War on Terror

In response to your defending my right to have my opinion - I appreciate that and am glad you haven't taken unreasonable offense, and agree with you; though I disagree I'm pleased to proclaim your right to maintain your own opinion. But where do you get the notion that it was "our job" to dethrone a dictator? I'm not saying I supported Hussein but there are plenty of other dictators out there, I don't see us going after them. If the war had been fought on behalf of the innocent citizens of Iraq, for their sake and their protection, I don't think I'd have any real objections. But I cannot believe that those were anything close to the motives of the Bush administration, since there are worse persecutions going elsewhere - China, Myanmar, Sudan, Somalia - and our government turns a sometimes blind, sometimes merely unmotivated eye. Nor can I believe that it was truly in the interests of protecting ourselves from weapons of mass destruction - I have yet to see convincing proof that such weapons ever existed, or that Iraq would have had the balls to level them against us; and furthermore, if that is sufficient motivation to go to war, then why is North Korea still untouched, even unthreatened by us? In all honesty, I cannot think of why we went to war in Iraq - I'm truly baffled. But I can't support a war of which I can't see the purpose. As another point of interest - since I've seen no conclusive statistics on it myself - does anyone have any idea what the ratio is of projected deaths at the hands of Hussein the evil dictator versus actual deaths caused by the turmoil we stirred up? Just wondering... Now, since when do civil rights pertain only to American citizens? Oh, yes, I understand that legally they only apply to citizens; but don't we have those rights because they are considered "inalienable" and so on? When our founding fathers asserted those rights they weren't American citizens yet - there was no America to be a citizen of. Yet they asserted the rights, not as Americans and therefore privileged above citizens of other nations; but as human beings and therefore granted rights which no government had the right to violate, and by which they declared that the government that had nevertheless violated those rights no longer held authority over them. And so shouldn't the same rights extend, in principle, to everyone? How can you possibly say that another has fewer rights than you because s/he had the misfortune of not being born in the United States? When I refer to injustices in the legal system, I do not refer to people actually caught with illegal weapons on their persons, or anything of the sort. I refer to random people, usually of Arabic descent, sometimes American citizens, arrested and held without charge; sometimes for days, sometimes for months, sometimes for years. I refer to lawyers instructed to defend these hapless victims - and then not being told so much as the charges against them, or allowed to bring witnesses to present their cases. I refer to an utter absence of trial, but instead a legal system based on an annual hearing at which the defendant and his lawyer - be he fortunate enough to have one - may argue a case which has never been presented. If these people have actually done something wrong, then let it be stated publicly, that their crimes may be known and denounced; and if they have only been arrested on behalf of their skin tone or nationality, then let us be honest - we are a country who grow more xenophobic and racist with each causeless arrest. I would be more than happy to provide support for my contention that we are a torturing nation, if you'd care to peruse any or all of the following sources (yes they are all New York Times articles; it's the only paper I read consistently and, though it's far from perfect, I regard it as my most reliable news source) On the impracticality of torture regarding the extraction of information: http://www.nytimes.com... On the findings of the Red Cross regarding torture at Guantanamo Bay Detention Center: http://www.nytimes.com... On torture tactics used in a detention center in Baghdad, as reported by a pair of detained American citizens: http://www.nytimes.com... I apologize if after this it takes me some time to respond again and appreciate your patience in advance.