Whenever those in charge don't have a supportable reason for doing what they're doing the response is that "they" know something we don't. They have secret information, or claim that they understand the situation better than we do; they then assert that we must agree with their decisions because "they" know.

My answer: B.S. Short of constructing some highly technical gizmo, there is nothing so difficult to understand about the basics of virtually any situation. It's not hard to understand Vietnam. It's not hard to understand the missle defense shield. It's not hard to understand Iraq either. We went in under false pretenses; had no plan of governance and have made one mistake after another. The situation was unwinnable from the start( when has the west ever had any success in the middle east?) because the necessary political institutions for good governance were not in place from the start. Besides,the Middle east powers that be had no interest in changing; their only interest is in maintaining their power. How hard is this to understand? I'm neither a political scientist nor a middle east expert, yet I think I've got a pretty decent understanding of what's going on. Anyone who reads Slate, Salon and the NY Times will probably come to the same conclusions I have.

When we review our follies of the past 50-60 years we pretty much come up with the same answers over and over again: politicians who have no sense of history; leaders who have a paranoid perception of reality who unfortunately have access to a huge military force.

Our leaders may have some details that we don't have but they are not smarter than we are nor do they have better judgment

than we do.They simply have the power, which obviously turns otherwise intelligent people into morons.

I've been voting and following elections since 1960, and I'm fairly skeptical about these early predictions.

First of all, we have two factors at work: high speed spinning from all sides and lots of time before we get a real feeling about the ultimate nominees. For those of us intensely interested in politics, I believe this early chapter of the campaign often bears no reality to what will happen when the season opens.

Kerry ultimately self destructed due to his being tone deaf about how to run a campaign and his inability to deal with the Swift Boaters.

Gore exhibited the same characteristics running against a candidate whom most of us would agree is a total disaster.

Let us be patient with the process.

While I support Clinton because I believe she has the most smarts and the most experience does not automatically lead me to conclude that she will receive the nomination or that she will win - although I find it hard to fathom that she would lose.

I used to think that the separation of church and state was done solely at the behest of the government.

When our country was founded our well educated and highly experienced leaders were well aware of the consequences of the involvement of the Church in politics. And religious leaders

were also well aware of the disastrous consequences of mixing church and state. Thus the wisest people of both institutions were in favor of the separation, seeing what had happened in

Europe.

We don't need to look very deeply to see what happens when reasoned thoughtful behavior disappears. It is a bogus argument to state that both reason and faith are mutually exclusive.

What is bogus is to state that only one or the other can be used to make sound decisions. Since when does it diminish a person of deep faith to use thoughtful, thorough and well researched information to make an intelligent decision? Isn't that why we become educated - to use all of our faculties to arrive at difficult decisions?

That the Bush administration had people in power who had excellent academic credentials only proves that book learning is not the same as being well educated. The well educated person also has good values including the respect for others.

We all are now suffering because we confused highly educated with highly intelligent.

I'm old enough to vividly remember how the Dept. of Defense, in its annual report to the nation, always presented the dire consequences of being unprepared to combat the Soviet Union. We have been propagandized to believe that the external threat is ominous and disaster is imminent, and that only having vast military power will protect us. A reasonable person could ask: is this traditional scenario accurate? Are we safer? Has our vast military power worked to make us , and the rest of the world safer?

I believe this is a very difficult question to answer with certainty, but my opinion is that the answer is no. The military mindset blinds us to the very real but difficult advantages that come from taking a primarily diplomatic and economic approach. If we used our vast resources of money, and the wealth of expertise all of our NGO groups possess, think of the real benefits we could provide to regions all around the world.

Imagine how we could help third world countries by providing cell phone services, simple medical clinics, basic infrastructure improvements such as cleaner water and effective waste disposal. The irony is that we really know how to do these things well, yet our money and efforts seem to go to providing weapons and attempts to eradicate illicit drug production.

What we have is an American lead, but worldwide paucity of imagination and lack of good will. We have ultimately a crisis of the spirit, where we would rather kill our "enemies" than operate out of the principles of respect and consideration for all of humanity. The truly sad thing is that we have forgotten the basic principles contained in our Constitution and Bill of Rights.President Bush and friends are just a particularly egregious example of shortsightedness and ill will.