Steven DenBeste writes an amazingly literate and coherant opinion site, USSClueless. I've never understood the format, but no matter. THIS PIECE is so well thought out that it merits your consideration. He talks about how the Iraq/WMD thing was never the real issue (as most of us non-nuanced conservatives know and none of the left has even tried to figure out) except as the justification we had to present to the UN in order to support Tony Blair. The real reason we went into Iraq was to take down a core Arab dictatorship, who was a nasty, evil guy anyway, and start to dismantle the mideast momentum toward facism. Maybe give the Iranians, who hate the mullahs, and the Syrians who are tired of being owned by the al-Assad clan, some hope of getting their own governments changed too. It was, and is, an effort to break the middle east stalemate which has been spiralling out of control for decades and was reaching a point where the whole world was going to be sucked in to the conflagration. It's why CLinton workjed so hard for eight years - the US needs a stable middle east that isn't exporting hate around the world. Well it didn't work because Arafat can't control his loonies. When push came to shove and Clinton got Israel to offer Arafat 98% of everything he ever asked for he refused to continue talking, went home and let loose the dogs. John Kerry and the left think the solution was more talking. That's because they are so steeped in their own "we just need to love each other and become freinds" bullsh!t that they are blind to the fact that these people will not ever stop, will not ever put down their weapons and will not ever stop hating until Israel no longer exists and the world is converted to Islam.