Folks, my two cents FWIT:

I remember thinking, right after 911, that if George was serious about this war on terrorism, then Iraq and Korea would HAVE to be on his s+++list. I think if it wasn't for the Twin Towers this would not be happening. I'll go this one better. If Gore were now President, this would still be happening, possibly with U.N. involvement.

I just re-watched the Frontline series compendium "The Long Road to War" The Frontline people are nobody's Conservative think tank. If anything, quite the opposite. They didn't even take a narrative position, simply showed the history of how we got here after the Persian Gulf War. The Iraqi dictator had a 10 Billion dollar nuclear program going, he had biological weapons factories, for the most part the original, more powerful, inspection teams did not find them without Iraqi informants. He has had years to prepare for the latter-day inspectors, a virtually unlimited budget, well trained scientists and engineers, and an excellent sense of taking just enough rope but not enough to fashion a noose with, until this very day.

So the necessity of dealing with this dictator is a no-brainer in my opinion. The people who fashion World Trade Center attacks have to be deprived of their present and future resources. It would have been much better to have the U.N. with us, but, as the French say, C'est La Vie.

I think the loss of civilian life on the Iraqi side will be far less than what's being predicted, unless the Iraqi military uses them as shields or continues to prey off them the way their government has for a couple of decades.

For better or worse, not by way of justification, the U.S. has initiated other military actions without being sanctioned by the U.N: Grenada, Panama. And so have the French: Algeria, and so have the English: Falklands.

I think the way we go about doing this is just as important as what we do, and I share the concerns of others on the list with respect to that. The 'peace' is gonna be a tougher sell than the war.

Thanks for letting me vent.