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You are correct that Clinton used occasional foreign policy crisis cynically for domestic political advantage like getting his scandals off the front pages. What should be considered though is that Clinton and the Democrats faithfully followed through policy set in place by Republicans i.e. Bush the Elder’s Iraq policy which shows a unifyied vision for the world amongst our governing elite. The WMD dead enders, as you call them, are using Clinton’s supposed belief in WMD as proof of Saddam’s malfeasance and justification for Bush the Younger’s war which is pretty ironic as these people never believed Clinton about anything. Funny using a sociopath serial liar and convicted perjurer as a character witness.

What many good people fail to consider (or refuse to) is that their government has intentions which are not pure, peace loving or altruistic whether it be Republicans or Democrats who are in charge. It is never considered that the collapse of the Soviet Union and Saddam's trouble with Kuwait made a golden opportunity for our moving into the mid-east large military forces and leaving Saddam in power provided cause for leaving our forces in place. 9/11 was the perfect excuse to take a giant leap forward in our plan to dominate the mid East and central Asia. One does not have to be an insider to know about this, our moves are painfully obvious. The sad part is that so many good people can not grasp how our actions of duplicitous diplomacy, aggression, war and occupation breeds enemies and blowback. How can so many basically intelligent people actually believe we were attacked by terrorist “because we are good” and that “they hate us for our democracy” and why do they believe we have a right to police the world and overthrow governments for our convenience and profit. Our foreign policy is no different than the big city gangster tactics of bribery, extortion and applying muscle. All of which is considered morally bankrupt when practiced by regular citizens but somehow interpreted as righteous and proper when done by the government. History shows that since the dawn of man the reasons for war have always been power and money but somehow this could never be considered part of our history. We always were white hats afterall so don't forget that and you'll feel much better.

Every word you say is true, and the answer to your question is 'government education camps', but as patriots, and personally where I have friends in Iraq, I must stay focused on the policy goal: bringing the boys home. We are our brother's keeper, after all (see tagline as it relates to Rs and Ds).

Politics, the art of the possible, requires that we 'cut deals' to obtain policy objectives, and at this moment in 2004, I am trying to tell (sell?) a story that will embrace those on the Right, without compromising my own positions.

As you and I both noted in our posts, citing a sociopath for any kind of proof, is not a position I am willing to take-- indeed no person who did would have any credibility with an 'honest Right.'

While no doubt history will barely mention the War on Terror as China emerges as the world's super power, the zeitgeist of our age seems to be the need of the public to believe they are under attack from 'all evil' even as a criminal class is imported by the government to nearby neighborhoods. We can blame that on 40 years of Cold War propaganda, I guess, but I am only 30 so others in their 40s and 50s will need to answer that question.

The WMD dead enders, as you call them, are using Clinton’s supposed belief in WMD as proof of Saddam’s malfeasance and justification for Bush the Younger’s war which is pretty ironic as these people never believed Clinton about anything. Funny using a sociopath serial liar and convicted perjurer as a character witness.

And there you have it. The premise has fallen not to whether or not they were even there in the first place, but because the Democrats said it automatically Bush was right to send troops to Iraq. They're now depending on scare tactics from the other party as justification for the invasion? Everything Clinton said was a lie, except when it came to Iraq?

Government employees (Bureaucrats) like to solve problems. If there are no problems handily available, they will create their own problems.

--George Van Valkenburg

The consistency of our foreign policy since Bush I and the collapse of the Soviet Union is indeed striking.

Look at our actions. The Soviet Union falls apart. It's conventional armed forces revealed to be a toothless tiger. It's economy in tatters. A threat to no one and incapable of even projecting Moscow's authority in much of the nation. How do we react? Do we celebrate our hard won victory with vast reductions in military spending? Do we lesson our involvement and reconsider our committment level to NATO? No - we expand NATO right up to the border of Russia itself and launch ourselves into the fray in the Balkans, involve ourselves in various intrigues with various regimes in the former Soviet States on the rim of their Old SOviet Union (pipeline and oil country) and even had troops in Uzbekistan before 9/11.

The Day the Soviet Union became the CIS is the day Conservatives should have set their sights and intellects against the second big enemy- the very government/industrial/ academic/ and media empire we had constructed to defeat the Soviet Union. Some did- most did not. This infrastructure wasn't just going to pack up and go away- job done! They needed new reasons for existence and foreign expansion and empire (for humanitarian and "democratic" reasons of course) is a great reason to keep the trillions flowing their way and to keep their government jobs and their government contracts intact.