sonofeire... that was satire, right?

You're not actually that caricature of an actual person. Nobody could be that extremist. I mean, rolling peaceniks and tofu into a line of adjectives was all well and good, but nobody who can evidently spell could be so stupid as to think of the issue in such black and white terms.

It isn't about such extreme ends and no, I don't see where this article actually stated that the soldiers who participated in the attack on fallujah are as bad as the terrorists who killed Daniel Pearl.

Do you? If not, then honestly, cut the hysterical spray it's a distraction from what we condone of our soldiers in war. Instead of making such ridiculous comparisons, how about stating what you do think is 'okay' for our troops to do, and whether you're fine with cutting off aid.

While you're at it, define the reasons why we are indeed better than the terrorists, more to the point, define how we stay that way and what acts we should refuse to sink to.

Thank you, Polycarp, for your fine review of this piece's near perfect projection of the FasciSSocialist Psychopathology.

In your roundup of those of Human History's very worst acts of barbarity committed by the manifestation of evil its practitioners, promulgators, promoters, polemicists and projectors, proudly, with froth and foam flecked passion and often, call: communism, socialism, "progressivism," "liberalism," "environmentalism, "laborism," "greenism" and "climatechangism" (well, OK, I made that last couple up -- but they're the road to totalitarian tyranny by any other name) -- and unwillingly or never by its such other of its names as: fascism, militarism and Nazism -- you missed such of those other obscene examples of Marxist/Stalinist/Hitlerism let loose as: Hitler, Castro, Hirohito, Pol Pot, Mussolini and Mugabe. And Mankind's double gold medal winner for both all-time most prolific mass-murderer AND most prolific ever child rapist, wanabe mandarin K "Dudd" Rudd's mate: Mao Tze Tung!

Not a one of them conservative, not one Australian -- nor yet American!

Nor yet even a traitor in sight to say so.

(Where's there a Burchett, an Arnett or a Mick Ware when one needs one?)

Brian Richard Allen
Los Angeles - California

Paul.L Wrote: "... So I showed you where you were wrong."

Yeah, right, Paul.L. Why not let others be the judge of that?

Paul.L wrote: "On this point at least we should be in agreement. Saddam NEVER cooperated EFFECTIVELY with the Inspectors."

I consider this to be nit-picking. Whether or not the Iraqi government was 'EFFECTIVELY' cooperating, the UN inspectors had all the necessary powers to deal with whatever conceivable threat existed and were using them. That is why former inspector Scott Ritter and the head of the UN weapons inspectors Hans Blix opposed the invasion.

Do I know for certain that if Iraq/North Korea/Pakistan/Iran/Syria/Libya/Venezuela had not been invaded, "Saddam would have peacefully ruled his kingdom without renewing his WMD programs?"

No, of course I can't say for certain, but given that Iraq had not succeeded in conquering any countries since Saddam Hussein came to power in 1972, which, by my count is at least three less than that which the US directly conquered, excluding Iraq in the same period, I would be inclined to agree with Scott Ritter that whatever threat could have conceivably have arisen would have easily been contained.

---

Let's have a closer look at how the US did such a great job of introducing democracy in Iraq, shall we?

"When Paul Bremmer first arrived, the US plan was to convene a large constituent assembly, representing all sectors of Iraqi society, where the delegates would vote for the members of an interim executive council. After spending two weeks in Baghdad, Bremer scrapped the idea. Instead, he decided to handpick the members of a governing Iraqi council. ..." (Klein, p 362)

"Bremer's next problem was the elections breaking out in towns and cities across the country. At the end of June (2003), only his second month in Iraq, Bremer sent word that all local elections must stop immediately. The new plan was for Iraq's local leaders top be appointed by the occupation, just as the Governing Council had been."(Klein, p 363)

Here are some links relevant to the Iraq war:

Number Of Iraqis Slaughtered Since The U.S. Invaded Iraq 1,252,595 http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths.html

Number of U.S. Military Personnel Sacrificed (Officially acknowledged) in America's War On Iraq 4,138 http://icasualties.org/oif/

The War And Occupation Of Iraq Costs
$544,507,752,171 See the cost in your community
http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=182

Iraq: At least 7 killed in another bloody day of US occupation:

A U.S. soldier and an Iraqi interpreter were killed when a roadside bomb hit their vehicle in northwestern Baghdad, the U.S. military said.
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsMaps/idUSANW22158020080813

'Where Are the Weapons of Mass Destruction?' By Scott Ritter

At what point in time will it become clear that a crime against America has been committed, not by any foreign terrorist group, but rather the highest officials in the land, those entrusted with safeguarding the Constitution? If the rule of law is to have any meaning today, Congress has no choice but to institute proceedings mandated by the Constitution against those high officials who have committed high crimes and misdemeanors against the American people.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20501.htm

... All links supplied by Information Clearing House (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info)

Another discussion "Winning the war in Iraq" concerning the Iraq war as a whole and less to do specifically with the Falluja operation has been started at http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=2052&page=0

I note Graham Young started the discussion by dismissing Naomi Klein's case against the war, which I have referred to above.

daggett: " .... That is why former inspector Scott Ritter and the head of the UN weapons inspectors Hans Blix opposed the (liberation) .... "

Convicted wannabe child rapist, Ritter -- as was effectively the whole of that most comprehensively (in all of Human history) systemically corrupt coming together of gangs of organized criminals, dictators, megalomaniacs and mass murderers: the "united nations" -- were directly in the pay of the Baghdad butcher's Baathists.

Before his Burger King ballsup, Hussayn paid wannabe pedophile, Ritter, USD$400,000.00. Ostensibly to "write a book." And the bumbling blustering own trumpet blowing Blix, also well-oiled by Baghdad's butcher, always was and remains but a two-bit bureaucratic cog in the permanently parasitical and pathologically hesperophobic anti-American Coffee Annan gang, whose ineptitude and cowardice gave the world Rwanda and oversees Darfor -- and whose overt criminality oversaw "oil for food."

And "cacofonix:" An interesting trotting out of the Soviet-inspired Socialist Internationale's usual Goebbelsesque and rhetorically hyperbolic talking points. Too bad though that almost every one of them is to veracity and/or to hisorical fact (or even to rationality and/or to sanity) what Michael Jackson is to normal sexuality.

And as to kid-rooter Ritter's "Where Are the Weapons of Mass Destruction?" I guess neither you nor he noted that the Coalition of around thirty nations' rationale for the removal of the Baghdad' butcher's mass murderous dictatorship and consequential liberation of Iraq was not the hugely inflated "weapons of mass destruction" canard but was Hussayn's countless breaches of the innumerable (albeit serially mindless and ever-more meaningless) UN Resolutions that arose from the liberation of Kuwait - at the termination of which liberation the Baghdad butcher traded Iraq's sovereignty for UN compliance?

And I guess you haven't noticed also (and despite that it's in any case moot) the constant stream of information regarding the almost daily location of evidence of countless weapons of mass destruction programs -- including the shipping a month or so ago, from Baghdad to Canada, of 500-odd tons of Hussayn's Yellowcake?

Brian Richard Allen
Los Angeles - Californicated 90028