"How do I begin....?"

Who exactly needs to see WMD - and who would really know what they are seeing anyway. I could take thirty commercial drums and put arabic warning signs on them, drop them off and say they were WMD - and how many really would know the difference? Sure it may comfort a few folks to see everything that is being extracted, but there really is no need to see other than to comfort the masses politically.

"Comfort the masses"?? In old Soviet-think, maybe. Americans would call that "informing the voters", since, ultimately, legitimate authority rests in us and we are ultimately responsible.

I don't have to be able to perform the required evaluatory WMD tests personally any more than I need to be able to interpret the results of my own blood tests. That's what I pay professionals for. If I have questions, I get a second opinion. In a case like the WMD, I'd probably want a third opinion too.

I agree that Saddam was a dangerous leader, and I find your frankness concerning motive for the war refreshing.

Wars and laws do not mix well. In the real world the victor of a conflict writes the laws and prosecutes the defeated.

So we get to break rules of conduct if we're confident we'll win? That sounds more like Bismarck than Lincoln. Tsk.

Pearl Harbor was not a first strike but the expected outcome of our assistance to Britain against the axis powers.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What have you been smoking???

The outbreak of war in the Pacific was not an outcome of anything happening in the Atlantic, but of increased conflicts between American interests in the Pacific and those of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

If Pearl Harbor was not a first strike -- and an undeclared first strike at that -- the American Navy might not have been sitting on its thumbs. Please read At Dawn We Slept by Gordon W. Prange.

By this logic, we knew that the Arabs were becoming increasingly radical on their national fringes and were prone to the use of terrorism, so the 9/11 attacks were just a logical outcome of our deteriorating relationships with these groups. Come on.

Neither Japan nor Iraq had successfully attacked our mainland and had only really attacked our machines of war (planes, ships, etc.)

Pearl Harbor was American territory. That the target was a military base on American territory doesn't change a thing.

There is absolutely no advantage to be gained by concealing the discovery of WMD. I agree that any pursuit of such weapons as may have been mobile would require secrecy, but to state recovery of and to show WMD that are already in allied military custody can only be good and appropriate, unless there are none to show.

You have provided a very original interpretation of events in the Pacific theater of WWII. Please remember that fiction doesn't cross over into non-fiction smoothly all the time.

Regards--
Mary Anne