Thinking more about the whole Iraq thing, it occurred to me that any person who seeks to become a leader should automatically be barred from doing so if they hold any kind of deep-rooted belief about anything, especially of the religious nature. Politics, by its own definition, is the art of equivocation and compromise: Any person who holds strong beliefs is unlikely to be successful in this and be a good leader at the same time. If you look at the most successful (political) leaders of all time, you notice that they are generally people who play loosely with concepts of morality. Augustus Caesar was not a particularly pious man(except on his deathbed); The great Kanuni Suleyman, while being a good Muslim, was not so pious that he turned his face against Jews and Christians, but rather welcomed them into his empire, to its benefit; Nelson Mandela, while president, could have spurned the white politicians, policemen and soldiers of South Africa, and not many would have blamed him, yet he took his erstwhile enemies into his embrace, to his eternal credit. Bear with me people, I feel that I'll be developing this idea...