Um, Obama Bin Laden hasn't been in Afganistan for a very long time. Before we even got in to Afghanistan he had moved to Pakistan, IIRC. We did fight down the Taliban in Afghanistan and they provided assistance to OBL, but OBL hightailed it out of there while Bush took a ten second breather as he attempted to do the 'nice' thing and let NATO consider some 'dialogue'.

Here's what I don't get... there was a point in time when we were told that Bin Laden receives dialysis every other moment and couldn't have survived a move to the next door neighbor's house, much less into the caves of Pakistan. Perhaps the caves are outfitted like the stations on LOST. I dunno. I just know that if he was physically in dire straits several years ago that it seems odd to me that we would believe him alive and well today.

Another thing we were cautioned about back at that time was that there were sleeper cells literally all over the world and that they were ready to be called into action. It was said that any public statements heard over the airwaves by terrorists might contain queues intended to set off chain reactions - queues that would go unnoticed to those of us unaware of what they were.

Because of this, I've always believed that we know exactly where Bin Laden is and that we want to keep him alive until such a time as we are confident that all of the spokes in his wheel have been followed to the rim and taken out. I think that we have tabs on his conversations with cell members on the 'outside' and that little by little in clandestine meetings in dark alleyways we are taking out those individuals who were trained and planted, assimilated and thus prepared to live lives right in front of us... and then one day do us harm.

And I think once we have those people taken care of that we will magically *find* Bin Laden. That, or be told that we have recently learned his death and we'll all sing, "Ding-Dong, the witch is dead!"

We hear a lot of angst about our position in Iraq, and while I understand it, I don't think it takes into account the position we were in post-9/11. We were attacked by a group of people who belong to a religion, and it is a religion that dominates the Middle East. Were the Taliban stationed in Iraq? We don't really know, but if they were, their presence there was probably minimal. Still, what we knew was that we needed to continue to work in Afghanistan, and in the midst of that Saddam Hussein was violationg air space provisions agreed to in the Gulf War cease fire. That is undisputed. He had fired at some of our unmanned spy planes that were supposed to fly over Iraqi air space - and that is not in dispute. He was refusing to present evidence that he had destroyed known quantities of 'ingredients' in WMD's.

That's really important. He was supposed to, per the cease fire agreement, destroy those things and present the evidence. He HAD not and he WOULD not.

And he had shot willy-nilly at some of our planes and we were conducting a war very close in proximity to Iraq and his nation shared a religion with the terrorists, who based their 'holy war' on that very religion.

And the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

And we were still very emotionally scarred from 9/11.

So people can moan and complain and point fingers about Iraq all they want. They can bemoan the innocent civillians who died as a result of our invasion, and I can mourn them with the knowledge that Saddam filled many mass graves with similarly situated innocent civillians year after year after year - genocide, rape, working with France and Russia and selling them FOOD that was given to them by NATO to feed the starving populace of Iraq - FOOD that was purchased largely with American dollars - and using the proceeds from that food to build palace after palace in which he lived lavishly as he raped and murdered countless innocent women that he wanted to have his way with.

And all of that would still be going on were it not for our intervention.

What does that have to do with anything? Obama says he wants us to pre-emptively go in to places like Darfur where we are able to do so. He says we have a moral obligation to do so. One could make the case that given Saddam's behavior against the citizens of Iraq - the citizens who starved while he sold their food, the citizens he raped and murdered and imprisoned for nonsensical reasons - that in fact under Obama's description of a reason good enough to invade, Iraq might've passed HIS smell test.

It was a country that quite likely would've become the next base for Al Quidah's operations. They were thumbing their nose at the very cease fire agreement they signed on to. There was extremely good cause to predict that it could quickly become a problem... and we didn't have a shred of evidence that the WMD's Saddam was known to be making in the previous decade had been destroyed.

Dirty bombs in suitcases... nukes in suitcases... powder to blow up a plane in the bottom of a shoe...

The climate when we invaded Iraq was much different then than it is now. People who don't care for Bush like to scream, "LIES LIES IT WAS ALL A PACK OF LIES!" I grow weary of that hysteria because it *was't* all a pack of lies. Certainly, in light of our heightened fear we may have seen and presumed some things, especially given Hussein's lack of cooperation in WMD disclosure. But judgement skewed by circumstance is, IMHO, a much different thing than an outright lie told to get one's way simply so one could go in and kill innocent people and break their stuff.

Long-term, our presence in Iraq may prove to be a very vital thing for our security. If we are allowed to maintain a presence there as we do in Europe, I believe we will have a measure of stability that we otherwise might not have had. If am Islamic nation seeks to do us harm, we are that much closer to their home base.

Do I think that seems "fair"? Would I want them to come plant a base in *our* hemisphere? Nope. No way. Then again, most Americans wouldn't be swayed by a scenario such as this one: