You forgort surrender monkey, Abduul Lover, communist,

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" Sarah Palin HAS elected BARACK Obama THE PRESIDENT"

That's a new one.. I have not heard that one yet..

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"Only a fool tests the depth of the water with both feet."

Yep. I do. My "New Direction" involves cruise missiles. Lots of them.

That's called, "killing a sparrow with a howitzer".

Hey, you gotta kinda figure - the middle east is still in its "feudal" phase. Whatever Islam is, it has a long way to go before it achieves anything resembling a "renaissance".

But yeah, there is this historical tradition within certain subsets of Islam, of trying to grab that kind of glory by force rather than by accomplishment, and it backfires EVERY time, and it just causes increased resentment and hatred. WHen will these people learn?

On the other hand, there's an equivalent stupidity here in the West, which also has been "recurring" lately, of thinking that we can somehow catapult one of these countries out of their present existence and into whatever political mold we think is most appropriate "for us". That too, leads to increased resentment and hatred. When will we learn?ds

Nah, sometimes you just have to sit back and watch your kids duking it out. It's part of growing up. If you interfere (as a parent or whatever), first of all your kids will never learn to take care of themselves, and secondly your kids will learn to resent you for your interference. It's painful to watch all that violence, but the longer term consequences of interfering and failing to exercise restraint in that regard, are even more serious.

Well, so - yeah - my personal opinion is that we have reached (or are now reaching) the "point of diminishing returns" in terms of our investment in Iraq, and it's now time to think seriously about cutting our losses and getting out. Unless we're willing to use those cruise missiles you're talking about, and I don't think that's politically feasible, it seems that the best we can do is to delay the inevitable - so why prolong the agony?

Hmm.... I'd suggest approaching this in different terms, 'cause with every passing day our military remains in Iraq, we are losing far more than we're gaining. And this would be true at many levels.