BB: Arne, Show me where Saddam complied. Read UNR 1441 - same goalposts the whole game.

No, no, no. Why don't you show me where ... and how ... they didn't comply. Then we can sit back, you and I, in our nice comfy chairs before our nice neat Internet-accessible terminals, far from the blood and smoke, and discuss whether any such alleged "non-compliance" was worth a single U.S. soldier dead, much less the 2000 -- and growing every day -- that we have to date. Be specific now.

BB: Prohibited material and programs WERE found.

None as amounted to as much as a duck's fart (much less the life of a single U.S. soldier). As for "programs", of those, there weren't any.

BB: "Just saying it is so don't make it so" right back at you."

Why don't you read what you just wrote. Put up or shut up. I already did my putting up at the top of the thread.

Have you ever talked with any of the flight crews attempting to enforce the no-fly zones prior to the invasion of Iraq? Active combat is the best description.

Where "attempting to enforce the no-fly zones" is defined as "provoking the Iraqis, testing their defences, trying to get them to turn on the AD radars and then sending a HARM up their ass, and bombing pretty much anything else they could on the slightest excuse." (Don't get me wrong, Clinton did the same thing, but I condemn him for this as well).

Point of fact: not a single U.S. plane "enforc[ing] the no-fly zones" was los to fire; not a single pilot hurt. The only ones doing the dying in these encounters were Iraqis. The "no-fly" zones were not a U.N.-approved measure, but were imposed unilaterally by the U.S. in the aftermath of the first Gulf war. Such an invasion of sovereign airspace is legally an act of war in itself. If any enemy or rival of the U.S. did such fly-overs of U.S. airspace, they'd be flaming wreckage in seconds. If the U.S. did not wish their planes to be shot at, the solution was within their own hands. But in fact, the U.S. deliberately sought to draw Iraqi reaction and/or fire on multiple occasions, in part to use such as an excuse to begin the softening up and weakening of the Iraqi defences and communications facilities in preparation for Dubya's coming war.

Still waiting for what you're going to tell Cindy Sheehan. Or are you going to spit on her, and malign her and insult her as the rest of the Fighting 101st Keyboarders have done, this Veterans' Day?

Cheers,