I could not agree with this more. States that threaten us should be taken down by any appropriate means. Knocking off Saddam qualified. So would knocking off the pot bellied pig in Pyongyang and maybe even the Khomeiniacs. But I think it important to be clear to the American people and to the world what we are doing.
If we are engaged in a process of destroying those who threaten us, say so. Bush has muddied his message with all the talk of spreading freedom and democracy in places that do not clearly indicate that they want it.
Trek, I don't want to extend this past what you have time for, but I would ask your thoughts on this...
It is seldom that those who indicate that they want freedom, have any need of outside help to obtain that freedom. For us to interfere in such cases, as you indicate, would be counterproductive and innately wrong. But we need also to perhaps realize, that in countries where tyrants rule, the only pictures usually allowed to be broadcast are those of supporters pumping up and down their rifles, in the tired, trite, approved method of CNN broadcasts. The ones under the boot have no say. I don't argue in any case that the US military intervene in affairs unconnected to our war on terror. But the military was not, I believe, what the President was referring to. The option of withholding trade, and, much more importantly I think, of simply using the power of the press is unreservedly ours as a sovereign country. It is the one weapon that we have consistently used against ourselves and that needs to be seized from the dark side. If we have to sit through endless denunciations in the French and German press of our "perfidy", why would we not exercise our power to condemn publically those countries which rape their own citizenry? What I've heard from the Iranian resistance, and from the Ukrainians, during their trial of fire, was..."-we don't need military help- we need your support in the world-wide press..." If we can untwist the tendrils of the Left from around our media, we can stop the propaganda of the Left, and begin to finally show the truth to the world. This perhaps is a call to all Americans to demand from the press that they halt the truth embargo.