Those who fail to learn...: You're really on a roll today, and I'd love to comment on them all, because you're making great points. You'll have to be satisfied with this: I just started reading Dr. Thompson's (Hunter, that is) book: "Fear and Loathing: The 1972 Campaign" (paraphrasing title here) which is about his time on the campaign trail as a writer for Rolling Stone on the '72 campaign. One of the issues he brings up again and again is how many candidates were running on an Anti-Vietnam platform despite their near-unanimous support for same only a few years earlier. They all admit to "having made mistakes" (boy, that phrase never gets old) and that now, they were certainly against the war (unless we start to win, in which case, they'll be for it again). People like Muskie and McCarthy who had to be FOR the war in the mid to late 60s b/c otherwise you're AGAINST democracy. Once the war is exposed to no longer be about communism vs. democracy, but rather thousands of filled body bags in a country most people can't place on a map, they're against it. The parallels are eerie.