Here’s an interesting essay by Richard Daniel Ewing, a “non-resident fellow” at the Nixon Center, about more “real reasons” the NeoCons decided to invade Iraq.

Bush’s foreign-policy team is a bold group. They do not see history in terms of news cycles or election intervals. These grand strategists view the world in century-long sweeps. … So what did they see on September 11, 2001? As New York’s World Trade Center burned, this group saw two new terrifying trends coming together with devastating results. First, they saw a deadly new terrorist enemy and a greater Middle East festering with anti-Americanism. But we all saw this. [ Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul ] Wolfowitz, however, saw this trend arcing decades into the future. To him, the Persian Gulf was becoming more dangerous and increasingly unstable. Next, Wolfowitz saw the inevitable spread of weapons of mass destruction. In 1950, only the US and the Soviet Union had atomic bombs. By 2000, poverty-stricken Pakistan and autarkic North Korea had acquired nuclear capabilities. With the threshold clearly dropping, what’s to stop Micronesia or Sudan from getting the bomb in 2050? Only lack of effort.

All in all this sounds like a good starting point for a discussion on preemptive action on the part of the US, and R.D. almost hits the right points at the end of the essay. This planning and it’s presumed execution ignores the will of the general public. The reasons for invading Iraq were never presented as they are here, and the American public never agreed to put their tax dollars and literal lives on the line for the Neo Con’s prognostications as to geopolitics. We agreed to fight terrorism directly, not to reshape the middle east in our image based on the theories of a handful of intellectuals pulling strings behind the scenes.

Cheney adds eBay sellers to the list of employed at a speech in Cincinatti. Edwards calls him out of touch and says he should start including bake sales and lemonade stands. Cute come-back, but he should also mention the number of people (including yours truly) who are listed in the “employed” category but use eBay as supplemental income.