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Originally posted by JQ:


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The neocon right only cares about human rights and democracy when it serves their purposes. When human rights and democracy get in the way of US/corporate/military-industrial interests, they are thrown out the window like a used Kleenex!
Exactly



Well, here we go again, with "Blame it on the Republicans".

In that 40-year period, did Kennedy change that policy?
Lyndon Johnson?
Jimmy Carter?
Clinton/Gore?

That's right. No they didn't.
About 20 of those 40 years were under Democrat control.

Let's keep in perspective that there was a cold war going on for 50 years between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. And like it or not, that required some dire measures.
You can wax philosophic about how terrible it is that we (through the CIA) participated in these things. But at the same time, it contained Soviet expansionism, and undermined Soviet confidence until their empire finally collapsed. Better this alternative than complacently allowing Soviet expansion, in which case (with Mondale in office instead of Reagan, say) we might still be in the Cold War.

Regarding oil out of Iraq, and Iraq having the second largest reserve in the world, as I said, we're getting cheap oil from many other sources. We don't NEED Iraq. It's also speculated there might be far larger unsurveyed reserves in Russia's frontier, that would provide a reserve to match that of the Persian Gulf.

Certainly, oil is a valuable commodity, and a crisis in the Persian Gulf would drive up the price. But as I said, the U.S. has been utilizing other sources to avoid dependency on Arab oil. U.S. presence in the Persian Gulf just guarantees greater stability, and less potential for wild fluctuation in the market.

And if we wanted to control Iraq, we'd be setting up a benevolent dictator, not preparing to have an election in Iraq in six months. If the Iraqis are voting, where is the U.S. conquest and domination in that?

The argument of U.S. maintaining secret control of Iraq, based in some kind of oil conspiracy, is absolutely groundless, from the lack of evidence I see.