KROFT: (Voiceover) Zinni is talking about a group of policymakers within the administration known as the neo-conservatives that saw the invasion of Iraq as a way to stabilize American interests in the region and strengthen the position of Israel. They include Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, former Defense policy board member Richard Perle, National Security Council member Eliot Abrams, and Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis Scooter Libby. Zinni believes they are political ideologues who have hijacked American policy in Iraq.
You think they're the architects of this?

Gen. ZINNI: I think they are. I--I think it's the worst-kept secret in Washington. That everybody--everybody I talk to in Washington has known, and fully knows, what their agenda was and what they were trying to do. In one article--because I mentioned the neo-conservatives, who describe themselves as neo-conservatives, I was called anti-Semitic. I mean, you know, unbelievable that that's the kind of personal attacks that are run when you criticize a strategy of those that propose it. I certainly didn't criticize who they were. I certainly don't know what their ethnic religious backgrounds are And--and I'm not interested. I know what strategy they promoted, and openly, and for a number of years, and--and what they have convinced the president and the secretary to do. And I don't believe there is any serious political leader, military leader, diplomat in Washington that doesn't know where it came from.

Perhaps the proliferation of dual citizenship and globalisation have rendered loyalty to one nation-state an anachronism but as long as people are expected to fight and die for their country I don't know how to replace patriotism with, say, a mercenary's love of money. Indeed, is putting love of corporate profits above love of country not treasonous? Is love of Haliburton or ENRON not the worst treason? Isn't war in service of profits the worst treachery?

The Mexican government is planning to change its constitution to establish a permanent right for those born in Mexico and living in other nations to obtain dual citizenship, a move criticized by some U.S. immigration experts as counterproductive to American interests.

The changes, reports the Santa Barbara News Press, would allow Mexicans naturalized abroad to participate in their native country's election process, as well as own land.
...
"In the words of Theodore Roosevelt, dual citizenship is a 'self-evident absurdity,'" Krikorian told WND in an interview. "You can no more be a genuine citizen of two countries than you can adhere to two different religions at the same time."

Ray described the dual citizenship concept as "an overall strategy" by Mexico City to "leverage its political clout ... through pressure and mobilization of their dual citizens."

More and more countries are allowing and encouraging their citizens to become technical citizens of the US while remaining citizens of their country of birth. The difference is, I can question the wisdom of allowing Mexican or Austrians to have dual loyalties while participating in US political life and while holding office in the US but if I question the loyalty of anyone who has dual US/Israeli citizenship I am accused of a slur and described as anti-Semitism or "scary." And that is mildly annoying. Much more troubling than a mindless rant by some rightie operating from ignorance and emotion.

Israel is not my country. I used to admire it but its behavior toward the Palestinians has caused me to feel that the US should have no closer relationship with it than we have with the Sudan or Somalia. It's NOT the 51st state, it's a rogue state that we shouldn't support. If Norway, where my grandmother was born, acted the same I would want the US to break off diplomatic relations. I have no loyalty to Norway. Why should any American have loyalty to Israel?

However, in both the cases of Rome and the US, the conquerers and occupiers made large amounts of money, Roman generals and administrators in the past, and American corporations in the present.

Ah those dirty corporations without which the US would revert to its Garden-like existence.

Non-sequitor. I said nothing that resembles that comment.

But where's the money? So far Iraq is just one big economic drain on the US economy.

On the overall economy, yes, but war rarely benefits the economy as a whole. Instead, war generally impoverishes many while enriching few. Individual corporations like Haliburton are making billions on Iraq that they wouldn't have seen otherwise. It's similar to how the United Fruit Company made out on the US invasion of Guatemala in 1954 but on a much larger scale.

Further you forgot the oil we did it for. You know the cheap gas we're getting now that we've conquered Iraq.

*lol* Why would the oil companies want to sell cheap oil? They'll use any excuse possible to raise oil prices if they can make more money by doing so.

So was the Marshall Plan Empire too?

No, but it wasn't pure charity by any means. It was a smart and foreign policy option that helped both to boost the US economy and to increase American influence over Europe.

So the US woke up one day and said, let me increase my influence over Europe by rebuilding their ravaged continent. I suppose the 400,000 US soldiers who died in WWII gave their lives to increase US influence too?

Read The Politics of War: 1943-1945 to get a good picture of the war aims of the UK, US, and USSR, and how they achieved them. While overthrowing Hitler was a great good, each of the Allies was in the war for their own gain as much as for any other reason. The US didn't end up with major new Middle-Eastern oil concessions after WW2 (along with many other gains) out of the kindness of the Allies' and Arabs' hearts, after all.

However, it's important that the US focus on dominance through its trade power and 750 overseas military bases rather than direct conquest and administration.

You mean like the bases the Defense Dept is trying to close in Germany to the wails of the Germans and now (this one really cracks me up) the Russians? You mean Europe would prefer to forgo the dollars the US brings to NATO about 3 X the amount of the entire Europe contribution. And not even written in as foreign aid but as part of the US defense budget. Or maybe you are referring o the bases in South Korea and US troops along the DMZ that we are trying to pull out to the dismay of the South Koreans. One man's aid is another man's Empire I guess.

The popularity of those bases is mostly in the eyes of the US, which plays it up in its own press. Most US bases are not very popular. Most Germans did not want to be the next battleground between the US and USSR; they wanted to do what Austria did instead. And of course, US bases in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Arabian peninsula are extremely popular, right?

Both Rome and the US exerted varying degrees of control over nearby states.

The devil is in the details. It is just that varying degree of control that makes the difference between, let's say, consensual government and autocracy.

You misread that. Varying doesn't refer to differences between Rome and the US. It refers to the individual client states. Both Rome and US controlled some states directly and others less directly.

For example, the US intervened directly to create the state of Panama so it could build and control the Panama Canal, but then controlled Panama indirectly except in cases where the Panamese people started to resist the US controlled government such as when the US kept troops there from 1918-1920.

Neither was interested in true autonomy.

Huh? I wholly disagree with that. Rome denied autonomy, the US is bestowing on a disenfranchised people.

See Panama above for a typical example of what US autonomy really means. As for Rome, if you don't even know what the consul was, how can you make a foolishly wide generalization above? If you do know enough to make absolute statements like that, then you can surely explain the high degree of autonomy that existed in Armenia, the most important Roman client state over the long term, and why that doesn't invalidate your statement?

Diebold Memos Disclose Florida 2000 E-Voting Fraud
The Diebold Memos' Smoking Gun Volusia Co.

"If you strip away the partisan rancor over the 2000 election, you are left with the undeniable fact that a presidential candidate conceded the election to his opponent based on [results from] a second card that mysteriously appears, subtracts 16,022 votes, then just as mysteriously disappears."
What we know from the memos can be summarized as follows:

* Two memory cards were uploaded from Volusia Couny's precinct 216,
the second one was loaded sometime close to 2am in the morning. It
automatically replaced the first card's results and reduced Gore's total by
16,022 votes and added votes to Bush plus a variety of minor candidates;

* Both memory cards loaded into the system clean and without errors,
indicating (contrary to the official line) that they were not faulty;

* After the error was noticed the original card was reloaded and the
mistake was rectified; - The error was introduced in such a way that the
total number of votes remained unchanged (again something that could
not happen by chance.);

* According to the technical boffins, the chance of the memory card
being corrupted and still passing the checksum error test are less than
60,000 to 1;

* The technical managers at Diebold Election Systems considered it a
reasonable possibility that the second card was part of deliberate
conspiracy to rig the election results.

Meanwhile over in Brevard County another error - also involving Global Elections System (the predecessor of Diebold) equipment is responsible for a further 4000 votes being lopped off the Gore total. And it is also worth noting that nobody knows whether the Brevard and Volusia county errors were the only ones in play at this time. These errors were both big ones. They were noticed and corrected on the night. How many smaller vote subtractions could have taken place on the night? Theoretically hundreds. As Dana Milbank's Washington Post report shows it was only because someone noticed the error in Volusia that it was corrected and remarkably the software itself contains no automatic system for rejecting negative vote totals being reported by precincts, events which by definition can only be nefarious and wrong.
Diebold Memos Disclose Florida 2000 E-Voting Fraud
The Diebold Memos' Smoking Gun Volusia Co.

Secondly, do you think for a minute that Enron executives magically started breaking the law the day that Bush took office. Please... they had been doing that crap for years, so where was Clinton (probably getting oral sex)?

In the words of Greg Palast, "Let's make it clear. Bill Clinton did get his hands dirty with Enron, but George W. Bush is made out of the mud."

One need only look at what happened in California to see the difference. Bush gave Enron and Ken Lay complete carte blanche to rip off California without FERC interference:

"Burn, baby, burn," is what one Enron electricity trader gleefully said about a California wildfire during the energy deregulation crisis. The fires, which knocked down power lines, helped push electricity prices higher. But that was one of the tamer comments found by CBS news among tapes in which Enron employees talk about shutting down power plants to steal "money from California to the tune of about a million [dollars a day]," and selling electricity to "grandma Millie... for f-----g $250 a megawatt hour." The tapes also show that Enron's head honchos, Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling were in the loop on the schemes to rob California blind. (Even with these revelations, the feds have not ordered the billions of dollars in refunds that Californians are due.) The tapes can be heard at http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/06/01/eveningnews/main620626.shtm"

Thirdly, have you ever heard of a little tragedy known as 9/11?

You mean the new Pearl Harbor? Try reading Micheal Meacher's This war on terrorism is bogus . Meacher, by the way, was on Tony Blair's cabinet for 6 years. He all but accuses the Bush administration of allowing 9/11 to happen.

You know what, ranting at someone who is so clearly a fool (who enjoys it) is a waste of my time. My only hope is that you're not a U.S. citizen so you can't vote. I find it amazing that your synapses can spark a thought at all. But, from your above statement it is fairly obvious that they don't.

What all this flood of quotes and links should show, if nothing else, is that my opinions are based on information and information from many sources. They aren't just "opinions."

And the color of the sky in my world? These days it is often gray or even black.

I'm troubled by elements in the Buffyverse that I consider right wing. Since I have watched little of Angel, most of my observations are about BtVS. I don't have the background or training to do the kind of social analysis that the commies and socialists are so good at but for those that like that kind of thing I recommend The World Socialist Web Site. It rocks.

Here are some elements of the BtVS that I identify with the right wing:

1) On BtVS there seems to be a love/hate relationship with government. Government is shown as bad. The evil mayor. Doris the social worker, interfering with the family. Even the local police are useless idiots. Any regulatory or police function is shown as corrupt or ineffective. But there's a love for power and militarism. The police are idiots but the mindless obedience of the army is shown as good. Not like government with all that messy democracy getting in the way. Even the Initiative was shown as good until after Walsh tries to kill Buffy. Torturing demons and cutting them up alive was okay.

2) Morality, especially for Buffy is a black and white thing. Only Giles seems to have any conception of gray.

3) There is/was a shortage of minority characters in major roles despite there being plenty of minorities as extras or in minor roles. (Janice anyone?) This might say more about the nature of TV than the Buffyverse. Just as "urban comedies", aka black sitcoms, rarely have major white characters, so white sitcoms like Roseanne or Home Improvement rarely had black major characters.

4) Self-reliance is shown as a necessity. In the Buffyverse there seems to be no effective police, no government programs to help people, no mention of even Social Security Benefits for Dawn after Joyce dies. Buffy must be self-reliant. She must take responsibility for Dawn rather than getting any government help. She doesn't even try to get Child Support from Hank. The right wing lesson being that you can only count on yourself, your family and maybe your friends for help. TBTB forbid that Buffy should get a government grant to go to college while Dawn gets SS benefits.

5) Except for the brief reign of the Initiative, which seemed to be more about controlling and using demons, there seems to be no government program to fight vampires and demons on the Hellmouth. So a private citizen must give up her life and future to protect others or they will have no protection. Another message about how it's not the government's role to help anyone.

6) On Angel Billy is being burned alive forever and this is "okay."

7) The attitude toward gay people is superficially accepting but Tara is killed and Andrew is shown as gay, a clown and bad. And even Willow has hardly been a role model since she became gay.

8) Women are the weaker sex. Even if they have superpowers. The "girls" have to be rescued, supported, and cared for by the men.

When she returns from the dead Buffy finds that the money Joyce left is gone and Giles must give her money to help her out.

When Buffy needs a job it is the men who give it to her. Xander on his construction project. Giles at the Magic Box. Without the men the best she can find is a minimum wage fast food job. Even Spike has to take her to the demon bars while the male trio disrupts her life.

When her life goes wrong it is men she turns to to fix it just as it is only males who are generally powerful enough to harm her. The Master. Angelus. Adam. The Mayor. The Trio. (Did Glory really even have a sex? Wasn't the female body a sort of aesthetic choice rather than the Beast's inherent nature? And even Glory had her male human side.)

Buffy and Willow and Anya are strong but they still have to be rescued by the guys cause they just don't have what it takes. Only Giles has the stomach to kill the (comparatively) innocent and human Ben. (And showing the murder of an innocent human as a necessity is a right wing thing. Like the Yemenis along with an American citizen blown up in their car at Bush's order because they were "suspected terrorists." Or innocent Iraqis picked up and tortured. Easy to compare to Giles' murder of Ben, who, as his dangerous Glory side, might be "suspected" of being a danger in the future.) A soft impractical girl like Buffy couldn't do it. A man like Giles could.

In Two to Go Giles must come teleporting in from England to save the day. In Grave only construction worker Xander could save the world when Willow runs amuck. In Grave all the girls (and the world) have to be rescued by the guys.
Despite the female empowerment theme of BtVS, the subtext is that it is men who have the power and money and it is women who must depend on them.

9) In Season Six magic and Wicca were shown to be evil and bad. The right wing considers the occult and witchcraft to be very very bad things. (Yeah, I know this was changed in Season 7.)

10) The Buffyverse is shot through with the view that evil doers(TM George Bush) cannot be reformed therefore it is not necessary to treat them fairly or try to change them. Demons and those demonized can be tortured or killed without any moral breach. Riley is a torturer and that's okay. When he tortures Spike in Into the Woods there is nothing to indicate his actions are morally wrong. Even Spike doesn't seem to hold them against him. After all the Initiative tortured various "animals" like Spike so this is nothing new for Riley. So it's okay. Like it's okay for the Bush administration to send various captured terrorists to be tortured . Terrorists are evil so torturing them is okay. Vampires are evil so torturing them is okay. Even Buffy has tortured them. When Riley kills Sandy, the girl Vamp!Willow turned and who was apparently getting blood by acting as a vamp!ho instead of killing, there is nothing that shows that he was wrong to murder her. His moral lapse was going with her in the first place. Certain classes of creatures have no rights and can be killed out of hand, even after they have been used for personal gratification.

11) The good (as defined by those in power) can do anything and it still be moral. Buffy is an arsonist...and that's okay. Those on the side of "right" are allowed to do things that would be evil if done by the other side.

12) Buffy never objects to the Initiative and its huge Dachau for Demons until they endanger a friend of her, Oz. She seems to think that cutting demons up alive is okay, even when she knows they are sentient, like Spike.

13) The most important role a woman can have is as a mother. Despite being "The Chosen One", Buffy's most important role is as Dawn's mother.

14) Sex is bad.

Sex with Angel causes him to turn bad and become a danger to Buffy. It is implied that this is one of the typical dangers of having sex.

Sex with Spike is bad and leads to Buffy's further degradation, to her indulging in bad sexual activities which lead to Spike trying to rape her. It is implied that she "asked for it" by even having sex with him in the first place. If she had never had sex with Spike he never would have tried to rape her.

Sex with Parker reveals Parker is bad with the implication that Buffy deserves it since she was easy.

Sex with Teutonic Nazi Riley is okay. If she had just been more submissive and dependent he wouldn't have gone to vamp!hos and they would still be together. Riley sex was the only sex that Buffy has ever had that was okay. But boring as hell cause Riley has to be the strong one, the one on top. Depraved Spike is willing to lead Buffy down the path to alternative sexual positions and activities. This was bad and led him to try to force himself on her.

15) Vampires cannot be changed or saved. This right wing view is more and more prevalent in our present criminal justice system. Rehabilitation is no longer the goal for criminals. Punishment is. Or permanent imprisonment. Or death. The idea that people commit crimes because of socialital or family factors is rejected, as is the idea that social programs reduce the likelihood people will be compelled or driven to lives of crime. Instead, like Evilistas everywhere, the right wing seems to believe that bad people, evil people are evil because it's innate and therefore trying to prevent the conditions that lead people to crime is futile. They see severe punishment as the only way to limit crime. In the Buffyverse staking is seen as the only way to control evil.

The entire thrust of the show is that once a group is defined as "evil" then anything can be done to them. This is about as Nazi a view as you can find. So vampires and demons are evil just because they are evil. No one questions if they could have valid goals or self-interests. They are evil. Just because. The entire Buffyverse canon is based around the idea that certain sentient creatures deserve to die. It's quite a contrast to say, Star Trek, where many dangerous "others" were changed into friends.