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

To: neolib who wrote (155684)	1/9/2005 2:24:07 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (6) \| Respond to of 281500

<My apologies. AFAIK, mike, you, GST and I don't have any special, non-public sources of info, such as the US gov. clearly does> Quite right Neolib, but different people draw different conclusions from the same information and some are right and some are wrong. My all-time favourite is Time magazine doing a big front page expose of male child prostitution in Moscow. It was hilarious. It was obviously not true and my only information source was Time itself plus what I know about human nature and how things work. A few months later, they admitted that they were had. In much the same way, Dan Rather was had. In the same way, the USA was had [by the Iraqi expats with an axe to grind]. The key to creating belief seems to be the victim wanting to believe. Having them start with the desired conclusion and naively accepting any evidence which however tenuously supports that desired outcome creates the false conclusion. The most absurd supernatural beliefs are held on that basis. Beliefs about foreign people are held like that, or other suspect groups. Beliefs about how the world works are held like that - burnings at the stake being conducted for those who didn't think the Earth was the centre of the universe. The Neocons wanted to believe all sorts of things about Iraq and Arabia in general, Moslems as well and Saddam in particular. Having an interest like oil helps with prejudiced thinking. That's why juries, judges and doctors don't get involved in close personal prosecutions and medical treatment. They know about bias. Even knowing about their human susceptibility to bias and prejudice, they can't separate their decisions from their personal associations. So, everyone simply KNEW there were weapons of mass destruction, babies being thrown out of incubators, and all sorts of things, just as Boykin KNOWs that his God is better than their one. Then there are the self-serving stories about how we are fighting for the Iraqi freedom and for democracy. What a load on nonsense. That's not in the slightest what it's about. Any number of billions of people have always lived under vicious suppression, including right there in the USA up until living memory and especially in the 19th century. Freedom and democracy are fig-leaves. It's really: Revenge against Saddam for allegedly inciting an attack on the Bush family and for 911 on a tenuous collective guilt basis. Maintaining oil supplies into the USA oil system. Strategic military positioning in the oil fields of the Middle East. Alliance with Israel. Geopolitical balance against Russia/China and Europe and in a geographically important area. Dislike of Saddam who has funded terrorist activities. Defence against the risk of noocular and other weapons. Keeping oil prices and oil and energy industry profits high [by keeping Saddam's oil off the market]. Military training [use it or lose it] and testing. Demonstration of military prowess. This list might not be exhaustive. Being an ethical war also helps, bringing freedom, of sorts, and democracy, of a type, against just another vicious tyrant, of which the world has seen all too many. It's not as though the USA has just nuked the place and taken over. There is no denying that it has been one of the more ethical wars [on the Cow side], if "ethical war" doesn't seem an oxymoron. So, with very good pragmatic, self-centred reasons, combined with the "we're doing it for their own good" reasons, it was a go, go, go!! Knowing what they know now, they would absolutely NOT have started the war. I start with a big stock of cynicism, skepticism and disbelief, which is not to say that everything has to be disbelieved. Picking and choosing carefully is the key. Even then, one can still be had, as I was with Globalstar. I was sure they would lower minute prices dramatically when they realized how badly sales were going. They didn't!! I misjudged their nature and fanatical beliefs in their marketing plans. Human obduracy is something to behold. Many would rather die, literally, than reconsider the premises of their beliefs. See Fred on Everything on Conservative lust for war and the religious support for such war: Message 20930245 Mqurice