What Ingrates are you talking about ? The ones in the white house, or the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan ? I'd agree with you wholeheartedly, that our troops are dying to please ingrates. Like Halliburton & Bush. Iraq and Afghanistan, however, have no reason to say "thanks". We've been dropping bombs on Iraq every 2 weeks for about a decade, even during the Clinton administration. In the first war against Iraq, we promised the Kurds support, if they'd rise against Saddam during our war... and then we abandoned them. Worse, we supported Turkey to the tune of several millions of dollars (in exchange for use of their airports during W's war on Iraq), and Turkey is using that money to attack ITS Kurds. Saddam was bad, but he was a MODERATE compared to the Taliban-like groups who are now able to step in, now that he's gone. There is simply no pro-America group in Iraq that's prepared to take over the country's reins. Worse, we didn't just make a surgical strike against Bin Laden or Saddam. No, we went in with a sledgehammer, killing, beating up, toruturing, and terrorizing 2 nations' innocent population. Then, trying to install puppet regimes. Hell, we don't even allow freedom of the press in Iraq. We've SHUT DOWN NEWSPAPERS there, and physically threatened their staff. Man, they HATE us for good reasons ! We didn't save them from anything, except by plunging them into a worse nightmare of starvation, lack of freedom, and oppression from afar. Don't talk to me about Iran and North Korea. Those are just the NEXT items of fear, on a long list on Bush's desk. Man, he's hoping to keep us afraid (and voting for war and big military spending) just as long as he can. Think about this: North Korea is isolated and STARVING. They don't even have China's support. They're going to collapse, like Russia did. Think about this, too: When Berlin's wall came tumbling down, and Russia's government collapsed from within, WHY DIDN'T THE US GOVERNMENT KNOW in advance ? Certainly, we weren't told, yet the signs must have been obvious. McCarthyism, cold war, "war" on drugs, "war" on terrrorism-- it's all invisible enemies, bogeymen under the bed, made to keep you voting like a scaredy-cat.