>But, you see, virtually every country in the whole wide world, save Afghanistan, was on-side with the U.S. in the war on terrorism starting at about 0915hr September 11, 2001.

And if the U.S. had invaded Afghanistan in August of 2001, you many of these same countries that were against our invasion of Iraq would have been saying the same thing: that there was no immediate threat to the U.S. What you are saying is that we have to wait to be attacked before we can respond. That is pure nonsense.

>And to this very minute they continue working closely with CIA, FBI, NSA, U.S. Immigration, U.S. Customs and any other agency that the U.S. feels needs to be involved.
>France has the acknowledged expert on Middle Eastern terrorism and it has been said that he collaborates constantly with U.S. interested parties.
>France has made arrests and has been totally forthcoming regarding Moussaoui(sp?) and whoever else was inquired about.
>Germany has many arrests under its belt and has not stopped close collaboration despite differences over Iraq.

We appreciate the help other countries are providing. However, they cannot find every terrorist, and there was no way they were going to prevent WMDs in Iraq from falling into the hands of terrorists.

>But there is a difference between collaboration and sycophancy, and many countries, both in the Security Council and otherwise, drew the line at starting to war without reasonable proof of need and urgency. That the U.S. 'felt' threatened by a third rate regime that had been under sanctions and close watch for 10 years and had been bombed regularly in that interval was a bit hard to swallow. Have you considered, for instance, that those same "financial interests" that you claim France and Germany and Russia had also gave them better/closer contact with the real situation on the ground in Iraq??? Knowledge that they didn't even consider to be "terroristic" and so was not part of the on-going sharing of terrorist information???

And they would have drawn that same line on September 10th, 2001. If Iraq can be considered a 3rd rate regime, then the Taliban in Afghanistan can be considered 4th rate. As far as French, Russian, and German intelligence goes, they were about as good as the U.S. intelligence services in predicting September 11th. Now, you expect us to rely on them. What a joke.

>It was the U.S. and U.K. that offered WMD and terrorist links as the just cause and when France and Germany and Russia and several others objected they were villified and threatened! As democracies speaking out for their people!

How were they threatened? Democracies speaking out for their people? Give me a break.

>As it stands now it is clear that the U.S. will not stand idle when it feels threatened. But your justifications remain UNPROVED and it appears that they will stay that way.

Like I have repeated. It's been 2 months. You were perfectly willing to give the U.N. inspectors years.

>So I would estimate that, once the U.S. makes its mext target clearly known, the number of "willing" will be substantially less IF the quality of justification measures up to that used for Iraq.

Our next target is Iran. There is no way we are going to allow them to produce nuclear weapons.

>Now it really doesn't matter (yet) because the U.S. has the power to crush whomever it chooses, whenever it chooses and you have proven that you will do so (i.e. not stand idly by). This may give you great comfort but it gives the rest of the world the chills.