On Monday morning, as usual when I get ready to go to work, I turn on MSNBC to watch a little Morning Joe. I respect Joe Scarbourgh as the only true conservative on the network, having to go against the likes of major lefties Ken Olberman, David Schuster, and Chris Mathews. Another reason to watch is that Mika Brzezinski is easy on the eyes. This morning Joe had the day off and Pat Buchanan was filling in. I usually have respect for Pat but our views of the war in Iraq can’t be any different. They were talking about the 4,000 deaths in Iraq since the beginning of the war and they had Chris Mathews as a guest. Chris was talking about a very short quote from Dick Cheney “so” when answering a question from a reporter talking about how unpopular they war is to the American people. Chris and Pat agreed Cheney and the administration are arrogant towards American citizens when it came to the war in Iraq. How we can have a war that is not supported by the American people? Chris also brought up polls that were taken when the war began , stating American supported the war in the beginning but this support declined when asked whether we could live with significant causalities. Well DUH, of course we don’t like to lose any soldier’s life in battle. I bet if we did polls during WWII we would say the same thing, and this was a war where we lost more soldiers in one battle than we have during the five years in Iraq.

Again, as Americans, we have a short memory when it came to events leading to the war with Iraq and if I have to repeat myself I will until I am blue in the face on the facts:

* congress had the same intelligence as the President and approved action by an overwhelming majority.

*President Bush never said that Iraq had anything to do with 911 but it was supporting terrorism in general.

*Saddam Hussein was crossing that line with us and the United Nations when it came to inspecting their nuclear facilities and daring us to do something. If we didn’t retaliate we would look like a paper tiger constantly making lines in the sand and not backing it up. Intelligence reports stated that he wanted to buy uranium in Niger, which turned out to be wrong AFTER THE FACT.

*We knew that Hussein had WMD’s they could be buried anywhere or left on a ship to Syria

*It was never about oil, there would be easier countries to knock over for their natural resources.

Over the last five years the administration has done an awful job speaking about their reaons why we went to war in Iraq. They have let the media and their opposition in congress dictate why we went into Iraq. Even if the intelligence was wrong and I am not sure that it is, we need to think this through on whether we should get out of Iraq. What would happen in the area if we would get out now or even a couple of years from now. I know we can’t maintain the troop levels where they are now forever. We need to get the government stabilized once and for all and if this means splitting up Iraq in three, so be it. I also know that we will be having a presence in the country for the foreseeable future to protect our interests and investment just like our presence in South Korea and Germany. If we would get out now, there would be a huge vacuum effect, that would make the situation 100x worse that what it is now.

Now going back to Chris Mathews comments, I don’t think the administration should care about what the American people think about the war. Cheney was right for answering the question with an arrogant “so”. While I agree that the President and Congress should listen to the American people more often than they do now on many issues, like abortion, taxes etc national security isn’t one of them. Leave it up to the experts. They have all the intelligence much of it classified for our safety, I don’t want polls from an uniformed public dictating foreign policy. If we had our choice we would never go to war because of the fear of the loss of life of our soldiers. There are many citizens our there who would never go to war under any circumstances. I think Barack Obama is one of them, who would rather sit down and talk with enemies of the state than be strong and protecting our interests.