that's a low bar to set, frog, and probably why many people don't care about being in the club.

poli, you're speaking about religions as if they are individual people with a singular brain: "christian is a peaceful guy, budda helps the elderly across the street, but islam is a murderer." that's ridiculous as a premise, without even mentioning the complexity of sects in all faiths, let alone the people that profess them. to DW's point, inversely, there have been many well-brought up christians who have pulled the trigger or ordered others to do so. the same with muslims. etc. but i don't need to tell you that, you're not dumb... i truly don't understand the fascination to find complete dishonor in islam as people such as yourself do. the koran is pretty damn nuanced and cryptic to the non-arabic speaking westerner. i won't even address your nuclear winter fantasy.

just as being religious doesn't necessarily make you bad, too. the whole conversation is a zero sum gain. it's why we have freedom of religion AND freedom from religion in this country.

yeah, how exactly do you qualify whether or not religion played a part in the a-bomb being dropped? - i'm sure a good number of the deciders were religious, just as some were not - it wasn't dropped in the name of a religion; only a country that basks in the glow of our judeo-christian heritage - how does a "good christian" square the realities of war, the panic of a nation and the good book when killing more than 200,000 people overnight? people are good and bad, whether they're religious or not, and institutions are not all the same -- your mileage will vary.

sam, you've been presenting your perspective every time you post on this blog. unless someone is on the exact same page with you, that's all it is -- a perspective. if you don't care about being crystal clear, pointing to facts, contextualizing arguments and, most importantly, showing patience to get others to see things the way you do without pointing fingers at their world-views or "subjective" nature, all you'll ever do is present your perspective and find agreement within your own circles. no, obama hasn't addressed the nation about what went down in lybia. is that great leadership? nope. that said, it's also par for course with our how US presidents deal with major issues. hell, it took four months for bush to speak to the nation about the abu ghraib incident. all administrations seem to be run like corporations, with layers of PR, spin, doses of reality, more spin, and then ultimately, culpability. while i don't believe he played a role in obfuscating the american public on the timeline/details, i too would like to have obama step up and make clear what went down at each embassy.

sam, to be clear, i don't hold my breath for you to give me any "credit" for my take on an issue. i'm not sure why you incessantly feel the need to get meta about the politics of the participants of the thread, rather than simply discuss / argue / elucidate specifics of the topic at hand -- from your perspective -- and let the conversation sort out as it will. if you feel people are being partisan hacks, then break down their arguments with your perspective. who knows, we might all move a bit more to the center... god forbid. haha.

i'm not sure what you're referring to locally, but re: the administration and matters of foreign affairs, the truth, more often than not, comes out way after the event -- no matter the administration. so when it comes to this matter, what's at the core of the concern over the "lie?" i mean, this isn't iran-contra or yellow cake -- it doesn't obfuscate american action in-theater or a public appeal to move into a situation... do you think it matters in the context that our embassy was attacked and we should have been ready for it? or is the "coverup" in benghazi an issue along political lines? are those issues one and the same to you?

roch, did the video spark the violence in cairo? if so, was it an organic reaction or planned kindling? the only way the obama admin can be clean on the benghazi explanation is if they truly had no idea that the violence didn't come out of a planned attack, which seems highly unlikely at this point. that link i posted above is pretty specific. i would imagine the state department had a debriefing by participants within hours.

well, the state department has released more details of what went down in benghazi, and it looks like a planned attack rather than a mob response to a video. if that was known from jump, blaming the attack on random religious extremists is pretty shitty ... even though terrorists in that region have been, historically, religious extremists or in the very least have used islam as a means for their political ends. it's a fine line, but there's a big difference between a planned terrorist attack and a random act of anger/violence. my questions: 1) when was the video first brought into the conversation? was it reported by a news agency or by our government? 2) aside from the anger about the circumstances of the event, do people actually think we should've been able to handle the attack better? is that part of the criticism of obama -- that the embassy should have been armed to the teeth?

i wouldn't accept that job no matter who was president.

you make a ton of assumptions regarding my position on foreign policy. first, i agree with ron that romney's administration would be quicker to dump/screw up diplomacy with iran and/or syria than obama. both situations are highly complex, and i simply don't believe romney could navigate those waters with any degree of proficiency. second, i trust obama more than romney. as a man and a politician. you don't have to agree, but that's what i feel. so if the US finds itself in a position where we'd have to intervene in iran, i wouldn't be enthralled with the reality of the situation (like so many right wing hawks), but i'd trust that obama exhausted every other avenue possible prior to making such a call. call it what you may, but i don't trust romney as much as i do the president. obviously, you feel the opposite because romney is a republican (see how it works both ways?)

not quite sure i understand the question, sam.

spag, no matter how hard you want iraq and lybia to be the same situation, it's not going to make it so. enough people, including myself, have already pointed out the differences from politics, to rationale, to logistics, to strategy, etc. if that's what you believe, that's fine. i can't speak for anyone else, gt, but i'm kind of burned out on the campaign stuff. i'm ready for november to be here already.

feel free to explain your comment, spag. comparing obama with a neocon, preemptive war ideology-based administration is pretty extreme. has he taken his damn sweet time in getting out of afghanistan? definitely. that said, he's not invading sovereign nations. the ONLY remainder from the bush era re: terrorism policy is the enemy combatant designation (allowing for drone attacks) and gitmo still being open, yet moving in the direction of being closed.

it's somewhat pathetic that politicians/campaigns/pundits are spending so much time qualifying unemployment figures to win their own jobs/power plays, rather than focusing on just getting more people back to work. i realize pointing that out is like opining against the sun rising in the east... just sayin'.

forget who won, i'm seriously interested in romney's economic plan to cut a break for the middle class, add to defense spending, essentially place medicare in the hands of the states, and have the national debt go down. i heard a lot of bluster, but relatively no details. i know that doesn't seem to matter in these debates, but... can someone, anyone, point me to his policy details?

bless his heart, indeed... god, i love that saying. haha.

i agree with hoggard; moderation was non-existent. and when lehrer actually spoke up, he over directed what a candidate should speak to, more so in a manner that might get them out of a hole. i noticed him doing that with obama often. as for romney, holy crap, how many times did he say, "i want" to do this or that? well, mitt, we all have wants that can't come true to to reality. if there was a an actual breathing moderator on the stage, we might have gotten some specifics out of him.

oh, and we saw how "home ownership" was accomplished. yikes.

"middle class growth" really? i'd love to see the numbers on that, spag.

i don't think anyone continued to complain about iraq once obama announced the exit date (well, the GOP complained about him announcing a date, but that's par for course). obama announced next year (3 months from now) as the end of combat and 2014 for us being completely gone from afghanistan. don't get me wrong, we should be gone by now, but what's the point of complaining? it's a done deal.

thanks, steve. that doc looked familiar when i was searching earlier today, but i couldn't find the reference while skimming it. when i found this back in the day, it literally blew my mind. and it's probably the missing link as to why spag can't understand why i was gangbuster nuts over the iraq invasion and not lybia. if similar evidence existed, something showing that the circle obama keeps had produced documentation stressing the need for regime change all across the middle-east five years ago i'd be scratching my head. if "they" had mentioned incidents necessary for us to become engaged -- someone lighting himself on fire in tunisia to spark it all off in the midst of a depression, for instance-- then even with these conflicts being drastically different from iraq on the scale of us involvement and casualties, i'd agree 100% with the pre-meditated regime change comparison... and i'd be on the verge of an ulcer while blogging again. but that's not reality. practically all of w's administration had signed the PNAC statement of principals and wolfowitz, the author of this doc in particular, was w's personal neocon mastermind. then post-9/11, everything just so happened to go down as planned. hell, they even put the strategy of the green zone into play, straight out of PNAC's notes. obama's people have nothing similar on record as far as i know and unless i've missed it, no one has made accusations of key elements of his admin pining years ago for something similar as the arab spring. the only comparison i see between iraq and lybia is in the removal of a dictator; not logistically how, not the cost or ease of the operation, not the justification nor the full context, just that it was determined regime change was the path to follow.

oops, meant to say "pre-911" above.

found it.

there was a DAMNING letter on the PNAC site that spoke of needing a large event to enable us to go back into iraq. i stumbled across that letter, which was dated in the late 90's, post-9/11 and prior to shock and awe. it's one of those things that make you scratch your head.. and then curl up into a ball.