My sense was that Kerry "won" on the Patriot Act by exploiting popular ignorance over it. The "sneak and peek" bit is one of many phony outrages that ACLU types falsely attribute to the Patriot Act, which have in fact been commonplace for decades.

I'm not trying to be antagonistic, but I'm very confused about Bush's stance on stem cell research and mapping that to the Iraq war. For example in the debate, he said, regarding stem cell research:

"To destroy life to save life is - it's one of the real ethical dilemmas that we face."

And he goes on to say:

"I had to make the decision do we destroy more life, do we continue to destroy life."

And, ultimately, his stance is against stem cell research -- at least there will be no further destruction of embryos past what has already been done.

It seems as though he put a lot of thought into stem cell research and it seems as though he is not fully supporting it since it "destroys life."

Mapping this over to the Iraq war ....

It is fairly common military-speak for people to say that it is necessary (and good) to sacrifice life for the betterment of a particular situation, especially once a war has started. Ideally, we're talking about soldiers here and not civilians, but the reality of it is that civilians do get hurt and killed.

So, I'm confued. Sacrificing the lives of grown adults (and civilian children) is okay, especially if we can depose a hated leader, but destoying embryos isn't okay, even if in doing so, we find the cure for terrible diseases.

Am I missing something here? Wouldn't the more consistent view be to oppose or be in favor of both (i.e., be for the war and for stem cell research, or against the war and against stem cell research)? Or is that just too simplistic?

It's a good point Puppy

The benefit from overthrowing a dictator is concrete. It's been done before and we know it works.

The benefit from embryonic stem-cell research is speculative at best. There has actually been more progress from adult stem-cell research. And I think that's true even if you pro-rate that against the admittedly limited amount of embryonic stem-cell research that's been taking place.

It's a "bird in the hand" calculation. If at some point we discover that embryonic stem-cell research really can perform as advertised, the calculation will shift accordingly.

I have to respectfully disagree with you McGehee. There have been instances of successfully deposing dictators, but it's not a "given" that such a change is always for the good or that it's even going to be successfully accomplished.

I mean, if this was such an easy thing, why has Castro been in power for so long? We have had plenty of reasons to get rid of him, if we could have done so.

In fact, going back to the beginning of the 20th Century, history says that the US can't really remove dictators very well. In some instances we supported them first (e.g. Saddam), then tried to remove them. Or, we removed one (e.g., Allende) and put in another (Pinnochet). The list is quite impressive: Castro, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh, Mao, Kim Il Sung & Kim Jong Il, Pinnochet...

You're arguing against a contention I didn't make. I didn't say "we know it works every time," I said "we know it works." Perhaps it would have been better if I had said, we know it can be done.

Which is not the case with the other side of your original comment, which was about stem cells.

At any rate, the only way anyone can realistically predict failure in Iraq is if America loses its nerve and elects a President who doesn't believe in the project. And that would be John Kerry.

Who, by the way, aided and abetted the Vietcong with his public statements upon returning from Vietnam.

Actually, you said "overthrowing a dictator is concrete." My counter argument basically revolved around the fact that it is indeed anything but concrete.

Look, I'm just bringing up a point. You can disagree. If you think that the lives of people in other countries in addition to own soldiers is worth sacrificing, then that's your belief. I can't argue with that.

But the issue that I have is that I'm not sure that those other people are necessarily worth any less (or more) than an embryo. If Bush was as careful and thoughtful about how he went to Iraq as he is about stem cell research, he'd have a lot more support than he does.