I Agree entirely with your Afghanistan claims. They don't constitute a rebuttal at all to what I was saying. Just because Bush had a failure of nerve does not mean Clinton's wasn't worse.

I also agree we should have finished Afghanistan first particularly with what we know now about Iraq'a WMD. At The time I was concerned anbout not finishing Afghanistan, but did not anticipate how badly Bush would let it fall off the radar screen.

Iraq is part of the war on terror and you have to be highly partisanly obtuse not to see that. Whether it was the best use of our resources in that war is however debatable. Saddam supported terrorism and most definitely was hostile to the US. It is idiotic to think he would never have considered an alliance of convenience with Bin Laden. He had repeatedly violated the terms of the GW1 truce and obstructed attempts to verify destruction of his known WMD stockpiles. HE was a very real threat based on the best knowledge we had. The terrorists are definitely being drawn to Iraq and their ties are being exposed there. They are also deathly afraid of a democratic muslim country as evidenced by their determination to stop Iraq's transition to democracy.

Regards,
Mark