[PornoDoggy]

Oh, gee ... I just used up three boxes of Kleenex.

You want to go for the emotional factor, Carrie? You want to ask my girlfriend how many goddamned Iraqis her son is worth?

Did those things happen? Probably - although I suspect when the truth is told much of the "information" we have about Saddam's regime will turn out to be in the same league as the Germans killing babies in Belgium in 1914, or the Iraqis ripping babies out of incubators in Kuwait in 1991.

Quite a sea-change in American politics, however, if the neoconservatives have decided that Jimmy Carter was right all along, and that the human rights of people overseas are not just worth considering, but are worth expending American lives for. In a manuer executed more skillfullly than an about-face by a crack military drill team, we're now notnationbuilding in Iraq to defend the downtrodden (and oil rich). Granted, all this sob story stuff is pretty fucking convenient, since the WMD/connections to alQaida rationale for the war didn't materialze. What I'm still struggling to figure out is how the very same people on the right who have their heartstrings plucked by the poor suffering Iraqis could have ignored it for fucking decades before it became a problem.

Just out of curiousity, how many nations in the Coalition of the Rented and Duped have human rights records that can rival Saddam's? Will we be taking them on any time soon? And what about our good buddies, Pakistan? The Pakistanis CREATED the Taliban, and those forces are STILL involved in the intelligence and military of Pakistan. The Pakistani military is full of unrepentant Islamic fundamentalists, and Mussarif's hold on power is tenuous at best. I cannot believe how many people were fooled by that dog-and-pony show last week with the "high ranking Taliban leader" bullshit - coincidentally taking place when Colin Powell dropped into town. The government we are trusting in Pakistan is the same government that just forgave those who passed nuclear secrets to any nation that had the $, and is less stable than the Shah of Iran was in the late 1970s.

That same Iraqi who used to fear his government now can't leave his house. That same Iraqi who used to worry about the men in space suits scaring his children is now worried that some terrorist scum will blow them up. It could be alQaida, could be unrepentant Bathist, or it will (if not already) soon likely be garden variety Iraqi extremists - Sunni, Shitte, or Kurd. In less than 3 months we're "turning over power" to ... well, we'll figure that out as we go along.

With all due respect, Carrie, that whole "protect the underdog" line of bullshit rings very hollow from the American right - who not so very long ago were howling at Clinton for intervening in Bosnia, although that conflict involved very real and unquestionable imitation of Nazi atrocities, and the threat of intervention from a multitude of nations offered the protential of war between a number of our allies. Of course, the Bosnians, Serbs, Croats, and Albanians don't have any oil, and - call me a cynic - the fact that the President of the United States who wanted to do this was from the other party just might have had something to do with it.

I'm sorry, but when neoconservatives start playing out the sob stories about horrible human rights abuses of oppressed peoples, my bullshit detector goes off. Those people either have something we want, there is an agenda hidden someplace - or all the other lies they wrap their policies up in have been exposed, and it's the last line of defense.