You're the one following folks around with "post-it" notes and seeking the same.

If I had wanted to flame you two I'd have started out doing so.

More importantly, you conveniently avoided the point of my post:

Do you believe the are Iraqis better off now than they were under Saddam?

If the answer is yes, than you, too, will have also learned something from hindsight and it is hypocritical of you to go around cut n pasting old posts.

Sometimes freedom is paid for in bloodshed. Not just a little--but a lot. The young men who went happy-go-lucky to fight the Rebs found quickly that the Civil War was not just going to be a three month affair as planned. Hate and violence have ways of escalating. The Civil War lasted four years and the Iraqi conflict is going to last much longer because the hatred that lives in the region is far worse than simple human slavery issues. It will exist long after the US has a symbolic presence.

Both of you believed the war was fought on false pretenses of WMD and was not justifiable. I'm sure in 1861 lots of folks thought an 85 year old declaration of solidarity against the British was not worth thousands of lives. Yet our nation today is the result of the decision to go to war over perceived injustice and the simple breaches of old documents.

The Iraq of tomorrow looks like it will be a bastion of freedom. When the women stood their grounds at the polls as the bombs went off, it demonstrated the utter devotion to freedom and democracy -one they were clearly willing to die for. On election day Iraqis showed their true colors and the American blood spilled on yet another foreign shore was again vindicated as were the beliefs and principles Americans hold dear.

It wasn't a war against Islam. It wasn't a war for oil. It was a war against a tyrant and the threat he represented to the US and the region.

Then again, you may not believe any of that even with hindsight. That's your right too.

Regardless, you don't have to remind folks here about what they've said or posted, I'm sure they all know what they've learned from this conflict even if they don't go around parading it.

SDAI-Tech1