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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill who wrote (296141)	9/12/2002 1:01:05 PM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

He was wise to focus on the challenge to the UN: are you going to enforce these resolutions, considering the escalating risk, or are you going to wait for Saddam to commit an outrage?

To: Bill who wrote (296141)	9/12/2002 3:08:58 PM
From: Knight	Respond to of 769670

Great speech! Cogent, persuasive presentation of the case against Iraq. To believe that Hussein will not continue to build weapons of mass destruction and will not continue to aid and abet other terrorist regimes requires Pollyanna-ish naivete. The following Cal Thomas piece published this week documents a number of interesting parallels between the situation today with Iraq and the situation in 1941-42. jewishworldreview.com Meanwhile, columnists opine about the lack of public support, how it will undermine our relationships with the international community, etc. An example is Chris Matthews' recent column, "To Iraq and Ruin," (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/08/25/IN239822.DTL) which concludes as follows: "This invasion of Iraq, if it goes off, will join the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, Desert One, Beirut and Somalia in the history of military catastrophe. "What will set it apart, distinguishing it for all time, is the immense - and transparent - political stupidity. "A mission to attack one isolated enemy will end up isolating us. A mission justified by the fight with terrorism will give birth to millions of terrorist- supporting haters. In every cafe from Manila to Casablanca, just whom do you think they will be rooting for? Just whom will their kids be killing themselves for?" What is "immense and transparent" is not the stupidity of action against Hussein but the stupidity of inaction. History amply demonstrates that appeasement of maniacal dictators does not result in a change of heart. Rather, it simply provides them with more time and resources to develop their diabolical strategies, and ends up costing more lives than does early action. Think of how much suffering and death could have been eliminated if action had been taken earlier against Hitler. Yes, the extremist terrorists will react in anger against the US, but they would have reacted in anger anyway because they've been brainwashed into believing that the US is an imperialist nation. We have demonstrated time and again that we are not. How many nations in history have treated their vanquished opponents the way we treated Japan after their surrender in WWII (i.e, rebuilt the country and the economy, then allowed them to have an independent government.)? In the last year, we vanquished the terrorist government in Afghanistan, yet we are already setting the Afghan people up to have an independent, democratic government. We do not subjugate; we liberate. We are no threat to any nation unless it either threatens us or egregiously violates human rights. When we invade and defeat Iraq, we will demonstrate all of the above yet again. We will liberate the Iraqi people from a dictatorial regime and will let them establish an independent, democratic government. According to Chris Matthews, "What will set [this invasion of Iraq] apart, distinguishing it for all time, is the immense - and transparent - political stupidity." Fortunately, within a few short years, it will be Matthews and the other political pundits of his ilk, who will come out appearing stupid--probably just about as stupid as those naysaying pundits of 1940-41 now appear. I had a history teacher in high school who used to say that when you study history two things will surprise you: First, how much things have changed and, second, how little things have changed. Yep.