I was out last night enjoying the beautiful NY evening and a few cocktails on the patio of my friends restaurant. It's on a marina. Started up a conversation with two guys who have a few years on me - late 50s and early 60s. Two blue collar guys, one who is now enjoying his retirement and the other who had no shame in telling me he was retired from "Verizon" and now works a job for a firm who has a government service contract, where he pretty much does nothing and even gets to catch up on sleep, for $30 per hour. Both looked more like pot-bellied pro-America, conservatives, than what was about to be revealed.

The subject of Iraq came up - not initiated by me, I can tell you - and what ensued really surprised me. It seems that one of the guys was a Vietnam vet. He had this really strong, yet warped (from my point of view) idea that the war was just about money and that everyone in Washington, from Cheney on down was walking away from secret meetings with black attaché cases clasped to their wrists. The cases he claimed, were full of money. He believes this in actuality and not just in theory, that they are getting cash kick-backs from various entities. His partner was a self-proclaimed liberal. Both were adamantly against the war and felt we should pull out "right now and not let another American die over there".

I obviously took my stance, which is well known here, but what happened next surprised me even more. There were a few younger people near us who couldn't help but hear what we were talking about. The next thing I know they were chiming in with their thoughts. The surprise was that they said they agreed with me and what I saw as the reasoning and justification for the war. These people were probably at least 15 years younger than me. I was kind of shocked. I would have thought they would express the same sentiments that the two older guys did. I would have expected to hear the same sort of things that some kids are expressing on college campus' around the country. But instead they seemed to be concerned about why things were able to get to the point they were on 9/11 and how we should be more aggressive in fighting terror. That was somewhat shocking to me. The whole thing seemed upside down in a way.

The older guys have lived through a war, the younger have not. Hence the difference of opinion, broadly speaking.

I was out last night enjoying the beautiful NY evening and a few cocktails on the patio of my friends restaurant. It's on a marina. Started up a conversation with two guys who have a few years on me - late 50s and early 60s. Two blue collar guys, one who is now enjoying his retirement and the other who had no shame in telling me he was retired from "Verizon" and now works a job for a firm who has a government service contract, where he pretty much does nothing and even gets to catch up on sleep, for $30 per hour. Both looked more like pot-bellied pro-America, conservatives, than what was about to be revealed.

The subject of Iraq came up - not initiated by me, I can tell you - and what ensued really surprised me. It seems that one of the guys was a Vietnam vet. He had this really strong, yet warped (from my point of view) idea that the war was just about money and that everyone in Washington, from Cheney on down was walking away from secret meetings with black attaché cases clasped to their wrists. The cases he claimed, were full of money. He believes this in actuality and not just in theory, that they are getting cash kick-backs from various entities. His partner was a self-proclaimed liberal. Both were adamantly against the war and felt we should pull out "right now and not let another American die over there".

I obviously took my stance, which is well known here, but what happened next surprised me even more. There were a few younger people near us who couldn't help but hear what we were talking about. The next thing I know they were chiming in with their thoughts. The surprise was that they said they agreed with me and what I saw as the reasoning and justification for the war. These people were probably at least 15 years younger than me. I was kind of shocked. I would have thought they would express the same sentiments that the two older guys did. I would have expected to hear the same sort of things that some kids are expressing on college campus' around the country. But instead they seemed to be concerned about why things were able to get to the point they were on 9/11 and how we should be more aggressive in fighting terror. That was somewhat shocking to me. The whole thing seemed upside down in a way.



my only comment is why people keep connecting Saddam with 9/11?

. . .do you wonder how many of your other predjudices are as severely off base?

I These people were probably at least 15 years younger than me. I was kind of shocked. I would have thought they would express the same sentiments that the two older guys did. I would have expected to hear the same sort of things that some kids are expressing on college campus' around the country. But instead they seemed to be concerned about why things were able to get to the point they were on 9/11 and how we should be more aggressive in fighting terror. That was somewhat shocking to me. The whole thing seemed upside down in a way.



Two friends of mine, in their late 40s, both card carrying liberals and Bush/Cheney haters, recently have told me that their college age kids berate them constantly about how we must fight terror, etc. One of the kids is studying "non-European" languages and his dream job is to work for the CIA. When we were in college in the 1970s, the last place that a college student would admit to aspiring to was the CIA. The world has changed. As I said in a post last week, I do not like what the war on terror had done to the United States (paranoia, potential loss of civil liberties). But, respond to terrorism we must. I may disagree with you and the current Administration on a lot (most) things. But, I respect the young men and women who are thinking about where the US should be in the world and are willing to "put their money where their mouth is." There is one thing (probably the only thing) that I shared (and continue to share) with Ronald Reagan -- a faith in the United States and that our best days are yet to come. Between us middle aged guys who still think in Vietnam era terms, guys like you (Steam) who take the opposite view and the next generation, I think that somehow we will find the right answers, pull through the current mess in the world and be better off at the end of the day.

An e-mail sent out from the White House Office of Public Liaison titled, "TALKING POINTS: 9-11 Commission Staff Report Confirmes Administration's Views of al-Qaeda/Iraq Ties" claims:

A 9-11 Commission staff report supports the Bush Administration's longstanding conclusion that there was no evidence of "collaboration" between al-Qaeda on the 9-11 attacks against the United States. The Administration has never suggested that Iraq "collaborated" or "cooperated" with al-Qaeda to carry out the 9-11 attacks.