OUGwave Wrote:

HuskieDan Wrote:

Schadenfreude Wrote:I'm quite open to the idea that encouraging the formation of free societies in the Islamic world is part of the solution when it comes to reducing the antipathy Islamic peoples have for Western democracies.

But this isn't a justification for war.

I agree. I'd very much like to see these countries move into the 21st century, but I don't see how it's our call to make, especially with force.

Parts of the Arab world use a vision of American capitalism as the great evil much as America did to blacks and the use of marijuana. Many years after Reefer Madness, America is still too blinded by that fear to seriously consider reversing legislation it enacted because of a propaganda campaign. I don't see how that makes us smarter, better and more able to tell any country what is best for them and their people.

What an absurd comparison.

Freedom isn't a "system" to be forced on anyone, it is a set of natural rights.

Now, the autocratic system these people are living in, THAT is a system being forced on them.

But as a relativist, you likely believe that people live under dictatorships by some sort of choice? Its borne out by facts, right? After all, didn't Saddam win by 100% of the vote with 100% turnout in 2003? And weren't those ballots required to be marked in blood?

Right. They OBVIOUSLY were enjoying self-determination at that point. Who were we to take that right from them and force freedom of expression upon them?

Some people's moral universe is so upside down it makes no sense debating anything with them.

My point -- and, I think, his -- is that the decision to go on a nation-builiding* expedition isn't exclusively *our* call to make.

I don't think either of us are denying that the United States ought to do what it can to ensure people around the world are not denied their God-given freedoms. In fact, much of the standard Democratic critique of Republican foreign policy in the 1970s and 1980s was based on this idea. All too often, the United States has preferred and supported thugs we could do business with to unpredictable (and, perhaps, leftist) democratically elected leaders. (The way Dick Cheney and the Reagan administration turned a blind eye to Iraq's acquisition and use of weapons of mass destruction in the 1980s was just one example of many here.)

But to make war against a nation that has neither attacked us nor posed a credible, imminent threat? That's not just immoral -- it's illegal. If our cause in Iraq was so righteous, then certainly we could have built a legitimate international consensus for it. To presume we know what's best for the entire planet is not only arrogant, it is ... undemocratic.

To suggest we don't need international legimacy to make war in cases where our national security is not credibly threatened is to justify a war at any time, at our choosing, against these countries:

Algeria
Angola
Belarus
Bhutan
Burma
Burundi
Cambodia
Cameroon
Chad
China
Congo (Kinshasa)
Cote d'Ivoire
Cuba
Egypt
Equaltorial Guiney
Eritrea
Guinea
Haiti
Iran
Kazakhstan
North Korea
Kyrgyzstan
Laos
Lebanon
Liberia
Libya
Maldives
Oman
Pakistan
Qatar
Rwanda
Saudi Arabia
Somalia
Sudan
Swaziland
Syria
Tajikistan
Togo
Tunisia
Turkmenistan
United Arab Emirates
Uzbekistan
Vietnam
Yemen
Zimbabwe

All of these countries are rated "not free" by Freedom House, which tries to judge this sort of thing.

You seem to be suggesting we have the right -- and perhaps even the moral obligation -- to invade any of these nations upon our choosing, without consulting with any of the people who live outside of the United States.

I don't accept that.

-----

* Remember that term "nation-building?" George W. Bush claimed he was against it. Now it is his only remaining justification for the Iraq war.

Oddball Wrote:

Motown Bronco Wrote:This isn't a partisan opinion of any sort, just an observation.  Am I off-base here?

I think that you are right on the mark. In fact, if current trends continue, I'm not certain that even <a href='http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,63179,00.html?tw=wn_story_top5' target='_blank'>Diebold</a> can save Bush.

In addition, to this point Kerry has been content to sit back and watch the Bush administration bumble their way down the polls. As effective as this has been, it has also allowed the Bushies to define the public's perception of Kerry.

I'd say this analysis is right on the money.

Quote:This looks like a mistake, but John Kerry's past campaigns have shown him to be a very effective counter-puncher down the stretch. Look for him to define himself with the public over the summer.

This however is opinion.

Kerry has never been in a national campaign. He's primarily run in very democratic Mass.

He's also bumbled plenty on his own.

But, Kerry could win this if he is truly skillful, and polishes his act into a coherent, consistent and positive message.

However, what is odd, is that people still report on him as, "the probable" or, "the expected" or, "presumably" the Democratic nominee. This may be polite, but it's odd that mainstream news sources seem to emphasize this. It's clear that there are opposing forces at work.

Kerry could win this if he is truly skillful. If he's skillful he'll portray a united Democratic party.

But, then what? The Democratic party will be behind him until Nov 5, then it will splinter back to the warring factions that are keeping his name as the probably nominee.

OUGwave Wrote:

HuskieDan Wrote:

Schadenfreude Wrote:I'm quite open to the idea that encouraging the formation of free societies in the Islamic world is part of the solution when it comes to reducing the antipathy Islamic peoples have for Western democracies.

But this isn't a justification for war.

I agree. I'd very much like to see these countries move into the 21st century, but I don't see how it's our call to make, especially with force.

Parts of the Arab world use a vision of American capitalism as the great evil much as America did to blacks and the use of marijuana. Many years after Reefer Madness, America is still too blinded by that fear to seriously consider reversing legislation it enacted because of a propaganda campaign. I don't see how that makes us smarter, better and more able to tell any country what is best for them and their people.

What an absurd comparison.

Freedom isn't a "system" to be forced on anyone, it is a set of natural rights.

Now, the autocratic system these people are living in, THAT is a system being forced on them.

But as a relativist, you likely believe that people live under dictatorships by some sort of choice? Its borne out by facts, right? After all, didn't Saddam win by 100% of the vote with 100% turnout in 2003? And weren't those ballots required to be marked in blood?

Right. They OBVIOUSLY were enjoying self-determination at that point. Who were we to take that right from them and force freedom of expression upon them?

Some people's moral universe is so upside down it makes no sense debating anything with them.

See, here's your fatal flaw. We didn't go to war to give the Iraqi's freedom. We went to war because they were supposed to pose an imminent threat. Iraqi's freedom is what the focus has shifted towards when justifying our action.

The idea that another nation's people deserve freedom is noble, but we don't own or run the world so I don't see how we have the moral authority - since we certainly don't have the actual authority - to come in, tear down and rebuild a country to match our version of what is right. If we're so hell bent on ensuring freedoms, why just Iraq? Who's next? When do we take on China??

If you're going to tell the rest of the world how to live, you damn well better have the rest of the world's backing to do so. It seems that we're falling back to our Puritan roots.

Schadenfreude Wrote:

OUGwave Wrote:

HuskieDan Wrote:

Schadenfreude Wrote:I'm quite open to the idea that encouraging the formation of free societies in the Islamic world is part of the solution when it comes to reducing the antipathy Islamic peoples have for Western democracies.

But this isn't a justification for war.

I agree. I'd very much like to see these countries move into the 21st century, but I don't see how it's our call to make, especially with force.

Parts of the Arab world use a vision of American capitalism as the great evil much as America did to blacks and the use of marijuana. Many years after Reefer Madness, America is still too blinded by that fear to seriously consider reversing legislation it enacted because of a propaganda campaign. I don't see how that makes us smarter, better and more able to tell any country what is best for them and their people.

What an absurd comparison.

Freedom isn't a "system" to be forced on anyone, it is a set of natural rights.

Now, the autocratic system these people are living in, THAT is a system being forced on them.

But as a relativist, you likely believe that people live under dictatorships by some sort of choice? Its borne out by facts, right? After all, didn't Saddam win by 100% of the vote with 100% turnout in 2003? And weren't those ballots required to be marked in blood?

Right. They OBVIOUSLY were enjoying self-determination at that point. Who were we to take that right from them and force freedom of expression upon them?

Some people's moral universe is so upside down it makes no sense debating anything with them.

My point -- and, I think, his -- is that the decision to go on a nation-builiding* expedition isn't exclusively *our* call to make.

I don't think either of us are denying that the United States ought to do what it can to ensure people around the world are not denied their God-given freedoms. In fact, much of the standard Democratic critique of Republican foreign policy in the 1970s and 1980s was based on this idea. All too often, the United States has preferred and supported thugs we could do business with to unpredictable (and, perhaps, leftist) democratically elected leaders. (The way Dick Cheney and the Reagan administration turned a blind eye to Iraq's acquisition and use of weapons of mass destruction in the 1980s was just one example of many here.)

But to make war against a nation that has neither attacked us nor posed a credible, imminent threat? That's not just immoral -- it's illegal. If our cause in Iraq was so righteous, then certainly we could have built a legitimate international consensus for it. To presume we know what's best for the entire planet is not only arrogant, it is ... undemocratic.

To suggest we don't need international legimacy to make war in cases where our national security is not credibly threatened is to justify a war at any time, at our choosing, against these countries:

Algeria
Angola
Belarus
Bhutan
Burma
Burundi
Cambodia
Cameroon
Chad
China
Congo (Kinshasa)
Cote d'Ivoire
Cuba
Egypt
Equaltorial Guiney
Eritrea
Guinea
Haiti
Iran
Kazakhstan
North Korea
Kyrgyzstan
Laos
Lebanon
Liberia
Libya
Maldives
Oman
Pakistan
Qatar
Rwanda
Saudi Arabia
Somalia
Sudan
Swaziland
Syria
Tajikistan
Togo
Tunisia
Turkmenistan
United Arab Emirates
Uzbekistan
Vietnam
Yemen
Zimbabwe

All of these countries are rated "not free" by Freedom House, which tries to judge this sort of thing.

You seem to be suggesting we have the right -- and perhaps even the moral obligation -- to invade any of these nations upon our choosing, without consulting with any of the people who live outside of the United States.

I don't accept that.

-----

* Remember that term "nation-building?" George W. Bush claimed he was against it. Now it is his only remaining justification for the Iraq war.

No, I'm merely pointing out the flaw in using "self-determination" as a reason NOT to go to war, because self-determination assumes some sort of Democracy.

The idea that we are FORCING Democracy on Iraq, as if they somehow wouldn't choose it, is my problem. Its a foolish statement and you know it.

The list of countries you provide serves no purpose. I need not advocate intervention everywhere in order to justify the morality of this intervention. You don't need to give a dollar to every homeless person in order to justify the morality of giving it to one. Furthermore, I would argue that Iraq provides a special case, in which its liberation is uniquely aligned with STRATEGIC goals.

And I will bet you any sum of money that I know more about the political status of all of the countries listed then you could possibly imagine, and only North Korea can even sniff Iraq when it comes to flagrant human rights violations (indeed, the DPRK exceeds the limits of even the most sadistic imagination---its less a country than a shop of horrors---the peoples' minds, bodies, and souls are the complete and total property of the state).

That you could put a moderate and relatively democratic country like Tunisia in the same breath as Saddam's Iraq proves your ignorance on such matters.

Again, I believe Bush needs to go, but I believe that if Iraq is put on the right track, through his own credit or the effort of a Kerry administration, then History will view him kindly. I don't need to support all interventions everywhere to support the idea of freedom in Iraq. You're attempting to create false choices here, and its not going to work.

Doesn't it suck to take the position that bad news for the economy and the troops is good news for the Democrats?

HuskieDan Wrote:The idea that another nation's people deserve freedom is noble, but we don't own or run the world so I don't see how we have the moral authority - since we certainly don't have the actual authority - to come in, tear down and rebuild a country to match our version of what is right. If we're so hell bent on ensuring freedoms, why just Iraq? Who's next? When do we take on China??

If you're going to tell the rest of the world how to live, you damn well better have the rest of the world's backing to do so. It seems that we're falling back to our Puritan roots.

When you have approximately 1 million people murderd by a regime in a 30 year reign of terror, we aren't talking about "our version of whats right"... we are talking about whats right.

And China? Look... Shaggy, jailing Falun Gong and blocking Google is a shame. It truly is. But to compare that to the three UNIQUE genocides committed by Saddam Hussein, you really have got to have some special training in moral equivalency.

There is only one regime that can exceeds Iraq's record of absolute human degradation, and that is North Korea, which is so far through the looking glass that occupying it becomes simply unfathomable.

You should read some historical work on what the Saddam Hussein regime has done in Iraq, and then compare it to Hitler. I think you would be truly shocked at the similarities in the ideologies of Nazism and Baathism. For instance, what did the Ba'athis do to mark the day they ascended to power? Hung 13 Jews in Baghdad in front of cheering crowds. Then there is the "arabization campaign" in Iraqi Kurdistan, which was a systematic attempt through demographic manipulation, intimidation, murder, kidnapping, and chemical warfare to literally cleanse the Iraqi north of the Kurdish presence. He drained the southern wetlands to drive out the Marsh Arabs, slaughtering them as they fled to Iran. This man was a sick, sick monster. Words such as these are thrown around too often, but if he is not sick, than sickness has no meaning. Baath socialism/pan-arabism is the DIRECT successor to European Fascism.

Its to our eternal shame that we did not act sooner. You should educate yourself on the horrors of life in Iraq for the last thirty years before you make banal comparisons to China and trite references to "our way" not necessarily being "the right way".

OUGwave Wrote:That you could put a moderate and relatively democratic country like Tunisia in the same breath as Saddam's Iraq proves your ignorance on such matters.

Actually, it shows I just quoted a list from Freedom House, which I assume has a bit more expertise on this kind of thing than I do.

Quote:I don't need to support all interventions everywhere to support the idea of freedom in Iraq.

You don't.

But following the Bush administration's logic on Iraq, any nation could invade a less free nation on the pretext that it is doing so to promote freedom. For instance, India, a functioning democracy, could invade Pakistan, a military dictatorship, without any pretense of a threat to national ecurity.

That's the (lack of a) legal standard the United States used in justifying its invation of Iraq.

OUGwave Wrote:You should read some historical work on what the Saddam Hussein regime has done in Iraq, and then compare it to Hitler. I think you would be truly shocked at the similarities in the ideologies of Nazism and Baathism. For instance, what did the Ba'athis do to mark the day they ascended to power? Hung 13 Jews in Baghdad in front of cheering crowds. Then there is the "arabization campaign" in Iraqi Kurdistan, which was a systematic attempt through demographic manipulation, intimidation, murder, kidnapping, and chemical warfare to literally cleanse the Iraqi north of the Kurdish presence. He drained the southern wetlands to drive out the Marsh Arabs, slaughtering them as they fled to Iran. This man was a sick, sick monster. Words such as these are thrown around too often, but if he is not sick, than sickness has no meaning. Baath socialism/pan-arabism is the DIRECT successor to European Fascism.

Its to our eternal shame that we did not act sooner.

Hell, we sold Saddam the weapons for some of those activities.

Here's the thing: Saddam was a truly awful man. But much of what has been stated about his record took place years ago, before the First Gulf War, back when the United States was in bed with the guy.

Citing Saddam's overall reocrd as a justification for flouting international law and invading is something like justifying an invation of China tommorrow based on Mao's record.

Schadenfreude Wrote:

OUGwave Wrote:That you could put a moderate and relatively democratic country like Tunisia in the same breath as Saddam's Iraq proves your ignorance on such matters.

Actually, it shows I just quoted a list from Freedom House, which I assume has a bit more expertise on this kind of thing than I do.

Quote:I don't need to support all interventions everywhere to support the idea of freedom in Iraq.

You don't.

But following the Bush administration's logic on Iraq, any nation could invade a less free nation on the pretext that it is doing so to promote freedom. For instance, India, a functioning democracy, could invade Pakistan, a military dictatorship, without any pretense of a threat to national ecurity.

That's the (lack of a) legal standard the United States used in justifying its invation of Iraq.

Look, maybe you didn't read my post carefully enough.


Democracies will always come in varying shades. Hence the Freedom House rankings you provide. Freedom House ranks the political freedoms of various countries, in a civil liberties sense. Now, this is important. But when you are talking about the wholesale effort to genocide a people, Freedom House's metrics are not very informative.

As I've said my last three posts, Iraq is different. Its off the scale because Saddam murdered 1 million people.

India and Pakistan enjoy relatively similar levels of freedom, believe it or not. The only difference is that Pakistan does not have an elected President. Both have elected parliaments. Voter fraud and intimidation is present in both countries. While Musharraf is not elected, its foolish to compare him to Saddam. He ousted an elected President, Nawaz Sharif, that was the most corrupt in the nation's history. His authority has been legitimized by two plebiscites that while not exactly free and fair, measure up well in comparison with other elections in the region, including India.

To compare either situation to Iraq, is, as I've said, extremely superficial. There's a difference between having an illiberal democracy, to borrow a term from Fareed Zakaria, and the wholesale murder of the citizenry. I've detailed Saddam's efforts to ethnically cleanse the north. Research the "Arabisation Program" of the 1980's (200,000 Kurds 'disappeared', 4 million forced out of their homes as refugees) and in particular the al-Anfal campaign of 1987, which responsible for the slaughter of 100,000 Kurds. Start with this link: <a href='http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/iraq/border/20030308-9999_1n8cleansing.html' target='_blank'>Arabisation Program</a>

That is just a fraction of the suffering this man has wrought. To compare him to Musharraf is to descend into the absence of meaning.

OUGwave Wrote:

Schadenfreude Wrote:

OUGwave Wrote:That you could put a moderate and relatively democratic country like Tunisia in the same breath as Saddam's Iraq proves your ignorance on such matters.

Actually, it shows I just quoted a list from Freedom House, which I assume has a bit more expertise on this kind of thing than I do.

Quote:I don't need to support all interventions everywhere to support the idea of freedom in Iraq.

You don't.

But following the Bush administration's logic on Iraq, any nation could invade a less free nation on the pretext that it is doing so to promote freedom. For instance, India, a functioning democracy, could invade Pakistan, a military dictatorship, without any pretense of a threat to national ecurity.

That's the (lack of a) legal standard the United States used in justifying its invation of Iraq.

Look, maybe you didn't read my post carefully enough.


Democracies will always come in varying shades. Hence the Freedom House rankings you provide. Freedom House ranks the political freedoms of various countries, in a civil liberties sense. Now, this is important. But when you are talking about the wholesale effort to genocide a people, Freedom House's metrics are not very informative.

As I've said my last three posts, Iraq is different. Its off the scale because Saddam murdered 1 million people.

India and Pakistan enjoy relatively similar levels of freedom, believe it or not. The only difference is that Pakistan does not have an elected President. Both have elected parliaments. Voter fraud and intimidation is present in both countries. While Musharraf is not elected, its foolish to compare him to Saddam. He ousted an elected President, Nawaz Sharif, that was the most corrupt in the nation's history. His authority has been legitimized by two plebiscites that while not exactly free and fair, measure up well in comparison with other elections in the region, including India.

To compare either situation to Iraq, is, as I've said, extremely superficial. There's a difference between having an illiberal democracy, to borrow a term from Fareed Zakaria, and the wholesale murder of the citizenry. I've detailed Saddam's efforts to ethnically cleanse the north. Research the "Arabisation Program" of the 1980's (200,000 Kurds 'disappeared', 4 million forced out of their homes as refugees) and in particular the al-Anfal campaign of 1987, which responsible for the slaughter of 100,000 Kurds. Start with this link: <a href='http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/iraq/border/20030308-9999_1n8cleansing.html' target='_blank'>Arabisation Program</a>

That is just a fraction of the suffering this man has wrought. To compare him to Musharraf is to descend into the absence of meaning.

But see, now you're getting to my point. Why were we told we were going to war? It had nothing to do with how many of his own people that Saddam killed. So why not just say that's why we were going to war? Why would the rest of the world not be behind us in eliminating such a bastard? What kind of precedent do we have for eliminating similar bastards without that bastard occupying another country?

OUGwave Wrote:Look, maybe you didn't read my post carefully enough...

...I've detailed Saddam's efforts to ethnically cleanse the north. Research the "Arabisation Program" of the 1980's (200,000 Kurds 'disappeared', 4 million forced out of their homes as refugees) and in particular the al-Anfal campaign of 1987, which responsible for the slaughter of 100,000 Kurds. Start with this link: <a href='http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/iraq/border/20030308-9999_1n8cleansing.html' target='_blank'>Arabisation Program</a>

Then perhaps we should have sought international support for an invasion of Iraq in 1987.

Worth reading:

<a href='http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/kurds/battle.html' target='_blank'>http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/kurds/battle.html</a>

The U.S. Senate passed a resolution that would have imposed tough sanctions against Iraq for killing Kurds. The Reagan administration threatened a veto, and it died.

Schadenfreude Wrote:

OUGwave Wrote:Look, maybe you didn't read my post carefully enough...

...I've detailed Saddam's efforts to ethnically cleanse the north. Research the "Arabisation Program" of the 1980's (200,000 Kurds 'disappeared', 4 million forced out of their homes as refugees) and in particular the al-Anfal campaign of 1987, which responsible for the slaughter of 100,000 Kurds. Start with this link: <a href='http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/iraq/border/20030308-9999_1n8cleansing.html' target='_blank'>Arabisation Program</a>

Then perhaps we should have sought international support for an invasion of Iraq in 1987.

Worth reading:

<a href='http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/kurds/battle.html' target='_blank'>http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/kurds/battle.html</a>

The U.S. Senate passed a resolution that would have imposed tough sanctions against Iraq for killing Kurds. The Reagan administration threatened a veto, and it died.

Then we agree. As I said, it is to our eternal shame that we did not act sooner. We would have saved countless lives. Interestingly, do you know when Paul Wolfowitz first started campaigning for active confrontation with Saddam? During the Carter administration, when he was a DoD staffer (then, a Democrat).

Not everyone is a late-comer to this idea of confronting Saddam. You seem to believe Im some conservative shill, that I need to defend everything the U.S. has ever done or will ever do in order to argue in favor of this invasion. I don't, and I won't. Nor do I need to defend the way in which Bush decided to go to war, what his public rationale was, or what he is doing now.

My position in support of the idea of invading Iraq, and the justification for it, is my own and stands completely independent from those incompetents that staff the Bush administration.

I just can't stand dodgy moral equivalencies. On the one hand you are comparing Saddam to Tunisia, and saying we have no justification to invade, and on the other hand you think you will get a pot shot in at me by conceding that Iraq was unique nightmare and that we should have done it sooner (and I have expressed my concurrence on that thought many times). Your attacks come from both sides. You should take a stand and stick to it, regardless of party politics.

HuskieDan Wrote:

OUGwave Wrote:

Schadenfreude Wrote:

OUGwave Wrote:That you could put a moderate and relatively democratic country like Tunisia in the same breath as Saddam's Iraq proves your ignorance on such matters.

Actually, it shows I just quoted a list from Freedom House, which I assume has a bit more expertise on this kind of thing than I do.

Quote:I don't need to support all interventions everywhere to support the idea of freedom in Iraq.

You don't.

But following the Bush administration's logic on Iraq, any nation could invade a less free nation on the pretext that it is doing so to promote freedom. For instance, India, a functioning democracy, could invade Pakistan, a military dictatorship, without any pretense of a threat to national ecurity.

That's the (lack of a) legal standard the United States used in justifying its invation of Iraq.

Look, maybe you didn't read my post carefully enough.


Democracies will always come in varying shades. Hence the Freedom House rankings you provide. Freedom House ranks the political freedoms of various countries, in a civil liberties sense. Now, this is important. But when you are talking about the wholesale effort to genocide a people, Freedom House's metrics are not very informative.

As I've said my last three posts, Iraq is different. Its off the scale because Saddam murdered 1 million people.

India and Pakistan enjoy relatively similar levels of freedom, believe it or not. The only difference is that Pakistan does not have an elected President. Both have elected parliaments. Voter fraud and intimidation is present in both countries. While Musharraf is not elected, its foolish to compare him to Saddam. He ousted an elected President, Nawaz Sharif, that was the most corrupt in the nation's history. His authority has been legitimized by two plebiscites that while not exactly free and fair, measure up well in comparison with other elections in the region, including India.

To compare either situation to Iraq, is, as I've said, extremely superficial. There's a difference between having an illiberal democracy, to borrow a term from Fareed Zakaria, and the wholesale murder of the citizenry. I've detailed Saddam's efforts to ethnically cleanse the north. Research the "Arabisation Program" of the 1980's (200,000 Kurds 'disappeared', 4 million forced out of their homes as refugees) and in particular the al-Anfal campaign of 1987, which responsible for the slaughter of 100,000 Kurds. Start with this link: <a href='http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/iraq/border/20030308-9999_1n8cleansing.html' target='_blank'>Arabisation Program</a>

That is just a fraction of the suffering this man has wrought. To compare him to Musharraf is to descend into the absence of meaning.

But see, now you're getting to my point. Why were we told we were going to war? It had nothing to do with how many of his own people that Saddam killed. So why not just say that's why we were going to war? Why would the rest of the world not be behind us in eliminating such a bastard? What kind of precedent do we have for eliminating similar bastards without that bastard occupying another country?

All good points.

And as I stated above, I have niether the need nor the desire to defend the administration's Iraq policy, including the grounds on which they built their case, the manner in which they have conducted the occupation, their preparedness for battle, or there responses to developing events.

All I am trying to say is that I am WELL justified in supporting the war. My logic and viewpoint stands on its own. I need not be some shill for Bush (I'm certainly not) in order to defend the justification for war.

In fact, as a supporter of the war, it is for all the problems you point out (with particular emphasis on what will now happen to the credibility of US intelligence claims), that I cannot endorse the President's re-election. That said, this was a worthwhile cause, notwithstanding how the Bush admin. has handled it.

And we should all be pulling for success now.

"All I am trying to say is that I am WELL justified in supporting the war. My logic and viewpoint stands on its own. I need not be some shill for Bush (I'm certainly not) in order to defend the justification for war."

Would you mind enumerating those justifications again? I'm kinda dumb (ask RebelKev) so you just have to go slow for me. I mean, between all the equivocating blather and self-righteous one-upmanship, I may have missed your points. Please forgive me.

So, again, if you're not a shill for Corporate America/Bush Cabal, then you're a reasonable American who finds it necessary to police the world?