From my experience of many years as editor of a diferent forum with a different purpose : we do not limit the length of comments, but do not allow the bringing in, by copy+paste, of outside material. If there is interest in showing readers somthing else, a link can be inserted, but only a link with no copied+pasted text. There are a couple of serious reasons, a) that forums are for personal thought and personally formed opinion to be expressed, and not for bringing in whatever has been thought and said elsewhere by someone else, or otherwise a forum becomes and exchanges of copies from here and there. And b) because of copyright reasons. People copy and paste from the Net without checking what can be copied, used and not. To keep it safe and avoid trouble for the owners of the forum, better avoid the copy+paste from outside sources.

Suzanne, One-third of the homeless on US streets are Vietnam vets, the Agent Orange and exfoliants used in Vietnam still live in the atmosphere and contribute to the 3,000 Americans who die every day of environmental-related cancers. Vietnam is a tragedy that ruined and changed and continues to haunt tens of millions of lives. It was and remains a national disgrace. When a hero does something shameful most people are generous enough to forgive. When a hero does the same thing again, and far worse, it is unforgivable. The world will not forgive America in our lifetimes. “America” isn’t a piece of soil but a rare idea and that has been butchered. I appreciate your optimism…and I am by nature idealistic, and alos pragmatic and know history. Perhaps we’ll survive. But we’ll never be the same.

I think about that, too. The conventional wisdom is that everyone will just kill everyone they don’t like if we leave—chaos. Well, we already have that. Maybe it’s like kids who act worse when they know Dad will step in if they go too far. I know—that is oversimplified…but remember Rumsfeld saying it was like a bike and we were the training wheels. This war has reduced us all to imbeciles!