[Odile]

World War II was a just and necessary. thank God we were able to win it. It's terrible thing for humanity that we had to use the atomic bomb to end it, however.

I've never been convinced that the so-called "Korean Conflict" or "Viet Nam" were either necessary or justified. Tragic errors both of them.

Thank God we won the Cold War. And God bless President Reagan (and Mr. Gorbachev) for their roles in that.

I was not very impressed with our move on Panama or the much touted Gulf War either. The campaign in Somalia was a disaster and our military adventures in Kosovo seem to have done little good.

What exactly have our little wars accomplished since WWII?

We are almost universally disliked and distrusted. Since Viet Nam we have been a house divided against itself. (We've never really recovered from the Sixties, despite the pleasant hiatus of the Reagan years.)

I personally think we are foolish to go waltzing off to war in the Middle East when we have utterly failed to cover our backsides here at home.

Our Immigration and naturalization policy is a DISASTER. Our unwillingness to tackle the severe problem of the unchallenged presence of several million Muslims running loose in our midst is a DISGRACE.

IF, as the anti-war crowd suggests W. is cynically prosecuting this war for the sake of cheap oil and ultimate personal gain and because he is somehow the "slave" of Israel, then he deserves to fail. But I doubt the truth of those assertions.

[DoughtyOne]

None of us like war.  The next to the last thing I want to do is send our troops into harms way.  The last thing I want to do is allow a barbarian like Saddam Hussein to gain too much power, munitions etc.

We know what he will do if given half a chance.  He will retake Kuwait.  He will more than likely take Saudi Arabia and other states on the Arabian Pennensula.  When he has viable weapons of mass destruction and a delivery system, he will do severe damage to neighboring states before they or we have a chance to react.  We have to move preemptively on this guy.  For the same reason we are going after the Taliban and Al Qaeda, Saddam has to be taken down.

Was the Korean war worth it?  Today half the Korean Pennensula is free.  Are those free citizens worth the price?  Was free Kuwait worth the price?  Was keeping Saddam from controling half or more of the world's oil supply worth the price?  Was the provision of a better leader for Panama worth the price?  You left out a few campaigns.  Was the freeing of Granada worth the price?  Was it worth it to make sure that airport down there couldn't be used to further leftist goals in Central and South America?  Was it worth it to deny the insurgents in El Salvador the ability to take down it's government and turn it Marxist?  Was it worth it to aid the Contras and helping them to remove that communist leader?

I give Reagan a lot of credit.  Although I view Gorby as better than his predicessors, I don't think he could avoid what was happening.  Reagan gets the credit.

What everyone forgets is that Saddam Hussein has killed his own people with chemical weapons.  He has either directly or indirectly killed millions of his own people.  He openly blames the US for starving the children of his nation, saying upwards of five million have died.  His pilferage of the billions in oil money set aside for their care, facilitated their deaths.  So it isn't just the US that benefits from his removal.  His own people will celebrate his removal.  His own military will.

Look our immigration and border policies are insane.  I can't argue with that.  That doesn't mean we can turn a blind eye to Saddam.

As for oil dollars, and Bush being in the pocket of big oil, that's not possible.  It's not possible for him to be seeking big profits from cheap oil.  If Iraq is stabalized, oil prices will fall.  Tell me one big oil company that will profit from lower stabalized oil prices.

Every person who makes the claim that Bush is in the big-oil pocket, would curse the day he every let Saddam take over half the world's oil supply.  If the oil flow were interrupted, they would damn him for that too.  Cold winters in New England to empty cars when they needed to go to work would be the excuse then to go after Bush.

Look, we don't live in a perfect world.  Evil does exist.  We are not perfect, but we are going to try to react to evil in a reasonable manner.  You can rest assured we will make mistakes.  You can also rest assured no other nation on the planet would do better.