Free Republic

Here's the short answer: At our country's founding, we wanted to avoid the religious wars that were tearing Eurpope apart. Going backwards now would be a recipe to disaster.
Let me also mention Freedom of Religion, Freedom of Conscience, Freedom of Speech. The basic legal principle of our country should be (and used to be) that one can do as one pleases so long as it doesn't tread on the inalienable rights of others.

Our current administration makes these preparations with the conscious intent of terrorizing into surrender those Iraqis who would defend their sovereign nation against the aggression of the lone global superpower.

At least you win some kind of prize for cramming a maximal number of of non-sequiters, misconceptions and plain ol' falsehoods into one sentence. To wit:

the conscious intent of terrorizing into surrender
Non-sequitar. Just because we possess the means does not imply the moral disposition or conscious intent to use terror as a weapon. Merely citing the inevitability of civilian casualties is pointless, as all modern warfare involves some of this, and thus there would be no distinction between terror and any other form of warfare. Or is this what you mean to do, Greyscale? -- deliberately blur the line between the two, so that you can invoke that 'moral equivalency' thing.

Iraqis who would defend their sovereign nation
Misconception. Liberals love moral equivalency because it allows them to both defend tyrants and condemn democracies: thus, 'Saddam defends Iraq's sovereignty' and 'the US engages in terror'.

the aggression of the lone global superpower
Plain ol' falsehood. Even without a (second) UN resolution (which is looking more and more likely), we will have at minimum the support of Britain, Canada, Australia, 8 mainland European nations, Turkey, Jordan, 4 Gulf states, Pakistan, Japan, et al. Truth is, it is the anti-war side that is getting lonely.
You've been banned, but I offer the above comments for you contemplation in case you are still out there lurking.

it's a crying shame that it would even have to come to that. It’s just a reminder that we have to be vigilant and assertive about protecting our rights.

Yes, a cryin' shame. Illegal search and seizure under the 'we're here to help you' rationale; threats by the state to take their children! (Shades of Stalinist Russia!)
Thank heaven for the Alliance Defense Fund and similar organizations. The ACLU is conspicuous by its total absence from these cases.

I believe... that this war is about what most wars are about: hegemony, money, power and oil".

Dustin chooses to ignore or discount the mountain of evidence justifying war, then invokes the 4 liberal bogeymen, proferring exactly zero evidence to support his bald @$$ assertion. But hey, since are own leaders are nothing but pathological liars, there just has to be some explanation, right Dustin?

I would apologize and admit being wrong.

I will look forward to that.

What would it take to get you to change your mind?

Given the overwhelming case that has been presented so far, the chance that Saddam is not dangerous enough to require military action is only slightly less probable than that the value of Pi is not between 3.0 and 4.0. However, if there is a distinct lack of actual WMD, facilities and scientists to corroborate what we have been hearing from the Bush team after we remove Saddam, I too will frankly admit I have been deceived.

But I am very skeptical of this sort of thing, like the Gulf of Tonkin, the Maine as an excuse by the government to get the people riled up for war.

This is not an analogous, rush-to-war situation. The press has been, for the most part, antagonistic or at least skeptical, requiring the administration to make a very clear and cogent case, which they have done, imo. Also, this war has been debated for over a year now, in various forums: newspapers, news forums like FR, colleges and universities, talking heads on all major TV networks, and lastly in the halls of Congress. No one can claim they were pressured into acquiescence or that the facts were withheld from them, or that the Congressional resolution was misused beyond its original intent (as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was).

I'll always believe Bush is stupid because he is.

That is a stupid statement.

Your attempt to (falsely) identify pot use exclusively with the radical left is nothing more than an emotion-based rant, not an argument. And your usual two-cents worth contribution to drug threads isn't worth even that much.

If brains were dynamite, Babs couldn't blow her nose!

Regarding, if Bin Laden really did have some link to Iraq, which he doesn't, that would change things.

This shows how open-minded you are to concrete evidence. What is your opinion of the Al Queda chem/bio training camp in Iraq, overseen by Iraqi intelligence and used to train AQ terrorists for operations all over the world? This is a war on terror, not simply on OBL, or any single person, country or entity. Growing and irrefutable evidence indicates that Iraq, NK, AQ and other countries and terrorist organizations are working hand-in-glove to destabilize western civilization (each for their own unique objectives, true enough). What will you say when this short war is over and ALL the evidence of Saddam's murdering, lying, banned weapons and links to various terrorist organizations is laid out in the glaring light of day? No more wiggle room then. Will you apologize for calling President Bush 'stupid'? Will you get on board and support our efforts, or will you prefer to cant and carp from the sidelines?

we are the aggressors. We are the ones who are going to start it. Politicians lie and governments break agreements. That's not enough to justify butchering a population in my

No, Saddam started it by invading a sovereign nation (Kuwait) in 1990. He aggravated the situation by continuing to doggedly pursue WMD, flaunting UN resolutions and forging alliances with Al Queda and other terrorists.

This will be an immoral war because we are going to wipe out thousands of people based on the miniscule possibility that Hussein is just going to, on a whim, launch an attack on us or our allies.

The danger is not so much a direct attack from Saddam's own Iraq, but a proxy attack facilitated by Iraqi chem/bio weapons, Iraqi-supplied intelligence and training. The possibility, far from being 'miniscule', is more like an inevitability, given Saddam's mentality and record of war-atrocities.
Furthermore, the inevitability of civilian casualties cannot be cited as a reason not to go to war. By your mis-reasoning, Saddam is allowed the widest latitude to develop WMD and do mischief, while the US is held to the strictest standards of tolerance and passivity.
And there will be no 'butchering' of innocents. The US military goes to unprecedented lengths to minimize civilian casualites; and those casualties deserve to be balanced against the countless innocent lives that will be saved by riding Iraq (and the world) of this mass-murdering dictator.

The remainder of your post is mostly mawkish sentimentality about the futility of war -- any war -- and paranoid meanderings about the supposed dangers of our own leadership. These musings only illustrate your own mental confusion and flight from the facts and hardly deserve a response. Suffice it to say that you have not made your case!

Earlier this year cattlemen proposed forming private militias to fend off local criminals and rebels from neighboring Colombia. The idea was abandoned as President Hugo Chavez suspended the issuance of new gun licenses and threatened to jail would-be militiamen.

I note with disgust that this is also the liberal's proposed policy here is the good ol' USA.

but Fred is no liberal or idiot by a long shot...he has written more on target rants than ANYBODY i know of.

True, and I have been subscribing to his newsletter for some time now. BUT... he seems to be slipsliding down the liberal path of national angst, cynacism and refexive distrust in our leadership, and war-weariness. He sounds like a man who just doesn't care much about his country anymore.
Plus, calling the President 'ferret-like' is unjustified. GWB is one of the finest human beings, morally, to occupy the White House, even if one thinks military action against Saddam et al, is 'mommyish'.

"We will still," he explained patiently, "take a note of any burglaries reported for statistical purposes." They just won’t investigate them.

Well, gee. That's reassuring.

If it's Brown, flush it!

The LP: RIGHT on taxes; WRONG on defense; WRONG on immigration; WRONG on abortion! One out of four is not a good thing, imo.
The LP has a role to play, I'm glad they are there. At least it gives people who feel politacally marginalized an alternative to the far left. But they overstate their importance. Rather than checks and balances, I'd say it's a case of the tail trying to wag the dog. Oregon voters reject new tax proposals religiously, even while electing Demos to statewide office.

the LP is pro-abortion and against the war on terror, Iraq and communism

Oregon Libertarian Party: "Hey, we helped defeat the tax increase! NOW will you join our anti-war protest?"

a conference on the practical, political and spiritual aspects of 'revolutionary environmentalism' compulsory group-think.
Roundtable discussions will cover such topics as: "The Ethics of Sabotage" "Sabotage is Cool" and "Is Environmentalism a Spirituality?" "New Age Environmentalism - An Introduction to Your New Religion." aaa

Or that Thomas Jefferson preached, in the First Inaugural Address, March 1801,
"[P]eace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none."

Hey, didn't Jefferson once go to war without a formal declaration? Against some 'Mohammedan country'?

I haven't watched any TV or news in the past week (except FR). Is any of this being picked up -- by any major news outfit? Or is the potentially biggest story of the year still being back-burnered?
It's a shame we are pre-occupied with Iraq at this point. Chavez is a brutal butcher just like Saddam, but with a more tenuous grasp on his power. With all the talk about removing Saddam (and I support it 100%!), hundreds of thousands of troops, battle carrier groups, etc. think of what just one cruise missile, well-aimed, could do for the people of Venezuela!

how did we ever win WWI & WWII, with a lousy conscript military?

Those were popular wars. Making men enlist against their will has never been a good idea -- ie. draft riots during CW, Vietnam. WWI might have produced some domestic unrest if it had dragged on. WWII was so enthusiastically supported, I think the only reason for the draft was FDR and his overreaching Federal bureaucracy. There was no lack of volunteers. The draft helped turn a popular war (Vietnam) into an unpopular war. Finally, the military establishment itself has stated over and over that it doesn't want/need any draft. The draft constitutes involuntary servitude to the gov't and is an institution worthy of sheeple and trained monkeys.
Did I mention Iraq has a draft?

Opps! Wrong thread. (Sorry, dixiechick.)