Old Guy, you're new around here so you don't know me or my posts. It is absolutely untrue to say of me -- or of most antiwar protestors -- that we don't "tolerate" those who think differently. I am always happy to discuss and debate political positions with those who speak from knowledge and have reasoned arguments. I don't, however, have much tolerance for those who parrot propaganda and rumor and call it fact, or those who simply hold to opinions without chasing down fact. Making claims like, "The Islamic extremists declared war on the US" is utterly irrelevant to any discussion of Iraq, since Iraq's government is a secular one.

And saying, "My point is that anti war protestors are busy totaling up how many people marched but they are not concerned with how many innocent people have died at the hands of dictators" is not only outrageously untrue, but it seems to show an ignorance of what many anti-war protesters have been fighting for for decades. Some of us have been paying attention all along, not just when the latest bonehead gets into the White House and tells us what to pay attention to.

And when some idiot gets on Fox News in prime time and calls a peaceful demonstration of first amendment rights "a bunch of damn communists," it's just another ignorant idiot as far as I'm concerned. As Kevin said so eloquently a couple of weeks ago, the attitude seems to be, "Be thankful you live in a country with free speech. Now shut up!"

Yes, I have been the victim of a heinous crime. The police even stood and watched it happen. No, I would not want those people bombed or tortured, whether I was there or not, because it would do nothing to make the crime go away. I would not choose to hurt them myself; I would definatley not choose to ask some to do so for me; but most of all I would be angered if someone else decided they were going to pursue "justice" by killing me and the criminals in question.

Replacing Saddam with a different but equally brutal dictator would not do anything to make the lives of Iraqi's better. Instead, in the meantime it will make it much worse. The Bush administration may talk all it wants to about how there will be a democracy afterwards, but the history of the US when we go on these sort of "liberation" missions tends to indicate that's we'll set up another dictatorship or else abandon the country to a long and bloody civil war -- and the demographics of Iraq virtually guarentee it.

Shall we "liberate" the Iraqi people while helping our ally Saudi Arabia, where the oppression under a fundamentalists government is much, much worse? The Taliban was our ally, too, up until almost two years ago, when they had the bad luck to have a misbehaving guest. Israel systematically engages in ethnic-based oppression, and we KNOW they have several sorts of WMD's and are also willing to engage in pre-emptive aggressive warfare. Are we "liberating" their neighbors because Israel might do it again?

You seem to be fond of asking others exaggerated questions. So tell me -- if Russia decided it was for our own good to remove President from power, and your children were hungry and dying of dysentary because all the water treatment plants were deliberately destroyed to "weaken" Bush's infrastructure, would you feel "liberated?" And if you are your wife were suffering from cancer because of the depleted uranium in the bombs they dropped that levelled your home, and even basic medication and painkillers were unavailable due to sanctions, would you welcome the Russian forces?

Would you really think they had your best interests at heart?