Dear Hammermill,

The fact that there are terrorists in a country does
not necessarily signify that its Government is supporting
them. We have suspected terrorists living in the UK
and so does the US and many other countries around
the World.

Saddam Hussain was not a very nice leader, but the
USA supported him as the 'Good Guy' during the Iraq
- Iran war against the more Muslim fundamentalist Iranians
(The Bad Guys?).

Just before the latest invasion of Iraq, the US weapons
inspectors were doing their jobs in that country. Had
Saddam thrown them out again, or been found to be in
significant violation of UN resolutions, then there
would have been some justification for that invasion.
All the US had to do in the meantime was keep some
troops in the area, sitting safe and sound and out
of harms way. I think what must of us in Europe objected
to was that you went in anyway, without any proof of
wrongdoing and without the UN sanctioning the action.
What a civilized country does has to be seen as fair
and reasonable, which this was not.

Now can we please stop this right wing, redneck, American
rhetoric and get back to gliding?

Derek Copeland


At 22:18 10 July 2006, Hammermill wrote:
June 16, 2006

Betting on Defeat?
It's far from a safe bet.
by Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online

Lately, it has become popular to recant on Iraq. When
2,500 Americans
are lost, and when the improvised explosive device
monopolizes the war
coverage, it is easy to see why - especially with elections
coming up
in November, and presidential primaries not long after.

Pundits now daily equivocate in their understandable
exasperation at
the apparent lack of quantifiable progress. The ranks
of public
supporters have thinned as final victory seems elusive.
It is hard to
find any consistent public advocates of the American
effort in Iraq
other than the editors and writers here at National
Review, the Wall
Street Journal, Christopher Hitchens, Charles Krauthammer,
Mark Steyn,
Norman Podhoretz, and a very few principled others.

But for all the despair, note all the problems for
those who have
triangulated throughout this war.

First, those who undergo the opportune conversion often
fall prey to
disingenuousness. Take John Kerry's recent repudiation
of his earlier
vote for the war in Iraq. To cheers of Democratic activists,
he now
laments, 'We were misled.'

Misled?

Putting aside the question of weapons of mass destruction
and the use
of the royal 'we,' was the senator suggesting that
Iraq did not
violate the 1991 armistice accords?

Or that Saddam Hussein did not really gas and murder
his own people?

Perhaps he was 'misled' into thinking Iraqi agents
did not really
plan to murder former President George Bush?

Or postfacto have we learned that Saddam did not really
shield
terrorists?

Apparently the Iraqi regime neither violated U.N. accords
nor shot at
American planes in the no-fly zones.

Senator Kerry, at least if I remember correctly, voted
for the joint
congressional resolution of October 11, 2002, authorizing
a war against
Iraq, on the basis of all these and several other causus
belli, well
apart from fear of WMDs.

Second, those with a shifting position on the war sometimes
cannot keep
up with a war that is shifting itself, where things
change hourly. And
when one has no consistent or principled position,
the 24-hour
battlefield usually proves a fickle barometer by which
to exude
military wisdom.

Even as critics were equating Haditha with My Lai,
al-Zarqawi, the al
Qaeda mass murderer in Iraq, was caught and killed.
And what was the
reaction of the stunned antiwar pundit or politician?
Either we heard
that there was impropriety involved in killing such
a demon, or the
former fugitive who was once supposedly proof of our
ineptness suddenly
was reinvented as having been irrelevant all along.

The Iraqi army - well over 250,000 strong - is growing,
and the
much smaller American force (about 130,000) is shrinking.
How do you
call for a deadline for withdrawal when Iraqization
was always
predicated on withdrawal only after there was no Iraqi
dependence on a
large, static American force?

After lamenting that the Iraqi government is a mess,
we now see a tough
prime minister and the selection of his cabinet completed.
So it is not
easy to offer somber platitudes of defeat when 400,000
coalition and
Iraqi troops are daily fighting on the center stage
of the war against
Islamic terrorism. Someone from Mars might wonder what
exactly were the
conditions under which a quarter-million Muslim Arabs
in Iraq alone
went to war against Islamic radicalism.

Third, there is a fine line to be drawn between legitimate
criticism of
a war that is supposedly not worth American blood and
treasure, and
general slander of the United States and its military.
Yet much of the
Left's rhetoric was not merely anti-Bush, but in its
pessimism
devolved into de facto anti-Americanism.

Senator Durbin compared Guantanamo Bay to the worst
excesses of the
Nazis. Senator Kennedy suggested that Abu Ghraib, where
thousands
perished under Saddam Hussein, had simply 'reopened
under new
management: U.S. management.' Democratic-party chairman
Howard Dean
confidently asserted that the Iraq war was not winnable.
John Kerry in
his youth alleged that Americans were like Genghis
Khan in their
savagery; in his golden years, he once again insists
that we are
'terrorizing' Iraqi civilians. With friends like these,
what war
critic needs enemies? Americans can take disapproval
that we are not
fighting 'smart,' but they resent the notion that we
are somehow
downright evil.

Fourth, the mainstream media is now discredited on
Iraq, and their
drumbeat of doom and gloom is starting to rile more
than pleases the
public. Aside from the bias that counts always our
losses and rarely
our successes, we are sick and tired of manipulations
like the lies
about flushed Korans, forged memos, and the rush to
judgment on
Haditha. Most weary Americans want at least a moment
to savor the death
of a mass-murdering Zarqawi, without having to lament
that he might
have been saved by quicker medical intervention.

Fifth, the historical assessment of Iraq is still undetermined,
despite
the pontification of former supporters who think they
gain greater
absolution the more vehemently they trash a war they
once advocated.

The three-week effort to remove Saddam Hussein was
a landmark success.
The subsequent three-year occupation in his place has
been messy,
costly, and unpopular. But the result of the third
and final stage that
Iraq has evolved into - an existential fight between
Iraqi democracy
and al Qaeda and Islamic fundamentalism - is still
uncertain. If we
draw the terrorists out, defeat them in the heart of
the ancient
caliphate, and win the allegiance of enough democratic
Iraqis to crush
the Islamicists, then our military has won a far greater
victory than
the removal of Saddam Hussein.

Sixth, note how critics now rarely offer alternative
scenarios. All the
old gripes such as the paucity of body armor or thin-skinned
humvees
have withered away. The Iraqi elected government is
sympathetic and
earnest, so demonizing them ultimately translates into
something like
'Cut these guys lose; they weren't worth the effort.'
Yes, the
American people want out of Iraq, but on terms that
preserve the
democracy that we paid so dearly to foster.

Even the one legitimate criticism that we were too
slow in turning over
control to the Iraqis, and that the Bremmer interregnum
had too high a
public profile, is now largely moot, as Ambassador
Khalilzad and Gen.
Casey are in the shadows, giving all the credit to
the very public
Iraqis and taking most of the blame for the bad news.

So we are nearing the denouement of the Iraq war, where
we wanted to be
all along: in support of a full-fledged and democratically
elected
government that will either win or lose its own struggle.

Seventh, the old twin charges - no link between al
Qaeda and Saddam,
no WMDs - are also becoming largely irrelevant or proving
untrue. It
must have been difficult for Time, Newsweek, and the
New York Times, in
their coverage of the death of Zarqawi, to admit that
he had been
active in Iraq well before the end of Saddam Hussein,
along with a
mishmash of old killers from Abu Nidal to Abdul Rahman
Yasin, the Iraqi
American who helped plan the first World Trade Center
bombing.

In addition, most abroad were convinced before the
war that the CIA was
right in its pre-war assessments. The publication of
the Iraqi archives
points to a real, not a phantom and former, WMD capability
- in line
with efforts elsewhere in the Islamic world, from Iran
to Libya, to
reclaim something akin to the old Soviet deterrent.

The costs in Iraq have been high and the losses tragic.
But nothing in
the past three years has convinced me otherwise than
that:

1=2E in a post-September-11 world Saddam had to be
removed on ethical and
strategic grounds;

2=2E the insurgency, though unexpected in its intensity,
could be put
down by a U.S. military that would react and evolve
more quickly than
the terrorists to changing conditions on the ground;

3=2E our mistakes, though several and undeniable, are
tragically the
stuff of war, and so far have not proved to be irreversible
or beyond
what we experienced in any of our past efforts;

4=2E the maligned secretary of Defense was right about
troop levels and
the plan for Iraqization - although demonized for trying
to transform
the very nature of the American military in the midst
of a war;

5=2E we are engaged in the great humanitarian effort
of the age, as
'one person, one vote' has brought to the perennially
downtrodden
Arab Shiites a real chance at equality;

6=2E the best method of winning this global struggle
against fascistic
Islamic terrorism remains fostering in the Middle East
a third
democratic alternative between autocracy and theocracy
that alone can
deal with the modern world.

Once a democratically elected Iraqi government emerged,
and a national
army was trained, the only way we could lose this war
was to forfeit it
at home, through the influence of an adroit, loud minority
of critics
that for either base or misguided reasons really does
wish us to lose.
They really do.

=A92006 Victor Davis Hanson

Anyway, you have got yourselves into three unwinnable
wars entirely of your own making, so I suggest that
you elect a President and a Government who are intelligent
enough to negotiate a way out next time.

On your Independence Day (from us), I hope you will
spare a thought for all those suffering in Iraq and
Afghanistan, the victims of 9/11, the Madrid and London
bombings and their families, and our respective soldiers
who have to enforce these unsanctioned policies.
=20
Derek Copeland