“if Saddam was the real reason for the Iraq war, it was a completely idiotic justification.

Well I’d disagree, but then again he wasnt the total justification it wasnt was it? Or are we going back to the conspiracy theory?

http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf

in which they state: “while the unresolved conflict in Iraq provides the immediate justification [for U.S. military presence], the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein”.

I mean, quite frankly, if Saddam was the real reason for the Iraq war, it was a completely idiotic justification. Saddam was always a containable threat, a deterrable threat. I am actually giving the Bush Administration the benefit of the doubt by suggesting that they had a more rational (though still, in my view, flawed) justification for the war. This view has also been echoed by Stephen Den Beste, by the way, hardly a liberal.

Well, so much for your being honest.

Where’s your evidence for all this? Was it in the Valery Plame show trial? Was it in the trumped-up hysteria surrounding the firing of 8 US attorneys? (and why that was more significant than when Clinton fired all 93, I dont know.) Where is it?

You know Mitsu, after a length of time when people tell you that Big Foot or the Loch Less monster exists but you never ever actually see Big Foot or the Loch Ness monster, rational people eventually come to the conclusion that those two entities do not in reality exist.

Another important distinction between liberals and conservatives.

Obviously I’m not merely referring to war spending. I’m talking about spending skyrocketing in the DeLay era, as well, where Congress became incredibly cozy with lobbyists and spent through the roof.

>executive privilege

Executive privilege has been invoked by presidents for time immemorial. Clinton invoked it in a number of cases, for example for the FALN clemency issue and others. Bush has invoked it not only for “national security” but to cover up the shameful politicization of Justice Department hires, etc. Nixon invoked it to cover up Watergate, etc. Sometimes it’s to protect something legitimate, sometimes to cover up something shameful. It’s been invoked by many presidents and each time, the opposition party always cries foul. That’s my main point. It’s simply naive to think that only the “other” party engages in oppositional politics. You guys do it, and so do Democrats. At least I’m honest enough to admit that.

>I see no similar shameful examples of such duplicity

That is one of the most unbelievably blind statements I’ve ever seen. The entire rationale for the Iraq war was duplicitous: neocons wanted to do a democratic revolution in the Middle East and they decided Saddam would be the excuse. Or, the Justice department politicization and Alberto Gonzales’ “I can’t remember”? Or of course we all remember Nixon’s shameful end. Or do we? To think that only members of the other party are duplicitous and your guys are totally clean is the utmost in naivete.

…for example, many Republicans criticize Obama’s idea that we ought to be sending more forces into Afghanistan

This is a bit disingenuous. Obama is saying we should send troops to Afghanistan instead of Iraq, thereby playing the old left-wing game of military three-card monte, that wherever the U.S. does something, it should have done something else, somewhere else. (No, no, we shouldn’t have done anything about Iraq! What about Iran? What about N. Korea? What about Darfur? We all know perfectly well that had any of those options been taken, left-wing propagandists and the legions of useful idiots would merely permute the country names above without missing a beat.)

Now if Obama were specifying beefing up Afghanistan in addition to Iraq, I’d listen.

…yet if the situation were reversed, and it was a Democrat that had committed to a war far from Afghanistan and Pakistan, I am absolutely certain Republicans would be the first in line shouting that we ought to be refocusing our efforts on Afghanistan.

Really? I’m not. We’ve done that experiment, in the Balkans. I don’t recall Republicans shouting at Bill Clinton about this, no riots, no demonstrations. The most you’ll probably find is some quiet questioning whether our national interests were/are involved in the Balkans, and whether it would be more appropriate for the EU to interrupt their mutual high-fiving about being the counterweight to the “American hegemon” long enough to fix a problem in …Europe.

Witness how Republicans used to be against big government until they took power, and then they spent even more freely than Democrats ever did.

We are in a war, you realize? And wars entail greater spending, you realize also? Furthermore, one of the biggest knocks on George Bush from Republicans is just that criticism.

Or how, when a Democrat is president, Republicans are shocked, shocked, that the president is invoking executive privilege, but when a Republican is preisdent, executive privilege suddenly becomes sacrosanct.

Small difference between exerting executive privilege in a matter of national security (until the New York Times publishes it, of course) and exerting it to keep a blow job quiet. Apart from that, good point.

Regarding “opposition”, all I can say is my comments apply to both Republicans and Democrats equally. Republicans tend to reflexively support what “their” side does, even if it goes against their long-held principles (as has occurred many times during the Bush Administration), and they also tend to oppose things just because a Democrat proposes it (for example, many Republicans criticize Obama’s idea that we ought to be sending more forces into Afghanistan — yet if the situation were reversed, and it was a Democrat that had committed to a war far from Afghanistan and Pakistan, I am absolutely certain Republicans would be the first in line shouting that we ought to be refocusing our efforts on Afghanistan). Witness how Republicans used to be against big government until they took power, and then they spent even more freely than Democrats ever did. Or how, when a Democrat is president, Republicans are shocked, shocked, that the president is invoking executive privilege, but when a Republican is preisdent, executive privilege suddenly becomes sacrosanct.

It’s just the nature of politics.

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