Hugo

Your examples of corporate abuse are interesting. Although I don't think the pictures are as clear as you make them out to be, these were instances of abuse and as with all things, abuses are inevitable due purely to human nature. Democracies have been known to make flawed choices and commit wrong or evil acts, however, that does not invalidate democracy or disqualify it from the position of best available mode of government. Furthermore, your examples are not evidence of a global and general decline in standard of living due to globalisation. You still have that to prove. What I have said is that globalisation is beneficial to third world countries as a whole. You have taken four incidents to prove that it isn't. That is not good enough. I would need statistics of declining standards of living from a majority of third-world countries to accept what you are saying. First you tried to tell me that evidence throughout the 20th Century proves that globalisation is wrong. That is like saying that historical evidence from Russia in the entire 20th Century, averaged out, proves how evil the current regime of Vladimir Putin is. Invalid. That's your claim that globalisation = colonialism, as surely as the claim in my example means you'd believe stalinism = Russian republic. Then you said - and I've already quoted this to you - "While globalization lacks the obviousness of colonialism, both involve economic domination of resources, labor, and often markets... Another striking similarity is the tendancy for defenders of both practices to legitimize or promote [certain] systems" You see how you have changed your ideas? Your first argument was ridiculous and you know it, but rather than recant you chose to try and twist your way out of it by claiming you said other than you did. My evidence thus far is that Saddam promised large cash prizes to successful terrorists, that according to Iraqi defectors Saddam operated a terrorist training camp for Iraqis and non-Iraqi Arabs, and that "special forces" soldiers who came out of that camp seem to have a great deal more terrorist training than any other special forces soldiers would or should. And here it is in nice simple terms for you: You claimed X. Then you said you actually claimed Y. Now you are claiming Z. First you said that Saddam had no interest in WMD. Then you said you meant that Saddam was interested in WMD but just couldn't build them. Now you say that Iraq in fact retained 5-10% of her WMD production capability and plenty of documents that they intended to resume said production as soon as possible.

This is an opinion column. It makes statements like "nearly all WTO decisions have gutted democratic restrictions on trade" but it mentions no examples of where this has happened. This column also assumes that you will find capitalism and trade intrinsically bad, if you have a knowledge of economics and know that they are not the obvious response to the allegations of this author is, "so what?" This says "The report documents how the government has used the roads, bridges and airfields built by the oil companies as a means for it to launch attacks on civilians... Oil company executives turned a blind eye" OK, so they watched somebody else abusing human rights and somebody else used their infrastructure to facilitate their abuse of human rights, and you believe that makes them culpable for these actions. Next on your to-do list is to charge steak-knife manufacturers with one count of murder for every known stabbing victim. It says, "In April 2000 Bechtel was finally forced to leave." So a corporation did something that didn't jive with the market and ended up out of business in that country. Sounds like that problem took care of itself. Oh, and they filed a lawsuit which any judge is free to throw out should he want to. You said "While globalization lacks the obviousness of colonialism, both involve economic domination of resources, labor, and often markets... Another striking similarity is the tendancy for defenders of both practices to legitimize or promote [certain] systems" So you said that there were "striking similarities" between colonialism and globalisation, and that globalisation and colonialism shared a lot of aspects barring "obviousness" but not that they were "quite similar." Gotcha. They're terrorists now. They are implicated in car bombings and so forth that have killed Iraqi civilians as well as US troops. Where did they learn terrorist techniques, Blackdog? So it was documented as a bioweapons facility, but you still claim that Saddam had no interest in WMD and was not actively pursuing WMD. I gave you the global security link. It's very easy to navigate that site, you'll find all you need there. They also provide sources and original documents for you to verify what they say. Oh, so now it's my fault that you're tripping over yourself? I think the word "looking" is pretty clearly defined. In this context it means seeking, searching for etc. Certainly not producing or developing as you claim you thought I said.

If you say so. I think it's absurd that you have a hard time separating the East India Company from Exxon or GM. I notice that you still have absolutely no evidence of your allegations. Can I safely assume that you will never provide any? As I said, there are massive differences between colonialism and globalisation. I'll repeat them again for you. Colonialism requires troop deployments to quell native populations from the colonising country. Globalisation does not. China has been known to use her own troops but to protect the interests of the Communist Party, not Western investors. India, Mexico and so forth don't, nor do they allow foreign troops on their soil to enforce business interests. Colonialism forbids manufacturing and processing in the colony. The colony is used as a source of raw materials, all manufacturing is done in the mother country to preserve their jobs and industry. Globalisation is the exact opposite: manufacturing is done in the developing country at the cost of jobs in the developed country. Colonialism forces monopolies on trade. Colonial rulers forced native populations to sell to them at low prices with force or threat of it, they also imposed rules that imports to the colony come only from the mother country or another colony. There are no such rules in globalisation. If you still believe that globalisation is bad, explain why Robert Mugabe went abroad begging Western corporations to set up shop in his country, and explain why Fidel Castro advised the Nicaraguans not to shut their doors to Western investment as he had. Your argument has gone from "globalisation is the same as colonialism" to "globalisation is quite similar to colonialism." The correct answer is, "globalisation is not colonialism." OK, so, we have it confirmed as a testing site for bio-weapons and a training camp for terrorist forces, in your own words, and yet you still claim that Saddam had no bioweapons and no interest in bioweapons and was not sponsoring terrorism. What is the matter with you? A broken clock is right twice a day. There are Iraqi intelligence officers, Iraqi scientists, satellite reconnaisance, failure of Saddam to disclose, sudden heavy traffic from Iraq into Syria in March 2003 (did Saddam pick that moment to triple his exports to Syria?). I think that reams of circumstantial evidence and multiple and independent eyewitness accounts are enough. Plenty of people have gotten convicted on less. The murder weapon you seek is almost certainly in Syria. I think you need to use your intuition, Blackdog. You are like a lawyer who will get his client acquitted on a technicality even though everybody knows he is as guilty as sin. No, it doesn't. If I say I'm "looking to get a car" does that mean I'm building one now? Does it mean I'm even in the showroom trying to get finance? No, it just means that I'm interested and actively trying to acquire a car. It does not mean I have one or that I'll have one tomorrow. Same with Saddam. You're playing word games to try and claim that what I said has a meaning that is not contained in either my words or my intent.

That doesn't address the issue of pride and dedication. I know a major in the USAF, a married man with kids, who flies an F-16 and was decorated in Kosovo. He could be earning four times his current salary as a commercial pilot, but he won't leave the service. To some people, serving your country is more important than money.

That's a farcical way to look at globalisation. Pre-1945, virtually all foreign investment and commerce with developing countries was colonialism. The phenomenon of globalisation has only been around for 25 years or so. Those first four words make your entire citation invalid, I'm afraid. Colonialism was deliberately crippling and exploitative and invariably accompanied by military force. That is no longer with us. There are no Western troops in India, China or Mexico to enforce these deals, as was the case with the East India Company. There are no bans on manufacturing and processing in these foreign countries, as there were under colonial rule. There are no enforced monopolies or price fixing. You have compared apples to oranges, and used that comparison to denounce the orange. You can, if you can prove that camp was something else. That's not what you are doing. You have evidence that Saddam was developing WMD and training terrorists from multiple independent sources. You choose to ignore them all, to believe that Saddam was as pure as the driven snow and was attacked by the evil aggressor, George W. Bush. Either you are unbelievably gullible, or you have taken a cue from a quote of Winston Churchill's and decided that you hate President Bush so much that you will side with the very devil himself to try and discredit him. This is just funny. Let me refresh your memory. Here is the exact quote from an exchange between you and I, Krusty having nothing to do with it. My text is in italics, yours is not. Wrong on all counts. That is what you said. Now you say, Nice try, indeed. You are floundering.

I don't see any evidence of that. What I do see is that in developing countries where there is substantial foreign investment, the indices of income and standard of living (literacy, life expectancy) rise and those of poverty fall. You say these economic indicators are invalid, you don't say what indicators we should use instead and you don't say why every economist alive is wrong to use them. Your counter-argument basically amounts to "No it isn't." The IMF information does not support your argument. It opines that integration may not be the key factor in growth but it does not state that integration creates poverty, exploitation and dependent economies as you claim. You still haven't posted any evidence of that. There would be a much worse one. By the standards of the rest of the 20th Century, what's happening in Iraq now is not even newsworthy. There's two primary witnesses who say it was, and no definitive proof that it was not a terrorist camp. So I've shown you a training camp, and I've shown you Saddam's promises of money to terrorists. He was a sponsor of terrorism. End of story. Anything else is nothing but naivete and self-deception on your part. You accuse others of blind faith in the US, but you give every benefit of the doubt to Saddam Hussein and want to believe the best of him in every circumstance. Have you absolutely no judgement of character whatsoever? Are you mad? I said that "Saddam was looking to get WMD." You said "Wrong on all counts." Those were your exact words in direct response to that claim. Now you're backpedalling and literally trying to eat your own words. What a mess you've gotten yourself into, again.

If foreign investment creates dependent economies, then Western Europe and Japan must be the most dependent economies in the world, completely subordinate to the US, for they have recieved the lion's share of all American investment this century. Obviously, they are not. I'll shed no tears for the destruction of subsistence farming and a starvation-level existence. The people in these third-world countries are all growing richer. In India, average income since 1980 (the advent of globalisation) has grown at 5% per annum. That of rich countries grew at about 1.5% in the same period. I quote Dr. Surjit S. Bhalla in the New Delhi Business Standard. So, if you believe that by improving the standard of living and increasing the incomes of people in the third world we are exploiting them, I invite you to explain to them why a return to grinding poverty and to abandon all hope for a better life for themselves and their children is in their best interests. This is just neo-Marxist drivel, Blackdog. Marx held that the rich grow richer and the poor grow poorer under capitalism, but history has shown that to be nonsense. Sadly, Marxists cannot admit they are wrong and the concept has shifted to the equally wrong-headed idea that rich countries get richer at the expense of poor countries who become poorer. Eventually, it will become common knowledge that this theory is absurd. The question for you, Blackdog, is whether you want to be ahead of the curve or not. Socialist theory is based upon economic superstition and ignorance. This is why you can't find any facts to support your ideas. I've yet to see any convincing argument that an Iraq without any occupying forces would smoothly and quickly gravitate towards democracy. It's my opinion that Baghdad might institute a democracy and would probably fight a long and bloody civil war against warlords and mullahs in outlying and ethnically different parts of the country. The existence of men such as Sadr is proof of this. For somebody who claims to cry a river over dead Iraqi civilians, you seem mighty keen for even more of them to be killed in a civil war that the West could prevent. It might have escaped your attention, but Al-Queda is not the only terrorist group in the world. It's not even the only Islamic terrorist group. It's entirely possible that terrorists being trained at Salman Pak were for Saddam's use, as a means for him to strike at other countries beyond his borders without an overt show of military force that would doubtless bring the wrath of the UN down upon him. Regardless, your contention that Saddam was not sponsoring terrorism has been proven false. Good for Rumsfeld. It's irrelevant to this discussion. I said that Saddam was looking to get WMD, you said I was wrong. I contend that the existence of 36 known WMD development sites in Iraq proves you wrong, that if Saddam did not have any WMD he had a very, very strong interest in acquiring some. It seems that your earlier statement of "wrong on all counts" was itself wrong on all counts. How amusing. This is not a counter-argument.

The US imports 2,489 times as much goods from Canada as it does from Indonesia. Is Canada exploited by the US, Blackdog? Are Honda and Toyota exploiting the US by opening up manufacturing plants over there? It takes a lot of "made in Indonesia" t-shirts to cover the value of a single Honda Accord. Most of the US trade with Indonesia is imports. That means that the US buys a lot more from Indonesia than it sells to them. According to your neo-Marxist theories, is it the buyer or the seller who is the exploiter in capitalist transactions? How many times have you heard people express remorse about how they exploited a car salesman by getting such a good deal on a new car? Furthermore, in order to be exploiting somebody you need to be making their situation worse. US trade with the third world makes their situation better. Citizens of these countries queue up for jobs in new factories for a good reason: it offers a better life than living hand-to-mouth, subsistence farming and risking starvation on a daily basis. No, I do not. What I am saying is that were it not for the US occupation, Sadr's threat would be far greater. He agreed to a truce thanks to the threat of overwhelming US firepower. Had that threat not been there, he would have tried a coup over at least part of the country. It would have been bloody and a lot of Iraqis would have died. Even if Sadr failed, somebody like him would have eventually succeeded. It was only a rag-tag army, but even that beats no army at all. When tyrants are allowed to run amok, their bloodshed is usually much more costly than the war that preceded them. Mao Zedong murdered far many more Chinese than died during the Civil War, and after Ho Chi Minh took over South Vietnam he butchered 1,300,000 Vietnamese, which made the 3,000 non-battlefield dead that can be attributed to US forces a mere trifle by comparison. Have you heard of Salman Pak? It was a training camp in Iraq, funded and maintained by Saddam's regime, where Iraqis and non-Iraq Arabs received training in planting explosives, hijacking, assassination, biological warfare. Take a look. Rubbish. I could make WMD in my basement. Obviously I won't go into the details but suffice it to say it's well within the capabilities of a college biology or chemistry student to grow anthrax or produce chlorine or phosgene gas. These things can be hidden very well. Chemical weapons can be kept in tanks identical to the propane tank you fuel your barbecue with. Bioweapons are contained in test tubes. Bearing in mind that Saddam keenly wanted to acquire WMD and allocated funds towards it, and the ease with which some of these weapons can be produced, I think it's a safe claim that Saddam was actively developing these weapons and probably had some somewhere. They are very small and Iraq is a very big country. When it's claimed that Saddam had no WMD, I think what is meant is that he had no nuclear weapons and no long-range delivery systems. Only the most naive of leftists would claim that he had no WMD of any kind, as described by international law. You said: "France Germany et all are flawed comparisons as all were industrialized nations with some established democratic institutions." You did not say that said democratic institutions had to be fully working, strong, recent or anything like that. When I mentioned Japan you proudly brought out an example of a weak and extremely short-lived democratic heritage and stated that this was why it could not be compared to Iraq. I then showed you the same thing in Iraq, to which your answer is basically, "No, wait, when I said X I meant Y." What you are basically doing is backpedalling wildly and trying to claim that your original contention had provisos that it never did. You were either wrong then, or you're wrong now.

Sanctions are still in place. The Western world as a whole punished China for the massacre and and Chinese foreign relations took a massive nose-dive. Zhao Ziyang was forced to resign. Just last year, the Chinese government sent an unsuccessful delegation to the European Union to try and get their arms sales ban lifted. Furthermore, Western trade and involvement with China is key in helping them out of their communist nightmare. Since China began trading internationally, the average Chinese income has quadrupled. Since 1989, virtually all the reforms demanded by the Tiananmen Square protesters have been granted.

The first post on this page is a series of points. I thought you might put up an argument as they were all refutations of your contentions. Do you accept them all?

Do you have any further rebuttal?

For those who don't know, today is the 15th anniversary of the day when Chinese soldiers killed hundreds or thousands of peaceful protestors in Tiananmen Square. Their crime was to demand democratic reform and some say in their own futures, for the Chinese Communist Party to stop literally telling them where to live, where to work, what to eat and whom to marry. Take a look at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, who are trying to raise funds to erect a memorial in Washington DC, proposed as a replica of the Goddess of Democracy statue built by the Tiananmen Square protesters and smashed by the Chinese military.

I believe there'll be an election this year. If the American public feels that Bush was mistaken and erroneous enough to deserve it they can elect Kerry.

I don't wish to split hairs, but it was Hitler, not Goebbels, who came up with the big lie theory. He first put it forth in Mein Kampf, where he wrote that the "big lie" spread by the Jews of German defeat upon the battlefield in WWI was easy to believe because people make up small lies every day, making them easy to disbelieve, but people will not imagine that an intellectual would deliberately tell a massive lie and will believe the most outrageous theory to be true.

The US Census data I gave you on international trade. Until you put up some evidence proving that there is, we'll have to accept that, yes. Whoever made up the rumour that the West exploits the Third World must be very pleased at how widely it has spread and how many people, such as yourself, blindly accept it without even bothering to perform a scrap of research to verify it. 5 minutes on the website of the US Census would dispel your illusions. You don't think Sadr would have made a play for power had the Coalition not been there? He very nearly did anyway and I'm sure his change of heart was more due to staring down the barrels of American tanks than to humanitarian concerns. He received funding from Mullah Qusi and is supported by former Ba'ath intelligence officers. This is the sort of person who would seize power were the Coalition to pull out tomorrow. Sadr is suspected of the murder of some of his rivals and has collected and armed a rag-tag army to do his will. Clearly, this is not a man whose solemn vow is to hold free elections should he get power in Iraq. Well, let's see about that. Buying weapons? Did you miss the German shipments of military equipment such as night-vision goggles? Sponsoring terrorists? Saddam himself went on Al-Jazeera and promised a large cash prize to the family of any successful suicide bomber who died killing Israelis. Looking to get WMD? Well, BlackDog, why would Saddam have WMD programmes if he had absolutely no interest in WMD? You accuse Krusty of a child-like faith in the US, but you seem to have a child-like faith in Saddam Hussein. I know which one is sillier. If you say so. Personally, I'll take the word of a man who served under Arafat for his entire adult life and has every incentive to be quiet and no incentive to tell his story, over yours, as you have no experience or evidence to support your idea that Arafat is a truly democratically elected leader. Alright, BlackDog, I'll concede. Japan had embryonic, short-lived and clearly very weak democratic institutions. Unfortunately for your argument, so did Iraq. In 1921 Prince Faisal was elected king with 96% of the vote, and in 1925 Iraq held her first parliamentary elections. In 1941, this admittedly weak democracy came to an end 9 years after Iraq was pronounced an independent kingdom and admitted to the League of Nations. Iraq broke the terms of her alliance with Britain and declared war upon her, and after a 4-week war the British occupied the country and ensured the formation of a pro-British government.

That's your argument? Three strikes, you're out. That's three times you have offered that opinion and three times you have provided absolutely no evidence or logic to support it. You simply have no idea about this subject. It's probably better for your argument if you refrain from speaking about it in future. Let's begin with Moqtada Sadr. Who happened to be buying weapons, sponsoring terrorists and looking to get WMD. A problem. "Arafat is a chip off the same block as Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Ahmed Yassin – they are all birds of a feather, they have small differences but are birds of a feather." 18:53 Jan 27, '04 / 4 Shevat 5764 That's all I could find in print, although admittedly I didn't search very hard. The quotation about the cutting off of tongues and heads came from a TV interview. Japanese men got the vote in 1925. The next year, the emperor Taisho died and the military began their takeover. Hardly a great democratic heritage.

Which democratic governments in the world take their policy cues from the White House? Where's the precedent? The ones shooting and bombing US soldiers and Iraqi civilians. There'll be no Iraqi king, which leaves only another military dictator or a theocracy as the likeliest candidates for a coup. Right now, it seems to me that the theocrats are more prevalent, so that is the group that I believe will end up in control should the US leave. I don't want to hear it, BlackDog. I already gave the evidence that proves this notion wrong. You have no evidence, so your point is null and void. He has a history of aggression against neighbour states. He was sponsoring terrorism. He was attempting to acquire or develop WMD. What does one have to do to be defined a potential threat to security and stability in your eyes, BlackDog? I'm tempted to think you'd believe he was "contained" until an Iraqi soldier was actually bayoneting you. Recantation accepted. Yes, a primary witness called Walid Shoebat. The fact remains that his popular mandate has about as much credibility as Hitler's did in 1938. I think we both know you're grasping at straws here. The pre-1917 Russian diet was a democratic institution as well, but only a fool would believe that there was any kind of democracy or respect for it alive in Russia at that time. The fact is that Japan had no history of practicing or respecting democracy when the USA introduced them to it.

That's a meaningless statement. You could see the "fingerprints of the USA" in any democratic country if you look hard enough. Japan. I'm sure they will, but the mullahs will get there first given half a chance. That's the whole problem. The clear role for the Coalition at this time is to remain in the country, maintain law and order and allow the Iraqi people an environment in which they can develop their own polity. No, it isn't. The vast majority of foreign trade in western, democratic nations is with other western, democratic nations. Since 1945 about 80% of US foreign trade has been with Western Europe and Japan. Most of the remaining 20% was with non-Western democracies such as Mexico or India. In March 2004, the 10 countries doing the most business with the US were, in descending order: Canada Mexico China Japan Germany UK South Korea France Taiwan Ireland Trade with Canada was 1,615 times as great as trade with Iran and 21,000 times as great as trade with North Korea. All this information comes from the 2004 US Census. Is this a sick joke? Did you miss the 300,000 corpses? "Containment" worked great, unless you were also contained in the same country as the psychopath. And another joke, surely. Yasser Arafat is about as elected as Pervez Musharraf. He gets elected because people who don't vote for him get their tongues, testicles or heads cut off. And they really stood the test of time, didn't they?

This is speculation, and highly unrealistic speculation at that. What do you think the reaction would be at this point if George W. Bush came out of the White House tomorrow and said, "hey listen, I changed my mind. There won't be any Iraqi elections. Meet my good buddy Mustafah Al-Massacre, he'll be running the country with the help of a big gang of thugs and the CIA." I don't think so. Time will tell, but you are leaping to a highly unlikely conclusion. Furthermore, there are many countries in the world where US involvement has created or rescued genuine democracy. There is a substantial track record for that too, which you seem to have forgotten. Have they consistently shown the Iraqis want a full-scale civil war, or a theocratic or military dictator to step into Saddam's shoes? I'm sure the polls do say what you claim - much as polls in Canada would show people would like better-funded healthcare and schools combined with lower taxes. The trouble is that it's not possible. If the Coalition occupation ends at this time it won't produce any kind of lasting peace. Let's not forget too the autobahns that Hitler built, or the great industrial progress in the USSR that took place under Stalin. The only thing preventing that kind of progress is people like you. By your reactions, you have deterred the US administration from continuing on this kind of action. You have made it clear you'd rather have the dictators left well alone, than any kind of action be taken against them (unless, of course, it be the utterly laughable half-measures from the UN that would never have achieved anything in a million years). OK, name me a democratic Arab country. Just one will do. One solitary example that proves your point. Japan had no established democratic institutions.

Why not? Are you saying it is better to continue with an erroneous policy indefinitely, than to realise that it is erroneous and correct it? You've asked them? I don't know that they don't care about the bloodshed to follow. After 300,000 (possibly more) murders I'd imagine they were pretty sick of bloodshed. My mother is a friend of an Iraqi dissident living in Britain, who tells me that everybody in Iraq knows someone who was "disappeared" by the Ba'ath Party. This isn't something that went on without people knowing. So I don't understand why our opinion differs on this. When George W ousted Saddam, my response was, "Good start." I hoped he'd then do something about other tyrants in Iran, North Korea and elsewhere. I also hoped he'd quit backing dictators and put pressure on friendly but despotic nations to reform. You, on the other hand, seem to think that the problem of Western backing of despots should never begin to be resolved. Your best course of action is complete inaction. Either that or you expect Rome to be built in a day. Only "we" can stabilise Iraq. Native democratic institutions are not able to defend themselves against the militants yet. What do you seriously think would happen if Coalition forces pulled out tomorrow? Do you think there'd be an election? No, there'd be an Ayatollah. Yes, it will probably be "our" democracy. British/American democracy has been established for centuries and has proven itself extremely resilient to would-be native tyrants and foreign conquerors. They will make excellent role models for the Iraqi constitution. If you believe that the US will "fix" Iraqi democracy in their favour, that doesn't happen. France, Germany, Italy, Japan and other democracies created or rescued by the US have proven themselves independent of and sometimes even hostile to the US. If the US wants a compliant, puppet-state Iraq current events would not even be happening. We'd already have some American mouthpiece dictator in office with the Ba'ath power structure functioning neatly under him.

I don't really have to be. The events speak for themselves. The democratic elements of Iraqi society are weak, there's no military and a skeletal police force. The militants are strong. At least that gallery no longer includes Saddam Hussein. Although that seems to make many people very angry, for some reason - perhaps they'd like to go to Iraq, meet with the families and friends of Saddam's victims and tell them they really couldn't give a crap about them as long as they don't have to hear about it on CNN? Oh yes, those people in Abu Ghraib/Fallujah/wherever. Tell you what, Blackdog, you visit the friends and family of Saddam's victims and I'll visit the friends and family of Abu Ghraib prisoners. I guarantee I'll be back home a long, long time before you are. My last point is that the primary duty of a state is to protect their own citizens. Bearing that in mind, Saddam's murder of his own citizens is a far worse crime than anything the US could do excepting, as I said, the mass murder of 300,000 American political dissidents. Workers in Saddam's WMD programme have admitted that they falsified their reports and told their superiors and Saddam that WMD progress was going really well. Are you seriously telling me you expect the CIA to know more about Saddam Hussein's WMD programme than Saddam himself does? Why don't we get the country stable enough to hold an election and then see how they vote? You seem to be arguing that if the US pulls out and allows the Islamic fundamentalists to ram Sharia law down the throats of the Iraqi people at the point of an AK-47 a la Taliban, that's somehow the Iraqi people "choosing theocracy." I.e. complete nonsense, as much as claiming that the North Koreans chose their despotic communist regime and love living (dying) under it.

"Lied to" implies a malicious intent. I think what's closer to the truth is that you were told something believed to be true at the time. Regardless, for me the justification for the war lies in two words: "Saddam Hussein." There is no good case for leaving that sorry excuse for a human being in power. It should have been done a long time ago (and for those who think the US is no better, I'll concede that point when I am shown the mass graves of 300,000 American dissidents murdered by the US government). If the US had left a long time ago the fate of Iraq would not be decided by the Iraqi people but by a tiny minority of extremely violent religious fanatics or former Ba'athists. That would be irresponsible. In the Nixon years the US might well have handed over the reins to a friendly despot and left the evil power hierarchy alone, the fact that they are committed to staying in Iraq for the long haul and rooting out the old power structure is testament to their good intentions. Furthermore, it took four years after WWII for Germany to become self-governed once again (or at least, half of Germany, the other half took another 44 years), and Japan was occupied for seven years. Both these countries were also completely beaten militarily and the post-war resistance was infinitesimal, whereas that is not true of Iraq, as we are seeing. It's extremely foolish to believe that Iraq could be left to her own devices after only a few months, US troops will probably still be in the country in 2010 and rightly so. Anything else will almost certainly doom the Iraqis to the evils of Islamic fundamentalism or another military dictator.

"The Socialist and Communist systems... spring into existence in the early undeveloped period... of the struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie." "The significance of Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism bears an inverse relation to historical development." 5 minutes in my copy of Manifesto of the Communist Party found those quotes. What's your source?

Marx and Engels used those words interchangeably.

It is not because he lied but because there is a law in Ontario called the Taxpayers Protection Act, which basically states that tax increases need to be approved by referendum. McGuinty has boldly stated that he will ignore this in his tax hike and will give Ontarians a chance to voice their opinions on this four years later in the provincial elections. In short, it's statist, undemocratic, insufferably arrogant and illegal. Lying is one thing, breaking the law is another.