Telling Quotes

[flwyd]

Shake dreams from your hair
My pretty child, my sweet one.

Choose the day and choose the sign of your day
The day's divinity
First thing you see.

A vast radiant beach in a cool jeweled moon
Couples naked race down by it's quiet side
And we laugh like soft, mad children
Smug in the wooly cotton brains of infancy
The music and voices are all around us.

Choose they croon the Ancient Ones
The time has come again
Choose now, they croon
Beneath the moon
Beside an ancient lake

Enter again the sweet forest
Enter the hot dream
Come with us
Everything is broken up and dances.

-- Jim Morrison, "The Ghost Song"

While still in Ohio, Bush raised the possibility that any Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were destroyed before or during the U.S.-led war, suggesting for the first time that coalition troops may come up empty in their search.

But in the interview with Brokaw, he said he still believes some of these weapons will be found but that "it's going to take time to find them."
-- from the AP wire

As I recall, "it's going to take some time to find them" was the antithesis of the administration's arguments in March. They were utterly unwilling to give weapons inspectors more time to search. They even pretended to have pretty good intelligence on what Iraq had and where.

This suggests that it wasn't really about weapons of mass destruction. I'm not as naïve as those who think "It's just about oil." U.S. troops did a very good job securing the oil weels and guarding the oil ministry building from looting while ignoring the wide-scale cultural looting and anarchy. So although oil is clearly key, it's much bigger. Why should we limit war profits to oil companies?

U.S. companies like ADM and Lockheed Martin make money when the bombs are dropped. Then U.S. companies like Haliburton and Bechtel make money repairing the damage the bombs did. And it's paid for by profits from the newly liberated oil (along with U.S. tax dollars). A much plainer example of this racket is shown in the great Charlie Chaplin film The Kid. The little kid walks down the street and chucks a rock into a lady's window and then runs off. Chaplin then rounds the corner peddling new window glass. On paper, this is growth, which is a Good Thing&mark;

So while a big deal has been made over shutting out countries who opposed bombing Iraq, I haven't heard of many rebuilding contracts that were offered to Spain and Australia. Never mind that the "screw them" approach is equivalent to not letting a doctor operate on a gunshot victem because the doctor opposed the shooting.

Speaking of the freedom, ibid also said:

Of Chirac, who led the opposition at the United Nations to the war against Iraq, Bush said: "I doubt he'll be coming to the ranch any time soon."

Oppose war and you get to stay in Paris instead of a weekend in Texas. I think I'll keep my anti-war sentiment, if that's the deal.