Mahlon.
This is not my usual field at the MIMF, but I have to salute you Mahlon on your remarks due to the 2008 election, which will bring the USA either further away from the rest of the western world or closer to us for instance in Europe.
You seem to have reached a mature understanding of the huge problems created when President Junior and his christian crusadors (100 million americans believe more in the Word than in Darwinism???) promised the western world: "We will invade Iraq, and capture Osama Bin Laden and his Al Queda terrorists and bring them to justice".
Right!! The problem was obvious from the beginning, for the Bush admin. hitting on a sovereign state never a threat to the USA, without any formal agreement and resolution within the United Nations. In fact the USA supported both Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban in Afghanistan against the Sovjet Union years prior to the staged World Trade Center airplane bombing in 2001 and the USA supported Saddam Hussain in the war against Iran a decade before the first Gulf War, where thousands of american soliders became ill and many died, because they were used for ginnypigs to the CIA produced Agent Orange chemical invented during the disaster and loss of the Vietnam war, where the USA was thrown out of Saigon in 1973 by vietcong farmers wearing sandals riding bicycles.
Of course the break from the Human Rights and the Geneva convention, introducing torture done by american soldiers on the internet from the Abu Graib prison in Bagdad, did not find any approvements in the rest of the western world. The Guantanamo torture prison - neither, not to mention the international illigal CIA Rendition program, meaning the USA can kidnap any citizen from any country and fly them to either Guantanamo, Cuba or any other bandit state the USA has bribed, where torture is approved of as a tool of enterrorgation.
Personally, I believe Hilary Clinton would be a disaster for a President - period. She can´t seem to make up her mind, where to stand on issues very important for the USA. For instance the hundreds of thousands middle class americans, who can´t pay the loanes back to the banks, and will lose their houses and homes during 2008. She voted for the invation of the wrong country - Iraq, where Osama Bin Laden or Al Qaeda have never been and Iraq had no terrorism prior to the invation, when President Junior promised the western world to capture him and his Al Qeada terrorists in Iraq. Beside this, she has been supported economicly by the old quard in the democratic party with 125 million dollars for her campain. Money, the contributers certainly want back in promises of Government contracts to benefit the usual corrupt corporate America.
The republican John McCain has the identity of a typical USA President. War time hero, imprissoned for 5 years in Vietnam while captured by the V.C. farmers, when he parashuted from his destroyed airplane. Victim of torture, one of the reasons he during the Iraq invation all along has voted and spoken against torture. He speaks his case or any political case plain and straight forward. He has a heck of a lot of experience at The Hill in D.C., which could prove good for the next President, but also it could prove to be bad, because of the total chaos within the republican party during the past 8 years on the Hill, because so many republican politicians have been accused of pedophilism, drugs abuse, driving under the influence, embesselment (Tom LeHay) of the indian nations, the Enron and the Haliburton scandales etc.etc. But for the republicans and the question of a republican President, John McCain would obviously be the best and probably only reasonable choice, since the other candidates have retired.
Barrack Obama, unlike the current President junior in the White House, has BRAINS and an education to prove it as a lawyer. He has something else, which the two other candidates McCain and Hillary Clinton don´t have. He knows that one of the issues most important for the USA on foreing affairs in years to come, will be to bring back the USA as the only super power left on this planet to the negociating tables in the UN and world wide. The USA has lost the confidence of the rest of the western world, while the republican President junior has entered one disaster after the next, moving away from the majority of his fellow americans, lying about his military career, cheated, he has broken more than 750 laws in your USA Constitution and every international agreed deal since the WWII, earsdropping on e-mails, telephones, private homes among the citizens of, what used to be The Great United States of America. Obama has a lot of support, economicly and because of his visions for the USA and has had it all along during his campain, from both republicans and democrats and obviouly the black/coloured poor America, who want a huge change of the USA. Domesticly and abroad. He has been the junior senator from Chicago, Ill. for some years, which means he has some experience at the Hill. But as we all know, segregations and discrimination is still a problem in the USA, and he is a coloured man by birth, which has never been a benefit for any american nor a campaining President.
I´ll put my money on, what is likely for the USA election, come November 2008 which is McCain or Obama, more than what is most needed for the USA to regain a natural membership of the Human Rights Commision, The Geneva Convention and the U.N. forrums again, not to mention the social problems domesticly in the USA as of 2008 having 47 million poor americans out of almost 300 million americans to live on the streets with no social security or free hospitalisation, with no regular income and 13 million more people from South America not so far naturalised, but south americans, illigaly working people in the USA who has escaped their own countires to become a part of The American Dream.
If America and americans want to be trusted again abroad it will take time and it will cost America to renegociate certain human issues, which we as democracies must garuantee our own citizens, to be able to call us - a democracy. One always measures the success of a democracy, looking at how well off the poor and needing are?
According to estimations from well oriented consultans within the oil buisness, americans will have to turn down the heating in your homes in 7 years, another important issue to think of. Another issue you should demand to be removed and thrown away is the republican produced program for the USA "New American Century - The US For Global Supremacy".
Whatever you guys over the pond decide for, I offer you and I realy hope you´ll to think seriously ahead about, who will be the better President for all americans and the rest of the western world, not whether he/she is a republican or a democrat. Beside this you have an astronomical disasterous deficit on your economy, which will take a lot of work to decrease during the next decades.