I also don’t think that all rulers set out with intent to supress the populace. However, many of them are less than scrupulous about the means that they use to attain what might be reasonable ends.
For example, I typed “RICO act” into Yahoo! search and got many hits describing the use of RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) in ways that seem to have little relationship to the reasons that the Congress passed the law in the first place. There are too many for me to cite them all but a search is easy to do.
Government officials are just like everyone else. If they can find a law that they can use to make their work easier they will use it. If that happens to infringe on the civil rights of some people, tough. Congress passed the law didn’t they?
After all even Hitler was only trying to gather the German people to a single country, give them space in which to live, and keep the Aryan blood line pure. And besides he was acting with the full approval of the legislature.
The USA Patriot Act was whooped through Congress with, according to Robert Scheer, no open committee hearings and little congresional debate. Now “Scheer” is a dirty word to a lot of people but the question here is whether or not Scheer is right, not whether he is a Bush hating, commie-pinko, left-wing, limp-wristed jerk.
It is that creep in power toward the executive that the balance of power was supposed to prevent and it seems to have broken down as a result of unthinking panic in the wake of the WTC bombing. Members of Congress appear to be afraid to stand up and say, “We are the directors around here. You Mister President are supposed to execute our intent,” and that intent was intended to be expressed in legislation after due deliberation.
Let it be known that i do not trust Saddam in ANY way , shape or form… i never said that. What i did say (or imply, cant remember- not looking back for it) was that i didnt trust the US government, this is different from saying that i DO trust Saddam. On the topic of this thread i would have to say that i would put little trust in any government… especially Iraq.
Now to your questions:1) yes i believe Iraq might have WMD.
He may be playing games just for the sake of playing games, i cant really say. Hes not exactly a role model for mental health. He is very defiant, i wouldn’t put it past him to cause all this ruccus simply to get the US stirred up, despite what could happen to him- and its not like he cares about what happens to his people. Maybe this is his disturbed form of entertainment… who knows?
I already addressed those last two questions, they just dont apply to me. In short, my outlook is that we just dont have the info or the concrete proof; not that i completely oppose military action, i just think we should gather more facts.
Oh, i just remebered an idea that i heard a while ago. Its on this topic but would also make a good thread. I think it might have origionated in greek civilization<---- not backing that up - just know that i heard this idea somewhere.
It stated that politicians or government leaders should not be paid money for participating in government. I like this idea because it would weed out the career politicians who are more concerned for thier career than improving lives of the citizens.
Some people would argue in this scenario that all the politicians would be rich in order to afford such a duty- an unfair bias… I say: supply them with food, shelter and anything else they need to live comfortably- but no money. This encourages others to participate without being rich.
Big advantage to this: only people who truly care about improving the lives of the citizens would want to persue a job as a politician and pertaining to this thread, i would be much more willing to trust them. In fact, i think i would even respect them!!!
Purplefloyd: I think your idea is a solution to the wrong problem. You think that people go into politics for the money? It is not exactly the best-paid position a lawyer or businessman or whatever can get!
A much more serious problem is politicians raising money for their campaigns. This is what makes them beholden to certain folks…Or creates sort of subtle dependencies.
Another problem is the “revolving door” whereby people who worked in government (Dick Cheney) or whose relatives are in government (G.W. Bush) are hired on as company executives and such mainly because of their connections and the strings they can pull…And, then they later end up back in government with lots of business buddy connections and a warped view of how the world works. But this would also not be dealt with by your idea.
So, while your motives are good, I think your idea completely fails to address the important ways in which politicians get corrupted.
A final point I would make here is that actually the reason I don’t trust Bush / Cheney / Rumsfeld is not so much because I think they are corrupt but because I think their views and values are all warped. I don’t think they are doing bad things because they are career politicians who want to get re-elected. In fact, I think Bush wouldn’t be doing nearly as many bad things if he hadn’t discovered how easy it is to lie and deceive and get away with it.
I generally trust the government more than I trust the motives of government critics, regardless of the party in power. The GWB bashing strikes me as no less partisan than the Clinton-bashing we got in the 90s.
This is unfortunate, because it lowers the signal to noise ratio regarding the actual pros and cons of the potential action in Iraq.