i almost feel that I should apologize for yet another thread on this ... the thing is, though, that I still feel that there's a whole lot of floundering going on and this issue SHOULD reflect on the values and the judgment of future candidates ... that's because all important historical events are fair game for evaluating future candidates ...

my position on candidates who voted for the IWR and have since apologized and said their vote was wrong is that they should be forgiven IF AND ONLY IF their apologies are for "the right reasons" and IF AND ONLY IF the lessons they say they've learned would give us reasonable cause to assume they would not make the same tragic mistake again ... I am aware that several DU'ers I respect very much do not agree that those who voted for the IWR should ever be forgiven ... I respect and understand that point of view; I don't agree with it as a blanket statement ...

and I will not jump into the semantic idiocy of whether the IWR was a vote for war ... that debate has been spun around in circles on DU to a dizzying degree ... you think it was a vote for war? you think it wasn't? i see no point in further discourse on the subject - any further debate on the subject will influence absolutely no one so what's the point? just to argue and make some noise attacking or defending candidates? no thanks ... i have my opinion on the matter; debate, at least for me, is now closed ...

here's why, beyond "it was/wasn't a vote for war", that a vote for the IWR was so tragic ... here's why it was so wrong ... here's why no Democrat should have voted for it ...

there are two excellent articles online that discuss all-too-clearly who the BIG WINNERS on Iraq have been? wanna take a guess before I tell you? here are the links:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-schee...
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518...

Too lazy to read the articles? no problem (although they are both excellent) ... the first article makes a strong case that Iraq, like every other war, is fought for the exclusive benefit of the military-industrial complex ... to add my own point to that belief, I see the selling of FEAR as the central advertising theme for the MIC ... sell more FEAR; sell more war; sell more weapons ... GOT IT? GOOD! the second article talks about the BIG WIN Iraq has been for BIG OIL ... they've already made record profits in the oil industry since the invasion of Iraq; they're loving this war ... why would they ever want it to end? but the public pressure to end the war has grown much too strong to sustain the occupation much longer ... are the poor little dears all upset? nope, because now it is time to "cash out their chips" ... if you read the second article, you'll see they've been able to exploit a desperately weak Iraqi government, with the aid of good old Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank, and force the Iraqis to essentially give away most of their future oil revenues ...

so, let's state this as clearly and succinctly as possible: the Iraq war was motivated by corporate greed in the MIC and in the oil industry ...

now, let's return to the "apologizers" ... those who merely say they were "duped by bad intelligence" give absolutely no indication that they either know why bush and cheney pushed this war OR they fully understand it and are unwilling to speak the truth about American corporate greed to the American people ... is it fair to expect anyone to accept their bogus apologies? surely, sometime in the not too distant future, the MIC and BIG OIL boys will promote their next campaign of fear and beat the war drums again ... it's their primary modus operandi ...

without clearly demonstrating that they understand this essential reality, apologies for destructive IWR votes are meaningless ... in those cases, the apologizers should NOT BE FORGIVEN ... an acceptable apology must contain an acknowledgment not just that their action was wrong but WHY IT WAS WRONG ... and blaming the bush administration's lies and deceit, while a good issue to raise, does not rise to the standard of an acceptable apology ... what we need from the apologizes, and from all future Democratic candidates, is a recognition of the true motives for this war and probably for most if not all wars ... this is NOT pacifism or isolationism being defended here; it's a recognition that the US spends more on its death weapons than all the other countries in the world COMBINED ... to argue that Saddam would have taken his skeletal army and launched an attack against the US strains the outer boundaries of genuine insanity ...

to conclude, what is demanded here is an "apology of substance" ... in fact, more important than the mea culpa is a more forward-looking recognition that the MIC and BIG OIL are poisoning our foreign policy and leading our country into devastating, unnecessary wars ... we should also demand that the institutions that allowed this to happen, i.e. the perverting influence of corporate America on our democracy and on our country's best interests, are in desperate need of reform ... two specific examples of these reforms include severe lobbying reform and publically financed campaigns ... if our candidates are unwilling to speak out against the real motivations for the invasion of Iraq, frankly they can keep their apologies ... and to argue that bush did it merely for revenge or to show up his father or for political gain is just not adequate ... the reason for this war was, is and will remain pure corporate greed ...

we need to know that future candidates, regardless of their IWR votes or positions, will not allow the greed of the MIC and BIG OIL to ever, ever let this happen again ...

NOTE: no candidates were harmed in the writing of this thread!

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