Confronted With Evils

"But insisting on it later in the calm of a prison camp betrays only a failure of perspective."

bHo is making it up as he goes along. That indicates not a failure of perspective, but a total lack of ANY perspective. Long term success is not built on decisions made for immediate and short-term gains. The "Beware of Thin Ice" sign doesn't show up on his Blackberry.

These same zealous proponents of 'non-torture' laws, to the point where sleep deprivation, no tv, no air condioning, etc. comprise torture, have no problem at all turning a blind eye when someone is euthanized, aborted, or for that matter, hauled before a HRC hearing in the flimsiest of excuses.

However, dare to question an illegal combatant without his lawyer or his mother present, and all hell breaks loose.

Hearing of the less than coddling nature of some of the regimes to which these prisoners may be deported to it wouldn't surprise me if they plead not be sent back. Maybe we'll see some 'sit ins'.

Sunny Cuba may not be such a bad deal after all!

The liberal mind -- now fully restored to power in the United States -- is in love with symbolic gestures. It is not much enamoured of the hard prudential reasoning that is involved in choosing between two or more evils. The mystery, to me, is the consistency with which it chooses to ignore the greater evil, in order to address the lesser.

It's a mystery worthy of study/investigation.

It's apparently a human failure, this behavior of Leftists.

Leftists are failing to be properly human, to use logic, reason, respect ethics, morality and to understand that there exists the polarities of good/evil, right/wrong... For some reason they choose to ignore inconvenient truth and fabricate alternate, and false, ones to effect false comfort for themselves. And the longer they're like this, the more it will take to make them snap out of it and open their eyes and minds to reality. Some are so far gone that not even 9/11 could make them snap out of their state of dissociation, delusionality and denial.

I'm astonished at how Leftists apparently either are unaware of so many facts, or are in denial of them. This is how they have come to think that Israel is always bad and guilty of wrongdoing and "Palestine" is always innocent and good. Such ignorance, such denial, such prejudice... it astonishes me to no end.

"However, dare to question an illegal combatant without his lawyer or his mother present, and all hell breaks loose."

Most constitutional democracies believe that the appropriate attitude to take is "Innocent until proven guilty", not "Guilty until proven innocent". If the illegal combatants are guilty, the presence of their mother or lawyer is not going to change much.

It really boils down to how much respect you have for your own constitution. There is a right way to do things, and then there is a pragmatic way to do things. The right way is dictated by the Constitution, the pragmatic way is dictated by reality. Obama's chosen the Constitutional way. Either which way, it isn't going to change much.

On a separate note, shocking though it may be to some of you, the US military is actually AGAINST the use of torture. If you use these methods, you open yourself to similar methods if your troops are caught. If an American soldier ever falls into the hands of a foreign nation, the last thing the military wants is for the poor fellow to go through the same methods attributed to the US in Guantanamo. The anti-torture conventions are based on all nations following them - if you violate them, you won't get sympathy if someone else violates them against you.

Obama knows that. So does the US military.

Canadian Sentinel, you stole these particular words of David Warren's right out of my mouse!!

Not half an hour ago, I read this astute article, grateful, not for the first time, for Mr. Warren's hyper-articulateness. Moonbats seem constitutionally incapable of seeing the forest for the trees. They're happy to only pee around the intentionally small perimetre they want to inhabit and comment on -- and to ignore the wolves that are closing in.

I too am at a loss in the face of the socialist thought process:

-It is a symbollic victory if we free the prisoners in GB yet we ignore the rights of their future victims.

-We support vacuum fluorescent bulbs because they use less energy even though we cannot read by their light, they emit dangerous uv rays, and require expensive environmental cleanup if broken.
We require ethanol in our fuel even though the resultant high fuel prices may starve millions.

-We condemn the Bush administration for Iraq even though he has deposed a vicious dictator who tortured and killed hundreds of thousands and in the process 40 or 50 million people have a chance for freedom.

My congratulations to David Warren for the column. When he is good Mr. Warren is amongst our very best writers.

Posted by: kandle at January 25, 2009 12:02 PM

"If you use these methods, you open yourself to similar methods if your troops are caught. If an American soldier ever falls into the hands of a foreign nation, the last thing the military wants is for the poor fellow to go through the same methods attributed to the US in Guantanamo. The anti-torture conventions are based on all nations following them - if you violate them, you won't get sympathy if someone else violates them against you."

John McCain is the poster child for how the North Vietnamese followed the Geneva Conventions. The muslim jihadists simply cut off heads while alive, after prolonged torture. The North Koreans used torture with pleasure. The Nazis and Japanese, in WWII, simply used execution after torture, in numerous instances. These cases are similar to "the same methods attributed to the US in Guantanamo" in what way.

That is not a rhetorical question. I am curious as to how the "Guantanamo" methods compare to what other nations or terrorists have ACTUALLY done, not MIGHT do.

A very well written article, factual and to the point.

in 'unholy alliance' horowitz goes some distance in parsing the 'progressive' thinking processes....
but one is STILL left goggle eyed...stupefied at their short term effectively suicidal 'reasoning'

speaking for myself...as anodyne....i often refer to Winston Churchill's definition of a Liberal...it is as true today as it was 100 years ago...

"much of modern Liberalism is after the ideology of a narcissistic teen-aged(pacem diana west)sensibility that chafes at the limits reality places on the utopian idealism and inflated expectations typical of most left leaning thought."

knowing all this i still regard them as traitors worthy of the strictest severest surveillance and sequestration.

The treatment of prisoners has been a problem since the start of our war against the Islamists. There are three classes of people under the Geneva conventions. Soldiers, non combatants and illegal combatants. Soldiers and non combatants are subject to protection under the convention. If you capture an enemy soldier you cannot put him on trial because he hasn't done anything wrong, but you can't put him in prison and interrogate him either. You can, however detain him until the end of hostilities.

illegal combatants have no protection and if you don't take them prisoner you have done nothing wrong. The problem is, if you catch terrorists, but they aren't in the act of committing an act, how do you treat them? We are in an area that law does not cover, so to pretend that we are violating their rights is just wrong.

The best solution would be to have declared them POWs and detained them until the end of the conflict, which is probably forever, the down side of that is you can't use them to gather intelligence.

One thing that should be done is to state that the legal protection that the constitution defines only protect citizens, not everyone on the planet, but al least here in Canada, we have blurred that line and we call what are really citizen rights, human rights, which they may or may not be , but if they are we are the only people on the planet who look at them as such.

I say kill them all and let God sort it out, its not like they would hate us any more if we did that, and they might actually have more respect for us if we did.

Sentinel said:
"It's apparently a human failure, this behavior of Leftists."

Evidence? But, remember it's anecdotal.
...-

"Woman bites driver over non-hybrid bus

Going green was a cause she could really sink her teeth into.

The frantic passenger who bit a veteran driver's arm was upset that his bus wasn't a hybrid, he said Thursday.

"She came on the bus, and she said she waited more than an hour for a hybrid," said MTA driver Peter Williams, 42. "I said, 'I'm not in control of what bus is assigned to me.'"

Williams, a dad of two who is in the Navy Reserves, plans to take a little time off after Wednesday's bizarre attack on an uptown M104 bus.

The woman, Shelia Bolar, 49, started hollering at Williams soon after she boarded the Broadway bus on the upper West Side.

When her rant was done, she she grabbed his arm."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2171395/posts

‘…shocking though it may be to some of you, the US military is actually AGAINST the use of torture. If you use these methods, you open yourself to similar methods if your troops are caught. If an American soldier ever falls into the hands of a foreign nation, the last thing the military wants is for the poor fellow to go through the same methods attributed to the US in Guantanamo. The anti-torture conventions are based on all nations following them…’

The Taliban and Al-Qaeda are not nations. If you were to put their prisoners up at the Banff Springs and give them manicures you can bet that they would still torture their Western prisoners much worse than anything that goes on at Guantanamo. To believe otherwise is being naive.

As to us being ‘shocked’. Stick to your argument and don’t put words in our mouths.

This has been another edition of Sour Grapes from Sore Losers here at SDA.

I always like reading David Warren.
The people who want to close Guantanimo and want the inmates to be given constitutional rights are ok with suspending trials for a length of time (120 days)? So no swift justice.
My opinion is that Obama has created a good panic situation for some bureaucrats. They have a year to figure out what to do with these people. They are not just ordinary folks in a refugee camp. David does point out the real situation with respect to the Geneva convention,which I am sure most of the outraged people are not aware of.
One thing that is a change here: Obama has overturned a long standing policy of government by applying a deadline to when a problem will be solved. Can we use that on some other govenment departments? If the problem is not solved in a certain time, shut down the program.

Good!
Now those on the front line will fel free to put a bullet in the knees of their wouldbe prisoners, wishing them well in their new lives: as cripples in Afghanistan...have a nice life!

Those lefty plans, never quite thought out to their possible conclusions.....

Posted by: real at January 25, 2009 12:43 PM

"This has been another edition of Sour Grapes from Sore Losers here at SDA."

What would be your reaction if the first thing a freed jihadist did was to, all odds being astronomical, run into you and bust a cap in YOUR a$$. The results would be so... well...em, ah, uh... real.

Real,

No one is childishly lamenting the election like you leftist did for the entire eight years of Mr. Bush.

What is being discussed here is the fear we are all in at the stupidity and incompetence with which our security is going to be handled for the next four.

The Obama is a two dimensional cardboard cutout with no real job experience of any kind. He has no military experience, his friends all hate America and he is an obvious pacifist.

This is not about sour grapes. But you see things through jejune eyes and therefore your conclusions are predictable.

Why not just say what you want to say which would be something like ...

na nana na na!

Real dropped the fake Arab typing accent again , what gives?

Posted by: cal2 at January 25, 2009 1:17 PM

"Real dropped the fake Arab typing accent again , what gives?"

Are you really asking which is the real real? Really?

The real real is that one who really believes that the real reality is one that a real lib could really ...

Need. More. Coffee. My. Brain. Hurts.

Out of this liberal stupidity there may yet come some good. As I mentioned here ages ago if these prisoners were released there probably would not be a lot captured from that point on. The only prisoners captured would be by coalition forces, read Afghan troops, the rest would be shot on the battlefield.

Damn liberals won the debate and the moral high ground again, we on the other hand get to shoot the bastards from here on in or turn them over to the Afghans to be tortured and live in horrid conditions. If my scenario is correct, I say, not a bad trade off.

How many prisoners have Canadian troops “captured” and to date still have under their control?

Has it actually been established that toture has been employed by US interogators?

Admittedly, I haven't been following things closely. But, as I understand it, there have never been any alegations of electric-wire-brush/appendage-removing/flogging-style beatings. Even at Abhu-Gharib, it was all about putting womens' underwear on the heads of the inmates, posing them in humiliating positions, and threatening them with torture.

Then, it seemed, that water-boarding and sleep deprivation were admitted to by the administration, there was about a week of debate about whether or not those things constituted torture, and then the leftists and media magically decided that they were.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

There's no chance that all the detainees are going to be set free. They will have to be moved somewhere.

Where?

The executive order is an empty, self-congratulatory, selfish gesture. It's all about him.

simple solution for terrorist exit out of gitmo,one terrorist , one bullet

seeing as past guests of gitmo are now poster children on terrorist web sites, simple exicussion is a honest guarantee that innocent lives will be saved

From Fox News.there is a website keeping track of Obama's 510 campaign promises.Just for fun,check out www.politifact.com

Agent Smith,

"As to us being ‘shocked’. Stick to your argument and don’t put words in our mouths."

What makes you think my post was addressed to you specifically.I pointedly said it only applied to "some of you".

"The Taliban and Al-Qaeda are not nations. If you were to put their prisoners up at the Banff Springs and give them manicures you can bet that they would still torture their Western prisoners much worse than anything that goes on at Guantanamo. To believe otherwise is being naive."

The US is not just concerned about Taliban and Al Qaeda. Either you are deliberately obfuscating the issue by limiting it to Taliban/Al Qaeda, or you simply know no better.

Let me spell it out in simple words. If a US military person is taking prisoner by Iran/Syria/North Korea/China (remember that little incident early in the first Bush presidency), then those nations can torture US military personnel using the same methods used by US military personnel. No nation other than the US and some of its Canadian fans, care about the classification the US uses to detain these guys. At the end of the day, they are citizens of some nation and the US military is torturing them.

Here, I will leave you with words taken directly from JAG memo dated Jan 5 2003. If you don't know what JAG is, go look it up yourself.

"Treating the detainees inconsistently with the convention arguably 'lowers the bar' for the treatment of US POW's in future conflicts."

And, more explicitly, in a memo dated 27Feb 2003:

"We nonetheless recommend that the Working Group product accurately represent the services' concerns that the authorization of aggressive counter-resistance techniques by servicemembers will adversely affect treatment of US servicemembers by captors."

"In addition, consideration should be given to whether implementation of such techniques is likely to result in adverse impacts for DoD personnel who are captured or detained, including possible perceptions by other nations that the US is lowering standards related to the treatment of prisoners and other detainees, generally"

I can go on, but you get the gist.

They don't mention Taliban/Al Qaeda. They mention nations - ALL nations. Comprendez?

It never ceases to amaze me that leftists like 'real' continually agitate for a political system that would surely illiminate his ilk first.

Awww cummon Kate have some patience eh! He's still learning "the craft"...even Harry Potter didn't hit his stride til the 3rd movie.

In honor of Chairman O's first media debacle, I'm going to light up a Macanudo Maduro, a la Rush.

*
well, he sure talks pretty... but apparently, the new american president...
is just as megalomaniacal & bloodthirsty as the last guy...

*

"Let me spell it out in simple words. If a US military person is taking prisoner by Iran/Syria/North Korea/China (remember that little incident early in the first Bush presidency), then those nations can torture US military personnel using the same methods used by US military personnel. No nation other than the US and some of its Canadian fans, care about the classification the US uses to detain these guys. At the end of the day, they are citizens of some nation and the US military is torturing them."

Yours (and most of the left's) confusion stems from the fact that you don't understand the Geneva Conventions. This is a little strange since an earlier poster summed it up pretty well. Your hypothetical with Iran/China/etc is ridiculous because any US soldier captured would be a lawful combatant (ie wearing a uniform and obviously distinguishable from a civilian). The whole point of the Geneva conventions is to separate soldiers from civilians, and the reward for doing that is that captured soldiers are required to be treated under humane conditions. Terrorists are the EXACT opposite of the type of people that the Geneva conventions seek to protect. They purposely disguise themselves as civilians for the very purpose of elevating civilian casualties (often to their own people!). So if China, etc. wanted to know how to deal with US prisoners they would have to look at how the US deals with lawful combatants - by following the rules of war set forth in the Geneva conventions.

This is all fairly moot however because, since the fall of the USSR, anyone the US is likely to fight against is not likely to ever follow the Geneva conventions regardless of what they state.

I'm not a bleeding heart liberal and rather believe that governments should never be allowed to detain people without trial. Unless we stand up for our convictions on liberty and freedom we become the people we are fighting. Let the bastards go.

Obama vs Limbaugh? It's funny to see the great unifier pointing his finger.

I look forward to more of this.

If some of them are released, I wonder if they can implant GPS devices into their bodies (either without their knowledge, or in a way that cannot be neutralized), as this might lead them to interesting locations in the terrorist sponsoring countries.

I've felt for some while now that they should have divided the Gitmo herd into two types, the hard core and major figures who should continue to face life imprisonment if not execution, kept alive only for information of value; and as for the rest, the lower level types as determined after interrogation, they should have been dispersed with the GPS devices if possible, to cut down on the negative publicity.

My point is that you want to punish the more effectual terrorists, whereas the lower grade foot soldiers are actually hurting us more by being at Gitmo than they could in any other way. As another poster suggests, if released, many would go on to die on the battlefield. Others might just take themselves out of the battle having had time to consider the whole business.

There does sometimes come a period near the end of a terrorist campaign when the momentum is dwindling, as with the IRA, when it's necessary to proceed with great restraint, in order to allow moderation to spread. I don't think we are anywhere near that point in this campaign, but if they take a liberal stance and terrorism continues at the same intensity, then some liberal voters will draw the appropriate conclusions and so there is always that silver lining to consider. Right now, Bush and Cheney seem to be "wrong" to many because alternative theories have yet to be tested in practice. When they are, it will be like global warming all over again, the liberal theory only looks good before counter-evidence appears. Then it starts to look very suspect.

I really like Obama. He's certainly inspiring. I think he's going to see more criticism from the Left than the Right. He's smart, and when the Left sees that he's not all they hoped for, they're going to be disappointed. I see him as more Centre, maybe Centre-Right, which is closer to my position.

I'm going to wait and see what he actually does before I start up with the wholesale attacks or praise.

Guantanamo was very damaging to the American rep worldwide - rightly or wrongly. As a symbolic gesture, closing it is huge for his credibility and America's popularity and influence. I'm with him on this one.

I don't think terrorists are a catch and release type of game. Gitmo was the best solution possible. They have some international rights but all of that has to be sorted out. Some were out in a month and some are monsters and should never be free. Some previous releasees have returned to their errant ways sometimes quite successfully. Think of what the monsters would do. Maybe turn them over to the country they were picked up from and they can do as they please. Khadr can swim back.

Don Uthole:

I am also sympathetic to the idea that civilized societies must, at all times, be better than the barbarians they must constantly be on guard against. And I believe in the idea of a fair speedy trial for any who are accused.

But the problem here is that there simply aren't any laws - either in the US or under the UN - under which the Guantanamo detainees can face a trial.

All laws are based on the idea that the accused was acting as a citizen of some country. When that person is a civilian committing a crime in a foreign country - the laws of that foreign nation prevail. When partaking in a military engagement, all international laws (such as the Geneva Convention that liberals like to whine about) assume that the combatant was acting as a soldier.

This means that he is expected to be wearing the uniform from one of the branches of the military of his "master" country. He'll have a rank and serial number, a chain of command, and a current set of orders that he was under at the time of the engagement. Most importantly, the military force he is fighting for should also have prisoner of war camps ready for the proper housing of American POWs that might be taken as the result of one of these engagements.

Of course, all of this is laughable. These people do not have a country under whose orders they were acting...and they would certainly never reciprocate and keep American POWs in any way...they'd just behead them and post the footage on the Internet.

That's why I laugh every time I hear about lefties petitioning the Canadian government for the "return" of Khadr. Canada didn't send him there, he wasn't under orders from the Canadian military. Thus, he certainly isn't a "soldier" - let alone a child soldier. Canada isn't asking for his "return" because he wasn't "sent to" (or captured and taken to) the battlefield on which he chose to be part of an engagement with US forces.

Notice how no other countries are asking for the return of the Guantanamo prisoners who might be their citizens. It's because they want it to be clear that these people have been essentially disowned by their countries of citizenship.

I will grant you that, maybe, the US should move to create some new sort of classification for combatants of this type so that we can at least come up with a way to have them properly tried. But, how could this possibly be done without a new UN charter - or at least some sort of international agreement? And how many years would that take? And do you really think a consensus could ever be arrived at among all countries of the world?

International laws governing the handling of REAL soldiers are based on the premise that combatants are not out in the field because they want to be there. Rather, it is presumed that they are just people who want to be home with their families but are on the battlefield because they are under orders...and they are just waiting for the word to come down that says, "Lay down your weapons - we're not at war anymore."

Because those at Gitmo are not these types of people, they are not soldiers...and there are no laws available to deal with them.

Real
are you not supposed to be protesting somewhere about the lack of readily available halal?
Peter..I was wondering the same thing,a well placed tracking device and a couple of drones later and voila,no more need for Gitmo.The problem is,where to place them where they won't be discovered,hmmmm,oh,I know,under their soap,they'll never find them there.

Jimbo, closing Gitmo without a plan—see Obama's embarrassing*, weak-kneed, live performance about the detainees last week—is style over substance, which seems to be about par for the course for this man.

* Obama kept looking over his shoulder to ask Greg Craig, his counsel, what was supposed to be happening:

OBAMA: We will be... uhhh.... ummm.... Is there a separate executive order, Greg, with respect to how we're going to dispose of the detainees? Is that it, eh, uh, what we're doing?

CRAIG: We'll set up a process!

OBAMA: We will be, uh, setting up a process whereby this is going to be taking place.

and

OBAMA: What we're doing here is to set up a special interagency task force on detainee disposition . . . So this task force is going to provide us with, uh, a series of recommendations on, uh, that. Is that correct, Greg?

CRAIG: That's right. And detainee policy going forward.

OBAMA: And detainee policy going forward so that we don't find ourselves in these kinds of situations, uh, in the future.

CRAIG: And there is clear guidance for the military as well.

OBAMA: And that we are providing clear guidance to our military in terms of having to do with it. [Now, isn’t that crystal clear and well expressed?]

This Charlie McCarthy routine, because Obama doesn’t know what his plan is, is not very encouraging—to say the least. Why would he get any credit at all for such a performance?

Frankly, it's only in the small minds of bleeding heart lefties, who don't have a clue about the Geneva Convention, human nature, or the survival (what's supposed to be an) instinct, that Gitmo has damaged the USA's reputation. And these are the same moral and intellectual pygmies who are giving Obama kudos for not knowing what the h*ll he's doing.

Typical, altogether typical . . .

Great post, bryceman. Thanks.

Re Khadr, here's a great, recent quote from PMSH: "My understanding of international law is, to be a child soldier, you have to be in an army"! He's got that right.

How about the Canadians, who want Khadr back, take turns letting him stay at their place?

No prisoners, no problem.

Know what i mean?

This is going to drive the leftoids up here around the bend;

Obama intends to make the Bush tax cuts for individuals permanent.

EBD:

The executive order is an empty, self-congratulatory, selfish gesture. It's all about him.

Exactly. Its that old narcissistic messianic impulse at work. All the glory must go to Obama. No matter the consequences to America or individuals. Including the families of 9/11. History only began last week don't yeah know. BHO year 0.

Posted by: Revnant Dream at January 25, 2009 6:22 PM

"History only began last week don't yeah know. BHO year 0."

So now all measure of history will be "in the years before BHO" (BBHO), "in the years of BHO" (OBHO) and "in the years after BHO (ABHO)?

Of course the commonality is that he be a HO. Where's Don Imus when you really need him?

Quote Posted by: lookout at January 25, 2009 4:45 PM
"Frankly, it's only in the small minds of bleeding heart lefties, who don't have a clue about the Geneva Convention, human nature, or the survival (what's supposed to be an) instinct, that Gitmo has damaged the USA's reputation. And these are the same moral and intellectual pygmies who are giving Obama kudos for not knowing what the h*ll he's doing.

Typical, altogether typical . . . "

Apparently most of the world are "small minded", "bleeding heart lefties" or "intellectual pygmies", because just about anyone I know of, including most world leaders, believes Gitmo has damaged the USA's reputation, whether they agree with the policy or not. Regardless whether you disagree with his policies, do you seriously believe Obama is a "moral and intellectual pygmy"? Or that you know the Geneva Convention better than he does - that he doesn't have a clue about it? Or that people are giving him kudos for not knowing what he's doing?

Or is this just more utterly empty rhetoric well beneath standards of any reasonable debate - an insult to the many intelligent posters on this forum who I'm sure would rather not be associated with those kinds of assertions?

Or maybe it's you. Typical.

I know you're not an idiot, or a fool, but this kind of post makes you seem like it, and reflects poorly on those who might otherwise share your views.

jimbo

the only reason the USA's reputation has been damaged by gitmo is because "Apparently most of the world are "small minded", "bleeding heart lefties" or "intellectual pygmies",

yes that's correct. do you think that Rwanda happened because of "intellect", or that "most" UN resolutions are directed at Israel because of "large minds"

maybe Lookout erred in forgetting to mention liars

Jimbo, I appreciate your overall civility.

I repeat that I think bleeding heart lefties are moral and intellectual pygmies—usually brainwashed too. If that's most of the world, so be it. That doesn't mean, de facto, that I'm wrong. (And, if Obama’s a bleeding heart liberal, which he seems to be, I guess he’s included. Did you read the transcript I included? Obama doesn’t seem very clued in, does he?)

Bleeding heart liberals are dangerous: civilization hangs in the balance and they're worried about the sensibilities and comforts of our barbarian enemies—who both slaughter us when they can and give not a fig for our rights—rather than protecting our lives and freedoms.

And, I repeat, the Geneva Convention does NOT include the Gitmo inmates. What do you, Jimbo, think should happen to them when Gitmo’s closed? As you may know, some of the released detainees have returned to their terrorist cells to kill again.

(And how what I say reflects poorly on those who share my views is, indeed, empty rhetoric.)

Thanks, GYM, good one.

Yes, I'll add that, in my experience, bleeding heart liberals are usually liars too!

Jimbo wrote: He's smart, and when the Left sees that he's not all they hoped for, they're going to be disappointed.

Sure, is that with or without the teleprompter.

I think Bush will get the last laugh. He obviously knew the deal and was barely able to contain the HUGE financial bubble that is now starting the collapse of the financial system as we know it.

Bush allowed the real estate bubble to increase in size instead of allowing a recession after the dot.com bubble bust. This has allowed the US to get themselves into debt to the tune of about $53 Trillion dollars. Their annual GDP is only about $8 Trillion. Can you say insolvency??

Bush made it out by the skin of his teeth and left the mess with some guy who hasn't a clue what he is doing.

Can you guess the outcome?

But as Canadians, we aren't in much better shape. Our debt is about 70% of our GDP, and Harper is about to increase that with his wild spending ideas in order to keep his job.

The next 10 years will be nothing like we have ever experienced before ... of that I am absolutely sure.