"The idea that the war was for profit seemed utterly ridiculous to me...we're America...we'd never do that or so I thought. While I did think there was an obvious securing of Iraq's oil fields aspect to the war, I had no clue of the outright profit component to what was playing out."

Well, at the time we were having those debates here I got heated because I personally had friends and family deploying to fight this war. So I had a rather large personal and difficult emotional investment that drove me to some of my outbursts here.

My cousin Ryan enlisted in the Marines right after 9/11 because he wanted so desperately to do something for his country. He never returned to the United States and this was due to the profit element in this war. While he was serving his term in the Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan companies poured into these countries and were immediately allowed to recruit our troops. They held meetings that the troops attended where they openly gave them gifts and offered them "high paying jobs" that would await them when their service was over. He signed up and took a job with Halliburton flying briefly to Texas for all the paperwork and orientation and then right back to Iraq. He has spent the last 15 years living in Iraq and Afghanistan working for different private contractors and established a residence in Thailand. There was a lot of money to be made on this war was the message being broadcast while he was there and anybody that wanted some of it could stick around. It was Milo Minderbinder in real life.

He just stayed and was doing so well from the war that he started a taxi business in Thailand, got married and helped his wife greatly expand her fashion business. Basically the whole thing changed him and how he thought and being a smart guy he (and many of our troops) discovered the "War on Terror" was a money making machine of epic proportions. So I learned way more than I wanted to know about the "profit component" of the war from first hand accounts.

"I'm hesitant to engage Pat when he says that I was never a conservative. That's just so ridiculous that there's little point in arguing it. I absolutely was but I'm so far removed from my former self that it's somewhat shocking as well as refreshing."

Hopefully people never stop attempting to learn things in life. I think Pat is a good guy but I do think he has become a little tone deaf to what goes on in the world due to all the nonsense our media broadcasts. Marc I think has decided to just stick his fingers in his ears and shout "I'm not listening!" while stomping his feet...at least he's armed though.

"I like to think I'm more astute than I was than to turn over my critical thinking skills to the likes of Limbaugh, Hannity or even Beck at one point but I wasn't. These guys are very good at painting with a broad brush and appealing to a person's animal instinct rather than their real intellect."

They are our very own Lord Haw Haws...I did not post that video here by accident. They hung Lord Haw Haw after WWII.

"The problems we face as a country are so much deeper than the least common denominator examples they like to use...the kind that cause one to say "yeah, you tell 'em, Rush!" I shake my head in disgust now at the Christian-right who have become so co-opted by the nationalism and fascism of our time."

History says these things come in waves. It will roll in and then recede and then roll in again. We have to be good surfers I guess to ride it all out. I think because we understand as humans that our time is finite that a lot of people feel justified in grabbing all they can and everybody else be damned. I think the role religion played was to provide a sense of comfort and inspire people to behave better because of the promise of something more after...however political hacks basically turned religion into the "War on Values" and pushed it into a "if you are not with us you are against us" deal. Honestly they like that kind of thing.

"I do thank you, Reg. I thank you for the dialog over all those years and for at least engaging me when I was so lost in a world of propaganda I'd entered into."

Wherever we went, Kevin, and wherever we got it was an even exchange and opportunity. I learned long ago that you can't tell people things most of the time, they have to discover it on their own and they only do that if they are looking. You were looking and found whatever you have because you bothered to do so. Beliefs are funny and often difficult things but we should never confuse them with truths. I apologize for any of my outbursts here that seemed too harsh but I hope you forgive me those because of how I was invested.

"My one regret in all of this is that my father-in-law only knew me as a staunch conservative. He was a democrat from Minnesota's iron range who was all about the working man and the middle-class. He died before I saw the light."

Maybe he recognized you were searching for that light.