"Blueskies" wrote:

I indeed have compassion for those who were murdered in the twin towers. The attack on Iraq is in no way associated with
that horrible attack.

There are always those who will prefer to wait and see what happens.
Hope for the best and all that nonsense. I for one am glad we took
out the regime in Iraq. Not doing so would have been a tragic
mistake. Imagine for just a moment the uproar the Bush bashers would
make had we not gone into Iraq and had then been attacked with WMD
that were determined to have come from Iraq!

I totally supported dubya in the Afghanistan offensive and I still do, but then he went into some
sort of all powerful flip and diverted those resources into Iraq. We almost had full UN support to go into Iraq with the
full support of the world, but he jumped the gun so to speak and I don't think it was right.

Did you happen to forget that the French proclaimed that they would
use their UN Security Council veto against ANY use of force in Iraq?
They weren't going to come off that position (nor were Germany and
Russia) until Saddam quit lining their pockets (and he had plenty of
money at his disposal thanks to the UN). Sad that you still believe
in such a corrupt system.

We are paying the
consequences of that decision with still more human lives.

We liberatied 25 million Iraqis , Iraq is well on the way to a
democratic government, and the region is now receiving newscasts from
sources other than the propaganda of Al Jezeera and the like. A
despotic dictator and his thugs are out of power, and a hospitable
haven for terrorists is gone forever.

But you didn't mention any of that. If the democracy in Iraq holds
the payback will be huge. At the very least, the US is respected by
her enemies again (and I'd rather the US was respected than "liked").

Lincoln said it best; "You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you
cannot fool all of the people all of the time."

Guess you're in the "some of the people all of the time" camp.

The horror of the attack on the twin towers will be with us for the rest of our lives. The civilized world needs to
teach the less 'enlightened' parts of the world what good looks like. The problem is the perception that we are
conquerors on a crusade. We need to change that perception...

When in the history of warfare has the civilian casualty rate ever
been so low (considerably lower than during Saddam's reign)? And when
has "being good" paid off when dealing with terrorists? We took
almost no action against the previous half dozen attacks on US
interests without doing squat. Look how we got "rewarded" on 9/11.

For a history lesson, read up on Neville Chamberlain and Winston
Churchill. I'll take a Churchill every time.

Mark Hickey