Iceman,
Thanks for your thoughts. I do understand where you're coming from. And of course I have a lot of respect for you and your ability to think through and analyze complex situations.
Let me try to defend CJ. What he's saying may not be 100% correct, but it's not "propaganda" either, IMO.
A few responses to your main points:
(1) Why should the US deficit be bigger when we're fighting in Iraq than it was when we fought World War I, World War II, Vietnam? It's bigger, not just in absolute dollars, but in terms of percentage of GNP. Why? Is this war bigger and more expensive than WWII?
The deficit is bigger because spending is up across the board, and taxes are down, although primarily on the very richest Americans. In every other war in American history, taxes were raised to pay for it. Spending on unnecessary projects was curtailed. Sacrifice was asked of all Americans. Not this war. Why not?
(2) In what states are people continuing to collect welfare checks for years and years? I hadn't heard about that. It seems pretty unlikely to me, but if you have hard evidence I'm very interested to learn about this.
(3) I do blame the government for not paying attention to all the warnings we had about 9/11. If I thought the war in Iraq had anything to do with stopping terrorism on American soil, I'd support that, too. I really would. I don't blame the government for trying to stop future attacks. I blame the government for going into Iraq because I think it will NOT stop future attacks -- and it's not even intended to.
If we had wanted to stop terrorism, we would have gone after, you know, the people who actually perpetrated 9/11. Bin Laden, remember him? Why is he still at large? When was the last time you heard George Bush mention his name? When was the last time we heard anything about attempts to get him?
Instead of pursuing Bin Laden, we attacked Iraq. Why? Was Bin Laden hiding in Iraq? Um, no, he was in Afghanistan. We pulled all our resources OUT of Afghanistan -- everything from military people to spies to linguists and translators -- and INTO Iraq, BEFORE we got Bin Laden. Why? Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.
Bush specifically intended to attack Iraq, even before 9/11, even before he became president. (He is on the record saying things about that during the months and years before 9/11.) 9/11 just became a nice justification for it. Trumped-up "weapons of mass destruction" arguments were another nice justification. Even if none of those things were true -- and they weren't true, and the Bush team knew (or should have known) they weren't true -- Bush wanted to attack Iraq anyway. It's a completely unnecessary war that is killing thousands of people and costing billions of dollars.
Now, you may disagree with some of what's in the above paragraphs, in terms of facts. Heck, some of it may not be true. But it's not propaganda. I'm not a left-winger. I don't think all war is wrong or that corporations rule the world or that the war in Iraq was all about oil or any of those whacked out things. But the facts above seem, as best as I can tell, to be true. I'm an honest, decent person, doing my best to work through what seems to be happening. And what is happening is pissing me off!!!
Thanks to all for the reasonable conversation. Knock on wood it can continue to be an exchange of ideas and views, not a way to attack each other.