[Skunk]

And we even wear differnt color, type, and style of battle dress so we don't all look the same. But geez, everybody is a soldier to the media.

Well, the media likes an easy phrase and 'soldier' is much easier than 'member of the armed services'. My own view is that everyone involved in the support of military units - even if they are the cook or cleaner - can be considered a 'member of the armed services' and are therefore a valid military target.

Frankly, I don't care if your job is a supply clerk - if that's an army uniform that your wearing, then you *are* a soldier - and you have no business complaining that you're coming under fire...

You can't do that until the objective has been achieved. This war was all about human rights etc! Leave now and the Baath party will come back - then you'll have to fight another war in 10 years time.

No, this war was about weapons of mass destruction. When it became apparent that there never were any weapons of mass destruction, it became officially a war about human rights.

In reality it is a war about oil and gaining a strategic quasi-political foothold in the middle-east. If it was about 'human rights', the first thing that the occupying forces would have done would have been to call a popular election - and hand over all administrative power and plans for a constitution to the newly democratically elected government.

But the Bush administration doesn't dare hand the right of self-determination to Iraq (one of the most promininent human rights) because it is afraid that the new government will not share the same political goals as the US - so it has appointed a puppet administration with a convicted felon (Chabli) within it's core - a fact not lost on the general Iraqi population.

Replacing one form of non-democratic government with another form of non-democratic government is not a good way of gaining peace and stability. The US did this with Iran - and in 1979 the Iranians rose up and threw out the US backed police-state. Since then, the moves towards true democracy in Iran has been considerably slowed down by repeated interference by the US.

So I have no doubt that the US *will* be fighting in Iraq in a couple of decades time - even if they manage to kill every single Ba'ath party member - because the real enemy is the US administration's attitude and there are no plans to combat that.