[Rhodes22-list] stirring the hornet's nest.... (political)

Wed Nov 16 06:01:08 EST 2005

Wally, Rummy, et al,

What the hell, our Gulfport attorney won't be in her
office for another hour so why not entertain myself
with this?

Rummy, you accuse me of chest thumping and then go on
to beat your own.  I can hear it all the way to
Tennessee.  Read the rest of your post and get back to
me on that issue.  Re-read my disclaimer on Buchanan. 
He is not one of my favorites but that doesn't mean he
isn't dead on from time to time.  I quote the
Clinton's when they are correct on issues, my personal
distaste for Billy which dates back to long before he
was President notwithstanting.  Argue the message, not
the messenger.  I couldn't agree more on the fiscal
responsibility issues and that is why Bush is in such
trouble with some elements of GOP - like me.

Wally, I thought I made it clear that I was pressed
for time and didn't want to engage in a point for
point debate with Slim, but this shouldn't take long.

"First the tyranny of Saddam. This is no reason to
invade a sovereign state.The US has ignored or even
supported so many tyrants I can't count 'em.  But just
to name a few, Pinochet, The Shaw of Iran, Kim Jong
Ill, even Saddam himself was armed by the US.  So we
say, "He's abusing his own citizens so we better go in
there and take him down."  Not only is this bad
foreign
policy, but it's bullshit policy because we don't
really care.  We didn't care about the Shaw's death
squads or Pinochet's.  Why now Saddam?  The whole
tyrant argument holds no water at all."

That's a pretty cynical view Slim.  We supported
Stalin when he was of use to us, and paid a heavy
price.  Past mistakes do not doom us to future
inaction. Are you implying that because we were
previously on the wrong side of history we are damned
to tolerate every despot?

"The same goes for the argument about spreading
freedom and democracy. What a load of crap!  Don't
tell me that our government actually give a rat's ass
about an Iraqi democracy.  No, I'm not saying
democracy itself is crap, but why would we care about
Iraq when we don't care about the dozens of 
other non-democratic countries?  Why Iraq?  Why not
invade Cuba?  Isn't Fidel a tyrant?  Why not North
Korea?  We know Kim Jong Ill is a tyrant.  This is bad
foreign policy."

It is no secret that we have ignored a lot of tyrants
in the Mid-East because THEY HAVE OIL!  Our "friends"
the Saudi's are perhaps the worst of the lot.  The
leaders of these nations have focussed the attention
of their citizens on hating the US for their miserable
conditions instead of their own leaders.  The
democratic process in Iraq has all ready spilled over
into other countries in the region.  Do you have a
better idea?  A billion Muslims constitute a large
population to ignore.  Are they a threat under their
current leaders?  Uh, yes.  Can we force them to
change?  No, that has to come from within, and it is. 
Kim Jong III?  We have China to help handle that. 
Fidel?  A lot of Cubans in Miami would love to invade
Cuba.  Bay of Pigs ring a bell?  He was a threat then,
not now unless you consider cornering the market on
57' Chevys a threat.

"I agreed with Mike Abdullah when he stated we had no
business in Kuwait in the first place.  We shouldn't
be fighting other countries' border battles. As Mike
said, What was Saddam going to do with his oil?  Drink
it?  He was selling it on the open market and black
market just like every other Arab state.  That was bad
foreign policy."

Gee Slim, that sounds familiar.  Poland, Austria,
Hungary, Czechoslovakia, etc., "peace in our time",
yada, yada, yada.  Remember what Santayana wrote about
repeating history.  What did he do with his oil?  Buy
weapons from the French, Germans and Russians?

"But whatever, then we had Saddam completely contained
with the 
no-fly-zone and the sanctions.  He was no threat to
us.  Perhaps he was a "threat" to Israel, but why go
to war with someone you've already beaten?  This is
bad foreign policy."

Actually Slim, Saddam used to shoot at us in the no
fly zone.  I'd be happy to introduce you to some of my
co-workers who can vouch for that.  Perhaps he was a
threat to Israel?  Does paying $25,000 to families
that provide suicide bombers in Israel constitute a
threat?

"Did we need to go in and hunt for WMD?  Do we need to
go into ANY country hunting for WMD?  Again, why not
North Korea?  This is bad foreign policy."

Read above about China and North Korea.

"Did we need to go into Iraq to control the oil?  No. 
What have oil prices done since then?  The exact same
thing they would have done had we not gone to war. 
They've gone up.  Happy now?"

You are correct, oil prices are a function of supply
and demand and geological limits.  We did not go to
war directly over oil but if it wasn't for oil, Sadamm
would be just another piss-ant dictator that we could
ignore, like most of Africa.  

"Did we need to go into Iraq as a response to 9/11? 
This is asinine foreign policy.  Everyone knows Saddam
had nothing to do with that."

It was the official policy of the Clinton
administration to take out Saddam.  Aside from one or
two missles up some donkey's ass around the
impeachment hearings, it was all talk and no action. 
9/11 raised the awareness level of the threat and
provided a convenient selling point.

"Thousands are now dead or wounded so Halliburton
could make a windfall. Folks, the definition of
Fascism is when government is in bed with
business.THIS IS VERY BAD FOREIGN POLICY!"

Sorry Slim, that statement is not worthy of a
response.

"Our government is despised by nearly every soul
outside our borders.  And over half those inside!  Do
polls dictate our policy?  I think not. Although I
noticed the Indonesians' attitude towards us perked up
a bit after all the tsunami relief money that poured
in.  But even our low-key, happy neighbors to the
north hate Bush.  The joke going around Canada is
that all you have to do to get elected is to be
anti-Bush.  I won't go into how mein furor is screwing
Canada on the softwoods issue.  I'll leave that for
another thread.  But we buy lots and lots of oil from
Canada so we ought to be nice to her.  Guess who else
wants Canadian oil?  China.  And lots and lots of it. 
Maybe we should invade Canada.  Yeah, that's the
ticket, 
eh!"

News flash!  We've been despised outside our borders
long before W came into power.  Do polls dictate our
policy?  NO!  Does being liked by everyone dictate our
policy?  NO.  Tojo and Adolf didn't like us either.

"It's beyond me how anyone can favor this war for any
reason."

A lot of people feel as you do Slim, including a huge
part of the moderate element of the GOP.  So what do
you suggest, cut and run?  We tried that.  I believe
John Kerry said a few thousand would be killed when we
pulled out of Vietnam.  He was off by a few million. 
To allow Iraq to fall into civil war would doom any
chance of the Middle East ever progressing beyond
dictatorships and tyrants. Why do we care?  Israel for
one, then there's the OIL!

Any one pissed off yet?  THUMP, THUMP, THUMP!

Gotta take care of business, see ya!

Brad

> Brad,
> 
> Your post doesn't really answer any of Slim's
> points. As you know I have 
> been against this was from day one. It doesn't
> matter what side led us into 
> the mess.
> 
> Wally
> 
> 
> >From: brad haslett <flybrad at yahoo.com>
> >Reply-To: The Rhodes 22 mail list
> <rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org>
> >To: The Rhodes 22 mail list
> <rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org>
> >Subject: Re: [Rhodes22-list] stirring the hornet's
> nest.... (political)
> >Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 03:15:59 -0800 (PST)
> >
> >Slim,
> >
> >Forgive me, I lied.  It is only 5am and I do have
> time
> >for one more post.  This is something I ran across
> >reading the morning papers.  Buchanan is not a
> >favorite of mine but sometimes he "gets it". 
> Enjoy.
> >
> >Brad
> >
> >--------------
> >November 16, 2005
> >The Politics of War and the Patriot Card
> >By Pat Buchanan
> >
> >Since the indictment of Scooter Libby, President
> Bush
> >and Vice President Cheney have been under
> relentless
> >assault.
> >
> >The gravamen of the charge is that Bush, Cheney and
> >the War Party cherry-picked and hyped the
> intelligence
> >on Iraqi WMDs and Saddam's ties to al-Qaida and
> 9-11,
> >and spoke of mushroom clouds over U.S. cities based
> on
> >flimsy evidence and forged documents that Saddam
> had
> >reconstituted his nuclear weapons program.
> >
> >Echoed by anti-Bush media that can smell blood in
> the
> >water, the Democratic Party is charging that Bush
> >misled, deceived or lied us into war. With polls
> >showing 57 percent of the nation no longer believes
> >Bush to be honest and truthful, the unanswered
> charges
> >have had a devastating impact.
> >
> >But Bush has a last card to play, and on Veterans
> Day,
> >he played it, the ace of trumps in any president's
> >hand: the patriot card.
> >
> >Speaking in Pennsylvania to the troops, Bush said
> that
> >pro-war Democrats like John Kerry saw the same
> >intelligence he did and voted to take Saddam down,
> and
> >that Democrats now accusing him of faking
> intelligence
> >are undercutting our fighting troops in Iraq.
> >
> >Translation: Democrats are giving aid and comfort
> to
> >the enemy in time of war. We are one step away form
> >the T-word.
> >
> >With his poll ratings at rock bottom and little to
> >lose, Bush has just escalated the war politics.
> >Democrats who have had it all their way since Cindy
> >Sheehan set up Camp Casey would do well to wonder
> >whether they have not ridden out a little too far
> into
> >Indian country and are heading for the Little Big
> Horn
> >where their daddies disappeared long ago.
> >
> >In the late 1940s, the Party of Truman and FDR was
> >shredded by Nixon, Bill Jenner and Joe McCarthy for
> >having sold out Eastern Europe at Yalta, lost
> China,
> >and coddled communists and Stalinist spies like
> Alger
> >Hiss and Harry Dexter White. And there was a reason
> >the attacks stuck. They had the ancillary benefit
> of
> >being true.
> >
> >The media may have rewritten history to make the
> >Edward R. Murrow Left look like the heroes of the
> era,
> >but the Democratic Party never recovered from the
> >charge its leaders had groveled to Stalin. JFK knew
> >it, and ran and won the presidency as an
> >anti-communist hawk.
> >
> >A generation later, Nixon and Agnew charged the
> >Democratic Party with having marched us into
> Vietnam
> >and then, when the going got tough, of having
> turned
> >tail, cut and run, and gone over the hill to march
> >with the children against the war into which they
> had
> >themselves led the United States. Those charges
> stuck
> >for the same reason: They were true.
> >
> >Between 1961 and 1969, when America was plunged
> into
> >Vietnam, Washington was Democratic, from the White
> >House to the Capitol to the pro-war Washington
> Post.
> >When Nixon arrived in 1969, Democrats started
> calling
> >it "Nixon's War," but the country knew it was a
> >Democratic war. And when the liberals turned on
> Nixon,
> >America turned on them and gave him a 49-state
> >landslide. Vietnam was the wheel on which
> liberalism
> >was broken and the FDR New Deal coalition shattered
> >forever.
> >
> >Now, Democrats have maneuvered themselves onto the
> >same risky terrain once again.
> >
> >Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice took us to war, but
> >Democrats were the happiest of camp followers. And
> >everybody knows it. Daschle, Kerry, Edwards, Biden,
> >Clinton and Schumer all declared Saddam a threat to
> >the Middle East and the United States. All voted in
> >October 2002 to give Bush his blank check to take
> us
> >to war. Now that the war is dragging on toward its
> >fourth year, now that footage of young men trying
> to
> >walk with artificial limbs is on nightly TV, now
> that
> >the morning papers report three or four more
> American
> >dead every day, they are trying to say they were
> >misled, they were deceived, they were lied to. It's
> >not our fault!
> >
> >But the truth is they failed America. They handed
> to
> >Bush the war power the Constitution had given to
> them.
> >Having enlisted enthusiastically in a "cakewalk"
> war,
> >national Democrats and Big Media are deserting and
> >applying for conscientious objector status in what
> now
> >appears an endless war.
> >
> >Sorry, it is too late for that.
> >
> >What Bush was saying in Pennsylvania is this: You
> may
> >accuse me of falsifying intelligence, but you are
> >falsifying history. And you will not get away with
> it.
> >I am going to fight it out on this line, even if it
> >costs me my presidency. But if I am going down, you
> >are going down with me.
> >
> >If Iraq is lost to chaos and civil war, and this is
> a
> >historic defeat and strategic disaster for the
> United
> >States, Bush is saying, I will charge you with
> cutting
> >and running, abandoning our troops under fire and
> >losing the Iraq war. No wonder Bill and Hillary
> seem
> >wary of throwing in with the Cindy Sheehan crowd.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >--- Slim <salm at mn.rr.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Never mind the spin or the rhetoric, forget
> about
> > > so-called intelligence,
> > > never mind your own left or right stripes.  What
> 
=== message truncated ===

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