[CatDawg]

Hitler would've eventually been countered no matter what. The U.S. simply would not have permitted total domination of Europe by him.

I agree that starting Barbarossa when he did cost him a potential victory over Britain, but with Churchill in leadership rather than Neville, Sea Lion would've been a a bloody marsh fight and the U.S. would've intervened quicker than waiting to land in North Africa in '42.

Besides, the error people make in equating Hussein with Hitler is that with Hitler you had a preceding veneer of cooperative diplomacy and treaties leading up to '39. With Hussein it was simply aggression from the outset.

At first it was aggression that served our purposes (against Iran, deemed a bigger threat in the first half of the 80s) and then it was aggression that legitimately threatened our interests as well as those of the western world.

It does not matter one scintilla that there were no WMDs in Iraq. Not one. The invasion was justifiable on the premise of multi-level acts of aggression against the U.S., against the Gulf States, violations of multiple UN Resolutions which required forcible response and, really, common sense.

How much sense did it make to sit and wait on a provably aggressive, unstable man sit in the midst of the world's most sensitive fuel reserve resource with the potential to disrupt it all, really?

He was a fascist, a murdering pig, a thug and the world is better off rid of him.

However, Sea Lion was abandoned in the fall of '40 so that he could put more forces on the Eastern Front with the Red Army. Hitler being bogged down after the defeat in Kursk realized that the chance of victory on the Eastern Front were basicaly lost. Therefore, his only chance was to convince Stalin that the powers of the US, Britain and the Soviet Union in which Hitler had caused to join forces, would ultimately fall apart. He hoped that once Stalin realized that he would not be able to depend on the US and Britain to help against Germany that he would settle with returning to the lines as they were in June of '41. During this time Hitler seeing his faith in the East began to pour more and more resources into the build up of the Atlantic Wall. Hitler felt that if he could push the Allies back into the Sea that this would be the end to any problems from the US and Britain since both Churchill and Roosevelt would pay every prices for the failure. At that time he could then start putting forces back towards the east. What I find funny was the fact that Hitler had criticized Kaiser for his failures of having two fronts in WWI and yet he had opened up three fronts in the East, West and Mediterranean. He had spread himself so thin that he would not be able to defend it. Had he not declared war on the US, especially if it had been at another time instead of when he was having to fight the counteroffensive of the Red Army things may have been different. Does the US get involved in the European theatre even without him declaring on the US? Had they stopped Overlord would Hitler have been right that the US would have been defeated in Europe? This where he would have certainly been wrong and would have resulted in more lives lost due to the fact that the US would have more than likely dropped at least one Atomic bomb on Germany.

I just had to throw some info back. I knew you liked Civil War history but didn't realize you enjoyed WWII as well.

To help keep this on the topic. My point from all this is that we to were put in a position of being to thin especially without draft. If you look at the horrible incident tonight and the other numerous murders committed by Ft. Hood troops in the past few years it does make you wonder how thin we've been since the troops from Ft. Hood have been through a greater amount of deployment for these two fronts than other troops.

We must remember right or wrong on the political side of things that the troops deserve our support and thanks.