And Saddam had attacked us, or perhaps you forget all those missle launches at American and British aircraft,

-- Porthos

If Iraq or some other country or region had decided to make constant and illegal flights over parts of America, bombing things at will daily, I hope we would have attempted, as Iraq did, to shoot down the aircrafts. We don't have the right to do any damn thing we please anywhere in the world, and then expect to suffer no consequences.

Some information about the illegal no fly zones.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_no-fly_zones

Saddam Hussein's heroes were people like Stalin and Hitler. This makes him a sociopath but not a jihadist. Saddam Hussein was an illegitimate child. He never forgot how he and his mother were treated by Muslim clergy. He never forgave either.

While he was in control the fundamentalist muslim clergy of Iraq kept a very low profile. That he could ever have made common cause with an out and out fundamentalist like Osama bin Laden is unlikely in the extreme. It would have made a lot of sense to leave Hussein there and for America to concentrate on really defeating a problem of its own making, namely the Taliban. Defeating them militarily was the easy part but the project also required peacekeeping skills: something the US military lacks almost totally. And, of course, the invasion of Iraq was planned for years and had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks or terrorism against America. The invasion of Iraq was about oil and establishing military bases in order to control the Middle East and that darn black gold. It certainly hasn't made America safer. If Saddam Hussein hadn't invaded Kuwait, thereby threatening America's oil supply and even the Saudis' oil he could have murdered as many Iraqis and Kurds as he liked. It's easy to prove this statement: in spite of Saddam's genocidal and homicidal tendencies there was absolutely no problem until he invaded Kuwait. The first place Saddam Hussein went when he arrived in the the big city as a 19 year old contract killer was the local CIA office. Somehow he just knew he was their kind of guy. The United States will never do anything unless they perceive it to be in their interest. They didn't go to Iraq to help the Iraqis and many of the American soldiers sent in there believed the lie that Iraq had attacked America on 9/11. They treated the Iraqis accordingly and the insurgency began. It is a matter of historical fact that the CIA created Al Qaeda as part of their effort to drive the Russians out of Afghanistan and their friends the Pakistani Secret Service created the Taliban. Talk about chickens coming home to roost! It seems pretty clear that Saddam Hussein was yet another patsy. If the CIA hadn't had a compulsive need to play a very expensive and nutty game of chess with the Russians the whole world would have been better off. The CIA has been in some very strange beds, including Saddam Hussein's and Osama bin Laden's. It's not a pretty story and it's not heroic. I can understand why so many Americans prefer the fairy tales their leaders and their media tell them. Or maybe they just have trouble following a plot so bizarre it belongs in a trashy thriller.

The pres & vp serve for 513 more days. We can count on these wanna be ubermensch to lustily wield real & imagined power under their unitary executive theory. Given the stonewalling from the admin, oversight of & restraint of executive wrong doing is a daunting & time consuming task.

Blame belongs first to the perpetrators/primary causal agents in the executive branch, then to Republican enablers in Congress. Dems & voters are several levels of responsibility removed. That some Dems caved to W & his Republican enablers on a 6 month amendment of FISA, doesn't warrant parrotting *** smears of the Dems.

Many commentators disregard the real world complexities of Congress attempting oversee & restrain a rogue executive. Some would have Dems in Congress imitate the executive branch & bypass any semblance of due process & adherence to the rule of law. Last time I checked a vote impeachment or censure requires evidence, some might say a "smoking gun", produced at hearings usually under oath. Until the dems took "control" of Congress in January, there was no prospect of hearings. Now Sen Feingold, & Congressman Hinchey are attempting to move hearings of Bush, Cheney, & Gonzales forward.

Lithwick of Slate.com falsely states: "They (dems in congress) won't go after the attorney general without a "smoking gun" in hand", and then correctly states "in light of the White House's policy of obfuscation, delay, and rampant claims of executive privilege—that smoking gun will materialize only if it is hand-delivered by some winged pink angel with an impressive security clearance."

Because too many people live in the world where Karl Rove's math reigns.

http://bradblog.com/

As Kurt Vonnegut has been quoted as saying... "The only difference between Hitler and Bush, is that Hitler was actually elected."

http://refspace.com/quotes/Kurt_Vonnegut

Probably the worst decisions made in the last six years were those that allowed Bush's "selection" to go uncontested both times.

Otherwise... we're pretty much on the same wave length:

Until the dems took "control" of Congress in January, there was no prospect of hearings. Now Sen Feingold, & Congressman Hinchey are attempting to move hearings of Bush, Cheney, & Gonzales forward.