RCT2 Questions

PhantomTails:

Face it, we have been at war since the attack on the WTC... the first attack... in 1993. The difference after the second attack is that the devastation was much greater. The other difference is after the second attack, we had a president who did what should have been done... not one who was more concerned with his "legacy" than his roll of commander in chief (as was the case in 1993).

The "surviving" that I was referring to has nothing to do with a terrorist attack under any future Kerry administration. The chance of an attack under that situation is the same as it would be under a future Bush administration... though I do think the chances under a Bush admin are a little less considering that that adminstration is taking a proactive approach to the War on Terror... as opposed to a "more sensitive" approach that Sen.Kerry has spoken of. Sorry to burst any bubbles... but this is a war and you can not afford to be sensitive in a war... especially against an enemy who wants us dead simply because of who we are. Truthfully, I am still trying to figure out how you can be "sensitive" in a war.

The "surviving" 4 years of a Kerry administration was in reference to the soverignty of the United States. I do not know the exact words, but Sen.Kerry has stated that he believes that the US should have looked to the UN to solve the situation... the same UN who has sat idly by while Hussein broke or ignored every sanction put against his country after the first Gulf War... the sanctions put against that country by the UN itself.

Sorry... but I firmly believe that we should never turn over our soverignty to the out dated and corrupt United Nations... and to think that there are those who are willing to even contemplate this at a time in our history when we are fighting for our very lives is completely beyond me.

We survived 8 years of the Clinton policy of poor foreing affairs (i.e. ignore everything... or only attack when the polls show that it will help your legacy), poor economy (slant the numbers to make things look good), feel good politics ("I feel your pain")... and that is when the enemy (radical Islamic terrorists) were operating on the small scale (first WTC, Kobahr towers, USS Cole). After those 8 years they were emboldened. The time since 9/11 showed them that the US means business and will not sit idly by, talk endlessly to the UN and simply lob a few missiles at some camps (or aspirin factories... or what ever) in order to make the public "feel good" (or take the spotlight off of various oval office scandals).

4 years of a "sensitive war" only waged with UN approval (read France and Germany) will only embolden them more. The threat is still there, no doubt there... but at least it is being countered to the best of our ability and putting them on somewhat of the defensive.

Then again, depending on what week this is... Sen.Kerry's stance on a "sensitive war" may have changed... as his stance on everything seems to be so likely to do.

So PhantomTails, while you are entitled to your opinion, I strongly suggest that you please refrain from deciding who should "stay away from politics" and who should not.

Well, I don't know about you SLFAKE... but I was much happier off when Clinton was president for his 2 terms than anytime I've been happy here. I think a lot of people would have voted for him upon a 3rd term if they could. I wasn't dancing in the streets, but I sure felt that our country was the best in the world worth living for.

Since the advent of Bush: everything has gone to hell. Gas prices way up, hundreds of thousands of jobs left for India, every country seems to now hates us, Bush is an anti-environmentalist & has repelled basically all that Clinton has tried to start. He wants (from what I remember) to take a number of animals off of the endangered list. Millions upon millions of our tax dollars are being wasted on determining if a gay marriage is constitutional or not!!! Bush is WAAAYYY too religious to the point it's scary. If it were up to him, we'd have the combination of church & state again! His religious beliefs are costing the advancement in science & technology (namely: stem-cell research). Even his wife wants it, but she won't openly say so.

I honestly dont know where these polls come from that show Bush is in the lead 'cause everywhere I go & see... it's all anti-Bush... and let's hope that something or someone will get him out of office before this country crumbles to bits!

This guy is crazy... there's many better leaders out there... but his name is certainly not George W. Bush!

Sorry... I am at a loss of words at that last post. I can't believe how blind some people are. We are talking about the very life of this country and all some can worry about are some animals being taken off of the endangered species list. Utterly amazing.

I'm going to bow out of this one now. I don't want to raise my blood pressure too much arguing with those who fail to see reason. Besides, gotta keep the blood pressure low... I can afford health care now (got great coverage)... but should the national health care that a recent Dem administration tried to push ever come to pass I don't know if I could afford to wait forever to see which ever government appointed doctor I am deemed worthy to see.

So, Comrades, go back to reading Pravda (spelling?) or listening to the likes of Rather, Brokaw or Jennings (same difference).

As for me... I am praying for a Bush victory in November... rather have a president who draws a line in the sand instead of one who buries his head in the sand.

*** Edited 9/13/2004 7:04:24 PM UTC by SLFAKE***

Honestly the alleged off-shoring phenomenon isn't a phenomenon at all. The Dept. of Labor shows it's barely a blip, it's just that it happens to be affecting white collar jobs, and white collar workers tend to be more vocal and politically active. It's called globalization and it happens eventually in every industry. I'm big enough to admit that no president has anything to do with that, and my industry has been harder "hit" than any other.

But that aside, what kind of ridiculous paranoid world do you live in that indicates working with the UN gives up our sovereignty? That's the trouble with Americans in general... we tend to believe that we're the center of the universe and our actions don't have consequences. Now that we're finally moving beyond the mourning stage of 9/11 and moving into reconciliation, I think it's time to stop asking "how" it happened and start asking "why" it happened. We have selective hearing in our world affairs, and that pisses people off. We let tens of thousands die in Rwanda and Sudan, more than Iraq and 9/11 combined, and do nothing. If we're going to be the world police, we can't just take action when there's oil involved. Just as jobs move around in a global economy, so are we a part of the world culturally and politically.

And Iraq has nothing to do with the "war on terror." It saddens me that so many people buy into that without a shred of justification. We are not safer for the war in Iraq. Aside from creating the biggest defecit in history, I'm not sure it had any affect for us at all. *** Edited 9/13/2004 8:01:52 PM UTC by Jeff***

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Jeff said:
Now that we're finally moving beyond the mourning stage of 9/11 and moving into reconciliation, I think it's time to stop asking "how" it happened and start asking "why" it happened. We have selective hearing in our world affairs, and that pisses people off.

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So are you saying 9/11 was justified? Regardless of what we do, these people will hate us. It's not going to change anytime soon. In the meantime, we have to protect ourselves by fighting the war on terror not ask "why" it happened because it should not have happened at all.

And I'm not saying we should not and try improve the situation with us being hated in the world. But we are not going to be able to improve that with fanatical Islam.

Speaking as a non-american I am dissapointed with some of the decisions made by the US on world matters. As Jeff said rightly they seem to have "selective hearing".

I'm also dissapointed that us British decided to follow whatever the US did for the sake of sticking together.

As far as the "why" instead of "how" question. There are several countries that hav similar religious and moral beliefs as the Americans, but in my opinion the terrorists has two reasons to strike the US.

1) More noticible Worldwide Impact, if a plane flew into a building in the middle of Peru and killed thousands how long afterwards would the world still be mourning?

2) Because of the arrogant nature of the American government (and in several cases the American public). Several comments out of Afghanistan have said that the American belief of it being the worlds supreme power is a reason for the attacks.

I'm not even going to comment on the war in Iraq as I have sadly lost friends due to the governments ineptitude on this matter.

p.s. Screenshot button on RCT2 is under the disk icon at the top of the page, when you click take screenshot is saves the file in the RCT2 directory for you to play with or print. :)

Of course I don't think 9/11 was justified! What kind of moron do you think I am? You have no freakin' clue how that day changed my life.

Again, tell me what Iraq has to do with terrorism. Tell me how we're better off.

Iraq has to do with terrorism because I just read a report of a riot with people in Iraq running around with yellow Alqueda (sp?) flags.

They are there. Yes I did make a mistake saying "just iraq" I'm sorry. Alqueda is alive. Obviously, I mean we here of car bombs and other things happenning by invividuals who hate the USA. And if there are so many that hate the USA than they are most likely Alqueda. Besides, if people from the prisons are let loose, so would hell.

I'm not saying everything bush has done is good but Kerry will raise taxes, USING WORKERS MONEY TO PAY FOR PEOPLE WHO SIT ON THEIR ASS ALL DAY TO LIVE. Even the democrats seem to hate Kerry. Didn't a democrat come to the REBUBLICAN convention and talk AGAINST Kerry?

I'm really not great with politics but the whole Bush Kerry thing has me interested.

The thing that bothers me most is Kerry as a person. He always changes his mind, gets a 1000 dollar hair cut( LOL) and we all now what he did after Vietnam. I live in Massachusetts and I would vote Bush!

I hate Kerry's head. It irritates me.

Jeff: It just sounded like from your wording that it was our fault that 9/11 happened because we "pissed people off in the Middle East." I think "why" it happened doesn't matter as much as who's doing it and how we can stop them. Screw trying to understand why they hate us, it is not going to change anytime soon.

al Qaeda doesn't have a flag seeing as how it's not a country. Iraq was not a harbor for the organization, yet that was one of the justifications for going to war (along with WMD's that didn't pan out and genocide from a decade ago). If Saddam did one thing right, he didn't allow terrorists to mess up the joint and undermine his power.

Can you show me where Kerry said he'd raise taxes for people that "sit on their ass all day?" I missed that in his campaign speeches.

So again, tell me what Iraq has to do with terrorism, and tell me how we're better off. It's not even about oil anymore, because we're not getting any of that.

Here's why I can't vote for the guy: He led us into a war under false pretenses, he's undone about two decades of environmental law, he's racking up the worse deficit in history, and Ashcroft is a scary bastard that wants to sacrifice liberty for the sake of safety.

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Scream Machine said:
Screw trying to understand why they hate us, it is not going to change anytime soon.

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Yeah, let's just break stuff. Good idea. I'm tired of my neighbors' dogs and kids, so as a good member of the community I'll physically harm them because I'm bigger than they are and have more money. My wife and family is OK with it, so it must be the right thing to do.

Don't try to over-simplify the issue. Finding our role in the world is not a simple matter of blowing **** up.

I know this guy who intensely dislikes people who smoke, I'm assuming it was due to second hand smoke poisoning others. His family had a history this one smoker and he hated him so bad that he threatened him to give him his cigarettes or else he and his very few buddies would pulverize him. The Smoker told the Bully that he didn't smoke anymore; he quit about 10 years ago.

The Bully told the "Smoker" that he didn't believe him, and to hand over the cigarettes. The "Smoker" insisted that he didn't have any. With the "Smoker's" permission, the Bully decided to search and frisk him.

When the Bully didn't find any cigarettes, he told the "Smoker" that he believed that he was hiding them, and he was going to open a can of "whipass" on him if he didn't give up the non-exsistant cancersticks.

No cigs were produced, so of course the small and weak "Smoker" got the crap beat out of him. Some people did cartwheels in the streets cheered because they believed that the world was perfect once again. Some feared the Bully would try to hospitalize them next for whatever reason. The rest saw the bully for what he really is, an arrogant and greedy slimeball who will stop at nothing to get as much money and power as possible for him and his buddies while he still has the chance.

The End.

Why it happened...

The first WTC attack

Kobar Towers

USS Cole

and others

It's like what you used to do to your parents to "test" their rules. Do something to see if you get away with it. Then you do a little more, and a little more, 'til finally you cross a "line" and they punish you. We did very little to "punish" those responsible for those initial attacks. Then 9/11 happened. Now we have gone to the Middle East (not just Iraq) to try and keep these thugs from coming back here again. Better to try to go after them there than to wait for them here.

A final note... last week a big deal was made of the "grim milestone" in the war on terror. We passed that milestone and then-some on 9/11/01.

Am I the only one that accidentally stumbled upon this, wondering what the RCT2 questions were?!

Look, all I'm trying to say is that I don't think we should be blamed for 9/11 happening. When you say things like "we need to focus on why it happened" it makes it sound like we have to find the root cause as to why exactly they hate our guts, and then try to make them not hate our guts. Good luck with that.

And I'm not saying the United States is perfect in everything we do because we make mistakes just like anybody else.

By saying we need to find out why, no one is saying we need to find out why we are hated, but why the government didn't do their job and stop it from happening. Thats exactly what we need to focus on is Why. When you understand Why, you know how to fix it the next time.

9/11, IMO, should never have happened. It did, now, instead of trying to fix it before it happens again, we go traipsing off to start a war, not with the kids that were throwing stones at us, but some other kid who hasn't thrown anything at us in years, or ever...

We went looking for their pile of rocks and found out they didn't even have sand to sling at us.

Things like intelligence reform and more uniform foreign policy are good measures to combat terrorism. Blowing up Iraq (not a terror threat) and allowing your attorney general to do whatever he wants (indefinitely hold Americans without trial) are not.

So you don't think Sadam should have been captured, everyone should have left him alone to do what he wanted?

Well, Ross, lets flip the switch. Should Austrailia's President (and this, btw, is all hypothetical) come in and invade america because he feels G.W. Bush was wrong for his actions? Just because you disapprove of what someone is doing dosen't give you the right to go in and take over. But that wasn't the reason he did it anyhow.

I agree Sadaam was not a good person, but Iraq is not the U.S., nor is it a U.S. territory...