> You are either being deliberately disingenous or you have not been
> following this thread. Further you have for some inexpolicable reason
> extracted one sentence out of a long paragraph and falsely presented
> it as my entire 'argument'. I'm sorry but you are being exeedingly
> foolish. This statement was part of a counterpoint to a specfic
> exchange, not a spontaneous one sentence 'argument to the list and I
> in fact reached a clear understanding with my interlocutor so please
> take your foolishness elsewhere.
Thanks for your very temperate reply. By "this argument," I didn't mean just that sentence, but the whole argument of the thread (which, BTW, I have been trying to follow as best I can, through all its twists and turns). I guess I am on the side of those who want to argue that the Bush people, including Wolfowitz, etc., are considerably crazier than anyone who worked for Clinton. But the Clinton people were of course also part of the "executive committee of the ruling class" -- just somewhat saner.
In your previous post, you wrote:
> I am saying that because of the way in which strategic military
> planning works, the two policies are part of a piece. By the time the
> US under Bush launched an operatrion like the invasion of Iraq in 2003
> (which is more about consolidating US military presence in that region
> - to police the worlds oil reserves - and may well see an extension of
> military operations into Syria and/or Saudi Arabia), such an operation
> had to have been in the works for at least five years, indeed this has
> revealed to be the case. The policy under Clinton paved the way for
> the military operations principally through softening-up Iraq by the
> enforcement of sanctions. I believe that they did not invade in 1990
> because military they could not. By 2003 the country had been crippled
> to such a level to make invasion feasible. Let us not forget Madeline
> Albright's remarks about how the lives of 500,000 children, victims of
> the sanctions, were 'worth the trouble' (paraphrasing).
>
Where was it revealed that the Bush invasion was "in the works for at least five years"?
Was Albright speaking for the whole Clinton administration when she make that remark?
All this said, I think the whole story about the sanctions, and indeed the whole formation of U.S. Iraq policy in the Bush 41 and Clinton administrations, has yet to be told.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ A sympathetic Scot summed it all up very neatly in the remark, 'You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk-dancing.' -- Sir Arnold Bax