Quite a colourful character by all accounts :DL

http://www.nndb.com/people/892/000023823/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv...ndal/barry.htm

The world would not be as interesting of a place without Marion "The B*tch Set Me Up" Barry.

To be fair, the DC has been cleaned up a lot since the 70's and 80's. Barry didn't have much to do with that, although his successor Anthony Williams deserves some credit.

Like any other town there are spots that are just awful. Basically I scoot down PA Ave right to the mall area for the museums. Adams Morgan was a nice spot as well as Georgetown. DC just might get statehood.

Military missions doesn't equal war.

I got really pissed when Barry closed down the 14th Street "attractions". That was some interesting place to hang out. Like a mini Las Vegas but instead of gambling there was porn, hookers, clip joints, and sex shops. Quite the tourist attraction. :yeah:

All gone now. :wah:

Berry's pledge was to get cocaine off the streets....one gram at a time. :nope:

Yes but wars have military missions. :D

Now why would POTUS fly to a carrier just to announce that a mission was successful while the war is still raging on??? To me it looked more like he announced victory...:hmmm:

I don't think anyone doubts that this was nothing more than a political stunt. A little premature, but still a stunt.

It is what politicians do. :know:

Lets get this straight once and for all. It wasn't a stunt, at least not one having anything to do with Bush or the end of the war.

The carrier Bush gave the speech on had just completed a 6 month tour of duty in the gulf and was on it's way home. That mission accomplished sign was put up by the ships command for the crews benefit and was in reference to the ships successful deployment, much like how submariners will tie a broomstick to their periscope to signify a successful cruise, NOT the end of a war that was still very much being actively fought.

Now, were Bushes PR people wrong for letting him be photographed with that sign in the background? The "hindsight is 20-20" answer is yes, given the incorrect assumptions our foreign friends have had over this for over half a decade now.

But one also has to question how much of these incorrect assumptions are related to their deep seated anti-Bush prejudices? After all I've never heard people so predisposed to hating a man as Euros are about our former president.

Not just Euros. You should talk to my roommate. Anything bad anybody says about anything current, "Well, it can't be as bad as the last eight years!"

Erm, not really. Bush declared the end of major combat operations on that ship as well. He said that we had prevailed in the Iraq War. Soon after that he said about Iraq "that mission has been accomplished." The "Mission Accomplished" line was also in the initial draft of the aircraft carrier speech.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Accomplished

It's Wikipedia, but the article is pretty well footnoted with reputable sources.

In my opinion, the mistake wasn't the sign, the mistake was declaring the end of major combat operations at that point. Anybody with a modicum of knowledge of pre-Saddam Iraq should have known that was a major mistake.

Right from the Wiki article: Bush's own words:
"We have difficult work to do in Iraq. We are bringing order to parts of that country that remain dangerous.""Our mission continues...The War on Terror continues, yet it is not endless. We do not know the day of final victory, but we have seen the turning of the tide."Doesn't sound too "over" to me.

As a matter of fact the only part of his entire speech that might support your argument is: "In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed." but even that is no official indication that the war was being declared "over".

So do many other things.

But what has been happening for the last few years in Iraq can hardly be considered a war in the traditional sense.

He was saying that the War on Terror was ongoing, not that the Iraq War was ongoing. His comment on Iraq makes it sound like a policing issue, not a war. It's sort of an "Iraq is done... now we move on to other parts of the War on Terror."

I can clearly remember the speech being billed at the time as the end of the Iraq War.

There was a pretty wide ranging civil war going on for a while, with lots of different groups fighting each other. Most groups were more intent on attacking each other than going after the US.

That's another reason why the statistic on the Iraq deaths is so misleading. US deaths in Iraq have only been a small portion of the deaths over there. The vast majority of the violent deaths in Iraq since the invasion have been Iraqis killing Iraqis or at least Muslim terrorists killing Iraqis.