What was shocking about this group is most expressed regret that our failures in Iraq means we now can't hit Iran!!

Talk about knowing nothing, learning nothing.

Are you baiting someone to try and prove Goodwin's Law or what?

.

i confess i supported the invasion

the only thing i can come up with is,

Afghanistan went so well, initially,

that i simply assumed Iraq would be similar

marc

If Iraq has settled down, with a functioning government and relatively terrorist-free, the proponents of this war will say, "See, it was worth it." but they will be missing the point entirely.

We didn't attack Iraq because we wanted to change its government (or so we were told). We attacked Iraq because we had to get rid of WMD.

There was no WMD but the idiot in the White House had to try to put a good face on it.

Republicans overwhelmingly support this war. I don't think they are capable of learning anything or changing their thinking.

With such great distance from the war, I wonder if not only these journalists but all Americans would be far more aware of the situation in Iraq and far more demanding of our withdrawal if there was a draft and they couldn't ignore it as some other family's problem.

Wow, I haven't read the GG letters section in a while, but I am amazed at how low quality so many of the opinions seem to be, compared to the rest of salon. I feel for ya, GG.

I guess I must be in the minority, because while I did not support the war (protested in the street against it), I also did not support Saddam Hussein. Remember, this is the man who gassed his own people, whose son murdered a man in front of a visiting diplomat, who ruled with an iron fist. Hussein was evil, period, and there will be no Nuremberg to reveal the extent of the horror.

So when the war started, I was upset, but a small part of me was hopeful- hopeful that Hussein would be removed from power, because I thought that whatever govermment came after could not possibly be as bad. Even a puppet government run by the US would have been an improvement.

But those of us who had a little hope- we were wrong. Our leaders failed us. We did not have a plan for reconstruction, we did not commit enough troop, we were not prepared to accept the necessary casualties. We did not have a government ready to put in place in the vacuum created by Saddam's absence.

So yeah, we made mistakes and we lost. But that doesn't mean that the war was entirely a bad idea. The Kurds are glad that we're there, and they're 20% of the population. A lot of people have died, but a lot would have died under Hussein. The sectarian violence that we're seeing would likely have happened anyway, but in a few decades after Hussein died. Or should we have allowed his sons to come to power?

There is such a thing as a just war (WWII is the best example), and this could have been one. It's too bad that it wasn't. And I can't fault those who supported it on humanitarian grounds.

Imagine the future of someone without EVEN a high school diploma

I barely graduated from HS, never went to graduation and never actually got a physical diploma.

Never have I had anyone ask to see a diploma during a job interview or even check with my HS to see if I got one. For a lot of reasons I never went further with schooling.. Sometimes I wish I had and sometimes I'm glad I didn't.

These days I think if you can fill out the application without misspelling your own name they automatically think you have a diploma.

Formal education is nice but not everyone is suited to the regimentation. If you march to a different drummer, or like me, to no drummer at all, it's hard to make it through HS.

The one thing that schools ought to be teaching the most is the one thing they seem to least desire to.. Teaching kids how to think logically, how to deconstruct an argument and recognize when they are being emotionally manipulated.

Since the schools do a lot of emotional manipulation themselves, it stands to reason they aren't going to teach the kids how to recognize and avoid it.

I'm reminded of Pink Floyd's "We Don't Need No Education".. Got themselves banned in quite a few countries around the world.

We don't need no thought control..

No dark sarcasms in the classroom.

Hey, teacher, leave them kids alone.

There are good interveiws with him on www.Antiwar.com:

http://antiwar.com/radio/2008/03/10/chris-hedges-2/

http://antiwar.com/radio/2007/10/18/chris-hedges/

www.Antiwar.com and Antiwar Radio are FULL of WIN. Although, like bucky said, it is run by Paleoconservatives and Anarchists, so its people can get a lot of crap around here.

By all means, agreed, throw out abstinence only education (oxymoron?... teaching falsehood, withholding information).

Another thing (like Noam Chomsky says): war crimes tribunals against the U.S. A little behavior modification? Has seemed to work pretty well - at least temporarily - in Western Europe.

There are many more areas in which we can do better if we would only stop letting events panic us into letting the Stupid People have their way. ;-(

"I wanted to go to 'them,' whoever 'they' were, grab them by the neck, and get them before they could get us. One of 'them' was Saddam Hussein" - Richard Cohen.

Richard Cohen and all the others, liberal and neo-con alike, have yet to explain how "they" were going to get us. How could a nation of 26 million; contained, deterred and crippled by sanctions be a threat to us or to anyone else for that matter.

It's a familiar story. We were supposed to stop the Communists in Vietnam or we'd be fighting them in Seattle.

Well, it's been 33 years since we didn't stop "them" in Vietnam and yet there's still no sign of an invasion of Seattle.