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Powell Aide Says Case for War a 'Hoax'
PBS recently aired an interview with Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson (Ret), Chief of Staff at the Department of State from Aug 2002 - January 2005, addressing some of the skepticism surrounding the pre-war claims made by the Bush administration. Wilkerson claims in no uncertain terms that he "participated in a hoax on the American people, the international community and the United Nations Security Council." This is not the first time that Wilkerson has spoken out against the administration and intelligence community.
Everyone outside the US already knows this.
I wonder whether he'll be marked - crazy, unreliable, or simply unpatriotic
I've been watching Wilkerson's speeches and interviews and opinions since early 2005. He's been one of the highest ranking officials to speak about the cabal that is in control of the White House now, but he also has inferred that the cabal has been in power for longer than the currency administration has been. For those who are anti-Bush, do not believe the Clinton was not part of the power party, either.
I strongly believe that the true case for war was to keep the petrodollar in power. I also believe that almost every war and military action we've been involved in since 1913 has been primarily for control of the global currency base, not for oil or trade or communism or any of the usual suspects.
Iran's current oil bourse theories came along just before the power party started beating the war drums against Iraq. I posted today the link to the Cheuvreux Report that reconfirms my crazy tinfoil hat theories about the control of the dollar, and this time from a huge international investment bank. War is the health of the State, said Randolph Bourne. For millenia, war was always about directly controlling others. Yet in the recent centuries, war has been about controlling others indirectly -- by controlling the means of barter between people.
No matter what Bush or Rice or Clinton or Nixon or Kennedy have said, hindsight lets us see what they were really about -- making sure that their peers and families and cronies were at the front of the welfare lines when our Federal Reserve was handing out newly printed paper dollars. To believe anything else is to continue to be a pawn to the system.
a) old news
b) anyone with two neurons to rub together should have figured this out before the shooting started
c) the public at large isn't going to get outraged about this (or anything else) unless gas prices go back up to $3/gal
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
It's too bad that there are no news organizations left that do any kind of investigative reporting. It would be nice to have this guy's claims analyzed by a third party. Oh well, I guess profits are more important than protecting the People of the US from their government.
...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
War is almost always a hoax, and war other than in self-defense always is.
The only just reason for war is because the alternative would be even worse - that by not going to war we would have doomed even more people to slavery or death. That is almost never the case.
It clearly was not the case here, even if every allegation made against Hussein had been true, although most of them were not. The hypothetical murder of some relatively small number (hundreds or thousands) of people, via a terrorist attack Hussein had little reason and less ability to commit, would not justify the actual murder of hundreds of thousands or millions (keep in mind the long-term effects of depleted uranium, not just on Iraqis, but on US forces as well).
This war and the mindless support US citizens have given it will go down as one of the greatest crimes of modern history, and those who knowingly support it deserve at least as bad as what is coming to them, and probably worse.
But, as is almost always true of almost every war, the innocent - including those in the US - will suffer far, far more.
That of course is one of the many good reasons not to start one.
Nonaggression works!
So is this enough for an impeachment hearing? People go to jail for murder with less evidence that we have about Bush, Clinton, and Bush, Sr. Do we have enough for Congress to begin a real case? Or is this just dreaming because not enough people in Congress have the balls to go through with it?
Developers: We can use your help.
I really feel bad for him.
He should have either run for President or gotten out after Clinton and not come back.
Bush & Cheney took all the credibility he had built up and wasted it by sending him to the U.N. to tell fairytales.
You can read the speech here but it isn't really worth doing, as so many of the facts provided in that speech have been proven false and were apparently known to be false at the time the speech was given.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Would someone please explain to me what this is doing on Slashdot?
May the Maths Be with you!
Yet another anti-Iraq war person says there wasn't grounds for entering war.
Yet more pro-Iraq war people disagree.
Film at 11.
Note that he claims to not have *known* that it was a hoax at the time that he participated and that some of his superiors were in the same boat.
I suspect this would be the likely defense if there *were* an investigation (which I don't expect) - "It wasn't *me* - I had no idea!"
The part that I find to be *more* damning is where he lists the items that the "intelligence community" *failed* to predict - fall of the Soviet Union, etc. The implication seems to be that the entire system is so flawed that preventing "hoaxes" like this in future will be difficult because it's almost impossible to know what is and is not true and whether or not you have all the data.
He's able to label the Iraq situation as a hoax only in *hindsight*, as he examines data not available to him at the time. This seems similar to the analyses done after 9/11 where there were suggestions (again, in hindsight) that the "intelligence community" should have known and been able to prevent 9/11 from happening. Hindsight's 20/20, after all...
Have fun,
Nathan 'Nato' Uno
http://web.unos.net/
Didn't they appoint someone to fix that problem?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Tomlinson
To bad he retired under accusations of political bias.
[/Irony]
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I've personally always fealt this was the right war, but for the wrong reasons. The Bush administration needed to come up with some reasons to go to war, but they didn't want to admit the truth of why, so they made up these cock-and-bull stories.
I can't really speak to what the Bush administrations true motives were. I suspect, that, mostly, Bush did think that Saddam Hussein was a growing threat to the US and the Western World, and didn't want to give him any chance to acquire any more WMD than he had. Maybe they sexed up the intelligence (which, btw, if they did do, I don't condone).
Why do I feel this was the right war? Perhaps my limited knowledge of history is incorrect, but, it is my current understanding that Europe and the US have played 'chess' with the Middle East for most of the 20th century, and that, to a large extent, Saddam Hussein was in power in Iraq because earlier administrations had propped him up. The U.S. has, purportedly, done some very bad things in the region, including: Iran had, at one time, a democratic government. The CIA apparently helped overthrow the democratic government and install a dictator (I don't know that he was a *bad* dictator per se, but still), which lead to the Iranian revolution which installed the current Theocracy we all know and love. It my understanding that the US then propped up Saddam Hussein as a sort of first-line-of-defense against Iran.
Personally, I feel America needs to give the middle east an apology for so much meddling, and get the hell out of their business. But, alas, Saddam Hussein was part of that meddling. And so, to try to get things somewhat 'right' before leaving, we are forced to meddle some more. And that, I feel, is the truest and best justification for the current actions in Iraq. To turn over the future of Iraq to the Iraqi people. As for Iran, as much as I don't like the current government (espcially the hate-mongering, former-terrorist president of Iran) it should also be recognized that, for to some extent, the current government of Iran represents the people of Iran, and outside of defending ourselves against them, we need to let their politics run their own course.
Of course, I may be completely wrong. I can only go by the history that I have learned, and it is within possibility that the history I've been taught is either completely wrong, or incomplete in some critical way.
The sad thing is though, that what history will likely remember is that we entered into this action on bad intelligence and bull-crap stories from Bush & Cheney, LLP. And, because we entered into it the wrong way, with the wrong communication to the Iraqi people, and the rest of the Muslim world, it will probably have the wrong outcome - forcing us to meddle further in Middle Eastern affairs.
First let me say, I'm a Bush supporter. I'm in the Reserves, and I participated in Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). I was lucky enough to be 1500 miles from the front lines, unlike the rest of my unit, but in any event I was there and I've got the tee-shirt to prove it. When the war first started, I was completely in favor of it. Today, I don't regret that we went in at all, and think in the long run the Iraqi people (and by extension the rest of the Middle East) will be much better off with a participatory democracy than living under the heel of a thug.
Having said all that, it's becoming more and more worrisome to me the degree to which the administration apparently ignored or possibly fabricated evidence. I remember saying at the time that it was a fool's errand to use WMD and/or terrorism as the reason to go to war, and that it seemed more like slick marketing than actual strategery. We had plenty of reasons to go in, and none of them had anything to do with WMDs or terrorism. Like the fact that the Iraqi forces habitually fired on US and UK aircraft patrolling the UN mandated No Fly Zones (considering that just prior to the war, I was working in the Turkish command center that controlled the Northern No Fly Zone and had friends and, literally, family flying over Iraq, yeah, I kinda took it personally).
But apparently someone, somewhere, decided that overt acts of aggression in violation of a cease-fire agreement weren't sufficient reason to justify reopening hostilities. So they decided to use weak or non-existant evidence to justify it, instead. Stupid. Just fucking stupid.
So now here we are, not-quite-three years later. We've spent billions of dollars, have hundreds of thousands of troops on the ground, and have thousands of war dead. What's the solution? Well, on the right you have people saying "It wasn't a lie, it was just a mistake." Well, when it comes to something of this magnitude, does it really matter if the root was incompetence or malfeasance? Sure, maybe from a criminal point of view (for instance, I'm not convinced there's a case for impeachment here). But not a whom-do-you-trust-to-run-the-country point of view.
Then on the left we have people like Murtha and Kennedy screaming that we should leave, RIGHT NOW GODDAMNIT!!! That's just insane, we can't leave the Iraqis in a worse position than we found them. That would be like walking away from a car stuck underwater with a woman trapped inside. I mean, what kind of man does that?
So here's what I want to see from politicians: be willing to say "Looks like we screwed up. We completely apologize to the Iraqi people and ask that you forigive us. We promise, to our citizens and the world, that we'll never again invade another country without an individual declaration of war passed by the Congress, ensuring that there will be a full debate before we, as a nation, take the lives of other human beings. We also promise that, now that we're in Iraq, we need to do right by the Iraqis and help them fix all the problems we caused. To that end, we'll follow the policies implemented by the Iraqi National Congress, and be willing to lend whatever assistance they request of us.[1]" Any politician who can say that, consistently, with a straight face, would get my vote.
[1] I know this would be effectively giving the Iraqi government a blank check, but I think that would be worth it to gain some much needed good will.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
The reason Clinton got impeached for parsing words, is because the Republicans controlled Congress & they managed to get Articles of Impeachment passed. The Impeachment died in the Senate... because the Republicans couldn't convince 75% of the Senators that it was a good idea.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
This war and the mindless support US citizens have given it will go down as one of the greatest crimes of modern history, and those who knowingly support it deserve at least as bad as what is coming to them, and probably worse.
"One of the Greatest Crimes of Modern History?" Please. I dislike the Bush administration and their idiotic excuses for invading Iraq, but president Jr. isn't even smart enough to commit an attrocity on the level to warrant such a description.
Let's not taint the discussion buy suggesting that the war in Iraq is a criminal enterprise on the level of Hitler, Stallin, Pol Pot, or other individuals who systematically spread terror and death in their wake. It isn't something like the apartite movement of wide spread supression. Nor does it relate to the mass organized genocide that occured in the balkans or Africa in the last decade.
I'm not defending president Jr.'s actions in any way. But let's keep the conversation rational. He is stupid, but he isn't evil.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Cost us $400B in direct losses and 1000+ lives so far with no end in sight. Some of that $400B goes to companies closely affiliated with Bush and Cheney. Bush gets blanket immunity from impeachment under the guise of "war on terror", domestic economy goes down the shitter, international relations follow, constitutional rights are infringed upon... Sure beats Clinton screwing an intern. Why was Clinton impeached and this fella is still in the office like nothing happened?
He didn't get his star.
Seriously.
Possibly, but not every 06 gets their star and it's pretty clear real quickly if you will or will not. Most are neither bitter nor disgruntled - they've had fine careers; reached a level above the "done a good job" retiremnet point (i.e. LT Col or 05); and really acre about the Army (as an instituion) and it's Soldiers.
The telling point was how White and Shinseki were brushed aside because they didn't toe the line and had teh balls to say what they thought it would take to invade and occupy Iraq (every time I heard Rumsfeld talk about how several hundered thosuand was 200k not 300k it reminded me of Clinton's "that depends on what your definition of is is" defence.); it was equally telling how the Army had to go to a retired General to get a new Chief of Staff - a job that any GO would give their right nut or ovary for and the Vice Chief turns them down and umor had it so did several other GOs.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Bringing politicians to account - isn't that what a democracy is supposed to do?
Blame your fellow Americans for the way they voted in the last election. If the "people" don't care about being lied to or don't care about complete idiocy and incompetence they *deserve* to bear all the consequences of the incompetence, mistakes and lies of their leaders.
The American people had a chance to "bring Bush to account" and they gave him a big thumbs up.
How dare you question the motives of someone who agrees with the majority of people here! You can only question the motives of *unpopular* people, silly!
Whatever. This is not news, as Wilkerson has been saying this for months. And it's not interesting, because Wilkerson offers no new facts, only opinions.
It's kinda like Richard Clarke's book: if you look at his actual facts, it does not add up to a serious condemnation of Bush. It's only when you add his opinions that it becomes an attack on Bush. Same thing here: he obviously disagreed with the policy, and he is disgruntled for that and perhaps other reasons, and he is speaking out, but he is not actually giving us new or interesting information.
But that doesn't matter: he agrees with "us" so therefore "we" were right all along!
Reduce the number of election machines at urban polling places in Ohio. Long lines. Turn away thousands of voters for Kerry.
SOP for the Corrupt Ohio Republican Party.
Actually, Clinton never balanced the budget, that was a myth that was created by the government in power at the time. Rmemeber, Clinton's "balanced budget" came from a few key elements:
Greenspan was inflating the currency base faster than even. The CPI did not keep up with the M3 money supply. This put more money into the economy, inflating consumer prices but also inflating the stock market, causing higher than expected profits which in turn put more money back into the government in the form of taxes. More money gave the government more spending allowances, but inflationary cycles can't last forever before someone realizes that the growth was due to the printing press at the Fed, not real economic growth.
Clinton's regime also used social security income as an income line item, instead of storing it in a non-existant "social security lockbox." That's like asking your boss for a loan against future income, and then calling that loan income even though you'd have to pay it back someday.
Lastly, much of government's real debt was listed as long term liability instead of actually calling it debt, so certain payable line items were taken off the budget books.
Viola, fake balanced budget. If any private individual or corporation balanced their books this way, they'd go to jail.
You're right of course, but why would anyone pay attention to the word of an individual who places career advancement over doing the right thing?
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
How have they been PROVEN wrong?
"Bush made a false call which caused 2,000+ Americans and unknown number of Iraqis to die."
Are you arguing that Bush knew that Iraq had no WMDs (unlike the rest of the world) or that Bush was wrong about the WMDs (along with the rest of the world) or that Iraq did have WMDs, but they were exported before the invasion began (as claimed by an Iraqi Air Force general).
How many Iraqis have been saved from torture, mutilation, and rape?
Were you oppsed to Clinton's actions in Kosovo/
In another news story today, Bush announced he will cut the deficit by cutting domestic programs. Is it safe to assume that, after this story aired, PBS will be one of the programs cut?
There are at least three possible explanations.
1. Hoax: intentional falsification of intelligence reports.
2. Honest mistake: Saddam's bluff took in the intelligence community, and every time his scientists lied to him they were lying to Western eavesdroppers.
3. Dishonest mistake: starting with the desirability of a war as a premise, drop any conflicting assessments onto the floor and assume that whatever you want to hear is the truth.
Draw your own conclusions, but read Woodward's _Plan of Attack_ first.
"I'd prefer to see the squabble of democracy to the efficiency of dictators." --Lawrence Wilkerson
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
Yawn. I was not criticizing the things he saw, I am criticizing the things he was talking about that he did NOT see. That is what "opinion" refers to. Like when he asserts Cheney put undue pressure on the CIA, while also admitting he has no actual knowledge that this happened. It's a boring game Wilkerson is playing, but suckers who Want To Believe buy it.
Those with an anti-Bush agenda seem to forget that from the late 90's up until the war literally every single one of those I mentioned were in 100% agreement over Iraq's pursuit, aquisition and stockpiling of chemical, biological and nuclear materials with the ulitmate goal of manufacturing WMD's. Maybe they were all wrong (you really think everyone worldwide was so misled?), however if you believe recent reports from certain Iraqi sources about mass movements of materials to Syria just prior ot the invasion then the jury is still out on this. But lying?
This is a lie. And for many of us, becoming anti-Bush (I have been a conservative Republican for 25 years) has to do with the obvious lies of the Bush administration (that we elected the first time) that you insist on propagating. You lie to members of all parties and your lie is often repeated by members of both parties, but it is a lie, even to those who are conservative but no longer have a party to turn to.
The case for war?
All that matters is the fact that the war on terror is going exactly according to how it was planned. The plans are all over the internet.
I don't know if it is wise to make a to-do list and show it to the world, then go down the list, but Iraq was just on top of the list.
The problem with this, since everyone knows the script, it makes countries like Iran and North Korea way more radical than they would have been. When you project your every move to the world, it might have the effect of making you seem unstopable but at the same time it alerts the bad guys of your next move.
Then on the left we have people like Murtha and Kennedy screaming that we should leave, RIGHT NOW GODDAMNIT!!! That's just insane, we can't leave the Iraqis in a worse position than we found them. That would be like walking away from a car stuck underwater with a woman trapped inside. I mean, what kind of man does that?
If you knew anything about congressman Murtha you would know he is (or was) considered fairly conservative - which is why his speaking out had such impact. Of course, I expect him to be branded a 'leftist' now, especially since that's equivalent to being called a communist these days.
Also, to make your analogy more appropriate, remember that the woman trapped in the car has a gun and wants to kill you.
-G
www.pixelstatic.com
I'm not one to defend Bush - I have no doubt whatsoever that the pretexts for war were a hoax. But I'm not totally convinced that this was a war solely over oil. Sure, oil was a factor. But I'm also sure that many neocons sincerely believed that by bringing democracy to Iraq they could lead the way for widespread democratisation of the Middle-East. When someone is as 'successful' as Bush I'm not convinced that money is the only consideration. I think Bush really did want to go down in the history books as the President that liberated the Middle-East. He believed that the success of post-WWII policies such as the Marshall Plan showed that this was possible. Before the invasion of Iraq many neocons accused liberals of racism for implying that somehow the population of the Middle-East were less amenable to democratisation than the populations of the fascist European countries. Unfortunately I don't think they understood the long tradition of liberty in Europe that made the transition to democracy, even in countries like Spain, a smooth one.
"The White House is not an intelligence-gathering agency," -- Scott McClellan, Whitehouse spokesman.
Clinton had the same bosses that Bush has, I suppose Clinton had a different way of doing things, but the actions Clinton took weakened the congress and strengthened the powers of the President. The actions Clinton took were preparation for the war on terrorism.
Look at the fact that it was Clinton who refused to agree to sign into the international court system. If we had an international court then there would be global oversight but Clinton said no. Always remember that.
Strictly speaking, it's not possible for the system to break.
Sure it is. If you have a lot of old people, and not a lot of young people, the system breaks. It's that simple. American social security works, because current workers pay for the current retiring generation. If you have a lot more people leeching benifits than are working, either taxes have to go (way) up or you have to decrease benifits.
If social security went into a fund where you were paying for your own generations retirement it would never break. Yes social security has turned a surplus that polticians have been borrowing against to pay down the deficit (this is because it's cheaper in the long run to pay down the interest on the deficit than to leave social security alone) but eventually that tool won't be there, and neither will the money for the baby boomers benifits regardless of what has been borrowed.
The only solutions are to have more children every generation (ie each couple must have more than 2.1 children), or mass immigration. If you've ever wondered why politicians support amnisty for illegal aliens when the American people are 80% against it, there is one of your answers.
Are you arguing that Bush knew that Iraq had no WMDs (unlike the rest of the world) or that Bush was wrong about the WMDs (along with the rest of the world) or that Iraq did have WMDs, but they were exported before the invasion began (as claimed by an Iraqi Air Force general).
You are insinuating the rest of the world thought Iraq had WMDs. Most of the rest of the world did not believe Iraq had WMDs. Bush was, in fact, going against the world's opinion, not with the world's opinion. According to UN inspectors, Iraq could not have significant amounts of WMDs, nor could they have concealed WMD development programs.
These findings were verified by US inspectors after the initial phase of the war.
How many Iraqis have been saved from torture, mutilation, and rape?
Less than have died as a direct result of the war. Much fewer than those that have been mutilated as a direct result of the war. Seems we carried on the use of torture.
You're probably right about the rapes, though.
If our goal is to stop state-sanctioned torture, mutilation, and rape, why aren't we in Sudan right this minute? More people are being killed there than have ever died by Saddam Hussein's orders.
Were you oppsed (sic) to Clinton's actions in Kosovo/
At the time? Yes. But he at least had UN backing. As it turned out, we were really fighting al Queda there, unlike in Iraq which was known to be antagonistic towards al Queda from the beginning.
So, let me get this straight. It turns out that all the evidence was trumped up by somebody, that the US built its case for war on a pack of lies, and you don't care who's responsible? You don't mind being misled, lied to, and generally deceived?
I'm not that honorable. I do mind being lied to (though I wasn't misled: I didn't believe evidence used to prop up the push to war, as much of it had already been discredited). In fact, I fucking hate being lied to. I want to find out who is responsible for the lies, and I wan't that motherfucker's balls served up on a plate with a side of potato salad and a nice glass of chianti.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Wilkerson never attacks Bush or the administration.
Nonsense. He said Cheney was intentionally putting undue pressure on the CIA (despite, again, having no such knowledge). How is that not an attack on the administration?
This is also the same guy who accused Cheney and Rumsfeld of being in a "cabal" to undermine State, and even the President. Said Feith was also in the cabal, and was "the stupidest blankety, blank man in the world." These are not attacks?
Yes, he does not attack Bush strongly, directly, but I didn't imply that directly: I was speaking there specifically of Clarke. I didn't say or intentionally imply Wilkerson was attacking anyone, even though he obviously was.
Why some people take this as an attack Against George W. Bush is puzzling.
How you can say the things he said do not constitute an attack against the administration is likewise puzzling.
Read your constitution
Duurrrr, we have a constitution? You don't say!
Our "defense" department is only minimally defensive. The fundamental design of our military is offensive and aggressive, built on the projection of power globally.
The primary example of this is the aircraft carrier and its associated air power elements, which allows the US to attack any target in the world within a week if not a day. This advantage subjugates any defenses of a target country.
ICBMs are likewise designed for intimidation and aggression. Whereas the soviet-era ICBM standoff was defense by mutual destruction, now our ICBMs threaten any country not armed with similar capability with instantaneous death.
Our long-range bomber fleet is likewise a power projection (offensive) unit, for the delivery of bombs over distances thousands of miles from our borders
Even ground forces have been reconfigured for maximum mobility, so that full effective ground combat can be waged anywhere in the world in the span of a month. This delay is considered acceptable since that provides a month for our air and sea forces to gain air superiority and soften any defenses.
The implicit reason for this is maintenance and coercion of our economic projects throughout the world, in order to sustain the resource consumption of America's economy. Our overconsumption leads to the reality that we must project power (via offensive threats) in order to "defend" our "security" (availability of resources)
This can only be concluded to mean we are an imperialistic aggressive country. Any pretensions to the contrary is strictly propaganda.
Hey, I'm just your average shit and piss factory.
When Bush said Sadam had looked for uranium in Africa he knew it was not true. The director of the CIA told him it was not true prior to giving the speech. So instead of removing the information from the speech he rewords it to be factually true but misleading. He would only have done this if he knew it was a hoax. Also don't forget that he had asked his staff to find a way into Iraq prior to 9/11.
back in 1998 hussein had WMDs and a WMD program. that's why all of those quotes are from 1998. in late 1998, clinton got pissed and bombed the shit out of iraq, targeting anything that looked remotely like a WMD storage or manfacture facility.
that isn't to say that some dems didn't speak of WMD programs in iraq after then, but just realize that using those statements from 1998 is about as disingenuous as using quotes from 1945 to 'prove' that the democrats thought germany was a threat to the US in 1973.
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Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
"You know why we went into Iraq right? OIL!" and so I politely responded "See, I just don't see what we have to gain by overtaking Iraq, in terms of oil." to which he responded "That's right, we don't! It's not worth it!". He made my point quite cleary
You've conflated two completely separate concepts and somehow imagine you've had a "point" made.
The motivation for an act says nothing about the actual (or even just perceived) results. We can invade Iraq for oil, and wind up even worse off than before. That the result of our actions didn't match our desires doesn't retroactively change our motivation. That your professor doesn't believe it was "worth it" has no bearing on the motivation either, it's a statement of his opinion on the cost/benefit analysis.
I don't know where you were in 2002, but the war WE were all sold was to be a few months long, we were to be greeted as liberators, and within a year Iraq's oil sales would pay us back every penny for the cost. Either they were lying or they were just as absolutely wrong as any human can be about something. Neither speaks highly of their capabilities for leadership, but their complete failure/deception is the reason we've seen little benefit. Had they accomplished what they intended/sold, we would have seen many clear benefits, both in increased oil production/market availability and greater political influence at zero direct financial cost, as it would all be subsidized by another country's oil sales. We also would have seen American oil companies take production share from European competitors, potentially leading to economic benefits for America in general, but definitely leading to benefits for the major campaign contributors and dinner party guests of our current administration.
I hope for your sake that if you intend to remain a neo-con, you find much better mentors than any of the current influential neo-cons. They seem to be so lost in the theory of what they're doing, they never bother to open the door and see what the real world is like. Tragic that they've fallen victim to the same major failure they once condemned liberal "ivory tower intellectuals" for.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Why would the rich like a small government that they can't control, over a large corrupt government that they can? It's not like citizens have any choice in the matter.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Only 30% of the eligible population elected this government.
We don't live in a democracy. We live in a republic. To make politicians accountable, that's the first thing you have to realize.
You also have to realize that citizens of a republic have certain responsibilities. And I'm not talking about the patriotic bullshit that we're told by government schools, media, and other institutions. I'm talking about being an active, capable, independent member of political society. I'm talking about being able to withhold your vote if there are no candidates you agree with, if the only decision is between the lesser of two evils.
We're beyond government "ignoring the Constitution". We're beyond government "breaking the law". We're beyond government turning on it's own citizens. We're way into the realm of applied political science, here. So this is a crash course:
Politicians in the US are using the "anything we can get away with" method to screw us out of our freedoms, our property, and a large chunk of our labor. And they can do so because a large percentage of Americans aren't capable members of the republic. Many of us are dependent upon the empire. We have government jobs, government loans, government housing, business tax breaks, welfare, military pay, military benefits, social security. Each of these things is a chain that binds you to this government and anything it wants to do. As long as you are dependent upon government, this government will act like it owns you. It will tax you, find you work, feed you, house you, and when things get tough, it will send you to die in war. You are their nigger.
So if you and your family can't do that: if you can't live without government hand outs, if you can't eat without a government job and US money, if you can't heat your house without oil extracted at the point of a gun or coal strip-mined with the help of a court order, you are a slave already. You don't get to complain about how your master treats you. That's the first step: become a citizen deserving of freedoms. Be capable of asserting your independence. Take responsibility for being a member of the republic.
And the alternatives should be clear by now. As the president has said: it's us versus them. It's us, peaceful, freedom-loving individuals who are concerned for the future of America, versus them, lying, warmongering sycophants who are in it for themselves. It's those that build and create versus those that take and destroy. And here's how we'll win:
Stop voting. Don't register. Stop using US currency. Stop paying taxes.
Forget about protesting. Forget about democracy. Forget about "working within the system". That's all bullshit to keep idiots occupied. These four steps, taken on a massive scale, will bring down the US government faster than you can say "military coup". And it will do so peacefully, fairly, "democratically" even.
That's how you get your country back. But here's how you keep it:
If you find a politician you agree with, and you think he will win, get a written copy of what he plans to do. Get physical proof of all his political beliefs. Scrutinize it like a lawyer would. Don't fall for any vague crap. This is your contract. You are exchanging your vote, and your sovereignty, for this politician's word. Get it in writing.
Now, when you vote for the politician, and he wins, and he doesn't do what he said he would do, or does anything that is against the contract you have with him, sue him in court. Sue him for damages. Find co-plaintiffs. Demand to be relieved from your contract. Find another politician you can trust. Or, don't, and learn to live without government. But, most importantly, remember:
Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Just ask Ireland when they really had issues with terrorism.
Well, AFAIK, the Irish terrorists never were suicidal. But, ignoring that, how and why did the terrorism in Ireland go away? Why did the Baader-Meinhof and the Brigate Rosse disappear? They are no longer in existence because their motivating power, international communism, disappeared. Don't fight the symptoms, fight the cause of the disease.
To stop islamic terrorism, the first thing one must know is that they are islamic. Their acceptance of suicide comes from their religion. Therefore, the only effective way to fight terror is by fighting religion. Not only their own kind of religion, but all kinds of religious fanatism must disappear. The kind of fanatism that drives islamic suicidal bombers is the same kind of fanatism that motivated Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma bomber, to avenge the death of his own religious leader, David Koreesh, by bombing a public building. When people become fanatics, any religion is as bad as the other.
If the USA wants to be safe from terror, the first step would be to remove from office all people like the Kansas board of education members that are trying to impose religious fanatism on the school curriculum, and the NASA administrator, or whatever his title is, who is trying to impose religious fanatism on scientific research.
No, we shouldn't. What you propose is equivalent to the destruction of the USA -- by destroying all the things that make it worth keeping.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
As a non-American, I find it slightly disturbing that the US is now justifying its Iraqi invasion as 'spreading democracy'. This has traditionally not been a strong point of American foreign policy e.g. the Vietnamese people would have voted for 'Uncle Ho' (Ho Chi Min - Communist leader) had the US allowed those elections to go ahead. Now we're seeing the 'wrong' (for the US, the EU and Israel) result in Palestine.
The danger is that the US will intervene whenever there is a free and fair election result with which it doesn't agree - then we're back with the US installing and supporting their own dictators (Saddam Hussein anyone?) with all of their attendant power abuses simply to keep the 'wrong' people out of (legitimate) power.
History always repeats!
Did it ever cross your mind that
1) We gave WMDs to him in the past?
2) Other countries did too?
3) He was a MASTER at hiding things in the desert. The place is the size of California. It could be YEARS before they would find them buried there (if we ever do). He was also very good at fooling inspectors by moving them in the front door, and moving the WMD's out the back OR->
3) He moved them out of the country before we got there?
Also if you remember just before we invaded, N Korea unplugged their cameras in their nuclear reactors. My guess (as well as other peoples' who are more in tune than I) is that Iraq had a bomb but no uranium for it. N Korea needed oil due to sanctions. It is highly likely that Saddam and N Korea were about to make a swap.
If that were the case, Saddam would have a working nuke or two. He might not be able to get it to the US, but he might could get it to Israel. Just before this time Israel made a statement that they would not wait on their allies to defend them if they were attacked and would respond with nukes if provoked.
If Saddam was dumb enough to get a bomb to Israel, they would nuke the entire region in retaliatory actions and wouldn't think twice about it. Bush knew this but couldn't allow that to happen. That is why we went to war.
And yes there were many other foreign intelligence agencies that agreed that Iraq had WMDs.
Libertas in infinitum