Ok, so I stand corrected about the Iraq study report. I've read about halfway and so far it's looking like 160 pages of honest accounting of the situation over there. 3,000 dead Iraqis per month? All of this talk about how 9/11 changes everything...I have to ask: 3,000 innocents here in America died on 9/11, and that same amount of Iraqi civilians have died...each and every month since 2003? Nothing has changed. It's the same old shoot first, ask questions later mentality that the Bush administration engaged in. If they were true to the maxim that a different kind of world requires a different kind of response, I wonder what would have happened had this report come out before we invaded Iraq? I wonder. All we have done is to react in the same way that nations have reacted since history was recorded, which is to kick some ass and continue the cycle of violence.

This is not to say that by us not doing that, that Al Qaeda would not continue to try and kill Americans at home and abroad. But by reacting the way we did, we've perversely given them way more power than they ever would have had.