Chesty; The conversation I brought to the forefront is strictly about the gains/lack thereof from the 'War On Terror' and had nothing whatsoever to do with the relative merits/evils of any religion, ZERO.

It appears to me that you're the one that wants to discuss how dastardly and evil Islam is, including it's directives to implement a Theocracy.

My position is quite clear. ALL religions are evil and anti-freedom, always have been, and always will be. And again, the only cause that effected our relative freedom from such drivers of ignorance and savagery was The Enlightenment. Had you spent as much time studying that major change in how men thought about the minds of men, the rights of men, and the fallacy of mystical, revelationary, and irrational knowledge---you might be better able to understand the topic of this Post.

I've explained this to you now for the third time since your intrusion into this Post. If all you want to say, is that Islam is evil, I agree with you and I add, All religions have been and still are evil towards the life of men. But the points in this Post still stand.

You're counting 'angels on the head of a pin' and missing the 'point'.

None of those questions matter.

Now you went too far. Arguing that their religion is bad and by inference that the West's is good, is as silly as comparing which cancer you'd rather have.

You cannot fight or defeat a religion.

That sounds and looks like a comment by me to the quote defined within the lines. And I'll stand by that. The Christians had to start bailing out of Iraq before Obama. Many of them went to Syria.

Blind faith can be reserved for no one, but trusting politicians to be ethical is simply asking for the impossible. Trusting politicians has made the mess of this country that it is and maybe to the point that we can never return to the true freedom that I so desire.

I couldn't disagree more. It's opportune that you bring up Kissinger, and then; "WE HAVE NO REAL IDEA what is really going on. Which is as it should be" and "the controls in the hands of the most eithical, educated politicians so that they will be modt likely to put ethical, educated bureaucrats into the policy positions to make the best possible decisions for our country."

I'm including an entire description of an event that Kissinger, McNamara, and LBJ swore to and used as the justification for legislation giving LBJ the authority to begin the Vietnam War. I was drafted into that "War" some 16 months later. Much, much later; McNamara and Kissinger both confessed that it was a "Black Flag" event. Totally false.

"The Gulf of Tonkin incident (Vietnamese: Sự kiện Vịnh Bắc Bộ), also known as the USS Maddox incident, is the name given to what were originally claimed to be two separate confrontations involving North Vietnam and the United States in the waters of the Gulf of Tonkin. The original American report blamed North Vietnam for both incidents, but eventually became very controversial with widespread claims that either one or both incidents were false, and possibly purposefully so. On August 2, 1964, the destroyer USS Maddox, while performing a signals intelligence patrol as part of DESOTO operations, reported being attacked by three North Vietnamese Navy torpedo boats of the 135th Torpedo Squadron.[1] Maddox expended over 280 3-inch and 5-inch shells in what was claimed to be a sea battle. One US aircraft was damaged, three North Vietnamese torpedo boats were allegedly damaged, and four North Vietnamese sailors were said to have been killed, with six more wounded. There were no U.S. casualties.[2]

It was originally claimed by the National Security Agency that a Second Gulf of Tonkin incident occurred on August 4, 1964, as another sea battle, but instead evidence was found of "Tonkin ghosts"[3] (false radar images) and not actual North Vietnamese torpedo boats. In the 2003 documentary The Fog of War, the former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara admitted that the August 2 USS Maddox attack happened with no Defense Department response, but the August 4 Gulf of Tonkin attack never happened.[4]

The outcome of these two incidents was the passage by Congress of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which granted President Lyndon B. Johnson the authority to assist any Southeast Asian country whose government was considered to be jeopardized by "communist aggression". The resolution served as Johnson's legal justification for deploying US conventional forces and the commencement of open warfare against North Vietnam.

In 1995, former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara met with former Vietnam People's Army General Võ Nguyên Giáp to ask what happened on 4 August 1964 in the second Gulf of Tonkin Incident. "Absolutely nothing", Giáp replied.[5] Giáp claimed that the attack had been imaginary.[6]

In 2005, an internal National Security Agency historical study was declassified; it concluded that Maddox had engaged the North Vietnamese Navy on August 2, but that there were no North Vietnamese naval vessels present during the incident of August 4. The report stated regarding the first incident on August 2 that "at 1500G,[note 1] Captain Herrick ordered Ogier's gun crews to open fire if the boats approached within ten thousand yards. At about 1505G,[note 1] the Maddox fired three rounds to warn off the communist boats. This initial action was never reported by the Johnson administration, which insisted that the Vietnamese boats fired first."[7]"

I think we absolutely need to know the whats, whys, and hows of everything anyone does in gov't at all times, rather than 20 or 30 years later after all the dead Americans and treasure spent.