This is growing very interesting. A political debate I may not have foreseen, but this is what this essay has become. And I'll remove the anonymous thing, like you suggested Calvin, because I bet there are a load of people who can't review because of it.

Anyway. This is how I see the Iraq War:

Bush said "There are WMDs in Iraq". There weren't. He used this as the reason for the war. If it had been true, more people would have supported him. This is what I have a big problem with. You can't make assumptions like that. Some may say "Sure, he messed up about that. He's human! And we liberated a ton of people anyway." But he's the president. We can't start wars unless we KNOW we are right, not we THINK.

I guess it's been good for the Iraqis.

But if we make that point, we have to think about the rest of the world too.

This morning (being at high school as I am) I had a lesson called PSE, which stands for ocial Education. There's probably something similar most other places. But we were discussing racism, and we got onto the subject of Zimbabwe. My teacher told us a story about a young man called Howard that had been behind the bar at the hotel she and her husband stayed it. He was from Zimbabwe, and he had had to leave because there were no jobs. (It sounds less violent, some how, when I said it like that) People had been thrown out of Zimbabwe because they were white, or sometimes just because they weren't rich enough. (Correct me if I'm wrong, this is how i understand it)

It's so bad that he cannot go back to his own family now. He'll be killed.

Howard and Mrs Goddard (my teacher) got onto the subject of the Iraq war, and politics and everything. He asked my teacher, directly, as a citizen of Europe and Britain, why she and her country were not helping him and his people, or why President Bush of America had not helped them.

My teacher ended up telling him she believed it was because his country had no oil. That was all. He didn't understand, and most of my class didn't understand either. They all went "WHAT?!" For the next ten minutes, we all talked about it. My friend Andy told me something I thought about though.

"Well, I was hoping that Bush would win. He messed up in his first term, so I want him to fix it this time. It's like starting a story and leaving the end of it to someone else. I want him to fix what he did. Finish it."

I think that if I had a slightly different way of looking at it, I might agree. Why leave it to Kerry to apologise to the dead civilians in Iraq? We've "liberated" them when about 42 percent of U.S. adults describe themselves as "not certain" that committing troops was the right thing to do.

Why force this kind of thing on other countries anyway, when we are having troubles with our OWN elections! The last election, as I've said before, was a complete mess. War records, "swift boat veterans for justice" or truth or whatever. Dirty race for the white house indeed.

The one before that, the one that "elected" Bush, was even worse. Virtually no democrats believe he was actually elected, anyway. Including me. This time, I think, we were resigned to our fate.

One more thing. I'd like to apologise for the following article that appeared in the Mirror. It was stupid. Really stupid. This article:

"THEY say that in life you get what you deserve. Well, today America has deservedly got a lawless cowboy to lead them further into carnage and isolation and the unreserved contempt of most of the rest of the world.

This once-great country has pulled up its drawbridge for another four years and stuck a finger up to the billions of us forced to share the same air. And in doing so, it has shown itself to be a fearful, backward-looking and very small nation.

This should have been the day when Americans finally answered their critics by raising their eyes from their own sidewalks and looking outward towards the rest of humanity.A self-serving, dim-witted, draft-dodging, gung-ho little rich boy, whose idea of courage is to yell: "I feel good," as he unleashes an awesome fury which slaughters 100,000 innocents for no other reason than greed and vanity.

A dangerous chameleon, his charming exterior provides cover for a power-crazed clique of Doctor Strangeloves whose goal is to increase America's grip on the world's economies and natural resources.

And in foolishly backing him, Americans have given the go-ahead for more unilateral pre-emptive strikes, more world instability and most probably another 9/11. "

Tabloid newspapers. Tuh.

OM