The problem is that diplomacy wasn't working. If any of his WMD programs would have panned out, it's game over. And we have the same problem with the Iranians all over again. We have not.
I agree with the highlighted part, too. It's a shame we're seeing it's the govt. he was talking about, and it's hardly using its power less. Whether it's being fascist about running companies and industries or sending 30,000 additional troops into Afghanistan. And I'm quite sure Jefferson was talking about govt. relating to its own people... He'd be rolling over in his grave if he saw what the party he founded has become. And no, the sanctions killed far more Iraqis than died in the past 8 years and certainly Saddam killed as many as 3M in his day compared to the ~10K we actually killed of our own doing. That's not counting Iraqis or foreigners killing other Iraqis during the occupation.
Going with the Thomas Jefferson theme ... "If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."
Exactly. He also said: A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government.
I wonder if Thomas Jefferson ever contemplated a global economy, the ease of outsourcing, off shore accounts or ability to conduct business over a computer. Ideals are great, but we got real time intensley complex problems in our economy and one liners or ideas from speeches aren't going to solve them.
I don't see what ease of outsourcing or offshore accounts or business over a computer would change his views in the least. Those things are only a problem for a tyrannical government, after all. More quotes: Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto. I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country. Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny. I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.
That all sounds great . . . I guess I'm not as much a motto guy (or political party guy) as much as taking each issue indivdually and applying what ever makes the most sense for that sitaution. For instance: looking at the motto of commerce, why did restrict trade with Cuba? Should we treat North Korea the same as other countries? With Sadam in power, should US treat Iraq the same as far as commerce goes as other countries? With all the complexities in the world, it is way too broad to have a motto "commerce with all nations", IMO.
Trade with Cuba was a JFK thing. Jefferson's view was that we should be like the Swiss, completely neutral. However, now that we've interfered everywhere, the only solution (IMO) is to undo what we've done and get back to Jefferson's ideals. We made Saddam, we had to unmake him.
They knew all along that there were no WMDs or connection to Iraq. But they still used the incident to trump up public support for the war, and bills like the Patriot act didn't they? Sad that you can still find plenty of schmucks on the street that still insist that we're doing a good thing in Iraq. The bigger the lie, the more people will believe it.
yeah, somehow we pulled the greatest hoax in history to get half the UN to go along with us. And, sure, no WMDs were found. Joke's on us, right? In 1990, Saddam had just completed an 8 year run of using WMDs of the biological and chemical sort to kill lots and lots of Iranians. (Maybe you think this is a "big lie", too?) In 1991, when we pushed back the Iraqi army from Kuwait, they found another "bad thing"....calutrons--whose only purpose in life is to use vacuum pressure and a magnetic field to separate U-235 (easy to make a fission bomb with) from U-238 (not capable). Why were these being used? Iraq had (has?) no nuclear power plants to speak of. I won't go into sanctions, or shooting at planes in the no-fly zone, or anything like that. What possible reason do you think that the government would lie about it? More and cheaper oil? Guess we jacked that up, too. Support for the Patriot Act? I didn't get to vote on that, did you? Your representatives did. Twice. Once in 2001, and for the reauthorization in 2006. And it passed. Twice. But we're the schmucks, I guess. "The trouble with most folks isn't their ignorance. It's knowin' so many things that ain't so." - Josh Billings
You do realize that the year is 2009? The US also backed Saddam in the war against the Iranians. The first reason given for going to war was Iraq's connection to 9-11, and that they had WMDs, then it was an operation to "liberate the Iraqi people" (apparantly, showing them good ole American democracy by sodomizing them). The next reason they gave was...well it was a mistake because we can't back out now because there will be too much violence. But I have NEVER heard this one before. We invaded because he had chemical weapons in 1990. Indeed.
did I say we invaded b/c of chemical weapons in the 90's? You're the one who pointed out that there weren't any in 2003, so we must've lied in order to get.....I don't know exactly. I don't think we're interested in higher oil prices, "sodomizing Iraqis" for democracy or whatever. Iraq was processing uranium and using chemical weapons. He was building biological weapons. Where the F*** did those go over 10 years of embargo, huh?
I am 100% positive that there's a lot to this story that you haven't heard before. I'll continue to try to educate.
How simplistic do you think anyone is that there's only a single reason for ANYTHING? There were many reasons to invade when we did. Some of those reasons were dispoven, and it's arguable that some or all of them were packaged differently than they ought to have been... but I don't see how or why anyone would think there has been a series of single explanations for the war. Ed O.
Maybe because I watched the news and listened to what the politicians and pundits were saying. I"m not saying those were the actual reasons we were going to war (they were clearly lies), I'm saying those were the reasons given, by politicians, and by their pundits on TV and radio. The talking points did clearly evolve over time.
Yes, it is false, but Dick and Bush did say that Iraq was connected to 9-11. You can't deny that, it's clearly documented.
