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He supported the Iraq war on the “realist" grounds of the strategic threat the Saddam regime posed to the region as UN sanctions were eroding and of his weapons of mass destruction; and on the "idealist" grounds that a self-sustaining democracy in Iraq would be a first step towards changing the poisonous political culture of tyranny, intolerance and religious fanaticism in the Arab world that had incubated the anti-American extremism from which 9/11 emerged.
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In late 2006 and 2007, he was one of the few commentators to support the surge in Iraq.
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Krauthammer is generally considered a conservative;<23> he has also been called a neoconservative.
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In a 2005 speech (later published in Commentary Magazine) he called neoconservatism “a governing ideology whose time has come." He noted that the original "fathers of neoconservatism" were “former liberals or leftists”. More recently, they have been joined by "realists, newly mugged by reality," such as Condoleezza Rice, Richard Cheney, and George W. Bush, who "have given weight to neoconservatism, making it more diverse and, given the newcomers’ past experience, more mature."
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According to Hendrik Herzberg, a former colleague of Krauthammer's at The New Republic during the 1980s, his views have changed significantly over time - Herzberg describes his views when the two first met in 1978 as '70 per cent Mondale liberal, 30 per cent “Scoop Jackson Democrat,” i.e., hard-line on Israel and relations with the Soviet Union', whilst characterising his politics in the mid-80s as '50-50: still fairly liberal on economic and social questions but a full-bore foreign-policy neoconservative'. Herzberg currently considers Krauthammer to be 'a pretty solid 90-10 Republican'.
-- The liberal media watchdog group, FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting), criticized Krauthammer, along with political analyst William Kristol, for their profuse praise of George W. Bush's second inaugural address on January 20, 2005. On FOX News, Krauthammer called the speech "revolutionary" in its advocacy of universal freedom and compared Bush to former U.S. President John F. Kennedy whose inaugural address expansively pledged that "we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
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In a December 5, 2005 in the Weekly Standard,<61> Krauthammer argues that any ban of torture must entail at least two exceptions. He claims that in both the situation of imminent danger (“ticking time bomb scenario”) or if it is believed that torture can procure life-saving information in the case of a high-level terrorist deeply involved in the planning of future attacks. He has repeated these assertions in The Washington Post and other publications where his work is syndicated.
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Yep, nothing warms like the heart like someone on DU defending a torture apologist neocon! :applause:
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