... these days ...

>> I find that some of the conclusions he arrives at are similar to
>> those of Moore. That makes for a pair of strange bedfellows!

... I agree with both your observation and your comment thereon. In fact, many of Buchanan's views are rather libertarian. There are, of course, many similarities between modern libertarianism and classic conservativism.

>> As to a "significant" relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda that you
>> refer to in the 9/11 commission report, I don't consider any friendly
>> relationship between a government and Al Qaeda to be insignificant.

Don't have the report with me at the moment, but when I get home, I'll quote the exact language from it for you. There was no "friendly" relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda. Sadaam's was a secular regime -- the muslim fanatics didn't like him a heck of a lot more than they like us. In fact, if you go back over the past 20 years or so, there were, at different times, more "friendly" relations between the U.S. and Sadaam than there were between al-Qaeda and Sadaam. Photographic evidence below -- and I'll bet you can't find a comparable photo of Sadaam and Osama!

>> As to a surgical strikes to take out Saddam and his regime.
>> There's no way that would have been feasible.

Actually, it was not only feasible -- we did try it once and barely missed. It could have been tried again -- and again -- and again, if necessary, until it worked.

>> That, quite frankly, would have been a Clinton solution.
>> Lob a couple bombs and problem solved.

Well, that isn't exactly what I had in mind. The effort we did make was a bombing run. However, there were other feasible military alternatives. At one point, preliminary plans were actually drawn up for a carefully targeted, quick strike, small force assault to take out Sadaam. Of course, that plan was never actually tried (I believe that, eventually, we would have had the intelligence necessary to make such an attack work). Worst came to worst, we could have subcontracted the job to the Mossad. I'd be willing to bet they'd have gotten it done!

>> Except we didn't know for sure where the elements of the regime were
>> at the time, and we are still hunting some of them down to this day!

But, we DID know where many of them were at different times. We "missed 'em by that much" the one time we did try a surgical strike. And I don't think it would have required taking them all out to effect a regime change. Probably would have been enough to take out Sadaam, Uday and Qusay.

Hope you did well playing poker. Can't make Reno, sorry. Have another commitment all day Saturday (draft for my computer Strato-Matic football league). ----- jim o\-S

-------------------- Donald Rumsfeld and Sadaam Hussein --------------------