Reply #8: Between posts on DU I have read your comments on the link, as well

[saltpoint]

as several you have posted either as contributor or OP regarding foreign affairs generally and Israeli-Palstinian affairs more specifically.

Some might accuse you of Kerry-bashing, though i have not done so tonight. You will concede, I hope, that you are likely to encounter supporters of Senator Kerry, and I count myself among them, some of whose loyalty to his career predates Nixon's resignation. The components of said loyalty are not casual accoutrements of doe-eyed optimists, but the earned dominion of genuine citizenship.

The piece in the TIMES on Wednesday morning was sadly abbreviated by space concerns, but otherwise well-enough developed to bring pressure to bear on Coalition involvement (or skullduggery) in the once-sovereign and now chaotic country of Iraq. Alexander never dreamed, I'm sure, that his capital would collapse into piles of smoking rubble at the hands of a fool like Donald Rumsfeld. Yet there it is. Kerry's piece laid out a clear plan, something the Bush administration has never had and apparently has not felt the need to develop. After all, it is not in the U.S.'s best interest to leave Iraq. In Afghanistan, Kharzai is there not because he is much-loved among tribal warloards (many of whom hate his guts) but, as you know, because he was a former mover and shaker at a major western oil company. The oil pipeline would not coincidentally run right through Afghanistan on its way to port in the Indian Ocean. A call for any exit at all aligns Kerry and any of his supporters against a powerful cabal of murky conspirators pretty high up on the power scale. The piece was brainy and ballsy both.

If Bush wanted out of Iraq, he'd manufacture a scenario so fast it would make our heads spin. Powerful forces wanted that oil and were willing to slaughter West Virginian and Ohioan kids to get it. Abu Ghraib isn't the first locus of political torture in history but it's embarrassingly one of the latest, and Kerry's remarks about the kind of sick fuck who would operate such a place are clear and absolute. Implicit in his piece this morning was 'strategy,' also something sorely lacking from Bush's foreign policy, and which would be an imperative under the deadline/exit proposal Kerry posited in the TIMES piece.

And on and on. I honor you your range, occuserpens, but with no summary material on that post, there just wasn't a damn thing to respond to. You like to use links, often 2 URLs in your posts, I see that, but Jesus man, we're on THIS board, not those other boards. Summarize a point and put it up for discussion. There are a lot of people on DU who will honor your scope and range, whether they agree with you or not.