rms said:

"If Messers Bush & Blair are wrong in their assertions over Iraq (which remains to be seen) then they are the war-mongering cowboys that you might well say they are. If they are right, do you have any fallback plans if/when a suitcase nuke were to turn up in NYC, LA or London or radicals were to attack the underground systems of said cities with sarin or ricin (for arguments sake)?"

So let me get this straight. You think removing Hussein is going to eliminate the possibility of finding one of these suitcase nukes? If your answer is yes, I have a beautiful bridge to sell you. If your answer is no, then I've got to ask you why we aren't attacking someone who's actually threatened (or threatening) us.

As for the fallback plan, I think a nice place to start would be to quit horsing around in the Middle East. It's given us nothing but headaches for the past 30+ years, and you know as well as I do that our trail of broken promises has only fueled extremist hatred for America.

"Would you ok a military response when a few more of your fellow-citizens are murdered? Or can their families take you and Sean Penn into a vacant lot and exact their vengance on the two of you since you seem keen to protect the Iraqi regime in the name of scoring cheap points over the current admin?"

From the way you're straining to connect the war in Iraq with the Twin Towers, it sounds like you believe Iraq is connected to 9/11. I have seen no proof of this, and if you've got access to some, please share it. And gosh, if we're only using the military to respond to the deaths of our fellow Americans, then I guess we can expect something similar in Israel soon in response to the death of Rachel Corrie. No?

"Perhaps if GW had embraced Clinton's `do nothing` foreign policy their would have been more after 9/11 to add to the 1st WTC attack, the massacre in Somalia, the embassy bombings and the attack on the USS Cole. While partisan idiots whine about the economy, none of them address how much the defense of the country was weakened during the 90's."

Such a clear memory of Clinton's "do nothing" policy, yet you seem to have forgotten Bush's initial strict "hands off" policy toward Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Shrub and his daddy's friends at the Carlyle Group were all too willing to turn a blind eye when they thought it would help them build their pipeline, but I guess that's somehow different from Clinton's mollycoddling.