[Xantar]

Your tiger metaphor goes for you too. You are assuming that what we are doing is not working and needs to be completely revamped with no evidence to support that it is failing. You assume that it is not working without knowing anything about it and distrusting those that are trained to do and have experience in the process. I don't know for sure that it is working either. All I know is that we have not been attacked since 9/11, that 2 terrorist attacks on the US have been thwarted since 9/11 (a nuclear plant in New England and a planned attack on the Brooklyn Bridge), and that we have experienced people in charge of the extraction. The circumstantial evidence supports my theory. Yours seems to be the African dancing around in circles while mine has a spear and a war party.

No, I don't know that the system is failing. What I do know is that power given to a bureaucracy inevitably gets twisted and abused. Isn't that why we didn't join in the International Criminal Court? It's not as if we really believed some evil international judge with an agenda would start rounding up random Americans and charging them with acts of war. It was just a matter of distrusting power placed in the hands of a few. I feel the same way about the authorities being able to detain people like this without due process (incidentally, Administration lawyers are trying to argue that Americans can be detained as illegal combatants just like non-citizens, so I'm not so sure that your distinction U.S. and non-U.S. citizens really works).

In the ideal world, this is the kind of power and authority we would grant during wartime and would then take away when it's no longer necessary. In reality, it's extremely difficult to take power away from a bureaucracy. Just ask the communists.

THE CONSTITUTION APPLIES ONLY TO AMERICAN CITIZENS. I already went over this. We are under no obligation to extend the Constitution to our enemies. We even extend the Geneva Convention to our enemies when we don't have too, lets not go so far as to give them the Constitution too. If that sounds harsh, so be it.

No, not harsh. Just hypocritical. Besides, why then are we seeing all these distinctions made between unlawful combatant detainees and prisoners of war? It's all just hairsplitting to get around the Geneva conventions. Let's not pretend the Bush Administration really does have all that much respect for them.

We just freed a country of 50 million people, and before that we took down the Taliban.

A point which doesn't necessarily get through to people on the ground. I'm not going to say that Iraqis hate us and long for the days of Saddam because that's clearly ludicrous. However, the truth is not so simple as saying that the majority of Iraqis want democracy either. Tom Clancy had an insightful line in one of his novels which said that the duty of the President is to ensure that everybody gets a steak dinner every once in a while and a football game on weekend nights. Provide that much and the vast majority of Americans will be content. Make a few substitutions in that statement and you'd have something that applies to Iraq. My guess is that the majority of Iraqis don't have terribly strong feelings one way or another towards democracy, but if they think it will get them fed and clothed, they'll give it a try.

Which in any case is beside the point. Yes, I understand that terrorism is rooted in a cancer on the culture and the society and not necessarily in something inherent to the American culture itself. My point, however, is that anyone can see that terrorism has gotten to us. Not just in the way we've bumped up security and tightened restrictions and so on. The way we're carrying on, anybody with eyes can see that we're scared. And that encourages terrorists to renew their efforts. Sure, they'd keep going regardless, but do we have to help them?

Um, there is a good chance we would have. There were many politicians that were very much against our involvement in the war, and the country at large was split as to whether or not we should get involved in the European theater. There were even many Nazi sympathizers in our country at the time. Roosevelt had to start the "lend/lease" program to England because he knew that the Congress would NEVER vote to sell England weapons and equipment. Japan was a common enemy, but many many people were against being involved in Europe.

Since you're the history major, I'll concede to your expertise. But I'd just like to point out that even supporters of the war here aren't rolling their used tires to collection yards to help in the war effort. Not that I'm saying Bush should go out and ask us for our tires because they won't mean much and never did. I'm just suggesting that some portion of the public really was invested in the war effort. Nowadays, the extent of anybody's support is watching footage on TV and making posts on the internet.

What frustrates me about your last two paragraphs is that you are relying on talking points that aren't your own, but that your repeating from the television set. Everything I've said in response to those I've said numerous times before and its all factual, and you knew them before you wrote about the WMD's. So I'm going to leave this conversation before I start repeating myself again. This has all become so very redundant.

I think your point in these last few paragraphs got muddled because I have no idea what you're arguing or what you're trying to say about my argument. You might want to note, however, that I hardly ever watch TV and so I'd have a very hard time getting my talking points from CNN. Maybe you just misunderstood me. My point in any case was never about whether it was right or wrong to go into Iraq or whether it's right or wrong now to try to establish a democracy. From the moment gunshots were fired, obviously we were set on a course to oust Saddam and establish a new government whether we liked it or not. And I could say that the Clinton Administration as well as the Bush Administration were dupes (despite being a liberal, I wasn't a fan of Clinton's foreign policy), but that's also beside the point.

All I'm saying now is that President Bush and his cabinet could have managed public support for the war so much better. Installing a democracy is a big deal, particularly if it is lasting and provides an example that spreads. As you said, it could lead to nothing less than peace for an entire region and for hundreds of millions of people. Whether I believe that would work or not, those are grand dreams, and Bush would have done well to trumpet them. Sure, you and I understand that a democratic government would have to be established and that it would take a really long time (and I assume back in 2003 that you were prepared to wait however long it took). But did the public at large understand that? I think they didn't, and I think Bush should have made sure that they did. Maybe you and I actually agree on this since you say your biggest criticism is that Bush can't seem to defend his own policies. In any case, I hope that clarifies thing because I'm about ready to give it a rest, too.