(V):  That rather misses the entire point of the post. 

Artful Dodger: So a democratically elected government is more evil then a bunch of right wing dictators?

I thought democracy was the lessor of the "two evils".

My bad!!

Artful Dodger: nice post ad

In an oil rich middle eastern country, two rivals are waging a civil war in a fight for power.  US officials meet and decide to support tyrant A because they think he will be easier to deal with in the long run and will have a more stabilizing effect on the region.  They supply him with arms.  A defeats B and then goes and kills millions of his supporters.  Many of them women and children.  The US gets blamed for interfering.

 Or

US officials meet and decide to support tyrant B because they think he
will be easier to deal with in the long run and will have a more stabilizing effect on the region.  They supply him with arms.  B defeats
A and then goes and kills millions of his supporters.  Many of them
women and children.  The US gets blamed for interfering.

or

In an oil rich middle eastern country, two rivals are waging a civil
war in a fight for power.  US officials meet and decide to do nothing.  A defeats B and then goes and kills millions of his
supporters.  Many of them women and children.  The US gets blamed for NOT interfering.

or

In an oil rich middle eastern country, two rivals are waging a civil
war in a fight for power.  US officials meet and decide to do nothing.  B defeats A and then goes and kills millions of his
supporters.  Many of them women and children.  The US gets blamed for NOT interfering.

Notice that tyrant A and B rarely get the press for their horrible crimes against humanity.  They fire the guns, blow up the bombs that kill the people, and the US gets to shoulder the blame. 

It's a small world after all.  And it's getting smaller.  The US must do something, along with the international community, to stop the thugs of the world.  N. Korea is a good case in point.  You people feel safe with these thugs having nuclear arms?  Forget who else has them.  You ok with N. Korea getting nuclear bombs and long range missles? 

If you say no to that question, then what's to be done?  Diplomacy has the word "dip" in it.  You'd be a dip if you thought diplomacy would work.  These folks don't think like you think.  

Many of the arguments one here assume a far less complex world than actually exists. 

(V): The point is, it seems to me, that the reasons have been for other than to add more states and increase federal tax revenues.

and like AD said, the world is a very complex place....

(V):  Because the world is complicated and sometimes the choice is for the lesser of two evils.  ;)

Czuch: So why has the USA interfered in so many governments over the years? Including upto the level of arming right ring monsters attempting military take overs, rather then the elected left wing government being in power?

Übergeek 바둑이: I guess it depends somewhat on how you define 'imperialism'....

I dont see the US as trying to gain more land or more authority or to conquer necessarily, which is what I think of when I hear 'imperialism'.

I believe we are simply trying to protect our own interests as a sovereign nation. From that point, we have a vested interest in keeping other countries from becoming dangerous to us.

We are dependent on foreign oil sources, so we have an interest in keeping these sources of oil from becoming unstable to the point where it effects our ability to obtain that oil. To me, that is not imperialism, per se.

Now, if we can figure out how to end this dependence, then I dont give a rats ass what these countries do or how they exist, as long as they leave us alone in the process. But as things stand right now, it can hurt the US if these countries are not stable. It just happens that we also believe the best way to make them more stable is for them to be democratic in nature, and to give their people freedom and rights and hope for a prosperous future.

Again, I dont see this as imperialism.....

Czuch:

I find the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan interesting in the sense that the government has gone to such great lenghts to justify and legitimize the war.

It is very interesting that many Americans dislike being called an empire. That is understandable because the United States was born out of the War of Independence from the British Empire. An anti-imperialist stance was part of the founding of the United States and the ideology that followed was one of expansionism but opposition to imperialism. This was embodied in the Monroe Doctrine. This doctrine was introduced by President James Monroe in response to the expansion fo the British Empire in Latin America. As Latin American countries declared independence from Spain the British Empire attempted to expand and James Monroe took a clear anti-imperialist stance.

In 1836 the Republic of Texas allied itself to the British Empire in the hopes of surviving as an independent republic. The Mexican government was trying to regain control of the territory and alliance with the British empire was an option that Texan pursued. In 1845 President James Polk used the Monroe Doctrine to justify the Mexican-American War. In that was the United States gained a lot of territory and President James Polk had a very difficult time convincing politicians in Washington that expansion into the west was not an imperialist policy. This is where the doctrine of Manifest Destiny was born. The US was destined (even divinely ordained) to expand across North America, and that was used as a way to justify American imperialism in the 19th century and later in the 20th century as the US moved to fight against communism in Latin America.

There are speeches of that era in the White House website. The tone of James Polk's speeches is so similar to the speeches of George W. Bush. Instead of Iraq Americans dealt with Mexico, and instead of Saddam Hussain, Americans demonized Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, the Mexican president of that era.

Considering the historical and ideological nature of American expansionism, I see the United States as a "reluctant empire". The US pursues a clearly imperialist foreign policy, but to satisfy the ideological expectations of the voting public the government has to try its best to justify war before the public.

This is not a new phenomenon. Every empire in history needed to justify its actions.

The Greeks fought against the "barbaric Persians", even though the Persians were one of the great civilizations in history.

The Romans fought against the "barbarian tribes" and tried to "civilize" them. That implied that Celts, Germans, Iberians, Egyptians, etc. had no civilization.

Arabs fought against "infidels" and believed that God had destined Islam to expand across the world. This implied that Christianity was an unacceptable religion.

Likewise the Holy Roman Empire went into the crusades in the name of God, and called Arabs and Turks barbaric, in spite of the strengths and achievements of those cultures.

The Spanish empire killed millions of American natives and justified it in the name of God and civilization.

Napoleon occupied all of continental Europe under the call of "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite" (freedon, equality, brotherhood).

The Britsh Empire tried to bring the "civilized world" to its imperial acquisitions. I imagine that India and China were not civilized!

Josef Stalin sent millions to their deaths in the name of socialism, equality and the fight against imperialism.

Now we fight our wars in the names of freedom and democracy. That is the essence of ideology. It sells abstract concepts as concrete justifications for war. The US has fallen into that ideological trap too. Imperialism in the name of a higher principle.

Übergeek 바둑이: Terrorism and WMDs were a plausible excuse to go to war.



Thats one I can agree with!

Bwild:

I entirely agree. The war in Iraq, just like the war in Afghanistan, is over oil and who controls the monopoly of production and distribution in the MIddle East and Central Asia. It is no accident that the following oil connections are obvious:

George W. Bush - Arbusto Energy (Arbusto is Spanish for Bush)
Condaleeza Rice - Chevron Texaco, former member of the board of directors
Dick Cheney - Former CEO of Haliburton
Hamid Karzai - current President of Afghanistan, former executive for Unocal, a pipeline company acquired by Chevron-Texaco in 2004

It is also no accident that Lee Raymond, the former chairman of Exxon-Mobil, was also the largest individual contributor to both of George W. Bush's electoral campaigns.

It is also no accident that the people in the list above (together with some of the big players in the war like Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz) also had their money in the Carlisle Group, a private equity firm run by Bob Carlucci, former head of the CIA. Carlisle is also the company that represented the financial interests of the Bin Laden brothers in the US.

Terrorism and WMDs were a plausible excuse to go to war. However, all wars always boil down to who gets rich, and in the case of Iraq it was oil companies.

Some day the truth will come to light because the Freedom of Information Act will at some point force the government to declassify all the documentation that for now remains classified.

Übergeek 바둑이: I think when its all said and done..it'll be over oil and oil prices.

gogul: Allthough, where is the carped for radioactive dust?

Imsoaddicted: It is Nicolas Sarkozy (the French pres) who said that if you brush the dust under the carpet you'll get a problem in the future.

My feeling is that the 2007 London car bombings where an orchestred fake from A to Z. A Browny/Bush booster, laws to control the opposition, to legitimate governmental stress over the people.

Imsoaddicted: It better not, otherwise I feel a revolution will be at hand.

(V): http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8110022.stm

lets hope this isnt brushed under the carpet

Artful Dodger: A mess. But I have to say this is based on limited info as we cannot get good reporting from that country due to the restrictions in place. But it feels like a religion backed dictatorship.. Well, I say religion, but realistically it's a perversion of the Islamic faith.

(V):   What are your thoughts on the current situation in Iran?

Snoopy: Hopefully they will go for the UKIP instead, but unless they change some of the immigration laws I fear it will be the BNP.

(V): they playing straight into the BNP hands
cant they see that

Snoopy: Have you heard about the Iraq Inquiry.. behind closed doors, no under oath, and no power to make people appear.

Such great openness that we are getting

(V): yet another WHITEWASH

i just add words fail me cause if i put what i really feel i be banned from here for good

At last.. Our Commons authority has published MP's accounts details....

Just they blacked out so much that it's a joke.

This sure is going to restore the UK people confidence in our democracy.... NOT!!

Czuch: ... US companies 'rebuilding' Iraq ripping of the USA government... blah blah blah.. Iraqi police giving weapons to enemy insurgents.. blah, blah.

And Saddam was at the helm because he had help from which western government???

And still The 9/11 terrorists have not been caught, and the Taliban is still an operational organisation.

And the rest of the world didn't believe the American Intel.. Our army got involved to make your USA invasion look good rather then just an admin on a blood lust.

(V): Putting people in jail is more expensive Czuch, didn't you know that?


I knew you would say that......

But come on, the UN inspection teams, meetings and mandates, year in and year out, food for oil, blah blah blah....

anywho, it was just the excuse the world needed to help the Iraqi people rid themselves of him and to begin their long road from desperation to hope a and eventually prosperity... never would have happened with saddam at the helm


right war right time right place

I would think the rest of the world would be like..."ballsy Americans for pulling the trigger, now that they have, at least we can get in there and help them out"

had that happened, this thing would have been ended and sorted out better long ago!

Czuch: Putting people in jail is more expensive Czuch, didn't you know that?

Pedro Martínez: Ok.... If you must! Do you want a plastic thermite recipe?

Czuch:
> Saddam had WMD, and used them???? Funny, he never gave the UN any evidence that he ever destroyed the ones not used
> Maybe thats why we all thought he still had some

In response to your comment, the CIA did have evidence that Saddam had ordered the destruction of his WMDs in 1995. I would recommend looking at an interview with Ray McGovern, a retired CIA officer who claims that in 1995 Saddam's son-in-law defected and said that Saddam had ordered the destruction of all WMD sites in 1991 to avoid their being found by UN inspectors after the Gulf War.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wHTNQrcCTA

That intelligence was deliberately ignored and set aside in favor of the now infamous "Downing Street Memo". It is claimed that this document was a fabricated intelligence report. This report claimed that Saddam had WMDs aimed at Kuwait and Israel. Wikipedia has a good description of the events about the memo:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downing_Street_Memo

We must also remember that David Kay, the Bush administration's weapon's inspector at the United Nations, resigned because he had warned the Bush administration that that Iraq probably had destroyed all its stockpiles of WMDs, and Colin Powell chose to ignore him.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kay
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Saddam_WMD_search

Ray McGovern did confront Donald Rumsfeld and had him on the ropes with the misuse of intelligence reports:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1FTmuhynaw

I think that intelligence was manufactured and that the decision-makers made a calculated risk. They thought that they could go to Iraq and find the WMDs after the war, even if they had no evidence that Iraq had any WMDs. Saddam was bluffing like he had done in the past. Then George W. Bush and Tony Blair called his bluff and were later confronted with Saddam having no WMDs. Since Bush and Blair could not prove that Saddam had anything, they manufactured intelligence to match war policies they had decided even before the 2000 election.

The US did have good reason to believe that Saddam had WMDs and that was because in the 1980s the US supported Iraq in its war against Iran. The Regan administration had sent Donald Rumsfeld several times to sign many agreements with Saddam Hussain. In the 1980s Donald Rumsfeld was CEO of AG Searle, a pharmaceutical company that sold to Saddam Hussain large-scale bioreactors that could be used to mnufacture anthrax and other biological wapons. Donald Rumsfeld knew that Iraq had that technology because it was his company that had sold it to Saddam. There is some famous footage of Saddam and Donald Rumsfeld shanking hands:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTldYbqlJc8

Colin Powell has admitted that the "burn notices" that should have been used to ignore bad intelligence were ignored. I think Powell's assessment was honest. The intellegence was believed, even if it was false.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZTLmOoPzjs

We must not forget also the Hutton Inquiry which investigated the death of David Kelly, the man accused of fabricating the intelligence in the "September Dossier", a British intelligence report claiming that Saddam Hussain tried to acquire Uranium in Africa. The questions surrounding that dossier and the death of its creator have bothered many people who believe in a conspiracy within the Blair government.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutton_Inquiry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr_David_Kelly
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_Dossier

I think that we will not know the truth about the intelligence failures until after George W. Bush dies. All that information will remain classified just as his father's involvement in the Bay of Pigs invation in Cuba remains classified, and Henry Kissinger's personal diaries and papers remain classified. The reason is that men in power do what they want, and they if necessary they will lie to the public to achieve their objectives. This is true everywhere, not just in the US.

Czuch: oh yeah... also, I am a tax paying citizen and the police say, no problem, this guy just stays in his house most of the time, and we will post a police outside his home 24 hours a day 7 days a week, and we will pay someone to go into his house every so often and inspect it, all at my tax expense

Thats not going to cut it for me personally.... I am going to say NO! Stop wasting my money and stop wasting the time for the police who should be doing something better, and just throw this idiot in jail or whatever, never have to use any of my brain to think about this guy ever again.... thats my solution, and we vote on it by the town, and the town members say okay, do it, so it is done and it is the will of the people.

Pedro Martínez:

Now somebody finally gets it!


But seriously, if you have some sort of authority who repeatedly demand of them to produce the guns, or some evidence that they had already gotten rid of them, and this authority continues to threaten serious consequences if they do not comply, this person should not have a big surprise when they wake up one day in custody again

(V): I don't trust the police. They are ineffective and ineffectual. I'm already getting ready for my preventive strike.

Pedro Martínez: But the police would have taken the gun, and searched his property.

Czuch: Are you sure Bush would have been impeached?? I think you are just over reacting.

"Funny, he never gave the UN any evidence that he ever destroyed the ones not use."

Actually plenty of inspectors went in and looked and saw nothing. The UN were as such satisfied (as far as I am aware of) that he had no WMD's.

Just I feel the US military machine and admin was after a victory, ya know.. the feel good factor.

But that does not change the fact that people in Bush's admin knew they were lying to the US and the world!!

Czuch: My neighbor bought a gun ten years ago. When I asked him to tell me if he still had it after he returned from prison, where he spent some time because he had used the gun against his own people (family members), he told me to mind my own business. I think I am going to burn his house because I think he still might have the gun and I am under imminent danger.

(V): I think they might be still very sore at the USA for supplying Saddam with WMD's that he used against their soldiers during the Iran/Iraq war.




Saddam had WMD, and used them???? Funny, he never gave the UN any evidence that he ever destroyed the ones not used

Maybe thats why we all thought he still had some

(V): Prove what???

I started with the proof...

"No one realized how bad the economy was. The projections, in fact, turned out to be worse. But we took the mainstream model as to what we thought -- and everyone else thought -- the unemployment rate would be."

"Everyone guessed wrong at the time the estimate was made about what the state of the economy was at the moment this was passed."


This is what the Vice president said, he admits they were wrong, that the intel they presented to the US people before the huge stimulus was wrong!

So.. was it a lie when they told us they would create or save 3 million jobs??????

My point is that under Bush, it would have been a lie, and ask him to be impeached for it.... thats all.