thunder wrote:

On Wed, 09 Jul 2003 14:08:52 +0000, Dave Hall wrote:

*ONE* of the reasons was evidently not there. But all of the rest
of
them still were. There was still the issue of chemical and
biological weapons (Yea I know, until you see them you won't believe
it), the brutality of Saddam, and the stability of the middle east,
and the elimination of havens for terrorists.

The brutality of Saddam was a given. No one will miss him.
Mid-east stability is still a wait and see. As an aside, the
mid-east might of already been a stable place, if we had kept our
CIA's hands out of it. You are aware that one of the CIA's many
mid-east coups was indirectly responsible for Saddam in the first
place.

You are correct. This country does have a very poor record, for
interfering in the affairs of other nations, if we feel it's to our best
interest. In the case of Iraq and Saddam, they were our friends,
because we shared a common enemy, Iran, at the time. Where we go wrong,
is that we fail to consider the constantly changing political atmosphere
in this region of the world. What might be today's friend, could turn
out to be tomorrow's enemy. This practice transcends partisan politics.
We tend to judge by our own set of morals and principles, which may be
different then that of the people in those other countries. We have a
weakness for wanting other countries to be more like us, as we have more
rights and freedoms as most other nations.
Then we face a catch 22 situation. If we keep our heads out of world
politics, we get accused of being "isolationists". If we do become
involved, we get accused of trying to police the world. It seems that no
matter what we do, we can't seem to please everyone....

Dave