Your questions are good and serious ones, but you willl get no answers. We are past the point of dialog. The fint/Hancock/snowman crowd, small as it is, will not be swayed. Not by anything.

We simply need a change, and fast.

These people are taking our country down the toilet.

Regardless of the skill of his advisors, or how much or little the Administration took their advice, it needs to happen. Having several hundred million people living in authoritarian, violent, hatred-teaching-and-preaching police states is NOT sustainable.

We all wish it would have been easier and that the US had made no mistakes in its execution -- but there is no turning back the clock. This adventure must be made to work. For their sake and ours.

Not true. The most viable long-term strategy is to get our military presence out of the ME and push HARD towards getting domestic, sustainable alternative energy strategies online quickly. As these technologies are refined and new ones are developed, we'll see fewer and fewer reasons to be there at which point we can tell them go go choke on their oil, keep our money HERE and SELL them all the guns, bombs, planes, grenades and land mines they want in order to blow each other up. It'll be nice to become an exporter from these wack-job nations rather than an importer from them.

If we're gone, they'll just go back to killing each other since it's more convenient.

Any other strategy is just a band-aid.

Giving them a common enemy to hate (that would be us, America) is a brillant strategy and is working quite effectively. But let's not pretend it's making us safer. We've sold our national security out in the interest of uniting the Middle East. I'm not sure how much support I can give to that, and still be a patriot.

I agree that it will be great to stop sending billions their way. But that won't stop their desire to kill us. Globalization has exposed the failures of the Arab/Muslim civilization. When they lose their only export, they will feel even more shame. And more poverty and desperation. And more desire to teach the Infidels a lesson.

I wish it could be so easy, but for societal changes such as what you're talking about I would estimate we're looking at generations, not months or years, and I don't think we're going to do it at the point of a gun.

A good analogy I heard recently: Just because Im upset with my government, or leader, doesn't mean I want China to invade us and change it over for me.

So we can only pick one? Cause I'm thinking both makes more sense.

In general, more of a liar than idiotic. The company that tested the # of lies in the Bush/Gore debates showed that early on.

But specifically in this context: how can he promote himself as the champion of freedom and democracy in the M.E. and align himself with two dictators?

Does he not know they are dictators? Or does he actually have little regard for democracy?

I'm not the first person to theorize that GW is labeled a true believer in-so-far as his mid-east policies. That he would find evidence to support his beliefs and ignore facts that run counter to his thinking shows me he operates in a reality out of touch with what's really happening and the neglectful of the consequences of his actions. He's also surrounded by people of like minds or with other agendas that dovetail with his, thus the lack of other voices around him for contrary views. Those with cautionary views (e.g. Powell) are either shuffled off, not consulted, ignored or insulated from him.

I call em as I see it.