Definitions

Posted on November 3, 2005 by Sappho

These words are used fre­quently by stream media and Blogs now a days and here are the definitions.

00 Ter­ror­ism
The unlaw­ful use or threat­ened use of force or vio­lence by a per­son or an orga­nized group against peo­ple or prop­erty with the inten­tion of intim­i­dat­ing or coerc­ing soci­eties or gov­ern­ments, often for ide­o­log­i­cal or polit­i­cal reasons.

01 Fas­cism
A sys­tem of gov­ern­ment marked by cen­tral­iza­tion of author­ity under a dic­ta­tor, strin­gent socioe­co­nomic con­trols, sup­pres­sion of the oppo­si­tion through ter­ror and cen­sor­ship, and typ­i­cally a pol­icy of bel­liger­ent nation­al­ism and racism.
A polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy or move­ment based on or advo­cat­ing such a sys­tem of gov­ern­ment.
Oppres­sive, dic­ta­to­r­ial control.

02 Dic­ta­tor
An absolute ruler.
A tyrant; a despot.
An ancient Roman mag­is­trate appointed tem­porar­ily to deal with an imme­di­ate cri­sis or emer­gency.
One who dictates:

03 Lib­er­ate
To set free, as from oppres­sion, con­fine­ment, or for­eign con­trol.
Chem­istry — To release (a gas, for exam­ple) from com­bi­na­tion.
Slang — To obtain by ille­gal or stealthy action: tried to sell appli­ances that were lib­er­ated dur­ing the riot.

07 Politic
Using or marked by pru­dence, expe­di­ence, and shrewd­ness; art­ful.
Using, dis­play­ing, or pro­ceed­ing from pol­icy; judi­cious: a politic deci­sion.
Crafty; cunning.

04 Cru­sade
Any of the mil­i­tary expe­di­tions under­taken by Euro­pean Chris­tians in the 11th, 12th, and 13th cen­turies to recover the Holy Land from the Mus­lims.
A holy war under­taken with papal sanc­tion.
A vig­or­ous con­certed move­ment for a cause or against an abuse.

05 Impose
To estab­lish or apply as com­pul­sory; levy: impose a tax.
To apply or make pre­vail by or as if by author­ity: impose a peace set­tle­ment. See Syn­onyms at dic­tate.
To obtrude or force (one­self, for exam­ple) on another or oth­ers.
Print­ing To arrange (type or plates) on an impos­ing stone.
To offer or cir­cu­late fraud­u­lently; pass off: imposed a fraud on con­sumers.
To take unfair advantage.

06 Order
A con­di­tion of log­i­cal or com­pre­hen­si­ble arrange­ment among the sep­a­rate ele­ments of a group.

A con­di­tion of method­i­cal or pre­scribed arrange­ment among com­po­nent parts such that proper func­tion­ing or appear­ance is achieved: checked to see that the ship­ping depart­ment was in order.
Con­di­tion or state in gen­eral: The esca­la­tor is in good work­ing order.

The estab­lished sys­tem of social orga­ni­za­tion: “Every rev­o­lu­tion exag­ger­ates the evils of the old order” (C. Wright Mills).
A con­di­tion in which free­dom from dis­or­der or dis­rup­tion is main­tained through respect for estab­lished author­ity: finally restored order in the rebel­lious provinces.
A sequence or arrange­ment of suc­ces­sive things: changed the order of the files.
The pre­scribed form or cus­tom­ary pro­ce­dure: the order of wor­ship.
An author­i­ta­tive indi­ca­tion to be obeyed; a com­mand or direction.

A com­mand given by a supe­rior mil­i­tary offi­cer requir­ing obe­di­ence, as in the exe­cu­tion of a task.
orders For­mal writ­ten instruc­tions to report for mil­i­tary duty at a spec­i­fied time and place.

A com­mis­sion or instruc­tion to buy, sell, or sup­ply some­thing.
That which is sup­plied, bought, or sold.

A request made by a cus­tomer at a restau­rant for a por­tion of food.
The food requested.
Law A direc­tion or com­mand deliv­ered by a court or other adju­dica­tive body and entered into the record but not nec­es­sar­ily included in the final judg­ment or ver­dict.
Eccle­si­as­ti­cal
Any of sev­eral grades of the Chris­t­ian min­istry: the order of priest­hood.
The rank of an ordained Chris­t­ian min­is­ter or priest. Often used in the plural.
The sacra­ment or rite of ordi­na­tion. Often used in the plural.
Any of the nine grades or choirs of angels.
A group of per­sons liv­ing under a reli­gious rule: Order of Saint Bene­dict.
An orga­ni­za­tion of peo­ple united by a com­mon fra­ter­nal bond or social aim.

A group of peo­ple upon whom a gov­ern­ment or sov­er­eign has for­mally con­ferred honor for unusual ser­vice or merit, enti­tling them to wear a spe­cial insignia: the Order of the Garter.
The insignia worn by such peo­ple.
A social class. Often used in the plural: the lower orders.
A class defined by the com­mon attrib­utes of its mem­bers; a kind.
Degree of qual­ity or impor­tance; rank: poetry of a high order.
Archi­tec­ture
Any of sev­eral styles of clas­si­cal archi­tec­ture char­ac­ter­ized by the type of col­umn and entab­la­ture employed. Of the five gen­er­ally accepted clas­si­cal orders, the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders are Greek and the Tus­can and Com­pos­ite orders are Roman.
A style of build­ing: a cathe­dral of the Gothic order.
Biol­ogy A tax­o­nomic cat­e­gory of organ­isms rank­ing above a fam­ily and below a class. See Table at tax­on­omy.
Math­e­mat­ics
The sum of the expo­nents to which the vari­ables in a term are raised; degree.
An indi­cated num­ber of suc­ces­sive dif­fer­en­ti­a­tions to be per­formed.
The num­ber of ele­ments in a finite group.
The num­ber of rows or columns in a deter­mi­nant or matrix.
To issue a com­mand or instruc­tion to.
To give a com­mand or instruc­tion for: The judge ordered a recount of the bal­lots.
To direct to pro­ceed as spec­i­fied: ordered them off the prop­erty.
To give an order for; request to be sup­plied with.
To put into a method­i­cal, sys­tem­atic arrange­ment. See Syn­onyms at arrange.
To pre­des­tine; ordain.

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21 Responses to Definitions

  1. Pingback: Global Voices Online » Blog Archive » Iraq: Definitions

  2. Jon says:
    November 4, 2005 at 06:13

    Things look­ing up for the right wingers…

    http://www.markfiore.com/animation/kiss.swf

  3. Jon says:
    November 4, 2005 at 08:53

    There is some dis­agree­ment over the def­i­n­i­tion of fas­cism. The dic­tio­nary def­i­n­i­tion that you’ve posted is prob­a­bly bet­ter used to describe total­i­tar­i­an­ism rather than fas­cism. Fas­cism is prop­erly defined as the merg­ing of cor­po­rate and gov­ern­ment inter­ests or, more sim­ply, corporate-controlled gov­ern­ment. A few peo­ple have taken issue with me on this def­i­n­i­tion because it leaves out the aspect of an elite class of soci­ety. This is not true, how­ever, as the wealthy are the elite, regard­less of other dif­fer­ences such as race or creed.

    I’m not sure why there is so much dis­agree­ment over the def­i­n­i­tion of fas­cism. It is a sim­ply defined word. I guess, if I was forced to assume, I would have to assume this is due to the fact that cor­po­ra­tions print dic­tio­nar­ies, but then again, I am always dis­trust­ful of the money-motivated.

    It is appar­ent to me that most of the peo­ple who’ve dis­agreed with me on the def­i­n­i­tion of fas­cism are Amer­i­cans. I am guess­ing that those who have com­pletely adopted a cor­po­rate soci­ety have dif­fi­culty rec­og­niz­ing fas­cism due to the fact that they are absorbed by it’s culture.

    It is quite obvi­ous to any­one who will look beneath the sur­face that cor­po­ra­tions exert a great deal of con­trol over the US gov­ern­ment. How­ever, recently the merg­ing of cor­po­rate and gov­ern­ment inter­ests has become so bla­tant that any­one who claims to be unaware of this effect must be will­fully ignorant.

  4. Jon says:
    November 4, 2005 at 09:17

    When Advo­cates Become Regulators

    *Pres­i­dent Bush has installed more than 100 top offi­cials who were once lob­by­ists, attor­neys or spokes­peo­ple for the indus­tries they oversee.*

    In at least 20 cases, those for­mer indus­try advo­cates have helped their agen­cies write, shape or push for pol­icy shifts that ben­e­fit their for­mer indus­tries. They knew which changes to make because they had pushed for them as indus­try advocates.

    The president’s polit­i­cal appointees are mak­ing or over­see­ing pro­found changes affect­ing drug laws, food poli­cies, land use, clean-air reg­u­la­tions and other key issues.

  5. Jon says:
    November 4, 2005 at 09:20

    The Buy­ing of the Pres­i­dent 2004
    *Lob­by­ists Bankrolling Pol­i­tics
    Bush gets nearly four times as much as Kerry*

    More than 1,300 reg­is­tered lob­by­ists have given slightly more than $1.8 mil­lion to Pres­i­dent George W. Bush over the last six years, accord­ing to a Cen­ter for Pub­lic Integrity study com­par­ing the dona­tions of all reg­is­tered lob­by­ists from 1998 through March 2004. Sen. John Kerry received $520,000 from 442 lob­by­ists dur­ing the same period.

    Such num­bers account for a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of those who ply the influ­ence game. In fact, the lob­by­ists who donated to Bush have rep­re­sented about 6,000 clients; those who gave to Kerry, approx­i­mately 3,000 clients. Com­bined, these fig­ures add up to more than half of all the com­pa­nies that hire lob­by­ists, accord­ing to the Sen­ate Office of Pub­lic Records. The SOPR says that there are cur­rently 24,000 lob­by­ists reg­is­tered to rep­re­sent 15,000 clients.

  6. Jon says:
    November 4, 2005 at 09:22

    Bush a Vic­tim of His Own Hubris
    *In the end, US vot­ers will not be fright­ened into becom­ing a nation that dis­dains decency*

    The unmak­ing of the pres­i­dent 2004 began on Sep­tem­ber 11 2001. By Sep­tem­ber 10, George Bush’s poll num­bers had reached 50%, the low­est of any pres­i­dent at that early point in his tenure. Hav­ing lost the pop­u­lar major­ity in the 2000 elec­tion and being deliv­ered the pres­i­dency by a five-to-four Supreme Court deci­sion, Bush oper­ated as though he had tri­umphed with a full-throated mandate.

    From the start, Bush ran a gov­ern­ment based on secrecy, handed over the depart­ments and agen­cies to more than 100 indus­try exec­u­tives and lob­by­ists appointed to key posi­tions, and exhib­ited bel­liger­ence towards any­one who raised a ques­tion about his right-wing imperatives.

  7. Jon says:
    November 4, 2005 at 09:26

    Bush Weak­ens Endan­gered Species Pro­tec­tions Under Guise of For­est Fire Pre­ven­tion
    *New Reg­u­la­tions Released Hours After Bill Signing*

    The Bush admin­is­tra­tion released reg­u­la­tions late yes­ter­day that remove pro­tec­tions for endan­gered species under the guise of fight­ing for­est fires. The reg­u­la­tions, which gut many key pro­vi­sions of the Endan­gered Species Act, were released hours after the President’s tri­umphant sign­ing of his for­est fire bill.

    “The Bush admin­is­tra­tion is cyn­i­cally using the threat of for­est fire to jus­tify elim­i­nat­ing key pro­tec­tions for endan­gered species,” said Robert Dewey, Vice Pres­i­dent of Gov­ern­ment Rela­tions for Defend­ers of Wildlife. “The new Bush reg­u­la­tions cut fed­eral wildlife agen­cies out of the loop on vir­tu­ally all tim­ber sales related to fire pre­ven­tion. The reg­u­la­tions hand wildlife over­sight respon­si­bil­i­ties to agen­cies headed by for­mer tim­ber indus­try lob­by­ists appointed by the President.”

    “Once again, we see the Bush admin­is­tra­tion engag­ing in a stealth approach to gov­ern­ing, announc­ing unpop­u­lar reg­u­la­tions after hours, when no one is look­ing,” con­tin­ued Dewey. “The Bush admin­is­tra­tion reg­u­la­tions elim­i­nate a vital check and bal­ance on log­ging and other projects that could harm endan­gered species. Defend­ers of Wildlife and other con­ser­va­tion groups will be fil­ing a law­suit shortly seek­ing to make sure the pro­tec­tions pro­vided by the Endan­gered Species Act con­tinue to be applied to all tim­ber sales,” con­cluded Dewey.

  8. Jon says:
    November 4, 2005 at 09:33

    Fatal Flaw Weak­ens RFID Passports

    In 2004, when the U.S. State Depart­ment first started talk­ing about embed­ding RFID chips in pass­ports, the out­cry from pri­vacy advo­cates was huge. When the State Depart­ment issued its draft reg­u­la­tion in Feb­ru­ary, it got 2,335 com­ments, 98.5 per­cent neg­a­tive. In response, the final State Depart­ment reg­u­la­tions, issued last week, con­tain two fea­tures that attempt to address secu­rity and pri­vacy con­cerns. But one seri­ous prob­lem remains.

    Before I describe the prob­lem, some con­text on the sur­round­ing con­tro­versy may be help­ful. RFID chips are pas­sive, and broad­cast infor­ma­tion to any reader that queries the chip. So crit­ics, myself included, were wor­ried that the new pass­ports would reveal your iden­tity with­out your con­sent or even your knowl­edge. Thieves could col­lect the per­sonal data of peo­ple as they walk down a street, crim­i­nals could scan pass­ports look­ing for West­ern­ers to kid­nap or rob and ter­ror­ists could rig bombs to explode only when four Amer­i­cans are nearby. The police could use the chips to con­duct sur­veil­lance on an indi­vid­ual; stores could use the tech­nol­ogy to iden­tify cus­tomers with­out their knowledge.

  9. Jon says:
    November 4, 2005 at 10:18

    Philosopher’s Stone
    *By Chris Floyd*
    While Potomac courtiers were read­ing the entrails of the cooked goose of Scooter Libby — the first Bushist hon­cho caught in the slow-grinding gears of spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor Patrick Fitzgerald’s inves­ti­ga­tion — in Wilt­shire, Flight Lieu­tenant Mal­colm Kendall-Smith faced a court mar­tial after declar­ing that the Iraq war was ille­gal and refus­ing to return for his third tour of duty there.
    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10866.htm

    ___
    UN Dou­ble Stan­dards Again on Dis­play With Syria Res­o­lu­tion
    *By Salim Lone*
    The begin­ning of the drive to jus­tify the use of force or other seri­ous actions against Syria for its pos­si­ble involve­ment in Rafiq Hariri’s killing is rem­i­nis­cent of the run-up to the 2003 US-led war against Iraq. As then, it is the United Nations Secu­rity Coun­cil which is the instru­ment for esca­lat­ing the ten­sions.
    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10861.htm

    ___
    U.S. offers plan to keep multi­na­tional force in Iraq another year
    The cur­rent man­date for the 180-thousand troops expires after next month’s leg­isla­tive elec­tions in Iraq.
    http://www.wavy.com/Global/story.asp?S=4066828&nav=menu45_2_1

    ___
    Iraq focus imper­ils US, ex-Pentagon offi­cial says
    The United States risks los­ing sight of some key for­eign pol­icy issues, includ­ing rela­tions with China and the Mus­lim world, because of its “single-minded focus” on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a for­mer senior Pen­ta­gon offi­cial said.
    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10864.htm

    ___
    Ital­ian Law­maker Says Country’s Secret Ser­vice Warned U.S. That Iraq Ura­nium Doc­u­ments Were Fake
    “At about the same time as the State of the Union address, they (Italy’s SISMI secret ser­vices) said that the dossier doesn’t cor­re­spond to the truth,” Sen. Mas­simo Brutti told jour­nal­ists after the par­lia­men­tary com­mis­sion was briefed.
    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10873.htm

    ___
    The Lie Fac­tory
    The inside story of how the Bush admin­is­tra­tion pushed dis­in­for­ma­tion and bogus intel­li­gence and led the nation to war.
    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10871.htm

    ___
    The Wrong War
    Back­draft: How the war in Iraq has fueled Al Qaeda and ignited its dream of global jihad.
    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10872.htm

    ___
    Dick Cheney’s Song of Amer­ica
    The Plan is for the United States to rule the world. The overt theme is uni­lat­er­al­ism, but it is ulti­mately a story of dom­i­na­tion. It calls for the United States to main­tain its over­whelm­ing mil­i­tary supe­ri­or­ity and pre­vent new rivals from ris­ing up to chal­lenge it on the world stage.
    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1544.htm

    ___
    AmBushed: Why Amer­ica turned on Dub­bya
    This isn’t just another Wash­ing­ton cri­sis; it is the worst calamity to befall a pres­i­dent since Water­gate. An admin­is­tra­tion built on lies stands exposed as never before, writes Andrew Stephen
    http://www.newstatesman.com/200511070006

    ___
    UN ‘respon­si­ble for killing thou­sands’
    The for­mer Assis­tant Sec­re­tary Gen­eral of the United Nations has told a jury that he holds the UN respon­si­ble for killing many thou­sands of peo­ple, includ­ing chil­dren, in Iraq through the impo­si­tion of sanc­tions.
    http://www.breakingnews.ie/2005/11/03/story228566.html

    ___
    Ray McGov­ern: The Tor­ture Test
    The White House and the CIA are lob­by­ing to exempt detainees held by the CIA from an amend­ment– spon­sored by John McCain and endorsed by nearly all senators-that would ban “cruel, inhu­man and degrad­ing” treat­ment for all detainees held by the United States.
    http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20051103/the_torture_test.php

    ___
    U.S. Dou­ble Stan­dard On Ter­ror­ism
    Cuban expa­tri­ate Luis Posada Car­riles, an old U.S. ter­ror­ist chicken, has come home to roost in Bush’s nest, expos­ing the president’s anti-terrorist poli­cies as a hoax.
    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10865.htm

    ___
    Mex­ico Defies Wash­ing­ton on Inter­na­tional Crim­i­nal Court
    Wash­ing­ton had warned Mex­ico that if it rat­i­fied the ICC and refused to sign an accord exempt­ing U.S. nation­als from the court’s juris­dic­tion, it would cut 11.5 mil­lion dol­lars in fund­ing from aid pro­grammes for fight­ing drug traf­fick­ing, accord­ing to human rights groups. The amount is equal to almost 40 per­cent of the eco­nomic aid Mex­ico receives from the United States.
    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10863.htm

    ___
    U.S. Wants Total Ban of Israel Arms Sales to Venezuela
    The United States has told Israeli offi­cials it wants a total freeze on arms sales to Venezuela, accord­ing to Defense News
    http://www.israelnn.com/news.php3?id=92337

    ___
    U.S. accuses Chavez of nuke ambi­tions
    Mr. Bush expressed skep­ti­cism about Mr. Chavez’s request for the Argen­tine gov­ern­ment to build a nuclear power plant in Venezuela. He ques­tioned why Venezuela, which is awash in oil, would need nuclear power.
    http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20051103–095630-4755r
    *Same shit, dif­fer­ent coun­try.*
    ___
    Blair’s power drains away
    Tony Blair was los­ing his grip on gov­ern­ment last night. He suf­fered blows to his author­ity as the res­ig­na­tion of David Blun­kett robbed him of a key Cab­i­net ally, Labour rebels slashed his Com­mons major­ity to one and his Ter­ror­ism Bill was left in tat­ters.
    http://tinyurl.com/dovzr

  10. Jon says:
    November 4, 2005 at 10:25

    White House Hid Iraq Intel­li­gence from the Senate

    Vice Pres­i­dent Cheney and his chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, over­rul­ing advice from some White House polit­i­cal staffers and lawyers, decided to with­hold cru­cial doc­u­ments from the Sen­ate Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee in 2004 when the panel was inves­ti­gat­ing the use of pre-war intel­li­gence that erro­neously con­cluded Sad­dam Hus­sein had weapons of mass destruc­tion, accord­ing to Bush admin­is­tra­tion and con­gres­sional sources.

  11. Jon says:
    November 4, 2005 at 10:51

    Venezuela Pre­pares to Invade US

    Cam­ou­flaged sol­diers jumped from boats into the surf and waded ashore in a mock assault Thurs­day, the lat­est in a series of Venezue­lan mil­i­tary exer­cises prepar­ing for a U.S. inva­sion that Pres­i­dent Hugo Chavez warns could come.

  12. Jon says:
    November 4, 2005 at 11:01

    Bush Hits New Low

    Pres­i­dent Bush’s job approval has reached the low­est level yet. Only 35 per­cent approve of the job he’s doing.

  13. Jon says:
    November 4, 2005 at 11:03

    House Repug­ni­cans Refuse to Hear Democrat’s Iraq Resolution

    Democ­rats tried unsuc­cess­fully Thurs­day to force the House to take up a mea­sure con­demn­ing Repub­li­cans for “their refusal to con­duct over­sight” of the Bush administration’s Iraq war pol­icy and to order inves­ti­ga­tions into it.

    The House voted 220–191, mostly along party lines, to set aside a res­o­lu­tion offered by House Minor­ity Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

    “I think it brings shame to the House for this Con­gress to be engaged in a cover-up when it comes to reveal­ing what’s hap­pen­ing in Iraq,” Pelosi said.

  14. Jon says:
    November 5, 2005 at 10:03

    “The lib­erty of a democ­racy is not safe if the peo­ple tol­er­ate the growth of pri­vate power to a point where it becomes stronger than their demo­c­ra­tic state itself. That, in its essence, is fas­cism — own­er­ship of gov­ern­ment by an indi­vid­ual, by a group, or any con­trol­ling pri­vate power.“
    –Franklin D. Roosevelt

  15. Ma Duce says:
    November 5, 2005 at 11:59

    Justin Rai­mondo lites up bath house jon, smok­ers both.

  16. Jon says:
    November 5, 2005 at 13:10

    Another one of your mul­ti­ple per­son­al­i­ties here HO? You’re afraid of lib­erty aren’t you? You don’t have the stones to stand on your own two feet do you? Per­fect sol­dier. Can’t think for him­self. Fol­lows any order no mat­ter how ridicu­lous. Must be the LT’s pet.

  17. Charles says:
    November 7, 2005 at 15:32

    LB,

    You missed this dead baby pic!

    I’m sure it was just an over­sight. We all know and respect how you present a fair and bal­anced view­point on the events in Iraq as an effort to present the objec­tive truth.

  18. Jon says:
    November 15, 2005 at 08:21

    Hey Charles… have any good “dead baby” jokes?

  19. Charles says:
    November 15, 2005 at 16:00

    Jon,

    How many pages have been writ­ten to date by par­ti­san com­mis­sions regard­ing pre-war intel­li­gence and the Bush admins use of intelligence?

    Its deep in to the hun­dreds — maybe thou­sands already.

    We have the 9/11 com­mis­sion, Robb-Silverman, Intel Sub­com­mit­tee, etc. You can add the Brit But­ler report as well.

    The Dems lat­est attacks, and Bush lied mantra, are cer­tainly get­ting trac­tion, but it will come back to haunt them in the end. Every com­mis­sion to date has clearly con­cluded that the admin did not lie about any­thing. In fact, they are pro­duc­ing juicy excerpts that paint the Dems as hyp­ocrits. The lat­est argu­ment they are try­ing to ply on the pub­lic is that Bush manip­u­lated intel to delib­er­ately over­state the threat from Sad­dam. First off, I doubt many dems even both­ered to read the NIE before vot­ing to sup­port the President’s posi­tion. Sec­ond, the Robb-Silverman report showed clearly that while the PRes may have had more intel data, what he had was even less nuanced and more damn­ing of Saddam.

  20. Jon says:
    November 16, 2005 at 09:26

    I think you have put way too much faith in your party my friend. You haven’t looked up to see the big pic­ture. Let me tell you what I think.

    Iraq is located on what could be con­sid­ered the most valu­able piece of prop­erty in the world. Every­body wants it. Your whole argu­ment is based sim­ply on the idea that Sad­dam wants spe­cial weapons, which I could agree with, and the mis­taken illu­sion that he wants to rule the world, which I think is a para­noid delu­sion you have devel­oped by lis­ten­ing too much to peo­ple who are in the pock­ets of oil com­pa­nies. You need to rec­og­nize that there is huge profit in oil… it is beyond your wildest fan­tasies. As the oil dwin­dles, the sit­u­a­tion will become even more prof­itable for those who are in the right places.

    What we should be doing is replac­ing every petro­leum prod­uct that we have become depen­dant on and do it as rapidly as pos­si­ble before it is too late. But, if you are mak­ing hun­dreds of bil­lions of dol­lars a year, this is the last thing you want and peo­ple exist in this world who are so greedy that killing hun­dreds of thou­sands of inno­cents means noth­ing to them. It is as sim­ple as that.

    Does the 2002 NIE prove any­thing? No, it does not. Now that we are in Iraq, you can see just how far this report was overblown. Even if it hadn’t been, too much of it is just based on sup­po­si­tion. The whole thing is rid­dled with ifs and maybes and pos­si­b­lies to the point that even if it’s worst case sce­nario is right, it is still not enough to go to war like this. The most impor­tant issue which would have to be proven would be that Sad­dam had the intent to go on a mur­der­ous ram­page and I don’t see that. Sad­dam is not an idiot and he is not psy­chotic. It doesn’t add up. He has no affil­i­a­tion with a dooms­day nihilist like Osama bin Laden (who was prob­a­bly work­ing in con­junc­tion with some fac­tion of our own gov­ern­ment… as I said, noth­ing is going to sur­prise me at this point).

    It both­ers me when I hear Amer­i­cans talk about how Sad­dam has used WMD before and that is their ratio­nale for attack­ing. If we go by that logic, the US should have been wiped out a long time ago because we’ve killed a hellofalot more peo­ple with nukes than Sad­dam ever did with chem­i­cals. The prob­lem with your ideas on going to war with Iraq is that it ignores the pos­si­bil­ity that Sad­dam was just des­per­ately try­ing to find a way to pro­tect Iraq, not just from Ira­ni­ans and Kuwaitis and who­ever, but also from oil addicted nations like the US, China and Israel.

    Occam’s Razor states: “Given two equally pre­dic­tive the­o­ries, choose the sim­pler.” Which of these two the­o­ries sounds more likely to you? Sad­dam was try­ing to take over the world (some­thing which he would never develop the capa­bil­ity to do and would have just got­ten him a seri­ous ass­kick­ing) or Sad­dam was demo­nized and manip­u­lated and made a tar­get of so that some greedy bas­tards could rake in oil prof­its? Be honest.

    You need to lift and shift fire from this man­u­fac­tured enemy and direct it to the cor­rect enemy, my friend. If such a thing exists, I would say your immor­tal soul depends on it. If it does not exist, at the very least, your children’s future depends on it.

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