Officer refuses to go to Iraq

Hell yeah. Acutally, I don't like the way Bush went about supporting the war--lying to us about a bunch of shit and using fake claims to justify it. It would have been better had he said--Saddam is evil, we are going to finish the job we started in the early 90s, and oh yeah, while there, we may as well take over their oil. He shouldn't have said that Saddam has WMDs, is linked to Al-Queda, and some of that other shit. We never found the WMDs, but he may have moved them. As to being linked to AL-Queda, it's false, and he knew--he just wanted a "moral" justification for war. Unfortunately, there is no "moral" justification for war. Espececially from the view of Clausewitz--war is nothing more than a power play. It had been a good ten years since our last major war, and we had had some bummers--somalia the biggest (or only). SO we kick Saddam's ass to show that, you know what, we're still kicking, and you guys can't do shit against us, we'll do what we want, because we have the power.We're not the first nation to do this, nor will we be the last. It's just a part of the whole idea of the nation-state, and war is necessary (granted, I'm not about to put my life on the line, which is why I really like all this robotic stuff DARPA's coming up with, just so long as its not used to control us) to stay in power.Not that that has helped OUR oil prices. I was looking at figures recently, and Exxon-mobil is ripping us off. You wouldn't imagine their approximate profit margine.

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All a man's knowledge comes from his experiences

Sand off the edges, sure, but not by lying, at times purposefully. Honesty is much more important, expecially considering if you get caught lying. It's his lying that's gotten his poll ratings so low
(well, at least partially responsible). At least he hasn't said "I am not a crook", yet.

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All a man's knowledge comes from his experiences

the lying is just the tip. our gov't's been lying to us for over a half-century at least, most famously started with the whole Roswell incident.And he isn't the only man making decisions--or at least he hasn't realized it. There was a political cartoon just recently in our local paper, and Bush is surrounded by his cronies, and the cronies are in saying--"we've decided that you are the decider", or something to that effect. He just thinks he is.And may we never have a Fuhrher.

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All a man's knowledge comes from his experiences

I'm not sure if you caught the drift of my post. I agree with the war, just not for the reasons the gov't said we were going in for. To find current WMD's? A better thing would have been to say--we're going in to stop him from ever usingthem again, regardless of whether he has them.Of course, I'm much, much more for the defensive style, instead of pre-emptive war. I know you're going to say that we can't wait to have our asses handed to us, but we've done it plenty of times, and we survived. WWII we waited and waited, and by the time we finally started it was almost too late--and we won.Had Iraq attacked someone, then I think there would be much more support for the war, both at home and internationally. As it is, we are looking like bullies. Good for us at home, but it's really screwing things up abroad.Here's a question for you--we went to war with Afghanistan. They harbor/ed terrorists. It was the home of a few of the 9-11 hijackers. Iraq harborred terrorists most likely. Not officially anymore. None of the hijackers were from Iraq. And we went to war with them, one of the reasons being a supposed link to al-Queda. Saudi Arabia harbors/ed terrorists, and most of the hijackers were Saudi. WHy haven't we gone to war with them? After all, they have more oil than Afghanistan, and provide a bigger threat to us than Afghanistan.

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All a man's knowledge comes from his experiences

Glad your not our national security advisor.Saudi Arabia, if they do not now, has harbored terrorists. That is enough of a threat on it's own, considering our business interests there. And then there is the oil issue. It is very important--ever hear of OPEC? ever hear of the oil shortages in the 70s? Did you know that Saudi Arabia is major player in OPEC?. Hmm, let's see now--they can put the sqeeze on the economic lifeblood of our country. Without oil, as we have no alternative right now, our economy's fucked. And Saudi Arabia, if they get mad at us, can decide to cut production of oil, raise the price of oil, whatever. Because OPEC controls most of the world's oil. The other major places we get our oil from aren't that secure either--they tend to not like us, or are idealogically opposed to us. They all present a bigger threat to our security than the Taliban did. The threat they pose--the ability to seriously affect (in a very detrimental way, I might add) our economy, is a very serious threat. The only reason we went there was to get Osama, and we still haven't found him. The reason we haven't gone to war with Saudi Arabie--business interests. Only reason we haven't gone to war with Venezuela--business interests (which may soon change, due to their attempt at nationalization of the oil industry)(that is, our business inteests there vanishing).We went to war with Iraq for maybe two reasons--oil, and an attempt to stabilize the region. Going after WMD's--publicity stunt that failed miserably. Link to al-Queda--misinformation--now al-Queda is there, but not sponsored by the gov't, which was what we were accusing Saddam of.As to screwing up things abroad--it helps for the international community to have a good opinion of us--it allows us to do more things, like pass sanctions and whatnot in that diseased organization known as the UN. It allows us more leverage in diplomacy. As it stands, too many distrust us, and for good reason--we don't have a trackrecord of being honest. You don't deal with crooks, and we are slowly, in the world's opinion, taking on an image as bad as that of a crook--a dirty, cheating, filthy liar.

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All a man's knowledge comes from his experiences