I’m unlurking here, because like the rest of you I feel strongly about this (and why post about the housing stuff – I agree with the consensus there).

PS, the comment “PD likes the weapons approach, probably because she is a military wife. Go figure…” is condescending. You don’t know PD. Do you many military wives, that you feel comfortable generalizing? I don’t know you, but I know you recently left ths forum vowing never to return because you felt personally slighted. Do unto others.

Foreign policy involves more than cleverness. Have the police in your neighborhood given up guns, because they have a better way of keeping the peace? We negotiate whenever possible, but that involves trust. Iran has been building a nuclear program for 19 years, and lying about it. Say we give them airplanes as you suggest, in return for their word that they won’t build weapons. What if – in accordance with their history – they’re lying?

Lostkitty – there are two countries run by fanatics that have or are trying to get nukes: North Korea and Iran. (If Saddam were still in power, given the advances in the Iranian nuclear program, would he be sitting on his hands? Would Khadaffi?) We’ve been in negotiations for years trying to get NK to give up theirs. Why let Iran have them? If Bush was just interested in oil, as you clumsily suggest, why not just offer to normalize relations with Iran and Iraq in return for generous contracts with his friends in the oil business. That’s the question Bush opponents need to answer.