Um.
Fact: Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.
Fact: Saying "Iraq" and "9/11" together in at least one sentence in every speech made by the President down to John Ashcroft can convince some people that there is a connection between the two.
Fact: There is no connection between Iraq and 9/11.
Fact: The best estimate of civilian deaths from warfare in Iraq is 100,000. Deaths by name is 15,000, the rest were arrived at through sampling performed by one of the premier universities in the world and published in a premier peer reviewed medical journal. The highest estimate is 150,000. The White House says it's more like 8,000. *sigh*
Fact: Osama Bin Laden planned and funded the 9/11 attack. Osama is still alive and well.
Six degrees of separation does not change the facts. The only "real" reasons we went to war with Iraq have either been proven to be mistaken or completely false except for some extremely weak and selfish reasons.
But we can't change the past and in the coming future we've got to deal with Iraq properly. I'm not sure what that is and I definitely don't trust this Bush crew to do whatever the best thing is. Lots more people will die no matter what's done but we should be trying to limit it as best we can. I don't think we have been.
What will it take before the number of civilian deaths in Iraq crosses the moral line for most Americans? The insurgency is going to keep coming as long as there are young people in Iraq. And until we leave or kill every last Iraqi they're going to keep coming. Will it cross the moral line for Americans if Donald Rumsfeld uses some nukes? Sadly I don't think that would be enough. They would somehow whitewash the agony of a city of people burning together. "By using a 15megaton bomb, see, we were able to kill all the people in the city instantly so there was minimal suffering," Donald would whine as his hands spiral through the evil hypnotist's miming they always do
http://poe-news.com/features.php?feat=31845. But like I said, I don't know what the best thing is going forward. I would think using some serious diplomatic pressure to bring in Arabic military forces to take over areas from our military would be smart. Begging and pleading as well as threatening would probably be the best approach. Then I think we should destroy part of the Israeli wall that is obviously encroaching on Palestinian land. That would really shake up the Arab world. But standing in place and punching like mad is just foolish. If you're going to start a fight you should always be finding a way to end it, especially if those you just beat were faking and stood up and kicked you in the ass. That's one of my personal mottos. Yeah, I know, it's too long to be a motto. But I'm kind of noisey like that. Just yak on and on and on about stuff, using sentences that are overly long and overly complicated. Those sentences that would have stumped most of my high school classmates when asked to diagram them. Or that really should be part of the preceding sentence(s) but are separated by a period to accent the length of the pause. But anyway, those are some of my thoughts on the subject of war in the Middle East. If you read all the way to here I've got a dada-ist joke for you:
Q: "How many frogs does it take to screw in a blender?"
A: Red.