REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

It’s over: MPs say the special relationship with US is dead

POSTED BY: AURAPTOR
UPDATED: Tuesday, April 6, 2010 06:23
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Friday, April 2, 2010 9:03 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

and no desire to cripple it's future power like Germany's. Are you saying the Iraq invasion was a kind of corporate imperialism? I'm ready to hear your 'capitalism's sinister role' argument.
Well, you catch on quick!
Quote:

As head of the CPA, Bremer moved swiftly to draft a series of laws to govern Iraq, which at the time had no constitution, nor legally-constituted government. The new laws of the US occupation authority numbered 100 in all, and were put into effect in April 2004. One of the Orders mandates that no elected Iraqi government will have the power to alter the US-imposed laws. The new laws, or Orders, as they were called, would insure that the economy of Iraq would be remade along lines of a US-mandated ‘free-market’ economic model.

Bremer pushed through more drastic economic changes in one month than the International Monetary Fund managed over three decades in Latin America. Former World Bank chief economist and Nobel Prize laureate, Joseph Stiglitz, described Bremer’s reforms as ‘an even more radical form of shock therapy than pursued in the former Soviet world.’

Bremer’s first act was to fire 500,000 state workers, most of them soldiers, but also doctors, nurses, teachers, publishers, and printers.

Next, he opened the country’s borders to unrestricted imports: no tariffs, no duties, no inspections, no taxes. Two weeks after Bremer came to Baghdad in May 2003, he cynically declared Iraq to be ‘open for business.’ Whose business he didn’t say but it soon became clear.

Before the invasion, Iraq’s non-oil economy had been dominated by some 200 state-owned companies, which produced everything from cement to paper to washing machines. In June, 2003 Bremer announced that these state firms would be privatized immediately. ‘Getting inefficient state enterprises into private hands,’ he said, ‘is essential for Iraq’s economic recovery.’

CPA Order 37 lowered Iraq’s corporate tax rate from roughly 40 percent to a flat 15 percent. Without tax revenues, the state would be unable to pay a role in anything.

Order 39 allowed foreign companies to own 100 percent of Iraqi assets outside of the natural-resource sector. This ensured unrestricted foreign business activities in the country. Investors could also take 100 percent of the profits they made in Iraq out of the country. They would not be required to reinvest and they would not be taxed.



Bremer’s Order 81

The CPA explicitly defined the legal importance of the 100 Orders to leave no doubt that they were, indeed, orders. An Order was defined as, ‘binding instructions or directives to the Iraqi people that create penal consequences or have a direct bearing on the way Iraqis are regulated, including changes to Iraqi law.’ In other words, Iraqis were told, ‘do it or die.’ The law of occupation was supreme.

Buried deep among the Bremer laws was Order 81, ‘Patent, Industrial Design, Undisclosed Information, Integrated Circuits and Plant Variety Law’.

At the heart of Order 81 was the Plant Variety Protection (PVP) provision. Order 81, states: ‘Farmers shall be prohibited from re-using seeds of protected varieties or any variety mentioned in items 1 and 2 of paragraph (C) of Article 14 of this Chapter.’

In plain English, this gives holders of patents on certain plant varieties, i.e. large foreign multinationals, absolute rights for 20 years over use of their seeds in Iraqi agriculture. The protected plant varieties are Genetically Modified or Gene Manipulated (GM) plants, and an Iraqi farmer who chose to plant such seeds must sign an agreement with the seed company holding the patent that he would pay a ‘technology fee’ and an annual license fee for planting the patented seeds.

Any Iraqi farmer seeking to take a portion of those patented seeds to replant in following harvest years would be subject to heavy fines from the seed supplier. Iraqi farmers would become vassals, not of Saddam Hussein, but of multinational GM seed giants.

Iraqi seed treasure destroyed

Iraq is part of Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization, where the fertile valley between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers created ideal conditions for crop cultivation. Iraqi farmers have existed since approximately 8,000 B.C. and had developed the rich seed variety for almost every variety of wheat used in the world today. They did this through a system of saving a share of seeds and replanting, developing new naturally resistant hybrid varieties through the new plantings.

For years, the Iraqis had held samples of such precious natural seed varieties in a national seed bank, located, ironically, in Abu Ghraib, the city made infamous as a US military torture prison site in 2004. Following the US occupation and various bombing campaigns, the historic and invaluable seed bank in Abu Ghraib vanished, a possible further casualty of the Iraq war.

Bremer’s Pentagon advisers had very different plans for Iraq’s food future.

Iraqi agriculture was to be ‘modernized,’ industrialized and reoriented away from traditional family multi-crop farming, into US-style agribusiness enterprises, producing for the ‘world market.’ Serving the food security needs of hungry Iraqis would be purely incidental to that plan.

The CPA’s Order 81, behind the cover of complicated legal jargon, in effect, turned the food future of Iraq over to global multinational private companies, hardly the liberation most Iraqis had hoped for.

Order 81 on Intellectual Property Rights, was not negotiated between a sovereign government and the WTO, or another government. It was imposed on Iraq without debate, from Washington. According to informed Washington reports, the specific details of Order 81 on plants were written for the US Government by Monsanto Corporation, the world’s leading purveyor of GMO seeds and crops.


...
As soon as Order 81 had been issued, USAID began delivering thousands of tons of US-origin ‘high-quality, certified wheat seed” for subsidized, initially near cost-free distribution through the Agriculture Ministry, to desperate Iraqi farmers. The USAID refused to allow independent scientists to determine whether the seed was GMO seed or not. Naturally, should it prove to have been GMO wheat seed, within one or two seasons, Iraqi farmers would find themselves suddenly dependent on paying royalty fees to foreign seed companies to survive.

There's more, if you care to look. Try googling iraq+CPA+orders

Anyway, OF COURSE we didn't invade Iraq to turn it into a corporate clone of ours!

We invaded for oil!

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Sunday, April 4, 2010 5:08 AM

KPO

Sometimes you own the libs. Sometimes, the libs own you.


Quote:

Explain the sanctions then ?

Was that not set up to punish Iraq ?



Well Sadaam was a monster with a history of WMD programmes - that explains the sanctions for me... How do you explain them, murderous U.S spite? Seriously, what was the U.S interest in sanctions beyond taming a tyrant?

It seems to me we should have ousted Sadaam in 1991 when there was international backing for the invasion, and then built up Iraq to be prosperous and free - just like the U.S did with ww2 defeated foes Japan and Germany.

Heads should roll

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Sunday, April 4, 2010 5:35 AM

KPO

Sometimes you own the libs. Sometimes, the libs own you.


Quote:

There's more, if you care to look. Try googling iraq+CPA+orders


Hmm, but by aiming to foster a democratic country with a free press etc. the U.S is surely severely limiting the extent to which it can control Iraq for its own gain in the long-term?

Corporate dependency is a better argument - but Iraq's economy is essentially oil, and there is a lot of international demand and competition for it. So I don't see how the U.S could've hoped to make Iraq long-term economically dependent on itself. I think the idea of a friendly oil-producing country, and a 'model democracy in the region' is closer to what the Neocons were dreaming of - which suggests they *intended* well for the Iraqi people.

Heads should roll

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Sunday, April 4, 2010 6:10 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Well, some would argue that WE have a democracy with a "free" press (owned by corporations, I might add). Nonetheless, we've pretty much acted as an imperial power at least since the Spanish-American War, and I would say that we've devolved into a corporatocracy despite democracy, so I've come to the sad conclusion that democracy is no barrier to, or guarantee of, economic freedom.

There are three main problems with OUR form of government. (And if I think about it, it boils down to two main problems.)

The first is that our media is owned by corporations and run for profit. It's not just a problem of Fox News running its single-minded right-wing slant 24/7. It's the degradation of "content" as a vehicle to sell crap you don't need and don't even want. So "content" is geared to the lowest common denominator... sex and violence... because those are the "hot-buttons" that can be reliably pushed to sell to thoughtless buyers (males 19-40). Content is not geared towards thoughtfulness.... those people don't shell out money because some chick with big boobs is humping a credit card. We're propagandized 24/7... Buy. Don't think. You are what you own. Sex. Violence. All problems are solved in 30 minutes (or 60 minutes). The world consists of doctors and cops. Nobody works for a living.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

------------
The second problem with our government is the huge amount of MONEY that it takes to get elected. That means that our candidates are winnowed through a sieve of "who doesn't offend the moneyed class". It's not that there's a "quid-pro-quo", it's a process of "natural selection", with money as the selector.

If you think about it, most of that money goes to... guess what? ... Commercial media! If the FCC would require commercial media to run political ads during prime time FREE for all viable candidates, then third-party candidates and candidates with less-mainstream ideas could be heard. But commercial media whines and complains that they'd lose too much money (oh, sob sob) and the FCC which licenses bandwidth on the premise that broadcasters contribute to the public good (it's in the FCC charter, look it up) caves in.

-------------------

The third problem is the non-democratic nature of our main bank: The Federal Reserve. How in hell we wound up with a commercial bank issuing our currency is beyond me. All Presidents are beholden to The Fed.

------------------

Anyway, I used to think that democracy could solve everything. When I was told by a brilliant colleague that it took only 200 years for the Constitution to be completely corrupted I was shocked right down to my shoes, because that was my touchstone... Sure, we were imperialist and our system ran on "one dollar one vote" but someday the people would rise up and right the wrongs through peaceful democratic change. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized he was right. I no longer think that free elections are the answer to everything.

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Sunday, April 4, 2010 8:23 AM

GINOBIFFARONI


Quote:

Originally posted by kpo:
Quote:

Explain the sanctions then ?

Was that not set up to punish Iraq ?



Well Sadaam was a monster with a history of WMD programmes - that explains the sanctions for me... How do you explain them, murderous U.S spite? Seriously, what was the U.S interest in sanctions beyond taming a tyrant?

It seems to me we should have ousted Sadaam in 1991 when there was international backing for the invasion, and then built up Iraq to be prosperous and free - just like the U.S did with ww2 defeated foes Japan and Germany.

Heads should roll



well, there was no international backing

Several key members of the coalition joined with the condition that there would be no invasion.

So killing over a million people on a theory with no evidence is ok in your book is it ?

And even later when it was known the sanctions were doing nothing but causing suffering and death... the US and Britain were the only two on the security council who wanting them to continue...

The motive of the US rings hollow when looking at the result, I think not only a crime was committed but I would also put it to the extent of calling it a genocide as to its scale.

Somebody needs to be held accountable


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Sunday, April 4, 2010 9:34 AM

ANTIMASON


Quote:

Originally posted by SignyM:
Well, some would argue that WE have a democracy with a "free" press (owned by corporations, I might add). Nonetheless, we've pretty much acted as an imperial power at least since the Spanish-American War, and I would say that we've devolved into a corporatocracy despite democracy, so I've come to the sad conclusion that democracy is no barrier to, or guarantee of, economic freedom.



i completely agree with you

Quote:

There are three main problems with OUR form of government. (And if I think about it, it boils down to two main problems.)

The first is that our media is owned by corporations and run for profit. It's not just a problem of Fox News running its single-minded right-wing slant 24/7. It's the degradation of "content" as a vehicle to sell crap you don't need and don't even want. So "content" is geared to the lowest common denominator... sex and violence... because those are the "hot-buttons" that can be reliably pushed to sell to thoughtless buyers (males 19-40). Content is not geared towards thoughtfulness.... those people don't shell out money because some chick with big boobs is humping a credit card. We're propagandized 24/7... Buy. Don't think. You are what you own. Sex. Violence. All problems are solved in 30 minutes (or 60 minutes). The world consists of doctors and cops. Nobody works for a living.



include MSNBC with Fox on the partisan slant issue and i couldnt agree with you more.. well put too

what would be some solutions? the best example of non-profit news i can think of would be the internet, and its aleady(arguably) the future of information mediums. the only alternative would be public, government run news- which no one here advocates(do they?). all we can really do is be responsible for ourselves and our own behavior, what we choose to consume or allow to influence us



Quote:


The second problem with our government is the huge amount of MONEY that it takes to get elected. That means that our candidates are winnowed through a sieve of "who doesn't offend the moneyed class". It's not that there's a "quid-pro-quo", it's a process of "natural selection", with money as the selector.



very very true. well if we had a truly free market, with a government that was neutral, but actually enforced contracts, congress wouldn't have become the venue for corporate lobbying. i mean what was the stimulus bill but a massive lobbying effort? the government has its influence in so many aspects of the economy, that lobbying is lucrative; even to the extent that candidates run for office as essentially lobbyists(if but for a cause ie green energy). i think if we had government policy that was less intrusive and intervening, government woudlnt be able to be used in such ways. call it niave idealism i guess

Quote:

If you think about it, most of that money goes to... guess what? ... Commercial media! If the FCC would require commercial media to run political ads during prime time FREE for all viable candidates, then third-party candidates and candidates with less-mainstream ideas could be heard. But commercial media whines and complains that they'd lose too much money (oh, sob sob) and the FCC which licenses bandwidth on the premise that broadcasters contribute to the public good (it's in the FCC charter, look it up) caves in.


so the FCC protects the current status quo? shocking! i think a candidate should have to pay for their add time- they dont need money to conduct interviews or debates. im all for more networks and more commercial access. the problem to me ultimately comes down to the candidate, as an elected official, being in a position to use government to give favor to a private instution. if government had less regulatory control over aspects of the economy, i dont think corporate lobbying would be as effective


Quote:

The third problem is the non-democratic nature of our main bank: The Federal Reserve. How in hell we wound up with a commercial bank issuing our currency is beyond me. All Presidents are beholden to The Fed.


Amen to that! it's the epitome of corporate/government collusion

Quote:

Anyway, I used to think that democracy could solve everything. When I was told by a brilliant colleague that it took only 200 years for the Constitution to be completely corrupted I was shocked right down to my shoes, because that was my touchstone... Sure, we were imperialist and our system ran on "one dollar one vote" but someday the people would rise up and right the wrongs through peaceful democratic change. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized he was right. I no longer think that free elections are the answer to everything.



i believe the constitution is key. otherwise as you said, free elections in a not-so-free society is almost oxymoronic

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Sunday, April 4, 2010 12:16 PM

KPO

Sometimes you own the libs. Sometimes, the libs own you.


Quote:

So killing over a million people on a theory with no evidence is ok in your book is it ?

You've lost me here...

Quote:

And even later when it was known the sanctions were doing nothing but causing suffering and death

You think they did nothing to limit Saddam's terrorising of the region? Isn't his list of atrocities much quieter under the sanctions?

Quote:

The motive of the US rings hollow when looking at the result

Well what do you think is the motive for the sanctions? You're yet to suggest a convincing one...

Heads should roll

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Sunday, April 4, 2010 12:48 PM

GINOBIFFARONI


Quote:

Originally posted by kpo:
Quote:

So killing over a million people on a theory with no evidence is ok in your book is it ?

You've lost me here...

Quote:

And even later when it was known the sanctions were doing nothing but causing suffering and death

You think they did nothing to limit Saddam's terrorising of the region? Isn't his list of atrocities much quieter under the sanctions?

Quote:

The motive of the US rings hollow when looking at the result

Well what do you think is the motive for the sanctions? You're yet to suggest a convincing one...

Heads should roll



I haven't suggested motive, because to tell you the truth I don't give a damn why they did it.

They did it, their actions were shown by UN and WHO reports among other things to be causing wide spread death and suffering...

And still they kept going, 5 years more

Their motives are irrelevant



http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/19/iraq

Post Invasion fiqures

Estimates of the Iraqi deaths caused by Saddam's regime amount to a maximum of one million over a 35-year period (100,000 Kurds in the Anfal campaign in the 1980s; 400,000 in the war against Iran; 100,000 Shias in the suppressed uprising of 1991; and an unknown number executed in his prisons and torture chambers). Averaged over his time in power, the annual rate does not exceed 29,000.

Only the conservatively calculated Iraq Body Count death toll credits the occupation with an average annual rate that is less than that - some 18,000 deaths in the five years so far. Every other source, from the WHO to the surveys of Iraqi households, puts the average well above the Saddam-era figure. Those who claim Saddam's toppling made life safer for Iraqis have a lot of explaining to do.


So killed more Iraqis, Bush, Clinton, or Saddam

I would say Clinton, followed by Both Bushs


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Monday, April 5, 2010 3:28 AM

CITIZEN


Quote:

Originally posted by kpo:
You think they did nothing to limit Saddam's terrorising of the region? Isn't his list of atrocities much quieter under the sanctions?


Right up until the invasion of Kuwait Saddam had full support of the US government. His terrorising of the region was not only enabled and materially supported by the US but directed as well; so sorry, but it's really no where near as clear cut as you're claiming.

It's really not a question of the nasty man being a big meanie, followed by the saintly US and allies stepping in making everything better. From beginning to end Saddam has been a pawn of the US and it's allies imperial machination in the region. His terrorising of the region, for instance the Iran-Iraq war, was something the US wanted. Because Iran was "bad", due to over throwing the American supported violent and oppressive dictatorship. The reason the US led the first Gulf War was because the pet dictator started terrorising the wrong people, rather than being a a good pet.

--------------------------------------------------

If you play a Microsoft CD backwards you can hear demonic voices. The scary part is that if you play it forwards it installs Windows.

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Monday, April 5, 2010 5:17 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Citizen: Indeed. I'm old enough to remember the Iran-Iraq war, when Saddam was portrayed as a "stongman" (not a dictator) and the newspapers carried pictures of him smiling and looking like someone's favorite uncle. At the time, we were supplying him with items needed to make chemical weapons (reactor vessels, scientific computers etc.)
Quote:

Prolonging the {Iran-Iraq} war was phenomenally expensive. Iraq received massive external financial support from the Gulf states, and assistance through loan programs from the U.S. The White House and State Department pressured the Export-Import Bank to provide Iraq with financing, to enhance its credit standing and enable it to obtain loans from other international financial institutions. The U.S. Agriculture Department provided taxpayer-guaranteed loans for purchases of American commodities, to the satisfaction of U.S. grain exporters.
...{T}he U.S. had begun, several years earlier, to provide it with intelligence and military support (in secret and contrary to this country's official neutrality) in accordance with policy directives from President Ronald Reagan... By the summer of 1983 Iran had been reporting Iraqi use of using chemical weapons for some time.... The U.S had intelligence ... describing Iraq's "almost daily" use of chemical weapons, concurrent with its policy review and decision to support Iraq in the war. The intelligence indicated that Iraq used chemical weapons against Iranian forces, and, according to a November 1983 memo, against "Kurdish insurgents" as well. ... What was the US response to the use of CW? .... Ronald Reagan issued National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 114, dated November 26, 1983, concerned specifically with U.S. policy toward the Iran-Iraq war. The directive reflects the administration's priorities: it calls for heightened regional military cooperation to defend oil facilities, and measures to improve U.S. military capabilities in the Persian Gulf, and directs the secretaries of state and defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to take appropriate measures to respond to tensions in the area. It states, "Because of the real and psychological impact of a curtailment in the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf on the international economic system, we must assure our readiness to deal promptly with actions aimed at disrupting that traffic." ... {By} late March 1984... the U.S. had publicly condemned Iraq's chemical weapons use. {But}... Although official U.S. policy still barred the export of U.S. military equipment to Iraq, some was evidently provided on a "don't ask - don't tell" basis. In April 1984, the Baghdad interests section asked to be kept apprised of Bell Helicopter Textron's negotiations to sell helicopters to Iraq, which were not to be "in any way configured for military use" The purchaser was the Iraqi Ministry of Defense.... During the spring of 1984 the U.S. policy... "favor[ed] expanding such trade to include Iraqi nuclear entities" ... force in the Middle East, and to keep the oil flowing.



Another one of our pets who went rogue was Panama's Manuel Noriega. He was our dictator until he decided he didn't want American troops practicing in his nation. The PTB looked at his location on the canal, decided he wasn't compliant enough (given the importance of the canal) and made up a cock-and-bull story about Noriega being a big drug runner in preparation for invasion.

Now, you have to realize that up until that moment there was NOTHING in the news about the role of Panama and drug trafficking. It was all about Colombia and Mexico then, as it remains even today. But Americans ate up the sudden burst of "news" stories with a spoon and fork, and backed the invasion and overthrow of Noriega without a blink.

I don't know how old you are, but I'm old enough to remember the build-ups to Vietnam, Panama, Chile, and Grenada. So it wasn't a far stretch to see the buildups to Iraq I and Iraq II: First, create a crisis out of a problem... make one up whole cloth, if you have to! Scare the American people. Move the goalposts while you're "negotiating" so that you can get your troops in position. Invade, to much cheering.

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Monday, April 5, 2010 6:52 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Sorry if it seems like I'm dumping information on you, KPO.

But one of the things I learned- from people much more intelligent and experienced- is that the overall gloss that Americans have about our actions and intentions abroad is nearly 100% wrong.

Given the evidence of our actions and their results, I've come to the conclusion that our military interventions are almost ALWAYS in support of higher profits for our corporations... either for cheap labor, cheap resources, strategic shipping points, or some combination. We wind up extracting that and thwarting natural aspirations of most people for a better life, so eventually we wind up supporting corrupt tyrants, landowners, military rulers, oil sheiks etc. who are able and willing to guarantee a "business-friendly" climate.

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Monday, April 5, 2010 7:18 AM

GINOBIFFARONI


Here is something else of interest


http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/04/201045123449200569.
html


Website 'shows video of US attack'



One of the internet's biggest sources of classified government information has released video of what it says is a US helicopter firing at civilians in Iraq.

Wikileaks, a website that publishes anonymously sourced documents, released what it called previously unseen footage, on Monday.

It said the footage filmed from a helicopter cockpit shows a missile strike on a crowded square in a Baghdad neighbourhood in July 2007.

The website said 12 civilians were killed in the attack, including two journalists, Namir Nour El Deen and Saeed Chmagh, who worked for the Reuters news agency.

The two men appear to survive the first strike and attempt to get away, but the helicopter returns a second and third time.

There was no immediate comment from the US military on the video.

story continues



http://wikileaks.org/



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Tuesday, April 6, 2010 6:03 AM

KPO

Sometimes you own the libs. Sometimes, the libs own you.


Quote:

Sorry if it seems like I'm dumping information on you, KPO.

Not at all.

You see the U.S political system as being rotten to the core - I view it as more fundamentally good and free, but with some worrying flaws and susceptibilities (some of them just human moral failings).

We each view the record of U.S foreign policy in a different light, because we see it as the outworkings of a different animal.

Quote:

I've come to the conclusion that our military interventions are almost ALWAYS in support of higher profits for our corporations...

I'm not going to deny that this is a factor in U.S foreign policy decision making, but I'm not convinced it's such a strong governing one, as your camp typically believes.

As I said, we view U.S actions in different ways - most of your blacklist of U.S actions that you highlight are cold-war interventions - which to me is significant. Machiavelian CIA machinations etc. are not some of the U.S's proudest moments - but when you see the 'evil empire' the U.S was confronting at that time you can understand, if not excuse, a desire to block that empires control and influence at every point and place.

The U.S seems quite susceptible to fear and hysteria it seems to me, when under a threat - terrorists, communists etc. And a lot of its worst foreign policy decisions come out of this - I imagine good men getting paralysed by the fear, and then men like Dick Cheney being left to take the initiative.

Heads should roll

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Tuesday, April 6, 2010 6:23 AM

KPO

Sometimes you own the libs. Sometimes, the libs own you.


Quote:

I haven't suggested motive, because to tell you the truth I don't give a damn why they did it.

Ok then my suggested motive stands, as the best we have.

Heads should roll

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