Sard,

No offense taken. I should have thanked you for the compliment.

Are we at war when the Congress has not issued a declaration of war? The Prez and Congress authorize military actions all the time without the window dressing of a formal declaration of war, the last of which was WWII.

Declared or not, we persued military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq that look very much like war to those involved. In that sense, the US is engaged in war.

The "war on terrorism," however, is straight out political BS, pretty much the same as the "war on drugs." Unless and until terrorism can be correlated specifically with one or more politically organized governmental unit(s), it's not a war. Terrorism is a criminal action, not a war action, when it isn't carried out by governments of nations. Fighting terrorism then, is a police type activity, since we're not fighting against a terrorist government of a nation or nations.

And let's not confuse fighting terrorism with the war we begat in Iraq. At this point in Iraq, it's hard to say what we've got. We started a war by invading the country, but that was over in a few days. It appears that what we have now is an unsuccessful occupation of a foreign land. Unsuccessful inasmuch as soon as we pop off a few insurgents, more Iraqis and other Arabs join the insurgency to replace them. "Staying the course" is a stupid game plan, a stupid war plan, and a stupid occupation plan.

Sorry Sard, but your boys Team Bush are really Team Dunderheads, who cannot seem to produce a useful thought or plan in the realm of foreign affairs. Much as I detested Nixon, at least he had Kissinger, who might be useful in ending a situation like this.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.