If the US really wanted Iraqi oil, we'd just have taken it in 1991.
1991 was Papa Bush. 2003 is Baby Bush. There's a difference. I never trusted Papa Bush either, but the worst thing he did to me was break his promise not to raise my taxes. Baby Bush is a whole different story. Even the Democrats never seriously dreamed of getting the sort of authoritarian legislation passed that Baby Bush has managed. (Why? Because the Republicans would have been watching them. But with Bush it's okay, because he's a "compassionate conservative.")
In addition, at least Papa Bush was honest enough to raise taxes. Baby Bush, on the other hand, claims to have lowered taxes, but is running up huge budget deficits. Deficits create inflation, which leeches away your money just as effectively--but less honestly--than increased taxes.
There is a clear and present danger from Saddam.
Can you show it to me?
Of course Iraq's neighbors are going to say Saddam isn't a threat--they are afraid of him.
You can do better than this, AFP. The reason they say Saddam isn't a threat is because they don't want the US tramping around in the Middle East where it doesn't belong, blowing !@#$ up and hacking people off. If he
was a threat, they'd want us there fighting him.
Bush II alreayd had his war, and he could gain much more politically by not going to war in Iraq.
To which war do you refer?
Gain more politically? You mean if he said, "Sorry, guys, just kidding" and folded up his tents and went home? He'd be a laughingstock! North Korea, which is scrutinizing us for any weakness, would become positively incorrigible. So would Iraq, and possibly the whole of OPEC as well. Tony "The Lapdog" Blair would be horribly embarrassed. The US would lose face all across the world--which is why he has to go to war now, even if he still can't find any WMDs and his public support sucks big green hairy ones.
He'd gain politically with
me, but he doesn't care what I think: I didn't vote for him and I can't imagine ever doing so in the future.
However, he is govenred by principal, which is a rare things today in politics.
Just because he's not getting hummers in the Oval Office from the hired help and porking everything in a skirt doesn't make him a principled man. He's violated his oath of office (the one about upholding and defending the Constitution) much more severely, in my opinion, than Slick Willy did--perhaps even more severely than any President since Lincoln.
