Perhaps I should stop frittering away my free time leaving comments at Glen Dean's blog and work on my own. But some times events are too overwhelming, like the whole Ron Paul debate business. Look at Hewitt's poodle, Dean Barnett. He argues that Ron Paul is a crank because Paul expects the Bush administration to " conjure up a Gulf of Tonkin incident to justify an invasion of Iran."
Isn't that official neocon policy? I'm sure that if I were to thoroughly research Paul's views, I might find reason to call him a crank. But the Bush adminstration's aggressive designs on Iran are common knowledge. Can Barnett really believe that it is outlandish to presume that the administration who rushed to war against Iraq because of the threat of "smoking guns" and "mushroom clouds" might conjure up a Gulf of Tonkin type incident to justify bombing Iran?
And another thing. If, as some rightwingers want; Ron Paul is kicked out of the debates but Rudy Giuliani is allowed to continue, can we finally drop the notion that the Republican party is in favor of "life"? War, torture and the worship of executive power are their motivating forces.
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I hope you are wrong about their designs on Iran. I could be totally naive, or just too busy to pay attention, but I couldn't imagine them conspiring to war with Iran at this point. Maybe the Weekly Standard is doing so, but not Bush. Like I said though, I could be wrong.
As far as the rush to war with Iraq, you have to remember the mood of the country at that point. I think that 85% of the country was for war. President Clinton made several speeches supporting intervention. Colin Powell certainly isn't a neocon.
The only people who really have any moral standing, or any right to say "I told you so" at this point, are guys like you, Pat Buchanan, Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich, and a really small number of conservatives, libertarians, and pacifist lefties. The last group opposed the war for different reasons, obviously than the first two. My point is, the political mood at that point was for war, and the Bush administration jumped on it and ran with it. That political mood doesn't exist today. I just don't see war with Iran happening.
As for Paul being kicked out of the debate, I hope all of the so called bottom tier stay in. They definitely add something to the debates, at least intellectually. I guess the people that get invited are the people that the sponsors want to invite. I don't know who is sponsoring the next one, but it is really only their decision.
I don't necessesarily think that there will be a war with Iran at this point, only that that is what they want. When you see neocons like Michael Ledeen saying "faster please," they are referring to war with Iran.
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