Übergeek 바둑이: I guess it depends somewhat on how you define 'imperialism'....

I dont see the US as trying to gain more land or more authority or to conquer necessarily, which is what I think of when I hear 'imperialism'.

I believe we are simply trying to protect our own interests as a sovereign nation. From that point, we have a vested interest in keeping other countries from becoming dangerous to us.

We are dependent on foreign oil sources, so we have an interest in keeping these sources of oil from becoming unstable to the point where it effects our ability to obtain that oil. To me, that is not imperialism, per se.

Now, if we can figure out how to end this dependence, then I dont give a rats ass what these countries do or how they exist, as long as they leave us alone in the process. But as things stand right now, it can hurt the US if these countries are not stable. It just happens that we also believe the best way to make them more stable is for them to be democratic in nature, and to give their people freedom and rights and hope for a prosperous future.

Again, I dont see this as imperialism.....

Czuch:

I find the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan interesting in the sense that the government has gone to such great lenghts to justify and legitimize the war.

It is very interesting that many Americans dislike being called an empire. That is understandable because the United States was born out of the War of Independence from the British Empire. An anti-imperialist stance was part of the founding of the United States and the ideology that followed was one of expansionism but opposition to imperialism. This was embodied in the Monroe Doctrine. This doctrine was introduced by President James Monroe in response to the expansion fo the British Empire in Latin America. As Latin American countries declared independence from Spain the British Empire attempted to expand and James Monroe took a clear anti-imperialist stance.

In 1836 the Republic of Texas allied itself to the British Empire in the hopes of surviving as an independent republic. The Mexican government was trying to regain control of the territory and alliance with the British empire was an option that Texan pursued. In 1845 President James Polk used the Monroe Doctrine to justify the Mexican-American War. In that was the United States gained a lot of territory and President James Polk had a very difficult time convincing politicians in Washington that expansion into the west was not an imperialist policy. This is where the doctrine of Manifest Destiny was born. The US was destined (even divinely ordained) to expand across North America, and that was used as a way to justify American imperialism in the 19th century and later in the 20th century as the US moved to fight against communism in Latin America.

There are speeches of that era in the White House website. The tone of James Polk's speeches is so similar to the speeches of George W. Bush. Instead of Iraq Americans dealt with Mexico, and instead of Saddam Hussain, Americans demonized Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, the Mexican president of that era.

Considering the historical and ideological nature of American expansionism, I see the United States as a "reluctant empire". The US pursues a clearly imperialist foreign policy, but to satisfy the ideological expectations of the voting public the government has to try its best to justify war before the public.

This is not a new phenomenon. Every empire in history needed to justify its actions.

The Greeks fought against the "barbaric Persians", even though the Persians were one of the great civilizations in history.

The Romans fought against the "barbarian tribes" and tried to "civilize" them. That implied that Celts, Germans, Iberians, Egyptians, etc. had no civilization.

Arabs fought against "infidels" and believed that God had destined Islam to expand across the world. This implied that Christianity was an unacceptable religion.

Likewise the Holy Roman Empire went into the crusades in the name of God, and called Arabs and Turks barbaric, in spite of the strengths and achievements of those cultures.

The Spanish empire killed millions of American natives and justified it in the name of God and civilization.

Napoleon occupied all of continental Europe under the call of "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite" (freedon, equality, brotherhood).

The Britsh Empire tried to bring the "civilized world" to its imperial acquisitions. I imagine that India and China were not civilized!

Josef Stalin sent millions to their deaths in the name of socialism, equality and the fight against imperialism.

Now we fight our wars in the names of freedom and democracy. That is the essence of ideology. It sells abstract concepts as concrete justifications for war. The US has fallen into that ideological trap too. Imperialism in the name of a higher principle.

Übergeek 바둑이: Terrorism and WMDs were a plausible excuse to go to war.



Thats one I can agree with!

Bwild:

I entirely agree. The war in Iraq, just like the war in Afghanistan, is over oil and who controls the monopoly of production and distribution in the MIddle East and Central Asia. It is no accident that the following oil connections are obvious:

George W. Bush - Arbusto Energy (Arbusto is Spanish for Bush)
Condaleeza Rice - Chevron Texaco, former member of the board of directors
Dick Cheney - Former CEO of Haliburton
Hamid Karzai - current President of Afghanistan, former executive for Unocal, a pipeline company acquired by Chevron-Texaco in 2004

It is also no accident that Lee Raymond, the former chairman of Exxon-Mobil, was also the largest individual contributor to both of George W. Bush's electoral campaigns.

It is also no accident that the people in the list above (together with some of the big players in the war like Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz) also had their money in the Carlisle Group, a private equity firm run by Bob Carlucci, former head of the CIA. Carlisle is also the company that represented the financial interests of the Bin Laden brothers in the US.

Terrorism and WMDs were a plausible excuse to go to war. However, all wars always boil down to who gets rich, and in the case of Iraq it was oil companies.

Some day the truth will come to light because the Freedom of Information Act will at some point force the government to declassify all the documentation that for now remains classified.

Übergeek 바둑이: I think when its all said and done..it'll be over oil and oil prices.

gogul: Allthough, where is the carped for radioactive dust?

Imsoaddicted: It is Nicolas Sarkozy (the French pres) who said that if you brush the dust under the carpet you'll get a problem in the future.

My feeling is that the 2007 London car bombings where an orchestred fake from A to Z. A Browny/Bush booster, laws to control the opposition, to legitimate governmental stress over the people.

Imsoaddicted: It better not, otherwise I feel a revolution will be at hand.

(V): http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8110022.stm

lets hope this isnt brushed under the carpet

Artful Dodger: A mess. But I have to say this is based on limited info as we cannot get good reporting from that country due to the restrictions in place. But it feels like a religion backed dictatorship.. Well, I say religion, but realistically it's a perversion of the Islamic faith.

(V):   What are your thoughts on the current situation in Iran?

Snoopy: Hopefully they will go for the UKIP instead, but unless they change some of the immigration laws I fear it will be the BNP.

(V): they playing straight into the BNP hands
cant they see that

Snoopy: Have you heard about the Iraq Inquiry.. behind closed doors, no under oath, and no power to make people appear.

Such great openness that we are getting

(V): yet another WHITEWASH

i just add words fail me cause if i put what i really feel i be banned from here for good

At last.. Our Commons authority has published MP's accounts details....

Just they blacked out so much that it's a joke.

This sure is going to restore the UK people confidence in our democracy.... NOT!!

Czuch: ... US companies 'rebuilding' Iraq ripping of the USA government... blah blah blah.. Iraqi police giving weapons to enemy insurgents.. blah, blah.

And Saddam was at the helm because he had help from which western government???

And still The 9/11 terrorists have not been caught, and the Taliban is still an operational organisation.

And the rest of the world didn't believe the American Intel.. Our army got involved to make your USA invasion look good rather then just an admin on a blood lust.

(V): Putting people in jail is more expensive Czuch, didn't you know that?


I knew you would say that......

But come on, the UN inspection teams, meetings and mandates, year in and year out, food for oil, blah blah blah....

anywho, it was just the excuse the world needed to help the Iraqi people rid themselves of him and to begin their long road from desperation to hope a and eventually prosperity... never would have happened with saddam at the helm


right war right time right place

I would think the rest of the world would be like..."ballsy Americans for pulling the trigger, now that they have, at least we can get in there and help them out"

had that happened, this thing would have been ended and sorted out better long ago!

Czuch: Putting people in jail is more expensive Czuch, didn't you know that?

Pedro Martínez: Ok.... If you must! Do you want a plastic thermite recipe?

Czuch:
> Saddam had WMD, and used them???? Funny, he never gave the UN any evidence that he ever destroyed the ones not used
> Maybe thats why we all thought he still had some

In response to your comment, the CIA did have evidence that Saddam had ordered the destruction of his WMDs in 1995. I would recommend looking at an interview with Ray McGovern, a retired CIA officer who claims that in 1995 Saddam's son-in-law defected and said that Saddam had ordered the destruction of all WMD sites in 1991 to avoid their being found by UN inspectors after the Gulf War.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wHTNQrcCTA

That intelligence was deliberately ignored and set aside in favor of the now infamous "Downing Street Memo". It is claimed that this document was a fabricated intelligence report. This report claimed that Saddam had WMDs aimed at Kuwait and Israel. Wikipedia has a good description of the events about the memo:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downing_Street_Memo

We must also remember that David Kay, the Bush administration's weapon's inspector at the United Nations, resigned because he had warned the Bush administration that that Iraq probably had destroyed all its stockpiles of WMDs, and Colin Powell chose to ignore him.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kay
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Saddam_WMD_search

Ray McGovern did confront Donald Rumsfeld and had him on the ropes with the misuse of intelligence reports:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1FTmuhynaw

I think that intelligence was manufactured and that the decision-makers made a calculated risk. They thought that they could go to Iraq and find the WMDs after the war, even if they had no evidence that Iraq had any WMDs. Saddam was bluffing like he had done in the past. Then George W. Bush and Tony Blair called his bluff and were later confronted with Saddam having no WMDs. Since Bush and Blair could not prove that Saddam had anything, they manufactured intelligence to match war policies they had decided even before the 2000 election.

The US did have good reason to believe that Saddam had WMDs and that was because in the 1980s the US supported Iraq in its war against Iran. The Regan administration had sent Donald Rumsfeld several times to sign many agreements with Saddam Hussain. In the 1980s Donald Rumsfeld was CEO of AG Searle, a pharmaceutical company that sold to Saddam Hussain large-scale bioreactors that could be used to mnufacture anthrax and other biological wapons. Donald Rumsfeld knew that Iraq had that technology because it was his company that had sold it to Saddam. There is some famous footage of Saddam and Donald Rumsfeld shanking hands:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTldYbqlJc8

Colin Powell has admitted that the "burn notices" that should have been used to ignore bad intelligence were ignored. I think Powell's assessment was honest. The intellegence was believed, even if it was false.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZTLmOoPzjs

We must not forget also the Hutton Inquiry which investigated the death of David Kelly, the man accused of fabricating the intelligence in the "September Dossier", a British intelligence report claiming that Saddam Hussain tried to acquire Uranium in Africa. The questions surrounding that dossier and the death of its creator have bothered many people who believe in a conspiracy within the Blair government.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutton_Inquiry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr_David_Kelly
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_Dossier

I think that we will not know the truth about the intelligence failures until after George W. Bush dies. All that information will remain classified just as his father's involvement in the Bay of Pigs invation in Cuba remains classified, and Henry Kissinger's personal diaries and papers remain classified. The reason is that men in power do what they want, and they if necessary they will lie to the public to achieve their objectives. This is true everywhere, not just in the US.

Czuch: oh yeah... also, I am a tax paying citizen and the police say, no problem, this guy just stays in his house most of the time, and we will post a police outside his home 24 hours a day 7 days a week, and we will pay someone to go into his house every so often and inspect it, all at my tax expense

Thats not going to cut it for me personally.... I am going to say NO! Stop wasting my money and stop wasting the time for the police who should be doing something better, and just throw this idiot in jail or whatever, never have to use any of my brain to think about this guy ever again.... thats my solution, and we vote on it by the town, and the town members say okay, do it, so it is done and it is the will of the people.

Pedro Martínez:

Now somebody finally gets it!


But seriously, if you have some sort of authority who repeatedly demand of them to produce the guns, or some evidence that they had already gotten rid of them, and this authority continues to threaten serious consequences if they do not comply, this person should not have a big surprise when they wake up one day in custody again

(V): I don't trust the police. They are ineffective and ineffectual. I'm already getting ready for my preventive strike.

Pedro Martínez: But the police would have taken the gun, and searched his property.

Czuch: Are you sure Bush would have been impeached?? I think you are just over reacting.

"Funny, he never gave the UN any evidence that he ever destroyed the ones not use."

Actually plenty of inspectors went in and looked and saw nothing. The UN were as such satisfied (as far as I am aware of) that he had no WMD's.

Just I feel the US military machine and admin was after a victory, ya know.. the feel good factor.

But that does not change the fact that people in Bush's admin knew they were lying to the US and the world!!

Czuch: My neighbor bought a gun ten years ago. When I asked him to tell me if he still had it after he returned from prison, where he spent some time because he had used the gun against his own people (family members), he told me to mind my own business. I think I am going to burn his house because I think he still might have the gun and I am under imminent danger.

(V): I think they might be still very sore at the USA for supplying Saddam with WMD's that he used against their soldiers during the Iran/Iraq war.




Saddam had WMD, and used them???? Funny, he never gave the UN any evidence that he ever destroyed the ones not used

Maybe thats why we all thought he still had some

(V): Prove what???

I started with the proof...

"No one realized how bad the economy was. The projections, in fact, turned out to be worse. But we took the mainstream model as to what we thought -- and everyone else thought -- the unemployment rate would be."

"Everyone guessed wrong at the time the estimate was made about what the state of the economy was at the moment this was passed."


This is what the Vice president said, he admits they were wrong, that the intel they presented to the US people before the huge stimulus was wrong!

So.. was it a lie when they told us they would create or save 3 million jobs??????

My point is that under Bush, it would have been a lie, and ask him to be impeached for it.... thats all.

gogul: I think they might be still very sore at the USA for supplying Saddam with WMD's that he used against their soldiers during the Iran/Iraq war. Strictly speaking the USA is an accomplice in war crimes as they supplied the technology.

And the manipulators of Iran call out the harmless, moderate and careful foreign reactions on the election as hostile. Pretty much for a country that maintains its revolution like a finance bubble with verbal trash against Israel and the US.

Artful Dodger: Strange.. as they were the ones for some time you've been complaining about MP's expenses over here from within Parliament. While everyone else was fat catting from the tax payers money!!

Czuch: Not just Howard Dean...

Well if you contend, as certain Republicans use to say to me... prove it. Show me the economic data that backs up your claim.

(V): Critics such as Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean charged that the Bush and Blair administrations deliberately falsified evidence to build a case for war.[


Well, i contend that obama falsified the benefits of 3 million jobs to build a case for a multi trillion dollar spending spree fraud.....

To me government fraud is government fraud, but you would never know that based on the media perception of fraud!

Jim Dandy: Nor the needed experience. I don't like the progressive movement and find it a frightening prospect for the future of the US. But then maybe I watch too much Glen Beck.

Artful Dodger: re:"If it makes you feel any better I now think Bush was an idiot."

If it makes you feel any better,I now think Obama doesn't have the intestinal fortitude to accomplish his mandate

Czuch: because the damage was done. It's like a patient at a hospital getting sicker through doctors mistakes... you can't leave the patient like that can you? To do so would be cruel and a break in the oath made to take care of the patient

Czuch: Yes, you did. so I believe.
One of your guys says...

"In an interview airing tonight on the PBS weekly newsmagazine NOW, Colin Powell's former Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson makes the startling claim that much of Powell's landmark speech to the United Nations laying out the Bush Administration's case for the Iraq war was false.

"I participated in a hoax on the American people, the international community, and the United Nations Security Council," says Wilkerson, who helped prepare the address."

"Shortly after the invasion, the Central Intelligence Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, and other intelligence agencies largely discredited evidence related to Iraqi weapons and, as well as links to Al Qaeda, and at this point the Bush and Blair Administrations began to shift to secondary rationales for the war, such as the Hussein government's human rights record and promoting democracy in Iraq.[6][7]"

"Critics such as Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean charged that the Bush and Blair administrations deliberately falsified evidence to build a case for war.[56] These criticisms were strengthened with the 2005 release of the so-called Downing Street Memo, written in July 2002, in which the former head of British Military Intelligence wrote that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed [by the US] around the policy" of removing Saddam Hussein from power.[57]

While the Downing Street Memo and the yellowcake uranium scandal lend credence to claims that intelligence was manipulated, two bipartisan investigations, one by the Senate Intelligence Committee and the other by a specially appointed Iraq Intelligence Commission chaired by Charles Robb and Laurence Silberman, found no direct evidence of political pressure applied to intelligence analysts.[58] An independent assessment by the Annenberg Public Policy Center found, however, that Bush Administration officials did misuse intelligence in their public communications. For example, Vice President Dick Cheney's September 2002 statement on Meet the Press that "we do know, with absolute certainty, that he (Saddam) is using his procurement system to acquire the equipment he needs in order to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon" was inconsistent with the views of the intelligence community at the time."

******

Enough to chew on?

Late Monday night, Republican National Committee Chief of Staff Ken McKay fired off a complaint to the head of ABCNEWS:

Dear Mr. Westin:

As the national debate on health care reform intensifies, I am deeply concerned and disappointed with ABC's astonishing decision to exclude opposing voices on this critical issue on June 24, 2009. Next Wednesday, ABC News will air a primetime health care reform "town hall" at the White House with President Barack Obama. In addition, according to an ABC News report, GOOD MORNING AMERICA, WORLD NEWS, NIGHTLINE and ABC's web news "will all feature special programming on the president's health care agenda." This does not include the promotion, over the next 9 days, the president's health care agenda will receive on ABC News programming.

Today, the Republican National Committee requested an opportunity to add our Party's views to those of the President's to ensure that all sides of the health care reform debate are presented. Our request was rejected. I believe that the President should have the ability to speak directly to the America people. However, I find it outrageous that ABC would prohibit our Party's opposing thoughts and ideas from this national debate, which affects millions of ABC viewers.

In the absence of opposition, I am concerned this event will become a glorified infomercial to promote the Democrat agenda. If that is the case, this primetime infomercial should be paid for out of the DNC coffers. President Obama does not hold a monopoly on health care reform ideas or on free airtime. The President has stated time and time again that he wants a bipartisan debate. Therefore, the Republican Party should be included in this primetime event, or the DNC should pay for your airtime.

Respectfully,
Ken McKay
Republican National Committee
Chief of Staff

(V): This was due to lack of regulation world wide of the banking system.


So why then the need for a multi trillion dollar stimulus, if some banking regulations were all that are needed?

(V): There was no expert saying he had WMD, just some vague comment from one person so I believe and he was dubious.



I cant believe we are back here again?

The whole US Congress and most of its government sent us to war on intel he had WMD, and now you tell me there were no experts saying he had WMD? We all sent our troops based on one dubious persons report?

Now that is criminal!

Czuch: No, as the real experts, aka those who were doing the inspecting said Saddam had no WMD's

There was no expert saying he had WMD, just some vague comment from one person so I believe and he was dubious.

And no, this is not part of a normal economic cycle. This was due to lack of regulation world wide of the banking system... I mean.. how else do you explain how someone is able to keep a $50 billion dollars scam going?

(V): I never doubted how bad things are, my opinion is that its all part of a normal economic cycle (well normal for a free market economy, which would be different from normal under a socialist type of system)


He and other economic experts just not think things were as bad as they were

Well experts thought Saddam had not got rid of the WMDs , but then they found out he had... thats the point, get it yet? Experts think things all the time, and they are not always correct.... and most of the time we realize this and we move on.


But how do you know that these Obama economic experts really did know what the economy was like, and that they really had no hope of creating 3 million jobs like they said they would? But they lied to us just to get their big spending spree passed easier.... Thats what was said about Bush, right? That he lied and should be impeached, right?

Its about a point, how the media and the liberals in general think about things differently when it is Obama or Bush, not trying to say anything about the specifics, just pointing out a bias and hypocrisy, as I see it....

Czuch: No. He and other economic experts just not think things were as bad as they were. And come to think of it... neither did you.

Jim Dandy: That post was addressed to Czuch and he likes it when I talk that way.

If it makes you feel any better I now think Bush was an idiot.

(V): Once again you miss my point... its not about what is specifically going on, its about the fact that expert intelligence isnt always as accurate as we would like it to be... that Obama pushed this package through in a big hurry, and was able to pull it off based in part on faulty expert intelligence!


Now, the real point for me, is the hypocrisy by the media and the liberals in general..... if this were Bush, we would be told how he lied to us to get what he wanted and he should be impeached blah blah blah

but now you say, "whats wrong with that?" well whats wrong is that we had this huge stimulus forced down our throats at record speeds, and now that it is a done deal, we are told that the info used to make this legislation was wrong, and since it is a president popular with liberals and the media, well, lets just say again, if it were Bush, you wouldnt be so easy on him, would you????

Artful Dodger: re:If this were any Republican President it would be a different story. But Obama is the darling of the press and inspite of the fact that he's running this country down the toilet, consider that those politicians who fully support Obama have been floating in that same toilet, waiting for someone to flush it.


It's good to know the moderator of this board shows such restraint

Czuch: Was it?? The page I found the interview on was dated December 2008.

Unless, the interview you saw was just a repeat of another one he did last year?? Who knows!!

The guy is saying the economy is in worse state then at first thought, what is wrong with that? We've had the same over here by our Government. I would you'd like to focus on that your current admin is trying to cut the budget deficit. I would have thought you would like that idea!!

(V): Well, the interview I quoted from was from a couple of days ago..... and the point is, that we were rushed into this multi trillion dollar stimulus package on faulty intel, both about the state of the economy, and on how the stimulus would create some 3 million jobs.

The press was all over the Bush administration for crap like this, but why nothing now????

"Bams clan lied, the nasty slobs... now more people lost their jobs!"