Sorry, I got over-dramatic there. Make it "I was always anti-Stalin, but I never thought we ought to *attack* Russia pre-emptively."

My aim was to show that one could
1. be anti-Stalin (and anti- all the later rulers of the USSR) and
2. not wish to start a pre-emptive war with Russia and
3. still be a loyal citizen of the United States, just like every president we had from WWII til the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Stalin & Russia are being used here as a parallel to Saddam and Iraq.

And that was my way of explaining "In a democracy (or a republic if you want to split that hair) dissent is not necessarily disloyalty," which was my point. It seems to be a difficult concept for many people.

Clint