Rosie is highly ungraceful and much of what she said is factually inaccurate. However, the point she attempted to make is not completely invalid. War is terror. "Shock and awe" was an attempt to make the entire country pause in a serious way and tremble in their shoes . . . . . from terror.

This notion that our wielding deadly force is going to be automatically honorable and lead to good results is just whack. The point Scarborough's guests made about Shias and Sunnis doing a lot of the killing is of course true but it was the raw power of Uncle Sam that upset the fragile applecart of their semi-calm, if deeply troubled society.

Will the country be better off for it; was the semi-peaceful coexistence of Sunnis and Shias that Saddam's rule brought a sham held together only by brutal henchman? Was it a cruel ruse that needed to be toppled to allow things to get way worse before they could get better? We're not going to know the answer to those questions for some time.

One thing that I do know is bogus, is this business of labeling from day one any Iraqi who fought against our guys as terrorists. What nonsense. Those guys were in their country, fighting off what they thought to be invaders.

Regardless of what you think of Saddam, the families of the Republican Guard who were killed mounting what they believed to be an honorable defense of family and home are never going to believe that their sons were terrorists. And until we can somehow motivate a sizable enough number of them to agree that the mission of Uncle Sam is one they want to embrace, we're going to continue our lengthy harvest of grief.

Cause these people have too many centuries of conditioning as fighters to ever surrender on their own soil.

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Te futueo et caballum tuum

1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K