Addendum: Found Haifa Zangana's commentary -- not an "article" -- by looking for it myself. She -- not he -- gives absolutely NO sources for her contentions and conjecture. And yet, seemingly based on one emotional opinion piece from a woman with who-knows-what axes to grind, comes Hanna Braun's conclusion that the U.S. is Nazi Germany. Priceless. Message was edited by: henry_hart_1

Republican X, “I do believe the neocons are wicked - wickedly misguided if you will.” [“This may be true, but you still fail to recognize the point that IM was making. The American people have demanded that the leadership do something to stop terrorist attacks in this country. A leader takes action based on the best advice they have at the time. The President took the advice of many people, some of which you call neo-con, but not them entirely. What action has your Union taken? NONE and you condemn action taken by your country. What action will you call for when the eventual attack takes place in the UK?”] When exactly did the American people demand an invasion of Iraq after 9/11 and how did they express this view to the leadership? There may have been a generalized fear of further attacks and fury over the Twin Towers incident but I didn’t see or read in the newspapers that people were out in the streets shouting abuse at Saddam and screaming for an invasion of Iraq. It was the Bush neocons that quickly connected the event to Iraq and strangely not to Saudi Arabia, whence most of the terrorists came from. The idea of a nexus between Saddam and Al Qaeda probably did not originate from the CIA but from the neocons at the Pentagon and the Iraqi ex-patriots who had their own political agenda.. They had long hoped for an opportunity to present itself which would allow them to find a pretext to remove Saddam. “You have attempted to draw me into a sort of game, where I pose a solution and you knock it down because it is 'philosophical' and not worth a grain of salt to those that LEAD.” [“You are already in the game. This is what you and others do everyday on this very site. The U.S. administration has initiated an attempt to solve the Radical Islam problem. You say their solution is not worth a grain of salt (in other words) all the time.”] The ‘Radical Islam’ problem is one that may well be exaggerated. It is not difficult to contradict my statement by alluding to 9/11, Bali and Madrid. But 9/11 was a glorified hi-jacking by a small bunch of fanatics, who used the planes as missiles. Even the Madrid and Bali bombings, terrible though they were, are not in essence different to what the IRA perpetrated in Northern Ireland and the UK, or the Basque Separatists did and are doing on a smaller scale in Spain. There was the Bologna station bombing in the 1970’s that killed many people and this had nothing to do with Islam. When the IRA bombed the British mainland, I don’t recall anyone thinking that we should invade the Republic of Ireland, although that is where the IRA kept some of their munitions dumps and explosives. Furthermore they had many supporters in Southern Ireland and could hide out there. It was never a possibility anyway, because of the Irish political lobby in the US. However, the IRA ‘terrorists’ (this is how the US describes their sort of activity) had financial and political support in certain circles in the US. In other words a form of state sponsored terrorism once removed. Ironic isn’t it. The focus on Islamic Fundamentalists or Islamic Fascists, as is the fashionable term these days, leaves one wondering what it is that has so fundamentally changed in the last two decade or so that make some Muslims such a big threat. I can think of one answer, there may be others, and that is the increased tempo of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. There have always been Radical Muslims just like there are radical Christians and Jews. They haven’t suddenly metamorphosed to a new and more dangerous virus. More likely they are reacting to factors that have disturbed them. It is true their reaction is extremely violent but this must be understood before it can be tackled. The IRA was thought of in the same way. The Protestants in Northern Ireland simply would not allow themselves to think that the Catholics had a genuine grievance and even if some did think about it, they were not going to change the way they went about governing the province. You will most assuredly argue that the Muslim Radicals are an entirely different problem and that they must be ‘defeated’, whatever is meant by this word. You somehow think that creating some form of democracy in the Middle East will undermine the small group of fanatics (and they are a small number compared to the over one Billion Muslims in the world). I don’t see this as a solution. In fact any US friendly ‘democratic’ regime in the Middle East is not going to influence this small group. As I said earlier, Italy had democracy in the 1970’s but there were still disaffected terrorists. Likewise Germany and the Bader-Meinhoff gang and their supporters. The Basques have a degree of autonomy but are still willing to practice terror. The dangerous experiment in Iraq and I don’t think it can be argued that it is not such, has a potential to go terribly wrong. It was not the source of the problem and will not be the answer. “Well, if they are LEADERS of any real merit, they would have avoided much of the problem.” [“This is called Monday morning quarterback. Any leader would like to avoid as much problems as possible. The trouble is no one can accurately predict these problems. Experts can only give predictions based on history and current intelligence. So they gave their predictions and our leader acted based on those predictions. It is what it is. All we can do now is work with what we have.”] Are you so sure that political leaders always wish to avoid problems as much as possible. Maybe some problems are just what they are looking for. They may enable a weak president to become something he would never have been and even a strong leader to rescue a failing reputation. Margaret Thatcher probably welcomed the Falklands War. She was most likely to have been defeated in the 1983 election, as she had reached a new low in popularity when the opportunity to become a War Leader arose in 1982. It made all the difference to her political fortunes. The same thing has happened to others on numerous occasions, sometimes it has enabled them to distract attention from severe economic difficulties, which would lead to their downfall. Sometimes it fits in with a long held agenda even though it has all the potential to be problematic. No politician is immune from his own psychological baggage and his unconscious motivation. As for acting on intelligence and predictions, there was ample evidence provided by the Butler inquiry, which showed that British intelligence did not tell Blair that Saddam Hussein presented a ‘clear and present danger’. In fact there was plenty of evidence that militarily he was a busted flush. Blair chose to mislead Parliament by ‘sexing up’ the intelligence given to him. That is why Blair is not trusted by the majority of people in the UK. Which does not mean that he will not be re-elected. Under our system of ‘first past the post’ a political party can gain power with a minority of the votes cast. Usually 40% is sufficient. Which means that the 60% that vote for opposition parties do not get the government they want. “The trouble is that they weren't and aren't!” [“Are you in or have you ever been in a leadership position?”] So I should keep my mouth shut, is that what you are saying? As a matter of fact I ran a business with many employees and the decision buck always stopped with me. But I was never involved in politics. Message was edited by: brolly2_1 Message was edited by: brolly2_1