tom wrote :"Leave Saddam in power in perpetuity. Keep the sanctions up. They were working so well. Surround the Middle East with massive American military might. But do nothing with it for years. This will eat billions of dollars while accomplishing nothing, and delight all the other nations over there."

Ah yes. Do you think it would eat up less or more than the 70 billion for occupation and reconstruction plus the uncounted billions we spent on the war plus the uncounted billions that we are going to have to spend next year, and the next and the next.

And never mind the fact that we did something MORALLY WRONG in this, by making war on false pretense.

All of which, Tom, is a red herring. What I am calling you to the carpet about is the bullshit regarding the truths of propositions 1 through 5. Those claims were the basis for our war, and those claims are FALSE!

Tom wrote: "Hope that the U.N. will catch him if he tries anything--"
[...]
Hope that Saddam's proven and repeated ambition for weapons of mass destruction never amount to anything.
[...]
Hope that Saddam never decides to actively support terror attacks on the West.
[...]


Based on the evidence we have, it seems the inspections teams were entirely successful. If this is a false claim, show me an active nuclear program, a single missile that can fly over 1000km, a single drop of weaponized toxin or a single cup of Anthrax spores.

You can't, can you? What the hell do you say to Johannes about his numbers (or complete lack thereof)? WHERE the hell is your integrity as a thinker and a man of reason?

Show me ONE al-qaeda terrorist, or ANY firm evidence of an alliance, or ANY plan por even POSSIBLE terrorist threat posed by Saddam. You can't, can you? Not ONE!

"And above all, don't do anything aggressive until the entire population of Tel Aviv or Washington D.C. is dying vomiting up their own insides. After all, we have to let the bad guy shoot first, right?"

There are many enemies of the US developing WMD that we know actually ARE doing it or have done it (Korea and Iran). Your concern for Iraqs capacity to do so is not honest, and is a purely rhetorical device. Your accusation that I am saying that we have to let the bad guy shoot first is also rhetorical and dishonest. We simply have to KNOW the bad guy is about to shoot, and if we want to be the good guy, we have to be RIGHT about that.

tom wrote: "I don't know why there is a gap between the intelligence beforehand and what we are finding now. To claim that thousands of people all over the world lied about it is insane. I don't know why Saddam continued to conceal the truth--any truth--knowing it would mean a military attack."

Occams razor would suggest that the Admin was lying and Saddam was telling the truth. Yep, astounding, but thats what the data suggests.

tom wrote: "Forget the oppression, the mass graves, the abuse of his people. The antiwar people have already stipulated this as utterly irrelevant. "

Tom, is dishonest and hypocritical, and it does not rise to a justification for war. We support butchers JUST as bad as Saddam. Additionally, its not our place to kill 10,000 so that some 'phantom body count' would not come about next year. nobody has that right, short of self defense. And there was no self defense.

In the end, Tom, You have nothing but these red herrings to throw around.ou Can NOT deny the original claims that led us to this war were false, any more than you can deny the holocaust took place.

Own up to the fact, and at least admit that the american people can be CORRECT in demanding an accounting for this, and that demanding one does NOT make them staisnist leftist scions of ANSWER. Own up to the fact that the falshood of the pretenses for war raise a VERY CLEAR moral question that MUST be addressed by our culture. Otherwise, I see you as without a scrap o intellectual integrity. If this war was waged by the Left and you dissented, you would be demanding EXACTLY what we are demanding and voicing EXACTLY the same concerns.

Put your feces and indignation aeway and think for a bit!!

Davin L.