Vice President Dick Cheney recently told a joke stereotyping West Virginia as a state prone to incest. Was his comment offensive or funny?

Okay, I didn't want this poll to be about the War, so I'll try to be very brief in replying about it. But first I'll address your comments regarding Cheney's joke.

After reading your latest post, I now understand what you meant in your reference to impeachment. But perhaps you can understand my confusion since the answer you selected was that the JOKE was "so offensive that Cheney should be impeached."



First of all, Cheney wasn't "thumbing his nose" at anybody. He was telling a joke. That's all it was; a joke. I've got a lot of "rednecks" and "hillbillies" in my family and we all love a good redneck joke. We laugh at Jeff Foxworthy because, number one, it's funny, and number two, there's a lot of truth to it. I'll admit it, and I'll laugh at myself. It's just a joke.

People who are offended at such jokes look foolish not because of the joke, but because of their overreaction to it. It makes them look like they've got a secret barnyard or incestuous fetish and they're trying to cover it up. To paraphrase Shakespeare's "Hamlet", "They protest too much, methinks." For the record, I'm not saying that it's true, but rather that the unintended consequence of their overreaction is raised suspicion. If you're trying to protect your image, the best course of action is to laugh it off.

As far as the War being unconstitutional, the Constitution specifically gives the Commander-in-Chief (President Bush) the responsibility of waging war. It gives Congress the responsibility of authorizing said war, which it did. The Constitution was followed exactly to the "T".



As far as the Administration "misleading us" into the War, there were a lot of other officials who had the same opinion that WMDs not only were present, but were a grave threat to our National Security; among them, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, and John Kerry. (See http://www.snopes.com/politic... If Bush and Cheney lied, then so did these others. And Bill Clinton had the information and his opinions about it while he was still in office, so it can't be alleged that Bush initiated it. If it was a lie, then Clinton lied first.



As far as the War being justified, Saddam Hussein thumbed his nose repeatedly at the U.N. inspectors and the resolutions commanding him to comply with the search for WMD's. The only logical reason someone would refuse to comply is either that they are hiding WMDs or they are insane. Personally, I believe that both those qualifications applied to Saddam Hussein.

Why didn't we find WMDs? Well, actually, we did. There is uncontrovertible evidence that Saddam Hussein not only had biological WMDs, but he used them on his own people. There is photographic evidence which I will not repost here due to its graphic nature. Our troops found many caches of biological weapons hidden in the Iraqi desert after Baghdad fell. Once again, there is photographic evidence (of which this is just a small selection).






What happened to the WMDs we expected to find? Well, there was plenty of time between the U.N.'s warning that a Coalition invasion was in the works and the time we actually got the authorization to go in for Saddam to smuggle much of them out of the country (most-likely to Syria). What they weren't able to get out, they buried. Iraq is a big geographical area and it would be impossible to dig up everything that was buried in their sands. As Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld so aptly explained, "The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

But look at what they DID find buried in the Iraqi sands:





For the story, go to http://www.snopes.com/photos/...
If Saddam buried fighter jets in the sand, don't you think he would have buried his WMDs as well when he learned of the coming invasion? And if it was difficult to find these huge jets, how much harder would it be to find the much-smaller WMDs?

And finally, sure, if we pull out of Iraq tomorrow no more of our troops will be shot in Iraq. They'll just be shot alongside us citizens when the terrorists we let get away invade American soil again. At that time we'll be fighting a defensive, rather than offensive, war. Not only will we have to worry about the lives of our troops, but we'll have to defend our citizens, our property, and ultimately our liberty. I hate war as much as the next guy, but I'd much rather fight them over there than have to fight them here.

Also, I don't want to be sending the next generation of U.S. troops to Iraq 20 years from now because we pulled another Gulf War retreat (the biggest mistake of George H.W. Bush's Presidency), leaving the job unfinished. If, as you say, we were to try the Administration for treason, then I agree that they will not be making any more "tasteless jokes." Our enemies will learn that we care less about protecting our liberty than persecuting our political adversaries and they will use that to destroy us. And that's no joke, tasteless or otherwise.



Well, so much for being brief. Anyway, I won't elaborate more on this topic, since it's getting away from the subject of the poll, but I am convinced that many people do not have access to a lot of the facts about the War. Otherwise, they would not protest against it so vehemently. Therefore, I thought I needed to answer your points with this food for thought. I hope it was informative.
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