"Palme D'Or" for Mike Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11&

[D-Dave]

First of all sorry for the late reply but am rather busy in RL. This however does not mean that I do not enjoy a worthy exchange of arguments as this seems to be.
So, let's continue :)

You store the precursors and mix them up just before you use them. I believe most of those chemicals were trucked to Syria in the weeks prior to the war in an attempt to thwart Hans Blix's team.

While it is true that some chemical Weapons are "assambeled" just prior to use, most of them not as it requires more then just a pair of gloves and a gas-mask. In other words most chemical and nearly all biological are mixed and stored right after production as a mix "on the Battlefield" is simply impossible.
About the "trucked to Syria" argument I'd like to repeat that the US Forces had incredible amounts of intel and that's the reason why I do not believe in that theory. Well, this seems to be a question of believe so we may have to agree to disagree on this bit.
On the other hand this does not rebute the fact that Mr. Bush claimed "we know they have them and we know were they are" which was obviously not true.

People in the US have been calling for more law and order for decades, and in response we have more people incarcerated that any nation on the planet. We also have a Constitutionally guaranteed right to defend ourselves with guns if we like. But, you entirely side-stepped my argument that the problem was drug use, and not firearm use.

I gues we misunderstood each other on that one. The guns issue arose to me from the line in the "bowling for columbine" movie and I did not mean to state this as an argument for the US having more gun murders then other countrys. I just stated that the (maybe due to governments inability to create a safe environment even understandable) attitude of "the federal government is not going to take care of it so I do it myself" sounds very dangerous to me within a democratic society.

By the way, the Second Amendment you refer to states:

"A well-regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State,
the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed."
— Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

This amendment was created in a time when the US felt an immediate threat from being reintegrated into the British commonwealth and not having the means to defend the country by a standing army. To me the Second ammendment is simply a relict from that time but that is a different issue which has been argued over for decades so I doubt I could bring up any new arguments on this. So we better leave that issue untouched :)

To clarify my "sidestepping" your argument of different drug culture I'd like to say that I simply misinterpreted you there. I thought you were argueing that there is more drugabuse and thus more drug related crime in the US to which I do not agree. (sorry, I guess things like that happen when one is taking part in a conversation that is not in his first language) Now I understand that you were refering to a different drug culture as of using different types of drugs. To this I have to admit that I simply do not have any facts about what different behaviours are amplified by certain types of drugs so it would be presumptuous to argue about that.

The Supreme Courts argument for stopping the recount was that selective recounts in only 4 democrat counties violated the "equal protection" clause. Either the entire state needed to be recounted, or none. It was obvious that any legal recount would result in a slim Bush victory.

Well, first of all it appears to me that we are talking about different courts here. The verdict you quote is from Florida's Supreme Court while I was reffering to the Supreme Court of the United States but concerning the "obviousness" of the result I'd like to quote from said document:

...results showed a 537-vote margin in favor of Bush...

For the reasons stated in this opinion, we find that the trial court erred as a matter of law in not including (1) the 215 net votes for Gore identified by the Palm Beach County Canvassing Board6 and (2) in not including the 168 net votes for
Gore identified in a partial recount by the Miami-Dade County Canvassing Board.

Now that leaves us with a margin of 154 in favor of Bush...lets look a bit further, shall we?

Lastly, we find the trial court erred as a matter of law in (5) refusing to examine the approximately 9000 additional Miami-Dade ballots placed in evidence, which have never been examined manually.

Hm, a margin of 154 versus 9000 votes that were not counted and never examined manually? Suddenly Mr. Bush does not appear to be an obvious winner but nothing seems to be obvious.

Now to the connection of this Florida Ruling to what I was talking about:

B. Must all the Ballots be Counted Statewide?
Appellees contend that even if a count of the undervotes in Miami-Dade were appropriate, section 102.168, Florida Statutes (2000), requires a count of all votes in Miami-Dade County and the entire state as opposed to a selected number of votes challenged. However, the plain language of section 102.168 refutes Appellees' argument.
...
Logic dictates that to bring a challenge based upon the rejection of a specific number of legal votes under section 102.168(3)©, the
contestant must establish the "number of legal votes" which the county canvassing board failed to count. This number, therefore, under the plain language of the statute, is limited to the votes identified and challenged under section 102.168(3)©, rather than the entire county. Moreover, counting uncontested votes in a contest would be irrelevant to a determination of whether certain uncounted votes constitute legal votes that have been rejected.
On the other hand, a consideration of “legal votes” contained in the category of “undervotes” identified statewide may be properly considered as evidence in the contest proceedings and, more importantly, in fashioning any relief. We do agree, however, that it is absolutely essential in this proceeding and to any final decision, that a manual recount be conducted for all legal votes in this
State, not only in Miami-Dade County, but in all Florida counties where there was an undervote, and, hence a concern that not every citizen’s vote was counted. This election should be determined by a careful examination of the votes of Florida’s
citizens and not by strategies extraneous to the voting process.

So far this means the Courts ruling was not declaring Bush winner but stating that an awefull lot of things obviously went wrong and that a statewide recount should be done.
Well and I am talking about the recount that was to be started based on this ruling, which was stopped by Bush via challenging this ruling at the Supreme Court of the United States.
Here is the full text of the court's ruling.
What I was earlyer and still am reffering to is the

V. CONCLUSION
Under these circumstances, the effect of a failure to grant a stay could well be to
deny Applicants fully effective relief in this case and to inflict material harm on the
electoral process. A stay is further justified by the extraordinary importance of the
outcome of this case and the extremely time-sensitive nature of relief. Applicants are
threatened with irreparable injury, and the equities clearly favor granting a stay, because
a stay is the only means of protecting the integrity of the federal electoral process while
ensuring proper and orderly access to the judicial system.

In other words the outcome of this case is so important that we do not think it should be according to the vote of the people but instead accpording to the results that the Florida Supreme Court stated to be "questionable".

I'll close this argument by quoting the Florida Supreme Court again as I can not put it in better words:

This essential principle, that the outcome of elections be determined by the will of the voters, forms the foundation of the election code enacted by the Florida Legislature and has been consistently applied by this Court in resolving elections disputes.
We are dealing with the essence of the structure of our democratic society.

9/11 Commission Report - Page 329

Ah, one of my favorite Pages of the report.
Here are a few things that did feel a bit awkward:

Clark added: " I have no recollection of clearing it with anybody at the White House"

While being under oath he was obviously not lying but to me this sounds a bit too forgetful.

The Prsident and the Vice President told us they were not aware of the issue at all until it surfaced much later in the media.

Funny that one of the Bin Laden Family was at a meeting of the Carlyle Group on September 11 that was also attended By Goeorge W's father. But hey they probably did not talk about such unimportant issues.

we found no evidence of political intervention [to let Saudis leave the country]

No evidence? Well at least Senator Byron Dorgan (Member of the Senate subcommitee on Aviation) remembers the authorization "at the highest levels" of some flights taking Bin Laden Family members out of the country...funny his name does not show up in the report at all.

Now to one of the realy astonishing lines (it is on page 330 actualy):

...the passengersbe identified and checked against various databases...Our own independent review of the Saudi nationals involved confirms that no one with known links to terrorism departed on these flights

While "no known links to terrorism" may be true but still there were family members of the prime suspect among them. Besides, "indentify" is not exactly asking questions is it?

Many of the detainee's in Abu Garib and Guantanamo are not POW's, so in a strict legal sense the GC does not apply. They should be treated humanely, but I disagree that they should not be aggressively interrogated.

So, how are many of the detainee's not POW's? Let's assume they are not, what jurisdiction would the US have? If you stick to a "strict legal sense" taking people into custody, shipping them into another country without those people being POW's and without a contract of extradition between the country of origin and the acting country under international law it is simply one thing: hostage taking!
Just another note: Even if they are not POW's and one should consider the imprisonment legal they would still be protected by the International Bill of Human Rights which was signed by the USA.

On your disagreement with not interrogate "them" aggressively it appears to me that you have fallen into the trap of good guy / bad guy stereotyping. How can it be that Saddam Hussein is a bad guy for torturing people and George W Bush is a good guy but sis also torturing people?

We are not fighting the Boy Scouts here, many of these people are ruthless terrorists. I would prefer we could all act civilized, but we need to realistically look at who we are dealing with here.

While I do not doubt that some of those people are "ruthless terrorists" what's it with those "others". Do you think to find out who is a terrorist and who is not it is ok to also torture those who are not? I mean there were hundreds of people send home and condsidered innocent after being "interrogated" for periods as long as a year and longer.
That sounds a lot like the famous "You are either with us or with the terrorists" prattle of Mr. George W Bush. The whole concept of good vs. evil is erroneous in itself (well maybe apart from God vs. Satan) as being good or evil is a matter of how one acts and not of who one is.

And, yet it is obvious to me that you did not read the 9/11 commission report. So from where do you get your facts?

I did actualy read most of the report but came to one conclusion: There are no real answers in it that I could take serious.
Personaly I tend to be sceptical if most of the document reads like "we found no evidence" or "I have no recollection" and the like. To me this is much to vague. Additionaly Mr. Bush refused to be formaly questioned and sworn in in front of the commisiion but instead agreed only to a non-public, informal meeting in his office. This little fact tends to increase my scepticism regarding the 9/11 commission report.
I prefer sources of Information like the daily press, news agencies like reuters, international media like the BBC or even CNN and obviously the Internet.


Now, as we are already at such a general discussion, let me add two more question (well it they realy are questions of believe but non the less interesting ones):
First:
Mr. Townsend (Homeland Security) stated that the data on which the recent Terrorist Warnings / Alerts were issued is dated from 2000/2001 and last updated in January 2004. That seems a bit old doesn't it? Now the question is, is the Bush Administration so slow to react on Terrorist threats or did it just come in handy to raise the alarm to shift the focus of the election towards peoples fear? (ok, this is realy to tease you, but I'd realy like to know what you think about this)

Second:
Do you think "War on Terrorism" can be won by military means (as the current Administration is trying to)?
While I do obviously not know if they will eventualy "win" this war [regarding this phrase one should realy check with local blockbuster video and rent "Wargames"] I look back in history and doubt it.
During WW2 France was occupied by the Nazi-Regime which had absolute superiority in Numbers and equipment but still could not defeat the french resistance (and I'd like to add that I am glad about this) and they did not even bother a bit with human rights back then.
Israel is fighting palestinian Terrorists without second thought for decades by all military means available and even by advisedly asassinating suspected terror leaders. Still they have not improved their security one bit.
Maybe it is the fact that with every terrorist killed there are two new ones being enflamed with the hate and maybe it would be wiser to focus on getting get rid of the reasons why average people suddenly support terrorists then dropping bombs on those people that one inevitably needs to root out those real whackos... ah well, it's a thought.

Looking forward to your reply :)
Greetings Dave