[Mr.Kimball]

I agree I think it should have been done during Bush 1 and I agree that Clinton let them toy with the UN and US. However, I still don't think we had justification to go back when we did. When you are dealing with situations like this I just don't see how you can pause and then decide to pickup later when basically nothing had changed. I know we gave the impression that things had changed but I think most of us can agree that they hadn't. Besides we could have kept him in check long enough to give all resources to finding Osama, then turned our attention more to him.

I think that things did change, and they changed in a major way from the Bush#1 period to the Bush#2 period. Yeah, I understand to a degree with your thoughts saying that Saddam was being somewhat contained, but a whole new set of obstacles came into the picture that has not even been touched upon yet. If you remember, in the early post 9-11 days the big emphasis was on eradicating state sponsored terriorist training camps for groups such as Al-Qaeda. If nothing else the main thing that Saddam and the rest of the Arab world learned that in a conventional war, that they were no match for US military firepower. If you remember Iraq was thought of to have had one of the best equipted and well trained armies in the world. It took the Persian Gulf War to really disprove Saddam's theory on that. With his military capabilities in shambles, Saddam and the rest of the whole Arab world then realized that a nonconventional terrorist offensive stategy was the only possible way destroy the US and it's allies. Maybe not so much with military tactics but by attacking the moral fiber and the financial stucture, and crumbling them from within. Thus the terrorist training era greatly accelerated and Saddam was a major sponsor of those activities. This is the part that during the Clinton Administration, flourished globaly. It was during the Bush #2 years (post 9-11) that the huge emphasis was to attempt to eradicate those traing facilities in the hot spots around the world. I'm sure those activities may have existed in places during Bush#1, but not to the degree that is was post Persian Gulf War and during the Clinton terms. So, I think you can tack that on as one of the variables as well as the others that have been mentioned that substaniates going into Iraq. This is why it was a totaly different situation and why I feel there was justifications in doing what we did. I understand your voice on the Iraq occupation vs. the Bin Laden hunt, but you can surely understand that there are/were issues in both areas that had/have to be dealt with simultaneously.