Teribus, the length to which you go to make your point derails the very point you're trying to make. You offer up a page when a paragraph would do.

but you do appear to have an incredibly uninquisitive nature, totally at odds with your contention that, "I have no problem in true discussions of issues and I enjoy evaluating new materials and digging into their sources for verification."

This is more of the tactic both you and BB use; attack the individual to confuse issues before moving to the topic at hand. Do you know the saying about not suffering fools gladly? That applies to the two of you. Having taken your measure, why should I waste my time reading the tripe you dish out? I scan it quickly, but I'm not going to address every non-issue you think keeps the world hanging in the balance.

Clearly what I consider a small number, in relation to the weapons Iraq had on hand 10 and 15 years ago (or the obscene arsenal held by the U.S.), seems to you to be an immense number. Anything more than zero is too many weapons for you. I have some tolerance in that when cleaning up a country one is bound to miss a few towns or a county or two* and I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt until proof appears that they planned to do anything with them. Iraq and Iran beat up on each other with those weapons, but since Bush attacked Iraq and not the other way around, there is no proof that Saddam had plans to use them against us or anyone. That's pure fiction from George W. Bush, who attacked Iraq simply because he COULD.

I'm not going to waste any more time with this thread. Those folks I enjoy reading and talking with are clearly as frustrated as I--there is no way to discuss this amongst ourselves without all of your pseudo-intellectual hyperbole washing over the conversation.

SRS

* :)