> Warner's right that the U.S. has attacked first many times, and Byrd was
> being sanctimonious and dishonest.
I think you're giving Warner too much credit and Byrd too little. Warner's not owning up to our imperial history and saying this is more of the same. On the contrary, he's whitewashing that history and saying we always acted preemptively when in fact we acted imperialistically. That's a much bigger lie than what Byrd's saying in my book.
Byrd's saying pre-emptiveness is a qualitatively different excuse from the lie we've used up until now, which is that country we were invading had asked for our military assistance. In making the assistance lie, we were always tacitly acknowledging that we didn't have the right to just invade and topple governments whenever we saw fit. But now, in changing the lie, we're trying to arrogate the right.
But of course you're right that even if we never declared we had the right, we've often acted as if we did. Especially in our "backyard" in the pre-Vietnam days.
Michael