Black Gold

Today's Washington Post editorial on Iraq has a very definite Pravda vibe to it -- sure we all saw, watched, and heard the Iraqi government repeatedly endorse an Iraq strategy along the lines of what Barack Obama has proposed, and repeatedly reject an Iraq strategy along the lines of the Bush/McCain perpetual war for perpetual occupation strategy, but here comes Fred Hiatt to tell us that's not what happened at all. The logic chopping and mixed up facts are stunning but no more so than the Post's bold declaration that fighting al-Qaeda is a less important national security priority than is military occupation of Iraqi oil fields:

Mr. Obama's response is that, as president, he would have to weigh Iraq's needs against those of Afghanistan and the U.S. economy [...] While the United States has an interest in preventing the resurgence of the Afghan Taliban, the country's strategic importance pales beside that of Iraq, which lies at the geopolitical center of the Middle East and contains some of the world's largest oil reserves.

It's important to be clear about what's at stake when it comes to Iraqi oil. Lots of oil is already under the control of hostile (Iran, Venezuela) or not-especially-friendly (Russia) governments. But that doesn't deprive American consumers of oil. Nor does it make oil more expensive. The Saudis and the Norwegians don't sell us discount oil. There's a global market and a global price. The American consumer filling up his tank doesn't see a difference if the oil's from Mexico or Equatorial Guinea or Kuwait, doesn't see a difference if the oil's owned by TotalFinaElf or ExxonMobil or Citgo. War for oil doesn't mean cheap oil for you.

What it does mean is protection for companies that have invested in Iraqi oil. Those fields could be a good investment. But there's a lot of "political risk." And insofar as Iraq is playing host to a large occupying military force and has a government that's dependent on that military force to stay in power, that political risk is mitigated. Which is great if you have a contract to drill for Iraqi oil, but really stinks as a national security priority for the United States (and it's bad for the economy to boot). Certainly I wouldn't say that it's more important than taking the fight to al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and Osama bin Laden.

UPDATE: See also Ackerman.

Comments

"Americans United In Joy!"

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE2DF163CF934A15751C0A966958260

Posted by El Cid | July 23, 2008 11:11 AM

Saying there's a global market in oil doesn't mean the oil will keep flowing if Iraq descends into anarchy and violence.

Of course, we're already there anyway, so it's not worth worrying about.

Posted by phil | July 23, 2008 11:13 AM

Odd to see that Imperialism is no longer the love that dare not speak its name. I would have thought that shame would have held Hiatt's tongue. (Spasms of wild laughter)

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | July 23, 2008 11:15 AM

You have to love the fact that back in the day, the Post et al were making sure that anyone who claimed the Iraq War was about oil was viewed as a crazy hippie freak. And now, of course, anyone who doesn't realize the war is about oil is a crazy hippie freak.

Posted by DTM | July 23, 2008 11:16 AM

It's funny that this is what the sketchy WaPo is still trying to get their liberal audience to believe- but the White House was sending e-mails to the contrary out to its supporters the other day, as recorded on Matt's blog.

For some perspective, see my blog today.

http://www.swanpoliticsblog.blogspot.com/

Probably the sketchy mainstream media and the conservative masters they are a tool of are playing it both ways: trying to keep liberals (i.e. people who have a mind to voice their opinions in the form of criticisms of conservatives) buttoned up tight while they see if they can get the conservative world to start thinking about leaving Iraq.

Posted by Swan | July 23, 2008 11:16 AM

Good stuff in WaPo.

See, the difference between the WaPo and Matthew is that the WaPo is telling the truth.

Meanwhile, der Spiegel is refusing to release the audiotape of the Maliki interview. There is only one reason to refuse to release the tape: they know that it contradicts what der Spiegel wrote.

Posted by Al | July 23, 2008 11:17 AM

the Post's bold declaration that fighting al-Qaeda is a less important national security priority than is military occupation of Iraqi oil fields

This is a lie by Matthew, of course. There are no al Qaeda bases in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda is in Pakistan, not Afghanistan. Fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan is important, but much less important than winning in Iraq.

Posted by Al | July 23, 2008 11:22 AM

Yeah, Al's right. Der Spiegel only said they provided the audiotape to the New York Times, which obviously made up its own translation. Der Spiegel should immediately release the original (and not the fake copied birth certificate) audiotape to a coalition of right wing nutbags, and then we will all hear the clear proof that the faked Apollo moon landings brought down Building 7.

Posted by El Cid | July 23, 2008 11:25 AM

The logic chopping and mixed up facts are stunning but no more so than the Post's bold declaration that fighting al-Qaeda is a less important national security priority than is military occupation of Iraqi oil fields

It's about time they fessed up.

Now I can finally give them these blindfolds and last cigarettes I've been holding for them and send them to the wall.
.

Posted by Grand Moff Texan | July 23, 2008 11:25 AM

Der Spiegel only said they provided the audiotape to the New York Times, which obviously made up its own translation

They did not provide the audiotape to the Times. They allowed a Times reporter and a translator to listen to the tape.

It really is no different than John Kerry providing his military records only to a select few friendly reporters. If there was nothing damaging in the records, he would have released them to everyone. Same here - if der Spiegel had nothing to hide, they would release the audiotape to everyone; they wouldn't just play the tape to one reporter for the Obama-sycophant NY Times.

Posted by Al | July 23, 2008 11:30 AM

It's awesome to see the naked imperialism. Bring it on fuckers!

Oh man, I love it when conservatives deny reality. Who would have thought they'd be waving the postmodernist flag?

Posted by Chris | July 23, 2008 11:33 AM

Careful, Al. My sources say the NYT and Der Spiegel just remotely triggered the tracking chip in your brain, and the UN's black helicopters are on their way. Better get to your tinfoil bunker in the basement.

Posted by DTM | July 23, 2008 11:38 AM

Al, you don't have a clue about whether or not there are al Qaida bases only in Pakistan and not in Afghanistan. You're glued to a computer screen (Literally. It's a tragic accident.) in New Jersey.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | July 23, 2008 11:38 AM

War for oil doesn't mean cheap oil for you. What it does mean is protection for companies that have invested in Iraqi oil.

Well, those things are probably true, but do you honestly think the administration's policy is being driven by Exxon and Chevron?

The important thing is not who drills the oil; it's what happens to the oil revenues. In 2006, Iraq exported 1.43 million barrels of oil per day -- at today's prices that's $73B a year of revenue. Saddam was a dangerous actor to have control over that kind of cash, and used it at various points in time to (a) wage war on his neighbors, Iran and Kuwait, (b) oppress his people, particularly Kurds, and (c) develop WMDs. (For reference, the second largest military budget in the world -- China's -- is ~$65B in USD.)

On the other hand, Saudi Arabia, which exports 6x as much oil, the UAE, with twice as much, and Kuwait, with 50% more, all have rulers who use its cash to live ridiculously extravagant lifestyle, invest in Western and Asian economies, and build vanity projects like, say, the city of Dubai. The entire goal of the US foreign policy in the Middle East is to get as much oil cashflow into the hands of rulers like that.

This is why we are hostile towards Iran -- they have tremendous cashflow that they could be using to develop military strength to threaten their neighbors, our allies, and/or the US -- and this is why we invaded Iraq and continue to worry about the condition of the country. It's not about democracy, it's not about cheap oil, it's not about the oil companies: it's about controlling how non-aligned oil countries use their oil money.

Posted by right | July 23, 2008 11:38 AM

then we will all hear the clear proof that the faked Apollo moon landings brought down Building 7

The truthers who believe that 9/11 was a government conspiracy are mostly Democrats. Recall that fully 35% of Democrats believe that Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks ahead of time (as compared to only 39% who don't). Remember when John Edwards promised to look into who brought down WTC7?

Posted by Al | July 23, 2008 11:40 AM

Until the oil in the Persian Gulf is controlled by the population of the Persian Gulf, and they decide to sell it of their own free will, for their own benefit, violent conflict will be the order of the day. Of course, respecting the wishes of the duly elected government of Iraq, in terms of what role, if any, a foreign government will play in Iraq, is integral to the Iraqi population controlling their oil wealth.

As to Afghanistan, the United States can choose to wage war on Al Queda and the Taliban as effectively as possible. or it can choose to fight a War on Drugs, including a war on poppy agriculture. It can't do both. Let me know when a Presidential candidate addresses that reality, because only then will it be worthwhile to start listening to Presidential candidates about their proposed strategies for combating Al Queda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Until that time, they are just engaging in pointless election season yammering.

Posted by Will Allen | July 23, 2008 11:42 AM

I wonder how many Republicans think it fair to suggest that FDR was egging on the Japanese to attack and that he knew that something was afoot? Are they "truthers"?

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | July 23, 2008 11:46 AM

Print it and tape it up somewhere:

"the country's strategic importance pales beside that of Iraq, which lies at the geopolitical center of the Middle East and contains some of the world's largest oil reserves"

The goalposts continue to shift. Remember when Iraq was invaded because of WMDs? Or a connection with al-Qaeda? Or to liberate Iraqis from a dictator? Or to promote stability in the region? Or export democracy? Now it is all about oil. No big surprise, even Bush admitted it is such.

Posted by freddiemac | July 23, 2008 11:47 AM

the WaPo is telling the truth

So, Al, were they telling the truth in 2003 when they kept insisting that the coming invasion was not about oil?

As I said on the other thread, I used to think that the WaPo was falling for the official lie. Silly me. It is becoming increasingly evident that they were in on the scam all along.

Posted by roac | July 23, 2008 11:48 AM

"On the other hand, Saudi Arabia, which exports 6x as much oil, the UAE, with twice as much, and Kuwait, with 50% more, all have rulers who use its cash to live ridiculously extravagant lifestyle, invest in Western and Asian economies, and build vanity projects like, say, the city of Dubai."

Uh, have I been living in an alternate dimension or aren't the Saudis the biggest promoters of radical Whahabi Islam in the Middle East and around the world? Didn't the Saudis once hold a telethon to raise money for Palestinian terrorists? Weren't most of the 9/11 killers Saudi?

One of the problems for the future of democracy is that the democratic process can't properly function if the body politic contains large numbers of people who are clinically delusional.

Mike

Posted by MBunge | July 23, 2008 11:50 AM

So, Al, were they telling the truth in 2003 when they kept insisting that the coming invasion was not about oil?

Of course.

People like Matthew may be deliberately obtuse, but it isn't that difficult to grasp. The Iraq war, in 2003, was about the threat posed to America by Saddam (a threat that the intelligence agencies overestimated, to be sure). The Afghanistan war in 2001 was about al Qaeda's bases in afghanistan and the Taliban's harboring of al Qaeda. What those wars had to do with 5 or more years ago is not necessarily related to which of the two countries is more important to our national security today.

Today, there are no significant al Qaeda personnel or bases in Afghanistan. There remain some remnants of al Qaeda in Iraq. But al Qaeda is nostly based in Pakistan, which (unbeknownst to Matthew, apparently) is a completely different country than Afghanistan. As to whether Iraq or Afghanistan is more important to our national security today, clearly Iraq is, for the reasons described by the WaPo.

Posted by Al | July 23, 2008 12:00 PM

It is kind of incredible to read the WaPo's prattle, quickly followed by Al's. It's just insane--this is what it must have felt like to read the newspaper in communist Poland. Maliki specifically endorses Obama's plan by name, and yet...he doesn't support it. Uh, okay.

And, amazingly, even when Hiatt and the gang are not constrained by reporting the facts honestly, they still can't put together a very compelling argument as to why Obama is wrong. It's OK to let Afghanistan revert back to the people who controlled it on 9/11 because Bush let bin Laden escape into Pakistan? We should think the needs of Iraq are more important than the needs of the US economy? Obama would have a bullheaded commitment to 16 months come hell or high water, even though he risked his candidacy in the primaries by refusing to agree to such a thing? Seriously? If we leave Iraq, oil prices will go up? Because, what, they've been so low ever since we went in?

Really, if they're just making stuff up, I'd have gone with "Al Quaeda will take over Iraq and launch a naval invasion of the Eastern Seaboard." If you're gonna lie, go all the way, Fred!

Posted by anon | July 23, 2008 12:05 PM

Al's right. Der Spiegel only allowed the New York Times to listen to the interview because it was a faked recording!!!

It is urgent for the security of our precious bodily fluids that an anonymous blogger suffering mutilated rabbit attacks work with a right wing blogger in love with John Bolton in order to get to the bottom of the kerning and digital copy signatures of the recording -- which we are sure will prove that Barack Hussein Obama X was actually born in ancient Lemuria!!!

Posted by El Cid | July 23, 2008 12:15 PM

Uh, have I been living in an alternate dimension or aren't the Saudis the biggest promoters of radical Whahabi Islam in the Middle East and around the world? Didn't the Saudis once hold a telethon to raise money for Palestinian terrorists? Weren't most of the 9/11 killers Saudi?

Yes which is why Obama can't ignore the Middle East and focus solely on Afghanistan. It's also why I feel democracy promotion is important. The Saudi monarchy probably doens't like to see democratic institutions next door in Iraq.

At least the Saudis don't threaten to wipe Israel off the map as Iran does on a daily basis, and isn't pursuing nukes, yet. The danger is that Iran via its Shia allies in Iraq, will stir up trouble with the oppressed Shia minority near Saudis eastern oil fields.

It's not for nothing that Jordan's King warned of a Shia "crescent" which includes Hezbollah and the alliance of convenience with the Sunni Hamas.

Good thing is the Saudis and Iran were negotiating in Lebanon.

They just want to keep the oil flowing, not necessarily give it to US corporations.

After 9-11, Bush closed the Saudi permanent bases and moved them to Iraq. Maybe moving again will help things.

Posted by Peter K. | July 23, 2008 12:17 PM

It would be nice if one of our Presidential candidates would simply note that the Iraqis are still scheduled to have elections this fall, and the results of those elections will have a huge impact on American policy in Iraq, thus it doesn't make too much sense at this time to make extremely detailed proposals regarding what American policy will be with regards to Iraq come January.

Posted by Will Allen | July 23, 2008 12:18 PM

Der Spiegel only allowed the New York Times to listen to the interview because it was a faked recording!!!

Who said anything about a faked recording? Der Spiegel allowed the Times to listen because they know that the Obama-sycophant NY Times will put out a story friendly to Obama. Duh.

Posted by Al | July 23, 2008 12:19 PM

Hey they cribbed my line from
yesterday.

About what is Obama right? He said sixteen months, and the Iraqis says 22 months. Being off by the HUGE margin of 37.5% can be characterized as being right only in the elite playing fields of Cambridge Square.

And mine is better.

How do I apply for a job at WaPo editorial writer?

Posted by gregor | July 23, 2008 12:22 PM

It would be nice if one of our Presidential candidates would simply note that the Iraqis are still scheduled to have elections this fall

Almost certainly they will not.

Posted by Al | July 23, 2008 12:26 PM

Will Allen demonstrating his brilliant grasp of nothing:

Until the oil in the Persian Gulf is controlled by the population of the Persian Gulf, and they decide to sell it of their own free will, for their own benefit, violent conflict will be the order of the day.

Listen shithead, violent conflict is the order of the day when know nothing thieves and murderers (that would be you and guys like Bush and Cheney who you voted for, fuckwit) spend decades propping up first one set of bastards and then toppling them with not even a hint of concern for the massive violence they have caused.

Only a complete fucking moron like Will Allen imagines that democracy and capitalism are a panacea. They are not. Especially when enforced with the barrel of a gun. The road to stability in the Persian Gulf is not by dimwitted clods like Will Allen promoting more violence and death. The road to stability in the Persian Gulf requires both acceptance of the powers that be and the use of non-violent persuasion. Toppling dictators is only useful if there is some plan to fill the power void. Otherwise you just get more death and destruction. Okay if you are a sick fuck like Will Allen and don't how many people die in order for you to impose your knee-jerk ideological passions on them. Not quite so good if you are a human being and prefer not quite so much pointless bloodshed.

Posted by Not as stupid as Will Allen | July 23, 2008 12:27 PM

Absolutely, Peter K. If the Iraqi population, including a minority Sunni populaton, can employ democratic methods to control the destination of revenues which result form Iraqi oil extraction, the very legitimacy of the House of Saud will become much more questioned by the Sunni majority now ruled by the House of Saud. I mean, if some lowly clan member in Tikrit gets to have a say in how Iraqi oil revenues are distributed, it becomes much more difficult for the worthless princes of the House of Saud to maintain that their Sunni subjects should essentially have no say in the distribution of Saudi oil revenue.

Posted by Will Allen | July 23, 2008 12:29 PM

Who said anything about a faked recording? Der Spiegel allowed the Times to listen because they know that the Obama-sycophant NY Times will put out a story friendly to Obama. Duh.

Posted by Al

Al's right! It's not that Der Spiegel can't be relied on to offer an audio session to a multi-billion dollar news corporation -- it's that it's the socialist New York Times which probably just made up what they said was the literal transcript in English of Al-Maliki's statements in Arabic! C'mon, New York Times!!! STOP FAKING TRANSCRIPTS!!!

Posted by El Cid | July 23, 2008 12:32 PM

Somewhat off-topic, but check out this day in history, 1942.

Posted by scythia | July 23, 2008 12:32 PM

As an Exxon-Mobil shareholder, I can tell you that there's nothing more important than defending the lease holdings of American oil companies. But I might sell my stock, and then the issue will become moot.

Posted by fostert | July 23, 2008 12:34 PM

"Until the oil in the Persian Gulf is controlled by the population of the Persian Gulf, and they decide to sell it of their own free will, for their own benefit, violent conflict will be the order of the day."

Oh, so you now support the nationalization of Middle Eastern oil industries? That's quite a surprising statement for a market loving guy like you.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | July 23, 2008 12:34 PM

If the Iraqi population, including a minority Sunni populaton, can employ democratic methods to control the destination of revenues which result form Iraqi oil extraction

Um, is this a joke?

Posted by scythia | July 23, 2008 12:37 PM

That the Al-bots are sent out in defense of WAPO is an interesting twist. From GOP fax to Fred Hiatt editorial to Al-botianism in high profile blogs. It is a feeble press, but what counts is that it keeps up. It isn't that we can't all see through the smokescreen, it is the bet we will get tired of having to say, everytime, we can see through the smokescreen. Prolonging the vanity war through an inexhaustible propensity to lie - this is the right's strong point. They will lie today, and they will lie tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and - if they catch their opponents at the right moment - involve them in endless corrections, slowly moving away from the whole point. The whole point here is, of course, that the Iraqi executive has given a timetable goal for Americans to get out of Iraq. Period.

What is going to be interesting is the WAPO presidential endorsement. This is a serious strategic matter. On the one hand, WAPO accrues prestige through being a "liberal" press who can be cited by the hardcore right to endorse rightwing positions. This is an important and precarious position. Slate, of course, has made an art of it for years - even the liberal slate thinks the KKK is right on black inferiority, etc, etc. Over there, it is called contrarianism. On the other hand, WAPO coming out and endorsing McCain might just be a relief - out of the closet at last! My guess is - no endorsement at all. Instead, of course, as we near November, the Op ed page will look more and more like the Weekly Standard, except crazier. Surely they will tap into the ever informative Cheney daughters for many fine defenses of the perpetual war thesis. The reporting on Iraq will contain even more gratuitious and lying bits about Iran supplying "arms" to "terrorists" and killing American soldiers. And there will be a Kagan fiesta in October.

I think the liberalosphere on the Net is in for another disappointment about the Obama trip. Sure, everything did go Obama's way. We now have a reluctant realization even by the Bush administration that the troops will have to be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of 2010. But the MSM blanked the Spiegel interview, has turned around the positions of McCain and Obama - McCain, the tv is assuring voters, was for the surge in Afghanistan, and Obama is copying him - and will simply continue to ignore the inconvenient, Iraqi part of the Iraq narrative. They can't help themselves. When the establishment creates a narrative, it is worse, in their eyes, for the critics of it to be found to be correct than for the narrative to fail the test of truth. J.K. Galbraith remarked that the British establishment could never quite forgive Keynes for being right about the punitive peace terms that ended WWI. The London Times, reviewing the book, said that it may have been "clever", but it aided the enemy. "It was not that the great men of the Treaty and the Establishment were suffering under the onslaught, although that, of course, was the real point. Rather, the criticism was causing rejoicing to the nation's enemies. It's a device to which the highly respectable men regularly resort."

Let's hope Obama survives being right on Iraq. It is going to be awfully hard for the MSM to forgive that.

Posted by roger | July 23, 2008 12:38 PM

Today, there are no significant al Qaeda personnel or bases in Afghanistan.

There are no al Qaeda bases in Afghanistan.

Which is why people suspect that there are multiple people posting under the "Al" franchise.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | July 23, 2008 12:50 PM

Progressive, there is nothing anti-market about noting that Iraq's oil reserves belong to the Iraqi people, and they should control it via democratic methods.

Scythia, am I to take it that you oppose the Iraqi population using democratic methods to control the destination of oil reveues, therefore you think the concept is "a joke"?

Posted by Will Allen | July 23, 2008 12:59 PM

It is fun to see the (never very convincing) "hey, we're there to help the Iraqis" masks peeled from the faces of the genocidal warmongers.

Of course, it would be a lot more fun to see their faces literally peeled off, the sick fucking animals.

Posted by voice of reason | July 23, 2008 12:59 PM

Scythia, am I to take it that you oppose the Iraqi population using democratic methods to control the destination of oil reveues

Not at all. I am 100% in favor of the Iraqis, and of all people worldwide, using democratic methods to control and profit from the extraction of their nations' natural resources.

I am so optimistic that this will actually happen in Iraq that I will personally ride my unicorn all the way to the Gumdrop Forest, just to make sure we do it right. I hereby call on the top execs of BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron, and ExxonMobil to join me.

Posted by scythia | July 23, 2008 1:12 PM

Uh, have I been living in an alternate dimension or aren't the Saudis the biggest promoters of radical Whahabi Islam in the Middle East and around the world? Didn't the Saudis once hold a telethon to raise money for Palestinian terrorists? Weren't most of the 9/11 killers Saudi?

The Saudis promote Wahhabi Islam to oppress their own people -- this has little bearing on the US. If they support Palestinian terrorists that wouldn't be surprising, but again that has little to do with the security of the US. That Saudi citizens want to attack the US is not at all surprising, since we enable and support the government that oppresses them.

This is all completely dwarfed by the fact that the Saudi's take in $400B in oil revenue each year (a figure 2/3 the size of the US defense budget) and do not use this money to build tanks, missiles, or nukes.

Posted by right | July 23, 2008 1:12 PM

Al: The Der Spiegel interview and translation were approved by Maliki's people before it was published. Multiple Iraqi gov't officials have repeated the same general viewpoing. Maliki has repeated it in more general terms. Game, set, match.

Pete K.: You made the statement that "at least the Saudis don't threaten to wipe Israel off the map as Iran does on a daily basis, and isn't pursuing nukes, yet." (We'll ignore all the Saudis involved in 9/11 for the moment.)

While Iran has heated rhetoric towards us, we don't exactly have a lily white history in our dealings with them. We propped up a highly corrupt shah who was guilty of murder and torture. When they finally ousted him, we gave weapons of mass destruction to Saddam, and supported his attacks which included the use of banned chemical weapons. They approached Bush in 2003 about talks and were spurned. Then they were named part of the "Axis of Evil" by a president who showed that he would start a war if a country didn't do what he wanted them to, regardless of the non-existence of an actual threat.

So try to look at it from their point of view. If you were a leader in Iran, what could possibly allow you to thrust America? I'm no fan of any theocracy but c'mon, Bush pushed them into a corner so hard that owning nukes appears to be the only road to safety left to them.

Posted by LFC | July 23, 2008 1:19 PM

Impressive, Al:

You moved from "Der Spiegel refused to release the interview in any way, shape or form" to "they only released in in audio, but not in written form" to "they only released it to the New York Times, which is full of Obama-loving terrorists anyway".

Talk about moving the goal posts.

Posted by Patrick | July 23, 2008 1:22 PM

In further confirmation of the clever right wing's insistence upon the unreliability of that fancy gay European socialist publication Der Spiegel, it appears that al-Maliki's office signed off on the transcript.

The reason the magazine scores so many high level interviews is that the editors agree to allow the subjects to "authorize" the interviews before they go to press. It wasn't just a slip of the tongue, in other words: Maliki not only endorsed Obama's plans for withdrawing from Iraq, but his office then explicitly approved the endorsement before it was printed. The denials, then, were doubly facetious. Spiegel couldn't say so, though, without revealing its embarrassing authorization policy.

http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/07/22/maliki-s-endorsement-not-lost-in-translation.aspx

Now Der Spiegel offers to play the audiotape for any journalist who requests it, but they say that they haven't been asked!

How do these Communist German fake journalists dare force Good American Patriot Conservative journalists to actually have to pick up the phone and call them? How DARE they?

Posted by El Cid | July 23, 2008 1:22 PM

scythia, I never predicted that it would happen. However, the Iraqi population is closer to that outcome today than they have been for decades, or possibly since oil was found in the region. Your attitude that such a prospect is "a joke", if widely adopted, especially by, say, Barack Obama, would make the prospect rather less likely to happen.

You may think it impossible for Arabs to manage their natural resources as well as, say, Norwegians, but I disagree.

Posted by Will Allen | July 23, 2008 1:24 PM

Impressive, Al:

You moved from "Der Spiegel refused to release the interview in any way, shape or form" to "they only released in in audio, but not in written form" to "they only released it to the New York Times, which is full of Obama-loving terrorists anyway".

Talk about moving the goal posts.

Posted by Patrick | July 23, 2008 1:26 PM

"The Saudis promote Wahhabi Islam to oppress their own people -- this has little bearing on the US."

Can anyone help me out here? I can't quite figure out how to have a reasonable discussion without someone who...

A. Thinks one of the (if not the) world's leading promoters and supporters of radical Islam should be of little concern to the country that had 3000 people killed in a single day by radical Islamic terrorists.

B. Doesn't realize that Saudi Arabia supports radical Whahabi Islam all over the world.

Is there someway to engage such a person in fair argument, cause I just want to tell him he's a bleeping moron?

Mike

Posted by MBunge | July 23, 2008 1:33 PM

However, the Iraqi population is closer to that outcome today than they have been for decades, or possibly since oil was found in the region.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/13/opinion/13juhasz.html
http://www.platformlondon.org/carbonweb/showitem.asp?article=58&parent=4&link=Y&gp=3
http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=ask_this.view&askthisid=287

You may think it impossible for Arabs to manage their natural resources as well as, say, Norwegians, but I disagree.

To be fair, Will, I only make racist statements like that while I'm fucking your sister.

Posted by scythia | July 23, 2008 1:38 PM

Mike,

You can't engage war supporters in logical arguments.

The fact is that war supporters deserve to be shot dead in the streets like rabid dogs. Mind you, I am NOT advocating such a solution, because there are practical constraints and disadvantages. but that is what the fucking animals deserve.

Posted by voice of reason | July 23, 2008 1:40 PM

scythia, apparently you aren't bright enough to grasp that sovereign people break existing agreements with multinationals with some frequency. Thus, any proposed law today regarding what rights multinationals will have in Iraq doesn't really guarantee what will be the case five years from now, especially if the Iraqi people are self governing five years from now. The people of Iraq have a much better chance of exercising self government than they have had in decades, thus they have a much better chance of controlling their oil resources. You simply think that the prospect of Arabs engaging in self government is a joke, no matter who you are having sex with.

Posted by Will Allen | July 23, 2008 1:51 PM

There can be no serious doubt that Maliki was quoted accurately saying exactly what he intended to say. It's also pretty consistent with what he and other members of the Iraqi government have been saying for a long time, so no one should be surprised. According to the latest ABC/BBC polling, the Iraqi government is currently supported by 55%--in Sadr City! This is not a puppet government.

Iraqis might really have a shot at getting some social benefits from their oil, certainly a more likely prospect than most of their neighbors being able to do so. This government will probably drive a pretty good bargain with the majors now bidding to invest the billions of dollars and priceless expertise needed to restore the collapse of their production infrastructure due to forty years of nationalization, during which much of Iraq's oil income was squandered by the fascist police state in starting hopeless wars.

The Washington Post article was respectable journalism, while Matt's response, echoed in the amen corner here, is juvenile cartooning. Concern about a lack of spare production capacity has brought oil to $150/bbl, with serious consequences only beginning to play out. If it goes to $200, or hangs around much longer where it is, we're looking at a giant world depression that would be a disaster with incalculable consequences. Iraq has the most easily accessible reserves on the planet, largely now unavailable. Making them available changes the global calculus, and may provide a bridge to the alternative energy future.

Oil is the lifeblood of the world economy whether or not we wish that to be so. "Stealing" it is not an issue outside the lunatic fringe. It is sold, currently at huge prices, by enthusiastically willing sellers. But if it becomes unavailable in a serious way, we will have a depression unlike any before it, which is hardly in the interests of the Iraqis, or any other countries' people.

Posted by robert powell | July 23, 2008 2:03 PM

Will Allen,

The prospect of a Western-style liberal democracy taking root in Iraq is a joke, although you appear not to be bright enough to see that. The Iraqis will be at each other's throats again the minute we leave, and only an authoritarian leader can hold the country together. Moreover the "elections" that are going to take place later this year are every bit as much a farce as the "elections" in South Vietnam or Soviet-occupied Poland, and deserve to be treated as the joke and sham they are.

Posted by Hector | July 23, 2008 2:07 PM

MBunge,

I am not a moron, and you could start by just making your points directly, instead of your bizarre rhetorical phrasing.

Yes, Saudi Arabia promotes radical Islam, but there is no realistic way to move them away from this -- it is the entire basis of their authority. I suppose we could remove the government, but that would either place us in the same predicament as in Iraq, or leave ourselves open to the chance that a Saddam- or Ahmadenijad-type leader could emerge and start a massive military buildup.

Alternatively, we could just address the actual threat posed by radical Islamists, which is the approach of directly combating Al-Qaeda operatives and cells wherever we find them. This approach, while difficult and costly, has prevented any terrorist attacks on US soil post-9/11, and seems clearly vastly preferable to a hostile regime controlling Saudi Arabia's oil money, with the ability to invest in nuclear weapons and other military capabilities.

voice of reason,

While your comments are charming, I am not, in fact, a war supporter. I think Obama's foreign policy approach is generally much more sound than McCain's or Bush's. It is a useless exercise, however, to consistently take potshots at the administration's Iraq policy -- as Matt and most commenters here often do -- without actually understanding the driving motivation for our Middle East policy.

Again, it's not about the Iraqi people. It's not about the oil, per se. It's not about "democracy". It's about preventing the oil revenue from being invested to build military strength.

Posted by right | July 23, 2008 2:13 PM

Yes, hector, I know you think self government is not achievable by Iraqis. All government is authoritarian; what varies is the level of authoritarian control, and how much individual citizens can affect their government. The Iraqi population is closer to having significant control over it's government than it has had in decades, which means it is closer to having significant control over it's oil revenues than it has had in decades.

Posted by Will Allen | July 23, 2008 2:27 PM

"So try to look at it from their point of view. If you were a leader in Iran, what could possibly allow you to thrust America? I'm no fan of any theocracy but c'mon, Bush pushed them into a corner so hard that owning nukes appears to be the only road to safety left to them."

I'd like to think the Israelis are too smart to bomb Iran. I think an attack on Iran would be a disaster.

Yeah I think Bush listing them in the Axis of Evil was a mistake. But "I'm-a-dinner-jacket" actually really said there are no homosexuals in Iran? They're nuts and Juan Cole is full of shit.

http://www.slate.com/id/2140947/

If I was a leader, unlike Saddam or Iran's theocracy, I'd give up WMDs. Or I wouldn't bluff about them as Saddam did. Who care if the Hyperpower is talking shit?

Posted by Peter K. | July 23, 2008 2:37 PM

Will Allen,

The Iraqi "elected" government exists at the sufferance of the United States military. Those elections are as much a meaningless farce as the "elections" in South Vietnam or Poland. Whoops I forgot, jerks like you think the Vietnam War was a good idea too.

Posted by Hector | July 23, 2008 2:41 PM

Matt says the Post editorial reminded him of a Pravda piece.

I think the more appropriate analogy is Baghdad Bob, our old friend.

When did old Bob start working for the post?

Posted by richbuddy | July 23, 2008 2:56 PM

Matt says the Post editorial reminded him of a Pravda piece.

I think the more appropriate analogy is Baghdad Bob, our old friend.

When did old Bob start working for the post?

Posted by richbuddy | July 23, 2008 2:57 PM

Hector, you are willfully, and perhaps maliciously, wrong. The Iraqi elections were certified free and fair by UN observers. Moreover, the turnout was huge, numbers only a delusional paranoid would imagine could be influenced in their (secret) ballots by the scattered handfuls of US troops spread out over the country.

When it was over, Iraqis in their millions risked their lives to vote in lots of people we didn't like, refused to vote in lots of people we did like, and at the end of the day got a government that has exercised rather remarkable autonomy in actual practice, about which you seem to have no information at all.

It is profoundly insulting to Iraqis, and to the people who have sacrificed to give them a shot a the most representative and legitimate government in the Arab world if not Arab history, to make up out of thin air charges that these elections bore any resemblance at all to those in communist Poland--excepting the one in 1988, of course.

Posted by robert powell | July 23, 2008 3:05 PM

Hell, Will Allen loves the idea of the war on Vietnam so much that when the Vietnamese rescued the Cambodians from the Khmer Rouge Will Allen has not a single bad word to say about Reagan's trying to restore them. Using Will Allen's bizarre and (really fucking stupid) analysis that makes him a full-throated supporter of the Khmer Rouge. His ability to justify the war on Iraqis comes from the same idiot logic. Sure, there were no weapons, sure there was no humanitarian crisis - that's exactly why we had to start murdering Iraqis. It was so unstable that we needed to destabilize it.

Yeah, it sounds phenomenally stupid when you say it that way - that's why Will pretends that his concern is "democracy" and jumps up on his racist high-horse to proclaim anyone who points out that "enforced democracy isn't really democracy" is a racist. All of his ranting is just more stupid shit from a stupid shit.

Posted by Not as stupid as Will Allen | July 23, 2008 3:07 PM

Yeah, as Robert notes, Hector, never let the facts get in the way.....

Meathead, your obsession with me regarding Cambodia really is quite rude, in that you are using bandwidth that others are paying for, but if you insist, no, saying that one is not going to debate the Reagan Adminsitration's realpolitik with regard to the Khmer Rouge, post genocide, is not the same as asserting, prior to the genocide, that one supports cutting off aid to the Lon Nol government, in part because one supposes that what will follow the Lon Nol government is likely to be governance by Cambodia's most able intellectuals. The latter statement expresses full throated support for rule by the Khmer Rouge, unless one supposes, as you sometimes argue, that the speaker is the dumbest man on the planet.

Yes, finally, I know you think Iraqis are only fit for the stability of tyrannical rule for decades on end. This is how your world view is so similar to that possessed by Jesse Helms, ya' ol' racist rascal, you!

Posted by Will Allen | July 23, 2008 3:32 PM

"Concern about a lack of spare production capacity has brought oil to $150/bbl, with serious consequences only beginning to play out"

Wait a minute, I thought that the run up on oil was caused by speculators? This wasn't a commodity bubble? Please explain.

Posted by freddiemac | July 23, 2008 3:41 PM

I see Shithead loves him some genocidal Khmers. When it's Reagan's love of brutal killers there's really no reason to talk about it, when it is a Democrat - hold on Betty. By your rules Will, yours is a full throated support of the Khmer. I can't help it if you are an idiot supporter of genocide - I don't make your rules. I just expose you for the racist monster you are.

But nice job taking the your week's worth of attempting to distract from Jesse Helms' racism and trying to project it out on others. You were the one supporting his "anti-communist" efforts, in the same way you support with your voice and your votes, the slaughter of innocent Iraqis for the greater glory of...well, let's be honest Dimwit, you support their slaughter because you are a supporter of slaughter. There's really no ideological backing - just a love of death and misery.

Sure, you pretend that anyone who doesn't love death as much as you do is a "supporter" of disgusting regimes - but that's why your support of Reagan and his policies regarding Cambodia are so important - it gives context to your "humanitarian" goals.

Face facts Clod, your boys supported Saddam Hussein. Your boys created WWI style sanctions that killed untold numbers of children, and then your boys decided to further destabilize a place they had been fucking over for decades.

When given a choice between a bad situation and a monstrous one - I will choose the bad one. Unlike you and the Khmer as well as you and Bush.

Posted by Not as stupid as Will Allen | July 23, 2008 4:02 PM

So Drooling Moron (don't pretend you don't recognize the name your teachers gave you Will), tell us how the Iraqis are better off now that there have been hundreds of thousands of them slaughtered and millions of them displaced.

Come on, you keep harping on how bad Saddam Hussein was for the Iraqis, how has George W. Bush been? What segments of Iraqi life have improved under the tender care of Bush's army of occupation? Give some statistics. Provide some context.

Please leave out bullshit theories of how millions of people might have died if some fantasy scenario that exists only in your head happened. Use the actual status of the Iraqi people from 2000 (the election of Bush) to 2008. What group did you save from genocide by your genocidal slaughter - Khmer Rouge loving butcher boy?

Posted by Not as stupid as Will Allen | July 23, 2008 4:09 PM

If the U.S. had really wanted to strengthen Cambodia's government, it wouldn't have bombed and carpet bombed it out of existence, since the bombing is what handed power to the lunatic Khmer Rouge guerrillas, and it was the bombing that committed the first stage of Cambodian genocide through direct killing, and it was the bombing which destroyed much of Cambodian agriculture which greatly boosted the numbers of dead under the Khmer Rouge murderers since starvation killed even more people than the KR's bullets.

Posted by El Cid | July 23, 2008 4:09 PM

"I am not a moron, and you could start by just making your points directly, instead of your bizarre rhetorical phrasing."

Sorry if my rhetorical phrasing is too much for you precious little mind. Let me be more direct.

You contended that we need to worry about Iran because they do bad things with their oil money but that we needn't concern ourselves with the Saudi because they only use their oil money to buy mink-covered bird feeders or something. But anyone with a fully functioning brain recognizes the Saudis have used, are using and will continue to use their oil revenue for some pretty horrible stuff. And that horrible stuff doesn't just have bad consequences for Saudis but for Americans, Europeans and others.

If you don't want to be thought of as a moron, don't write moronic things like that.

Mike

Posted by MBunge | July 23, 2008 4:10 PM

The actual bombing record of the U.S. in Cambodia, from USAF records.

http://www.yale.edu/cgp/us.html

Posted by El Cid | July 23, 2008 4:12 PM

Uh, no, meathead. My rules are that supporting the cutoff of aid to the only entity which can prevent another entity which wishes to commit genocide, and calling the entity intent on genocide a country's most able intllectuals, is expressing full throated support for the entity intent on genocide. That has nothing to do with not debating the wisdom of supporting a post genocidal entity as a means of acting as counterweight to a more powerful, albeit less murderous, despotic government. You really are stupid, aren't you? Along with being a Helms-style racist, of course. Oh, and a liar, too. That goes without saying, doesn't it?

Posted by Will Allen | July 23, 2008 4:17 PM

In fact, guess where Osama bin Laden got his fortune? That's right, construction of mink covered bird-cages (close enough for a moron like Will Allen - his understanding of finance is approximately that of a pig's understanding of particle physics. Actually, that's approximately equal to his understanding of everything - he is a world class moron).

Posted by Not as stupid as Will Allen | July 23, 2008 4:17 PM

El Cid, one can condemn Nixon's Cambodian policy while also condemning McGovern's statement that the fall of the Lon Nol government would likely be followed by the rule of Cambodia by it's most able intellectuals. Is there some reason you think such positions are mutually exclusive?

I do think unfortunate that we have followed the meathead's insistence on threadjacking every thread in the direction of Cambodia.

Posted by Will Allen | July 23, 2008 4:25 PM

yea, meathead, I know it is your belief that Iraqis are only fit to be ruled by Baathist despots for all time. I don't dispute that this is what you believe is best for them. Why do you ask me to restate what your beliefs are?

Posted by Will Allen | July 23, 2008 4:31 PM

The funny thing about Will Allen and his support for the Khmer Rouge - he thinks anyone who opposed the dictatorship of Lon Nol was a supporter and should be condemned. On the other hand, returning brutal killers to power isn't a topic he wants to discuss. Sure, Reagan's idiotic anti-communism had him rejecting the people who had saved Cambodia from the ravages of American foreign policy in favor of brutal killers. But what's important is that a Democrat once said something that Will can make into support for those very same people - before the killings.

In the mind of a moron, opposing a dictatorship when the alternative turns out to be brutal murderers is a much more heinous act than actual support for people who have already committed heinous acts of murder and brutality. After all, one must be harped on as proof of perfidy, the other isn't worth discussing.

Again, this is important in the context of Iraq and Will Allen's two votes for the idiot in chief - George W. Bush. For an imbecile, only the fact of Iraq's government by dictatorship matters. That the living conditions will be devastated by war isn't important. That the result of war will not be a liberal democratic oasis but a nightmarish hell-hole with justifiable anger towards those who made it such - not important. The hundreds of thousands of dead - not at all important.

For a human being - saving the Cambodians from genocidal monsters was a good thing. For a human being - preventing the mass slaughter of Iraqis would have been good. These are not goals Will Allen can support.

Shithead - I'm done with you for a while. Go back to lying about how anyone who didn't support Bush's war of aggression against Iraq and its subsequent humanitarian disaster is some kind of racist and a supporter of Saddam Hussein. Go back to lying about your support for Reagan and the Khmer Rouge. Go back to pretending you didn't spend a week trying to distract from Jesse Helms' record of proxy murder.

I know that projection helps you sleep at night.

Posted by Not as stupid as Will Allen | July 23, 2008 4:32 PM

Will Allen, no amount of post hoc statements by anyone about Lon Nol, about the Khmer Rouge, about anything, actually caused the fall of the Cambodian government -- and it is certainly an exaggeration to really call it that.

But, no, I actually think that there is zero, if not less than zero, moral culpability for anything that happened in Cambodia if McGovern thought that something better than the Lon Nol government might emerge. A wrong prediction, but wrong in the sense of incorrect, not wrong in the sense of 'hey, let's carpet bomb these villagers for almost a decade and see what happens' wrong.

It's all part of a game to desperately try to retroactively justify the policy that actually brought the Khmer Rouge to power.

Since it was obvious to all involved, at the time and afterwards, that it was the Johnson and Nixon administrations' bombing, supported enthusiastically by the warhawks, which faciliated the rise to power of the previously marginal Khmer Rouge, it becomes necessary for the warhawks to somehow blame uninvolved leftists & doves for the Khmer Rouge takeover which they had just facilitated.

So, unlike the right, even if you were to show me some mythical leftist who had celebrated gleefully the Khmer Rouge takeover of Cambodia, had dressed up in the Khmer flag (if such a thing existed) and danced and sang on the streets of Khmer Rouge glory, no, it would be tacky and gross, but it would have absolutely zero to do with actually helping hand power to the Khmer Rouge as did bombing the place from 1965 - 1973.

Cambodia was brought up for the same reason in conjunction with the Iraq war -- to make a bad analogy to justify policy today, based upon retrospective warhawk mythmaking about the past.

The propaganda lines thus merged -- to leave Iraq now would be like how the liberals left Cambodia and allowed the Khmer Rouge to take over. A false and horrible myth, and one which depends just as much upon retrospective imperial justification for the U.S. slaughter of Cambodians -- by people who never cared in the slightest about Cambodian lives before it became useful for them in anti-leftist propaganda -- as it does on myths regarding the current occupation of Iraq.

Posted by El Cid | July 23, 2008 4:38 PM

I imagine the Atlantic doesn't rue the loss of Matt Yglesias too much when they read posts like this...

Posted by A New Fox News Fan | July 23, 2008 4:50 PM

You contended that we need to worry about Iran because they do bad things with their oil money but that we needn't concern ourselves with the Saudi because they only use their oil money to buy mink-covered bird feeders or something. But anyone with a fully functioning brain recognizes the Saudis have used, are using and will continue to use their oil revenue for some pretty horrible stuff. And that horrible stuff doesn't just have bad consequences for Saudis but for Americans, Europeans and others.

I'm confused. Do you propose we invade Saudi Arabia? Maybe we should tell them what bad people they are; that would probably make us feel better.

Saudi Arabia brings in $400B a year in oil revenue. Iran brings in over $100B. Iraq today is over $70B. The administration (and its predecessors) feels the largest and most significant threat to the US from the middle east comes from the investment of these funds into hostile military force and nuclear weapons. Saudi Arabia is not making any such investments, Saddam-era Iraq was, and Iran seems to be.

This is not a defense of Bush administration policy; I am just laying out what I perceive as the logic behind their actions.

Posted by right | July 23, 2008 5:57 PM

right, it is interesting how the bush people sort nations into friends and foes. It is pretty well known that Pakistan's nuclear capacity couldn't have been built without Saudi money. And it was, you know, internationally illegal. And the Pakistan entrepreneur's felt that had to share their bounty with the North Koreans after they'd finished it. Meanwhile, the Pakistan ISI set up the Taliban. When the U.S. declared war on Afghanistan, Pakistan ISI people fought alongside Taliban soldiers against the Americans. The kindly Bush administration overlooked this faux pas, and even allowed ISI personnel and Taliban commanders to be airlifted from Kunduz in December, 2001, back to Pakistan, where they promptly set up camps on the border, contacted the remnant of Al Qaeda, and have since been waging war on Afghanistan. Recently, in fact, they killed nine American soldiers at a forward camp in Afghanistan. This, then, is the record of those the Bush administration holds to be our friends.

Now, is it just possible that the friendship, here, is less between the Saudis, the Pakistanis and the Americans than between the Saudis, the Pakistanis, and an American oligarchy that has no sense of loyalty whatsoever to America? It happens in a lot of countries. In Iran, for instance, the Iranian people obviously didn't feel like the Shah was representing "Iran" - he was representing the interests of the people who put him in power.

So I think the logic followed by the Bush administration and the logic of American interest is quite different. The Bush administration and their constituency have no sense of America and no love for it - they have, instead, a keen sense of self interest and a willingness to use any kind of rhetoric to persuade the American public to allow themselves to be exploited to that end. The constituency, admittedly, has a more complex psychopathology - a feeling that they have lost power, acute anxiety about virility, and an imprisonment in childhood narcissism that leaves them pitifully open to demogogic rigmarole.

The Bush administration has never pursued American interest, however, and never will.

Posted by roger | July 23, 2008 6:18 PM

Saddam-era Iraq was

And yet another moron pipes up. Please provide something we like to call evidence. And no, evidence circa 1992 doesn't qualify as a justification for a 2002 invasion. As to your imagining that the Saudis aren't putting their money towards terrorism, well I guess we know exactly how stupid you are.

Is there some kind of rule? Anyone who voted for George W. Bush is required to be a total fucking moron, a demented loon, or a sickening combination of both? Or is it just those who did and comment here?

Posted by Not as stupid as Will Allen | July 23, 2008 6:26 PM

It should be made clear it matters not to you or me where the oil comes from or who profits most from its sale. Oil is fungible and it all flows into the market, contributing to the total supply, thus the supply demand balance and thus price.

What's at stake is additional profits by US and Western oil companies. The supply of Iraqi oil is not in question.

The idea of 'owning' oil or the ground it lies under is irrelevant to consumers.

Admittedly going forward this could change as periods of very tight supply might, finally, make major oil producers use their market power to restrict sales. However the fact is that there is no way the US can control such things even if US oil companies are running the fields in Iraq or anywhere.

To repeat. It's about corporate profits. Oil corporation profits. They were poised to sign sweetheart deals in Iraq and that's now not possible.

In addition we will end up spending $3 trillion or so on this misadventure meant in part to 'contol' the oil there and thus save us money on its price. In the best of circumstances it would have taken decades to recoup that money in savings. Instead the savings will not happen at all. On a cost benifit basis the Iraq war has been a loser of monumental proportion, but you knew that.

Posted by rapier | July 23, 2008 6:47 PM

Yes, meathead, I think working hard to remove the last impediment to the Khmer Rouge taking power and then killing a third of the Cambodian population is worse than working hard to give support to the Khmer Rouge in their conflict with the Communist Vietnamese, after the genocide had taken place. You see, unlike you, politics for me isn't about figuring out a way to feel good about myself. It is about taking the action which results in a smaller chance that, say, a third of the Cambodian popualtion might be murdered, rather than taking the action which results in the greater chance that the murders will occur. After a third of the Cambodian population has been murdered, my interest in whatever wrong policies are pursued subsequently is greatly reduced, for the simple reason, you dolt, that things are quite unlikely to get a helluva lot worse after a third of population has been killed, and another hefty percentage driven into exile. There was no saving the Cambodian people from genocidal monsters by the time Reagan was elected, moron, because the genocidal monsters had already committed genocide, with the help of Nixon and McGovern. You really are unfair in your critique of McGovern, in which you assert him to be the dumbest person on the planet. This cannot be true as long as you are around.

You are the sort of idiot who thinks that decent intentions amount to more than a bucket of warm spit in the area of international relations. They don't. Your idiocy, if applied elsewhere, would have resulted in, say, asserting that the people of the southern half of the Korean peninsula were worse off in 1952 due to American military actions on the peninsula. Who knows? Maybe you also think people with yellow skin, like you think those with brown skin, are better off when they are ruled by tyrants for decade after decade after decade.

El Cid, no amount of rationalization will change the fact that George McGovern worked very hard to remove the last impediment which was standing in the way of the Khmer Rouge murdering millions of people, and he did so while asserting that what would take place would not be, as many predicted, a bloodbath (which he dismissed as "hysteria"), but rather rule by enlightened intellectuals. Your tribalism is such that you cannot conceive that Nixon and McGovern both engaged in misrule.

Posted by Will Allen | July 23, 2008 6:54 PM

Not as stupid,

Thank you for quoting three words of my post in order to call me a "fucking moron." You sure helped prove me wrong!

For the record, I have never voted for George Bush. I don't understand why people on these threads cannot respond to arguments without resorting to name calling and wild accusations.

Posted by right | July 23, 2008 11:08 PM

right, meathead can't post without lying. It's reflexive.

Posted by Will Allen | July 24, 2008 12:50 AM

right, did you, or did you not intend those three words to mean "Saddam Hussein was using its funds to create a nuclear threat?"

If you did not, then your writing is incredibly poor. If you did, then you are, in fact, a fucking moron. In no case have you justified the slaughter of Iraqis and not the slaughter of Saudis. The House of Saud's money was what enabled Osama bin Laden to finance the single most successful terrorist attack on US soil - no it wasn't nuclear, but it took the title away from Tim McVeigh.

Namecalling and invective are required when the opposition is so obscene as to support mass murder. Unless you can prove that mass murder is the only way to prevent something worse, your support for it marks you unfit for decent conversation. So you don't get it.

Now, as for the aside, can you show me where it says "right, as a voter for George W. Bush?" Sure, idiots like Will Allen (see the difference, here I am referencing a total fucking moron by name - his spectacular brand of illiteracy and projection is well known) will read that into it, but it doesn't accuse you. It is, however, an indictment of Will "Khmer Supporter" Allen - who, aside from presenting justification for supporting known brutal thugs, boasts that he voted for George W. Bush both when said candidate was an empty suit with an anti-libertarian track record and no experience as well as once said candidate had demonstrated his incompetence by actively undermining those who might have prevented 9/11 and his malice by assaulting the people of Iraq.

It only implicated you if you were as thickwitted and malicious as our friend Will Allen. But your support for the war on Iraq doesn't put you far from such morons.

You are, of course, welcome to provide actual evidence that Iraq's "nuclear program" was a threat. Otherwise you can wear the badge of "fucking moron" proudly like Will does. For him being stupid and evil is his reason to live. Maybe for you it's just an accident. Better yet, perhaps you are able to learn. Let's see.

Posted by Not as stupid as Will Allen | July 24, 2008 4:15 AM

Matt: "Certainly I wouldn't say that it's more important than taking the fight to al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and Osama bin Laden."

While it's not, there's also no possible way to "take the fight" to those three - as the articles I've emailed to you every night make clear. Certainly there's no military way to do that without turning Afghanistan and Pakistan into Iraq.

Is that what you want? TWO losing wars (not counting Iran, which makes three) in exchange for one?

Go see "The Dark Knight" again and listen to the Joker talking about "people with plans". He's right.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | July 24, 2008 4:49 AM

Will--I think the facts support El Cid on Cambodia. There's just no way McGovern's remarks can be construed to be in the same universe of significance with the "secret" war we waged there.

El Cid--yes, there was a Khmer Rouge "Cambodian flag". I bought one at the UN, where that appalling government was seated with the support of China and the US, among others. You don't have to like the government of Vietnam to recognize that they did the world a favor by getting rid of the Khmer Rouge.

None of this has much if anything to do with Iraq.

I've been delighted with the frothing, pants-wetting hysteria of "not as stupid" since I realized that he is doing more to damage the anti-American, pro-Saddam faction he speaks for than anything that could possibly be written by its opponents. No one could really be as stupid, boring, and obnoxious except on purpose. It has become clear that in reality, "not as stupid" is really Dick Cheney, posting under another name in order to bring discredit and shame to Bush opponents. Keep up the good work, ...stupid!

Posted by robert powell | July 24, 2008 5:57 AM

I find WaPo's assertion (that Obama's vision is eccentric because it focuses on Afghanistan rather than Iraq) weird:
http://randomsubu.blogspot.com/2008/07/al-qaeda-in-afghanistan.html

Posted by randomsubu | July 24, 2008 6:13 AM

"I'm confused."

No kidding.

The point I'm trying to get at is that you don't know what the heck you're talking about, and don't even WANT to know what the heck you're talking about.

You make a statement that seems ignorant of the fact that Saudi Arabia is one of the chief supporters or radical Islam in the Middle East and around the world. When I point out this basic, fundamental error, istead of acknowleding it by saying "Ya got me. I think Iran's a bigger threat but I did seriously understate the problem with Saudi", you repeatedly tried to promote your initial, ill-considered, stupid contention.

That led me to wonder how you can have an intelligent, rational argument with someone who not only doesn't understand the issue being discussed...but is actively resistent to being informed or enlightened on the subject?

Mike

Posted by MBunge | July 24, 2008 10:22 AM

Ah I see that even bloodthirsty morons like robert powell recognize the fundamental stupidity of Will Allen's argument on Cambodia. Now if he can only be made to realize that "anti-slaughter" isn't the same as "anti-American" and, of course, give up his relentless support for murdering people who haven't done a fucking thing, robert "kill 'em all" powell might join the ranks of humanity.

Nah, sick fucks like robert powell are never going to give up their dreams of empire.

Here's a hint fuckwit - you still haven't provided a justification for murdering Iraqis. Until you do, you are a walking advertisement for unprovoked aggression.

Posted by Not as Bloodthirsty as robert powell | July 24, 2008 10:30 AM

Robert, I've never made any defense of Nixon's policies. What began meathead's months-long psychotic episode, and eventually El Cid's particpation, was my accurate observation that when all that stood in the way of the Khmer Rouge killing a third of the Cambodian population was the Lon Nol government, George McGovern worked hard to make sure that the Lon Nol government would no longer be an impediment to that outcome. Now, I always thought McGovern simply didn't grasp the nature of the Khmer Rouge, thus he made his infamous remarks in which he asserted that those who predicted a bloodbath if the Lon Nol government were to fall were engaged in hysteria, and how Cambodia would be subsequently ruled by enlightened intellectuals.

Meathead, however, really despises McGovern, and maintains that McGovern didn't grasp that the fall of the Lon Nol government meant that the Khmer Rouge would take power. In short, the argument is that McGovern had the intellectual capacity of a carrot. I dislike McGovern's actions, but the man is a patriot, so I'd never slander him in this manner.

Posted by Will Allen | July 24, 2008 10:42 AM

By the way, mr. powell, the relevance of Cambodia is that Will Allen's willful misrepresentation of McGovern's remarks and his blithe attitude towards Reagan's actual support for restoring the brutal Khmer Rouge is one of his hobby-horses (like his distractions from Jesse Helms' racism - he spent a week downplaying it). The only thing that has happened is that I have exposed his idiocy up-front rather than waiting for him to start off with his big lie.

In addition, this rectal-cranial inversion exactly mirrors the kind of big lie represented by the "we have always been at war with Oceania" that Will Allen and other warmongering idiots espouse. It is really no different that the complete assholes who claim that anyone who opposed the terrorist bombing of Baghdad (400+ bombs as an assassination attempt? Please, you can't call it anything else) and the subsequent brutalization of the Iraqi people "anti-American."

Now, it may be that there are some who support me who oppose my methods. That's okay. But to be lectured on civility by someone who supports mass murder is just fucking obscene. Nothing I have said, indeed nothing I could say, compares to the incivility it takes to re-write history. Nothing I have said, indeed nothing I could say, compares to the incivility it takes to support the slaughter of human beings because they have resources you and fuckwits like yourself want.

None of your self-serving bullshit changes the fact that Iraq wasn't in the midst of genocide. It wasn't on the verge of genocide, and only someone incredibly stupid or dishonest could posit a threat to the US from Saddam Hussein's Iraq circa 2002. You are welcome to try, but unless you can provide facts that contradict the reality of the past six years your arguments will be fare more obscene than mine - they will be based on lies and idiocy.

Posted by Not as Bloodthirsty as robert powell | July 24, 2008 11:01 AM

Obviously "far more obscene," not "fare more obscene."

Posted by Not as Bloodthirsty as robert powell | July 24, 2008 11:03 AM

Meathead, you are the one who introduces George McGovern and the Khmer Rouge into every thread. Who, exactly, has a "hobby-horse"? Gosh, you really are crazy.

Posted by Will Allen | July 24, 2008 11:30 AM

Will Allen,

Do you support the American intervention in the Soviet-Afghan war? You do realize that the communist government was the only thing standing in the way of Islamists taking power? If you're willing to accept responsibility for the Taliban coming to power and eventually murdering 3,000 Americans, then sure I will accept that McGovern has some responsibility as well. Of course moral idiots like you probably think that the Vietnam War, the intervention in Afghanistan, and America's support for assorted right-wing scum from Cuba to Nicaragua to South Africa were all good ideas.

You're welcome to your stupid illusion that Iraq will turn into a happy little Western capitalist "democracy". I prefer to believe that any attempt to construct a liberal "democracy" in a country like Iraq is a fool's errand, and I will continue jeering at the notion since it's a notion that deserves to be jeered at. We should have learned the lesson from Vietnam that people do not like to have the Americans barge in and tell them how to run their affairs, especially when that advice means turning over power to a craven coterie of collaborationist stooges. Unfortunately, Will Allen apprears not to have learned this lesson.

Posted by Hector | July 24, 2008 1:07 PM

Actually, Hector, you are wrong about Islamists taking power in Afghanistan being the inevitable result of the communists being toppled. Unlike Cambodia, there was not a single dominant force in opposition to the existing government, and had the U.S. stayed involved after the Soviets left, there's a pretty good chance the Taliban never would have dominated the country; it only took about 90 days of limited intervention in 2001-2002 to topple the Taliban, after all, by restarting alliances with mostly northern Afghan tribes. I do hold those who chose to abandon Afghanistan, when the Soviets left, responsible for the rise of the Taliban, however. Don't you?

Yes, and for the final time, I understand it is your position that Arabs are incapable of self-government, and that they actually prefer to be ruled despotically. Kind of similar to how many white South Africans used to describe black South Africans. Congratulations, I guess, but you really don't need to keep repeating yourself.

Posted by Will Allen | July 24, 2008 2:29 PM

Lon Nol was a hopeless piece of shit who had no chance of preventing the Khmer Rouge nightmare Will, and you probably know it.

"not as bloodthirsty/stupid" has been exposed as an agent provocateur, probably Dick Cheney in mufti. Rave on, moron.

Posted by robert powell | July 24, 2008 5:58 PM

robert, "no chance" is a statement of total certainty which is unwarranted by the facts, especially when the alternative is the murder of one third of the Cambodian population. Even so, McGovern would have been more respectable if he had simply said, "Yeah the Khmer Rouge is going to slaughter a massive amount of people, and I think that is the best achievable outcome", instead of the nonsense he spewed.

Posted by Will Allen | July 24, 2008 6:24 PM

Another alternative was to keep bombing Cambodians, killing them directly and speeding the Khmer Rouge takeover. But, more importantly, though he wasn't bombing and slaughtering them, George McGovern wasn't as condemning of the Khmer Rouge as upcoming genocidalists as he should have been.

Posted by El Cid | July 24, 2008 6:35 PM

Yeah, sure, El Cid, it was really possible to "speed up" the Khmer Rouge takeover from the time McGovern successfully achieved his goal of ensuring that the Khmer Rouge would have no opposition, which allowed the slaughter to proceed without impediment.

Of course, that warmonger McGovern later advocated military intervention to stop the genocide, after he became aware how wrong he had been. I'm sure you condemn the warmongering McGovern's beliefs, right?

Posted by Will Allen | July 24, 2008 7:00 PM

I love it, robert powell, supporter of Dick Cheney pretending others are like him - assholes of the first order cheering on massive bloodshed.

Sorry fuckwit, you and Will Allen may approve of slaughtering human beings for fun and profit, but you couldn't expose the piss in a boot if the directions were written on the heel. But good try - it's like Will Allen spending a week trying to distrct from Jesse Helms' racism and then going around and lying about me - reversing our positions.

But then I guess when your rationale for slaughtering Iraqis is a lie, and that lie is your rationale for posting, all you have is lying.

Good job you bloodthirsty dipshit.

Posted by Not as Bloodthirsty as robert powell | July 24, 2008 8:12 PM

Look, Will Allen, you're welcome to keep up this fantasy that if only the U.S. had been willing to keep perpetually somehow magically 'aiding' a toppling government, it would have kept going, even if it shrunk down to a 2 yard square of jungle somewhere, and somehow saved them from the Khmer Rouge.

But you're an idiot fantasist. McGovern didn't kill the Cambodians and stop the U.S. from saving them. The U.S. government didn't give the slightest, tiniest, most minor sh*t about saving Cambodian lives. Not in the slightest.

The U.S. stopped funding the fake Cambodian regime because it couldn't do the things the U.S. cared about -- exert power and hold back the Vietnamese Communists.

I don't know under what bizarre fantasy view of history you came to imagine that your warhawk friends wanted to save Cambodians from tyranny or slaughter, but that's simple nonsense.

The only, the only, the only reason that to this day right wingers pretend to care about civilian lives in Cambodia is that they think that if they yell about it in a certain way, they can blame the genocide which the warhawks brought about on liberals and leftists.

McGovern could have actually recommended something which might have saved the Cambodians -- the one intervention that was possible, and every source at the time including Nixon and the CIA, all of whom realized that there was ZERO possibility of ANY U.S. intervention.

McGovern could have, and in retrospect should have, advocated that the Cambodian government either surrender to or be taken over by the Vietnamese Communist government, with full U.S.-Soviet assistance if need be.

But though this might have been effective, people like you would have stopped it.

You can keep it up. I'll keep going on this comments blog forever. And ever. And you can keep claiming that if somehow mean ol' George McGovern hadn't stopped your friends from funding Lon Nol's incompetent, drug-running, callous thugs, that it would have somehow stopped the Khmer Rouge.

But you'll convince no one. No one. Your case is wrong and silly, not least of all because the last people in the world who gave a damn about the lives of Cambodian peasants were the very Lon Nol allies that you want to be seen as the just-short-of-saving everyone heroes.

I'm not surprised. There are always the weird holdovers with their theories of history. There are a lot of eager counterparts with whom you can discuss such views, for example, among the lunatic Cuban exile community of Miami, especially if you talk to the older, more terrorist-allied types.

Posted by El Cid | July 24, 2008 8:28 PM

The thing that finally made me laugh out loud at Will Allen was the discovery (until I ran into this loon proposing the preposterous theory that George McGovern gave "full throated support to the Khmer Rouge" - and yes that's Will Allen's idiotic phrasing for the McGovern quote that Will holds out as a talisman against thought - I didn't really know much about the Cambodian history) that Ronald Reagan and his government insisted, after the killing fields, that the Khmer Rouge was the legitimate government of Cambodia.

That's right, actual aid and comfort to the butchers. And Will's response? A weak-minded defense saying that Reagan was engaged in anti-Communism and that one could kvetch if one cared to.

So poor McGovern who was wrong about what butchers the Khmer Rouge would become is a monster; Ronald Reagan who knew what butchers the Khmer Rouge were and still supported them - well that's not really an issue Will cares to discuss. It doesn't demonstrate how evil the Democrats are - so it isn't important.

So we are faced with an incredibly selective outrage. A sort of "the mote in your eye is worse than the beam in mine" logic. There's no intellectual honesty here, only a deliberate strategy of tendentious argumentation.

Of course people (and I'm being extremely generous here) like robert powell use exactly this sort of argumentation when they create post-hoc humanitarian reasons for the war on the people of Iraq. As does Will Allen.

Point out how much worse George W. Bush has been for the Iraqi people and Will Allen accuses you of supporting the oppression of the Iraqi people. Never mind that every decision must weigh the costs, risks, and benefits and that there is no weighing that allows the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people to be outweighed by some nebulous "freedom."

Indeed, that's why Reagan and those like Will Allen and robert powell supported the restoration of the Khmer Rouge - they were overthrown by (big string hit here so we all notice how evil this word is) Communists. Nothing is more evil than (string hit) Communism. Now, credit where credit is due, robert powell did denounce the support of the Khmer Rouge by western governments. But it is unlikely that a staunch supporter of the brutalization of Iraqis would have done so in real time.

And ultimately, aside from the fact that it reveals just how partisan Will Allen's rants are, that's why this matters now. In robert powell's lunatic justifications for slaughtering Iraqis are the echos of the idiocies of supporting brutality for ideological reasons that owe nothing to concern for the people.

How many people die under a democracy enforced by the bootheels of soldiers isn't important. For the Will Allens and the robert powells of the world - dead is better than living under (strings) Communism or (bigger strings - only because it is more current) Saddam Hussein.

There are some who can argue such. Those giving their lives to topple such governments in the hopes of better lives for their posterity are free to do so. Those who give the lives of others and who only experience the fruit of those endeavors in the form of self-gratification are not.

Will Allen, George Bush, robert powell, and Dick Cheney all had no right to sacrifice Iraqi lives on the altar of "democracy." No amount of self-promoting blather will change that. And no, even humanitarian nightmares a decade past do not justify those sacrifices. The deaths of innocents in averting or ending a mass slaughter is regrettable. The deaths of innocents in avenging such criminality is criminally abhorrent.

Both of the idiots in question are now free to wildly misrepresent my points here. As they must, neither of them has the wit nor the courage to argue honestly.

Posted by Not as Bloodthirsty as robert powell | July 24, 2008 10:20 PM

Re: McGovern could have, and in retrospect should have, advocated that the Cambodian government either surrender to or be taken over by the Vietnamese Communist government, with full U.S.-Soviet assistance if need be.

Now that's an intervention I could have gotten behind! The Socialist Vietnamese government were worth fifty Richard Nixons, Lon Nols, or Will Allens any day of the week. I wonder how many genocides the odious Will Allen has stopped recently.

Of course, that wouldn't have pleased Will Allen whose real goal was to see an oligarchic tyranny of collaborationist U.S. toadies ruling every country in Central America, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and everywhere else.

Posted by Hector | July 24, 2008 10:23 PM

El Cid, I never made any claims about any person's motivations in supporting continued aid to the Lon Nol government. That is simply a lie you invented. I made two claims; that the Lon Nol govenment was the only impediment to the Khmer Rouge in 1975, and George McGovern worked very hard to end all aid to the Lon Nol government, while claiming that what would follow the Lon Nol government was rule by Cambodia's most able intellectuals. That, unless you agree with the meathead's claim that George McGovern was the dumbest man on the planet, and thus thought there were able intellectuals not connected with the Khmer Rouge who would take power, constitutes (yes, meathead) full throated support for the Khmer Rouge, before the Khmer Rouge had accomplished their genocide.

Meathead, you are lying agin when you stated that I supported Reagan's Cambodia policy. Why do you lie so much? I stated that my strongest interest in policy regarding Cambodia was pre-genocide, for the simple reason, you titanic dunce, that what happens AFTER a third of the population has been murdered, another substantial percentage driven into exile, and the rest of Cambodian society atomized, is rather less important. Of course, for you, a genocide is all about how you view yourself. Every single thing is first and foremost about you. Everything. Thus, you think it in just as important to examine policy which was put in place AFTER a massive genocide has occurred as it is to do so before the genocide, because doing so gives you opportunity to preen.

Hector, it may have escaped you, but Danny Ortega just won an election in Nicaragua. The difference, of course, from when Ortega lost an election, was that Ortega's opponents didn't have to have a war waged before they would agree to have a fair election. This is likely shocking to you, of course, because you probably thought that Nicaraguans were also people who preferred to be ruled despotically. Say, did you support the Afrikaaners back in the day? After all, they agreed with you regarding certain races of people being unfit for self-government!

Posted by Will Allen | July 25, 2008 1:09 AM

By the way, meathead, I've been completely accurate regarding your agreement with the world views of Jesse Helms. You, like Helms (and Hector), belive that some races of human beings cannot govern themselves, and indeed are happier when they don't have the chance. There is no doubt that if you could get in a time machine, and visit the United States in 1860, you would be in agreement with those who claimed that African slaves really were better off and happier in bondage.

Posted by Will Allen | July 25, 2008 1:30 AM

You don't understand, Will. "not as..." is a hoax. No one truly interested in forwarding the anti-American, pro-genocidal dictator line he espouses would be so inept.

"not as..." is obviously Dick Cheney in mufti, posting to bring humiliation and discredit to everyone with a left-leaning perspective.

Posted by robert powell | July 25, 2008 7:39 AM

Yes, that's right: I specifically dispute the assertion that the Lon Nol government was an impediment to the Khmer Rouge in 1975.

The time to have intervened would have been to stop bombing and killing them earlier than 1975, to have had the U.S. follow McGovern's recommendation and stop slaughtering Cambodians, even in 1972, so as to stop pushing Cambodian peasants into supporting the Khmer Rouge.

The doves could have prevented the whole thing. After all, the important time was pre- genocide, and very likely had the warhawks' slaughter been stopped before Nixon's escalation into carpet bombing, an absolute Khmer Rouge takeover would have been avoided.

But the anti-commie nutbags couldn't listen to the wisdom of a McGovern, whose council might -- but unlikely, in my view, being a Democrat and given the Democratic history of giving in to the warhawks, and given the fact that no one in politics seriously cared about Cambodian civilian lives -- might have avoided the genocide.

Hell, you know what might have prevented a huge amount of the deaths under the Khmer Rouge? Food aid. All those people that died? Somewhere between many and most didn't die from bullets and work camps. They died from starvation.

Partly that was from the U.S. bombing's destroying the rural agricultural system and no one could have instantly fixed that, no one on earth; partly that was from the fact that the Khmer Rouge were lunatics who made Mao's Great Leap Forward seem sophisticated in its agricultural wisdom.

Combine an unavoidable famine scenario with lunatic authoritarians, and, well, you've got a situation even more deadly than North Korea, and it's possible that people died in North Korea's recent famines on a scale approaching Cambodian genocide deaths -- and yet nations sent food aid to North Korea.

But still -- if it's actually preventing death you wanted, as opposed to lamely trying a few last attempts at blaming the warhawk-caused genocide on a few doves & leftists here and there -- you would have attempted to feed the starving majority.

However, such rampant sanity might have avoided the entirety of the Indochina wars. If you want to blame the Democrats and liberals for millions of deaths, you might want to start with their refusal to assist Vietnam to achieve the sort of independence that Africa and South Asia had seen. The crazy 'domino' that the U.S. foreign policy establishment used to justify such colonialist repression in the name of avoiding a Communist sweep -- that's what you can blame.

I don't dispute that one could imagine scenarios in which magic intervened and the Lon Nol became a serious impediment; after all, right wing nutbags always whine for decades that some treasonous liberal 'lost' some country to the commies only 'cause if we'd have kept backing them, it really would have worked this time.

But that is the difference between unlikely fantasies about what might have been and likely understanding of what was, and a willingness to recognize the real points at which decisions could have and should have been made, not the anguished regrets of why the apparently impossible wasn't fully attempted.

Posted by El Cid | July 25, 2008 8:19 AM

As expected neither Will Allen, whose reflexive lying is near socipathic, nor robert powell had the wit or courage to address the arguments - both simply used idiotic lies (Will's support for Helms and his support for slaughter both projected onto me - cute, but expectantly moronic) and leave it at that.

It would be funny, it it weren't so sad how much projection is in Will Allen's demented screed. Like all rational people, I oppose the things that led to the Khmer Rouge - it's just that McGovern's statement did no such thing.

Quick McGovern/Reagan(Will Allen) analogy: once an avalanche has begun, there is no reason to worry that yelling will cause one. But only a sick fuck wishes for the return of that disaster.

One of the hypocritical things about Will Allen's defense of Reagan (remember, this is under Will Allen Rules - condemning an alternative is support) is that it relies on the "well it's all over now" that Will Allen uses as a strawman when it is pointed out that there was no ongoing genocide in Iraq.

The inconsistency is easily explained - Will Allen is a racist fuck who likes seeing non-Americans killed and opposes anyone who would go with the lower body count.

Posted by Not as Bloodthirsty as robert powell | July 25, 2008 10:10 AM

Meathead, you have consistently, like Jesse Helms, asserted that some races are incapable of self government, and actually prefer to be ruled by despots. You are correct, though, that I am rather less concerned about making loud noises after the avalanche has occurred. You are insane, so you think it is just as important to prevent the loud noises after the avalanche, as part of an effort to make yourself feel good about your cautious behavior. You are a lunatic, plain and simple.

El Cid, we'll just have to diaagree as to whether it was impossible for the Lon Nol government to act as an impediment to the Khmer Rouge's genocidal plans, if the Lon Nol government had continued to receive American aid. That, at least, is an honest disagreement, and I appreciate that. It still would have been preferable if McGovern had not portrayed the Khmer Rouge as including Cambodia's most able intellectuals, thus meaning that the prediction of coming bloodbath by the Khmer Rouge was mere hysteria.

Posted by Will Allen | July 25, 2008 10:50 AM

One point where I will disagree with you El Cid is this: McGovern could not have pushed for the right thing in Cambodia. Yes, a joint Vietnam led force involving the US and the USSR would have been a good thing. But there is not a politician of any stature who could have said any such thing at that time. In fact, saying such a reasonable thing today would be political suicide. It would have been a world-changing event. Sadly, such a proposition would make opposing the assault on Iraq in 2003 look like a demagogues position.

As for dipshit, this character he calls Meathead sounds a right bad guy. Could you Will "dumbfuck" Allen provide some support for your wild claim that this imaginary opponent actually is racist? Or is it just one of those Tourette's symptoms where you cry racism to cover your own?

In contrast to your imaginary opponent I oppose racist actions like slaughtering people for their own good - which, given your position on the Iraq war, is a solidly Will Allen position.

Posted by Not as Bloodthirsty as robert powell | July 25, 2008 10:50 AM

Meathead, you have consistently, like Jesse Helms, asserted that some races are incapable of self government, and actually prefer to be ruled by despots. You are correct, though, that I am rather less concerned about making loud noises after the avalanche has occurred. You are insane, so you think it is just as important to prevent the loud noises after the avalanche, as part of an effort to make yourself feel good about your cautious behavior. You are a lunatic, plain and simple.

El Cid, we'll just have to disagree as to whether it was impossible for the Lon Nol government to act as an impediment to the Khmer Rouge's genocidal plans, if the Lon Nol government had continued to receive American aid. That, at least, is an honest disagreement, and I appreciate that. It still would have been preferable if McGovern had not portrayed the Khmer Rouge as including Cambodia's most able intellectuals, thus meaning that the prediction of coming bloodbath by the Khmer Rouge was mere hysteria.

Posted by Will Allen | July 25, 2008 11:06 AM