[Cronos]

I get what you're saying and agree with you -- Saddy did NOT support alQ because they were a threat to him, probably a bigger threat than the US. The alQ loathed Saddy, as, for whatever else his faults may have been (and there were many), he was secular -- he didn't really care what religion you were as long as you supported him and hated the Persians. the anti-Israeli thing was just a way to get support in the Arab world. Of course we had to get rid of him, but now the onus is on us to show them a better way. Saddy was the lesser of the two evils (saddy or the Talibs), but now we can give them somethign better and give OURSELVEs a great opportunity to get a secure state int eh near east.

[azhenfud]

My friend explained Saddam couldn't outright claim "no WMD's" because the Al Quirks were on the border and within Iraq waiting for him to declare he had no means of retribution left. If he had (and I believe Al Queida has already infiltrated since his fall) the terrorist cells would have immediately stormed him since they had a basic hatred of Saddam and needed him out of the way.

Fanatic Islam's goal is world dominion - despite all the PC coverup and denial.

As my friend explained - any democracy formed within Iraq must begin with Iraqi's. Western influence can only be just that - influence - and not force. The Iraqi people have to decide to be free and that freedom is also freedom from fanatic Islamic control.

[philosofy123]

I do respect Dr. Lewis’s knowledge of Islam, and consider his scholarly ideas are important for our politicians to follow, however, I do not agree with him on the Armenian Holocaust by the Moslem Turks. He must have gotten to close to Turkish government, which is always very defensive, and sensitive about that subject. I admire Turkey a lot, but I still think that they need to come out clean about their historical dark past regarding the Armenian holocaust.

It is obvious that the Moslems hate the Christians and Jews, and wish to convert them to Islam or kill them as they historically have done in the past. The West is now richer, and stronger, and their drive to convert the West is growing more frantic under the fanatical fundamentalists in power in Saudi Arabia, and Iran. The Real solution to this world problem is not "democracy", but moderation of radical Islamists control of their media. The way I see it, we in the US have fanatical Christian fundamentalists that may wish to have us beat people for not going to church, however, our media is controlled by the liberals; hence, we continue to have tolerance, and acceptance of each others. As the fanatical Christian fundamentalists would wish more rigid behaviors from us, the media (some times get too extreme) continues to moderate, and socially engineer our minds, and perceptions. The West’s experiments of tolerance through human rights advocacy for our minorities have proved successful for us, and were never introduced to the Moslem nations. Moslem leaders take pride in covering up barbaric hate against their minority citizens... Since the West has the biggest power and economic leverage on this planet, it is in a good position to "impose" tolerance, and moderation in the Moslem media.

You are going to ask: IMPOSE? Yes impose! But of course incrementally! How did the US media get to have gay propaganda shows on our TV? It did not happen overnight! The majority of our population still do not accept gay behaviors, but our media keep soft selling (through comedy) the gay issues. The art of propaganda was not invented yesterday, and is widely used throughout the world by leaders to achieve support from their population.

The first thing is for our politicians to realize that they must infiltrate the Moslem media through a covert help from their politicians. If our politicians chose to keep hands off interfering with other countries internal hate propaganda, then we will still have to contend with the results of such propaganda. Spending money bribing intellectuals to do the incremental soft selling of moderation should be our first priority. UN sponsored tactics can also help legitimize such effort. Considering freedom of religion, protection of minorities’ house of worships should be pushed by the Islamic leaders and the UN. Crimes against humanity should be further defined to include forced religion conversions or religion killings. Worldwide solidarity against nations that oppresses its minorities in the name of religion must become a cause celebre du jour.