Topic: A Brief History of the Worst Congress Ever

[WindAndConfusion]

Despite an international uproar over Abu Ghraib, Congress spent only twelve hours on hearings on the issue. During the Clinton administration, by contrast, the Republican Congress spent 140 hours investigating the president's alleged misuse of his Christmas-card greeting list.

:wide-eyed,asynchronousblink:

[Quemaqua]

Gee, politicians are horrible?  What breaking news.  Fuck all of them, including the Democrats.

[idolminds]

I dont really know whats worse, them taking so little time on something important or the last group taking so much time on something trivial.

[Ghandi]

I couldn't read past the first paragraph. Good Lord.

As for congress, the fact that we impeach a great president for getting a blowjob (or lying about it) and we do nothing to Bush is testament in itself as to the state of Congress. Although I disagree that all politicians are horrible- where would we be without the selfless few who actually drive forward and develop our country?- the majority of them are merely sticking out for their own necks, afraid of getting voted out. Power corrupts. Absolutely, in some cases.

[Cobra951]

Clinton's lying was under oath, making it perjury--a felony that would send most people to jail, let alone cause the loss of their jobs.

Anyway, I did read into Page 2.  That was enough.  I do know that the republicans have been very heavy-handed.  I'm glad they're losing control of the legislature.  I doubt things will get much better, though.  This country is in serious trouble, with corruption ruling the day, from both parties.

[Quemaqua]

What Cobra said.  It isn't that I don't think the current administration needs changing or that I don't agree with what most people are saying when it comes to how bad they're doing, etc. etc.  The difference is I think their proposed solutions are laughable and worthless.

[Ghandi]

Clinton's lying was under oath, making it perjury--a felony that would send most people to jail, let alone cause the loss of their jobs.

I realize this, my point was simply that actors under the current administration have provided false testimony (lied?) under oath about much more serious allegations than a blowjob, namely WMD's.

[Quemaqua]

Who lied about WMDs?

[Pugnate]

Your government.

[WindAndConfusion]

Clinton's lying was under oath, making it perjury--a felony that would send most people to jail, let alone cause the loss of their jobs.

No, perjury doesn't - definitely not in the case of a witness for the defense, let alone the defendant himself. (The Fifth Amendment would also offer some protection (even when lying about non-criminal acts), but I don't know how it would apply in that situation.)

In practice, the only perjury cases that ever get prosecuted are witnesses for the prosecution. First, they are The Enemy, even for the prosecution, since it greatly undermines their case (especially on appeal). Second, the defense is expected to lie (assuming they're actually guilty and have requested a trial), and therefore the prosecution's only job is to prove they're doing it.

Third, I don't want to see people get sent to jail for getting/lying about blowjobs. (Although, I'd like to see Mark Foley go to jail, since he broke some of the laws he helped write while chairing the Committee on Missing and Exploited Children.)

It's approximately Christmas and I'm therefore surrounded by lawyers. If you're actually curious about this stuff, I could ask?

This country is in serious trouble, with corruption ruling the day, from both parties.

I honestly believe the Republicans are worse (at least in recent years), but I agree with the general sentiment.

[WindAndConfusion]

Gee, politicians are horrible?  What breaking news.  Fuck all of them, including the Democrats.

You can't possibly out-hate the Congresstards around me.

If they were on fire, I'd piss on them, but only after they were dead.

Nonetheless, the Rolling Stones article makes a pretty good case that the 109th was among the worst, ever.

[Quemaqua]

Your government.

That's false.  I don't know why people keep saying it.  They didn't find what was expected, necessarily, but WMDs were found.  Just because it isn't a nuke doesn't mean it isn't a WMD.  If memory serves, there was mustard gas and something else.

[WindAndConfusion]

That's false.  I don't know why people keep saying it.  They didn't find what was expected, necessarily, but WMDs were found.  Just because it isn't a nuke doesn't mean it isn't a WMD.  If memory serves, there was mustard gas and something else.

It was a moldy, spoiled canister of mustard gas or two and some artillery to fire it. Not in usable condition. They were leftovers from the Iran-Iraq War. I think we may have been the ones who supplied them. (We definitely gave Saddam permission to use them to suppress the Kurdish uprising after Desert Storm, if you recall.)

There was also a "mobile biological weapons lab" or whatever they called it, which was most definitely not. If I recall a quote from an inspector: "It could be modified if you tinkered with it enough, but that's true of any tin can. It would be easier to start over with just a bucket."

There were some other allegations about "yellowcake" and the like, none of which panned out.

If my memory serves.

Definitely no "weapons of mass destruction" worth speaking of, though.

[Pugnate]

What W&C said... left over stuff from the Iran/Iraq war, when Iraq was the 'good guy'.

[WindAndConfusion]

Found a Wiki.

[Quemaqua]

It's like arresting a guy for a littering charge so you can get him in custody then nail him for murder.  That doesn't make it any less valid in terms of intended objective.

[WindAndConfusion]

It's like arresting a guy for a littering charge so you can get him in custody then nail him for murder.  That doesn't make it any less valid in terms of intended objective.

Wait... so Saddam was doing something worse than planning to sell nuclear weapons to Al Qaeda so they could kill us all*, and he got nailed for it? That's odd. The only conviction I remember was the one from the useless show trial in which his accomplices - Rumsfeld and Cheney - got off Scot free.
* Or whatever it was we were supposed to be pissing ourselves over in January, 2003.

[Quemaqua]

Last I checked there were a number of connections to Al Qaeda that were proven, even if they weren't WMD-related.  And I don't know why I'm even continuing this.  This is the most boring subject in the universe to me.  I really couldn't give a fuck either way.

[shock]

 There was no link between Saddam and Al Qaeda.  None at all.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47812-2004Jun16.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein_and_al-Qaeda

The Washington Post article is really good.  Makes you wonder how the people that lead our country can be SO incredibly misinformed.  That, or they choose their "evidence" extremely carefully so that it can help them further their own goals, political or otherwise.

Either way, it scares the piss out of me.  What scares me even more is that a lot of people think Iraq and Al Qaeda were related.

[WindAndConfusion]

What W&C said... left over stuff from the Iran/Iraq war, when Iraq was the 'good guy'.

I think we supplied some weapons to both sides, for whatever fantastically fucking brilliant reasons the Pentagon came up with.

ETA:

One of the factors contributing to hostility between the two powers was a dispute over full control of the Arvandrud/Shatt al-Arab waterway at the head of the Persian Gulf, an important channel for the oil exports of both countries. In 1975, United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had sanctioned Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to attack Iraq over the waterway, then under Iraqi control; soon afterward, both nations signed the Algiers Accord, where Iraq made territorial concessions — including the waterway — in exchange for normalized relations.

Iraq had staged a battle against Iranian forces a year earlier in 1974, resulting in heavy casualties on both sides. Iran attempted to destabilize Iraq, and encouraged Kurdish nationalists to break up the country, in response to Iraq's similar activities in Iran's Khuzestan province.

However, the relationship between Iranian and Iraqi governments briefly improved in 1978, when Iranian agents in Iraq discovered a pro-Soviet coup d'etat against the Iraqi government. When informed of this plot, Saddam Hussein, who was Vice President at the time, ordered the execution of dozens of his army officers, and to return the favor, expelled Ruhollah Khomeini, an exiled leader of clerical opposition to the Shah, from Iraq.

Iran's embassy in London was subsequently attacked by Iraqi-sponsored terrorist forces a few months prior to the war in 1980, in what came to be known as the Iranian Embassy Siege.

... and the rest is some amazingly fucked-up history.

[WindAndConfusion]

Here's another one I forgot to drag out for derision:

"Each time you print it hurts my family And now I have lost them Along with Everything I have worked for during my 64 years of life," Cunningham wrote. "I am human not an Animal to keep whiping [sic]. I made some decissions [sic] Ill be sorry for the rest of my life."

The amazing thing about Cunningham's letter is not his utter lack of remorse, or his insistence on blaming defense contractor Mitchell Wade for ratting him out ("90% of what has happed [sic] is Wade," he writes), but his frantic, almost epic battle with the English language. It is clear that the same Congress that put a drooling child-chaser like Mark Foley in charge of a House caucus on child exploitation also named Cunningham, a man who can barely write his own name in the ground with a stick, to a similarly appropriate position. Ladies and gentlemen, we give you the former chairman of the House Subcommittee on Human Intelligence Analysis and Counterintelligence:

"As truth will come out and you will find out how liablest [sic] you have & will be."

Liablest. Did he mean to say libelous or liable? One means "lying," the other means "getting in trouble (for lying, let's say)" - why is it so incredibly unsurprising that a Congressman doesn't know the difference?

(You can find Cunningham's letter here - direct link to SignOnSanDiego's electronic copy and attached transcript. Cunningham's original is even more illiterate than the transcription, if you can believe it. He writes with about the same competence you'd expect of a 14-year-old in a chatroom.)

[WindAndConfusion]

Can't believe I almost missed this.

Although I disagree that all politicians are horrible- where would we be without the selfless few who actually drive forward and develop our country?

Politicians don't drive forward or develop countries. Their only job is to not fuck up too badly too often.

[Cobra951]

Now that's just plain cynical, even for me.  Mr Smith Goes to Washington may be extremely rare, but I do think without those like him, the country would be in much worse shape, and earlier.  Somebody actually has to push progress through.  That doesn't happen by accident.

[Ghandi]

Can't believe I almost missed this. Politicians don't drive forward or develop countries. Their only job is to not fuck up too badly too often.

Except for those who actually help to push forward good legislation and develop our country. Somehow I feel as if we are going in circles..

[Raisa]

i haven't read this whole thing  yet but decided to put my finger in the pie.

Xessive, it's the iraqi government who gave the date of Saddam's hanging.  I guess they see nothing wrong with having executions on that day.

It's a pretty brutal way to go but it drives home the point that when they sentence and have laws about execution, they follow it no matter if you're an infamous person or an unknown.  In a morbid way, it's relieving to see some countries who at least try to stick to their word.

about the holocaust, well weren't the muslims teaming up with hitler?

[Ghandi]

wrong thread raisa 

[Xessive]

i haven't read this whole thing  yet but decided to put my finger in the pie.

Xessive, it's the iraqi government who gave the date of Saddam's hanging.  I guess they see nothing wrong with having executions on that day.

It's a pretty brutal way to go but it drives home the point that when they sentence and have laws about execution, they follow it no matter if you're an infamous person or an unknown.  In a morbid way, it's relieving to see some countries who at least try to stick to their word.

about the holocaust, well weren't the muslims teaming up with hitler?

I know it's the wrong thread, but I'll post here and it can be moved later

Anyway, with regard to who gave the order, it's publicly announced to be the "new Iraqi government" which is notoriously an American puppet gov. That's one of the reasons there's a lot of chaos going on in Iraq right now. This gov't was appointed by the US, not the Iraqi people.

Muslims teaming up with Hitler? Not really.. Hitler generally wanted to wipe anyone who didn't fit his idea of supreme humans. Anything that wasn't Aryan was going down. Since Arabs are majority Semites, we'd be on his "to kill" list.

If Hitler was going after Jews exclusively, then we sympathized and we understood why he did. We don't condone his behaviour, and we don't support his methods. Killing innocents is abhorred and not tolerated, especially from an Islamic perspective.

Given the evidence it's obvious that specific sects within the Jewish community were creating a lot of trouble wherever they went. Hitler was zealous and went after the entire Jewish community, instead of specifically targeting the handful of trouble-makers, who were primarily Zionists.

In essence Muslims did not team up with Hitler, but we appreciate the irony.

[Raisa]

Wrong thread.. shucks.

Ghandi, circling is the way to go. 

Actually, I was talking to someone about this the other day and one of the conclusions was, if the US wasn't so paranoid about terrorism and protecting their motherland while putting their fingers into other people's pies then this mess wouldn't be here. 

It's like Bin Laden knows how to hide because he was trained by the US and some other countries right?   He knows how they work too. 

But again, I think I'd rather have the US fumbling rather than the notorious Muslims who kill in the name of Allah.  (No offense to Xessive, et al.)

Xessive, here's something you may find interesting

During World War II, hundreds of thousands of foreign peoples joined with Hitler's legions to bring theirs people into special status in Hitler's New Order. Tens of thousands among them were Muslims, where the majority of them came from Soviet Union. Under the banner of the crescent and the swastika, these Soviet Muslims believe to become holy warriors to liberated theirs land. But the end of this unholy alliance was a disaster for them.

[Xessive]

Yo, sorry for the delayed response. I've been out and about for the last couple of days.

That's an interesting piece you brought in, Raisa. To specify (and after a bit of reading), they were the "Soviet Muslims" who generally supported Hitler only because he was wiping out the Jews, and it was out of hatred rather than any kind of true religious intent. If anything I'd refer to these specific groups as splinter factions.

This brings up an important point; every story has more than one side. The Soviets and the Soviet Muslims had the most exposure to the Jews of the time (the majority of which inhabited the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe), so it's very plausible that their hatred and their support of Hitler was out of ethnic discrimination. And unfortunately they may have used the "name of Islam" as an excuse to justify their actions. It happens in every religion, and it still happens today; for example the Taliban.

As Muslims, we would never support a regime that perverts the laws and tenets of Islam so brutally. They completely demeaned and removed human rights (specifically women's rights) in the name of Islam, contrary to actual Islamic law which clearly defines women's rights. Any crazy rules they came up with (i.e. women can't drive) are perceived as purely cultural, and independent of religious influence.

This is exactly the same reason I don't judge people haphazardly. I'm very specific about who I call into question, and I don't base my decisions on opinions. This is why when I bring up political issues involving the US, I will always specify that I'm talking about the government, not the people. The American people are just like all other people in the world. The part that concerns me about the American people is the abuse they may be facing from their gov't.

A people and they're governing body need to agree and work together for a society to function agreeably. Like any relationship, it's a matter of give and take. In the case of the USA, it's a lot like a marriage riddled with infidelity. The gov't has been investing the majority of the country's resources elsewhere, completely neglecting its people's needs. When the people ask, the gov't tells them what they wanna hear, and that seems to satiate them. It won't last though, eventually the people will have lift the veil and rise up.

My only hope is it's not too late for us here on this side of the world! We're counting on the American people to catch on to their gov't cheatin' ways, and stop it before their gov't totally fooks us all up.

Anyway, nobody lasts forever. I'll be content if I live a peaceful existence with my family, far from someone else's troubles.

[Quemaqua]

A people and they're governing body need to agree and work together for a society to function agreeably. Like any relationship, it's a matter of give and take. In the case of the USA, it's a lot like a marriage riddled with infidelity. The gov't has been investing the majority of the country's resources elsewhere, completely neglecting its people's needs. When the people ask, the gov't tells them what they wanna hear, and that seems to satiate them. It won't last though, eventually the people will have lift the veil and rise up.

There, at least, is something we can completely agree on.

[Ghandi]

Well said, X. I think that what any reasonable person wants, is simply to live a peaceful existence. This is what frustrates me so much about the current administration, that they would actively go out and seek war so that the president will have a good approval rating. And to top it all off, we go in with quite possibly the worst strategy ever created, not even understanding the Iraqi culture and how to deal with the aftermath of toppling the government. It is also unfortunate that we are about to send in an additional 20,000 troops. Don't get me wrong, I hope that it works, I'm just fundamentally against putting more of our troops in the path of IED's. Not to mention that the Iraqi government doesn't want us to send additional troops. 

In any case, I think that the American people are beginning to voice displeasure, with the recent elections as perhaps the first example of this. You can only lie (or, perhaps, bend the truth) for so long before your credibility begins to diminish. I eagerly anticipate the next presidential elections. I don't think that it is possible to elect anyone worse.

[Quemaqua]

I think the main thing I disagree with people about these days isn't that we *really* want things that are so fundamentally different, but that we see absolutely different ends to getting there.  Things are only going downhill and I see no reason to believe that there are going to be improvements in the next batch of fucking political idiots.  You can't fight a broken system through a broken system.

[scottws]

I agree with Que on this.  What Ghandi said about people speaking out in shoving a bunch of Republicans out of power is correct, but I highly doubt that it will truly make much of a difference.  The Congress is too thoroughly corrupted.