At 13:42 21 November 2005, Don Johnstone wrote:
Derek

Perhaps your remarks would be better directed at President
Bush,
---------------------------------
Hi Don (the universal expert on everything!).

We clash on another forum. I think that President Bush
would be too thick to understand my remarks anyway!

I should make clear that most Americans, the ones I
have met anyway, are nice, likable people. How they
collectively (although very marginally) managed to
elect George 'W' as President is therefore quite beyond
me! But then I thought that Bill Clinton was a good,
intelligent and sensible President (well he was partly
educated in the UK), whereas I gather the US 'Moral
Majority' didn't think much of him. I don't think much
of Tony Blair either by the way.

We Brits. are extremely grateful for America's help
in World War II, without which we would probably now
be living in a totalitarian state, controlled by Germany.
Obviously we are more than happy to return the help
wherever we can, but only for legitimate wars. The
war against Iraq was never sanctioned by the United
Nations. In my opinion Saddam Hussain was more of a
blusterer than an actual threat to anybody outside
his own country. While the UN weapons inspectors were
in Iraq and apparently making progress the Allies should
never have declared war on Iraq!

I never thought that invading Iraq would defeat 'Terrorism',
or make things better for the Iraqi people. In fact
it seems to have had entirely the opposite effects,
as so many Muslims were so angered by it, that they
are queuing up to be suicide bombers, even British
born ones!

Anyway, end of rant, but preventing the war was something
I cared passionately about at the time. I did all that
I could by writing letters to politicians and newspapers,
as well as taking part in protest marches - something
I would never normally do by the way

One consequence of 9/11 and the Iraq war, is that all
European based gliders over a MTOW of 500kg now have
to be insured at considerable extra cost against being
used for terrorist attacks. Somehow I can't imagine
that flying a Duo Discus into the Houses of Parliament
would do all that much damage!

Cheers,
Derek Copeland