Spain
It's hard to know what to make of Spain's election results. One hopes that a large part of it was due to voters' disgust with their government's attempt to blame it on Basque separatists.

The danger, however, is how those results will be viewed by bin Laden and his followers. They may not care what message the voters were trying to send; they'll only see that Spain is withdrawing its troops from Iraq. In the end, such a perception of weakness can only lead to more terror.

----------Mike Ramirez, Los Angeles Times

I've said before that while I initially backed our invasion of Iraq, that support was based on it being an integral part of the War on Terror. Once it became apparent that there were no terrorists or WMD's waiting to be unleashed upon the US, my support went down the toilet. We had no business wasting our time, our resources, and our soldiers lives on toppling Hussein.

The unfortunate truth is that if we had concentrated our resources on tracking down bin Laden an rebuilding Afghanistan, THAT would have done more to discourage the terrorists than any other course of action. Creating a successful democracy in that troubled and divided land would have been an inspiration to people in other nearby oppressed nations.

Instead we're now left spinning our wheels in BOTH Iraq and Afghanistan while our former allies scramble to distance themselves from us.

I know many will insist that our invasion of Iraq was right and just and that the rest of the world is wrong. But think about that a moment: The very fact that we ARE almost by ourselves, and that everyone else says WE'RE the ones who are wrong should say something as well.

----------Oliphant