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That was a war that was fought to protect ourselves from an attack upon us. In other words we were defending ourselves. There is a difference. The laws in the United States show this. A person that uses a weapon to wantonly go out and kill a victim is guilty of murder.

A person that defends himself against this type of individual and kills the intruder is excused as self-defense. This example has evolved through centuries of Christian history and is declared a natural law. This natural law was applied as a reason for attacking Iraq. The excuse was given that we had to act immediately because there was an immediate attack pending. Similar to the robber standing outside your door with a gun in his hand.

Now you have the right to blow him away with any type weapon you have. Unfortunately, for you, it is discovered that the person did not have a gun, that he was trying to get assistance for an auto accident that happened down the road. You reply that you THOUGHT he had a gun. This places you in the position of being very foolish and reckless at the least and probably headed for the slammer. As you keep protesting; "I thought he had a gun", you look very foolish and even accused of being a nut.

WW II, the man standing outside the door DID have a gun as Pearl Harbor showed. You DID have the right to defend yourself, which we did. We did not attack the man standing next to him, in this case, Germany and Italy, until they declared war upon us and declared their axis with the original killer. There is a big difference between WW II and Iraq as I have tried to show.

I do not expect to convince the neighbors that "I thought he had a gun" as an excuse. They will keep pretending that he is a paranoid nut that made a terrible mistake. Now to Iraq. Sadaam was a brutal dictator that abused his own people and people in surrounding countries. We see the same conditions in Cuba, Haiti, Somalia, North Korea, Colombia, and scores of other countries.

The first obstacle we face in eliminating all injustices in the world is that we do not have the resources to eliminate them all. The second obstacle is the fact that we do not have the authority to do this. The third obstacle that we face is the inability to defend ourselves militarily and economically. Someone has to pay the bills, and someone has to furnish the manpower for the armed forces. We need a genuis to figure this out over a prolonged period of time. We also need to figure out how to defend our borders, ports, and airports, for defense of America is the FIRST priority for being a nation.

Then, after all this is solved, we have to put a risk benefit ratio together to determine whether our intervention in different countries is causing more or less harm to the position we are taking. We have to ask ourselves if the deaths associated with our actions are greater or less than the original government we wish to topple. Most of all, we have to determine that the area will be more peaceful when we leave, because we cannot occupy the world. Our record has not been good. One only need to look at the conditions in Somalia, Kosovo, Haiti, Africa where we have been involved and answer the question: "Are these nations better off and more peaceful than when we came"?

I know these opinions of mine are foreign to the nuke 'em, blow 'em up crowd that enjoy this type of behavior, but they will determine the long range future of America. Do we move forward as an example of independence and peaceful intentions or do we go forward in the traditions of other empires that exhausted themselves in the ever increasing drive to dominate as much of the world as possible before collapsing. History does not treat this scenario kindly either.

I do not think we are trying to eliminate all evil in the world, just those who have threaten the safety of the citizens of the US. It's not too excessive is it?

Those who aid and harbor our enemies, have made themselves our enemies as well. Therefore we overthrew the Taliban gov't in Afghanistan. We overthrew the Saddam dictatorship in Iraq because...must we count the reasons? On top of violations of their Treaty of Surrender, and numerous UN resolutions, all over long periods of time, finally they would not come clean about their WMD programs.

Just because we cannot remove all evil in the world doesn't mean we shouldn't do what we can.

I think we go forward as an "example of independence and peaceful intentions", which are demonstrated by our turning dangerous dictatorships to democracies, rather than turning them into subjugated provinces of the US.

The situation facing the United States in 2003 was similar to that of Great Britain and France in the 1930's when Hitler was beginning to militarize the Rhineland and breaking the Versailles Treaty. From my earliest days I was told that had France, in particular, moved against Hitler at that time WWII would have been avoided. Yet on paper the German army at that time faced no significant threat to the Western Allies. They waited until the threat was imminent, and their country was overrun.

Bush, on the other hand, clearly stated "some say we must wait until the threat is imminent" but he argued that doing so would be a mistake. He never said the threat was indeed imminent. The fact that Saddam's WMD programs were unaccounted for did not in itself mean that he had WMD, but the refusal to comply with the terms of UN inspectors, coupled with his history of WMD made it an unacceptable risk, whether or not he actually had them. After 9/11 this should be obvious.