Respect?

Respect?

McCain swore an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution. Attacking Iraq violated the laws of this land. YES it does matter. This whole damn thing is disgraceful. I don't like the fact that these guys dance around that point.

"we deserve each other’s respect"

McCain and other politicians are extremely offensive. He talks about respect? How much respect does this man have for the American people for him to play along with a lie about why are lives are at risk from terrorists attacks? He LIES when he claims we were attacked on 9/11 "for who we are." This is a grave violation of the rights of the American people, you want to talk cynicism? What kind of person cons his fellow citizens into continuing to put their lives at risk?

Michael, how can you support a man who is robbing the American people of their freedom of self determination. This is life and death, to lie about these things is really low. How more cynical can one be to rationalize feeding the public a lie about why their fellow citizens have lost their lives?

Dishonesty about 9/11 motives robs Americans of the freedom to decide for ourselves if we want to put our lives at risk over specific foreign policies.

Those that push the lie are not sincere. They intentionally omit things in order to misrepresent what the motives are. This should make you think about how honest they were about Iraq intelligence! The Bush administration cited Hussein Kamel's testimony to back up their claims of WMD while ignoring the fact that Kamel said "All chemical weapons were destroyed, I ordered destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons—biological, chemical, missile, nuclear—were destroyed." "Drumheller also said the Bush administration paid no heed to Naji Sabri, Iraq's foreign minister, who had made a deal to reveal military secrets, and who said there were no secret weapons" "It just sticks in my craw every time I hear them say it's an intelligence failure," Drumheller said.

Look how Tenet selectively quotes from the key sentence being sure to omit this part about WHY they are attacking: "in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim."

The U.S. signed the UN Charter. We are supposed to be a nation of laws. the war on Iraq was illegal. And I think the examples I gave about WMD intelligence were straight forward. You want to avoid what it means. Can you at least agree that when Donald Rumsfeld said "WE KNOW WHERE THEY ARE" he was not telling the truth?

You write on your blog that "your larger motive" for supporting the Iraq war was "the Tom Friedman argument." I suggest that this is a big part of the problem because Friedman has lied to you and he is manipulating you.

Friedman lies about bin Laden's motives. Friedman claims, " the fact is that bin Laden never focused on this issue. He only started talking about "Palestine" after September 11, when he sensed that he might be losing the support of the Arab street. " (p311 of Longitudes & Attitudes ) and " Osama bin Laden never mentioned the Palestinian cause as motivating his actions until he felt he was losing support in the Arab world. " (p361-362 of Longitudes & Attitudes ) What Friedman has written is a flat out lie. To give just one example that disproves what Friedman wrote: "Your position against Muslims in Palestine is despicable and disgraceful. America has no shame. " - Osama bin Laden May 1998

Please do try to make excuses for what Friedman is doing. It should be obvious why Friedman tries to con the American people.

Once you understand what the 9/11 motives actually were (and not what people like Friedman want you to think they were) you can see that attacking Iraq was outrageous.

Once you look at the facts about the 9/11 motives you can see that lack of democracy in Iraq had NOTHING to do with the motivation of the terrorists for the simple fact that they know that Iraq was one of the countries that the U.S. was not currently propping up. Lack of democracy in Iraq had nothing to do with the terrorist threat, they didn't blame us for it! Can you see now how outrageous the war on Iraq was? In fact, the CIA Warned That a U.S. Attack on Iraq Could Ignite Terror!