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Sunday, February 17, 2008 12:00 AM

The fun and excitement of civilization wars (fought from afar)

Believing that one is waging paramount war against the most evil enemy ever is a garden-variety psychological need, not a political or ideological conviction.

The letters thread is now closed.

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Tuesday, February 19, 2008 07:40 AM

The problem is...

There will be another terrorist attack on US soil - what will happen then? With us so primed, will there be any boundaries to what these people will say or do when that happens? Will the public's jadedness hold, or will we be willing to go down some really dark hole that makes our current predicament seem minor.

It's a scary thought.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008 07:44 AM

A plague on both your anonymi

This is fun. One anonymous refuses to employ the gifts God gave him; pretends to doubt where none exists. The other presents himself as Mort Sahl in the grip of Nasruddin. I prefer the latter, of course, but must protest that I'm neither a dualist nor a proctologist. I'm a liberal warmonger, as everyone here knows.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008 07:49 AM

Che Pasa.

Portent?

Important!

Albert E. said when the bee colony is sick the planet will soon be dead.

I'm now off of here to see the mule veturdnarian and the plumber psychologist.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008 07:55 AM

point taken.

Your interpretation of a piece may vary greatly from someone else's interpretation.

I can't disagree with you there. You have one interpretation, Greenwald has another, never the twain shall meet, and de gustibus non est disputandum.

Was there anything else, or can you take your petard and go now?

Tuesday, February 19, 2008 07:59 AM

Thanks Glenn.

Thanks for the gestalt, GG. Some of your best pieces are those in which you take a garden variety rant from some Serious Pundit, take a deep breath, and parse it for the rest of us. Translating Steyn's "9/11 is fading from memory" into "thank God there are selfless people like me who are strong enough to keep vigilant, when do we attack Iran" is brilliant.

Where do these guys see any link between, on the one hand, twenty very dangerous individuals with box cutters and an ideology driven by a couple dozen zealots in caves, utterly devoid of an army, air force, navy, or ballistic anything and, on the other hand, a perceived need to invade foreign countries, occupy them for years, and "draw fire" over there while stripping the treasury and eviscerating the Constitution? Is it because as long as our soldiers are shooting at somebody, at least "we" (as a country, certainly not personally) are doing something manly?

We aren't at "war", "war" must be declared by Congress and it is only in that event that any of the President's "war powers" are even arguably present. We are at "war on terror" the same way we have been at "war on poverty" or "war on drugs" -- who will suggest that suspension of the Fourth Amendment was permissible in support of the War on Drugs? The Nazis were "bad" and that was a war declared by Congress, did the President have the authority to torture them?

GG's exposition of Steyn's absurd self-congratulation over his own irrational fears lays bare the scope of the self-deception underlying the neocon philosophy. To meet the very real, and very dangerous, challenges presented by the Islamic terrorist threat, we would need to be diligent at a level that just isn't sexy and manly enough for these guys: things like examining incoming cargo become relevant, but that just doesn't present all that many heroic opportunities. Better to invade the Middle East or, as Jonah Goldberg/Michal Ledeen have put it: "Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business."

Respect and enforce the Constitution. Impeach Bush. No FISA telecom immunity. No Torture. Restore habeas corpus. Be America, sheesh!

Tuesday, February 19, 2008 08:01 AM

Paging Adnoto! Paging Adnoto!

Report to the rEVOLution War room, stat! It is time to make war on the cabal of warmongers (led by William Timberman and LWM!

>-[ rEVOLution War Meeting NOW!!]-<

Posted February 6th, 2008 by Here is Your Sign

5 days prior to today... no coverage. 4 days prior to today... no coverage. 3 days prior to today... no coverage. 2 days prior to today... no coverage, and TODAY? No coverage!!

Ron Paul is not even listed on some states' ballots!!

We've been silenced too long, and we'll be silent no more. We need highly cognitive people responding here with highly logical solutions to the problem at hand. Consider this an official launch of an exploratory committee to counteract these acts of war against the American people.

We shall remain as Dr. Paul asks, peaceful. However, we do need to show no mercy, fear, and shall above all... STAY THE COURSE... feed them their own medicine.

All means necessary should be considered... electronic, psychological, economic, defamation of character... any and all viable options that can be instituted immediately and effectively. Canvass? Delegates? Yeah we need that, too. But for now... we prepare for battle... this is what they've wanted.

They have no dirt on the good Dr. They want us to get pissed off to the point they can say "See... they're all crazies." HA! They haven't begun to SEE crazy.

Give us what you got and lets have the input. We need to be clean, thorough, and SANE... and yet oh so effective.

PATRIOTS... ASSEMBLE!!

http://www.dailypaul.com/node/34207

Tuesday, February 19, 2008 08:01 AM

British Iraq Dossier

"An early version of a British dossier of prewar intelligence on Iraq did not include a claim about unconventional weapons that became crucial to Prime Minister Tony Blair's case for war, the newly published document showed Monday.

"The document, from 2002, says Saddam Hussein's government acquired uranium and had equipment necessary for chemical weapons, but it does not include a claim that Iraq could launch chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes of an order to use them. That statement, later discredited, became central to Mr. Blair's case for supporting the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

"Critics of his policy contend that the 45-minute claim was inserted into later drafts of the document on the orders of Mr. Blair's press advisers, who were seeking to strengthen the case for invasion - an accusation that government has strongly denied."

[ ... ]

(Edward Davey, an opposition Liberal Democratic lawmaker, said Monday) ... "A press official should never have been drafting a document that ended up being used as the justification for going to war. There has to be a clear distinction between those that offer impartial intelligence advice and the government's spin machine."

---The Associated Press, via The New York Times, 2/29/08

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