music2myear said:
The facts I quote are "bias and misinformation" and your facts are truly "facts." Quote me some recent studies, show me news articles from someone besides the "big 3 liars"; I want to know.
I doubt you really want to know, if you did you would have looked it up yourself. GO ahead read this and see what I mean they hate Bush and what he does falls down on the rest of us. Try reading foreign news along with independent news.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002-08-14-1a-cover_x.htm
http://www.canadiandimension.mb.ca/extra/d0816eh.htm
Foreigners say over and over that it's George W. Bush they dislike, not all Americans. But what if Americans give Mr. Bush a second term as president on November 2? Will foreigners still say it's the man in the White House who is the problem, not the voters who put him there?
The U.S. presidential election is widely seen as too close to call, but one thing is clear: if the rest of the world could vote, Bush would lose in a landslide.
The most recent evidence came last week, when major newspapers in ten countries released the results of a series of coordinated opinion polls. Thousands of people in Japan, Great Britain, Israel, Mexico, Spain, Russia, South Korea, France, Canada, and Australia were asked their views about Bush, challenger John Kerry, the war in Iraq and the global role of the United States. By a 2-1 margin, foreigners opposed a second term for Bush. Only in two countries, Israel and Russia, did a majority of respondents favor Bush over Kerry.
Most foreign governments seem to share their citizens' desire for Bush's defeat, even if diplomatic constraints keep them from saying so publicly. "Even off the record, government officials will not tell you this," a spokesman for a major European nation told me in June, "and I am not telling you this now." But his mischievous smile left little doubt about his true feelings.
What is striking is how foreign governments and ordinary citizens alike invariably emphasize that their antipathy towards Bush does not extend to America, or Americans, at large.
"We like Americans, we don't like Bush," ran the headline in The Guardian newspaper of Great Britain. "Bush Is The Problem" explained the headline in South Korea's Joong Ang Ilbo newspaper.
The fact that foreigners make this distinction may comfort Americans, but it shouldn't be taken for granted. After all, in a democracy—and don't most Americans think we have the greatest democracy in the world?—the people are responsible for the government they elect.
Of course, one can argue that Americans didn't really elect Bush the first time. Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000 by half a million votes, but Bush ended up as president with help from his brother, the governor of Florida, and a Republican-dominated Supreme Court.
But whatever the absurdities of the Electoral College that governs U.S. presidential elections, the rules are the rules, everyone knows them and each side has had plenty of time to get ready for this year's showdown.
If Bush does win on November 2, Americans will in effect be saying to the world that we endorse his bellicose, high-handed, unilateralist approach to international affairs. In that event, why should foreigners keep drawing a distinction between an American president they deplore and the American population that gave him four more years in power?
