Saw "Wag The Dog", you're right, great movie! Hey, check out Gil Scott-Heron, "Work for Peace" on the Spirits CD. The song refers to Gulf War I, but it's still timely!

oh, an excellent, excellent film about war and politics is 'Wag The Dog.' highly recommend it.

i hear you seeshell. the GOP loves to snipe the democrats about big government but, in turn, their solution is big military spending. in their eyes, war creates jobs ... through spending.

that's a large reason why during Clinton's 8-years, the deficit was so marginalized. not because of interest rates or better budgeting but because of less military spending. during the first and second debates, kerry and bush haggled over the cost of the iraq war, which many put somewhere around $150 billion. billion. dollars. where did this money come from? the debt is growing, deficit spending is up ... it's not like we're paying an iraq war tax ... so where does that money come from? oh ... we BORROW it. we borrow it from Americans. we borrow it from Asia. we borrow it from the EU. we borrow it from our future.

what seems implausible to me is that w. bush doesn't see where this left his father. after reagan and the cold war, we closed thousands of military bases from coast-to-coast. subsequently, we fell into one of the worst recessions ever. the recession started in southern california and spread throughout the rest of the country. take a look at southern california and you'll see that in the 80's, defense spending was driving a HUGE part of their economy. so .. when the bases closed, the economy went to ****. here we are 10-years later, and we're spending money on war again. war is bad business. we can't afford it.

Oh, it's definitely personal, no doubt, Saddam tried to kill his daddy and this is just Texas justice mentality at work. But it's also about money and power...

"Terrorism is the war of the poor. War is terrorism of the rich." ~Leon Uris