No, unless this was the reason for the invasion. It was not, just an additional benefit.

Bush has just got to hope that Sharon doesn't stretch his leash even further and decide to kill Arafat. I cannot think of any case in which the current adminsitration has publicly severely rebuked Israel for any action. Sharon might be willing to gamble that by killing Arafat, Bush would be enough in campaign mode not to sever ties, thus drawing him firmly in Israel's camp.

Very short term, this would be good for Israel. Long term, it would mean the loss of the most powerful broker for Mideast peace.

Of course, if hostilities do break out, maybe the US can spare another 50K troops to support the Israelis. If nothing else, direct involvement of the US in defending the JLZ (Jesus Landing Zone) in Jerusalem will get Bush points with God.

Those alumilium tubes had little or nothing to do with manufacture of a nuclear weapon. I don't remember the finding of armed missiles either, only ancient decaying artillery shell.

After further manipulation by your media and (god forbid if bush is still in office) bullied into the whims of the administration of the day, probably even more stupid than after the first. It's going from badly planned to boneheaded to plain old stupid. I'm hoping falluja is the turning point, if they'd gone into falluja even the British most likely would have pulled out of Iraq.

Year after year we've seen the hamfisted stomping around of a wounded elephant trying to stamp on bees, the net result so far is to only give it's enemies yet more ammunition and help recruit a new generation and a new country of angered fellows into the fold. I hate to think what the US would do after another attack, but however stupid it may be you can bet it won't solve the problem.

Lets face it, this isn't about Al-Queda anymore, all you hear about now are 10,000 little groups of angry people purported 'linked to Al-Queda', it's a meme and thanks to the US, it's growing fast.

.umm.....remind me again what the actual reasons were? Weapons of Mass destruction which could conceivably fall into the hands of Terrorist organisations such as Al Quaeda?

Given that that reason has now been discredited at an international level I notice people falling back on the rationale that at least we rid the world of Saddam's dictatorship....as if that justifies attacking another soveriegn nation

The only thing I feel fairly certain of now is that we had no business being in Iraq at all

Well put.

1- Saddam embarrassed Bush Sr.
2- Iraq was a threat to Israel.
3- Iraq was a threat to our God given right to oil.
"That reason" was only one of the reasons, but as I said a year ago, Saddam knew he could not beat us. His only chance was pressure by other countries to convince Bush to back off. If he used WMD's against us, that chance would vaporize. So he had no choice but hide/destroy/export them, before the shit hit the fan. He certainly had plenty of time to do that. I'm not sure they existed in the first place, but I'm not surprised they haven't been found.
But we do. Lots of "business". Big "business".
;)

......Cant fault ya.

My person feeling on the WMD thing is that Saddam was tricked by his own advisers, so caught up in his own power structure and surrounded by people who always said yes to save their own heads that there probably wasn't any WMDs after the first war.

Well......what a distasteful little site that is. Just anti moslem sentiment .....Across the centuries we've had pogroms in the west against the Jews....Now we seem to be replacing them with Moslems as the face of our disdain.

This one particularly irks me.

They make little or no cultural contribution to the world. Few seek out their poetry, their writing, their movies or music. The most famous Muslim writer of fiction in the world is under a fatwa death sentence now and lives in exile in Europe.

As far as sentences one and two--bullshit.

As far as sentence three--a fatwa cannot be repealed, but the one against Rushdie has been all but repealed. He can live in relative normalcy now.

I found the claim america is secular amusing. It demonstrated a clear lack of understanding of one of the fundamental tenants of the whole Islamic extremeist movement, crusades.

What an amazing lump of generalisations, unsubstantiated statements, misinterpretations.

Someone should ask this moron if he wants to protest and do his taxes in Roman numerals. If it weren't for 'arabic' numbers and the invention of the zero, we would still be inventing letters for every decimal place and half decimal.

MMIV

The point this out, along with a few other minor bits and pieces and miss a pile more (law for example, I find the US inviting the cradle of the rule of law both ironic and prophetic). They claim this is of course, irrelevant.

Friends, please. I'm sure that Mr. denBeste is referring to the last half-century.