The flag in the background is almost identical to the one that flew every day of Saddam's tenure as Iraq's despot. You'd think that such a flag would be burned and pissed on and buried never to be seen again. It wasn't, though. That says something about the Iraqis and how they feel about the Ba'athist revolution.
I did not defend Saddam's rule at all. I have no idea why you suggested that. I was only saying that the Iraqis don't view that period of their history as wholly worth forgetting, because they allow this flag to fly today.
So you do realize the Iraqi flag has been modified since the fall of Sadaam.
The basic flag with the tri-colors and stars representing unity of Iraq, Egypt, and a 3rd Arab country (can't remember which) was in existence well before Sadaam's time.
One has to remember that we won the Vietnam War strategically by changing China's foreign policy. We didn't "pullout" so much as leave after a victory. It was the MSM that called it a "pullout". People in New England are so incredibly gullible where the media is concerned.
Think about everything you ever "learned" and then ask yourself if it was the MSM that taught that to you. Then think again.
Repeat after me: "There was no pullout from Vietnam. We left after we victoriously achieved a genuine peace treaty." And I am not being sarcastic. Liberals would like for you to believe that is a sarcastic statement because they couldn't bear to acknowledge that it is actually true.
The way a Democratic Congress betrayed our friends in Indochina AFTERWARDS was a war-crime. More than 2 million people were killed when we withheld funding for the anti-communists there.
Reasons for the Iraq War:
1) Geographical crossroads to the Middle East and Eurasia. Needed to become a democracy with crisscrossing highways going everywhere. We need to have Europeans driving to India and driving to China along "Highway 5" through Iraq and Iran. We need hotel chains along that highway and the kids in the backseat need to see "Waterworld: next exit 15 miles." And I am serious. A prosperous society similar to ours in some of the basics is not a society that will nuke us when we are not looking some September morning.
We do need to have everyone in the world, especially trucks with products in them, traveling freely along Iraqi highways at least on the way to somewhere else.
2) Put the Shiites into power in the Middle East after having been sidelined for 1000 years. This would kill off Sunni political Islam faster than otherwise.
3) Stop the Libyan weapons program funded by Saddam.
4) Put all of the Middle East oil into pro-American hands so no funding goes to terrorists. Duh!!
5) Implement Flypaper Strategy of pretending that we are in a quagmire so we can urge 300,000 young idiots to come to Iraq to die (because we really have the place a lot more under control than the media is saying.
Maybe the MSM is knowingly helping us (at the executive level) by giving anti-American arabs incentive to go to Iraq to die. We might find out in 10 years that MSM executives worked with Bush to deliberately create a "quagmire" effect as part of the strategy to drain the swamp of the Middle East outside of Iraq, by drawing the swamp water into Iraq.
Maybe Cindy Sheehan is unknowingly fulfilling the role of the Pied Piper...leading would-be insurgents to try to kill more "mother's sons" when, in actuality, our Marines are waiting for these "arab heroes" right across the border. So pipe on Cindy. Motivate those bad guys right into the muzzles of American weapons.