Gareth - Naw... I know Carol, and she is genuinely motivated by a desire for peace, brotherhood, and equality. She is motivated toward every good and decent human virtue you or I could name. Her outrage springs from belief in morality, not a committment to hatred. She does not at all strike me as a person who hates. If you bother to investigate her allegations, you will find plenty of backup for them...but why would you? People seldom bother to look up factual backup for positions they disagree with...they do the precise opposite.

Don - We have exactly the same problem with political parties in Canada...they oppose other parties' policies not on moral principle, but just in order to score points and make the other guys look bad. It's a wretchedly hypocritical exercise all the way around.

And it happens internationally too. I have been reading material which makes it pretty plain to me that the French, Russians, and Germans primary motivation for opposing the USA launching this war were stemming from their own financial and strategic interests in Iraq and the Middle East, not from their love of international law, peace, and justice.

However, it has proven convenient for them that the US/UK position is so clearly without legal basis or moral justification. It puts the French, Russians, and Germans in a good position to have some real moral fervour behind their own self-serving policies.

I'm speaking of politicians in Europe, not of the ordinary public. The ordinary public mostly do not know about the hidden agendas of their governments, and genuinely ARE morally outraged by the war. Likewise, I suspect that most Americans who support the war are equally unaware of their government's hidden (but not too well hidden) agendas.

- LH