This military strategy is about doing what's best for the largest amount of people.

Ah, so finding WMD and frustrating terrorism have been placed on the back burner, have they?

Certainly not. Doing what's best for the largest amount of people includes getting rid of any chemical/biological weapons, and getting rid of a regime that funds terrorism.

If you can't tell, this "sliding scale" of relative worth that you have put forward still disturbs me. I mean, once we have put any of our reservations aside about the justifications for this invasion and are fully committed to "Support Our Troops!", who gets to decide what the ratio is? Is it 1-to-5? 1-to-100? or maybe 1-to-200?

I don't know about the math. I am terrible at math. But the fact is, Iraq's strategy is to turn this into a war of urban combat, and that increases the number of civilian casualties to begin with. That's on them. If we are then reluctant to pull the trigger because there *might* be non-combatants in the area of the blast radius, we're risking our troops' lives and endangering the overall mission.

Like Yasimina was going to hop in the Mercedes with her mom and zip across the desert for a brief vacation in Lebanon?

Iraq's a big country. There's lots of places in Iraq that we're not going after. It's not like she has to travel across the country, but if there's a lot of Republican Guard folks coming in and out of the "library" next door, maybe Yasimina and her family needs to think about relocating until the war is over.

Hmmm. Again, I thought this was all about WMD.

If you're trying to get me to bite on the notion that "this is about WMD and terrorism, and not a regime change," that's not going to happen. I'm also not going to debate the connection between getting rid the regime and taking care of terrorism and the use/development of WMD. You think getting rid of WMD in Iraq (which have been used on Iraqis) doesn't benefit Iraqis?

I have to ask: What would have been the negative consequences if we had delayed this 6 months -- had a little more parlay with the countries whose support we *said* we wanted? How about 12 months?

Well... I am *furious* that we didn't try to stick with diplomacy a little while longer, and try to get more nations on board with a more proper enforcement resolution. I found the 30-day resolution that was briefly on the table to be fair. I was against going to war when we did and under the circumstances that we did, but I also think that the chances of getting a REAL weapons inspection process going forward were very slim.

Turning the question around, why did it have to take 6-12 months for Saddam to fulfill his obligations under 1441?

July 2002. Take what you like from this. For me, it just confirms the feeling that the decision to invade was a done deal long ago and that all of the dancing around about WMD, terrorism links, UN resolutions, and weapons inspections were immaterial as regards the outcome.

I don't follow your logic. It seems to assume that the White House had no idea about WMD, terrorism in July 2002. What's so questionable about the timing?

Also in that issue, Seymour Hersch's recap on how the administration falsified "proof" of Iraqui nuclear capability (and did a laughably bad job of it at that....What, you say that 98 percent of Rush listeners still consider this fabrication to be the gospel truth? I'm shocked!)

It certainly wouldn't be shocking to me if the Government was engaged in falsifying some documents. My understanding of was that the falsifications in the report that Powell provided came from their intelligence sources, not Gov't officials themselves. But I'm not so naive as to think that there aren't lies and half-truths told by the U.S. (or any other) Government, and it's conceivable to me that those who oversaw the document were looking for any evidence to substantiate their chosen conclusion.

Incidentally, I think it's important to point out that, though I seem to be taking a position here where I'm defending the rationale behind the war, and giving parts of our Government the benefit of the doubt, I think Bush and many elements of his administration are complete idiots. I just think that there are far too many voices buying into whatever conspiracy happens to get printed, without thinking that maybe, just maybe, there's a good end to these questionable means.