And If I might add my own take on Odin's ode:

1.The left believes the administration should be focusing its resources on Al Qaeda instead of Iraq.

Yeah, right. The left believes the US has repealed the Bill of Rights because of the terrorist hunt. They want nothing more than to kill all provisions of the Patriot act and bring home all US forces. Guantanomo repulses them. Ashcroft is the personification of a deputized Billy Graham and the Nazi SS rolled into one for the left. They believe that 9-11 was engineered by Bush so as to allow for a crackdown on civil liberties and as a grand master plan that will finally all end up with the neutering of homosexuals and the outlawing of abortion. Furthermore the fringe leftists believe on top of all that, that concentration camps for all dissenters are awaiting and the big black SUVs will come and take them away screaming into the night. That's explains the folks that drive erratically around you, fleeing down the highway, if you drive a black Suburban - inevitably they all have faded Gore/Lieberman stickers on their Hondas and see you as a potential henchman of the new apocalypse.

2. The left doesn't buy the administration's rhetoric about Iraq being an gathering threat to the U.S.

Naturally. Clinton and Madeline Albright didn't believe that NK would pursue nuclear development after a healthy bribe and some derriere-kissing either. We look at what's happening in Iraq - & Don proves it nearly daily - that many folks in Iraq, if given the opportunity, would kill as many Americans as they possibly could. Better in Iraq with armed soldiers than aboard planes, in our cities and at our global interests. Iraq is a shooting gallery. We have provided a target - but a target that shoots back if they miss.

3. The left believe it was a preventive, not pre-emptive war, and sets a foolish and dangerous precedent.

You mean preventable right?

The war was incredibly successful. It ended the reign of Saddam Hussein, freed an entire nation and is poised to set it on the road to democracy. As wars go - this one is a role model worthy of emulation. If someone had told me, in 1997, that we could get rid of Saddam's regime in a few months and have him captured within the timeframe of a year - and guarantee an extremely low casualty figure - I'd have said, "What the heck are we waiting for?"

4. Having learned the lessons of Vietnam, the left doesn't believe trying to democratize a foreign country through force is worth the cost in lives and treasure.

Vietnam, Vietnam, Vietnam. Vietnam was not a failure. Had we not supplanted the sorry half-reared French effort as they were overrun by communists in Indochina, we'd not be seeing a free Japan. Taiwan would never have had the chance to become as prosperous and as capitalistic as they became. Vietnam was a success. We halted the communist advance in Southeast Asia and made it clear that further expansion would meet much more serious action. Had not Truman been pussyfooting around and had we done the same for Hungary and the poor Hungarians - we might've saved hundreds of billions in NATO expenses over the decades that kept a watchful eye, and army, on the Eastern European Bloc of the Soviet satellites.

Had we firmly addressed the Soviets and communism when we had the bomb and the Rosenbergs were still drinking coffee in New Mexico - then Vietnam and Korea would likely never have been necessary. In fact, the whole world would be a vastly different place.

Think about it.

If you really do, you'll see the parallels and start wishing that George Bush could've been President in Truman's time. And when you project out the destiny the mideast had under a Gore presidency - you'll realize that Bush has saved millions of unborn people who were otherwise destined to die: Kurds, Baathist political victims, slaves & prostitutes and many more in other nations around Iraq in an increasingly fanatic, ignorant and hate-filled middle east.

SDAI-Tech1