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POPSVeteran Peacemakers O'Malley, Maharaj on Iraq The show has many interesting details on conflict resolution and peace work. Additionally... There is not one Iraqi from any segment of society that O'Malley met that was not resentful of the American occupation. This was fueled by the unequal treatment that Iraqis receive at American checkpoints where low-level American functionaries are waved through but top Iraqi government officials wait for hours to pass.
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POPSIraq Cost = 2.68 Googles The Bush administration should have been forced to pay for this war in a way that was consistent with their ideology. On the financial markets. It long ago would have been rendered just another failed Bush business. But we are forced to continue to pay for his psychological issues with his dad.
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POPSLosing the War “Fighting Al Qaeda involves a security side and an ideological side. The security side is successful, but the other side of combating Al Qaeda is ideological and it is not successful.” al Qaeda's goal here is fairly clear. The present world power structure is largely built on the backs of a U.S./Saudi agreement of sorts wrt oil and investments. The weakest link is in Saudi Arabia (closer to the radicalized population) and that weakness is now being exploited. They believe if they take the present Saudi government down then they bring the U.S. down with it. Energy independence never looked so good (and the war in Iraq never looked so stupid).
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POPS2002 Barack Obama Interview: Against Iraq War Obama in an 2002 interview comes out against the Iraq war. Though I would say his thinking is not exceptional (no insult, just that any educated person can think on the fly and sound cogent) he stands in such contrast to the current resident of the White House as to sound like a savior.
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POPSIraq: Deeper U.S. Involvement
In some ways I agree with Bush. If we don't come up with some plan to handle the mess he made in Iraq the remnants of that broken nation state will come back to haunt us. Big time. But unfortunately I feel that Bush is out of his league and hasn't clue what he is doing. Securing Iraq will take a lot more troops, a lot more than the 40,000 the president is thinking about. To that end we need to share the burden and relieve the stress on those that already serve by requiring the service of all able bodied people. If the future security of the U.S. is dependent on a secure Iraq and secure Middle East then we need sacrifice form everyone. We need the draft. We also need to raise taxes to pay for the war. What we don't need are young people largely form the lower socioeconomic classes baring the burden of the war while the SUV class buy plasma TVs made in China with their tax refund and the CEO class buy second homes in Switzerland with theirs. This is surely a recipe for disaste
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POPSSaudis: Will Back Sunnis This public posturing is no surprise. There is now jockeying to see who will take control of the situation in Iraq. Iran, Saudi Arabia, or al Qaeda. There is a lot of talk about how the Saudis are worried about Iran but this is not the case as much as they are worried about an al Qaeda friendly Iraq (on their border). The Saudi royals know that an al Qaeda's goal is to take them down and they need to show some "street cred" in Iraq to head off this challenge.
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POPSBush is "a pitiful coward" The dust bin of history cannot come soon enough for this presidency. Remember when they took the White House? Talk of having the adults in charge? Ha! Remember that Republicans call themselves the party of personal responsibility? Ha! Can our country survive the next two years?
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POPSThe Attack on Human Rights Watch Good overview of the controversies over HRW's reporting of the Israel-Lebanon conflict. Neier deals with the following arguments: * HRW devotes a disproportionate amount of attention to Israel (false) * HRW did not declare Hezbollah an aggressor (HRW never declares aggressors in its reporting, because it realizes that "aggression" is an inherently political concept, as Israel and the US pointed out when they protested the creation of the International Criminal Court) * He also takes down Dershowitz's argument that because sometimes Hezbollah mingled with civilians, Israel should be exonerated for all civilian deaths caused by its air strikes. Dershowitz failed to note that HRW documented two dozen cases where Israeli strikes killed civilians where there was no evidence of a Hezbollah presence. Moreover, Dershowitz himself used sloppy evidence to overstate the presence of Hezbollah among civilians. Via http://www.matthewyglesias.com/
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POPSConfessions of Evil Some look to the terrorist and call them evil. Others say it the liberal press that are evil. This guy has the right idea - he starts by looking in the mirror. Where do you look?
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POPSBecause of Iraq Featuring four Iraq veterans and VoteVets.org Advisory Board Member, retired General Wesley Clark, the ad reminds Americans that the next time they see ads declaring the world is a more dangerous place, they should remember it is that way, because of Iraq.