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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mannie who wrote (23348)	7/26/2003 1:54:24 AM
From: lurqer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Moving long term military bases out of Saudi Arabia into Iraq ... negating the oil contracts of the French ... revenge. Saddam attempted to kill W's Poppa Agreed. IMO all part of the "convergence". But a "regime change" was contemplated long before many of these "ancilary" reasons existed. The neo-cons envision world domination. From the 1992 "Defense Planning Guidance" "Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power. These regions include Western Europe, East Asia, the territory of the former Soviet Union, and Southwest Asia. "There are three additional aspects to this objective: First the U.S must show the leadership necessary to establish and protect a new order that holds the promise of convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests. Second, in the non-defense areas, we must account sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order. Finally, we must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role." From the neo-cons perspective, Iraq is merely a step in a journey. Neo-conservative writers began to urge regime change as part of a larger strategy for remaking the Middle East. from ceip.org All, JMO lurqer

To: Mannie who wrote (23348)	7/26/2003 12:15:42 PM
From: TigerPaw	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 89467

There were as many separate reasons as there are people with Bush's ear (which isn't a very large crowd). 1) Rove - wanted a 2002 election issue that was more important than anything a Democrat could say. 2) The PNAC and Israel lobby wanted to make the middle east safe for Ariel Sharon. 3) Some military wanted to repeat the 1991 war, only better. including Saddam's head. 4) Some defense companies wanted contracts and jobs. 5) Cheney and Carlyle wanted oil. It was still all about oil because nobody else's goal could be reached unless they got lots and lots of money to finance it, and that is where the oil comes in. Caring about getting bases out of Saudi Arabia was only important because they cooperate with oil. The result? The only goal that is being accomplished well is the oil. TP

To: Mannie who wrote (23348)	7/26/2003 1:17:47 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

SOLDIERS SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER ________________________ Fri Jul 25, 8:02 PM ET By Richard Reeves story.news.yahoo.com. <<...I'm with the kid in Fallujah, the Army private in the Third Infantry Division, who said Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ought to resign. Rummy and his crowd led and misled those soldiers out there to occupy a country we can defeat but not control. Rumsfeld, who should never have been given an army to play with, is either nuts or incompetent. I tend toward the former. He and President Bush overreached in sending 16 of the Army's 33 combat-ready divisions to win an easy war and now have to leave them out there to occupy the desert -- something they are not well-trained to do -- until we withdraw or find someone to take our place. Now there's a problem. We mocked and bullied most of our allies in the run-up to war -- we didn't need the wusses of Old Europe and old everyplace else -- and now we are begging the people we ignored, the United Nations and our own North Atlantic Treaty Organization, to come bail us out. We can't really win this game. In that way we are repeating the mistakes we made in Vietnam all those years ago. This is quite a different war in quite a different place, but there is this similarity: The Vietnamese and the Iraqis have been there forever and will be there forever, but we will leave sooner or later. So our soldiers want to go home -- and some now feel they have been betrayed by their superiors right up to the commander in chief. This is what our young guardians are saying: A private: "We liberated Iraq. Now the people here don't want us here, and guess what? We don't want to be here either. So why are we still here?" A corporal: "I'm not sure people in Washington really know what it's like here. We'll keep doing our jobs as well as anyone can, but we shouldn't have to still be here in the first place." The problem the military has now is that some of these soldiers and marines, too, have been freely sharing their thoughts with the American people, exercising their freedom of speech -- most notably on camera with ABC News. If I were an ABC correspondent I would have used them on the air, too; the press is not part of the military...>>