[thechat] Getting closer

[Lauri Vain]

Tony,

> What a pity that's it's the same story in Iraq, North Korea, and
> all those other axis of evil places, the common people, busy with
> their own daily lives, can't control their governments either,
> but we (free peoples of the west) are going to let our government
> bomb these poor people back to the stone age, because, even though
> we elected them, we can't control them....

That is a narrow-minded statement. People apparently are in control of
the government, when there is a 50:50 split between going to war and not
going to war. I don't see how somebody could claim that people have no
control over the government, when Hugh just said the following sentence:

"is about 47% in the current poles. Unfortunately not enough."

Apparently people *are* in control (that 47% in the margin of a 50:50
situation, so the government is still doing what the people want).

Democracy is about doing what people in a country want and at the moment
~50% of people in the States want war -- as simple as that. The problem
is that citizens don't always agree with each other (as a matter of
fact, they rarely agree), so what politicians need to do is to find out
what *most* people want. You cannot please everybody and sometimes you
shouldn't even please the majority, as people do not understand
everything what's going on and what you're doing (especially decisions
in the economy etc).

You absolutely CAN NOT claim "we elected them, we can't control them",
given the numbers that we have (I'm referring to the 50:50 split between
votes again).

If you want to make a point, then make a valid statement (the problem is
that "I don't want to go to war, so the United States of America
shouldn't go to war" does not carry the weight you would be wishing
for).

What's my point? Nothing really, except -- please do not make
hysterical, totally false statements like the one I quoted above.

The following is for the record.

I'm not really for Bush (rather the opposite). I think he is not very
intelligent and is trying to divert attention away from problems at home
and the fact that he never got Bin Laden.

BTW, do you remember that he never really had (or didn't present) any
evidence that Bin Laden was behind the attacks? Everybody now says that
he was, but Bush hasn't proved it yet (this is proof again that if you
repeat something very often, people will simply believe you)... he just
needed somebody to point the fingers to for the "average" American, who
doesn't even know where Afghanistan and Iraq are on the map.

Also, I'm against war as long as we haven't proved that they really have
weapons of mass destruction and that it's Saddam's intention to use them
as a first strike weapon. This (the existence of weapons) is also
something that hasn't been proved yet, but rather repeated kazillion
times... Bush says that Saddam does have 'em and demands them to be
destroyed, but it might be hard to destroy something that you don't
have. Even more - it's false to demand destroying them before you have
presented evidence of their existence]. It is my personal opinion that
the US and GB shouldn't go to war as long as there are other measures.

p.s. I want to repeat my point again, as it might have been lost among
the argumentation of the last paragraphs again -- let's carry on the
conversation, but let's not make untrue and hysterically unintelligent
statements.

Cheers,
Lauri