Rick Cook wrote in
:

Dan White wrote:
"Nate Perkins" wrote in message
. 125.201...

What's astounding to me is the total lack of skepticism towards the
administration. It's almost like people desperately want to believe
the convenient party line. But when they positively claim evidence
of WMD and all they can turn up is yellow cake, aluminum tubes, and
bogus mobile weapons labs doesn't it cause you to wonder? And when
they claim Iraqi support of terrorism in the wake of 9/11, but all
that can be proven are links to anti-Israeli terrorist groups,
doesn't it begin to strain the credibility?

It seems clear that the policy to invade Iraq was set first, and the
justification was adapted later to suit the circumstances.



There's your problem in a nutshell. You are accusing the admin of
some secret motivation in Iraq that you can't really explain without
sounding like a Michael Moore kook. So what was the real story,
Nate? Can you answer without using the terms "Bush's father," or the
"Saudi connection," or "Halliburton"?

For somebody who is so intent on investigating and picking apart all
details of the Iraq situation, I'd like to see you put the same
effort into telling us all the REAL reason we went there, AND provide
the same good, solid evidence you are demanding of the rest of us.

dwhite


You're wasting your time, Dan.
Nate is so deeply committed to his position that he warps the entire
world to 'support' it. Naturally in his view the administration and
those who agree with them are capable of any kind of perfidity,
stupidity, lie or underhanded act to further a policy whose
motivations cannot be in any sense pure.

The eagerness to mischaracterize the opinions of the opposition is one
of the distinguishing hallmarks of the neo-cons.

Of course I never said anything approaching your attribution of
perfidity, stupidity, or even lie ... but that doesn't keep you from
saying I have.

As for the "purity" of the administration's actions, give me a break.
What do you want us to think they are choirboys or something?


What you're seeing is the perversion of politics in our age into a
game in which one's opponents cannot merely be wrong, but must be
utterly evil. (And yes, you can find exactly the same twisted thinking
on the other side of the political divide as well.)

Oh, I agree entirely. Most of the "good vs evil" guys are not coming
from my side of the political divide, though.

It's tragic and it's going to cost this country dearly.

Too late, it already has. Failure to see things in anything but a rigid
ideology has given us tax cuts on top of staggering deficits, it's given
us the ascendancy of the Christian fundamentalists, its given us the
ill-advised (to put it mildly) war in Iraq. You don't have my side of
the political divide to thank for those things.

You'll note in this case he ignored all the evidence of groups which
attacked Americans directly because it contradicts his illusion.

Nonsense. You want to justify the invasion of Iraq based on the murder
of Leon Klinghoffer during the Achille Lauro hijacking 20 years ago???
Wow, now there's a reach for you.

There's simply no point arguing with him. He can't teach, he won't
learn and he just wastes your time.

(And for the record -- and the ideologues who might be listening -- I
am
a long way from uncritically supporting the Bush II or any other
administration. But we can expect that statement to be ignored.)

Sure doesn't look that way from what I've seen of your posts.