During the hiatus, war broke out. But you probably knew that, didn't you? I never really felt like I should address the whole war thing, but now I feel like I should.

Before the war started, I was against it. I thought that the U. N. inspections should have been given more time to work. Actually, to say I was "against war" is inaccurate. I was more against the timing of it and I did think that military action should have been authorized with the United Nations. I fully recognized that something had to be done about Saddam Hussein and his horrible treatment of his own people. Forcing him out seemed like the only option.

It's interesting to note that in the months and weeks before a single GPS-guided missile had been launched, I was surfing through many a war and anti-war blogs, left-wing and right-wing blogs. I guess I was trying to gather as much information about both sides of the issue before committing to an opinion. The problem was every site I visited made valid points about their stance. On one hand, the right-winger/pro-war folks made points like the UN needed to show it's authority, while the other side of the debate wanted more diplomacy and time. Both sides made perfect sense to me. During my own self-debate, I needed to stop blogging and the war started. So, any opinion I had about "going to war" is quite unnecessary at this point, eh?

Now, my feelings are we all need to support our troops, no matter how opposed one might be to war. In my opinion, protesting the war at this point is a useless waste of energy. It's a waste of energy because it's on and nothing will stop it until Saddam is in hell. It's quite ironic that anti-war protestors have proven to be more of a nuisance than the Iraqi troops seem to be.

I think the protestor's time and energy would be much better spent focusing on campaigning for a presidential candidate that could defeat the incumbent (of course, I don't think Bill Clinton can run again). Or, perhaps saving their energy for the surely inevitable time when the U.S. has overstayed their time in Iraqi, yet our boys aren't brought back home. Surely by election time, many folks will be quite fed up with a humongous deficit, a down economy, and government that spies on its own people and a change will be in order.

One quick side note: I do not believe this is a war for oil, as many anti-war protestor's and their signs would have you believe. No, now it's about liberating an oppressed society of humans. Later, when it's over and government contracts are being handed out, maybe, then it's about oil...