The overwhelming majority of the majority party, and a minority of the minority party, such as Maine's Michael Michaud in the 109th Congress, believe as a matter of religious dogma that "life begins at conception". They don't even wait for the zygote to attach to the uterine wall. Have a period, go to jail is the recent Virginia expression of this wisdom, for non-celibate women.
The majority of the 7th Majlis believe that "life begins at quickening", and have just approved a conditional abortion bill for circumstances where the fetus is damaged or the life of the mother is endangered by pregnancy. This removes liability for three to ten years imprisonment for the woman and any person assisting in the expulsion of a fetus, and a fine for the judicial value of a wrongfully taken human life.
When the overwhelming majority of the majority party, and a minority of the minority party, vote to commit the United States to a war against Iran, it won't be to secure Iranian oil and gas for the US, though they may believe that. It won't be to end the non-existant dangers of a non-existant nuclear weapons program, which even when such a program assumed to be existant is hysterically miniscule compared to the "loose Soviet nukes" problem, though they may believe that too.
No, when the overwhelming majority of the majority party, and a minority of the minority party, vote to commit the United States to a war against Iran, it will be to secure democracy and human rights, and they will believe that.
If the Republican legislative leadership woke up some morning, and by some miracle, they woke up in Tehran, they would be more anti-woman than the legislative leadership of, and the majority of the 7th Majlis. And they'd work to overthrow democracy and re-criminalize abortion under any circumstances.
I tried explaining this to the guy who runs the Network Information Center for Iran, we were both doing maths at Berkeley during the 70's. He just couldn't believe that our leadership was more God-Damned than his was.
Of course, under it all, the overwhelming majority of the majority party, and a minority of the minority party, will vote to commit the United States to control the access of East and South Asia to West Asian fossil carbons, though they will not believe that.
Posted by EBW at April 14, 2005 06:46 AM | TrackBackInteresting how our SecDef was not so enthused yesterday about Afghan call for US security pact. It appears tha all we want is overflight and base use, not actual troop commitment...
Posted by: Peatey at April 14, 2005 10:28 AM