www.oxdem.org
 

In closing, let's turn to an example where I clearly got something wrong. After all, the Band deserves a break.

Sorry, but I don't think they need one.
 

lol

pwned

111
 

The real question is whether Ryan & co. went on the record back in 2003 with regard to their expectations about the war.

I was in high school.
 

I think that you are completely missing the point about the soundness of the moral choice made by the US.

Let us assume for the moment that the US didn't choose to invade the sovereign nation of Iraq because of claims that Hussein had accumulated a significant number of WMDs, or that he would soon demonstrate a nuclear weapon. (The probability that these claims were true could have been estimated by allowing the UN inspectors to complete their job.) Instead, let us assume that the public debate that we did try to have was an attempt to determine answers to questions like these:

What is the likelihood that an invasion of Iraq (with approximately 150,000 troops) will ultimately result in the establishment of a democratic form of government there?

If a democratic government can be established in Iraq, then what is the probability that this government will be a (Western) liberal democracy, or at least friendly to the West, rather than a government based on Muslim religious law that is hostile to both the West and Israel?

How many Iraqis are likely to die before either of these goals is achieved? Are the Iraqi people willing to sacrifice themselves and their families to achieve this goal?

Not only did we not know the answers to these questions, we weren't even able to determine whether it was possible a priori to estimate the answers with any accuracy.

Therefore, our invasion of Iraq was justified by people like you using almost purely theoretical arguments, without any serious public or private attempt to evaluate (and plan for) contingent risks. Some people (like you) hoped that the unknowable risks were outweighed in principle by the possible rewards, however likely or unlikely they may be. This was grotesquely irresponsible, because without a reasonable estimate of the probability that we would achieve our goals, we literally had no basis for a war of choice. The result has been an appalling loss of life in Iraq, without clearly significant progress toward our goals to justify that loss. This is our shame -- not Abu Ghraib.

Worse, in this post you have not made the case through any empirically-based argument that the current state of affairs in Iraq was in fact highly unlikely to have arisen except as a result of the particularly poor strategic choices made by the Bush administration. For all you know, there wasn't really any way to succeed in Iraq, and the current situation was very highly likely to occur regardless of either our intentions or execution.

The problem isn't simply that you were wrong about some things, as you have indicated in your post. The problem is that you didn't seem to care that there might not be any way to estimate a priori the magnitude of the errors you might be making. I am amazed that you continue to claim that this was the correct moral choice.
 

One reason to have been optimistic about the future of Iraq post SH is that nice people think other people are nice.
Nice people thought the Iraqis were nice people who would, having been given the opportunity to act nicely, act nicely.
It would have been monstrously chauvnistic and even racist to suggest that some people can't handle freedom, that democracy empowers powers better left unempowered, tht slaughtering one's erstwhile neighbors has a lot more appeal in some cultures than in others.
Sure, we all want the best for our families. Who could doubt that? The question is under what circumstances do we want the best for our families? Does the best of all possible worlds require the extinction of Israel? The second-rate status of women? Permanent conflict with unbelievers?
That question should have been asked.

A failure in Iraq would go a long way to prove what the crypto-imperialists claimed: The wogs can't govern themselves.

Who would have wanted to say that? Who would have wanted to act on that presumption?

Those who hope for a US failure in Iraq will get something they hadn't thought about: Proof that They are not at all like Us. Not at all.

And that clarification may take the WOT in directions they would not like.

For a numbers issue: Some decades ago, the Symbionese Liberation Army kept the Bay Area hopping and there were never more than about a dozen of them. They didn't have outside funding and training. Point is, it doesn't take many people at all to screw up a society. And in Iraq, they have thousands upon thousands bent solely on that goal.

Next question: What to do?

Shut Iran and Syria out of the meddling business, whatever it takes. And whatever it takes may well have further benefits not directly connected with stopping arms smuggling. Like regime change.

Redo the Iraq police, even if they have to be all fired and new guys recruited.

Deal most briskly with militias.

And, just for poops and giggles, don't say or do anything that our enemies consider good news.
 

A very substantive debate. My compliments to NPCurmudgeon, Jeffery and Richard.
 

NPCurmudgeon said:
"The probability that these claims were true could have been estimated by allowing the UN inspectors to complete their job."

Do you honestly believe that the weapons inspectors would ever have been able to truly "finish the job?" They had been kicked out multiple times, and denied access to sensitive areas.

Chris Matthews was one of the few journalists I remember constantly asking the question, "What if Iraq elects a theocracy? A government bent on Sharia law and hostile to the west?" Nobody wanted to answer that question. I think the answer can be found in how we treat Egypt. We know that if we push Mubarak for truly free elections, the threat of the Muslim Brotherhood coming to power is very real.
 

Jeffrey,

In principle, we can argue about the greatest good for the greatest number, but in practice we should be able to estimate how much good we are likely to accomplish.

For (an overly simplfied) example, if we can reliably estimate that

* With 250,000 troops, we have a 10-30% chance of establishing a liberal democracy in Iraq, at the cost of 500,000-1,000,000 lives; or

* With 400,000 troops we have a 40-75% chance, at the cost of 250,000-500,000 lives;

then we are ready to have a moral debate. The problem is that we can't estimate "good" by headcounting. We have to have some idea about the probability that we can deliver on our promises.

Richard,

In my opinion, arguments based on the post-World-War-II occupation of Japan (although admirably empirical), are inapt, because (1) World War II was not an optional war, in the Iraq sense -- there was a demonstrable existential threat to the US, and (2) there are no reliable ways to draw cultural parallels between post-war Japanese and Iraqi cultures. I think that claims that arguments like this are racist miss the point: democracy is not a natural state of government. We take it for granted, because we grew up with it, and Western culture evolved toward it for centuries. There is no reason to believe that a culture with no reasonably recent history demonstrating the precursors of democracy will rapidly adopt it.

John Phillippe,

Yes, I believe that the probability that the UN inspectors could have provided us with a reliable estimate of Iraq's WMD capacity, despite Hussein's intransigence, was high. If you can find documentation that the inspection team was happy to leave Iraq shortly before the invasion because they thought that they weren't getting anywhere, then I will have to change my opinion.

I appreciate the constructive nature of this debate very much. I apologize if I have to duck out of it soon -- I have to travel to Australia on a business trip.
 

The problem isn't simply that you were wrong about some things, as you have indicated in your post. The problem is that you didn't seem to care that there might not be any way to estimate a priori the magnitude of the errors you might be making. I am amazed that you continue to claim that this was the correct moral choice.

Good point, npcurmudgeon.
 

NP.
That's an interesting point about evolving toward democracy. We can start with classical Greece. Durant mentions a city-state that was so fond of its constitution that anybody proposing an amendment was supposed to have a rope around his neck, to save time if the amendment was voted down.
In Greek democracies, and early republican Rome, the franchise was mostly limited to those who could afford the panoply of a hoplite and showed up for the wars. Since heavy Infantry was the decisive arm, maybe that had something.....
Then there was the protodemocracy of the German tribes, in that the chiefs didn't have practical means of being a tyrant. And Magna Carta.
Etc.
The Reformation said, among other things, that each man is competent to run his own life and his ideas are presumptively valid until demonstrated otherwise.

The problem with all this, especially if the Iraqis eventually elect a theocracy as the Egyptians might sans Mubarak, is that it demonstrates, as I say, that They are not like Us.
This would not be a few fanatics who've highjacked a peaceful religion. It would be the majority of the voters. That's different.
We would look differently at Muslims around the world, and possibly in this country as well.

One can never tell about another's motivations. Easiest thing to lie about and toughest to prove anything about.

But, let's suppose Bush is playing a very, very deep game.
We win in Iraq, including a reasonably liberal democracy.
Great.
We lose in Iraq because they can't govern themselves.
Now we have a laboratory experiment with as many controls as you could possibly expect outside of a lab.
And it proves These People are not like Us, and we'd better, damn' well better, start thinking that way.
Also great, from the point of view of motivating and educating the West.
 

Richard,

Yes, in principle, it is an interesting experiment. However, it is not an experiment that should have been undertaken without a careful consideration of the costs (i.e., the probable number of dead Iraqis).

At this point, the moral consideration to be made (in the context of your comment) is whether the Iraqi population is willing to let us manipulate the laboratory controls while they suffer the consequences.
 

I didn't make up the experiment.
I said the effort in Iraq, if it failed, would be the equivalent of a laboratory experiment and that if Bush were playing a very deep game, either outcome would have been useful, if not exactly equally wonderful.

To this point, attacks by Islamic terrorists have all been written off as the responses of mideducated fanatics.
The surveys of support--see what the British Muslims thought of 7-7--is generally overlooked.
The idea that this is a clash of civilizations is relegated to the fringes, since it's a matter of a few deluded individuals.
Should Iraq fail because of the major differences between what we thought they were and what they turned out to be, the clash of civilizations would be a more mainstream argument.
Not a bad outcome for somebody (Bush) who is trying to get his fellow citizens to wake up.
But I only speculate.

The moral load of the "experiment" is only ours if we think the terrs killing Iraqis are without agency and can merely react, like a paramecium, to our presence.
They can stop any time, far as we're concerned.

Failure in Iraq will convince a good many in the west that Muslims are different and trying to deal with them as if they aren't is nuts.

I feel sorry for the good folks who will be slaughtered if we take offthe experimental controls. I hope the last American out of the country deletes the voter rolls.
 

Jeffrey.
I believe Iraqis don't have a lot of the usual nationalistic history to be proud of. No St. Joan, or Cinco de Mayo, or Armada, or Valley Forge, no Tours or Teutoburger Wald, no Edison or Martin Luther King. It is said that when the veterans of Pickett's Charge met at a reunion to reenact the thing, the Confederate vets wouldn't retreat. Walking sticks were brandished, until the marshalls broached the kegs and a good time was had by all.
Grant's treatment of the rebs at
Appomatox is unlike any civil war's end I ever heard of.
Let any man who claims to own a horse or mule take it with him to work his little farm. It was Palm Sunday, still time to get a crop in.
Officers to keep their side arms. Lee refusing to go bushwhacking.

Nothing like that for Iraqis to get teary about.
But you have to start someplace. There was the cop who grappled with a suicide bomber, keeping the asshole away from a line of voters, dying in the process. That was a man and an Iraqi. You could do worse than to aspire to such bravery and self-sacrifice.

But, as a Russian writer said, you can only perjure yourself so many times before it starts to ruin you.

One soldier remarked that most Iraqis had the intellectual and emotional level of a sixth-grader.

I understand Iraqis working for the government didn't get paid. They got gifts from Saddaam, or at least that's how the payroll was treated. So they didn't get paid for their work. They got paid for being pleasing to SH. The cumulative effect of the cumulative effect has to mean something, since it can't mean nothing.

The cost of censoring even your thoughts to avoid the slightest slip which might be overheard by somebody who has a quota of reports to the secret police.... Sickmaking to think about.

So it's possible the Iraqis are sick, ruined, damaged by their recent history.

Or it could be that the Arab/Islamic culture is the problem.

One is a more sympathetic predicament than the other, but if either is a given, we have a problem when we try to think of an Iraqi as a wannabe westerner.

I worked with exchange students for twenty-plus years (AFS) and it's possible to seed the young folks. But it's a long, long process and a lot can overcome it.

Anyway, in the meantime, we are being treated to the possibility that it will become manifest that this is a clash of civilizations and we will have to think differently.
 

"precisely the reason why lesser attacks such as the first WTC bombing, the Khobar towers explosion, the twin embassy explosions and the attack on the USS Cole led to the climactic terrorist assault on 9/11."

Speaking of 9/11, let’s take a few moments and look at some of the details of that horrible event that precipitated the "war on terror", the event without which the Bush regime would never have been able to scare most Americans into thinking it was somehow necessary to invade Iraq, the event around which America’s foreign policy has been inextricably wrapped ever since.

One thing that struck me as odd in the days after 9/11 was Bush saying "We will not tolerate conspiracy theories [regarding 9/11]". Sure enough there have been some wacky conspiracy theories surrounding the events of that day. The most far-fetched and patently ridiculous one that I've ever heard goes like this: Nineteen hijackers who claimed to be devout Muslims but yet were so un-Muslim as to be getting drunk all the time, doing cocaine and frequenting strip clubs decided to hijack four airliners and fly them into buildings in the northeastern U.S., the area of the country that is the most thick with fighter bases. After leaving a Koran on a barstool at a strip bar after getting shitfaced drunk on the night before, then writing a suicide note/inspirational letter that sounded like it was written by someone with next to no knowledge of Islam, they went to bed and got up the next morning hung over and carried out their devious plan. Nevermind the fact that of the four "pilots" among them there was not a one that could handle a Cessna or a Piper Cub let alone fly a jumbo jet, and the one assigned the most difficult task of all, Hani Hanjour, was so laughably incompetent that he was the worst fake "pilot" of the bunch, with someone who was there when he was attempting to fly a small airplane saying that Hanjour was so clumsy that he was unsure if he had driven a car before. Nevermind the fact that they received very rudimentary flight training at Pensacola Naval Air Station, making them more likely to have been C.I.A. assets than Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. So on to the airports after Mohammed Atta supposedly leaves two rental cars at two impossibly far-removed locations. So they hijack all four airliners and at this time passengers on United 93 start making a bunch of cell phone calls from 35,000 feet in the air to tell people what was going on. Nevermind the fact that cell phones wouldn't work very well above 4,000 feet, and wouldn't work at ALL above 8,000 feet. But the conspiracy theorists won't let that fact get in the way of a good fantasy. That is one of the little things you "aren't supposed to think about". Nevermind that one of the callers called his mom and said his first and last name ("Hi mom, this is Mark Bingham"), more like he was reading from a list than calling his own mom. Anyway, when these airliners each deviated from their flight plan and didn't respond to ground control, NORAD would any other time have followed standard operating procedure (and did NOT have to be told by F.A.A. that there were hijackings because they were watching the same events unfold on their own radar) which means fighter jets would be scrambled from the nearest base where they were available on standby within a few minutes, just like every other time when airliners stray off course. But of course on 9/11 this didn't happen, not even close. Somehow these "hijackers" must have used magical powers to cause NORAD to stand down, as ridiculous as this sounds because total inaction from the most high-tech and professional Air Force in the world would be necessary to carry out their tasks. So on the most important day in its history the Air Force was totally worthless. Then they had to make one of the airliners look like a smaller plane, because unknown to them the Naudet brothers had a videocamera to capture the only known footage of the North Tower crash, and this footage shows something that is not at all like a jumbo jet, but didn't have to bother with the South Tower jet disguising itself because that was the one we were "supposed to see". Anyway, as for the Pentagon they had to have Hani Hanjour fly his airliner like it was a fighter plane, making a high G-force corkscrew turn that no real airliner can do, in making its descent to strike the Pentagon. But these "hijackers" wanted to make sure Rumsfeld survived so they went out of their way to hit the farthest point in the building from where Rumsfeld and the top brass are located. And this worked out rather well for the military personnel in the Pentagon, since the side that was hit was the part that was under renovation at the time with few military personnel present compared to construction workers. Still more fortuitous for the Pentagon, the side that was hit had just before 9/11 been structurally reinforced to prevent a large fire there from spreading elsewhere in the building. Awful nice of them to pick that part to hit, huh? Then the airliner vaporized itself into nothing but tiny unidentifiable pieces most no bigger than a fist, unlike the crash of a real airliner when you will be able to see at least some identifiable parts, like crumpled wings, broken tail section etc. Why, Hani Hanjour the terrible pilot flew that airliner so good that even though he hit the Pentagon on the ground floor the engines didn't even drag the ground!! Imagine that!! Though the airliner vaporized itself on impact it only made a tiny 16 foot hole in the building. Amazing. Meanwhile, though the planes hitting the Twin Towers caused fires small enough for the firefighters to be heard on their radios saying "We just need 2 hoses and we can knock this fire down" attesting to the small size of it, somehow they must have used magical powers from beyond the grave to make this morph into a raging inferno capable of making the steel on all forty-seven main support columns (not to mention the over 100 smaller support columns) soften and buckle, then all fail at once. Hmmm. Then still more magic was used to make the building totally defy physics as well as common sense in having the uppermost floors pass through the remainder of the building as quickly, meaning as effortlessly, as falling through air, a feat that without magic could only be done with explosives. Then exactly 30 minutes later the North Tower collapses in precisely the same freefall physics-defying manner. Incredible. Not to mention the fact that both collapsed at a uniform rate too, not slowing down, which also defies physics because as the uppermost floors crash into and through each successive floor beneath them they would shed more and more energy each time, thus slowing itself down. Common sense tells you this is not possible without either the hijackers' magical powers or explosives. To emphasize their telekinetic prowess, later in the day they made a third building, WTC # 7, collapse also at freefall rate though no plane or any major debris hit it. Amazing guys these magical hijackers. But we know it had to be "Muslim hijackers" the conspiracy theorist will tell you because (now don't laugh) one of their passports was "found" a couple days later near Ground Zero, miraculously "surviving" the fire that we were told incinerated planes, passengers and black boxes, and also "survived" the collapse of the building it was in. When common sense tells you if that were true then they should start making buildings and airliners out of heavy paper and plastic so as to be "indestructable" like that magic passport. The hijackers even used their magical powers to bring at least seven of their number back to life, to appear at american embassies outraged at being blamed for 9/11!! BBC reported on that and it is still online. Nevertheless, they also used magical powers to make the american government look like it was covering something up in the aftermath of this, what with the hasty removal of the steel debris and having it driven to ports in trucks with GPS locators on them, to be shipped overseas to China and India to be melted down. When common sense again tells you that this is paradoxical in that if the steel was so unimportant that they didn't bother saving some for analysis but so important as to require GPS locators on the trucks with one driver losing his job because he stopped to get lunch. Hmmmm. Further making themselves look guilty, the Bush administration steadfastly refused for over a year to allow a commission to investigate 9/11 to even be formed, only agreeing to it on the conditions that they get to dictate its scope, meaning it was based on the false pretense of the "official story" being true with no other alternatives allowed to be considered, handpicked all its members making sure the ones picked had vested interests in the truth remaining buried, and with Bush and Cheney only "testifying" together, only for an hour, behind closed doors, with their attorneys present and with their "testimonies" not being recorded by tape or even written down in notes. Yes, this whole story smacks of the utmost idiocy and fantastic far-fetched lying, but it is amazingly enough what some people believe. Even now, five years later, the provably false fairy tale of the "nineteen hijackers" is heard repeated again and again, and is accepted without question by so many Americans. Which is itself a testament to the innate psychological cowardice of the American sheeple, i mean people, and their abject willingness to believe something, ANYTHING, no matter how ridiculous in order to avoid facing a scary uncomfortable truth. Time to wake up America.



Debunking Popular Mechanics lies:
http://www.lookingglassnews.org/viewstory.php?storyid=6880
someone else debunking Popular Mechanics crap:
http://www.serendipity.li/wot/pop_mech/reply_to_popular_mechanics.htm
still more debunking Poopular Mechanics:
http://letsroll911.org/ipw-web/bulletin/bb/viewtopic.php?t=5505
and still more debunking of Popular Mechanics:
http://www.reopen911.org/ericreubt.htm

Poopular Mechanics staff replaced just before laughable “debunking” article written:
http://www.reopen911.org/hiddenhand.htm
another neo-con 9/11 hit piece explodes, is retracted:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/august2006/180806hitpiece.htm
Professor Steven Jones debunks the N.I.S.T. “report” as well as the F.E.M.A. one and the 9/11 commission "report":
http://www.infowars.com/articles/sept11/wtc_buildings_collapse_steven_jones.htm
N.I.S.T. scientist interviewed:
http://www.teamliberty.net/id235.html
F.B.I. says no hard evidence linking Osama bin Laden to 9/11 which is why his wanted poster says nothing about 9/11:
http://forum.afghansite.com/index.php?showtopic=9349
Fire Engineering magazine says important questions about the Twin Tower “collapses” still need to be addressed:http://fe.pennnet.com/Articles/Article_Display.cfm?Section=OnlineArticles&SubSection=Display&PUBLICATION_ID=25&ARTICLE_ID

Twin Towers’ construction certifiers say they should have easily withstood it:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/november2004/121104easilywithstood.htm
USA Today interview with the last man out of the South Tower, pursued by a fireball:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/sept11/2001/12/19/usat-escape.htm
Janitor who heard explosions and escaped has testimony ignored by 9/11 whitewash commission:
http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/ignoring_9-11.html
Janitor starts speaking out about it and his apartment is burglarized, laptop stolen:
http://kurtnimmo.blogspot.com/2005/08/apartment-of-nine-eleven-hero-william_28.html
Firefighters tell of multiple explosions:
http://www.wnbc.com/news/1315651/detail.html
Eyewitnesses tell of explosions:
http://research.amnh.org/users/tyson/essays/TheHorrorTheHorror.html
Interview with another firefighter telling of explosions:
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/Banaciski_Richard.txt
Firefighter saw “sparkles” (strobe lights on detonators?) before “collapse”:
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/Fitzpatrick_Tom.txt
Other eyewitnesses talk of seeing/hearing explosions:
http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2005/11/more-proof-911-inside-job-witnesses-to.html
Surviving eyewitnesses talk of multiple explosions there:
http://www.thememoryhole.org/911/veliz-bombs.htm
Cutter charge explosions clearly visible:
http://www.rense.com/general63/cutt.htm
The pyroclastic cloud (that dust cloud that a second before was concrete) and how it wouldn’t be possible without explosives:
http://st12.startlogic.com/~xenonpup/physics/
Detailed description of the demolition of the Twin Towers:
http://gordonssite.tripod.com/id2.html
Freefall rate of “collapses” math:
http://www.911blimp.net/prf_FreeFallPhysics.shtml
More about their freefall rate “collapses”:
http://www.serendipity.li/wot/second_wave.htm
Video footage of the controlled demolition of the Twin Towers:
http://www.plaguepuppy.net/public_html/video%20archive/
Video footage of the controlled demolition of WTC # 7 building:
http://911research.wtc7.net/talks/wtc/videos.html
More of WTC # 7 controlled demolition:
http://www.wtc7.net/
Naudet brothers' video footage of the North Tower crash:
http://www.911blimp.net/vid_Naudet.shtml
Photos of the Pentagon’s lawn (look at these and see if you can tell me with a straight face that a jumbo jet crashed there):
http://www.911blimp.net/cached/HuntTheBoeing!.htm
More photos of this amazing lawn at the Pentagon:
http://cryptogon.com/docs/Introducing%20the%20amazing%20Penta-Lawn%202000!%20(9-11).htm
Very unconvincing fake “Osama” “confession” tape:
http://welfarestate.com/wtc/faketape/
More about the fake “Osama” tape:
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/osamatape2.html
Fake “Mohammed Atta” “suicide” letter:
http://www.welfarestate.com/wtc/fake-letters.txt
Commercial pilots disagree with “official” 9/11 myth:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/september_11_us_government_accused.htm
More commercial jet pilots say “official” myth is impossible:
http://www.masternewmedia.org/2001/10/31/commercial_jet_pilots_analysis_of_the_twin_tower_attack.htm
Impossibility of cell phone calls from United 93:
http://www.physics911.net/cellphoneflight93.htm
More about the impossible cell phone calls:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO408B.html
Experiment proves cell phone calls were NOT possible from anywhere near the altitude the “official” myth has them at:
http://physics911.ca/org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=9
Fake Barbara Olson phone call:
http://www.vialls.com/lies911/lies.htm
Where the hell was the Air Force?
http://www.welfarestate.com/wtc/af-scramble.txt
More about the Air Force impotence question:
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0331-11.htm
Sept. 10th 2001, Pentagon announces it is “missing” $2.3 trillion (now why do you think they picked THAT day to announce it? So it could be buried the next day by 9/11 news):
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/01/29/eveningnews/main325985.shtml
Unocal pipeline-through-Afghanistan plan:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0513/p05s01-wosc.html
Unocal pipeline-through-Afghanistan plan mentioned:
http://thetyee.ca/Views/2006/05/19/OutOfAfghanistan
More on Unocal Afghan pipeline:
http://www.newscentralasia.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1031
The attack on Afghanistan was planned in the summer of 2001, months before 9/11:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1550366.stm
Pentagon deliberately misled 9/11 Commission:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=EGG20060802&articleId=2887
Evidence destruction by authorities and cover-up:
http://www.flcv.com/coverup.html/
9/11 whitewash Commission and NORAD day:
http://fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/071204_final_fraud.shtml
The incredible fish tales of the 9/11 Commission examined:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=%20GR20051213&articleId=1478
Jeb Bush declares state of emergency 4 days before 9/11 for Florida, saying it will help respond to terrorism:
http://www.eionews.addr.com/psyops/news/jebknew.htm
Steel debris removal from Ground Zero, destruction of evidence:
http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/groundzero/cleanup.html
Over two hundred incriminating bits of 9/11 evidence shown in the mainstream media:
http://thewebfairy.com/killtown/911smokingguns.html
Tracking the “hijackers”:
http://www.welfarestate.com/911/
“Hijacker” patsies:
http://911review.org/Wiki/HijackersPatsies.shtml
“Hijackers” receiving flight training at Pensacola Naval Air Station:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0208/S00085.htm
Several accused "hijackers" still alive and well, wondering why they are accused:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1559151.stm
Yet the F.B.I. insists that the people it claims were the "hijackers" really were the "hijackers":
http://www.prisonplanet.com/fbi_denies_mix_up_of_911_terrorists.htm
No Arabs on Flight 77:
http://www.sierratimes.com/03/07/02/article_tro.htm
Thirty experts say “official” 9/11 myth impossible:
http://911fraud.blogspot.com/2005/06/us-governments-offical-911-story-is.html
“Al Qaeda” website tracks back to Maryland:
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/alqmaryland.html
Al Qaeda videos uploaded from U.S. government website:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/july2004/140704governmentwebsite.htm
Operation: Northwoods, a plan for a false-flag “terror” attack to be blamed on Castro to use it as a pretext for America to invade Cuba, thankfully not approved by Kennedy back in 1962 but was approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and sent to his desk:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/us_terror_plan_cuba_invasion_pretext.html
 

While I have not read all the posts, let me add my own comment concerning a point that always irks me: the oft-told tale of the creation of democracy in Japan. While hardly a Japan expert, I am familiar enough with its history to be able to point out that this is a widespread myth, with unfortunate contemporary consequences (believe the myth and you just might end up in Iraq to "repeat" the "success story").

First of all, Japan had a functioning parliamentary system for decades prior to the American occupation. Those of you who are tempted to mock that assertion probably don't recognize any parliamentary system with a democratic suffrage as legitimate unless it fits into a narrow pattern (hence the rise of another famous myth-- no democracies have ever fought a war against each other, happily confirmed if one refuses to recognize Wilhelmine Germany as a democracy, which it was). So, Japan was hardly transformed into a democracy by the US occupation because it already was a democracy. This is not to deny that there were changes wrought to some institutions and laws, but they were hardly transformational. Which leads me to the second part of the myth

2. The Japanese system at present continues to manifest many of the same tendencies that it had prior to the "transformation". There is a massive concentration of power in the hands of the political elites centered on one party in partnership with concentrated business interests (the American policy of breaking up the Zaibatsu was quickly abandoned as a result of the Cold War).

So, the unfortunate repetition of this myth about the ability to create democracies (Germany being the other part of the myth)is hardly the cause of the American debacle and defeat in Iraq. But a little bit of wisdom about the limits of power in the past may have given a few wise heads reason to pause instead of becoming cheerleaders for the Bush adventurism.
 

I have never been comfortable with citing Germany or Japan as examples of our supposed prowess in creating democracies ex nihilo, especially when cited in support of our capability to do the same in Iraq. The differences are too stark.

Both Germany and Japan were ethnically and religiously fairly homogeneous. Both had a strong sense of nationhood. Obviously, none of the these statements apply to Iraq.

Also, our war making was incalculably more brutal in each case. What percentage of military age males in each country were killed during the war? Does anyone know? I'd imagine 10% or more. There was also much more violence inflicted on people outside the MAM demographic. Blockades, aerial bombing, and, in the case of Germany, pretty much everything the Red Army did on its way to Berlin.

And, finally, the justice of our cause and our self-assurance in asserting it also played a role. Leaving aside the technical correctness of the justice issue, certainly we currently lack the confidence to assert its justness. Our justifications come off as lawyerly at best. This was not the case post WWII.

So, I'd say our success, and it was a huge moral and political success, in democratizing Germany and Japan after WWII, had little to tell us regarding the likelihood of democratizing Iraq.
 

I have no trepidation challenging him. As wonderful as his scholarship has been, he has bought into the notion that only American (and French and British) democracy (ies) meet his definitions. But Japan had a Diet, suffrage, basic law, etc. It may not meet your standards or his, but then our system hardly compares to some of the democracies of the world (the Senate, electoral college, voting issues, etc).
 

Jeffrey-- David Adesnik would probably be amused that you mis-predicted my own position on china. I am, to adopt the term, probably closest to the foreign policy realist school (though my own sympathies are on the left). I believe that China should be allowed, hopefully successfully, to find its own path to a more pluralist society. The alternatives are too awful to consider and would make the Bush misadventure in Iraq look like a picnic.

I will now turn to the Dower piece that you linked to. But I think we both realize that once the terms are more carefully defined we are more or less in agreement.