South Korea: Hostage killed

[RedRigmaJacket]

SEOUL, South Korea (CNN) -- Iraqi insurgents have killed the South Korean civilian they were holding hostage, according to South Korean Foreign Ministry officials.

A spokesman said the U.S. military informed the South Korean Embassy in Iraq that they had found a body that appeared to be that of an Asian male, the officials said.

They sent a photograph of the body, and the embassy identified Kim Sun-Il, who was kidnapped on June 17 in Fallujah, west of Baghdad.

The Islamist Web site "Voice of Jihad" also posted a message saying that the insurgents had killed Kim.

Kim, 33, was an Arabic speaker and evangelical Christian who had worked in Iraq for a year as a translator for a South Korean firm supplying goods to the U.S. military.

In a video broadcast Sunday on Al-Jazeera, Kim cried in English, "Please get out of here. I don't want to die ... Your life is important, but my life is important."

The insurgents had demanded that South Korea cancel plans to send 3,000 additional troops to Iraq.

Overnight, hundreds of South Koreans gathered in central Seoul on to condemn the dispatch of South Korean troops to Iraq, but the government is so far not backing away from its decision.

Police said protesters holding candles and placards that read "I don't want to die. South Korean troops must get out" gathered in a downtown street, chanting "We are against the dispatch of troops!"

Earlier, Foreign Ministry spokesman Shin Bong-Kil said that South Korea was trying to establish contact with as many countries and organizations as possible that could help win Kim's release.

He declined to comment on whether South Korea had direct contact with the kidnappers.

South Korean government officials had given numerous interviews to Arab media appealing for Kim's release, Shin said.

South Korea plans to send 3,000 troops to Arbil in the northern Kurdish region of Iraq. Military officials say about half are combat troops trained to protect the rest, who are to help rebuild Iraq, distribute aid and train security forces.

Some 670 South Korean military medics and engineers in southern Iraq since May last year will move to Arbil to join the main force, which Seoul sees as a difficult but vital gesture to the United States, an ally with 37,500 troops in the South to deter North Korea.

The deployment would make South Korea the third-largest contributor to the coalition in Iraq, after the United States and Britain.

[BigSugar]

is it just me, or does anyone else wanna stick high voltage prods up the rectal cavities of these islamic jihad fucks and turn the power to "high"?

[msbirt]

Nope.

All our hands are bloody.

matt

[Smoker29]

I'll flick the switch Big Sug. I'll even go "serial killer" on their ass and skin them alive and force feed them BBQ ribs. I'll record their screams so their families can hear them squeal like pigs. If you want to argue with me that these people somehow deserved to have their heads lopped off, save your time. You'll never convince me otherwise. Fucking bastards!

[bluelupis]

It's funny you say that Smoker. half my family lives over in Morocco and they would say the same thing as you are. I for one see these people getting desperate and holding the world hostage. The world pays more attention to a few grissly deaths than a large number of people dying at once.

[msbirt]

I would never excuse their actions, but I will also not excuse the desire for revenge (though I understand it, and I fear the same impulses in me). Where does it all end?

matt

[quietlygreen]

11,000 (http://www.iraqbodycount.net)

[markalot]

---
Pre-CISEly.

how many civilian iraqi deaths are there?
---

Don't be ignorant. Noone counts how many we kil, no one counts how many Saddam killed before us. Oh that's right, it only matters how many the americans kill.

Two wrongs make a right, afterall.

[schmoop]

But...but...but....why can't we just neeeegoootiate with them?? Attempt to understand their feeeeelings??

They are just regular peace-loving folk with legitimate grievances, you know.

[Duemellon]

MaL,
The difference isn't the body count, it is precisely who is doin the killin.

Whether Saddam or Pol Pot killd millions of innocents doesn't justify us going in & killin thousands.

Schmoop,
Compassion, understanding, & inclusion hav a place in this world when we must find a way to stop killin each other over things we can't explain.

[msbirt]

Originally posted by schmoop
But...but...but....why can't we just neeeegoootiate with them?? Attempt to understand their feeeeelings??

They are just regular peace-loving folk with legitimate grievances, you know.

Who is "them." Do you realize that we have often been "them" to the rest of the world?

*************************************************

"It's [the mass genocide in East Timor] probably the biggest slaughter relative to the population since the Holocaust, which makes it not small. And this is genocide, if you want to use the term, for which the United States continues to be directly responsible.

"East Timor is a small island north of Australia. Indonesia invaded it illegally in 1975, and ever since they have just been slaughtering people. It's continuing as we speak, after more than two decades. And that massacre has been going on because the United States has actively, consistently, and crucially supported it: it's been supported by every American administration, and also by the entire Western media, which have totally silenced the story. The worst phase of the killing was in the late 1970s during the Carter administration. At that time, the casualties were about at the scale of the Pol Pot massacres in Cambodia. Relative to the population, they were much greater. But they were radically different from Pol Pots' in one critical respect: nobody had any idea about how to stop the Pol Pot slaughter, but it was trivial how to stop this one. And it's still trivial how we can stop it -- we can stop supporting it.

"Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975 with the explicit authorization of Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger [37]. Kissinger then at once (secretly, though it leaked) moved to increase U.S. weapons and counterinsurgency equipment sales to Indonesia, which already was about 90 percent armed with U.S. weapons [38]. It's now known from leaked documents that the British, Australians, and Americans all were aware of the invasion plans in advance, and that they monitored its progress as it was unfolding. Of course, they only applauded [39].

"The U.S. media have real complicity in genocide in this case. Before the invasion, news coverage of East Timor had in fact been rather high in the United States, surprisingly high actually -- and the reason was that East Timor had been part of the Portuguese Empire, which was collapsing in the 1970s, and there was a lot of concern back then that the former Portuguese colonies might do what's called "moving towards Communism," meaning moving towards independence, which is not allowed. So before the invasion, there was a lot of media coverage of East Timor. After Indonesia attacked, coverage started to decline -- and then it declined very sharply. By 1978, when the atrocities reached their peak, coverage reached flat zero, literally zero in the United States and Canada, which has been another big supporter of the occupation [40].

"Around that same time, the Carter administration moved to send new supplies of armaments to Indonesia, because their army was running out of weapons in the course of the slaughter. By then they'd killed maybe a hundred thousand people [41]. The press did its job by shutting up about what was really going on -- when they did have coverage, it was just repetition of grotesque lies by the State Deparment and Indonesian generals, a complete whitewash. In fact, media coverage to this day has always completely wiped out the U.S. record: the strongest criticism you'll ever find is, 'We didn't pay enough attention to Timor,' or 'The U.S. didn't try hard enough to get Indonesia to stop its atrocities' or something like that [42]. It's kind of like saying the Soviet Union didn't try hard enough to bring freedom to Eastern Europe, or they didn't pay enough attention to it -- that was their problem.

"And remember, the U.S. role in all of this has never been a secret -- it's in fact been acknowledged very frankly. For instance, if you read the memoirs of our U.N. ambassador at the time of the invasion, Daniel Patrick Moynihan -- who's greatly praised for his defense of international law, incidentially -- he says: 'The Department of State desired that the U.N. prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success.' Okay, then he goes on to describe the effects of the invasion, which he was fully aware of: he says, in the first couple of months it seemed 'some 60,000 persons had been killed...almost the proportion of casualties experienced by the Soviet Union during the Second World War.' Alright, that's the Nazis, and that's Moynihan, the great advocate of international law [43]. And he's right, that's how it happened: the State Department wanted things to turn out as they did, and he ensured that they did. Moynihan's at least being honest, let's give him credit for it.

"Another thing that's never reported, though it's completely public and was perfectly well known at the time, is that one of the main reasons why the Western powers supported the invasion was that there's a huge offshore oil field in Timor's territorial waters, and before 1975 the Australians and the Western oil companies had been trying unsuccessfully to make a deal with Portugal to exploit it. Well, they hadn't had any luck with Portugal, and they figured an independent East Timor would be even harder to deal with -- but they knew that Indonesia would be easy: that's one of our boys, we've been running it ever since the huge massacre there in 1965 that the West applauded, when they wiped out the Communist Party and killed maybe 600,000 people [44]. So for instance, leaked diplomatic records in Australia show that right around the time of the invasion, top Australian officials said that they would do better with an Indonesian takeover, and that Indonesia should be supported [45]. Again, I have yet to see a word about any of this in the U.S. media."

Understanding Power by Noam Chomsky, pgs. 295-297.

See http://www.understandingpower.com Chapter 8 for citations listed here.

*************************************************

I apologize for being so long-winded, and applaud you if you made it through. Chomsky says this better than I ever could, and he's done the original research, not me, so I'm not going to pretend that this is my knowledge.

However, my own reading of the sources pertaining to this passage bear out the truth of his claims.

So my questions to you hawks are the following: 1) How might we appear to those in other countries who know the facts regarding our numerous interventions just like East Timor? 2) How can you really justify, if this situation and others like it are taken to be true, the concept of "them"? Aren't we "them" to other places around the world? 3) If our interests in East Timor were not really about East Timorese freedom from 1975 to 1999 (when Indonesia was forced to hold a referendum), why should we or anyone else internationally buy into our numerous rationalizations (which constantly change, by the way) for being in Iraq? 4) Do these peace-loving people (as you called them schmoop) have legitimate grievances against us or is your sarcasm fitting for these irrational savages? 5) Would others, in light of the above and other such atrocities, describe us as peace-loving?

I could ask a dozen more questions, but I won't.

I'm not saying I believe the United States is getting what they deserve. I'm not saying that murder is ever justified.

I love the United States. I just wish it would change and that its people could deal with the truth of its government's dealings.

We are not the innocents that you paint us to be. We are all guilty, and we are just continuing to play into the cycle of violence.

Those in other countries have just as much right to treat us with suspicion and violence as we do them. Schmoop, you make it seem like our enemies are the only ones who are irrational and can't be negotiated with. Do you honestly think that they don't look at us the same way? They know what we did during the first Gulf War right before the invasion. Do you? The week before the invasion, Iraq proposed to the United States a negotiated settlement involving their withdrawal from Kuwait in the context of an international conference on regional issues (like the whole Israel vs. Palestine thing). The U.S. rejected and invaded. You don't think they've forgotten that, do you?

Peace is the only option. Peace and absolutely dead-on focus in terms of securing our own country as best we can while beginning to spread and foster an atmosphere of peace, trust, and goodwill.

Or we can blow each other up.

I'm done now.

matt

[Duemellon]

Birty,
There is no way I can fit that biggas thing in my sig.

[msbirt]

Sorry. You may paraphrase ;) .

[The Mad Hater]

birty, thanks for the magnificent post.

Duemellon, I can't help but be reminded of your statements in the Columbus thread, this points right to it. you should still remember that you've handled my ass pennies, but that post up there is the hard information that I can sink my teeth into that further illustrates points that you were trying to make when I was suffering from the C2 infection. we can all help each other in sharing information, and some enlightenment will take place in the process. one of my greatest weaknesses is aquiring and absorbing information (I read something about something, but I forget where I read it and what it was about), so mooching off you bleeding heart peacenik green-ass broccoli chomping tree hugging pot smoking acid dropping birkenstock wearing liberals here on this bbs is one of the few tools I have for balance.

having said that, the American media needs to calm the fuck down. they're just as responsible for bringing social ruin about as anyone.

[Duemellon]

Originally posted by The Mad Hater
you bleeding heart peacenik green-ass broccoli chomping tree hugging pot smoking acid dropping birkenstock wearing liberals here on this bbs is one of the few tools I have for balance. heh, u'r 'net age is showing: BBS indeed.

I don't like broccoli, u baby-seal clubbin, warmongering, fanatical fundamentalist religious crusading, chauvanistic, segregationist.

[schmoop]

Matt: Please don't tell me what Noam Chomsky thinks, tell me what YOU think. Using Chomsky as a paragon for intellectual honesty is like using Vlad Lenin as a paragon for human rights.

See: http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/21/may03/chomsky.htm#

Its a long read, so here is one (of many) money quotes:
-------------------------------------------------------
Yet Chomsky’s moral perspective is completely one-sided. No matter how great the crimes of the regimes he has favored, such as China, Vietnam, and Cambodia under the communists, Chomsky has never demanded their leaders be captured and tried for war crimes. Instead, he has defended these regimes for many years to the best of his ability through the use of evidence he must have realized was selective, deceptive, and in some cases invented.

In fact, had Pol Pot ever been captured and tried in a Western court, Chomsky’s writings could have been cited as witness for the defense. Were the same to happen to Osama bin Laden, Chomsky’s moral rationalizations in his most recent book—“almost any crime, a crime in the street, a war, whatever it may be, there’s usually something behind it that has elements of legitimacy”—could be used to plead for a lighter sentence.

This kind of two-faced morality has provided a model for the world-wide protests by left-wing opponents of the American-led coalition’s war against Iraq. The left was willing to tolerate the most hideous acts of state terrorism by the Saddam Hussein regime, but was implacable in its hostility to intervention by Western democratic governments in the interests of both their own security and the emancipation of the Iraqi people. This is hypocrisy writ large.
-----------------------------------------------------

But back to YOUR thoughts.....peace is the best option. Absolutely. No question. Anybody who thirsts for war is demented, has never seen it, has played a few too many video games, or some combination of the above. It is a hideous, amoral, hellish thing. However, to lay down in the face of a clear and present danger is to invite your own destruction.

We are not innocents. But when is a badge of innocence a necessary criteria for defending oneself? More questions could also be asked.

I would characterize myself not as a "hawk", but as an extremely peaceful person. However, if you were to break into my house threatening the lives and well-being of my family, I would not meet you at the door with pleads for peace and understanding, or allow you to rape/murder one of my children as I stammer apologies for my past transgressions. The few moments inside my home would be your last moments on earth.

And who are "them"? I would not characterize them as "irrational savages" -- your words, not mine. A fitting therm I've heard used is Islamofascists -- those that want to violently take out all secular goverments of the Middle East, Spain, Portugal and Asia and replace them with a brutal fundamentalist islamist theocracy that (among other things) subjugates women and enslaves children, with the ultimate goal of bringing down Europe and the West through violence. And what is most scary is they are motivated to a large extent by religion. If you don't believe this threat exists, then you must really enjoy the view below the sandline.

Pax Romana.

[msbirt]

Schmoop,

I thought that I did tell you my thoughts. That was the point of the lengthy material I posted after the information from Chomsky. I used the information that I believe to be factual from another person who is also doing serous work as a backdrop to explain why our country's "kill 'em all" philosophy is irrational.

First, your attack on Chomsky: why should he, you, or I spend time trying to reform the governments of other places? That doesn't make any sense. Asking Chomsky or anyone else to be outraged about the behavior of Indonesia and pushing for changes there while living here is like being angry with Saddam Hussein for not pushing for serious social change in and intervention with aggressive America. It's nonsensical. You push for change in a place where you can actually have some sort of impact. What can I do about the behavior of the Chinese government unless I pick up and move to China? Not much. Am I upset with the things that the Chinese government often does to its citizens? Of course. But what makes sense for me to do is to speak up and be heard here in this country where my political pressure (combined with others who feel the same way) can make a difference.

Chomsky is not saying that other governments aren't doing bad things. They are. What he's saying is, let's stop out country from exacerbating the problem.

Secondly, last time I checked, there was no Iraqi invasion of the the U.S. homeland. How can one paint what we're doing over there as "defense"? Many would say that the Islamofascists (who are whackos, by the way) are defending themselves from the U.S./Israel united front that is constantly marginalizing the brown people in the Middle East. They certainly have more of a claim to defense than we do.

If I remember correctly, Al Qaeda was the group that brought down our buildings, not Iraq. I say, let's defend ourselves from Al Qaeda by beefing up Homeland Security (a lot more than Shrubya has), reversing policies that we are involved in with other countries that are aggressive to Islamic countries, taking a true position of neutrality in the battle between Israel and Palestine, actually working toward a real peaceful solution there as opposed to the usual dog and pony show we bring to the negotiations, and setting up a Department of Peace to begin working toward peaceful solutions to world problems instead of the colonial, interventionist, "opening of markets" stance we usually take.

This ain't about Iraqi freedom. This is about inserting some good old fashioned American control in a very unstable place so that we continue to have our hands on the resource we need to keep this big machine running.

And by the way, if they'd just come out and admit that this is what our actions are about, we could all be completely honest with ourselves about our contribution to this violence. How could I criticize them for doing what they're doing under those pretenses (war for oil)? I drive all over God's green earth to see a bunch of dolts pound on some drums and strum a guitar while screaming unintelligible lyrics. I shop at Wal Mart. I've got oil all over my hands.

But no. It's really about the freedom of the Iraqis. Yeah, that's the ticket.

matt

[Duemellon]

Birty,
We can change the policies of other countries thru peaceful means. As a country. As a citizen askin our country to. Right? We hav a say in our country? right?

Schmoop,
No one, in our country, who wants popular support or to b PC, will not b in support of war for war's sake. There r some ppl i'v run into that love war, destruction, combat, & such. These weren't overvidgamed tweens, these were ppl who were in wars.

As for ur statement that u r a peaceful man & violence/war is a last resort, Bush would say the same. I would say the same. I'm not a peace-at-all-cost kinda guy. I believe in the power of violence. I understand that if Joe is gonna kill u & can't keep Joe from killin u unless u kill him, u kill Joe. However, violence is a last resort. It's proven to be the final decider in conflict. By it's very nature it's the last resort. The question isn't whether or not it's a last resort, the question is how quickly u use this last resort.

I prefer many steps from the point of the original disagreement over the situation to the point it gets to violence. Bush, & many Hawkish folks, hav much fewer steps. But both of our processes end in the ultimate "last resort" of war/violence.

[msbirt]

Originally posted by Duemellon
Birty,
We can change the policies of other countries thru peaceful means. As a country. As a citizen askin our country to. Right? We hav a say in our country? right?



Right.

[msbirt]

Originally posted by schmoop
Matt: Please don't tell me what Noam Chomsky thinks, tell me what YOU think. Using Chomsky as a paragon for intellectual honesty is like using Vlad Lenin as a paragon for human rights.



I mentioned in the thread where I quoted Chomsky that I checked several of his sources, and came to the conclusion that I agree with his analysis. We aided the Indonesians in doing some nasty shit over there for a very long time.

Are we not supposed to work together as citizens to share information we discover? I'm just a schoolteacher in Greenville, Ohio trying to pay bills, get my fat ass in shape, hang out with my friends, keep relatively close ties to my family, keep in touch with a brother locked away in prison, learn how to play the guitar, and read as many books as I can find time to fit into my schedule. We all are like that. Chomsky is a freak in that he has decided to spend his life following around the government and detailing their misdeeds.

We don't all have time to do that to the degree that he does. If I did, I wouldn't be a schoolteacher anymore. But I want to be. Having peple like Chomsky in the movement helps others do the hard work that they don't always have time to do. I don't always agree with Chomsky. Windschuttle is quite right in a good portion of his analysis of Chomsky's work, in my opinion. But I used a portion of Chomsky that I find to be quite revealing to make an argument that we might not be the most trustworthy people to the islamists. I'm glad that his information about East Timor seems to pan out, as it is instructive about U.S. purposes in the world.

Should we check his sources? Yes. Should we open our eyes and read as much and live as much as we can so we can formulate our own opinions about the world? Yes. But we're going to have to lean on each other a little bit and choose who to trust sometimes, because the time is just not there.

I could choose to trust the corporate media (And all of them are operating on the same paradigm; ain't a lick of difference between any of them. Not a difference that matters) or I can choose to trust the independent media who are scraping by and earning pennies compared to the bigshots over at ABC, FOX, etc. When it comes down to it, I simply choose to trust my own intuition, observations, experiences, and others who I feel are like me in independent media organizations and elsewhere.

And are you saying that Chomsky was being dishonest in his information about East Timor? Where? Which parts? Have you checked him? What are your sources?

Why is it that whenever a guy like Chomsky comes forward, he has to have all of his facts straight and his sources in a row (which is a good thing), but when it comes to our mainstream, corporatized whores in the media, they get to operate on the assumption that they're telling the truth?

How is Chomsky intellectually dishonest in this particular case?

Don't provide me with a link. Tell me why YOU think Chomsky is intellectually dishonest.

matt

[DaysWithoutEnd]

There is a big difference between morality and public policy. Unfortunately, we often fail to find the balance between them.

Oh yeah, revenge solves nothing, beyaatch.

[angryj5]

so why dont all you trigger-happy fuckers who want to slaughter iraqis and so-called terrorists enlist?

[schmoop]

Matt I'm tired and I need to go to bed. I'll get back to you tomorrow, but a few quick thoughts:

Chomsky is an intellectually dishonest PERSON. If Jerry Falwell tells me the sun rose this morning (which it did, I think) I still will tell him to go pound salt -- he's nothing more than a steaming pantload whose BS redlines the ol' meter of self-indulgent hypocricy. Chomsky fits here just as well. He has a right to say whatever he wants and even if he stumbles into truth, his track record is awful and his intentions are suspect at best. I would rather step around that sewer-hole and keep walking.

You and I are in absolute complete agreement about the corporate media. Blech. Thank God for the internet. Want to know what is going on in Iraq? Don't turn on the TV. Read the many bloggers who are there, posting every day without the filter of the govt or the media.

You're a schoolteacher, eh? Props to you, you are doing the Lord's work with our yutes.

I just can't get into the whole "war for oil" nonsense now, its a pointless exercise. Suffice it to say that there is a huge disconnect among people regarding whether the actions in Iraq are part of our defense against Islamofacist terror. It makes big-picture sense to me, but many people don't see the connection. Which is fine, however I believe in 20 years the historical perspective will prove otherwise.

And now, getting back to the original point of this thread (if anyone is still reading it) I have a question....

Did anyone notice that the poor South Korean guy was pleading for his life IN ENGLISH? What's up with that? I know he was a translator, so he must have been a master of a few languages, but the guy's pleadings were (supposedly) directed to the South Korean government -- why was he not speaking Korean?? (if there is another name for the language Koreans speak, please excuse my ignorance) What's with the English? Anybody??

Merry postings to all and to all a good night.

[Duemellon]

havn't seen it, but it's possible that we showd the ones where he spoke English & they showd the ones where he spoke Korean.

Altho English is a common language taught in Korea.

[msbirt]

Originally posted by schmoop
Matt I'm tired and I need to go to bed. I'll get back to you tomorrow, but a few quick thoughts:

Chomsky is an intellectually dishonest PERSON. If Jerry Falwell tells me the sun rose this morning (which it did, I think) I still will tell him to go pound salt -- he's nothing more than a steaming pantload whose BS redlines the ol' meter of self-indulgent hypocricy. Chomsky fits here just as well. He has a right to say whatever he wants and even if he stumbles into truth, his track record is awful and his intentions are suspect at best. I would rather step around that sewer-hole and keep walking.


I haven't read enough Chomsky, or criticism of Chomsky to know what I think about this. It seems to me that it is possible that he has just been wrong about some things and that he has been skewered for being wrong about them because he's criticising large, mainstream institutions of great power. There's a difference between being intellectually dishonest and being wrong. I read the commentary you linked to by the Australian guy. He makes some interesting points, but one guy's opinion does not change my mind. I'll have to look into this some more. But I'm not ready to dismiss Chomsky as dishonest.


You and I are in absolute complete agreement about the corporate media. Blech. Thank God for the internet. Want to know what is going on in Iraq? Don't turn on the TV. Read the many bloggers who are there, posting every day without the filter of the govt or the media.

They ARE a great source for what's really going on. I read a few of those for a while, but lost the links. Got any links for me?

You're a schoolteacher, eh? Props to you, you are doing the Lord's work with our yutes.

Thanks for the props. It's a tough job, and one that I love. Talk about an institution rife with dysfunction and competing purposes. I work very hard to make my classroom a humane and interesting place.

I just can't get into the whole "war for oil" nonsense now, its a pointless exercise. Suffice it to say that there is a huge disconnect among people regarding whether the actions in Iraq are part of our defense against Islamofacist terror. It makes big-picture sense to me, but many people don't see the connection. Which is fine, however I believe in 20 years the historical perspective will prove otherwise.

How could it possibly be nonsense to look at oil as a cause for our intervention? You cannot deny that we have sometimes propped up totalitarian governments in the past that opposed popularly elected leadership because of our financial interests. And now, all of the sudden, with Shrubya, we're supposed to believe that the administration has eaten so many freedom fries that they are now purely concerned with Iraqi freedom? Oil has nothing to do with it? To dismiss it without consideration is nonsense (not saying you haven't considered it, but I can't tell from your post).

Look, if we are intervening for oil, how can I really criticize that? That was one of my points in a previous post in this thread. I consume as much oil as the next guy. If we didn't have a cheap and consistent source of oil, our economy would collapse. And quickly. Our government is charged with protecting our borders and our interests. It might make me uncomfortable, and I may feel disgusted by the whole process, but how could I be too critical? I'm part and parcel of the problem if oil is our rationale.

But they won't say that. It's about freedom. PUH-LEEZE. What about the North Koreans? No country is more fucked up than North Korea. What about the dozens of other countries that are locked into totalitarian systems full of brutality? They're not as important? Iraqis were less free? More brutalized?

Or maybe....wait.....No....................well.....Y eah, I guess...........could it have something to do with.................mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm......... ...........................Oil?

Yeah, that's it.