Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: Neocon who wrote (150156)	11/1/2004 8:32:40 AM
From: GST	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 281500

<What is new is the attempt by the neoconservatives to make foreign policy comport more with our ideals as a nation.> Neoconservatives hijack the right to claim our ideals as a nation as their own. There is nothing "American" about the war in Iraq -- unless you believe America to be a place where we set the truth aside as often as needed to justify compulsive aggression, a place where ideals are just slogans used to justify our killing.

To: Neocon who wrote (150156)	11/1/2004 12:26:00 PM
From: Michael Watkins	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I didn't change the subject. I happened to mention Reagan's tacit support of Saddam using Chemical Weapons in more than one post, and you asked "I don't know why you think that" so I told you. Many supporters who are pro "Bush/Wolfowitz" doctorine use simplistic arguments, in roughly the same declining order of threat or relevance that Bush did: **** We know Saddam has chemical weapons (of course we know this, we knew this in 1983 when Reagan had no problem with this) *** We know Saddam has biological weapons or the capability to make them (of course we know this, we shipped him some of the strains of biological agents) Saddam is a bad man. And then when Congress, and the people, were a little ambivalent about rushing into war with Iraq, the trump card: ***** We have intel that proves without a doubt that Saddam is trying to reconstitute a nuclear program to fulfil his long held dream. See these shiny tubes (we won't tell you that our own experts debunked this as proof) they are proof. The purpose of raising the Reagan link to Saddam's past is simple. Far too many people bought into the diminishing reasons for attacking Saddam because they thought this was some new and therefore unique threat. Had the American people been fully briefed (or cared to check for themselves) they may have asked much more pointed questions and not given their support quite so readily. What is new is the attempt by the neoconservatives to make foreign policy comport more with our ideals as a nation. What ideal is resolved here? Iraq clearly was not a threat to the United States yet the justification for attacking was because he was a threat. Claiming high and mighty ideals are now the justification for the attack and occupation is now yet another rationale simply because all the others have dropped off the list of believable justifications.