Tim Blair

It calls into question our ability to rein in political excess and to root out state-sponsored incompetence.

No, that's what elections are for. What has really been called into question is the left's ability to demagogue their agenda in the streets and newspapers. If their lovingly crafted giant puppets and angry screeds can't drive government and public opinion, then all is lost.

The Gary Younges of the world seem to be hatching like flies at our universities. Schooled on hack socialism and self-loathing, they simply can't see the birth of a free and democratic country and feel anything.

Personally, I'm excited for the Iraqi people and proud that some countries in the West still have the character and courage to fight tyranny.

Democracy fails when I don't get my way!

Why the Dragunia continues to employ this hopeless, no-talent hack is quite beyond me. Presumably because his myopic pseudo-insights play well with bien pensant opinion in Islington and Hampstead. But the guy can't write in anything except the most plodding platitudes. If he could actually turn a phrase, then that might be a mitigating factor. Younge's columns look like they're turned out by a teenager for the high school newsletter.

I think Gary Younge misses his own point : "This war" is unfortunately what it's all about.

War by it's very nature, entails a corruption of systems, in order to mutate into whatever is required to win that war.

It need not be a military war either : America is looking at "Proposition 56" right now.

"Fiscal war" demands that the normal two thirds majority be sacrificed in order to meet a pressing need.

Younge does write some decent stuff but as soon as he climbs on that Leftie horse.......

Well, it's starting to look like Bush and the rest of the criminals in this Administration will be held accountable. There are just too many scandals to keep track of! Oh Wait! Here's another! Bush & Co. should be tried for crimes against the United States of America, but if I have to settle for getting his ass disgracefully kicked-out of office, so be it. Another one-termer - just like Poppy Bush...
http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=312&row=0

great link peter, almost like linking to an excerpt of a m.moore book on m.moore's website extolling the evil plot by GWB and the joooz to destroy the WTC.

Hey, Peter, I can do that, too. Did you know that John F'n Kerry, Michael Moore, and Alec Baldwin paid for the transfer of nuclear weapons technology from Pakistan to North Korea? I am just about to write a book about it, and I will have a website and everything, just like your faves. Thus, it is proven that the plot was all done by anti-Bushies. What I wrote *is* proof, isn't it? At any rate at least as much as you seem to need.

Younge's stuff reads like the crap I used to hear in college in the mid 70's years from lefty professors.

Although at that time, with a skull full of mush, I gave it the "academia ok."

Wrong answer.

In real life, war, and what leads up to war is often messy, full of missed opportunities, and also full of a lot of mistakes. This is because we have imperfect human beings making decisions and waging war.

Perhaps one day we'll re-sequence our DNA and achieve perfection for humans. Until that day arrives, war will be waged as we have waged it since the dawn of man: imperfectly.

The US Revolutionary war was waged imperfectly by both sides. I guess we shouldn't have bothered waging it, since everything wasn't perfect. People died because of mistakes that were made.

Same thing for WWII. Lots of mistakes, missed opportunities and some bad calls by leaders that caused loss of life. Should we have waited until we could have wage this perfectly?

If you're looking for perfect anything, don't expect it if a flawed human being is involved.
The perfect society, political ideology, country, or culture doesn't exist. There are mistakes and flaws in everything we have a hand in.

A lot of good things for the Iraqis and, hopefully, for the stability of that part of the world can and has already resulted from the Iraq war. We didn't have perfect intelligence or troops. We've done the best we can with what we have.

Any mistakes that may have been made, in the ongoing war on terror, pale in comparison to the good that has been done. For anyone who says otherwise, I wonder why the think so little of the Iraqi people to wish they were still suffering under Saddam & Son.

The Iraqi people suffered for what, 12 years, while we 'talked and negotiated' with Saddam over weapons inspections? We had the legal right, via the cease fire Saddam broke, to have troops there much earlier than we did. Wonder how many Iraqis died or were tortured in those 12 years?

Did people really think we could: get rid of Saddam & sons, route out remaining loyalists, rebuild a country that had been looted by Saddam & Sons .. do all this & more in a year's time?