[prairiebreeze]

Richard, I've read many, not all, of your replies on this thread. I understand you think the war was without merit even though people aren't being made to sit on broken bottles until they fill with blood anymore and the iron maidens have been pulled from service. Ok, I guess that's your cross to bear.

But I wonder if you are glad at all about how the war has brought out in the light the corruptness of instutions like the UN, governments like France and politicians like Galloway (and others who will be exposed with time)?? Is that a good thing to you or would you prefer to still have those people (criminals)running full tilt while the world was ignorant of their treachery? Is it a good thing that America has seen it clearly demonstrated who her true friends are??

Prairie

[arete]

I'm glad to see at least a tempered reply to my point of view. You are on the "liberation" track and see the war as a humanitarian work. Well, that works, I guess as long as democracy can take hold and law and order work for the people of Iraq. Of course that begs the question of why we chose the Iraqi people to liberate and not the N. Koreans or the Cubans of a whole host of other oppressed peoples. Africa is a complete mess and at any given time hundreds and sometimes thousands of innocent people are killed over political rivalries or by dicatorial leaders.

My point is and remains that this war was "sold" with all the PR hype and misinformation that the administration could come up with. Just wars don't need to be sold and hyped. The public would intuitively know it without all the fabricated "intelligence" reports and all the other nonsense that went into building support that went into this "mission".

I was all for going after the terrorists in Afganistan as, to me at least, the case for doing so was perfectly clear. Not so with Iraq. All the vague "terrorist links" and "secret chem labs" and "mystery ships" and "nuke development" information put out by the administration never did have an honest ring to it. Then there was all the diplomatic fumbling and bumbling and the "buying" of "willing" friends like Turkey. GW went from calling for regeme change, to disarming, to terrorist threat to liberation of the people, and then back again hoping that one of the excuses would stick with the public. I thought that alone was very confusing and smelled of dishonestly about the purposes for war and the real motivation for putting our sons and daughters in harms way. The administration never did convince me.

Maybe part of my problem with all this is that I took GW at his word about not getting into "nation building" and I have a real problem with the Dept. of Homeland Security and the Patriot Acts which naturally rub my convervative nature the wrong way. I trusted GW when I voted for him and now I don't. It ought to be interesting to see how this all works out over the coming weeks and months.

Richard W.