Everything we have discovered shows that Iraq was in violation of UN resolutions AND the cease fire agreement of 1991. We could legally have nuked Iraq of the face of the earth and still be completely within our rights.

The only thing Blix has done is shown how ineffective the UN was at preventing the destruction of materials and in forcing compliance with resolutions.

Effectively Blix helped to castrate the UN by his prostrate position to Iraqi officials who could schmooze him and bully him into churning out half-a--ed reports.

The US has removed a psychopath with nuclear desires, brought the first taste of religious freedom into an area in which Shiites and Christians were second class citizens and is in the process of assuring that the Iraq of of tomorrow is not the training ground of terrorists or funding source of suicide bombers.

200 men and women have lost their lives and though it is amazingly small by most war standards, each one is a tragic loss. However, when put in its proper perspective if someone said ten years ago that Saddam's regime could be disposed for under the same amount of casualties as occur in a single day's worth of traffic accidents in the US - it would be well worth it.

Saddam was firing at UN planes daily. It cost us BILLIONS to protect the Kurds. You whine about the cost of the war and yet in the long haul this war will end up SAVING us money. We can pull out of Saudi Arabia, end the US-British patrolled no-fly zones which wore down planes and stressed pilots unnecessarily. We are finding that Saddam and his sons were more evil than we had imagined and that excising that evil will forge a new future for Iraq in the same manner as excising Hitler did for Germany.

For the first time a middle east peace is seriously being pursued - and only the knowledge that American tanks are in the region helps fuel the peace process. A Palestinian state is closer to reality than has ever before been acknowledged. The Israeli pullout would never have happened under Gore or any democrat president.

And most importantly Bush has removed the battlezone to the middle east instead of New York or Washington DC. That puts the stress off of homeland defense and the BILLIONS incurred in expenses for raised threat levels.

Clearly Saddam was ready to reactivate his nuclear program as soon as inspectors left. The cost of dealing with that possibility would have been another constant expense - more spies, more satellites and endless guessing games.

The decision was a sound one and I have no regrets about US actions whatsoever.

President Bush has saved the US and in more ways than one. We are free of the yoke of the UN, free of bureaucracy always to our disadvantage. Only folks with woefully limited perspectives or narrow self-interests who can't see the big picture think otherwise. The uninformed will always be easy marks for snot-nosed prevaricators at the NY Times who laugh at your gullibility when they make up their own quotes.

Rise above it Don. Raoul, nice as he is, was brought up and indoctrinated in a very pro-arab, anti-semitic region which worships at the altar of the status quo and collectivism, where a man like Blix can be an icon of the 'don't make waves' crowd, but what's your excuse?

;-)

SDAI-Tech1