I am not saying you are down playing the lives of American soldiers that gave their live's for their country. You are probably sad that they died just like all good people should feel, but you are down playing why they lost their live's. Talk to a Iraq vet and most will tell you the good they did and the pride they had serving in Iraq, Most will not say they were only in Iraq because they had no choice because the bush administration made them do it (which how you make it sound). I look at it as they died with the pride of making the world a better place ( I think that is how they would like to be remembered) and not that they lost their lives because they had no choice.

            There are bad people all over and some do get in to the military. The few that committed crimes( abu ghirab) had justice served upon them. To convict others ( such as the bush administration) of knowing or ordering this to be done or to say how bad we are is just a left wing ploy (to make Bush and the republican party look bad ) This only helps put our miltary in harms way , having those who think we are helping- change their view to - we are trying to hurt them.

             I agree most are glad Sadaam is gone and I for one am glad we did this before he regrouped (after the 1st Iraq war) to a point that when we did attack we may have lost 4,000 soldiers on day one. We did not need to go in based on weapons of mass destruction . There were other valid reasons to take him out, However based on intel we used , that was the best reason.

             I did not mean to put words in your mouth about freeing the enemy combatants but after reading your response it seems that  you think all the gov't does in gitmo is torture ( I may have used a baseball bat). These combatants are well cared for. Sure Obama made a promise to close gitmo in the first 100 days during the election but now that he is changing his mind on that. He now knows more then he did before the election and he will not shut it in 100 days. I feel the more promise's Obama "fails" to keep, that he made during the election the more I will like him. I hope in the next 4yrs he does a great job and if he does I may vote for him 2012.