I'm betting on #2.

Yeah... sounds like that day off with Mom might have put you over the edge.

Well, I may not be posting in the right place, but here goes...

Thomas Friedman had a column in the Times on Wednseday that clarifies my thinking on the U.S. and the Middle East.

Friedman says the real reason for the war was that after 9/11 we had to hit someone in the Arab-Muslim world. Afghanistan was not enough. We had to lance the growing terrorism boil that said suicide bombing was okay, that terrosism would be tolerated. We had to show that Americans were willing to die in an effort to break the back of the concept that terrorists could get away with whatever they wanted to do.

And the worst government in the Arab-Muslim world was Iraq. So their number came up, and we attacked them.

But this is a tough idea to sell to the American public. So the Bush team came up with the "weapons of mass destruction" justification. Now it's becoming clear, like Peter says, that this is not ture. Saddam did not have all the weapons we were told that he had.

So now the question becomes: will the euphoria of winning a war overpower in the American public's mind the fact that they have been lied to by the Bush Administration.

I think there's a chance this can happen if the Bush team can stabilize Iraq, and Americans can then put Iraq off their screen. But getting Iraq fixed up looks like a long shot just now.

So if we can't stabilize Iraq, it will stay in the front of American's mind. That means more focus by Americans on the fact that the Bush Administration probably lied to us.

And not stabilizing Iraq will provide more justification and feul for the terrorists to go back to doing their thing, as Friedman argues.

And if that turns out to be true, then Bush and the Administration are dead.

To my mind, and Friedman does not get into this, the root of the problem is our military structure.

We are great at fighting conventional wars: tanks and missiles and hundreds of thousands of people rolling across the desert. But we haven't yet learned how to fight the terrorists.

So when we had the 9/11 problem, we couldn't catch bin Laden. And Washington was angry that we had been attacked and that we couldn't catch the guy who attacked us. (They're human just like you and me.)

As a result, Washington had to respond with what we do well, and that was invading a country with our conventional forces. Iraq was just the easiest target at the moment. And we did a great job with our conventional forces.

The problem in Iraq today is that our military is not trained to operate as a police force. (The number of Military Police is minimal, and they are really trained to bring back AWOL soldiers.) Our military is trained to kill people. So they are having a hard time trying to bring to Iraq the policing concepts necessary to create peace in the country, and that are altogether different than the killing concepts of war.

So that's why I'm a big supporter of Rumsfeld's efforts to reshape the military!

We need to improve our anti-terorist capabilities.

And we need to develop a "nation-building" capability, altogether separate from the military, if we beleive we are truly in the Age of Pax Amnericana!

...All of which is probably more than you want to know at this hour of the morning!

Ironic comment de jour:

Two thousand Americans needed to perish on 9/11;

Billions of US tax dollars needed to be spent;

American soldiers needed to die in Iraq;

All in order that..............

Shiite Muslims in southern Iraq would be free to cut themselves up with knives on a Holy Day.

What a wacky world!!

Well, if Bush is planning to invade and occupy countries ad naseum, I am with Dad on the need for more military police, but . . .

I saw the Friedman piece too, and it didn't make any sense to me. There is no link between Iraq and 9-11. So, saying that it was Ok to invade Iraq because of 9-11 is like saying that if a Chinese person kills the folks in the apartment next door, I am justified in waiting a year and a half, and then going down to Chinatown and shooting random Chinese people. I mean if you or I did that, we would be guilty of murder. Period. There would be no moral justification for that kind of behavior. So I don't get why Friedman thinks it is Ok to engage in that sort of sloppy morality on a massive scale -- Osama kills thousands of U.S. people, so we go kill thousands of people who had nothing to do with his crime?

Plus, that is not why Bush said we had to go into Iraq. He said it was because Iraq represented an immenient threat to our security because it possessed tons of WMDs. Now, it turns out he was probably either wrong or lying. So, months after hundreds of U.S. Service people and thousands of Iraqi civilians have died, the American public still doesn't have an explanation for the bloodshed.

Frankly, if Clinton was impeached for lying about his sex life, shouldn't Bush be impeached for killing thousands of people with no apparent justificiation or credible explanation?

Did Clinton get impeached? I guess I missed that one.

I am, however, rather confident that George W. knows the definition of "is." ;) That's one Bill couldn't seem to figure out.

Anyways, aren't you guys psyched about the freedom Iraqis are experiencing to practice religion and voice their opinions as they want?!?!

I still contend that as long as all of us want to drive around in our cars (not just "gas guzzers," but gas consuming cars instead of alternative energy vehicles) and we don't want to fully exploit internal US fossil fuel reserves, its a little hypocritical to not support our efforts at stabilization in the Middle East.

The only real answer is for us all to suck it up and get independent of Middle Eastern fossil fuel. We got to go cold turkey -- otherwise we will continue to have folks from the Middle East ramming planes into our buildings and expensive turmoil.

Sorry to say, being angry at George Bush is not the answer; the answer is to start setting up some solar panels to heat your house, use public transportation, support oil drilling in Alaska, spend lots of $ on an alternative energy car, etc. You get the idea..........

Hey, I am all for renewable resources. I think the government should subsidize renewable energy to the same extent they support the oil industry. And again, we would already be out of the Middle East if Reagan, Bush, and Bush hadn't been such opponents of renewable resources. Carter was subsidizing the solar industry so people could afford to use renewable resources. So I guess, if you want to support renewable energy, support a Democrat.

But Maryellen and I live our life to minimize our use of petro resources, so I am content that we are doing our best on that front. We don't have solar panels on the roof (yet), but we have structured our life to minimize commuting, minimize our use of plastic, to recycle, consume less, not use petro based fertilizers and pesticides, buy foods that are local instead of shipped half way across the country, etc. etc.

But my original point was that Bush never said we need to invade Iraq to stablize that country and ensure a steady supply of Middle East oil. If he had said that, he would not have gotten approval from Congress or public support.

Bush said it was all about WMD, and he was either completely wrong, or he lied. When the President takes actions that lead to the loss of thousands of lives, and his stated reasons were either wrong or lies, I think he should be removed from office. That's all.

P.S. I will check with Maryellen who is the best lawyer in the family, but I think technically Clinton did get impeached. The House voted in favor of his articles of impeachment, and articles of impeachment are like an indictment -- they are a set of accusations. But then the Senate declined to go forward with the trial of the impeachment articles, so he was never removed from office. I think that is right.

That's my recollection (how's that for a lawyerly response), but I'm sure Neera would know.

Here's my question: if it turns out that people in Murphy North Carolina were helping bomber (terrorist) Eric Rudolph evade the FBI, is Bush obliged to invade? Or would that only be the case if people in Murphy also had a truckful of fertilizer, or some other weapon of mass destruction?
Regime change in North Carolina!

I definitely agree with everyone that the choices we make in our "personal" lives impact on the rest of the people (and other living creatures!) on our planet, so I am way supportive of everyone's efforts to live their lives in a conscious and deliberate manner, trying to give more than we take from the world, which is I think what Mike and others were suggesting.

On that note, my folks bought a hybrid car. How's that for walking the walk!!!