text: are you confident that america will continue to be free and prosperous ?   as someone has already said, empires rise and fall. one of the first signs of weakness is when a country thinks it is so powerful that it can do what it wants. i think the us has stood for lots of good things in the past and has helped a lot of countries but guantanamo, for example, lessens its moral authority. the war in iraq seemed to be a knee jerk reaction. they had to nail some bad guy (with the right ethnic and/or religious background) whether he had anything to do with 9/11 or not. you expect things like this from a totalitarian government, not from the us. they would have been a lot better off concentrating on afghanistan where they could have made a real difference.    however, if the us works more closely with other countries which, by the way, have had democracy for as long or longer, they will do a lot better than following the adage "my way or highway". as a great admirer of roosevelt and lincoln i can only shake my head in dismay when i think of the commander in chief you have now. the sooner he goes, the quicker the us will make ammends. by the way, i am no admirer of the democrats. i just like people in charge who know what they are doing.