[api]

Classier than starting a war for no discernible rational reason.

Edit: just to make my position clear: this goes beyond Democrat/Republican ideologies or politics and into the realm of criminality. This is in a wholly different league from the Mozilla CEO gay rights controversy.

Condoleeza Rice and the rest of the Bush administration cynically exploited 9/11 to launch a completely unrelated war for no discernible reason other than to enrich their pals in the defense contracting industry and perhaps to pursue some crackpot political theories that were never publicly disclosed or discussed.

These people lied us into a war, and every indication seems to be that they did so intentionally. They committed fraud at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer money and (conservatively) tens of thousands of innocent human lives. They are white collar criminals with blood on their hands and belong in prison.

Am I wrong? They've had ample time to explain themselves and have failed to do so. I think it's because they can't. Anyone want to link to a rational and defensible explanation for the Iraq war that does not reference crackpot baloney from a right-wing rag like Pajamas Media or Fox News? (Just so you know this isn't totally partisan... I'd say the same thing if a similar thing were done based on information from AlterNet or TruthOut or some other lefty rag. By rag I mean 'clearly biased to the point of being untrustworthy news source.')

What would you think if Dropbox had recruited -- say -- a Bernie Madoff type who happened to "get off" on a technicality for running a Ponzi scheme? What Bernie did did not (directly) kill anyone.

I'm very curious to see how the stock of a company that recruits crooks to their board does on the open market.

[acjohnson55]

No need to debase yourself to make that point. Referring to her as a "bitch" does nothing to make your point more valid. I have deep distaste for Clarence Thomas, but I'd never refer to him by the n-word. Your elaboration here is far more interesting and appropriate than the original comment.

[api]

Normally I'd agree. I just think this issue is kind of way out in a class by itself, outside the bounds of ordinary disagreement.

Sarah Palin is someone I pretty much disagree with on almost everything, but I would not use such language to refer to her and I would not advocate boycotting a company for appointing her to their board. I might roll my eyes or scratch my head but that's about it.

[gurkendoktor]

> Just so you know this isn't totally partisan

I've never even been to America, and I know fellow hackers who have also cancelled their Dropbox account over this. The Iraq war and American surveillance are not partisan topics. I'll be advising against Dropbox (and their new acquisitions) wherever I have the chance/influence.

[api]

Iraq is far worse than mass surveillance, though the latter is definitely a problem. At least in the case of surveillance the supporters have made something like a rational case for why they think it's needed, and the topic is being debated as it should be. It also usually doesn't involve killing people, and the cost is far lower.

I'm honestly not familiar with anything in recent American history as flagrant as the Iraq fraud. Even Vietnam made sense from a certain point of view and its supporters made their case and it was debated. It ended up being a bad idea, but it was technically a lot more democratic and less fraudulent. Some of its supporters have even admitted they were wrong.

My darkest suspicion about Iraq is that the reasons are either too corrupt or insane to even discuss... either flat-out premeditated fraud or something in complete fruitcake territory like trying to initiate the millennial Christian eschaton. The fact that nobody has even tried to make a coherent well-articulated case that doesn't insult my intelligence makes me wonder.

[dang]

This is off-topic and flamewar bait. Please stop.

[DenisM]

Politicians aren't the source of power, they are conduits of power. Rice happened to be a very good conduit.

[aridiculous]

May I ask what/who you think is the source then?

[DenisM]

In the anarchic world the power originates at the muzzle of a gun, which in turn roughly corresponds with the economic power. However, this arrangement has high costs of conflict resolution, so in the post-anarchy world violence is ceded by society to be the monopoly of the state, and politicians are set to be conduits of the economic power towards the power of the state. Where politicians don't do their job, economic power goes out whack with political power resulting into a violent upheaval.

Therefore in modern society power lies with economic actors - people, capital, or any other entity that has economic impact and can be modeled as pursuing its own interests (self-preservation and some expansion).

A stable society would represent the interests of the people and the interests of the capital in proportion to their economic influence. Some actors will usually try to usurp the power at the expense of less diligent and/or less organized actors.

A great deal of the usurpation is based on demoralizing the opponent - if your opponent believes fighting for representation if power structures is pointless, you will have more power for yourself.

[camus2]

the private corporations their party are financed by.

Cheney used to be the CEO of Halliburton, And strangely the Ben Laden family were investor in the Carlyle group: https://www.google.fr/search?q=bin+laden+family+investors, as were former CIA operatives ,the Ben Laden family are bankers.

Not even going into who The Bush family friends are,but a lot of answers and explanations can be found in the "Kingdom", Saudi Arabia.

EDIT :i'm not a conspiracy theorist, yet when you just follow the money, things get really really strange. But it did not start with Bush 2, Clinton was highly corrupted with Saudi money too.