"The Iraqi's need to pay us back for their liberation, every single solitary penny ... I think they owe us a lot for that."
Well, Paul Wolfowitz did say that the war would pay for itself and then the Middle East birth pangs would turn into a Jeffersonian democracy in his pants. Or something. But I'm not sure even he thought that the Iraqis should be required to "pay back every single solitary penny" for their liberation. It was more of wink-wink that the cheap oil would make it all worthwhile.
As Neiwert points out, there's also that little matter of the hundreds of thousands of dead people to account for. We "liberated" an awful lot of people from their lives and I doubt there's a whole lot of gratitude for that.
Speaking of "over there" here's Seymour Hersh (via Michael Moore)
You never know with post-Vietnam Democrats whether or not they are true believers or whether they just don't have the juice or the desire to fight the military industrial complex. The result is the same either way, which is the perpetuation of same military industrial complex. And so it goes.
Unfortunately, this isn't the cold war in which there was a consensus for containment among the policy elites. The only consensus now seems to be to wet our collective pants at the slightest threat, start killing some random people and tear off another piece of the constitution. (And then do it all over again when Dick Cheney emerges from his coffin at sundown and snarls some criticism to Politico.)
I'm thinking this may be the right time for a president to challenge this system. In fact, I thought that even with all the inspirational vagueness of the 2008 election, this would be the one policy area in which the Democrats would make a fairly sharp turn. So far, it doesn't look like that's going to happen.