That is the quandry, isn't it. How do we fight this battle? You assert that the first step is to understand Islam and the true source of this sentiment. I think that I would agree with this statement to some extent. It is necessary to truly understand how we have affected this region and created the very sentiment that we are now fighting against. When you really start to understand that, the situation gets even more complex. They don't just hate us because we have intruded on their region. They hate us because we have played w/ them like chess pieces, pitting them against each other to meet our needs and then bailing out on them after we get what we want. But, in the end, the biggest problem is that we represent the antithesis of the fundamentalist culture that they are trying to sustain.

Now, once you gain this better understanding, what do you do with that information? They are still coming, no matter what we do. Our only hope is that the region begins to police itself. But, in the interim, we either sit idly by and wait for the next attack or we finish what we started in Iraq and demonstrate our resolve, the one thing that they do understand about us. There is no resolving of differences in this scenario. With Allah as their guide, they have vowed to destroy us...we can't talk ourselves out of that.

As far as Iraq being a "junk-hole", I think that there are relatives of the tens of thousands of dead kirds that might disagree with that. There are millions of Iraqis that now have a level of freedom they could only have imagined. The only thing turning Iraq into a "junk-hole" is the unending flow of terrrorists from surrounding countries fighting tooth and nails to stop the establishment of a free Iraq. The biggest problem facing Iraqi muslims right now is not the Americans. We're spilling American blood daily trying to protect them. The problem they are facing now is the fundamentalist Islamic radicals killing fellow muslims. Based upon recent proclamations from Iraqi groups demanding the end to these terrorist attacks, it's fair to assume that there is hope that Islam will start to police Islam. Personally, I think that is our best hope for resolution.