Americentric

I think there is a huge misconception that needs to be addressed. Everyone thinks that Iraq had WMDs and posed a threat to the USA. This was false of course. What we've learned recently is that when Saddam was interrogated he said he didn't have the resources to make WMDs but he wanted the world to think he had them, which is why he kept out weapons inspectors. Why would he do this? Iran is Iraq's biggest enemy, remember who was fighting whom in the 1980s. Saddam claimed he wanted to keep Iran at bay, to keep them from attacking for revenge from the last war.

But America thinks everything is about us. We think Saddam wanted WMDs to use on us. Why? Why would he want to attack the strongest country in the world when he was crippled? Doesn't make sense.

Turning to Iran, I heard someone say that if we didn't go to Iraq that Iraq and Iran would have worked together on a bomb to attack us. WTF? These two countries are mortal enemies. Hell, don't they realize that our biggest problems in Iraq are from Iranians stirring up trouble in that State? Why would they work together when they hate each other? Because we think everything is about us. Iran canceled their weapons program in 2003, when Saddam was no longer a threat. They were preparing for Saddam again. Remember, Saddam used WMDs (we provided mind you) against Iran in the '80s.

But somehow everything is about us, and that's why we've been making a huge stink out of it. I keep hearing people say, "With Iran's history of kidnapping Americans." Again, WTF? One time, and only as a bargaining chip to bring back the dictator we supported so they could bring him to justice. We were protecting him.

We need to get over our ego. I remember a friend I met in Poland who was an Englishman living in Scotland. He said when he thinks of the US he is sad. He says he can't judge because Britain was the Empire and now we are. His nation has been what we are, so it would be hypocritical to judge us. He says we'll learn sometime and be humbled. Every evil person in the world isn't out to get the USA.

America is anti-christ

Because the Church in America has been politicized and within the Church nationalism and Christianity are synonymous, the rest of the world sees our military action in their land as our attempt to Christianize them.

The Crusades are alive and well in the Middle East. I saw a sign a Palestinian protester was holding when Bush was in Israel that said, "150 million evangelicals want salvation." The Bush doctrine of "exporting democracy" is seen as an attempt to convert the Muslims.

Maybe some of the blame can be put at the feet of Ann Coulter who said we should invade them and convert them to Christianity and the ultra-conservatives continue this BS.

Loaded language

I keep running into this and it's bugging me. Everyone keeps using language like this, but it doesn't make any sense.

"Our troops are doing a great job defending our country."

How do you argue with that? They're not aggressive, they're not invading or occupying, they're defending our country, they're on the defense, they're being attacked.

But what's the reality? When was the last time our country was actually defended by our soldiers? World War II when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor was when it started, and Japan invaded Alaska. Japan was attacking us, and we defended against them successfully. Since then we have never been attacked by another nation. Our military action in Columbia isn't defending our nation. Our military action in Afghanistan isn't defending our country.

We were attacked on 9/11. I guess you can say we're defending against Al Qaeda now. But lets be clear, Iraq has nothing to do with this. No Iraqis were involved with 9/11. Al Qaeda wasn't in Iraq until we invaded that country.

I'm not actually sure if we're defending against Al Qaeda much actually, it seems like we're using the Marshall's job of rounding up bad guys to bring them to justice. We're also trying to stabilize regions in Persia which breed terrorists, but we don't use that terminology about our police forces. We don't say Marshalls or Detectives are "defending" the city when they track down a criminal. We don't say our police services are "defending" our cities when their presence deters crime.

I wouldn't say they're "defending" our nation, I would say they are "serving" the nation. I'm not sure whose interests they're always serving, mostly it seems like corporations' interests.

Now that I think of it, when corporations and governments merge like we see here, that's actually the definition of fascism.