Tom:<br><br>You may be interested in a recent book, a small one, Coauthored by William Kristol, editor I believe of the Weekly Standard, and another author, that deals with the exact issue that you are referencing and many others with respect to US middle east and other policy. If you are not familiar with Kristol, he is hardly a liberal pacifist, in fact he is one of the architects of America's new post cold war policy which you now see being played out. He is one of Paul Wolfowitz's closest allies and confidants if that gives you any idea of his position on these things.<br><br>I heard him being interviewed 2 nights ago by Charlie Rose for about an hour. What I like about him is that he fully recognizes and doesn't try and minimize any of America's failings, such as the one you refer to, which were done in a complex political context, and thus must be judged fairly, but it was never the less clearly a failure and is one of the reasons that we are not trusted in the region. Like wise, all of the promises of help we made to those inside Iraq, prior to and during the last Iraq conflict, and then promptly forgot and let thousands die while we went back to the golf course. <br><br>Kristol talks very candidly, honestly and convincingly about such error and failures and stresses that if we want to be leaders and respected in the world we must avoid this type of thing in the future. It is refreshing to me to be able to here some one such as Kristol speak on these things without every one calling him a pacifist and and a traitor. Blind patriotism is simply self defeating and Kristol speaks to this issue very cogently. As such, he is an honest, clear thinker who is not affraid to address all sides of the issue head on so that we might move forward and do better in the future. <br><br>If honesty about our failures, including national failure, is a Biblical principle clearly and repeatedly taught in the scriptures, particularly the old testament, doesn't it make sense that we should attempt to emulate these things now in our dealings with the world? I believe we would be much more respected than we are now if we did so.<br><br>I'm sorry but I don't recall the name of the book, but it was just released and a net search under William Kristol will undoubtedly flush it out rather quickly.<br><br>Hope this helps,<br><br>Gerry
