[Stuart]

Originally Posted by Jerrek

scastle, you're being very dumb. Two points.

Sovereign means, as Webster's put it, c : enjoying autonomy : INDEPENDENT <sovereign state>. It has nothing to do with royalty.

Second, Canada has a queen. So please. The United States is a sovereign republic, and Canada is a sovereign constitutional monarchy.

OK. I stand corrected.

But, do not call me dumb. That is insulting.

You still haven't answered my question: Who financed Saddam?

And I couldn't agree more. The United States does not go out there targetting civilians on purpose. Sure, accidents happen, and that is tragic. But I am quite a firm believer that our soldiers are rather honorable compared to the rest of the people. When was the last time you heard American soldiers rape their PoWs?

That's fair enough. Accidents do happen. I don't call the kind of "soldiers" that target civillians, rape & pillage soldiers. I call them thugs. Americans don't do this (rape & pillage I mean).

Israel is the same. They don't target civilians. They target militants. It just so happens that the Palestians, demonstrating the bravity, find it useful to hide among civilians and put their ammunition factories among schools and hospitals.

I have to admit, unless they are using the general public as a human shield, they wouldn't put military facilities in the middle of populated areas. We don't. The US & Canada don't. In fact, I don't think any civilised country does.

Now, just in case this isn't clear from my posts. I am not anti-American, and I do think it was right to remove Saddam (I actually think we should have done it in Gulf War 1). The only stupid thing (IMO) that both George Bush and Tony Blair did was announce that Saddam had WMDs before they had firm evidence. Having said that, I don't think we would have gone to war if they hadn't said that.

I also believe that Saddam did have (and possibly still has) WMDs, although I would be very surprised if they are anywhere near Iraq.

I have also found the few Americans I have met to be charming and extremely friendly.

The only thing I don't like is the "We are better than you attitude", but I don't like that attitude wherever it comes from. As I said in my earlier post, I don't think that attitude is patriotic, just arrogant.