[m21sniper]

Originally posted by fastpat
I would hope not, but these sleaze bags have been around a long time, and won't be snuffed out by one gigantic failure. They're already in advance CYA mode, shifting the blame where they can, and denying that they favored an invasion despite their positions being in print. You might find this article in The American Conservative interesting.

"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."
~Thomas Jefferson.

No, but I can state categorically that nearly everything written in the National Review, The Weekly Standard, and put out by "The Project for the New American Century" to be so. All neocon outlets, with the appearance of having been funded by AIPAC.

I won't deny that those publications are 'ultra conservative' mouthpieces. But the truth is all political groups have their own mouthpieces. Freedom of speech has to apply to everyone regardless of their message, or it's just another illusion.

That's my opinion.

Almost all of those rights access have disappeared as a result of government warfare. The US government has done this over and over again, it's a pattern that's easily discernable if you stand at the near end of the 20th century and look back to 1898. H. L. Mencken said it best, "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. " and "The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable." You can read more of his statements here.

I know of one guy that would've certainly agreed:

"Those who can make you believe absurdities
can make you commit atrocities."
~Voltaire

In large part, selling a war is selling an absurdity, as war itself is the ultimate absurdity known to man. Once you get the people onboard for a cause, you can get them to agree to almost anything that "sounded reasonable at the time."

Again, it's the law of unintended consequences in action. We do not intend to enslave ourselves, but our own shortsighted quest for absolute security(a non-existent condition anywhere on this earth) leads us to do very, very stupid things. Like giving our leaders powers that quite frankly, they just should not have.

"In order
My position isn't that the Iraqi's shouldn't have a break from Hussein and lead as good a life as I've had, my position is that there is no amount of treasure and blood that can give that to them, they must get it for themselves if they want it. It's not clear to me that they do."

They ultimately may or may not want their freedom. But to me giving a man a chance at it is one of the most noble causes i can imagine, even if it is a totally unintentional byproduct of some other agenda.

The laws of unintended consequences(yep, those again) can produce a good result every once in a while. The truth is, we will not even know if Iraq was "worth it" for a very long time. I suspect that in the LONG term, it will have been very much worth it, but only time will tell.

For my part i think the reasoning for war as put forth was just, and the base thinking sound, the implementation however has been akin to handing a four year old a gallon container of gas with no lid and a lighter.(or invading a country without having even 10% of the required interpreters...like we did in Iraq). It also did not help that we had probably the second worst wartime SecDef in US history in charge, or that our intel turned out to be pretty lame(mainly because Saddam sold his deliberate disinformation campaign so well.)

If you have not read Cobra II yet, you really should. And Fiasco too.

We can do this. We must make the US government small enough that it's again afraid of us, fearful of an overseas military adventure, and completely subservient to America and Americans.

The gov't rarely willingly relinquishes power unless it is in it's best short term interests to do so(like to win an election). Short of that, i've already offered my opinion on what it would take to roll the gov't back to pre New Deal proportions. Personally, i think those days are gone forever.

The most dangerous, in fact the only real enemy of America and Americans, is the US government itself. Compared to that, everything else is no more bothersome than a gnat buzzing about your head. [/B]

The US gov't is in many ways a very real threat to the freedom of the American people, but i feel you are making a HUGE mistake by dismissing the threat posed by the Islamists.

My own worst case(realistic) scenario:

The Islamists want a Sharia ruled world, and they have time, motivation, and demographics on their side. Short of WWII like "Total warfare"(an absolute political impossibility short of a major WMD attack on a western city), i doubt we can even defeat them at all.
One by one they will establish a majority in western nation after western nation, and inherit intact entire functional nuclear arsenals as they vote(or shoot) themselves into power. It's already happened in more than a few places. Somalia being the most recent.

Demographics are a cold hard biitch my friends. The US is projected to be a latino majority in about 25-30 years, but not Europe. Low native European birthrates combined with an aging native population, muslim conversions/immigration, emmigration(white flight), and high muslim birth rates pretty much signals where this "clash of civilizations" is headed if left unchecked.

Of course you can hardly even discuss these things without being labelled some kind of paranoid racist by the PC crowd, but the numbers are what they are, and they aint good.

The problem with this gov't and all democracies, is that our election cycles emphasize short term tactical thinking over long term strategic planning.

As any half-assed chess player will tell you, that is a recipe for disaster.