Hand it to tw -- I serve him, almost daily.

Bruce, are you trying to tell me you're "not on my side?"

Y'know they have special online auctions for people like you:P

Can't be for people like me -- I never go. :p

A free and democratic Iraq, connecting with the global economy in full and not just in the oil sector -- Iraqi produce and greengroceries are voluminous and could be famous, for the Fertile Crescent is as fertile as it ever was -- is an Iraq that wins out, and America along with her: it's a win-win. Whether a new Iraq is a federation or a looser confederation, either would be fine. Three separate states seems too likely to lead to Balkanized problems.

Rejecting al-Qaeda's agenda of retreating into the Gap is the most positive step I've seen from there. Iraq is finally awakening to sense.

UG: ha ha. That's weak, changing the scenery like that.. ooookay... good. xoB answered the right question with the right answer. You're... hopelessy, comically stuck in your oversimplified monochromatic useless "with us or agi'n us" world view. I wish you had less company, but, thankfully, you don't have the company of the wiser and more thoughtful voices here.

xoB, I applaud your clarity.

Damn it! Now they are in the mall, too? al-Qaeda is everywhere. :mad2:

Bastards! I needed a new pair of kakis.

V, you can't show it's weak -- Bruce got clever, I got thoughtful about his clever reply. Tw on the other hand is an idiotic brute with a very ill concealed penchant for totalitarianism, and no chastisement of such idiotic, brutal antipatriots can even approach the excessive.

I am a partisan of democracy and libertarian democracy at that: my opponents are partisans of something else, or they'd sound a bit more like me. Those opponents that have gotten crosswise of me on the subject do so at their peril; they haven't come off very well. Here's one reason why:

You're very taken with a supposedly more sophisticated point of view, while being under rather a mistaken understanding of mine; I do not despise the neutral, but I don't give them much thought either, come to that. The thing that is invariably -- to the point of ennui -- wrong with this sophisticated point of view is that it errs always on the side of "America-do-nothing. America-win-nothing." The adjective for this thinking is "idiotic." Unless you'd consider "subversive," or "fascist-sympathizing" to suit the case better. There certainly seems no totalitarian or socialist nation these sophisticates can't fall in love with, except for the safely dead socialist regimes like fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. (Boy, there's intellectual courage, excoriating them... seen it happen in the local lib-weekly free paper.)

I don't accept that, and I am hardly unique in this.

As long as the US leaves ALL their oil and natural gas to them, I agree.
I think we disagree on how much the US has to do for them.

I thought that was called " S T R A W M A N " . . .

Send the Gitmo guys home NOW! Many will have their heads chopped off or sent to home prisons, so why should we continue to protect them? Close the place down and make it a max prison for prisoners from the US who need to go away forever. Now there is an idea!