And of course you can stay up to date on the news from various perspectives:

See that’s the thing with Chomsky, I love him and I despise him. He’s clearly very well read and research. He clearly has great intellectual horsepower. Yet, he makes the most ludicrous and easily defeated arguments. And extremely naive ones to boot! Still, he holds very true to his word. His website has an enormous amount of material, including pieces that are very critical of him. He has a history of supporting free thought (including holocaust denial). He is probably the best example of a proponent of academic freedom that has ever existed and for that I am extraordinarily grateful. But the simple fact of the matter is that he’s never run a hamburger stand, let alone a nation or a newspaper. The guy is simply watching things from the bleachers and trying to tell us what the play-book is and game plan is. He’s a commentator without a foundation in what it actually takes to execute anything. Granted he could never get elected to office, but his views are permanently skewed because he is perhaps the most biased observer there has ever been. He wears his ideology on his sleeve and much like other social critics, I think of the Marxists here, he spends half his time searching for what isn’t there and the other half ignoring what is. You want know what his world view is like? You ever see one of those pictures that is totally and completely blotched out in red, but when you place the red sheet over top of it you discover an underlying picture in grey? That is exactly what Chomsky’s views are. The world is full of “red” but Chomsky’s “red sheet” eliminates all the red to reveal a fully formed “picture” beneath. The problem is that in the real world, the red is part of the picture. What he reveals is his preconceived ideology. It’s quite the same as how Bush went about Iraq, oddly enough.

I have to rethink my earlier analogy of the football game. The problem is that in a football game you can see all the plays that are happening on the field. When running a nation, much happens behind closed doors and no one, other than the people in the room, really know what is happening behind those doors.

It is with all of this context that I watched the following video…

Chomsky on Iraq and Iran

There are many great points that Chomsky has. For one, Iraqi opinion should be weighed. Secondly, as Colin Powell said to Bush, “you break it, you own it.” However, to claim that the US is fully responsible for the sectarian violence is utterly absurd. The reason that such sectarian violence wasn’t happening under Saddam is because he was a brutal, murderous dictator. The US, by any real comparison, is not a murderous regime. Compare it apples to apples. Are there atrocities that the US has committed? Of course! But we don’t have a torture chamber anything the likes of Saddam Hussein. We also don’t have mass graves, because we don’t do mass killings (and a stray bomb is not the same as rounding people up and massacring them). But Chomsky doesn’t have time for those facts.

All I ask is that people take some independent studies and review them with Chomsky in mind. A look at the study from the BBC and ABC shows that while Iraqis do want the US out, they do not want the US out now. However, it is certainly very clear that the US has not lived up to its claims that everything in Iraq will be better. Five years later, the situation is worse than it was under Saddam Hussein.

Here are a few quick poll results released in March 2008:

Q12c [ASK IF Security Situation has “become worse” in Q11] Who do you feel deserves the most blame for this worsened security?

US forces operations 20
Militias 13
Al Qaeda 9
Neighbouring countries 6
Politicians/political groups 11
Iraqi Government 9
Parties and their militias 18
Other 14

Q22 How long do you think US and other Coalition forces should remain in Iraq? Should they leave now, remain until security is restored, remain until the Iraqi government is stronger, remain until Iraqi security forces can operate independently, remain longer but leave eventually, or never leave?

62% say US troops should remain longer
Only 38% say US troops should leave immediately.

Q34 For each item I name, please tell me if you think the United States should or should not
have a future role in that area:

Providing training and weapons to the Iraqi army

Should 76
Should not 23
Refused/don’t know 1

Providing financial aid for reconstruction within Iraq

Should 73
Should not 26
Refused/don’t know -

Assisting in the security of Iraq in terms of Iran

Should 68
Should not 31
Refused/don’t know -

Assisting in the security of Iraq in terms of Turkey

Should 66
Should not 34
Refused/don’t know -

Participating in security operations against al Qaeda or foreign jihadis in Iraq

Should 80
Should not 19
Refused/don’t know 1

Other stats are outright damning!

Q9. I would like to ask you about today’s conditions in the village/neighbourhood where you live. Would you rate (insert item here) as very good, quite good, quite bad, or very bad?

The security situation

Very good 20
Quite good 42
Quite bad 27
Very bad 12
Refused/don’t know -

The availability of jobs

Very good 7
Quite good 22
Quite bad 35
Very bad 35
Refused/don’t know 1

The supply of electricity

Very good 1
Quite good 11
Quite bad 43
Very bad 45
Refused/don’t know -

So by Chomsky’s very own standard, the US should stay in Iraq longer, because that is what the people of Iraq want, even though they also blame the US for many of their problem. Chomsky isn’t completely wrong, but he has a very clear and biased agenda. Surely, given the opportunity, he would spin the stats to fit his views.

There’s one more thing. Chomsky wants to claim that the US is not a proper democracy that makes decisions dependent upon the whim and will of a wind blown populace, but he doesn’t want to recognize a very clear fact. The US population supported the war with a majority opinion. I knew this graph would come in handy when I saved it from the BBC website. Check it out. Opinion has changed, but policy cannot be based solely on opinion, because the populace has no ultimate responsibility to the actions or inactions of the nation.  That is why we live in a Republic and not a Democracy.  Can you imagine if we did live in a Democracy?  We would have an utter calamity on our hands when people voted for things.  “Yes, I want National Health Care AND Free College, but I don’t want my taxes raised.”  We be bankrupt, but we’d have free health care…  of yeah, like Cuba, except without the political dissidents in prison.