[JeFF D]

Did anyone see Dr. Phil today? A friend of mine told me he had war protestors on and really made them look like idiots, saying they were just ignorant. I didnt see it though I only heard about it from a friend.

Anybody know if its true I would of suspected him to be one against the war even though he's from texas;)

A script would be nice, wish I would of seen it.

[Hypnogator]

Good for Dr. Phil. He tells it like it is.

Also, Dennis Miller on the Tonight show last night had a GREAT rant on anti-war protesters, celebs, and Michael Moore. The audience went wild! Wish I had taped it. :D

[priv8ter]

I wanted to hate this guy due to his psycho babble, and also the fact that he is associated with Oprah, but he does say some things that make me smile every now and then.

[stevelyn]

During one of his famous rants, Dennis Miller refered to the title of Michael Moore's fictional gun film as "Trolling for Concubine". :D :D :D

[XLMiguel]

I saw the show. I normally wouldn't watch, but he had a could of twinkies from the Code Pink anti-war group. The leader, a woman named Medea (from, surprise, San Francisco), first honked me off when she showed up in DC giving flowers to the French Embassy while the urination contest at the UN was in process.

Basically, Dr. Phil said that he fully supported their 1st Amendment rights to express their opinion, but womped on them for not considering (and taking responsibility for) the fact that that their actions would be giving aid and comfort/encouragement to the Iraqi's while also being co-opted and twisted by the enemy and used against our POW's. He then got on their case for diverting the police, who had to babysit and try to keep order while they blocked traffic and otherwise behaved poorly. He felt that the cops' time would be far better (and more appropriately) used to guard against terrorism.

The Code Pink women were typical liberal elitist blissninnies who just wanted 'to stop the madness' and bring our troops home now. No recognition of the notion that not everyone in the world 'plays nice' and that you cna't negotiate with tyrants. They just made with a sickening 'we're morally superior' kind of attitude, and just didn't get it. Truly clueless.

The audience was firmly pro-troops and the administration, it included families of POW/MIA's. The bliss ninnies got very lkittle sympathy in general.

[4v50 Gary]

Reading the above posts, Dr. Phil brings up a good point that by diverting police from patrol work to crowd/riot control, important buildings, monuments, structures (bridges, power transformers, aquaducts, etc.) are more vulnerable. While I hate to see it happen, but what if a Al Qaeda sleeper awoke and blew himself up in the midst of our anti-war protestors? A rude awakening is an understatement for the bliss ninnies. Lest the bliss ninnies forget, Al Qaeda doesn't want to sit at the bargaining table and get recognition like Yasser Arafat does. They want to destroy the bargaining table and have the world revert to the 14th Century.

[LoneStranger]

Excuse me, but while I have never watched Dr. Phil I was under the impression that he graduated from Shawnee Mission West H.S. up here in the Kansas City area. How would that make him from Texas??

[David Scott]

Dozens of times, I have heard this argument that any dissent is "giving aid and comfort to the enemy" and I just can't buy it. I think it would give DIScomfort to an oppressive regime to see a country where freedom of conscience and the right to dissent are protected by the Constitution. War protesters in Baghdad would quickly find themselves strapped to a table with electrodes on their genitals. Here, we have a little thing called "freedom".

Besides, if we suppress dissent, we become what they are. Franklin said someting about if you sacrifice liberty for security you will have neither.

[jmbg29]

I think it would give DIScomfort to an oppressive regime to see a country where freedom of conscience and the right to dissent are protected by the Constitution.If that is what you would think, then not only are you wrong, but you miss the point entirely.

We are talking about "comfort" in the sense of bolstering the enemy's sense of fighting on. When Peter Arnett tells the Iraqi people that "the American war plan has failed". Not only is he lying, but he is almost certainly causing the stupid bastards to fight when it is in their interest to surrender.

War protesters NEVER prevent war. They make war certain by convincing the enemy that there is great reluctance on the part of the opposing country to resort to war.

War protesters give the enemy the "aid and comfort" that they need to in order to believe that we will falter, and they will eventually win.

Good leftists that they are, the "protesters" resort to mob rule when they don't get their way. Now there is a surprise, eh? :rolleyes: :scrutiny: :uhoh: :barf:

[XLMiguel]

I guess 'you had to be there' to hear the way those bliss ninnies blathered on and on about the 'millions and millions' of people against the war and how they were the majority, and how it was an 'immoral, corrupt, illeagal war'. Their rhetoric sucked and smacked of misrepresentation, hyperbole and innuendo.

The enemy doesn't care about the fact that people have the right to protest here, they only care about the soundbites that they can use to misinform those sympathetic to their cause. I really enjoy asking the anti-war people if they've shared thier views with Saddam . . . . or what do they think would happen if they tried:evil: They never seem to have a snappy come-back for that one . . .

Dr Phil allowed as how he wasn't well enough informed to have an opinion about the rightness or wrongness of it all, but he was of the opinion that their timing and tactics were in very poor taste and questioned if they considered the unintended consequences of their actions, which they really didn't seem to care about ('cause they's morally superior,after all).

I don't think anyone is for suppressing dissent. Indeed, it is everyone's duty to question government (the price of Freedom is eternal vigilence, y'know), but between the Code Pink's snotty self-righteous attitude, thrown in with a few 'hate-America' anarchists and other bad actors, I just think there are better ways to make your position known, and they should look to the company they keep :rolleyes:

[answerguy]

We are talking about "comfort" in the sense of bolstering the enemy's sense of fighting on. When Peter Arnett tells the Iraqi people that "the American war plan has failed". Not only is he lying, but he is almost certainly causing the stupid bastards to fight when it is in their interest to surrender.

Arnett's comments were wrong more because of where he said it, not what he said. Same with Moore, if he said his crap to an anti-war protest gathering it would not have been as bad as what he did that was beamed live to our troops overseas.

[Jason Demond]

While he may have said what people wanted to hear, he is still an anti-gun SCUMBAG!:cuss: :fire:

[Khornet]

someone pointed out that when you come from a society where dissent is not tolerated, and is brutally suppressed, the sight of thousands of Americans marching against the war will lead you to believe that the Bush admin. is irresolute and on very shaky legs. So you fight on, thinking Bush is about to be toppled.

WE know that most Americans support the war, and WE know that thousands of marchers means diddly to the authority of the president, but the Iraqis don't.

In this way, the protestors really DO give aid and comfort to Saddam's people.

[Khornet]

why protest?

To try and stop the war.

Exactly how does that not help Saddam?

The Malone approach is more honorable: oppose the war until the shooting starts, then shut up about it. But there are few Malones.

[Captain Bligh]

Regardless of whether I agree with the anti-war crowd, I am thankful for their right to be able to stand in the streets and say what's on their mind (no matter how ill informed one may believe they are).

It's one of the things that makes this a free society worth fighting for.

I think it's rather hypocritical to say we're for some freedoms (e.g., the right to keep and bear arms) while denigrating those practicing other guaranteed freedoms (e.g., free speech, the right to peacefully assemble, a free press, etc.).

If this was Iraq, Saddams' boys would take you to the basement and work you over for expressing the wrong opinion.

I'd rather be here living peacefully among opinions I don't agree with. YMMV

RJ

[jmbg29]

I think it's rather hypocritical to say we're for some freedoms (e.g., the right to keep and bear arms) while denigrating those practicing other guaranteed freedoms (e.g., free speech, the right to peacefully assemble, a free press, etc.).A lot of folks make this mistake. The idea that rights come with no accountability.

A person can say what ever they like. They should also be aware that what they say has consequences that attach the moment the words are spoken.

For instance: A person could come up to me in a dark parking lot and say "Give me all your money!" The consequence that would attach to that would sound like "BLAM! BLAM!...BLAM!" Which wouldn't be denegrating so much as it would be fatal. But it was their choice to use the cover of darkness to threaten my life with their freedom of speech.

War protesters almost never rise to the level of deserving anything more than a laugh in their face. A reasonable exchange of free speech from both sides of the issue. The protester says something laughably false, and the non-protester gets a laugh at the protester's expense. No harm done.

Some protesters are deserving of respect, but they are the rarest of birds. They are the precious few that also showed their faces and spoke up to protest in December of 1998 when President Clinton chose to execute the Iraq Liberation Act (which passed the H.of R. 360-38, and the Senate by unanimous consent, and which he signed into law on Oct. 31st of '98) when he initiated "Operation Desert Fox" for the ostensible purpose of removing Saddam and his regime.

You see, those folks are actually against war, not against who is waging it.


Bubba's eloquent reasoning for the need of regime change in Iraq.

The Iraq Liberation Act
October 31, 1998

STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release

October 31, 1998

STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT

Today I am signing into law H.R. 4655, the "Iraq Liberation Act of 1998." This Act makes clear that it is the sense of the Congress that the United States should support those elements of the Iraqi opposition that advocate a very different future for Iraq than the bitter reality of internal repression and external aggression that the current regime in Baghdad now offers.

Let me be clear on what the U.S. objectives are: The United States wants Iraq to rejoin the family of nations as a freedom-loving and law-abiding member. This is in our interest and that of our allies within the region.

The United States favors an Iraq that offers its people freedom at home. I categorically reject arguments that this is unattainable due to Iraq's history or its ethnic or sectarian make-up. Iraqis deserve and desire freedom like everyone else. The United States looks forward to a democratically supported regime that would permit us to enter into a dialogue leading to the reintegration of Iraq into normal international life.

My Administration has pursued, and will continue to pursue, these objectives through active application of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions. The evidence is overwhelming that such changes will not happen under the current Iraq leadership.

In the meantime, while the United States continues to look to the Security Council's efforts to keep the current regime's behavior in check, we look forward to new leadership in Iraq that has the support of the Iraqi people. The United States is providing support to opposition groups from all sectors of the Iraqi community that could lead to a popularly supported government.

On October 21, 1998, I signed into law the Omnibus Consolidated and Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act, 1999, which made $8 million available for assistance to the Iraqi democratic opposition. This assistance is intended to help the democratic opposition unify, work together more effectively, and articulate the aspirations of the Iraqi people for a pluralistic, participa--tory political system that will include all of Iraq's diverse ethnic and religious groups. As required by the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for FY 1998 (Public Law 105-174), the Department of State submitted a report to the Congress on plans to establish a program to support the democratic opposition. My Administration, as required by that statute, has also begun to implement a program to compile information regarding allegations of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes by Iraq's current leaders as a step towards bringing to justice those directly responsible for such acts.

The Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 provides additional, discretionary authorities under which my Administration can act to further the objectives I outlined above. There are, of course, other important elements of U.S. policy. These include the maintenance of U.N. Security Council support efforts to eliminate Iraq's weapons and missile programs and economic sanctions that continue to deny the regime the means to reconstitute those threats to international peace and security. United States support for the Iraqi opposition will be carried out consistent with those policy objectives as well. Similarly, U.S. support must be attuned to what the opposition can effectively make use of as it develops over time. With those observations, I sign H.R. 4655 into law.

WILLIAM J. CLINTON

THE WHITE HOUSE,

October 31, 1998.

Bubba's address to the nation a month and a half later at the inception of "Operation Desert Fox", :rolleyes: can be found here:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/july-dec98/clinton_12-16.html

When people speak their conscience, I respect it. When they blather their ideology, and it is goofy; I laugh. I can't help it, I'm just a happy guy! ;) :p :D

[S_O_Laban]

LoneStranger, IIRC Dr. Phil was born in TX and didn't move here until he was about 10. His family moved back to TX and he stayed in KS to finish school. He then later moved back to TX. Hope this anwsers your question.