loquitur, you are presenting a false choice.

I doubt anyone here would imagine advocating for general/public disclosure of classified materials. It is disingenuous to imply that this has happened, and unrealistic to suggest that the only alternative is a state in which the executive controls all terms of debate without consequence. It's inappropriate for us to believe that we have a system in which there is free debate and real consideration of action when one of the parties can take action, propose legislature, and entirely control the terms of discourse by limiting access to information that doesn't support predetermined outcomes.

What does the power of the Congress mean when their decisions can be influenced, if not determined, by restricting or propagating the information they use to make decisions?

Here is one of Bush's speeches delievered prior to Congress' vote authorizing military action in Iraq. Tell me where the lie is? Tell me what it means when he says "Evidence indicates"? Does that mean he said it with 100% certainty?

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0021007-8.html

I'm not saying he lied, unless it's a lie through omission. But I'll turn that around on ya ace.

Find me some quotations where Bush says that there is evidence that contradicts the assumption that Iraq possessed or was seeking WMDs. Find some quotes of him saying that his conclusions were supported by some evidence and refuted by other, substantial, evidence and analyses.

I also said this was a lie by omission, and IMO, unethical not to add a few words to those public speeches to tell the American people that there was conflicting intel when asking them to go to war"

"The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program....although some agencies within the intelligence community disagreed".

You dont think that would have been more honest with the American people?

ace..explain to me how this is not a lie?

On Meet the Press, Feb 04:
President Bush: I went to Congress with the same intelligence — Congress saw the same intelligence I had, and they looked at exactly what I looked at, and they made an informed judgment based upon the information that I had. The same information, by the way, that my predecessor had. And all of us, you know, made this judgment that Saddam Hussein needed to be removed.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4179618

If your criticism of Bush is based on his communication skills, I can not argue that point. However, the way I understand what he said in the quote above, based on the fact that he says "...the same information...my predecessor had..", that he refers to general information that was commonly known. I think that information was the basis of his desire to invade Iraq. That was the basis of my support of the war.

Also, I have no idea what he had that Congress did not see, or that the Clinton administration did not have.

Ace, do you think "what he had that Congress did not see, or that the Clinton administration did not have" is important? I'm just curious - because based on stuff you said earlier, your support for the war is conceived in different terms anyway.

I guess I have to post this article again:

Two highly classified intelligence reports delivered directly to President Bush before the Iraq war cast doubt on key public assertions made by the president, Vice President Cheney, and other administration officials as justifications for invading Iraq and toppling Saddam Hussein, according to records and knowledgeable sources.

full article: http://nationaljournal.com/about/njw...06/0302nj1.htm

That is why I said I believe we have different moral standards for sending our brothers and sons (and sisters and daugthers) to war.

I think there was enough information commonly available to come to an informed decision to either support or not support military action against Iraq. Inconclusive intelligence one way or the other would not have changed my view.

You characterize it (I went to Congress with the same intel..) as bad communications skills and I characterize it as intended deception.

And I guess I have to post this article again from #73:

Two highly classified intelligence reports delivered directly to President Bush before the Iraq war cast doubt on key public assertions made by the president, Vice President Cheney, and other administration officials as justifications for invading Iraq and toppling Saddam Hussein, according to records and knowledgeable sources.

full article: http://nationaljournal.com/about/njw...06/0302nj1.htm

I think a president has a moral obligation to rely on the best and latest intel and not simply "information commonly available"

For all of the above reasons, that is why I said I believe we have different moral standards for sending our brothers and sons (and sisters and daugthers) to war.

I can't find anything. i primarily looked in the months prior to Congrssional approval to take military action. Generally you get alot of stuff like this.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea.../20021005.html

Clearly, if by conclusive intelligence you mean that which supported the given reasons for invasion, "conclusive intelligence" consisted of incorrect conclusions.

So you don't think it is material that the president ignored and suppressed information that contradicted his stated positions? I guess I can't understand that point of viwe...

i dont understand where this thread has gotten to: i dont see how it is that the question of the quality of infotainment cooked down and coalated by the administration is resolved in any way by the question of whether ace happened to believe that information or not. the information was itself false. that this false information resonated with ace's political committments is not about anything except ace's political committments.

the question of intent--which is what is at issue in the use or non-use of the category of "lie"--is obviously problematic. it will not be resolved in a space like this simply because we do not have much in the way of relevant information. here, too, the question is information: and not about whether as you watch tv you are inclined to impute motives to george w. one way or another. the question of intent would be best resolved in a proceeding--and given that the integrity of the system is at issue, i would think impeachment a healthy development--because regardless of the obvious problems that intent poses even within such a hearing, it would nonetheless function to elevate system concerns over the partisan and personal politics of this administration.

another way: insofar as ace's personal relation to the case for this debacle in iraq is concerned, it seems to lean entirely on psychological and political committments---- the argument he makes comes down to: "i cannot accept that this happened. i cannot accept that the evidence presented was false. i believed the case and so it must have been true."

that isnt much of an argument.

I am not going to go through everything but...

Sadaam violated U.N. resolutions.
Sadaam had a history of military aggression.
Sadaam had a history of using chemical weapons.
Sadaam had a history of trying to develop nuclear weapons.
Sadaam, while loosing the first Gulf War, for no tactical military reason he targets Isreal with bombs.
Sadaam had a history of killing his own people.
Etc.

After the fact we find Sadaam was diverting billions of dollars from the oil for food program, I have my thoughts on why, what do you think he was going to do with the money?

I can accept false information as false information. I did not base my views on the information that was later determined to be false. And, just because the information was false does not prove a lie. I do not accept the "lie" by omission argument.


The link did not work for me.

I can't believe we're still debating whether we were misled and, in some cases, directly lied to about our reasons for going to war.

This war was a strategic move designed to, in my opinion (moreso than the question of oil which was a sideline of a much bigger objective), install a democracy in the heart of the middle east which would be the catalyst for a domino effect of change in the region. Thereby, yes, securing the stable production and distribution of the region's oil and opening up ginormous new world markets and geography for global capitalism to play with.

Like, duh.

Truthfully, I don't think it's a horrible plan, but it went south real quick because, well, they didn't plan it. I guess GOD was gonna take care of all the details like, you know, human nature and happy endings.

Ace, with all due respect, if you still think it was about Saddam and wmd's you really need to read more.

Sorry to interject so little so late in the conversation, but I had to say something.

If you really want to read it: What Bush Was Told About Iraq

Two highly classified intelligence reports delivered directly to President Bush before the Iraq war cast doubt on key public assertions made by the president, Vice President Cheney, and other administration officials as justifications for invading Iraq and toppling Saddam Hussein, according to records and knowledgeable sources.

But I dont see the point of debating it further.

i don't think this is a mod-offense, but if it is, mods do your thing or pm me and i'll do it.

this is how i felt listening to the news in the run-up to the war:

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y29...bush_bingo.jpg

ace....re: "The danger to America from the Iraqi regime is grave and growing." You posted that "message" from the white house, in your post #110.....

My question is, why???

In my post,
<a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpost.php?p=2239744&postcount=93">#93</a>
I included Rumsfeld's <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2003-07-08-uranium-usat_x.htm">July 2003, assertion</a> that the administration chose to "go to war", without any significant new information concerning the threat that Saddam's Iraq posed.

I also included quotes dating from Feb., 2001, until Sept. 16, 2001, which all conveyed a similar assessment from Tenet, Powell, Rice, and finally, Cheney.
All four statements amounted to, as Rice put it, in late July, 2001:
All of that was precedd by this news reporting:
They all said words to this effect, ace:
Rumsfeld said:
....and his words are your entire argument to justify a war against a country that was assessed as not posing a significant threat....and even Rumsfeld said, <b>"The coalition did not act in Iraq because we had discovered dramatic new evidence of Iraq's pursuit of weapons of mass murder"</b>

.....so why bother to post "things" like,
<b>"The danger to America from the Iraqi regime is grave and growing."</b>,

.....why, ace....even you don't believe that.....the record shows that there was no basis for that statement....it's rhetoric......and hundreds of thousands have died.....why, ace?

This is from the article

Bush and Cheney cited other reasons as well for evidence of a potential Iraqi nuclear program. Actually, what I have read Bush stated that Sadaam was seeking to or is reinstating its nuclear program. The author, is lieing based on ommision and lieing based on what Bush actually said about Iraq having a nuclear program compared to reinstating one.

Here is the second.

This is not justification for Bush lieing by omission in my opinion. You would want Bush to say - ...and there is evidence or actually an opinion about what Sadaam might do if his regime's demise is imminent, ah - they say that he is unlikely but could conduct a clandestime attack against us on our soil...

I can see why this debate is over.

Once again, you misrepresented what I said and what I wanted Bush to say

I simply wanted Bush to add a few more words to his public speeches that would have acknowledged there were differences of opinion in the intel community. (from my post #104)

"The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program....although some agencies within the intelligence community disagree".

and that is why the debate is over :)

The intelligence in question is about the tubes. The tubes could be used for conventional or nuclear weapons. The report did not question if Sadaam was seeking to reinstate his nuclear program.

Pretty close to my own view. Thanks for coming out and saying it.

Some of the stuff that gets posted around here reads more like "my team has to win" than "how did we get here and where to now."

Why don't you consider it to be constructive to respond to each and every opinion that is posted that flies in the face of all of the facts....facts like the ones I posted to suuport my opinions in my most recent post, and in post #93.

Do my points make sense....how are they weak? Where are the weaknesses in the evidence that I've posted to support my conclusions?

You're an attorney loquitur, yet you give me the impression that all of our arguments are equally tedious and weightless. This is the "process" that we had to go through, here....to end the posting of assertions that Saddam "did too" have WMD.....and, obviously it worked. Months go by before anyone attempts to post that opinion, and hopefully, sooner rather than later, this will wind down in a similar way.....

Personally, I think it's because there is only one person here defending the Saddam/wmd story and everyone else knows it was a bunch of horseshit.

I'd like to rewrite this slightly:

This war was a strategic move designed to force a 'democracy' on a sectarian, theocratic society that had been living under a false democracy (false-republic) for decades under tyrannical rule that we helped to create because we were unwilling or unable to have a healthy and mutually beneficial international relationship with the former Soviet Union. The simple plan was to, under the guise of both national security (proven incorrect) and humanitarian removal of a dictator (we kill more than Saddam), gain military and economic—and even social—dominance over a region rich in the only natural resource that our government seems to be interested in, despite the fact that not only will this resource will run dry soon and we will kill tens to hundreds of thousands of innocent people.

To say simply that this wasn't planned well overlooks the glaring fundamental flaws to the plan. Not only were the logistics overlooked—we don't have the manpower, oil is a very short term investment, the Baath military wouldn't just stop fighting—, but the entire endeavor was completely unethical from any and every standpoint. That unethicality* of the war clearly would ruin MANY of our strongest alliances and decimate our reputation further. The fact that the UK, our long time bitch, is withdrawing troops is not but further proof that even our closest allies cannot support us in this. We've lost 3,300 men and women serving in the military who simply wanted to serve our country honorably.



*that's a new word, and I've just coined it

I don't know if you have been reading all of this, but I have been. There have been several instances when I have looked into the details of an allegation of lies and have found no support.

This is a free market place for ideas. Given that freedom you can choose to participate or not participate. My desire is to come to a clear understanding of what Bush and Cheney lied about. If the issue of lies has not been made clear, it is because the support of the accusation lacks clarity, not the question.

By saying it wasn't planned well, I don't mean to say that I ever favored a military incursion to force western-style democracy on the middle east. Only that western-style democracy in the middle east not an unfavorable concept to me.

The toll of what has happened as a result of this war is not lost on me, you can trust in that.

i don't know will, leaving the ethics out of it...if we simply wanted to know sadaam's guy off the totem pole and put some pretty well fortified military bases on iraqi soil...i'm not so sure that our pnac administration didn't accomplish precisely the minimum and main thing they wanted / felt they needed to accomplish. i think a lot of the other things were not thought to be immediate future objectives by the serious planners of this. i think it was to mainly get our foot in the door, wearing an ironshod boot. we're there. we're not leaving. i don't care if we pull our troops back to reduced levels, we're going to be there. we've got proximity to many big suppliers of oil, and we can respond militarily from close quarters if and when shit breaks down over there.

i mean, india and china are on the move with increasing consumption of oil and output of co2. there might not be a lot of oil remaining at current or increased consumption levels, but having access to that resource is absolutely critical if the united states wants to retain anything even remotely like its current standard of living.

then, when the ethics bit comes in...its sort of a 'oh fuck. but we can't do that....wait wait wait...we'll do that, and call it this. classic bait and switch. at least that's my take.

ace, I respectfully request that you to consider that you're blinded by the context you're looking from.

Based on what you've posted in this thread, it's crystal clear that this statement is 100% not the case.

For me the issue is not so much the lies themselves but the dishonesty by omission.

Or do you really still believe we went into Iraq because of Saddam and wmd's?

to me, i feel like i'm taking crazy pills when i think about thinking about the concept that we would have allocated however many trillions of dollars to free people from a dictator so that they could be overrun by god knows what, or that we're so intent on the humanitarian movement that we can't do shit in darfur, and that we were afraid of sadaam having "wmd's' in iraq, as though he was going to pounce on our asses.

i remember back in grad school having an office mate talking about how sadaam had some sort of fucking balsa wood fliers that there were going to use to dispense chemical weapons in the us, and i remember thinking that my ass was going to rear up and eat me alive for having to let those thoughts cross by cerebellum. i remember thinking: thor gravyslapping hammerthrower, we'd better have something better than operation iraqi freedom! and wmds and crazy dictator going on to be doing this, and we'd better do it quick and clean and then get out. and of course, we're not out, and of course while i think we did have other objectives, i find them rather hypocritical unless we want to have the old dog eat dog america isn't the land of the free and the home of the brave, but just another group of shaved monkeys flinging their poo and trying to get by for another day. sometimes we're nice to each other, but shit - with mickey d's on the every corner, who has time to be pissed off?

/end rant. i'm going for a run.

To which I respond with Cheney's own words:
The President and Vice President repeatedly tied Iraq to 9/11 and lied about it.
Lybia approached the US in March 2003. Cheney lied in order to make the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq seem successful in stopping global terrorism.
I think we all know that's bullshit. We initially had tens of thousands of troops tracking down Osama Bin Laden in 2001 and 2002, and most of those troops were sent to Iraq in 2003. By 2004, when Cheney was in the debate, fewer than 10,000 troops were involved in the hunt for Bin Laden, whereas 100,000 troops were sent into Iraq.

I'm sure you've already read from what I've posted how Cheney saying he's cut all financial ties with Halbiruton is a big fat lie. Not only that but there is evidence suggesting that he was involved in awarding contracts to Haliburton.

Oh absolutely, but that was one of the fundamental flaws: we don't have the troops. It's becoming clear now that Giuliani and McCain have very little chance of overcoming Obama, Clinton or Edwards, all of whom have spoken clearly about troop withdrawals. I'd be willing to bet that if Obama or Edwards win, we might see the disassembly of the military bases in Iraq. I see UN peace keepers or an international force of some kind trying to clean up the mess, but there's no way that the US will continue to be in there along for more than a few years.

We went into Iraq for a number of stated reasons (and I'm choosing my words carefully) of which WMDs was a rather late arrival to the list. It was added because Blair prevailed upon Bush to go to the UN, and the prior UN resolutions were heavily weighted toward disarmament and disclosure. So the UN presentation was heavily focused on the WMD issues. Bush had been prepared to go in without that whole kabuki dance in the UN, which ended up delaying things by about 6 months. WMD became a heavily stressed theme for the likes of Cheney but it was added relatively late in the game. As things stood at that point, before Powell's speech, the inspectors had been tossed out in '98 in violation of the Gulf War-ending resolutions, there were regular shots taken at coalition planes in the no-fly zones and a whole bunch of other stuff going on. That's the irony here - it's not like WMDs were a necessary condition to the Iraq invasion. Whether they were a sufficient reason is a different question. Whether the invasion was a good idea even if Saddam had WMDs is yet a third question.

I just read an extract of an article by Fred Kagan that essentially says the war was a mistake because there is no evidence that the culture in the Middle East as it currently exists can accommodate liberal democracy. I printed it out and will read it in a bit. If anyone is interested in the link, I'll try to dig it out. But if that blurb is right, then the issue as pertains to Iraq was twofold in 2003: (1) was there anything to be done about Saddam Hussein? and (2) if there was, what should have replaced him? Number 2 is the harder question to deal with, and that's the question that wasn't adequately analyzed. I get the impression that the administration assumed that liberal democracy is a default position for humanity, which is decidedly not the case - it's a relatively rare and relatively recent exception to prior human experience. And when a culture doesn't support liberal democracy, an implemented democracy fails -- as it regularly does in Haiti, as it did in Zimbabwe, as it did several times in Nigeria, and on and on and on.

The impression I'm getting here is that people are collapsing issue #1 and issue #2, and misdefining issue #1 as being about WMDs, which is a rewrite of history.

And had the UN given up permission, things would have been different. They didn't. We had a coalition of the willing invade instead of UN forces. Saddam didn't break US resolutions, he broke UN resolutions. The horrible irony to all of this is that the US broke the UN Charter on the grounds of upholding an UN resolution.

If you remember the Gulf War, the invasion was MANDATED by the UN. That's how these things are done legally. Whether you agree with the Gulf War or not, the argument can't really be made that it was illegal (so far as I know). 'Iraqi Freedom' (ugh) was quite the opposite. Kofi Annan, the Sec Gen of the UN has specifically agreed with my expert analysis when he said:

well, i haven't repeated this for a while, but i think its accurate.
i think the motivation for this debacle follow directly from the neocon interpretation of the first gulf war. it's pretty clear from the project for a new american century statement of purpose, from the 1998 letter these bozos sent to clinton advocating an attack on iraq. the necon interpretation is simple enough: they understood clinton in particular as a problem because he favored multi-lateral agreements as the basis for globalizing capitalism. for the neocons, this was insufficiently nationalist. the first gulf war was, for them, the theater of american national humiliation at the hands of the united nations--the "proof" is in the delusion that there was a "job to be finished" and that this job was toppling saddam hussein--and that the johnwayne amuricans would have "finished the job" had they not been shanked by the un. no matter that this is in historical terms somewhere between revisionism and hallucination--the first gulf war is for the neocons a symbolic conflict pitting two types of globalizing capitalist order--one embodied by the un, built along the multi-lateral model (at this point anyway)--the other a model emphasizing (assymterical) bilateral agreements as the basis for the new capitalist order with the american military apparatus wedged onto the top of it as the lone superpower, or military hegemon. the arguments advanced by teh bush people to legitimate this debacle were, as wolfowitz said a couple years ago, expedients--the action wasn't about any of it--they were all rationales for launching a war that the pnac had been advocating for a long time. so none of it was serious, none of it was true or had to be true.

apparently, the oil was a secondary motivation--it'd be a way to make the debacle pay for itself. i have never accepted the argument that oil was THE motivation. i dont think it irrelevant, but think it down the list a bit in terms of priorities. more a perk to be had by the heroic americans, an expression of undying gratitude or some such nonsense.

although this continues to boggle my mind, the idea was a short war, a quick victory, a bunch of photo ops and a fait accompli insofar as the emergent global capitalist order was concerned. if the political adversary is understood not to have been saddam hussein at any point, but rather an entire emerging order symbolized in neocon fantasyland by the un, you can explain pretty easily how the right treated the un--from powell's ridiculous, shabby presentation through the the amazing obfuscation of the reasons why only the resolution legitimating the war did not pass the security council (freedom fries anyone?) the tragic aspect of this--which is also ludicrous and would be funny had it not already cost so many lives--is that there was no plan b.

there was no plan b.

everything that has happened in and around iraq seems to me to have followed in a straight line from this.
if the interpretation is right, then it is not in any way surprising that the actual rationales floated for this debacle were horseshit.
the only surprise is that there is any surprise.

you can see that the whole of plan a, such as it was, was carried out too--the surreal "mission accomplished" photo op, complete with cowboy george in a flight suit and a knotted bandana over the penile region actually makes sense this way. it was supposed to be serious. it was supposed to be the coup de grace, the crowning of the colossal fuck you to the united nations, to multilateralism, to a globalization that does not leave a place for good old fashioned reactionary nationalism and all its foul correlates---why without nationalism, it is hard to mobilize racism to sell a fucking administration--but more broadly, as the right will find out soon enough on a scale that goes well beyond what they have already found out, without this illusion of "the nation" conservatives have nothing to say. nothing to say at all.

so far as i can tell, then, even the people who supported this misbegotten fiasco in iraq were duped. they don't have and will never have the actual arguments for the invasion given to them. not from the bush administration anyway. they wouldnt have sold the war, those arguments. they are transparently delusional--were from the outset---were in 2003--certainly are now--some backwater reworking of kissinger-style realpolitik lay behind it, along with some idiotic faith that amurica is somehow "gods country" and that therefore this god character will make everything hunky dory, so there need be no plan b or even a coherent plan a.


so it is pretty obvious that folk like ace, who appear to have believed in the bush people, to have assumed that they were operating in good faith, were used. that cant be fun.

I think you're right in that we continue to try turning societies that are socially and/or economically broken into democracies when it should be working the other way around.

actually, willravel, without going through the rigmarole of the legalisms, arguably it wasn't necessary to get UN approval because the 1991 resolutions that suspended the war already authorized the use of force for noncompliance. That doesn't tell you anything about whether the politics dictated a new resolution, or the optics, or whether getting another resolution was a good idea. I can think of good arguments either way.

But that is a very different question from the issue of whether Iraq would have a stable government in the short term or even medium term if the UN had been in charge from the git-go. Very very doubtful. The UN did come into Iraq after the fact, to run the reconstruction, and then the insurgents killed de Mello and the UN pulled out. (That's pretty consistent with the UN's record in general: the UN failed to protect people from massacre in Srebrenica, can't do noodlysquat in Darfur even as we speak.)

So whether it was a good idea to get the UN to say OK in late 2002-early 2003 is a totally different question from whether things would have been different if the UN had OK'd the invasion. I see no basis for believing there would have been no insurgency if the UN said the invasion was OK. The Iraqi insurgents are the kind of people who use children as decoys in car bombs - you think they give a rat's ass whether the UN says OK or not?

roach: i agree with the analysis only to say that the end of the day, i think we really do work like little shaved monkeys; most other things i think are rationalizations for procurement and control of food, shelter, clothing, and mating. so i think that is the root source of drivers of something like pnac. no one else can fuck with us, because we are the it, the everything, the id and the ego and a pat of butter. personally i think, to a certain extent, that the bush administration wanted their motivations / explanations to be obviously full of shit, so as to up the ante on the fuck-you-ary. yes, we are saying we are doing this, and you know its not true, but those are the reasons we are giving and we are doing this whether you like it or not. fuck off.

so i suppose i can't ulimately separate reserving access to oil and military dominance in the region from the ideology behind it; its almost like left hand washing the right. we get access because we are the dominant, we deserve access by virtue of being the dominant, and as the dominant we must step to the plate and play the role that nature and god have intended for us to. anything less would be shirking the duties we have been given at this point in the history of the world.

pimpin ain't easy.

uh loquitor: these insurgents are living in a country under colonial occupation. what the fuck do you expect them to do?
i somehow expect that were you an iraqi under this occupation, you would be doing some actions on your own. i would. i think almost anyone would.

as for un approval: i think it would have made a huge difference--for example there might have been a plan b--there would have been far more attention paid to the post-invasion problems--there would have been nothing like the same meanings of occupation---but we'll never know, because i maintain, as i posted above, that alot of this was about the neocons wanting to effectively show the un that they were an obstacle to the assertions of american manliness in the form of unilateral colonial occupation.

as a quasi-aside, i was under the impression that we stopped seeking un approval because we knew we didn't have the votes in the security council. therefore, as we had already decided to go in, if the council had voted not to allow us to go in, we would have directly been in violation of a un resolution. is this not correct?

That is why I need you. Help me see the light. I can identify a lie when it is presented to me with factual truth. It seems that we gone from Bush and Cheney lied to lies of ommision. That is pretty convenient, isn't it. Then we find that the data omitted was not material to any relavant question. So, I am concluding the whole "Bush Lied" thing is just an empty phrase.


100% of what I wrote? Are you guilty of a "lie of ommision"? You clearly did not qualify your statement with any contradictory intellegence.

Point taken. It's easy to slip into the party line.
The use of force wasn't just anyone's to use, though. The idea was to leave the door open for another UN decision, and the UN was considering the "eighteenth resolution", the plan put fourth by the US, UK, and Spain (cha cha cha!) which was essentially what ended up happening in the invasion. The thing is, France, Germany, and Russia said no. In other words, this was all still tied up in the UN when King George suddenly exclaimed "Diplomacy has failed" and then gave very suspect information to the Senate in order to rush the war.

Here's what I'm saying, and ALL that I'm saying: Bush wanted into Iraq. There's anecdotal evidence that he was talking about Iraq the afternoon of September 11, when there was NO intelligence to link the two, false or otherwise. Then he culled the intel he needed to support the conclusion he had already arrived at and brought to the table.

What I'm inviting you to consider is that you're making the same logical blunder. You've concluded that Bush Didn't Lie, and that conclusion blinds you to the (ample, btw) evidence that he did. I know it LOOKS like you haven't seen any evidence that satisfactorily contradicts your position... but notice that you HAVE a position, and you're holding the evidence up against it. That's not exactly what you'd call the scientific method.

I assert that you're not actually interested in knowing whether Bush lied, per the second sentence that I quoted. I assert you're mostly interested in defending your pre-supposition.

This directly contradicts what many on the left have said. Many believe Bush wanted to invade Iraq from day one, for various reasons including revenge for the attempt on his father's life.

I guess there is so much stuff floating around - truth has to take a back seat.

I come to the debate with the premise that Bush did not lie, true. Anyone spending anytime reading my position on Iraq would know that. (I am guilty of a lie of ommision, I should have that disclaimer on every post.) On the otherhand, and I may be wrong, but I guess some people come to the discussion with the premise that Bush did lie, just a wild guess on my part. At any rate I put my views on the table and ask questions and provide support for my point of view. If that is wrong, so be it.

roachboy, if you think the Iraqi insurgents give a rat's ass about UN resolutions, you're ......... well, to put this nicely, you're mistaken. I'm also curious about your use of the term "colonial occupation." Iraq is nothing like any colonization I am familiar with in history. Or is it just that you think any first-world war in the third world is by definition colonial?

Can you imagine? MULTI-NATION Colonialism! A McDonalds drive-thru, a Volkswagen factory, a Crédit Lyonnais bank, a VimpelCom cellphone dealer, a Selenia gas station, a Heineken beer factory, a Lenovo notebook dealer, an Iberia aircraft company...in every Iraqi province!

Did that happen in 1992? No? There ya go. The UN can be corrupt, but it's NOTHING compared to the Bush Administration.

How does "Bush wanted into Iraq" contradict the position from many of the left that... Bush wanted into Iraq? Do you still read the posts you reply to? Or is it all knee-jerk defensiveness over there?

Lots of posts in a short time.

Loquitur, if you get a chance, I'd appreciate a link to that article you mentioned. At least the title and publication and I'll track it down myself.

I found it. And the article wasn't by Fred Kagan, it's by Edward Luttwack. He has a few things to say, but what I was focussing on was this sentence: "It is not hard to defeat Arab countries, but it is mostly useless. Violence can work to destroy dangerous weapons but not to induce desired changes in behavior." BTW, he views diplomacy and concessions as equally delusional. His solution is to stop thinking so much about the Middle East: buy their oil (they have no other economy for most intents and purposes, so they HAVE to sell to us) and let them deal with their own problems.

Here is the name and link: The Middle of Nowhere by Edward Luttwak, Prospect Magazine, May 2007

Host, I don't get into the details on a lot of this stuff because for the most part it involves two people talking past each other. I wrote a blog post on methods of discourse and analysis, and the limitations of logic, that you might find interesting - it's here. Logic ain't all it's cracked up to be, at least outside mathematics.

If I were to try to address most of what you wrote I'd have to spend a long time diagramming your arguments, isolating premises, picking which were defensible and which not, and then reconstructing the argument, backed up with research. This forum is a form of entertainment for me - mental exercise, if you will. Here I'm just doing some mental noodling, not trying to win arguments or make definitive presentations. I respect what you do, Host - you put a lot of work into it, and I'm not belittling that by any means. I just don't feel I have to match it. I might do some detailed discussion from time to time, but it really would be as the mood strikes me.

And he would be absolutely right.

Otherwise, from your assessment, I'd say I'm in intense disagreement with his concepts. I'll read the article, though.

MM, he was talking specifically about Arab countries - they simply refuse to recognize defeat, which as a cultural trait has certain positives, but the negative is that they refuse to draw lessons from setbacks. But you'll see how he handles that, if you read the article.

Sounds like some other country I know....hmmmm....

fucking jamaican bobsledders!

Will, I wonder why the Frogs, Germans, and the Russians voted no.

Could it have been because they honestly were looking for a diplomatic solution? Or did they have alterior motives?


We all know the UN security council members vote according to whats best for the world. :eek:

What a magnificent strawman! Who the hell cares why they voted the way they did? The point is that they did. The vote in the UN meant that the "Eighteenth Resolution" was not endorsed by the UN. The plan that the US, UK, and Spain (cha cha cha!) used in Iraqi Freedom was voted down in the UN. They said no. Why? Well maybe they were psychic and saw a clear path to the clusterfuck that is Iraq today. Maybe they all voted C because they didn't study. It doesn't matter. The point is that they voted for some reason and the resolution didn't pass. The resolution didn't pass, and we did it anyway. We invaded a country that wasn't a direct threat to us and in doing so we broke a treaty signed in good faith: the UN Charter.

Tell you what, find an article that shows that bypassing the UN and invading Iraq didn't break the UN Charter.

It's very late and this thread isn't really the place to get into it, but I thoroughly disagree with his assessments.

Thank you, loquitur, I'll take a look at your blog post and the Edward Luttwack piece.

I found <a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/search.php?searchid=854098">14 posts</a> that I've done since october that contain references to and quotes from Ben Ferencz. Loquitur, you are probably familiar with Ferencz's opinion of UN Res. 1441 and what it authorizes the US to do...as well as his overall opinion of the legality of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq:


This is from my <a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpost.php?p=2237692&postcount=7">next to latest post</a> on the subject:
In my latest post, I shared this illuminating UK reporting on the behind the scenes process that the UK cabinet engaged in to achieve a needed legal opinion concerning Res. 1441:
I don't understand how you can entertain the idea, loquitur, that Res. 1441 provided the US with authority to invade Iraq unilaterally.

I have posted, a number of times....that US and UK warplanes had been heavily bombing Iraqi targets for at least 5 months before march, 2003 invasion, including targets outside the northern and southern "no fly" zones. Certainly the bombing of areas of Iraq outside of the "no fly zones" was illegal aggression, yet it was still not enough to satisfy those who wanted to invade Iraq.

If you examine some of the 1600 letters Gertrude Bell wrote from Iraq in the late teens and early 1920's, it seems obvious that democracy in Iraq is an ill conceived notion in such an artifically assembled nation of 3 historically adversarial groups, sunni, shi'a and kurds, within borders abutting much larger adversarial regional military powers (Iran and Turkey.)

I've traded stock and options, some years as a full time sole proprietor, since 1998. I've learned that logic is often an impediment to success....much smarter people than I predict the reactions of logical traders, and they crush them by squeezing whatever position that "logic" dictates one should take. "Squeezing the shorts" or flushing out the long stock positions of those who are at work druing market hours, setting "stops" on their positions to trigger automatic sell transactions, before taking the stock back up in price, is SOP....a game for the deep pocketed "hedgies".

That is the game that they play, and they are very good at it.....but this isn't a game. It's premeditated, elective war. It's a life or death matter, and logic needs to play a role in decision making, as well as consensus from the Secrataries of defense, state, and the director of central intelligence.

These fuckers don't learn. They STILL think they can pump their lies out to the American people.

In a speech DAY BEFORE YESTERDAY, Bush said, "For America, the decision we face in Iraq is not whether we ought to take sides in a civil war, it's whether we stay in the fight against the same international terrorist network that attacked us on 9/11... The primary reason for the high level of violence is this: Al-Qaeda has ratcheted up its campaign of high-profile attacks."
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...202305_pf.html)

There is plenty of evidence that there was ZERO connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq before our invasion. The group calling itself "Organization for the Foundation of the Holy Struggle in Mesopotamia", which has been dubbed "Al Qaeda in Iraq" by the administration and the media, has only tenuous connections to the actual Al Qaeda, having been founded by al-Zarqawi, who is known to never have been Al Qaeda. What we've got here is ANOTHER bald-faced lie.

say it ain't so rat, say it ain't so. always reminds me of that quote from w about one of the hardest parts of his job being to draw the tie between iraq and al queda/911.

thinking about things like this make me wish i used drugs.

What's also blisteringly arrogant and swallowed whole by so many Americans is the concept that the civil struggle in Iraq is all about the people out to "get us."

the luttwak piece is really pretty funny---and it only makes sense as a satire. which makes sense: luttwak is an interesting cat---here's a reasonably well written blog-like piece on him and a few others, which is worth a read through:

http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/lists_...es-l/2776.html


====================
in a manner of speaking, reconmike and powerclown above demonstrate the apparent a priori status of facile, one-dimensional critiques of the un in the context of the ever-diminishing space of conservativeland....i have long found it curious that such claims had any traction anywhere, given that they are little more than retreads of old school john birch society nonsense, the fear of a rootless cosmpolitanism destroying the authentic backwoods nationalism of righteous amuricans...the rabid and fundamentally anti-semitic anti-communism of the birchers was geared around the equation of the un with an international bolshevik conspiracy, with the protocols of the elders of zion actually functioning as a logical lynchpin. it is truly a glorious ideological legacy the right drew on for this particular element of its collage politics, reaching way into the lower depths of the jurassic park of reactionary ideology that is the united states. in the retread version, the historical ignorance of the conservative set is taken for granted, the facile appeal of blood-and-soil politics is taken on as a structuring trope and the attending paranoia deployed as a mobilizing tool.

this is ultimately about rightwing identity politics--the logic functions to link a vague image of a very large-scale phenomenon to imagined threats to blood and soil and the virtuous toil of the volk---er..."patriots"....within this schema, you see a marketing device for the neocon geopolitical phantasm that shaped the logic of the iraq debacle itself---you see the linkages between the ideology of conservativeland in its more respectable-seeming form and that of the black helicopter set----here as elsewhere, the logic is basically pavlovian--rooted in a sense of being-threatened by outside forces beyond comprehension or control (a classical feature of petit bourgeois fascism everywhere)----and so is rooted in class anxiety, in status anxiety----this johnbirchsociety schema does nothing but condense and rechannel, requiring no particular thought, only a reaction. a third element of this johnbichsociety idiocy emerges in the way the term "socialism" operates in conservativeland: which refers typically to some undefined and undefinable Evil, one that collapses a vague image of stalinism into the history of social-democratic politics into a fear of the state, which is in turn refigured as a correlate of the international conspiracy of rootless cosmoplitans that it is the duty of righteous volk/patriots to oppose.


it'd be funny, this bizarreo identity politics, if it hadnt been a considerable force in the states over the past few years, had it not been a central element in the fabrication of a sense of being-threatened by saddam hussein/al queada/pick your Villain----within such a schema, the Source of the Threat hardly matters: anyone or anything can be plugged into the position occupied by the un in johnbirchland and the effect is the same---
so it is that the retread version can drop the centrality of the protocols of the elders of zion and replace it with something else--it doesnt matter, really, the logic works with or without explicit reference to the ur-text---and
was a perfect devise for structuring and selling the "war on terror" hallucination, the "threatened by iraq" hallucination--all of it.

and it worked: in responses even in this thread from ace, for example, it is pretty clear that the problem--the root problem--is that this is less about the validity of claims made to market the neocon's war than about maintaining a space for a conservative identity, which is a visceral construct, not a logical one. threats to the ideology or to the signifiers organized by it are ultimately threats to indentity that have to be swatted away. the motivation is psychological, but the arguments are routed through the discourse of politics.

the effects of conservative identity politics linger still, like the smell of some nasty flower. the ideological context has changed around them, and they cannot deal with this simple fact. as the context changes, the choice it presents simplifies: denial or vertigo. so it goes.

<157> Host, I used the word "arguably" for a reason. This isn't cut and dry. And I never said it was 1441 that might have authorized the invasion; what I was referring to was the argument that the original ceasefire resolutions from 1991 could (note the word "could", not "must" - this is not stuff that is clear) be read to authorize resumption of hostilities upon breach by Iraq. Bear in mind that people's conceptions of the UN and its role (and the role of the US) will bear heavily on how they come out on this legal issue - it certainly affects yours, doesn't it?

It's dangerous to get yourself too invested in the legalisms on this issue, as if there is a single determinable right or wrong legal answer - this is foreign policy and power politics, and legalities tend to be invoked to justify whatever position someone wants to take. In my day to day life that's done, too, but there is a judge to decide who was right. In this context there isn't one, so invoking legalities is of limited usefulness other than to set the boundaries of the disagreement. That's useful, but it won't give you definitive answers in a particular case.

Roachboy, the Luttwak piece is the foreign policy equivalent of Pat Moynihan's "benign neglect" advice. I was recommending reading it mainly because of his observation (which to my eyes appears historically accurate) that Arab societies don't react to politics and war the way other societies do, that neither making nice nor getting tough appears to alter behavior. No doubt there are deep cultural reasons for it (and that's way beyond my expertise), but it certainly appears to be true. Germany and Japan, for instance, did some soul searching as a result of their loss in WW2 and fundamentally changed their societies to the point that they are almost aggressively pacifist - this after centuries of militarism and expansionism. The countries of the Middle East have been battered by the past century's events, yet appear not to have adapted much - free inquiry, status of women, tolerance of dissent, all are frowned on. It's a pity, too: half a billion people living in social structures that are a thousand years old. I don't know what can be done to change it or if it even is susceptible to change; greater minds than mine are wrestling with it.

loquitor: the subtext of the article is hegel's philosophy of history.
what that comes down to is that places you know something about change, but places that you dont know shit about dont seem to. it is not accurate, it is not interesting and if it isnt a joke intentionally, it nonetheless is one.

let's assume that the piece is in fact satirical, shall we?
that way, i can retain my veneer of being nice and you can too.

ummmm............ not sure that's right, roachboy. Not to pull the old man shit here, but I do recall that for pretty much my entire life there has been intractable strife in that section of the world that that has been impervious to all efforts at resolution on any terms except 100% what the locals want. When that happens you tend to see violence. The sheer volume of Middle Eastern warfare has been staggering: in my lifetime alone (I'm 48), and leaving out the Israeli issue and leaving out Western country interventions, so that we have only locals fighting each other, there have been wars involving Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Sudan, Chad, Ethiopia/Eritrea, Somalia - and that's just off the top of my head. Some of those countries have been involved in more than one war and some more than two. Mix in the conflicts at the edges of the Muslim world, with non-Muslims, and the number increases by an order of magnitude.

No, it's not satire, sadly. His prescriptions might be fatuous but his identification of an intractably pathology-wracked region is spot on.

In other news, two cosponsors just signed Kucinich's impeachment bill. They are Rep. William Lacy Clay (D-MO) and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL). Schakowsky is a deputy whip and senior member of the House congressional leadership.

http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff05032007.html

loquitor: you cant pull "old man shit" on me...well maybe by a matter of months if you were born before august...but those months can be crucial, i know.
the problem with luttwak's piece and your memory exercise is superficiality.
hegel at least tried to "prove" that history only happened to white people: egypt for example once had history: they "knew there was a riddle" but couldnt figure out how to say it, therefore pyramids. so you see that hegel was able to go from superficial understanding to major tourist attractions and back to superficiality with ease when it came to places he fundamentally knew nothing about. this is obviously not to say that hegel was stupid---which would itself be a ridiculous thing to say--more that his book the philosophy of history is absurd. strict application of dialectical thinking to a world composed entirely of signifiers.
luttwak relies on this philosophy of history to organize his superficiality--but there is not method to be applied with strictness, so there is nothing of any interest to be had from his particular exercise. the idea that his piece could be confused with anything like a history of the region is laughable.
that is why i prefer to think of it as a satire.
it's a way of saying that he cannot possible be serious.

on a related note, over the past week we have seen the following bushworld developments: a clampdown on military personnel blogging from iraq and a piece about new conflicts emerging at guantanomo between detainees and their lawyers. in the first, you see an outline of what the folk in bushworld imagine the problem with iraq to be: bad press. in the second, you see another: legal representation which results in bad press. and you see the response of the bush people to this: try to eliminate or undermine the information.

without information, folk like luttwak can almost seem compelling.
its just a lobotomy away.

You're way better than ageism. I'm only 23 years old, btw. I just happen to read a lot.

Coming strictly from my own layman's perspective, the Luttwak piece seemed to paint the middle east, arabs, muslims, etc. (groups that cannot easily be "grouped") with broad strokes of 1st world arrogance and indifference. Something we are all very used to hearing among average folks here on the ground, but something I find very disturbing and dangerous coming from someone who supposedly has a better vantage point to make observations from than most of us.

Are you smarting than a 5th grader?

5th grade geography question: Which of these countries are in Africa and NOT in the Middle East? - Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Sudan, Chad, Ethiopia/Eritrea, Somalia

Depends on how you define "Middle East". There are different answers based on that definition. For instance, oil producing states would exclude Somalia and Ethiopia/Eritrea and possible Chad, but if you do it by religion, those are all included.

From post #3:
If you've refused to consider impeachment of Cheney and Bush as a realitstic or even an appropriate response for the democrats to undertake, consider what influences have shaped your opinion, and whether they are trustworty:

.....Why is big corporate news media trying to convince us that the majority does not want the investigations by the new congress, that we actually believe are necessary and appropriate?
....and a WaPo article trotted Panetta out with the same message, (Jonathan Weisman....in both stories...) just a month ago:
But recent polls show just the opposite: (results here show 60 percent satisfied with amount of time spent investigating by congress....or they want even more...)
...and it doesn't seem that sentiment has changed much since before last november's elections:
The state Democratic Convention last week, in the most populous state in the US, passed a resolution that called for
The San Francisco newspaper, quoted above, did not report on the outcome of the impeachment resolution vote.

Doesn't the democratic party in California, consist of the largest number of registered voters, by an overwhelmingly high number, of any state party membership, in the country?

Why was coverage of the party's impeachment resolution, shunned or downplayed so dramatically by all of the news media?

The other two major California papers that did report on the outcome of the impeachment resolution vote, did not lead their stories with it, and they downplayed the significance:

A google news search of the quote, "appropriate remedies and punishment, including impeachment."
http://news.google.com/news?ie=UTF-8...22&btnG=Search

...demonstrates support for the opinion that it got no widespread coverage....

Even CBS news provided no news reporting of Murtha's impeachment references, originally broadcast on their own network news, Sunday morning program.....

Contrast the lack of coverage about references to impeachment of Bush and Cheney with this "message"....from "the people":

Here are polling results from polls taken just before this Chris Matthews program aired:

Contrast what Andrea mitchell has reported twice....with:
....and here was Andrea Mitchell observed again, on April 26, telling the same lie about favorable sentiment for a Libby pardon:
....so, all ye "conservativolk", no need to confine your viewership to foxnews....all of the major media seems beholden to your opinions....

Jazz....that is the most sweeping and far fetched definition of the Middle East I have ever seen. If you "go by religion", would you also include Indonesia, the largest muslim country in the world (it has small oil reserves as well), in the "Middle East"?

By geo-political standards, you can include Egypt and Libya, but by any standards, the African nations of Algeria, Sudan, Chad, Ethiopia/Eritrea, Somalia have absolutely nothing to do with "Middle East" warfare and/or politics.

IMO, characterizations like that just further make the case for MM's observation about "painting the middle east, arabs, muslims, etc. (groups that cannot easily be "grouped") with broad strokes of 1st world arrogance and indifference."

But back to the more important topic:
A small step but still DOA.

John Conyers' impeachment bill in 2005 had 38 co-sponsors and was focused on other equally, if not more important issues, like torture, spying on Americans, using govt resources to retaliate against critics, etc....

Creating a select committee to investigate the Administration's intent to go to war before congressional authorization, manipulation of pre-war intelligence, encouraging and countenancing torture, retaliating against critics, and to make recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquer...9:h.res.00635:

Conyers, as chair of the Judiciary Committee, would have to give the Kucinich bill at least a cursory acknowledgement for it to get on the committee's calendar. He hasnt and there are no indications he will....nor is he considering re-introducing his own bill.

Hey, DC, can I ask you a favor? When some people quote others, they include the name of the one they quote ([Quote=DC_Dux]). Being the lazy ponce that I am, I don't usually go back and read the entire thread, especially in those with many responses. I sincerely appreciate it.

Getting back, Somalia isn't in the Middle East any more than California is in Central America.

Will...i'm a lazy ponce as well..but I promise to do better :)

The political correctness meter is bouncing off the stops here. Why is everyone always so afraid to mention the elephant in the room? The thing about lefties is they blame everything bad on the advanced and civilized, while the weak and backward get a pass on everything.

My sincerest and most humble thanks.

I can't wait for you to go into details about these very broad strokes. The left is blaming everything on Dick Cheney because he's advanced and/or civilized? I'm going to enjoy this.

A well supported post, Judy ! I hope to read more from you....

That's just my opinion. Do I need some kind of "support" to post an opinion?

If you want your opinion to be taken seriously, yes.

I would respond to that with a question of my own: If I were to assert that George W. Bush not only had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks, but was involved in the planning and staging, would you take my statement as fact or ask me to corroborate or provide proof?

I'm aware of the conspiracy theories, and everyones entitled to have theirs. Are you asking for my personal opinion in regard to your personal opinion?

I'm suggesting that the idea that Bush was involved in 9/11 is as believable as the 'left' blaming everything on Cheney because he is either advanced or civilized. You, Judy, are quite wrong. Speaking as someone from the left, I believe my mistrust of Dick Cheney to be well justified in that the man has lied, and there is proof of that.

Well........ I'm not signing on to Luttwak's thesis by any means, but it's way too glib to discount commonalities among the Middle Eastern peoples simply because there are differences. The issue is which ones are relevant for us, as outsiders, insofar as there are things we have to respond to and deal with. Certainly there are huge differences between, say, Algerians and Omanis. But there are also some serious commonalities (e.g., language, religion, some ethnic overlap). The trick is to tease apart which cultural markers are relevant to which collections of peoples, and which are unique to specific areas. For example, Morocco is a much more open and tolerant society than, say, Saudi Arabia, although both are Islamic, Arabic-speaking societies. But they also have a lot in common, including (for instance) a heavily blood-based social structure (families, clans and tribes) and strong notions of shame and honor.

This comes back to a concept I have discussed with people before quite often. Generalizations aren't invalid merely because they don't account for each individual case. They are what they are: general statements, and they are only as strong as the degree to which they hold true. Just as it's a mistake to apply general statements to individuals, it's equally a mistake to ignore general truths because of individual cases.

i almost posted this a while ago:

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y29..._the_Troll.jpg

but then i thought, Politics gets a rough enough image as it is, so now i thought i'd take the approach of reaching out to Judy Taber as a newcomer to the forums. judy, this tfp place tends to be a litle different than many forums on the internets. generally, just an fyi: if you'd like for anyone to respond to you for sustained periods of time, you're going to have to post more than that. not everyone will post with the linked references as host and dc tend to do; however, some sort of logic train or sequence of thoughts other than comments that could easily be taken for trolls is expected.

i feel fairly confident that an out and out discussion of the gist of your comment will be refuted under scrutiny, if it should come to that. regardless, if you'd like for it to be taken seriously, i would suggest starting another thread regarding your views on conservative and liberal thought, and expounding upon it there. otherwise its (hopefully) going to fall flat in this thread, as its a complete threadjack without any particular significant link to the topic.

Sure, loquitor, sometimes generalizations are expedient, but when you use such vast generalizations to theorize about shunning a "group" that is actually a very wide variety of nations, cultures, lifestyles and RELIGIONS as a possible "solution" to today's problems and conflicts, then it's nothing but appallingly absurd. It's as if we decided to "disown" Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana because "they're all white trash." We would never say something like that about a 1st world region.

1. in our steadily shrinking world it is IMPOSSIBLE to ignore them and still progress ourselves

2. it is in our own best interest to help bring these, as someone else so charmingly put it, "weak and backward" people into the 21st century...your moderate globalists and neo-cons understand this...Colin Powell understands this...James Baker understands this

Luttwak mentions the "irritant of terrorism." Well, I think we all know that terrorism is more than an irritant. And if you want to seduce young men away from the wiles of rasputin-like leaders who will use their minds and bodies as disposable weapons, then you need to give them jobs. You need to give them jobs and (please forgive me) fucking Wal-Marts and FUTURES. Something to lose so that they don't feel like all they have that is precious is an afterlife. It may not be perfect, but fuck it all if having a family and a livelihood and a little money left over every month to go to the movies isn't better than living your life at the barrel of gun. Muslim societies can and have moderated and progressed and it's extremely disingenuous (and, I think, suicidal) to purport that they haven't and can never have something to offer us.

I've been under the impression for a while now that maybe the real challenge today is not for the broken societies to progress, but for the healthy societies to really selflessly sacrifice for their betterment first. And I suspect if we don't learn how to do that then we're screwed. And personally, I don't hold a lot of faith that we're up to that challenge.

So no, I vehemently disagree that we should roll our eyes, chuckle and walk away from several billion of the earth's inhabitants. It's ludicrous because it is impossible.

Not to mention that now we have already planted our fat ass over there and they've got our license number. They know where to find us.

Sorry to go on and on. I know this is threadjacking and I shouldn't do it, but I really care about these kinds of issues more than any others...and, well, folks are talking about them. :shy:

This evening its Cheney, tomorrow it'll be Rove, and Monday (all) day and night it'll be Bush. Pretty soon those names will change into Clinton, Obama, Emmanuel, Pelosi. Is there terrorism? Eh. Maybe. Is it worth getting this country worked up about it? Eh. Maybe.

Anyone see 300?

Please elaborate on the missing grey mammal.....it seems in my ignorance, or confusion I might have noticed the whale, but not the elephant. I fail to see the "pass" anyone is getting, unless you are confusing understanding and a search for information as forgiveness and looking the other way. Blame for the current situation is being placed exactly where it belongs....on those that created it.

Perhaps you know a better place to direct dissatisfaction?

Oh, by the way. Political correctness is often confused with diplomacy.

I began post #171 with two examples of WaPo Jonathan Weisman "stories" which both conveyed a "message" from Leon Paneta to other democrats, advising them not to be "too confrontational". Now, for the third time in just a month, Jonathan Weisman "plants" more reporting to discourage democrats, only this time:
Weisman had to correct his story, and there is not much left to it, after this correction:
....so, Mr. Weisman, where and when did "Democrats offer[ing] the first major concession"?

"Liberal press"....and "democrats better watch out !"....is this BS coming from this faction?
<b>Too "confrontational" seems to be working.....</b>

The "given" that impeachment will increase the Bush-Cheney approval rating, "like Clinton", is more BS:

Interesting election result in France today. Amazing turnout: 85.5%!! That's just unbelievable. I haven't figured out yet what it means. I really loved my time in France - great country, beautiful, terrific food, and yes, the people were friendly.

And I just have to note that Segolene Royal is one of the best-looking 53 year-olds I have ever seen.

I won't sleep soundly through a single night until they're both tried in the senate, resign, or complete their terms on Jan. 20, 2009:

Host, since it's unlikely they'll be removed from office before their terms end, I'd suggest you get some sleep aids, preferably nonpharmacological. I find that 1/2 hr daily of cardiovascular exercise vastly improves the quality of my sleep.

I hope that you are responding with humor, but, even if you are....you're an officer of the court....and you don't seem very concerned by any of this....
....I noticed your under reaction to the charges against Libby, and his trial.

Who do you admire....James Comey?....Patrick Fitzgerald?....Bradley Schlozman? ....William Rehnquist? .....Thurgood Marshall? ...... Ted Olson? ...... John Roberts ?
I'm just six years older than you are....and I have never seen anything that compares with what is happening in Washington, now. It makes Nixon's disregard for the law look trivial......
If you think that I am over reacting to a president and vp, and now a DOJ, that seem more like enemies of the state, than defenders of it, do you believe that your reaction is "just about right"?

Yes, it was humor. I don't want you to give yourself a heart attack over politics. Believe me, it's not worth it. In two years or less there will be new issues, new actors, new crises, new headlines. Tying yourself up into a pretzel over today's nonsense is not good for your soul. Try taking a longer view.

I cant' believe you say you can't remember anything as bad as today. Surely you can remember Nixon? That was much worse than anything that even you think is going on now. Fercrissakes, back then the President was involved in a criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice!!! Step back a second and think.

My general feeling is that people need to get a grip and remember that what goes around comes around. The state of political discourse has degenerated so badly that I think we are going to be disabling the federal government from ever getting anything done. A good libertarian like me should think that's not such a bad outcome, but this isn't the way to do things. We still need good public servants, and the way things are now, I can't see any good quality person wanting to go under the microscope. Not every disagreement is the apocalypse, and not every person on the other side from you should be investigated as a potential criminal.

Whom do I admire? Lots of people, on both sides of the aisle. My first requirement is honesty: I'm okay with disagreement but I detest intellectual or other dishonesty. After that is ability - can the person get things done? After all, you can be the world's smartest person and still be unable to screw in a lightbulb. Part of ability is decency, interpersonal relations - after all, part of getting things done involves motivating and convincing other people.

Host, a bit of perspective please. Being on the other side of the political divide from you doesn't make someone a criminal. If you recall, there was a string of investigations of people in the Clinton admin, too, and I'm sure you were just as outraged about the persecution of Ron Brown and Henry Cisneros as the Repubs are now about Scooter Libby. Believe me, there's plenty of this stuff everywhere. As I said, what goes around comes around.

Now if I was intent on being a shit disturber I'd say that if the federal government wasn't involved in so many things there would be much less opportunities for corruption, but maybe I better not open that can of worms.

I have kept myself on an even keel by reminding myself that we live in a fundamentally good and strong country and that we will likely muddle through even if the people I don't support are in charge for a while. The US survived Millard Fillmore, it survived Warren Harding, it survived Jimmy Carter, and it will certainly survive whoever you're complaining about at any given time. In my entire lifetime there was only one election (and it wasn't a federal election) where I honestly thought that if the guy I was supporting didn't win there would be a general disaster. Other that that one time, though, I am usually perfectly content to let whoever my fellow citizens chose to do the best s/he could do in the job s/he was elected to do - whether or not the winner is who I voted for. They should be watched and held accountable for results, certainly - but they also should be allowed to do their jobs. It's the American way. And it's much better for your blood pressure.

loquitur, I'm with host on this stuff. If what's going on now isn't going to ruffle your feathers, then you may waker up one day and it'll be too late. For example:

The suspension of habeas corpus was one of the biggest blows to our Constitution in history. The Military Commission Act of 2006 seems to forget that the Constitution that says the right to challenge detention shall not be suspended except in cases of rebellion or invasion; neither of which we face today. There's nothing about enemy combatants from another country. It's blatantly unconstitutional and should be struck down immediately.

The domestic wire taps bypassing the FISA court and not having any judicial over site were illegal and wrong, and the president is NOT above the law. The wiretaps were and are unconstitutional.

digression on the french election/sarko (post 189):

this an appalling result. but the shoes have not really dropped yet--he still has to form a (viable) government and then the elections for the assemblé have to happen next month. if no-one else does it, i'll put up a thread about this when things are clearer. but at the moment, sarko's election is a very bad development for france. the only good thing is that the biggest loser is the front national--but the reasons for it are terrible--alot of their positions have been co-opted by sarko. the 53.6% that voted for him voted for front national-lite.

btw this election is also very much about the disarray of the socialists on the one hand, and about the problems that non-fascist conservatism confronts as well.

There are plenty--and I believe host is among them--who would say that the Bush has a hand in at least that level of malfeasance.

I was five months old when Nixon left office, so I can't really compare first-hand. I do know there's some dirty stuff happening.

Nixon - tapped the phones of a few journalists
Bush - tapped the phones of countless American citizens

Nixon - talked to G Gordon Liddy about assasinating columnist ack Anderson
Bush - misrepresented the truth about Iraq and led the country to a war that's costed hundreds of thousands of innocent lives.

Nixon - broke into Daniel Ellsbergs office, the the Dem HQ at the Watergate hotel
Bush - suspended Habeas Corpus

I'd say Bush is much, much worse than Nixon, who was a crook.

As I said, people need some perspective here. When the come up with politically motivated tax audits, FBI investigations of opponents and discussions of raising bribe money, you might convince me we're getting there. Right now I don't see it. I do see some mismanagement and political overreaching but nothing qualitatively different from many other presidencies.

I think people have to get over this notion that if your side loses an election the other side has to be deligitmated. It wasn't any more attractive when the cranks on the right were trying to get Clinton charged with murder or claiming that Hillary had Vincent Foster bumped off.

I'll try to remember to write a longer post later, but my short-form response is that we should help where our help is likely to do good, and stay away where it's likely to be futile. In the short term we shouldn't try to help people who are likely to feel that what we consider help is actually a form of invasion. The trick is in knowing which is which. Long term, helping one group, if done right with a successful result, is likely to incentivize others to want to conform. But that's a long-term scenario, and presumes an ability to know what we're doing. We kinda made that mistake before, so I'd be very wary of making it again.

loquitur, are you familiar with the death toll in Iraq? That's all the perspective I need.

Yes. It's also irrelevant to the discussion, unless you really think that a difference of opinion over a foreign policy question is the same thing as a crime.