<p>True. Morally, the ends do not justify the means. When discussing and acting to ensure survival, I am willing to tolerate a certain amount of ambiguity in the interests of national security. </p>
<p>Is this nice? No. 
Do I like it? No. Would I change it, if possible? Yes. ;)</p>
<p>wow, so some here would allow ambiguiity to they would be “safer”?</p>
<p>your own life is more valuable than other innocents? when I see that, I ask wwjd…certainly not that</p>
<p>Only arrogance makes us think that we can shove our Judeo-christian ethics and lifestyle down the throats of others, insist that our brand of democracy is what “everyone who loves liberty” craves and not expect those others to getd p-s’d off at us. When people get p-s’d off at us, the younger, less educated among them, turn it to hatred and that breeds violence. How on earth does that make us safer?</p>
<p>Everyone cool it, or this thread goes the way of the dodo. KK? :)</p>
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<p>Actually, Truman was attacked by many as being too soft on the USSR. So was Eisenhower. Some attacked them as being “sympathetic” to communism.</p>
<p>Truman was also blamed for the fall of China to Mao. </p>
<p>In the end, it’s no-win for our fair leaders. Bush may have had the right intentions (or not, depending on your view), but the current situation in Iraq is quite painful. As the Economist quipped, in so many words, “Iraq is too fractured to be a single state. But it’s also too fractured to be three states.”</p>
<p>IOW, Iraq doesn’t have the social capital to be one state. But if it were split into statelets or even three states, the sectarian violence against minorities in that new smaller state would probably be more like genocide.</p>
<p>For the record, before anyone jumps on me, I don’t really have an opinion yet about “staying the course.” I may later when it becomes more clear to me.</p>
<p>U.S. charts Iraq’s slide to `chaos’
Nov. 2, 2006. 01:00 AM
MICHAEL R. GORDON
NEW YORK TIMES</p>
<p>WASHINGTON—A classified briefing prepared two weeks ago by the U.S. Central Command portrays Iraq as edging toward chaos in a chart that the military is using as a barometer of civil conflict.</p>
<p>(yep, its going great)</p>
<p>bechtel is leaving iraq, just too dangerous</p>
<p>the iraq police have killed american troops</p>
<p>we are no longer looking for the kidnapped soilder</p>
<p>the president of Iraq doesn’t want to work with us much</p>
<p>and the iraqi forces, well, they seem to be not too interested in doing their duty, according to american military</p>
<p>ah, yes, rumsfeld is doing an amazing job</p>