Watch out Laurie, you'll be accused of being narrowminded and short sighted for having pride in your country since it's such a filthy, dirty, evil place to live, and our government is the worst in the world, and we're so greedy.

Personally, I'm glad that the American haters just stay out of the country. We have enough radical left wingers that do enough to downgrade their own country (for which I wish they would just shut up and leave if they don't like it).

As for looking to Tobey Keith as a policy setter, that's just plain stupid. He's an entertainer who had something to say about 9/11 and was still grieving his father who had been killed by a drunk driver when he wrote the song. He has as much right to say what he said in that song as people like Susan Sarandan, Sean Penn, and Alec Baldwin have in spewing their anti-American crap. I do think that it is sad that so many people look to entertainers as role models and mold their lives after them, so in that way Soledad, I agree with your statement.

I also agree that Bush is not the greatest politician who ever lived and that he makes stupid comments, but then who doesn't. Even Laura Ingraham ( a far right wing talk radio host) made that statement (for which I was genuinely shocked, because she is about the most irritating thing to listen to, just short of Dr. Joy Brown). But I also agree that if what Mandela said was NOT taken out of context that he was WAY off base and his comments were so stupid that their validity should be questioned. If someone can give me a totally unbiased reason why we should NOT remove Saddam then I am all for listening to it, because when I made my decision that I thought that he SHOULD be removed, I made it based on reading and listening to both sides before making my final judgement.