They perceived victory in the Cold War as vindication of this ideology. (This is a little simplistic, as there were a myriad of factors.) Frustrated during the 1990’s by the Clinton foreign policy, they formed the Project for the New American Century (http://www.newamericancentury.org/) to lobby for their belief that the US’ unrivalled power should be used to spread democracy around the world, by force if necessary, particularly through the removal of Saddam.

Neo-Cons should be viewed as just one stream of thought among many in the US foreign policy establishment, rather than a sinister force trying to hijack government policy. After 9/11, their arguments carried the most weight, the urgency to transform the ME being ever greater in light of the new threat. Democratisation (perhaps naively,) was seen as the solution to Islamist Terrorism.

Regarding WMD, there was a wealth of conflicting information regarding whether he had them. Al Qaeda prisoners and Iraqi ex-pats fed false information. Two former heads of UNSCOM, Richard Butler and Scott Ritter, disagreed on whether Iraq had WMD or didn’t respectively. Most importantly, Iraq had form, both in using WMD and in constantly deceiving weapons inspectors and the UNSC. (See Butler, “Saddam Defiant.”)

Although the evidence, as a whole, was inconclusive either way, Saddam’s behaviour helped convince the US and its allies that it couldn’t be trusted. The mistake was to present the WMD case as “a slam dunk.” Importantly, the final report of the Iraq Survey Group indicated that, although possessing no military WMD capability, Saddam fully intended to reconstitute his WMD arsenal once the worlds’ back was turned. (http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/report/2004/isg-final-report/index.html) Furthermore, failure to properly prepare for the post-invasion stage allowed the insurgency to gain a seemingly unstoppable momentum.

Unfortunately the Bush Administration has not had the resolve to consistently articulate this argument. Instead, media on both sides present a simplistic picture- either that the war was pursued under false pretences and is a disastrous misdirection of resources, or the FOX line that Saddam did indeed have ‘em.

Again, this demonstrates how there is much more at play in international politics than just corporate interests.

Ev (cont.)

If you read all of Obviously's posts and mine i feel a little annoyed at your choice of 'argument' in that thread. I cannot believe you are in complete agreement with him, even if you felt sorry for him and angry at me. Just which of my other posts convinced you that I was smug, condescending, conceited and patronising to those who did not appear to deserve it? (frankly IMHO benjamin and his alter-ego 'brother' deserve everything that is coming to them. I don't see you decrying their ultrabigotry - what makes me so deserving in your opinion). Care to show me I'm wrong there?

I don't apologise for making you so angry as that was entirely your own choice.

I don't apologise to Obviously as i've already told him i have favourably reconsidered a little my initial thoughts of him and his words and he has not accused me of the things you so effusively did.

On rereading your post i take less offence at your initial rant to me, and have already expressed an admiration of your later works.

As for your comment to Chris. Partially correct. Problem: most people don't 'conspire' to make money, they refine a majority of their personal effort into it. There are, without question, the megarich and largely 'unseen' individuals who, because of their vast wealth are able to manipulate the weatlh of millions and governments into producing more wealth for themselves, eg. Cartels, Bill Gates with Windows/explorer. Billy might be borderline conspiracy/ just an extreme case of 'private enterprise manufacturing inbuilt profit' but i think you can see the difference between him and a Lockheed(eg) investor hoping to make a fast buck?

'dozer,

Glad we finally understood one another.
You latest posts are cogent and articulate, doesn't mean i altogether share your views ! : >

I shall consider carefully and get back to your comments on Iraq and corporate activity concerning war (the Thread) once my post limit allows!

Thankyou for helping to restore my faith in intelligent life in this country.

Ev - that applies to you too.

Dozer mate -

You haven't given this thread one fresh thought, nor one fresh perspective. You have simply trotted out a narrative. It shows you read a lot, but all the contributors to this thread read a lot. We have read and weighed this stuff before.

You have managed to portray the PNAC neo-cons as a bunch of buffoons. I wouldn't disagree, but try telling that to the Iraqis. It won't go down well as an excuse.

Despite the Pentagon purse being picked to the tune of $2.3 Trillion dollars by Sept 10th 2001 (and the odd other measly trillion before), the boys finally managed to slash the arse out of the US treasury money bag and the whole country went off to "war" (if that's what you call it when the sides are so unevenly matched).

Paul Wolfowitz himself (your genial World Bank manager) admitted to Vanity Fair that WMD was the best and most plausible excuse at the time.

It's a con. It's a fake. It's a scam.

All the ideologies, the "isms", the labels count for nothing.

One neo-con summed it up nicely:

''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors - and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'

*

Banjo,
maybe I missed something seen by others in your posts, but to my mind you are a level-headed, clear-thinking non-racist. I hope I am not wrong.

Rainier,
I believe you stand on my side of the 'line-drawn-in-the-sand' here and are fervently anti-racist. I have to say though, that you occasionally misread posts and blame people for comments they made to others than yourself as being made against you personally, please go back and read some posts carefully and if possible, without believing people like Banjo are opposed to you. Thanks for your posts exposing the race myth.

CJ,
I see where you were going with your comment to Banjo but you might like to say something less open to misunderstanding to explain your problem with (one of) Banjo's posts.

Obviously,
(Oh to be young again)... Did the book you have read and rely (seemingly exclusively) upon have anything to say that the most 'obvious difference' between you and your OWN SISTER is the abscence of a 'Y' chromosome - meaning you have 953 DIFFERENT genes between you and your 'identically' genetic, same 'race', sister (assuming you share the same parents and your mother was faithful and neither of you are genetic mutants (virtually impossible if the latest research is proven to be correct - DNA replication of 3,000,000,000 base amino acid pairs in every single cell of humans is unlikely to ever be completed PERFECTLY.

If you can completely miss something that bleedin OBVIOUS you have NO credibility in the rest of your well constructed but ludicrously simplistic and false arguement. Q.ED : )

You have a fairly decent brain, it seems - try opening it just a little more than you have so far. That is not to say that you MAY have already opened it more than your past might have prevented it from being. Keep on learning and not falling for 'reasonable sounding' prejudice and hatred.

(cont.)

Apologies for wrong thread post previously - is now in correct place.

I wrote this a year ago and sent it to a radio talkshow host. Undoubtedly no-one in OLO has heard anything about it since. It is appropriate to this thread and remains to be contradicted intelligently by anyone who can show it is untrue or displays the potential for some to conspire to influence world politics for their own fiduciary gain and that hence conspiracy’s (such as 9/11) are not ‘real’.

But first, ask yourself this question:

If you were Amoral and a member of a seriously organised crime syndicate involved in an industry with a $130 billion dollar per year turnover, just what lengths would you and your syndicate go to?…

Having watched the ABC's Foreign Correspondent TV program last night (2005), something struck me as being quite remarkable and I'm amazed that it appears no journalist has made the connection and tried to follow the money trail.

I refer to the heroin trade emanating from Afghanistan, you know, that place the Neo-Con led George Bush government so desperately wanted to remove the Taliban from and where John Howard has just sent even more of our SAS troops recently to suppress a Taliban insurgency.

According to the figures shown in the ABC report (which I believe were supplied by US administrators working in Afghanistan to 'control' the supply of Opium to the rest of the world - quite literally) the total amount of opium resin exported from Afghanistan in 2000 was 4600 tonnes (4.6 million kilograms). This was reduced to 135 tonnes in 2001 when the Taliban were paid by Britain and the US to eliminate poppy harvesting and were also promised a greater legitimacy for their Afghani Government in world affairs (The UK and US were preparing to accept the Taliban as the legitimate government in Afghanistan before 9/11!).

Now take a close look at the figures and the MONEY involved here. (The US and UK were offering a paltry US$1 000 000 each to the Taliban. (Cont.)

(from previous post)
The Taliban reduced the amount of opium trafficked from 4600 tonnes to 135 tonnes from 2000 to 2001.
(Afghani farmers were paid US$50 kilo for the raw opium. Total income to producers reduced from $230 million to $7 million).

Consider that 90 % of this product found it's way to heroin users and retailers in the UK.
Consider that 10 kgs of opium are needed to make 1kg of heroin (http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/heroin/flowers_to_heroin.htm).

This means in One Year the UK heroin trade stood to lose 90% of 4600 - 135 tonnes opium = roughly 400 000 Kilos of pure heroin.
Consider that street heroin is cut to anywhere between 3 and 60 % purity. This equates to a minimum of 800 000 000 grams of street heroin which would be needed to be sourced from another growing source to feed the UK addicts.

Consider that heroin sold on the street for an average of 70 POUNDS per gram in the UK in 2001
(http://www.drugscope.org.uk/druginfo/drugsearch/ds_report_results.asp?file=%5Cwip%5C11%5C3%5C007chapter5.html)

This means in 2001 organised crime stood to LOSE 70x800 million Pounds in turnover!
That is 56 BILLION pounds! In ONE YEAR.

Could it be worth some drug cartel paying 20 martyrs families a million pounds each to pilot planes into the World Trade Centre and then planting the belief in the media that it was the work of Osama Bin Laden in order to give the US a reason to remove the Taliban's control over the drug industry in Afghanistan? (something The US already had made contingency plans to do before the Sept 11 acts!)

Remember that The Taliban offered to hand over Bin Laden to a neutral country for trial. The US rejected this and destroyed the Taliban control in that country. While the US puppet-government of Harmid Karzai has been in power and while the US leads an anti-poppy campaign in that country, the opium production has risen from 135 tonnes in 2001 to 4200 tonnes in 2004, almost back to the levels pre-Sept 11. Well done America, so much for the War on Drugs! (source - ABC 'Foreign Correspondent' 23/Aug/2005)