Man, I absolutely love this post!

Been away for a while, so I wanted to pick and choose a few things to take shots at:

1. "i dont think i could handle another flip-flop.." Bigjohn - If you can't handle another flip-flop election, how are you going to handle 4 years of flip-flops?....So far, that is Kerry's modus operandus, so it's fair to assume that we should expect that from a Kerry/Edwards administration. "I voted for the $87 Billion before I voted against it."

2. kcarlile - You already took a beating over your statements about the UN "coming around" and staying within procedures, but I have to hit you up on that one too. You REALLY need to rethink your stance on the motivations and credibility of the UN. The corrupt and self-serving actions of the major powers within the UN have been exposed for all to see. Their credibility is severely damaged after 10 years of being defied without repercussion. Over time, their role in these different scandals will further damage their credibility. The UN has never acted in the best interest of the US. US interests cannot be their only driver, but they have an obligation not to act in direct opposition to the interests of one of it's largest members and by far the largest contributor. Everyone wants to have this utopia with a unified governing body that maintains the peace between nations, but people need to reconsider their views of the UN being this body. They have done absolutely NOTHING to deserve that level of respect from us.

3. 2X6, you are definitely the local scholar on affairs in Africa. I will definitely admit my ignorance in that arena.

4. jtmccoy - You REALLY have to avoid posting that late at night.

5. Adam - You have swallowed the left conspiracy theory hook, line, and sinker. Do you truly think that we are going to come out of this with some kind of unending supply of oil? Yes, we might come out of this with a good trade partner once the country settles down. But, as we ALWAYS do, the US will leave Iraq a sovereign nation free to do with their oil what they see fit. The only ones with blatant interests in hijacking their oil are the UN members, who are very pissed off that we busted up their party.

6. I'm kind of getting tired with the whole dialog about why we didn't attack such and such banter. The only reason we outright invaded Iraq is because we had permission. However much no one wants to believe it, the UN resolutions gave us the permission to enforce the consequences of Iraq's defiance. Given the evidence we had at the time of Iraq's thread, along with the existing UN resolutions, the US made a choice to finally enforce the resolutions of the impotent UN....something that was long over-due.

We all need to face it; we did it because we could. We would love to beat the crap out of all of the dysfuntional regimes out there, but it's not practical.

7. As a final note, I want to throw out another thought. I am getting sick and tired of hearing about this crap about Bush not winning the election. That seems to pop up a lot when a Democrat gets really wired up and wants to scream about Bush. The problem is the fact that they're wrong. Studies following the election show that Gore would NOT have won based upon ALL of the different recount variations that he requested in his lawsuit.

That issue may seem a bit arbitrary, but it was on my mind. I like the Beasties Boys, but their recent cd has numerous songs bitching about Bush, including statements about him not being elected by us.

OK....that's my 2 cents.