Newsday)

Jinnah would not have made mince meat of him, good as Jinnah was as a prosecutor Gandhi was sharper. Secondly though hindu muslim unity was certainly Gandhi`s dream, but as regards Partition his role was not as clean as is projected. Gandhi himself picked holes in the cabinet mission plan, which Jinnah accepted and which was India`s last best chance for unity. Not only that but the offer remained on the table for the next 10 months until June of 47 and neither Gandhi nor Nehru picked it up.

romair:
Gandhi was accused also of flip-flop by Jinnah and others. He disarmingly said that he did so because he was wiser than when he made his last statement.
And how successful was he? Jinnah beat him to a pulp when it came to the affections of muslims. He had two dreams - hindu-muslim unity and prevention of the division of india (`over my dead body`). How successful was he in achieving them?
...jinnah would have made a mince-meat of him in a televised debate!

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dost-mittar #54: ``John Kerry is a politician and a senator. Senate is no place for Gandhis and Naders, compromise is the name of the game in the senate and there is a limit to which one can go against the overwhelming desire of the people of the country.``

Gandhi actually did quite well in politics, if I recall my history correctly. And had he been the leader of Congress at the crucial last years before independence, instead of Nehru, South Asia would have probably been decades ahead of where it is today, and far far more peaceful. India and Pakistan would have been a very loose federation within one country. There would either have been no partition, or a slowly phased out one, with far less violence. Kashmir would have held its plebescite, and Indians and Pakistanis would not need to have huge militaries.

So I am not sure whether I can buy your argument. In fact, it supports what I am stating, rather than contradicting it.

I am not saying that politicians should not play politics. All I am stating is that true leaders form the opinion polls. And only weak ones chase after them. I don`t think Bush has invaded Iraq through his own conviction. He has done so through the conviction of the neo-cons. However, the conviction of the neo-cons, however wrong it is, has given them the opportunity to take a leadership posiiton and influence the opinion polls.

Had Kerry spoken out against the Iraq war, from day one, which was his conviction, don`t you think he would have been in a much stronger position today. There would have been no charge of being a flip-flop. His stance would have been consistent...............

Ferozek #56: ``Elections are won by being hypocritical and compromising your convictions with your ambitions and subsituting principle with political expediency. Elections are won by telling the people what they wish to hear instead of the telling them the truth.``

This is true, only for those individuals who cannot establish their leadership traits. Those who can do so, always lead the opinion polls. They never need to follow them. The most successful leaders and leadership decisions have always been the ones, where the leader has taken major decisions and has delivered on those decisions, many times against opinion polls. Not the ones where the leader has simply chased opinion polls.

The person who forms opion polls, through leadership, will always be more successful than the person who chases them.

``On a lighter note, I really found your comment amusing not to trust in the value of surveys. If memory serves me right, you seemed to have argued many a point on Chowk on the basis of the statistical explantions of surveys! :)``

I am not stating that one should not trust the value of surveys. I am just stating that real leaders form the results of those surveys, they need not chase them.

I only use surveys to present facts. I don`t necessarily use them to make decisions. I am stating that Bush will win the elections, as of today, because all surveys indicate that he will. That doesn`t mean I want him to. Nor would I vote for him, based on those surveys.

Malik99,

How did W raid Social Security to pay for the tax cuts? Not sure I follow here.

BTW, I agree about borrowing from foreigners (now mainly Chinese) but SocSec?

Which candidate was better on the issues?

3.3%
Cheney (832 responses)

96.7%
Edwards (24244 responses)

25076 total responses

Which candidate seemed more knowledgeable about fighting terrorism?

5.4%
Cheney (1359 responses)

94.6%
Edwards (23616 responses)

24975 total responses

Which candidate was the most credible?

3.3%
Cheney (816 responses)

96.7%
Edwards (24260 responses)

25076 total responses

Regardless of your thoughts about the issues, which candidate do you think performed better during the debate?

3.7%
Cheney (951 responses)

96.3%
Edwards (24432 responses)

25383 total responses

(Newsday Poll)

re: Romair # 51

Elections are not won by displaying conviction because it scares the major donors. Elections are won by being hypocritical and compromising your convictions with your ambitions and subsituting principle with political expediency. Elections are won by telling the people what they wish to hear instead of the telling them the truth.

In the end, whether Bush wins or Kerry wins, nothing much will change. Reality will mock perception pretending to be a reality and reality will be the perception of a lie told as a truth.

Ciao

P.S.: On a lighter note, I really found your comment amusing not to trust in the value of surveys. If memory serves me right, you seemed to have argued many a point on Chowk on the basis of the statistical explantions of surveys! :)

Echoboom

what do the following lines mean in your extract?

``Then there was the eight-seater plane of General Beg who, as the official host, had to get the small jet that would take him and the ambassador south would be parked at Multan.``

hamidm:
yes, we live in an abnormal country where an american tourist can roam about freely without wearing a t-shirt with a canadian flag!

Romair:
John Kerry is a politician and a senator. Senate is no place for Gandhis and Naders, compromise is the name of the game in the senate and there is a limit to which one can go against the overwhelming desire of the people of the country. That`s why he has a chance of winning the election as long as he can squarely deal with the charge of the flip-flop, a charge you can lay at almost any senator in the US.
Ralph Nader, on the other hand, is an idealist who can afford to speak the way Kerry spoke in the 70s when he was not in politics and the anti-war sentiment had taken hold in the US just as anti-iraqi war sentiment is slowly taking hold now. All Nader can do is spoil the party which is what he is doing. He bears a major responsibility for the Iraq misadventure.

``Oil and Blood`` by William Butler Yeats

In tombs of gold and lapis lazuli
Bodies of holy men and women exude
Miraculous oil, odour of violet.

But under heavy loads of trampled clay
Lie bodies of the vampires full of blood;
Their shrouds are bloody and their lips are wet.


It can also be Titled: ``Najaf--An ungainful Occupation``

One of the all-time great speeches:

How Do You Ask a Man to Be the Last Man to Die in Vietnam? (full text at http://hnn.us/articles/3631.html)

``I would like to talk on behalf of all those veterans and say that several months ago in Detroit we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged, and many very highly decorated, veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia. These were not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.........

They told stories that at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Ghengis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country......

In our opinion and from our experience, there is nothing in South Vietnam which could happen that realistically threatens the United States of America. And to attempt to justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos by linking such loss to the preservation of freedom, which those misfits supposedly abuse, is to us the height of criminal hypocrisy, and it is that kind of hypocrisy which we feel has torn this country apart.

We found that not only was it a civil war, an effort by a people who had for years been seeking their liberation from any colonial influence whatsoever, but also we found that the Vietnamese whom we had enthusiastically molded after our own image were hard put to take up the fight against the threat we were supposedly saving them from.......

We found most people didn`t even know the difference between communism and democracy. They only wanted to work in rice paddies without helicopters strafing them and bombs with napalm burning their villages and tearing their country apart. They wanted everything to do with the war, particularly with this foreign presence of the United States of America, to leave them alone in peace, and they practiced the art of survival......

We saw Vietnam ravaged equally by American bombs and search and destroy missions, as well as by Viet Cong terrorism - and yet we listened while this country tried to blame all of the havoc on the Viet Cong.

We rationalized destroying villages in order to save them. We saw America lose her sense of morality as she accepted very coolly a My Lai and refused to give up the image of American soldiers who hand out chocolate bars and chewing gum.

We learned the meaning of free fire zones, shooting anything that moves, and we watched while America placed a cheapness on the lives of orientals..........

Each day to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam someone has to give up his life so that the United States doesn`t have to admit something that the entire world already knows, so that we can`t say that we have made a mistake. Someone has to die so that President Nixon won`t be, and these are his words, ``the first President to lose a war.``......

We are asking Americans to think about that because how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?......the hypocrisy in our taking umbrage at the Geneva Conventions and using that as justification for a continuation of this war when we are more guilty than any other body of violations of those Geneva Conventions;......

We are here to ask, and we are here to ask vehemently, where are the leaders of our country? Where is the leadership? We`re here to ask where are McNamara, Rostow, Bundy, Gilpatrick, and so many others? Where are they now that we, the men they sent off to war, have returned? These are the commanders who have deserted their troops.......

(Lt. (retd.) John Kerry, 1971)

Ferozek #45: My mention of political mumbo-jumbo is not in the context of electoral procedures. In such procedures, it is obvious that electoral votes matter.

My mention of this mumbo-jumbo was in the context of real leadership, itself. Leadership does not emerge from electoral massaging. It emerges from a conviction in a belief, and the subsequent articulation of that belief, in a logical and humane manner. It does not appear from reading surveys, it appears from taking stands on what one believes in.

If one shows such leadership, the electoral votes and surveys, themselves, fall into place. This is the problem with Kerry. He was a man of conviction. He volunteered for Vietnam on conviction, despite being a rich kid. While George Bush and Dick Cheney were using anything and everything to avoid going to Vietnam. Kerry came back and, purely out of conviction, opposed the war openly, making the best speech of his life, at the age of 27. Bush at the age of 27 was living off his successfull fathers` crums, fighting drinking problems, and taking his dad`s businesses to bankruptcy.

The 27 year old Kerry is the one that will win in an election today. His, ``How do you ask a man to die....`` applies as much to Iraq as it does to Vietnam. Yet he has been caught up in political mumbo-jumbo and electoral massaging, like all politicians. He has no stance nor conviction, anymore. Which is why he will lose.

I cannot believe a person like Kerry, would support the Iraq war, purely out of conviction. Yet he voted for it. He still supports it. He support Sharon, when his background indicates otherwise, etc. He is not showing leadership, even though his background is filled with it. And this is why he will lose the election (unless he makes major changes), which has been his to win, all along.

Nader, on the other hand, is saying what he believes in. And what he has always believed in. His stance has not changed, even though he knows he will never win. That is called conviction.

Bush has no clue what he believes in. His knowledge is far too limited, to the point that he had to take Cheney along with him to the Sep 11 heaerings. He is saying what his neo-con enablers have told him.

In the end, the USA will be a far more humbler country, once Bush is done trying out his policies. Already, after Iraq, that aura of invincibility around the USA`s military has come crashing down. No one is scared of it, anymore, after seeing what the Iraqi maulvis have done. It will take a hell of lot for Bush to, for example, even convince Americans that he should attack Iran.......

US Major General John Batiste, speaking on CNN, provided extensive details about the military operation, in which 3000 US marines and 2000 Iraqi national guard troops were engaged. A total of 125 suspected insurgents were killed and 88 taken captive, many of them after an Iraqi special forces raid to seize control of Samarra`s holy mosque.

``This is great news for the people of Samarra, 200,000 people who have been held captives, hostages if you will, by just a couple of hundred thugs,`` Major-General Batiste said.

BAGHDAD, Oct. 4 -- As U.S. and Iraqi troops patrolled the battered streets of Samarra, the central Iraqi city reclaimed from insurgents in two days of lopsided battle, residents emerged Sunday reporting thirst, hunger and casualties among the civilian population, according to news service accounts from the city.

Of the 70 dead brought to Samarra General Hospital since fighting erupted, 23 were children and 18 were women, (Washington Post Foreign Service)

---

among 70 dead 23 children and 18 women -- and this is supposed to be ``great news for the people of Samarra`` -- The brutal Americans have totally lost their mind -- this unbridlded savagery -- killing Iraqi children like flies and counting them as insurgents......mr Bush will burn in hell till eternity for what he is doing to Iraqis in Iraq -- and the Moron says that ``they hate us`` -- no wonder the number of insurgents is multiplying like crazy....

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