I've seen the bullet holes of extremism: Gordon Brown has let us down

Though Al-Qaeda were allowed to operate out of Afghanistan by the Taliban, the war in Afghanistan was not self defense IMHO. The Taliban should have been persuaded to remove Al-Qaeda, especially if the Pakistani forces, and intelligence were used - after all it was apparently the American CIA and Pakistani SIS's handiwork to create the Taliban in order to bring some king of law and order to the country post the Soviet war, when Osama Bin Laden was funded by the CIA to train and arm the Mujahideen against the soviets, and then civil war in 1996.

Note Al-Qaeda, and the Taliban and Wahhabism/Sunni based organisations, and have a deeply critical view of Sufi and Shi'a Muslims, calling them as apostates, and often engaging in violence against them - I've seen the bullet holes myself in mosques as far away as suburban Karachi.

It does seem that the reason to go to war in Afghanistan was a pre-cursor to war was a pre-cursor only to going into Iraq.

Why Iraq: Oil. Even Greenspan admits it was so .

How ironic now that Bush is now thinking of military action against Iran - A democratic state (well since the US appointed monarch , The Shah, was overthrown), which is Shia - while the West continues being on great terms with Saudi Arabia - a monarchy, the home of Wahhabism, and most of the 9/11 terrorists. Seems like that the lesson has not been learned.

Meanwhile deaths in Afghanistan of western troops is on the rise, and the county is in the hands of drug lords, and the president Karzai lives up to his derogatory title of Mayor of Kabul. People of Iraq meanwhile pray for the westerners to leave so that they can rebuild their country and infrastructure. Nobody knows how many Iraq's are dead, where the oil has gone, nor what treasures from this historic land have been looted.

Its been five years since the war in Iraq was "won"!

How can the world allow itself to be scared into thinking that is right or just - or that this will contain the ideology that has generated the horrors of 9/11. Gordon Brown had a great opportunity to show courage and great leadership by declaring a withdrawal of forces from these two wars - I'm afraid he appears to have failed his country on day one as Prime Minister.