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UN approval is nice (although it wasn't enough for Kerry in the Persian Gulf War), but shouldn't be a requirement for the United States or any country to protect itself. Especially when there was no way in hell that France, Russia, Germany or China were going to ever support such action (and France promised to veto it). What were we to do? Out bid Saddam's bribes?


Not attack? What present danger did Saddam pose? He was going to launch those non-existant weapons at us? And in the meantime, North Korea became a nuclear power, while we were busy with Saddam. Nobody's pushing that issue, and I'm not sure why. Would President Gore have done better? I don't know. I only know what *did happen*, and what did happen isn't really anything that made the world safer.



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Once Saddam succeeded in lifting sanctions and reconstituting his weapons programs,


Edit: bah, where'd this line go? Anyway, you basically point out why I claim "not a present danger" just above.
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bringing it up, is because only the "Bush attacked Afghanistan for an oil line!" people are buying into this.



I was prepared to argue, but I think you're right. Afghanistan wasn't about an oil line, and if Bush was wearing a wire, it obviously either had a dolt on the other end, or it wasn't working. I still like the bulletproof vest theory, and it wouldn't bother me to hear that was the answer.

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Who can ever know? I was born in 1975, so I was too preoccupied with um.. I don't remember. I do know that the Vietnamese say that the Anti-War movement in the US is what gave them faith to keep fighting. At that point, they knew they didn't have to win strategically. All they had to do was cause enough US casualties to sway public opinion. The Vietnamese even have John Kerry and Jane Fonda in their museum . I sure as hell think that we could have won, had the war been fought differently from Day One, but that's all hindsight.


Sure, getting behind a coup of the South Vietnamese leader and letting him be replaced with less benevolent folks who were our "allies" in keeping Vietnam "free" was a mistake, and if you consider it, it's a mistake we seem to have not learned from at the time. (Allende was later; Chile stayed "free" but that's sort of a mockery of the term when you consider just what Pinochet really was... and here's the fascism you think Churchill was commenting on not being put out in Europe, which in South America we helped *install*. Consider this: would the antiwar movement have been as strong as it was if not for the early mistakes? People point at them as weakening us in the war, and ignore the stuff that came first. So uh, maybe you (not you you, the general you) might want to get that large object out of your eye before you go after that speck in the protestors' eyes? Likewise, the people bitter about the My Lai coverage (and the Abu Gharaib prison scandal). It's like a kid who's bitter over being punished and can't grasp that it's a consequence of an earlier action.

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That's a different era my friend. John Kennedy was a democrat but supported preemptive action and lower taxes.


Many Democrats support lower taxes... for the people who could really use lower taxes. Do I need lower taxes? Not really. Does someone who makes more than me need lower taxes? Maybe. Probably not. Do they want lower taxes? Do I care?

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Conservatism, by nature, is all that we hold sacred in this great nation of ours.


Yup. That fellow man? Screw him, let him save his own ass.

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That's why we want to conserve it. Winning the Cold War and allowing millions of people to live in freedom comes to mind.


Ah, but that's helping your fellow man, that's liberalism
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I think they do in spades. Because he supports and respects them. He honors their service and doesn't view them as war criminals in waiting.


Let me go out on a limb (albeit a rather solid one) and suggest that much like in every other facet of life, war-criminals-in-waiting are a tiny minority of soldiers in Iraq... they just happen to be the ones which will give this nation a black eye to Iraqis and the world. Much the same as extremists in any issue, they represent a fringe, though because of their actions, generally the most visible part of whatever group they have or claim affiliation with. Sometimes that visibility is more damaging to the group than others.

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I'm glad that you are coming to terms with Bush's inevitable victory already. But the thing to remember is that if Bush wins, as Americans, each and everyone of us is a winner.


What are the odds that winnings for men 18-25 will be a free trip to Iraq? I have not much to worry about. I'm too old for them to want me. If the future of the country were at stake, I'd probably volunteer anyway.


Edited by dbrashear (31/10/2004 00:18)