I never said Ho was a sweet old man. And you haven't convinced anyone eavesdropping that I did, either. You've been busted again, TB. And I know you looked up Ho's wartime relations with the US Office of Strategic Services because you never squeaked a word about them in your indignant little post. As usual, you change the subject by proving things I never said were mistaken. Well, I guess I have little choice but to plead guilty to that.

Remember, Tom. We had half a million men in Vietnam, as well as an Air Force and a Navy. We waged war on its neighbors and masterminded a coup there to install a cooperative puppet government. WE lied to our own people about what we were doing there, not for reasons of military security (the enemy knew perfectly well what we were doing), but to keep our own people from finding out.

They didn't have one man here, not even a saboteur or terrorist. We were there for reasons of our own, because our global strategic and geopolitical interests (our ideological feuds with the Chinese and Russians) were at stake, so we felt that gave us the right to go halfway around the world for ten years and kill a million people.

And for what? What did we get out of it? Did the world come to an end because we failed? In Iraq, once again our geopolitical interests (and access to oil) were at stake. We were the aggressors again, but without any Commies, we had to invent a new excuse, WMDs.

Country's don't commit aggression because they believe they are evil. They do it in order to serve some political or economic end. And surprise, surprise, they always find a way to morally justify it to themselves, and fire up their own people to die.

Our war against the Japanese Fascists and their Nazi allies was justified, as was our war on Afghanistan's Al-Quaeda/Taliban; both were responses to attacks on our soil. In Korea our armed forces on a purely defensive mission with a treaty ally were treacherously attacked. We had every right to be in those places, just as we had a right to be in Western Europe, Japan, or the Philippines, diplomatic treaty obligations and a counter to Soviet or Chinese aggression.

But every other country we've intervened militarily in since the end of World War II, in Asia and South America, has been simply because people like you feel we have a right to send troops anywhere "our interests" are threatened. And the excuse is always the same: Communism. Although we have to come up with new excuses now that Commies are getting scarce in the world.

When a country invades or bombs another, or attacks it with proxies, or provokes a coup to install a friendly government, simply because it has strategic or political or economic interests it wants to further, that is aggression, pure and simple. There is no other way to interpret it or describe it, you can't just wish it away and pretend it is some holy crusade we have a right to engage in because we are for freedom and no one else is.

How many times have I pointed this out to you and you still can't see it? (Sorry, I couldn't resist that.)