This stands in stark contrast to the whole John Huang/Charile Trie/monks with money/”no controlling legal authority” shennagians that was seen during Clinton-Gore. Add to that their relativist world view, and I am far more nervous with them than with Bush-Cheney.

There are two reasons why the government is growing larger — the same reasons that caused the defecit to grow under Reagan:

1> Our national-security/defense infrastructure was mismanaged after the fall of the Soviet Union, so significant repair work had to be done. Add to that the shift in emphasis from diplomacy to resolute force (a shift I think was long overdue), and it makes sense to spend more in this area.

Also, national-security/defense is the proper purview of the federal government … in contrast to a lot of other areas the federal government is now involved in.

2> Problem is, so many of our leaders (primarily Democrat, but some GOP) play to the wealthist prejudice of the masses, that it is politically risky for this Adminstration to compensate for the necessary national-security spending by cutting other areas that are neither necessary in terms of societal effect, nor the proper purview of the federal government in the first place.

The Administration is caught in a dillemma when it comes to protecting our inalienable rights. Like Reagan, they have chosen to give some ground today on the sound fiscal principles that they know protect our right to pursue happiness, so that they can assure their ability to protect our right to live …

… in the hope we can live long enough for the masses to come to their senses about the pursuit-of-happiness issues a little later.

Currently the GOP is in control of the government. I see larger government and significant consolidation of power, not the opposite.

I saw many people “on my side of the fence” take their nervousness about the government during that Adminisration, to the point of irrationality in the 1990′s — the whole black-helicopter-UN-takeover-let’s-form-a-militia frenzy.

They didn’t get what I stated above — you can tell a lot by listening to the record “in the normal direction”, instead of obsessing about the hidden “lyrics” — and that is why I am more concerned about the open proposals of the Democratic Party, than I am of what may be going on behind the scenes at the White House today.

The Dems, in the name of compassion, are doing more to build an infrastructure for fascism (albeit unintentionally, for the most part) than the GOP is with its pro-business/serious-security stance, due to the Dems’ exuberance for inserting government in many places where, IMO, it is structurally incapable of advancing solutions.

As for keeping the machinations of government out of the bright lights of scrutiny you want to see, keep in mind that such illumination benefits the sniper as much or more as the watchdog.

There comes a point where an insistence on openess becomes counterproductive with respect to good government — especially when you are dealing with enemies that are so morally bankrupt, they will turn your openess, your compassion, and your sense of fairness into weapons that can kill you.

Again — listen to the record frontwards. The GOP pushes policies like less government involvement and tax cuts — policies that work against the consolidation of power required to establish oppression or fascism. That, along with common sense about those who would kill us, gives me confidence that this Administration will not abuse our rights when it is behind closed doors.

I will check the linguist situation out, but consider this — in Afghanistan, the locals demanded both a quicker and a greater role for themselves. We knew that in Iraq, we would have to do more of the work the locals are doing in Afghanistan, so it does make sense to shift resources there.

As for Bush embracing the privelege of wealth and power — I don’t see anything Bush has done topping the shutdown of flight ops at LAX for a high-dollar haircut aboard AF One.

What you perceive as arrogance, I perceive as getting down to business and focusing on the management of the Executive Branch — instead of making his appearance his first priority, and letting that affect the conduct of the peoples’ business.

I also see a somewhat-justified disdain for a post-Watergate press corps that views dirt and sensationalism as the fastest path to a Pulitzer, and/or has a wealthist mindset that colors its journalism.

I am also seeing a lot of libertarians and conservatives with a “purist” mindset, bash this Administration for not being as open as they think they should. The way these people are straining at every gnat (lack of press conferences, details in the Patriot Act) reminds me of the preachers a few years back who were ranting about backwards-masking as a significant threat — when I found that I could separate the garbage from the gold (in terms of feeding your head), just by listening to the albums frontwards.

I assert that we will be able to tell when an Administration is adopting oppression as policy, in time to do something about it, without subjecting them to the equivalent of a continuous, real-time proctoscopy that will slow down the legitimate work they do. Our checks and balances are adequate for the task.

Actually, one of the first signs we should look at is how the public policies of an Administration — or a potential Administration — seek to reach into our day-to-day life. Another is how such an entity places value upon the character and history of those it has to deal with, at home and abroad.

The first sign indicates the capacity for true oppression, the second indicates the soundness of the judgment, of any Administration.

Lying involves intended deception — you know it is wrong, but you say it anyway. Do you have proof that those documents/photos were fabricated?

OTOH, from what I see, what this Administration did was make a judgment call, based upon the evidence available. The fact that they were wrong on many of the particulars was, in no way, proof of lying — or even of fundamentally bad judgment (see my posts above on this thread).

What it does indicate is that our intelligence systems are inadequate for the present geopolitical conditions — a problem that can be laid as much or more upon the political Left, as it can upon this Admistration.

The real beef many of those that are accusing the President of lying have, is that he was willing to make a decision on Iraq at all — for they fear an America with strength, resolve, and moral clarity in its leadership.

Does no one remember the presentation that Sec of State Powell made to the UN chock a block full of photos of suspected sites, activities, and replete with assertions of the types of systems (delivery and otherwise) that the Iraqi regime was hiding? I do. That presentation put me in the “pro-” camp (albeit only briefly)

But it was a fabrication.

As for (2), from where I stand Bush appears to embrace the privilege of wealth and power more than any president since I started paying attention (Carter), and that?s saying something after Clinton?s self-centeredness. As a most basic example, the Bush administration has repeatedly demonstrated a ?stop asking questions, trust us, and do what we say? attitude, and seems to consider our checks and balances to be a nuisance. That?s not what I call equal rights and responsibilities for rich and poor. It?s more of an aristocracy.

?When are the politicians — on either side — going to tell us little guys the truth about our responsibility in this society??

Supply and demand. If we don?t demand it, it?ll won?t be supplied. As long as we keep voting for the lesser of two evils, we?re not likely to kick evil out of office.

1> I didn’t know about the linguists — do you have more details?

Usually, however, the “why didn’t we invade Afghanistan like Iraq?” argument is framed in a way that casts dispersions upon the motives of the Administration, simply because the force structures were different.

Two different battles, two different force structures for sound military and diplomatic reasons — but they are still in the same war.

2> I am NOT kidding about the disdain of many for Bush because he doesn’t share their wealthist prejudices … and unfortunately, your comment smacks of wealthism as well.

Show me where Bush gives more rights to the rich, or demands less responsibility from them, than from the little guys like you and me.

OTOH, the Democrats, in both rhetoric and policy, show me that they see all wealthy people that do not submit to the intellectual and moral “superiority” of the Left — regardless of how they got/keep/use their wealth, or the effects such activities have on society as a whole — exactly the same.

The Dems see the wealthy as a hybrid creature — a cross between a sheep (that can be shorn for a while), and a leech (that must be crushed).

Even worse, they numb ordinary people to their need to “think like businessmen” and execute, with discipline, the sound planning and preparation that would prevent much of the poverty our social programs end up attempting to deal with.

When are the politicians — on either side — going to tell us little guys the truth about our responsibility in this society — a responsibility to be wise and productive that is equivalent to the rich man? When we get 250 million plus people engaged in problem solving, instead of the elites presuming to put the responsiblity on themselves and the rich alone, we can do less complaining and more solution-finding!

“Those kinds of flawed thinking can lead one to fear America more than terrorism,because it is led by someone who simply believes rich guys and poor guys should have the same rights and responsibilites …”

I’d like to think you’re kidding with that last bit, but I suppose not, huh.

The arugument that “since we didn’t get Bin Laden FIRST, Bush must be misleading us” is old, tired … and invalid. (Same with moving those Saudis out of the country … could it be that they weren’t involved, and our government wanted to protect them from an irrational backlash from some of our own wackos?)

First, the political and logistical realities in Afghanistan precluded flooding that nation with American troops. We learned that from the Soviet debacle in the 1980′s — the rugged, landlocked territory compels us to deal with the locals, who understandibly want a significant say in what goes on.

(This is good, by the way, as long as they keep their heads on straight, which they seem to be doing. They are truly taking ownership of the problems within Afghanistan, and putting structures in place that will reduce the chance of that nation being hijacked again by Islamofascists.)

Besides, heavy armor and massive forces are not that useful for finding the Osama needle in the Afghani haystack — you don’t need them for that. We put the forces we need in to do what we first needed to do — rob bin Laden of the leverage and support of the Taliban and the Afghani infrastructure they controlled, and kill or capture as many Al Quada as possible. That has done more to reduce the threat of terrorism than the actual capture of bin Laden will. (Don’t get me wrong — I still want his head on a pike. However, it is not the only prudent objective we need to pursue).

Your implication is that our objectives should be limited to “justice”; i.e. limit our efforts only to nabbing those who have already bloodied us, and then back off from pursuing all those who seek to do the same … simply because they haven’t bloodied us, yet.

That objective is inadequate … our objective must be to establish and maintain a geopolitical environment where terrorism has no “return on investment” — an environment where we, in a sustained and resolute way, act to either turn nations and people away from terrorism … or destroy them ruthlessly if they persist.

I have described why this needed to be done re: Iraq in my last post on this thread. I have described why this must be pursued worldwide, in other posts and other threads.

Leaving Saddam in control of the Iraqi infrastructure, as we act to achieve the above objectives (or even just to get bin Laden, for that matter) would have been very risky — he would have been highly motivated to gamble even more than he historically had, because he would have seen opportunities to strike us or our friends when we were distracted.

We are turning governments away from terrorism (though dissident elements in their governments have not let us finish the job yet) in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan (with the side benefit of Pakistan and India behaving civilly with each other). Libya is cooperating with us. Afghanistan and Iraq are making sure their nations are protected from being hijacked for use by terrorists — and the leadership in those nations that consorted with terrorists has been uprooted and almost reduced to insignificance.

We are acheiving the objective described above.

The “war only for justice/get bin Laden first, before anyone else” tack indicates to me that you are more worried about the potential actions of America, than the actions of those who persistently seek to deny people their inalienable rights by physical force and psychological leverage.

Looking at the historical record, I would say that such worry is based upon misplaced reasoning … even when you consider the foreign-policy blunders we have made in the past.

Maybe you’re not this way, but I have ran into many with your view — and they also seem to have a greater fear of CEOs that might shred some paper, than of thugs who have shredded people.

Be sure that your reasoning is not clouded by wealthist prejudice or moral equivalence, which are both common in these discussions. Those kinds of flawed thinking can lead one to fear America more than terrorism, because it is led by someone who simply believes rich guys and poor guys should have the same rights and responsibilites …

… and is willing to think, then make a decision, instead of asking everyone else (even those who would like to diminsh us) if it’s OK.

There is evidence that the Bush administration would rather have Bin Laden free rather than defeated. Days after the hijackings, while no airplanes were allowed to fly in US airspace the president authorized an airplane to fly around the nation to pick up Bin Laden relatives and other Saudi Arabians. Fifteen of the nineteen hijackers were Saudi Arabian but the president decided to ignore this fact and let these individuals fly home to safety without being questioned about their possible involvement in the attack on our nation.

Also, rather than finishing the mission of tracking down Bin Laden, â??Dead or Aliveâ?, the President and his administration chose to commit over 130,000 US troops to invade Iraq whom the president recently stated had nothing to do with the attack on our nation.

Nazi commander Herman Goering once stated, “Of course, the people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to greater danger. It works the same way in any country.”

So what is the Presidentâ??s bidding? Part of it appears to be that he would rather have us all living in fear of being attacked.

Devil’s Advocate-style question: How believable a selling point would have been necessary? A Yom Kippur-like invasion of Isreal? Four or five armored divisions rolling over the Saudi border? A mushroom cloud over Paris/London/New York?

All rhetorical, yes, but what must be examined is the trip-line, i.e., how serious a threat is needed to be unanimously judged credible?

I’m still waffling on this thing, since all I get is Cable/Network media, which is as useful as blueberry pie in a housefire. Any insight as to what would have been “real” would be appreciated.

Your “pseudo-random thoughts” are excellent! You did a great job of describing some of the reasons (beyond human rights violations) for getting rid of Saddam.

The fact that we haven’t found stockpiles of WMD was a surprize to most of us. For me, another surprize was the extensive international market for nuclear and other parts and technology. I don’t think the Bush administration has gotten enough credit for its progress in unravelling that, and it’s largely due to our “liberation” of Iraq.

We now know that Iraq paid for missiles from North Korea, and that there was active trade through Libya, Pakistan, etc. And we’ve gotten more proof that China was a big supplier to Pakistan, among others. If Saddam was still in power, even with Hans Blix hanging around,wouldn’t this extensive market still be open to terrorists?

T — when you start the firing, you can start with the Democrats who have consistently voted to emasculate our intelligence capabilities (often because they feared having to explain the actions of a strong, confident America to their elitist friends worldwide).

MattG — first, I agree we need to get to the bottom of this.

How do you propose to do that, however, in a way that prevents the Democrats from turning the process into a political circus with themselves as the ringmasters, rendering it ineffective?

And, how do you do this without significantly inhibiting the work our Executive Branch still needs to do?

As for WMD imminence, what I got from Bush’s speeches is that Saddam didn’t yet have the capabilites (in either payloads or delivery systems … and that includes the willingness of terrorist allies) to deploy those kinds of weapons beyond his own borders, therefore the threat was not “immediate”.

However, Bush (and I) believed now was still the time to take him out, because:

1> His history and present behavior indicated that he was motivated to put himself in a position to be able to deploy such weapons, when it was to his advantage — and there were no checks-and-balances within the Iraqi system to delay, much less prevent, Saddam from seeing his wishes carried out.

2> Anything short of a nationwide proctoscopy would be inadequate to determine when/if he would be ready to deploy those weapons, until after the first one was deployed — and Saddam, unlike Nelson Mandela, refused to subject himself to that level of “examination” willingly. Nothing short of armed invasion would be required to perform this … the “frisking” by weapons inspectors, based on the statements by Hans Blix and others, simply left too much doubt as to Saddam’s capabilities.

3> One weapon, if deployed, would bring massive disruption, not only to the target area, but to the entire world, as fear would become an obsession for people worldwide.

4> Once the first weapon was deployed, the leverage of WMD could easily paralyze (or at least partially inhibit) the decision-making process, not only at the UN, but even within the Oval Office, because the fear of more mass casualties would lead to a lot of second-guessing — and sniping by the poltical opposition. Hesitation, however, could also lead to even more casualties, in a classic damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don’t scenario.

Actually, I was not too worried about a nuclear capability in Iraq (that is sufficiently complicated to preclude quick and deeply-hidden development), nor was I too worried about bioweapons (most mass-deployable ones are so slow and easily countered, once detected, that they are only effective if covertly applied — and once the first bug was unleashed, the world would be on notice).

My big worry was the development of chemical weapons, particularly sticky nerve agents like VX. Saddam had the petrochemical infrastructure to not only do this, but to do so relatively quickly and hide them in plain sight. These agents act very quickly, and it is quite difficult to defend a large civilian population against multiple, simultaneous applications.

Bottom line — I concede nothing.

Bush was absolutely right in his judgment … Saddam was not a threat that day, but we could not be sure beyond a very reasonable doubt that he would be ready … and willing … within days or weeks, because he was not honestly and openly dealing with us.

A man with his history and motivations, in control of a national infrastructure with the resources to produce WMD, could not be trusted in this day of global tranportation, instant news, and suicide terrorists, to keep any WMD genie in his possession in the bottle.

The moral relativism of the Left has denigrated the importance of character and honesty in our evaluations of others, to the point that we leave men like Saddam in power, even after their previous brutal acts show they cannot be trusted with resources and infrastructures capable of producing WMD … simply because they haven’t gotten around to using them on us, yet.

The refutation of this relativism by the President is one of the primary reasons the Left has a visceral hatred of him … and why they refuse to acknolwedge the common-sense judgment he has made in Iraq, for it shows the bankruptcy of their reasoning.

There are many reasons why we didn’t find the WMD we thought were there … from the blurred vision our intelligence apparatus, thanks to its starvation by politicians Left and Right, to the extra time Saddam & Sons (and their Russian and Syrian friends) had to move any and all out of Iraq, or even out of existence.

However, to think that leaving Saddam in place, given his history and the absence of a completely-comprehensive, sustained mechanism of observation of Iraq’s internal operations by leaders we could trust, would never result in the strengthening of terrorism, or Iraq producing WMDs for his deployment, in the forseeable future is simply beyond reason. Since we didn’t have this comprehensive ability of observation, there also was no way to determine when such deeds would be executed by Iraq before the fact — it could be days, weeks, months, or years, but left to himself, Saddam would make it happen.

WMD or no, he had to go down. The world refused to exercise that sound judgment … yet many on its surface are so resentful of American strength, prosperity, and the resolve that is derived from correctly perceiving absolute truth, that many others seek to turn those attributes into tar and feathers for the American Eagle.

“Yes I did imply imminent danger, but I was mistaken. Next question.”
–

And I’d stand up and applaud. Occasionally a politician will demonstrate that publically taking resposibility for a mistake/bad judgement/brain fart/whatever, more often than not, results in the matter being quickly dismissed and everyone moving on. Why, oh why, do so few of them learn from these examples?

“If your neighbor across the street says that he has missiles pointed at your house and has already proven that he hates you and wants you dead … Would you sit at home twiddling your fingers and hope that he would come to his senses someday?”

Well, if you’re a libertarian that’s what you’d do! You’d say that we have to prove that the threat from our neighbor is imminent, and in the meantime we have to live uneasily until we have absolute proof that our evil neighbor means us harm. And if your neighbor did attack you, then you’d have to ask yourself what you did to provoke the attack. You’d have to wail on and on about how your “head of the household” failed you by not preventing the attack, but at the same time you’d have to bitch that your “head of the household” is being too aggressive in his response to the attack.

A brief summary of libertarian comments on terrorism:
Case #1: A terror attack occurs
Libertarian Response: Say that our government has taken insufficient action to protect us. State boldly that our government is at root to blame for the attack.

Case #2: We vigorously kill terrorists
Libertarian Response: Say that we are inciting further attacks against us. Also say that we are going about things all wrong, treating the act of terror as a military instead of as a criminal action.

Case #3: We preemptively attack and destroy a regime that we perceive to be a potential threat to us
Libertarian Response: Bitch loudly and repeatedly that the attack was completely unjustified, because the regime didn’t pose an “imminent” threat to us.

So when you’re a libertarian you really do get to have your cake and eat it, too.