[Danzig]

we are still paying for our rotten foreign policy, based so many years on what russia did--excuse me, what the soviet union did. bin laden and those of his ilk accepted the help we gave them to rid their country of the soviets, but it did nothing as far as building an ally in the region. they hated us, they just used us as much as possible to rid them of the 'other' evil, the ussr. to them we were no less evil. same as the iran/iraq war. we used the 'enemy of my enemy is my friend' kind of logic, it's what got saddam all those weapons (we knew he had wmd, he used them(gassed the kurds), we gave them to him) because rather than stay the hell out of it, we chose sides. not iran, because of the shah and again, the ussr...but iraq--just as evil as iran.

as far as whether iraq had any part in 9-11, and whether that was part of why we invaded iraq....seems to me that after 9-11, we've changed our mentality a bit. don't wait for them to hit first. see a danger, hit them. was iraq a danger? probably not so much as thought, certainly not as dangerous as iran....

problem is, after somalia, not reacting to the cole, etc...we've portrayed ourselves as weak. we let any goodwill from kuwait evaporate--what hurt us the most was encouraging the overthrow of saddam after gulf 1, and doing NOTHING to help those poor bastards that we led to believe we'd help. now they're dead. those who survived have no use, no respect for us.

that being said, our foreign policy should never be based on weakness, not on popularity. we won't ever truly be liked over there, not as long as we are allies of israel. but we need to earn back the respect we've lost. bush doesn't seem the one to do that....