Believe it or not, policy is not made entirely in sound-bites on the 6 o'clock news. Anybody who read anything coming out of the think-tanks that were shaping policy saw the thinking behind the war fleshed out into something other than the pre-chewed version of foreign policy that becomes the debate. Much of it turned out to be wrong, but not for the reasons touted in political rants and much of it turned out to be right but often not for reasons the authors originally promoted. But it does disservice to the argument to say the issue was decided on what was on TV.
>>>but overall, if he touted the liberation aspect leading up to the invasion, it must have been a pretty minimal effort.
>>
>>Why, because it didn't register with you? Because you ignored it? It WAS in the media here. Most people focused on Colin Powell's briefing though and disregarded the rest.
>
>Well, I thought I was following the news reports, but if you say it was reasonably prominent in the administrations exhortations for invading Iraq then I'll take your word for it and assume it just didn't register with me. Though I'm hard pressed to figure out why that would be. Personally I think (and again, I could be wrong) that if there, it was exceedingly minor in amongst all the other rhetoric.
Charles Hankey
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin
Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
