[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.

[tuckrdout]

Mr. "virtue" (meaning of arete in greek)

I took Bush at his word when he said he did not believe in nation building either. And we don't want to. I don't want to scale and clean the guts out of a fish after I catch it either, but it must be done before I can enjoy it. Mr. Bush is doing what had to be done after 9-11. It was the right thing to do.

I have a hard time taking you at your word, with your tag line. Kinda disqualifies you as a Bush supporter, imho.

[prairiebreeze]

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.

Many reasons I believe. WMD for one, (Yes I believe it's there), but also to facilitate our removal of troops from Saudi Arabia. Iraq's neighbors are delighted to see Hussein gone. You and I have no idea about the benefits behind the scenes to that aspect. And as far as North Korea, since China will be key in however that plays out, we are still in the diplomatic stages with them. Iraq squandered it's diplomatic opportunity, with the help of the French, Germans and Russians of course. You didn't answer my question about whether it's a good thing that we learned of the Euro/Russian treachery and UN corruptness out of all this. Prairie