[WillowTheWhisp]

My first thoughts are that I'm sure I really don't know enough about the whole situation to have a valid opinion. There must be many facts that we are not aware of. I was fairly disgusted with the whole WMD thing and not least of all the death of Dr. Kelly. Unfortunately that reason/excuse or whatever has proved to be a stumbling block for most people when nothing was ever found.

It's too easy to say that it's all about oil. Maybe the first gulf war was more about oil but I don't think this is. This has got a lot to do with fear as well. Perhaps it would have been better if Saddam had been finished off the first time round, but he wasn't.

Any fundamentalist group or movement can be scary and I do feel that there is a real threat to the rest of the world. As Tealeaf said if everyone had sat back and done nothing when Hitler invaded Poland we'd probably all be speaking German today. I don't think we can just ignore this problem and hope it will go away. Mind you, we wouldn't have the "gypsies/travellers" problems but would we really want a Nazi solution to them?

I don't think we can afford to have an "I'm alright Jack" attitude these days. It's too small a world to think that what happens in one area doesn't affect the rest of us.

For Darby and anyone else with loved ones out there it must be a difficult time. Let us hope they return home safely.