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This is a tragedy of a gigantic proposition. President Bush, with his twisted world view and the total lack of understanding the region and his delusional belief that military option is the way to go to iron out all the wrinkles in the messy U.S. foreign policies, has brought you in the brink of the worst fiasco ever by any previous president of yours.

That you still find capacity in yourself to see this sorry tragicomic mess as a worth while excercise, is almost incomprehnsible. However, I keep following your musings to see if it is completely beyond your capabilities to start dealing with facts and put your ideological and mythical beliefs on the back seat. Might it be, that you have invested too much of your heart and soul into these Neo Conmen that any awakening is an impossibility? Then we would be witnessing also a personal tragedy, that of yours.
 

You are projecting when you talk a twisted world view and total lack of understanding of the region. Regarding military options, you are completely clueless, apparently. Worst fiasco ever--are you that historically ignorant. We've been worse off than this--we've made much worse mistakes than this. There is more history than your lifetime. I suggest you try to learn a little of it. Then we'll talk. What I've written is the absolute truth. That you find it incomprehensible makes my point.
Thanks for the concern.
 

Dear Roger, that you have been a lot worse off than this is only due that all the chickens haven't come to roost yet. Be patient, the worst consequences are still to come, and this time we don't even have to wait too long!

Maybe then Roger will...nah, silly me!
 

pekka, please throw a fact in, please. Even one would help. All the chickens haven't come back to the roost. What the heck does that mean?
I'm putting out actual history and you're responding with fact free, semi-hysterical opinion. We're typing past each other.
 

Roger, what you see now in Mess-O-Potamia is just a prelude to the regional blood letting that will happen in the relatively near future.

This wrecking grew of yours has taken a delicate task of dismateling the ME to fit their preconcieved notion what it should be. They decided in their now famous wisdom to start the job by braking the foundation first. That the ME will collapse when the regional power strugle will commence to fill the vacuum seems to somehow elude you. But then again, President Bush will correct it promptly by sending 20,000 or so more Americans to referee the civil war there. And magically this will make all the nasty things go away according to you and to your war president.

You want facts? I give you facts:
1. There were no WMD's
2. Iraq has not bee able to strike you, neither they planned such a stupid suicide mission.
3. Iraq was well contained and never had strenght, after 1991, to attack anybody.
4. Iraq was one of the blogs to keep the ME in some sort of balance and by removing her it has given Iran the present strong and unchallenged satus in the region.
5. When America stopped talking to Syria and Iran and left the Palestanian issue totally neglegted, the tensions and long term negative consequences will be felt for years to come.
6. By America going it's own way and totally disregarding the advice of her friends has alianated friend and foes alike. The damage to the U.S. prestige has taken the most severe hit and isolated it from the rest of the world.
7. The strong and capable America is dearly needed to solve the key issue in the ME - Palestain. After fumbling everything possible with the Palestain-Israel conflict, by blindly backing Israel with everything, on top of the fiasco of the Iraq war and occupation, who will believe anything the U.S. says or does as long as this incompetent herd of neoconmen are in charge?

OK, I feel silly of talking about these "facts" that you wanted. I promise to engage with you, if you so wish, but you have to narrow them down for me. Believe me, there is no shortage of facts about the sheer lunacy that is the Iraqi war. I have huch, though, that you just like your president don't really seek facts.
 

Pekka, I'm not sure you understand the meaning of the word 'facts.'
Iraq had WMD and used poison gas in the 8 year war against Iran (no doubt part of the peaceful foundation you talk about later) and against Kurds on about 40 occasions. Iran used nerve gas against Iraq. Iraq had a nuclear weapons program and were showing undeniable signs (liar Joe Wilson nothwithstanding) of wanting to reinstitute it.
Iraq planned the assassination of the first president bush and you need to read about some of the translations of captured documents from Iraq about terrorism plans.
The were shooting at our and British planes enforcing the no fly zones on at least a weekly basis.
I'm not sure of your use of the word 'blog' here but Iran is indeed one of the evil countries in the world (an Axis of Evil if you will) but I believe we hope it will fail without our having to use military force--at least that's all I see us doing--hoping.
Talking will not help ease tensions between Israel and the Muslim world. Israel will have to be eternally vigilent. I hope we continue to support and arm them through out their struggle merely to exist.
The only damage I can see to our prestige is that we have hamestrung our efforts to the point that they can be made to appear as failures. Strong, sure, swift response would serve us a lot better, I agree.
See above about no point in talking. I've learned that lesson--you'll apparently need new examples (more evidence of your lack of historical knowledge here).
Thanks for engaging--Oh, just for grins--tell me how many people Canada has in its armed forces--round it off to the nearest thousand.
 

Roger, the hypocricy is the known quality with the Bush Administration. However, when they preach how horrible the WMD's are, they do so by sitting on the largest cache of the nukes, poison gases and biological weapons ever in the world's history, it is a bit thick. Add to this that the U.S. is the only country in the world ever to use nukes in anger and also the fact that the late Uncle Saddam got his Kurd and Iranian killing gasses from "the best ever" defence secretary, the right honourable Rumsfeld, and one can't help but start rolling one's eyes. This whole charade is so over whelmingly beyond the pale and thus that it got by you undetected boggles the mind.

I wonder, if you could give me your take on what are the positives that have been accomplished with the war in Iraq? Quite frankly, I see the disaster.
 

Roger,

See previous comments I have posted. I continue to maintainn the position that the invasion of Iraq was not a priority w/ respect to preserving our national security.

Yes, Saddam Hussein was a monster.
It remains to be seen whether what replaced him better serves the Iraqis. Meanwhile, Iraq has become a black hole for our resources which could do much more good elsewhere, to wit, Afghanistan.

You have admirably provided legal justification for the invasion of Iraq in prior posts. Legal justification is inadequate in consideration of the realpolitick.

It is particularly unfortunate in that the invasion and the reconstruction could have been handled differently and produced a much better result.

I have reserved Rajiv Chandrasekaran's book at the DCPL. It promises to be a catalogue of horrors stemming from this administration's belief that one's political connections were much more important than one's qualifications.
 

We did not sell poison gas to Iraq. Your ignorance betrays a liberal bent. More of your fact free world view. We have renounced poison gas in any form and have never used it (although we were getting ready to use it against Japan when they surrendered). We developed nuclear weapons because we were informed (mis-informed it turns out) that Werner Heisenberg was working on a Nazi bomb (either he wasn't really or he couldn't get it done). We used all we had left in Summer, 1945 in order to stop the war right then so that we didn't lose 500,000 and kill about 10,000,000 in an invasion of Japan. Less dead in Nagasaki and Hiroshima than in Tokyo earlier that year with no nukes. We built a lot of nuke weapons after 1945 to keep from losing a war to the Soviets. That was just good sense. We've destroyed about half of our nuclear weapons since those dark days. Yeah and we're hipocrites not to want a Hitler lite characters to have poison gas and nuclear weapons. You are so ignorant about history, that I am not going to waste my time tutoring you any more. If you have an actual fact in what you write, I'll read what you say, otherwise I'm probably going to be ignoring you. Any word on the size of Canadian forces?
 

What the hell does fumbling George and his idiotic road show (all the way to Baghdad) gotta do with the size of the Canadian forces? You are right, Roger, we mix as well as oil and water and since there is no common language between us, I will go somewhere else. I do thank you for your courtesy of at least trying to educate me in the matters of military.

Please, try to give a good listen to your friends, Tony and Mike!