General Zinni on Sixty Minutes

After an exhausting session with Victoria's Secret Police, Ron
confessed the following:

Well Iran was still on our **** list, and they were the biggest threat at that
time in the Middle East. Iraq had not taken out hostages, and was not trying
to spread Islamic Revolution around, and in fact they were opposed to it also.

Iraq's was a secular regime to be sure.

If they had been anywhere else in the world besides next to Iran, circumstances
would have been different. Hussien has had collossially bad strategic
judgement, and if he had not gassed the Kurds, or invaded Iraq, or pursued
nuclear programs, he would still be in power, and Iraq would not have been the
pariah it was most likely.

This probably doesn't seem like much to you, but do you realize that
you did NOT mention anything about Iraq's ties to supporting al-Qaeda?
Unless of course you are like most liberals that don't see one, never
saw one...and certainly don't deny they're now in Iraq killing our
kids (thanks to porous borders and ethnic camoflage).

Ponder for a moment that if we invaded Iraq to keep WMD away from
terrorist (and recalling how terrorists have flooded into Iraq in the
last year) where are the WMD? If we have not found the stockpiles
after searching over a year, does this mean the islamist ****s have
them now? And if they do...then a major reason for invading Iraq was
for **** (since the islamist ****s might have the WMD anyway at this
point). But I digress.

Yes I think we can all agree those countries should be free. Iraq is enough of
a problem right now without having to worry about others. Going into others
too would guarantree failure for all of them. We can still promote freedom in
those countries however without military action.

That last sentence is exactly what I would say...and me the liberal.

Yes we should promote efforts to change, and I think Vietnam is probably along
that path as it is, although has a ways to go.

Cool, so we can agree that there is no need for military force, yes?

DPRK, well that is another darling of the really far left groups.

Ron that simply is not true. I think you keep using a sliding scale
(so to speak) of the political spectrum. Leftists...liberals...really
far left. Name one American politician that thinks the DPRK is a good
thing?

Well the ones who may have not been happy, sure were content, based on their
displeasure for anyone who actually dared to want to roll back the Iron
Curtain. Look at how much leftists despised Reagan and the free markets
economists for daring to think the USSR could be defeated economically. They
all just wanted the USSR tolerated, and maybe contained.

To be fair, I would characterize our economic defeat of the USSR as a
great example of containment. The opposite of containment is military
warfare. Containment worked, we were not out "nation building," we
were protecting our european allies.

Well it sure wasnt a real effort unfortunately, and some here know all too
well. While I would not call Johnson a leftist, Vietnam certainly was not an
effort to win.

OK, I'd say that if the effort had gotten any more "real" the nice
folks in the PRC may have decided to roll south like they did in
Korea. Would it surprise you that Ho Chi Minh and his band of
nationalist communists attempted to get Truman to persuade the French
not to come back to reclaim their colony after WWII? Perhaps...perhaps
we might have spared a great deal of blood and treasure if Truman had
put the strong arm on De Gualle.

Yes he wanted to cancel the Peacekeeper ICBM, SDI (which many Soviets think was
the last straw in their economic defeat), B-1B, AH-64, Aegis cruisers, Patriot
SAM, AV-8B, F-14, AIM-54 and AIM-7...

Assuming this is all true...and looked at another way...1980's Kerry
could simply be opposed to increased military spending at the expense
of domestic/social programs. Reagan made great tax cuts (that
everybody remembers) but they all seem to forget that taxes were
raised by the second term and the federal deficit was absolutely huge
when he left office. My first mortgage in 1984 had a 13% interest
rate.

“I see an enormous haughtiness in the United States trying to tell them what
to do,”

Kerry, in regards to the Sandinista Government.

OK...in the long run things have worked out (Contra victory) without
an invasion by the US. Perhaps the haughtiness was the end-run around
congress, and what was the reason for dealing with the islamist ****s
in Iran (the same SOBs that had taken our fellow americans hostages to
begin with)?

Don't you think it's kinda ****ed up to be in a secret deal with
assholes that held our embassy folks hostage...think back to how you
felt about Iran in 1979, not at this moment reflecting on Reagan's
legacy.

I dont think the US really had a real leftist movement equivalent to modern
liberals, outside of Hollywood and Academia, until the mid-late 60s.

If you're interested...give this a shot, Tom Hayden and the Port Huron
Statement from 1962.
http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst3...nts/huron.html

You cant call Truman, JFK, LBJ lefties or even liberal. They would have
nothing in common with the left wing of today.

Again you're using a slippery scale. LBJ and his "Great Society" was
mo' debly liberal. I think all of those guys would embrace the
Democratic party of today.

Yes, and in hindsight we can see more now, and sometimes in our zeal to face
down communism, we allied ourselves with someone who wasnt really any better.

And this is exactly the moral dilemma...and it is a moral dilemma that
many liberal friends argue. We propped up dictatorships during the
fight against communism, why is it now a requirement to go pro-active
now? Answer? Because we're the 800 pound gorilla. I would argue that
it was not necessary to invade Iraq; I would argue for containment
(not appeasement).

Our govenment has gone over the cliff claiming we're promoting
democracy and the rule of law...but there is now evidence of this
according to the WSJ. To me this indicates the Abu Ghraib prisoner
stink goes much higher than the Brigade level (as Ed might think).

[quote]
Pentagon Report Set Framework For Use of Torture
Security or Legal Factors Could Trump Restrictions, Memo to Rumsfeld
Argued

by Jess Bravin
Monday, June 7, 2004
Wall Street Journal

Bush administration lawyers contended last year that the president
wasn't bound by laws prohibiting torture and that government agents
who might torture prisoners at his direction couldn't be prosecuted by
the Justice Department.

The advice was part of a classified report on interrogation methods
prepared for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld after commanders at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, complained in late 2002 that with conventional
methods they weren't getting enough information from prisoners.

The report outlined U.S. laws and international treaties forbidding
torture, and why those restrictions might be overcome by
national-security considerations or legal technicalities. In a March
6, 2003, draft of the report reviewed by The Wall Street Journal,
passages were deleted as was an attachment listing specific
interrogation techniques and whether Mr. Rumsfeld himself or other
officials must grant permission before they could be used. The
complete draft document was classified "secret" by Mr. Rumsfeld and
scheduled for declassification in 2013.

The draft report, which exceeds 100 pages, deals with a range of legal
issues related to interrogations, offering definitions of the degree
of pain or psychological manipulation that could be considered lawful.
But at its core is an exceptional argument that because nothing is
more important than "obtaining intelligence vital to the protection of
untold thousands of American citizens," normal strictures on torture
might not apply. ...[unquote]

Go here for a link to the whole article http://www.intel-dump.com/
see the Monday 7 June entry.

If this is true...I find it scary and against everything I think
democracy is about.

But I still believe that leftist movements were against promoting freedom in
the communist countries during the 80, based on their word of ridicule, their
actions to promote some of those same countries, and their demonstrations that
only served to help the USSR, Cuba, Nicaragua, etc.

Fair enough...we'll agree to disagree. I don't think anti-nuclear war
demonstrations were de facto anti-democracy rallies. That is too
simplistic. Demonstrating against Reagan's Iran-Contra affair (secret
deals with a terrorist enemy via an end-run around our participatory
democracy) is not exactly what democracy is about.

As a liberal, I will say that the ends don't always justify the
means. Setting a good example is just as important. If you're for
democracy then support the mechanisms of our democracy...namely public
scrutiny...and not torturing prisoners.

Again thanks for the excellent discussion...Honest!

Robey