Sorry to spoil your (and "breed"'s) little party here. I realize that if your audience knows little about MidEast history and doesn't have the time to use a web browser to check up on your "facts", then naturally you will assume that you can get away with murder as you gleefully rewrite history to paint the US as the cause of all that is wrong with the MidEast. The fact that the area has been a hotbed of violence for how many millenia now, doesn't faze Liberals as they make their baldfaced claims that the CIA is behind every instance of war, strife, or totalitarian government in the MidEast.
"None of these points you make can, by any stretch of the imagination, be called 'facts'."
Poppycock! Saddam was NOT a "puppet" of the U.S. A puppet is a puppet is a puppet! Words have meaning. The favorite liberal trick of redefining words may work well on campus, but not here. A "puppet" ruler of a country is understood to be (or at least understood by "normal" people - i.e. people other than liberals like you wishing to redefine a word at any given moment in order to produce the illusion of your winning an argument) ... is understood to be a ruler who does not hold real power, but rather is a "front" so to speak for the REAL ruler - who is running the country behind the scenes.
No matter how glibly you redefine words and wave off a fellow liberal's lies with excuses like, "One person says that America's support of Saddam was puppetry, one person disagrees, ...." - it does not change the fact that you and "breed" are both lying. Iran chose to make the U.S. an enemy (by holding our embassy staff hostage for 400+ days, among other things). We chose to SELL weapons to Iraq (the enemy of our enemy) - not GIVE them. Iraq had plenty of petrodollars to pay for all this hardware. And we shared satellite photos with them of Iranian troop dispositions. None of this made Iraq a "puppet" in ANY sense of the word. You can NOT "stretch" the word's definition that far.
Now, I realize that I should do the humane thing here and cut you liberals some slack. I realize that after 8+ years of Clinton, it's getting extremely difficult for liberals to distinguish between a "stretch" and a "lie". It may shock you, but F.R. is filled with people who still insist on distinguishing between those two words!
"I'm sure America wanted SOMETHING in return"
Of course. Iraq was in a war with Iran. Iran was our avowed enemy. So we gave Iraq some support. No brainer. What we "got in return" was the containment of Iran. Duh. This doesn't support the "Iraqi puppet" claim any more than anything else you've said. Iraq also got tons of support from other MidEast countries who wanted to contain Iran and their nasty policies.
"Now what is also a fact is that Saddam was as much of a brutal autocratic tyrrant when we supported him as when he was a sworn enemy. All talk of America 'making the world free for democracy' and such can hardly apply here.
Straw Dog! I challenge you to produce a single quote from anyone at that time who claimed that our support of a "friendly to US" dictator who was fighting against an "avowed enemy of US" dictator was "making the world safe for democracy" or anything similar to that!!!
The Cold War was FILLED with cases of "Nasty Undemocratic Country A fighting against Nasty Undemocratic Country B. The USSR is supporting Country B. What should US policy be here?" Well, duh! But our support of any "Country A" is now - and has always been - defined as "Evil US Hegemony" among The Liberati set.
".... US hegemony ..."
Funny, but I only recall hearing that phrase recently in the mouths of Red Chinese, Cubans, North Koreans, and (innocent?) victims of the typical American Liberal Arts (emphasis on "Liberal") Education. Are you a member of any of these groups, pray tell?
".... Timor ....."
Red Herring. Timor is in the western Pacific. Check it out on a globe. We were talking about the MidEast. .... But all right, if you want to talk about other countries -
"why is it we haven't defended a slew of other nations that have been invaded in recent history."
Actually, we HAVE. Who has been spoon-feeding you your "history" lately? We had no strategic interests in Somalia. We sent troops in a failed attempt to prevent starvation of innocent people who we knew almost nothing about, and had practically ZERO history with, and/or cultural associations with. Both Bush-I and Clinton tried to help Somalia, BTW. And what about Kosovo? And long before that - Bosnia? What were our strategic interests there? Bosnian oil? Kosovan oil? Somalian oil? Haitian oil? I'll agree that Clinton should have helped out in Rwanda ... I have no idea why he didn't. And there are other places we theoretically could have done some good, but the various US administrations chose not to, and perhaps they had good reasons not to that we weren't privy to. If you think that the lack of any Rwandan oil fields was the one and only reason we didn't help out there, you most certainly have "oil on the brain", and I have suspicions where you picked up this nasty affliction ... this mental block that serves to inhibit any rational thought whenever you attempt to cogitate on the topic of the USA's geopolitics.
"No lofty ideals were being upheld in the Gulf War. To claim otherwise would be fallacious. One more fact before I cut out. ....."
So, the desire to restore a little country - which has long been a friend of ours - to its rightful owners, by chasing out the murderous forces of a neighboring bully country, had absolutely nothing to do with America's decision to fight Iraq? I see. And is this meant by you to be numbered among the "facts" you wished to establish before you cut out? I'm glad to see that you got your money's worth out of your "higher education" - especially in the area of Critical Thinking - i.e. the ability to distinguish between facts, opinions and lies. (And just WHO got their money's worth here, if I may be so forward to ask? Did you pay the bills? Your Daddy? The taxpayers?)
"... Taliban ... Taliban ... Taliban ... I'm sure the connection isn't so nuanced that you can't figure it out"
Well, gee! Silly me! Here I thought I had caught "breed" in an out-and-out lie with that History Rewrite about how the US had financed a group (the Taliban) in a war against the USSR that had ended 6 years before the Taliban was even formed. But now I find out it wasn't a "lie." It was merely a "nuance"! Gosh, I better go back for another degree, so I can keep up with all the word redefinitions as well as the latest History Rewrites! Before you know it, they're going to try and redefine "is"! (..... All right. Just kidding of course. Even a Liberal wouldn't try and mess with that word ...... right?) I just LOVE this blatant liberal hypocrisy - on the one hand, you lecture us about how we RightWingers are so ignorant about Afghanistan and the rest of the MidEast. And then you go and treat as equivalent all the factions in Afghanistan at all times in recent history!
"Breed is factually correct in his view that America does not ALWAYS act altruistically, benevolently and non-hypocritically"
Oh, I'll agree with everything in your sentence starting at the word "America". But the FACT is that you and Breed have not said anything credible to prove this assertion, and have lied, distorted, "stretched" and "nuanced" yourselves silly here in your attempts to use US/MidEastern history to "explain" (which always eventually leads to "justify") the hatred for the US that was demonstrated so forcefully by the 9/11 attacks.
SUMMARY - This is the same old crap I saw ad nauseum in the old Usenet "talk.politics.*" groups just before, during and after the Gulf War. It's just been recycled/regurgitated into a new generation of unprotected minds by the same people who were circulating it before - burned out Baby Boomer profs.
Too bad scientists can't develop an "Anti-Liberal Brain Condom" Then there could be nationwide campaigns to warn students to place these over their brains whenever they go to the lectures. "Don't go to class without proper protection!"