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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: frankw1900 who wrote (101950)	6/18/2003 5:34:16 PM
From: JohnM	Respond to of 281500

The vast majority of folk from both left and right care about human rights. Not as a staple of foreign policy. And I mean the foreign policy leadership. And cares enough to make it an important part of foreign policy. With regard to Iraq, I've consistently argued for years the best reason for overthrowing that regime was its human rights record - "the nature of the regime." I still think so because every fear I had about the place is being confirmed - it was a charnel house. I think you are right and was impressed with Ken Pollack's rendition of this argument. But the Bush folk didn't go for that argument. They were, in my estimation, doing Iraq for two reasons. First, they wished to gain better control over the global oil markets. The best version of that is to stabilize prices. There are, obviously, not so beneficent views. Second, they wished to have a demonstration project for their preventive war doctrine. Iraq fit that bill almost perfectly: no nukes, weak military, horrendous dictator. The wmd stuff was sort of running in and out as an argument but they made the mistake of cherry picking the intelligence and then making those arguments front and center for the invasion. Blair looks to be paying a price for that strategy. It's my view that Bush will too if the occupation of Iraq continues to go badly. When the Iranian regime is finally put away you will find it running a close second to Iraq in the murder and torture stakes. Evidently, the Shah was not much better.