Democratic Peace Theory, look it up.

Ron Paul's 'answers' are incredibly stupid though. If you really think reinstating the gold standard is in any way helpful to the economy you need to take either a basic Economics course or learn some US history. Somebody who gets things so fundamentally wrong deserves no support whatsoever.

huh? Why exactly are they deserving of death again? Gulf War II was just cleaning up the mess left by Gulf War I, a mess caused by allowing the international community to dictate how it was carried out. Think of it as a much smaller and less 'glorious' WWII.

I don't know, probably not very good. However that doesn't necessarily mean it shouldn't be attempted. It's not impossible, Turkey is a democracy and it's Muslim. There's Muslims in all the Western democracies and they seem to get by fine.

There are documentaries about the Iraq occupation already out that show that much of the problems we have been having are directly because of bungled policy decisions shortly after the fighting ended, not because of the people of Iraq being unable to live under a democracy. The first mistake was disbanding the regular military, a pillar of society that gave thousands of men stable jobs and could be used as a police force. Disbanding it threw those thousands of people with military training and weapons out on the street, surprise surprise armed resistance arose. The second was banning all Baathist party members from the new government, which eliminated all the experienced government workers and bureaucracy. This is dumb because to be in the Iraqi government they had to be party members, that doesn't mean they were hardcore about it. Much like in Nazi Germany, the rank and file were just trying to hold onto a job, not fervent believers.

Now I dunno how a forceful conversion to democracy will work, it worked in Japan after WWII but that was a different set of circumstances (unified culture and ethnic group, crushed in a war and forced into total surrender). Time will tell.

Politicians, lying?! Welcome to reality. In this case however I wouldn't say Iraq's possession of WMD was a lie at all. Iraq had and used them in the recent past, they were under UN inspections to monitor their access and development of said weapons, and we had a continued military presence in the surrounding countries and enforced embargos and no-fly zones because of them. Saddam kicked out the inspectors, which is reason enough to reinvade given past actions, investigators who could have told us the truth of the WMD situation if they hadn't been forceably removed.

It was found out after the invasion that the UN inspectors had succeeded in eliminating Iraq's WMD programs and prevented them from restarting, the very said inspectors that were removed. They were gone for years, which could have given Iraq enough time to restart the programs.

Incorrect yes, but not the bald lie people try to make it out as.

So f**king what.

The Alien and Sedition Acts didn't lead to John Adams being hanged for treason. If you killed every lawmaker who proposed or passed unconstitutional laws we'd have no lawmakers. The constitution is up for debate and interpretation anyway, one man's treason is another man's... good thing?

I think you're right, Gwil, when you bring up the point that we've more or less made it our responsibility to make Iraq stable. I can agree with that as a point of principle, a moral abstraction. The problem with that stance is that, though it's easily arrived at, it opens two much more serious and complicated questions. How could we make Iraq stable? And even if we had definite plans for it, would we have the means to execute them?

My thought is that we don't know whether the United States staying in Iraq would improve a thing. We don't have the first idea about how to turn a mess of ethnic and religious factions into a safe and democratic nation. And where are the resources coming from? There's talk of cutting taxes now -- now, when the government has had to intervene in several instances to help the economy, when we're fighting an enormously costly war that's doing for us (and for Iraq) exactly nothing.

John McCain actually attracted me in 2000 for his integrity. By all indications, that race taught him that speaking frankly about what you believe, even if you aren't making the right sounds for voters, is no way to win an election.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioy90nF2anI&eurl=http://mccain.bravenewfilms.org/blog/574-john-mccain-vs-john-mccain

To any supporter of his, I say: enlist. If the army will take you, join it now. If it won't, go to aid Iraq in some civillian capacity. Drop whatever plans you may have for life in the States; go sustain a war demonstrably brought about by manipulation of the public. That's what a vote for John McCain asks of the military.