I'm on the road again for a big chunk of today, so let's just contemplate this icon for a failed, dishonest presidency—not only was the Iraq War a failed endeavor, but we have here an administration that relied entirely on propaganda and illusion…and they were incompetent at even that.
While you're considering that, you've also got to wonder how Chris Matthews can look himself in the mirror every morning. Why do these men still have their jobs?
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They have their jobs because they're good at conning people. It doesn't hurt that Republicans come primed wanting to believe either, like creationists do.
Indeed. The Democrats must remain vigilant in the face of voting fraud and biased voting machinery.
In our society, in the best available circumstances, the boy who points out the Emperor isn't wearing any clothes is considered impolite.
In the most common circumstances, he's considered to be partisan and biased.
In the worst case, he's considered to be mad.
It's not enough to tsk and shake our heads at stupidity. We have to be willing to condemn it, even when that risks societal condemntation in turn. Most importantly of all, we must prevail against the temptation to use stupidity for our own purposes. (I'm looking at you, Myers.)
You're saying people fell for incompetent propaganda? That's incompetent!
Given all the other major reasons to object to Bush's actions, like the unknown number of Iraqi civilian war dead (just to name one in general), and the infant mortality rate due to clean water not having been restored (to name a specific one), not even to mention his plans for the upcoming hurricane season ("Let's, first of all, pray there's no hurricanes," Bush said. "That would be, like, step one."), this is probably the single pettiest reason I'll never forgive him for all the harm he's wrought.
However, it's additive, not subtractive, so all the other big reasons for my contempt still hold as well as this one.
Thank you, W, for pissing all over my birthday with this phony photo op trying to paint lipstick on your pig of a disastrous failure.
RavenT wrote:
You sure it's not multiplicative instead of additive?
:)
RavenT, we do know the number of Iraqi civilian war dead. You're using propaganda in insisting that we don't. You repeat the same lie over and over hoping people will believe. Clean water not restored? Tell that to the Marsh Arabs. Prepare for the hurricane season? Doing what? Oh, please enlighten us as to what the president should do. And if he does, you'd fully support him at it? Or would you complain that he trying to take power from the states? Because isn't it really their problem?
Be vigilant. They're about to try the same routine on Iran in a last-ditch effort to resuscitate Chimpy's moribund poll numbers. And since Chimpy now claims that he's emperor and can ignore the law, they won't bother seeking authorization from Congress this time...
Iraq's water situation is not good, actually:
IRAQ: Funds for water treatment wane, say officials
BAGHDAD, 9 April (IRIN) - Unless the government releases more funds to rehabilitate and maintain water treatment facilities, the Ministry of Municipality and Public Works will not be able to meet the country's potable water needs, say ministry officials.
Local residents, meanwhile, continue to express frustration with regular water shortages. "These past three days were very hard for us, without clean water," said Baghdad resident Hamid Ahmed, 45." We couldn't even take showers."
Bushra Juhi, 38, a resident of the capital's low-income Huriya neighbourhood, said that potable water often got mixed with sewage, so that "we're forced to buy bottled mineral water after we developed stomach diseases from drinking the potable water".
"The quantity of potable water to be pumped next summer will not exceed 59 percent of the real need, if the same obstacles - like the lack of finances allocated to the ministry - continue," said Ayad al-Safi, a ministry official in charge of technical affairs. "Electricity outages and fuel shortages will continue as they are."
Al-Safi added: "The government has to deal seriously with the water sector because it's just as important as the security sector."
The ministry's 2005 annual report, issued last October, noted that some US $512 million had been allocated to the water sector in 2002. In 2005, however, only $186 million was set aside for the rehabilitation of old water-treatment plants and the construction of new ones.
Al-Safi pointed out that only 20 percent of last year's reduced funding was released to the public works ministry. "This isn't enough to develop crumbling infrastructure," he said. "The majority of government funds for rebuilding have been diverted to fund security programmes."
"Because of this, we can only produce 6.8 million cubic meters of the daily 9.6 million cubic meters needed for the whole of Iraq," al-Safi added. ...
I call bullshit, troll.
1) How did you validate the number? You claim to know, so prove how you do.
2) Nice try on diverting the topic away from infant mortality, too, but I'll go with the Tufts, Yale, and UNICEF demographic stats, rather than your trollish attempts at creating a strawman.
3) Disaster management is a well-established field, and "prayer" is not the first step in any reality-based disaster plan. Do you really not grasp a concept that fundamental?
4) Why would I complain that he's trying to take power from the states? States have a role, smaller organizational units have a role, the federal government has a role, and I've never advocated anything differently. Despite my richly-deserved contempt for the man, if he would implement a reality-based, competent plan, I'd give him credit for it, your attempts to create another strawman notwithstanding.
You're trying to derail the discussion by changing the subject away from Bush's failures, because his actions don't stand up to honest scrutiny. No amount of your name-calling ("propaganda") and straw-men can change the fact that his chickens are coming home to roost.
"We don't do body counts," remember?
I don't think this day is particularly special, considering that the Mission Accomplished photo-op didn't hurt anyone, unless being reminded that the President is an idiot constitutes hurt. The real day to note is 3/20, the anniversary of the invasion.
This is actually really interesting--we have before us an immediate case study of how a Bush supporter's mind works.
"Babies dying in Baghdad and in villages for lack of clean water don't matter, because clean water has been restored to the Marsh Arabs."
For NatureSelectedMe, this inhuman non-sequitur is, apparently, a logical proposition.
No wonder you support Bush--that must appear every bit as reasonable to you as the above proposition does.
RavenT: next year come to Helsinki and celebrate your birthday with a few Finns. Or 45 000 more.
Bob
For certain values of "know".
Survey says: Min 34711, max 38861.
Not a number to be proud of. Either of them.
Forget Chris Matthews. I'd like to know how the good citizens of Clark County, Ohio can sleep at night after having sent Richard Dawkins so many threatening and hateful letters when he asked them, via The Guardian, not to vote for Bush in 2004. (How dare Dawkins criticize our fearless leader? He's a Yourupean!) Clark County voted overwhelmingly for Bush out of sheer spite, going Republican for the first time in years.
I, for one, have no patience for Americans who supported this war now saying how they were "deceived." Oh, they're angry at Bush now, are they? And do they likewise overwhelmingly reject his call for the teaching of Intelligent Design in schools? No. And there you have it. Well, I think that Americans are only disappointed that we haven't kicked Iraqi ass hard enough, that we didn't pound a little Third World country into dust enough. As far as I'm concerned, the current anti-war sentiment springs not from a critical assessment of the situation, but from a knee-jerk bully/coward reaction. Even if these people are truly angry at Bush--did they apologize to Dawkins for what they said to him? Are they willing to admit that they were wrong? No!
This country is still marching toward war, even if it isn't with Iraq, or Iran, or Syria. This country is marching to war against critical thought, and it doesn't need Chris Matthews to do so. It doesn't even need Bush. From what I see of the mentality in this country, even those who now oppose the Iraq war (and how long would that last were we to enjoy an unlikely string of victories?) Bush is just the forerunner of an even worse nonsecular horror coming down the pike.
Disaster management is a well-established field, and "prayer" is not the first step in any reality-based disaster plan. Do you really not grasp a concept that fundamental?
You know you're a troll. You really are. I don't know if you've read anything about the President. Maybe his personal history? Have you listened to any of his speeches when he ends it with "May God bless you all"? You know what? He's religious! A day of Prayer and Remembrance would be right up his alley. But did you say anything about the Gulf Opportunity Zone? No, that would be way too positive, wouldn't it?
Discuss his failures, sure. There's enough to go around. But why do you have to use lies? That's what I don't understand. You guys never come up with "he should have done this" either. That's because that would be work and you would have to think and it would expose you to possible criticisms of your plans. It's much easier to list problems. You can sound so intellectual.
NatureSelectMe, please understand when I type F*CK YOU I am really spitting in your face?
You know you're a troll. You really are.
"I know you are, but what am I?" That's your A game, when it comes to logic and critical thought?
You guys never come up with "he should have done this" either.
I miss the old days, back when Republicans actually were the crew-cut, establishment, "let's do things by the book" types. As stodgy as it might have been to be familiar with the already-existing literature on domain knowledge and to build on what's gone before and is already well-documented, it beats the current crop of know-nothings (and proud of it).
No wonder you support Bush, NSM. This "let's reinvent the wheel, after first slashing the tires" mentality perfectly fits your lazy refusal to familiarize yourself with domains and facts.
Looks like fun, Bob. Next year in Helsinki!
Oh, one last thing. You accused me of lying, NSM.
Show one lie on my part. If you can't, then you're lying about my character, and Jesus isn't going to like that from you at all.
Put up or shut up, slanderer.
But that's how *every* mainstream anti-war movement has always worked. Sure, there were a small number of people who, for example, were against the war in Vietnam from the start, but mass opposition didn't really happen until much later -- when it became clear that the US wasn't going to win. It wasn't the case that more people suddenly made a critical assessment that convinced them that war in general was bad.
RavenT, you're getting touchy, aren't you?
As stodgy as it might have been to be familiar with the already-existing literature on domain knowledge and to build on what's gone before and is already well-documented
It seems to me we were following that book before 9/11. Let's put our heads in the sand. They'll go away with enough appeasement. Things get bad, let's run away. We're doing something different now because the old plans didn't work very well. Islamism is dangerous. Saddam had to go because he would have helped them. He did help them. He wasn't interested in following UN resolutions. The sanctions were hurting the children. Remember them? We were being proactive in getting rid of him.
I call that a lie. NelC cleared that up. You said unknown to give a false impression that there are hundreds of thousands dead.
NatureSelectedMe, Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11 nor did he have any weapons of mass destruction, as the U.N. inspectors under Blix were in the process of finding out before Bush started the war. There was no crisis that forced us to go to war in Iraq, and no good reason to think that Saddam Hussein would be a significant threat to his neighbors again. We would have been better off sticking to rebuilding Afghanistan as a priority, instead of squandering the immense amount of good will we had in the world after the terrible events of 9/11. But Bush instead pursued a war for his own political advantage as well as vainglory, and willfully mislead America. There were options other than "regime change" available to us in Iraq, just as there are now in Iran, although I fear Bush again wants a war for no good reason.
Not at all--flensing you is like an extra birthday present for me, although it's starting to grow boring for lack of challenge.
I'm still waiting for you:
1) to back up your assertion that I lied about Bush's record with any actual facts, and
2) to explain your non-sequitur about how the Marsh Arabs having water somehow makes the Baghdadi and village babies deaths ok.
(sound of crickets chirping, courtesy Lenny Flack)
sorry, that should be "Flank"; I can't type this early in the morning.
Ooooohhhhh, NatureSelectedBadly just caught me in a lie about Lenny's name!! :)
Neil Young unleashes a digital broadside today. His new album, "Living With War" (Reprise), was recorded and mostly written three to four weeks ago and as of Friday can be heard in its entirety free on his Web site, www.neilyoung.com, and on satellite radio networks...
"We are the silent majority now, and we haven't done a damn thing," Mr. Young said. "We've stood by and watched this happen. But there's more of us than there is of them, and we have to do something. When people start talking and see they can get away with it, it's going to happen everywhere. It's going to be a landslide, it's going to be a tidal wave. This is just the tip of it."
http://livingwithwar.blogspot.com/
NSM, the IBC figure is the lowest estimate. Half of the estimates are over 100,000. IBC may be accurate and they defend their figure/
http://www.iraqbodycount.net/editorial/defended/3.php
I read RavenT's use of the word unknown as in "we don't know". If you know better then please produce your figures.
If you have evidence of Saddam helping Islamic fundamentalists then that would also be good. There is no Saddam was connected to 9/11 and I think that's the Whitehouse position isn't it?
"But that's how *every* mainstream anti-war movement has always worked."
Granted. But I'd like to know why all these so-called Christians or whoever-they-are carry around such violence in their hearts, that they cheer a war as if it were a video game, that they send anonymous threats to a guileless scientist of the caliber of Dawkins while claiming to believe in a God who sees every secret action. If people support a war for policy reasons, fine. If they just want to decimate a nonwhite, largely (though not totally) nonChristian populace because it feels good, because they're "ragheads" or whatever, there is something incredibly wrong with them.
If they believe that our troops are fighting for freedom, okay. But freedom of speech means that they sign their name to a letter or e-mail that they write, and if they cannot do that because of its content, then perhaps they are saying something morally wrong! They just don't get to go around threatening other people because of that person's opinions. That's not okay. We are not an authoritarian regime yet, but that is authoritarian behavior, and that is the nub of my gist and the source of my complaint--this surreal combination of the mawkish sentimentality of modern Christian religion, the utter yuckiness of grown adults believing in angels, miracles, and Jesus as one cool dude, mahn, while simultaneous displaying such obscene behavior toward others and toward ourselves. This country is marching toward authoritarianism, and this is how it starts--not necessarily with the Iraq war (thought that has done enough), but through rationalization, through the refusal to accept personal responsibility for what is done by whatever democratic institutions we have left. People don't have to be anti-war, just anti-warlike.
Oops that should be "there is no evidence that Saddam was connected..." I'm a slow typist and clumsy, a bad combination.
It is the nature of democracy that the leadership reflects its people. It seems, in fact, unavoidable. Pretending this is not true is a way of dodging responisbility, and responsibility is the critical feature of a democratic citizen.
You will need to embrace your collective stupidity before you can correct it. Pretending you are outside your democracy is copping out of democracy.
Your leader is your fault.
More and more, this Administration is taking as its motto the whole of Bush's intended concession speech in 2000: "Uhhhhhh...like, this sucks worse than anything has ever sucked before. Huh huh huh huh."
David Wilford: Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11 nor did he have any weapons of mass destruction
Talk about a non-sequitur. Who said he had anything to do with 9/11? I used 9/11 as a time marker. The reasons Bush gave in the speech before the invasion were clearly about the GWOT. And Saddam did at one time have WMD, or why was Blix in there?
Bush didn't believe Blix's final report; he relied on the CIA's flawed intelligence. Yes, I agree we had flawed intelligence. There were a lot of reasons for it and very few of them can be rested on Bush's shoulders during the 2000 - 2002 time frame. I believe we have better intelligence now. But either way, nobody was using the "no WMD" until we went in there and looked for ourselves.
RavenT, you can keep your crickets!
RavenT, you can keep your crickets!
Will do, NSM. I'll keep them right here with me, while we all await your answers to my questions, reproduced below for your convenience.
I'm still waiting for you:
1) to back up your assertion that I lied about Bush's record with any actual facts, and
2) to explain your non-sequitur about how the Marsh Arabs having water somehow makes the Baghdadi and village babies deaths ok.
(sound of crickets chirping, courtesy Lenny Flank)
NatureSelectedMe, you're the one who put the Iraq war in the context of 9/11, and Bush, Cheney and others did their level best to play up any possible links between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. Bush recently said, and I quote, "... I don't want to be argumentative, but I was very careful never to say that Saddam Hussein ordered the attacks on America." Only imply it! At least in Afghanistan we knew the Taliban was giving Osame bin Laden support, and so did the rest of the world.
As for the WMDs, Bush had solid intelligence that Iraq could not have ever gotten uranium from Niger, but that claim made it into his 2003 State of the Union speech anyway. There was a high-level source from Saddam's inner circle who was quite credible and told the CIA that Iraq no longer had WMDs, but that was deliberately ignored by Cheney and Bush because they had to maintain a facade of plausible deniability regarding the alleged threat those alledged WMDs posed. When Blix actually started finding out what wasn't there, that didn't prompt Bush to hold off on the war one bit. The canine and equine show Colin Powell put on at the U.N. was a joke, with no real evidence, just plenty of supposition intended to keep us misled on the path to war.
RavenT: explain your non-sequitur about how the Marsh Arabs having water somehow makes the Baghdadi and village babies deaths ok.
Here's the problem. I don't believe your statement about lack of clean water. I used the Marsh Arabs argument to show that there is more clean water now. I should have stated that as my assumption. Now with that said, I can't see how my non-sequitur implies I think baby deaths are OK in Baghdad or anywhere else.
Two things I pointed out in this thread are some of the lies I'm talking about. "100,000 Iraqi civilian dead" and "Saddam had links to 9/11 used as reason for invasion."
Now can you silence those crickets?
I'm really enjoying Stephen Colbert's take on the whole thing:
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_co…
That's entertainment.
George Bush can never admit that a Democrat named Bill Clinton had all of Iraq's WMDs destroyed. It would have made him regurgitate to admit it. If you don't think Saddam had WMD's, check out Nova's website on this one. But Clinton did an excellent job getting rid of them.
Here's the problem. I don't believe your statement about lack of clean water.
Ok. I can back up my assertion with data from UNICEF, the United Nations Development Programme, the Red Cross, Yale, Tufts... You set the standard of reported evidence for acceptable evidence that Iraq's children are suffering and dying from lack of clean water, and I will provide it for you. Just let me know what your standard is.
I used the Marsh Arabs argument to show that there is more clean water now.
There is not more clean water anywhere in Iraq than there was before the war started, if that is what you mean by "more". If by "more" you mean "more than there was at the absolute nadir", I would agree with that as far as it goes, but that hardly invalidates my point that babies are dying while promises to restore the infrastructure right away remain unfulfilled, and billions of dollars (both in oil revenues and in funds) cannot be accounted for by the Coalition Provisional Authority.
I should have stated that as my assumption. Now with that said, I can't see how my non-sequitur implies I think baby deaths are OK in Baghdad or anywhere else.
Because you wrote:
Clean water not restored? Tell that to the Marsh Arabs.
and thought it was an adequate contradiction to my point. If I assert that babies are dying in Baghdad and elsewhere, and you assert that things are fine in South Iraq, then those two facts are not connected, hence the non-sequitur. You are the one who connected them, and so I was pointing out the entailments of your connection. As it stands, one fact does not contradict the other, and so it is not a contradiction.
Now can you silence those crickets?
Actually, yes--now that you are engaging with the points brought up, rather than just trying to derail the thread with non-sequiturs, strawmen, and calling people who disagree with you "liars"*, I will agree with you that you have ceased behaving like a troll.
* that last one's actually not been fully addressed, but I'm acknowledging the effort that you are making.
Daily Kos has the entire transcript.
http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/4/30/1441/59811
I'm still wiping the tears.
Great snort... Who invited Colbert? I'm very glad they did, but still...
You know.. I am just about as tired of the, "We all knew it shouldn't have happened", crowd as I am by the, "Bush did the right thing", crowd. Here is what we knew at the time:
Saddam was bragging about programs.
Saddam had "some" contact with terrorist groups.
Saddam was shooting at our aircraft in the no fly zone.
Saddam was starving his own people, grabbing them off the streets to torture and kill and he "had" already commited acts against his own people and neighbors that made it likely he would continue to be dangerous.
What we know now:
His WMD bragging was a bluff.
He did have maps to facilities that the inspectors didn't know about.
He failed to make any solid connections to Al Queda or other groups.
His own attempt to create his own special suicide bombers failed, because Iraqis in generally seem to be too smart to do that sort of stupid stuff (at least prior to the irrival post-invasion of foreign jihadi).
What we should know, but isn't reported:
The suicide bombers are given orders in some cases by Iraqi, but are foreigners. The Iraqi figure that if some moron wants to blow themselves up, at least its not one of them doing it, and they may as well let them.
Most of the internal groups fighting are doing it out of economic hardship. Terrorism pays more than busted buildings with jihadi camping in them. Some of those also persist in the belief that Saddam's regime can be rebuilt.
What we should have learned from history:
You can't win very easilly if foreign agents are mucking up the situation and you might lose if you can't put a stop to it (in this respect it is like Vietnam).
You can't expect 2-3 different factions, with two of them run by religious nuts, to form a government without forcing the issue some way (like the splitting of Germany into different sections).
You can't force things to go your way in the environment like Iraq (one of the few things that Bush almost got right, only he missed the rule above).
Politicians are the same every place, especially religious ones, and most prefer to scramble for power, while avoiding dealing with the real problems and issues. The fact that one of the three factions are sane and stable, doesn't change this, especially if the leaders of the majority is some of the biggest nuts.
And finally.. If you don't work from day one to make sure the economy is stable, you end up with something like the Werewolves in WWII, who will fight to restore the old order, because they believe in it, and supported by people that are simply destitute and out of a job. It took a very long time for that to fix itself in Germany, and then it only happened because they where not surounded with a half dozen countries that all thought the US, Britain and Russia, in that case, where the enemy of their entire civilization (or religion).
Bush's crime is failing to learn from history, failing to listen to warnings and actually being stupid enough to fall for Saddam's bluffing.
Saddam's mistake was being a monster, who assumed that the US wouldn't act without the UN, that the UN would "never" attack him without evidence, and that if he bluffed hard enough his neighbors would be scared enough about what he "might" have to leave him alone as well.
The failure of everyone else was initially in coming up with a solution that didn't leave people dying, his country falling apart, those same children everyone is worried about starving to death while Saddam built palaces and "still" not having a damn solution that will fix the problem, instead of making it worse, but now being damn sure that we ***should have*** or, even stupider, that somehow **did** know he wasn't dangerous, in spite of all evidence that there where things we didn't know, facts that where incomplete, inspections couldn't inspect what they didn't know about and the fact that Iran would have wiped Iraq of the map in a minute if they or anyone else was 100% sure Saddam wasn't a threat to anyone.
We all fucked up. And every "solution" presented by both sides amounts to either, "lets continue to screw it up", or, "lets just leave and hope the result isn't 5,000 times worse the day after the last boot leaves Iraqi soil." I might not have an answer either, but I know both solutions are so incomprehensibly insane that it make me ill to contemplate the consequences of either choice. The only thing I do agree with is that Bush and his moron squad are not going to be the ones that find a solution.
Do you suppose he had this in mind when he declared May 01 to be National Loyalty Day?
No, really!
SPEAK TRUTHINESS TO POWER. Thank you Monsieur Colbert!
What I knew back in 1982 (when I was in high school): The CIA never should have gone into Iraq in the 1960s to sponsor the rise of the Baathist Party, and we never should have supported Saddam Hussein against Iran. I knew, as a high school junior, that he was going to gas the Kurds. Then he did, and Senator Jesse Helms, of all people, grew a spine and tried to yank Saddam's funding. The Reagan Administration put the kabosh on that and we continued to fund this monster--a full two years before Saddam's forces invaded Kuwait, which sparked the first Gulf War.
What I didn't know back then (but know now): The United States should never have overthrown the democratically elected government of Iran to put the Shah in charge. Jesus H. Christ, a democratically elected government in Iran--exactly what Bush now says would result from a nice little bombing there, too! (Now that Iran won the Second Iraq War.)
What England knows: The government of England made certain promises regarding independence to the people of the region now known as Iraq and Syria (who helped the Allies win the war in the area against the Turks during the First World War) through the idealist T.E. Lawrence, promises on which Britain reneged. The British military was subsequently kicked out of Iraq and declined as a world power.
Bushie study history? Maybe we should just let the Bush doggie go walkies with his comic stand-in, and study history ourselves? You know--as if we were a free people, or something? As if we were the richest people on earth, who can have access to all the information that we want if we would only ask for it, instead of wondering if Britney Spears has the baby blues? Do you think we could do that?
It was damn painful, to explain to people why I opposed this war, after everything that Saddam Hussein did and after opposing him as long as I did. But few people paid attention long enough. "War creates jobs!"--I kid you not, those were the signs being held at the pro-war rally here in the Twin Cities just days before the war started.
Good summary Kagehi.
Kristine: The United States should never have overthrown the democratically elected government of Iran to put the Shah in charge.
I think you're talking about Operation Ajax. And the CIA didn't overthrow the government, just the prime minister. The Shah was always in power. But that was back in 1953 wasn't it? That was bad, agreed. The world was a little different back then. So are you saying we shouldn't promote democracy now because we ruined it then? So what do you really mean when you say "Bushie study history"? He did, and he's doing the right thing now?
I don't hear anyone saying we shouldn't promote democracy, but Kagehi's right about Bush and his moron squad ignoring history. When we were the victors in WWII, we invested heavily in the Marshall Plan, even when we had the leverage of being the victors--and that paid off. We were starting way ahead of zero at that point, and still we invested the effort to do it right.
However, when we overthrew Mossadegh, we sent a message to the Iranians that it didn't matter who they elected. Iranians have longer memories than Americans do, and the overthrow of Mossadegh is still a sore spot in Iranian-American relations.
So in anything we try to do with Iran, we're not even starting at zero; we're starting in negative territory, because of that history. It's not unreasonable to expect that it will take proportionately more investment and demonstration of good faith to make up for that lost ground, if we want it to be anywhere near as effective as in Germany and Japan, not even taking into account what political resources Germany and Japan already had to work with, which are not present in Iran.
Instead, Bush and his clowns are trying to do everything on the cheap, instead of investing in what's necessary to make it successful. If they didn't want to take on the investment to do it right, they should have walked away from it, but it didn't take a crystal ball to see that their half-assed approach in Iraq had a lot more ways to go wrong than it had to go right.
The same is true for Iran--there are a lot more ways that Bush can screw it up than to get it right, and given his track record, I doubt he's going to learn from history this time, either.
I don't think we should try to strong-arm other nations into democracy, nor should we tie trade, diplomatic recognition, or other considerations to acceptance of democracy.
Human rights, certainly. But it IS actually possible to have a functional government that isn't democratic. It's even possible to have one that functions better than a democracy.
This administration only uses force. Military force, political force, force marketing, it doesn't matter. The method changes due to the medium, but the essential principle remains the same.
Kagehi, I have no idea where this alledged Nazi "werewolf" fantasy got its legs, but let me assure you that no such phenomena occured in post-war Germany. It is completely made up out of whole cloth, and there was no organized group carrying out widespread acts of sabotage and terror against the Allied occupation anywhere in Germany after WWII. For the straight dope on this, please check out the following link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werwolf
Bob O'H: What's the weather like this time of year in Helsinki, anyway?
As for Iran, one of the things the US also did (besides helping overthrow a democratically elected government) is encourage a nuclear industry ...
And loyalty day??
Not bad (well, it depends where you're from I suppose). It's about 10-15C, and nice clear skies. The sort of weather where it's almost warm enough to sit outside and have a picnic. So on May 1st Finns do it anyway, because it's traditional.
Bob