Or were you saying that I personally would change my mind if I were in Iraq in the firing line? Well, that would be an odd situation, cause I’d probably be killed by my neighbors for speaking out against the crazy mullahs, and saying that capitilism and democracy are great things. American bombs would be my last worry.

Or perhaps you meant as a soldier? Well if I were a soldier, statistically I’d be much more likely to support Bush’s war in Iraq, even though I’d be much more likely to lose my life in support of Bush’s decisions.

So don’t get all esoteric on me, tell me what you mean, other than a cheap piece of rhetoric trying to take away my right to have an opinion.

So long as it’s someone else’s life, of course.

Oddly enough, many of those who supported Bush on Iraq did so despite having little or no confidence in Bush’s motives. The argument was along the lines: Yes, the decision to invade may be driven by imperial ambitions or even greed, but anyone getting rid of Saddam, for whatever reason, deserves support. I always found this line of argument unsatisfactory, but the best response I could come up was: If Bush has no particular concern for Iraq’s welfare, we can’t have any confidence in his handling of the aftermath.

But the idea that nothing could be worse than Saddam has proven very resistent to evidence.

But taking the pro-war left as a whole, I would have expected more discussion of this than I’ve seen, since it casts a fair bit of doubt on the morality of supporting Bush on Iraq.

In any case, the main point of this sentence was to lead into links to pro-war leftists who have taken a stand on this.

So when you come out against the Clinton N. Korea aid I’ll listen to your criticisms of Bush.

And you know this, how?

You ask what Rice and Bush did wrong?!!

The U.S. has given nearly one billion in aid to this dictator since 1992! This pace of aid increased after 9-11 even though it has long been known that this is a bloodthirsty dictator who is so much a commie that he has banned private gardens.

“But of course we had to invade! Sure, there are other dictators around the world that we don’t have a problem with, but Karimov is different! He had rape rooms! RAAAAPE ROOOOOOMS!”

Brendan,
Those abuses would happen whether the US was there or not. At least with the US there, we are able to excert some sort of morderation. And simply because of the US presence there is magnified international attention on all the regional events.

And if Bush and Rice are screwing up here, how so? What are they doing wrong? What could they do to resolve this? Invade? Sanctions? Beg?

Rice’s threat to ‘cut aid’ should be taken with an extremely large pinch of salt, considering what happened the last time the US ‘cut aid’ in response to ‘human rights violations’ in the region.

‘In July, the U.S. State Department determined that Uzbekistan had failed to make sufficient progress on its human rights commitments as outlined in the U.S.-Uzbek Bilateral Agreement and therefore did not qualify for direct government assistance, cutting U.S. $18 million in aid. However, in August, the Department of Defense undermined the principled message this decision sent by pledging U.S. $21 million in new military aid. The U.S. continues to regard Uzbekistan as an important partner in the war on terror’.

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/01/13/uzbeki9895.htm

Fine words are not enough.

http://antiwar.com/justin/