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But I don't see a real debate here. Democrats (or their supporters) don't post or don't exist. Republicans (or their supporters) can't make a criticism about Bush.
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I do and I don't agree with this observation. I believe that I don't agree, in part, because of the issue du jour (the 9-11 Kangaroo Commission) that is getting the most coverage of late, and consequently generating the most 'discussion' here--or at least the bulk of the postings.
If you sense that some posters here (typically supportive of Bush) may be unwilling to make a criticism of him with respect to the 9-11 attacks, perhaps it's because the criticisms coming out of the Commission's carnival of hearings and the resulting press coverage is so unstinting in its attempt to pin not just responsibility but BLAME on the Bush administration for not preventing the unpreventable, for not thinking that the unthinkable coud happen, and for not correcting systemic shortcomings or overcoming intelligence failures which were 10, 20, 30 years in the making.
When you see a parade of former Clinton-adminstration hacks like Ben-Veniste and Gore-Lick giving interview after interview after interview in which they all but get up and dance naked on the table in their revelry at the opportunity to smear the Bush administration--to smear the likes of Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld and Rice--it's a wonder these boobs have any time to listen to testimony or to conduct hearings into what the systemic and institutional failures were that allowed the United States to be so vulnerable to that type of attack;
when you see someone with a maimed conscience like Bob Kerrey, who has literally been accused of murder (yes, murder), all but jump out of his chair and into the spotlight for a chance to second-guess someone else for what may or may not have been failings in judgment or analysis, in unimaginably difficult circumstances;
when you see someone without a maimed conscience like Ted "Chappaquiddick" Kennedy, who has been accused of the equivalent of murder (yes, murder), proudly hoisting his bloated, alcoholic, amoral legacy onto the stage of a presidential campaign for one last vicarious glint of glory (oh God, PLEASE let it be his last); ready, willing and able to make the wildest, most slanderous, most out-and-out WRONG and WRONGLY-MOTIVATED condmenations of Bush administration policies;
...perhaps in that context, Chiwas, one can begin to understand why Bush supporters give no quarter on this issue. It shouldn't take 5 minutes' worth of debate to come to the agreement that what happened on 11 September 2001 was essentially going to be unpreventable in a society as open as the one we lived (yes LIVED) in, and that there is virtually ZERO chance that the policies or actions of any administration, whether it had served for 8 YEARS or 8 MONTHS, would have been able to avert those attacks. That is reality.
Instead, we are treated to a daily diet of the Carnival of Lies and Hypocrisy that is the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.
If the national debate moved beyond this issue, perhaps on to social issues such as pregnancy rights of women, or equal rights for homosexuals, or maintaining the separation of church and state, or economic issues like taxation equity or tax reform, perhaps then you'd see less polarized opinion, and more nuanced debate. The lack of legitimate debate you see here, though, is in my constituionally-protected opinion (IMCPO) a reflection of the lack of legitmate debate there is on the 9/11 Commission.