Once again, President Obama is engaging in sabre-rattling, this time in the Far East with China and North Korea. However, he is backing off from pushing North Korea too far because they actually have nuclear weapons. In the past 12 years, the calculus has been simple. If you have nuclear weapons, like North Korea, it is hands off. If you don't have nuclear weapons, like Iraq, the U.S. can invade anytime it wants to. No wonder Iran wants nuclear weapons! Any nation would. Meanwhile the real threat in the Mideast is Syria's use of chemical weapons on its own people. This will throw us back into a WWI, mustard gas scenario. The restraint(!) shown by the nations of the world in WWII, to kill millions without chemical weapons, was scotched by what I believe to be the U.S. abuse of nuclear weaponry in bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Obama has upped the ante with his use of predator drones to kill civilians in Pakistan. It is unlikely al-Assad will show restraint, given Obama's use of drones. Once again, the greatest threat to world peace is the U.S. government.

Walter Haugen

Ferndale