I wholehearted agree with Hitchens' remarks. I only wish to point out that, in my opinion, he failed to use his strongest arguments.

Heretofore (i.e. before 9/11) it has always been agreed by all except the Isolationist Right, that FDR showed great wisdom in making the war against Hitler a higher priority than the war against Japan despite the fact that it was Japan that attacked the US at Pearl Harbor. Hitler's Germany, it has always been said, was the greater danger. If Japan was defeated, Germany might yet defeat the Allies. If Germany was defeated, Japan could not hope to win on its own. Today, the Taliban-Al Qaida in Afganistan have taken the place of Japan; Saddam Hussein and Iraq have taken the place of Germany; and the critics of the Iraq war have taken the place of the Isolationist Right. Liberal critics of the war in Iraq demean the greatest triumph of liberalism in the twentieth century when they argue that we should limit our attacks to the individuals or states that attacked us.

One further point deserves mention. The critics argue that we do not have the military strength to make war on two fronts simultaneously in Iraq and Afghanistan. They argue that we "took our eye off the ball" (i.e. the main enemy in Afghanistan) in order to attack Iraq. During World War II, FDR and Churchill had no compunction about fighting Germany and Japan on a multitude of fronts at land and sea. Alone, either of our World War II foes was greater menace than the combined forces of our enemies today. Yet we triumphed. We should have no compunction about making war on the the forces of terror in both Afghanistan and Iraq and not fear that we are too weak to win in the end. If critics of the war truly believe in the liberalism they will unite with all enemies of terror to defeat the terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Your arguent falls apart even more swiftly than Hitch's.

The WWII comparison is absurd. Germany declared war on the US. Saddam and Iraq did not. In fact, Iraq were already defeated after Gulf War 1 and unlike Hitler, posed no threat to anyone.

Furthermore, Japan and Gemrany were allies. Iraq and Al Qaeda were sworn enemies.

Carrying out an unecessary attack on those who pose no threat to us is not isolationism, it's common sense. It is you that demenans our efforts in WWII by comparing a stupid was of choice (Iraq) with one that was essential.

Finally, if we are to wage war against terorrists (stupid as that sounds) then one has to consider the cost benefit. In the case of attacking Iraq, it has been a gross mistake - creating terrorists where no terrorists formerly existed.

For a writer of as fine a caliber as Hitchens, his argument for two simultaneous wars comes off as convoluted and exceedingly obtuse. Perhaps his desperation to prove his point has clouded his grammatical judgement.

Take, for example, his three points. Numbering "simplistic" arguments to connect them together didn't work in high school, and it won't work now. But let's forgive the style grievances and take them on individually. His first point seems to argue that since Zarqawi left Afghanistan when we invaded and went to Iraq, well, that's about it. Oh right, he brought a handful of friends and then when we invaded Iraq and toppled the government, he brought more and more until we finally killed the scumbag. Never mind that there were a handful of jihadists in Iraq before the invasion yet after, lo and behold, swarms of them. Surely the work of Saddam from beyond the grave, surely the reason to invade a country to go after a handful of crooks.

Point number two brings us back to Afghanistan. We don't even need more troops, Hitchens says. The NATO-led force is doing fine without us. So all that surplus? Yea, sure, send it to Iraq. What's the point in having a military if you aren't going to use it to the max, right? Never mind the 4,000+ American men and women dead, the countless tens (hundreds?) of thousands of Iraqis dead, and the complete loss of our credibility in the Muslim world. It seems strange to me that the people who trumpeted the surge in Iraq are so willing to deny that Afghanistan, too, could have used a surge of its own a long time ago.

The third and final argument is callous even by Hitchens' standards. We needed to conquer Iraq so that we could learn how to fight better in Afghanistan? Please, say that with a straight face to the families of those who have died in Iraq, that they were really just part of a live-fire training exercise so that we could get to those who really mattered. Why those same lessons could not have also been learned in Afghanistan is beyond me. After all, it wasn't like the Iraqis were giving classes on counter-insurgency.

Hitchens wraps his argument up by mentioning a country that has been proven to be supporting terrorists and ruled by a brutal regime, Iran. They aren't quieting down, either. In fact, Iran has become bolder and bolder with each passing month. Funny, I remember Iran having two major opponents in the area, you know, who kept each other in check and kept most of the fighting regional (as in, not worldwide). Oh yea, that's right. Iraq and Afghanistan. I'm sure they appreciate the help.

I love your argument, and your analagy. Very accurate. Here's mine, alqueda equals eggs and saddam oranges. In alqueda we made an omlette, in sadam orange juice. One was cooked, but still runny, the other was pulverized. The omelette had nice cheeze and asparagus, and bacon too, but no brie. If FDR had of made the OJ there would have been no pulp, as it turns out there was extra. If chamberlain had made the omelette it would have fallen to peices. If churchill had made it would have had stilton and been perfect. Hitler would have thrown the whole frying pan against the wall; he was vegetarian.

I love breakfast. Especially at Denny's. Denny's in Baghdad. Get it?

Thank you for taking the time to respond to my post. You make some interesting comments. I, of course, disagree that my argument falls apart or that it is absurd. Or that Hitchens' argument falls apart. Or that there is a difference in the speed by which they fall apart. But I was interested by your comments.

The WWII comparison is not absurd. Germany declared war on the US it is true. But Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Wake Island, Guam, the Philippines and other US territories and launched submarine attacks on US commercial shipping all over the Pacific. Japan sent troops to invade many of these US possessions immediately after Pearl Harbor. Meanwhile, Germany essentially did nothing aggressive. Lacking strong leadership I think it quite likely that the US might have focused first on Japan and worried about Germany later. The Isolationist Right in the US argued in favor of it. The British actually expected that this might happen.

If Iraq was already defeated after Gulf War 1 then Germany was defeated after 1918 and could not pose a threat to anyone in 1939. The many years of peace that followed 1939 is sufficient proof of this fact.

Whether Japan and Gemrany (sic) were allies is immaterial. Whether Iraq and Al Qaeda were sworn enemies is immaterial. Neither makes any difference to my argument.

Now we get to the core of your point: That we were "Carrying out an unecessary attack on those who pose no threat to us is not isolationism, it's common sense. It is you that demenans (sic) our efforts in WWII by comparing a stupid was(sic) of choice (Iraq) with one that was essential." This just demonstrates that you did not understand what I wrote. It is immaterial to my argument whether World War II and Iraq or Afghanistan were or were not "wars of choice." We could always have surrendered. We always have a choice. I did not accuse you or the Left of isolationism. I only pointed out that the Isolationist Right favored concentrating on Japan which had attacked the US, while the Internationalist Left favored concentrating on the greater enemy Germany, which had not actually attacked us at that point. I further made the point that this has always been considered one of FDR's more statesmanlike decisions. By inference I hoped that you would see that it might make sense to finish off the strongest enemy first before destroying the immediate aggressor. In other words that, as in World War II, it might make sense to first overthrow the dictator with hundreds of thousands of men under arms before finishing off the immediate aggressor. The Taliban and al Qaida are not going anywhere soon, we will deal with them soon enough. In this age, when a dozen men with box cutters can kill 3,000 New Yorkers in a morning's work, no American leader can blithely assume, like you, that Hussan posed 'no threat". It is risible to believe that he would fail to take advantage of any opportunity to attack the US.

Regarding the status of the war against terror, al Qaida seems to disagree with you. They seem to accept that they have been defeated in the Central Front of their battle against the US and they are repositioning themselves in droves from Iraq to Afghanistan even as we speak. Realistically, they are probably hoping to hold out a little longer against our forces until a new US administration tires of fighting them. I think they are facing reality better than you. However, I do agree with you that we should "consider the cost benefit". You say that in "the case of attacking Iraq, it has been a gross mistake - creating terrorists where no terrorists formerly existed." I respond that we have made far more dead terrorists than live ones in Iraq and the declining numbers of those trying to get into the country and the declining numbers of attacks they make are good enough proof of this. There does not seem to have been any great upwelling of terror since 2003. Indeed, all over the world islamic scholars have been recanting their support of terror and governments have been making headway in combatting those who do not recant. The terrorists themselves seem realistic enough to accept these facts; why not you?

Regarding the costs of the US adventure in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is important to establish some perspective. Wars are bloody and expensive and wasteful and our current wars are no exception. If we are going to analyze the cost we need to compare it to previous US colonial wars, like the Mexican War and the Spanish American War. In the Spanish American War, from 1899 to the end of the Filipino Uprising in about 1904, the US lost 15,000 dead, mostly due to illness, or more than three times the dead in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. This was at a time when the US population was less than half its present size and the US military was also less than half its present size. Yet the Spanish American War has always been regarded as a "splendid little war" with relatively low cost and high return. Ditto the Mexican War although it was much shorter. The losses were smaller, too, but the US population was only about 14 or 15 million at the time and so the losses were proportionately a much higher percentage of both the Army and the Nation. Yet it, too, has always been seen as a great success. Considering the relative size of the population and the GNP, I don't think the burden of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are any greater a burden than these previous conflicts that have been seen as successes. Whether we look back on Iraq and Afghanistan as successes is for the future to decide but at the present time I think the evidence is fairly promising.

The analogy is about fighting two enemies at once. It doen’t matter whether AQ and Saddam were “sworn enemies” at all. What matters is that both AQ and Saddam were our enemies. As for the WWII analogy, it wouldn’t have mattered that Japan and Nazi Germany were allies (especially since they never collaborated at all beyond Hitler sending them some plans for the Me262 that never got the Japanese anywhere, their alliance was on paper only and wasn’t much more meaningful than Saddam claiming that he “hated” AQ) what did matter is that Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany were regimes that could not be tolerated and left to thrive on our planet. They would have to be destroyed by the free world regardless of whether they were “friends” on paper or not. Likewise, we as the free world cannot tolerate a Saddam or AQ. One down….

WWII was a war against defined states with clear targets for our troops. FDR had the political courage to commit all of our nation's resources to victory, and his team defined clear achievable objectives. FDR was also wise enough to refrain from attacking the Stalin's USSR while the war was still raging.

The point is that, while it was possible to conduct simultaneous wars against Saddam in Iraq and against Al Quaida (and the Taliban) in Afghanistan, simultaneous wars were not necessary. The Administration's half-baked committment to the wars, and its woeful lack of strategy, have complicated the situation.

If the "shock and awe" attack on the Taliban had been followed by a "shock and awe" reconstruction effort, and a great show of generousity to Pakistan and Afghanistan's other neighbors. Al Quaida would have been flushed out with no safe place to hide. Instead, the Administration's political cowardice allowed our enemies to remain in many regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan and to gain a temporary foot hold in Iraq. Faced with this poor outcome, The Administration has refused to define clear objectives for our troops (or clear political goals).

Comparisons with past wars fail because none of our previous Presidents proved to be cowards when faced with a real threat.

Very well said Patriotism. I think you're absolutely right about every point that you make. I would just add that another place where the comparison with WWII doesn't work is in the fact that both Germany and Japan were obviously pursuing aggressive policies around the world when the U.S. entered that war. There really wasn't an option of fighting one or the other. Meanwhile the same can't be said of Iraq. No matter how much one might despise Saddam it's beyond a stretch to assert that he posed any immediate threat to us. Or to anyone outside of his country, by that time.

If Iraq was already defeated after Gulf War 1 then Germany was defeated after 1918 and could not pose a threat to anyone in 1939. The many years of peace that followed 1939 is sufficient proof of this fact.

Sorry, but this too is another absurd comparison. The comparison between the progress made by Germany between 1918 and 1939 (21 years) as opposed to what Iraq might have achieved in 11 years is a non starter. Germany were not under UN sanctions or subject to weapons inspections. In fact, Germany was welcomed back into the international military and business community.

Whether Japan and Gemrany (sic) were allies is immaterial. Whether Iraq and Al Qaeda were sworn enemies is immaterial. Neither makes any difference to my argument.

On the contrary. Germany and Japan were part of the same war. They were essentially the same enemy and which is telling, because the Bush administration went out of their way to link Saddam with AQ, even though no such connection ever existed.

I only pointed out that the Isolationist Right favored concentrating on Japan which had attacked the US, while the Internationalist Left favored concentrating on the greater enemy Germany, which had not actually attacked us at that point.

No but they did declare war against us.

In other words that, as in World War II, it might make sense to first overthrow the dictator with hundreds of thousands of men under arms before finishing off the immediate aggressor.

This argument makes about as much sense as Douglas Feith’s idea that we should have attacked a country like Brazil after 911 just to prove to the world we were serious. Saddam had no military. He had no army. He had no arms for that matter. As we are witnessing in Afghanistan, nor was he the more dangerous proposition. In fact, he never so much as threatened the US, and was only our enemy because we decided he was no longer of use to us.

The Taliban and al Qaida are not going anywhere soon, we will deal with them soon enough. In this age, when a dozen men with box cutters can kill 3,000 New Yorkers in a morning's work, no American leader can blithely assume, like you, that Hussan posed 'no threat". It is risible to believe that he would fail to take advantage of any opportunity to attack the US.

On the contrary. Those men with box cutters showed how impotent AQ really are. They needed American planes after all, to launch the attack. It was their hail mary. As for Iraq, there is no longer any debate we were lied into this war. In fact, Saddam posed so little a threat that the war party had to manufacture a false pitcture of him in order to frighten the public into believing the war was necessary. Even if he had the opportunity to attack the US, were is the evidence that he would ever have taken it. Saddam was a thug, but he was a survivor, not a man with a death wish.

Regarding the status of the war against terror, al Qaida seems to disagree with you. They seem to accept that they have been defeated in the Central Front of their battle against the US and they are repositioning themselves in droves from Iraq to Afghanistan even as we speak.

Really? The NIE seems to disagree with you.

Groups like AQ know they will never win a pitch battle against a military force like the US. Hell, they know they didn't even stand a chance against Saddam. AQ's rasion d'etre is to launch launch attacks that will provoke an over reactin from the US, which in turn provokes outrage in the Arab world, which is where they draw their support.

You are confusing AQ with insurgents (ie. Iraqi people who are resisting our occupation of their land). Al Qaeda have been guted, bugt it was in Afghanistan that they suffered their greatest losses. As for giving cedence to what AQ says, I would advise caution. Zawahiri said he prayed that the US would remain in Iraq long enough for AQ to kill 100 thousand Americans, so who knows where fact begins and false bravado ends? I respond that we have made far more dead terrorists than live ones in Iraq and the declining numbers of those trying to get into the country and the declining numbers of attacks they make are good enough proof of this. Your anamysis is flawed. Terrorists are not a finite number – this is not a case of killing them all when we eliminate the last standing AQ memember. Groups like AQ survivie by rallying others to their cause, which in turn is accelerated by the presence of US troops in the region and the so called “collateral damage” we inflict. Having said that, the number of attacks AQ were inflciting, as opposed to isurgent activity, has never been delineated by the pro war party that blames any attacks on AQ in the past, and Iran now.

There does not seem to have been any great upwelling of terror since 2003.

Really? So the London, Bali and Madrid bombings were what exactly? The number of suicide bombings in Iraq went from Zero in early 2003, to around 1000.

Indeed, all over the world islamic scholars have been recanting their support of terror and governments have been making headway in combatting those who do not recant. The terrorists themselves seem realistic enough to accept these facts; why not you?

What facts are you talking about? First, you need to step out of your plastic bubble long enough to question what terror groups you are talking about. For exampe, apparently terrorist groups like the MEK, and Jundulla are OK (because were are harboring them) while othe terror groups are the bane of all evil, or we simply delineate groups that do not take orders from Washington as teroridst groups (ie. Hezbollah and Hamas). Which governments have made “headway in combatting those who do not recant”? Saudi Arabia and Pakistan continue to be Club Med’s for AQ type groups. the

US lost 15,000 dead, mostly due to illness, or more than three times the dead in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

Yes we have more survivors, but what about the tens of thousands injured or with PSSD? As Joseph Stiglitz stated, even if we were to end the war today, the cost would run over 3 trillion (conservative esitmate). Where is that money going to come from? Tax? And isn’t it revealing that the number of dead Iraqis (estimated as high as 1 million) or the 4 million Iraqi refugees, or the devastation wrought on Iraq, does not even factor into your calculations?

Whether we look back on Iraq and Afghanistan as successes is for the future to decide but at the present time I think the evidence is fairly promising.

With all due respects, you are seriously deluded. Both will go down as failures. This argument that one day Bush and his cronies will be vindicated, when we’re long gone, is pure desperation in the light of the fact that both have been monumental failures.

“Germany were not under UN sanctions or subject to weapons inspections. In fact, Germany was welcomed back into the international military and business community..”

You’re crazy. Ever hear of the Treaty of Versailles? Germany had to pay reparations for WWI and was one of the poorest nations in Europe at the time. I remember seeing photos of Americans using German Marks as confetti for New Years Parades in the 30’s

Saddam had T72s, and Mig29s some of the most advanced weapons of the times. Germany was still fighting mostly with WWI equipment and those acquired from annexed territory like Czechoslovakia.

The Treaty of Versailles did not impose sanctions on Germany against trading with the rest of the world. Clearly in spite of paying reparations, they were able to amass a very potent military arsenal between WWI and WWII. After all, who else in Europe was able to stand up to them?

Saddam had T72s, and Mig29s some of the most advanced weapons of the times.

Is that supposed to be funny? How many of these remained after Desert Storm? And of the few that remianed, how advandced could they have been given that none of them even dared to enter no fly zones during the 90's?

It's amazing that those on the far right will look at somethign as innocuous as a Kalashnikoff and regard it as WMD.

The Treaty of Versailles did not impose sanctions on Germany against trading with the rest of the world. Clearly in spite of paying reparations, they were able to amass a very potent military arsenal between WWI and WWII. After all, who else in Europe was able to stand up to them?

I admit, I am not an economist but I venture to guess that trading with the rest of the world is not so effective when your currency is being used as confetti by the rest of the world. Again, most of Germany’s military was outfitted with outdated equipment much of it WWI era. Many of the panzers used to invade Poland, France and even the USSR were training tanks never intended to be used in actual combat. Nazi Germany was great psychologically in the years leading up to the war, giving the impression that they were much stronger than they really were. Also, it wasn’t that UK, France, USSR and USA were not able to stand up to Germany, it was that they were unwilling to deal with them when they could actually have had an effect. Preemptive war in 1936 may have been a good idea. The Nazi war machine was potent in the early years mainly due to new tactics (Blitzkrieg) and good leadership. They also were willing to fight were as the rest of the world was not.

Is that supposed to be funny? How many of these remained after Desert Storm? And of the few that remianed, how advandced could they have been given that none of them even dared to enter no fly zones during the 90's?

I remember seeing plenty of T72s (brewed up, of course) on the news footage of the invasion.

It's amazing that those on the far right will look at somethign as innocuous as a Kalashnikoff and regard it as WMD.

Unwittingly, this is probably one of the most telling statements ever. The AK47 is a WMD, just ask the citizens of any African country in the sub-Sahara, or those in Darfur, or those in Afghanistan, Iraq or South Vietnam. The AK47 is responsible for more deaths than any cluster bomb or your “white phosphorus”.

I remember seeing plenty of T72s (brewed up, of course) on the news footage of the invasion.

Sure, but let's be honest here. Most of the footage we were shown was stock and historical footage, certainly in teh lead up to the attack.

The AK47 is responsible for more deaths than any cluster bomb or your “white phosphorus”.

Not from across the Atlantic it's not and let's not forget the massive air campaign that gets virtually no coverage in the media.

In this article Seymor Hersh reported that according to the 3rd Marine Air Wing (smaller than the Air Force or Navy) dropped an incredible number of bombs on Iraq in the first 16 months alone

Since the beginning of the war, the press release said, the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing alone had dropped more than five hundred thousand tons of ordnance. “This number is likely to be much higher by the end of operations,” Major Mike Sexton said.

Doing the calculations and assuming that most of those ordnance are 500lb bombs, that comes to 3 million bombs or more than one 500lb bomb every minute 24/7 for the first 16 months. Now think of that. If only 10% of those bombs hits a human target, that's 200 deaths in the first 16 moths of combat.

And to think that the air campaign has actually been escalated since then?

200 deaths in 16 months, that sounds very low to me:)

You really think bombs have killed more than the AK? No way, the AK47 Has been involved in every modern conflict since Vietnam, and the one conflict that could be considered true genocide (Darfur) is being committed against civilians largely with help of the AK47.

Dear Mr. or Ms. Neolefty:

Thank you for reading my post and for responding in such great detail. I will try to respond point by point but I may get tired and give up before I finish. Suffice it to say it won't be because I didn't think you were in error, but simply because my endurance did not exceed your ignorance.

If Iraq was already defeated after Gulf War 1 then Germany was defeated after 1918 and could not pose a threat to anyone in 1939. The many years of peace that followed 1939 is sufficient proof of this fact.

Sorry, but this too is another absurd comparison. The comparison between the progress made by Germany between 1918 and 1939 (21 years) as opposed to what Iraq might have achieved in 11 years is a non starter. Germany were not under UN sanctions or subject to weapons inspections. In fact, Germany was welcomed back into the international military and business community.

Perhaps you do not remember the Armistice, the League of Nations,the occupation of the Rhineland and the allied bridgeheads, the Treaty of Versailled, the war guilt clause, the loss of territory to Poland and other countries, the reparations, the limitations on German military forces and the banning of the German military draft? To say that Germany was "welcomed back into the international military and business community" is insane. The failure was in not asserting international rights when Hitler violated Germany's commitments and in not requiring Germany obedience to its obligations under the League of Nations. Germany faced just as many if not more limitations on its sovereignty after 1918 as Iraq after 1991. Germany violated all its post-World War I agreements and rearmed with the intention of making war and obtaining regional if not world domination. Germany and Iraq were obviously different magnitudes of threat to world peace but Iraq was very definite a threat to world peace in 2003. It had violated all its international commitments and was every bit as capable of endangering the peace of its region as Germany was in 1939, Luckily, the US under President Bush did not allow Saddam to get away with what the Western Allies permitted to Hitler.

Whether Japan and Gemrany (sic) were allies is immaterial. Whether Iraq and Al Qaeda were sworn enemies is immaterial. Neither makes any difference to my argument.

On the contrary. Germany and Japan were part of the same war. They were essentially the same enemy and which is telling, because the Bush administration went out of their way to link Saddam with AQ, even though no such connection ever existed.

You are losing track of things. If Germany and Japan were "both part of the same war," then it doesn't matter which one attacked us first and which one declared war. We were equally entitled to attack whichever one we chose. By the same token al Qaida and Iraq are every bit as much the same enemy as Germany, Japan, Italy, and their various allies were in World War II, and we had every bit the same right and duty to destroy them as we did our enemies in 1939-1945. Both al Qaida and Saddam had been attacking us regularly since 1992 we had every bit as much right to attack the one as the other.

I only pointed out that the Isolationist Right favored concentrating on Japan which had attacked the US, while the Internationalist Left favored concentrating on the greater enemy Germany, which had not actually attacked us at that point.

No but they did declare war against us.

You are seriously confused. Both Japan and Germany declared war on us. The former did so after they attacked us, the latter waited until after the declaration. The fact that Germany actually declared war before they made war should be a point in their favor. Are you seriously contending thta the US should have concentrated on fighting the Japanese and not the Germans? Earlier you argued that they were part of the same war. That would seem to indicate that it didn't matter who we attacked first. In my opinion both Iraq and al Qaida were in a state of war with the US from 1992 onward and that it was only a matter of timing when we chose to reply. Almost before the ink was dry, Iraq violated its agreements with the US and its Coalition allies and thus reinstated the state of war that had existed prior to the armistice agreement of 1992. If that was not enough they declared war on us by firing at the planes enforcing the no-fly zone and by subverting the food for peace program. These were every as much an act of war as was al Qaida attack on the twin towers. You are the one who argues that we should concentrate on attacking the Taliban because they attacked us. Iraq also attacked the US.

In other words that, as in World War II, it might make sense to first overthrow the dictator with hundreds of thousands of men under arms before finishing off the immediate aggressor.

This argument makes about as much sense as Douglas Feith’s idea that we should have attacked a country like Brazil after 911 just to prove to the world we were serious. Saddam had no military. He had no army. He had no arms for that matter. As we are witnessing in Afghanistan, nor was he the more dangerous proposition. In fact, he never so much as threatened the US, and was only our enemy because we decided he was no longer of use to us.

Of course Saddam has no army now. We liquidated it. But before the war, that was not the argument used by the anti-war forces. The anti-war argument was all about how great Saddam's military was: how it was going to cause tens of thousands of US casualties with conventional, chemical, and possibly nuclear weapons, how the Arab "street" was going to rise up against the US, how he was going to send missiles into Israel and other allied countries. None of this has come to pass. Now you magically eliminate all Saddam's military assets. Regarding Afghanistan, you again don't know what you're talking about. We toppled the Taliban and gutted al Qaida in Afghanistan with a couple of hundred special forces men. Was that a greater threat than Saddam and his 400 - 500,000 troops and his oil wealth? The Taliban and al Qaida still operate from the tribal regions of Pakistan but they are a shadow of their former selves and cannot operate throughout Afghanistan as they could before. We should continue to press them by every means available but they are not a serious threat to overthrow the Karzai government or to force US and NATO out of the country. Our success in Afghanistan has been based on a knowledge of the people and the country built up over several decades starting with the mujahadeen campaign against the Soviets. The worst possible thing we could do would be to bring in a massive US force and basically occupy the country like the Soviets did.

The Taliban and al Qaida are not going anywhere soon, we will deal with them soon enough. In this age, when a dozen men with box cutters can kill 3,000 New Yorkers in a morning's work, no American leader can blithely assume, like you, that Hussan posed 'no threat". It is risible to believe that he would fail to take advantage of any opportunity to attack the US.

On the contrary. Those men with box cutters showed how impotent AQ really are. They needed American planes after all, to launch the attack. It was their hail mary. As for Iraq, there is no longer any debate we were lied into this war. In fact, Saddam posed so little a threat that the war party had to manufacture a false pitcture of him in order to frighten the public into believing the war was necessary. Even if he had the opportunity to attack the US, were is the evidence that he would ever have taken it. Saddam was a thug, but he was a survivor, not a man with a death wish.

So, I guess your argument is that it doesn't count if you get killed with an imported or highjacked weapon. It only matters if you made the weapon domestically. The fact that al Qaida doesn't make its weapons adds to the threat of terrorism. I guess it doesn't matter either if you get killed by an "impotent". To my mind you're dead either way. Secondly, if the so-called "impotent" al Qaida terrorists could kill several thousand Americans in a few minutes, with nothing more than a few box cutters and an evil idea, it makes the threat from Saddam even greater not lesser.

Regarding the status of the war against terror, al Qaida seems to disagree with you. They seem to accept that they have been defeated in the Central Front of their battle against the US and they are repositioning themselves in droves from Iraq to Afghanistan even as we speak.

Really? The NIE seems to disagree with you.

Groups like AQ know they will never win a pitch battle against a military force like the US. Hell, they know they didn't even stand a chance against Saddam. AQ's rasion d'etre is to launch launch attacks that will provoke an over reactin from the US, which in turn provokes outrage in the Arab world, which is where they draw their support.

You are confusing AQ with insurgents (ie. Iraqi people who are resisting our occupation of their land). Al Qaeda have been guted, bugt it was in Afghanistan that they suffered their greatest losses. As for giving cedence to what AQ says, I would advise caution. Zawahiri said he prayed that the US would remain in Iraq long enough for AQ to kill 100 thousand Americans, so who knows where fact begins and false bravado ends? I respond that we have made far more dead terrorists than live ones in Iraq and the declining numbers of those trying to get into the country and the declining numbers of attacks they make are good enough proof of this. Your anamysis is flawed. Terrorists are not a finite number – this is not a case of killing them all when we eliminate the last standing AQ memember. Groups like AQ survivie by rallying others to their cause, which in turn is accelerated by the presence of US troops in the region and the so called “collateral damage” we inflict. Having said that, the number of attacks AQ were inflciting, as opposed to isurgent activity, has never been delineated by the pro war party that blames any attacks on AQ in the past, and Iran now.

Excuse me! Now you are arguing both sides of the case. If al Qaida is never going to win against the US, why the hell should we worry about them in Afghanistan? Why is it that when the NIE agrees with you, you think it's fine, but when it says that Iraq was making nuclear weapons, Bush is a liar?

There does not seem to have been any great upwelling of terror since 2003.

Really? So the London, Bali and Madrid bombings were what exactly? The number of suicide bombings in Iraq went from Zero in early 2003, to around 1000.

Yes. Really. World wide the number of terrorist incidents have fallen dramatically. Since 2006, they have even fallen in Iraq. Most of the terrorist incidents in Asia have actually occurred in Sri Lanka and not in either Iraq or Afghanistan. With the Israelis crushing the so-called "intifada" there does indeed seem to be a diminution of terrorist incidents around the world. Check your facts.

Indeed, all over the world islamic scholars have been recanting their support of terror and governments have been making headway in combatting those who do not recant. The terrorists themselves seem realistic enough to accept these facts; why not you?

What facts are you talking about? First, you need to step out of your plastic bubble long enough to question what terror groups you are talking about. For exampe, apparently terrorist groups like the MEK, and Jundulla are OK (because were are harboring them) while othe terror groups are the bane of all evil, or we simply delineate groups that do not take orders from Washington as teroridst groups (ie. Hezbollah and Hamas). Which governments have made “headway in combatting those who do not recant”? Saudi Arabia and Pakistan continue to be Club Med’s for AQ type groups. the

Governments making headway against the terrorists: Algeria, Egypt, Colombia, Israel, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, India, Philippines, Russia, Indonesia, Morocco, Jordan, Lebanon, Ethopia & Pakistan, among a number of others.

US lost 15,000 dead, mostly due to illness, or more than three times the dead in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

Yes we have more survivors, but what about the tens of thousands injured or with PSSD? As Joseph Stiglitz stated, even if we were to end the war today, the cost would run over 3 trillion (conservative esitmate). Where is that money going to come from? Tax? And isn’t it revealing that the number of dead Iraqis (estimated as high as 1 million) or the 4 million Iraqi refugees, or the devastation wrought on Iraq, does not even factor into your calculations?

So, there were no PSSD victims in previous wars? Or does it only count as a result of wars you personally oppose? In any case, are you willing to have your argument reduced to the dollar cost? Who cares about the cost? The financial cost of the war in Iraq is not significantly greater vis a vis today's economy than the Spanish American War / Filipino insurrection was to the US economy ca. 1898-1910.

Whether we look back on Iraq and Afghanistan as successes is for the future to decide but at the present time I think the evidence is fairly promising.

With all due respects, you are seriously deluded. Both will go down as failures. This argument that one day Bush and his cronies will be vindicated, when we’re long gone, is pure desperation in the light of the fact that both have been monumental failures.

If I am deluded about the war in Iraq then so are most Americans. The Democrats did not abandon their efforts to defund the War in Iraq and did not fail to adopt any of their other anti-war efforts because it seemed like the war was being lost. If they thought that, they would have redoubled their efforts. They abandoned these efforts because they seemed less and less popular and the war seemed to be on its way to ultimate success. So too are most Iraqis. They have met most of the measures of success established by the Democrats in Congress in 2006 when they confidently expected that the Iraqis could never meet any of them. And so too is Sen. Obama deluded if I am. He is not now feverishly trying to back out of his campaign commitments to get out of Iraq within 16 months because the risks and costs of staying longer have increased but rather because they have declined. The fact that the war is no longer the main political issue in the US election is because the war has got worse but because it seems to be successful. This war, like any war, may end badly yet. Who can read the future? However, clearly seems like peace is breaking out in Iraq. I think we can all agree that it would be a good thing if the present trend continues.