YouTube will bring real democracy, bring down tyrants, clean up politics, defeat evil corporations..

Consider these two examples:

VP Cheney in 1994: says that invading Iraq would create a quagmire in this video on YouTube.






Transcript:

> Do you think US or UN forces should have moved into Baghdad?

No.

> Why not?

Because, if we had been to Baghdad we'd have been all alone... it would have been a US occupation of Iraq... Once you got to Iraq, took it over, took down Saddam Hussein's government, what are you going to put in its place? That's a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government, you can easily see pieces of Iraq fly off - a part of eastern Iraq, the Iranians would like to claim... in the north you've got the Kurds; if the Kurds break loose and join the Kurds of Turkey, then you've threatened the territorial integrity of Turkey; it's a quagmire if you go that far... how many dead Americans was Saddam worth? the answer was not very many, and I think we got it right.


Al Gore criticizes President Bush Sr. for being soft on Saddam, and claims Saddam had WMDs in this 1992 video.






Summary: There is ample evidence (from CIA, defense dpt., commerce dept. etc.) that Iraq has been deeply involved in developing/procuring WMDs (nuclear, chemical and biological), that Iraq has been supporting terrorism. Bush ignored all this, mis-led the American people, and was hell-bent on pursuing a policy of helping Saddam's regime financially... The "theory" that Iraq's behavior could be modified by just economic sanctions is highly flawed. That wouldn't work anyway because Bush has consistently looked the other way when Saddam has been engaging in all this atrocious behavior.

Now, depending on your level of cynicism or naivete, you might be shocked or say "yeah, politicians are hypocrites. what's the news in that?".

What got me a bit excited, however, is the very fact that we can see these clips now, with very little effort or cost. Thanks to the internet, it's now possible for a motivated individual to dig up such then-vs-now pieces and share with thousands for almost no cost. Sure this medium can be exploited and manipulated by the powerful, can be used for propaganda, etc. The net effect will still be that it'll be possible for the small guy to poke his finger in the big bad guy's face. Is that great for democracy or what?!

I was half kidding about bringing down tyrants and defeating evil corporations, but only half kidding!