"It seems that when I said "You seem unclear on the nature of conscience", I missed the mark. You actually seem unclear on the very nature of a free society. Your response reeks of the attitude of someone happy in a totalitarian society, worshiping Authority and The State. "Bush is the Commander in Cheif and YOU aren't. If you were the President of the US, THEN you could make this call" indeed. gb, you and I personally are responsible for the actions of the officials we elect. We have a duty as citizens of a free society to object when our elected officials do the wrong thing."

It is obvious that you never read anything I post.

"The demand that anyone who thinks Bush is doing the wrong thing come up with an alternative is a red herring.

A red herring? I suppose it does distract you from bashing the President.

"Picking the best course of action is Bush's job, and when he fails to do his job we have a right to say so."

You have the right to say UFOs exist and if the President does his job well, you have the right to say he is doing his job poorly.

"Besides, telling the truth about the emperor wearing no clothes is the necessary first step to change; to fail to point out the error allows him to continue on his misguided course with no thought, himself, of alternatives."

I guess it depends on what you mean by "errors". No human is perfect. And it's quite possible that the person(s) claiming another person is making an error is the one(s) making an error or could be a deliberate lie.

"But OK, we can play that game. Now that Bush's specious claims about WMD and a connection to Al Qaeda haven't stood up to scrutiny, and we have information we were denied before the war, it's actually rather easy to outline what course Bush should have taken. For starts, don't invade Iraq; without the promised piles of WMD and high-level connection to Al Qaeda, Iraq was not a clear and present danger."

Of course Saddam is the guy who buries jet fighters. Burying a truck is much easier than burying a jet. And it's obvious that Saddam's regime had connections to international terrorist groups. How good those connections were is not at this point clear. What is absolutely clear is that Saddam's regime has paid money to terrorists. And any leadership of any country which publicly states that it will reward any acts of terror is a grave concern to any people who are against terrorism.
Your premise is wrong, but who cares, right?
Now let's continue this anyhow. We didn't have the option "to do nothing with Iraq", we were imposing sanctions and maintaining a UN No Fly Zone over most of Iraq.
This required an airbase in the region, or at least a aircraft carrier.
Iran was a problem. France, Germany, and others wanted to end the sanctions- and were actively undermining the sanctions.
So, in order to do nothing we would need to first stop doing things. Would you favor lifting sanctions? Would you favor ending the "No fly Zones". Would you pull out all US miltary from the region? This isn't a simple, do nothing. What message are sending to the countries in the region, if you pull out US forces? If the greatest superpower on the planet doesn't have the will, would weaker countries confront the problem? How much are these countries going to listen to high sounding ideals with no practical back up?

"Instead, stay the course in Afghanistan, go after the thousands of Al Qaeda and tens of thousands of Taliban we knew were there, and still are; don't go chasing mirages in Iraq."

We are staying the course in Afghanistan.

"That wasn't so hard, now was it?"

Very easy, if you don't know anything.

I said: "Conscience is not the opposite of herd phenemenon. Nor does it mean disagreeing with the majority. It is not neccessarily cowardice to keep quiet and hope to be proven wrong. And finally, you can exercise your conscience and keep your head down."

Robert says:
"Wrong. Absolutely wrong. You will never possess a conscience, let alone exercize it, if you think that it depends on going along with the majority and keeping quiet if your conscience might offend the herd. That's the coward's way out, and cowards cannot possess consciences. "

About the only way not to have a conscience, is to have a very strong faith in relativism- plus stir in lots of denial.
I don't have this problem. Though the Lefties might want to examine the possiblity.
It might also be due to biological defect- such as having steel rod travel through skull at high speed. [I'm also willing to allow the possiblity that some criminals have at least a portion of their problem being due to a biological defect.]
But I think in general it's a matter of "a shortage of conscience" [rather than having or not having] and this shortage is mostly due to stupidity.