He's just an old fashioned imperialist. Not even willing to pay lip-service to self-determination, he understands that the world simply belongs to whoever is willing to apply sufficient explosive ordinance to it.

Not only is his world-view morally bankrupt but he's also a complete jerk in normal conversation.

because you don't really care about it except for how the outcome helps you to villify George Bush.

You're arguments would be significantly more persuasive if you weren't a habitual liar. The community you have entered is made up a diverse group drawn together by their interest in preserving the rule of law and the Contitution in the face of a systematic assault upon it.

You, on the other hand appear to have little but name-calling to use in defense of your interpretations of history. You are failing to persuade anyone here of anything except your owm malicious nature.

I'm feeling this strange compulsion to start rereading my Robert Anton Wilson collection.

I wonder why?

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

We'd all be more thouroughly impressed with your vast knowlege of the scope of history if we had a particular reason to believe a single word you say.

Again, your moral emptiness pretty much makes any historical knowlege you may possess irrelevant.

a demented view of your government and countrymen

Independent of another commenters word choice, there is nevertheless a demented view that might be worth discussing.

It's called American exceptionalism, and it refers to the act of shifting moral judgements based on the identity of the actors. One needn't be "demented" in order to perceive that from the Iraqi point of view, American soldiers are unwelcome and dangerous. One needn't be demented in order to note that the rules that were written in the aftermath of WWII and which form the basis for the existence of the UN (written in large part by the US) outlaws wars of aggression and that in the absense of a direct threat from Iraq, the US is in violation of the same rules it authored.

What is demented is the idea, that torture and sexual abuse are acceptable or forgivable if carried out bt "Americans" against "terrorists" if only because a terrorist once made a video of a beheading.

Once you take off the blinders that make everthing we do automatically OK, you will suddenly see that we have a lot to answer for, and calling blog commenters names isn't going to make that culpability go away.

That would be ignoring the fact that I just dissented.

I'll note that you directed your comment at an individual and thus weren't taking the same tack as your anonymous buddy, but the idea that anybody who opposes the current occupation of Iraq doesn't support our fellow countryman who are there, is not only a nasty lie, but it reveals the same kind of muddy thinking that enables the President to ignore OBL while occupying Iraq because to you "They're all the same"

Note how anonymous has taken a single comment from a single poster and pretended that he can draw a conlclusion about everyone here on the board as a result.

This, not to put to fine a point on it, makes him a lying hack.

is completely ignoring the fact that the funds for occupying Iraq are passed as emergency measures and aren't even part of the defense budget.

That's without even mentioning that the idea that the cost of our defense ought to be proportional to the size of our economy takes one out of fantasyland and puts them squarely in stupidville.

"Reducing defense spending" has become as much of a bipartisan, toxic position as "increasing taxes." They both can only go in one direction.

It's amazing how much evil and stupidity can be contained and explained in a single simple sentence.

As long as our Democratic process include plenty of "Not In MY Backyard" thinking and the inevitable desire among all humans to get without giving, we're going to be stuck in this quandary.

The political poison associated with raising taxes or reducing military spending is a problem that won't be addressed any time soon, but the amount of waste and misapproriated spending (and here I'm thinking to about our severe overreliance on air power and expensive toys rather than boots) can be addressed even in this environment. Here, on the other hand, is where the entrenched corporate interests rear their ugly heads and affect the debate in ways that only feed their own voraceous appetites.

This is why I think attacking obviously hack press coverage and encouraging people to think about the negative affects of media consolidation is the Achilles heel than can slowly help us get out of this mess.

Egads....

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/01/01/pakistan.voterigging/

I'm of course wondering how the few remaining BushBots will be spinning this one.

I can already hear them claiming that Specter and Kennedy are traitors to the glorious cause by consorting with the enemy.....

Sorry.... I stand corrected.

I still get frustrated when people who can and should know better nevertheless say things theyu don't believe because they think it will "play in Peoria"

Its not the first time I've seen ignorance being held up as a virtue.