a more balanced approach to conflict is a platitude? So whenever folks disagree we should bomb, kill, etc? What on earth is wrong with honest negotiation and compromise - the development of a peace treaty through discussion, understanding and embrace of each other's inherent rights???If that is passe or a platitude, I don't know how you can live in this world???Regarding Wes' not getting whoever's point:??I'm not so certain that my high school friends who went to the Naval Academy, West Point, or through an ROTC program and graduated in 1993 ever expected to wind up invading a sovereign nation under false pretenses and spend a prolonged amount of time trying to beat down a guerilla warfare? They did not believe in this war, they joined a military that they believed would participate in peace-keeping missions to prevent genocides and protect human rights around the world. They never expected to fight in a war to expand the American Oil Empire. There are, no doubt, those who joined after swallowing Bush's kool-aid and believing that Saddam was responsible for the 9/11 attacks and even believed that he had nukes and bio-weapons. We have proven that wrong, and evidence is now emerging that Bush knew it was all a lie too. Reality is knocking. Are you willing to answer the door?

I got this in respose:

Reality check # 1: Explain to me how honest negotiation and compromise - the development of a peace treaty through discussion, understanding and embrace of each others inherent rights works with a genocidal dictator? It was tried in Munich 1938 and the result was 6 million jews gased.??Reality Check # 2: Saddam used bio-weapons against his own people and the Iranians.??Reality Check # 3: The US found three WMD's in Iraq, Saddam, Uday, and Qusay.??Reality Check #4 : " A more balanced approach to conflict reduction in the region"?Is a euphemistic phrase for an anti - Israel pro - Palestinian stance. As a child of the sixties I never thought that the liberal left would support baby killing terrorists.??Reality Check #5: "Reality is knocking .Are you willing to answer the door"?We have answered and on the other side was a man with a bomb strapped to his body willing to kill himself and innocent women and children!

Woah. So I sent this off:

re #1 & 2:Hitler was actively murdering his own people, and attacking all of his neighbors in order to build a supernation that would exterminate an entire race of people. We funded Saddam to kill his people in the 80s. Remember - we were for him before we were against him. I reluctantly support the Kuwait war in the 90s because Kuwait was a sovereign nation, albeit one that the western world carved out for their nation-building oil-hungry purposes.

re: #3: Did we find nukes? bioweapons?  We found a dictator that we installed who was keeping Iraq together, albeit by force. I don't think Wes loves Saddam, and I know I don't. But you have to admit that Iraq was WAY less a threat to us as a nation held in check by Saddam than it is now with a civil war raging (more people die in Iraq today than died in our own civil war per day), terrorists streaming in and amassing support in the face of a US occupation. WMDs will appear in Iraq, because the nation is so insecure. Are the people of Iraq better off today than they were in April 2002? None of us liked Saddam, ever. Are we better off without him in power there? Has democracy flowered in Iraq now, 3 years in?

re #4: Oh come on. When did I say anything anti-Israel? History reminds us that Israel was established by the western powers after world war 2. People who had lived on that land since a prior conflict hundreds of years earlier were removed and a new country established. So these two groups who had existed with degrees of conflict had the West come in and settle things for them by dividing their land. Now, because of that, the old conflicts have simmered to boiling points. The arabs feel that the west unfairly favors Israel (and soemtimes we do) and Israelis feel that the rest of the arab world unfairly favors Palestine.

Until there is some meaningful reconciliation there will be war. Both sides are wrong. It's like a fight in the sandbox that never ends, with neither side mature enough to hear the other and share in a fair manner. The danger to the entire world is horrific at this point since we all know that Israel has nukes. Since the world economy is based on oil, devastation in the region is a global catastrophe. So what should we do? Impose a US protectorate to settle everything?

re #5: How has it gotten to this? Suicide bombers are crazy, yes. HOw did they get to the point where they would kill themselves? Where does that rage come from? Islam? A religion that teaches peace and adherence to a strict moral code? Hardly. It comes from wounds and rage that has festered for decades. Much like riots in the US, violence from injustice over a long period, ignored by those in power explodes. The reality is that now there is a conflict running so deep that it is a matter of life and death. And yes, behind some doors lurk those seeking to destroy. Where are those willing to heal instead of kill? Will you be one who wants to heal? Or one who insists on more killing?

So I am having a most interesting discussion with the neocons. Got some responses for me?