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Joined: Nov 2000
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JQ
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Joined: Nov 2000
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I found this while surfing the internet. I thought it made sense. I'd like to know what you guys think of it.

__________________________

"
IT’S NOT ABOUT OIL OR IRAQ. IT’S ABOUT THE US AND EUROPE GOING
HEAD-TO-HEAD ON WORLD ECONOMIC DOMINANCE.
By Geoffrey Heard
Melbourne, Australia

Summary: Why is George Bush so hell bent on war with Iraq? Why does his
administration reject every positive Iraqi move? It all makes sense when
you consider the economic implications for the USA of not going to war
with Iraq. The war in Iraq is actually the US and Europe going head to
head on economic leadership of the world.

America’s Bush administration has been caught in outright lies, gross
exaggerations and incredible inaccuracies as it trotted out its litany
of paper thin excuses for making war on Iraq. Along with its two
supporters, Britain and Australia, it has shifted its ground and
reversed its position with a barefaced contempt for its audience. It has
manipulated information, deceived by commission and omission and
frantically “bought” UN votes with billion dollar bribes.

Faced with the failure of gaining UN Security Council support for
invading Iraq, the USA has threatened to invade without authorisation.
It would act in breach of the UN’s very constitution to allegedly
enforced UN resolutions.

It is plain bizarre. Where does this desperation for war come from?

There are many things driving President Bush and his administration to
invade Iraq, unseat Saddam Hussein and take over the country. But the
biggest one is hidden and very, very simple. It is about the currency
used to trade oil and consequently, who will dominate the world
economically, in the foreseeable future—the USA or the European Union.

Iraq is a European Union beachhead in that confrontation. America had a
monopoly on the oil trade, with the US dollar being the fiat currency,
but Iraq broke ranks in 1999, started to trade oil in the EU’s euros,
and profited. If America invades Iraq and takes over, it will hurl the
EU and its euro back into the sea and make America’s position as the
dominant economic power in the world all but impregnable.

It is the biggest grab for world power in modern times.

America’s allies in the invasion, Britain and Australia, are betting
America will win and that they will get some trickle-down benefits for
jumping on to the US bandwagon.

France and Germany are the spearhead of the European force—Russia would
like to go European but possibly can still be bought off.

Presumably, China would like to see the Europeans build a share of
international trade currency ownership at this point while it continues
to grow its international trading presence to the point where it, too,
can share the leadership rewards.

DEBATE BUILDING ON THE INTERNET

Oddly, little or nothing is appearing in the general media about this
issue, although key people are becoming aware of it—note the recent
slide in the value of the US dollar. Are traders afraid of war? They are
more likely to be afraid there will not be war.

But despite the silence in the general media, a major world discussion
is developing around this issue, particularly on the internet. Among the
many articles: Henry Liu, in the ‘Asia Times’ last June, it has been a
hot topic on the Feasta forum, an Irish-based group exploring
sustainable economics, and W. Clark’s ”The Real Reasons for the Upcoming
War with Iraq: A Macroeconomic and Geostrategic Analysis of the Unspoken
Truth” has been published by the ‘Sierra Times’, ‘Indymedia.org’, and
‘ratical.org’.

This debate is not about whether America would suffer from losing the US
dollar monopoly on oil trading—that is a given—rather it is about
exactly how hard the USA would be hit. The smart money seems to be
saying the impact would be in the range from severe to catastrophic. The
USA could collapse economically.

OIL DOLLARS

The key to it all is the fiat currency for trading oil.

Under an OPEC agreement, all oil has been traded in US dollars since
1971 (after the dropping of the gold standard) which makes the US dollar
the de facto major international trading currency. If other nations have
to hoard dollars to buy oil, then they want to use that hoard for other
trading too. This fact gives America a huge trading advantage and helps
make it the dominant economy in the world.

As an economic bloc, the European Union is the only challenger to the
USA’s economic position, and it created the euro to challenge the dollar
in international markets. However, the EU is not yet united behind the
euro—there is a lot of jingoistic national politics involved, not least
in Britain—and in any case, so long as nations throughout the world must
hoard dollars to buy oil, the euro can make only very limited inroads
into the dollar’s dominance.

In 1999, Iraq, with the world’s second largest oil reserves, switched to
trading its oil in euros. American analysts fell about laughing; Iraq
had just made a mistake that was going to beggar the nation. But two
years on, alarm bells were sounding; the euro was rising against the
dollar, Iraq had given itself a huge economic free kick by switching.

Iran started thinking about switching too; Venezuela, the 4th largest
oil producer, began looking at it and has been cutting out the dollar by
bartering oil with several nations including America’s bete noir, Cuba.
Russia is seeking to ramp up oil production with Europe (trading in
euros) an obvious market.

The greenback’s grip on oil trading and consequently on world trade in
general, was under serious threat. If America did not stamp on this
immediately, this economic brushfire could rapidly be fanned into a
wildfire capable of consuming the US’s economy and its dominance of
world trade.

HOW DOES THE US GET ITS DOLLAR ADVANTAGE?

Imagine this: you are deep in debt but every day you write cheques for
millions of dollars you don’t have—another luxury car, a holiday home at
the beach, the world trip of a lifetime.

Your cheques should be worthless but they keep buying stuff because
those cheques you write never reach the bank! You have an agreement with
the owners of one thing everyone wants, call it petrol/gas, that they
will accept only your cheques as payment. This means everyone must hoard
your cheques so they can buy petrol/gas. Since they have to keep a stock
of your cheques, they use them to buy other stuff too. You write a
cheque to buy a TV, the TV shop owner swaps your cheque for petrol/gas,
that seller buys some vegetables at the fruit shop, the fruiterer passes
it on to buy bread, the baker buys some flour with it, and on it goes,
round and round—but never back to the bank.

You have a debt on your books, but so long as your cheque never reaches
the bank, you don’t have to pay. In effect, you have received your TV
free.

This is the position the USA has enjoyed for 30 years—it has been
getting a free world trade ride for all that time. It has been receiving
a huge subsidy from everyone else in the world. As it debt has been
growing, it has printed more money (written more cheques) to keep
trading. No wonder it is an economic powerhouse!

Then one day, one petrol seller says he is going to accept another
person’s cheques, a couple of others think that might be a good idea. If
this spreads, people are going to stop hoarding your cheques and they
will come flying home to the bank. Since you don’t have enough in the
bank to cover all the cheques, very nasty stuff is going to hit the fan!

But you are big, tough and very aggressive. You don’t scare the other
guy who can write cheques, he’s pretty big too, but given a ’legitimate’
excuse, you can beat the tripes out of the lone gas seller and scare him
and his mates into submission.

And that, in a nutshell, is what the USA is doing right now with Iraq.

AMERICA’S PRECARIOUS ECONOMIC POSITION

America is so eager to attack Iraq now because of the speed with which
the euro fire could spread. If Iran, Venezuela and Russia join Iraq and
sell large quantities of oil for euros, the euro would have the leverage
it needs to become a powerful force in general international trade.
Other nations would have to start swapping some of their dollars for
euros.

The dollars the USA has printed, the ‘cheques’ it has written, would
start to fly home, stripping away the illusion of value behind them. The
USA’s real economic condition is about as bad as it could be; it is the
most debt-ridden nation on earth, owing about US$12,000 for every single
one of it’s 280 million men, women and children. It is worse than the
position of Indonesia when it imploded economically a few years ago, or
more recently, that of Argentina.

Even if OPEC did not switch to euros wholesale (and that would make a
very nice non-oil profit for the OPEC countries, including minimizing
the various contrived debts America has forced on some of them), the
US’s difficulties would build. Even if only a small part of the oil
trade went euro, that would do two things immediately:

* Increase the attractiveness to EU members of joining the ‘eurozone’,
which in turn would make the euro stronger and make it more attractive
to oil nations as a trading currency and to other nations as a general
trading currency.

* Start the US dollars flying home demanding value when there isn’t
enough in the bank to cover them.

* The markets would over-react as usual and in no time, the US dollar’s
value would be spiralling down.

THE US SOLUTION

America’s response to the euro threat was predictable. It has come out
fighting.

It aims to achieve four primary things by going to war with Iraq:

* Safeguard the American economy by returning Iraq to trading oil in US
dollars, so the greenback is once again the exclusive oil currency.

* Send a very clear message to any other oil producers just what will
happen to them if they do not stay in the dollar circle. Iran has
already received one message—remember how puzzled you were that in the
midst of moderation and secularization, Iran was named as a member of
the axis of evil?

* Place the second largest reserves of oil in the world under direct
American control.

* Provide a secular, subject state where the US can maintain a huge
force (perhaps with nominal elements from allies such as Britain and
Australia) to dominate the Middle East and its vital oil. This would
enable the US to avoid using what it sees as the unreliable Turkey, the
politically impossible Israel and surely the next state in its sights,
Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of al Qaeda and a hotbed of anti-American
sentiment.

* Severe setback the European Union and its euro, the only trading bloc
and currency strong enough to attack the USA’s dominance of world trade
through the dollar.

* Provide cover for the US to run a covert operation to overturn the
democratically elected government of Venezuela and replace it with
anAmerica-friendly military supported junta—and put Venezuala’s oil into
American hands.

Locking the world back into dollar oil trading would consolidate
America’s current position and make it all but impregnable as the
dominant world power—economically and militarily. A splintered Europe
(the US is working hard to split Europe; Britain was easy, but other
Europeans have offered support in terms of UN votes) and its euro would
suffer a serious setback and might take decades to recover.

It is the boldest grab for absolute power the world has seen in modern
times. America is hardly likely to allow the possible slaughter of a few
hundred thousand Iraqis stand between it and world domination.

President Bush did promise to protect the American way of life. This is
what he meant.

JUSTIFYING WAR

Obviously, the US could not simply invade Iraq, so it began casting
around for a ‘legitimate’ reason to attack. That search has been one of
increasing desperation as each rationalization has crumbled. First Iraq
was a threat because of alleged links to al Qaeda; then it was proposed
Iraq might supply al Qaeda with weapons; then Iraq’s military threat to
its neighbours was raised; then the need to deliver Iraqis from Saddam
Hussein’s horrendously inhumane rule; finally there is the question of
compliance with UN weapons inspection.

The USA’s justifications for invading Iraq are looking less impressive
by the day. The US’s statements that it would invade Iraq unilaterally
without UN support and in defiance of the UN make a total nonsense of
any American claim that it is concerned about the world body’s strength
and standing.

The UN weapons inspectors have come up with minimal infringements of the
UN weapons limitations—the final one being low tech rockets which exceed
the range allowed by about 20 percent. But there is no sign of the
so-called weapons of mass destruction (WMD) the US has so confidently
asserted are to be found. Colin Powell named a certain north Iraqi
village as a threat. It was not. He later admitted it was the wrong
village.

’Newsweek’ (24/2) has reported that while Bush officials have been
trumpeting the fact that key Iraqi defector, Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel,
told the US in 1995 that Iraq had manufactured tonnes of nerve gas and
anthrax (Colin Powell’s 5 February presentation to the UN was just one
example) they neglected to mention that Kamel had also told the US that
these weapons had been destroyed.

Parts of the US and particularly the British secret ‘evidence’ have been
shown to come from a student’s masters thesis.

America’s expressed concern about the Iraqi people’s human rights and
the country’s lack of democracy are simply not supported by the USA’s
history of intervention in other states nor by its current actions.
Think Guatemala, the Congo, Chile and Nicaragua as examples of a much
larger pool of US actions to tear down legitimate, democratically
elected governments and replace them with war, disruption, starvation,
poverty, corruption, dictatorships, torture, rape and murder for its own
economic ends. The most recent, Afghanistan, is not looking good; in
fact that reinstalled a murderous group of warlords which America had
earlier installed, then deposed, in favour of the now hated Taliban.

Saddam Hussein was just as repressive, corrupt and murderous 15 years
ago when he used chemical weapons, supplied by the US, against the
Kurds. The current US Secretary for Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, so
vehement against Iraq now, was on hand personally to turn aside
condemnation of Iraq and blame Iran. At that time, of course, the US
thought Saddam Hussein was their man—they were using him against the
perceived threat of Iran’s Islamic fundamentalism.

Right now, as ‘The Independent’ writer, Robert Fisk, has noted, the US’s
efforts to buy Algeria’s UN vote includes promises of re-arming the
military which has a decade long history of repression, torture, rape
and murder Saddam Hussein himself would envy. It is estimated 200,000
people have died, and countless others been left maimed by the
activities of these monsters. What price the US’s humanitarian concerns
for Iraqis? (Of course, the French are also wooing Algeria, their former
north African territory, for all they are worth, but at least they are
not pretending to be driven by humanitarian concerns.)

Indonesia is another nation with a vote and influence as the largest
Muslim nation in the world. Its repressive, murderous military is
regaining strength on the back of the US’s so-called anti-terror
campaign and is receiving promises of open and covert support --
including intelligence sharing.

AND VENEZUELA

While the world’s attention is focused on Iraq, America is both openly
and covertly supporting the “coup of the rich” in Venezuela, which
grabbed power briefly in April last year before being intimidated by
massive public displays of support by the poor for
democratically-elected President Chavez Frias. The coup leaders continue
to use their control of the private media, much of industry and the ear
of the American Government and its oily intimates to cause disruption
and disturbance.

Venezuela’s state-owned oil resources would make rich pickings for
American oil companies and provide the US with an important oil source
in its own backyard.

Many writers have noted the contradiction between America’s alleged
desire to establish democracy in Iraq while at the same time, actively
undermining the democratically-elected government in Venezuela. Above
the line, America rushed to recognise the coup last April; more
recently, President Bush has called for “early elections”, ignoring the
fact that President Chavez Frias has won three elections and two
referendums and, in any case, early elections would be unconstitutional.

One element of the USA’s covert action against Venezuela is the
behaviour of American transnational businesses, which have locked out
employees in support of “national strike” action. Imagine them doing
that in the USA! There is no question that a covert operation is in
process to overturn the legitimate Venezuelan government. Uruguayan
congressman, Jose Nayardi, made it public when he revealed that the Bush
administration had asked for Uruguay’s support for Venezuelan white
collar executives and trade union activists “to break down levels of
intransigence within the Chavez Frias administration”. The process, he
noted, was a shocking reminder of the CIA’s 1973 intervention in Chile
which saw General Pinochet lead his military coup to take over President
Allende’s democratically elected government in a bloodbath.

President Chavez Frias is desperately clinging to government, but with
the might of the USA aligned with his opponents, how long can he last?

THE COST OF WAR

Some have claimed that an American invasion of Iraq would cost so many
billions of dollars that oil returns would never justify such an action.

But when the invasion is placed in the context of the protection of the
entire US economy for now and into the future, the balance of the
argument changes.

Further, there are three other vital factors:

First, America will be asking others to help pay for the war because it
is protecting their interests. Japan and Saudi Arabia made serious
contributions to the cost of the 1991 Gulf war.

Second—in reality, war will cost the USA very little—or at least, very
little over and above normal expenditure. This war is already paid for!
All the munitions and equipment have been bought and paid for. The USA
would have to spend hardly a cent on new hardware to prosecute this
war—the expenditure will come later when munitions and equipment have to
be replaced after the war. But munitions, hardware and so on are being
replaced all the time -- contracts are out. Some contracts will simply
be brought forward and some others will be ramped up a bit, but spread
over a few years, the cost will not be great. And what is the real extra
cost of an army at war compared with maintaining the standing army
around the world, running exercises and so on? It is there, but it is a
relatively small sum.

Third—lots of the extra costs involved in the war are dollars spent
outside America, not least in the purchase of fuel. Guess how America
will pay for these? By printing dollars it is going to war to protect.
The same happens when production begins to replace hardware, components,
minerals, etc. are bought in with dollars that go overseas and exploit
America’s trading advantage.

The cost of war is not nearly as big as it is made out to be. The cost
of not going to war would be horrendous for the USA—unless there were
another way of protecting the greenback’s world trade dominance.

AMERICA’S TWO ACTIVE ALLIES

Why are Australia and Britain supporting America in its transparent
Iraqi war ploy?

Australia, of course, has significant US dollar reserves and trades
widely in dollars and extensively with America. A fall in the US dollar
would reduce Australia’s debt, perhaps, but would do nothing for the
Australian dollar’s value against other currencies. John Howard, the
Prime Minister, has long cherished the dream of a free trade agreement
with the USA in the hope that Australia can jump on the back of the free
ride America gets in trade through the dollar’s position as the major
trading medium. That would look much less attractive if the euro took
over a significant part of the oil trade.

Britain has yet to adopt the euro. If the US takes over Iraq and blocks
the euro’s incursion into oil trading, Tony Blair will have given his
French and German counterparts a bloody nose, and gained more room to
manouevre on the issue—perhaps years more room.


Britain would be in a position to demand a better deal from its EU
partners for entering the “eurozone” if the new currency could not make
the huge value gains guaranteed by a significant role in world oil
trading. It might even be in a position to withdraw from Europe and link
with America against continental Europe.

On the other hand, if the US cannot maintain the oil trade dollar
monopoly, the euro will rapidly go from strength to strength, and
Britain could be left begging to be allowed into the club.

THE OPPOSITION

Some of the reasons for opposition to the American plan are
obvious—America is already the strongest nation on earth and dominates
world trade through its dollar. If it had control of the Iraqi oil and a
base for its forces in the Middle East, it would not add to, but would
multiply its power.

The oil-producing nations, particularly the Arab ones, can see the
writing on the wall and are quaking in their boots.

France and Germany are the EU leaders with the vision of a resurgent,
united Europe taking its rightful place in the world and using its euro
currency as a world trading reserve currency and thus gaining some of
the free ride the United States enjoys now. They are the ones who
initiated the euro oil trade with Iraq.

Russia is in deep economic trouble and knows it will get worse the day
America starts exploiting its take-over of Afghanistan by running a
pipeline southwards via Afghanistan from the giant southern Caspian oil
fields. Currently, that oil is piped northwards—where Russia has
control.

Russia is in the process of ramping up oil production with the
possibility of trading some of it for euros and selling some to the US
itself. Russia already has enough problems with the fact that oil is
traded in US dollars; if the US has control of Iraqi oil, it could
distort the market to Russia’s enormous disadvantage. In addition,
Russia has interests in Iraqi oil; an American take over could see them
lost. Already on its knees, Russia could be beggared before a mile of
the Afghanistan pipeline is laid.

ANOTHER SOLUTION?

The scenario clarifies the seriousness of America’s position and
explains its frantic drive for war. It also suggests that solutions
other than war are possible.

Could America agree to share the trading goodies by allowing Europe to
have a negotiated part of it? Not very likely, but it is just possible
Europe can stare down the USA and force such an outcome. Time will
tell. What about Europe taking the statesmanlike, humanitarian and long
view, and withdrawing, leaving the oil to the US, with appropriate
safeguards for ordinary Iraqis and democracy in Venezuela?

Europe might then be forced to adopt a smarter approach—perhaps
accelerating the development of alternative energy technologies which
would reduce the EU’s reliance on oil for energy and produce goods it
could trade for euros—shifting the world trade balance.

Now that would be a very positive outcome for everyone.
. . . .

Geoffrey Heard is a Melbourne, Australia, writer on the environment,
sustainability and human rights.
. . . .

Geoffrey Heard C 2003. Anyone is free to circulate this document
provided it is complete and in its current form with attribution and no
payment is asked. It is prohibited to reproduce this document or any
part of it for commercial gain without the prior permission of the
author. For such permission, contact the author at
gheard@surf.net.au. "

Joined: May 2003
Posts: 5,958
some RKMB'ers are Obsessed with Black People Hmmm?
5000+ posts
some RKMB'ers are Obsessed with Black People Hmmm?
5000+ posts
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 5,958
Absolutely spot-on. I'll count the minutes until outraged neocon aplogists come and declare that Sadaam was Hitler: The Sequel and we were all in imminent peril from his WMD program.

Joined: May 2003
Posts: 5,958
some RKMB'ers are Obsessed with Black People Hmmm?
5000+ posts
some RKMB'ers are Obsessed with Black People Hmmm?
5000+ posts
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 5,958
quote:
Al Gore on Bush Credibility, Democratic Vision for the Future

On August 7, former Vice President Al Gore delivered the following speech at a forum hosted by Moveon.org and NYU College Democrats.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

Thank you for your investment of time and energy in gathering here today. I would especially like to thank Moveon.org for sponsoring this event, and the NYU College Democrats for co-sponsoring the speech and for hosting us.

Some of you may remember that my last formal public address on these topics was delivered in San Francisco, a little less than a year ago, when I argued that the President's case for urgent, unilateral, pre-emptive war in Iraq was less than convincing and needed to be challenged more effectively by the Congress.

In light of developments since then, you might assume that my purpose today is to revisit the manner in which we were led into war. To some extent, that will be the case -- but only as part of a larger theme that I feel should now be explored on an urgent basis.

The direction in which our nation is being led is deeply troubling to me -- not only in Iraq but also here at home on economic policy, social policy and environmental policy.

Millions of Americans now share a feeling that something pretty basic has gone wrong in our country and that some important American values are being placed at risk. And they want to set it right.

The way we went to war in Iraq illustrates this larger problem. Normally, we Americans lay the facts on the table, talk through the choices before us and make a decision. But that didn't really happen with this war -- not the way it should have. And as a result, too many of our soldiers are paying the highest price, for the strategic miscalculations, serious misjudgments, and historic mistakes that have put them and our nation in harm's way.

I'm convinced that one of the reasons that we didn't have a better public debate before the Iraq War started is because so many of the impressions that the majority of the country had back then turn out to have been completely wrong. Leaving aside for the moment the question of how these false impressions got into the public's mind, it might be healthy to take a hard look at the ones we now know were wrong and clear the air so that we can better see exactly where we are now and what changes might need to be made.

In any case, what we now know to have been false impressions include the following:

(1) Saddam Hussein was partly responsible for the attack against us on September 11th, 2001, so a good way to respond to that attack would be to invade his country and forcibly remove him from power.

(2) Saddam was working closely with Osama Bin Laden and was actively supporting members of the Al Qaeda terrorist group, giving them weapons and money and bases and training, so launching a war against Iraq would be a good way to stop Al Qaeda from attacking us again.

(3) Saddam was about to give the terrorists poison gas and deadly germs that he had made into weapons which they could use to kill millions of Americans. Therefore common sense alone dictated that we should send our military into Iraq in order to protect our loved ones and ourselves against a grave threat.

(4) Saddam was on the verge of building nuclear bombs and giving them to the terrorists. And since the only thing preventing Saddam from acquiring a nuclear arsenal was access to enriched uranium, once our spies found out that he had bought the enrichment technology he needed and was actively trying to buy uranium from Africa, we had very little time left. Therefore it seemed imperative during last Fall's election campaign to set aside less urgent issues like the economy and instead focus on the congressional resolution approving war against Iraq.

(5) Our GI's would be welcomed with open arms by cheering Iraqis who would help them quickly establish public safety, free markets and Representative Democracy, so there wouldn't be that much risk that US soldiers would get bogged down in a guerrilla war.

(6) Even though the rest of the world was mostly opposed to the war, they would quickly fall in line after we won and then contribute lots of money and soldiers to help out, so there wouldn't be that much risk that US taxpayers would get stuck with a huge bill.

Now, of course, everybody knows that every single one of these impressions was just dead wrong.

For example, according to the just-released Congressional investigation, Saddam had nothing whatsoever to do with the attacks of Sept. 11. Therefore, whatever other goals it served -- and it did serve some other goals -- the decision to invade Iraq made no sense as a way of exacting revenge for 9/11. To the contrary, the US pulled significant intelligence resources out of Pakistan and Afghanistan in order to get ready for the rushed invasion of Iraq and that disrupted the search for Osama at a critical time. And the indifference we showed to the rest of the world's opinion in the process undermined the global cooperation we need to win the war against terrorism.

In the same way, the evidence now shows clearly that Saddam did not want to work with Osama Bin Laden at all, much less give him weapons of mass destruction. So our invasion of Iraq had no effect on Al Qaeda, other than to boost their recruiting efforts.

And on the nuclear issue of course, it turned out that those documents were actually forged by somebody -- though we don't know who.

As for the cheering Iraqi crowds we anticipated, unfortunately, that didn't pan out either, so now our troops are in an ugly and dangerous situation.

Moreover, the rest of the world certainly isn't jumping in to help out very much the way we expected, so US taxpayers are now having to spend a billion dollars a week.

In other words, when you put it all together, it was just one mistaken impression after another. Lots of them.

And it's not just in foreign policy. The same thing has been happening in economic policy, where we've also got another huge and threatening mess on our hands. I'm convinced that one reason we've had so many nasty surprises in our economy is that the country somehow got lots of false impressions about what we could expect from the big tax cuts that were enacted, including:

(1) The tax cuts would unleash a lot of new investment that would create lots of new jobs.

(2) We wouldn't have to worry about a return to big budget deficits -- because all the new growth in the economy caused by the tax cuts would lead to a lot of new revenue.

(3) Most of the benefits would go to average middle-income families, not to the wealthy, as some partisans claimed.

Unfortunately, here too, every single one of these impressions turned out to be wrong. Instead of creating jobs, for example, we are losing millions of jobs -- net losses for three years in a row. That hasn't happened since the Great Depression. As I've noted before, I was the first one laid off.

And it turns out that most of the benefits actually are going to the highest income Americans, who unfortunately are the least likely group to spend money in ways that create jobs during times when the economy is weak and unemployment is rising.

And of course the budget deficits are already the biggest ever -- with the worst still due to hit us. As a percentage of our economy, we've had bigger ones -- but these are by far the most dangerous we've ever had for two reasons: first, they're not temporary; they're structural and long-term; second, they are going to get even bigger just at the time when the big baby-boomer retirement surge starts.

Moreover, the global capital markets have begun to recognize the unprecedented size of this emerging fiscal catastrophe. In truth, the current Executive Branch of the U.S. Government is radically different from any since the McKinley Administration 100 years ago.

The 2001 winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics, George Akerlof, went even further last week in Germany when he told Der Spiegel, "This is the worst government the US has ever had in its more than 200 years of history...This is not normal government policy." In describing the impact of the Bush policies on America's future, Akerloff added, "What we have here is a form of looting."

Ominously, the capital markets have just pushed U.S. long-term mortgage rates higher soon after the Federal Reserve Board once again reduced discount rates. Monetary policy loses some of its potency when fiscal policy comes unglued. And after three years of rate cuts in a row, Alan Greenspan and his colleagues simply don't have much room left for further reductions.

This situation is particularly dangerous right now for several reasons: first because home-buying fueled by low rates (along with car-buying, also a rate-sensitive industry) have been just about the only reliable engines pulling the economy forward; second, because so many Americans now have Variable Rate Mortgages; and third, because average personal debt is now at an all-time high -- a lot of Americans are living on the edge.

It seems obvious that big and important issues like the Bush economic policy and the first Pre-emptive War in U.S. history should have been debated more thoroughly in the Congress, covered more extensively in the news media, and better presented to the American people before our nation made such fateful choices. But that didn't happen, and in both cases, reality is turning out to be very different from the impression that was given when the votes -- and the die -- were cast.

Since this curious mismatch between myth and reality has suddenly become commonplace and is causing such extreme difficulty for the nation's ability to make good choices about our future, maybe it is time to focus on how in the world we could have gotten so many false impressions in such a short period of time.

At first, I thought maybe the President's advisers were a big part of the problem. Last fall, in a speech on economic policy at the Brookings Institution, I called on the President to get rid of his whole economic team and pick a new group. And a few weeks later, damned if he didn't do just that - and at least one of the new advisers had written eloquently about the very problems in the Bush economic policy that I was calling upon the President to fix.

But now, a year later, we still have the same bad economic policies and the problems have, if anything, gotten worse. So obviously I was wrong: changing all the president's advisers didn't work as a way of changing the policy.

I remembered all that last month when everybody was looking for who ought to be held responsible for the false statements in the President's State of the Union Address. And I've just about concluded that the real problem may be the President himself and that next year we ought to fire him and get a new one.

But whether you agree with that conclusion or not, whether you're a Democrat or a Republican -- or an Independent, a Libertarian, a Green or a Mugwump -- you've got a big stake in making sure that Representative Democracy works the way it is supposed to. And today, it just isn't working very well. We all need to figure out how to fix it because we simply cannot keep on making such bad decisions on the basis of false impressions and mistaken assumptions.

Earlier, I mentioned the feeling many have that something basic has gone wrong. Whatever it is, I think it has a lot to do with the way we seek the truth and try in good faith to use facts as the basis for debates about our future -- allowing for the unavoidable tendency we all have to get swept up in our enthusiasms.

That last point is worth highlighting. Robust debate in a democracy will almost always involve occasional rhetorical excesses and leaps of faith, and we're all used to that. I've even been guilty of it myself on occasion. But there is a big difference between that and a systematic effort to manipulate facts in service to a totalistic ideology that is felt to be more important than the mandates of basic honesty.

Unfortunately, I think it is no longer possible to avoid the conclusion that what the country is dealing with in the Bush Presidency is the latter. That is really the nub of the problem -- the common source for most of the false impressions that have been frustrating the normal and healthy workings of our democracy.

Americans have always believed that we the people have a right to know the truth and that the truth will set us free. The very idea of self-government depends upon honest and open debate as the preferred method for pursuing the truth -- and a shared respect for the Rule of Reason as the best way to establish the truth.

The Bush Administration routinely shows disrespect for that whole basic process, and I think it's partly because they feel as if they already know the truth and aren't very curious to learn about any facts that might contradict it. They and the members of groups that belong to their ideological coalition are true believers in each other's agendas.

There are at least a couple of problems with this approach:

First, powerful and wealthy groups and individuals who work their way into the inner circle -- with political support or large campaign contributions -- are able to add their own narrow special interests to the list of favored goals without having them weighed against the public interest or subjected to the rule of reason. And the greater the conflict between what they want and what's good for the rest of us, the greater incentive they have to bypass the normal procedures and keep it secret.

That's what happened, for example, when Vice President Cheney invited all of those oil and gas industry executives to meet in secret sessions with him and his staff to put their wish lists into the administration's legislative package in early 2001.

That group wanted to get rid of the Kyoto Treaty on Global Warming, of course, and the Administration pulled out of it first thing. The list of people who helped write our nation's new environmental and energy policies is still secret, and the Vice President won't say whether or not his former company, Halliburton, was included. But of course, as practically everybody in the world knows, Halliburton was given a huge open-ended contract to take over and run the Iraqi oil fields-- without having to bid against any other companies.

Secondly, when leaders make up their minds on a policy without ever having to answer hard questions about whether or not it's good or bad for the American people as a whole, they can pretty quickly get into situations where it's really uncomfortable for them to defend what they've done with simple and truthful explanations. That's when they're tempted to fuzz up the facts and create false impressions. And when other facts start to come out that undermine the impression they're trying to maintain, they have a big incentive to try to keep the truth bottled up if -- they can -- or distort it.

For example, a couple of weeks ago, the White House ordered its own EPA to strip important scientific information about the dangers of global warming out of a public report. Instead, the White House substituted information that was partly paid for by the American Petroleum Institute. This week, analysts at the Treasury Department told a reporter that they're now being routinely ordered to change their best analysis of what the consequences of the Bush tax laws are likely to be for the average person.

Here is the pattern that I see: the President's mishandling of and selective use of the best evidence available on the threat posed by Iraq is pretty much the same as the way he intentionally distorted the best available evidence on climate change, and rejected the best available evidence on the threat posed to America's economy by his tax and budget proposals.

In each case, the President seems to have been pursuing policies chosen in advance of the facts -- policies designed to benefit friends and supporters -- and has used tactics that deprived the American people of any opportunity to effectively subject his arguments to the kind of informed scrutiny that is essential in our system of checks and balances.

The administration has developed a highly effective propaganda machine to imbed in the public mind mythologies that grow out of the one central doctrine that all of the special interests agree on, which -- in its purest form -- is that government is very bad and should be done away with as much as possible -- except the parts of it that redirect money through big contracts to industries that have won their way into the inner circle.

For the same reasons they push the impression that government is bad, they also promote the myth that there really is no such thing as the public interest. What's important to them is private interests. And what they really mean is that those who have a lot of wealth should be left alone, rather than be called upon to reinvest in society through taxes.

Perhaps the biggest false impression of all lies in the hidden social objectives of this Administration that are advertised with the phrase "compassionate conservatism" -- which they claim is a new departure with substantive meaning. But in reality, to be compassionate is meaningless, if compassion is limited to the mere awareness of the suffering of others. The test of compassion is action. What the administration offers with one hand is the rhetoric of compassion; what it takes away with the other hand are the financial resources necessary to make compassion something more than an empty and fading impression.

Maybe one reason that false impressions have a played a bigger role than they should is that both Congress and the news media have been less vigilant and exacting than they should have been in the way they have tried to hold the Administration accountable.

Whenever both houses of Congress are controlled by the President's party, there is a danger of passivity and a temptation for the legislative branch to abdicate its constitutional role. If the party in question is unusually fierce in demanding ideological uniformity and obedience, then this problem can become even worse and prevent the Congress from properly exercising oversight. Under these circumstances, the majority party in the Congress has a special obligation to the people to permit full Congressional inquiry and oversight rather than to constantly frustrate and prevent it.

Whatever the reasons for the recent failures to hold the President properly accountable, America has a compelling need to quickly breathe new life into our founders' system of checks and balances -- because some extremely important choices about our future are going to be made shortly, and it is imperative that we avoid basing them on more false impressions.

One thing the President could do to facilitate the restoration of checks and balances is to stop blocking reasonable efforts from the Congress to play its rightful role. For example, he could order his appointees to cooperate fully with the bipartisan National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, headed by former Republican Governor Tom Kean. And he should let them examine how the White House handled the warnings that are said to have been given to the President by the intelligence community.

Two years ago yesterday, for example, according to the Wall Street Journal, the President was apparently advised in specific language that Al Qaeda was going to hijack some airplanes to conduct a terrorist strike inside the U.S.

I understand his concern about people knowing exactly what he read in the privacy of the Oval Office, and there is a legitimate reason for treating such memos to the President with care. But that concern has to be balanced against the national interest in improving the way America deals with such information. And the apparently chaotic procedures that were used to handle the forged nuclear documents from Niger certainly show evidence that there is room for improvement in the way the White House is dealing with intelligence memos. Along with other members of the previous administration, I certainly want the commission to have access to any and all documents sent to the White House while we were there that have any bearing on this issue. And President Bush should let the commission see the ones that he read too.

After all, this President has claimed the right for his executive branch to send his assistants into every public library in America and secretly monitor what the rest of us are reading. That's been the law ever since the Patriot Act was enacted. If we have to put up with such a broad and extreme invasion of our privacy rights in the name of terrorism prevention, surely he can find a way to let this National Commission know how he and his staff handled a highly specific warning of terrorism just 36 days before 9/11.

And speaking of the Patriot Act, the president ought to reign in John Ashcroft and stop the gross abuses of civil rights that twice have been documented by his own Inspector General. And while he's at it, he needs to reign in Donald Rumsfeld and get rid of that DoD "Total Information Awareness" program that's right out of George Orwell's 1984.

The administration hastened from the beginning to persuade us that defending America against terror cannot be done without seriously abridging the protections of the Constitution for American citizens, up to and including an asserted right to place them in a form of limbo totally beyond the authority of our courts. And that view is both wrong and fundamentally un-American.

But the most urgent need for new oversight of the Executive Branch and the restoration of checks and balances is in the realm of our security, where the Administration is asking that we accept a whole cluster of new myths:

For example, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was an effort to strike a bargain between states possessing nuclear weapons and all others who had pledged to refrain from developing them. This administration has rejected it and now, incredibly, wants to embark on a new program to build a brand new generation of smaller (and it hopes, more usable) nuclear bombs. In my opinion, this would be true madness -- and the point of no return to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty -- even as we and our allies are trying to prevent a nuclear testing breakout by North Korea and Iran.

Similarly, the Kyoto treaty is an historic effort to strike a grand bargain between free-market capitalism and the protection of the global environment, now gravely threatened by rapidly accelerating warming of the Earth's atmosphere and the consequent disruption of climate patterns that have persisted throughout the entire history of civilization as we know it. This administration has tried to protect the oil and coal industries from any restrictions at all -- though Kyoto may become legally effective for global relations even without U.S. participation.

Ironically, the principal cause of global warming is our civilization's addiction to burning massive quantities carbon-based fuels, including principally oil -- the most important source of which is the Persian Gulf, where our soldiers have been sent for the second war in a dozen years -- at least partly to ensure our continued access to oil.

We need to face the fact that our dangerous and unsustainable consumption of oil from a highly unstable part of the world is similar in its consequences to all other addictions. As it becomes worse, the consequences get more severe and you have to pay the dealer more.

And by now, it is obvious to most Americans that we have had one too many wars in the Persian Gulf and that we need an urgent effort to develop environmentally sustainable substitutes for fossil fuels and a truly international effort to stabilize the Persian Gulf and rebuild Iraq.

The removal of Saddam from power is a positive accomplishment in its own right for which the President deserves credit, just as he deserves credit for removing the Taliban from power in Afghanistan. But in the case of Iraq, we have suffered enormous collateral damage because of the manner in which the Administration went about the invasion. And in both cases, the aftermath has been badly mishandled.

The administration is now trying to give the impression that it is in favor of NATO and UN participation in such an effort. But it is not willing to pay the necessary price, which is support of a new UN Resolution and genuine sharing of control inside Iraq.

If the 21st century is to be well started, we need a national agenda that is worked out in concert with the people, a healing agenda that is built on a true national consensus. Millions of Americans got the impression that George W. Bush wanted to be a "healer, not a divider", a president devoted first and foremost to "honor and integrity." Yet far from uniting the people, the president's ideologically narrow agenda has seriously divided America. His most partisan supporters have launched a kind of 'civil cold war' against those with whom they disagree.

And as for honor and integrity, let me say this: we know what that was all about, but hear me well, not as a candidate for any office, but as an American citizen who loves my country:

For eight years, the Clinton-Gore Administration gave this nation honest budget numbers; an economic plan with integrity that rescued the nation from debt and stagnation; honest advocacy for the environment; real compassion for the poor; a strengthening of our military -- as recently proven -- and a foreign policy whose purposes were elevated, candidly presented and courageously pursued, in the face of scorched-earth tactics by the opposition. That is also a form of honor and integrity, and not every administration in recent memory has displayed it.

So I would say to those who have found the issue of honor and integrity so useful as a political tool, that the people are also looking for these virtues in the execution of public policy on their behalf, and will judge whether they are present or absent.

I am proud that my party has candidates for president committed to those values. I admire the effort and skill they are putting into their campaigns. I am not going to join them, but later in the political cycle I will endorse one of them, because I believe that we must stand for a future in which the United States will again be feared only by its enemies; in which our country will again lead the effort to create an international order based on the rule of law; a nation which upholds fundamental rights even for those it believes to be its captured enemies; a nation whose financial house is in order; a nation where the market place is kept healthy by effective government scrutiny; a country which does what is necessary to provide for the health, education, and welfare of our people; a society in which citizens of all faiths enjoy equal standing; a republic once again comfortable that its chief executive knows the limits as well as the powers of the presidency; a nation that places the highest value on facts, not ideology, as the basis for all its great debates and decisions.

http://www.democrats.org/news/200308080001.html


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Screw the UN. And screw the Euro. Clinton did almost the same thing for almost the same reasons. The difference is that Bush actually managed to bring down the regime.

Maybe the Democrats are so uptight over this whole thing because they can't stand to be shown up by an administration they've been working overtime to portray as incompetent. :lol:

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"Hey this is PCG342's bro..."
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President Bush this, President Bush that. Here's a list of countries thay supported America's action of removing Soddom from power:

Afghanistan
Albania
Angola
Australia
Azerbaijan
Bulgaria
Colombia
Costa Rica
Czech Republic
Denmark
Dominican Republic
El Salvador
Eritrea
Estonia
Ethiopia
Georgia
Honduras
Hungary
Iceland
Italy
Japan
Kuwait
Latvia
Lithuania
Macedonia
Marshall Islands
Micronesia
Mongolia
Netherlands
Nicaragua
Palau
Panama
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Rwanda
Singapore
Slovakia
Solomon Islands
South Korea
Spain
Tonga
Turkey
Uganda
Ukraine
United Kingdom
United States
Uzbekistan

And looky there! Some of the countries are located...within Europe!

Not to mention that "On October 10, the House of Representatives voted 296-133 to authorize President Bush to use force against Iraq. Later that evening, the Senate joined the House in supporting the measure by a vote of 77-23."

http://www.juntosociety.com/vote/iraqres.html

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PJP Offline
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Sure JQ...sureeeeeee.


Our national security and a lasting peace in the middle east were the reasons we went to war......not this filth propaganda.......whomod come on man you're smarter than that. I read your posts you're a smart guy......Gore and the liberal wing of the democratic party are just bitter.

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"Hey this is PCG342's bro..."
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quote:
Originally posted by PJP:
.......whomod come on man you're smarter than that.

No really, he isn't.

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quote:
Originally posted by PJP:
Sure JQ...sureeeeeee.


Our national security and a lasting peace in the middle east were the reasons we went to war......not this filth propaganda.......whomod come on man you're smarter than that. I read your posts you're a smart guy......Gore and the liberal wing of the democratic party are just bitter.

So you're just going to shoot the messenger because you don't like the guy?

He makes valid point after valid point which I also agreed with long before Gore voiced them. As a side note, he clearly said he wasn't running so this " i wanna be president" remark I read is a bizzare case of having a sore winner.

quote:
President Bush this, President Bush that. Here's a list of countries thay supported America's action of removing Soddom from power:

Afghanistan
Albania
Angola
Australia
Azerbaijan
Bulgaria
Colombia
Costa Rica
Czech Republic
Denmark
Dominican Republic
El Salvador
Eritrea
Estonia
Ethiopia
Georgia
Honduras
Hungary
Iceland
Italy
Japan
Kuwait
Latvia
Lithuania
Macedonia
Marshall Islands
Micronesia
Mongolia
Netherlands
Nicaragua
Palau
Panama
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Rwanda
Singapore
Slovakia
Solomon Islands
South Korea
Spain
Tonga
Turkey
Uganda
Ukraine
United Kingdom
United States
Uzbekistan

*Whew* Thank God for them. If not then we'd be policing Iraq by ourselves and paying more than $1. billion a month to occupy Iraq! Those Solomon Island and Micronesian troops really come in handy

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sore liberal.

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JQ
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You idiots can't put up a persuasive arguement against the guy so you dismiss it as "filth propaganda" and attack the Democrats for doing the same thing. No one ever said that Clinton didn't. I dare any of you to put up a good arguement against the topic.

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Hey whomod:

Did you notice that European nations were in that list? Italy, United Kingdom, Spain? Sure makes a lot of sense that they would be involved in a plot to devalue their own currency, which was at the heart of the article's ridiculous argument.

I listed the other nations to debunk the other argument: that the decision to go to war with Iraq was something that President Bush supported all on his own, and that clearly wasn't the case.

Try to keep up, partner!

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JQ
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MisterJLA: You're the first one to make any sense. How do you know they're not just "jumping on board with the Americans and hoping for some trickle-down effects?"

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you cant know, any more than you can know the author of this pieces hypothisis, there is no way to know its all guesswork, i would say the author of this piece has a huge anti US bias thats why he took the time to write it...

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I can't imagine any trickle-down effects that would be worth devaluing your own currency!

It just doesn't add up.

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quote:
Originally posted by MisterJLA:
Hey whomod:

Did you notice that European nations were in that list? Italy, United Kingdom, Spain? Sure makes a lot of sense that they would be involved in a plot to devalue their own currency, which was at the heart of the article's ridiculous argument.

I listed the other nations to debunk the other argument: that the decision to go to war with Iraq was something that President Bush supported all on his own, and that clearly wasn't the case.

Try to keep up, partner!

quote:
President Bush this, President Bush that. Here's a list of countries thay supported America's action of removing Soddom from power:

So did you list all those countries to show popular support for removing Sadaaam or did you do do it to debunk the initial article?

Try to keep up.

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you really have run out of ideas havent you?

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Ummm, how much oil do we get from Iraq?

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Don't forget the December 16th 1998 speach that Bill Clinton gave. I gues Al Gore forgot about that. It was even on TV. Hummmm, does the left have memory loss or do the have selective memory? He talked about everything GW Bush did back in January of 2003.

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"So did you list all those countries to show popular support for removing Sadaaam or did you do do it to debunk the initial article?"

That was one of the points of the article...that Bush decided upon this either exclusively, or with minimal support.

quote:
Summary: Why is George Bush so hell bent on war with Iraq? Why does his
administration
reject every positive Iraqi move?

quote:
America’s Bush administration has been caught in outright lies, gross
exaggerations and incredible inaccuracies as it trotted out its litany
of paper thin excuses for making war on Iraq. Along with its two
supporters, Britain and Australia,
it has shifted its ground and
reversed its position with a barefaced contempt for its audience.

quote:
America’s allies in the invasion, Britain and Australia, are betting
America will win and that they will get some trickle-down benefits for
jumping on to the US bandwagon.

quote:
President Bush did promise to protect the American way of life. This is
what he meant.

Why not mention the Congressional vote? Why equate US policy, with the beliefs of the President? Why not mention the other countries, other than Australia, and the United Kingdom?

The author tried to paint a very narrow picture of the participants of the war, and that clearly wasn't the case...more than two other nations thought that this was the right way to go.

That's why I listed the countries, whomod.

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JQ
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quote:
I can't imagine any trickle-down effects that would be worth devaluing your own currency!

It just doesn't add up.

I think you're right, it doesn't add up. But the neo-conservative/Bush explainations don't add up either.

I still think one of the biggest, if not the biggest, reason behind this war was to further the United States' economic dominance. But like BSAMS said, it's just guesswork.

quote:


Don't forget the December 16th 1998 speach that Bill Clinton gave. I gues Al Gore forgot about that. It was even on TV. Hummmm, does the left have memory loss or do the have selective memory? He talked about everything GW Bush did back in January of 2003.

Why do you guys always bring up Clinton to:

a. Make Bush sound better by comparing the two.
b. Try to knock down the credibility of an arguement.

Left-Right politics go beyond Clinton-Bush politics.

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I think Clinton is generally brought up when liberals try to blame situations soley on Bush and Clinton is used to show it is/has been general US policy not personalized as they would liuke to paint it.

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Clinton is our god and what he does should not be questioned or remembered for he is better than we poor souls. Liberal Europe shall crush the Conservative America with an cleansing of nuclear weapons that shall rain down upon the cowboys and their whores they use to bred more such cowboys. Then Liberal Europe shall join hands in peace with North Korea, China, Iran, and all others while we build the perfect society that the Americans tried so hard not to allow us. Dean will survive the nukes for he is invincible and will rise through the rakes of Liberal Europe and rule over the world and make it perfect. Yes.

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JQ
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Shut up Pooh Bah!

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Am on your side, why should shut up? Am Liberal and proud of it and won't sugar coat what think of all conservatives and their Origin of All Evil Leader known as Cowboy Bush and what should be done about them. A grand CLEANSING should be brought upon the Right and rid us of their stupidity and ignorance, then our enlightenment can shine through unopposed. Yes.

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JQ
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I'm not a liberal, I'm a moderate-conservative. You're just an alternate ID set up to mock whomod.

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Then friend, you will be the first to fry in front of Dean's glorious retribution. Yes.

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quote:
Originally posted by JQ:
quote:
I can't imagine any trickle-down effects that would be worth devaluing your own currency!

It just doesn't add up.

I think you're right, it doesn't add up. But the neo-conservative/Bush explainations don't add up either.

I still think one of the biggest, if not the biggest, reason behind this war was to further the United States' economic dominance. But like BSAMS said, it's just guesswork.


In September, Bush released a blueprint for an imperialism, entitled "The National Security Strategy of the United States of America." The Bush doctrine is an update of Manifest Destiny on a global scale-American expansion and domination over world resources. It's a chilling document that portends the use of U.S. military force in every corner of the globe, in essence, waging continuous war.(shades of Orwell)

One section of the National Security Strategy document reads: "Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military buildup in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States." The war resolution passed by Congress promotes the unprecedented Bush doctrine of preventive war and pre-emptive strikes-as outlined in the Bush blueprint for national security.

http://web.sbu.edu/fcsc/bush_doctrine_plans_global_domin.htm

http://www.nion.us/Discussion/Lotta%20on%20Bush%20Doctrine.htm

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[whaaaa!] I had no idea you wanted other countries to get ahead of us in everything!

Don't worry, the British and their offspring are inherently friggin' awesome and will not be left in the dust. Everyone else? Well, do you really care that much about the Roman Emp- I mean the European Union? [no no no]

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"Hey this is PCG342's bro..."
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Shame on President Bush for wanting to maintain the world's strongest military! He should just be nice and let other countries pass us by. That would be the fair thing to do.

[yuh huh] [yuh huh] [yuh huh] [yuh huh] [yuh huh] [yuh huh]

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some RKMB'ers are Obsessed with Black People Hmmm?
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Funny how you focus on the "U.S. is # 1" aspect of the comments but completely discount the preemtive war half.

I'm curious to see if any non-Americans here on the boards share this nationalistic zeal of most of you on these boards. I'm sure they're comforted to know that if their nations get too ambitious they can expect a blitzkreig attack.

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Educator to comprehension impaired (JLA, that is you)
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Educator to comprehension impaired (JLA, that is you)
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You skipped the potential adversaries part, that means those who have showed hostile intent towards the US. Typical.

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terrible podcaster
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Nobody has anything to be afraid of - except known antagonists. People liken the US to the world's police force sometimes. Well, you've got nothing to fear from the police as long as you're being a decent, law-abiding citizen. Despite what you might think, the goal of Bush's foreign-policy plan isn't unending warfare, it's creating a practical deterrent against warfare. During the Cold War, the USA and the USSR exercised a much greater level of control over their respective parts of the world directly or indirectly through the unspoken threat of world-destroying nuclear war. Now that those scenarios are a thing of the past, what's to keep more Saddams or more Milosevics from popping up if they think they can get away with whatever they want without fear of retribution? You can talk about the UN and its sanctions and 'peacekeepers' all you want - really, talk about 'em, I need a good laugh. The point is that Bush is trying to bring about more responsible use of the power at this country's disposal - namely, the establishment and maintenance of a lasting peace in the face of threats such as rogue states, WMDs, and terrorist organizations.

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JQ
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I'd like to hear what you guys thought the war was all about.

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terrible podcaster
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I'm still piecing it together. :lol:

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JQ
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So am I. But what is your opinion as of right now?

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some RKMB'ers are Obsessed with Black People Hmmm?
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quote:
Originally posted by Captain Sammitch:
Nobody has anything to be afraid of - except known antagonists. People liken the US to the world's police force sometimes. Well, you've got nothing to fear from the police as long as you're being a decent, law-abiding citizen.

Sometimes I sit here and actually envy you guys. Belive it or not, i used to be a conservative Reagan Republican. And then I turned 18 and had to face the REAL world all by myself. Such self-righteous, trusting authoritarian worldviews make me nostalgic for my childhood where mommy and daddys house and comfort shielded me from reality.

I think a lot of blacks and latinos may beg to differ with your cheery trusting opinions of law enforcment. I myself can clearly remeber being made to come out of a car with my hands up and made to lie on the sidewalk as so the officer can tell me I was exceeding the speed limit by 3 mph. I'm sure you can relate. [yuh huh]

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Educator to comprehension impaired (JLA, that is you)
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Rascist.

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Liberalism shall rid the world of all racism and police brutality for there will be no more police and conservatism, having being cleansed from our society, all will come together in the great unity of Liberalism and drink from the same well. All Hatred will be cleansed away from our liberal enlightenment. Yes.

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some RKMB'ers are Obsessed with Black People Hmmm?
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I remeber telling that story once to a colleague who happened to be black. We then got to talking about all the instances we experienced of police harassment. A caucasian guy I had been partnered up with at the time just sat there looking all lost and bewildered unable to relate. Finally he said "that's never happened to me" in a very innocent but lost tone of voice. Me and the black guy just started rolling on the floor with laughter.

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some RKMB'ers are Obsessed with Black People Hmmm?
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