[Ishmael]

Originally Posted by sonar732

Even though Lincoln was a very vocal anti-slave man in private, he was vocal about preserving the union in public. His policies reflected the war, both before and after. Before the war, he favored policies that would lead to the eventual extinction of slavery as those policies would've prohibited admission of any more slave states in new territories. Early in the war, he replaced generals in border states who claimed the slaves in their region were free to make sure those states would side with the union cause. Late in the war, he gave a speech on 'limited' sufferage.

Good point. Lincoln saw that slavery was economically inefficient in an industrializing society and would have eventually ended due to the inability to compete with modern industry.

For all of those who complain about Bush sidestepping the Congress on numberous issues...Lincoln did the same here.

Congress looked at the same intelligence...hence partly shown in their approval ratings and why the Democrats are playing possum like Kerry did in the last election on whether or not they should've voted for or supported the war from the start. Not because they "didn't know", but because they did know and are looking at their political future to back track on their stances...hence why McCain is the only one who's been upfront about his stance on the war from the start.

Now...as I've said multiple times in other discussions...this will be my last post regarding as I'm sure there will be 5 rebutals soon to be in this topic.

EDIT: ...Last time I checked...there was no reason for the Bush administration to be pardoned. Bad policies, according to some, isn't grounds for impeachment.

Lest we forget, the Iraqi intelligence was primarily promulgated by Rumsfeld's Office of Special Plans. When CIA analyses didn't jibe with their "Curveball" intel, John Bolton was sent to the CIA to browbeat and threaten analysts who disagreed. I agree that Saddam was a bad actor and is better off gone. But I also submit that if we had actually had enough troops to keep civil order and actually hired Iraqis from the beginning, we would have kept a lot more of the good will of the local populace and been able to nip most of the insurgency in the bud. By privatising the reconstruction to his friends and their hiring of people out of other countries gave the Iraqi people no stake in the reconstruction efforts. I also think that a reconciliation comission along the lines of the post-apartheid South Africa model would have gone a long way to reducing Sunni/Shia tensions. Instead, they sent on Death Squad Negroponte as ambassador and the strangest thing happened. Death squads appeared on the streets of the cities of Iraq contributing to the ethnic cleansing of mixed Sunni/Shia neighborhoods.