I think the former Senator you all are referring to is Bob Kerry, Nebraska republican, I believe. If I recall correctly he has admitted that maybe he did kill some civilians while on a special ops mission, just to keep them quiet. And I think he got a bronze star for that mission. It’s been a while since that story was out, so I may have every detail wrong.
The callous, arrogant attitude of the warmonger rightwingnuts on this board is appalling. Iraq is not Grenada. It isn’t Panama. It not Afganistan, either. The reason George the First declared “victory” without ousting saddam probably had as much to do with the assured bloodshed that would have ensued as to do with geopolitical power balancing. Sure we mowed down the cannon fodder like so much wheat, but the republican guard was virtually untouched and ready to launch the real defense when hostilities stopped. I actually give Poppy Bush a lot of credit for knowing when enough was enough.
All this BS about what a threat Iraq poses to the US with all her WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION just confuses the hell out of me. So POTENTIAL use of WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION constitutes just cause to invade? We better start digging a moat, because not only is our nation armed to the fangs with all the worst weaponry imaginable, but we SELL the shit to just about any buyer. Some people deride the US for wanting to be the policeman to the world, but a better analogy is that we ARE the drug-dealing-cop to the world. We’ll feed and fuel your appetites and then use those same appetites to justify fucking you over at will. Saddam is example numero uno of this phenomenon. Saddam was a great US ally for years and years, funded and armed to the hilt by our freedom-loving nation (including the year he gassed his own people, people) until he showed the unmitigated audacity to launch an unprovoked attack on Kuwait. Who played who? It is arguable.
Call it what it will be - the Campaign Campaign. Bush will follow his usual Nixonian urges and fail to realize he’s already as popular and powerful politically as he can be, and destroy himself by overreaching. I detest W. I think he is displaying increasingly fascist tendencies, what with secret warrantless detentions of US citizens and his rampant crony capitalism. But at least I sense that even the most diehard, kneejerk rightwingnuts are starting to realize what they have wrought. Even my dad, a diehard, kneejerk republican had to wonder the other day “What in the world is Bush thinking, all this stuff about invading Iraq?” It gives me some hope that the American populace won’t permit the excesses suffered by German and Japanese and Russian people a half century ago.