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Sunil et. al.<BR>
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Thanks for the link to this book on the neo-cons. <BR>
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Odd how the war in Iraq has become a "normal" part of the social/political landscape we function in, with heated discussion of the rights and wrongs involved in how we got there seemingly not a high priority. We are stuck in Iraq despite the horrors and the slim odds of long term "success." Holding the Bush administration responsible for the misguided and illegal process of our military invasion and occupation of another country that never attacked the USA, a war pushed by the Bush administration with lies about WMDs and Iraq's ties to 9/11, is only a subject those "leftists" pursue. <BR>
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Consider how often in the "leftist" media we see any fact based discussion of the total death toll we have inflicted upon Iraq do to our invasion and occupation. The "leftist" media rarely presents even the total injury count for US soldiers, much less the totals for civilian deaths on the Iraqi side, inflicted not by "terrorists," but by US military actions. <BR>
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Is this truly the approach of a "left wing" media?<BR>
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I guess we are expected to accept that we have killed tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis as the costs of our "noble mission" to bring democracy to a country that clearly has a huge segment of the population that does not want us there. No need to dwell on those innocent Iraqi deaths in our "left wing" media? <BR>
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What?<BR>
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We are truly in an Orwellian age where politically nuanced thought is defeated by reference to stereotyped labeling of political views that delegitimizes the expression of fact based political theory if it does not conform to the established "wisdom" coming from our leaders.<BR>
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Consider that those "leftist" democrats, backed by the "leftist" media, who voted unanimously in the US Senate and House of Representatives (except for the one lone "no" vote from Representative Barbara Lee, who received death threats and was labeled as a "communist" for her position) to give Bush the authorization to invade Iraq, certainly showed their true "left wing" colors!<BR>
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Right. Wrong? I mean, really, the democrats in this case voted like "right wingers."<BR>
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Wait, this can't be, we must maintain the "left wing" label for democrats. It's got to be either "left'" or "right:" there are no other options for independent creative political thinking<BR>
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<A HREF="http://www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20010923solevote0923p4.asp">http://www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20010923solevote0923p4.asp</A><BR>
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Wow, it is amazing, isn't it, how those "left wing" democrats who gave Bush his war resolution with no opposition expressed their true "soft on terrorism antiwar views!"<BR>
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So much for the voice of a vibrant independent thinking free democracy when the whole US Senate votes in lock step to support Bush to go to war in Iraq with all the serious doubts that could have been raised.<BR>
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Ted Moffett<BR>
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