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great post eric.. this, along with the records of French and Russian officials get back-alley deals with Sadam to make huge profits is the real answer to “who was taking their position about Iraq because of Oil?”. Note that since the war, the price of oil in the U.S. has gone UP, i guess the whole thing about us wanting to go to war so we could steal the oil has been shown for the propoganda tool that it was. Meanwhile, repeated and tangible evidence of the actual, traceable oil interests of the war’s opponents is becoming ever more clear.

Misha, higher prices mean greater profits for owners and investors of oil industries. Should ring a few bells? Certain folks in the Whitehouse, hint, hint!

ok, so let me get this straight… now the administartion is controlling the flow of oil, messing with supply and demand and somehow creating a conspiracy between all the different oil companies to boost prices?! meanwhile, not a single one of them its opting out of his conspiracy in order to catch a bigger share of the market? It seems that if oil prices went down, this would be proof that we are stealing Iraq’s oil, if they go up, its also evidence that the administration is helping the oil companies. if the stay the same, this also would ahve to be a sign of some conspiracy by the administration. what am i missing?

Misha, you are missing nothing. Many of us said before the invasion this was about control and access to oil and you just proved that the whole scenario was a win-win-win for Bush and his family and buddies who are in, or invested in the oil industry.

No Oil in Afghanistan so No capture of bin Laden which should have been priority one after 9/11. But, oil came first as we now all see.

Good stuff, Eric. Before the war, we heard nothing from the left except how the war was all about oil—and nothing else. Now we hear that it was all about weapons of mass destruction—and nothing else. As the left constantly shifts the goal posts and rewrites history, it’s good to be reminded of who was really profiting from the exploitatation and enslavement of Iraq.

David,

If it is all about control of oil then would you admit that the French and Russians did not give a damn about war or peace, but merely wanted to retain control of the oil?

That knife has two edges. While there is no direct evidence for your innuendo that the administration did this ‘for oil,’ there is volumes of direct evidence that oppossition to the war by France and Russia were motivated by purely for that reason.

How do you respond to that?

I think it is funny that both sides want to say that the other was in it for the oil, weapons contracts, or whatever other form of profiteering. Money was an important part of the decision to go to war, as well as an important part of the decision to protest, but was one of many factors, far from the only one. It’s a given that anything invovling Iraq is going to involve oil. It’s just a shame that no-one, U.S. or international, seems able to discuss that fact and it’s implications in an open way in a political body. Unless of course their accusing whoever they disagree with of corruption. David, although I do agree that oil was one thing on the administrations agenda, I must say Eric’s thourough research warrents a thourough response that deals the implications of his article.

Eric, I have absolutely no evidence to refute what your propose. It is extremely likely that the Russians and French were very interested in protecting their financial interests in Iraq and they as much as said so prior to the invasion.

They also talked about destabilizing the region, which has happened, contrary to Bush’s spin, and about there being no easy or quick exit from Iraq once one steps in and takes out Hussein. They were absolutely correct about that as well.

As has been noted here by others, there are a number of reasons for every country taking the stance it took, including the U.S. The terrorists were not in Iraq, and we did not make the terrorists in Pakistan and Afghanistan our primary objective, and we have not made Korea, by far a greater threat, our primary objective. No, we made the Oil rich Iraq our primary objective and that responsibility for doing so falls directly at the feet of our President.

Although the US made control of Iraqi oil part of it’s national energy policy, I think we all agree that there were many reasons for the US invasion of Iraq, not the least of which was GW Bush’s fear of Iraqi assasins coming after him with bio-chem and nukes the same way they tried to off his Daddy.

I’m interested to see what Annon’s investigation will turn up regarding Haliburton’s $73 million deal with Saddam while Cheney was CEO. Did Cheney authorize kick-backs to Saddam or his henchmen to secure the deal?

You can’t excuse American Corruption with French or UN. As for the connections drawn, I’d be interested to know what a real investigation would yield up, not merely the connections implied by the National Review which I’m concerned might be a little biased in its reporting. I know it sounds suspicious, what happened there, but I think one should wait on off the cuff accusation until you know what really happened.

Of course, the Republicans at the National Review know everything, so what’s the necessity of moving beyond innuendo?

Show me how this conspiracy really works- Who the players are, and what roles they’re playing. Otherwise, you ask me to exchange one kind of ignorance for another.

David, how exactly has the region been destabilized? And you realize that you are saying that keeping brutal dictatorial regimes in power is a good thing merely because they are “stable,” that is pretty self serving as that stability is good for everyone but those that suffer under their rule. All things considered the region has not been destabilized as a result of the liberation of Iraq. We have a constitution in both Afghanistan and Iraq, I think that is progress, if that leads to reforms in the neighboring countries: bring it on. The only thing that has been destabilized is the comfort of oppressive terrorist regimes across the world including N. Korea and Libya. It is not an accident that these star global citizens have come to the bargaining table not to blackmailing the world.

Miguel, stability is what guarantees that if you destroy one evil regime, you don’t get several others. An example of this is the chaos that overtook Laos and Cambodia in the wake of the Vietnam War.

Case in point, what would you think would happen if the government we set up in Iraq collapses. Do you think perhaps that the countries neighboring Iraq might try and divvy it up?

Maybe some rogue element comes into power, and essentially sells out Iraqi sovereignty in the manner of the Warsaw Pact.

If you want an idea of what might happen, you just have to look at what Afghanistan became during the 1990s because America didn’t stabilize it.

We have laid a burden on ourselves not easily laid down: We must not only look after the interests of one country (our own), but two. The question, quite valid, is whether our intervention in Iraq has served the Iraqi’s interests better than our own.

Of course, that sounds selfish, but it really isn’t, because the Iraqi’s may very well end up with the rug pulled out from under them if our interest have been so compromised that we suffer an attack, or a disruption of our economy.

We can do much, and should do much given our wealth, and our know-how, but we must choose the proper time and place to apply it, or else our superior technological, political, and military power will end up allowing us to plunge further into difficulties than other weaker nations would be able to.

We should have finished Afghanistan, and having dones so, rebuilt the country. From there we could have created an example of both the consequences of harboring and sponsoring terrorists, and the generosity of America towards its defeated enemies.

My point here is to show that the UN is not altruistic organization totally without ulterior motives or agenda in the whole Iraq debate nor are the countries who opposed it. Even without the taint of scandal or apparent gross negligence in administering the oil-for-food program I find the UN and the ‘progressive internationalist’ position undefendable.

Yet unsubstantiated charges that the US is just in it for the oil go on and on. It is asserted in every argument against the war without regard to evidence. Even, dare I say…

I have absolutely no evidence to refute what your propose…

Yet…

…we made the Oil rich Iraq our primary objective and that responsibility for doing so falls directly at the feet of our President.

The region is not any less stable than it was. Certainly Iraqi’s are better off today and will be far better off in the future without Saddam Hussein.

The goal in the long run is, of course, to make the region more stable. Even democratic. I don’t see how keeping ‘stable’ dictatorships in power acheives that goal.

Regime change in Iraq is not a deviation from the war on terror. It is an integral part of it. We must not back away from our committment to the Iraqi people. That would result in a destablization.

If we see the war on terror as more than just a crime scene investigation we can look to how we can change conditions on the field of battle instead of just reacting to the enemy.

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty. -JFK

Regime change in Iraq is not a deviation from the war on terror. It is an integral part of it.

Eric, since al Qaeda was not operating in Iraq before the war, I’m not sure how invading Iraq had anything to do with al Qaeda. Could you explain it again, maybe I missed something.

Eric-
Lets pretend for a moment that we agree on every issue, and I supported the Iraq war.I’d just like to pose this question to you-
Since the real goal here is to eradicate terrorism entirely, wouldn’t it have been more systematic if the job in Afghanistan had been done fully,if most american forces had been pulled out,Osama were within sight and the Afghan police were stable and strong, and THEN attention had been switched to Iraq?
Even IF the Iraq war was justified, and everything about it was right, don’t you agree that at the very least the handling of the situation was a little shoddy?

Hmmm… the grammar on that last post of mine seems highly questionable.lol. Sorry, I’m very sleepy.

Suhasini:

Let me take a shot at that one. I think that it is a myth that we somehow stop or diverted our efforts in order to take care of Mr. Saddam. One of the biggest items that had to be done before we could continue the efforts against Al Qaida was to shore up the diplomatic problems in Pakistan. That’s because while we almost had the Al Qaida leaders at Tora Bora, they were able to slip away to Pakistan where our military could not operate. So during this “diverted” time we had to address the political issues with Pakistan. In the past year we brokered at least a truce between Pakistan and India (if you remember they both were sending troops to Kashmir.), and gave Mushariff the political power and personal protection to clean up the pro Taliban remnants of his own government. All of that took time, but this weekend you saw the results; Pakistani troops in the tribal areas. This could NOT have taken place a year ago.

The only problem now is that these guys can, and may already have, move to Iran. That is why putting pressure on that country now is so important, and we are using the international community to provide it. As candidate Dean said (paraphrasing) “I don’t know what levers we have on Iran.” Well Iraq is one big lever and that is why Iran is supporting the terrorist activities against democratic reforms.

Iraq is a big piece of the war on terror, its stability is a big goal of the conflict, and it in no way hampered the efforts to bring Al Qaida to justice. In fact, it might just speed it up.

It’s funny you quote JFK on this. JFK started out with a regime change policy, but in the end he did not wage a pre-emptive war, but instead opted for a solution of containment.

The Iraqi war was not a part of the war on terror. Bush could have ended the debate long ago with an appropriate release of evidence found post-war linking Saddam to Al Quaeda. If he has such evidence, it’s beyond me why he’s stalled on its release.

Since such evidence has not been found, the default position must be as it was formerly described: Iraq was not a major sponsorer or harborer of terrorists. Of course, without the terrorists, there is no connection to the war on terror. How you can continue to insist on maintaining such a stance in the face of the lack of supporting evidence is difficult for me to figure out.

Lee, Stephen,

I will kindy explain once again, as I never tire of doing so, how Iraq fits into the scheme of things strategically in the war on terror.

As many are quick to point out, all of the middle east hates us. They hated us before 9/11. Osama Bin Laden is a symtom of that disease, he is not the source of it.

I will now attempt to answer the all encompassing reason for 9/11, “Why do they hate us?” They hate us because 1)we support Israel, 2)we intervene in the middle east without directly intervening by supporting ‘stable’ dictatorships and keeping the status quo in power.

1) We cannot change course on supporting Israel. Lest we become complicit in a new extermination of the jews.

2) We can change our policies, vis a vis, changing the status quo, and removing rogue regimes who once had chemical and biological weapons and who we thought to still have said weapons of mass destruction.

A stable democratic, or even stable semi-democratic/moderate society in Iraq who have greater freedom and prosperity will put enormous pressure on the rest of the middle east for further change.

The alternative is to convene a grand jury and try to extradite Osama from a Taliban controlled Afghanistan and leave Saddam Hussein in power in Iraq.

And I will add to Eric’s response that the strategy of containment, which was our principal foreign policy prior to 9/11, did several bad things: 1) It allowed the status quo of dictators and monarchies to exploit the people of the region and starve thousands if not millions of Muslims. 2) It was the primary reason that we had U.S. forces stationed in Saudi Arabia (the no fly zone and protecting the Saudi’s against Saddam). And 3) this policy bred resentment and hate in the Middle East which has been effectively channeled by the terrorists to include suicide airplane rides into our buildings.

As the President has said many times, and as Dr. Rice repeated again this morning, this is a sweeping foreign policy designed to fix the problem rather than swat at the flies. Now one could argue that this shouldn’t be our goal or that it is cost prohibitive to do such, but one can not argue that all of the actions we have taken, including Iraq, are not related to the war on terror. To do so would just revise history.

Hmm… Eric, let me get this straight.

Everyone in the Middle East hates us.

Therefore, to get them to like us, we need to support Israeli assassinations of 80-year old, wheelchair-bound since the age of 12, terrorists, and invade and occupy an oil rich, Middle Eastern country.

After doing this, all Middle Eastern countries will become stable, democratic nations.

The only alternative is to capture, try, convict, and execute Osama bin Laden.

You know what, Eric? It sounds like you’re speaking English, but it still doesn’t make any sense. Is English your first language? Maybe we just have a communication disconnect.

George, I’m really not sure what you added to Eric’s explanation. Sorry.

Wouldn’t it be better to just end our reliance on Middle Eastern oil? Why are we sending $20 billion every year to people that hate us? Once we are no longer funding terrorist groups (US->Saudi Arabia->Muslim ‘charities’->al Qaeda) the Arabs, who all hate us, can go back to peacefully molesting sheep in a region that has no more importance to the United States.

But then Cheney would stop getting a paycheck from Halliburton (plus the big bonus and his old job back when he leaves public service) and old 41 would lose his Arab patronage.

I guess if I was a Republican, I wouldn’t have a good solution to the terrorism problem, either. But I’m a Democrat and the long-term answer is energy independence.

Lee,

I should say one thing before I start. I don’t take anything said here personally, I hope that no one takes my arguments here personally either. Though political arguments can be heated and can engender highly charged personal feelings because what we believe is personal, I fully expect that we could argue vehemently and still be able to remain friends, so to speak.

That said, you are missing my point. The policies democrats are advocating are not new. They are the policies which got us to where we are today.

I didn’t mean to convey that everyone in the middle east hates us per se, but public opinion of us is very very low. And it has been for some time before Iraq. I don’t know if there are any polls out there about public opinion before and after Iraq. (I think I might look for some.)

What I do know is that the goal in Iraq is a good one. If we carry it on through we will have begun to speak with our actions and not just words.

The hatred is cultural and religious. I think that there are many in the middle east who could be our friends. They are just like us, in the sense that we are all human beings and have the same cultural capacities. The truth is that everything we do is demonized, whether it is good or not. Muslim clerics in Africa found a way to make polio vaccines sinister.

The US invasion of Iraq was not an invasion of conquest in the classic sense. The Bush administration had no intention of making Iraq the 52nd state. We have planned from the beginning to remove Saddam and help the Iraqis set up self government and then leave. Can we expect this to have been done in a year?

Concerning the problem of Israel. We cannot just agree with the Arab world, because the Arab world is wrong in this issue. The rampant hate and anti-semitism cannot be mitigated or even partially excused in any way. (And I do believe it is that bad.)

Hey Eric, thanks for the pre-amble. I have a thick skin and an abrasive debating style myself, so I’d better say the same thing. Nothing personal and no offense meant.

…Unless someone starts implying I’m an unpatriotic, terrorist lover just because I disagree with the present administration’s policies. :)

The policies democrats are advocating are not new. They are the policies which got us to where we are today.

If you’re talking about the international cooperation we get in tracking down terrorists around the world, and the UN and NATO nation-building assistance we’re getting in Afghanistan, then I totally agree. If you are including what’s going on in Iraq, then I’m afraid that’s Mr. Bush’s war and we wanted no part of that except as a UN sanctioned action.

I totally agree with you in that Saddam had to go and a stable, liberal, constitutional democracy in Iraq may help stabilize the region. I just disagree with the method.

There is plenty of evidence that if Bush had given the inspections another 3 weeks, the UN Security Council would have agreed to a second resolution authorizing force. UN inspectors on the ground at that time saw no evidence of WMDs ready to be launched at the US or delivered to terrorists, and Tenet says the CIA never claimed with any certainty that there was.

There was no harm in waiting the extra 3 weeks. Not even militarily, since we certainly could have logistically supported our troops at their staging points in Kuwait and they train in the California desert, so the summer heat wouldn’t have made much, if any, difference to the operation. In fact, waiting would have given the 4th Infantry Division time to redeploy from off the Turkish Coast to Kuwait where they would have been a big help.

The benefit of waiting 3 weeks would have been a true multinational mandate to disarm Saddam and liberate the Iraqi people. There would have been no way the Arab ‘street’ (or anyone else, for that matter) could make a strong claim that the invasion was a US attack on Islam and a plot to steal Iraqi oil. Certainly not strong enough to encourage the number of ‘new recruits’ flocking to to the Jihadist banner.

No, Eric. While I agree with you in principle on all your points, the Devil is in the details. President Bush, for whatever reason, wanted to go it alone, and that is the root (or at least the trunk) of the problems we face today.

Eric, once those planes hit those buildings, the issues of large scale military retribution for terrorist attacks became moot.

But you still, with no supporting evidence, insist that we should conflate Iraq with the war on terror. I can’t see that as a valid approach to Iraq. I just can’t. There has been so much evidence to support what could essentially be called the David Kay position: that there have not been substantial stockpiles of WMDs since the last Gulf War.

With the revelations Clarke has given, another mark against that theory is drawn: Iraq ceased it’s terrorist operations after the plot to assassinate Bush hideously backfired. It is highly doubtful that they would let Al Quaeda work from their territory willingly.

If there are no terrorist, and no WMDs in stockpiles, then there was no threat of WMDs in Iraq falling into the hands of terrorist, much less the Nuclear Bomb Bush’s people were talking about.

So why, Knowing this, would I support Iraq as a legitimate part of the war on terror? You’ve failed to prove much of the reason for a pre-emptive strike in the name of fighting terror. And since I owe no political loyalty to this president, I don’t see how I should make up or accept excuses for what clearly was his people’s idea, and not those of my people.

The war on terror does not depend on the political fortunes of one man, but the quality of the efforts at reducing the threat of terrorism on these shores, and in the lands of our allies. I’m tired of hearing the excuses from his people, of being expected to swallow his rhetoric wholesale when the facts have not backed him up. The welfare of this nation and the welfare of George W. Bush’s political career are two different things in my book.

I totally agree with you in that Saddam had to go and a stable, liberal, constitutional democracy in Iraq may help stabilize the region. I just disagree with the method.

I have been listening to parts of the 9/11 commission hearings. One thing that struck me as ironic was that Richard Clarke’s main thrust was that the Bush administration failed to be preemptive about Al Qaeda. Yet where Bush has been preemptive, in Iraq, is the liberals’ main criticism of the Bush administration. From where I sit Bush can’t win by following the left’s advice.

There simply was no other way to remove Saddam. The method used was the method of last resort. Waiting it out for his natural death wasn’t going to work because he was grooming his two sons to take over his dynasty. Sanctions were certainly not going to remove him. US policy has been, in effect, to wait him out for the last 12 years since the gulf war. We have been counting on some kind of internal revolution, which we unaccountably refused to help right after the ceasefire.

Perhaps waiting three more weeks would have made all the difference, but I tend to doubt it. France, Germany, and Russia had their minds made up as much as Bush had, I think. I don’t believe anything would have changed their minds short of Saddam doing something terribly stupid and suicidal.

The weapons inspections would have gone on, and on, and either they would have produced a clean bill of health, or they would have been continually frustrated by Saddam. If Iraq was proclaimed free of WMD, he stays in power. The French and Russians keep their oil contracts and lucrative deals with the dictator, and US troops have to pack up and go home. What do you think the minister of information, Al Sahaf, would make of that? “Bush backs down. The US is a paper tiger.” Alternatively if Saddam continues to frustrate the inspections, which he was wont to do for pride reasons more than anything else apparently, we would have no choice but to invade anyway. What other choice is there? Why did Saddam insist on pretending that he had something to hide? He apparently believed that he had weapons of mass destruction. Many of his generals believed he did.

Given the circumstances, I would have made the same decision. What Bush exhibited after 9/11 is precisely the same preoccupation with threats that he is now accused of ignoring before 9/11. No one believed that Saddam was no longer a threat before 9/11. After 9/11 anyone charged with protecting the security of the United States might look very seriously at Saddam Hussein’s Iraq as a primary concern.

What is the primary threat to US security today? Stephen would tell me that it is Al Qaeda. I agree. Al Qaeda with chemical weapons, or biological weapons is a scary thought. If you believed Saddam had chemical and biological weapons would you believe that he would have any qualms about giving it to another group to use against us or our allies?

But, Saddam and Al Qaeda don’t like each other… True on one level. On another level they both claim to be part of a muslim brotherhood, Al Qaeda fanatically, Saddam cynically. Saddam was funding palestinan terrorists, harboring terrorists, both officially and unofficially, and if he believed it would benefit himself would no doubt arm terrorists. Of course these are just hypotheticals. Like 9/11 would have been before 9/11 happened.

Clinton’s cruise missile strike on the aspirin factory was predicated on intelligence that VX gas may have been being manufactured there. Was there a connection there between Iraq and Al Qaeda?

Before the pharmaceutical plant was reduced to rubble by American cruise missiles, the CIA was secretly gathering evidence that ended up putting the facility on America’s target list. Intelligence sources say their agents clandestinely gathered soil samples outside the plant and found, quote, “strong evidence” of a chemical compound called EMPTA, a compound that has only one known purpose, to make VX nerve gas.

The U.S. had been suspicious for months, partly because of Osama bin Laden’s financial ties, but also because of strong connections to Iraq. Sources say the U.S. had intercepted phone calls from the plant to a man in Iraq who runs that country’s chemical weapons program. -Weekly Standard, quoting an ABC article.

The piece goes on to talk about the head of the plant making a trip to Baghdad to see the head of Iraqi Chemical Weapons program. There are more links between Al Qaeda operatives and Iraq. Though you might not consider these pieces of intelligence something to go to war on, there is no reason to believe that Saddam would not deal with terrorists to help them develop weapons or provide assistance.

Soon after the war, the picture began to become clearer. The U.S. collected considerable evidence that Abu Musaab Zarqawi, a top al Qaeda planner who fled Afghanistan as the Taliban regime was ousted, moved in and out of Iraq and met with officials in Baghdad.

Saddam never moved against a huge al Qaeda presence on his own territory — the headquarters of Ansar al-Islam in northern Iraq. This radical Kurdish group has ties to al Qaeda officials in Afghanistan. The U.S. smashed the camp in the early days of Operation Iraqi Freedom. -Washinton Times

There may not be any WMD, and I agree that the fortune of this nation does not depend on Bush staying in office. It doesn’t depend on Kerry taking office either. Even if Kerry is elected he can not pull out of Iraq prematurely. To do so would be disaster. He has said as much. The main problem I have with Kerry is that he says many things. He says what he thinks he needs to say at the time. At least with Bush you know that he will go the distance regardless.

The main point to removing Saddam was not merely to confiscate WMD, but to prevent him from ever using or passing on WMD. The real threat was Saddam.

Remember, WMD doesn’t kill people, people kill people. (I couldn’t resist.)

Perhaps waiting three more weeks would have made all the difference, but I tend to doubt it. France, Germany, and Russia had their minds made up as much as Bush had, I think.

Take the time to read the article. None of the leaders of those countries wanted Saddam in power, but because of anti-war sentiment in their countries, they couldn’t be seen as being railroaded by the US. They needed a ‘neutral’ third party to help them convince the voters. Blix should have been courted by Bush, not slammed.

In any case, if the US had made the effort to help them out by waiting a few weeks, they would have passed the second resolution (they passed the first one unanimously, right?).

we would have no choice but to invade anyway. What other choice is there?

The choice of waiting 3 weeks and going in under the auspices of the UN.

Why did Saddam insist on pretending that he had something to hide? He apparently believed that he had weapons of mass destruction. Many of his generals believed he did.

I never understood where this Republican delusion came from. Saddam and all the Iraqi leaders consistently denied having WMDs.

After all, if they had said (like Korea did), “Hey, we have WMDs!” then there never would have been any controversy over the issue.

Pre-emption against a terrorist organization proven responsible of acts of terror against the United States takes place in a different context than that of a nation with no proven supply of WMDs or recent terrorist activity.

The whole point of pre-emption is to respond to an immediate, imminent threat. Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait does not qualify, because Kuwait posed no danger to his country. Our recent war does not qualify because the threat we were supposed to find did not exist. Had Bush let the DoD and the CIA do their jobs, we would not have made the mistake.

The success and failure of foreign policy is context sensitive, not intention sensitive. The right action have to be taken, and if we are not discrete and prudent in our choice of what means we use to execute our foreign policy , we will only make things worse.

How immediate is immediate? How imminent is imminent? Richard Clarke claims he was asking Clinton to bomb or invade afghanistan years before 9/11. Yet, it was not deemed a high enough threat, nor politically expediant to do so until 9/11. Had we done so 9/11 would have been prevented, would it not. Perhaps not. We might have only made them madder.

Is imminent within eight years of Clinton? Eight or nine months of Bush?

You know, Americans used to take pride in the fact that we’d never strike first. We were always the good guys; the fair-fighters; the guys who hated the Nazis and the Japs for their dastardly pre-emptive attacks.

From the very founding of this country, the United States has never been ready when war broke out, because we were never a militaristic people. However, when we were attacked, we always mobilized quickly and kicked some ass. No country ever seriously considered the US a door mat.

A pre-emptive strike based on credible evidence of an impending attack is justifiable. An attack based on anything less than that criteria, lessens us as a people.