If the only superpower in the world suddenly picks you as one of its three biggest enemies - branding you as Evil in the process - you too might be tempted to elect a hardliner and start a nuclear arsenal.  Just saying.

Edited: to correct wording that made Scott happy. Damn I hate when I do that.

LOL  :)

Scott I do enjoy hearing what you have to say, we may not agree on much, but at least you have an opinion. My dad had a favorite saying, a teacher he had named H.T. O'Blue ( at least as a kid thats what we thought my dad was saying)

If we as kids would say "I don't care" my dad would say "You know what H. T. O'Blue says:" "The world don't want people who don't care."

The naivete or ignorance, or whatever you want to call it on this issue makes me sad sometimes. Should we just return to complacency and the reactive policies of the past in dealing with terrorists? I don't think so.

I believe you take a page from the conflict between the Russians and Afghanistan, let those nearest it's borders keep aggression contained. Supply them with support i.e. weapons, but do not put American soldiers in military conflicts that could and should be fought by those most effected. 

You say we are fighting terrorism over there to keep it on their soil, but when Timothy McVay blew up that building in OK. did we attack Canada? Same goes for attacking Iraq when they had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. We needed to work with Iraq offer support so to keep Iran in check and go after Osama in Afghanistan and put the Afghan government's feet to the fire for harboring the mastermind of 9/11. We would have the worlds support, instead of pissing all our allies off by going into Iraq.

The poster child for naivete and ignorance. We didn't piss off all our allies, did we Jodi? England and a few others joined us in taking down a regime that was takeable, to put us in the best possible place we could be for launching attacks against terrorism in the Middle East. Afghanistan was an important foothold too, but it's not the greatest place to be with a large military force, taking another page from the Russian/ Afghan conflict, so it's much better to have the main presence in Iraq, for the moment.

We did go after Osama in Afghanistan, btw, in case you didn't notice it, but it appears he's fled to Pakistan, or points east. We did a little more than hold the Afghan government's feet to the fire. The Taliban was in charge of the government, and we took them down, and now they have a democratic government, with elected leaders in Afghanistan for the first time ever. You're not saying we went too far in Afghanitan too, are you? Because it sounds like you are, or simply didn't realize what we have already done in Afghanistan.

If we as kids would say "I don't care" my dad would say "You know what H. T. O'Blue says:" "The world don't want people who don't care."

Your dad was a smart man, Jodi.  :)

But I'm not completely convinced that Bush knew it was false at the time he put it in his speech.

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He knew he was on shaky ground.  He HAD to say "the British government has learned" because our own intelligence had "learned" it wasn't true.

We were going into Iraq, one way or another.  The sad part is all the bullshit that was drummed up.  If Bush had said "We installed Saddam, that was our bad, we owe it to Iraq to clean up our mess" I'd have backed him all the way and likely voted for him in 2004 - although finishing the job in Afghanistan still would have made more sense - but then you have the argument that Bush didn't want to leave this task to a president unwilling to execute it.

Or he could have said (and this was in fact an after-the-fact justification) "you know, Saddam Hussein isn't going to live forever, and when he goes there's going to be a civil war.  We've already seen what The Taliban can do when it has opium cash backing it up.  Do we REALLY want them to control a huge natural resource we depend upon every moment of every day?"  That's not a tough sell to me either.

But no.  Mushroom cloud terror orange alert plastic sheeting Democrats-if-elected-will-ruin-us-all flypaper aluminum tubes anthrax ripple spring surprise BS wins over levelling with the people every time.  And that's why Bush doesn't have to worry about going to jail.

The Taliban was in charge of the government, and we took them down, and now they have a democratic government, with elected leaders in Afghanistan for the first time ever.

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If things are as rosy as you make them sound, then why are we sending more troops there?

Maybe because Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld fucked up there too.