Right on Ben May. If I had bothered to say something, I couldn't have said it better. sincerely, a canuck who supports his government in not supporting our southern neighbours in their maniacal rampage around the globe showing off their latest smartest weapons and how good they are at dismembering a little bit less civilians than the last time. bah ok you got me fired up here goes... Iraq has weapons of mass destruction eh? Even billions and billions of dollars couldn't convince any significant majority of countries to say with a straight face that they believe it. You have Blair considering himself a morally justified hero while he commits political suicide. You have Howard... I haven't figured out the Aussies. You have Spain - with what 80% of their people against the war? Aren't they having enough trouble holding their own country together, what with the Basques and Catalonia, to be going around spreading Utopia in the rest of the world? Add a list of pico-powered countries who are basically just saying that they'll help put the peices back together, and you have the coalition of the willingly bought and paid for. It's right in the charter that the UN is built on - you don't interfere with the domestic situation of a sovereign country. This war is fundamentally illegal - one every level you can look at it. I don't hear Sadam saying to the UN do things my way or you will fade into history and become irrelevant. Who is undermining the credibility of the UN here? The USA failed miserably at strong arming enough countries into authorizing this invasion. But nobody would need any bribing to pass a resolution outlawing this invasion (except maybe some counter-bribing to the USA telling countries they want to vote no). All the world needs is someone with the balls to step forward and suggest it. The USA accusing Russia of selling military hardware to Iraq gets us a little closer to that. How could they call Iraq a threat to the rest of the world while saying out of the other side of their mouths that all the soldiers will roll over and the people will great the American invaders with open arms? (How wrong they were, sigh) They kept comparing Iraq to Hitler's Germany - as if Iraq is going to blitzkrieg throughout the Middle East attacking their neighbours at will. Iraq today is the result of a decade of crippling war and then another decade of crippling sanctions, not a worthy opponent for the US Army (guerilla tactics are another matter, and can't really be defeated militarily anyway). And they don't have weapons of mass destruction. If the USA has something besides suspicions, if they actually do have some real evidence instead of these high school quality intelligence bits they keep trotting out, then why the hell didn't they hand it over to the inspectors? How can they say they know Sadam has weapons and that they want to take them away from him, meanwhile they can't help the people looking for the supposed weapons to find them? Either they have proof but are deciding to hide it so they can go to war anyway, or they don't have proof and it's all propaganda so they can go to war anyway. I don't have any trust either way. Canada's biggest anti war protests are in Montreal, the biggest city in the province of Quebec, the one that wants to declare independence. Canada supporting the war would be a huge boost for the separatists. Our Prime Minister would be committing political suicide in an even more spectacular fashion than Blair if he sent Canadian troops to Iraq. The governing Liberals would hemorrhage votes to the only other anti war party, the left NDP, if they came out supporting the war. In spite of all of this, the American Ambassador still has the gall to criticize us for making the obvious decision. Nevermind that it represents the will of the majority of our people. Nevermind the entwined history of our two countries. (especially nevermind that despite us having a free trade agreement there are recent new duties on Canadian softwood lumber and wheat affecting thousands and thousands of jobs, and that border security is adding more and more significantly to trade costs). If we're not with the US, apparently we're against them. I for one don't mind one bit. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=584&ncid=584&e=2&u=/nm/2003... Yes I saw the video of American POWs here in Canada - I didn't see anything wrong with them, the soldiers gave dignified responses to the reporter's questions. They didn't show any of the dead bodies that were mentioned though, which I wouldn't be interested in seeing anyway. I think it's hypocritical for the Americans to be getting so steamed by pictures of POWs after what they did in Afghanistan. Remember it's easy to call youselves free if you never check if the door to your cage is locked - censorship is not good, plain and simple. </rant> Sorry everyone, couldn't help myself. Peace.