Thank you for this post, Herb. I read it several times and have been meaning to get back to responding to it with the intellectual response it deserves. It was cogent, well said and pushes the mind to the edges of the envelope of rational thought. I only dare to attempt a reply now that I have set aside enogh time to do it justice. I cannot outdo what you have said, for it is all well stated and unarguable.

Just as in the Viet Nam protest era, these "useful idiots" (in the words used by Karl Marx and Vladamir Lenin to describe American leftists) are dupes of the American Communist Party in its new guise as the "World Workers' Coalition." The organization of these marches and protests against our nation is handled by a group calling itself "ANSWER." They are wholly operated and funded by the World Workers' Daily, the organ of the American Commnnist Party.

You're right. They offer no alternatives that have any meaning, intellectual substance or practical realism. They only wish to demonstrate their arrogant misquided beliefs that they possess some superior knowledge about how the world should be. They totally ignore 12 years of obfuscation, deceit and deception by Saddam Hussein. They are dismissive of the motivations for action to force this petty despot to live up to his obligations to the rest of the world and his neighbors. Their chants and screamed obscentities add nothing to the discussion about whether or not we ought to act on his refusal to live up to the terms of his own cease fire agreement from 1991. They mistake France's self-centered declarations of opposition to war for actual reasoned debate. How the Hell would France know anything about fighting a war and its attendant horrors? They have never done it. They have surrendered before war ever happened to them every time. Their efforts at prosecuting war in war zones far from their soil - Morocco, Algeria and Viet Nam were miserable failures in each instance. Their abysmal performace as "allies" during the American Revlution was pitiable, at best, primarily limited to blockading one harbor on the eastern coast of the colonies, and they didnt' do that as well as it should have been done. Had it not been for the heroic efforts of our ragtag fledgling American Navy, that blockade would have been a dismal failure. American ships of the line had to station themselves between the French ships and the open sea to keep them from hightailing it when actually confronted by British ships.

I dare venture to say that not one fo those mindless cretins prancing around with their stupid signs recently is aware that the best known "gift" of France to the colonies was the practice of scalping that they brought to and taught to frontier Native American groups. They stupidly think placing a flower in the gun barrel of a tyrant will somehow magically turn him into a peace-loving flower child as well. They have no life's experience to draw upon in the debate over how the real world operates and they are intent on only one thing blaming the US for every ill of the world.

Dont' get me wrong. Perhaps I, more than most, am painfully aware of the misconduct in foreign affairs of some of our past and present leaders. We're no angels, but screaming lies repeatedly does not change them into truth. No man who has seen friends die horrible deaths in foresaken hellholes wants war. No man who has ever taken up arms and taken the life of another wants that for himself or his children - or anyone's children - ever again unless it is the only way possible to protect and defend. In those cases, military men know that some situations can only be resolved by the indignities of combat. To claim otherwise is stupid, senseless and insulting, yet it is what they do.

Claiming our goal is middle=eastern oil is shamely wrong and patently false. If we wanted Daddam's oil, we could buy it from him. In fact, we have been doing just that for many years now in an effort to get money for medicines, drups, medical supplies and food to the Iraqi people, but Hussein keeps the money for his own self-aggrandizement and for the purposes of funding arms acquisitons and terrorist organizatons like Hezbollah and Hamas. He even promotes their efforts in those areas. Where are their signs denouncing those actions? They parade in the streets of free nations to spew their mindless bile. Why don't, or won't, they do the same in Baghdad, Pyongyang, Bejiing or other such capitals of corpulent corruption? Could it be because those places don't permit dissent?

Thanks again, Herb. It was a great post and one that left me awestruck with admiration.