Three years have passed since most Americans came to the conclusion that the Iraq war was a "mistake." Reporting the results of a Gallup poll in June 2004, USA Today declared: "It is the first time since Vietnam that a majority of Americans has called a major deployment of US forces a mistake." And public opinion continued to move in an antiwar direction. But such trends easily coexist with a war effort becoming even more horrific.
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Faith that American might makes right is apt to be especially devout among those who command the world's most powerful military - and have the option of trying to overcome wartime obstacles by unleashing even more lethal violence.

These days, there's a lot of talk about seeking a political solution in Iraq - but the Bush administration and the military leaders who answer to the commander in chief are fundamentally engaged in a very different sort of project. Looking ahead, from the White House, the key goal is to seem to be winding down the U.S. war effort while actually reconfiguring massive violence to make it more effective.
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Meanwhile, the Iraqis killed by Americans don't become much of an issue in the realms of US media and politics. News coverage provides the latest tallies of Iraqis who die from "sectarian violence" and "terrorist attacks," but the reportage rarely discusses how the US occupation has been an ascending catalyst for that carnage. It's even more rare for the coverage to focus on the magnitude of Iraqi deaths that are direct results of American firepower.

BTD spent the first few minutes discussing how he views politicians.

"The do whatever they can get away with."

Basically, politicians might have personal convictions but ultimately what they say and how they vote is determined not primarily by those convictions but primarily by pressures placed on them by the usual cast of characters in american politics.  the base.  independents.  moderates.  special interest groups.  etc. etc.

and i don't know.  maybe that's true of some politicians.  i think maybe joe biden's convictions might run counter to some of the things that are in the bankruptcy bill, but there you have all those credit card companies employing thousands of people in delaware.  

but i do think, in the case of someone i keep bringing up, jim webb, this view of politicians becomes less applicable.

if it really came down to a choice between doing something that he honestly thought would be bad for his son and getting defeated in the next election, i would think the headache of american politics wouldn't be worth it to him.

furthermore, while i'm sure i will be called naive for saying this, if it was proven that politicians only do what they think they can get away with, then i would want a different kind of politician altogether.

decisions are of course important, and they should not be made based on political pressures.  i don't want politicians making decisions because their phones were flooded with 50,000 phone calls of irate voters who promised to work the phones for them ever again during election season.

to use an example, i don't think a politician should support a cap on carbon emissions because they would pay a political price for not doing so.  i think they should support a cap on carbon emissions because the science dictates that our planet can not survive at the current rate.